And there might be classes for parents on how to help their children – especially in inner city areas where the culture of parental involvement may be least developed – and perhaps to outline the curriculum they are working to.Mr Ashdown is conscious that this fits in well with what Mr Blair has been saying about individual rights being matched by responsibilities. Each school would have a home-school liaison teacher to ensure pupils with academic and disciplinary problems are visited at home by teachers to enlist parental support in trying to resolve them.Ofsted would be obliged to ensure that school inspectors take the level of home school liaison into account before drawing up their report. He and his education spokesman, Don Foster, have been discussing with the National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations the idea of “requiring” parents to visit the school – probably at least once a year – to discuss how they can help ensure that homework is done. my view is that parents are more interested in participating and helping with the education of their child than they are in running the administration of their school.”Mr Ashdown is envisaging a “contract between school and home” in which parents are given a clearer notion of how they can help and encourage their children. “The single most cost effective action you can take to improve education standards is to convince parents that they have a part to play in the process … And because he, unlike Tony Blair, has come out unequivocally in favour of spending an extra pounds 2bn on education and against the use of spare money to cut income tax, he is perhaps better placed than Labour to try and intervene in the argument raging between Gillian Shephard and the Treasury on her budget for next year.But it is on standards that Mr Ashdown is raising something which, though sketchy, is rather interesting: the responsibilities parents should take for the behaviour and academic performance of their children in return for the taxpayers’ money. And, for good measure, he was yesterday in an interview with the Independent, lending his own voice as a former member of the special forces – the Special Boat Squadron to be precise – to the chorus of denunciation against Michael Portillo for suborning Britain’s military, including the SAS, for party political purposes in that “Don’t Mess with Britain” speech last Tuesday.The typical Special Forces soldier, he says scathingly, is not some kind of “lager lout” in uniform, but a “thinking, serious, very intelligent” person who deeply resents being used as a politician’s “prop”.But it is on education that Mr Ashdown now has most to say.

It exhorted them to join his MPs in lobbying Kenneth Clarke to restore the money cut from last year’s education budget, ensure a significant rise in education investment in this year’s budget and to join his own MPs in opposing the Finance Bill if that doesn’t happen.Though Mr Ashdown won’t say so, it is clearly aimed at the 30 to 40 one- nation MPs whom Mr Howarth claims are potentially as disaffected as he is.Tomorrow he makes an important speech to the Institute for Education. Donald Macintyre talks to Paddy Ashdown as the post-conference dust settles on a new relationship between his party and Labour

In case you had forgotten during two weeks of solid Labour and Tory headline-making, Paddy Ashdown hasn’t gone away.
Yesterday, undaunted at having seen Alan Howarth spectacularly defect to Labour a week earlier without pausing to consider his own party as an alternative resting place, the Liberal Democrat leader shot off a letter to all Tory MPs. Schools could only be improved with the co-operation of everyone in them, he argued.”It does not seem helpful to have a model of inspection which is seen to be hostile to the individual,” he said.”All that will happen is that individuals will tighten ranks to fight off this enemy.”. Plans expected to be complete by the end of this year could mean that good schools will wait six years before their next inspection while weaker schools will be revisited after two.Plans to allow schools to evaluate their own progress, monitored by inspectors, now seem to have stalled.John Dunford, president of the Secondary Heads Association and a member of Ofsted’s consultation group on inspections, said that it had never discussed allowing inspectors to judge individual teachers.However, he added that the new framework’s emphasis on teaching and learning could strengthen the Prime Minister’s plans, and that this would be bound to prove harmful. They say the moves will intensify opposition to an already unpopular inspection system.Tomorrow’s announcement is designed mainly to allow inspectors to concentrate on literacy and numeracy, and cut down on unnecessary paperwork.Further changes to the privatised school inspection system – under which all secondary schools will be visited by 1997 and primary schools by 1998 – are also under discussion. They will also be expected to show that they are using resources efficiently and assessing pupils’ progress properly.Last week, Chris Woodhead, the chief inspector of schools, was attacked for announcing complete inspections of two London boroughs on the eve of the Conservative Party conference.

Now teachers’ leaders have complained that John Major’s plans were not discussed during the consultation period on the new inspection measures. In the past, judgements have been made on school departments rather than on individuals.Officials say details of the Prime Minister’s scheme are still under discussion, but leaked draft guidance on the new inspection framework says teachers will be judged on how well they know their subjects, whether their lessons are well matched to the curriculum, whether their pupils are well-motivated and whether they are able to raise expectations. Then we found the hacker had reconfigured it to call the United States.”. Individual teachers could be picked out for criticism or praise on their lessons and on how well their pupils are performing under a new, slimmed-down school inspection system to be announced tomorrow. Schools will also be judged on the amount of homework they set, even for the youngest pupils, and will be expected to account for how they are using the free time gained from the cut in the content of the National Curriculum.
But teachers’ leaders fear the framework could also back up a pledge by John Major last month that inspectors should name a school’s weakest or strongest staff.