I am now trying to get my head around the decades long saga of failure that is the attempt by the British Government to devise a workable "skills strategy", by reading Alison Wolf's outstanding book, Does Education Matter?

Meanwhile, Eamonn Butler gives his opinion of the latest effort along these lines, over at the Adam Smith Institute Weblog:

All garbage. It's just an attempt to correct, in the workplace, what our rotten state education system hasn't done at school. If instead of a failing state monopoly, we had diversity and competition in schools, then maybe educators would give kids what they really need to get on in life – and enthuse them in the process.

And why do we need new government-run vocational qualifications when independent agencies already provide them? We should let employers decide what they need in the market, not force them into something they might regard as no good.

And joining up the agencies is a laugh. England has 9 Regional Development Agencies, 47 Learning and Skills Councils, government departments for skills, education, work, who knows what, plus a zillion other work and training quangos. You couldn't even get them all in the Albert Hall, never mind getting them to agree anything.

No, in this case, government is the problem, not the answer. …

Which sounds very like the opinion I'm eventually going to arrive at. But check out the comments – two so far, against and for what Butler says.