Dealing with the proposed changes from the Government as well as defining what a liberal edcuation system for the 21st century would look like seems like a good area for discussion.

Like, is the purpose of the education system to produce productive wage-slaves, or informed citizens of a democracy? to teach students the "right" answers, or how to find answers to any questions?

I would hope no liberal thinking person would want education to produce wage-slaves! How do we produce informed citizens yes but one would have to touch on making sure they have skills to make them employable.

Of course. What I do find depressing, however, is how so much of the discourse is focused on employability. The central skill for both citizenship and employability is communication - being able to understand and to make oneself understood. Citizenship also requires the development of critical thinking, which is antithetical to wage-slavery. There are substantial interests who stand to continue to gain from a population consisting of wage-slaves by day and celebrity-obsessed couch-potatoes by night.

I'm disturbed, for example, by the current focus in FE and adult education funding on courses with a vocational qualification.

Centreforum is just in the process of drafting a response to the white paper and we would be very interested to hear any good ideas.
The problem with your point about wage slaves is that Briatin is actually weaker at vocational training than most of our European counterparts, with lower staying on rates and much lower numbers going through vocational training. Are you suggesting we become even more academic in focus?
I agree about training for citizenship. More curriculum time should be sent on teaching behaviour, relationships (in addition to sex education), financial planning, citizenship. But how much time?

Here's another question. The white paper argues that pupils should be able to choose schools rather than schools choose pupils. But our education system is riddled with selections. Apart from grammar schools, we have voluntary aided church schools which are state funded but can select their own pupils, "specialist" schools, academies.. All of them partialy or wholly selective. Surely this is unacceptable?

I agree that the way schools can select at the moment is unacceptable. Personally, I dislike faith schools, especially the idea that the Government should fund them.

I have never understood the choice argument when it comes to schools or health. When I went to secondary school in the 1970s, I had the choice of three schools. They were all nearby. I picked one. I got in. If I hadn't got the one I wanted I suppose I would have been upset but frankly I imagined all three were fairly similar. Surely, all schools should be at the same standard?

Vocational training is fine but instead of being more academic or more vocational, I believe the way we need to go is to educate people to think for themselves. And thinking for yourself doesn't have to be academic. It seems to me that in the future, people will need to be able to be creative and flexible in the way they approach work.

Learnng creativity and flexibility can help you discover your potential and develop your individuality (key liberal ideas) so the requirement of the employer will for once match the requirements of a liberal society.

Within the schools, pupils should be given as much control over their lives as possible. They should be taught to think for themselves, question and little by little be given control over what they do without undermining the educational process or causing chaos within the schools. That is where I would like to see the choice. Not about which school but within the schools. A better educated, more self-confidence population can only lead to a society where people take control over their lives and flourish.

On health, if I am knocked down in the street I want to go to the nearest hospital and be helped. I don't want to be shown a catalogue of hospitals and choose.

I've been thinking and talking about education quite a lot over the holidays, and I'm now even more convinced that focusing on choice/selection is absolutely, and in every way wrong.

There is, clearly, a problem with the education system. It's not working as well as it should. Specifically, the problem is that the system perpetuates disparity of opportunity between the haves and the have-nots. The DfES' analysis, based it seems on some obsolete Thatcherite thinking from the 80s, is that competition between schools for funding will drive up standards overall. But it seems pretty clear to me that competition will further exacerbate disparity. It might make some schools better: those that attract the motivated children of the motivated middle-classes. But these families on the whole don't do badly out of the system; they already know how to manipulate it by moving to the catchment areas of the good schools, or lying about their faith, or carrying out other disgraceful acts of deception which we somehow think are OK (it's for the kids' sake..) but are ultimately much wronger than, say, doing a cleaning job while claiming benefits. And it's those other people - the ones who have to do two cleaning jobs to make ends meet - who don't stand to benefit from choice. They don't have the resources, the time, the contacts, the knowledge or even the language, to chase round the houses getting their children into a "good" school. Getting them to go to school at all is hard enough.

The schools with good league-table results already select their intakes extensively, and they avoid taking the children of the have-nots - not necessarily by excluding them, but just not recruiting them. I live in Lambeth, where as well as some of the worst secondary schools in the country, we have two chart-topping primaries, one Catholic and one secular. I have heard that both practice extensive underhand selection through parental interviews. Of course, now they don't need to: house prices in their catchment areas do the job for them. Once you remove the problem children from the equation - the ones whose behaviour is likely to be suspect, because their parent has to do the office-cleaning job at tea-time when middle-class kids are learning their table-manners, you make the task of teaching the whole group much easier. Results improve in a virtuous circle that is utterly vicious to those outside it.

It seems to me that selection itself, whether at primary or secondary, and whether on the basis of faith, class or academic ability is the problem, not the solution. Selection and choice are two sides of the same coin. Of course, it's a knee-jerk panacea and it appeals to the minority of very middle-England, middle-class parent-voters who determine the colour of the government in our broken and undemocratic voting system. But it's absolutely not the answer to the problem of underachievement by the have-nots.

The answer may, however, be competition between schools - but for funding, not as the White Paper intends for bright, well-behaved, easily-teachable pupils. School funding formulae should make much more provision for the inevitable much higher additional costs of teaching children from families which don't have the resources to do the socialisation-behaviour stuff before and after school. Educating these children is a vital challenge for us all; we should give schools the wherewithal and the incentives to meet that challenge. Instead, the white paper imagines there is no challenge.