Don't you just love it? The whole education system is collapsing under the weight of endless tickboxes and a target-driven culture and what do the government come up with? More tickboxes and more targets. More worrying still is that it could be a mechanism for ensuring teachers' performance is judged against the yardstick of how they communicate the national curriculum. I'm certain it's there to weed out heretics.
I was one of the lucky ones. I had several truly inspirational teachers when I was a kid. Each and every one of them would nowadays be considered a heretic. For example, if something interesting was in the news, our wonderful English teacher would let us debate it over the course of a week or more. Macbeth could wait - after all, he'd been on the stage and on the page for more than 400 years . I strongly suspect that these days such a diversion from the thought-police schedule would represent poor performance and gross irresponsibility. Yet it was immensely creative - a gentle meander through real issues and a chance for us to rehearse our own personal philosophies. And, funnily enough, we all got great Eng Lit grades, despite (because of?) the lack of cramming.
If the system has lost such fantastically effective diversionary routes to learning, then it's hardly surprising so many of us are risking the wrath of Balls, and opting out. At least we're getting close to the 5-year MOT of this government. Let's scrap the clapped out old banger. The trick will be to avoid putting what's effectively just a different heap of rusty old rubbish on the road.
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