For 9 years I've watched the UK education system flail about on the ground after repeated abuse from the government. As always, the government is trying primarily to get something for nothing (see railways, hospitals). The second motive, thanks to New Labour of the Right Wing, is the desire to push people to spend the money they have and don't have, to send their kids to private schools. [Don't complain. It's good for the economy, stupid.]
The government does this by running the state school system into the ground, allowing kids to run amok and leaving staff with no options for obedience training. I've seen the inside of a classroom, and it's an ugly sight. Funding is continually cut. Box-ticking bureaucratic work is foisted upon staff who work 12-hour days [staff turnover is of the McDonald's kind; can you say 'revolving door'].
Schools in deprived areas are doubly penalised because their poor, poorly-fed desk monkeys are performing badly thanks also to a lack of funding. All the more reason to destroy a perfectly good building and community and send the kids to the shiny new Academies (privately-run schools taking government money) which preach the new business mantra all day, instead of the national curriculum [since the school bosses are friends of the government, the schools are essentially run by Labour dictat; bye-bye school board]. That's why the OECD finds the UK languishing near the bottom of educational-results surveys, with the US and its No Presidents Left Behind policy.
[Economist 8 Dec '07 pg71][Photo: Wang: Follow Me]
P.S. much the same is happening to the NHS health-care system.
