18th February 2010

The Future of Ipswich Schools

I have just returned from the teachers' Q&A session with Oliver Letwin at Chantry High School.

It is painful to hear - once again - of the frustrations and obstructions that teachers in Ipswich face day in, day out.  It is clear that, in a number of schools, morale could not get any lower.  Like everyone else, teachers are fed up of strategy after strategy, announcement after announcement, promise after broken promise.

It is painful because teachers deserve better.  These men and women are in large part responsible not just for every individual's future but for the future of our communities, our town, and our country.

That is why our schools policy is so refreshing.  Because the one thing we're not going to do is impose yet another set of targets, another new strategy, another layer of administrative supervision.  We are proposing something far more radical: to set schools free.  Free from the controlling hand of the minister in Whitehall.  Free so that teachers are free to teach, in schools controlled not by bureaucrats and policy wonks but by the community - by parents, by teachers and by local people.

With power back in their hands, teachers have a fighting chance of creating the change that so many schools want and need.  At a time when so much looks bleak, this really is an exciting future worth fighting for.