Any government, especially a coalition, will shirk responsibility for its decisions when it can lest it be saddled with something that it can’t shift come coalition-meltdown and fresh elections.

The tired mantra of the free market is a trusty friend at such a time. It has never been proven either way that this causes a rise in quality. Intuitively, it just sounds good especially when the media do little more than lap up press releases and reshape them as their own.

The fact that this new development in free market innovations comes at a time when it’s now known that other privatisations (gas, water, electricity etc) have not lead to the expected number of positive improvements and the fact that costs never really seem to fall (IT projects, rail privatisation etc).

This is evidently not important to UK journalists. It is lucky that others are around to do their job properly.

If we were current or future students, we’d be a little concerned about the fact that this hasn’t been decided yet. The only thing that can be concluded is that attitudes towards student financing have changed immeasurably over the past decade or so.

The issue, we’re told, revolves around who, ultimately, is responsible for the cost of an education. The government think it’s a collective responsibility up to 18. Then feel that some contribution should be made by the student.

This seems fair enough. But if the banks and bankers can be bailed out to the tune of billions of pounds, why not penniless students? Why shouldnt’ they be bailed out?

Alas, there’s a simple response. Banks have the power. Universities, aside from the Russell Group, and students don’t have any power. Moreover, the very people who are looking to maintain their spending power in to the next decades clearly don’t wish to relinquish that to help pay for the younger generation’s education. This is as clear as day.

British Banks needed saving. And in the same way, we can expect that many of the top UK Universities, with their friends in high places, won’t be left to go to the wall, either. Bums on seats will guarantee that, albeit at the real cost of diluting the uni experience.

But students? What chance have they got?

Well, actually, no. One in three immigrants WHO TOOK THE TEST failed. That is very different to saying 1 in 3 of ALL immigrants failed the test as the Beeb headline implies.

We’re not saying that’s intentional but an emotive subject such as immigration requires a better choice of language than that, don’t you think?

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The Gove-nor doesn’t get it. They never do. Balls-Up was no different. It isn’t managerial tinkering that the Education system needs. ‘Wearing a new tie doesn’t a new man make’.

The Education system needs leaving alone. Now that would be truly radical. An Education system run by educators and not journos out-of-touch with the realities of being a young person in the UK.

Freedom would be good, also. Freedom from Gove-nor and chums whose tinkering will only alienate teachers and support staff more. Freedom from the ‘market’.

Freedom for educators to make experienced decisions backed by supportive parents and trusting children.

So Gove and chums do you want to be remembered for something really revolutionary? It’s up to you!

Despite the fact that all the middle-aged people working at UK universitities didn’t pay a penny towards their own education, they seem ready to expect the younger generation to foot the bill so that they can retire early, tend to the garden and holiday overseas.

What the young need is someone who represents their interest. Not Clegg, who is ready to do any deal to appear important. What is needed, instead, is someone ready to unite the young behind issues that are of concern to them, including of course the disgrace that are tuition fees.

Other countries may have expect students to pay for their education via fees and loans but these are lower-tax countries where property is cheaper.

Young Brits have nothing to look forward to apart from high taxes, low wages, no property ownership and interminable loan repayments.

This will become all the more galling when they discover that they’re simply paying to maintain the living standards (and property prices) of those older than them.

This is a national disgrace. And one that does not bode well for the social fabric of the UK.

As concerning is the fact that only 4 of the 23 are women. There is also only 1 from an ethnic minority. And how many of them went to private, fee-paying schools?

In the UK, social difference is something to be proud of. In other countries this would be to their shame.

Apparently, this is ‘representative’ democracy. What a joke!

There are approximately 30,000 primary, secondary, special needs and independent schools in the UK. Under the terms of the plan, the first 5,000 schools to apply for the free service before 31st July will have it installed and operational on their websites in time for the next school year in September.

Schools may apply for the free ROKTalk service to be added to their websites by completing the online application form at www.roktalk.com

Website accessibility is an increasingly important obligation with legislation such as The Disability Discrimination Act paving the way for The Equality Act, set to be ratified into law in the UK later this year, obliging website owners ‘to ensure that it is not unreasonably difficult’ for disabled people to use their websites.

Approximately 10 million people, or 15% of the population, in the UK suffer from some form of disability which presents them with a challenge, to a greater or lesser extent, to internet access – resulting in a barrier to the socio-economic benefits of being ‘web-enabled’. These disabilities include dyslexia and cognitive and learning difficulties through to visual impairments, including blindness.

“Many people would assume the internet to be out of reach of the disabled.” Said Jonathan Kendrick, Chairman and CEO of ROK. “In fact, with the aid of assistive technologies, the World Wide Web has given many disabled people greater autonomy than ever before – providing the websites they visit are as fully accessible as technology allows.”

ROKTalk has been specifically developed to take website accessibility and usability to the next level through providing website owners with usability functions to include cap-height adjustment and colour-contrast changers, in addition to text-to-speech, as well as and enabling website visitors to download text as audible MP3 files.

“The enormous development in website accessibility and usability that ROKTalk delivers is obvious, particularly for those with a learning disability such as dyslexia and those who are visually impaired, but so is the fact that most schools are hard-pressed financially with little or no budget to license new technologies.” Said Kendrick. “This is why we have taken the decision to give ROKTalk free of charge to as many schools across the country as we can.”

ROKTalk is usually priced at between £120 and £2,500 per year depending on the nature of the customer (whether they be Commercial, Governmental or Charitable), the services they license and the number of visitors to their websites.

“We will aim to offset our costs from providing ROKTalk free of charge to these schools through the placement of relevant and appropriate sponsorship within the service and we will also offer ROKTalk to those schools who miss the free of charge 5,000 cut at a heavily discounted rate, to include our text-to-speech language translation service, in due course.”

The full ROKTalk service, currently being licensed to website owners worldwide, includes a multi-language text-to-speech translation service.

This dogmatic and wholly unedifying way to treat fellow human beings is at the heart of the peculiarly sickening manner in which ‘efficiencies’ are made in education. Doing it the education way has a particular nastiness of its own, of course, so here is our guide:

1. Managers asked to reduce costs by ministers.

2. Remember from business management training that wage costs are the largest single drain on funds.

3. Look for obvious targets to get rid of e.g. older teachers with pension entitlements.

4. Bring in OfSted inspectors to do the initial dirty work and legitimise the whole enterprise.

5. Rate school, college etc’ as ‘underperforming’ (based on the current fashion in classrooms but without any rigorous scientifically foundation).

5. The predictable ‘bad’ inspection results then lead to ’special measures’ and inspectors brought in again to observe teachers once more.

6. Surprise, surprise! Older, more expensive teachers are told they are out of a job unless their grades improve.

7. Teachers with decades of experience and local knowledge decide either to a) tell management and inspector to “f*&K off” and then quit b) take sick leave due to stress or c) play ball but sour the staff room atmosphere permanently.

8. Other good teachers decide that the school is not a good place to work and jump ship.

9. School is left with disgruntled, older and/or younger, inexperienced staff.

10. Union action follows under the pretext of protecting teacher jobs but really to drum up support, raise subscriptions and fight the Left’s corner once more.

11. Meanwhile, pupils and students lose experience, qualified and content staff and suffer lost classroom time due to strikes.

11. Management happy because they have reduced costs. Hooray!

A fine party member he may be but he most certainly didn’t go to a state school – although his bio conveniently said he did at one point – and isn’t a former teacher – he’s a journo – so what right does he have to be responsible for education policy in England?

None. Nada. Zip. Zero.

Can we please have someone who actually represents the vast majority of pupils, students and teachers who work in state education? What about an educationalist with classroom experience for starters?