Rarely is the question asked, “is our children learning?”

–George W. Bush, 2000

Last week on The Big Picture*, Simon produced a special report on the state of the education system. The panel all seemed to agree that there wasn’t anything particularly wrong with the current state system, going as far as to argue that there was a relatively even distribution of both state and independent schools throughout the league tables.

The panel don’t seem to be alone; a recent Populus poll for The Times (9th Feb 2010) asked people to rate their perception of public services on a scale of 0 – 10, and the modal average was 7.

This raises two puzzling questions: firstly, why are the Tories focusing on education as the target of their policy announcements, and why would anyone call for “positive discrimination”?

The Conservatives have been calling for reform of education with a focus on more traditional subjects like history, and have proposed radical changes allowing parents to have more influence. Their draft manifesto lists various policies for achieving this and granting more independence in what they call a post-bureaucratic age, but the true reason is found in the opening blurb:

the success of our plan to mend Britain’s broken society depends less on the actions that a Conservative government will take to give people more power and more on society’s response [emphasis added]

Despite the apparently positive view of education that the Populus poll indicates, the same poll found that 70% believe society in Britain is broken. The question is how to fix it, and the Conservatives have, rightly or wrongly, targeted education.

As for the private and state sectors, it can only be presumed that there is a perception of a gap between the two. Otherwise, the only reasoning for calls for “positive discrimination” is covert class war – something few parties are willing to openly advocate. Perhaps this argument may see such calls silenced over the course of the election, particularly if Labour are to claim that the state sector is now the equal of independent schools.

Is education reform needed, have the Tories misdiagnosed a “broken Britain”, or is this all myth?

*Shameless plug alert! Rob presents The Big Picture.

On top of this, the National Bullying Helpline is, as I type this, dominating the news channels – particularly since their patron has just resigned over the alleged breach of confidentiality when they stated that several people working in Gordon Brown’s office had contacted them about bullying.

But this doesn’t remove the political element from the story. The problem for Labour is one of context. For a party satirised by the fictional government of the Thick of It, one particular Malcolm Tucker quote stands out:

How dare you call me a bully. I am so much worse than that.

There are already those associated with Labour who the public and the media perceive as bullies: Alastair Campbell and Damian McBride, whilst labelled “spin doctors”, also were believed to have fulfilled the role of “enforcers”.

Whether or not this is true will by now be irrelevant; the damage is done to their careers. The real problem for Labour now is that this might be extended to the Prime Minister, and the fear that there might be similar consequences.

The media have been accused of being selective in their coverage and have to some extent ignored some of the more negative coverage of the National Bullying Helpline. More weight has been placed on the issues of confidentiality surrounding the statements of Caroline Pratt. Yet the media can afford to be selective and may well do so consciously – this story has a much longer history than the last 48 hours.

Yet when there was originally speculation about the political role of blogs, it was suggested that they provided little more than a platform for the views of an individual. The comments sections seem to contradict this. Whilst yes, in some cases people are angered or seek to provoke others, there is also opportunity to hold the blogger to account and discuss issues further. Bloggers have taken to publicly asking questions of each other and answering them – as when Guido Fawkes of Order-Order questioned Daniel Finkelstein’s approach to tax.

Edward Murrow’s maxim holds true:

the fact that your voice is amplified to the degree where it reaches from one end of the country to the other does not confer upon you greater wisdom or understanding than you possessed when your voice reached only from one end of the bar to the other

Both comments and the network of blogs (I refuse to use the term “blogosphere”) inform reader and writer alike. The change in tone from dismissing blogs to accepting them is one that has, and hopefully will continue to, expand discussion and debate.