Daniel Johnson in today's Telegraph:

So the Tomlinson report, supposedly the greatest shake-up of secondary education since 1944, has been endorsed by the Government. In our household the news induced nothing but a sinking feeling of déjà vu. My wife's first response to Tomlinson was to think of our four children: "Guinea pigs again!"

Have they forgotten what happened when Keith Joseph replaced the O-level with an exam (the GCSE) which almost everybody could pass? Or how the A-level has been degraded into a muddle of modules and multiple choice?

Today, fewer than one in six school-leavers knows which king signed Magna Carta. Forty years of permanent revolution in our schools has produced the most examined but least educated generation in modern history.

Tomlinson is supposed to be about restoring confidence in our discredited examination system. The report actually does the opposite. Tony Blair insists it does not abolish the GCSE and AS-level. But it does, replacing them with "teacher assessment" of the pupil, who is only required to do an "extended project".

If there were any doubt that the replacement of formal exams by assessment has been an intellectual disaster, the curious case of Prince Harry's Eton art project ought to have dispelled it. For a former chief inspector of schools to be blind to the institutionalisation of cheating shows how deeply the rot has set in.

What school did Tomlinson go to, I wonder? And what university? (Are they now pleased with and proud of themselves?)

Times Online did a profile of him yesterday, by Jenny Booth, which will disappear soon, I guess, so here is all of it:

With a lifetime in education, first as a teacher and then as a schools inspector, Mike Tomlinson is seen in government circles as a safe pair of hands with a good record for dealing with tricky situations.

Born in 1942, and educated in Rotherham and Bournemouth, he studied chemistry at Durham University and taught in schools in Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire for 12 years. He also spent a year as a liaison officer between schools and the petrochemical industry.

He joined Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Schools in 1978. In 1996, the year after he was appointed director of inspection, he headed the team that went in to run the troubled Ridings School in Halifax for a year, when it was named the worst school in England.

He also helped to restore the education system in Kuwait after the 1990 Gulf War, and to develop a schools inspection regime for China.

He was awarded a CBE in 1997, and in 2000 was made chief inspector after the sudden resignation of his boss, Chris Woodhead. After the bitter antagonism that had existed between schools and Mr Woodhead at the renamed Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted), Mr Tomlinson was seen as the right man to pour oil on troubled waters.

He was not a caretaker leader however, criticising the Government over damaging teacher shortages.

He retired in April 2002, but rather than opt for the quiet life he became chairman of the trust running schools in Hackney, one of England's most problematic education services.

He had been there rather less than six months when Estelle Morris, the Education Secretary, called him in to sort out the mess over A-level grading and standards.

Miss Morris resigned not long afterwards, and it was her successor, Charles Clarke, who asked Mr Tomlinson to take charge of the review of 14-19 education, a much bigger political hot potato.

He was careful to build a broad consensus on his committee, which included representatives from schools, further education colleges, independent schools, employers, vocational trainers, universities, but it remains to be seen whether the far-reaching reforms he proposes will be acceptable to the public.

Interesting man, with an interesting life. But how are the mighty fallen.

This looks like a classic example of a self-reinforcing and collectively self-deceiving committee making a gigantic blunder than very few of them would, individually, have made.