The kids are not alright

Politicians, not teachers, are to blame for Britain’s decline in education, says kenneth minogue

Why, in Britain's broken society, do bad things not only happen but tend to get worse? The reason is likely to be that we have become locked in a cycle, in which the consequences of one policy cause the next degeneration. Let me illustrate.

Few people doubt that the quality of education in Britain's schools has degenerated and that it has done so in almost exact proportion to the involvement of the Department of Education in telling teachers what they must do. The more directives, the more bureaucracy endured, the worse the results.

Many comprehensive schools have become engines for providing increasingly worse education for pupils, a decline no longer concealed by inflated exam results. History becomes propaganda about the evils of British life, geography the current affairs of

The decline can no longer be concealed by inflated exam results

climate change, social studies indoctrination in how to be multicultural.

A capacity to spell and write grammatically is no longer something teachers even try to teach their pupils. And a stream of directives comes from the DfES about teaching parenthood, better diet, equality issues, not smoking, how to deal with the increase in bullying and similar subjects. Employers despair at the quality of those applying for jobs.

Why does it happen? Let's ask the old Roman question: Cui bono? Who benefits? At first, one might think it would be the teachers, because teaching real subjects to pupils is harder than being a child minder.

But, no. The real beneficiaries are the politicians. Most politicians today have never had a real job. The only skill they have ever exercised is to talk vacuously and get out the vote. And so one reason for this dumbing down suggests itself.

Who would vote for these incompetents – except a generation of young people never seriously challenged by the demands of real education?