Guvnor Gove

Britain's wretched education system just goes on getting more divided. We already had public schools (actually private, but benefiting from charitable status), grammar schools, comprehensives and Church of England primaries. Blair introduced academies and multiplied the number of faith schools. Guvnor Gove brought in free schools. Now he wants to create an 'English baccalaureate', which will be not English but Anglo-Welsh and not strictly a baccalaureate. His 'EBacc' will not compare with the real baccalaureates, French, European and international - highly regarded school-leaving exams taken at age 18 - but will be a new version of O-levels. The more schools are reorganized the worse they seem to get. The sad thing is that we had in the comprehensive an excellent system, but we never spent enough on it to make it work. The public schools are in effect comprehensives, since they will take in any dunce whose parents are rich enough to pay, but what is good enough for the wealthy is deemed too good to be provided free to the rest of the population.