The NUT - dinosaurs

Jurassic Park is alive and well: welcome to the National Union of Teachers, led by class warrior and bigot Bill Greenshields. The latest madness to come from the NUT - whose members gleefully indoctrinate our nation's children with leftist, politically correct filth - is a call for all independent schools to be brought into the state sector.  

Usually all we get from the NUT conference is a threat of strikes over pay, conditions or testing of students. This year is no different: NUT members will be balloted to strike over class sizes and inadequate pay. 

But the idea that our independent schools - which dominate league tables and offer a superior education to the overwhelming majority of state-run schools - should be run by the state is moronic. There's a reason that parents will make sacrifices to send their kids to the best schools: it's because these schools are full of teachers who care passionately about the kid they teach and they invariably find a child's talent and help him or her develop it to its full extent. All too often state-run schools fail the children they should be educating - and the blame for that lies with too many indolent teachers who are more interested in fighting the class war than in providing kids with a well-rounded education. 

A tale to of two Tories

Michael Gove is the Tories' education spokesman. Andrew Lansley is the Tories' health spokesman. Both are in charge of two keys policy areas. And yet one of these men has mastered his brief and is prepared to countenance radical reform by learning the lessons from other countries whereas the other has shown himself to be weak and incapable of original thought. 

Michael Gove is one of the brightest and most effective members of the 2005 parliamentary intake. His willingness to countenance radical educational reform - based on the Swedish model - is precisely the kind of truly innovative and compassionate policy that the Tories need to advocate in the run-up to the next election. Parents will be empowered and the nation will benefit markedly. Fraser Nelson wrote a superb piece about Gove in this week's Spectator which I urge you to read. 

And then there is Andrew Lansley. I could be generous and take the view that Lansley is a man scarred by the failures of the past decade and that he genuinely believes the NHS is such a political hot potato that we need, as a party, to stay well clear of anything that smacks of privatisation (or can be portrayed as such by our enemies). My fear is that - on the NHS, at least - the Party is unwilling to be radical. We saw this with the abandonment of patient passports after the last election (an NHS version of the education voucher system now being embraced by Gove). And yet I truly believe that voters realise that 2001 saw the last hurrah of the high-tax, big-spending politics of the left. They were prepared to give Brown one last chance to throw money at the problem and now they are ready to at least explore something more radical. 

Andrew Lansley has shown himself not to be up to the job. Radicalism need not be presented in a manner that alienates voters - Cameron has shown that himself. His great success in decontaminating the Tory brand is that he can advocate radical solutions in a way that voters will respect. If the Party is prepared to be radical on its education (and welfare) policies, why not on its health policy?

Kids should indeed learn Bengali and Mandarin

Now this may come as a surprise to my regular readers but I am inclined to concur with the view of Ofsted that kids should learn Bengali and Mandarin in preference to French and German. Having studied German to A-level and French to AO-level, I am naturally a fan of kids being taught foreign languages. And yet while I remain convinced that learning one or two European languages ought to remain a priority, I am increasingly convinced that kids also need to learn one or two non-European languages such as Bengali, Mandarin, Arabic or (possibly) Russian.

A combination of suicidal economic and social policies imposed on member states by the EU coupled with the startling growth of the BRIC economies (Brazil, Russia, India and China, for the economically illiterate among you!) means that we cannot afford to ignore the development of those nations - and if we are to deal with them in business, we need to extend them the courtesy of learning their languages (notwithstanding that their business leaders will probably speak English in any event).

UPDATE: One reader has reminded me of the 1970s comedy Mind Your Language - banned for being offensive, of course. Here is the pilot episode from YouTube.

We need more oral, not less

The news that kids can now pass French, German or Spanish exams without even speaking the language should come as no surprise. GCSEs and A-levels have been dumbed down repeatedly over the past 20 years so that the government can proclaim how standards have improved when all anecdotal evidence suggests the opposite. 

Yet rather than moving away from the oral component of exams, I have long advocated the addition of an oral component to other subjects such as history, economics, politics and business studies. When I studied A-level and S-level Politics there were some students in my class who were capable of regurgitating essay plans but who could not hold a conversation about the subject in hand. An oral examination in politics would have found out those students and would have ensured all students actually understood the subject fully. 

The news that those studying foreign languages now no longer need to prepare for oral examinations suggests that my vision for more orals, not fewer, will not be realised until the curriculum is reviewed by an incoming Tory government. 

White Men Can't Jump

So ran the title of the Hollywood movie. Now we learn that white boys from working class backgrounds can't learn. With only 15% gaining good GCSEs, they do even worse in school than boys from black Caribbean, black African, Indian and Chinese backgrounds.

Michael Gove decries the fact that our educational system is causing a growing gap between rich and poor. I'm not sure whether that's the right place to start - after all, if the Tories had a truly progressive educational policy we would see educational vouchers allowing parents to exercise true choice as is the case in mainland Europe and the USA. But just as the Tories are too scared to take on vested interests in the NHS, so it seems the Party is unwilling or unable to side with parents desperate for their children to succeed.

The failure of white boys from working class backgrounds in schools should come as no surprise - but you can bet it won't be big news. Underachievement of kids in schools is only big news if the kids who underachieve come from an ethnic minority background as it fits with the narrative that Britain is a racist, unequal society. Today's report shows this is not the case at all - so its findings will be ignored. Welcome to Britain in 2008.

Grammar Schools: Let's Defend Excellence

It should come as no surprise to learn that the government has decided to find ways to embarrass the Tories by portraying the Party as being divided. First, the government hoped that the lengthy debates on the EU Treaty would pit Ken Clarke against Bill Cash when in reality this has backfired: instead, MPs' scrutiny of the Treaty reveals the vast number of powers being handed over to Brussels without a referendum.

After Plan A failed, the government now moves on to Plan B: grammar schools. This issue caused David Cameron a lot of self-inflicted damage last summer and, of course, provoked the resignation of the excellent Graham Brady from the front bench. Today we learn that a government report argues that all grammar schools should be scrapped to make education fairer for poor pupils. The Department for Children report concludes that faith schools and academic selection were contributing to a divide between rich and poor.

If there is a distinction between what Conservatives and the Labour Party believe it must surely be on the question of equality: we stand for equality of opportunity while the left believes in equality of outcome. We believe in diversity, they believe in sterile conformity and dumbing-down.

Yet again the politics of envy are being deployed by an increasingly desperate government hell-bent on out-manoevring the Tories rather than governing in the interests of the nation as a whole.

The tragedy is that David Cameron's wrongheaded attack on grammar schools last summer will make it much more difficult for him to defend grammar schools against this renewed onslaught by the class warriors who populate the government benches and the Department for Children.

Is there a way for Cameron to position the Tories to be on the side of parents who want the best for their kids and who aspire for a better life for their families while still clinging to the nonsensical policy announced last summer? Or will Cameron now be able to pull together the muddled education policy rushed out last summer in an effort to pick a gratuitous fight with the Tory Right with the Tories' need to be on the side of parental choice and educational excellence?

Labour perpetuates poverty of aspiration

The news that the Labour government is insisting that state schools are not allowed to choose their pupils on subjective grounds of merit should come as no surprise. Socialists hate to see parents exercise choice. Equality of outcome matters more to them than equality of opportunity - no matter what rhetoric the Prime Minister uses.

Coupled with the unedifying row over the charitable status of Britain's private schools, falling educational standards and business and wider society being lumbered with a generation of illiterate, ill-disciplined and socially maladjusted neanderthals who represent Labour's focus on "education, education, education", this highlights the need for schools to be independent of governmental interference.

Grant-maintained status, abolished by Blair in 1997, saw schools receive money from the government but they avoided a good deal of unnecessary interference by LEAs and the Department for Education. Heads and governors should be given that level of independence again - and if they want to choose the brightest, most musical or sportiest kids to attend their schools, or to choose them from a lottery or on whatever other basis they think fit - that should be a matter for them.

Where's the NHS version of the TaxPayers' Alliance?

The TaxPayers' Alliance is a model for how think-tanks should operate. The TPA is a campaigning organisation, a pressure group on steroids. Instead of publishing turgid pamphlets read by a handful of fellow policy wonks, the media-savvy TPA commissions polls, undertakes and publishes newsworthy research, secures media coverage and then campaigns on that particular issue with vigour.

There can be little doubt that the TPA has helped pull the political parties towards its viewpoint such that each of the main three parties now promises to reduce taxes and cut government waste. None of the parties has yet gone anywhere near far enough for my liking (or for the liking of the excellent TPA Chief Executive, Matthew Elliott) but the outlook for low-tax campaigners is much more favourable today than it was before the TPA existed.

If the TPA represents the views of the many taxpayers frustrated with high taxes, stifling regulation and government waste, who similarly represents the views of those frustrated with the NHS, policing, transport, housing or education - it struck me that no one yet does so with the same skill, vision, determination and single-mindedness of the TaxPayers' Alliance.

With the NHS in a shambles - with sensitive personal data being lost, people dying of hospital-acquired infections and the moral evil of the postcode lottery condemning people to an early grave - who represents the views of those patients and their families who truly want a radical change in the way healthcare is delivered in Britain?

The Patients' Association cannot do this, not least because it is a charity. The truth is that we need an NHS-version of the TaxPayers' Alliance. The same can equally be said of other policy areas such as policing, law and order and prisons, transport, housing or education.

For libertarians and conservatives to shape the agenda in healthcare, policing, transport, housing and education, we need more media-savvy campaign organisations like the TaxPayers' Alliance. As I have argued many times before on Conservative Home and elsewhere, the Conservative Party alone cannot win the next election or deliver the change our nation truly needs. A vibrant, broad-based conservative movement is needed - and that movement needs some new members who will truly transform the debate on healthcare, policing, transport, housing and education.

My Two Cents...on Labour's incompetent government

While I was away, politics in Britain sank to a new low. Not content with playing politics with the election date – albeit he was deliciously scarred by the experience – our Prime Minister tried to play politics with the country’s finances in the pre-budget report and comprehensive spending review announcement rolled out last week. That too went down like a cup of cold sick.

With a National Health Service that allows patients to get fatal infections in filthy hospitals and, so we learn today, sees some patients indulging in DIY dentistry, the government now has the gall to whine about obesity levels – instead of tackling the criminal rate of deaths from preventable infections and conditions that are treatable in the rest of the civilized world such as early stage cancer and heart disease.

Our state schools turn out hordes of ill-disciplined, innumerate and illiterate kids, taught – if I can use the word loosely – by too many teachers who don’t seem to care about the kids in their care. If they did, they’d put the effort in that the counterparts do in the private sector.

Gun crime, knife crime and gang violence are prevalent throughout our inner cities and, increasingly, in the shires. The police obsess with targeting motorists, attending politically correct training courses, not offending Islamofascists, tip-toeing around profiling and even waving the white flag in the war on drugs.

The City of London – the ONLY reason England isn’t a third world socialist hell-hole like Scotland – is now being ruined by our Scottish Prime Minister and Scottish Chancellor in some seeming act of national revenge for Culloden. The decision to hammer entrepreneurs by almost doubling Capital Gains Tax is beyond moronic. It is simply dangerous for the health of our nation as any investor, entrepreneur or businessman worth his or her salt will be thinking twice about keeping their wealth in the UK.

Instead of dealing with the crises in the NHS, our education system, law and order and the economy, the government fiddles while Britain burns, ministers squabbling among themselves and passing more authoritarian laws that infringe our freedom of expression.

We are led by pygmies. If you thought the likes of John Prescott, Charles Clarke and David Blunkett were lightweight, they look like political titans compared to the shambolic losers governing us today.

It’s good to be back after a week in the Land of the Free. I’m ready for the fight: I do hope you are too!

Today's Hero is...David Cameron

Today's Hero is...David Cameron, for promising to abolish modular A-levels and putting kids into sets from the age of seven. His radical education proposals will also see kids forced to repeat years of school if they fail to make the grade.

I remain unhappy at Cameron's opposition to grammar schools. But the fact he is willing to campaign openly for selection, setting and streaming suggests that there may be a traditional values man in there somewhere. Now he needs to advocate setting schools truly free from local authority control and allowing taxpayers' money to follow the child.

Education vouchers, just like patient passports, are a no-brainer. They embody the Tory principle of "trusting the people". If the Tories are truly to stand for decentralisation and localism, it's time education vouchers and patient passports were revisited.

My Two Cents...on exam results

Yet again we learn that exam results have risen to new heights today. Last week it was A-levels, today it is GCSEs. Britain is a nation of geniuses, full of dynamic intellectual power houses set to turn Britain into the most powerful economy on earth. Or not.

The charade that we have to endure every year is becoming increasingly tiresome. If one dares to question the results obtained and the validity of the qualifications awarded, one is attacked as a kill joy. The students have worked really hard, we are told, and questioning standards is questioning their efforts.



This is nonsense. Old O-level questions now routinely appear in A-level exams. A-level questions appear in degree course exams. University lecturers complain that much of the first few weeks of a degree course is spent teaching undergraduates things they should have learned at school. And employers complain that qualifications are worthless and that too many graduates or school leavers seek to enter the workforce lacking common sense, a work ethic or any semblance of transferable skills.

Part of the problem is that too many people are forced to remain in education. This will only get worse if the government gets its way and kids are forced to remain in full-time education until they are 18. Some kids are academic and career-focussed. It is right that they are encouraged to go to university, although only if they are bright enough and if they study a recognized worthwhile degree.

Other kids are less academic. More time should be spent with them encouraging them to secure more vocational qualifications. John Major’s misguided unification of polytechnics and universities in the 1990s has a lot to answer for as it discouraged people from entering vocations or trades.

Tony Blair memorably said that his three priorities in government were “education, education and education”. If only the Blair/Brown government had delivered on that pledge instead of giving kids false hope and our nation what all too often appears to be a generation of socially awkward illiterate and innumerate chavs.

My Two Cents...on teaching history

The Daily Mail reports today that 70% of students drop history before they even get to GCSE. Worse, instead of giving students a chronological overview of history, lessons have been reduced to a random collection of topics. As a result students’ knowledge of key events and historical figures was patchy or non-existent.

Part of the problem is that there are too few teachers who themselves knew anything about history. Others would prefer to teach trendy new subjects which lack intellectual rigour. But history is an essential discipline if Britain is to have a well-rounded citizenry.

As was once said, those who fail to learn the lessons of history are condemned to repeat history’s mistakes. And a little bit of perspective and understanding of what made Britain a great nation wouldn’t go amiss either. Especially as it will upset the multiculturalist politically-correct brigade who hate this country and who want us to apologise for – well, pretty much everything.

Today's Hero is...Civitas

Today’s Hero is…Civitas, the centre-right think tank that has today exposed the way that learning has been ruined by political tinkering in the curriculum. The development of politically correct dogmas mean that kids know a lot about global warming, slavery and the Stephen Lawrence report but little about British history, English literature or Christianity. Tory education spokesman, Nick Gibb, said that “the anti-knowledge, anti-intellectual approach of many education reformers has had a deeply corrosive effect” on education standards.

None of this should come as a surprise. The attempt to impose a national curriculum in the late 1980s was always going to be hijacked by leftists. The same is already happening with citizenship classes. The best way to ensure kids learn what they truly need to learn in life is for parents and governors to determine what each school teaches. Localism and choice are the answers.

My Two Cents...on lefty lecturers

The University and College Union held its annual conference last week in Bournemouth. The UCU represents the interests of academics, lecturers, researchers and academic-related staff working in further and higher education throughout Britain. If you ever wondered why Britain is falling behind the rest of the developed world, look no further than the UCU – a trades union stuck in a time-warp.

One of the motions adopted by this bunch of lazy hippies calls for a boycott of all Israeli academic institutions and to organize a UK-wide campus tour for Palestinian academics and educational trade unionists. Another motion calls for an end to all research and cultural collaborations with Israeli institutions while also calling for the immediate restoration of aid to the Palestinian Authority. Another one calls for institutions to twin with a Palestinian University or college. This is the kind of puerile politically correct posturing that was de rigeur in students’ unions in the 1970s and 1980s, but that ended in the last decade or so. Unfortunately while the kids may have grown up, the supposed grown-ups haven’t.

Academic freedom is essential in a free society. Students should be encouraged to explore all sides of an argument and to form their own views based on their research. The one-sided indoctrination espoused by the University and College Union is a grave cause for concern. Their embrace of the Palestinian cause at a time when Hamas, a terrorist organization, is in power in the Palestinian Authority is offensive and dangerous. If only the members of the UCU could concentrate on doing their jobs and teaching students.