Getting the Question Wrong

Ask a Stupid Question, get a Stupid Answer, strange how that childhood comeback has come back in the form of: ask the wrong question and you will always get the wrong answer.
For example ask: ”What's the best way of delivering 90% of someone's educational experience online?" and you will eventually get 'A Virtual Learning Environment, everyone needs one', as the answer.
But ask: "What's the best way of delivering a high quality education?", and you will get an answer involving well-motivated, well-trained and well-resourced teachers with smaller and smaller groups of students.

As a result of this particular misconceived question, millions of pounds, hundreds of thousands of people hours and multiple Gigajoules of mental energy are going to be wasted forcing every school in the country to adopt a VLE.

Another example of a wrong answer because the question was wrong would be ‘OFSTED’, by asking, “How can we force schools to change?”, as opposed to, “What do schools need to assist the change we will be working hard to convince them is necessary?”

Can you think of the questions that should have been asked when we got these answers?
SATs, National Curriculum , Curriculum 2000, PFI, Building Schools for the Future, BECTA Self Review Framework, TLRs, PPA, Threshold, ASTs, Chartered London Teacher Status, Local Management of Schools, Capita, National Literacy Strategy, The Primary Framework, The Interactive Planning Tool, DiDa and on and on and on…..