There’s a heartening story in the Evening Standard today of the difference that public service reform can make. The paper reports that Harris City Academy is the first school in the country to receive a perfect Ofsted score under the new inspection system. This is a transformation since 1991 when at Sylvan High School , the school that the Harris Academy took over, 90 percent of pupils failed to get five good GCSES A* to C.
The story does make you wonder how much better education in England would be if the Major government had made every school in the country a grant-maintained one or if Blair hadn’t spent his first few years in office trying to undo Tory education reforms before coming round to the idea of academies but too late to ensure that they were rolled out across the board. Thankfully with Michael Gove’s plan for free schools, the Cameron government should have the right idea on education from off.
Comments