Opinion: Good ideas will eventually have their day

At Number 10, hardly a day went by without the Government feeling the need to launch an initiative for education. But at individual school level, the head and staff have to try to work out which initiatives are likely to stick.

It's worth looking at Hyman's "tyranny of policy momentum" in the context of Gordon Brown's Budget announcement of pilot Activity Agreements (YPN, 23-29 March, p5).

There is something slightly Orwellian about the present government: new ideas, however unreasoned, equals good; old ideas, however reasoned, equals bad. This is where the planned Activity Agreements come in. They are weekly allowances for disengaged 16- and 17-year olds who sign up for individually tailored learning plans. Few may recall that they were first proposed in the Social Exclusion Unit's PAT 12 Report of 2000, which called on the Government to take a look at the Australian Youth Allowance that provided an income for young people subject to an activity test. The thinking was that the test could move beyond rewarding participation in education or training and take account of situations where disengaged young people were making efforts to deal with more immediate problems.