The Tory leadership race has descended into slapstick politics, and it seems to have no boundaries. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the last week, the two candidates have acted more like cliche-spouting populists on the campaign trail than responsible members of a party that is still in power. The latest foray into education policy by frontrunner Liz Truss – ostensibly the nation’s foreign secretary – defies belief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She proposes that Oxford and Cambridge interview any high-achieving student in the country who has three A* grades at A-level. She believes it is unfair that “you should have to put yourself forward” for these positions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
She might have added, “God forbid you to have to go somewhere like Leeds University,” a fate she avoided by transferring to Merton College, Oxford.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The concept places an even greater emphasis on exam performance as a predictor of future success, a facile obsession with little to do with education: Truss has long been blown away by exam-centric Chinese schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Worse, it reinforces the elitist assumption that Oxbridge should be further aided in selecting the top achievers each year in order to achieve ever higher levels of academic quality and status. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Truss would not have made this proposal if she had graduated from Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, or Durham.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Universities can and should play a role in social engineering by broadening their social base. But that is true of all of them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
They are the most powerful agent of the ailing levelling-up agenda in some parts of the United Kingdom. They bring creativity and talent, public funds, and graduate jobs to areas that have been drained over the last half-century. These institutions require the brightest students if they are to compete nationally and internationally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The government should not try to drain them of a few hundred A* students each year in order to bolster the egos of Oxford and Cambridge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Such vacuous and ill-conceived ideas spew forth from the Truss camp on a daily basis, forcing the hapless Rishi Sunak to imitate. In an economic downturn, this is not the way to select a responsible prime minister. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Conservative Party is failing the country.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Tory leadership race has descended into slapstick politics, and it seems to have no boundaries. In the last week, the two candidates have acted more like cliche-spouting populists on … <\/p>\n