Murray Rowlands urges Labour to take the Conservatives to task over glaring omissions and contradictions in their strategy for schools
YOU have to hand it to Michael Gove, the Tory spokesmen on children, schools and families. He makes a renaissance man look like a part-time dabbler. Turn on the television or radio news and he will often be seen and heard. Media coverage of his shadowing of Ed Balls is truly impressive. So why is looking at the Tory education policy not unlike contemplating a black hole?
The root of Gove’s analysis follows David Cameron’s contention that Britain is “a broken society”. This is a fundamentally reactionary philosophy for education and community services. It operates on the basis that the ills of the systems delivering education, care and support rest with innate failings in children and young people and not the deprivation produced by our economic system. It goes against recent research showing just how much social class directly affects education in this country.
Under a Conservative government, the creation of academies would be stepped up to include even those schools currently functioning well – all in the name of offering parents “genuine choice”. Behind this philosophy is the belief that competition between schools for pupils inevitably produces an improvement in standards. As happens in Sweden, Gove proposes that any interested groups should have the opportunity to open their own schools and seek the custom of parents. He has ruled out these schools being able to make a profit, as some do in Sweden.
Some people may struggle to see any difference between Labour and Conservative policies on education. But occasionally Gove slips into the traditional Tory nostrums of attacking progressive teaching and demanding greater discipline in schools without defining what he really means.
Even though he has conceded that the plethora of tests in schools is placing a straitjacket on effective teaching, Gove criticises schools for not inculcating bodies of knowledge for children from the age of five. Although he frequently cites Sweden’s education reforms as a model we should follow, he conveniently forgets that Swedish children from the age of five to seven enjoy the empathy and child-centred approach to learning he is on record as deploring.
The challenge for Labour is to work out a coherent response to Gove. Although the success of academy schools is judged as problematic in many areas, it needs to be pointed out that Labour creates them on a strictly pragmatic basis because an existing local education authority-run school was seen to be failing. Unless academy schools are a part of the Government’s attack on inequality, they cannot be justified.
At times, Labour appears to be advocating them as an ideological commitment – which is almost identical to the Tory approach.
Gove is using this apparent commitment to a whole new set of academies to justify a system where schools throughout the country are forced into a spurious competition with each other in the belief that educational standards will inevitably rise as a consequence.
Producing a critique of Tory policy means asking whom the new academies are accountable to. With all their acknowledged failings, the vast majority of our schools are accountable to the communities they serve. We can welcome the growing involvement of the co-operative movement in sponsoring schools, but we must be aware that accepting co-operators also involves accepting the sponsorship of religious organisations with perverse ideologies they wish to make part of their school’s curriculum.
The danger in outsourcing the development of new schools has been highlighted by questions about the way Entrust, a sponsor of eight academies, operates. As with the fiasco over the marking of SATs exams, serious questions have arisen about the way Entrust is managing Government money. Why, after having set up only one school, has Entrust been given such a key position in the Government’s programme? Local Education Authorities are open to public scrutiny; Entrust is hiding behind business confidentiality in refusing to answer questions about its activities.
Under the Tories’ proposals, the whole range of new schools they say they would establish would be hidden from public scrutiny, although they would be publicly funded.
Labour should counter the Tory suggestion that former military personnel could drafted into schools with acute discipline problems. There is no evidence that military experience provides a teacher with the necessary skills for working in schools of this kind.
Gove makes much of his aim to remove the bureaucracy around which schools have to operate. Labour should challenge him to say what exactly this red tape is and if its removal would put such children – particularly vulnerable children – at risk. Labour should pay careful attention to his statistics purporting to show that there has been growing inequality in education since 1997.
For instance, according to an appraisal by Ruth Lupton of the London School of Economics, the educational performance of children in receipt of free school meals has not declined, as Gove claims. In fact, there has been improvement. Gove has been given an open goal for his criticisms because he is able to identify “failing” through statistics coming from Ed Balls’ own department. However, some of the schools on Gove’s list have made significant improvements in standards.
Labour must ask how practical it would be to give all parents an automatic first choice of school. The Tories advocate this, but they are also trumpeting the virtues of smaller schools. Does that add up to a coherent policy? They are calling for schemes to encourage the ablest teachers to go into the most difficult schools. This ignores the fact that schemes of this kind already exist.
As part of moves towards improved discipline, Gove suggests removing the right of appeal against permanent exclusion from children and parents. He talks of creating dedicated schools for these often very difficult youngsters, but does not spell out how they would operate or how they would be paid for in an increasingly problematic economic climate.
Meanwhile, Gove appears to accept many of Labour’s initiatives, such as Excellence in The Cities and Sure Start. He has even apparently conceded that Labour’s objective of 50 per cent of school leavers going on to higher education was a valid one. He retreated from his attack on subjects such as media studies, saying it was counter-productive if students were forced into disciplines they did not like.
Gove’s commitment to give more to children from disadvantaged backgrounds is welcome. But would this survive the spending cuts David Cameron would initiate if the Tories win the next general election? In the meantime, progressive educationalists want to see some clear red water between Labour and the Tories.
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You say that “social class directly affects education in this country..” but this is irrational. The definition of social class includes variables like income, wealth occupation and educational attainment. As the definition of social class includes educational attainment it cannot also be its cause: its like saying that being blonde makes you fair haired. What actually happens is that a child who does well in school – and there are many, many factors that cause this – gets a better job and becomes middle class, marries someone who is middle class, pass on their genes to their children and raise them, creating a better environment, choosing their friends, etc, and so being middle class is perpetuated. If a bright working class kid does well in school he gets a good job, marries a middle class girl, etc. so the working class is perpetually losing people to the middle class. Most currently middle class people are from working class stock. My parents were, but I went to a grammar school, become a doctor, married a doctor, became middle class and my children are too. Its the way of the world and to be applauded.