New Labour's education failure

12 April 2012
Evening Standard editorial comment

The revelation that Tony and Cherie Blair have been boosting their sons' preparations for A-levels at a state school with extra tuition will surely enrage many parents. The public is rightly disturbed when politicians preach the virtues of state provision and then seek to circumvent or supplement it themselves.

Mr Blair's sons attend the London Oratory, one of the best state schools in the capital: indeed in the country. By sending them there he could claim that they were within the state system, even if to do so they initially had to be ferried from distant Islington to Fulham. But even that, it transpires, is not good enough and private tutors have been hired by the family from the private Westminster School to aid Euan and Nicky's preparations for their final exams. It is disingenuous of Downing Street to claim, as it did this morning, that it is an entirely private matter. Only this week Mr Blair appeared on Channel Four news defending his education reforms and saying that "the system is improving... it has to be made to work".

In his private behaviour, however, the Prime Minister is demonstrating that he knows the system is failing and that the gap opening up between even the best of state schools and the private sector is widening. That is a fear shared by thousands of parents across the capital. But only a minority have the financial resources to tackle it in the way that Mr and Mrs Blair have done. New Labour did not regard it as a private matter when the Conservative leader, Iain Duncan Smith, whose four children were all educated in the state sector, recently decided to send one of them to Eton on a scholarship.

For parents who cannot find a decent education in the state system, there is little or no difference between a party leader who sends his sons to a private school and another who chooses a top state school and then hires the very best private tutors to garnish its teaching. A state system that cannot attract or retain the offspring of aspirational middle class parents becomes an education only for the poor. Many people will argue that the Blairs, by employing tutors for their sons, are simply following standard practice among the middle classes - and nobody should be criticised for doing the best for their children.

However, if Labour after five years in office had made the reforms on education that Mr Blair had promised, parents would not be agonising about whether they should be providing their children with extra tuition, at considerable expense. This story underlines how New Labour has failed to deliver decent schools - particularly in London - and has let down a generation of children.

Markets must keep their nerve

Today, the Fourth of July, America celebrates its nationhood for the first time since September 11 brought a new day of infamy to its calendar. A pervasive sense of uncertainty is reflected in the stock markets, with share prices here closing yesterday 16% below the start of the year and at their lowest for five years. The FTSE 100 index ended yesterday lower than the trough it reached on September 21. Since then, the American economy has shown resilience relative to the doomsday forecasts of the time; but it has also become clear that the boomtime assumptions underpinning company valuations have not been ironed out. The Enron and WorldCom debacles were the starkest sign of that: but are unlikely to be repeated if reforms proposed in Senate and Congress and by the Securities and Exchange Committee prove effective.

Still, they have spooked investors beyond measure. A Wall Street holiday can mean sharp slides elsewhere as traders mark down prices, but selling in real volume tends to wait for days when all players are present. Yes, US and UK accounting standards need improvement. Yes, the dollar's decline could become a rout of foreign capital. But Enron and WorldCom were two particularly controversial companies in a US stock market still valued by investors at $9 trillion. Shareholders should keep their nerve today.

Let parents choose

Ken Livingstone is just one of a growing number of parents - chiefly drawn from the affluent middle-class - who are simply refusing to believe what the Government is telling them. And it is not enough for health ministers simply to tell such parents that they are wrong, only more loudly. The Government's want of credibility on this matter, aggravated by Mr Blair's refusal to say whether his son Leo has had the triple jab, is such that more and more parents who can afford to do so will pay over £170 to have their children given separate injections while others will simply refuse to have them innoculated at all. The realistic option, therefore, is to give parents the choice whether to accept doctors' advice that the MMR vaccine is safe or to opt for separate injections on the NHS.

Such a choice will be costly, even though the Government protests that this has nothing to do with its preference for the triple jab, since nurses will be required to administer the vaccine three times, not just once. That cost will be borne by us all. However, if significant numbers of children contract measles or mumps, that too would have a price for the NHS. David Lammy, the new minister at the Department of Health, should begin his office by tackling this fraught question head-on, and give parents the right to choose.

Losing it

Unfortunately, the 'No' campaign then added an own goal by including in its cinema ad a clip of the comedian Rik Mayall impersonating Hitler. This has caused some real distress from some Jewish and veterans' groups - and quite a lot of manufactured outrage - from supporters of UK entry who see a chance to portray the 'Nos' as crudely provocative. The inclusion of Hitler could be defended on the principle that he was an enthusiast for a united Europe - although his way of achieving it was markedly different to the technocratic elites of today. But any image of this potency must be treated with care by political campaigners. An excessively juvenile sense of humour is not the way to win hearts and minds.

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