May 22 2007
Did you enjoy that Clause IV moment?
Reading David Cameron’s education policy article in today’s Times, it is difficult to see what all the fuss has been about. There is the continued support for existing grammar schools, to reassure the MPs for Buckinghamshire, Kent, Berkshire and the other places lucky enough to retain these good academic schools.
There is the new proposal that we will create a grammar stream in every comprehensive - the quickest and fairest way of giving the more academically inclined pupils everywhere?? more challenging courses and more chance of getting into a good university.
There is the proposal that a Conservative government will let people and institutions establish new schools, that can compete to offer pupils a better deal, paid for by state money to cover the fees or costs.
Of course the leasdership is right that we must offer opportunity to all, regardless of background, income and geography. This new education policy allows us to do just that.
This is not a Clause IV moment. The new policy builds on our excellent principles of choice, competition and quality, rather than renouncing them. Labour needed a Clause IV moment because its belief in the state as owner and manager of business did not work. We need a rejection of spin moment, to re-engage the many who have given up on all the political parties because they do not trust them. A good place to start would be for Conservative peers to vote down the secrecy Bill in the Lords.
John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
But this still does not answer the problem of the postcode lottery when it comes to gaining places in the better schools. Children whose parents can afford to move into the catchment area of a good school will still have an advantage over children whose parents cannot.
Surely it would be better to create a grammar/academy in every town that would take in the most gifted pupils regardless of location. This would help to ease the tensions surrounding school places and put an emphasis onto achievement rather than class band.
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Yes, I enjoy it every time Cameron picks a fight in order to exchange more real Conservative members with new liberal members. Sooner or later real Conservatives (such as yourself?) will realise that Cameron’s change means that the Conservative Party become an environmentalist NuLabour Party and they will be forced to do what must be done, even if it means splitting the Party into two.
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Cameron and Willets, either through incompetence or deliberate act, expressed views that betrayed lack of concern for those parents educating their children in the state system with aspirations for their children. The message came across that the “modern” Conservative Party cares little for such people and their (your) priority was for those on free school meals and also their rich friends who can afford to buy their children’s education in private schools.
I also read that this was supposed to have been a ploy to put Brown on the back foot by supporting city academies. If Cameron and his advisers thought that they certainly shot themselves in the foot.
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Spot on. Why more people aren’t saying this is beyond me.
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