SEA Submission to Labour Party Commission on Education - June 2011

Foreword: The wider perspective

 

We are grateful for this opportunity to help shape Labour education policy. We have gone beyond the four questions asked in order to help differentiate Labour party education policy enough from current government policy.

We believe that Labour needs to develop its education policy in a way which builds from our key political values of equality, democracy, freedom and solidarity and which shows how these values can inform practical, relevant and attractive policies which will motivate people to campaign for them. In particular, Labour education policy must address what kind of public education system we want, how it should be controlled and made accountable and how we would ensure that education promotes greater equality and solidarity in society.

The following submission is based on extensive research, exposition and discussion by members of the SEA over a period of several months.  It comprises contributions and quotations from the SEA President, Professor Richard Pring of Oxford University, Professor Richard Hatcher of Birmingham City University, Martin Allen, co- author of ‘Lost Generation?’, Fiona Millar writer, journalist and campaigner for comprehensive state maintained education and numerous professionals and campaigners in the field including MPs, college principals, head teachers, university lecturers, educational psychologists, school governors, parents and trade unionists.

 

We believe that all education policy should be based on evidence.  ‘In the last two years there have been several comprehensive and independent reviews of many aspects of education and training in England and Wales ‘from the cradle to the grave’. If policy and practice are to be based on evidence, which ministers often affirm then these reviews are essential reference points’.    Professor Richard Pring, Evidence from the Past, Principles for the Future, March 2011. 

 

Professor Richard Pring has already made an independent submission to the commission.

 

We would refer you to our short statement “Education – the way forward for Labour” which we think is a good basis for policy development. We are happy to engage in further discussion and elaboration of the issues raised in this response.

 

Campaign to save state education

 

It is our submission that the Labour Party should lead an effective campaign to save state maintained education from privatisation equivalent to the campaign mounted to save the NHS.  We believe that the issues are much the same as those involved in the NHS and that the Labour Party should commit itself to the principle of co-operation not competition in public education.

 

Evidence shows that the present formula for inspecting schools ‘is designed to ensure that a large proportion of schools fail’ – Richard Hatcher, June 2011 – and that because attainment is measured by ‘raw scores’ that ‘schools serving poor areas will be most vulnerable to being failed’.  This is because the coalition government ‘want to open up the school system to private providers including those operating for profit.  Both of these entail dismantling the powers of both local authorities and of the teacher unions’. *

 

Labour’s Academies were not run for profit but ‘Now the creation on a large scale of Academies needing sponsors and of Free Schools – new start Academies – opens up a large and new market for profit.  They will need to employ private companies to set them up on their behalf in order to meet the tightened up application criteria.’*

 

The Labour Party must expose the wholesale selling off of state provided education assets and make it clear to the electorate that state maintained education will be safe in our hands.  The threat is real and advancing apace: ‘UK-Analyst.com makes its Wey Education its ‘Tip of the Day’ - a speculative buy at 16.5p.  The reason: the UK market for education is massive.’  The ConDem government have no mandate for this and they are using so called failing schools as an excuse to privatise state maintained education.  Labour must carry out a thorough review of the policy of Any Willing Provider being able to take over a school.  There must be clear democratic governance of these providers, strong grouping and proper commissioning of services.

 

Ken Purchase, former MP and SEA NEC member, proposes that ‘The SEA calls on the next Labour Government to conduct a full review of the governance and regulation of private providers of services to state-maintained education institutions, first to develop an education dedicated quality assurance mark, which together with a British Standard Mark any provider must possess as a condition of business and second, to ensure that state provided resources are not unnecessarily leaked away from state education institutions into the dividends, consultancy fees and salaries, of both 'for' and 'not for' profit companies, trusts, foundations, charities, voluntary or any other organisations offering education services to maintained institutions.’

 

*Richard Hatcher ‘The State of Local State Education’ paper delivered to SEA Conference June 2011

 

A key principle: “Do no harm”

 

Labour must expose the fact that the majority of schools currently converting to Academy status are being bribed into doing so. ‘Schools converting get their normal funding plus a share of the LACSEC money the LA holds for central services.  The way this is calculated by the DFE gives Academies much more than Local Authorities actually spend on them.  Some councils have been getting an extra £300 per pupil, worth around £300, 000 to the average secondary school.’ 

 

Meanwhile Local Authorities are being docked more money than they actually budget for Central Support Services – a total of at least £148 million.  This cut compounds the massive cut in Local Authority budgets – 27% over the next four years on average.

 

Head teachers, teachers, parents, governors of schools wishing to accept the bribe of converting to academy status must realise that they are specifically harming the interests of students in the maintained sector.  In many authorities there will soon be a tipping point where the LA will no longer be able to provide essential central services such as Educational Psychologists, speech therapists, SEN support etc. because the money has all been given to Academies. 

 

Labour must expose this self-seeking and insular approach to education provision and assert the principle of equal opportunities for all rather than excess for the few. 

 

Local democracy

 

‘The survival of local authorities in education is at stake.  Not just the technical and administrative role of LAs but their role as the democratic expression – however inadequate – of the local community.’  Schools are also being bribed into converting to Academy status by the promise of autonomy and freedom from LA accountability.  They will be responsible only to The Secretary of State; 20,000 self-governing units all sending in minutes of their governors’ meetings to Michael Gove.  This is clearly untenable and is a sham, a method of breaking up state maintained education and releasing schools onto the private market.  In reality there will be much greater control over curriculum, uniform, pay and conditions in these schools as they are increasingly taken over by Private Education Chains – private companies with no educational integrity whose only motive is profit.  Education will be dominated by large scale private providers such as ARK, E-ACT and Capita similar to the domination of large supermarket chains – ASDA, TESCO and Sainsbury’s.  There will be no real autonomy – only company policy.

 

Labour must look ahead to what form of democratic local organisation will be needed to provide a fair and well managed state maintained sector at local level.  The Labour Party’s education policy should either endorse the local authority as a means of ensuring local democratic accountability   or explore more direct means of ensuring local democratic accountability.  e.g. elected school boards.     ‘This conference believes that the Labour party should draw up plans to transfer all publicly funded schools to a single status. This would require them, as a condition of their funding, to have a comprehensive and inclusive intake and to comply with a national code for fair admissions.’     Motion submitted to the SEA Conference 2011.  

 

A reconfiguration of local government may well be required by the time of the next election but there must be democratic accountability at local level. ‘The Government should ensure necessary resources, teacher supply, legal framework, curriculum entitlement and overall accountability but leave detailed arrangements to democratically elected local partnerships and authorities.  The actual shape of such partnerships – their funding, organisation, local accountability and limitations within a national framework is a key question bequeathed by Reviews for others to answer’ – Richard Pring.  Effective democratic organisation at local level is the only way to achieve continuity and co-operation between a variety of providers.  Strategic planning is required so that early years primary, secondary, tertiary, FE, HE, employers, apprenticeship providers, ESOL, adult education can provide integrated comprehensive provision for all learners in a particular local area.

 

‘We call upon the shadow team to examine the Alberta experiment where all schools are state schools, there is strong local co-operative support between schools (not competition) and all schools offer a core curriculum plus differing specialisms to cater for the needs of different learners and to ensure a balanced intake of students’ – Fiona Millar.  The commitment to ensuring that ‘Every school is a good school’ will negate the competitive, market driven middle class parent dominated rat race that now characterises the English system.  

 

High expectations

 

The Labour Party must regain its role as the party of high educational expectations.  It must champion and extol the virtues and successes of most comprehensive schools while not tolerating complacency about poor performance.   Comprehensive education has been an overwhelming success.  It is only the Tory press and Tory Ministers bent on privatisation that continually denigrate the efforts and successes of teachers and learners in the state maintained sector.  Last year GCSE results were the best ever.  There are now more students qualifying for to go to university than there are places to accommodate them - ‘The UK is in the premier league of world education’ – Brian Cookson, NASUWT.   However, ‘Whereas Labour had many achievements there were many areas in education policy where opportunities were missed as well as creating openings for incoming coalition government’.  Labour needs to be ‘very honest about the changes and our position in respect of things like parental choice and the existence of schools that need to improve’ – Fiona Millar, SEA Conference June 2011.  Labour must make clear its belief that good learning is based on good teaching, well-resourced facilities and recognition of the fact that 93% of education success is based on social and economic background. (Professor Bernard Barker, University of Leicester) 

 

This is not an excuse for low expectation but a reason to base high expectations on the needs of the specific learner – ‘To each according to their need’ – and to provide adequately for schools in poor areas with large numbers of learners from deprived backgrounds and large numbers for whom English is their second language.  ‘Research shows that autonomy does raise standards; if it is autonomy over how learners are taught and how they are assessed’ – Martin Johnson, ATL, SEA Conference June 2011.  Schools in deprived areas do not need to be described as ‘failing’.  They need generous resources and freedom to teach according to the specific needs of their students.  This would necessitate an end to SATs and the reintroduction of teacher based assessment.  No child should be labelled a failure.  All children are educable and must have their needs and rate of development sensitively respected. 

 

Defining our commitment to comprehensive education

 

Andy Burnham has quite rightly reclaimed the concept of comprehensive education.  We now need to further define this.

 

The SEA urges the Labour Party to ensure that comprehensive education means:

• A comprehensive curriculum; broad and balanced
• Strong local comprehensive systems with co-operation between schools not league table-driven competition.  This co-operation should also extend to further education colleges where over 100,000 young people aged 14-16 currently spend a substantial part of their curriculum time in these institutions which have the resources and expertise often lacking in the schools.
• A system that is inclusive ensuring that all students including those with special needs can be taught together in a comprehensive classroom. A move back towards a presumption of inclusion
• Training in all schools to equip teachers with the skills needed to teach in inclusive settings
• The retention of School Action Plus to provide for access needs of all students
• The establishment of cross-phase provision so that all students can move freely through the stages of education as appropriate
• The provision of properly funded Independent Advice and Guidance for 14-16 year olds to provide appropriate advice on post-14 and post-16 options to ensure that they make the right choices for their future education

 

We support the idea of widespread consultation with local people to establish what they want from education, for example through local education commissions or Alberta’s ‘Go Public’ approach.

 

A comprehensive curriculum

 

What knowledge and skills does the next generation need to be successful in the modern world? How can we continue to improve standards in English, maths and science, but also provide a balanced curriculum which meets the needs of all children?

 

These question go to the heart of curriculum policy and design and were addressed very comprehensively at the upper secondary level by the Tomlinson report and the Nuffield Review of 14-19 Education “Education for All”*. These might be a good place to start in progressively building up a curriculum entitlement for all young people through primary and secondary education.

The government’s concept of a liberal education (eg: the English Bacc) is a very narrow one, on the other hand Labour’s vision in government was often too instrumental (education mainly for employment and economic ends). We need to embrace the idea of an aspirational core entitlement for all young people which prepares them for citizenship, work and a good life in every respect, includes elements of choice and allows for progression at different rates. Rather than attack the English Bacc, we should be arguing to broaden it in a way which values vocational and creative learning and different levels of achievement at different ages.

Assessing achievement by a certain age can be a useful snapshot but we also need to value student progress and achievement at all levels. League tables tend to lead to schools concentrating on the progress of students close to a specific threshold (eg: 5 A-C at GCSE or the English Bacc)

 

 

*The curriculum framework should introduce all young people to:

• forms of understanding which enable them to make sense of their physical and social worlds;
• opportunities to excel and to have a sense of achievement;
• practical and economically relevant capabilities;
• issues of profound social and personal concern;
• information, advice and guidance for future career, training and education
• knowledge, skills and experience relevant to the wider community.

 

*From Education for All – The Nuffield Review of 14-19 Education and Training.

 

School admissions

Fair and equitable school admission policies are fundamental to a truly comprehensive system.  The SEA believes that ‘The Labour Party should draw up plans to transfer all publicly funded schools to a single status.  This would require them as a condition of their funding to have a comprehensive and inclusive intake and comply with a national code for fair admissions’ – SEA Conference, June 2011

*SEA considers that a fair admission system is fundamental to the creation of a high quality school system that provides equal opportunities for all.

It therefore opposes current government proposals to reduce the ability of local authorities and the school adjudicators to ensure that the school admission system is fair and transparent. It considers that these proposals will make the admission system more unfair, more difficult for families to manage and easier for schools to choose the pupils they want and reject those they do not.

It will campaign for an admission system which will provide equal and fair access and a choice of high quality schools for all by:

• making it a priority of the admission system that all schools have intakes that are balanced as far as possible in terms of ability, class and ethnicity
• eliminating covert selection especially by schools that manage their own admissions
• reducing the growing complexity of the admissions system
• strengthening the admissions code and the ability of local authorities and the adjudicator to ensure it is complied with.

*Motion passed at SEA Conference June 2011

 

Widening participation

 

The Labour Party has acknowledged the research that demonstrates that EMA played  a crucial role in encouraging those students from disadvantaged backgrounds who would not otherwise have gone on to FE and HE to continue their studies post 16 and post 18 and aspire to university education.

 

*‘The Labour Party’s plans for government should include as a high priority the reintroduction of EMA’ – SEA Conference resolution June 2011.

 

Further the Labour Party should include plans for a phased return to a fully publicly funded system of higher education and the abolition of tuition fees

 

All publicly funded universities should be required as a condition of their funding to develop plans for widening access and responding to the educational needs of their communities’ *SEA resolution.

Who is education for?

 

What influence and control do parents want over local schools and their own child’s education?

 

What parents most want is a good local school for their children. They value a good relationship with the school and some may wish to become more involved in the wider life and governance of their child’s school for instance as an elected parent governor. Beyond this, there is no reason why the current parents of children at a particular school should exercise any more influence or control than other members of the community. Schools are a social resource, owned by the whole community and not by today’s parents or by private providers or “chains” of providers with no roots in the local community.

The key questions are: How do we make individual schools and the education system as a whole democratically accountable to the whole community? What type and degree of accountability and over what area would be appropriate? How do we reflect the stakes of the national state, the region, local authority and local neighbourhoods as well as those of parents, pupils and educational professionals? We would welcome a fuller debate on this issue.

As Richard Pring argues in his paper,* ‘What counts as an educated person in this day and age?’ The Labour Party needs to be reminded of the profoundly ethical nature of education policy in terms of values and personal well being … We should make sure that the provision of educational opportunities begins with the needs of the learners, not with the interests of the providers’.

 

 

A high quality teaching workforce

 

How can we create the most professional and highest quality teaching workforce in the world?

 

We will get the best from our teachers if they have good national conditions of service and feel valued. Teaching is not purely a craft, although there are many craft aspects to the job. Good teachers have a good grasp of education theory and strong core values, they are willing to experiment, innovate and research in order to improve their teaching. Teachers need time to work together and form networks within and across schools to develop and share good practice and there needs to be an “open source” culture in public education rather than a market in resources and methods. Teachers should be entitled to regular sabbaticals to refresh their knowledge and skills and government should support national or regional teams of expert teachers to promote improvement and innovation and support trials for new developments.

The SEA is concerned about the increasing privatisation of teacher training, based as it is now on organisations such as ‘Teach First’ which has become responsible for the majority of teacher training, having recently overtaken the Institute of Education.

 

While it is recognised that some head teachers will be pleased to recruit teachers with good degrees from Russell Group universities, it causes concern that the main motive for this is financial rather than vocational. It is again a matter of ‘Do no harm’. Salaries paid to Teach First teachers are taken from the LA budget and there is no parity of esteem between teachers doing identical jobs in different schools - for example a TF head of science in an Academy and a head of science in a maintained school can receive wildly differing salaries. The SEA calls upon the commission to research into how many teachers from ‘Teach First’ remain in teaching beyond two years – five years and analyse quantifiable results in terms of good teaching being provided.

 

The SEA has serious reservations about the whole question of ‘on the job’ training which reduces training to simply to learning a series of skills rather than developing a clear understanding of the philosophy, sociology and history of education and thus a deeper understanding of how and why children learn.

 

The SEA calls upon the commission to reinstate university based teacher training. Richard Pring argues, ‘No policy, howsoever well thought out, has merit unless it is thoughtfully implemented by those who teach. They alone have the pedagogical expertise for communicating the knowledge, values and skills, which we have inherited, to the developing minds, interests and aspirations of the learners. But that expertise needs to be nurtured through rigorous training and then through continuing professional development, responding to the perceived needs of the teaching profession’ - ’Education for All’

 

 

 

Teacher recruitment and retention

 

Current government policies are a serious threat to the recruitment and retention of good teachers in the maintained sector. The current secondary school ‘floor target’ of 35% of students getting 5 ‘good’ GCSEs including English and Maths is being raised to 40% by 2012 and 50% by 2015. This means all schools must achieve the national average or above or be turned into an Academy and privatised. This is of course patent nonsense in mathematical terms, since the nature of averages is that some are below and some are above. However the effect on the morale of teachers in schools achieving 43% or 47% will be very serious – motivating some to look for other posts rather than work in a school that has been labelled a ‘failure’. A strong local system could support all schools and the staff working in them rather than allowing some to spiral towards failure.