“Halfway There” – an encouraging title for the iconic report on comprehensive schools written forty years ago by Caroline Benn and Brian Simon, is now quite a cross party theme. Stephen Twigg borrowed the phrase last autumn, adding that Labour’s One Nation Education system (details tbc) will demand renewed vision and a challenge to orthodoxies. For the coalition, David Laws recently described the education service as “around M on a journey from A to Z” which is halfway by any other name. If the politicians are right, then schools have been stuck since 1970 or their destination, like the boundary of the universe, is accelerating away from us. The halfway theme suggests a consensus about where we started, where we are and, critically, where we are going. Instead, we are all over the place on both service design and the content of the curriculum.
Content from our partners
