Tag Archives: politics

That was The Week That was…

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This was an interesting week to have been away from one’s desk. Three Secretaries of State in a week! That’s one for the record books, along with so much else that has happened in Westminster politics during the past seven days.

How much will education feature in the debate over the selection of the next Prime Minister? Will some education journalist ask the obvious questions such as:

If you are going to cut taxes, what will happen to funding for schools, especially in the period before inflation is brought under control?

What are you going to do about the present teacher shortage?

Will you review the way that the apprenticeship Levy operates so that it isn’t a tax on small primary schools?

How important is helping young people recover from the effects of the covid pandemic and what would you do to help boost their mental health?

Do you believe in local democratic control of schooling?

What are you plans for levelling up as it affects the Roma and Traveller communities across England?

Was the EBacc a mistake?

How important do you see the youth Service and other out of school activities?

Will you offer Free School Meals to all primary school children for free?

I am sure that readers can add to this list with this with their own priorities. I am also pretty certain that most of these questions won’t be asked of the candidates.

Education, and schooling in particular doesn’t often feature in either leadership or general election campaigns. It is possible that there could be a debate about selective education, started by one of the candidates, as it is a topic that appeals to the older generation of Tory voters even if most younger Tories have never experienced it, unless they come from parts of the Home Counties. Faced with rising private school fees, some Tories might also see selective state education as a tax cut for parents no longer needing to pay school fees.

And on fees, where will the candidates stand on higher education, university fees and student numbers? It will be especially interesting to see what the Chancellor says as a former Education Secretary. 

Talking of former Education Secretary’s, I wonder whether there was time to take the Ministerial photograph of Michelle Donelan to hang on the wall at Sanctuary Buildings or whether they will use one taken in her previous Ministerial role in the department.

Finally, there is the future of the Schools Bill to consider. This mess of a piece of draft legislation was mauled in the House of Lords and is being reconsidered. The oversight and regulation of academy trusts is an important addition to the legislation on schooling, but I hope that the new team will also listen to their councillors about the importance of both place in the governance of schooling and the need for democratic local accountability.  Local Authorities will not accept the need for responsibility without involvement in decision-making and that matters for admissions, pupil place planning and SEND.

New Role: different blog

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As regular readers of this blog know, I have been a county councillor in Oxfordshire for the past eight years and was re-elected for another term of office earlier this month.

Yesterday, my colleagues across the political parties elected me as their Chair of the County Council for the next year. In this role, I am the public face of the Council in non-political matters. As a result, this blog will mostly confine itself for the next twelve months to matters relating to teacher supply and the labour market for teachers that are part of my professional interest as chair at TeachVac http://www.teachvac.co.uk and my travel book Twin Tracks.

I would like to thank readers for their support and comments over the years that I have been writing this blog. As Chair of the County Council, I support a number of Charities including Children Heard and Seen that works with children where a parent is in prison.

If any reader would like to make a donation to this Charity in appreciation of the posts on this blog over the years, then their web site is at https://childrenheardandseen.co.uk/?fbclid=IwAR3AmbJ97d6NOkq4r9sWoTwsbvsDYODJq8vfbRxPtlit_H8wQbFLdbeJCYM or their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/childrenheardandseen Please mark any donations ‘Oxfordshire Chair’s appeal’.

Policy making is not campaigning

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This blog is mostly about education. However, after three months of campaigning for last week’s elections, including fighting the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) for Thames Valley (TV) election for the Liberal Democrats, I felt like a final foray into a reflection on the interesting events of last Thursday.

During the whole of my recent campaign as Liberal Democrat candidate for Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) for Thames Valley (TV) I was never once emailed and asked for a manifesto of my policies. Sure, there were a couple of emails along the lines of we haven’t heard anything from you and what do you stand for. There were also several media events, including an appearance on BBC South Politics show were questions were asked about particular policies.

Despite this lack of voter interest in the details beyond what was available at https://www.choosemypcc.org.uk/ and other similar sites, turnout for the PCC election was 35.9% this time compared with25.6% in the last PCC election in May 2016. Not surprisingly turnout was higher where there were other elections being held on the same day as the PCC election. We won’t know the result until sometime on Monday.

There is an essential lesson to be learnt here. However good your policies, and, as in Education, the Liberal Democrats had devised some really good policies, as they  have for tacking crime and handling policing, it is the campaigning that matters. Know your electorate. The Obama Team in the USA were great at that understanding when helping him first win the US Presidency. The Tories have learnt that lesson: others haven’t.

Here’s an interesting analysis of the Hartlepool by-election from Mark Pack, President of the Lib Dems:

The by-election has simply seen Hartlepool’s politics catch up with elsewhere.

“… and, there’s the important first opinion poll that Survation carried out in the seat. Their final poll, showing a big Conservative lead attracted a lot of scepticism but was right.. However, it is their first poll for the by-election that is important for understanding what happened.

Combined, Conservatives and Brexit Party got 55% in 2019. Survation’s first poll put the Conservatives on 49%. Their second and final one put the party on 50% and the result saw the Conservatives secure 52%. No great drama there. But for Labour it was 38% in 2019, 42% in the first poll and then… 33% in the second poll followed by 29% in the actual result.

The story here is of Labour failure, not of Conservative surge. That’s a point reinforced by the English local elections. At 36%, the Conservative equivalent national vote share is decent but not stellar. That’s not some new era-defining level of support for Boris Johnson’s party. It’s a fragile result that has brought success this time, but could very plausibly be followed by failure.

It looks like Labour badly messed up its candidate selection and campaign. …I suspect that once more detailed analysis is in, this will turn out to have mattered rather more than the Labour candidate being a previous Remainer who lost his seat in 2019.”

There’s no doubt that a large section of the population of England like an identifiable character; Churchill’s cigar and Wilson’s pipe as well as Boris’s hair are visual signals the electorate can see and easily remember. Even Mrs May’s shoes and Mrs T’s handbag are what people remember. It works in local elections, where independents are rarely shrinking violets.

Of course, cash helps. It is no surprise that Liberal Democrats went from no Councillors on Amersham Town Council in Buckinghamhire on Wednesday to taking control after the votes were counted, with eight new Councillors. The impending by-election and local spending by the national party has made a difference by adding the push that was needed to shift unhappy tory votes into the Lib Dem camp.

Know your electorate is as important as know your class is for a teacher and for candidates and Councillors tailor your material appropriately. But, nothing still works as well as talking to voters on the doorstep and being visible in the high Street.

Governments lose elections more often than oppositions win them. But, sometimes, oppositions lose elections as well producing unexpected outcomes.

New readers start here

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There are a bumper set of local elections across England on 6th May. Some people are finding their way to this site as a result of the fact that I am defending my county council seat in Oxfordshire and also standing as the Lib Dem candidate for Police and Crime Commissioner in Thames Valley – as I did in the previous two elections for this post.

To help those reaching the site as a result of wanting to know more about my published views on this blog, I have brought together some links to posts over the years. Some are more personal than others.

Over time views may also alter as circumstances alter. Thus schools becoming academies is now a different matter to the situation when this blog first started.

Any way here are links to some posts you might want to read first:

https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2019/03/07/knife-crime-must-be-tackled/
https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2014/05/09/knife-crime-do-we-need-mandatory-sentences/
https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2019/08/11/rods-poles-and-perches/
https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2019/03/11/support-youth-justice/
https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2018/11/14/isolation-poor-use-of-funding/
https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2018/05/03/upturn-in-average-number-of-young-people-in-custody/
https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2014/06/22/supreme-court-one-parliament-a-half/
https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2021/01/23/time-for-jacobs-law/
https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2018/11/23/memories/
https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2019/04/05/a-parent-in-prison-is-not-a-crime/
https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2018/08/28/crime-and-a-lack-of-learning/
https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2018/04/14/the-responsibility-of-us-all/
https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2016/12/16/thank-you-mr-taylor/
https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2015/01/29/can-we-halve-the-number-of-women-in-prison/
https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2013/04/23/youth-numbers-in-custody-halve-in-a-decade/

There are rather more than I remembered writing, but with more than 1,100p posts I guess that isn’t really a surprise.

Baroness Williams of Crosby

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I am saddened to hear of the death earlier today of Shirley Williams, Baroness Williams of Crosby.

Baroness Williams was one of the founders of the SDP and had previously been an education secretary during the Labour government of the late 1970s. Created a Life peer in 1993, Baroness Williams played an important background role in education for the Party in her role as a senior politician of wide experience. Her great speaking ability motivated many audiences in both the conference hall and at fringe meetings during many Liberal Democrat conferences over the years. She finally retired from the House of Lords in 2016, but remained an inspiring figure for many in the Liberal Democrats.

In a blog post when another Liberal Democrats stalwart of the House of Lords, Baroness Sharp of Guildford retired, I paid tribute to these two Peers along with Annette Brooke the former MP. All were important for the Liberal Democrats in the field of education, from early years to higher education.

I first encountered Shirley Williams when she was Secretary of State for Education. She initiated The Great Debate in Education on the back of the Prime minister’s famous Ruskin College speech. This was the start of the shift from a national service locally administered to a nationally driven education service that we now have in England. I had achieved some notoriety after appearing in the national press and was invited to several media events where Shirley Williams was the speaker. I especially recall one such event in the Royal Institution where she was opposed Norman St John Stevas, possibly one of the best Secretaries of State we never had.

It was Shirley William’s misfortune to be secretary of State when the government of Jim Callaghan was teetering on the edge of collapse. She had to endure the ‘winter of discontent’ and during that period she failed to stop the caretaker’s strike in Haringey that lead to several weeks of school closures.

Although successful in taking North Yorkshire County Council to court over the need to create non-selective education in Ripon, it was too late in the parliament and the life of the Labour government for any action to be taken on the result that backed the government’s view of the 1976 Education Act, and so, along with the other selective schools that she tried to convert to comprehensive education, selective education still remains in that part of Yorkshire, helped by Mrs thatcher’s prompt repealing of the 1976 Act as one of her first actions as Prime Minister.  

Shirley Williams was an inspiring orator and a joy to listen to when speaking at Liberal Democrat events, either extempore or from a prepared speech. She was not a good timekeeper and was often late, but nobody ever seemed to mind. She was also a great European and had the courage to from a new political party. Along with many other, I will miss her.

Tidying Up

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One of the side effects of isolation is the time to do those jobs you have been putting off doing for ages. In my case, this includes tidying up part of my study. However, as I a great believer in ‘creative chaos’ rather than the clean desk method of working, I find it all too easy to become distracted.

The latest distraction has been around two unique books in my collection. Both were given to me as leaving presents. In both cases I had made it clear to colleagues that the normal envelope passed around the staff wasn’t what I wanted. If people wanted to thank me for my time with the organisation, then they need to use their intellectual capital not their cash.

When I left Brookes University in 1996 to join the then Teacher Training Agency as its ‘Chief Professional Adviser on Teacher Supply’ to quote for the press release issued at the time, I asked staff for something that either inspired them in their own education or had been important to them in their career either as a teacher or working in an education establishment. They were kind enough to put the resulting collection to a book, and then to allow me to add some thoughts of my own. I have always wondered whether this might form the basis of an interesting anthology.

The second book was presented to me when I retired from Times Supplements in 2011, just under three years after they had bought my company. My then deputy, crafted a book containing many of the columns that I had written for the TES over the 11 year period when, in one form or another, I churned out a weekly piece, usually about numbers somewhere in the school system. In those days the government produced many more statistics than it seems to do these days.

In the past few years, I have returned to that compendium from time to time, either to check a fact or to reflect how some things have changed and others have stayed the same.

As many regular readers know, I wondered about stopping this blog in January with the 1,000th post. This is the 20th post since then, so that was a New Year resolution that didn’t last. But, looking at the other books, set me thinking whether I should produce two more? Firstly, a collection of the first 1,000 posts on this blog: the good; the bad and the plain indifferent, and secondly a shorter collection of the ‘best’ posts selected by readers?

Do please leave a comment and a suggestion either if you think it a good idea or if you think it a mere vanity project that should be discarded without further ado.

Either way, it is always good to hear from readers and I am still wondering who it was that downloaded every posts on Christmas Day 2019, creating a record score for views on any one day during the history of this blog.

 

Who loses in the Education stakes?

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Education is likely to play a important role in the sub-plots swirling around Breixt that will underpin any forthcoming general election. The terrible twins of British politics: Labour and the Conservatives, seem keen to make life harder for the many, in favour of policies that affect the few. Both seem keen to inflict damage, one intentionally, the other without thinking, on the private school sector.

Today’s suggestion mooted in parts of the Press of an increase in selective school places in any Conservative manifesto will affect private secondary schools, especially if parents switch from fee-paying schools to fill the additional places in free state-funded selective schools. They can use the savings in fees to ensure success in the entry tests for the selective schools.

Labour’s plan for the abolition of private schools will create extra costs for the state system and seems likely have the same effect as the Tory proposals of driving pupils into state selective schools and state comprehensive schools in the residential areas where parents live. For some, it might also mean a move to a new house, unless the existing private schools were ‘nationalised’ in situ.

Either way, both ‘old’ parties of government seem keen to avoid offering headline policies for the many children in State education at present. What about reducing off-rolling by secondary schools and putting in place policies that confront the reasons why schools have taken that route?

And also abolishing Ofsted in favour of a national light touch oversight of standards and more flexible local quality assurance regimes allied to large-scale professional development of the workforce, including development of future leaders, sadly neglected since the abolition of clear policies and qualifications for headship disappeared under Labour.

To abolish the private sector, Labour will need to revoke the long-held right of parents to choose how to educate their own families. This is a level of state intervention in the lives of everyone, probably not seen outside of wartime. Indeed, Labour haven’t required it of the health service, where private health flourishes in certain sectors of the market.

Will Labour also seek to remove private companies offering after-school tuition and support, lest spending money on an extra maths class gives unfair support to the pupils that can afford it? Presumably, the cathedral choir schools will also disappear if they cannot survive on the National Funding Formula?

All this is of more than passing interest to me as I have been asked to stand as the Lib Dem candidate in Castle Point in Essex if there is a general election in December. Indeed, tomorrow Lib Dems at Westminster will push for one on a Monday early in the month at Westminster. Will Labour support them?

Castle Point includes Canvey Island, where as a youngster from North London, I went on holiday in the 1950s. It is also part of the Essex/Southend Selective School system and less well funded than either of the two Unitary Authorities that split it off from the rest of Essex.

How do you teach politics today?

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One of the more interesting side effects of what is happening in Westminster, Paris and Washington at the present time, is how those staff teaching politics syllabuses prepare candidates for examinations this summer? Do they a] ignore everything happening at present and assume the status quo ante in terms of what they expect in answers to questions and essays, regardless of what they teach in lessons, or b] do they try and provide students with an understanding that they can convey in their essays when by the time the examinations arrive the situation might yet be different again.

Take the following section from a syllabus published on the internet:

 Parliament and government relationships
  • Accountability 
  • Executive dominance 
  • Elective dictatorship 
  • Bicamera

 The roles of the House of Commons and House of Lords in scrutinising legislation and holding the government to account. The influence of backbenchers, frontbenchers, whips and the Opposition.

Answering that section after the events of the past ten days is going to be interesting, let alone what might happen over the next four months leading up to the examination day. The same is true of the section about ‘The role of parliament in the political system’.

I guess the safe way forwards will be to start any answer with something such as ‘Received wisdom and understanding up to the start of 2019 was …. This is expressed by writers such as …’ and then delve into what has changed if the candidate feels comfortable with being able to explain the new reality.

Earlier today I posed this dilemma to a well-known educationalist and former teacher of politics and was reminded by her that there have been occasions in the past, such as a change of Prime Minister between the setting of the exam paper and the date the examination is taken that can make the expected predicable answer no longer accurate, unless it is place in a historical context.

I guess this is the risk with a subject that deals with contemporary life. Fortunately for economics and business studies examiners, stock market crashes has a greater tendency to occur in the autumn, after the harvest has been gathered in, than at other times of year. Although the same cannot be said for inflation or interest rate changes.

Nevertheless, it is politics lessons that must be the most interesting lesson on the curriculum this week. In higher education, students can often attend courses just out of interest and one wonders whether some sixth formers might want to do so for politics lessons at present. Alternatively, for most it might be a big bore, even though it is up there with Peel and reform of The Corn Laws and the decline of the Liberal Party in the 1920s and the effects of the Great Crash of 1929 in terms of its magnitude as a parliamentary event.

Finally, I understood the term bicameral for a parliamentary system of two chambers, but the syllabus quoted above was the first time I had come across the use of ‘bicamera’ to describe such a system.

 

 

 

 

Vision and not just rhetoric needed

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As you might expect, Angela Rayner’s speech to the Labour Party Conference was strong on rhetoric, but short on real substance.

Take the following extract:

Our National Education Service will not only reverse the cuts but tackle the inefficiency of the Tories’ school system and take power from corporations and hand it to communities.

Might there be just the hint of an ambiguity there? What will be national and what will be returned to communities?

A promise of a national supply agency to extend the Conservative’s National Vacancy Service that is already competing with the market.

For local authorities, … we will allow them to build schools, create new places and take back control of admissions from academy trusts. But, nothing there about funds for local inspection and advice services and local coordination of teacher training places to ensure sufficient supply. Presumably, that will remain a national function not delegated to local authorities.

Then there is a bit of a muddle

So we’ll allow academies to return to local authority control. We’ll end the scandal of individuals and companies profiting from schools they are involved in, stopping fat cat pay for bosses and restoring fair pay for staff.

And we will use our time in government to bring all publicly funded schools back into the mainstream public sector, with a common rulebook and under local democratic control.

Will Labour create a fully locally governed system of schooling and at what level of government? Why create new cooperative schools, except that it sounds good, when a reshaping of the system with just two classes of state funded schools; maintained and voluntary. The latter being able to form groups of schools, along the model of diocesan schools. What happens to control of post-16 further education. Will colleges remain under national control or be integrated into a more local framework?

Missing was anything about the future of selective schools. Will Labour plan to reform them if it came to power?

Curiously, given the fact that Labour want to offer seats on the board to workers, there was no pledge to ensure staff could sit on governing bodies and no suggestion of how local policy development would need to involve governors, teachers and voluntary school operators. Is the old Education Committee model the way forward, or does Labour have any fresh ideas for local governance of education? Not yet clear, at least from this speech. Presumably, a work in progress?

Where does Labour stand on the curriculum, on testing and on inspection? Or aren’t these important enough matters to highlight in a speech aimed at applause rather than a blueprint for the future.

Missing also was any reference to how education will need to help young people face a world that will be very different from that of today. I know how important structures are, but I want an Education Secretary that can deal with those issues in a paragraph at the start of a speech and then provide a vision for the future that is more than a return to a ‘national service locally administered’ that is what yesterday’s speech seemed to promise.

(For readers that don’t know, it is right that I declare an interest as a Liberal Democrat Councillor on Oxfordshire County Council with the spokesperson role for education.)

750 not out

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After celebrating its 5th birthday in January this year, this blog has now reached another landmark: the 750th post. The administrators tell me that means somewhere close to 450,000 words have appeared so far, with a word count averaging somewhere between 550-600 words per post: slightly shorter in recent years than in 2013 and 214.

Key themes in recent times have included, the place of local democracy in the school system and the recruitment scene for teachers, whether into teacher training or for the labour market for teachers and school leaders. This blog has published an analysis of the monthly figures from UCAS for applicants and applications to teacher preparation courses for graduates almost since the day it started. Those post followed on from a monthly review I wrote during the first decade of the century. It that case, circulation was only to a band of paid subscribers.

My involvement with TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk and its global affiliate www.teachvacglobal.com has allowed me to make comments on the state of the labour market for teachers and school leaders in England. However, since much of the data TeachVac holds is unique to the company and TeachVac is a free to use recruitment site for both schools and teachers it isn’t a good idea to give away everything for free, so the data has been used sparingly on the blog.

How did this blog come about? Between 1998 and 2011 I wrote a series of columns for the Times Education Supplement, the venerable and much respected publication for the teachers and their schools. When I retired from their service, I wrote for Education Journal for a year or so, but was never really satisfied by being tied down again to a publication schedule: hence, eventually in 2013, the blog.

The nature of blogging provides freedom to the creator of the pieces to say what they want when they want. Originally, it was a blog about the numbers in education. To some extent it still is, but it has widened its approach, especially after I became a Liberal Democrat County Councillor in Oxfordshire in May 2013. My experiences with schools in Oxfordshire has resulted in a number of interesting posts since then, some of which have subsequently appeared in print in the Oxford Mail.

Where next for the blog? I suppose the next goal must be to reach 1,000 posts, probably by sometime in 2020. There is certainly enough to write about.

I would like to thank the many people that have added comments to the various posts over the years. There are some regular commentators, such as Janet Downs, and there are those that have just posted a comment about one specific post. Then there are the many people that have liked various posts. Thank you for your votes of support and appreciation.

The blog is mainly read by United Kingdom readers, although recently there have been more readers from the USA than in the early days and there has always been a small number of visitors from locations in different countries around the world.

If you have read this far, thank you for letting me indulge myself and I hope to keep you entertained, informed and possibly sometimes even educated.