September 23: Ed Balls and Mr Carter square up over Kent schools
There's no concealing the fury at County Hall over a
decision by Ed Balls, the education secretary, to tell KCC it was
sending in "expert advisers" to lift classroom standards at its
poorly-performing secondary schools.
Ed Balls sends in "troubleshooters" to
Kent>>>
KCC Conservative leader Paul Carter is
incandescent over the intervention and has already fired off an
angry letter to Mr Balls over the matter.
He has pointed out that over recent years, the performance of
most secondary schools has improved and the authority has
just posted some of its best GCSE results ever.
Having said that, the Government was never going to launch an
initiative aimed at improving standards and then not say anything
about progress being made - or, as Ed Balls sees it, progress not
being made fast enough.
So KCC can not be surprised that with such a large tail of
supposedly under-achieving schools - the largest number in the
country - the secretary of state has highlighted the fact.
He might have been rather more diplomatic about the matter but I
suspect that's not his style.
It is the case that between them, the Kent schools in this group
are having considerable sums of additional money spent on them (as
you can see
here) and any Government will want to see a return on its
investment like that).
Politically, there are a couple of points worth making.
Ed Balls is seen as a potential successor to Mr
Brown and the announcement that he is daring to
intervene in the country's largest selective authority will no
doubt play will with the left-leaning elements of the party.
And it is not so disadvantageous to Cllr Carter. In robustly
confronting the secretary of state, his own credentials as a firm
supporter of selection are given an airing.
With the likelihood of a change of
Government, however, the row may just be a
proverbial storm in a tea cup.
I can't see a future Conservative government cracking the whip
against Kent in quite the same way and wonder whether the
National Challenge initiative will go by the wayside in any
case.
But what would replace it?
A Conservative government is no different in that respect
from Labour. It too would have to have its own policy on
lifting standards at under-achieving schools. The question is
whether it will be able to resist leaving it to education
authorities to sort out.
Knowing politicians and their chronic inability to stand
aside whatever they might say about de-centralising, I suspect
not.
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Wednesday, September 23 2009