Monthly Archives: May 2014

Bureaucratic and undemocratic: just what you expect from Labour

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David Blunkett’s blueprint (interestingly this the colour of the cover of his report, a colour once associated with the Tories and not Labour)  published yesterday has little to say in favour of local democracy. The Party that made sure the NHS was established on a national basis now seems determined to do the same for schooling. I have to declare that I am not unbiased in this debate as I am a Lib Dem County Councillor in Oxfordshire, and I firmly believe, at the very least, that primary education should remain a local democratic function whatever the fate of secondary and further education.

At the heart of David Blunkett’s proposals lies a new post of Director of School Standards (DSS):in reality a local commissioner for education reporting to a boss in Whitehall. However, with multi-borough and sub-regional officials, even “local” will mean many different things.

This new cadre of Labour bureaucrats will effectively remove any meaningful control over schooling from elected local authorities. The DSS, it is proposed, will monitor standards, and intervene where necessary; decide on new schools; and would have an un-elected panel to turn to for advice. The analogy with public health is used in the document, although, interestingly, public health was returned to local councils last year, with the director of Public Health making  an annual report to the Council.

Indeed, Oxfordshire has decided to provide a school nurse for every secondary school from September, something presumably Mr Blunkett would not think it was the local authority’s job to decide.

The fact that some local authorities have been less good at providing schooling for some children is not, in my judgment, a reason to take education away from local authorities as a whole, and to reduce them to toothless husks of their former selves.

In Oxfordshire, there is an Education Scrutiny Committee that has an attainment working party reporting to it; and officers monitor standards and report progress. Councillors are concerned about standards – the same is true elsewhere. Councillors need the ability to intervene if things are going wrong. Most of the powers suggested in the Blunkett review can be provided to existing local authority directors without the need for a new bureaucracy, and the inevitable costs associated with it.

Furthermore the Blunkett Review flies in the face of what Labour said before Christmas about Police and Crime Commissioners: then  their review, led by ex-Met Police Commissioner Lord Stevens, said PCCs, introduced in 2012, should be scrapped in 2016 and more power given to local councillors and local authorities. So, more power for councils over the police, but no power over schools now seems to be Labour’s inconsistent line.

Labour may understand the problem, and in part it was a problem created during their government, but their anti-democratic, centralist approach – under the guise of extending school-based, or in practice, groups of school based management – is not, in my judgment, the way forward. Providing a new ‘duty’ on local government to inform and support the interests of pupils and parents merely rubs salt in the wound.

There are, of course, good things in the other parts of the Review. The support for qualified and properly-trained teachers, improved careers advice, and a strengthening of the admissions code are all welcome. However, in the scale of things, you cannot escape the fact that at the heart of the Blunkett philosophy for schooling is a disregard for local democracy and an admiration for a managerialist approach.

Local councillors are much more accessible to parents that a Director of School Standards that may well be responsible for a sub-region. If the proposals in this blueprint make it into the election manifesto, it is Labour candidates that will have the biggest challenge in selling their party as interested in keeping education local come the general election next May.

 

 

Why keep a dog and bark yourself?

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The quote at the head of this piece came into my mind when I read the announcement by Michael Gove that he was establishing an independent review of teacher training courses led by a Surrey Primary head teacher with 26 years experience in one school. The DfE gave the aims of the review as:

  • define effective ITT practice
  • assess the extent to which the current system delivers effective ITT
  • recommend where and how improvements could be made
  • recommend ways to improve choice in the system by improving the transparency of course content and methods

Now these seem suspiciously similar to the task of Osfted inspectors when they look at teacher training provision. So, will the review team just read Ofsted reports, collate the findings, and publish a Report? In view of the time frame; a Report by the end of the year, from a group yet to be established, means that it will be interesting to see what more they can achieve.

Were I to commission a review it would have had terms of reference something like: consider the nature and content of the teacher preparation scheme needed to deliver an effective and improving school system that measures its performance among the best in the world for the range of children it serves while competing for entrants in a thriving labour market for those who after training will teach a diverse range of subjects and ages of pupils in many different types of schools.

The Gove review will need to consider what the purpose of choice is within training? We don’t need choice about standards. We may offer choice of course that is different for new graduates and older career switchers but we may also like both groups to train together. The Review might also ask why we don’t offer methods to allow teachers post-entry to retrain for different subjects or phases.

However,, perhaps the central question that any Review will need to address, if it is not to be a superficial endorsement of current policy directions, is how do we ensure sufficient teachers in the right places to drive the school system forward when an improving economy makes teaching seem less competitive to some new graduates as a career choice than other possible options? And once trained, how do we ensure they are recruited where they are needed?

As a primary head teacher, I hope that Mr Carter takes a long hard look at both the PGCE for primary teachers and School Direct in the primary sector, as well as Teach First’s primary offering, even if it is not actually included in his formal remit. Are there enough high quality applicants to sustain the pressure of a 39 week course that puts them in the classroom almost from day one? If not, how can we achieve such performance from the 20,000 trainees we need each year to create an improving school system?

On the secondary front, there are almost as many issues to consider, but I doubt course content and methods are really an issue except, perhaps, to see where subject knowledge fits into the picture.

Finally, the Review might like to comment on whether QTS should remain unspecified after the preparation phase or be more linked to specific subjects and phases of teaching.