Are we seeing the beginning of the decline of state education in Britain? It might sound extraordinary - especially as we have a Labour Party in power. But the evidence is piling up.
Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary, told local government leaders this week that she intends to bring in charities, parent groups, religious groups and 'mutual organisations' to run some schools. Local councils, she announced, "don't add value through micro-managing heads". Councils, she suggested, could be reduced merely to "commissioning" schools instead of running them.
This is a radical - perhaps we should say a 'desperate' - new idea. On its past record, one must doubt how much will come of it. But this is the second time the government' has shown a willingness to break up the state monolith. It aims to create 200 City Academies by 2010. These schools are supported by money from business and are meant to enjoy a little more independence than normal state schools. Frankly they have disappointed so far, probably because the independence they have been given has not liberated them sufficiently. But these two policies show that even a Labour government is willing to shift the balance of British education.
Despite its regular claims that schooling in Britain is getting better every year, the Government knows in its heart that our wholly state-financed, state-run education is in serious trouble.
Ruth Kelly - and, more to the point, Tony Blair - knows that according to the government's own research, one in five adults in Britain is 'functionally illiterate'. They know that despite hundreds of initiatives and new punishments, truancy is high even on the official figures - never mind the unofficial figures which would include bunking off from classes after children have registered.
They know about the disorder and the way some sink schools have become academies in delinquency. And in case they forget any of this, they have Dianne Abbott sitting behind them. She is the Labour MP who took her child away from state education in Hackney saying that only nine per cent of black children in the area got five decent GCSEs.
So they know there is a problem and now, in his last term as Prime Minister, Tony Blair belatedly wants to do something about it, even if it means giving up the old Labour idea of state education for all.
Not that state education was really a Labour Party invention in the first place. It began before the party existed.
It was a Liberal government that passed a law in 1870 enabling local councils to create schools to 'fill up gaps' in the provision of education by religious and commercial schools. These 'gaps' were not as big as most people assume. The government reckoned that the overwhelming majority - 95 per cent of all children - received between five and seven years education. The government set the ball rolling that led to modern state education, only to help that last five per cent of children.
In the century after that, many politicians including David Lloyd George and RAB Butler (in his 1942 Education Act) expanded the scope of state education. But there was no intention at the outset that state education should do more than supplement schooling provided by others. If the government now welcomes charities, religions and companies into education, it will simply be taking us back to where education originally arose.
It will also be bowing to mounting pressure from below. Parents are increasingly heading away from dependence on state education anyway. A new generation of new, less expensive commercial schools is beginning - schools without frills and cheap enough to attract parents of middling means, instead of only the rich.
Fee-paying religious schools are also growing apace - particularly evangelist and muslim ones. The number of independent, faith-based schools jumped from 170 to 276 in 2004/05 - a rise of over 60 per cent in a single year. I visited one, The Tabernacle in North London and met two boys who had been saved from lives of crime because their single-mothers had made heroic financial sacrifices to take them out of a bad inner-city comprehensive and send them to this evangelist school.
'Home-schooling' is also growing fast. There are more and more aids for home education such as learning through the use of computerised courses.
Parents - famously including Tony Blair himself - are turning more and more to private tuition, too, to make up for the deficiencies of their children's schools. One in four children at state schools now receives private tuition at some point.
The move towards allowing choice for parents is world-wide. France might still be sticking to a full-blooded state system, but Denmark allows parents to set up their own schools with state money. Netherlands has a large element of independence in its schools. Sweden has more competition between schools than we do and gets good results on international tests. And in America there is a major political movement towards allowing parents more choice - including the chance to choose a private or religious school. Even the state school of which I am a governor has recently become more open to the idea of trying new ways of teaching children to read that have been developed by the private sector.
State education, of course, is still powerful as an army and as resistant to change as a mountain. The trade unions won't like change. But there is a bit of movement at the top and certainly a passionate desire for better things at the grass roots. The institution of state schooling has passed its peak.
(This is the unedited version of the article which appears in today's Daily Express.)
Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Education
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Well, we can see where it's going ... the refusal of the CPS to prosecute the "Happy Slappers" suggests things will (amazingly) get worse before they get better.
Posted by: Paul at September 9, 2005 08:01 PM
The Dutch and Scandanavian solutions have not really changed all that much. Their schools still in thrall to progressive doctrine, and educational achievement is at best marginally better than in Britain. Dutch and Danish parents may have all the problems of actually running their schools, but at the end of the day the state bureaucracy still holds them accountable for the money they receive, and this entails a a fair bit of control. And we should never forget that most middle-class parents have quite a lot of sympathy for 'child-centred' dogma. What Blair is offering will change nothing--even if he wanted to, he lacks the political power to dismantle the vast superstructure of bureaucracy that enforces orthodoxy.
Nick Seaton has calculated that about 40% of all education spending never reaches the school gate. Of the 60% that does get through, huge amounts are wasted; considering the cost of compliance with bureaucratic requirements and feather-bedding in non-teaching staff, I would guess that another 15-20% of spending is of no discernable benefit to pupils.
There can be no doubt that the Achilles heel of the system is the disaffection of middle-class parents. Just as the Soviet sytem collapsed when the Nomenklatura realised that a British plumber enjoyed luxuries they could only dream about, our Guardianistas are starting to realise that the schools they created are so bad that they don't want to send their children there.
It remains to be seen how long the system can shore up its creaking defenses. I have very ambigious feelings about my part in the synthetic phonics revolution. If the Government were to take my advice and introduce open trials, with the role of the DfES and the QCA minimised, it is possible that something of a revolution could occur, one that would go a long ways towards keeping state schools from collapse. However, I doubt there is much chance of this. From everything that has happened since Jim Rose was appointed to recommend how synthetic phonics should best be introduced, the DfES has lept straight back in the saddle, and and they are continuing almost as though nothing has happened. I will be seeing Jim Rose the week following, and I daresay he will make the right noises--but when the time comes, he is the sort of chap who knows which side his next quango is buttered on. So roll on the revolution.
Posted by: tom burkard at September 10, 2005 04:41 PM
I think James Bartholomew overstates his case in regard to education. What has driven the dysfunction of education, and the welfare state in general, has been the collapse of family life since the 1960s, which itself has been driven by easy divorce, even easier contraception (and therefore recreational promiscuity) for all, and the destruction by Margaret Thatcher of jobs which enabled a father to support a family on his wage alone.
The single most important determinant of good educational outcomes is a positive attitude to the child's education by parents and, in particular, the father. Since hordes of schoolchildren have no father at home, it is no wonder they underperform.
So what does the government do? It tries to compensate by introducing a National Curriculum or, to put it another way, teaching by numbers. Instead of just paying the bills and inspecting the schools, the government tries to teach.
This never happened when I was at school, and when I went to grammar school paid for by the state I was taught, and taught well.
Posted by: Michael Petek at November 21, 2005 05:07 PM
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“Are we seeing the beginning of the decline of state education in Britain?”
Do we mean a decline in state provision or a decline in standards. I presume the former, as it is now accepted by many that standards began falling a generation ago. Only the blindest of socialists and the self interested educational establishment are pretending things are still getting better.
I don’t expect a Nulabour government to herald a significant change in state provision. It would require an admission that not only have they been incompetent, hard enough for any politician to own up to, but require them to bring about a revolution amongst the educational elite (Nulabour voters all). Even the Tories didn’t come near to achieving this. But the hardest thing for Nulabour would be to stand aside and permit the introduction of schools with non-egalitarian, competitive, disciplinarian ideologies. To do this will involve questioning the very principles of social engineering in which they believe, and faith is always much more difficult to change.
On a practical note, a return to more traditional education methods would also necessitate repealing several stupid laws and the human rights legislation.
I suspect we still have another 5-10 years of, “Educational theory says things must be getting better, so we will keep on making examinations easier, and fiddling the statistics to prove our case.”
If the history of science is any guide, a new generation of sociologists and educational theorists will eventually emerge and overthrow the existing dogma. The backlash will then be severe and rapid.
Posted by: John East at September 9, 2005 10:42 AM