The Economist reports education technology as an opportunity leveler

This week The Economist reports on the use of Desire2Learn's Degree Compass analytics technology for supporting wise course choices.

This is a technology-triumphs-where-policy-has-failed story. And without doubt a triumph for the students whom it liberates from the pain of bad guidance.

I am contrasting it with a small local story this week, which is the inverse. My children's school had been consigned (along with hundreds of others) to "Special Measures" in 2011, a measure either of failure (not my view) or a trick played by those with political determination to inflict painful change on state education. This week parents and teachers celebrated the successful emergence from this grim regime, and the restoration of the school's official reputation as "good".

That was a story of the triumph of old fashioned effort by dedicated human beings, over the manipulation of categories that those in power like to resort to.