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Clegg, Coalition, education, Gove, Liberal Democrats

(satire)

Nick Clegg is prepared to oppose plans by Michael Gove to replace GCSEs with a two-tier system by voting in the House of Commons to increase the proposals by 300%.

A furious deputy prime minister, who was not consulted on the Education Secretary’s reforms, has made clear that he will reject Gove’s plans out of hand by instructing Liberal Democrat MPs to express their outrage and denounce Gove in highly personal terms before finally allowing him to do whatever he wants.

A senior Liberal Democrat party source said:

The Liberal Democrats are not in politics to make sure levels in education are lowered for all children – that’s why we voted to raise the levels of tuition fees by tripling them. We want a modern education system for the 21st century, one that preferably costs three times as much as it used to. We are committed to a more expensive system for the future rather than turning the clock back to the past with a two-tier education system that was three times cheaper.

Tim Farron, the Lib Dem party president, added his voice to the criticisms. In a statement he said:

We need to make sure we create opportunities in our school system for the many thousands of neglected kids whose parents have enough money to buy them an education regardless of how thick they are.

But returning to a two-tier exam system would be madness – the O-level/CSE system dumped millions of young people into a second division from which they couldn’t escape, that’s why we need show how determined we are to put a stop to these plans by increasing the number of divisions poor children can be dumped into to at least six instead.

Oh, and if there are any fees involved – we probably need to triple them too.

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