A bizarre approach

Thank God for Iain Martin, who has called Labour’s response to the Gove ‘Free schools’ idea what is: ‘moronic’. He writes:

‘Labour warned that the resulting experiment risks creating a “two-tier” education system. Good grief. And Britain doesn’t have a two-tier schools system now? Actually it’s more like 10 tiers. In this troubling context, claiming that Britain somehow has a splendid one-tier education system that must be preserved is moronic.’

If enacted and delivered, the Gove school reforms will transform education: either they will inaugurate extraordinary improvements, or they’ll be catastrophic. For my money, I don’t think Gove has done enough to explain how buildings will be paid for, how applications will be vetted, whether reform will precipitate home tuition in honour killings, whether the schools will be covertly selective, will the new schools cater for students who don’t speak English or will there be special ‘TEFL schools’ that will surely dislocate society further, and what on earth will be in curriculum.