Even for the sceptical, the suddenness and speed with which the academy schools project has fallen from public grace is remarkable. After years of uncritical acceptance of official claims that academies, and free schools, offer a near cast-iron guarantee of a better-quality education, particularly for poorer pupils, there is now widespread recognition of the drear reality: inadequate multi-academy trusts failing thousands of pupils, parents increasingly shut out of their children’s education, and academy executive heads creaming off excessive salaries – in some cases almost three times higher than the prime minister – from a system perilously squeezed of funds.
Crisis can be an overworked term in politics, and our schools are good examples of public institutions, subject to years of poor political decisions, that continue to do remarkable work. But along with the academy mess, we can add the following to the current charge sheet of what should be (along with the NHS) our finest public service: pressing problems with recruitment and retention of teachers; rocketing stress among young children and teenagers subject to stringent testing and tougher public exams; and the ongoing funding crisis.
61chrissterry 
Education what is the real problem and are there any solutions.
Unfortunately Education in England has not been OK for many years and I believe, this to some extent goes back to the 60s.
Then the Labour Government of the day created Comprehensive education, it went about this by buildind some new schools, converting the existing Secondary Schools to comprehensive and in many areas also convert the eisting Grammar schools to comprehensive. A system of ‘one fits all’ and while Comprehensive educaton was good for some pupils, myself included it was not good for all.
From then on successive Governments have all tried to amend or recreate various education systems, but mainly on ‘one fits all’ and where any of these changes sufficiently financed, I fear not.
Successive Governments have with education proceeded on a similar basis as all Government do with many areas of Government, health included.
Every one of us is an individual and therefore what is right for one can not be expected to be right for another and so on. It is therefore reasonable to expect that any system needs flexibility, variety and most of all sufficient finance, something which successive Governments have not been forthcoming on.
It is not only this for education, but also health and certainly Social Care as none of these areas and many others can not be looked at in isolation.
In any of these areas the outlook of England as been changed over the years for England is more multicultural than ever before and this I believe is good for England. There are now more differing aspects to the people within England, not only on race and culture, as there is now a greater range of disabilities and persons with disabilities are also living longer. There is the vast leap within media and computerisation and many other aspects.
Some people long to go back to an era where situations appeared to be better, but as mentioned above there have been many changes in many aspects over the years and to go back and try to recreate then is now impossible.
So what is the solution, well for one we need to forget about ‘one fits all’, finance needs to be found and all areas of Society need to be included so that the ‘big picture’ can be experienced. There will be other and the experts need to find these and lets not forget experts can be found in many forms and in many areas, for parents and also children are also experts in some form.
We therefore need total inclusion in all aspects of life and we all need to work together.
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