Trevor Fisher warns that Labour’s failure to defend and bolster academic schooling is playing into the hands of the party’s Conservative opponents
ED BALLS’ attempt to defend his way of helping failing schools (Tribune July 4) is illustrative of reasons why the Government of which he is a member is failing. It is not just that the approach advocated by the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families is educationally disastrous. The real problem is it is a throwback to the strategy which failed under Tony Blair.
Although Balls sets out some admirable aims in the National Challenge for Schools, his methods constitute a re-run of flawed “name and shame” policies. The Government’s plan is to use a crude threshold of 30 per cent of pupils getting GCSE grade A-star to C, publicise the identities of those schools which do not reach this arbitrary target and threaten them with closure. This is a recipe for making schools fail, even though Balls admits that one third of them “are high-performing schools with great leadership”. Who would want to work at a school publicly humiliated by the Government? What parents would wish to send their children there?
The Government knows that, despite huge amounts of money and endless initiatives (or because of them), educational problems are mounting. The Chief Inspector of Schools has admitted the whole system is stagnating. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), British children are bottom of the league in terms of happiness and self-regard.
Government interference is at the root of Britain’s educational difficulties. Initiatives are run without proper checks and balances, producing a crisis of accountability. The pace of change would destabilise the system, even if the initiatives were a success. But they are failing. Current examination reform for 14 to 19-year-olds is undermining exam credibility. The diploma system is being launched while it is still seriously flawed. This is against a backdrop of media speculation that the Government has a hidden agenda to abolish A Levels. The CBI has withdrawn support for diplomas, as it has come to regard them as a threat to the academic qualifications of GCSE and A Level. Labour’s failure to defend academic education has become a potent weapon for the Tories.
Reforms of A Level are deeply problematic, with the A-star grade coming on stream in 2010 threatening to give advantages to public schools. John Denham, Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, is committed to improving university access, but his own Government is undermining him. Meanwhile, modularisation of GCSE, due in 2009, will weaken that exam and strengthen the return to O Level in the public schools via the International GCSE. A two-tier system with academic private schools and non-academic state schools is now possible.
Meanwhile, at the pre-school level, Beverley Hughes is ploughing ahead with imposing regimentation on Early Years Schooling in September, despite growing criticism. The Government does have some idea there are problems with primary education and has set up the Rose enquiry. Despite this, ministers ignore their own advisory group’s recommendation that children should not start formal education till the age of six, that phonic systems should not be a statutory reading requirement and that targets should not be imposed.
It is time to call a halt. As Goethe said, genius is knowing when to stop. Balls should suspend the exam reforms at GCSE Level, put the diplomas on ice and reinstate the enquiry into A Levels promised in the 2005 white paper. Hughes should suspend the statutory requirements for EYS. Denham should set up an independent enquiry into university admissions to remedy the imbalance between state and private schools – without going down the quota route. Rumours that the failing schools policy is to be extended to “coasting” schools should be scotched. The Government’s education team should admit they are in denial over various failures and execute a U-turn.
Trevor Fisher is head of history at a Staffordshire further education college
This article is posted for debate at www.compassonline.org.uk
