Lib Dem MPs need to take a vital role restraining the exuberance of the Coalition’s secretary of state for education. His enthusiastic promotion of academy status for top ranking schools (as opposed to the previous government giving this to struggling schools) and his determination to get parents and others to set up state-funded free schools answerable only to himself, is in danger of creating a two-tier system of state education.
These innovations are driven by political ideology rather than by educational evidence and professional advice. They will undermine the erstwhile democratic attempts by local authorities, once supported by the Lib Dems, to ensure that education serves the whole community of young people.
A letter published on 14th September in The Guardian, from twelve professors of education, myself included, says:
In crude terms there will be an upper tier of successful schools mainly in affluent middle class areas and a lower tier of struggling schools mainly in poorer working class areas. The upper tier will be independent of local authorities and, in effect, by taking funding from them, reduce the support that the authorities can provide for the schools in the lower tier.
Mr Gove denies that there will be two tiers because he claims that the ‘pupil premium’ to be paid to schools for every ‘underprivileged child’ will correct the ‘underachievement’ of these children. The chance of the pupil premium being substantial enough to contribute significantly to raising the achievements of ‘underprivileged’ children, looks slim.
In our letter, we urge Mr Gove to delay making approvals beyond the 16 free schools and 32 new academies opening this term until he has taken speedy advice from leading researchers into school admissions, governance and school finances, with other experts and professional leaders, on the likely consequences of his far-reaching policies.
Professors of education may be an endangered species, but we speak from wisdom garnered over many years of serving education through research, teaching and teacher training. Lib Dem MPs should be vociferous in helping ministers to anticipate negative and possibly perverse consequences of Coalition policies.
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17 Comments
We already have a two tier system in state education good schools and bad schools.Given that the advice of these dozen wise professors has had so little effect so far perhaps it is time to try something different?
Two tiers already: yes. Good and bad schools: no. “Good” and “less good” is more accurate. Ending government interference would raise the achievements of all schools. Mr Gove, like his Labour predecessors, is not listening. See http://www.free-school-from-government-control.com for a twelve point strategy that is genuinely different.
Noting that a key aim of free schools is for those selected to experience less state prescription, monitoring and interference; surely the best candidates for these freedoms are those schools that are already successful and progressing in the right direction; schools failing to meet expected standards are poor candidates for such autonomy as they would appear to require corrective action and more intervention?
Certainly school education in this country has been bedivilled by a two tier system for as long as I can recall. The terminology has changed – it used to be secondary modern vs grammar – but the underlying reality is of ‘good’ vs ‘bad’ schools as if measuring them on a single dimension could ever be terribly useful. The basic assumption has always been that university entrance (especially Oxbridge) is a ‘success’ and anything else a ‘failure’.
At the root of this is an education industry that is characterised by what management writers often characterise as ‘producer push’. The producers are producing as if on autopilot – an internal dynamic that myopically only sees academic results as valuable – without regard for what is actually wanted by ‘customers’. (Using market based thinking and terminology is not always justified in what I do not regard as a proper sphere for a market, but it is analytically helpful in this case).
Hence schools are asssessed largely on how many good GCSE grades their students get. In such circumstances forcing 15 year olds who can barely read to attend is little more than ritual humiliation. What nonsense! What a waste of human talent! What a waste of money!
An better approach would start by recognising that those students who do NOT reasonably aspire to go to university require an alternative path through school and post school that leads into the world of work via apprenticeships (with formal teaching elements as appropriate). The important thing about this path is that it should be as simple, transparent and in general as visible as the current route to university and that the entry requirements for apprenticeships should be demanding. The school’s task would then be to ensure that its graduates were suitably pre-qualified to take up apprenticeships. (Thus providing the customer-pull for the schools to respond to). The existing piecemeal approach will never work; we need a well designed system.
Providing a viable alternative for students who are never realistically going to be suited by university will be a boon for those students. It will also help schools by giving them a clearer objective for these students that they – and their parents – can identify with.
It’s been shown time and time again that the schools that do better, largely do better because of greater parental involvement in children’s education. This is often the case in wealthier households, thus middle class children do better at school.
Tinkering with how schools are run will not change this. What really needs to be altered is the catchment policy of schools, and the league tables which encourage competition for places, house price inflations, and exodus of wealthier families from areas with poorer schools. It’s a difficult problem to solve fairly, but it’s important to do this, else we will just end up with more and more unfairness in the school system.
Good teachers don’t want to work in schools full of unruly kids, and parents who can afford to buy houses in other areas don’t want to send their children to less good schools either. It’s responsible for a great deal of the social divide we are seeing in our society today, and the ‘flee to the suburbs’ mentality.
Liberal Eye – you probably didn’t intend it, but it sounded awfully like you were suggesting schools are there just to churn out mindless little workers suitable for employment. As far as I were aware, they are social institutions designed to lead a child to their full potential in all areas of life – not just employment. Perhaps I was being naive 😉
Chris Gilbert: you are not naïve, as I am sure you know. Schools play a vital part in the social, personal, physical, cultural, aesthetic, and intellectual development of young people. Sadly, the “expected standards” that Andrew Tennant refers to are the simplistic devices that recent governments have chosen which reflect only the ability of pupils to jump through certain narrowly defined hoops.
The biggest factor affecting how young people succeed in the terms of these “expected standards” is the level of social deprivation and poverty in their family and community. A government that wants to ensure that every school is a good school must first tackle economic issues such as the inequality in our society. But to free them all from excessive testing, ruthless inspection, daft league tables and obsessive micromanagement from government, would at least enable schools to decide for themselves how best to respond to the varied needs of their pupils and their parents. We should overcome the cynicism of our age and trust teachers.
Two tiers isn’t enough! If we are going to allow a diverse range of individual schools, then there should be as many tiers as there are schools. Let a thousand flowers bloom!
there do not seem to be many flowers planned for the desperately poor areas in which I live!
>CHRIS. It’s been shown time and time again that the schools that do better, largely do better because of greater parental involvement in children’s education.
Yes, 100%. But:
>Tinkering with how schools are run will not change this. What really needs to be altered is the catchment policy of schools,
I went to a comp with a wide catchment area and young, enthusiastic teachers. From day one, the kids whose parents encouraged them to learn tried to do so, while the kids whose parents couldn’t give a stuff called us “snobs” and disrupted any lesson where the teacher wasn’t in firm control.
They all left at 16, with maybe a few CSEs. We said “good riddance” and enjoyed the sixth form.
Mixing with middle class kids hadn’t pulled them up, but they’d done their best to pull us down and stop us learning.
@ Chris Gilbert,
I certainly didn’t mean to imply that schools should just churn out “mindless little workers”, although what the system is producing at present in some cases seems to be non-workers unfitted for a place in society – economically or in any other way. Give a person the ability to earn a good living and you also give them the ability to do everything else.
@ Cassie
That was more or less my wife’s experience. She was in the age cohort when leaving age was raised to 16 frustrating some who had hoped to leave. She says that two in particular did their level best to stop the rest learning as long as they remained in the school.
@Andrew Tenant
Don’t buy your argument here at all. If a school thrived under state intervention why assume that freeing it from state control will help it/further it/continue it? And why should a school that is failing under state intervention benefit from more of the same? Surely you can also conclude from each of these examples that schools that succeed under state control will continue to thrive if they remain under it, and schools that don’t might thrive if they are freed of state control.
@mpg
Interesting, and a reasonably valid alternative take on it; if it helps, I’d free all the schools and let the parents decide which are the successes and which shouldn’t get funding; I don’t think there’s any benefit in state interference in education.
@ mpg
A neat point and good that Andrew accepts it.
@ Andrew Tennant
Your argument ‘let the parents decide which are the successes’ would only be fair if society was a level playing field lacking the awful inequalities of wealth of today. Certainly the state should not interfere in what is taught, how it’s taught, how it’s assessed, and how schools are evaluated. Yes, I agree with David Langshaw saying ‘let a thousand flowers bloom’ – but Pat Roche speaks fairly for many and hence state intervention is needed to ensure fair funding that supports the underprivileged as much as the privileged. If too much goes to the ‘privileged’ a downward spiral acts and the ‘two tiers’ become entrenched.
Lib Dems understand this better than Conservatives and need to be assertive in the Coalition on this issue in order to curb Mr Gove’s enthusiasm.
Don’t think I agree with you Michael, how can schools that don’t benefit their children become entrenched when the system would allow an alternative, should parents choose it, to be created?
@ Andrew
The reason is twofold. First, while Mr Gove wants parents to be able to set up their own schools if they are dissatisfied with the existing provision, it requires energy and time to do this. When young parents are working hard (and maybe shift hours) to earn sufficient to keep themselves and their family above the poverty line it is going to be unusual people that will have the energy and time, and indeed the self-confidence, to encourage their neighbours to work with them and try to set up a new school. Second, when (or if) this happens it will take children and state funding away from the existing schools, which will mean they have to make staff redundant, and so the school will lose some of its expertise: the start of a downward spiral.
Schools in areas where there is widespread poverty and unemployment, struggle to achieve well for their pupils, This is not because of incompetence by the teachers (which notwithstanding the machinations of some of the tabloid newspapers is today rare) but because the community is depressed and parents find it hard to convince their children that the future will be different because of their schooling.
This is an important debate. Keep it going. Perhaps soon you will take those horns of the ears of your logo! Best wishes.
Sorry. Misspelt. Meant ‘off your logo”.