Today's big British National Education Story is about a school in Croydon which sent its pupils home early because it couldn't afford to teach them, this being because it couldn't afford substitute teachers.
My problem is that when I see a nationalised industry resisting "cuts" by this time honoured technique, which is basically to treat the exact people for whom it all is supposedly being done with maximum and very public neglect, I smell technique rather than reality. If your job is seeing to widows and orphans and you want more money, the standard procedure is to round up a few of your saddest looking widows and most appealingly photogenic orphans, and some newspaper photographers, and chuck the widows and orphans in the gutter in front of the newspaper photographers, and stand next to it all wailing "Look what you made me do!"
Lacking detailed inside knowledge of this particular school, I have no idea whether this is grandstanding or a genuine cry for help.
We call that the "Washington Monument Game" over here. The National Park Service, which runs the Washington Monument, is a prize winner at this. When the government was shut down over a budget dispute in the mid 90s, they closed down Skyline Drive to traffic and attempted to chase hikers out of Shenandoah National Park and the Smokies.
It is rumoured that the DC government decided to cut out all services to Georgetown when congress cut their payment. No one there noticed any difference...
