Civitas Blog

Lord Adonis' City Academies continue to cause controversy. The Telegraph is ambivalent on principle, since they are really a rightwing thing, but has repeatedly pointed out that for the amount of money being spent the returns are remarkably mixed. As the for the Guardian, since the idea of using the private sector to bolster the shortfalls in the public sector is automatically to be regarded as a bad one, the government's experiment is a betrayal as well as a failure. What with the widespread acceptance of the academic failure of comprehensives and the admission by the likes of Baronness Warnock that was inclusion was a mistake, the Labour project's day are numbered. The New Labour project is hardly faring better - patchy semi-selection in the form of specialist schools, catchment (i.e. income) selection in comprehensive schools and then of course these dubious academies. Type 'City Academy' into the search engines on any of the newspaper websites and you'll find a plethora of material, but here are two notable columns, one from the Telegraph, the other from the Guardian. It is patently clear that if Blair is to achieve his number one objective in office - and let's face it, it's looking a bit late now - he's going to need far better education, education, education.