An urgent need for change
Fraser Nelson 12:36pm
We hear phrase "market failure" often enough - but (as Michael Prowse once said) government failure is far more common. The most egregious example is education – and David Cameron says in his press conference today with Michael Gove. Here are a few facts they highlight today in their document (read it here):
1) Some 140,000 pupils were suspended from secondary schools for violence or persistent disruption in 2005/06. Many end up in the cells - almost 100,000 under-18s are given custodial sentences.
2) Suspensions for physical assault (in primary schools) is about twelve times higher in deprived areas than in the least-deprived ones. The scourge of school violence is focused on the poorest neighbourhoods.
3) Rather than police this, teachers are themselves investigated - as the targets of false allegations. Some 59% of head teachers say that false allegations have been made against them or their staff within the last three years.
Anyone who knows a teacher (who works in a normal or deprived area) will have heard similar stories. Police turn up to schools in twos: one to enter the building and the other to guard the car. And the disruptive kids know that their best form of getting teachers off their back is to lodge a false complaint against them. It sends the system into hyperdrive, and the teacher – not the bully – is hounded.
Gove today outlines new laws and powers which give teachers more power to deal with the problem. He’d end the right to appeal against expulsion, reverse Balls’ daft rule forcing schools to take a disruptive pupil for each one they expel, and offer teachers more protection against false claims. All good stuff, but I am sceptical about central government's ability to deal with this very effectively. Good schools will use such powers, the bad ones will not. The LEAs are the real power in education. What’s needed is a revolution in approach to discipline in schools – ie, a culture shift. And that can take years to achieve.
The Tory education plan has two planks. This is the first: how the party would seek to shake up existing schools. The second plank – supply-side reform along the Swedish system where a new breed of small, independent schools open in the state sector with state funds – is the policy that has the power to change education in England forever. It just needs a small number for a tipping point to be created, where existing state-run schools know they must shape up, or lose pupils (and money). Once they are responding to the priorities of British parents, no Whitehall edicts will be needed.
Until then, a Tory government must obviously use edicts (and empowerment measures, as today's are) as best they can. But the dismal state of affairs outlined in the Tory document is another chilling reminder of just how urgently change is needed
P.S. You may not have heard of Prowse. As the FT’s Washington Correspondent, he was converted away from New Labour - and explained how in a 1995 article in The Independent. Read it here.
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Trumpeter Lanfried
April 7th, 2008 1:00pm Report this commentWhen did we start using the soppy social worker word 'excluded' in place of 'expelled'? Was it about the same time we started calling pupils 'students' and vicious troublemakers 'difficult'?
Fergus Pickering
April 7th, 2008 1:00pm Report this commentThis is the place where Labour are most vulnerable, much more so than in Health or eve Cime, which, like the poor, is always with us. The cock-up in Education is mostly THEIR FAULT, though it's true it started with the Tories. And everybody knows things could easily be better but they, Labour, pertinaceously persist in their folly. If the Tories are not going to give us our nice GRAMMAR SCHOOLS back then at least they can suggest omething else, almost anything else will do. Michael Gove, in spite of his godawful glasses, seems to have thought seriously about this. Go, go Gove and we'll wait for the contact lenses and the new haircut.
Ian S
April 7th, 2008 1:22pm Report this commentThat Prowse piece is fantastic, thanks for pointing it out.
Ian C
April 7th, 2008 3:24pm Report this commentThe Tories can promote very radical solutions in education and will only gather votes by doing so. This is the one subject that all know that new solutions are needed, and now. It is not a matter of party loyalty for voters and this government is almost universally accepted as having failed miserably in education. So they will not be given any credit for more new initiatives, however sensible. This is the route to a wider set of radical solutions to other problems eg. tax, health & social spending - a can opener for team Cameroon if they dare but use it boldly. Soften the public up with good but radical solutions on this 'open door' and then follow up with big moves on the other subjects once this has registered in the polls.
Familiar Clown
April 7th, 2008 3:29pm Report this commentIt is very sad that there are so many state-run schools in Britain with such disruptive and devious kids. If only their parents would realize the opportunities their offspring could enjoy if they were to be empowered with steady and supportive parenting. Not all education happens at school. The environment in a successful household, where there is a strong work ethic, where children are encouraged and supported in their homework, where discussion and debate are informed and stimulating, where there are role models for habits such as reading, where there is peace and quiet for a child to study; obviously equips a child with a real advantage, quite apart from school itself.
John of Enfield
April 7th, 2008 3:52pm Report this commentJust watch out for NuLab stealing these Tory ideas lock stock & barrel if the are found to be attractive in any way by the electorate.
George Steiner
April 7th, 2008 4:06pm Report this commentHave you fellows ever been skiing? Sliding down is awfully easy. Sliding up is impossible. But please continue discussing the sliding up problem.
David Lindsay
April 7th, 2008 4:15pm Report this commentThey announce roughly once every three weeks. When they announce the returnn of grammar schools, then it will be news.
Fraser Nelson
April 8th, 2008 7:02am Report this commentFergus, the Gover indeed has a haircut and contacts - alas the library photographs of him have not yet caught up. But George, I expect Labour will not copy this idea because education is one area where the two parties seem genuinely polarised. Ed Balls is cracking down on good schools (faith schools, grammars) in a strategy that must be calculated not to appeal to the country, but to the Labour Party he would like to lead. Nicking Tory ideas goes down badly in Labour back benches - and that, I suspect, is his prime audience.
Fergus Pickering
April 8th, 2008 8:23am Report this commentYes, I thought he looked different in The Times. You must do something about that photograph. Surely the Spectator can't be behing the Times on this occasion. You are right. Labour are quite sincere. Education isn't a matter of learning things. It's a matter of social engineering for the New Dawn where knowledge will just wither away. Don't forget. The real answer is GRAMMAR SCHOOLS.
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