Yet More Diploma Balls

At 3:30, Ed Balls will rise to announce, it is expected, the abolition of SATs at 14. As if there were not already enough to distract attention from what, where he is concerned, is the real story of the day: that not even one quarter as many people as were expected have opted for his new Diplomas.

And where are even they, Ed? Not at the public schools such as you attended, but do not mention in your Who's Who entry. Nor at the Lenin High Schools doubtless to be attended by your own offspring. Nobody is ever going to follow you to Oxford (at least, not in Science, Languages and Humanities - something like Engineering might be a different matter, and that might well be a very good thing) via these diplomas.

Alongside very highly academic education for those suited to it and (although there was never anything approaching enough of this) very highly technical education for those suited to it, there used to be, and there should be again, institutions providing both exactly as much academic knowledge and exactly as much technical knowledge as most people really need.

They turned out huge numbers of economically and socially active, culturally and politically aware people.

And they were called Secondary Modern schools.