Whoever wins the Labour leadership, on education the challenge is clear. Labour lost its traditional opinion poll lead on education with most people failing to see any difference between the two main parties. In fact, both parties adopted the paradigm laid down by Kenneth Baker, Margaret Thatcher’s Education Secretary, in the 1988 Education Act. The centralised political direction of education has been the star by which Labour and the Tories have navigated. Now Labour has to find a new narrative.
The weakness of the old approach was demonstrated in the Academy Bill debates. Shadow ministers accurately charted the reversal of policy involved in snatching high-performing schools. They made capital out of the undemocratic way the bill was rushed through and the aim of giving the Secretary of State control over academies through control of finances. Ultimately, though, most people cannot tell the difference between a Tory academy and a Labour one.
The key innovation in Michael Gove’s bill is the unlimited power given to the Secretary of State over schools. This has not been effectively opposed because there is no commitment to reduce the power of the Secretary of State by a future Labour government. Local democracy over schools is off the agenda. Thus the direction of travel has been identical for the past 25 years – and because of this Labour remains unable to get back its poll lead on education.
Exam reform has been scarred by political intervention since the 1980s. To be fair, Labour came to recognise that this was destroying public confidence in the exams system, with Ed Balls setting up an independent regulator, the Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation. But Ofqual failed to gain the public’s trust and there was no outcry when Kathleen Tattershall resigned as head of the exam watchdog over Gove’s plans for political intervention.
Now the coalition’s Education Secretary has exam reform in his sights. He is virtually unopposed over the IGCSE at 16 plus and a return to traditional A-Levels at 18 plus. Labour has failed to make an effective response and it was left to Oxbridge to outline the shortcomings of these half-baked plans. Labour remains hamstrung by its record of political intervention in the exams system, contributing to what the head of the Office of Fair Access described as “grade inflation”. The new leadership must take academic standards seriously.
Few things lost Gordon Brown’s Government more support over education than its attempt to float a work-based diploma as a replacement for A-Levels. In doing so, it withdrew support for the International Baccalaureate, destroyed the Advanced Extension Award and abandoned the pledge of the 2005 white paper to have an inquiry into the A-Level exam in 2008. The inquiry was postponed until 2013 – sowing suspicion over Labour’s intentions – and will now not happen.
Every time that Jim Knight as schools minister stood up to claim the diploma was worth more than three-and-a-half A levels and that every vocational qualification was of equal or more worth than existing academic GCSE or A-Level exams, Labour lost credibility. The Tories were able to pose as the defenders of academic education. But academic education is a socialist cause and it is inverted snobbery to claim the contrary.
Labour still does not see that exams are an Achilles heel for both parties. Central intervention, in particular the modularisation of GCSE and A-Level exams to break them into bite-sized chunks, the pressure to achieve ludicrous university admissions targets and the failure to back apprenticeships properly because diplomas dominated its thinking all contributed to Labour’s failure. The party should accept the past decade was a disaster for exams and pledge to reverse the direction of travel on exam reform. This can no longer be driven by the whims of Westminster politicians.
Gove is as likely to prove a disaster on exam reform as elsewhere, but a paradigm shift will be needed to exploit his flaws. The tendency has been to accept the Thatcher programmes in their essentials. Continuing the line of advance set down by the 1988 Education Act would be a huge mistake.
Labour cannot oppose Gove effectively unless it alters its own course. Exams will be crucial to this, and Labour must take control of exam reform away from the Secretary of State. As the leadership campaign enters its final weeks, the contenders will need to embrace the necessary paradigm shift needed and proclaim that exams must no longer be a political football.
Trevor Fisher is a member of the Socialist Education Association and editor of its journal, Education Politics
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Can you really run a state school for a profit? Education Secretary Michael Gove seems to think so. However, what Gove has either ignored or missed is that, in the United States, for-profit charter schools have been a huge disaster for the children in the cities where they were first imposed.
In 1997, the US Congress passed the Charter Schools Act – forcing local school districts to allow private enterprise to take over or set up schools. The justification for this was that the competition of “market pressures” would force both public schools and charter schools to perform well and deliver a quality product.
The record shows otherwise. For example, in Michigan, more than 75 per cent of charter schools are run by for-profit companies. While these schools are funded with public money, the public does not control them. Since these schools are run by private companies, they don’t have to reveal how they have used their money or how much profit they have made. As far as local communities are concerned, the schools are no more than big holes into which money gets poured.
Companies such as Edison are adept at finding ways to make a profit. Schools set up shop in abandoned premises, including supermarkets, large office complexes and old school buildings. These buildings are often owned or leased by a management company that is owned by the for-profit charter school company. The charter school, run by the same firm, gets state education money for each student – some $9,000 a year in the state of Michigan. The school then pays the management company hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in rent.
The educational quality in most cases is worse than in the public schools. In 2007, students at the charter schools in the Detroit area scored lower than Detroit public school students in the Michigan statewide test.
How could it be otherwise? The profit taken out of these schools is money not spent on the education of students. So for-profit schools end up having a high number of unqualified teachers; a high turnover rate, with sometimes several teachers teaching the same class in a school year; and even classes taught by a string of temporary service employees.
It was recently confirmed that in the 10 schools run by one company, Charter School Administrative Services, 62 per cent of teachers were unqualified. This is a private company which received more than $40 million from the state of Michigan in 2008. This is money that did not go to the public schools. And that is just one company, 10 schools. There are more than 200 charter schools in Michigan alone.
Even more worryingly, a recent report from the Civil Rights Project at the University of California in Los Angeles found that nearly 80 per cent of Michigan’s black charter school students attend intensely segregated minority schools. Why does this matter? Research shows that attending racially diverse schools significantly improves students’ academic achievement, graduation and college attendance rates. In 2007 the US Supreme Court held that, along with achieving diversity, reducing the racial isolation of students of colour in schools is a compelling state interest. Yet black and Latino students attending charter schools are more often typically in schools where 90 cent or more students are non-white than are their counterparts in traditional public schools.
Some years ago, the now notorious Lehman Brothers issued a report predicting: “The education industry may replace healthcare as the focus industry.” In the US, that’s exactly what for-profit charter schools are: private industry taking over public education, squeezing out all the profit they can and leaving children with a far worse education. Is this really what “progressive” Tory education policy looks like?
Mike Ion is a former deputy head teacher
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The Government started to dismantle the national education system and intends local government to have little or no involvement in education. We have already seen plans to build new schools abandoned, all schools invited to become independent and development work on new qualifications abandoned.
Parents will find it increasingly difficult to find local school places for their children as admissions become a free-for-all. Meanwhile, teachers’ national pay and conditions will be replaced by schools deciding their own arrangements. The national curriculum is at risk. Things that help poorer children to achieve, such as the extension of free school meals, will be withdrawn, because ministers regard them as social engineering. Even careers advice is under threat, as it not regarded as valuable.
Labour needs to set out its educational policy as a matter of urgency. Ending the love-in with academy schools and selection where it remains would be a good start. Most importantly, the party must guarantee all children the education that will maximise their life chances.
Labour should propose no primary school class over 25 and all class sizes reduced to 20 by 2020. Education for 14-19-year-olds should become the responsibility of the government department for business, skills and universities so that all students can benefit from combining academic and vocational learning instead of seeing them as separate routes and having to choose between them. Funding should follow the student, with further education colleges and schools funded on the same basis.
Apprenticeships should be regarded as part of the educational system. Where appropriate, higher education should work with employers to help develop and deliver content.
University education must work more closely with employers and offer greater flexibility, thereby extending opportunities to a wider range of people who may wish to attend later in life or part-time. The student loan system should go and be replaced with a graduate tax paid when students’ earnings reach a certain level – but only paid for a limited time to reflect the cost of the course. The school building programme should be reinstated and include FE colleges. There should be no return to the Private Finance Initiative or a quango like Building Schools for the Future.
All schools and colleges must be adequately funded and accountable for their performance. Labour’s priority has to be high standards for everyone, with government intervention if necessary. The purpose of that intervention is to work with schools and college to address any lack of achievement by students.
The examination system needs major changes. GCSE and A-Level examinations must be modernised. Early years provision needs to remain universal, but a later start to formal schooling would bring us into line with the rest of Europe. While lifelong education is still seen as a minority interest, many adults wish to develop new skills. Diplomas should be extended to include adults instead of being as seen as a 14-19 qualification. Ways should be found to provide financial support to help adults who want to add to their qualifications, especially those who missed out at school.
This is a way to beat the recession and avoid a situation where many of the most qualified generation of school students cannot go to university because there are insufficient places.
Labour must develop a vision for education to benefit the whole country. That would transform its chances of winning the next general election. So far, there is little sign of that happening.
Graham Lane is a former chair of the Local Government Association’s education committee
