Sir Ken Robinson/Ed Balls

I don't subscribe to everything here, but a persuasive and engaging speech that certainly makes several important points very clearly. And he even made me smile.

Ken Robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

I certainly needed something to raise a smile as the latest education white paper seems to present very little for any serious educator to smile about. Proof that Ed Balls is no more capable than his leader, of recognising that Westminster is the problem rather than the solution. I'd take a less cynical stance were this not the latest in a long line of policies that are anti-educator, anti-education and, criminally, anti-children. At best, it's the very worse kind of electioneering. At worse, it's downright malevolant.

The school grading cards are the worst, particularly the idea that schools are now to be evaluated on how well they reduce social inequality! There I was thinking that this was why I spent years tramping pavements and knocking on doors - to get this party elected. The tragic fact is that society has already effectively failed many of these kids before they even hit school - the social inequality runs so very deeply and the very mechanisms needed to mitigate this poverty - material, social and cultural - are the mechanisms that New Labour has not had the political backbone to implement. It's business as usual at Westminster and after all of the recent handwringing, they have learned not a thing.

By most indices, inequality in Britain has grown under New Labour - Britain is not a great place to be a child, even compared with similarly industrialised Western nations. And this is not just about about what is happening in our schools - this runs wider and deeper, right to the very core of the deal that the young are getting from Cool Britannia. The size of the gap between the very richest and poorest continues to increase. A few hours spent in and around any of the country's most deprived communities provides nothing more than a reminder of the impact of the size of the gap between rehetoric and reality in terms of the value we place on childhood.

Well, with a little luck the Secretary of State will be getting his own 5-year MOT less than a year from now.