Our ‘National Challenge’ to Government…
Bill's recent article in the Morning Star and EDUCATIONforTOMORROW
Ed Balls should be
ashamed. His “National Challenge to
Schools” is an unwarranted attack on teachers and children in a desperate
attempt to save the Government’s increasingly damaged skin.
He has, as Secretary of State for Children, Families & Schools, presented himself as something a bit different from the pack of New Labour “free market” dogmatists – particularly by commissioning an inquiry by Professor David Buckingham of the Institute of Education into all aspects of the role of private sector companies in our state schools – from advertising and vending machines in school corridors, through the commercialisation of the curriculum, to the ownership and control of our schools by individual millionaires and big business through the Academies programme and similar privatising initiatives.
But before Buckingham’s inquiry has had a chance to start work, Balls has acted to try to shore up his Government’s disastrous political position on the privatisation of our schools.
In the last few days he has resorted to belittling the efforts and achievements of young people from the toughest and most disadvantaged backgrounds… and threatening the livelihoods of their teachers and all the other workers in their schools… through his “National Challenge to Schools”. 638 schools – almost all from the poorest and most disadvantaged areas of the country - are to be set statistical ‘targets’ in terms of examination results, unrealistic in both extent and timescale – and threatened with closure and/or replacement by Academies if they fail to achieve them. He ignores the fact that 26 of the named schools are already Academies. The effects are clear. Teachers are undermined professionally, “named-and-shamed” schools are destabilised, and their pupils are denigrated and demoralised.
In the current
situation the schools identified have had about as much chance of reaching “The
National Challenge” demands as the average person has of winning “The National
Lottery”. Now they become the targets in a very cynical political game… they have
to be seen to be “failing” if the Government is to stand any chance of
convincing parents and local communities that the idea of private sector
control of schools is worth a second thought.
While Professor Buckingham prepares research on the effects of Academies as requested, Balls pre-empts the outcome of his own inquiry by declaring Academies to be the answer to the educational problems in these areas. Much of the £400 million associated with the “National Challenge” will, we can bet, find its way into the private sector through “education consultancies” and the “Academisation” process… the costs associated with turning schools over to the control of private sector “sponsors”.
The Government’s sustained attempts to fragment and privatise our education system are deeply unpopular. Wherever Academies are proposed, there are active local campaigns made up of ordinary people who do not want their local school sold off to a used car salesman, a religious fundamentalist, a financial speculator, a carpet warehouse magnate, a pork pie and sausage manufacturer, a mobile phone shop, a property developer… or whoever the multi-millionaire sponsor may be in their particular town. They do not want the special favour of a “sponsor” University for one school, and nothing for its neighbour. They do not want their schools taken away from elected and accountable Local Authorities. They do not want to travel further down the Government road of full blown privatisation, with schools run as competing profit making education businesses. That’s the “end-game” to the process.
Often these principled anti-privatisation campaigns are successful – and undemocratic Academy plans are shelved. Both NUT and NASUWT teaching unions have recently taken strike action to prevent the forcible change of employment of their members into the Academy private sector. Anti-Academy candidates were elected with good majorities in the recent local elections. Wherever the truth is told about Academies and other privatisation programmes, the Government loses yet more support – particularly from its traditional voters
So the Government is
impelled to attempt to chip away and undermine the confidence of those ordinary
people in their local state comprehensive schools. Thus, we have the “National Challenge
to Schools” – a political manoeuvre to conjure up “failure” out of real
sustained success of the state comprehensive system.
The whole state education system is presented as achieving less than in some “good old days” - about which the critics are a little unspecific. Nothing could be further than the truth. Young people across the system as a whole are doing better now than in any “golden age”.
I am 57 years old. I took my GCE ‘O’ levels (an A-C grade GCSE is the equivalent of the old GCE ‘O’ level) in 1967. I was lucky. I was one of just 20% of pupils who went to a Grammar School in my area. In other areas only 15% of pupils went to Grammar Schools.. and, in some, as few as 10%. For the most part, it was only pupils in these schools who took GCE “O” level, with only a very few at Secondary Modern Schools – about 80% of the school population – getting that chance.
In 2007, across all schools, about 60% of pupils achieved five or more A-C grades at GCSE… compared with just over 20% getting the equivalent in the mid 1960s.
So the state comprehensive education system – born in the 1960s - has succeeded in trebling the number of young people achieving these results – and this is the outcome of steady progress brought about by teachers acting professionally and co-operatively within and across state schools – in spite of recent Government dogma and top-down initiatives… and struggling in the face of education fragmentation, competition and privatisation.
The big majority of
the schools identified in the Balls Challenge as having less than 30% of pupils
achieving five top grades in GCSE are from the poorest of areas, with children
from the toughest backgrounds. All the research, produced and replicated over
the last seven or eight decades, demonstrates that the biggest single factor in
the educational achievement of young people is their social class background,
their position in the growing wealth/poverty gap, the degree of economic
deprivation they encounter every day of their young lives.
Even so, many of these schools achieve only just under Ed Balls’ statistically driven 30% target figure – a figure which is 150% higher than that achieved by the old selective grammar school system. And many, many more of their pupils gain three or four A-C grades, which they would have been denied in pre-comprehensive school days… the result of hard work by both them and their teachers and by other workers of all kinds in their schools – workers now insulted and threatened with school closure.
But, under Ed Balls direction, we now know what to say to
these children. “You may be facing many,
many difficulties in your life at home and in your communities. You may face
poverty every day. You may have worked very hard to achieve your GCSE results.
Your school may be achieving higher results that the old selective school
system. But it’s simply not good enough… in fact you and your school are
failures! And as a result of your failure, we are going to close your school,
and open a new one, which we will give to a millionaire to run… perhaps this will teach you all a lesson!”
Ed Balls tells us that his “National Challenge” and the Academies programme will help to “break the link between poverty and attainment”. Of course he doesn’t say how this might happen. The fact is that, if the Government genuinely wants to see an improvement in educational achievement, its priority should not be to break up state education, or even to simply seek to mitigate the effects of poverty in our schools… but to tackle and eliminate poverty, and the causes of poverty. But such measures have been conspicuously absent or hugely inadequate in New Labour’s policies and budgets.
A Derbyshire Labour MP told me over a nice cup of tea during
the recent Public Services Lobby of Parliament that everyone was getting
richer in
Two days later, the Government’s own figures told a different story. A further 100,000 children living below the poverty line in 2007, to be added to the 100,000 more the year before, bringing the total to 3.9 million - “or 2.9 million if you exclude housing costs,” as a Minister comfortingly explained – so presumably you face less poverty if you are homeless?
This is why young
people underachieve – because this New Labour Government is failing them. And that is why the Labour Party will lose
the next election, unless (is it too late?) they at least drop their bullying
arrogance – such as the “National Challenge to Schools” – and begin to listen
to the people.
So here’s a “National Challenge to the Government”. Listen to the people. Take action to provide decent jobs, decent pay, decent pensions, decent benefits, an end to poverty, proper public services – and stop attacking the workers in education, health and other public services who are charged with doing the best job they can for the ordinary people, while you dance to the tune of your millionaire mates.
You’ve got a maximum of 18 months. Should you fail this challenge, the people are likely to close you down. You’d almost certainly be replaced with something even worse than you… but don’t kid yourselves that this means it won’t happen.
Ed Balls is the product of the £9000 a year fee paying private Nottingham High School – and then Keble College, Oxford - where his dad had also been educated. He has not had to struggle against the social and educational effects of poverty and deprivation. Nor have his teachers and lecturers. Perhaps Ed, you should show more respect for teachers and pupils who face those issues everyday, and who are working hard together to produce very positive results… and who will be devastated by your unfounded attacks on their achievements.
Bill Greenshields
National President
National
12th June 2008