Excluding parents from our schools

Education Eric Hester
ASnyone who has ever met Dom Antony utch, head master f Downside, will tell you that he is no faintheart and not one for whingeing. What he revealed in his article in this column in The Catholic Herald, a fortnight ago was, therefore, shocking in the literal sense. Dom Antony stated that education was being undermined by bureaucracy. He stated, and I firmly agree with him, that A/S-levels examinations should be scrapped and replaced with the proper Alevels that we used to have. His great plea was: "Why can't the government leave education to those who practise it?" Dom Antony said that good teachers were leaving the profession because they despaired of bureaucracy. He railed against the "geek culture" of ticking boxes and filling in forms.
These revelations are not new. What is shocking is that they are coming from one of the toughest of heads, in a wealthy independent school. If it is like this at Downside, then what is it like in the local bogstandard comprehensive or Catholic primary or secondary school? The heads of maintained Catholic schools have everything of which Dom Antony rightly complains and more. They have to follow the national curriculum, and tailor their entries to suit local government bureaucracy. They have to fight off the political correctness which invades every aspect of life.
Downside will be able to celebrate Christmas properly: Catholic schools in Birmingham have to battle against the loony council that want them to celebrate "Winterval". Downside will have no "sex education" at all in the bad sense and will determine its own policies. Catholic primary schools are having to fight off those who, in direct defiance of the Pope himself, are trying to demand that Catholic schools set up "sex education" for children at what the Holy Father calls "the years of innocence". Those years will be no longer be "innocent" if these people have their way.
Similarly, Downside is able to choose its own books for Religious Education, but in several dioceses Catholic schools are forced to use the books decided by the diocesan bureaucrats, who are every bit as bad as government and local government bureaucrats.
Dom Antony has rendered a great service to all schools by his statements. He has correctly identified what is wrong with education: interference from politicians and bureaucrats. All Catholic teaching gives the supreme rights on education to parents, but the Government ignores them and so do the bureaucrats.
Downside has also given everyone something to think about in its news that it has given a place to a formerly difficult pupil who is now learning Latin, playing rugby and doing very well all round. This black teenager had been thrown out of his inner-city school for being "rude, disruptive and unmanageable". His mother agreed to send him to Downside, where a generous benefactor paid his fees. He will shortly be the subject of a television documentary which will show what can be achieved by good schools if the government will keep off their backs. Here, too, Dom Antony has done a great service.
Ae5 I write this, Estelle Morris, government ducation minister, has announced that at every maintained school in Britain, there will be an "individual learning plan tailored to his or her needs." Far from changing, the Government is making things worse. It is an insult to teachers to say that they do not already take account of the needs of individual children and to state that a bureaucratic national scheme is necessary. Everyone knows that it will mean more paperwork.
Catholic schools, even maintained ones, have a great deal of power if the heads and governors choose to use it. They should use it now and declare that they are not going to do anything unless it is absolutely in the interests of the children. Dom Antony should give every school in the country heart to fight against the geek culture.