At lunchtime I had the pleasure of attending the “Breakthrough Manchester” event hosted by the Centre for Social Justice. The centrepiece of the event was an excellent address by David Cameron on education - and in particular on schools. You can read the full speech here.
Now, whilst Labour bloggers get themselves into a big tiz over the terminology (see LabourHome and Chris Paul amongst others), I prefer to look at the policy meat.
The concept of local communities creating education co-operatives to run schools is both perfectly in line with Conservative principle of devolving power back to professionals and the local community, and a million miles away from the disastrous centralist tendencies that the Labour Party (including the Labour & Co-Op Party members) apply to our education system - both nationally and here in Salford.
One only has to look at the shambolic way in which Salford’s Labour Council has handled the Building Schools for the Future project to see how much better things could be if our education system could be handed back to the communities our schools are supposed to serve.
A community school by any other name…
Now, whilst Labour bloggers get themselves into a big tiz over the terminology (see LabourHome and Chris Paul amongst others), I prefer to look at the policy meat.
The concept of local communities creating education co-operatives to run schools is both perfectly in line with Conservative principle of devolving power back to professionals and the local community, and a million miles away from the disastrous centralist tendencies that the Labour Party (including the Labour & Co-Op Party members) apply to our education system - both nationally and here in Salford.
One only has to look at the shambolic way in which Salford’s Labour Council has handled the Building Schools for the Future project to see how much better things could be if our education system could be handed back to the communities our schools are supposed to serve.