Cameron has put himself in a difficult position by supporting state schools
Dear David Cameron,
I’m delighted to see that someone in politics has realised that the economic crisis is not the only important issue facing this country over the next few years. While Gordon Brown is being regularly humiliated by other heads of state, with Nicolas Sarkozy now joining the long line of foreign dignatories who have recently slated him, you decided to turn your attention back to your flagship education policy. While I agree with everything that you’ve said, I fear that you might have put yourself in a difficult position.
You and Michael Gove are to be applauded from setting up a future Conservative government to shatter the state monopoly on education. You will allow charities, parents, community groups and private enterprises to open up state schools anywhere in the country. Furthermore, you will offer financial incentives for them to set up in deprived areas and will also offer schools additional funding for taking on more pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds. On the basis of what I was saying yesterday about why I am a Conservative, I firmly believe in the government having a moral duty to help those from more difficult backgrounds get the start in life that they deserve and this is precisely the kind of policies that would bring this about – state funding supporting independent public service providers in the name of social justice. Your desire to take on the teaching unions, who remain far too powerful, is to be welcomed as their stranglehold on education has suffocated our schools and prevented innovation and improvement for too long. In addition to breaking open the state monpoly on running schools, you will allow state schools to drop GCSEs in favour of more rigorous exams currently only allowed in private schools, headteachers would get more power to expel pupils and staff would be able to restrain violent children without fear of being sued. No complaints from me. Admittedly you’re reiterated that you won’t do anything about existing grammar schools but we’ll save that discussion for another day.
These policies will have huge appeal among parents. I’m convinced that middle class parents would much rather send their children to a high-quality free comprehensive than fork out £10,000 a year to ship them off to private school. Parents from more deprived areas will presumably be delighted that their children get additional money for their education and new schools are more likely to be set up near where they live. Who could complain about that? I think your sentiment is absolutely correct but I’m worried that you might have backed yourself into a corner at a personal level. We’ve all seen the backlash against Labour ministers sending their children to private school because Labour are the natural enemy of the independent sector. You said yesterday: “I would like my children to go through the state sector. I’ll always do the right thing for them.” But that’s just it: you’ll always do the right thing for them. You turned your nose up at around 15 primaries near your West London home to send your five-year-old daughter to an Anglican state school because you wanted to do what’s best for your children. When your youngest son Elwen starts primary school in a couple of years, you might well be Prime Minister. What if the local schools aren’t good enough for you? Even though you said you’d like your children to go into the state sector, the state schools near you might not be good enough. What if there’s a better private school in the near vicinity? Would you really ignore it when the time comes?
I fully support your education policies and I think they could herald something quite special in our schools if implemented correctly. That said, I have always ignored the media heckling of politicians for sending their children to private schools because I know that when the time comes, I will do what’s best for my children regardless of what other people say or think. You clearly had the best intentions when you made your comments yesterday. I can only hope that they don’t come back to hurt you.
Yours sincerely,
A.Tory
Witanagemot Blogs
I should preface this by saying that I ferry my children 20 miles to school as I will not use the local ones. In rural England this is the only choice at present. Independent schools are too expensive for most of us, and I rather dislike the ‘religious indoctrination’ policies I have seen in some of them. (I have worked in both state and private schools). This has become less avoidable in recent years in the state system also. (I am not religious and object when my 6 year old comes home and tells me I shall go to hell because I don’t believe, that I am a bad person).
There are ways however, to rescue the state system from its current malaise. Firstly, the scrapping of the GCSE, and a return to something much more like the O Level, with much less emphasis on coursework (which can be rendered a useless measure by the conduct of individual teachers in an effort to avoid failure). There is no reason to make those who are uninterested sit History sociology or music just to make up the numbers, study something useful like plumbing or electronics at 14. That way you have more chance of getting the required standard of Maths & English into them before they lose all interest in education through sheer boredom.
The Syllabus must be re written. It must be more relevant, British history must return, ingenuity must be encouraged in sciences and arts, and the one size fits all mentality must be restrained. I am involved in music teaching, and the current course involves little musicianship and a great reliance on technology. This makes sense if you want higher numbers to take the course, but less sense if you wish to encourage achievement because it just encourages unsuitable candidates who like listening to music but have not pursued instruments at all and see it as an easy and enjoyable C grade with little intellectual endeavour.
Everything is geared to university entrance, but do 50% of our teenagers really gain from going to university, and does our education system really prepare those that go?
I also do not understand the obsession with private education. If the state could be made to do the job properly there would be little need for it. (It’s not a lack of resources we have in the state sector, it’s a lack of initiative and an overdose of dogma). At the same time, I see no need to attack the public sector, just leave it alone to do what it does while constantly making it irrelevant by lifting the standard in the state sector. My German and Dutch friends have a great grasp of a wide range of subjects from English and literature to art and sciences, (and laugh at the way languages are taught here with some justification). They are all state educated, so it can’t be impossible here, can it?
Lastly, Labour politicians have constantly tried to undermine anything that does not conform to their political agenda, while all the time taking advantage of it for their own. Do as I say, not as I do, the call of the champagne socialist. I do not see this in conservatives, and hope never to do so.
Actually, GCSE coursework has now been pretty much scrapped in every subject but the iGCSE is still far superior in terms of standards. I’m more of the opinion that schools should be given flexibility in the curriculum because it seems ridiculous that every school in the country teachers the same subjects in the same way – where is the innovation and creativity?
As you said, the obsession with private education is simply that state education is so awful that parents are desperate to buy their way out. I hope for everyone’s sake that the Conservatives’ reforms can break this understandable but saddening mentality.
When your youngest son Elwen starts primary school in a couple of years, you might well be Prime Minister. What if the local schools aren’t good enough for you?
More pertinently could a state school be expected to cope with the added security that a Prime Ministerial child would bring to it? I remember clearly what happened when it transpired that Stella Rimmington, then head of MI5, had her daughter attending La Sante Union in Camden (I’d gone to an affiliated School in the Borough). The news eventually leaked prompting firearms officers, spooks and paramilitaries (not to mention the press) to descend on the area and disappear the girl forever. Well, in the ‘from the public eye’ sense and not the more dramatic one. Rimmington’s home was obviously compromised too but that’s less of an issue when you know Dave would be living in Number 10. Still, you can see the concerns…
Security will be important and perhaps a private school might be better equipped to deal with it. That said, where there’s a Prime Minister’s will, there’s probably a way.
Nope. Michael Howard’s idea of education vouchers that was in the 2001 manifesto is the way forward.
Based on the full cost of a state education place, I have done a break-even ready-reckoner (click link) on what how many children would have to go for vouchers for different values for there to be no net cost to the taxpayer, i.e. if the vouchers were £5,000, as long as more than a quarter of children (including those already in private education!) used the voucher, there would be no net cost to the taxpayer – so if half of children took them up there would be a modest saving to the taxpayer.
What’s not to like?
No way, Mark. I know that vouchers have a lot of fans, but my interest in helping support those from disadvantaged backgrounds always pushes me away from them.
The middle classes will have too much power in a voucher system, whereas a ‘pupil premium’ to encourage schools to take on pupils from more difficult backgrounds will help push education forward for everyone, not just the well-off. Choice can be introduced through other more just means, as David Cameron and Michael Gove have discussed, and vouchers would not incentivise new schools to set up in neglected areas.
so if half of children took them up there would be a modest saving to the taxpayer.
TBH, I’d rather pay a bit more tax, if I had to, if it could *guarantee* kids left school able to read and write. The saving would come down the line from reduced benefit bills and lower prison fees.
As a blue-sky excercise, would it be beyond our ken to devise an educational system that let every child be literate and numerate and if we can do that, maybe get year-zero on education and start from scratch!
I liked what Cameron said. The State’s stranglehold on education, with it’s one-size-fits ideology, (and it’s that ideology itself that is all-important to the like of Basher Balls, not the business of educating), has done tremendous damage and is a sad, depressing scandal.
But I must say that I am disappointed in Cameron’s attitude towards Grammar schools. I’m not any kind of educational expert, AT, but in terms of giving disadvantaged kids the opportnity to a good, solid, rigorous education, as well as producing well-rounded and more-self-reliant individuals, Grammars cannot be beat.
Don’t get me wrong, I think Cameron’s ideas are very good, and were they to come to fruition would be a distinct improvement on what we have now.
But we don’t really know if it will work, or what unseen, and potentially insurmountable problems, may arise as a result.
Whereas, despite the fact that Grammars would have to adapt slightly, they remain an engine of social-mobility with an impressive and proven track record.
Play a game Bobshed – get a list of Labour ministers and juniors since 1997 and then remove the ones who wen’t to grammar schools. Do the same with a general list of Labour MPs and now reflect on the old adage about ‘pulling the ladder up after you’…
There are two ways of ensuring equality – either drag everyone UP to the same level or dismantle the top end and place everyone in the bottom. Socialism, in its urge for equality over its drive for standards, would rather that everyone suffered at the same level than have anyone, especially not the rich, escape from egalitarian squalor.
As someone from a working class background, from a council estate who’s parents benefited from Thatcher’s change to home ownership and so on it has always been this perverse desire not to elevate but to demote all to the same level that underpins my abiding mistrust of socialism. Its the abiding belief that quality should rise and that talent, not ‘need’, should be rewarded that has consistently pushed me to the right of centre.
Absolutely agree, Shaun.
I grew up on an estate. I believed in Socialism until I was in my twenties. But as I got older I gradually lost faith in it and drifted away from the left. What Socialism, with all its spite and egalitarian nonsense, has done to education may well be the main reason for me.
LFAT “The middle classes will have too much power in a voucher system…”
I prefer the US definition of middle class – that is every normal family with one or both parents working. What we UK snobs split up into ‘working class’ or ‘middle class’. A teacher friend told me that the only kids who cause problems are from single-parent families, broken homes etc. (obviously a lot of kids from those backgrounds are perfectly good pupils). So if a voucher system benefits “the middle classes” which is around 80% or 90% of the population in my book, that must be A Good Thing? And those parents from The Underclass who care about their kids’ education* can ride the coat tails of the US-definition middle class who gradually and inexorably push up standards.
Or do you think that Tesco et al would provide better food at lower prices if they were nationalised and there were some taxpayer-funded premium for selling ‘healthy options’ to The Underclass? I doubt it. And running a chain like Tesco is one heck of a lot more complicated than running a school for a few hundred children, teaching them time-honoured stuff like times tables, spelling, grammar and history and so on.
* The incredible rise in The Underclass is purely down to our welfare policies** that e.g. pay an unemployed single woman an extra £120 a week plus free council flat if she has two or more kids, whereas a woman who gives up her job to stay at home with two kids while her hubby goes to work on an average wage gets a princely £40 or so in Child Benefit and a smidge of Working Tax Credit – there’s no penny compensation towards the loss of her earnings. That’s a whole ‘nother topic (click link for more)
** They don’t have any of this rubbish in The Netherlands and their rate of teenage & single mothers is negligible.
When your youngest son Elwen starts primary school in a couple of years, you might well be Prime Minister. What if the local schools aren’t good enough for you?
It’s pretty obvious what he’ll do. There’s bound to be at least one good state school in the whole of London, and Cameron will pull strings to make sure his kid gets a place. Like Blair did. Come to think of it, Cameron’s a lot like Blair in many ways.
“And those parents from The Underclass who care about their kids’ education* can ride the coat tails of the US-definition middle class who gradually and inexorably push up standards.”
Mark, I guess this is where we disagree. A voucher system will let the middle classes steam ahead in the hope that those less well off will eventually benefit too. I much prefer a system where everyone is empowered with the same choices and the same benefits, but the schools themselves play a greater role in giving opportunities to those from tougher backgrounds. Charter schools in America are placed in the hardest districts because the national and state governments know that this is where you have to start, not by giving the middle classes a further step up.
Our underclass is absolutely down to distorted welfare policies but changing our benefits system will not be enough to wipe away the generations of pain that Labour have inflicted on many families. This is why I believe the state needs to play a role (albeit a limited one), because without some help these families will keep falling further and further behind.
Cabalmat, you may well be right. I’m just frustrated that he dug such a huge hole for himself. No doubt this was politically rather than personally motivated.
He would like to. It strengthens his case if he can point out to the socialist policies that have run schools since comprehensives were formed and say “… but those policies mean I cannot, as I value my children’s education as much as you value education for your children. We are now doing something about that, changing the culture in schools, where Labour simply made it worse”
Perhaps, but you know the left-wing press will still hammer him for making a ‘u-turn’. The policies that he is putting forward will take years to embed. In Sweden, where they’ve had school choice and independent providers for almost a decade, they’re still trying to sort out some problems with school accountability and a lack of new schools in some parts of the country.