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Best to ignore ministers

The head of the school that ranked top of today's primary school league tables attributed her success to "ignoring" most of the Government's flagship literacy and numeracy strategies.

The problem with Tony Blair's central planning system is that it gets things wrong. There is no sense swapping things around all the time in accordance with the central fads.

For example the real problem with examinations is that they are continually changing the way they work. This undermines their credibility as an objective, absolute system.

Similarly they are at it again reorganising the health service into either 3 or 1 PCT for the whole of Birmingham. My own view is to leave things alone with potential the option for areas to locally decide to evolve structures. Birmingham Social Services had a major reorganisation to fit with the PCT boundaries. Now the PCT boundaries are changing.

Comments

PoliticalHackUK said…
Even back in the 'good old days' of the O & A Level (I can just about remember those), the exams weren't objective or absolute, as the final grade depended upon where you fell on the curve - only a certain percentage of students would pass each year or attain a particular grade.

The real problem with examinations is that they have become the be all and end all for some schools, rather than letting the schools focus on providing the best possible education to all their pupils, they are worried about maintaining their place at the top of the list.


Thanks for the truism that the problem with the system is that it gets things wrong. Perhaps you could cite an example of a system that doesn't?
6:34 pm
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