Letters | 8 March 2008

Education revolution

Sir: Fraser Nelson (‘Made in Sweden’, 1 March) is right to highlight the importance of Sweden’s independent state schools for the debate on school choice and diversity. The successful Swedish experience strongly influenced New Labour reformers as we sought to introduce independent state-funded schools into England. However, it doesn’t need the Conservatives to ‘bring the Swedish education revolution to Britain’. The revolution has arrived already in the shape of the academies programme, which enables schools to be set up and managed on an independent basis by promoters outside the local authority system. There are now 83 academies open, managed by promoters including leading private schools, universities, churches, businesses and philanthropists. Academies are concentrated in precisely the areas of low standards highlighted by Mr Nelson, and they are working. Their results are rising far faster than the national average, and they are on average three times oversubscribed by parents who like what they see.

This is why we are accelerating the academies programme. At least 160 more academies will open by 2010, with more to follow thereafter. The Conservatives may be talking about radical education reform; New Labour is delivering it.

Andrew Adonis
Minister for Schools,
House of Commons, London SW1

Powell unhinged

Sir: Robert Shepherd’s analysis of the reasons behind Enoch Powell’s notorious immigration speech (‘The real tributaries of Enoch’s “rivers of blood”’, 1 March) is fascinating. But there are other more concise explanations. My aunt, Dame Enid Russell-Smith, worked closely with Powell when she was deputy secretary to the Ministry of Health and he was health minister, and she admired him greatly. When, after the 1968 speech, I asked her why this wonderful man seemed to have descended into abusive racism, she had a simple answer. ‘He’s gone mad,’ she told me. ‘People do, you know.’

Colin Bostock-Smith
St Leonards on Sea


Moor to the point

Sir: I am relieved to know that my concerns about the possibility of a President Obama are due not to any substantive matters but solely to my ‘primeval racist fears of the black super-male’.