Set targets for schools, but not impossible ones

Had things turned out a little differently, and had David Blunkett not been promoted to Home Secretary after the general election last June, we might well be now contemplating his resignation. For, as we remind the former Education Secretary today, it is five years since he promised that he would resign if his targets to raise standards in primary schools had not been met by 2002.

As The Independent reveals today, a survey of more than 40 local education authorities by this newspaper suggests that the standards set by Mr Blunkett are not going to be met. Just as well that Mr Blair thought it would be better if Mr Blunkett's talents were deployed at the Home Office.

To be fair, the Government only just missed what were rather ambitious targets. Mr Blunkett said that he wanted to see 80 per cent of primary pupils meet the required standard in English and 75 per cent satisfy the required marks in maths. The indications are that 75 per cent or so will gain the required standard in English, with around 73 or 74 per cent making the grade in maths. So if Mr Blunkett had had to resign, it would have been over a comparatively minor failure. Many of Mr Blair's ministers have refused to quit – and been allowed to stay – for rather more grievous offences.

Estelle Morris, the current Secretary of State for Education, understandably shows no sign of falling on Mr Blunkett's sword. Instead, she seems intent on setting even more exacting standards for her own time in office. Thus we have a government that appears to be so ambitious for the children of the nation that it is prepared to set new, higher standards before even the old standards have been met.

In that respect, the constant exhortation to schools to meet ever more demanding goals with Stakhanovite performances driven and monitored by bureaucratic zealots at the centre has a vaguely Stalinist air to it. There is also the slight worry that the need to meet these arbitrary goals might tempt some to lower the bar a little. Higher standards are, of course, always a laudable idea, in education as in many other aspects of life, but the imposition of permanently unattainable ones may not be such a bright idea.