Posted By Site Administrator at 05/03/2010 16:18:47
Do I even need to pose this question? If not, what can be done about it?
These questions are at the front of my mind again, as the election nears and the parties compete for the education vote. All want to win plaudits by showing their commitment to improving matters through pledging to take the supposed shortcomings of the system seriously, and therefore to introduce radical reforms. But few seem to acknowledge that change has been almost constant for 20 years now. Is never-ending reform, while making sense to politicians constantly chasing headlines and votes, really the way to make the most of our public services? Again, that question almost answers itself. But still the change comes.
At times, it is hard to avoid the sense of policy-making-by-auction, with the sides desperately trying to outdo each other in their drive for reform, with all the depressing implications that has for what should surely be a thoughtful, patient and long-term process of helping bring about improvements in pupils’ understanding, engagement and motivation.
Last week’s proposal put forward by Gordon Browns and Ed Balls on giving more power to parents when the schools their children attend are “struggling” is a case in point. Labour’s policy would allow parents to vote on bringing in another provider of education if a significant group of them were unhappy. Local authorities would have to conduct the polls, and these alternative managers would be selected from a list of approved providers, or “brands”, as Mr Brown called them, including groups which already run academies, and successful schools.
All very eye-catching. But what will these powers mean in reality? Aside from engendering yet more stress in heads and governing bodies, will they bring about genuine improvements? I can’t see it.
Parents already have the right to call in Ofsted if they have concerns, and have used it in one high-profile case involving an academy. (See http://bit.ly/cpay9x) Simply giving them the right to call in another provider does not seem to be taking this much further, given that a failing Ofsted report will usually lead to the head changing. Successful providers may have good track records with other schools, but I have to say that dramatic improvements in results should always be treated very cautiously, given the statistical gaming of the accountability system that sometimes goes on.
No, it seems as if Labour is simply using this policy as a strategy to take on the Tories for parents’ votes, as the Conservatives are already pledging to make it easier for families to trigger the establishment of new schools if they are unhappy with local provision.
For a sense of the concern within Labour of being on what could be seen as the wrong side of this argument, see a recent piece in The Times by former minister James Purnell, suggesting the party needed to do more to promote parental choice of schools (http://bit.ly/c5qFHx). This was eagerly seized on by Conservative advisers as an admission that Labour was losing the battle for parents’ votes. The new Labour policy followed a few days later. If this was a tactical gambit in which Labour was introducing a policy with long-term implications for school-parent relationships simply to gain some short-term tactical advantage in the chase for parents’ votes, it should be ashamed. The day-to-day fight between politicians is no way to run our schools.
There are other problems. In focusing so much, in their pre-election skirmishes, on structural reform, politicians take attention away from the need to attend to what evidence shows is most important: the quality of teacher-pupil classroom interaction. In changing things so regularly, they exhaust staff and take time away from what teachers tell me matters most: the core business of classroom success. Most fundamentally, so often this fight about how education needs to “improve” is essentially predicated on negativity. In their seemingly ever-increasing desperation to talk about what needs to change, and in particular about helping parents escape supposedly failing/underperforming/struggling institutions, the politicians inevitably undermine state education.
To be fair, all three main parties have implicitly offered support to those who might criticise aspects of the reforming logic which they all share. Michael Gove, for the Conservatives, acknowledges that schools need a break from change, and says they will get one... after a blaze of early activity should the Tories win power. Nick Clegg, for the Liberal Democrats, talks about the need for parents and schools to work together. And Ed Balls, for Labour, flagged up some practical problems with the Conservative emphasis on new schools which centred on the difficulty of waiting for structural change to bring about results.
But really, a more mature approach to politics – based on standing back and asking what is really in the national interest – would be very different. A politician who promised to try to get the country behind its schools, to stop the perpetual focus on the negative and who was prepared to –genuinely – take some of the politics out of education might win my vote. I think it will be a long wait, though.
