A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 28th July 1994.

Nothing more greatly exposes the contentless verbiage of Tony Blair for what it is than Labour’s new policy statement on education (report, July 27th).  Declaring that “mediocrity and decline can no longer be tolerated”, it goes on to announce measures which will remove the last vestiges of international standards from our schools.

Few British people seem to realise how pathetic an examination the GCSE is in the key subjects.  As Ray Sherlock showed (In My View, July 20th), GCSE mathematics has been gutted of virtually everything recognisable as mathematics.

Labour’s proposal for abolishing A-levels and replacing them by a so-called General Certificate of Further Education, directly related to GCSE, will complete the destruction of school mathematics, physics and chemistry, long sought by the ignorant egalitarians who advise Labour politicians.

If Mr Blair took the trouble to see what actually passes for further education in this country, he would see that the constant prattle about vocational education merely deflects attention frm the school’s abject failure properly to teach the bulk of our children the foundation elements of any education – the three Rs.

For an industrial country, no subjects are more vocational than mathematics, physics and chemistry, but only a minority of young people can do them – which is why Labour wants to destroy them.