The wonders of Jordan

Jerash

Karnak





Petra

We spent Easter in Jordan, visiting the major sites and relaxing by the Red and Dead Seas. Our original planned trip to Syria as well was cancelled - later than I had expected given the appalling events there - just days before our departure, but that didn't take from the wonders of Jordan. We ended up with the Cox and Kings 'Splendours of Jordan' trip, which was a fast-paced but excellent overview.

From our Amman hotel, close to the Ministry of the Interior, the noise of a crowd chanting seemed to grow ever louder. Jordan had, after all, not been immune from the Arab Spring: King Abdullah sacked his government in response to some protests, and on the Friday before we arrived, dozens of police were injured after Islamist extremists demonstrated in Zarqa - or so the Jordan Times reported. But these were no demonstrators: the hotel had laid on two giant screens by the swimming pool for a late evening soccer match. Those who cancelled their visits to Jordan because of Syria or Egypt are missing out. Amman is an extraordinary mix of old and new, and felt entirely safe though all the big hotels had airline-style security. We had a great dinner at the famous Fakhr el-din restaurant and spent time visiting the wonderfully preserved amphitheatre and the Citadel with its remarkable city views. We took in the Franciscans' Mount Nebo where Moses saw the Promised Land and the great crusader castle at Karnak. Petra with its stunning Treasury, tombs and Siq is as awe-inspiring as one would expect; and Jerash - old Antioch - is a remarkable Graeco-Roman city.  Wadi Rum has all the echoes of Lawrence of Arabia that one would expect; while Aqaba is a splendid city to relax (with cheaper taxes than elsewhere in Jordan too) especially staying in the centre.

Petra

Petra sunset

Aqaba

But the Jordanians are worried about growing cancellations as a result of the Arab Spring. True, over Easter there was little sign of tourists staying away, especially in Petra and Aqaba. But there is a real concern that people will stay away in the autumn or next year, as people consider their options. Syria and Yemen may be out of bounds for now, but Jordan is not. I hope people don't allow the troubles of neighbours to let them miss out on the wonders of this remarkable country.

Cable is right: Cameron's kneejerk immigration policy is bad for business

Vince Cable is in many ways the biggest disappointment of the Coalition. He is a shadow of his former self, showing little sign of the sparkling wit that brought forth the cruellest jibes against Gordon Brown when he was the Lib Dems' stand-in leader. But today, in criticising David Cameron's knee-jerk approach to immigration as 'very unwise', he has redeemed himself a little. The coalition's ludicrous immigration quotas are a threat to British business.

Labour had, rather more sensibly, developed a points system which meant that skilled people could be recruited where they were needed. But by substituting a quota system, the Government has tied itself in complete knots.

Universities are a good example. Higher education is big business for the UK, worth almost £5bn a year in fees and spending by overseas students. While there are bogus private colleges that operate above chip shops, there are also hundreds of thousands of legitimate degree-level students who can choose to study in Australia, Canada, New Zealand or Malaysia rather than Britain. Labour rightly expanded their numbers and actively recruited in countries like China and India. Instead of focusing its clampdown on the bogus colleges, the coalition is using a blunt axe as part of its migration policy to make recruitment, including in private degree providers that might provide real competition (alongside FE colleges) to keep fees down. And it is reducing incentives for overseas students, denying them the chance to use their skills in the UK after graduation (something Sir James Dyson has criticised).

The truth is that immigration made and makes a real contribution to economic growth, so long as migrants pay taxes and contribute their skills. Both are surely useful attributes to a government with no obvious growth strategy. Of course we need to improve the skills of British youngsters, but to pretend that having more skilled or paying migrants is bad for Britain is simply bad economics. Any business secretary who didn't recognise these facts wouldn't be worthy of the title.

Why I'm backing AV

I will be voting in favour of the Alternative Vote on May 5th for one very simple reason: it is far better to have an MP who has got the support of 50% of their electorate rather than one who may represent just a third of them. That's it. It isn't complex. Sun readers should surely be able to grasp even if the newspaper's editors find it too difficult.

But instead of a straightforward argument about whether or not this is a good principle, we have been subjected to an awful lot of rubbish on both sides. Perhaps this is always the case with referendums - in Ireland, where they are almost an annual event thanks to the strictures of the Constitution, one divorce referendum was lost over the supposed threat to family farms. Even so,  the sheer fatuousness of the current AV debate would give the Irish a run for their money.

The cost of AV was said to be depriving us of nurses (no, that'll be down to Lansley's new bureaucracy and his 'efficiency savings') while AV was apparently going to get rid of nasty crooked MPs (only if a majority of people vote against them). The broadcasts by both sides must rank as among the worst ever shown in recent times. Yet, in truth, this is a modest measure that will make our voting system a little fairer. Nothing more, nothing less. And I'll be voting Yes.

Changing the NHS changes

Readers of this blog will not be surprised that David Cameron and Nick Clegg are being forced into full-scale rescue mode for Andrew Lansley's health 'reforms' this week. The attempt to force GPs to become NHS managers was always bonkers, however good the more entrepreneurial GPs may be at managing local healthcare budgets. While Cameron clearly should have known this, he was clearly adversely affected by Francis Maude's decision to deny him a reasonable level of politically-savvy advice within No. 10. The removal of the quasi-accountable role of the Primary Care Trust clearly ran directly counter to Liberal Democrat policy (even if the latter sought to bring local authorities into the picture). It was also inevitable that their initial attempt to create a market based on price rather than quality would have to be reversed, given all the Cameron guff about the 'NHS safe with us' before the election. And the removal of waiting time targets (despite 'guarantees' in the NHS constitution) was always going to affect patients adversely - and it has started to do so.

So, the conjoined coalition twins have a chance to reverse Lansley's mess before the legislation is torn apart in the Lords. But they should not pretend that all they are doing is minor tinkering if they are making the more significant changes that are required. If they really want to win back public support, they need first to apologise for the changes, which were a clear breach not just of the coalition agreement but also of the solemn promises (there were a lot of those, weren't there?) made by Cameron and Clegg before the election. They then need to spell out what they will do and what they will not do, as a result of their U-turn. That should mean at the very least voluntary participation in the fundholding scheme, a residual role either for PCTs or local authorities and competition based firmly on quality. They need also to be rather more honest about the extent of improvement since 2000 - which is pretty obvious to anyone who has experienced the system before and after - as well as the extent to which it still needs to improve. And finally, they need to restore the maximum waiting times until such time as they genuinely are no longer needed, with any Tory who says that they 'distort clinical priorities' being forced to wait on a trolley in A&E on a Saturday night without being seen for a minimum of 10 hours. Only then will they start to convince the public. Anything less is (not very good) spin.

University challenges

I really don’t understand the logic of the Government’s higher education policy. I have supported the need for increased fees, and recognise the good sense of having more bursaries at the same time. Having a higher repayment threshold for graduates also makes tactical sense coupled with higher interest rates on the loans. I can also the merit in encouraging access schemes from summer schools to places guaranteed to the ablest students in particular schools (though not some of the madder quotas suggested by Simon Hughes). However, it is the economics of the policy – and the approach of other government departments – that just doesn’t add up.

The first problem is that the Government has cut the teaching budget by far too much at the same time as allowing higher fees. Of course, universities might have been expected to bear a 15or 20% cut, but an 80% cut is absurd, and it makes it inevitable that most will seek to compensate by increasing fees as far as they have.

The second major problem is with overseas students. The clampdown  on bogus colleges may focus on the right targets, but there is a danger that differential practices in consulates overseas sees many overseas students taking their studies - and their money - to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Europe or the new Asian universities instead. More importantly, as James Dyson has said this week, the decision to limit work opportunities for recent overseas graduates is wholly self-defeating. Once again, the ideological self-certainty of the coalition - this time on the Conservative side - has been allowed to triumph over a more nuanced position that was much more clearly in Britain's economic interests. This could cost us all £2 billion a year, with nothing to show in return.

And lastly, the government has let the universities off the hook on loans. It is the same with the decision to lift fees to a £9000 maximum but not properly to cost the likely effect of scrapping a large swathe of teaching grants: of course, most universities will try to charge the top rate. It is wholly bizarre that the Government didn't simply require them to develop their own loans schemes for fees above £6000. After all, that is what many vice-chancellors had been expecting.

The government is right to want to encourage colleges and other lower cost providers to enter the market - and bidding for funded places seems a reasonable mechanism, so long as a quality threshold is met - but it needs to think through rather more carefully how its higher education policies will interact with each other. If it doesn't, not only will it fail to improve social mobility, it will greatly
reduce the competitive capacity of English higher education.

So, as it rewrites its long-delayed Higher Education white paper, it needs a fundamental rethink of its model. Given that it is unlikely to restore teaching grants – and if it did so, it would probably raid FE budgets to pay for it – there are three things it could and should do.

On access, it should actively encourage merit-based access programmes, including those that offer places conditional on slightly lower grades to the ablest students in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. The focus needs to be on access for the poorest, not state school students who don’t need an extra leg up. On overseas students, while continuing to clamp down on bogus colleges, it needs to craft an attractive package for genuine students that tells them they are welcome rather than tolerated – and that includes access to skilled jobs in the two years after graduation. The Home Office should not be allowed to kill this vital export industry.

And finally, the Government should require universities that wish to charge £9000 a year to bear some of the liability for the loans that this will lead to, rather than trying to micromanage the market any further. By all means, auction some funded places to the lowest bidder and encourage FE and private alternatives, but do so by allowing more rather than less of a competitive environment to develop, where students can make informed choices. Getting this right is vital for students and universities.

Protest politics

Ed Miliband has been criticised for speaking to Saturday's TUC rally against the coalition's cuts, not least because of the fairly predictable efforts by anarchists to discredit the march with their mindless vandalism. But Ed was right to speak to a march attended by 250,000 people, though he is wrong in the message he is putting across. The 250,000+ people who marched on Saturday were not the usual suspects. They came from across the UK, and included many who rarely march. Contrary to the received wisdom of the London pundits, there are lots of Middle Englanders working in local government, schools and hospitals facing cuts and job losses over the next three years who are far from being traditional Labour voters. They include Mail readers and people who voted for the coalition last time, and Cameron and Clegg will need to find ways to talk to them as much as Miliband.

But Ed's problem lies not just in his message to the marchers, but in his and his shadow chancellor's wider approach both to the cuts and domestic reform. Labour learnt the hard way over 18 years in opposition after 1979 that effective opposition is selective opposition. That means being prepared to say much more clearly which broad areas Labour would cut - nobody wants a shadow budget - and which would be protected as a result of a slower repayment of the debt. It is not good enough, as Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, does too often, to pass over this as quickly as possible. The truth is that the voters may not like the cuts, and may particularly dislike certain cuts, but they don't yet feel that Labour has re-earned economic credibility because they see it as being responsible for some of the deficit even if they recognise the role of global banking too.

This is not just a problem with the cuts. It applies to domestic policy too, where Labour should welcome where the coalition has adopted and extended the party's approach - on academies, high speed rail or welfare reform - and be much more focused on opposing policies that go in another direction, such as forced GP fundholding or cutting frontline policing. In both cases, a clearer
honest message would be far more effective and have lasting benefits for Labour's image in the tough years ahead. After all, a three point poll lead in the midst of all these cuts is hardly the stuff of 2015 landslides.

A budget chance to promote social mobility

George Osborne's Budget tomorrow has variously been presented as an opportunity to scrap air duty, national insurance and VAT on petrol. But for thousands of young people from less well off families, its most important feature will be what it does about the Education Maintenance Allowance. Until this year, 16-18 year-olds in full time education with family incomes below £30k a year have had a conditional allowance of up to £30 a week, payable provided they attend school or college and intended to enable them to continue studying after GCSEs. The government has announced that there will no further payments, not even for those young people who started two year courses last September. There will instead be a small discretionary fund expected to be worth around £70m (though this is likely to increase after Simon Hughes's review) to replace the £490m distributed by EMA, of which most goes to young people in the poorest families. And while higher education fees have been the main media focus of student protest, the greatest injustice and potential hinderance to student mobility is the abolition of the EMA.

The irony is that its abolition was only made necessary because the Liberal Democrats insisted that their pupil premium should not lead to a reduction in overall school funding, and the Treasury insisted that the Dept for Education must fund it from within its wider budget. But the EMA is far better targeted than a pupil premium that is likely merely to provide sticking plaster for wider school cuts, and which lacks the same degree of conditionality on the recipient. Truanting or tardy EMA recipients can lose their allowance; there is no sanction as yet proposed for schools that show little to justify their premium.

So, tomorrow's Budget offers Osborne an opportunity on two fronts. The first is to restore the EMA for those students with a reasonable expectation of receiving it for 2011-12, those in the second year of A-level courses for example. If Osborne doesn't make this change, the courts almost certainly will. And I would be astonished if DFE lawyers haven't already reached this conclusion: after all, they made clear that university tuition fees could not apply to existing students when they were first introduced in 1998. The second is to introduce a much more comprehensive replacement to the EMA for new statements. Simon Hughes has certainly been arguing for this, as have many FE colleges. There needs to be enough money to cover the costs of transport, books and learning materials for all students with family incomes below the £20k where the full £30 EMA was currently paid.

Ministers make the argument that the EMA did not significantly increase participation, and that with compulsory staying on coming in from 2013 for 17 year-olds and 2015 for 18 year-olds, the scheme has substantial deadweight costs. But EMA has increased participation, especially among 17 year-olds, as the IFS has shown. More importantly, it has a conditionality that is absent from child benefit for young people over 16. And it creates a sense of responsibility in the young person that is crucial in today's mollycoddled times. Looking at the two benefits in the round together with an increased apprenticeship offer could offer a way out of the funding dilemma, but not without some additional resource for the poorest students. After all, what exactly is the point of introducing a pupil premium for under-16s only to remove an important ladder of opportunity when they reach 16. George Osborne has the chance to put things right in his Budget.

Educating the health secretary

While the battle to protect Libyans from Gaddafi continues, domestic news - bar, perhaps, this week's Budget - is unlikely to get much of a look in. But the weekend saw two further dents in the credibility of Andrew Lansley's grand plans for the NHS. First, the Observer revealed that recent polling showed record levels of satisfaction with the health service, after the reforms and investment of Labour. This information had been suppressed by the Government, which talks a lot about publishing facts but tends only to do so when the facts suit their case. In this case, Lansley apparently preferred 2006 data to more recent figures. The figures bore out the findings of earlier concerns about the government deliberately ignoring an improving trend in health outcomes. Both are shamefully promoted by Lansley. But we need to know the baseline, and trend, so we can judge his changes in the same light.

The second dent came in an article by the independent-minded GP and Tory MP Sarah Wollaston, in the Sunday Telegraph. She is particularly concerned about the impact that stripping out Primary Care Trusts and handing £80 billion of public money to GPs will have on the NHS. There should be as much concern about the premature removal of floor standards over waiting times, which are likely as budget cuts bite to lead to longer waits for treatment and a return to the trolley patients of the late 90s. As I have argued before, the issue is not whether reform is needed or even whether GPs can be entrusted with primary care budgets, but the utterly mad way in which these reforms are being introduced. There is no evidence they will work: it is all based on a hunch, which might be OK with a £5 bet at Cheltenham but not with an £80bn wager on the NHS. There is no distinction made between enthusiastic GP fundholders and unwilling conscripts. There is no proper transition with targets and primary care trusts. The whole thing has failure written all over it in large letters, and it is astonishing that neither David Cameron nor Nick Clegg can see it.

The absence of any proper No 10 policy scrutiny is evident in the way these changes are being introduced. And if the new policy wonks drafted in to the PM's Policy Unit have any sense they will immediately propose several changes to the Lansley lunacy. If they want a better model of reform, they could ask Michael Gove at education who has adopted this approach with academies and free schools. First, make fundholding a gradual process available to those who want it and have the skills to deliver it. Second, retain PCTs as a smaller but important strategic oversight until there is universal fundholding. Third, keep some floor standards - maximum waiting times for treatment and A&E - and use them as part of the accountability package. Fourth, be absolutely clear that competition will be on quality with fixed prices for treatment. That is the model that Gove has adopted in education - pace but choice on academies and free schools, residual local authorities, GCSE and Key Stage 2 floor targets and fixed per student funding (still linked to area) with adjustments for poverty and special needs (albeit with spending cuts). Lansley could do worse than learn from his education colleague. The rest of us could do a lot better if he did.

Another valiant effort to address special educational needs...but is the money there?

Back in 1997, David Blunkett published a Green Paper on special educational needs. Though it has subsequently been presented as being about a 'presumption towards inclusion', it was much more about trying to address the frustrations of statementing, and to introduce alternative less bureaucratic ways of meeting the needs of those with less severe SEN. Blunkett certainly wanted disabled youngsters to have access to mainstream schools, but always recognised the need for special schools for those with severe learning disabilities or emotional and behavioural difficulties, to use the accepted jargon in the SEN world. The changes did at least allow for School Action Plus, where extra help short of a statement is needed. It too wanted more early identification of needs through baseline assessments and greater co-ordination between agencies. And it led to a significant new role for many special schools as hubs of specialist help linked with mainstream schools, a role extended as they formally became specialist schools.

Forward thirteen years to today's coalition Green Paper on SEN. There is plenty in here with which one could hardly disagree. Early identification of special needs needs to be improved. Better local information would be useful. Stronger aspirations for those with SEN is essential, and too many pupils are mis-diagnosed often being placed on School Action. Joint assessments and single personal budgets make sense too. As does mediation if people are ready for it, rather than tribunals. But while there may be some savings to be made through extending programmes like Achievement for All, the danger of this paper is that it falsely raises expectations in some of its promises. In particular, there may well be a demand for new SEN free schools, but will they have the funds needed for complex needs? Will there really be parental choice, when the Treasury has made it subject to the 'efficient use of resources'? And will there really be the great levels of local information and support when local authorities are implementing huge cuts, and schools are losing funds too? These are not mere details: they lie at the heart of delivering the ambitions of the Green Paper.

Striking the vocational balance

I am something of a fan of Prof Alison Wolf's acerbic and polemic approach to education and the labour market, which is why I invited her to contribute to two volumes of essays that I edited for think tanks in the past. And there is much that is good in her eminently readable report (pdf) on vocational education today, even if it may not all be welcomed in the exam industry. Some vocational qualifications are not good enough; quality needs to be improved. Good work-based apprenticeships need to be more widely available. A better league table balance needs to be struck. Ministers should be explicit about which qualifications will be accredited. Colleges should be able to admit young people full-time from 14, freed to respond to local labour market demand and college lecturers freer to teach in schools. All young people should be expected to work towards GCSE grade Cs - or genuine equivalent- in English and Maths if they don't get them at 16. She is also absolutely right to argue that institutions should be funded per student rather than per course (though the extra costs of some high-tech courses may need consideration).


But there is one significantly misguided asssumption in her overall prescription, and the Government will be making a mistake if it adopts her ideas unquestioningly. As was obvious from Lord Baker's dismissal of her report this morning on Today, the notion of just 20% of the curriculum for 14-16 year-olds being available for practical education runs directly counter to the need from strong vocational or practical routes available from the age of 14, including through Baker's planned university technical colleges. If we leave it until 16 before enabling young people to take a significant number of useful practical courses, they will simply disengage from education. And that disengagement could be for 4 years as compulsory participation extends to 18, not just 2 as now. Of course, they should learn English and Maths, and science - though a good applied GCSE standard qualification is needed for the latter - and there should be a strong emphasis on communication, written and oral, in English.

I have long argued in favour of pre-apprenticeships from 14 as a way of achieving this, something the Labour government started but lost interest in as the Diploma was developed. Of course, we also need a better weeding out of poor qualifications - Ofqual should be ruthless on this score - as well as a kitemarking of those that are good. But there are good BTECs and Diplomas and it would be unfair if all were tarred with the same brush (even if, to be fair, the detail of Wolf's report rather than its reporting doesn't do so, particularly at level 3). And we need to find ways to involve employers in providing worthwhile work experience that makes those on such courses job ready.


But there is a second significant misunderstanding in the Wolf analysis. Many academies and other schools use vocational qualifications not only to engage otherwise disaffected young people or even improve league table rankings, but also to encourage them to gain good GCCEs in English and Maths. (Incidentally, by using 2005 rather than 2010 data, she claims that less than 50% of pupils achieve English and Maths GCSEs by the end of Key Stage 4: in fact the latest DFE statistics show that 53.4% do so, with 57% gaining GCSE or equivalent in both subjects. This is the result of an explicit change to the league tables made by Labour in 2005. I do hope her other statistics are more robust.) They would do so regardless of the league table rankings, though there should be appropriate recognition of kitemarked vocational qualifications in the tables. By discouraging any pre-16 vocational qualifications, Prof Wolf is making it harder to achieve her entirely laudable goal of every young person achieving GCSE English and Maths. Moreover, Level 1 and Level 2 qualifications may not in themselves lead to jobs, but they can lead young people onto further qualifications that do. Progression matters too, and any kitemarking should be linked to this.


And while it is true that other countries that offer vocational education also require an academic core - including English where it is not the first language - they are also much more successful in striking the right balance, often from the age of 15. The danger in the message from today's report is that it will tilt the education system so far away from pre-16 vocational or practical education that it not only creates a large new cohort of truants but that it makes it much harder to avoid them from becoming NEETs.


So, while the Government should certainly embrace Prof Wolf's demands for higher quality qualifications and more apprenticeships, it must not lose sight of the need to provide an offer that is attractive and useful for those that would otherwise truant and those who have a more practical aptitude than others. It was good to hear Wolf lauding hairdressing as well as engineering and constuction courses on Today this morning; but we also need to find ways of preparing young people for the wide range of jobs in the leisure and tourism industries. If the qualifications there are not strong enough, they should be improved not abandoned. And there should also be a place for rigorous practical courses in subjects like languages, showing their relevance to jobs in tourism and business, as Baker's UTCs propose. None of this is to downplay the importance of academic rigour for the majority. But it is to recognise that a genuine choice of strong academic and vocational qualifications should be available to every young person - with the right independent careers advice - from 14.

Yes, Prime Minister

One of the most delicious moments in my time working in government was when David Blunkett played the episode of Yes Prime Minister where abolition of the Department for Education is proposed, to senior officials in the department after an away day dinner. The episode may have been based in the early 80s, but it resonated far too close for their comfort in the late 90s. The series set such a high standard that the new stage version clearly had a lot to live up to. It was with that in mind that I finally caught the Chichester Theatre production at Bath last night. And while it lacked the presence of Paul Eddington and Nigel Hawthorne, it retained enough of the wit of the original, cleverly updated to today's fiscal crises and global warming obsessions, to entertain for the best part of two hours.

Simon Williams was a creditable Sir Humphrey and Richard McCabe a blokeish Jim Hacker for our times, as they sought to reconcile the sordid requests of a foreign minister from one of the ex-Soviet 'stans with the need for a vast oil-fuelled bailout. With the threat of a civil service act designed to remove many civil servants' perks, Sir Humphrey is persuaded to do the PM's bidding. Parts of the script simply didn't ring true, not least the conversations with the BBC, but Anthony Jay and Jonathan Lynn ensured that it retained enough fresh and knowing humour to remind us how much we miss such genuinely good and well-observed political comedy. The play has been on the go for a year, but the writing felt sufficiently fresh and relevant to engage the Bath audience last night. Perhaps we could have a short TV series revival for the coalition age?

A brave and sensible move on admissions

Today's Daily Telegraph reports that Michael Gove is planning to give academies and free schools the right to prioritise pupils entitled to free school meals for admissions, where it can help give them a more balanced intake. I'm not sure why a school wishing to achieve this would do so rather than going for banding or random allocation, but it is nevertheless a brave and sensible move that could help social mobility particularly if the pupil premium becomes anything more than a few hundred quid of sticking plaster for the cuts.

The Telegraph, needless to say, regards the whole thing as 'social engineering', which one supposes is not the same as buying a house in the catchment of a good school in order to gain admittance. I remember when Tony Blair was considering extending the Admissions Code to allow more banding, as well as extending choice for those entitled to free transport and the introduction of choice advisers, the Telegraph was equally sniffy. But those changes were right and necessary, especially as academies expanded, and many do use banding or lotteries. Ironically, it was a Times report on banding - where pupils are tested so they can be placed in different ability bands to achieve a comprehensive intake - that caused some very senior Labour figures to imagine that the 2005 White Paper was about increased selection. It didn't help that the Times placed an 11-plus paper on their front page to illustrate the news.

The simple fact is that good schools need objective measures to avoid becoming socially selective. It is extraordinary that some so-called comprehensive campaigners equate easy access to one's nearest school with fair admissions. With a heavily oversubscribed school, it is nothing of the sort, though it is sensible to have a balance between a neighbourhood catchment and one that is wider and more accessible. Equally, it is not enough to open school admissions up in this way. Choice advisers need to be developed in the way they were originally intended, as advocates from communities where people are reluctant to travel to good schools rather than local authority employees (though some of the latter do some good work, to be fair). Parents need active encouragement to apply.

The Telegraph report suggests that the new measure will be permissive, which is also probably sensible, though schools are required to prioritise children in care in their admissions policies. However, it is to be hoped that there is a degree of positive encouragement to good schools in urban areas in particular either to adopt this preference or to use banding or random allocation for at least a proportion of their intake. With some academies having 11 applicants for every place, it is the only fair way to ensure a more equal intake. That is not about social engineering. It is about enabling genuine opportunities for social mobility.

Not quite heirs to Blair

I have a column in the March edition of Public Finance, explaining why the coalition's public service reforms are not as much in the Blair tradition as they imagine.

David Cameron’s closest coalition colleagues are said to follow a ‘cult of Blair’ on domestic reforms. They proceed with pace, avoiding Tony Blair’s lament that he acted too slowly. They proudly display the scars on their backs from opposition to their changes. And they are extending some New Labour initiatives in health and education. But they have parted company with its ‘investment and reform’ approach in important ways - and that might be their downfall.

You can read the full column here.

The definitive death of Dev's doleful legacy

Ireland's election result is no less groundbreaking for having been largely predictable. Fine Gael is likely to form a strong government with Labour, between them holding 113 seats out of 166 in the Dail. They will seek better terms than the crippling 5.8% interest rates that they have to pay on their European bailout loans. But essentially they will preside over a continuity of the austerity that had been begun under Fianna Fail in the years that saw its demise. But the real importance of the election is the collapse of DeValera's party, an event that with the liberal reforms that were symbolised by the 1990 election of Mary Robinson as President, the neutralisation of Northern Ireland as an issue and the collapse of Catholic church authority under a welter of child abuse scandals has finally brought to an end the stifling insularity that characterised Ireland from the 20s to the 70s.

Of course, some things haven't gone away. The economic collapse has brought back the spectre of emigration, though it lacks the permanence or distance of earlier years and there remains a strong and growing private sector thanks to the low corporation taxes so hated by Germany and France. Fianna Fail, with just 20 seats, has partly lost ground to a stronger Sinn Fein party which has obscured its past to secure 14 seats. But as importantly, the Irish Labour Party, despite a haltingly confused election campaign, is now Ireland's second party, with 37 seats and has done better than its previous best result in 1992. It is the predominant party in Dublin, and the opposition benches also have several hard left TDs who may form an informal alliance with Sinn Fein to challenge the next coalition with Fine Gael on around 75 seats, from the left.

That Fianna Fail has fallen so low doesn't, of course, mean that it will permanently be stuck in the doldrums. Its new leader, Micheal Martin has at least halted what could have been an even worse slide. The Canadian Conservatives showed that parties can recover from such a drubbing. But what it does mean is that the old assumptions are finally dead and buried. To some extent, the Celtic Tiger boom was the catalyst for much of that change already. But it was presided over by Fianna Fail, which had managed to adapt in many ways to those winds of change, though never convincingly to embrace them. So, the transition could never be complete while the party of Dev continued to dominate Irish politics.

Now that party will need to face up to a future that it had sidestepped while Bertie was in charge as the money flowed in. Ireland needs to show that it can be modern and efficient with more realistic and soundly based growth. Whatever happens, there is no doubt that the election of 2011 will come to be seen as just as seismic an event in Irish political history as the 1918 poll that saw the demise of the Irish national party in favour of a Sinn Fein that gave birth to the two parties that dominated independent Ireland's politics for 90 years.

This post also appears at Public Finance.

Ireland's call, Kenny's choice

There is a peculiar air of unreality around the Irish election campaign. The big issue seems to be whether one-time teachers like Enda Kenny, the man likely to be Taoiseach by the weekend, should continue to access teachers' pensions (which he has decided not to take while in office). However, the real issue is whether it is good for Ireland to face a Fine Gael minority government rather than the long anticipated coalition with Labour.

To be fair, Kenny has fought a pretty good campaign, though he started it with a reputation for leadership so low that the only way was up, and as predicted here, Labour has provided a spectacular object lesson in how not to win elections, schizophrenically tacking left on tax and spend policy while running ads intended to undermine Fine Gael's appeal to middle class, fiscally conservative voters. The party leader, Eamon Gilmore, who had a brief moment not so long ago when he could credibly talk of himself as a future Taoiseach, has lost his personal lead as potential Taoiseach to the new kid on the block, Micheal Martin, who has rescued Fianna Fail from oblivion if not a pretty crushing defeat with as few as 30 seats. More seriously, his strategy of talking of higher taxes for those earning over €100k (£85k) a year could have cost him a swathe of Dublin seats, as Fine Gael is now leading the capital's polls.

Even so, Labour is still likely to achieve a result that will come close to Dick Spring's 33 seats (from a 166-member Dail) in 1992, and Fine Gael seems certain to exceeed 70 seats. (The Guardian will be disappointed that Sinn Fein will probably have to settle for a dozen seats at most, though Gerry Adams will probably take a seat). But with a swathe of independents, including assorted Trotskyists, likely to win seats, the temptation for Kenny could be to ignore Labour and cobble together a coalition with the independents. However, Garret Fitzgerald, a former Taoiseach and Fine Gael leader, has struck a timely note of caution in this respect in a speech, as the Irish Times reported:

Dr FitzGerald said such a coalition would be “much more solid” than seeking support from Independents, which he described as “disastrous”. “With Independents you have no idea. They can blackmail you for something in their constituency,” he warned. Dr FitzGerald believes the two parties can sort out their differences. “If they sort those out and stick together for five years, you have the kind of majority needed to do all the unpopular things that need to be done.”

Kenny has sought to increase his international standing during the campaign with visits to Chancellor Merkel and EU President Jose Manuel Barroso, intended to suggest that he could re-negotiate the stiff interest rates demanded for the Irish bailout. Even if he does, he faces a pretty tough time as Taoiseach. It would be crazy to go into it without a strong partner in government, and Labour is still the only serious option. Gilmore has started to remind people of this and to rein in the more damaging rhetoric. Kenny needs to show he means business, by urging vote transfers to Labour on Friday, if he wants the chance to lead as Taoiseach rather than forever having to buy off the whims of unreliable independents.

Time for a few more U-turns

I'm afraid I hadn't got around to stirring myself into a righteous rage about the management of the forests before David Cameron ruthlessly hung the hapless Caroline Spelman out to dry over the ill-communicated and poorly considered proposals. He badly needs to get a grip from No 10. But I am sure that its impact would have been far less damaging than two other government plans that remain a core part of the coalition project: forcing GPs to take over most of the NHS budget and the scrapping of the EMA. Both require swift retreats or they will lead to future problems when it is too late.

As I have said here before, there is nothing wrong with GP fundholding, where GPs actually want to hold the funds and where certain services that they will have no interest in commissioning are provided elsewhere. There is a lot wrong with simply handing over £80 billion of our money to consortia on the hunch that it might be a bit less bureaucratic or a bit more efficient. After all, the King's Fund has shown decisively that the Government's rationale for change is wholly bogus. Some GPs may have a natural aptitude for strategic decision-making. But just as some are lousy at diagnosing diseases, some will be hopeless budget-holders, at least when it comes to dealing with such large sums. This policy has disaster written all over it. Like the forest sell-off, it has no real support except from a few keen fundholders (and if they are keen, let them do it). In his heart, the PM must know this. Since he's in u-turn mode, here's what he should do. First, slow the reform timetable and the abolition of primary care trusts to allow reluctant fundholders to join as volunteers rather than conscripts, as with academies. Second, make the policy permissive, so that those with good business plans get the right to commission and those without must go back to the drawing board. Third, introduce a quality threshold alongside price into the value-for-money criteria, so that the policy doesn't end up replacing good provision with weaker but cheaper alternatives. Oh, and give Andrew Lansley another job where he can be less destructive.

On EMAs, it is a little different. This is a policy driven not by ideology but by funding. Ironically, the determination to pretend that school budgets were not being cut to fund the pupil premium led to the destruction of a proven, targeted measure to encourage ambition and achievement for poorer pupils to fund an untried, untargeted pot of money that will merely be used to plug funding gaps in schools that receive it. Michael Gove told school leaders six months ago that he wanted to persuade the Treasury that EMAs should stay. He clearly didn't succeed. But now that we are seeing the combined impact of government policies on young people, he needs to try again. Not least because without it, in the absence of compulsion when the participation age is raised, there will be nothing to persuade poorer young people who should do so to stay in further education when that is a better long-term option than a badly paid job with statutory part-time training tacked on. I know poorly paid young people lack the voting power of weekend forest-goers, but if the government cares about social mobility, it will make important changes.

Here's what Gove should do. First, all students who received an EMA in Year 12 should get one for Year 13 or the college equivalent. Scrapping an EMA mid-course is unforgivable: have university students been asked to pay a higher fee mid course? This will also avert another court defeat if a legal challenge takes place. Second, savings are needed, so the EMA should in future be made available to all students entitled to free school meals while at school whose family income remains low. This would encourage students to claim FSM at school, helping schools in areas where there is a stigma about FSM to claim the pupil premium. But it would still save money by confining eligibility to the poorest students. Third, the EMA's requirements for study and attendance should be strengthened, with rewards for those gaining good qualifications. Fourth, there should be a differential transport element depending on where students go to college or school. Such a scheme could be introduced at lower cost than the existing EMA but it would make a direct link with the pupil premium and bridge the gap between school and university, where poorer students receive significant support.

A wise education secretary would make the change before a beefed up Number 10 policy and strategy function works out what a disaster EMA abolition will prove to be - and before he loses another court case.

Will Fine Gael govern alone in Ireland?

Enda Kenny has not exactly had a good press in his years as leader of Fine Gael. Last year, I joined RTE discussion shows where his leadership was being compared with that of Gordon Brown. Last week, he was much criticised for failing to join a TV debate with the new Fianna Fail leader Micheál Martin and Labour leader Eamonn Gilmore. And Gilmore had until recently been expected to be in a position to dictate the terms of a new coalition government, if not demand the post of Taoiseach as his more ambitious election posters optimistically declare across Ireland.

Yet today all the talk is of Enda for Taoiseach at the head of a Fine Gael government propped up by some of the 15 or so independents expected to triumph as Fianna Fail gets a deserved drubbing from the voters. The Taoiseach-in-waiting has even headed off to Germany for a photocall with his Christian Democrat colleague, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, to discuss possible changes to the economic bailout. Meanwhile, Labour's hopes of exceeding the 33 seats that Dick Spring won in 1992 are starting to fade, especially if the constituency polls are to be believed.

As it happens, I'm not sure all the polls are right. Fianna Fail's 15% showing seems too low, and Martin has had an impressive performance suggesting he is a leader who had nothing to do with the government in which he sat as a permanent fixture at the cabinet table. And the vagaries of Ireland's PR system could deliver transfers from left-wing parties to those on Gilmore's slate. it would also be a big risk for Kenny to try to govern with fickle independents in some sort of minority government rather than having Labour in a stable coalition which could have 105 seats between them.

Yet, there is also a sense in which a fundamental tactical error by Gilmore has blown his expected gale - talk of Labour taking 40+ seats was commonplace - off course. Winning two seats in most Dublin constituencies requires the votes and transfers of middle class voters who have been badly affected by the country's economic crisis as much as those of traditional Labour voters or transfers from the likes of Sinn Fein. Yet when Gilmore should have been reassuring those voters, he fell into the classic trap of tacking left by promoting higher taxes for people earning over €100k (£85k) which has been effectively attacked by Fine Gael. This has seen Labour's vote starting to fall back - as low as 20% in one poll yesterday (and lower in aggregate constituency polls), where the party was scoring in the high 20s and low 30s not so long ago. If Fianna Fail's vote is understated, Labour could fall further.

Of course, there is much to play for in the next 12 days, and the public may respond to Kenny's go-it-alone declarations by giving Labour a stronger mandate. Labour still seems likely to have a big increase in vote and seats, and Fianna Fail to face unprecedented losses. But it is just starting to feel that far from being the great breakthrough election that many had predicted, this will be the one where the baton simply passes to Fine Gael minus any of the reforming instincts that Labour could bring to the table.

Good governance in Ireland requires a strong Labour showing on Friday week. Gilmore should take a few lessons from his veteran colleague and former finance minister Ruairi Quinn on how to play the economy ahead of tonight's five-leader debate. He has no time to lose.

How to make Big Society more than just BS

David Cameron is having another relaunch of his Big Society today. Always a bad sign in government, this one is boosted by his slightly implausible declaration that this half-formed policy is his great mission in life. Desperation suggests itself, not least as the policy has suffered its share of knocks in recent weeks.

The thinking behind the Big Society is perfectly reasonable. At least it would be if it didn't rely on stale caricatures of Labour's approach. When I worked with David Blunkett, he regularly spoke of citizenship and volunteering, which translated into curriculum changes and the promotion of programmes like Millennium Volunteers (since renamed) which is not much different from Cameron's citizens' service. Blunkett also belonged to a Labour tradition that owed much to the pre-war mutualism of the co-operative and trade union movements, which promoted credit unions and penny libraries in Victorian England. Tony Blair regularly promoted 'Big Society' themes such as mutualism in the delivery of public services through trust schools, for example. Gordon Brown was obsessive about encouraging volunteering.

Their enthusiasm produced valuable measures, but no-one would pretend they amounted to a great breakthrough. And there is even less reason to believe that Cameron will be any more successful however much he puts the policy up in lights.

For a start, there is already a certain amount of 'Big Society' activity going on - Cameron highlighted Balsall Heath in his Observer article yesterday, just as Blunkett did a decade ago - but its existence is not proof that it can rapidly be extended, especially if it is simply seen as a substitute for local authority cuts that ministers crassly pretend either are not happening or are nothing to do with them. As Will Straw points out in a great piece on Left Foot Forward today, citing comparisons between poor US states and Sweden, cutting public spending actually tends to reduce volunteering. Changing the culture requires more than words.

Then there is the lack of enthusiasm not just about those who are not already volunteers, or among those who volunteer, as I do as a school and college governor, to become more actively engaged. This is not just because they don't understand what the Big Society is all about, though they don't, but because their lives are filled with work and family commitments. Most people don't want to run their local school or park unless they think the system is failing them. And most people are happy with their local services. One survey today suggests a similar lack of enthusiasm among the coalition's MPs.

And there is also the matter of education. A cultural change will require a shift in what young people learn. Citizenship is patchy in schools, but instead of being revitalised it could be axed in Michael Gove's curriculum review. The International Baccaureate requires a degree of volunteering from young people, but Gove's English Bac gives credit for nothing beyond the narrowly academic. If the Big Society is to resonate, it must start with young people, many of whom already raise money for charity and would happily volunteer in their communities with the right encouragement. There needs to be space for them to try establishing social enterprises in schools and the translation of citizenship on the curriculum into citizens' service for all. Doing so could develop valuable personal skills that would stand them in good stead at work or in university.

But there is little such understanding in Cameron's 'here today, gone tomorrow' speech. Commercial loans for social enterprises will hardly encourage a flurry of activity, and seem yet another example of how the banks have hoodwinked the coalition. Of course, the civil service will rebrand lots of initiatives as Big Society to please their masters, just as they did with theThird Way when it was the phrase of the moment, and as they have rebranded plenty of fairly ordinary school proposals as 'Free Schools' to beef up the numbers in the DFE. But if Cameron genuinely wants to realise what he says is his great mission, he needs to start with young people, be honest about the cuts, recognise the true potential of mutual and social enterprises, and find ways to support those who give of their time as volunteers. Unless he does so, the Big Society really will be so much BS.

This post also appears at Public Finance.

A little honesty on the cuts, please

The complaints by 90 leading Liberal Democrat councillors about the impact of the local government cuts give the lie to claims by the unpleasant Eric Pickles and his team of local government ministers that councils could achieve all the necessary savings painlessly (at least for 'frontline services'). It is impossible for coalition ministers to treat these claims in the same way as they airily dismissed announcements from Manchester City Council about its cuts.

Of course, there are some savings to be made by small London councils merging services like education (it used to happen in something called the ILEA) and schools may be able to merge administrative functions. But the blunt reality is that there will still be job losses - often at the front line - and cuts in everything from Sure Start to libraries. It is as fatuous for Pickles and others to claim that everything would be all right if only council chief execs cut their pay or their middle managers were named and shamed in local papers for earning £60k a year, as it is to imagine that a bit of ritual stake-burning for bank bosses will restore our national fortunes.

What we require is a little honesty here. Of course that applies to the opposition too. In truth, local government would have been a prime target for cuts by Labour if it was in power, though one might have hoped that the stealth cuts to schools - £250k on a £6m budget is typical - might have been avoided with a less frenzied frontloading of the savings, especially the short-sighted axing of most formula capital.

However, the coalition cuts are made all the worse at the frontline by the pretence that that they either aren't happening or aren't needed. Such duplicity can only cause real outrage when the reality hits home. The coalition's austerity drive would have far more credibility if they stopped playing the silly game they tried in opposition of suggesting that the biggest cuts in nearly a century could be achieved painlessly. If the government want us 'all to be in this together' in sharing the pain, they need to be honest about where it will hurt. And they should stop blaming those they have forced to implement the cuts for getting on with their job.

A little honesty might work wonders for the government's rapidly dwindling reputation.

Slow progress on free schools

Michael Gove put a brave face on it over the weekend as he sought to talk up interest in free schools. Yet for all the rhetorical enthusiasm, the fact is that just eight primary free schools are likely to be ready to open in the next two years, with perhaps another 27 in some sense advanced. We should not scorn these projects: each represents the vision of their promoters and can offer extra diversity in their communities. But one can question the importance of their development to wider school reform. The TES in an editorial last Friday argued that free schools are an irrelevant sideshow, arguing that the system is only likely to take off if for-profit providers are allowed, something politically untenable at least before the next election.

And a closer inspection of the eight free schools announced on Friday suggests little that could not have been established under existing programmes.

* There is a Suffolk school becoming 'free' to avert local authority closure by becoming a secondary school
* Jewish, Hindu and Anglican religious schools of the sort that expanded significantly under Labour
* A Montessori school that will surely eschew ministerial phonics edicts
* Two schools that actually call themselves academies, one established by Ark, one of the strongest academy chains and the other by a next door primary academy in Enfield.
* There is only one school that suggests a genuine desire by parents and teachers to introduce something wholly new: The Free School, Norwich

Essentially they are eight new academies - albeit mainly in the primary sector where Labour unwisely declined to expand academies. They differ little from existing academies or religious schools, and the pattern seems little different with most of the other 27 (aside, perhaps, from the planned Mahirishi school in Lancashire.

All of which makes one wonder why Andy Burnham, Labour's education spokesman, has set himself so against free schools. His opposition is as ridiculous as the elaborate claims being made by their enthusiasts on the other side. Free schools may offer a useful addition to the educational landscape, they may provide a little extra competition (and a few planning headaches for some councils). And they may give their pupils and parents a sense that state education can meet their needs.

But they seem pretty unlikely to transform the system in the way that the original secondary academies (and, legally, free schools are simply academies) - particularly those established in disadvantaged areas with strong sponsors - already have. That is because, unlike Sweden or America, where free and charter schools have thrived, Britain already has a strong tradition of diversity and independence in the state sector. That said, no Labour government is going to reverse what has already been set up: so our spokespeople should stop pretending otherwise. Instead, let's welcome those free schools that see the light of day, but focus our energies on ensuring that academies - whatever they are called - continue to advance the lifechances of children in the poorest areas of the country.

We must support the transition to Egyptian democracy

When I was in Egypt last year, it was pretty obvious how tired the middle classes had become of the stagnancy of Mubarak's rule. It was not that people were living in dire poverty: rather it was the squalour of the public space, the creaking infrastructure, the rubbish-strewn Nile on the outskirts of Cairo, the poor standard of public services, the turgid nature of the state-owned media and the lack of any outlets to let off steam. Visiting the nation's celebrated antiquities, the contrast with the remarkable civilisation developed at the time of the Pharoahs was stark. So while the scale of the recent protests has been remarkable, the fact that they have happened is less surprising, including the mass gatherings today. And while Britain and the US have understandable anxieties about the future of the Middle East peace process and the impact on Israel, there should be no equivocation on the importance of Egypt having the chance to become a democracy.

Nobody is suggesting there should be elections tomorrow, though Mubarak would have helped himself a lot had he not so blatantly rigged last year's polls. But the military can act as a guarantor for democratic parliamentary elections on a fixed date not too far in the future, as well as the planned Presidential polls. The months in between should be a time not only to restore order and faith in the Egyptian economy, especially tourism, but as importantly to establish a free media, democratic political parties and a proper constitution that guarantees those freedoms. Instead of the disappointing (if understandable) equivocation that has come from Washington and Whitehall, we need now to hear a firm understanding that it is indeed the Egyptian people who should decide their futures, and that they will receive whatever help they need from international organisations, including those in Britain, Europe and the US, dedicated to the promotion and development of democracy. We must stop any pretence that the will of the Egyptian people is embodied in the person of Hosni Mubarak. There is self-interest here too: unless we adopt that approach, we lose whatever dwindling diplomatic influence we may hope for in post-Mubarak Egypt.

A new dawn for Irish politics?

With an Irish general election likely before the end of the month, how likely is it that this will be a mould-breaking election? Certainly the position of Fianna Fail had seemed precarious until the clever former foreign minister Michael Martin manouevered Brian Cowen out of his party's leadership and moved himself into the top job.

Martin is now displaying the ruthlessness expected of the party of DeValera, Lemass and Haughey, and is busy sidelining TDs and running a very tight seats strategy to make the most of the party's dismal poll showing in the Irish PR system. He has also been making smart noises about backing a Fine Gael government to keep Labour out, noises unwelcome to Fine Gael's hapless leader Enda Kenny who wants to lead a coalition with Labour. With a 16% Fianna Fail poll showing yesterday, there is every chance of that rising to 24% by polling day as Fianna Failers furious with Cowen's ineptitude return to the fold.

That said, Fianna Fail will do well to hold a third, let alone half, their seats in the current circumstances. And the likelihood is that there will be a Fine Gael-Labour government with Kenny as Taoiseach (though Labour's Eamon Gilmore is far more popular). The issue will be the respective showings of the opposition parties - and the Greens - in the final votes and seats tallies. The Greens seem likely to lose most of their seats, and Labour should at least double its seats. The extent to which they succeed, especially in Dublin where Labour should be the largest party, depends on the success of Sinn Fein, with Gerry Adams seeing to enter the Dail, and the ragbag of Trots, leftists and local independents who can expect to pick up a share of the disillusionment vote. Labour has beaten Fine Gael in some polls, but seems unlikely to do so in the vote that matters unless Kenny screws up big time - an achievement of which he is more than capable.

But will this really be a mould-breaker? While a welcome breakthrough for Labour would undoubtedly alter its position in Irish politics, not least if it overtakes Fianna Fail, any government will be severely constrained by the European austerity measures agreed by Cowen, even though Labour is proposing to backload the cuts. Sinn Fein could gain some extra seats, and may even deprive Labour of some expected gains, but is unlikely to be more than a louder voice in the next Dail. And Martin seems set to turn Fianna Fail into a credible opposition, erasing the memory of Cowen's ineptitude.

That will make it even harder for Labour is to retain its strength in Government, a feat it has not achieved in previous coalitions. After all, Labour had 33 seats in 1992 which it halved in 1997, though that owed much to an unexpected deal with Fianna Fail for three of those years. Without the demise of Fianna Fail, that mould will be a lot harder to break - even though the results seem certain to represent a historic high for the Irish left.

This economic setback is Osborne's responsibility

George Osborne has finally been found out. Yesterday, Richard Lambert bemoaned the absence of any serious growth strategy in government. Today's ONS data confirmed what one instinctively felt: the economy has been contracting rather than growing. Of course, the weather in December will have had a depressing effect on some retail trade. But this setback is about much more than that. It reflects the absence of any serious effort by the government to promote growth (leaving aside Vince Cable's BRIC tours) and an utter ignorance about the knock-on effect of cuts that have already been made on the private sector.

That latter point is particularly important in the absence of the former. As soon as the coalition was elected, it set about breaking contracts and tearing up purchase orders across Whitehall. These were not contracts with their own public sector employees, but with firms in the private sector. They may have been in areas like communications, advertising or other consultancies. But they are a part of the economy, and their abandonment has caused a significant contraction in a service industry that relies on both public and private contracts. At the same time, capital projects including many school building programmes were scrapped, even though they were well advanced. That had a significant impact on the construction sector.

The issue is not whether or not those cuts should have been made, or even the size of the cuts through to 2015. Any government would have cut back on consultants, and probably slowed capital building projects. Rather it is the way in which the axe fell without warning or planning, and with little chance for those losing out to find alternative work. At the same time, there is no evidence that the private sector is yet ready to take up the slack for the much more severe cuts that will have an impact from April. The problem, in other words, is that the government has wielded the axe without thinking through the consequences or how to mitigate its reductions in public sector contracts. And, the less growth there is in the private sector, the greater the cuts they will make in the public sector to compensate for lost tax revenues. And that is why the coalition should take the blame for this contraction in the economy, and stop trying to blame the snow or the last Labour government. It is George Osborne's responsibility now.

The chance to get the curriculum right

Michael Gove has finally launched his curriculum review today. It is a difficult balancing act. On the one hand, the education secretary is keen to promote greater freedoms for schools, with more academies and free schools. For many schools converting to academy status, the freedoms in the curriculum are an important incentive. On the other, he clearly believes that there is a body of knowledge that every young person should experience during their school days.

I find myself similarly conflicted in this debate, as a supporter of academies and someone who has seen the benefits of a more imaginative skills-led curriculum, provided it is anchored in a strong core of knowledge. Which is why Gove is right to present his proposals as benchmarks rather than a prescriptive core. The truth is that the national curriculum has always been a difficult balancing act. I worked with David Blunkett in the 2000 curriculum review when he battled to keep locational geography, key historical figures and leading Victorian authors on the secondary curriculum. The reduction in prescription that followed the more recent curriculum review arguably went too far in diminishing the entitlement to such knowledge.

For many young people, school is the only time they will experience Shakespeare or Dickens, and learn about the extraordinary history of Britain and the wider world. It is a chance to acquire a basic understanding of how the world works, and where places are located. It should be an introduction, too, to our democracy and to an understanding of scientific concepts that are a part of our everyday discourse and debate. Between the ages of 7 and 14 there should be some basic knowledge that any educated youngster should have. That knowledge will be different today from what might have been taught 25 years ago, and Gove should say so. At the same time, it is no good saying that as adults, they can look things up on the Internet: without that core, it is impossible to separate the online wheat from the chaff.

Equally, I think the last curriculum review went too far in spelling out non-academic subjects, but there are important skills and attributes that schools can and should teach. I personally worked to get cooking on the curriculum, as what was taught in design and technology would leave children none the wiser in a real kitchen. Equally, there are attributes like communication, research skills and teamwork that should be expected in schools without prescription.

The real difficulty arises after 14. Kenneth Baker's University Technical Colleges will want to teach a different curriculum from a traditional academically inclined comprehensive or grammar school. Academies serving our most disadvantaged areas succeed because they have the flexibility to mix the academic and the vocational. It was not because she despised languages that Estelle Morris removed post-14 prescription, it was because she believed learning should start sooner and that schools needed that flexibility beyond 14. The English Bac will reward schools that teach languages and history or geography as standard through to 16. But many of our best heads can tell Gove that there are also many bright technically-minded students for whom a Tech Bac - with English, Maths and Science + two technology/technical GCSEs - would be more appropriate.

If this curriculum review simply reinforces the EBacc straightjacket, it will be a retrograde step. But if it focuses on getting a consensus on the body of knowledge that a well educated young person should know by 14, and allowing a sensible and rigorous flexibility beyond that, it could prove an important educational step forward.

This post also appears at Public Finance.

Cameron's NHS roulette

David Cameron deserved every moment of his rough ride on the NHS this morning. For he simply lied to the electorate about his plans before the last election. No ifs, no buts. He lied and Andrew Lansley lied. They said that they would not engage in any 'top-down reorganisations' of the system. And that is precisely what they are doing.

It would be one thing if Cameron were simply extending choice by engaging more private providers, which is one more sensible part of the Lansley agenda. It might be OK if they were allowing more GPs to band together to establish fundholding co-operatives to complement commissioning by primary care trusts. That isn't what they are doing. They are forcing GPs to run the £80 billion NHS budget, whether they want it or not. That is more than a brave experiment. It is a reckless gamble with the whole health service.

I support free schools and allowing schools to become academies. I support more private choice within the NHS. But I think this experiment is profoundly mistaken because it is being imposed. It is not evolutionary, it is destructive. And it comes at the same time that the coalition are tearing up the biggest success story of recent years - greatly reduced waiting times - which could see the return of the trolleys and excessive waits. I spent some time in hospital before Christmas and saw the benefits of those changes compared with my last visit ten years before.

It is one thing to press ahead with radical reform where there are clear benefits from doing so, or there are strong structural reasons for doing so. Continuing - and accelerating - the direction of travel of Labour's reforms (as Michael Gove has done to an extent in education) would have made sense. Throwing everything up in the air and seeing where it all lands is madness. It undoes ten years of solid improvement for no obvious gain. Not only will Cameron and the coalition come to regret this. So will the rest of us.

This post also appears at Public Finance. It has been highlighted at the Guardian and Stumbling and Mumbling.

The King's Speech

We saw the leading Oscar-contender, The King's Speech, last night. The packed cinema for a midweek teatime showing certainly suggests it is already a hit. And there is superb acting throughout, from Colin Firth's credible stutterer George VI and Geoffrey Rush as the speech therapist Lionel Logue to the impish Ramona Marquez from Outnumbered as a young Princess Margaret. With Timothy Spall as Churchill, Derek Jacobi as the Archbishop, Helena Bonham Carter as Queen Elizabeth, Michael Gambon as George V and Claire Bloom as Queen Mary, this is truly a feast of British acting talent. The story is simple enough: the Duke of York (prodded by his wife) turns to cheeky Aussie Logue to cure his stammer, and relies upon him for crucial speeches. Tom Hooper directs it all with great aplomb. But it is not quite the perfect film the reviews suggest either. It is a bit drawn out over two hours, the history is a bit fishy (too many references forward) and it feels at times as if it might have been better as a stage play. Even so, it is still one of the best movies likely to emerge in 2011 and definitely not to be missed.

Signs of success

The coverage of the league tables today is littered with predictable claims of 'failure' across the system, doubtless stoked by coalition ministers anxious to exaggerate the scale of their task. But one simple figure stands out: there are now just 82 out of 3200 secondary schools in the entire country where fewer than 30% of pupils get five good GCSEs including English and Maths. In 1997, there were over 1600 such schools. In anybody's book, that ought to be a cause for celebration. And for Michael Gove, it should be too. Because a lot of that improvement took place as a result of Labour policies that he has wisely decided to continue - academies and the London Challenge approach of consultant heads helping others, together with tough floor targets (they were, it has to be said, also helped by extra resources, a part of the equation largely missing these days). It is plain daft for the press to label as failing any school that doesn't meet any target set after pupils sat their GCSEs. But the fact that the 30% floor target has dramatically cut those below that benchmark suggests that a 35% benchmark can also help shift the baseline. So, today is a sign that real reform can lead to real improvements, at least for many. That's the true lesson of today's league tables.

Errors with EBacc haste

Tomorrow's league tables will contain a new measure. In addition to the core data on the number of students gaining five good GCSEs, with and without English and Maths, there will be a column for what the Education Secretary Michael Gove calls the 'English Baccalaureate'. This is not as yet a new qualification. Instead it is a reckoning of the proportion of GCSE students who gain a C grade or above in a combination of English, Maths, Science, Languages and History or Geography. As a fan both of the International Baccalaureate - which the education secretary is making easier to access - and of the use of performance tables to encourage change in the system, I might be expected to support this move. But I believe it has been seriously mishandled and is danger of having perverse consequences for the coalition's wider education goals. Here's why.

First, the decision to add this figure to the tables was formally announced just seven weeks ago, after students had sat their GCSEs for 2010. Schools were not given a chance to change their behaviour, to encourage more pupils to do history or French. So, if its purpose is to encourage such a change in behaviour, it is a big mistake to introduce the measure before anyone could seriously be expected to do so. It would have been more sensible to have linked it to the 2012 tables. That way, there might have been a chance for schools that had focused on other subjects to provide their students with a greater chance of doing languages or humanities. In other words, if the goal is to encourage a greater take-up of traditional subjects -not an ignoble aim - the result may be to create a huge wave of anger as schools find themselves 'named and shamed' for failing retrospectively.

Second, there is some perversity in the choice of subjects. For some reason, applied French and some applied Sciences are excluded. It may be that ministers believe that applied subjects are less worthy than traditional subjects. But, with languages in particular, if ministers seriously wish to see a re-engagement with modern languages (and the inclusion of Ancient Hebrew whilst excluding applied French seems especially perverse) then they should be encouraging the exam boards to develop an entire suite of rigorous but applied languages courses. After all, the best way to persuade a teenager the relevance of languages is to show that it improves their chances of working in the tourism industry, the City or business travel. And while reading Moliere in the original may be a noble aim, the revival of languages requires a bit more hard-headed business sense, with as one leading business figure said to me yesterday, a strong push on Spanish and Mandarin rather than French or German.

Third, the Government's attitude to the vocational remains unclear. It is true that some vocational qualifications have become overrated in their GCSE equivalence. But such qualifications are invaluable in engaging otherwise disengaged students to study, and many schools and academies use them as leverage to get students taking other more traditional GCSEs, including English and Maths. It is vital that ministers clarify whether or not they will have any value in future tables. By all means, cut the tariff - most heads would agree - but most are certainly not worthless and should not be so treated.

The real danger of tomorrow's tables is that the hasty move to a new measure obscures the genuine improvements that have taken place as a result of two programmes introduced by Labour that have been continued by the coalition. The first is the rapid improvement of academies in disadvantaged areas: many have remarkable scores using the five GCSEs incl English and Maths measure. They deserve the highest praise, not to be bashed by the press for failing something for which they were never invited to compete. The second is the rapid rise in results for the lowest achieving schools: it is likely that fewer than 100 schools will have less than 30% of their pupils getting the five GCSE benchmark, compared with half of all secondaries or 1700 schools when John Major left office. That owes a lot to floor targets, extended to 35% by Gove in his White Paper. Again they deserve praise and encouragement.

It is vital that ministers make two things clear when they publish their tables. The first is that schools will be judged on their new EBacc only after 2012 and its publication now is purely for the purposes of statisical comparison. The second is that schools that have exceeded Labour's benchmark deserve credit, and give a target date for achieving their new 35% benchmark. Unless they do, they will allow genuinely successful schools, including many of the academies they seek to extend, to be pilloried unfairly as a result of their ill-thought through decisions.

The expansion of academies

The government is making much of the fact that there are now 407 academies, twice as many as when Labour left office. This is not a strictly fair comparison, of course, since the secondary figure of 371 academies includes 68 where the work, including sponsorship, had already been done before Michael Gove entered Sanctuary Buildings. In other words, there are 100 secondary schools and 36 primary schools that have converted to academies as outstanding schools as a direct result of his greater flexibility. It is good that this option is now open to all schools, including primaries, that wish it, and that schools are taking it up: schools benefit from greater independence. It is also right that the best schools should be expected to show system leadership as academies, though the detail of how that requirement is being applied is a little sketchy. Schools like Outwood Grange and Greensward - both given academy status by Labour - had much stronger models of partnership linked to their status. And it is simply ridiculous to claim that the marginal governance and financial changes involved in converting an outstanding school to an academy are in any way comparable to the huge task involved in gaining secure sponsorship and leadership for a new academy in a tough area or an academy replacing a failing school.

Rather than focusing on the speed with which the programme has expanded or assuming that the Labour government's ambitious target of 400 academies in deprived areas was an 'artificial ceiling' which it wasn't, the education secretary and his Conservative colleagues should acknowledge these two very different types of academy and the challenges they present, and the hard work that his predecessors put in reaching the 271 total. There will be more academies, and that is a good thing. But what matters is their collective contribution to school improvement and social mobility as much as their overall numbers. So, the emphasis and ministerial effort should now be on encouraging more imaginative trusts, chains of schools and shared curriculum communities, with a strong drive for improvement. That could provide a genuine transformation.

2011: The year for honest votes?

In his column today, Daniel Finkelstein (£) shrewdly recognises that the referendum on the Alternative Vote could be one of the most important political decisions of the year. At the same time, the IPPR has produced an excellent report making the case for this voting reform. As a long-time supporter of the Additional Member System (or AV + a proportional top up) I can see why some supporters of voting reform may be sceptical about this more limited change. But it is surely better to achieve one of the principles of reform than wait in vain for something more substantial: after all, the Liberal Democrats didn't exactly go out on a limb for such reform when they had their chance.

I am pleased that Ed Miliband is backing AV: doing so wholeheartedly will help to give him the definition that he has been slow to acquire. But it is vital that the case for AV is made vociferously and the decision to coincide the referendum with the local authority vote is regarded as an opportunity to maximise people's understanding of the change and to achieve a respectable turnout. Put simply, AV allows people to vote for the candidate they most want without losing the chance to vote tactically for their second best. It is a far more honest system than First Past the Post and should be sold as such. Of course, it is not a proportional system, and could even end up less so. But it does reflect voters' preferences at a constituency level more accurately.

It is interesting that when people are told precisely what is involved in AV, they support it, whereas when AV is shrouded in mystique, it has rather less support. So, the pro-AV campaign should not only promote 'honest voting', it should find ways clearly and simply to explain what's involved and its simplicity. With both those characteristics, there is every chance that 2011 could become the year when honest voting wins the day. Despite Nick Clegg.

Happy New Year