WHITE PAPER OR WHITE ELEPHANT?

The waiting is nearly over. Tomorrow, at long last, it is Pancake Day, and the Government will publish the education Bill, setting out their final proposals for reforming English schools.
We will know then how much ministers have been forced to change their plans in the face of some of the longest running and most vocal opposition Tony Blair has encountered since the Iraq war.
One of the questions you will not hear ministers ask in public, however, will be "are these reforms really worth the hassle?"
Newspapers are claiming this morning that Ms Kelly's career as Education Secretary is at stake over the reforms, and there are fresh mutterings that the PM's own job could be in doubt if he fails to get the plans through Parliament.
(See the Times, for example: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2060541,00.html)
Even if the Bill does become law, Mr Blair's position at the head of the Labour Party will be decidedly tricky if he secures his great education legacy only with Tory votes.
And that is just the beginning of the endgame. The White Paper has caused a huge amount of political grief for the Government already.
John Prescott, Estelle Morris, Neil Kinnock and about 90 Labour MPs, along with all the major teachers' and headteachers' unions, all thought the White Paper was a really bad idea.
We have had a select committee report, an "Alternative White Paper", a lot of angry meetings, and letters offering "clarifications" (that means "concessions", just to clarify).
When it was published at the end of October, ministers were promising a Bill "early in the New Year".
By Christmas Ms Kelly was telling friends she expected the Bill "in the first few days of February". That slipped fairly quickly to some time "in February" once the scale of Labour opposition to the proposals became clear.
And sadly for them, the Government were getting no favours from the calendar. February has once again turned out to be rather a short little month and tomorrow, the 28th, is the last possible day when ministers could get the Bill out and claim they have stuck to the original timetable.
Half-term has been and gone and most schoolchildren worthy of the name will have an eye on all the Easter eggs piling up enticingly on the supermarket shelves.
Soon, however, we will know the final shape of the Bill.
Have the Government's promises of more freedoms for schools, choice for parents and influence for private backers survived all the sweeteners offered to Labour MPs? Or will they be as hollow as some of those chocolate eggs?
Still, some ministers may find a hollow chocolate egg preferable to other options when the time comes...

A GOOD EGG

Monday February 6:














Tuesday February 7:
The Times: "Egg on her face, and that's before the U-turn"
Daily Star: "CRACKED IT; EGG-STREMIST SPLATS EGG-UCATION CHIEF"
The Guardian: "Shell shocked: minister hit by egg"
Express: "The Yolk's on Kelly"

Thursday February 9:
Tony Blair and Ruth Kelly host seminar in Downing Street for businesses and other organisations interested in backing their White Paper plans for "trust schools".
The PM tells the audience: "Ruth has been very busy doing a Cabinet presentation and Question Time. The only eggs we have got are in the sandwiches today."
Initial inquiries suggested that there were indeed eggs in the sandwiches. And cress, too.
But Ms Kelly's officials remained tight-lipped over what the minister had for lunch.

MIDDLE CLASSES RULE OK

So ministers have put forward their "clarifications" to the schools White Paper (no "concessions" or "compromises" please, spin doctors may take offence).
They hope all the clarifying will win over the critics on their own side while insisting that the core elements of their "historic" plan remain intact.
Yet there was something approaching a shrug of resignation in the Prime Minister's tone today, on one key point at least.
Ministers acknowledge that middle class parents too often work the current system to their advantage, colonising the best schools and leaving the worst to those with less influence.
The Government has consistently claimed that the White Paper will help children from the poorest families in the most deprived areas of the country.
But Mr Blair told MPs at this morning's Commons Liaison Committee meeting: “Whatever system you put in place, middle-class parents will try to do the best for their kids.
"You can move house in the end, and who could blame them?
“We all want to do the best for our children."
(Incidentally, he was also questioned over his own decision to send his two eldest children to the Catholic London Oratory school, which won a legal case to continue interviewing prospective parents but will lose this right thanks to the concessions - I mean clarifications - announced last night.)
Ruth Kelly detailed the package of changes to the White Paper in a late night letter to Barry Sheerman, the chairman of the Commons education select committee, yesterday.
But while Ms Kelly agreed to a surprising number of demands from the committee for altering the plans, she refused their most direct suggestion for getting more working class children into good schools - quotas.
Or "benchmarks" as the committee called them.
Just as universities are set "benchmarks" for the proportion of state school students they could reasonable be expected to admit every year, so schools should also be given such loose targets to aim for, the committee said.
Mr Blair dismissed the idea of "social engineering" to break the stranglehold of the middle classes on the best schools.
And Ms Kelly said "quotas" would not be appropriate.
But there is another option which has won some support in influential circles.
Getting into a good school has been described as "a postcode lottery". Why not make it a real one?
The select committee proposed making admissions "anonymous", hinting at the idea of a ballot to allocate places in over-subscribed schools.
One of Mr Blair's confidants and a consistent champion of disadvantaged children, Sir Peter Lampl, publicly backed the ballot idea two weeks ago.
Now that really would be a bold and radical gesture towards making school admissions fair to all families, not just those well educated and wealthy enough to work the system - perhaps a little too fair. Maybe a shrug in this direction is all the Government can afford.