THE TORY policy of encouraging schools to opt out has been pursued at the expense of state education. It is designed to set up a permanent division in education provision between rich and poor.
The propaganda said it would bring choice, diversity and local accountability. Its results have been the opposite.
Opting out actually means opting in to control from Whitehall - all administered by the Funding Agency for Schools quango. In the long term this body is just as likely to be asking for cuts as LEAs.
It is not as if there is any evidence to suggest the education is any better. NUT members have pointed out the Grant Maintained (GM) schools are more likely to concern themselves with corporate image and fancy logos in order to attract their "customers" instead of spending it on pupils.
The opt out policy can only be understood in the context of the right's intention of developing a higher skill base among the small portion of children who will eventually enter the labour market.
Schools in leaty areas attended by well-heeled children with middle income parents will enter into a spiral of increasing resources and quality. The rest will get thirdrate schools with overworked teachers and deciming budgets. Average capital spending in GM schools has been three times that in local authorities.
This is why the Tories have been so keen to approve "selection" - another word for exclusion.
Desoite this there have been a number of reports of financial crises in GM schools.
It is encouraging to realise that despite the barrage of propaganda the public have not been taken in. The number of GM schools remains a small proportion of the overall number. Planned revenue spending on the sector has been halved and the tide of pro-GM ballots has been halted.
Given adequate information parents are able to see the opt out policy for what it is.
If only the same could be said of the Labour leadership.
Of course these Tories cynically used the 'one nation' concept as a device to con backward workers to vote for the party of capital. (even as 'one nation' Baldwin confronted the 1926 General Strike and Heath attempted to crush the unions with the Industrial Kelations Act).
The sad, tragic fact is that Tony Blair picks up the discarded Tory slogan because, unlike them, he actually believes that class distinctions are now irrelevant.
Denouncing the 'inefficiency' of the poverty and deprivation of Britain's growing 'underclass' (presumably the 30 percent, who have got poorer
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 78. 25 February 1995, Page 4.