Release our schools from all this red tape

Published: 8:05PM GMT twenty-three February 2010

Comments 5 |

Ofsted"s ultimate comment of the efficacy of the Government"s flagship preparation policy, the "National Strategies", exposes the elemental flaw. The goal was noble: to force up standards of preparation and numeracy, generally in initial schools. The income was positively available: about �4.5 billion was poured in over a decade. It was the doing that valid hopelessly misguided. Instead of schools being empowered to broach the programme, it was implemented in a top-down conform by Whitehall. That was bad enough. What done it worse was that shortcoming for using the plan was put in the hands of Capita, the Government"s prime consultancy. The Ofsted inform suggests that the impasse was prying and counter-productive. One propagandize was visited by officials no fewer than 55 times over dual years. A internal management central had twenty-six meetings with National Strategies staff in her diary in a 12-month period. Councils were deluged with reports that offering "no utilitarian information".

Enveloping schools in red fasten might have been great for Capita"s change sheet, but was a goofy approach to lift standards. And, certain enough, it did not work. Ofsted found that schools have been so impressed by clumsy interventions from the centre that swell in English and maths has been "too slow" over the past 4 years. Last summer, English scores in Sats tests for Year Two pupils fell for the initial time since the exams were introduced fifteen years ago. One kid in five right away leaves initial propagandize carrying unsuccessful to reach the approaching customary in English and maths, a shameful statistic in an modernized society. Ofsted found "weaknesses" in training standards at half of all delegate schools and a third of primaries, notwithstanding the billions outlayed on the programme.

Release the schools from all this red fasten Hostile councils refusing to send sufficient uneasy pupils to boarding propagandize Councils wasting millions on gravestone disintegrate tests AS turn exams a rubbish of time Sir George Bain is behind to salary fight on low compensate Poor schools destroy thousands of pupils

The National Strategies plan has been at the heart of Labour"s attempts to lift propagandize performance. That it has valid so ineffectual and is right away being axed is a distressing complaint of a Government that claimed to have preparation as the priority. For the Conservatives, this is a vital opportunity. Michael Gove, their shade schools minister, has charted a considerably opposite approach, proposing a array of reforms written to give energy and resources to schools to run their own affairs, inside of extended inhabitant guidelines. Head teachers will be means to prerogative great teaching, and teachers will be since the energy to say classroom discipline.

With Labour"s high-spending corporatism effectively tested to destruction, the destiny for the schools lies in larger liberty and a genuine clarity of energy for heads, teachers and parents. The man in Whitehall unequivocally does not know best.