We were talking about glib cliché solutions. Here, we have the prime minister.
“No-one wants their child to go to a failing school and no-one wants to them to go to a coasting school either,” said Mr Cameron.
“‘Just enough’ is not good enough. That means no more sink schools and no more ‘bog standard’ schools either.
Blah, the same old crap they all come out with ever since Chris “probably wouldn’t get away with that these days” Woodhead invented incompetent teachers all those years ago. The BBC initially trailed the story as “Cameron’s war on mediocrity” before presumably realising they were about to kill satire. The actual content here seems to be the invention of a new category, “coasting schools”, that might be gifted to landlords (that’s “academies”).
Also, this:
Setting out his party’s education policy, the prime minister said funding per pupil would not be cut and would provide a further £7bn for places for rising numbers of pupils….On funding, the prime minister promised to protect “flat cash” per pupil spending, which would not increase in line with inflation.
That is to say, it’s a cut. It’s not a cut, it’s flat cash. Sorry. A community charge. Sorry. A spare room subsidy. Sorry. It’s not a cupboard, it’s a small room!
Just the man for a war on mediocrity.
And “Sir Michael Wilshaw replaced the “satisfactory” grade with “requires improvement”…
You know, this seems to be a pervasive issue, from GCSEs to hiring – the belief that no matter what the state of any given institution already is, it must be possible and necessary to force its metrics to show continuous improvement, without actually giving it any more resources. Weren’t conservatives at least supposed to believe in leaving well enough alone?