Was Mr Blair too optimistic in his promise to me?
.You're asking me what is the exact space of time it takes to turn round schools in a borough with the worst record. I'm not going to be tied to a date because that becomes the endgame.' Trouble is, parents are tied to target dates, for the obvious reason that their kids grow up, and it does the present generation of children no good if her department's incremental improvements finally hear fruit sometime around 2030. And it was the Prime Minister, not me, who put his reputation on education on the line in what used to be his own backyard. His Education Secretary clearly isn't confident that this modest aim will be met.
The government target of 50 per cent participation in higher education by 2010 looks so shaky that they're dispatching Naomi Campbell and Radio One DJs on a road show to encourage working-class kids to apply. Morris is scathing about the old Left's reluctance to confront children with competition. `Middle-class kids have always been pressurised to achieve. It's a cop-out not to apply the same standards to the children of the poor. Children are naturally competitive.' Asked why we need to set a numerical target for numbers at university, it turns out that she's not quite sure either. 'Some body or other — the one that looks at skills needs of the nation — set the target.' It doesn't seem to have occurred to her that some body or other might be wrong, or that the effects on the reputation of universities might be more damaging than the skills allegedly gained. The one set of doubts I have heard raised about Morris's abilities is that she's a better implementer than an innovator.
Things have been a bit tense, with me doing on schools an only slightly more polite version of Sharron Storer's fishwife attack on Mr Blair about the NHS. I would have sent me out into the corridor long ago by now, But Morris wears down the disruptive pupils with her niceness. 'We're still on a journey,' she says, and puts her hand on my arm. 'That annoys you a little bit about me, Anne, I can tell, My answer to your specific question about your local schools is that you will come back to me at the end of our second term and say, "You've done a lot but it's still not good enough." ' That's my guess too, Estelle. Now who's going to tell Tony?
Anne McElvoy is executive editor of the Independent on Sunday and an Independent columnist .
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