The new class war

Even by the standards of this government, the behaviour of the Children Secretary Ed Balls is simply astounding in its cynicism and ideological spite. Consider the parlous state of education in Britain. Standards are dire and getting worse. Britain has tumbled down the international league tables in literacy, maths and science. A quarter of all children leave school without having properly mastered the three Rs. Fewer than half of all 16 year-olds are getting five good GCSEs, with one in six failing to achieve a single grade C.

Truancy is rising every year in proportion to the increasing imbecility of what children are being taught. At the top of the system, degrees are becoming meaningless as universities lower their pass marks and spoon-feed weak students who would previously have failed. From top to bottom, in short, the education system is simply disintegrating. So what does Mr Balls do in response to this national crisis?

He attacks faith schools — one of the last remaining bastions of relatively decent educational standards and discipline — on a trumped-up charge that they are breaking the national admissions code. He has accused dozens of these schools of using banned practices such as interviewing pupils, researching their backgrounds and requesting cash contributions as a condition of entry. It now turns out that most of these breaches were technicalities that he blew up out of all proportion. The most damning charge was of ‘cash for places’ — but when that was looked at more closely, it fell apart altogether.

It involved a mere seven schools in the London borough of Barnet, six of them Jewish primary schools and one Church of England. But there is not a shred of evidence that these schools have demanded cash as a condition of awarding a place, like some kind of classroom protection racket. It is a grotesque smear. The fact is that faith schools often ask parents for money to fund religious studies and other services, since the state only funds the statutory education they provide.

But that doesn’t mean such contributions are a condition of entry. Indeed, Barnet council says emphatically that these parental contributions have had no bearing on admission to any of these schools.

The accusation is particularly grotesque because Jewish schools ask parents to help fund the security measures now dismayingly necessary because of the mounting threat of anti-Jewish attack