There – it’s out in the open. What a weight off our chests. We Liberal Democrats aspire to higher educational standards for our secondary school children than Camden currently provides. (www.thecnj.co.uk/camden/2007/120607/news120607_01.html) Is that a sin? Or even a shock? Isn’t that what we should be aspiring too? How else are we going to get our middle classes to send their children to state schools?
Last week Camden’s primary schools were lauded as second best in the land in terms of contextual value added (which measures how much progress the children have made during their time at the school and takes into account their socio-economic backgrounds). Camden’s state secondary schools are better than those of Islington, Haringey and Brent, but surely that’s nothing to write home about. We have to do better. A lot better.
The Lib Dems are certainly not fans of Tony Blair’s academies, but we need to find a way to raise standards fast and so we’ve decided to use the academy model to bring in UCL, an education provider with a track record of world excellence. I personally hope that the new school will build on UCL’s reputation in terms of climate change research and will put global warming at the heart of the curriculum.
I find it hard to see why aspiring to higher standards than Camden currently achieves is a bad news story.
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