Election Special

by Donald Clark, Epic

Fruit flies and Fly guys

Election time again. Did Paul Daniels, Michael Winner and Peter Stringfellow actually leave the country as they promised last time? Unfortunately not. Let’s insist this time round, whoever wins!

Polly Toynbee and David Walker in ‘Better or Worse?’ described Labour policy in education and training as being driven ‘mechanistically, as a tool for either productivity or as an engine of social engineering’. Time will tell whether there is any truth in this harsh statement. Despite the huge increase in spending on learning, it is still not clear that proportional and sustainable gains have been made in either education or training.

One of the perceived problems in both education and training is that neither evolution nor revolution are achieved by a series of rapid fire, fruit fly experiments. The fruit fly initiatives literally die off like flies, leaving the system none the wiser. We’ve had NHSU, UKeUniversity, local LSCs, RDAs, SSCs, institutes, labs and dozens of other confused and overlapping bodies. No sooner does one disappear than others pop up in their place. Like the oversupply of accreditation, we have oversupply of government initiatives.

So what have been the successes and failures of this government in education and training? Cracking the problems of low productivity, low attainment, low levels of literacy and low participation were to prove harder than they thought way back in the rosy days of 1997.

Teachers
To be fair, we have loads more teachers (28,000 extra), tons more teaching assistants (over 100,000) and significantly better pay. The NCSL and GTC have changed the face of teaching for the better. Yet the bickering continues at conference time. A minister need only mention the word parents, appraisals or inspection to get adolescent boos and jeers. It’s an annual ritual.

Schools
Former Home Secretary, David Blunket’s targets seemed to be working in their first term but this gave way to a plateauing of the results under the Rt. Hon. Charles Clarke. Initial successes gave way to realism, as ministers saw the enormity of the task. Those at the top did better, but those at the bottom also grew in numbers. The bottom line is that 2 out of every 5 sixteen year-olds leave school with no meaningful qualifications. Specialist schools, foundation schools and academies were launched but few seem to understand their relevance.

The bad news is that the excellent Tomlinson recommendations have been shelved. There are at least some signs of sense in more school building, encouraging schools to get more involved with parents, the community and OFSTED.

Mass higher education
Most policies in education pretend to be for the many but turn out to be for the few. This is especially true in higher education where middle class parents take advantage of everything on offer. For the first time we’ve seen steady progress towards higher education for nearly half of all school leavers.

More controversially, top-up student fees have been introduced. This was brave politically. From 2006 universities can charge up to £3000. A third of all students actually get £3000 in a non-repayable maintenance grant, so not all have to pay. Nevertheless, this is a blow, deliberate of course, to middle-class parents who have taken so much from the system in the past.

Training
This is pretty much a mess. The LSCs have been funnelling money to colleges but proved ineffective in engagement with employers, workplace education and real innovation at the local level. The SSCs are stuttering into action and doing what their predecessors have always done, spout policy that is not backed up with action. The NHSU had noble aims, but got bogged down in trying to be a University. There’s been lots of policy documents but little to please employers in the feeble ‘modern apprenticeships’ or workplace learning. There’s real disengagement by employers who are still, after all this time, faced with too many entities, too many qualifications and too many initiatives.

E-learning
With e-learning strategies flooding from LSCs (47 of them), SSCs (loads more), DFES (what did happen to that strategy?) and a batch of reports on skill shortages, one would have expected a little more action. In fact, the e-learning industry quietly got on with debating, innovating, designing, developing and delivering the goods.

Future
So what is Labour promising this time?

It’s true that every child gets £1000 more spent on them than in 1997 and that education spend has gone up from 4.7% to 5.5% of GDP. But has the spend been effective?

There has been another push on literacy and numeracy, one of their great successes in education, but this is now starting to wilt. Every 16 year old has been promised further education and training by 2010. That means school, college, training or apprenticeship.

Parents are now seen as ‘partners’ in education. How revolutionary – the idea that parents should be involved in the education of their children! Try telling that to the headteachers – Ruth Kelly tried and got heckled. Parents, on the whole, are not welcome in schools.

In training we see vague promises about effective SSCs, a Skills Academy, a TUC Academy. More bodies, more strategy document and more Academies – unfortunately, it looks like we’re in for still more talk. We’re still waiting for effective action.