Education, Education, Education

On coming to power in 1997 Labour promised 'Education, Education, Education'. It created plenty of eye-catching iniatives micromanaging things from the top via a bevy of targets and threw a shed load of money at the problem. There are pupils leaving the school system now that will have spent their whole time under the New Labour way. We have spent the money and given it time to work, so surely there should be some results by now. Well apparently not

The independent study said the government's National Literacy Strategy had cost 553 million pounds in the seven years to 2005 but had had "almost no impact" on reading levels.

But what about the raft of statistics that Labour uses to show how good it is?

National test results rose strongly up to 2000 before flattening out in recent years but Tymms said there had been little actual improvement overall when measured against objective standards.

He said studies, including his own, had shown the rise in results was misleading and exaggerated the changes in pupils' actual attainment. The literacy strategy had also been distorted by the pressure on schools to hit government performance goals, with less able pupils falling behind.

"Resources and effort were targeted at those pupils who were within range of achieving a Level 4 because that is the standard by which the success of schools was judged," he said.

So just as in every other area the statistics where massaged to meet the target.