Labour's adoption of Conservative education ideas is driven by electoral tactics not education strategy

The Gordon Brown election fighting blue print is leading to a rerun of his standard election tactics.

Reduce the gap between the parties by copying as many of the Conservative policies as you can, and leaving a few chosen dividing lines.

Hence on education Ed Balls has been trying to create the equivalent of the Russian Concordski copy of the Tory Education Concorde.

Groups of schools are to be allowed to remove themselves from LEAs and now the national plans for teaching national strategies are being dropped.

Labour must know that the public is very dissatisfied with the current state of education with failing schools and worthless qualifications which 12 years of "education, education, education" have produced.

I suspect there is also a wish to smash the controls of state rather than hand them over to a Conservative government.

This is in part the explanation for why the Conservatives have kept much of their manifesto under raps. Brown just copies much of it and leaves his big lies to win the day.

Politics aside this looks like a good idea - if and only if - schools are given real control over their staff. I was talking to a teacher a week of two ago who told me that two teachers in their department were so hopeless that they weren't teaching any pupils, but because of the closed shop practices and Union domination in education couldn't be sacked. Hence the school and most of all the children are made to pay for left wing unions refusal to accept the norm int he productive sector of the economy that you do the job or you leave.

Personally I think Labour will fluff this necessary part of the reforms and leave a powder keg of Union resentment and educational inefficiency to go off on the Tory's watch. ( Like much else they are messing up and destroying right now. )