The ‘Trojan Horse’ scandal in Birmingham is, inevitably, being used to prove the pet arguments nurtured by a number of people, even though the reality is more complicated.
Some argue that this shows the dangers of faith schools, even though these were not faith schools. Others, including Nick Clegg and Tristram Hunt, are arguing that the ‘balance’ of oversight of free schools and academies needs to be corrected, even though not all of the 21 schools investigated by Ofsted were outside local authority control. The Deputy Prime Minister was on the Today programme this morning, and he dropped a number of comments that suggest he’s keen to make changes, and changes that will cause a row with the Tories.
First, he suggested he wanted more central control over the curriculum:
‘So I think maybe one of the things we need to think about is how do we make sure that a core body of knowledge, which of course that body of knowledge has within it a lot of the values that we all believe in, how do we make sure that a core curriculum, not a great sprawling one, is taught in all schools in our country regardless of the nameplate at the school gates?’
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