The first and perhaps surprising thing to say about the Tories’ proposals on education is how much of the government’s agenda they accept. They welcome the school diversity introduced by the government. They support empowering schools. They endorse academies. They have no plans, they say, to change arrangements on admissions. And, despite a few mumbles and grumbles, their report essentially accepts the government’s focus on functional skills and widening curriculum opportunities through vocational diplomas.
Even one of their flagship ideas – developing small schools and having schools-within-schools – was embraced and supported by the government some three years ago in its five year strategy for education, and is being increasingly adopted.
The policy of ‘Pioneer Schools’ is hardly original either. The Tories propose that parents and charities should be able to set up state-funded schools if a certain number of a local authority’s schools, or a certain percentage of its school population, attend schools rated as underachieving by Ofsted. Leaving aside the issue of whether competition of this sort is the best way of turning round underperforming schools, local authorities are from this year already under a statutory duty to help parents set up a new school where they express a wish to do so. And the running of new and reorganised schools (including those closed because they are failing) has to be subject to a competition, in which parents and charities are encouraged to participate.
In addition, the trust school model, which is based around charities, is sufficiently flexible to allow for different levels of parental involvement. So the policy seems little more than an incremental addition to the battery of provisions for dealing with struggling schools. Arguably the Tories have missed a trick in not focusing more on how teachers and parents can work together better on supporting the day-to-day learning of their children.
The second thing about the Tory recommendations is the blatant attempt to play the ‘professional’ card. A ‘Royal College of Teachers’ is proposed, following a similar model used by various branches of the medical profession – though the proposal utterly fails to appreciate that Royal Colleges are fundamentally about training and accreditation which under the Tories’ proposals would be located in an entirely separate body. Also, as with the NHS, there would be a head of profession to advise ministers – a chief education and skills officer. And, in a move that is designed to appease schools rather than look after the interests of parents, Ofsted’s role is downgraded.
However, teachers would be well advised to read the small print before buying this package since, despite the rhetoric about trusting professionals, the report cannot resist interfering in headteachers’ day-to-day running of their schools by making them follow specific rules on the setting of pupils.
The plan for heads to have the final say on whether a pupil should be excluded also looks like a flawed prospectus resulting in headteachers having less, not more, freedom. The abolition of appeals panels for exclusions will give parents (and pupils) no option but to go to court if they want to challenge a head’s decision. That in turn will mean a spate of judicial reviews that will consume headteachers’ time and schools’ money.
Inevitably it will also lead to a rise in the number of exclusions which, given the link between exclusion and involvement in the criminal justice system, hardly seems the best way to tackle David Cameron’s supposed priority of social breakdown. Better by far to give local groups of headteachers the budget, the staff, the facilities and the responsibility to manage pupil behaviour.
Another proposal which also seems to have a perverse outcome is making 11 year-olds repeat their last year in primary school if they have not acquired the basic skills they should have at this stage. Nothing is more likely to stigmatise them and erode their confidence than being kept back in this fashion. Much better to provide intensive personalised support in their new school.
Do the Tories’ have any good ideas? The proposal for an ‘Advantage Premium’ to give hard-to-help children additional per capita funding does have some merit – but again reflects something the government is already developing.
So a school report on the Tories’ plans might read something like this: ‘David has a nice style of writing but he really should stop copying other people’s work. And when he tries to think originally he needs to put more effort into making sure his ideas are not self-defeating.’