Smile, you're on Candid Camera! Criminal Justice Act campaigners took their protest to Michael Howard's house, and staged a rooftop demo FEW winners. Lots of losers. A familiar story? The Tories seem determined to run education in the same way as they do the lottery.
League tables at GCSE, A level and SAT results are a central plank of the marketisation of education and reinstatement of a new 11-plus.
For most parents the odds against them winning this education lottery are high. There is no enthusiasm for turning the clock back to the Grammar/Secondary divide.
To describe the present league tables as crude is an understatement. Among the absurdities are:
• the exclusion of pupils who haven't reached 16 in the exam year;
• the inclusion of pupils who have been placed in a lower year and therefore have not actually taken exams;
• placing special schools where many children may not be able to read or write alongside selective fee paying private schools.
In one sense this does not matter — the Tories are not concerned with parents being able to make informed choices. They merely want to fuel the education market place in which parents send their children to the "best" schools.
And it is clear what the Tories have in mind by "best" — they almost certainly mean those which inculcate the appropriate market philosophy of success and don't waste time on working class "no hopers".
Yet there are growing signs that some in the ruling class are not convinced that the changes will bring "value for money" or a workforce with the necessary skills.
'Progress'
This is why people are talking now about value added" league tables designed to take "progress" into account. For Gillian Shephard - and probably David Blunkett too - this means no more than comparing GCSE results with key stage 2 SATs (the new 11-plus).
David Blunkett's recent conversion to "value-added" league tables is an abject capitulation to the Tory ideological and economic offensive. It confirms the correctness of the NUT'scampaign — not one test - not one table.
No matter what the precise method of selection turns out to be it will rest upon the GCSE exam and ignore the contribution that critical thought and personal skills make to the development of an individual — the stuff of what real education should be about. ENCHERO