Mr. Staples also cites several countries, Japan among them, that have ministries of education responsible for "educational quality control".
From any other speaker such a statement might not be provocative; but this was David Willetts, the British minister for higher education, responsible for cutting direct government funding for universities and replacing it with a threefold increase in tuition.
A spokeswoman for the Department for Education, responsible for education in England, said: "The government is determined to put an end to the inequalities of our education system.
The philosophy in the past has been that elementary through high-school education is responsible for teaching and engaging children in science, thus creating a science literate public (Bell 2009).
Adherents of the National Science Foundation and others held education professors and schools of education mainly responsible for what they believed was the low-achieving status of American students, particularly in mathematics, science, and modern foreign languages.
"I'm taking notes," said Representative George Miller (D CA), who chairs the House of Representatives education panel responsible for reauthorizing the current federal law governing elementary and secondary education, known commonly as "No Child Left Behind".
Nicky Morgan, the education secretary, blames the prvious Labour government's target of getting 50% of young people into higher education as responsible for "snobbery" about vocational choices.
Quite frankly, the people in charge of our maths education are responsible for the appalling mess it is in.
Instead, responsibilities are divided between the ministries of the environment and the economy, with the education minister responsible for financing research on renewable energy and storage technology.
And perhaps more pressing for the parents waiting in the wings: apprehension about how they would enforce their rights over admissions and support once their children are admitted to an academy, if the secretary of state for education is responsible for managing thousands of independent schools, rather than hundreds as was the case under the last government.
