Tuesday 25 October 2005

State schools "to be independent"...

... says the headline. But when we read the small print we find that this announcement refers to English schools only. Fair enough - power over state schools in Scotland is devolved to Holyrood, so Ruth Kelly has no responsibility for schools up here. But when the legislation is put to MPs at Westminster it may well be decided by the votes of Members from the non-English parts of the UK. What has shadow education secretary David ("Dave") Cameron got to say about that? He should let us know - not simply because of his education role (in England) but because he could well become prime minister of the whole of the UK.

I also note that:

Ed Davey, the Lib Dem education spokesman, said schools needed freedom from Whitehall
Again we're talking about the Lib Dem education spokesman for England, not for the UK. Has Mr Davey told his colleagues in Scotland that it might be a good idea to give our schools "freedom" from Holyrood? Needless to say the English state schools aren't to be given any real independence. For that they and their financing would need to be removed from the hands of the state completely.

1 comment:

David Farrer said...

Comments made on previous template:

Martin Kelly
Yes, those pesky Glasgow Irish have hands in everything. 
 
Just look at Liam Fox.

26 October 2005, 06:46:10 GMT+01:00
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dearieme
Anent nationalism, my dear old Dad always said that you must rub along with the English or be run by the Glasgow Labour Party. It always was obvious. He was much too well mannered to suggest that the latter option meant being run by the Glasgow Irish anyway. (It would have done 40 years ago: does it today?)

25 October 2005, 23:05:17 GMT+01:00
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Hector Maclean
On a related point, I saw on Newsnight last night that clown Kenyon Wright moaning about post devolution Scotland being too centralised and controlling. The big diddy spends years complaining about how the English dominate Westminster and by definition Scotland and how awful this is, blah blah blah. 
 
So Scotland gets it's own parliament, and he is now moaning that it is not being run along Anglo Saxon lines! Did he not notice that the three biggest parties in Scotland were all socialist? What a dope.

25 October 2005, 18:00:42 GMT+01:00
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Hector Maclean
Well the English state schools might not be getting real freedom in the sense in which I suppose you are meaning, but it is a damn sight better than what any Scottish schools will be getting. 
 
I am afraid we are very complacent in Scotland, which means the political establishment can claim that we are satisfied because everything is fine and dandy. 
 
We shall in due course see whether schools in England surge ahead of schools in Scotland. However the fact that reform is happening in England, while reform is ignored in Scotland has been fairly typical of how things have been done since devolution.

25 October 2005, 18:00:03 GMT+01:00
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Trackback
Trackback message 
Title: BBC confused by devolution 
Excerpt: The BBC have been making alterations to their news stories again. Originally this page began like this: 
 
Tony Blair outlines the shake-up of state education which he hopes will be a "pivotal" part of his last term in office. 
Blog name: The CEP Blog

25 October 2005, 12:07:19 GMT+01:00