What is the biggest problem facing our education system? This is a question that can drive progressives to drink. It is also something we need an answer to at the beginning of this politically important year. So is it that parents haven’t got enough clout to push their kids into their favoured school? Is it that there aren’t enough academies or independent state schools?
Or is it, as we heard last week, that bright state school kids aren’t getting into Oxbridge? Of course these are all worthy concerns that need consideration, thought and money, but the answer to the initial question lies in the school league tables published last week. Despite all the investment, reform and huge strides forward over the past ten years, still over half of all students at 16 aren’t getting five good GCSEs. 53.3 per cent of kids don’t reach the standards we should all expect them to. In short either our expectations are wildly wrong, or we are not getting it right in the classroom.
Let’s put this into context. There are 639 secondary schools where less than 30 per cent of students get 5 good GCSEs. At the school I have just finished teaching at the figure was 19 per cent (including English and Maths.) This means that 81 per cent of kids in last year’s Year 11 – of which I taught two classes – around 200 children, can’t do things like paragraphing, letter writing and complex multiplication. More importantly though it means these kids, most of who would describe themselves as working class, have no passport to progress and no educational means to fulfil their aspirations. Aspirations which are always higher than their target grades demand and often beyond what their teachers and society expect of them.
Now this isn’t a call to return to the standards agenda, or to introduce more testing, but rather it is a reality check to those who think our job is done, or those who feel our education system is somehow failing most those at the top. The solutions to these entrenched and self-reinforcing problems of illiteracy, poverty and disengagement are complex, expensive and liable to fail some of the time. But the multi-agency, cross-departmental approach, as laid out in the Children’s Plan is a start. The extension of the leaving age to 18 will also be crucial in allowing kids the time and space to succeed. Furthermore, the government should encourage a renewed focus on school collaboration rather than competition. This would allow heads in tough schools, who are all too aware of the achievement crisis, to draw on the best practice of colleagues rather than spend time and energy sharpening their elbows for fear of loosing funding.
There is also politics to this. The knock-on effects associated with underachievement pose problems for all of society. It sounds obvious but the minute an angry teenager feels they can’t succeed or meet the standards of their peers, they are more liable to leave education altogether. Vulnerable and unfulfilled youngsters can be prone to exploitation. So if the problems are faced by all of us, we all need to respond. And only Labour does collective responsibility. Only Labour does community response. Just look at Cameron’s equivocation on raising the school leaving-age and the extension of the educational maintenance allowance. Just consider the fact that support for the grammar school system which would exacerbate this attainment gap still further, is still unofficial Tory party policy.
So this latest batch of school results should be a call to arms to get behind the Children’s Plan and to expose the Tories. We desperately need to make the argument to voters that only with Labour do we have any chance of meeting the expectations and hopes of all children, regardless of where they go to school or where they come from.
Oli de Botton is PPC for Hitchin and Harpenden, former Assitant Headteacher, currently educational consultant