Unfortunately it isn’t just the economy that will suffer as a result of a hung parliament; educational reform will be paralysed. The current government has made many mistakes in educational policy over the last thirteen years but at least they have been able to make decisions. In the event of a hung parliament there will be intense arguments over what to do next.

Labour wish to continue knocking down bad comprehensive schools and replacing them with academies (new comprehensives). This seems to be inspired by old fashioned socialist dogma – replace the structure and it will change the people within it. The PFI (Private Finance Initiatives) that have been used to build these new schools increases the national debt exponentially and we will still be paying for them when they have become piles of rubble or look just as old fashioned as many of the glasshouses of the sixties. The old top-down approach, ‘nanny state’ solution is alive and well.

The Conservatives want to work from the ground up by giving parents the ability to set up their own schools. This policy is supposed to go hand in hand with continuing to support the academy programme, which is rather odd.  The idea of working from the ‘ground up’ is diametrically opposed to the Labour position, so this is a significant departure from current policies.

The Liberal Democrats want to allow money to follow the most problematic schools and more needy pupils.  The rest of their education policy includes no big ideas on how to solve the educational problems in Britain.

Education ‘Fit for Purpose’ is what Britain needs. Academically able children need a grammar school education and those who are more practically orientated need a vocational approach. This should replace the ‘selection by area’ approach of all comprehensives in this country, which favours the rich and discriminates against the poor.

As it is now likely there will be no overall majority, decision making on education will be paralysed. At least when there is a policy being implemented by a secure government you can oppose it, campaign against it and hopefully change it. Soon there will be nothing to oppose, just a bunch of squabbling politicians acting like schoolboys – A RECIPE FOR CHAOS! Hopefully, the electorate will realise this and vote in a majority government that can make decisions.

The simple answer is YES! Of course I clarify this by saying there is always a need to replace buildings and provide more congenial environments for children to learn in. However, this should happen in the normal cycle of replacing buildings that wear out and improving design etc. The real question is: does the provision of a new building make a significant difference to what goes on inside it. The answer to this question must be a resounding NO!

This particular government and now the Conservatives, if they take office, seem obsessed with creating new schools. An even more ridiculous scenario has occurred with the current Labour government: the worst schools are knocked down and replaced by an academy. Did anybody stop to ask what was actually wrong with the one they knocked down? The new building, or academy, will be largely peopled by the same students and many of the same teachers that were in the failing school. Surely what matters is what is actually going on in the building. This is the real question that must be asked. It is embarrassing for the government to admit that many of the new academies are performing just as badly as the schools they replaced. They were not the panacea for the ills in education they were cracked up to be.

I believe the bulk of the money this government has wasted on building new schools should have been invested in the students themselves. The biggest problem all secondary schools face in the UK is the quality of their intake. Many children are entering secondary education with poor literacy and numeracy skills. If the massive investment given to erecting shiny new buildings had instead been injected into primary schools to solve numeracy and literacy problems, there would have been huge improvements in secondary school results by now. The moment a child faced difficulty, it could have been addressed immediately. There would have been no lack of resources to do this. Instead, the primary schools have been starved of desperately needed cash for special needs. This kind of help is reserved for only the most desperate cases and many children drift through the system with ‘undetected’ problems.

I hoped there would be a change from the Conservatives but it seems the lure of shiny new buildings is still there. It could be that another generation of children will have nice new classrooms to sit in but will not be able to access the curriculum they are being offered, due to poor literacy and numeracy.