Publisher's Synopsis
An Inaugural Professorial Lecture In this inaugural lecture, Professor Michael Barber examines why education has become 'a new playground' for politicians. He argues that the recent series of crises over standards and morality are not a passing fad but a result of the fact that politics and economics have become inextricably bound up with wider questions. The headlines may read 'Bulger' or 'Dunblane', 'The Ridings' or 'Manton' but the issues at stake are trust, social capital, morality and economic growth. It is not that politicians have strayed across the border into the forbidden lands of priests, rabbis or imams but that the borders no longer exist. Their attempt to bring this kind of profound change in spite of growing constraints represents what he calls an 'impossible task'. In the second half of the lecture, he looks at how politicians should seek to undertake the impossible task. He looks at the role of the Prime Minister in changing education and the responsibilities of the Secretary of State for Education and Employment before advocating radical changes in the approach to policy of the DfEE and the various education agencies. He urges government to seek to create a new policy climate in which everyone involved in the provision of education becomes part of an unrelenting drive for higher standards.
