EDUCATION POLICY
Private citizens
have always been able to
establish new schools and some
of our best educational institutions
have started in exactly this way. T_he
challenge, of course, will be quality
assurance, as parents will want to
and give headteachers greater powers to exclude disruptive given access to personal tutors and know that new schools have the same
pupils permanently without any appeal to the local authority. provided with regular report cards. rigorous inspection arrangements
He would allocate more points in school league tables for Quite where the funding – or the tutors –
that apply to other independents.
subjects such as maths and physics and remove vocational would come is less clear.
NEIL ROSKILLY,
qualifications from the academic rankings. Until January, the Liberal Democrats
Independent Schools
Mr Gove won’t say whether he will allow universities policy on education could be summed up – as Association
greater freedom to choose their own intake but private it still is on the website – as “cutting class sizes
school pupils are less likely to be penalised for their and scrapping tuition fees.” They were committed
background. His aim is for children to pursue a to more funding for poorer pupils, scrapping the National
“traditional, grammar style” academic education – Curriculum, extending childcare to 18-month-olds, and to
although of course there will be no more grammar schools, smaller schools. Mr Clegg has admitted that he thinks that
that would be a step too far for the modernising Tories. state secondaries are often “too big and too alienating.” At
Nor has Mr Gove pronounced on private schools, in case the end of January that all changed, as Mr Clegg faced up
his party looks as though it is pandering to his Notting to the new financial realities, and scrapped the tuition fee
Hill neighbours up the hill. and childcare commitments as unaffordable, leaving their
Labour, steered by Mr Balls, plans to go in the opposite education policy as a cut in class sizes and not much else.
direction. Critics would say that Mr Ball’s education policy, But not much else may yet be the best idea.
like everything else about him, is more about politics than It’s education, education, education – as all the leaders
pupils. He wants to create a clear dividing line between like to say – but these are three very different education
Labour and the Tories over education – and everything policies for the 21st century. %
else – at the election. First, he secured a promise from the
Chancellor Alastair Darling that unlike virtually every
other budget in Whitehall except the NHS, funding for AT-A-GLANCE PRE-ELECTION EDUCATION PROPOSALS
schools would increase under Labour by a modest 0.7 per
The Conservative Party The Labour Party
cent next year. That will allow him to contrast his spending

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have greater disciplinary powers and children would be
WWW.FIRSTELEVENMAGAZINE.CO.UK SPRING 2010 FIRST ELEVEN 35
pp32-35FE_SPR10GovSMsub.indd 35 28/1/10 17:51:16
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