Tag Archives: Labour Party

What is the role of the State in schooling?

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This is an interesting philosophical question for a Sunday morning. It arises out of my post yesterday questioning a decision of the Labour government to allow a state school to open sites overseas, presumably for profit. Has Labour gone mad? | John Howson

The genesis of that blog  post was a tes magazine piece about a grammar school in London teaming up with a global brand to open sites in Dubai and Delhi Queen Elizabeth’s School to open fee-paying school in Dubai | Tes

What is the role of the state in schooling in the second quarter of the 21st century? When the 1870 Education Act was passed, as one of the Gladstone government’s first Bills before the new parliament, it was to ensure all children received at least some education. There was a feeling that a lack of literacy was resulting in British’s industry losing its advantage in the industrial revolution to countries with better educated populations.

After 1870, the State increasingly became the default position for schooling. Parents didn’t have to use it, but if they didn’t choose an alternative, basically the private sector or home schooling, then attending the local school from five to early teens was required of children. State paternalism or practical politics to allow the economy to continue to be successful?

155 years later, and we have the State, now run by a Labour government, sanctioning a state-funded school partnering with a global company to create school sites overseas selling its brand of education.

Why not allow this? After all, as someone pointed out on LinkedIn, the State too often rescues loss-making industries, why then shouldn’t it make money out of education?

Of course, the State already helps British Industry and commerce make money from exporting aspects of our successful education enterprise, from textbooks to teachers and private schools with sites overseas, as well as private schools bring in overseas students and their fees the government offers help and advice.

So, should State capitalism in this country support state schools opening branches overseas, and those schools making a profit on that work, to be ploughed back into their school in England, thus potentially earning it more cash than the State provides?

Firstly, profit is not a given. Secondly, how will the countries where such schools are located react. Happy not to worry about attracting expatriate workers because there will be high quality education for their children. And, also happy for its own citizens to attend such schools, with a different curriculum to what State schools in that country might teach?

The issue of state schools topping up their funding, whether from parents, donors or now profits, has worried me ever since I taught in Tottenham in the 1970s. School fetes, a feature of those days, run by primary schools in Highgate made thousands of pounds, those run by schools in Tottenham couldn’t match such income. Was this acceptable? At that time, local authorities ran schools and could compensate for this discrepancy. Now, the National Funding Formula make such compensation more challenging, except through the Pupil Premium.

The entrepreneur in me applauds the school making money overseas; the politician takes the opposite view. In this case, I think the politician wins. We need to debate afresh the role of the State in schooling in England, and both its purpose and its limits.

Why ’V’ Levels are important for Labour

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Alongside her campaign to become deputy leader of the Labour Party, the Secretary of State for Education has found time today to announce a new post-16 set of qualifications, called ‘V’ Levels, presumably to bring order to the landscape of such qualifications that she sees as confusing.

As I write this blog, the exact details of the new qualification to sit alongside ‘A’ & ‘T’ Levels has not yet been announced to the House of Commons, so we don’t yet know about the nature and format of ‘V’ Levels in detail.

However, as the following table shows, they may be important to many Labour Party members fighting non-metropolitan seats in the north of England, The Midlands and the South West region.

RegionNumber of pupils completing key stage 4Sustained education, employment & apprenticeshipsSustained education destinationSustained apprenticeshipsSustained employment destination
North East26,93191.581.74.65.2
South West53,11193.984.14.75.0
Yorkshire and The Humber58,91892.082.84.34.9
North West79,55092.183.34.14.7
East Midlands50,00292.684.24.24.2
East of England64,44594.287.42.74.1
West Midlands64,56592.485.23.24.0
South East90,64994.387.72.64.0
London84,42794.692.00.91.7
Outer London55,92194.892.01.01.7
Inner London28,50694.191.90.61.5

The data is for 2023 and was published last week by the DfE as Destinations of key stage 4 and 5 students: 2024 – GOV.UK although it doesn’t seem to contain the 2024 data yet.

London students, and especially those in inner London Key Stage providers seem overwhelmingly to remain in a sustained education institution, albeit not necessarily the institution where they undertook their Key Stage 4 courses. Less than 1% of inner London students proceeded to a sustained apprenticeship. Obviously, there is more room for such apprenticeships to be offered to these pupils. By contrast, the further away from London the region, the more likely that over 4% of students will proceed to apprenticeships.  

The pattern for employment, not regarded by previous government as a key option after the raising unofficially of the learning leaving age to eighteen, mirrors that of apprenticeships, with higher rates the further away from London students are located. Indeed, London is something of an outlier in respect of employment rates for this group, following the pattern expected after the raising f the school leaving age.

Missing for the table are the NEETS – those not in any category in the table. Will ‘V’ Level qualifications help reduce this number, and might it help if such qualifications started at 14, the age when many NEETS fall out of interest in schooling? I was going to write, ‘fall out of love’, but many, I suspect, were never actually in love with schooling.

Anyway, I will be interesting to see whether the announcement helps the Secretary of State’s own election campaign and, if so, whether she will be in place to take the initiative forward?

What counts as terrorism?

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Last month I wrote a blog post about the reasons why teachers have been barred so far this year from ‘teaching’ and ‘working with young people’ by their regulatory body.

The fact that a large number of protesters were arrested last weekend for supporting a proscribed terrorist organisation, made me think about how might the regulatory body approach any teacher with a criminal record for supporting a proscribed organisation?

Paul Harris, a human rights lawyer, has written an interesting article about the prescription of Palestine Action Why proscription of Palestine Action is a mistake | COUNSEL | The Magazine of the Bar of England and Wales In his view the prescription was too draconian a response.

I asked him about the position of teachers arrested protesting the proscription, and this was our exchange on LinkedIn:

John Howson Paul, Thank you for writing this. I wonder whether the Teaching Regulatory body would disbar someone from teaching for the act of terrorism of holding up a placard?

Paul HarrisAuthor Barrister and senior counsel at Doughty Street Chambers, Cornwall Street Chambers, Erik Shum Chambers, Hong Kong

John
Maybe not for just holding up a placard if they were not charged. But if convicted of an offence of supporting a proscribed terrorist organisation because of holding up the banner then it seems to me the Teaching Regulatory Body would have little choice but to disbar.

I am not sure why a Labour government took the decision it did over Palestine Action. It is interesting to compare it with how the Conservative government behaved when Extinction Rebellion were protesting by both sitting down on motorways and through other types of disruptive protest.

Following on from Paul Harris’s comment, I think that any direct action protest, and the actions of Extinction Rebellion supporters was seen as just that, and punishable under existing laws raises interesting questions. Did the behaviour of the courts in Extinction Rebellion cases set a precedent for state action over protests. There is, I suppose, a question mark over any such precedent when the direct action involves defence assets, such as airplane engines.

However, even if direct action could be seen as terrorism, I don’t think reacting to the government’s decision to prescribe and organisation by supporting the existence of the banned group through holding up a placard makes those that take that action guilty of terrorism.

However, in the light of Paul’s comment, my guess is that any teacher holding up a banner with any reference to Palestine Action might well be risking their career in the present circumstances, even if they are doing so in their own time, and nowhere near their place of work.

Clearly, it is time for the professional associations to engage with the Secretary of State for Education, both in her cabinet role, and in her role as a possible candidate for the post of deputy leader of The Labour Party, to ensure peaceful protest is not classed as terrorism, even in support of a banned organisation.

The idea of a Labour Secretary of State for Education supporting a regulatory body’s decision to bar a teacher for holding up a placard is not one I ever expect to have to consider on this blog.

Windfall profits and SEND

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There is no doubt that the rise in demand for special school places over the past few years was neither anticipated nor effectively dealt with by the State. One consequence is that large amount of off-balance sheet debt being carried by many local authorities responsible for schooling in England. Another consequence, highlighted by the Liberal Democrats in a press release issued today, is what might be described as the ‘windfall’ profits being made by a few in the SEND sector. Lib Dems demand cap on SEND providers profits as top firms rake in £100m – Liberal Democrats

When the highest paid director of a company operating both care homes for children and special schools is paid over £300,000, or more than twice the salary of a Director of Children’s Services commissioning the use of places in the schools and homes, it seems sensible to question whether such use of public money should continue.

At this point, I must make clear that I am a capitalist. The 40 years I have traded on my own account and through a company, as well as held a portfolio of investments in other companies. However, there are two issues that concern me. Where should the boundary line between services offered by the State and those run by the private sector be drawn? And how should price be determined?

It is interesting, as I have noted before, that in the USA and many other countries, public transportation is just that: a service run by the State. In England it has become a battleground between the State and private enterprise and the differing political opinions. Most would expect SEND to be a public service.

What often seems to be lacking is a mechanism to regulate the costs of suppliers to the State. When the private sector funds its enterprise by borrowing to provide the services and then expects the State to service that debt with a profit element added, it seems to me like time to take the service out of the private sector, and back into public provision.

In the case of SEND school places, national and local government should work together to prove places in state-run schools that would obviate the need for private sector intervention. This means the State, in this case the DfE, being much more interventionalist than has been the case.

The Liberal Democrats, of which I am a member and activist, noted in their press release that

‘Research commissioned by the party and carried out by the House of Commons Library showed that the top handful of profiting companies each took home tens of millions a year. One Group, operators of 28 special schools, turned over just over £200 million a year, making £44 million in profit – a margin of over 20%. That profit is 150% what the company made in 2022.’

How many more teachers might the £44 million have funded? While we wait for the government to produce a White Paper on SEND, perhaps the Local Government Association should set up a taskforce to remove the need to use the private sector.

I am sure that when John Stuart Mill, the nineteenth century philosopher, said that’ it was the duty of the State to see it citizens were educated, not to educate them itself’ he did not expect the cost to the State to be more than a reasonable amount.

Pragmatism versus Principles

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Every politician should have principles. Some might call them values, and others might designate them as ideologies. Whatever name you use, they provide a yardstick by which to judge any government.

I know that there were two key message I passed on to senior leaders when I became a cabinet member in Oxfordshire. One was ‘no bin bags’ and the other ‘no young person on remand should be in Feltham YOI’. I might explain my reasoning behind each of these principles in a latter post, but for now it is enough to know that both were accepted by officers and, I believe, achieved.

Looking at the wider context of the present Labour government, there is one clear principle that they adopted quickly: tax the private school market through VAT and changes to business rate relief. This was the introduction of a long-standing view of the Labour Party that such schools are divisive and not good for society as a whole. This despite some Labour members sending their own children to such schools in the past.

Another, and equally important principle for the Labour party in the 1960s and 1970s was the drive to non-selective secondary education. Indeed, it was Shirley William that introduced the 1976 Education Act, the main purpose of which had been to introduce into law:

1The comprehensive principle

  • Subject to subsection (2) below, local education authorities shall, in the exercise and performance of their powers and duties relating to secondary education, have regard to the general principle that such education is to be provided only in schools where the arrangements for the admission of pupils are not based (wholly or partly) on selection by reference to ability or aptitude.

Education Act 1976

Special schools and schools for music and dancing were exempt from Clause 1.

The Act was only ever tested in the courts once, when the government took North Yorkshire County Council to court over provision in the Ripon area. Despite losing in the court, the Council ignored the judgment, as it was made very close to the 1979 election that Labour was expected to lose, and indeed did do so, to the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher. Clause 1 of the 1976 Act was repealed by the incoming government in July 1979, just two months after the general election.

Since then, we have had nearly 50 years of mostly the ‘status quo’ remaining in place regarding the organisation of secondary education. It is interesting that the Blair government, elected in 1997, using the strapline of ‘education, education, education’ started off by introducing tuition fees for higher education, but never tackled the secondary school system.

I wonder why the current Labour government, just like the 1997 Blair administration, supported by a large majority in parliament hasn’t discussed a common framework for a national schooling system to put alongside the National Funding Formula created by the Conservatives?

Taking up the reigns again

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Nineteen months ago, I paused this blog when I was appointed as the cabinet member for children, education and families on Oxfordshire County Council. Tomorrow, I officially relinquish that role after failing to win one of the newly created seats in the county council election: one of the few Liberal Democrats to be in such a position.

As a result of no longer being a councillor, and cabinet member, it does mean that I am able to start this blog again. However, even when I was a cabinet member, I have continued to post my views about recruitment into teacher training on LinkedIn. I am grateful to those that have commented on those monthly updates.

Much has changed in the education scene during the time that my blog has been paused. We now have a Labour government, but two-party politics has disappeared from the scene.

What is it, I wonder, about the third decade of each century that results in massive changes in the political landscape. A century ago, the Labour Party displaced the Liberal Party of Asquith and Lloyd George as the opposition to the Conservative Party in a two-party system. Two centuries ago, the start of the urbanisation resulted in a rapid growth in the electorate; a change that in 1832 was to lead to the Reform Act and the start of a road to universal suffrage.

In this context of political change, it is interesting that the DfE’s Interim Curriculum Review had little to say about citizenship as a subject. Perhaps the results of last Thursday might persuade the government to reconsider the importance of protecting democracy by reintroducing the subject into the curriculum.

However, to do so might mean changes in funding, not least for ITT subject targets. I am pessimistic about future funding for education. More funding for defence and the NHS will put pressure on government funding for department such as Education.

Nevertheless, I do believe that rationalisation within the academy sector could reduce spending on back-office salaries. I am also firmly of the belief that with a National Funding Formula being pupil driven, the practice of pooling schools’ balances within a MAT is unhelpful.

When such pooling involves cash balances being pooled across different local authority areas, then I am totally opposed to such a practice. But, then, I believe schooling has a very strong ‘place’ component. I also believe that the local community should have a democratic involvement.  I do not want a schooling system with the same level of local accountability as the NHS.

The nightmare that is SEND was simmering in the background 18 months ago, and it was a poor ofsted judgement that parachuted me into Oxfordshire’s Cabinet, after the Labour Party walked away from the administration. With the National Audit Office, The Education Select Committee and others revealing the scale of the task ahead, there remains much work to be done to support the education of our most physically and mentally challenged young people. As with adult social care, where the Select Committee has reported today, relationships between education and the health service are an important part of the resourcing debate about the best use of funds for the SEND sector.

I take my hat off to the officers managing the remaining local government functions within schooling, many of which, as with home to school transport, often bring parents and officers into disagreement. Although no fan of the undemocratic MATs, I also acknowledge the great work many of their leaders are doing for the education of the nation’s children. I just wish they had more local democratic oversight and support.

Missions still need funding

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In February, Sir Keir Starmer outlined his five missions for the Labour Party – one wonders, will they appear on a pledge card, as once before – and the fifth one was ‘raising education standards’ according to a BBC report at the time Keir Starmer unveils Labour’s five missions for the country – BBC News

After a recent announcement about teachers, dealt with in my blog at Labour’s style over substance | John Howson (wordpress.com) came a Leader’s speech today on the subject of what the Labour Party would do about policy for education.

In reality, education seemed to mean schooling, skills and early years, if the press reports are to be believed. Interestingly, the BBC has now substituted the word ‘pledge’ for the term ‘mission’. An example of ‘word creep’, perhaps? Actually, it seems more like sloppy journalism if the text of the speech is to be believed, as it starts by referring to ‘mission’ not pledge. Read: Full Keir Starmer mission speech on opportunity, education and childcare – LabourList

At the heart of the speech seems to be these two questions

‘So these are the two fundamental questions we must now ask of our education system: are we keeping pace with the future, preparing all our children to face it?

And – are we prepared to confront the toxic divides that maintain the class ceiling?’

The speech was about class and opportunity as a means of raising standards. Sir Keir has clearly moved on form the famous ‘rule of three’ and now favour a five-point approach, so we had

Apart from the already announced increase in teacher numbers and the retention bonus, there was little about either how the new education age would be delivered or how it would be paid for. No pledge to level up post 16 funding, so badly hit under the present government.

Plans for Early Years

Oracy to build confidence

A review of the National Curriculum for the new digital age

The importance of vocational and work-related studies

Tackling low expectations

There was little for any progressive politician to take issue with in the speech, but little to demonstrate the drive to accomplish the fine words. Re-opening Children’s Centres will come at a price, as will changing the curriculum.

There was nothing to show how resources will be channelled into areas of deprivation and under-performance. Will Labour continue the Conservative idea of Opportunity Areas that do nothing for pockets of underperformance in affluent areas or will it revive the Pupil Premium introduced by the Lib Dems, when part of the coalition, ascheme that identified individual need, wherever it was to be found.

I think I still prefer the 2015 approach from the Liberal Democrats to end illiteracy within 10 years: something that can be measured, rather than the more nebulous ‘raising of standards’ offered by Sir Kier.

Finally, from the Labour Party that introduced tuition fees, not a word on higher education and the consequence of raising standards on the demand for places. Perhaps Labour has still to reconcile the brave new world of skills and the place of universities in the new education landscape. With higher standards will come another class ceiling at eighteen?

Labour’s style over substance

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I woke up this morning to news that the Labour Party had some new proposals to end the teacher supply crisis. Strangely, the press release section of their national website hasn’t posted anything, so I am reliant on what the BBC has said for the following thoughts. Labour plan to give teachers £2,400 to stop them quitting – BBC News

In passing, the Labour Party website generally doesn’t seem to be up with events, something that surprised me for a national Party aiming for government. But there are some issues, such their relationship with other political parties, and stories of suspensions and expulsions of members that I am sure they would want to bury. Still, that is all for another day and another place.

What are Labour suggesting and why do I say that it is style over substance? Firstly, there is nothing to ease the pain of training. No fee payments, as agreed when Tuition Fees were introduced by Tony Blair’s government. This would have been an excellent opportunity for a headline along the lines -well it’s not up to me to do Labour’s work for them.

Instead of targeting trainees and entrants, we get a survivor bonus according to the BBC story

The plans to improve retention rates, announced by Labour’s shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson on Sunday, would see new incentive payments awarded once teachers had completed a training programme known as the Early Career Framework, which covers their first two years in the classroom.

Apparently, the payment would be £2,400 or only between a gross one-off five to ten per cent payment of what a teacher would be earning at that point in time, before tax, national insurance and pension deductions. Less, with a £30,000 starting salary. Paying this to all survivors, regardless of the help or salary they received during training would according to Labour cost £50 million. I wonder what paying fees and a training salary to make all trainees equal, and it easier for career changers to become a teacher, would cost?

Labour’s other key promise is welcome, but even more hollow when you burrow down into what it means in reality.

The [Labour} party says it would also make it compulsory for new teachers to have a formal teaching qualification or be working towards one – a requirement scrapped by the coalition in 2012.

Sure, Gove made a headline announcement that academies did not need to employ qualified teachers: and most academies ignored this freedom, as they often did with the freedom to pay classroom teachers different salaries. However, it hasn’t stopped all schools employing unqualified teachers when they cannot find a qualified one to fill a post. After all, it was the Labour government that changed the name of these staff from ‘instructors’ that clearly demonstrated that they were not qualified teachers, to the more positive term ‘unqualified teachers’, and also created a pay scale for them.

Curiously, there were fewer unqualified teachers by headcount working in schools last Novermber (2022) than in November 2010, the first census after the end of the last Labour government – 14,389 in 2022 compared with 15,892 in November 2010 according to the DfE’s Workforce Census.

Ensuring all teachers are qualified, and qualified in teaching their subject or phase, something the Labour announcement doesn’t offer, must be a requirement. However, Labour doesn’t say what schools, faced with a vacancy, should do if a qualified teacher isn’t available: send children home? The lack of a credible answer to this question makes the policy no more than idle rhetoric about trainee teachers not about solving the teacher supply crisis.

I would offer emergency certification with a required training programme from day one for unqualified teachers, including those not qualified in the subject that they are teaching.

Labour final policy on staff development is again good in principle; this area has been neglected by the present government, despite the limited experience of much of the teaching force. However, the policy lacks detail, and detailing who will be responsible for implementing and paying for it?

Taking tax breaks away from private schools would probably affect the special school sector, where local authorities mostly pay the fees, more than schools where parents are responsible for the fees. Such saving would also probably be stretched thinly to pay for all the mooted changes.

Retention can be cheaper than recruitment, but by making training more attractive for all, there is more chance that schools currently unable to recruit teachers would fill their vacancies. All too often these schools are situated in the more deprived areas. These are the schools any policy should be tested against: does it improve the education of children in these schools?

For those that don’t know, I am a Liberal Democrat County Councillor in Oxfordshire

Ending child illiteracy by 2025: reprise

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Sometimes a visitor to this blog uncovers a previous post that is worth a reprise. I think that this post from 2015 is one such post. Many of the points hold good today, even to the issue of the Labour Party and tuition fees. Let me know in the comment section what you think.

Ending child illiteracy by 2025

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The Liberal Democrat plan to end illiteracy by 2025 announced today would mean that every child born in 2014, ought to leave primary school in 2025 able to read and write at a standard identified to lead to success in secondary school and beyond. To help them meet this commitment to end child illiteracy by 2025 the Lib Dems would boost the early years Pupil Premium to an even higher level than the primary school Pupil Premium thus recognising the vital importance of a child’s early years for learning and development.
The Lib Dems would also overhaul early years teaching qualifications by letting nursery staff work towards Qualified Teacher Status and by 2020 requiring a qualified teacher graduate in every school or nursery delivering the early years curriculum.


As a Lib Dem, I have been fighting for better early years education for decades. This aim is reminiscent of the Millennium Development goals of 2000 that sought to ensure primary education for every child throughout the world by 2015. And what’s the point of primary education if children don’t learn to read, write, count, and lay down the skills to acquire the tools they will need for their future lives as adults.
Despite a focus of attention on the lack of education success among the poor that goes back to work undertaken when Ruth Kelly was Secretary of State in the Labour government, it is still clear, as Nick Clegg pointed out, that it is those less well off in society whose children don’t make the expected levels of progress.


Labour has been hinting about cutting tuition fees if elected. As Labour was the Party that introduced them in the first place in 1997, and then increased them, requiring students to repay the cash borrowed from day one rather than when they started earning, as now, Labour must say if it favours supporting undergraduates ahead of ending illiteracy in the next parliament; it cannot do both and still stick to its spending plans.


To achieve the ambition of ending illiteracy by 2025 means providing the cash for schools and early year settings to achieve this goal. Depriving local authorities of the cash to support pre-school settings where health, welfare and education issues can be dealt with together won’t allow the goal to be achieved. Yes, the bulk of the funds should go to schools and through an early years premium, but the work needs co-ordination and that is where local authorities need funds. By all means make it a ring-fenced grant, but do not force local authorities out of supporting initiatives by cutting their funding.


Schools also need to know how to deal with that small group of parents that are indifferent to their child’s progress and don’t, can’t or won’t work with the school and pre-school setting in helping their children learn. Helping schools know what works rather than everyone re-inventing the wheel will also ensure best use of the money. Does that mean a role for local authorities?

Four-day week for teachers?

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A Labour MP has called for a four-day working week to be introduced across the public sector.

Lib Dem-run South Cambridgeshire District Council’s cabinet will meet today to approve the continuation of the trial for all desk-based staff as well as extending it to cover caretakers and binmen. 

These are just two of the headlines from an article that I read this morning. What would be the implications for teachers of the introduction of a four-day week? The answer depends upon whether the same amount of face-to-face contact with pupils was maintained as at present and whether that was contact time spread over four or five days? What effect would four longer school days have on pupils, especially younger pupils? After all, some early years settings already offer wrap around care that is much longer than the traditional school-day.

What would the psychologists and those that study brain development in children have to say about putting five days of work into four? Perhaps a model would develop of four days of taught time and the fifth for ‘homework’ or supplementary activities.

On the plus side, parents also working a four-day week would have an extra day with their children: on the downside, parents whose working week did not coincide with the school four-day week would have to deal with the need for extra childcare.

Any change would come with a cost both to individuals and to the State. If there wasn’t sufficient funding, schools might be tempted to cram the teaching into four days and use the fifth day to generate income from their school sites and playing fields.

In a sector struggling to recruit enough teachers at present, would a four-day week make the profession more or less attractive to potential teachers. Certainly, if the bulk of graduate careers moved to a four-day week, teaching, already operating an employer-driven form of flexi-time, might be unattractive without some other boost to conditions of work.

A four-day working week might be a real challenge to the private school sector, where the additional costs would most likely have to be passed on to parents through increased fees. An increase of this magnitude might drive more parents back into the state sector, upping the cost of state education to the government. Add VAT on to the costs, and such numbers switching might increase still further.

During the Corbyn era, Labour proposed four additional bank holidays for workers; all during school holidays, so teachers would have seen no benefit from them. The implications for the teaching profession and others working in schools of the widespread introduction of a four-day working week do need to be considered.

However, I don’t think that the present model of schooling will continue as it has for the past 150 years. The AI revolution may well turn out to be as profound for society as the microchip revolution that started in the 1970s and transformed the world of work beyond recognition in many areas, but only to a limited degree in schools.

 Technology and its interaction with the process of schooling has further to go in the future. Perhaps the pressure for a four-day working week for humans might be the catalyst for major changes in schooling?