Education and party politics Available to Purchase

Now that we are approaching the season of the Party Conferences, it is worth while considering in general terms, the relationship between education and politics. One still hears it said from time to time, that education ‘should be taken out of politics’. This has always seemed to me an absurd demand for two reasons. First, it is clearly impossible; if political parties genuinely disagree over educational policy (or one particular aspect of it), and include their views on the subject as part of their appeal to the electorate then clearly education will inevitably have become a political issue — that is what the word means in this context.