The Blair legacy

He seemed so plausible

In the 1960’s Harold Wilson’s Labour government set about demolishing the grammar schools, destroying the best secondary education system in the world and, at a stroke, depriving bright children from under-privileged backgrounds of their best chance of self improvement. Not to say that it is impossible to rise through the comprehensive system but it is more difficult and next to impossible if you are in the catchment area of a sink school.

The middle class voted with their feet. Those who could afford it used the private education system. Those who could not endeavoured to move house to the catchment area of one of the few decent comprehensives.

Canting “socialist” hypocrites like Diane Abbot and Ruth Kelly paid up for private education. Canting “socialist” hypocrites like Tony and Cherie Blair wangled their progeny into out of catchment area direct-grant grammar schools.

The poor folk made do with the comprehensives.

Blair talked of “education, education, education” and poured money into the state system. The money was wasted on league tables, targets, bureaucracy and, a New Labour favourite, unqualified teaching assistants, the “health care professionals” of the education system.

Today, The Times reports:

Nearly 40,000 more children are now being educated privately than when Tony Blair came to power, new figures reveal today. Despite increasing government spending by two thirds, in real terms, since 1997, record numbers of parents are turning their backs on state education and paying up to £25,000 a year for private education.

...low teacher turnover provides stability and smaller class sizes mean pupils receive more attention and are better disciplined,

And The Times leader goes on to say:

Some 25 years ago, public school headmasters lived in fear of a Labour election victory because the party had pledged to abolish independent education. After ten years of Tony Blair, their successors must be praying that this Government is endlessly re-elected. As we report today, the private education sector is living through its own “never had it so good” era.

It is a searing indictment of Blair’s ten years in power that his weasel words about educational egalitarianism have come to nothing. All who can are deserting the state system.

Wilson’s Labour government started the destruction of our secondary education. Blair’s government has continued it and is now also destroying British University education. Despite promises to the contrary, fees and top-up fees have been introduced. We are moving back to the situation we had before University grants when only the middle class could afford a University education. For the poor, university fees are daunting. For the wealthier middle class they are a positive relief in comparison to the spiralling costs of private secondary education.

It would need a brave and radical politician to save the secondary education system by returning to grammar schools.

But the politicians need not be quite so radical to save the NHS, which is heading exactly the same way as state education. The NHS may be, like the comprehensive school, “free at the point of entry” but sadly, like most comprehensive schools, it provides a second rate service.

There is now two tier healthcare. The poor folk are offered a restricted service provided, not my doctors, but by the ubiquitous “health care professionals”, the “teaching assistants” of the NHS. It is already near impossible to find an NHS dentist. It is close to impossible to find an NHS psychiatrist; or an NHS plastic surgeon; or an NHS fertility expert; or an NHS vascular surgeon who will operate on varicose veins. After an acute illness, the NHS patient is turfed out of hospital with inadequate follow up provided by well-meaning but incompetent nurse-specialists whose time would be better spend back on the wards doing the job for which they trained.

NHS physiotherapy is unavailable with a realistic time frame. Similarly, NHS MRI scans and CT scans are difficult to obtain. Front line cancer drugs are unavailable in many parts of the country.

Each day, the list of healthcare that is no longer available on the NHS gets longer.

Do you really think that Tony Blair was followed up by a cardiac nurse-specialist after his heart surgery? Do you really think that Tony Blair’s children went to a sink comprehensive? Do you really expect Ruth Kelly to use the service for which she was responsible for her own son?

Top tier patients, Elizabeth and Philip, Tony and Cherie, continue to see dentists and doctors. The wealthy, who can afford Denplan and BUPA, continue to get a good dental service and a good medical service provided by fully qualified doctors.

It is not too late to turn this around. It is still possible to return to the days when there really was a reasonable standard of healthcare available for all.