Many will be left wondering how the Tories can make theiur education plans a reality when their pledges raise more questions than they answer.
We were promised the “most radical agenda of school reform for the last generation” from the Tories today, with a commitment to make “children the authors of own life story”. It sounds so appealing, doesn’t it? Better than many of the bureaucratic top down initiatives we’ve grown used to in education. And yet, how many of us will be left wondering if the Tories can make this a reality when their pledges raise more questions than they answer.
While many teachers and parents will welcome a “new generation of smaller schools and smaller class sizes”, many will be baffled by Conservatives plans to deliver this. They place the Swedish school system at the heart of their manifesto, despite the fact experts around the world, including Sweden’s schools’ inspectorate, say they do not improve standards.
For free schools to work, vast numbers of parents need to have the desire and expertise to run their own schools. If not parents, charitable foundations, social enterprises or community groups who want to improve state education can get involved, but these imagined “‘little platoons’ of civil society” are often people with an agenda, whether political, religious or profiteering.
Responding to the manifesto, Linda Heaven-Woolley, a recently retired head of one of the most rapidly improved comprehensive schools in the country, told Left Foot Forward:
“Inner city areas will not have huge swathes of people coming forward to run one, even if philanthropists appear from somewhere in a recession. I can see cliques of middle class parents getting into this – social exclusion yet again for the working class.
“No one type of school has proven the worth of any model – there are good and poor academies as much as anything else.
“The quality issues lie in the institution, providing it is well funded, as schools have been mainly under Labour, with good national leadership that should be responsive to consultation.”
Free schools also rely on the idea that unfettered competition drives up school standards and requires surplus places. This will cause havoc for head teachers and governors who will need to plan year-on-year efficiencies, and is not cost-effective.
The Tories place an emphasis on discipline in their manifesto, but the only hints they have given on how they plan to improve students’ behaviour are: encouraging former soldiers to join the teaching profession; removing the right for parents of excluded children to appeal – which could send parents to the courts and be more costly for schools; and setting up small schools with more manageable class sizes, the plans for which are deeply flawed.
On the subject of teachers, the Tories do not once mention trusting teachers, as they do with healthcare professionals, and instead focus on banning anyone with less than a 2:2 from receiving state-support with teacher training, despite the fact they have appointed Carol Vorderman (third class honours) to be their maths adviser.
It is interesting to look at what the Tories have left out of the manifesto. There is no mention of a pledge in the January draft document to “redirect the school capital budget to fund at least 220,000 new school places in the poorest communities”. They also appear to have dodged their plans to introduce Saturday lessons for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Parents have been complaining that Saturday classes could become a “badge of dishonour”, while teachers raised concerns about their workload.
Meanwhile, there is still no information on how they will pay for the pupil premium, only a vague commitment to “raise productivity growth in the public sector”.
Tory schools policy is not so much an invitation to innovate schools, more an abdication of responsibility to address some of the true inequalities of our education system. Plans for DIY schools and the party’s invitation to ask people for help actually reveal that the Tories haven’t got a clue how to run our education system.
At their launch today, they played a video of a first time voter young mother, Julie from Wales, a parent who lived in a deprived area with poor access to schools, but one who admitted her children attended “a great school”. It lead the Standard’s deputy political editor Paul Waugh to tweet:
“Is this a video for Labour??”
16 Responses to “Tories’ schools policies raise more questions than answers”
Andy Sutherland
Tories' schools policies raise more questions than answers: http://bit.ly/asb3kF /via @leftfootfwd
Johanna Thomas-Corr
RT @leftfootfwd: Tories' schools policies raise more questions than answers: http://bit.ly/asb3kF
Richard Godwin
RT @leftfootfwd: Tories' schools policies raise more questions than answers http://bit.ly/asb3kF
Johanna Thomas-Corr
Just blogged on Tory plans for schools #Torymanifesto http://bit.ly/asb3kF
Toby Young
Three points.
It’s simply not true to say “experts around the world” say that free schools in Sweden haven’t raised standards. On the contrary, I can point you to numerous research papers that demonstrate they have raised standards. Here’s one:
http://www.ifn.se/Wfiles/wp/WP578.pdf
Secondly, while it’s true that it will be mainly middle class parents who try and set up free schools in the UK, that won’t mean “social exclusion yet again for the working class”. The Tories said nothing in their manifesto about allowing free schools to have different admissions policies. On the contrary, they will be bound by exactly the same rules when it comes to admissions as Academies. In the case of the school my group is trying to set up in Ealing, it’s admissions policy won’t be any different from that of the surrounding comprehensives. That means it’s intake will reflect the social and ethnic diversity of the local area — which is exactly what we want.
Thirdly, you’re misinformed about surplus places. Yes, the Tory policy will require the DCSF to fund surplus places, but it already funds them and has done for years. It’s official Labour Party policy to fund the existence of some surplus places in state secondary school precisely in order to promote parental choice.
If you want to know what the real differences are between the two main parties policies, see my blog here:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyyoung/100034260/conservative-manifesto-the-tory-education-policy-has-got-my-vote/