Policy Comparison 4 - Education

Today we look at Education. Living in Scotland where this is a devolved issue, the direct impact of this issue is slightly less, but its an area I'm involved with professionally so have an active interest and which can be revealing about where the parties are coming from.

Before we start, just an aside linking to yesterday's post now the manifestos are all launched. I think the Lib-Dems were brave and slightly more honest this morning in detailing cuts that would have to be made and admitting that even that would probably not be enough and in giving full costings for everything. So more honest, but not completely there yet. Bits of it are certainly open to question, but at least its all out there to be examined. In a fair world, this would play in their favour. I suspect it won't. Anyway, back to Education, again in no particular order:

LIB-DEMS

• This Party will spend an extra £2.5bn on schools, guaranteeing them the money they need to support children who are struggling.
• We will replace the National Curriculum with a more flexible Minimum Curriculum Entitlement offering greater choice and room for innovation. If a college offers a more suitable course for a 14-19 year old, they should have the right to study there.
• We will create a General Diploma which will use GCSEs and A-Levels and high quality vocational qualifications as building blocks, enabling pupils to mix quality vocational and academic learning.
• We will pass an Education Freedom Act banning politicians from meddling in the day to day life of our schools and create a fully independent Education Standards Authority with real powers to stand-up to ministers.
• We will build on the best of the Academies model, while correcting its defects.
• We will scrap tuition fees for full and part-time students taking their first degrees and have a fully costed plan to do this over a six year period.
• We will re-focus the money committed to the employer led Train to Gain programme on individual adult learners so that they can access the training they need.
• We will guarantee good information on local schools through a school report card including full information on a school performance including both exam results and other parent’s views.

Increased spending on Education has long been a central tennet of Lib-Dem policy, so I would hope that it is something they would stick to even in the light of the current financial situation. They've also made it one of their key 4 areas, so that's promising. The suggested refoorms to the National Curriculum offering greater flexibility sound good, as does an independant Education Standards Authority. Providing it was run by the right people with the right experience in the field, this to me seems a better way to go than some of the micro-democracy ideas we might find later. I like the focus on individual learners accessing the training they need. The school report card idea comes across as being a bit gimmicky, but probably an improvement on league tables and I like the inclusion of comments from other parents.

BNP

• The restoration of discipline - including corporal punishment - uniforms, traditional teaching methods and stricter exams (e.g. '0' levels).
• The reintroduction of grammar schools with entrance exams at 11 and 13.
• The reversal of the programme to close special needs schools which penalises the most vulnerable.
• The reintroduction of competitive sports and daily Christian assemblies.
• The teaching of old-fashioned literacy skills (as opposed to clearly failed "modern" teaching methods).
• The teaching of old-fashioned mathematics skills which have practical application to everyday life.
• The teaching of a full curriculum of British history. This will instil in our young people knowledge of and pride in the history, cultures and heritage of the native peoples of Britain, and not the cherry-picked politically correct drivel being fed to children today

This is unadulterated call to return things to the way they were with no recognition of the benefits changes have brought, whatever their defects. I don't believe that its modern teaching methods which are at fault, but rather wider issues which have left schools under-resourced and pupils dealing with things outside school that leave them in no state to learn when there. The last point is the most offensive - one suspects that the history children would learn under the BNP would be far more "cherry-picked" than that they get today. I'm also opposed to the re-introduction of corporl punishment - I think it sends all the wrong messages to children. I hate to see the word "Christian" allied to any BNP policy, but am actually opposed to this measure anyway. I think would be socially divisive, rather than inclusive for children of other faiths (but then they would probably all have been deported by the BNP anyway). Plus, I don't think it actually serves much of a purpose, from my own memories of religious assemblies at school, they were a fairly meaningless affair which was more of a bore and a turn-off than anything else.


UKIP

• To promote choice we will introduce an education voucher to cover the cost of a state education that can be transferred and topped up to private, other state and religious schools.
• This Party believes that school services should be provided by private, non-profit, parents, charities and co-ops to further expand choice in education.
• We believe strongly in grammar schools and will allow the creation of new grammar and other aptitude/skill selective schools where there is support.
• We will insist schools teach the 3R's and uphold rigorous standards through County Education Boards to replace LEAs and OFSTED.
• This Party will safeguard the rights of homeschooling.
• This Party will abolish university tuition fees.
• On university education, this Party will abolish the target of 50% of school leavers to go to university. We believe more technical and practical subjects should be undertaken at technical colleges, which some former polytechnics may revert back to being.

Its a pleasant surprise to see UKIP aren't as far right as I expected on this issue - no mention of re-introducing corporal punishment, for example. There is however the right wing suspicion of new teaching methods and a desire to return to the good old days, which weren't actually that good. The whole choice in education debate I find to be something of a red herring. Surveys have shown that most parents would actually "choose" to send their children to their local school if they felt assured that they would receive a high standard of education there. I don't buy the argument that increased choice for parents will force other schools to improve their standards. To my mind, its a way of avoiding the investment needed to raise standards across the board. I think they have a good point on universities though, both in scrapping tuition fees and in the need for more vocational alternatives - I think the 50% target is a mistake.


Conservatives

• The single most important thing for a good education is for every child to have access to a good teacher. We will take steps to enhance the prestige of the teaching profession, provide more on-the-job training and attract the best people into the profession.
• We will raise the entry requirement for taxpayer-funded primary school teacher training from a C grade in English and Maths GCSE to a B, and graduates will need at least a 2:2 in their degree in order to qualify for state-funded training.
• Schools - especially struggling ones - must be able to attract the best teachers and subject specialists, so we will give all headteachers the power to pay good teachers more. By redirecting the current teacher training budget, we will pay the student loan repayments for top maths and science graduates for as long as they remain teachers, expand Teach First and introduce two new programmes - Teach Now and Troops to Teachers - to get experienced, high-quality people into the profession.
• We will make it easier for teachers to use reasonable force to deal with violent incidents and remove disruptive pupils from the classroom without fear of legal action, and give teachers the strongest possible protection from false accusations. We will legislate so that teachers can ban any items that cause disruption in the classroom.
• We believe head teachers are best placed to raise standards of behaviour, which is why we will stop heads being overruled by bureaucrats over exclusions. We will reinforce powers of discipline by strengthening home-school behaviour contracts
• Every child who is capable of reading should be doing so after two years in primary school, and evidence from Scotland has shown that there are teaching methods that can make this possible
• Promote the teaching of systematic synthetic phonics and ensure teachers are properly trained to teach using this method.
• Reform school league tables so that schools can demonstrate they are stretching the most able and raising the attainment of the less able

I'm going to start by trying to be positive about the tories for once - the last point is a good one and those would be helpful things for league tables to show. Its also hard to argue that getting more good teachers into schools is a good thing, except this would also seem to imply that current school issues are down to poor teachers, rather than years of under-investment under Thatcher and New Labour. (Ok - I've run out of positive things to say about this policy now). Being able to pay good teachers more would create divided staff room and even further lower staff morale, which can't be in anybody's interest. The "Troops to Teachers" idea seems to be an overly-simplistic stab at improving discipline and I doubt its a good idea. I am uneasy about the idea of teachers using reasonable force to remove disruptive pupils - yes, in situations where there is violence or a physical risk to somebody children might need to be restrained, but this seem to be going further than this. Finally, I would be actively opposed to giving heads too much power over exclusions. I know from experience that some heads (only some) are too prone to use exclusions for pupils who are merely difficult to deal with and not necessarily meriting exclusion. There needs to be some authority above the head to which parents can appeal and who can hold the heads accountable.


Greens

• We believe much smaller class sizes are the key to behaviour and learning. We want a state funded education system which; provides essential numeracy and literacy skills; promotes a sense of responsibility, confidence and respect in all young people; caters for all specialisms and needs; promotes a sense of community; and promotes a healthy lifestyle through good diet and exercise
• To measure school performance we support the abolition of the system of SATs and league tables. We would like to see a system of self-evaluation for schools, that is monitored by the local education authority.
• This Party's position on grammar and public schools means that we would remove the charitable status of all such schools and offer state funding to them so they will be accessible to all children in the local area.
• All children, even those with disabilities and special educational needs, will be given the opportunity to attend their local school, which will provide diverse support for people with special needs. In special cases and in accordance with the child's wishes, there may be a need for segregation, which will be provided as a unit within the school.
• All schools, both state controlled and privately run will be required to embrace a multi-faith perspective throughout the delivery of the curriculum.
• This Party opposes City Academies and Trust Schools as we believe that schools should be governed in the interests of children and their parents, not through private individuals or businesses.
• Recruit and retain more teachers by allowing them greater freedom and, to remove one of the main reasons teachers leave teaching, ensure their paperwork is greatly reduced.
• Students will not have to pay tuition fees - we support grants not loans, providing a basic income sufficient for needs while in full time education.

There's a lot here that I like. Smaller class sizes with academic skills being complimented by social ones. Not sure how effective self-evaluation of schools would be, but its definitely preferrable to the current league tables and would allow the schools to focus more on teaching than targets. (BTW - can't believed none of the right wing parties had cutting paper work to encourage more teachers in - an oversight by the tories?). I'm kind of warming to their position on grammar and public schools. It seems nonsensical that these institutions which charge huge feees from most of their customers should be classed as charities, but this seems like a constructive way forward. Special units in mainstream schools can really work and are more inclusive, but in some cases special schools are still the best option, so I'd like to hear more about whether the greens would keep them as well. I'm supportive of the multi-faith perspective and the opposition to business involvement and abolishing tuition fees. All in all, I like what's on offer here.


Labour

• We will provide two additional outreach workers to support families at each Sure Start Children's centre in the 1,500 most disadvantaged areas.
• This Party will provide nursery places for 65,000 two year olds in the most deprived areas by 2012.
• To help parents improve their children's school attendance and behaviour, we will expand school-based Parent Support Advisers and we will fund two parenting advisers in every local authority over the next three years.
• We will give parents a say on local school provision by ensuring that where a significant group of parents say they are dissatisfied with local school leadership they will be able to vote to call in an experienced schools provider from a chain of schools or another good school to turn things round.
• This Party will offer 30,000 pupils one to one support in literacy and 30,000 support in numeracy every year over the coming years.
• In secondary schools, this Party will provide one to one tuition to 300,000 pupils in English and Maths who are falling behind their peers.
• This Party will guarantee every young person up to the age of 18 an apprenticeship, training or a place to study free of charge by 2015.
  

The focus on early years provision is great and something that seems off the radar of all the other parties. From the sound of it, the role of the Parent Support Advisers isn't all that different from what I used to do before the reorganisation, so I think its a good idea but wish they would change the name as not all issues especially with teenagers are down to parenting and this could be stigmatising. On the positives, the one-to-one support sounds good. But can't get my head round this idea of parents being able to vote for the takeover of a school by another school. It seems like a model badly copied from business rather anything that will genuinely raise standards - back to the drwing board with that one. As I've said before, I'm also unsure of the wisdom of guaranteeing places in the last point. In order to meet this guarantee, often artificial training courses are created with little real prospects at the end which produces a lack of motivation. From my experience more incentives and support to access what they want to themelves tends to work better.


Summary

There's good things about each of the Green, Lib-Dem and Labour proposals. If you could combine Labour's early years policy, with the Green's secondary school and the Lib Dem's further education it would be wonderful. Even UKIP are not without their merits on further education (and they managed to get through a whole policy without mentioning Europe as the source of all ills). So I've found it a bit harder torank them this time, apart from position 6, so in reverse order:

6. BNP another odious attempt to return to an illusory past.
5. Conservatives - they're better in some areas than UKIp, but also have more ideas thatv make me feel uneasy. Like alot of their policies this feels a bit scattergun, some good ideas, some bad, but little coherent vision of what the main issues are let alone how to fix it.
4. UKIP - they're stronger here than in other areas, but I just don't buy the choice argument which is central to what they're saying
3. Labour - great on early years provision, but then lose the plot abit in high schools and further education
1= Greens and Lib Dems - ok that's cheating a bit, but have a lot to recommend them with one or two less good ideas.


Next item on the agenda will be the environment.