With enemies like these . . .

. . . who needs friends? One mutes criticism of the Coalition government not only because it is new, and still coming to grips with the statist apparat, but because it is so much preferable to the recently passed, impacted stool of the Labour regime. As Evelyn Waugh said, one can only vote against the more detestable of the alternatives, and the core Labour supporters keep reminding us how contemptible they are.

This is Katharine Birbalsingh, once a marxhorroid, who has been sent home from her job as deputy head of a C of E school in south London. Her offence? To have addressed the Tory conference after SecEd Michael Gove and to tell the truth about English education. Following from the Telegraph

We have a situation where standards have been so dumbed down that even the children know it. When I give them past exam papers to do from 1998, they groan and beg for a 2005 or 6 paper, because they know it’ll be easier. The idea of benchmarking children and letting them know how they compare to their peers is considered so poisonous by us teachers that we don’t ever do it, and children live in darkness, without any idea of how they compare to those around them, let alone to those who are educated in the private sector.

Exclusion quotas bind our headteachers, league tables have all of us pursuing targets and grades instead of teaching properly, and the ordinary child . . . is lost in a sea of bureaucracy handed down from up above. . . Kids themselves cry out for structure and discipline.

The Daily Mail quotes the passages that Birbalsingh's colleagues will no doubt use to justify sacking her:

Black underachievement is due in part to the chaos of our classrooms, and in part, to the accusation of racism. If you keep telling teachers that they’re racist for trying to discipline black boys, and if you keep telling heads that they’re racist for trying to exclude black boys, in the end, the schools stop reprimanding these children. Black children underachieve because of what the well-meaning liberal does to them.

League tables tell you nothing about how good a school really is, just how good the school is at playing the system and picking the easier exams. I’d like to see bad teachers getting fired and heads given the powers to discipline children.

Birbalsingh has a book coming out, and this episode will not harm sales. The only other question awaiting answer is if she deliberately burned her bridges in order to make a lateral move into politics. I hope so - the Coalition is notably short of talented women.