Recently retired York secondary school head teacher, David Ellis, gives his take on the twists and turns of the Government’s education policy.

JUST when you think that the present government can’t look any less competent in running our education system they come along with another set of announcements that both contradict what has gone before and show a complete lack of understanding of what our young people, our schools and our country need.

Firstly teacher recruitment.

Do you remember all of the promises to recruit more and better teachers? The intention to show how much teaching is valued as a profession? It is now obvious that the treatment of teachers over the last seven years has lead to a complete crisis in recruiting the quality and quantity of teachers that are need.

In December 2017 we discovered that applications for teaching are down by 40 per cent .

No real surprise there but the government response to the crisis staggered even a cynic like me. Below is a section of the letter that Nick Gibb MP wrote to all Teacher Training Institutions on January 29, 2018.

“It is vital that we continue to recruit high quality teachers.

“I recently met with a number of universities to discuss how we can maximise recruitment in 2018/19 and beyond.

“As a result of the discussions we are amending our ITT criteria…..

The changes we are making will encourage universities and schools to assess candidates on their potential to meet the teachers’ standards by the end of their training and will include a requirement to demonstrate what steps they are taking to maximise recruitment………

"Over the course of this recruitment cycle we will continue to scrutinise our data to judge whether there are any institutions that have a particularly high rejection rates in priority subjects…..”

So the government that is committed to ‘raising standards’ wants ITT providers to drop theirs to help Nick Gibb meet his targets because the recruitment crisis has nothing to do with him or his government.

Secondly, just as I was coming to terms with this revelation I hear the prime minister, Theresa May, making a speech about tuition fees and university entrance in “one of the most expensive systems of university tuition in the world” I wonder who is to blame for that?

Her new Education Secretary, Damian Hinds, wants to see “more variety” in the level of fees.

He is obviously surprised that nearly everyone wants to charge the maximum amount.

And finally whilst still on the subject of university entrance our prime minister says that Technical Education should have a greater status compared to the university route.

This can’t be the same government that wants to introduce a more academic curriculum, more grammar schools, removed most vocational courses from accountability measures and seen a 59 per cent reduction in apprenticeships since the introduction of the apprenticeship levy can it?

Taking all of this together it is clear that actually this government have no vision for education, no idea of the damage they have done by driving out thousands of committed teachers and no sense of the impact they have had on the lives of tens of thousands of young people who do not fit in to the narrow curriculum offered in our schools.

The long term impact on a post Brexit Britain will be huge as we struggle to fill the skills gap that will be needed in the UK as European workers look elsewhere to find work and international businesses go with them.

Do the government not care or are they really this hopeless?