Francis Maude was on Question Time making clear that he thought the school "lottery" was not fair or a correct system for allocating school places. Other Tory MP's were keen to get on the radio to say what the "Labour Council" was doing in Brighton was wrong.
Now Hertfordshire County Council, a Conservative run council is following Brighton and Hove by introducing a lottery too.
What will the Tories say now ? My guess is there will be a long silence.
4 comments:
What Lib Dems say nationally and do locally are, usually, completely different (and vice-versa)! Of course messages vary with Labour and Conservatives but not on a scale of the Lib Dems. I've always seen the Lib Dems as a franchise party - Lib Dem in name, anything you want them to be on the ground.
Aren't your lot the same ? They talk about lower taxes yet in my area, for example, tax rise under the Tory Run COunty Council have been, on average, more than double what the Lib Dem district council have done, yet the Tories always bang on about being the party of low taxation.
Well, I'm one Conservative who is FOR these lotteries and approve of what Herts. is doing.
This approach is the best way to ensure a level playing field in access to state education. It is unreasonable that the state funds an education system with EVERYONE's money that only delivers a decent education for those materially priveleged enough to live in the best part of town _ or in the scarce bits of 'social' housing that are fortunate to come within that particular catchment area. This is distorting the housing market and delivering a double bonus to those who receive it: children who already come from more comfortable homes, with better educated parents, more useful social networks, end up getting a far better education than their less privileged peers _ AND get to inherit the inflated property values that their parents only derived from being in the catchment area of a good state school. Oh! And a bunch of smug middle-class lefties get to boast that their kid goes to the local comp (cue polishing of socialist halo) and carry on voting for the incompetent Labour councils that deliver a rotten education for working-class kids on the other side of town. This is glaringly clear here in Haringey, where the only decent school is in an area called Fortis Green where family homes cost £750k to £1.5 mil. Meanwhile, their lefty parents moan about 'Iraq' and 'global warming' whilst having ignored the destruction over the last 40 years of every decent school in Tottenham in the east of the borough. Screw them! I can't wait to see their property prices fall and see them faced with the choice of going private or giving a damn for a change about all the other schools in the borough _ 50% of parents locally send their 2-ary school age kids out of borough because they don't trust the local provision. When it comes to STATE provision, the state has an obligation to see that it provides fair and equal access for all.
Who knows? Perhaps the Conservatives are going to decide their final policy on School Lotteries by organising a lottery.
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