This is less the result of 'liberal elite' thinking, than simple electioneering by all parties for the last forty-plus years.
We have all been to school, so we all have experience of receiving teaching, and being in a classroom.
That makes parents as potential voters ripe for the emotional tripe trotted out by all governments, and the ludicrous policies dreamed up by their increasingly incompetent and often barmy Education Secretaries - Kenneth Baker, Keith Joseph, Ken Clarke, Ruth Kelly - it's been like giving a chain saw to a psychopath for decades.
So if you start saying you'll 'sort out education' (the trick is to always refer to 'our children' to make you sound all warm and inclusive) - you will get votes.
How do you 'sort out education'? Simple - you change the national curriculum boundaries so often that teachers have no chance to get anything to work before you change it again, until they and the children are so confused they don't know which way is up.
Then bombard teachers with so much criticism for your own failures that they leave in droves, causing the biggest gap in filled teaching and head teacher posts since records begain.
Always blame the previous administration, always make changes that mean nothing useful, and then move on to Health, or somewhere else where can do maximum damage with minimum positive impact.
Until governments stop teaching voters - sorry parents - as 'consumers' of education, and using meaningless but vote-catching sounds like 'parent power', and putting money into university instead of nursery education, you'll get what you've always got.
Education is far too important to be left in the hands of politicians, but there it is, and there it remains.