Cameron’s schools speech was an admission of failure over education

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/oct/28/cameron-admits-coalition-failures-on-education

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Did anyone else notice that debate on schools policy was strangely absent from this year’s party conferences? Education received no more than a passing mention. It’s all a long way from the days when it was almost guaranteed a central spot in any leader’s speech. “Education, education, education” seems to have given way to “health, health, health”. Although the emphasis on the NHS is entirely understandable given the challenges it faces, I hope that the relative silence on schools isn’t a sign that the parties think all is well.

The reality is very different. If proof were needed, it came in a recent speech from the prime minister. What masqueraded as an announcement of new ideas to get tough on “failing” schools if the Tories win the next election was nothing less than an admission that the policies at the very centre of the coalition’s education strategy since 2010 have failed.

The speech outlined plans to extend the role of the newly appointed regional commissioners, giving them authority over all schools rather than just academies and free schools. They would become some of the most powerful individuals in education, with the ability to fire teachers and headteachers, replace governors, implement new approaches to behaviour and introduce new policies on uniform and homework.

The speech could hardly be described as a logical next step for this government. The PM and his ministers speak now about local intervention, powerful regional structures and limiting headteachers’ autonomy but they are the same people who have been lecturing us for the past four and a half years about the dangers of local authority interference and the importance of freedom for all school leaders. This government told us that “choice” and the market would solve all our problems and redirected the efforts of a whole department of state to convert schools to academies that would be run from Whitehall.

Ministers can point to an improvement in standards in some schools, which is of course to be celebrated, but the real test of a government’s strategy isn’t just what happens to already successful schools, but whether their policies work for those schools that most need to improve. It may be no coincidence that David Cameron’s speech came just days before Ofsted reported that the six Birmingham schools caught up in the “Trojan Horse” saga – five of them academies and the responsibility of the Department for Education – had made insufficient progress.

It is difficult to exaggerate how much the botched changes of the last four years have distracted teachers from their real challenge of improving the quality of teaching and learning and although I’ve no doubt that regional commissioners will make good use of their powers, it would be a testament to their professionalism rather than the wisdom of the government. Ministers seem to completely fail to understand the problems they have created and seem incapable of offering any solutions.

I offer four examples of their muddled thinking.

First, if the Conservatives have at last realised that they can’t run a few thousand schools from Whitehall, even with an army of civil servants, why do they think eight commissioners will be able to support and challenge 24,000 schools spread across the length and breadth of the country?

Second, when the education service is crying out for clarity about who oversees the growing number of academies and free schools, why does the government propose to exacerbate the problem by setting up a conflict between commissioners and local authorities over who oversees local authority schools?

Third, if these policies are ostensibly about devolving power, why do they think that a National Teaching Service of “superteachers”, rather than a local arrangement, is the answer to anything?

Four, when the evidence shows the need for education to work closely with other agencies, why is there no attempt to reverse the fragmentation of services over which the coalition has presided?

This government will leave a minefield of energy-sapping, unworkable policies for its successor. No matter how difficult the issues, let us hope that the lack of discussion at conferences merely hides a depth of thinking behind the scenes.