The single best reason to vote Tory

Rhoda Klapp

Anyone familiar with how the local education authorities undermined the private nursery schools a few years ago will be suspicious of them trying again with this initiative. The education establishment knows how to protect its fiefdom.

the shade of dr kelly

this policy has been around for a while now and whilst i personally applaud it there are still possibly over 30% of the population who might vote for the bunch of freaks who have destroyed this country over the last 13 years!

the tories need real game-changing policies to wake everyone up.

the first is a referendum on acceptance of the lisbon treaty (yes i know - yawn) but not for the purposes of repealing it but to send a message to the eurocracts that britain is strongly anti-EU to give cameron more strength when negotiating euro laws etc - a case of agree with me as the alternative is a population who would like out.

the second and i think more sly though is that they need to announce that they will ban scottish, welsh and N.irish mps from voting on matters that do not affect their consituencies.

not only is this right on a brad scal but it causes problems for other parties in a hung parliament. the chances are that the tories will have the vast majority of votes in the UK, the vast majority of english seats and for any party to disregard this weight it would be very dangerous thus giving the moral argument for control to the tories.

DC - start being decisive about other issues - most already like or don't dislike the direction that the tories are going in but you need desperately to have some more key radical policies for people to vote for and if they are gut issues, even if nationalistic, they will work.

Simon Chapman

I completely agree. By far the best reason and one that I hold on to when occasionally succumbing to wondering whether power will be worth the long march there.

It will be vital to recruit a core team of knowledgeable and entrepreneurial civil servants who are absolutely committed to doing this, to make it happen. There was once such a team to advance the academies programme, and something similar will need to be re-built. Policy needs highly effective champions to push it through. Without that, it will remain aspirational.

se1man

Yes. But I was really rather hoping to have more than one reason for voting Conservative.

Dave & Co seem to be rapidly deleting most of the other reasons (and there weren't that many to start with).

For crying out loud why can't we get some leadership in this country?

Robert Eve

The best reason to vote Tory is that they are not Labour.

After that it gets more difficult.

Andre

This is certainly the best reason to vote Tory. This policy demonstrates the idea of getting rid of state control and letting people take control of their own destiny. It has wider implications and applications. Can we do this with the police? Local govt involvement in education is awful - I speak as the partner of a teacher, erstwhile school governor and parent of school children. The object of education should be to develop the child, to do what is best for the child. Currently it is to fill young minds with a lot of politically correct hog wash and cripple teachers with idiotic initiatives on global warming, healthy eating and dodgy sex. Lets get back to teaching our children basic academic subjects and let them decide for themselves as they grow up. This is what the great majority of parents want. Take politics out of education

Boaby McGhee

Nice to see Fraser, a Scotsman, admit that there is no reason for anyone in Scotland to vote for the Tories as education is a devolved matter.

Frank P

Robert Eve

Quite!

wrinkled weasel

Perhaps after this post, all those tinfoil hatters who accuse you of answering directly to Charlie Whelan will begin to see the nuances.

TimC

The Tories need to carry out an analysis of the risks to the schools providers and then make sure that the bill caps these.
For example the local authority might use:
Health and safety-(this building has the wrong sort of stairs)
Zoning-(This bulding is zoned for commercial use not education)
Qualifications-(The staff may have degrees but are they 'qualified' as teachers?)
Hygiene- (You need more loos)
Parking(This will cause congestion)
CRB -(Have all these checks been completed)
Then of course the teachers unions will join in.
In short the bill has to predict and prevent spurious grounds being used to prevent a school opening.

Bernie Gudgeon

The ONLY reason to vote Tory is they're not Labour.

Tim Carpenter LPUK

This "reason" is a sham. A confection.

Under Tory plans parents apply to the LEA who then go cap-in-hand to the Central Government to gain "permission" to open a school. All the while various "interested parties" buzz around Central Office hoping to be selected to operate or run (but never both?) these new schools.

It is a fake.

If an LEA is stuffed with burnt out Trotskyist die-hards you are sunk.

If you are in a good area with a shortage of good places nearby will you show up on the radar?

If you want to both own and operate but not using one of the favoured entities, how successful will your application be? How rapidly will it be processed?

No, the Tory plans will, if anything, widen the gap except for a few flagship sites that will get a condescending pat (or is that a nudge?) on the head and be used for window-dressing.

This does not need central control. It does not need to go via the LEA (which should in fact become redundant). We will still see control over admissions, curriculum, pedagogy and I have no doubt that Home Educators will continue to be bullied.

To say that schools need such tight controls is basically saying that Heads cannot be trusted to provide suitable environments or that all will be aiming for selective schools only or demanding top-up fees.

Tories clearly trust themselves and the corporate interests of potential school operators best and will retain the final say on school creation.

A Libertarian government will not be making the mistakes (and corruption magnets) that are built in to the Tory plans. The people to empower are parents and head teachers - or even a teachers' collective if they so wish for all new AND existing schools.

BenM

Dire, dire policy.

No advanced country in the world would try and impose a mess of a system like this.

Say what you will, but the State is still the best guarantor of universal standards. And the State makes it possible to keep education out of the hands of wealthy vested interests.

One of the best reasons not to vote Tory.

Ged Carter

It's strange that the Select Committee findings on homeopathy/Evidence Check 2 - yet to be published - has already attracted media attention. Arguably, their first Evidence Check:Early Literacy Interventions is of far greater significance - it has barely been noticed.
Should Michael Gove become Minister for Education, the right of all children to become literate will be paramount. Ironically, a significant budget cut may play a major part in ensuring that this becomes a reality. A fallacy of government policy in offering massively expensive intervention lies in the fact that its heavily-promoted programme is at odds with the reading instruction recommended in the Rose Report (June 2006). The government decision to promote wave after wave of budget-heavy programmes serves not only to undermine the Rose recommendations but also to confuse teachers. The poor quality of the government’s evidence base for their intervention programmes has been severely criticised by the House of Commons Science & Technology Select Committee (Dec. 2009). In future, the DCSF’s 200 plus army of analysts could find it more difficult to rubber stamp programmes that lack a good quality evidence base. The government has failed to respond, to date.
The main intervention programme implemented by the Government with unseemly haste will cost in the region of one billion pounds over the next decade.
Barely a word about this or about why education institutes, almost without fail, withhold information about early reading instruction.

Ian Walker

BenM: Erm, except the Swedes, whose education policy this is modelled after?

David Lindsay

It isn't going to happen. What they have now is a think tank paper. Should it ever become a Bill, then that Bill will say "only with the permission of the local authority", which no local authority, of any political colour, would ever give.

Nor, in the coming hung Parliament, has Gove a cat in hell's chance of being given the job, anyway. He has no interest in it, and he has been parked there to keep him out of the way. What he wants, but will mercifully never have in any government not led by Tony Blair, is a platform for his lunatic views on foreign policy.

Yet this schools business is indeed the Tories' only distinctive policy, and is arguably their only policy of any kind. So there is simply no remaining purpose to the Tories.

Andre

BenM 20% of school children leave school unable to read and write fluently. How advanced it that? Look at the Swedish model - you don;'t have to be a Stig Larssen fan to realize it works a treat and turns out people who can talk with out using cliches in several languages. Of course the unions and the Leas will try and wreck it - this will be Cameron's miners strike - bring it on I say

Snowman

BenM @ 1.54:

Roughly one in seven comprehensive school leavers happens to be unable to read. Good enough for you, then?

To add insult to failure, in real terms, the spend on each pupil runs roughly fife times the level when Grammar schools were around. Madness to kick it into long grass, and come up with an untried model that needs the Trockyist loonies to relinquish the grip they have on the young. Pigs and flying?

hadrian

The Tories may promise an educational revolution but as with al State pedges and promises we should retain a healthy dose of sceoticism they can ever fully deliver it. Why? Because of the vast resistence of those in the system at just about every level nor should we forget that the Politicians themselves may be less than enthusiastic once in power. The presumption of the State that it has the right to dictate to parents how to educate their children is the crux of all this. In Sweeden and Germany for instance home schoolers have been treated with typical State high handedness and the threat is as great here. Still we wish the Tories well in their project for it's infinitely better than what those bureaucratis, Balls and Harman envisage for our culture.

Naomi Muse

It looks good to allow well-meaning and energetic, educated parents to set up an educational establishment

BUT

Does this mean that addressing the constipation and carnage that has been going on in the state education system is not going to be addressed?

Care is needed to ensure that it doesn't just turn into a sort of half-way-house, providing for education in the same way as private hospitals cater for NHS patients, but don't have to do the work to put the bill in, and still don't provide what every child needs to make the most of his or her life.

BenM

Bizarre antipathy here to LEAs who are only trying to ensure universally excellent levels of education.

Of course the Tories are for this bizarre policy, it means their wealthy chums can opt out of the system altogether.

This policy then is about assuaging the prejudices of hysterical middle class parents - not raising standards.

What that means for remaining schools can easily be ascertained by the way in which standard destroying Grammar Schools rob comprehensives of a glut of bright children who would help pull standards up.

That's why LEAs retaining Grammars post such mixed results.

Best thing to do is shake off the Grammars. Then see standards gradually improve.

By the way, on literacy levels... what are we comparing to? One in seven functionally illiterate now (which I do not dispute) compared to what in previous decades? Was it higher? Lower?

Flatdogz

Thank you, Tim Carpenter (LPUK
February 1st, 2010 1:53pm)

We have Home Educated all 5 of our children under Tory and Labour governments, and we have always had stumbling blocks placed in our way

We decided last year that we would be voting for the Libertarian Party this time round, as we have been let down big time by the Conservatives and couldn't even consider the current shower. We realise that a vote for the Libertarians will likely be wasted this time, but are convinced that when people really get to know what they stand for, they will become a force to be reckoned with.

O'Harlan

Wouldn't Gove's proposals lead to a rapid rise in the number of Madrassas?

If so, they would obviously need to be thoroughly regulated, to prevent incursions by HT, wahabbists, or other unsavoury elements.

Leon Vestey

Our current political system has effectively disenfranchised us. Most of the things we want set to rights are never even discussed in government circles:
Immigration: the return of transport and utilities to public ownership;the benefit system; the EU; the underfunding of the army;the collapse of the justice system under left-wing 'judges';the corruption in both local and national government; the cowardly, bullying police 'service', and so on practically ad infinitem.
I personally will not vote for any party except the BNP should they field a candidate in my area. Many of my friends feel the same.

Bob

I agree with Leon. We have been disenfranchised. Who in their right minds would vote for any of the parties on offer?
I would not leave home on a dry day to do so.
I echo Leon's comments.