The April/May2010 British election campaign saw educators, academics and parents drawing battle lines in a debate to remove politics from education. Leading educators, writing in a TES letter of 2 April 2010, want to shift the prime responsibility for education to teachers, schools and colleges, urging that schooling should be depoliticised so as to rebuild public trust and free up education.
The outgoing Labour government, whilst making positive changes, also greatly increased the central, statutory control of education, and undermined the professional autonomy of teachers. For example, on the one hand, Ed Balls the former English Education and Children’s minister said he wanted teachers to exercise more responsibility, professional judgement and leadership. On the other, he trusted teachers so little that he signed the ‘nappy curriculum ‘ of the Early Years Foundation Stage into law in September 2008, with no Parliamentary debate. The EYFS requires child minders of three year olds in non-statutory settings to use computers for basic literacy, setting 70 targets for educators.
In sharp contrast, the Welsh government adopted the EYFS as voluntary guidelines for educators. Furthermore, Ed Balls said that teachers who refused to carry out SATS tests in 2010, would be breaking the law, rather than debating with them the extent to which ‘teaching to the SATS test’ was distorting real education.
Or take the way in which the findings of Professor Robin Alexander’s Cambridge Primary Review were dismissed by government. He concluded that:
‘ In spite of our careful attempts to elicit and record differences, what is striking about the Community Soundings is the extent of consensus which they reveal, especially in the key areas of educational purpose, curriculum and assessment, the condition of childhood and society, and the world in which today’s children are growing up. What is no less striking is the pessimistic and critical tenor of much of what we heard on such matters. Thus we were frequently told that children are under intense and perhaps excessive pressure from the policy driven demands of their schools and the commercially driven values of the wider society.’
An unnamed government spokesperson replied defensively that, ‘The vast majority of children go to better schools, enjoy better health, live in better housing and in more affluent households than they did 10 years ago… The government does not share the view that children are over tested. Tests help parents and teachers monitor the progress of children and ensure they get the help they need.’
A gulf has opened up between government on the one hand, and teachers, parents and academics on the other. Education needs to be taken out of politics. So it was refreshing that Nick Clegg described the fourteen page Swedish national curriculum, as a refreshing contrast to the lengthy English one, and went on to announce the need for a freedom in education charter. And rather than engage in the magic silver bullet policy of Swedish style parent run free schools (some of which will be run by profit making companies ready to pounce on a new market) advocated by the new Education secretary Michael Gove MP, the 14 education professors called for a research informed National Education Council to help guide schools with developing curricula, pedagogy and assessment. This would sit between renewed local authorities and government, with scrutinising roles in areas such as children’s attainments. Government would set overall systems, structures, and funding, but not what is taught and how.
‘The Council would guide schools in their development of curriculum, pedagogy, assessment and self evaluation; monitor children’s attainment by sampling; monitor local authorities’ supprt for schools; sponsor research into worthwhile practise; and generally aim to tell the public and Parliament of the successes, failures and future direction of the education system-without fear of favour of party politics.’
These proposals are similar to what the Freeing Education chapter of Common Wealth advocates. This calls for both a de-politicisation of education, and also pushing the market out of education as well. (E.g. for profit schools and education services such as Offsted privatising school inspection to corporations.) Common Wealth calls for a return to an equal partnership between government and schools, with each playing to their strengths- once again a public, but autonomous service. More freedom means the liberation of discretionary effort, and more responsibility-it’s the up to students, teachers, parents and communities.
A first step? Your call! However, several members of a Common Wealth Workshop that I conducted in Sheffield on Saturday May 21st suggested that we organised a world or conversation café at Freeman College, and invited local Sheffield Hallam MP, Nick Clegg to a dialogue on freeing education. They thought that civil society needed to open up participative political space for dialogue. It would be interesting to hear how Nick Clegg envisages the potential of the core Liberal principle of freedom to transform education.
Refs: www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6040712
Common Wealth for a free, equal, mutual and sustainable society, www.hawthornpress.com (2010)
