School! Huh! What is it good for?
Following this week’s strikingly similar announcements by both Nick Clegg and David Cameron on their respective party’s education policy, debate seems to have taken off amongst LibDem activists.
The main point of argument seems to be around the provision of ‘free’ schools on the successful Swedish model. Nick Clegg has long been a fan of these, discussing his support for the principle during his 2007 leadership campaign. Unfortunately the article which has provoked most of the debate is at best a poor piece of research and at worst dog-whistle politics, which seriously misrepresents the schools policy of both parties.
Now I’m not known for being a great consensus politician. but I also don’t believe in ‘opposition for the sake of it’ adversarial politics. Whilst the leader of the Local Government Association, Simon Milton, supported allowing private companies to make a profit from running schools, Tory education spokesman Michael Gove has steadfastly opposed this, saying:”The money we spend on education should stay within education,”. So whilst the Telegraph leader yesterday stated “Charities, private companies and parents’ groups will also be allowed to set up schools[…} and in time, though this is not yet Tory policy, to do so for a profit“, to translate this into Conservative policy without any evidence seems to me to be unreasonable and misleading.
What the Conservatives are proposing, allowing ‘free schools’ to open, even where there is no shortage of school places, it not so far from LibDem policy in this area. Both parties have identified a Swedish schools group – Kunskapsskolan – as the sort of company that they would want to see running schools. Socialist Sweden is quite happy to see Kunskapsskolan operate at a profit there. The company is getting a trial run in the UK, as LibDem run Richmond Council have chosen them to run its new Academies – not for profit, of course! What really matters is that good schools should be available to parents and that education should continue to be free at the point of delivery.
Where LibDem and Tory policies diverge is in the area of delivery. Most people agree that every child is different. So if every school is basically the same, there cannot be a school that can meet the needs of every child. We must not forget that the last Conservative ‘Great Education Reform Bill’, produced by Kenneth Baker in 1986, invented the National Curriculum. This was the thin end of the very large wedge which removed many freedoms from schools – the freedoms which David Cameron says he now wants to restore. Look closer at what the Conservatives are proposing and you will see that in many areas they proposed merely to ‘reform’ – removing Labour’s prescription and replacing it with their own rules again.
If schools are to be able to deliver real choice, then they need a light touch of local or national control. Independent schools and those who home-school are allowed to ignore the national curriculum and other government diktats. Yet there are no signs that great numbers of those who study outside the state school system are leaving education unprepared for life.
Currently the system of league tables encourage teaching to the test and a concentration of effort on the borderline pupils. To expect otherwise when the future of a school and the jobs of the teachers depend on the results is expecting the impossible. Schools must be freed from the constraints of national curriculum and tests and teachers enabled to work as professionals in the best interests of their pupils, with a light touch inspection regime.
I would agree with Jock Coats that choice in secondary education meansthe ability to have gymnasiums, technical schools, volkschule, Summerfield type ‘free schools’, Montessori-type provision, Steiner schools, intensive schools, specialist schools, faith schools, not faith schools, whatever a community or urban area can stand in its local catchment. It means offering the IB instead of and alongside A levels and so on.
Let’s ensure that the days of talking about bog-standard comprehensives are well and truly over and save the party politicking for where there are real disagreements – such as on student fees.
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