More Balls
James Forsyth 5:34pm
Is it a bigger scandal that six state schools are asking parents for voluntary contributions or that 100,000 children do not get into their first choice school? Ed Balls clearly thinks it is the former as he has gone into full Laura Spence-outrage mode over it, naming and shaming the schools involved.
One can’t help but wonder what Balls is up to in trying to turn this into a big story. As Conor Ryan, who used to advise Blair and Blunkett on education, writes, “The problem with turning the issue into a cause celebre is that it alienates many of the good school leaders that this government needs if it is to tackle failing schools and pioneer personalisation.”
It seems that these schools are being attacked both to distract from the constant slew of bad news about the state of education in this country and to bolster his class warrior credentials. Once again Ball’s partisan advantage is being put ahead of the interests of children.
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Nadine
April 3rd, 2008 5:52pm Report this commentThis government is returning to Old Labour faster than anyone could have ever imagined. This is a deliberate strategy to undermine faith schools, you only have to listen to Diane Abbott's tone whenever faith schools are discussed on the This Week programme.
Jessica
April 3rd, 2008 5:55pm Report this commentClassic spin, try to create controversy over a tiny number of schools asking for voluntary contributions when 100,000 children are being denied an education at the school of their choosing. If the media were doing their job properly Balls would not be allowed to get away with it!
TomTom
April 3rd, 2008 6:17pm Report this commentIf Jewish schools need to pay for security the Government should be funded it directly since the threat must originate from the poor controls on Islamic radicals allowed to set up in London and a general lack of vigilance by H M Government
Adrian Drummond
April 3rd, 2008 6:21pm Report this commentPurely out of interest, can anyone explain why Balls has a chip on his shoulder about class?
Tom
April 3rd, 2008 6:31pm Report this commentJust a question but under this new system, one should expect a large number of people not to get into their first choice no?
Fred
April 3rd, 2008 6:41pm Report this commentSorry, you are reporting that Ed Balls is an idiot, interested purely in spin and acting as a control freak? What is the news in this. Nothing to see here, move along please.
Chuck Unsworth
April 3rd, 2008 6:57pm Report this commentThis wouldn't be anything to do with his own children's schooling would it? Did the Balls' not move to another part of London at the critical moment and has that school not recently suffered a setback?
ChrisD
April 3rd, 2008 7:40pm Report this commentCall me a cynic, but I realised weeks ago that it was a classic Labour spin operation to try and divert the blame and anger of thousands of parents away from his department and this government .
Those schools are being used as a scapegoat for a failed education policy which does not deliver a decent local state school in every area.
Classic New Labour tactics at work, the media still *falls* for it when it delivers a good headline though....
Trumpeter Lanfried
April 3rd, 2008 10:04pm Report this commentWasn't it John Prescott who hit the nail on the head when he said, (from memory), 'the trouble is, if you have a good school everyone wants to get into it'?
He was right of course. And we have yet to hear Labour's solution to this dilemma unless it be, 'improve all schools', a policy which successive governments have now been pursuing for fifty years.
The result? Pupils who went to lousy schools fifty years ago have seen their children, and now their grandchildren enrol in the same lousy schools. Nothing changes. Not even the rhetoric.
Fergus Pickering
April 4th, 2008 12:05am Report this commentIf you had GRAMMAR SCHOOLS as we do in East Kent then none of this would arise and the Ballses could send their little darlings to a nice school no bother.
The Laughing Cavalier
April 4th, 2008 8:26am Report this commentThis looks as though Balls is pandering to the left of the party as part of a long term strategy to succeed to the leadership, just as Brown did to Blair. Good schools will suffer for one man's ambition.
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