Tower and Town, May 2017

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Towards Better Education

Can we move away from this chaotic, muddled excuse for an education system?

I have spent the last 25 years working in Further Education and before that I was a young person myself, so for all my life I have had either a personal or professional interest in supporting them. Over that time I have witnessed the creation and subsequent closure of numerous Government Agencies charged with deciding what young people need, each being remarkably similar to what went before. All being equally unsuccessful.

I have seen the complete re-vamp of A levels and am now witnessing the reversal of this in under 20 years. I have listened intently to Ministers’ plans to create parity between so called vocational and academic education, knowing full well that the inevitable proposal to change the vocational curriculum would lead only to a flurry of activity before being quietly forgotten when the minister moves on, their tenure measured in months not years.

Throughout all this time I have sought to largely sidestep what I am being told is needed by those proposing the purpose of further education is solely to meet the needs of employers. I have also sought to work collaboratively and collegiately with other colleges when I have been told that the needs of young people are best met through “competition and choice”.

The notion that the provision of social goods, like education, can be improved through the wasteful duplication of resources necessary to create the market conditions, where pseudo–competition can be created, is highly contestable everywhere, except where policy is made. But, whilst it might arguably be affordable during times of plenty, this highly expensive system is simply not sustainable when funding, as is the case today, is being cut.

I use the word system lightly. We don’t have an education system in England. Interestingly though, many countries do, many countries operate systems which have been left to endure for decades, subject only to necessary fine tuning along the way. My field is Further Education. In the UK, since the Second World War, we have seen in excess of 30 attempts to overhaul the vocational education sector. The corresponding figure for Germany is 2. Perhaps that says it all.

In England our political parties have decided that education policy is party politics. This justifies their dealing in education for political capital. 24 hour media need feeding and so as practitioners we have to endure this month’s new initiative every month. Policy is regularly drafted on the hoof and in response to today’s crisis in Westminster. This accounts for education providers being responsible for dealing with terrorism and extremism, for ensuring that no harm can come to young people at any time, and many other things besides.

Just take a look at schools today. At a time when schools are facing a short term demographic drop in demand for school places we have more ways of opening schools than ever. Each new school offers more “choice” and the “competition” this creates will increase “standards” for all. Well, this familiar mantra rings hollow. There is no evidence to show how the opening of new schools (Free Schools, Studio Schools, University Technical Colleges, Academies, Academy Chains, dare I mention “new” Grammars ! etc) makes a blind bit of difference to the performance of young people in any given area overall. They do, however, provide politicians with wonderful photo opportunities and the reassurance that they have done something.

Looking to the future, however, if we want to allow young people to be better educated and better prepared for an unpredictable world then I would advocate that we take education policy out of the hands of politicians and create, with full party support, a Royal Commission to properly decide on educational policy for the next 20 years. The notion that “competition and choice” will provide high quality should be disavowed completely. The institutions that are needed, to deliver much higher expectations than we currently have for our young people, should be identified and invested in properly so they have the best resources we can provide. This would also include better paid teaching staff.

The money to provide this is already there, it is just spent unwisely. The costs of created pseudo-markets and the monitoring arrangements accompanying them aren’t necessary. Ofsted could go too if institutions were accountable to their locality rather than Government.

Independent schools’ charitable status could be revoked with the benefits channelled into state education. Finland seems to regularly do well in international performance tables. In Finland no school can charge fees and all intakes have to be broad. There is no streaming either. Finland seems more focussed on educating in contrast to our national obsession with grading and sorting and using education as the back stop for dealing with failings in other policy areas.

If Government had the courage to hand over responsibility things would improve quickly. If not, as is likely, we will remain subject to short term whims and a repeating cycle of doomed-to-fail initiatives. If only we had more conviction politicians and fewer career ones.

Steve Wain