The failure of education to connect, meaningfully, to the experiences and aspirations of many children and adults, or to a wider collective social vision and purpose, is the key factor in the lack of progress made towards reducing educational under-achievement and the transition to a more inclusive society.
Poverty and inequality remain endemic in the UK, voluntary or enforced disengagement from education is increasing among young people; such is the sense of helplessness about the fracture lines in our communities that serious political thought is being given to identifying ‘high harm’ children, before they are even born.
Education policy has been the subject of an unremitting and at times bewildering series of reforms by both Labour and Conservative administrations since the creation of the welfare state. To the ordinary person, for whom, perhaps, children provide the main or whole point of having an education system, the fine distinctions between grant-maintained, foundation and specialist schools and city academies may be wholly obscure. As a ‘brand’, education lacks any comprehensible values and a clear overall identity.
Among adults, the belief that learning can provide aid for living, for improving relationships or for changing lives is, similarly, divided on class lines. Participation rates in learning are lowest among unskilled or unemployed adults, with more than half not undertaking any form of learning since leaving school compared with only 17 per cent of those in the highest income bracket.
Since the 1980’s, education policy has rested increasingly on the freedom of schools to operate within ‘quasi-markets’ Yet the operation of schools in the market place and the positioning of education as a consumer choice, disadvantages those who are already least well-placed to exercise power as consumers. At an abstract level, constructing education, or other public services, simply as an extension of consumer choice, displaces an alternative concept of public provision, organised on principles of solidarity and mutuality, valued by all and available as a right when needed.
And the years since New Labour took office have provided the highest watermark of investment in education and other public services, compared with the previous two decades; the highest benchmark for action to eliminate poverty and its consequences, particularly among children. If the project is felt to have run aground, it does not bode well for the future.
Drawing on the experience of childcare, education and policy analysts, Capacity’s new pamphlet, The Learning We Live By, suggests that more can and should be done to narrow the gap in life chances for the least advantaged children and to promote the economic well-being of families.
The article, No Child Left Behind, argues that Every Child Matters should require all those who are part of the children’s workforce to have, as an essential element of professional development, training and understanding of poverty and its impact on children and family well-being.
Recommendations are also made for strengthening children’s centre centres, with more training opportunities for parents and a strategy for delivering economic well-being.
But it is in the need for education to be capable of fulfilling individual human needs that the greatest challenge lies. In Another Wasted Opportunity? Patrick Diamond observes that greater equity of result requires a new relationship between the state, public service providers, the community, and citizen.
That new relationship requires a tolerance of diversity, local responsiveness, less reaching out and more being part of the community. If there is one thing that the different contributions to this pamphlet show, it is that the will and the knowledge, among those who work with children and families, are already there.