Monthly Archives: January 2012

Bring back Woodhead

The education service in England has had to endure some far out Chief Inspectors of Schools coupled with Secretaries of State who want to interfere with it. This is the first time I realised there was a new kid on the block from the first of January who appears to vie with Michael Gove by taking an outlandish approach. Schools, he says, will be inspected without prior warning.
Gove is attempting to force primary schools to become academies. Where it becomes known there have been large protest meetings. The problem is that any crank can apply directly to the Department for Education with a submission for Free Schools without even the local authority being aware. How planning for education will take place, or accountability can happen is a complete mystery. Since New Labour pushed Academies there is no opposition to the privatisation of education from any major party.
I have heard rumours that organisations like book publishers are planning on running a number of schools, where of course they will have a captive market for their publications. Money is the key. Education as a serious area of study has disappeared. The less anyone knows about it, how children learn, is all dead and buried in the ideological world of market forces.