Battle for Britain

Sorry for not posting for ages but it has been difficult finding the time, what with my new role as government advisor. (Super-Teacher, Sex Blog Queen and now Apparatchik-Chick – I am unstoppable!)

Speaking to the Select Committee last week, I feigned humility and awe – actually, the awe wasn’t entirely feigned, for who doesn’t get a little turned on by power and influence? – whilst at the same time being bold and outspoken. Indeed, I was forthright and uncompromising as I agreed with everything Michael and his team are proposing.

Where education policy is concerned, we simply cannot afford to underestimate the importance of supporting each successive government’s claim to be radically shaking up the system by introducing the 3 R’s and discipline back into schools. For years, like so many others, I have been campaigning for English and Maths to be reinstated at the heart of the curriculum. Long have we cried for some kind of strategy for dealing with the lamentable state of children’s Literacy and Numeracy. For far too long, kids in Britain have been doing pretty much nothing but P.E., Media Studies and smoking – and only one strand of this axis of nonsense is officially wrong!

I must applaud Michael for bravely bringing the battle to the complacent, well-meaning liberals. I remain astounded by this lot’s self-righteous indignation against the social segregation being tirelessly and selflessly fought for by well-heeled parents demanding that Free Schools be built for their children and their children’s friends.

Furthermore, making youngsters sit exams from the age of six is a wonderful idea. We already know, after years of positive feedback from teachers, how valuable endless formal testing is.

Fundamentally, however, it is a question of winning hearts and minds.

It may sound paradoxical, but in order to move forwards we need British schools to resemble those in the third world. It does not so much matter that they are under-resourced, over-crowded and miles away from the families they serve; schools in the developing world, where they have them, are full of eager, smiling faces, driven to gratitude by the desperate, hungry hope of escape. Yes, my friends, by hope. Hope and fear. Healthy, natural fear. Both the immediate, irksome fear of violence and the more powerful, pervasive fear of being left behind. Here, in lazy, cosy Britain, we can but dream.

Let us just pray that we do not end up like Sweden.

(Apart from in the matter of Free Schools being allowed to make a profit, which I think I must be in favour of. I must remember to check… Better text him now while I’m thinking about it…)