Schools

Exceeding expectations

Today’s Guardian has an interesting story on the success of the New School Network, an organisation set up to get parents’ to take up the opportunities offered by the Tories’ planned school reform. The Guardian reports that 200 parents groups and 100 groups of teachers are interested in setting up schools. I suspect that take up of the Tories new schools will exceed expectations. One person involved with the New Schools Network told me recently that they would judge the policy a failure if it did not lead to the creation of a 1,000 new schools in the first two years. From a political perspective, the problem for the Tories

Balls beats the drum for investment

Oh, look, Ed Balls is talking about “investment” again.  This time it’s an address on the Government’s Children’s Plan, and, judging by the preview in today’s Independent, it’s all going to be about how much more money his department is spending.  I doubt Alistair Darling will be impresssed – especially as much of that money was strong-armed out of the Treasury in the early hours of Wednesday morning last week.  And I doubt that some of Balls’s other colleagues will be too amused either.  Their departments will be subject to even deeper cuts thanks to his brinksmanship. But you suspect that Balls isn’t just hoping to rile his fellow ministers

Public scepticism about Labour’s record on education

Isn’t it funny how things work out?  I imagine the government once thought they’d get credit for the ever-improving GCSE and A-level pass rates, but now results day just rekindles the debate about slipping standards – and rightly so.  Ed Balls may have tried to divert attention on to the Tories this morning, but he can’t really escape the verdict of this ComRes poll commissioned by Newsnight.  Here are the main results: 67 percent of respondents said Labour hasn’t lived up to Tony Blair’s “education, education, education” vow. 52 percent said Labour hasn’t improved the overall quality of education.  41 percent said they have. 47 percent said the standard of