In the same Op-Ed The Times continued in its degeneration into a neo-liberal tool by making the bizarre claim that Faith Schools “Create competition which, by and large, is a healthy.” A perpetual, prevalant, interminable error of the free-marketeers is their assumption that, since the market works brilliantly for the economy, it must work equally well when applied to just about anything else.

This has lead to the aforesaid absurdities in response to “Targets” and although Ofsted has been a good deal less irrational this suggestion is downright odd. Schools are effectively dependent upon the quality of their “Resources” {that’s young human beings, to you or me} to get the “Product” {an education} to levels which are observable by those who measure {league tables, that is, not the remarkably efficient Ofsted inspectors} and although that could, plausibly, be considered similar to the standard capitalist model how exactly does this comparison work out who the “Consumer” is. Would it be the parent, who chooses? The child, who is the one which actually receives the benefit? Or is the child’s mind truly seen merely as a resource and the parent’s contentment what the school must provide.

This is a suitably dismal view of education for a philosophy reliant upon economists to provide, as well as perhaps the only one that they ever possibly could. It is also entirely untrue: the faith school approach to “Competition” is simply to siphon away the most academically talented students, using an advantage which the secular state schools do not have at their disposal. To present this as a contest is rather like saying that a sprint where one conducts the race freely and the other with his legs bound is entirely fair and open.

Besides, a school is a poor one if it places the desires of its student body, or worse still the parents of this body, above their intellectual lives and as such is entirely an anathema to the ideal of “Customer satisfaction” that neo-libs rely upon. It must pursue their greater and long-term pleasures and interests as well as more short concerns, rather than being a solely a means of satisfying the immediate will. If it honoured the doctrine of “Supply and demand” that is neo-liberal dogma then it would flounder and sink, as it is only an occasional child that desires more homework but the inverse proportion, if not greater, that benefit from it.

In short what is suitable for economic revival and pleasing the customer is not appropriate at all for the education system. Competition may well have its place, perhaps even a prominent one, in such a system but it is firstly unwise to apply political theory based around economics to the education of children and secondly doubly unwise to imagine that a school with a selection process will ever be able to “Compete” with one without and win by any other means than a positive catchment area.

To summarise further: given that this preposterous piece sat alongside a piece where a journalist sharing Hillary Clinton’s genital format claimed that her vagina should be considered before her political acumen, her character and the wisdom of her policy {or at least disregarded all three latter to focus upon the former} is there truly any worth left in The Times at all?