The no-win generation

I've written this for the Public Finance blog:

Today’s GCSE celebrations – as with those on A-levels last week – will be muted somewhat by the lack of opportunities facing young people after they digest their results. Undergraduate places for UK students may have been up by 10,000 this year, but they still left many youngsters with no prospect of a university place. The youth employment market is unpromising, with many graduates struggling to find places with their degrees, and many apprenticeships and college places are hard-fought.

The lack of opportunity is an economic tragedy – and it is vital that it is addressed by the Chancellor in the Spending Review, when we should finally learn what will replace the axed Future Jobs Fund, a successful programme that had begun to help young people back to work. It is also crucial that universities have a sustainable funding system when the Browne review reports. But there is no reason to compound the difficulties facing young people with the annual sour scepticism about their achievements.

This year’s biggest raspberry must go to Civitas who chose today to launch a full-scale assault on many vocational qualifications. They may be over-valued in the league tables, but plenty of heads will testify that in disadvantaged areas they have a vital role raising the aspirations of young people so that they then study more academic GCSEs including English and Maths. But others are not immune. We are told that the ‘record pass rate’ is a sign of further dumbing down by the same people who criticise the previous government for not seeing sufficient GCSE improvement for its record investment in education.

When schools minister Nick Gibb produces his curriculum review in the autumn, it is important he doesn’t listen too much to the naysayers. He must ensure there is a strong vocational range of options not just to introduce young people to hands-on work but also to motivate them to gain further qualifications. He should allow more choice so that those who don’t want to overspecialise too soon can do the respected International Baccalaureate rather than A levels if they wish, and allow Diplomas to develop in applied subjects. And he should ensure that the curriculum allows young people to develop both the breadth of knowledge and the range of skills that will stand them in good stead at work, university or in later life.

But, for today, could we just confine ourselves to congratulating the young people who gained GCSEs and giving them the practical help and advice they need to take the next steps towards further qualifications or work?

Who's to blame for A-level science success?

The Telegraph website reports two interesting subject stories from today's A-level results. The first is a further dip in French and German entries (somewhat offset by an economically rational decision to opt for Spanish instead) which the Telegraph blames on Labour's decision to scrap compulsory post-14 languages. There is then a report on the (further) surge in advanced Maths and Physics entrants which is largely due to a very successful Labour government initiative to improve take up in the so-called STEM subjects, driven through universities and specialist science colleges. This drive has also increased science and maths entries at GCSE and to universities. Funnily, the Telegraph has forgotten to mention the Labour government's role in this story, claiming this is entirely a result of the recession even though a 20 year-decline in physics actually started to reverse before the recession.

100 days

Sky has marked 100 days of the coalition with a very silly self-selecting poll, admirably debunked by Anthony Wells. Chris Leslie has produced a list of 100 'regressive' things that the coalition has done. There are plenty of media cheerleaders singing their praises in contrast. But what would a balanced picture look like?

First, the fact that the coalition has emerged is itself an important event in British politics, and one not to be sniffed at. That there would be both Conservative and Liberal Democrat ministers in office would have seemed unlikely to many twelve months ago. While we're in a generous mood, we should praise some genuinely positive things that the coalition has done: Cameron's response to the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, the broad protection of the overall DFID budget and much of what is in the Academies Act - which largely updates Labour legislation - is to the good, even it is rather stymied by a lack of resources and a failure more explicitly to expect collaboration between good and weak schools. An AV referendum is long overdue (though it should be decoupled from partisan boundary changes). And David Cameron has proved better in the role of PM than might have expected (though Nick Clegg is ten times worse than even I could have imagined).

One can't argue about the need to cut the deficit, but one can certainly argue about the speed with which it is being done and some of the perverse decisions that have followed with nary a whimper from the Lib Dems. In no particular order, I think these are the ten worst things the coalition has done so far:

scrapping Building Schools for the Future projects that were already underway;
abolishing the Audit Commission;
scrapping the Child Trust Fund;
scrapping the Future Jobs Fund;
forcing reluctant GPs to take control of patient budgets;
scrapping NHS waiting time maximums - 18 weeks for treatment; 4 hours at A&E;
abolishing the Film Council;
slowing the nuclear power programme by putting Chris Huhne in charge;
scrapping life-saving speed cameras to appease petrolheads;
Cameron playing to the gallery in India (over Pakistan) and Turkey (over Israel)

I realise that not everyone will agree with this list (and I have left off several aspects of their crime and justice agenda that they will certainly come to regret). On the other hand, I don't think everything on Chris Leslie's list could have been preserved under the cuts planned by Alastair Darling, for example - so I choose these ten because they generally run counter to the declared objectives of the coalition.

Moreover, they illustrate the gung-ho nature of the cuts and a preference for prejudice over evidence in too many coalition decisions: in the process they reduce accountability; endanger children; damage the environment; limit the opportunities for young people to take responsibility for their lives; or reduce our international standing. With GP commissioning, it would have been better to develop it with those who wanted the extra responsibility first (pace academies).

That said, Labour needs to be much more forensic in its approach to the coalition. It needs to support some cuts, while opposing others, and not be ashamed of the best aspects of its own record. The coalition still has a degree of public support after 100 days, even if Labour is just four points ahead; the extent to which Labour can erode that support in the next year will be a measure of the canniness of our next leader.

Consorting with the enemy?

Alan Milburn has attracted his share of flak for agreeing to act as a social mobility adviser to the coalition. John Prescott has tweeted:

So after Field & Hutton, Milburn becomes the 3rd collaborator. They collaborated to get Brown OUT. Now collaborating to keep Cameron IN

There's a lively debate running on the Labour Uncut website too. And there were plenty of groans when John Hutton agreed to chair the pensions review and Frank Field a welfare review.

But the naysayers are wrong to complain. There is plenty of things to criticise the coalition about - Friday's utterly absurd abolition of the Audit Commission is just the latest example - but this is not one of them. Of course, there's a political calculation involved, just as there was when Labour gave roles to Tories like Chris Patten.

But this is not the same as luring Labour MPs into the Tory party as happened when Labour welcomed Tory MPs like Shaun Woodward, Peter Temple-Morris and Alan Howarth into the party. Why is there such a tribal outcry about people who keep their politics whilst doing a job that they see as in the national interest, drawing on their own past experience? Nobody argues that the Republican Robert Gates should not work for President Obama and few would disagree that the socialist Bernard Kouchner is an able French foreign minister, appointed by President Sarkozy (although his socialist colleagues have displayed their tribalist tendencies by expelling him from the party).

And by appointing them, there's also a recognition by the government that these are talented people with a contribution to make on issues of national importance, and a greater contribution than anyone in the two governing parties. That's something that has Tories like Stephen Glover and Iain Dale seething. With the coalition so schizophrenic in its assessment of the Labour years, that is a good thing.

And it is something that Labour should be happy to celebrate in opposition as a valuable counter to the all-too-successful demonisation of our very real achievements in government. If we did so, we might start to win back more independent-minded lost voters more quickly.

Efficiency and independence

The news that Sir Philip Green has been appointed as the PM's efficiency tsar may have annoyed Vince Cable. But it could cause as much angst to Michael Gove and Andrew Lansley. For, Sir Philip has one big idea for efficiency, as he indicated on Today this morning: centralised procurement. This means that local management of schools, independent academies, foundation trusts and GP commissioning are all obstacles to what he would see as the way forward. He simply doesn't understand the point of such diversity in public services.

Of course, in schools, they used to have such central procurement before LMS. It was done by local authorities. It meant that if a headteacher needed to repair a broken window, they couldn't use the local glazier but had to turn to the council's approved provider. Some schools tied to PFI deals are already limited in this way. Of course, there are savings in stationery or computers to be made from procurement: most schools are part of large procurement consortia anyway for such purposes anyway. The difference is that they choose: those that aren't should be encouraged to join them. And I don't doubt a lot could be saved in central government through consolidation of functions and joint procurement, but ministers need to be careful that they don't allow Sir Philip's uber-centralising philosophy to strangle school and hospital independence in the red tape that comes with ostensibly more efficient centralised procurement.

This post also appears at Public Finance.

The right sort of cuts

David Blackburn at Coffee House highlights moves by No 10 to stop any repeat of the milk snatcher fiasco at the weekend. Apparently, ministers need to be careful to avoid any cuts that might upset the media, rather than worrying whether their cuts will damage vital and successful programmes, many of which have already faced the axe. Who said the age of spin was dead?

The dangers of a paltry pupil premium

I've written this piece for the Public Finance blog on the problems that could arise if the Government gets it wrong on the pupil premium and school funding:

Today’s reports about Departmental warfare with the Treasury over the cuts are hardly a great surprise. But what will disappoint many in schools is the suggestion in The Guardian that the pupil premium, the Lib Dems’ flagship schools policy, may be less than £1000 a year – compared with the £2500 promised in the Lib Dem manifesto – and that the Treasury is expecting the Department for Education to stump up much of the cash itself.

This should not be a great surprise at all. While ministers have set great store by David Cameron’s declaration at PMQs, early in the coalition’s tenure, that the money would come from outside the education budget, the department’s consultation on the Pupil Premium suggested that a number of existing pots currently going direct to schools were for the chop. The Treasury was never likely to allow a substantial premium without DFE paying a large part of the cost.

The July consultation document suggested that the government would ‘mainstream relevant grants’ into the dedicated schools grant, leaving local authorities to decide on its ultimate distribution. This would likely include at least the School Development Grant, School Standards Grant and School Standards Grant (Personalisation). For many schools, the value of these grants is already significantly more than the value of a likely pupil premium. At the same time, the consultation is clear that the Government wants to ensure that the real beneficiaries of the premium are outside inner city areas, where funding may be kept down over time as the government moves towards a national funding formula.

A pupil premium is a good idea, as is a national funding formula. But trying to introduce the latter and move towards the former in these cost-cutting times is a recipe for political disaster: the vociferous losers will shout louder than the relieved winners. And the row over BSF funding may pale by comparison.

Will the coalition really adopt a graduate tax?

Today's Times (£) claims that the coalition has now come down in favour of a graduate tax, following David Willetts' interview with James Landale on Marr yesterday. When I saw the Times headline this morning, I assumed I must have seen a different interview. But, no, the Times uses the following quote to justify its position:

“We do have a preference for a way of going forward that involves graduates after they have got into work,” he said. “Graduates on average earn at least £100,000 more during their lives than non-graduates. We think [they] should make a higher contribution to the benefits of the university education they have received.”

I also heard Willetts telling Landale that the Browne review was 'looking at' a graduate tax along with everything else. But Willetts was very careful, whilst soothing his boss Vince Cable's injured ego, to avoid saying anything that could be seen as an endorsement of the graduate tax.

What he was describing in his quote could just as easily mean extending the payments required under the existing system. The difference between doing that and what Cable wants is that the latter would involve graduates paying a fixed proportion of their income for life, while the former could be paid off quickly if one's earnings grew. It may be that David Cameron and George Osborne are committed to raising income tax from all graduates. But I doubt it. Which makes it rather odd to see the Times getting so excitable about some (perhaps too) clever wordplay by David Willetts yesterday.

The Good Soldier

Bath Theatre Royal's summer offering at the Ustinov - while the Main House is closed for a revamp - is Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier, based on a novel written just before the outbreak of the First World War. The story revolves around an American prude John Dowell and his flirtatious wife, Florence, and their friends Edward and Leonora Ashburnham, a British couple whom they met at a German spa resort.

The cast is excellent in a fine adaptation by Julian Mitchell that makes great use of the limited space in the Ustinov, with many of the actors playing several roles. Edward is a seemingly good soldier - outwardly - whose mix of extavagant unaffordable charity and serial philandering provides his long-suffering, but calculatingly cold wife Leonora - played superbly by Flora Montgomery -with a full-time job rescuing the family finances and saving her caddish husband from himself and his romantic urges.

The relationship with the Americans provides a backdrop for a longer series of flashbacks and revelations that are delivered with extraordinary energy and pace by the cast. But for all their exuberant enthusiasm - and a very fine adaptation - the story itself is ultimately unredemptive. Fine novel it may have been - and championed by Graham Greene - but one is left wondering after a dizzying two hours what it was all about, really.

Boycotts, testing, targets and cuts

The publication of today's national primary school test results - the last taken under the Labour government - show both the limitations of the NUT/NAHT test boycott and the importance of externally validated national testing. The improvements since 1995 when the tests began have been remarkable, and this year's Maths results are the best ever. When we took the decision to make Key Stage 4 the expected rather than the average standard (ahead of the 1997 election) we faced a lot of criticism then from those same unions that felt a boycott somehow benefited students this year: they said we were being too ambitious. But using targets, particularly floor targets, combined with the literacy and numeracy hours in the late 90s allowed a big change in results. The fact that this is now a standard that can be achieved by 4 in 5 eleven year-olds vindicates that ambition. Over 100,000 more pupils each year make the grade. The schools minister Nick Gibb is right to argue that even more should reach this standard.

But he and his colleagues must be careful in what they are cutting. If Gibb wishes to strengthen the quality of teaching in primary English and Maths, he needs to find ways to incentivise schools to do so. Simply providing a cash premium on its own for poorer pupils without such incentivisation will make little difference, especially if it removes money from programmes directed at the 3Rs and improved in-service professional development. The majority of pupils and teachers defied the unions, enabling today's results to be published. But it is important that the coalition balances its welcome commitments to strong accountability and a pupil premium with the sort of floor targets and agreed ambitions that have also played such an important part in the improvements of recent years.

Why do luxury hotels behave like Ryanair?

We're just back from a great holiday in Italy, taking in the opera in Milan and Verona, great historic sights in both cities, the beautiful peace and quiet of Sant' Angelo on Ischia, and the chaotic energy of Naples. We had great food and wine, and are well refreshed. But as we stayed in five different hotels across Italy, a curious point struck me about the different attitude of different hotels: the posher hotels act most like Ryanair in their treatment of their guests.

To illustrate, we stayed in hotels in Milan and Verona, both attractive small-ish hotels where there was inclusive breakfast, free wifi and free soft drinks from the mini-bar. Or, rather, we were assumed to have paid for all these in our room tariff in the same way that British Airways didn't charge extra for our luggage and a sandwich when we returned from Naples yesterday. But when we stayed the last couple of nights at a more upmarket Naples hotel - which was very nice - the charges came thick and fast. Three Euros for thirty minutes using your own computer to access the Internet. Six Euros for a small bottle of coke or four for a small mineral water from the minibar. Thirty Euros each for breakfast if we wanted it. I know from experience that this is the norm: 3* and some 4* hotels are far more likely than 5* hotels to provide wifi and mineral water as standard.

At the very least, wifi should be free in any room and not treated as a cash cow. And mineral water should be offered where the tap water is undrinkable. After all, hotels don't charge people extra for the toiletries or TV which are included in a room price. And hotels that charge for wifi should be required explicitly to publish their charges in the same way that Ryanair (however reluctantly) has to publish its ludicrous baggage charges. There are an increasing number of great hotels that offer free wifi, while others can charge as much as £20 a day. It is time that hotels were required to spell out their extras as explicitly as any budget airline: the irony is that it is the most upmarket ones that will complain loudest when they are.

Vacanze Estive

This blog will be taking a rest for the next few weeks, as we head to Italy for the summer holidays.

Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition

The story of the prohibition of alcohol in the United States from 1920 to 1933 is an extraordinary piece of social and political history, and nobody tells it better than Daniel Okrent in a fantastic new book, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, just published in the US and available in the UK via Amazon.

The prohibition lobby was closely linked in its early days both to the evangelical Christian right and the Ku Klux Klan and to women's suffragists, supporters of income tax and trade unionists, though by the time that the Catholic Al Smith became Democrat Presidential candidate in 1928 the former wing was much stronger. Their opponents in the drinks trade boxed themselves into a reactionary mode by rejecting these liberal causes, particularly women's suffrage, ensuring that women supported the alcohol ban by as much as 9-1.

But the impact of prohibition was profound on the US: not just the rise of organised crime through the Chicago bootleggers, but through changes to the fabric of American life in many ways from the growth of night clubs where women could drink through to the election of FDR and his ability to effect the New Deal. The cast of characters associated with the propagation of prohibition and its undermining was legion, and the second camp included most immigrant communities whose Democratic support was cemented at this stage, respectable Scottish distillers in cahoots with Canadian exporters and high society industrialists whose opposition led to repeal through to supporters of prohibition whose shameless blackmail of often 'wet' politicians has rarely been seen before or since.

Meanwhile, the number of legal and illegal ways of bypassing the law grew including: booze cruises outside an expanded 12 mile coastal limit, the growth of Havana, a new prosperity for the Bahamas, Cunard liners, legal farmhouse cider, communion and Jewish sacramental wine (creating a lucrative Californian vineyard replete with guesthouses for visiting priests and rabbis), alcohol for 'medicinal purposes', tonics for women (some created by leading drys), imports from Canada and various bootlegged and mixed versions of industrial alcohol. True, alcohol consumption fell, but the law was so widely flouted and created so much new crime that its repeal was inevitable.

Okrent tells this amazing story from the birth of the prohibitionists in radical politics through the growth of the Anti-Saloon league and its split opposition in distillers and brewers who couldn't agree among themselves on tactics through the movement of upper class women that finally led to repeal. It is one of the most readable and jaw-droppingly entertaining histories I've read in ages.

A graduate tax would be a mistake

Vince Cable, the business and universities secretary, is a man with a problem. Despite Nick Clegg's best efforts, his party fought the election on a ludicrous higher education policy of scrapping fees. As domestic students paying a proportion of their fees for twelve years, reducing the burden on low-income earners who never went to university, the Liberal Democrats clung to their plan to scrap those tuition fees contributions. Purely to pull the wool over the eyes of students in a handfull of university seats. Now, faced with being in charge of higher education policy, Cable has to perform contortions to try to get himself off the hook. Hence his graduate tax idea.

Lord Browne's review has several options. One is to do nothing. A second is to increase the fee contribution from a maximum of £3,290 to £5,000 or more likely £7,000 a year. A third would simply involve allowing universities to charge what they liked, as they do already for overseas students. A fourth would raise the interest rate on the loans, while retaining the current repayment system, or expect universities to establish their own loans. In any case, universities need to be able to charge higher fees sooner rather than later, though it may be politically unrealistic to do so without a cap.

But under the current system, students get a very good deal. Poorer students receive grants as well as loans. All students can borrow the money they need for tuition and maintenance and repay it through the taxation system at a modest interest rate as and when they can afford to do so. What they are not required to do is to pay back more than they borrow. And they can be rid of their loan more quickly if they wish to do so and can afford it. In some cases - as with science teachers - employers could opt to repay the loan as an incentive.

Vince Cable thinks all this is terribly unfair. The fact that fees have not deterred students from poorer backgrounds, as the Liberal Democrats constantly claimed during the introduction of both phases of tuition fees, matters not a jot. What the Liberal Democrats are looking for is a backdoor way of raising taxes further on high earners. They want, in Alex Barker's words, a student loan that you never pay off.

But the graduate tax has two other not inconsiderable flaws. The first might trouble Cable's Treasury colleague, Danny Alexander: it raises no money for a long time, as it can only be levied on future graduates. In the meantime, the state would have to pick up the tab at a time of 25% cuts in Vince's budget. Universities could whistle for any money. And it could also encourage a brain drain, as good high earning graduates who wanted to flee their 'debt to society' could work abroad and pay back not a penny.

Rather than performing contortions over the issue, Cable would be better allowing his formidable universities secretary, David Willetts, who had the intellectual good sense to rescue the Tories from an equally daft opposition to fees, to work with Lord Browne's team on getting an answer that keeps UK higher education competitive and achieves the right balance between government and student payments. The future funding of higher education should not be held to ransom in order to rescue the Liberal Democrats from their own intellectual incoherence.

This post also appears on the Public Finance blog.

Paid more than the PM?

An ugly alliance between some trade unions and anti-public sector populists in the coalition is taking hold. The latest victim is a London headteacher, whom the Daily Mail (editor's salary: £1.1m a year) this morning claims is being paid £276,000 a year. In fact, he is being paid £82,000 a year as an inner London head, and received around £50,000 a year for helping improve other inner city schools through the very successful London Challenge. The rest would seem to be out of hours work, arrears and pension contributions. In other words, he is being paid for more than being head of his primary school, and even then his salary for the two jobs is closer to £140,000 a year. We are invited to compare this 'outstanding' head's pay (inflated by the GMB and their pals in the Mail to £276k) with the saintly David Cameron, who toils away cutting the public sector for a mere £142,000 a year.

But is it true that Cameron earns just £142k? Well, not exactly. First, the millionaire PM has the ultimate two grace and favour homes at his disposal - the 11 Downing Street flat and Chequers - the annual rental value of which would surely bump up the value of his salary quite a bit. Then, he gets his travel sorted with a chauffeur-driven car. And he has a pretty hefty pension to boot, all of which would surely bump the real value of his salary towards the £300,000 mark. I don't say he shouldn't get such a deal - of course he should as Prime Minister. I just wish he and his acolytes would stop being so sanctimonious about the pay of other public sector leaders who don't enjoy his perks.

Ministers can't ignore the boring details

The many twists and turns in the school buildings fiasco (many of which have been ably exposed by Ed Balls) seem to point to a major flaw at the heart of the coalition's approach to government: a failure to bother themselves sufficiently with the details and a wish covertly to continue in opposition rather than accepting the trials and tribulations of government.

The wholly unfair Sunday briefings against Tim Byles, an able leader of Partnership for Schools who pushed the capital programme back into shape, suggests an ugly tendency among some in government towards smears and childish oppositionism. But the fact is that whatever capital programme emerges to replace Building Schools for the Future will need someone to run it and keep the costs in check, and that expertise does not exist within the Department for Education, nor is it easy to find outside it. Michael Gove has deservedly been praised for his willingness publicly to accept responsibility for last week's fiasco; one must hope that he can equally publicly disown the trashing of Byles and PFS, and put a stop to similar such briefings.

The lesson that he - and his fellow ministers - should draw from last week's affair is that they need to look in much greater detail at the implications of decisions, and recognise that the simple slogans of opposition do not always easily translate into the effective policy of government. That is not to say that the ministers should accept everything they are told by the civil servants, especially where their advice could scupper the coalition's radical reforms; rather it is to recognise that without proper checks, without a recognition of the delivery mechanisms and agencies needed to effect policy, and without a clear message, the government will come seriously unstuck.

Civitas has rightly drawn attention to the likely three year setback that will result from a rapid rush to GP commissioning, a view largely echoed by the excellent Chris Ham from the Kings Fund on Today this morning. And the idea that the independent Food Standards Agency should simply be absorbed into the DoH beggars belief. Here are two accidents waiting to happen. And they won't be the only ones unless ministers recognise that they need to take charge and get behind the important details, rather than operating like a permanent opposition.

It may be boring, it is certainly time-consuming, but without greater focus on details the coalition will not last nearly as long as many people think.

Getting the lists wrong was not Gove's biggest error

There is plenty of justifiable outrage at the cack-handed way in which the lists of spared and scrapped school building projects were issued this week. For those schools that thought their plans would be realised, the agony of being told that this was merely an administrative error must have been unbearable, and Michael Gove is right to don sackcloth and apologise in person.

But it would be wrong to view listgate as the most important mistake in this sorry business. That lay in cancelling 719 existing Building Schools for the Future projects in the first place, many of them well advanced - meaning that whatever admin costs were regarded as profligate will already have been accrued. BSF may have become too bureaucratic, but behind it lay a desire to achieve rather more than new buildings for a £55 billion investment. A transformation was being sought across whole towns, cities and shires, not just in individual schools. There were expectations that new schools would have the latest technology, that classrooms would be adaptable to modern needs, that the schools would approach carbon neutrality and that by improving the learning environment, they could contribute to higher standards. Many BSF plans were explicitly linked to the establishment of academies.

Of course, a new government might be expected to seek better value for money from the whole process. It may even have new priorities for what they should contain (though it should eschew building new schools on a Victorian model) and it may see potential value for money improvements in more standardised plans. All this could be achieved through a halt to future building plans, without throwing existing plans out, particularly those that were well advanced.

Maybe, Gove is seeking to win Brownie points from the Treasury. Maybe he thinks he can't fund free schools without cancelling existing plans. Either way he must surely have realised how much political damage this would do to the coalition. Tory MPs are as angry as Labour ones, with one planning a march on No 10. And given that many plans are funded through the Private Finance Initiative, was it really necessary? Unlike his cabinet colleague at health (latest wheeze: having trashed Jamie's school dinners, let's get McDonald's to run our health campaigns) Gove has had a clear rationale to his reforms, whether one accepted it or not. By creating so many enemies so early, he has made it that much harder to achieve his radical ambitions.

Meanwhile, is it worth asking where the Lib Dems were in all this process? Probably not, as their DFE minister, Sarah Teather's apparent ignorance of what has happened in education over the last ten years is matched only by her obvious inability to influence a single decision of any real importance in her department.

Coalition plans to abandon playing field protection

Amidst the understandable outrage among schools losing their BSF expectations, there has been little attention paid to the terms of reference of the review of capital funding that has been introduced alongside the cancellation of 700 planned new schools. Buried in the terms of reference is the following:

Reducing the burden on schools

· To review and reform the requirements on schools including the building/School Premises Regulations, design requirements and playing field regulations.

In other words, the coalition is considering removing the requirement introduced by Labour that playing fields can only be sold where they provide new sports facilities, like a new sports hall. Currently, a school wishing to dispose of a playing field is considered against three main criteria:

• that playing field provision and curriculum requirements at the school making the disposal, and at other local schools, are met
• that community use of a school's playing fields is taken into account
• that any sale proceeds are re-invested:
  firstly, to provide new or improved outdoor sports facilities;
  secondly, to provide new or improved indoor sports facilities; or
  thirdly, to be used to help raise standards by providing educational facilities.

While not eliminating sales, the requirement had greatly reduced their number by creating a presumption against such sales, and each sale has required explicit DFE approval. Now it would appear that despite plenty of bluster in opposition, the Coalition wants to relax these requirements.

That ought to boost England's sporting chances in the future.

Hopi Sen, like my anonymous commentator below (please don't be so shy), has been reading too many conspiracy theories. Hasn't he?

Short-sighted building cuts

Modern school buildings - over 1100 new schools were built since 1997 - remain one of Labour's great educational legacies. And while there may well be savings to be made in the Building for the Future (BSF) programme through more standardised plans, it is deeply worrying to see the coalition treating the abandonment of school building plans almost as a badge of pride.

While there may be a good case for some cuts in revenue spending, the cuts in buildings investment cannot but hinder the recovery, damaging the construction sector. This is an investment in the future which should not be treated as an optional extra. George Osborne effectively acknowledged in his Budget speech that previous Tory governments mistakenly cut capital investment during previous recessions. It remains to be seen how the capital programme emerges after this review of BSF: but a return to the days of crumbling schools in the 90s would not only be bad for education, it would be bad for the economy and future growth.

No wonder business confidence is ebbing from the economy.

This post also appears on the Public Finance blog.

Getting 16-19 education right

Education Secretary Michael Gove has been setting out his plans for A level reform. He wants to reduce modules, scrap AS levels and get universities to play a greater part in syllabus design. There is certainly a strong case for further reducing modularity so that a greater proportion of the marks goes on synoptic assessments, and cutting the endless repeats that have been allowed of modules. Having universities more involved in developing syllabuses could also hekp raise standards. However, there is a danger in trying simply to recreate A levels as they were. Both the Conservatives and Labour accepted the case for AS levels in the 1997 election - the idea had been accepted in 1996 by Conservative ministers after a review led by the late Ron Dearing.

Whether it is wise or necessary to scrap AS levels now is doubtful: they can be useful in offering greater breadth in sixth form studies before the specialisation in Year 13. Removing other modules doesn't require their abandonment. Moreover, A-levels represent only one part of the picture when it comes to 16-19 education. The coalition has been sniffy about Diplomas; it should reinvigorate them so that there are strong work-related course options available to young people, while strongly promoting those that have industry backing. If needs be, a stronger work experience element could be added. Equally, while keen on apprenticeships, they need greater clarity over who will deliver them at a time of substantial youth unemployment - colleges may be strongly placed to take more of the risk, particularly in partnership with small firms.

As well as strengthening A levels, ministers should make it easier for schools to offer the International Baccalaureate, a rigorous qualification that doesn't require the narrow specialisation of A-leveks from academically able students. And while it may be right to increase the synoptic element of A levels, they should retain the idea of a long essay or project as part of an A level student's portfolio: that is where real 'deep thought' is likely to shine through. It is important that there is a rounded approach to 16-19 education that addresses the needs of all young people.

Whatever Works

To see Woody Allen's Whatever Works, a film that brings Allen back to New York and to the comic style of his earlier creations. The great Larry David largely reprises his Curb Your Enthusiasm grumpiness as Boris Yellnikoff who finds himself falling for the Southern charms of a Mississippi runaway, Melodie St. Ann Celestine played with naive brilliance by Evan Rachel Wood. As Melodie's parents - great performances by Ed Begley Jr and Patricia Clarkson - track her down, a classic Allen plot unfolds as they discover the freedoms of New York. It is cliched to describe Allen's movies as a 'return to form' - he has had several good movies this century - but it certainly shows that he still knows how to get the most from a great ensemble of actors.

Targetless Standards

The Home Secretary, Theresa May, made great virtue of her plans to scrap policing targets yesterday. No longer would the police have to answer 999 calls quickly, or bother themselves with such trivia as patrolling on the beat or their public reputation. Instead, they should just focus on bringing down the crime rate. Her colleague, Andrew Lansley had a similar outlook a few weeks ago as he consigned an already long limit on A&E waits of no more than four hours to history, and abandoned one of the most successful public sector reforms of Labour's years, the 18 week waiting time target. Instead consultants and trusts could pretty much decide for themselves whether to be bothered about patients suffering on trolleys or facing extra months in agony awaiting treatment.

Both moves will lead to a serious decline not only in the quality of the police or health services, but particularly in the rights of victims of crime and patients. A shared insight of the Thatcher/Major and Blair/Brown years was in the importance of customers of public services and their rights, and a recognition that producer or professional interests did not always know best. The most important change Labour introduced was in delivering minimum standards (in schools, expectations of minimum GCSE or test results delivered huge improvements in the most disadvantaged areas). Now the Coalition in a zealous attack on an admittedly excessively target-driven culture has thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

In one sense, this could be said to be understandable, at least in the police. By removing public expectations, the police can be 'freed' to concentrate on other matters. Yet in saying this, May seems profoundly to misunderstand the nature of the relationship between police and public. Most crime has fallen significantly in recent years (though some violent crimes are up) so the expectation that the police treat victims and the public better has not been at the expense of this core task. But it is also the case that the police are more than crime-fighters: their presence and that of community support officers makes people feel safer, particularly at night; their willingness to respond reassuringly to victims is as important in some crimes, like burglary, as the knowledge that the criminals will be caught. This has particularly been true in community policing. What these targets said is that the police recognise that they are funded by taxpayers, and are not a law unto themselves. Gene Hunt was being consigned to the past.

Andrew Lansley seems equally in thrall to professional interests. Despite polling clearly showing that waiting times are very important to patients, he is abandoning the maximum waits and allowing consultants to adopt a 'doctor knows best' attitude that was beginning to be challenged by the success of the targets. The point is not that most medical professionals don't believe they put patients interests first; it is that the default position of too many in the medical profession is to ignore what patients say they want. Without minimum standards, patients' concerns can too often be ignored. And the frustration and anger that follows will not be good for their health - or the NHS.

So, why is Labour not making more of such profoundly regressive steps? One reason is the preference of too many leadership contenders for attacking a record they should celebrate more - or at least offer a balanced assessment. Having failed to defend our record over the last few years, it is also harder to revive it now. But the bigger reason is the failure of the party to level with voters about where it would cut and what it would protect before the election (of course the other parties blatantly lied to voters but they are now in government and getting away with their dodgy reinvention of history). Had Labour followed Alistair Darling's advice, it would be in a stronger position to challenge those policies that will harm patients, parents or victims. But even those weaknesses should not prevent the party from trying harder: unless it does so now, history will have been rewritten by the coalition. And when the 8 hour trolley waits return, and the delayed 999 responses soar, the reasons will be lost in the mists of time.

Hopi Sen has a valuable follow-up to this post here.

Simon Callow's Man from Stratford

To see Simon Callow's one-man show Shakespeare: The Man from Stratford at the Bath Theatre Royal last night. In one of the last Main House shows before this summer's revamp of the historic theatre, Callow delivered another tour de force as he raced through the Bard's career interspersed with great speeches from his plays. Loosely -and inevitably - dividing his 90 minute monologue into the Seven Ages of Man, Callow took us from a Middle England childhood where young Will received a grounding in Latin grammar at Stratford grammar school, before working in his father's glove shop and marrying Anne Hathaway, through plague-ridden London to Shakespeare's time at the Globe and his retirement as a man of property to his home town. It is a thrilling story of small town politics, big city revenge, royal fickleness and apparently transient fame. Callow excels at this sort of show - as his earlier brilliant renditions of Wilde (the Micheal MacLiammóir version) and Dickens showed, and he thrilled his audience again last night as he moved effortlessly from historic narrative to dramatic impersonation. The play is touring through to Edinburgh, where it is sure to be a great hit.

The benefits of immigration

As Theresa May produces her latest proposal to demonise migrants (with the acquiesence of some senior Labour figures), Alice Miles offers a timely reminder in this week's New Statesman that many immigrants provide things that local people are simply unwilling to do:

When a local post office closed a couple of years ago, the villagers wailed and moaned, because the accompanying shop would have to shut, too. The post office was indeed just an expensive public subsidy for a crap village shop, so when it did shut, the dismal shop swiftly followed, despite the villagers' attempts to form committees and fundraise to keep it open.

Then a family from Sri Lanka arrived. They bought the lease, reopened the shop. The (generally white and wealthy) villagers patronised them, and the Sri Lankans smiled back. The shop is thriving. It sells fresh, locally sourced meat and fish, and good bread; it offers dry-cleaning, seedlings, fruit and veg. And the family is about to open a little café outside.

It's only one shop in one village, but it is a lesson in what immigrant enterprise can do. The white people just gave up on it when their subsidy was withdrawn. This is the other side of the currently fashionable, anti-immigration bleat from some Labour leadership candidates, and from the Conservatives.

'Reviving' competitive sports

Good luck to the Michael Gove in his 'revival' of competitive sports as he takes forward school olympics plans, particularly if he builds on a huge revival in school sports under Labour. But I hope he doesn't fall for the myth that Labour engaged in some ludicrous 'war' on competitive sports. (Even in the 1980s, where I was schools press officer for the ILEA, I organised the launch of a detailed independent research report on team games in London schools, accompanied by great photos of scores of London school sporting success stories, disproving the idea that the ILEA - and not a few misguided heads - was anti-competitive sort. It won plaudits from the Mail and Telegraph at the time! The Labour political leadership of the ILEA in 1988 was keen to promote it in London schools.)

There were several important elements of Labour's approach in government: the first was to increase overall participation in sports and PE; the second was to protect school playing fields unless they were being replaced by other sports facilities; the third was to revive competitive team sports. The Youth Sports Trust was transformed into the successful organisation it is today. Using an increasing specialist sports school network, local sports co-ordinators were employed to help revive sports which declined under the last Conservative government largely because teachers declined to help with after-school coaching. All playing field sales have had to be approved by a body that includes the strongest campaigners against their sale - but critics ignore that growth in sports facilities that often resulted.

The number of specialist sports colleges was increased from 11 in 1997 to around 500 today, creating as many local networks which are key to the growth in sport. The proportion of young people doing at least two hours a week of sport a week has risen from 23 to 90 per cent. And great strides were made under both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in increasing the numbers of pupils involved in competitions. Even between 2007 and 2009, competitive games were on the rise: in 2007, 98% of schools had sports day, 58% other intra school competitions and 35% were involved in inter-school competitions. By 2009, these last two figures had risen to 69% and 41%. I do hope that the Secretary of State builds on those successful structures and doesn't fall for the Daily Mail myth machine.

This post has been picked up by John Rentoul.

New Oz PM Julia's education courage bodes well for ALP

The extraordinarily brutal way in which the Australian Labor Party has despatched its leader, former PM Kevin Rudd, as his net popularity dipped from record positives to below zero, may have brought wry smiles closer to home. But his successor, Julia Gillard has a formidable record as Deputy Premier in seeing off the teaching unions as she introduced national testing and published results, courage which should stand her in good stead as PM. The contrast between her readiness to press ahead with important policy in the face of vested interests and Rudd's pusillanimity on carbon trading has been stark, with the latter a turn-off for voters. With Gillard in charge, the ALP now has a fighting chance of keeping power in this year's elections against a very right-wing Liberal challenge. Let's hope she does it.

This post has been picked up by John Rentoul.

Hillary's potential path to 2016

This blog backed Hillary Clinton during the last US Presidential election campaign, even though Barack Obama was the clear favourite among many liberals here and in the US. There is no doubt that Obama's election was a remarkable historic occasion. He has also - after some flapping - delivered on some key policy objectives like health care. He has also made imaginative appointments to some top jobs, including the Supreme Court (and the Secretary of State). But what is remarkable is that he has also managed - not entirely due to the combined wackos of Fox News and the Tea Party movement - to lose so much of the goodwill that greeted his election.

Obama lacks the emotion expected of US commanders in chief - which may endear him to many in Europe, but doesn't work in domestic crises - and has a surprising unsureness of touch whether it is in handling the BP crisis where he has gained no credit for forcing them to establish a £20bn fund to help victims of the oil leak or on selling his health or banking reforms to a wider electorate. He has been better on policy delivery than might have been anticipated - but far worse at presentation and selling his policies. And that matters in politics.

Despite being a largely disorganised affair with Sarah Palin their only recognisable figurehead, the Republicans are averaging a six-point lead in November's midterm elections. They are on course to make a net gain of six state governorships, could regain the House (despite a slight Democrat lead in generic polls) and reduce the Democrats' Senate majority considerably. And it has to be said that a big reason for their ability to do so is the inability of Obama to reach out to the electorate: the very criticisms that were made of him in states like Pennsylvania in the primaries now appear writ large on a national stage.

At the same time, Obama's decision to appoint Hillary Clinton has proved, despite her initial misgivings about accepting the post, to be a boon to her reputation. Her personal popularity is much higher than his, in excess of 60% and sometimes as high as 70% approval ratings. She has been loyal to a fault, and largely successful on the international stage. She is highly respected in the military: even today, with General McChrystal ranting to Rolling Stone about her White House colleagues, he gives Hillary a pass. Now there is serious talk of replacing the hapless Joe Biden as VP with Hillary, either after the midterms or for as an Obama running mate in 2012, allowing her to run for the top job in 2016. While such talk may be fanciful and speculative for now, the evidence is growing that it isn't just Bill who knows how to be the Comeback Kid.

Where is the Budget for recovery?

I have written this post for the Public Finance blog on today's Budget:

So much of today’s Budget was pre-trailed – the VAT rise to 20%, the increase in capital gains tax, a public sector pay freeze, lower income tax bills for the lowest paid, eye-watering public sector cuts – that one might have expected to have seen an imaginative approach to economic recovery to compensate. Labour’s argument that the widespread cuts already announced could have a negative effect on jobs and the recovery needed to be answered. And George Osborne failed to provide an adequate response.

A modest cut in corporation tax still leaves UK rates much higher than those in Ireland, a country that has taken even harsher measures in cutting its deficit. There was nothing in the Budget to promote innovation or higher level skills – the ‘technician skills’ that are needed to provide growth and compete with the fast-growing Asian economies. The measures for small firms sounded unappetising, and as complex as in any Gordon Brown Budget. The Tories show no recognition of the interdependence of the private and public sectors, and the effect on small services businesses of big public sector cuts. Scrapping tax relief for the video games industry seems bizarre, and could affect growth in a highly innovative British success story. However, there will be relief that capital investment is not further to be reduced, particularly in schools anxiously awaiting the results of a review into Building Schools for the Future, though the level at which it is being frozen was artificially reduced as a result of forward spending on the stimulus. And there is no indication – as benefits are cut by £11bn – of any replacement for Labour’s youth jobs programmes that were cut last week.

With 25% real terms cuts in unprotected departments, there were no guarantees on education spending, even as health and aid spending were ring-fenced, which will mean a tough summer of negotiation for both the Department for Education and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Osborne did indicate, however, that education and defence would not be treated as harshly as other departments.

Schools will be hoping that the promised pupil premium provides some cushioning, and it will be hard to reduce frontline spending in schools, 16-19 colleges or Sure Start without causing a huge outcry, though the Treasury may argue against real-term rises with a two-year pay freeze and a future increase in staff pension contributions. Universities are likely to have to charge higher fees after the Browne review, and cuts in adult skills spending in colleges are already under way. Other big areas of spending like education maintenance allowances and children’s and youth services face possible deep cuts too.

Politically, George Osborne delivered confidently and Harriet Harman gave a sharp and well-judged response. But it is the Liberal Democrats who look most exposed over the details, particularly the VAT increase after their denunciation of the Tories’ VAT ‘bombshell’ before the election. While they may argue that they achieved some of their income tax and CGT plans – and the removal of the cider levy for their West MPs – voters are unlikely to see these as mitigating the wider impact on public services and the working poor. There were clever touches – pension pledges and an uprating of child credit – but they are unlikely to protect the party from the anger of a significant proportion of their electorate who believe this is not what they thought they were voting for. Talk of an international ‘consensus’ – not shared by Barack Obama in the US – may not be enough to win them back.

Coalition cuts enthusiasm and a lack of a growth strategy

I wouldn't argue against George Osborne's proposition that the public sector deficit is unsustainable. And there is certainly a case for reviewing public sector pensions - John Hutton is a good man for that job - and a pay freeze for public sector workers. Benefits need reform, in the direction that Labour had been moving, shifting the able-bodied from welfare to work (provided there are jobs and business opportunities in the economy). There may even be a need for the Tories to defy their pre-election commitment that there were no plans to do so and increase the general level of VAT (though an extension of the scope of VAT would be hugely regressive and politically very stupid).

However, what is most worrying about the narrative surrounding Tuesday's 'emergency' budget is the complete absence of any growth or jobs strategy, and the total lack of understanding of the interrelationship between the private and public sectors. The freezing of school building projects is crucifying the construction industry. The Nimbyist changes in housing rules will hardly help. The opposition to rail electrification or airport development suggests little understanding about the relationship between transport infrastructure and economic growth. The bizarre package of job cuts this week - including in Sheffield and in youth job programmes - shows a strange set of priorities.

So I share the concerns of those economists who argue that deep cuts without any jobs or growth strategy will depress the economy, depress growth, depress tax revenues and push up unemployment. The relish with which the Tory press has been treating the forthcoming budget has not been corrected by Osborne (despite his protestations of a belief in 'fairness' this morning) and the Liberal Democrats have utterly failed to moderate the Thatcherite enthusiasm that surrounds the whole exercise - Vince Cable has disappeared without trace.

Unless the coalition strikes a proper balance between necessary savings, tax increases and future jobs and growth, it will cause huge problems for the whole country in the future. In that, they are right to argue that we are all in this together.

The future for free schools

The coalition's plans for free schools are given a bit more detail today. As I reported in my recent Public Finance article, there is a greater emphasis on the potential for teacher-led than parent-led schools. Otherwise, we are told that a group of 50 or so parents could club together to demand a new primary school; a larger number will be needed for a secondary (the latter are more likely to be developed by existing academy providers and secondary schools). They will be governed in a way similar to academies, and subject to Ofsted inspections, tests and tables. And the talk now is of taking over shops rather than shiny new buildings. So far, so predictable - and there was a sensible recognition this morning that some will fail, as has happened to over 600 of the 5000+ charter schools in the US .

I have no doubt that there will a number of high profile free school developments, including Toby Young's much publicised plans and those supported by some of the Teach First graduates. A more difficult group will be those parents who set up a free school simply to stymie local authority rationalisations: at a time of spending cuts, there will be some high profile battles with angry councillors. Equally, there will be plenty of difficult judgment calls when the bids from Muslim schools emerge, though it is likely that the efforts of scientologists and other cults will be stopped unless they successfully disguise their true backers.

Labour should not oppose the development of free schools, provided they are non-selective. After all, they build on an architecture developed in its education bills. The main change proposed by Michael Gove is a freeing up of planning restrictions that councils had used - with no attempt by Ed Balls to stop them doing so - to block the parental rights to demand a new school set out in the 2006 Education and Inspections Act. Instead of adopting a kneejerk defence of existing planning rules or local authorities, the next leader of the Labour party should look creatively at the model to develop imaginative new groups of free schools including in disadvantaged areas, some of which might challenge the rigid curriculum orthodoxy schizophrenically embraced by the Conservative front bench. Indeed, such imaginative thinking would be far more likely to help us win back Southern voters than talk of abolishing the charitable status of independent schools.

However, the programme's supporters are being a touch naive in their expectations about how rapidly this programme will develop. The £50 million diversity pot announced today will help some, but it will take a lot more effort than they think to develop a programme of Swedish-style or US charter school proportions. The main reason is that both systems lacked diversity before those developments. Indeed, Swedish free schools are still required to teach the national curriculum. By contrast, a huge diversity and significant autonomy has developed in our system under both Labour and Conservative governments. Not only will there be in excess of 300 academies from this autumn, there are thousands of religious schools (that don't get public funding in the US) and over 1200 foundation schools that have many of the freedoms enjoyed by academies already. Moreover, the degree of autonomy over staff and budgets enjoyed by community - local authority - school heads is far greater than in most other developed countries. Of course, there are challenges in moving our system towards the achievement levels of countries or territories with much higher degrees of ethnic homogeneity like Finland or Singapore, and Gove is right to be ambitious about improving standards, though he is wrong to underestimate how much progress has been made in recent years. But a far greater contribution to that further improvement is likely to emerge from plans for the expansion of mainstream academies, better teacher quality and strong accountability.

Lib Dem Danny's shameful bonfire of opportunities

Liberal Democrat Chief Secretary Danny Alexander's bonfire of programmes designed to give young people a genuine chance to gain work through internships and practical experience is a betrayal of everything his party claimed to stand for in the general election. It also gives the lie to the idea that the coalition is seriously interested in getting people off welfare and into work, and undermines the claims of welfare secretary Iain Duncan Smith in that regard. The Future Jobs Fund and the Jobs Guarantee for the long-term unemployed are both measures that should not be abandoned in the absence of better alternatives. Their abolition could consign tens of thousands more young people to a longer time - if not a lifetime - on benefits. It is the exact opposite of what the coalition claims to stand for, and to withdraw such programmes without any concrete alternatives in place suggests that the Lib-Con Government is more concerned with spin and macho cost-cutting than substance where reducing unemployment is concerned.

As the Guardian reported, David Cameron's chosen poverty guru Frank Field has said of the abolition of the Future Jobs Fund:

"If we are telling people their benefits will be time-limited, cut or ended, we will carry the electorate with us only if we can definitely offer someone a job". He said the requirement to take jobs enshrined in the jobs fund scheme also stopped young people from endlessly fiddling the system, making them realise it was decision time because they would have been required to take a job. "Many jobless try desperately hard to get jobs and fail to do so," he said, adding that "the cumulative effect of that failure is enormously crushing on them". "What the jobs fund was beginning to do was offer concrete jobs for people to go to, and that was a lifeline that no amount of new deal and no amount of our rhetoric ever offered them," he said. "It was one of the most precious things that the last government was involved in."

Gove places stronger expectations on new academies

The new education secretary Michael Gove moved significantly forward in his recognition of the importance of outstanding schools that become academies working with other schools, in his first major speech as secretary of state this morning. In a well-received and policy-rich speech to heads at the National College conference in Birmingham, he made clear that he expected the new academies to work with at least one other school in a system leadership role, and that programmes like the College's National Leaders of Education would play an important part in delivering that system leadership.

Let me be clear: I would not be going down this road if I thought it would in any way set back the process of school improvement, if would in any way undermine the progress we need to make in our weakest or most challenged schools or if it would in any way fracture the culture of collaboration which has driven school improvement over the last decade. This policy is driven, like all our education policy, by our guiding moral purpose – the need to raise attainment for all children and close the gap between the richest and poorest. I believe this policy will only work if it strengthens the bonds between schools and leads to a step-change in system-led leadership. That is why I will expect of every school that acquires academy freedoms that it partners at least one other school to help drive improvement across the board.

While Gove had previously recognised the importance of such collaborative work, he had not been quite so explicit in his expectations before. His challenge now is to develop an effective but flexible mechanism that enables such system leadership to flourish. I have written here before about the role that High Performing Specialist Schools - many of those targeted for the first wave of new academies - play alongside the NLE programme. But with flexibility to choose an appropriate system leadership role, there should also be some real incentive. One potential mechanism is the academy funding agreement: a straightforward link between a proportion of the additional funding that comes from no longer being attached to a local authority - or a tougher redesignation process for specialist schools - and embracing such a leadership role would help cement Gove's ambition. It would also provide the reassurance that many who support an extension of academies - but worry about the potential loss of the programme's social mission without such levers - have been seeking.

The truth about Bloody Sunday

As a child growing up in Dublin, I remember the atmosphere of horror and shock that followed the killings on Bloody Sunday. A national day of mourning was declared in the Republic, the IRA led a mob that burned down the British Embassy and the limited RTE television broadcasts reverted to a schedule normally only used on Good Friday in those days. Truth be told, it was one of only a few occasions when the 'Troubles' seemed to impinge on daily life down South: the other was the Dublin bombings. To many in the Republic, the six counties, far from being the missing part of the nation, seemed a remote and even unwelcome neighbour. Yet the North provided a daily backdrop of death to the seventies as the IRA became ever more vicious in their killing, only outdone by the gory awfulness of their loyalist counterparts. And Bloody Sunday was the prelude to that brutal decade that scarred so many in the North.

For those whose loved ones were killed on Bloody Sunday, the memories of that day have never gone away, even as the benefits of the Good Friday agreement are felt across Northern Ireland. Today's inquiry should finally give them the answers that they deserve, and which they were so cruelly denied in the Widgery whitewash. It is pretty damning stuff that fully vindicates the testimony of many eyewitnesses, including former Bishop Edward Daly. But it would be wholly wrong to conclude that there should then be prosecutions of the soldiers involved: in a Northern Ireland where once-brutal terrorists - including one said to have carried a machine-gun on Bloody Sunday - are respectable assembly members, and even ministers, there is nothing to be gained from trying to prosecute those soldiers who killed innocent people in Derry on that fateful day any more than there is merit in reprosecuting the many other horrors perpetrated in the bloody years that followed. David Cameron was absolutely right to deliver the apology he did in the Commons, as was Sir Mike Jackson - and it is unfortunate that this inquiry has taken so long to reach its conclusions - but Sinn Fein members who have been among the greatest beneficiaries of the post-peace amnesty should be the first to argue that having finally achieved the truth, it is in nobody's interests not to move on.

Greenberg

To see Noah Baumbach's thoughtful and incisive Greenberg: the story of faded rock singer turned carpenter, Roger Greenberg, who is recuperating in his brother's house after a spell in a mental hospital following a nervous breakdown, where he starts an awkward affair with the family's young personal assistant, Florence (played with brilliance by Greta Gerwig). Ben Stiller plays Greenberg with huge understanding, giving his combination of grouchy complaints, terrible personal behaviour and self-obsession such depth that one actually cares about an otherwise horrible person. Gone is the goofiness of Meet the Fockers: who knew that behind the goofball comedy there was an actor capable of carrying a multi-layered film like this through virtually every scene? There is great support from Rhys Ifans and Jennifer Jason Leigh as a fellow band member and former lover respectively. But this is a breakout film for the two principals - Stiller from his stereotype, and Gerwig showing she is destined for greatness. This is not easy viewing - it can be ponderous and episodic - but it is nevertheless a great movie.

Who really betrayed universities over funding?

David Willetts, the universities minister, is too clever to believe the partisan tosh that he is mouthing about university funding today. He is right to argue the case for higher tuition fees and new approaches to higher education. But he also knows that Labour - with his support - established an independent review of university funding precisely to address the issues involved. He also knows that the solutions that he is talking about - including a greater focus on teaching quality and on FE college-based higher education were set out with admirable clarity by Lord Mandelson in his higher education strategy paper last year.

If Willetts wants to look for people to blame over higher education funding, he need look no further than his own front bench before he and David Cameron performed their overdue u-turn on tuition fees. (He might have a chat with the Home Secretary, who spoke on education when Labour first introduced fees). And while he's at it, the universities minister might care to educate his coalition colleagues - including his Secretary of State - who cynically misled university students about the potential for scrapping fees.

Such a strategy would be far more credible than attacking Labour ministers who took brave decisions in the face of such political cowardice. After all, he may need Labour support when the time comes to implement his tough decisions.