Educational contradictions
As there seems no end to the dogmatism and doctrinaire folly of the Secretary of State for Education and Science, there also seems no end to Mr Prentice's dishonesty and prevarication. For Mr Prentice, without so much as a by-your-leave, has gone back on the promise of successive governments to reduce and then eliminate classes numbering more than thirty in the state sector of education: his position now is that the Government will merely "permit" the abolition of such classes (surely even his Government would not want to prevent the elimination of such classes?) but will not, apparently, take serious steps to reduce their number. All the efforts of Mrs Thatcher, when she was Secretary of State, to improve both the quality and the numbers of trained teachers have now, apparently, gone for naught; and while the Secretary of State pursues in one direction a policy of hammering the private and grant-aided sectors of school education in a fashion which will, quite apart from anything else, massively increase the burden on the state sector, he, in another, makes clear his intention of doing little if anything to reduce or alleviate that burden. Thus we see the contradictions of aspiration and inadequacy into which socialist doctrine — and socialist ministers — inevitably drive the educational system of which they have charge. It behoves the Conservative Opposition — which, under Mr St John-Stevas, has indeed begun well in this area — to fight as best it can, in alliance with worried parents, both to expose the prevarications of Mr Prentice and to smash the measures for which he is making himself responsible.
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