Comment: A contradictory and flawed education policy
The education white paper promises much but will deliver little. Michael Gove’s proposals need to be challenged.
By Chris Keates
The Department for Education white paper – ‘The Importance of Teaching’ acknowledges a point that the NASUWT has stated consistently, that well-trained, qualified teachers who are able to use their professional skills, judgement and experience, are crucial in ensuring that children are able to meet their potential and achieve their aspirations.
Unfortunately, the policy proposals within the White Paper, and the spin that the coalition government has allowed large sections of the media to perpetuate, suggests a very different scenario and fail to live up to the promise of the white paper’s title.
In order to push through what are reactionary and regressive polices, the coalition government has sought to create an illusion of failure in the profession and in the education service. The objective of this attempted deception is to mask the inconvenient truth for the coalition government, that since the last Conservative government, results have improved across the board, post-16 participation has increased and more students than ever are now studying university-level courses.
To seek to give credence to the proposals and to defend the case for the proposed changes in the white paper the coalition government has made much of the use of evidence from selected academic studies to inform the white paper. Data from international assessments is misused liberally, ignoring that fact that they were never designed to operate in a league table format as they measure only very narrow sections of the curriculum and are biased in favour of certain types of teaching. The ‘case for change’ publication issued alongside the white paper is nothing more than propaganda based on cherry-picking of information ignoring the fact that the actual evidence as written is much more nuanced and uncertain.
The white paper is littered with contradictory and flawed proposals. On the one hand it suggests that schools should be autonomous and innovative but then on the other hand seeks to increase the high stakes accountability structure encouraging a tick box mentality and even inertia. It states that teachers should be free to get on with teaching but then suggests measures which will result if implemented in them being on a permanent capability procedure. It proposes that the curriculum should allow teachers the freedom to choose but then plans to specify the knowledge that all children should have and the subjects that are taught at GCSE.
It claims to restore teachers’ ability to exercise professional judgement and then instructs that reading will be taught by the use of synthetic phonics. It stresses the need for an education system that is prepared for the future and yet downgrades the status of vocational qualifications. It affirms that social mobility is paramount and yet plans to leave pupils at the mercy of the market. Elements that could be capable of being welcomed, such as an emphasis on improving behaviour within schools, offer a 1950s solution to a 21st century problem.
Neither the NASUWT nor teachers are afraid of or resistant to change. The fact that we spent the last seven years working in partnership with last government on a programme of workforce reform is testament to that fact. Teachers are resigned to the fact that the only thing constant in education is change. But teachers and the NASUWT believe that any change should be to raise standards and secure equality, fairness and social justice, the important values of successful state education.
The white paper proposals meet none of those tests and unless they are challenged vigorously our state education system, in which there is much of which to be proud will descend into a free market free for all which should make us all deeply concerned for this and future generations of children and young people.
Chris Keates is general secretary of the NASUWT teachers’ union.
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