Evidence, Policy and the Reform of Primary Education: a cautionary tale

We are specialists with considerable experience of the different phases of education who have come independently to the same conclusion: that government policy is no longer the solution to the difficulties we face but our greatest problem. ... It is not only the torrent of new policy that rains down on each sector, the constant changes in direction and the automatic rubbishing of any discomforting evidence. ... It is also the failure of successive ministers to appreciate that reform has to be accompanied by continuity if the stability of our educational institutions and the quality of their courses are to be preserved.1