The government s continuing commitment to improving the education system is clear from the announcement in the Comprehensive Spending Review of the extra £7.8 billion to be spent over the next four years. But financial investment alone will not deliver the real change that people want to see in education in Britain.
When Tony Blair said, education is the best means to eradicate poverty and enable people to realise their own unique potential , he re-stated the long-held view that a good education is one of the keys to creating genuine equality of opportunity.
Some argue that real equality will not be achieved until private schools are abolished and all parents are compelled to use the state system. The argument against this is that the state system should first be brought up to the standards of decent private schools so that parents are not forced to compromise their child s quality of education.
To achieve this, the government must develop and invest in the three pillars of the educational system: schools and their teachers, children themselves and, importantly, their parents. So far Labour has concentrated on two of those three pillars; investing in new buildings, finding additional money for books and equipment, recognising the value of teaching through increased pay and opportunities for teachers, and focusing on improving standards through initiatives such as the literacy and numeracy hours.
On its own, however, this is not enough to bridge the divide between state and private sector education. Even where funding in the state sector is at the same level, it is clear that it is the third educational pillar of parental involvement that delivers better results in private sector education. Paying fees gives parents an incentive to monitor their child s progress and to play a more active role in the school itself. The challenge for the government will be to foster parental involvement in state schools without that pecuniary incentive.
There are already initiatives to develop strong links between schools and parents, for example, through the development of home-school agreements. However, the government has focused on penalising parents when, for example, their children play truant. This approach leads to parents and children equating education with compulsion, making them less likely to respect and develop the system. Truancy is a problem that must be tackled but it would be better accomplished by breaking down the barriers between school and parents, not building new ones.
Problems such as truancy and lack of educational motivation must be addressed at their roots. Asking parents, for example, to sign off their child s homework every day would bring them closer to their child s education. Encouraging attendance at parent-teacher meetings and a scheduled meeting with the head teacher at least once a year would enable the school to communicate problems to parents better.
The benefits of parental involvement are well documented. Ofsted, for example, has found that all beacon schools have good relationships with parents, in contrast to most schools in special measures. An initiative at Newall Green Infant School in Manchester, which encouraged parents to come into school on a regular basis, led directly to marked increases in National Curriculum Level 2 results.
Finding time to take a proper interest in their child s education is difficult for working parents, but there are ways of overcoming this as shown by the recent Dads and Sons campaign, which allows working fathers a paid hour s leave to be with their children. Companies could also permit employees to help their local school by assisting with repairs, after-school activities, or fundraising, developing a closer bond between parent and school and enabling parents to be proactive, rather than passive, observers of their child s education.
Unless we recognise the importance of encouraging parents to participate in the delivery of their child s education, rather than just depending on them to deliver their child to school on time, we will fail to reach the standards necessary to create opportunity for all our children.