In an amazing turn up Humphreys managed to ask a question from the right of center (well sort of).
Humphreys: Well, the problem with education is we've had 10 years of spending and it hasn't worked, what are you going to do?
Cameron: Well, the problem is that it hasn't been spent on the right things. We'd spend it better
Actually - in answer to Humphreys quesion;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/3717744.stmNot that our man Cameron can muster up the intellectual capacity to answer the question without the usual platitude.
Brown is prime minister. But the more interesting news for me is how Cameron's leadership is showing signs of brittleness. The loss of trust in the man rumbles on in Tory circles, we have a defection of a Tory MP (albeit an odd one) which would have been less of an issue had it not been that his criticism about Cameron standing for nothing but spin and PR was all very close to the truth. I still believe as I remarked at the time the announcement on grammar schools was a disaster. And so far, so it has proved.
Meanwhile, we have the Sutton Trust reminding us that social mobility has collapsed. So rather than ability being the gateway to educational opportunity we know clearly have wealth as the main arbitrator. This is increasingly recognised and will - over time - become accepted wisdom just as most of the Thatcher economic legacy has become accepted. But while we wait, our educational establishment fiddles and talks about better exam results....
http://education.guardian.co.uk/specialreports/grammarschools/story/0,,2110883,00.htmlSadly, the blindingly obvious reason for this improvement keeps on coming out....
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/education/article1991393.eceAnd Brown promises to introduce "streaming" into schools. Maybe its just me, but this smacks of phonics. Lets do the blindingly obvious thing that the inane educational establishment stopped doing a couple of decades ago and call it a major step forward. Why is this even a debate? How have we - as a society - let the educational "producers" make such a hash of education for so long? In a free society, the parents would never have put up with this nonsense, and the acceleration of private education (despite huge increases in costs) demonstrates that as soon as possible parents opt out of the broken comprehensive system. But still the educational neanderthals that make up the leaders in the teaching "profession" spend most of their time asking for league tables to be abolished (so we cant tell whats going on).
