You are right to identify that “being subject to four-year cycles and the whims of politics” has been a problem in education for too long (Leader, TES, June 29). Let us indeed hope that the new Cabinet can “put an end to boom and bust” in education policy-making.
For that to happen, the most vital part of new ministers’ induction should be “learning how to learn from past experience”: this is vital if the familiar aspiration for embedded working relationships that really make a difference for schools and business can be realised. As for the National Council for Educational Excellence, I hope its members realise we have had many initiatives to build partnerships between schools and employers over the past 40 years. If new schemes are to be sustainable for more than four years and serve the proper interests of education and business, then the first job must be to look at the evidence of what works and what doesn’t about this potentially important way of building capacity for learning in every community.
Frank Newhofer
Oxford