Geography Is Now a Pamphlet for Greenpeace, History Is About How to Become a Historian. They Call It 'Learnacy'. I Call It Lunacy ; Today Ed Balls Launches Another Plan to Turn Around Our Worst Performing Schools. Here Chris Woodhead, His Fiercest Critic, Says State Schools Are Still Failing Our Children

Summary

---

ANOTHER month, another Government initiative to raise standards in schools.

One man who won't be clapping the Secretary of State for Schools on the back today is Chris Woodhead, the former Chief Inspector of Schools, perpetual thorn in the side of the education establishment and one of the most trenchant critics of New Labour's record in the classroom.

See the full content of this document

Extract

---

Geography Is Now a Pamphlet for Greenpeace, History Is About How to Become a Historian. They Call It 'Learnacy'. I Call It Lunacy ; Today Ed Balls Launches Another Plan to Turn Around Our Worst Performing Schools. Here Chris Woodhead, His Fiercest Critic, Says State Schools Are Still Failing Our Children

His crusade is cultural, not just managerial.

So as Ed Balls introduces new plans to turn around our worst- performing secondary schools giving them six weeks to come up with an "action plan" then closing them after three years if they fail to deliver and replacing them with privately run academies Woodhead is far from satisfied.

"The problem is that the Government has dumbed down the national curriculum," he says. "Geography has become an ecology pamphlet for Greenpeace but nobody knows where places are, and history is about learning how to be a historian rather than what actually happened.

They call it "l...

See the full content of this document

---