School for scandal

News diary corner

Next week the government publishes its white paper on education for 14-19-year-olds.

Expect an unseemly scrap over the reforms proposed last year by Mike Tomlinson, former chief inspector of schools, who headed a commission with a remit to rethink secondary education. The vision that emerged was radical: reviving vocational education; getting employers involved in the process of setting standards; special grades for very gifted kids.

But the Observer's politicial rune-readers suspect that the government is poised to side-step Tomlinson's plans for fear of being accused by conservatives (big and small 'c') of vandalising the hallowed A-Level.

Expect a scrap in the best playground tradition, with Daily Mail columnists gathered around the hair-pulling, arm-flailing melee shouting 'fight! fight! fight!'

Meanwhile, we in the Observer are doing our best to get to grips with a desperately knotty issue. There were nearly fisticuffs in the newsroom as debate meandered onto the relative merits of the old Grammar school system and the injustices/opportunities dealt out by the 11-plus exam.

(To summarise: it was a wicked system that branded children as failures far too early in their lives and yet the abolition of grammar schools backfired because middle class families piled their kids into private education with the result that there is now less social mobility in Britain than there was in the 1950s.)

Back in the 21st Century, our homework is to wade through Tomlinson's original 118 page report.

Cheats can read our news story from October when the report first came out.