MAIL COMMENT: Why testing is more important than ever

As we contemplate the horrendous mess that this Government has made of the school testing system, it's worth recalling why it was first introduced. Not so long ago, there was no means of knowing which schools were failing, and millions of children received a shoddy education without anyone realising until too late.

So SATs were created to keep an eye on the performance of schools, allowing intervention if they began to fail.

So much for the theory. But what a monstrous hash has been made of the practice.

A hopelessly incompetent private sector company, that allows markers as little as seven minutes to go through a whole English paper, hasn't produced the results on time. And many are so poorly marked that they would be worthless anyway.

Enemies of the testing system will gleefully seize on this disaster to claim that the whole regime should be dropped. But with millions of children still leaving school unable to read or write properly, a system for identifying poorly performing teachers is more important than ever.

What a pity that at this crucial moment in the education debate, schools minister Ed Balls, normally so happy to prance in public, is barely to be seen. If he doesn't stand up and be counted now, then he doesn't deserve another day in his job.

BBC navel-gazing
Can Auntie be trusted to police herself? Yesterday, the BBC Trust, the supposedly independent group whose job it is to regulate the activities of our national public sector broadcaster, published the latest in a set of navel-gazing reports.

Sold to their critics as an exercise in corporate soul-searching, these reports have turned out to be little more than a glorified series of pats on the back.

Yesterday's looked at the BBC's contribution to the economy, and concluded that it leaves Britain £6.5billion a year better off, all too briskly dismissing the concerns of those who believe that the Corporation's aggressive expansion is stifling commercial rivals on the web and in local radio.

It follows a recent report into the massive salaries earned by broadcasting stars such as Jonathan Ross which concluded  -  surprise, surprise  -  that the BBC is behaving oh-so-sensibly with your money.

More reports  -  including one into perceived liberal bias in its current affairs coverage  -  are in the pipeline. But unless there's a change of tack, we already know what they will say. Auntie knows best.

Mending the covenant
The case of paratrooper Ben Parkinson, who suffered 37 horrific injuries when he was blown up by a landmine in Afghanistan, moved everyone who heard about it. He was offered only £152,150 in compensation, less than a third of that handed to an RAF typist with repetitive strain injury to her thumb.

The Mail highlighted the case and generous readers contributed £50,000 to fund a judicial review of his award. To its credit, the Government has responded with a comprehensive overhaul of the military compensation system.

Maximum payouts have doubled to £570,000, injured servicemen will be offered free bus travel, and councils banned from taking awards into account when assessing means-tested help for adapting the homes of disabled veterans.

Of course there are quibbles  -  the controversial tariff system which decides how much the injured should receive remains untouched. And it's true that the Government has borrowed most of its ideas from the Tories.

But it's hugely welcome for all that, a first step in rebuilding the military covenant between society and the armed forces which protect us.