Like thousands of people throughout the country with a concern about education I listened with growing anger as Andrew Adonis gave his unqualified support for Tory plans to open up state education completely to market forces is this country. He was speaking on Question Time presumably representing a Labour point of view.
Adonis’s comments raised the whole question of the way elements in Labour are still prepared to triangulate on its policy that should oppose moves of this kind. The fact that Labour is not opposing Gove’s reactionary policies effectively as Fiona Millar points out in the Independent is directly related to the way that Ed Balls is compromised on the question of foundation schools. Rather than follow up research from the Institute of Education which undermined the case for their widespread introduction Balls chose to keep his head down and allow Gove to make the running on the issue. Now when he attempts to oppose the obvious absurdities in the education bill Gove is currently rushing before parliament the media are not slow in pointing to the inconsistencies of his argument against the universal adoption of foundation schools.
Fiona Millar cites the case of King’s College in Gove’s constituency on which I was a Governor before it was taken over by 3Es City Technology College based at Kingshurst in Birmingham. This group claims that it achieves a 20 to 30 per cent improvement in its schools. However a recent Ofsted report reported King’s College as failing both academically and administratively. On taking over the school 3Es refused to appoint the existing outstanding headteacher. In the period following the takeover there have been five different headteachers of the school. Gove claims that his motivation for his so called reforms is to offer disadvantaged children schools that will offer a genuine educational opportunity. It is significant that King’s International, as it became, drew much of its intake of students from social housing in Camberley and because of this seen as the third choice by Camberley parents. Its main feeder primary school has 32 per cent who speak English as their second language. As a result the school struggled with its budget – the reason Tory Surrey turned it over to a private company to operate.
Faced with the reality of the Ofsted report 3Es have walked away from the school.
The media in its present uncritical relationship with the coalition government has failed to question why Gove has flipped from Sweden to America to Canada in his efforts to find examples of how well his independent free schools are working in practice. What has come out is that the one thing these free schools have not done is benefit the poorer children they were supposed to. The Tories speak endlessly about opposing top-down educational policies when the management of these schools has been taken away from teachers, parents and local communities. Under the terms of Gove’s bill a head or governing body can opt to take a community’s school out of local authority control without consultation with anyone else. They will be encouraged to buy a whole range of specialist services currently provided by Local Education Authorities loosing the advantages of economies of scale that currently exist. As a consequence schools remaining within LEAs will have enjoy fewer services than they currently enjoy. Money to support the new schools is to be taken from Labour’s budget for the rebuilding and renovation of the nation’s schools.
Fiona Millar cites evidence that Gove’s bill is the least popular element of the Tory/LibDem policies. It should be central to Labour’s attack to point out that competition between schools simply takes resources away from one school to another and means that the schools at the bottom of this process are pushed into a downward spiral. Gove is encouraging top schools to opt out, which will accentuate this process meaning that for those schools who already have more will be given. The door is now open for corporations to take over state schools and despite Gove’s denial run them at a profit. Companies such as the arms manufacturer Vosper Thorneycroft, as well as providing a range of services they currently do, Vosper Thorneycroft are poised to take over the direct management of schools. Research in America by Stanford University shows that only 17 per cent of schools run by corporations made more progress than the existing schools and 37 per cent less. There is anticipation that these companies will attract parents by marketing the schools they operate as a product. However, once the initial enthusiasm for these takeovers goes corporations’ main concern will be profit. As the biggest cost in education is a teacher’s salary the suspicion arises that teaching staff will be evaluated on what they might cost rather than their teaching ability.
It is interesting to listen to Toby Young and his middle class group who are determined to set up their own school, in London. One of his selling points is that setting up schools in unused warehouses and factories can cut costs. The reasons for the failing Swedish system is that the free schools set up in this way do not have laboratories, playgrounds, or sports facilities. Face-to-face teaching is often replaced by IT software. Despite Gove’s mantra about reducing testing in schools, far from providing all-round education, these schools concentrate on measurable outcomes.
Faced with the very real threat that the Tories are about to initiate a wholesale market takeover of education it is essential that Labour speak with a united voice in opposition. Estelle Morris former education minister has recognised the threat. Now Labour must work effectively against it.
Murray as ever has a rose tinted view of life. The policies of labour and their refusal to address many of the structural educational policies, the national curriculum, a hankering for centralised control and a refusal to address the issue of distance to school as an entry criteria were far more important locally. Murray himself lives in an area where it is characterised by very rich and wealthy professional people – some lucky enough to be funded by the government. The only state school available to people in that area is Kings. Access to Collingwood is often on appeal and Tomlinscote too. Labour’s politically motivated central grants were also significant. Given say Surrey received about 1 fifth per resident compared with say Manchester, it meant that the local authority were unable to invest at all and have run a deficit for many years drawing on reserves. This resulted in a tail spin in school performance across the whole of the county with only rare examples of schools adding value compared with counties in Labour’s heartlands and those counties who had held onto selective education. Affluent parents faced with schools full of asbestos (like Kings) and in a state of structural decline (no money to rebuild) became populated by children from families that couldn’t pay to escape or were unable to move. Historically though, Collingwood had been the problem school – situated in the heart of social housing. They addressed their problem by using subsidised buses to bring in children from Deepcut and further away. This option was refused when Kings applied for it. Interestingly, the county having no money left is looking to stop the bus services that had fixed Collingwood – and the head there is now trying to mobilise a political movement to maintain the market skewing subsidies that had made his school appear better than it was.
Camberley is interesting. It has pockets of deprivation for which the ACORN profile is that of the Glasgow Gorbels (albeit the profile suggests the residents will read the Scottish Daily Herald, I suggest this isn’t the case). Initially residents appear to have high incomes, but once the very high costs of living and the lack of labours investment in national road improvements and train (it was 30% quicker to get a train to London in Victorian times than at the end of Labour’s rule), the residents of Camberley are very poor in terms of discretionary spend. In fact, outside of Kensington and Chelsea, the bulk of the truly rich (i.e. they have discretionary income) live in labour subsidised northern heartlands. Against that back drop, it is thus surprising that Camberley has the highest rates of private education in the country. It means that Labours funding policies and national curriculum have starved the children of Surrey of a decent education going back a whole generation and that any who can barely afford to escape, jump at the chance.
Murray … wise up, labour lost, it was a failed generational experiment that reduced social mobility, rewarded the banal and encouraged teachers into the profession who’s sole qualification was that they had been paint pot washers (oops class room assistants) for 2 years and have not even achieved CSE Maths or English. (Another local school).
We now need something completely different.