Thursday, March 02, 2006

WHERE ARE THE REVOLUTIONARIES?

Where did they go? I thought you had them? They must be around here some place...
Not so much as a hint.
Tony Blair's plans for a brave new breed of independent "trust schools" vanished without trace from the Education and Inspections Bill when it was finally published on Tuesday. Or the phrase "trust schools" did at any rate.
The Government insisted this did not mean that trust schools had been abandoned. The term is simply a way of re-branding an existing type of school.
You don't need new laws to create trust schools. A trust school is "a foundation school with a foundation", the Department for Education and Skills said. There are dozens of these already up and running.
At Downing Street on Monday, the Prime Minister invited a few journalists round to explain to the world why everyone should back his Bill.
We asked him whether he could name any really new powers that trust schools will have which are not already available to schools. He couldn't. All he said was that the powers which some schools have now will be made available to all those who want them.
There had been "evolutionary" change over recent years, resulting in things like foundation schools and academies with the kinds of freedoms over their own affairs he was hoping to give trust schools.
But the "revolutionary" bit will come by giving all schools the chance to have this autonomy and the opportunity to enter a partnership with a business or university "as of right", he said.
We also asked him how many trust schools he imagined joining this "revolution". Neither Mr Blair nor Ruth Kelly wanted to put a figure on it.
Given that trust status is only going to be an option for existing schools, not a compulsion, and given that there are very few new schools opening every year, you can begin to see why.

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