“The current structure and system of examination boards is an expensive shambles which does not serve the public interest... There are not many areas of life where it can be argued that nationalisation is the solution to a problem. This field, though, is the exception to that rule.”
The Times, June 14
“The staffrooms treat the Department of Education and the quangos that run testing with the same fatalistic derision as the Russians treated the Soviet politburo and its planning agency, Gosplan.”
New Statesman, editorial
“Like someone who finds themselves the unintended beneficiary of a tax break, I am quietly counting my parental blessings about the distorted examination system. ... The current system gives you a fabulous almost continuous, print-out of what is inside a child’s brain. It is not great for children’s civil liberties, but I quite like being Big Mother.”
Sarah Sands, The Daily Telegraph, June 13
“It’s all right for middle-class adults to have a relaxing smoke in their gentrified drawing rooms but working-class children are being turned into stoned, imbecilic, illiterate criminals. They have been written off as an acceptable loss.”
Social worker Julie Fawcett on the policy of tolerating cannabis use in Lambeth, Evening Standard, June 17
“Fred said he had been reading UN articles 12 and 42. Who gave him access to such filth? Most boys would have been healthily reading Mr Richard Desmond’s top-of-the-shelf publications. These human-rights-crazed politicians are destroying the whole idea of childhood.”
Frank Johnson, The Spectator, on 14-year-old Fred Tyson Brown’s testimony before a House of Commons hearing on children’s rights
“Outsiders think they know education more than the trained teachers. Teachers are a condemned lot. They are blamed whenever things go wrong.”
Patrick Kibui, principal of Kenya science teachers college, in The Daily Nation, Kenya
“Education isn’t a foolproof vaccine against extremism; as a group, the Sept 11 hijackers were well-educated. But expanding access to education in the developing world is among the most effective tools for teaching tolerance and reinforcing social stability... The challenge for Bush is to rally the world as he did in the war against terrorism - this time for a global campaign to leave no child behind.”
Los Angeles Times looks forward to the G8 summit, June 17
