Green Paper: A dog’s dinner

Now, there’s a title for a Green Paper: Schools that work for everyone. Personally, I can’t see it. What I’ve seen so far of this hastily unveiled plan resembles a dog’s dinner, a cobbling together of a few Tory obsessions plus a swipe at independent schools (no longer popular with the party) and a scam for getting something for nothing from universities.

Let’s take the four key points in turn. First, allowing new faith-based free schools to select up to 100 per cent of pupils based on their faith. Lest we fear the religious focus creating cultural or racial ghettos, we’re assured that schools will be required to include pupils from different backgrounds. How that will be achieved is unclear. Such loose wording could involve years of wrangling. How, for example, can a Church of England primary attract a good range of children from Indian or Pakistani backgrounds, who are more likely to be Sikh, Hindu or Muslim?