Her enemies do not believe that achievement, in the context of good personal development, should be the goal of education.
They cling to the idea that the purpose of education is to promote equality rather than to maximise each person’s achievement. Mixed ability is their vehicle, and they are still in their Party’s driving seat.
An inspection by a person who demonstrably knows less about the work than those in the setting they are inspecting, is professionally insulting and must stop.
Pupils do not have a fixed level of ability, but they do have a starting point. Teaching not matched to this will not work, however much is spent on it, and however much energy expended in promoting it.
Paying back debt as soon as they begin to earn a graduate-level salary and suffering from excessive rents, is an unattractive combination. Why should these young people vote for us? Social engineering is not a Conservative principle, and it has blown up in our faces.
The argument for mixed ability is based on sociology rather than analysis of intellectual development, and it does not work.
The current Ofsted handbook has 459 paragraphs and is supplemented by 179 pages of government guidance on safeguarding – while the time for inspectors to check them has been reduced by over 90 per cent.
The mantra of “inclusion” means being “taught” in mixed ability groups, that do not allow the teacher to give the detailed explanation and practice the pupil needs in order to make progress.
While Ofsted has expressed regret for the Perry case, it has not admitted that change is a matter of urgency. We must restore reports written in good, clear English.
The report shows Caversham Primary School is a good school, and well led and managed. The use of discretion would probably have fixed the issue of an administrative oversight.
The Government’s Action Plan to tackle the disastrous, miserable and ruinous situation that has developed in the provision for special educational needs says nothing about ensuring that everyone who can, learns to read.
Teachers have legitimate grievances – including the administrative burdens imposed on them. Some union leaders have a political motive in exploiting these.
The Education Endowment Foundation is headed by a person who describes grouping children according to their learning needs and abilities as “symbolically violent”. It should be scrapped.
Sometimes practical details – such as fluorescent light being used in school, but not at home – are overlooked. The interests of the individual pupil are ignored by the “progressives”.
Undoing the good work of dismantling Labour’s quangos, only to create another one, five times as big, in the Education Endowment Foundation, is plain old-fashioned folly.