The government’s greatest failing is ignoring advice

Naomi Langford-Wood

Attitudes out of kilter, that is what all of these things are. Government by omniscience is classic hubris.

Hubris is a delusional self-belief normally borne of being too long in the job.

Ignoring proven expert advice is hubris or stupidity.

Ed Balls whole behaviour back to his mouthed words in parliament last year, about putting more tax on is hubris.

Harriet Harperson's reaction when being caught crashing her car and driving away without following correct procedure, with the parthian shot saying that people knew where to find her is hubris as well as being against the rules and probably an offence.

Gordon Brown thinking that he can solve the problems he created with his holey tripartite control system is hubris.

The outcome of hubris is incorrect judgement.

A thorough purge of parliament having put all the overclaim of expenses right so we all know that profiteering out of taxpayers has been properly addressed, is the only way.

And, an early election. Fear of losing ones position in life is the best antidote to hubris.

Leo Aylen

It is time the ordinary citizen, you, me, and everyone, realised fully and repeated regularly that all politicians are by definition incompetent, because they are mere amateurs trying to interfere with professionals.

Ask any teacher about the government initiatives of the last twenty years, which have choked creativity from education.

Or ask any politician to explain why the invasion of Afghanistan is necessary for the defence of UK national security. Have the Afghans got nuclear warheads, and rockets capable of exploding those warheads over London? Why have we not heard about this.

As we approach the General Election, let us voters not expect competence from politicians.

Judy

The very fact of the teacher unions, every single one of which has endorsed it, being the cheerleaders for this report should alert you to be cautious in using it as a stick to beat the government with.

The "experts" are the educational establishment. The lead academics, particularly Professor Robin Alexander, have a very long track record going back to the original Thatcher government imposition of the National Curriculum of opposition to every stage of its implementation. As Robin Alexander set the inquiry up, he chose the experts, the panels and the direction of the research.

They do in fact acknowledge that standards have risen and many improvements have been made. Most of the negative findings are axe-grinding. I am absolutely not a supporter of Ed Balls, but I do think "listen to the experts" without examining the credibility, track records and interest-group connections of the "experts" is a naive and surprising conclusion for a Spec columnist to come to. They are certainly not the equivalent of motor mechanics--and in any case have you read the "Which" reports on the way in which the overwhelming majority of car service firms will systematically overcharge you for fixing things which aren't wrong with your car, whilst failing to spot the really dangerous faults?

Some of the findings in the review make sense; others represent the interests of the unions and the educational establishment. It is a field in which any research is all too likely to come up with the answers you want it to.

You quote the views of the leaders of the NAHT and the NUT about this report. Do you really take them as serious indicators of the quality of the report? Would you quote the leader of the RMT as an indicator of the worth of Boris Johnson's track record so far on transport on London and on his proposals for the future of London Transport?

The government has a great many failings and deserves to go. But failing to swallow this report as the ultimate truth about the state of primary education is not one of them.

Stepney

It's about time someone said this.

Time after time expert advice from outside Whitehall is simply waved away in the most off-hand way as though the "little people" ie outside the political class, don't know their arses from their elbows.

It has been utterly symptomatic of a government that doesn't listen, is inept in its vision and incompetent in its operations.

Brian

Great photo.
No surprise that the DSCF won't accept criticism or any suggestion of failure - Balls has learned that trait from his mentor.

Moraymint

"However, ministers dismissed the comprehensive report as ‘out of date’"

Marxism at its spectacular best.

If the Labour Party's attitude to governing the country wasn't criminally negligent, we could all be having a laugh at their "Carry On Up Whitehall" antics.

As it is, we're hurtling towards oblivion however good, bad or indifferent is the Labour Party's education legacy:

http://tinyurl.com/yfm66ac

Meantime, the political class schemes to hold on to its dodgy but lucrative expenses arrangements.

How did it get to this?

Ray

Ed Balls walks on water... (well, that's when he's not getting his trousers wet).

Carroll Barry-Walsh

"the rise of unelected and unaccountable groups taking key decisions behind closed doors; the 'empty rituals' of consultations; the authoritarian mindset, and the use of myth and derision to underwrite exaggerated accounts of progress and discredit alternative views"

This could stand as a description of everything Labour has done over the last 12 years.

T .England

Don't you just love it!
Labour isn’t just out of touch with what the public wants but when members of the public in positions of respectability are giving them sound advice they ignore that too. This can of course all be blamed on Gordon I know best Brown.
This can also be used as a way of making the point that Brown never listens to sound advice & is one of the reasons the country is in such a mess.
Roll on the election, at least we know Cameron doesn’t think he’s superman & has the sense to listen to those who know better.

Rhoda Klapp

If you think the teacher's unions are part of the problem, why would you set too much store by their advice? Sometimes experts have agendas.

Stephen

The link above to the conclusion of the report is to the coverage in the Guardian. Given that we object to the government rejecting the findings of the report on the basis that experts know better than politicians are we also in favour of 'Delaying formal lessons until after a child turns six, to allow them to focus on play-based learning, so those who struggle at the age of four or five are not put off for life' and 'Scrapping Sats and league tables and replacing them with teacher assessments in a wider range of subjects than just the 3Rs, to encourage primaries to focus on the broader curriculum'?

It appears that opposition politicians are not. According to the Guardian report Nick Gibb the shadow School Minister is also choosing to reject some of the recommendations of the report. Apparently he says '... we do not agree with all its proposals for changing the curriculum, or that politicians should end school for four to six year olds."

It seems that all politicians choose to ignore the experts some of the time. Sadly, 'Nanny knows best' will not be consigned to the dustbin of history next May.

Tiberius

Have you received the command yet, David, to pull this thread?

As a parent governor (and hopefully someone with basic obcervational capabilities), I'd say the quotation sums things up very succinctly.

Apart form the dogma-bearing variety, teachers do seem to recognize that the progressive stuff is load of Ed. Targets, SATS, endless documents eulogizing school "achievement", all the doublespeak - these don't teach the children; only good teachers within a disciplined environment free of Big Brother can do that.

I am suspicious of the teaching unions' willingness to cooperate with Gove's proposals, but if they are sincere in their reaction to this report, so much the better. Undoing the knots in the education system going back 40 years is needed, but those of the last 12 is imperative.

Jock

I don't think it's a only question of not taking advice but often one of taking the wrong advice, at huge expense both in terms of the cost of supply of the advice and the cost of the consequences of accepting it. Think Management consultants, IT experts etc.

A good starting point to finding the right answer is to identify the right question. Too often the government work backwards from a solution being peddled by the actual or potential suppliers to find (or be directed towards) a problem that fits the solution on offer. The suppliers have as their objective the achievement of top line growth and bottom line for their organisation and usually do pretty well. Failures or problems in pursuing the solution,or as a result of implemeting it, so far from damaging their business more often results in additional work to remedy the problem.

john miller

Balls? Idelogical? Even delusionally? Some mistake there, I think.

Dennis Sewell

But one of the pieces of advice in this report should most certainly be ignored: the recommendation to increase the period of postgraduate teacher training from one year to two.

That would be a move in the wrong direction. Slashing it to six months - or even 3 - would be more like it. During the coming year or two there will be a heck of a lot of clever graduates being made redundant in the middle part of their working lives by businesses, government departments and (with a bit of luck) quangos. A fair number will have better degrees than most teachers and a broader experience of life. We should be thinking of nudging them into teaching via six to twelve week conversion courses, not perpetuating the myth that a teacher has to spend longer in training than a fighter pilot before being allowed to go solo.

DangerDave

Can we please have this picture for every article involving Ed Balls-up please

Nicholas

The government's reaction to this report convinces me that their agenda for education (like most other things) is deliberately incompetent, malevolent and destructive (q.v. Verity & her posts about New Labour's deliberately destructive policies).

These are nasty Marxists in power and at work.

Richard Jenkins

Can anyone improve upon the Daily Mash: "BRITISH children should be taught things by trained professionals in some sort of large building, according to a major new report."

Prodicus

I'm looking forward to the considered Gove response to the Cambridge Report.

Alan Phillips

Yesterday I heard that the cost of monitoring the A&E waiting times added up to a spend of £400 million! Why are these kind of costs being agreed?

This is typical LieBore. Spend on the admin and to hell with the rest of the project. I'm not for wanton and carefree management but there are limits.

The only advice Governments of any colour need to adhere to is that any service requires the base of the spending pyramid is made from the front line spending and the rest shrinking to the top job. The CUBE is more of an apt spending pattern these days.

The Government only use review data that fits their agenda, instead of facing up to the facts that their ideals are just no good.

Rick Hamilton

Ed Balls is proof positive - if ever it were needed - that it is perfectly possible to have a top degree from an elite institution and still be a blithering idiot. Like all intellectual Lefties he assumes that he is the sole custodian of the correct way of thinking on every matter. The tumbrils await.

salieri

Naomi,

"Government by omniscience" - would that be the GCSE they invented in order to replace separate papers in physics, chemistry, biology and Latin? Or was it perhaps a mis-spelling of Miniscience?

More seriously, what led you to suppose that the Labour Government has ever taken advice of any kind for any purpose other than endorsement of the ideas that had already sprung, Athena-like, fully formed from its own brow?

Any Colour but Brown

In one respect the Govt are correct - this report is out of date and reflects the fact that it was implemented 6 or 7 years ago.

That is also the tragedy - this report reflects a time when things were far better than they are today.

The education system is in a far worse state that this report would have you believe.

JohnBUK

The only "experts" are the customers. They'll buy what they want if given a chance, not what some third party unelected, unaccountable, jobsworth decides.

Michael Booth

Whether for or against the Cambridge Report, the fact is that we continue using a nineteenth century educational model based on the farming year instead of starting afresh with the 21st century in mind.