Nick Clegg is making a major speech on education today, and it’s (already) getting some heavy coverage in the media:
Schools should be less constrained by the National Curriculum, Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, says on Monday.
In a speech to the Centre Forum think-tank at the Microsoft headquarters in London, he will call for an end to the “one size fits all” approach to education.
He will call for the establishment of an education standards authority to tackle accusations of dumbing down by ensuring exams retain their gold standard.
Mr Clegg will also argue that the number of civil servants at the Department for Children, Families and Schools should be cut in half, and power devolved to local level. (Daily Telegraph)
and
National curriculum tests taken by 1.2 million pupils every summer should be scrapped, the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg will say today.
He will tell a seminar hosted by the think-tank CentreForum that his party proposes abolishing tests for seven and 14-year-olds: “The regime of testing and targets is based more on the need to evaluate schools rather than the personal needs of pupils.” England’s testing regime is, he says, “as centralised and de-personalised as any in the developed world”.
Mr Clegg is the first party leader to call for the abolition of national curriculum tests on such a large scale – a move which will give the Liberal Democrats’ next election manifesto a distinctive flavour on education.
His pledge will be welcomed by heads and teachers’ leaders who have been arguing that the current testing regime is destroying pupils’ interest in education, with schools teaching to the tests and abandoning a broader range of subjects to ensure they perform well in government league tables. (The Independent)
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7 Comments
Excellent. I think we need to emphasise that it’s the Tories who have got us into this mess, by introducing the national curriculum & the battery of tests which New Labour have slavishly followed.
Despite their half-baked & illiterate complaints about “the nanny state”, the right cannot resist using the state for social engineering: the education system is the most obvious manifestation of this, as they seek to impose “discipline” & revert to some magical system which supposedly existed in the 1950s, even though in reality education then was much worse than it is now.
The right cannot resist trying to micromanage society, & the existence of trendy “libertarians” in the Tory party does not alter this, just like “Old Labour” & New Labour have tried to micromanage the economy through various bizarre & counterproductive schemes.
It is time to adopt a system more like those found in Europe, with a later starting age for school & less incessant tests. A good teacher can monitor children’s progress & parents should have the right to access information about this. These systems do not work.
They are almost as bad as the 11-plus.
I hold the view that the state should fund education, with a pupil premium for those from poor families or who do not speak English as their native language. This will provide, if not fully equal opportunities, at least far more of a chance than some have now.
The present system of PFIs and what have you is utter filth, as Labour are essentially socialists who now worship big business, & are not, nor have they ever been, liberals, economically or socially.
It is my certain conviction that the curses of poverty & inequality can be effaced by liberal solutions, & the education system is obviously the key to everything.
“The present system of PFIs and what have you is utter filth”
I take your point, but take a deep breath, you’ll do yourself a damage!
Actually I agree with much of what you say, but not much of what Nick Clegg says. His plans look to me to be about shuffling bureaucrats around the place with a soupcon of test cutting. He seems to accept education as a nationalised industry – top-down central planning rather than something more liberal.
A voucher with some carefully targeted top-ups for special needs and non-native speakers would be an excellent place to start.
There seems an obvious difficulty in proposing a national independent board (Education Standards Authority) of some kind to overview the Education system but rejecting the Tories’ idea of an independent board to overview the NHS. The latter was rejected by us because it lacked democratic accountability. Possibly the former is not meant to take any executive decisions but that rather makes it look unexcitingly like what we used to call HM Inspector of Schools.
What will be the difference between the Educational Standards Authority and the existing QCA?
I agree with removing the testing regime as Nick suggests, and I would like to to go further in his analysis on this.
It seems to me that our education system is geared up to creating robots. Every parent has to be worried that their robot has a higher spec than someone else’s.
Education should be about personalty and diversity. Whilst it is true that we need in our society some boring accountants (just using a prejudice to illustrate a point), we also need our wild pop stars or our genius footballers.
By all means lets have high achievement in our education system, but surely it is better to do so by finding ways in which children can be inspired to love history, or the poetry of words.
The last thing we need in our education system is the death of eccentricity all for the sake of a more efficient economy.
Excellent post, Geoffrey Payne. I put my name to all of it.
I would also add that the testing regime, which Labour and the Tories have set up, probably did have the aim of “economic” “efficiency”, but isn’t actually working on those terms.
Children are wonderfully creative beangs whose curiosity should be stimulated in learning, which gives them a lifelong love of knowledge. But they are put off by systems geared towards one way of learning, where those who fall behind stay behind. Slowness is not the same as stupidity. All children have their own interests, which they should be pointed toweards, as in Europe.
I think there should be streaming in schools, on a subject by subject basis. I myself was good at most things, but had no aptitude for art. The art teacher probably thought I was stupid. My view of her is best not expressed on a family blog…
I am dismayed by how much is wrong. But my anger is only because I know things can be better. When I hear some right-wing maniac talk about how good the 50s were. I thank Baal, Zeus & Wotan that I live in 2008. And I really do believe the future can be better.