Morning:
8°c
IT IS still remarkably easy to end up in a no man's land in inner-city education in London. We live in the Clerkenwell end of Islington. Shortly after we settled in there in 1997 I interviewed Tony Blair and asked how long it would take until the Government could guarantee us a good secondary school to send our (then yet unborn) children to. "Give us two terms," said Mr Blair, jutting out his chin. "I'm passionate about education."
Well, so am I, as a natural meritocrat and the product of a comprehensive very far away from the chatterati of N1. But 12 years on and three children later - the first approaching the end of primary school - we still don't have an obvious local option that would fit Mr Blair's hopeful criteria.
Islington secondary schools have been legendarily bad - with the consequence that a huge tranche of Islington pupils are educated outside the borough, either in neighbouring Camden, or privately for those with the resources.
The drive to replace failing schools with academies is good news in my book and the best thing New Labour has done in power. No Conservative Government would reverse it: no one has a politically viable alternative. For many inner-city parents, it's the academies or bust. Many do need to be improved, refined, granted: but they must be made to work or another generation is educationally doomed.
But guess what: the new academy with good starting conditions in the heart of Islington is Church of England and already heavily subscribed with a sudden enthusiastic swell of Anglicans. Our children attend Catholic state primaries.
We would only qualify for the academy if we squeeze into the distance criteria - which is touch and go and only makes up a small proportion of places.
The one other option - Islington Green - has long been a troubled school and has been made an academy. It will take many more years to sort out, even supposing they get it right quickly.
So, we are back where we started: prodded towards the private sector for those who have the cash: or searching for alternatives outside Islington.
Ed Balls is right in a narrow sense: London provision is better than it was before. But that's pretty irrelevant to many professional parents. An education desert has been replaced by an educational lottery - there's still no guarantee for parents in the inner city that they can get an education for their children anywhere near as good as their own in the state sector 30 years ago. Some progress.
