Here is a question. A few weeks ago, Keir Starmer made a thoughtful speech about education policy, fleshing out his party’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity. Who can remember what was in it?
The Labour leader set out laudable aims, including breaking down the “class ceiling”, improved teaching of oracy – to develop skill in using spoken language – in schools, a boost for vocational education, a commitment to invest in early years development and reforms to the way Ofsted defines success.
Yet as Guardian columnist John Crace noted in his sketch of the speech, much of it was instantly forgettable: “Within minutes of a [Starmer] speech ending, it’s as if you hadn’t been there.”
Why is this? The state of education policy in England (education is devolved in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) is lamentable. Like or loathe Michael Gove’s disruptive revolution during the coalition years, it was an endless, exhausting, often toxic whirlwind of ideas. Since then, there has been a yawning gap waiting to be filled with a serious project – though given the makeup of the government, the chances of something progressive emerging have been slim. But even trying to remember the names of recent education secretaries is a thankless task.
Labour has taken a courageous step in challenging the social apartheid of private schools by promising to end their tax breaks, but it isn’t enough. The party needs more specific ideas and a clearer narrative to carry them.
Most state schools today do a fantastic job in difficult circumstances, especially with the long tail of Covid effects. But so many aspects of our education system belong to the past, not least the soulless treadmill of GCSEs that were invented as a final qualification for an era in which the compulsory school leaving age for many children was 16. Today all are required to stay in education and training until 18. Those exams are also a zero-sum game. For some pupils and schools to pass, others must “fail”. The third of pupils who do not achieve a pass in English and maths inevitably struggle to break what Starmer defined as a class ceiling.
A simple and elegant way to address this issue would be the introduction of a real baccalaureate award at 18. This would be nothing like Gove’s English baccalaureate announced in 2012, which is simply a collection of academic GCSE subjects. Rather, this would be a school or college leaving qualification that every pupil could achieve at some level, which could include exam results and vocational qualifications as well as achievements in the arts, sport, project work and civic activity.
This type of enrichment is exactly what parents pay for in the private sector and would broaden the current definition of what we mean by a “good education”. It would also tick Starmer’s aim of parity of esteem between vocational and academic qualifications by unifying them under one award, while judging young people’s achievement in more than pass-or-fail terms. Ultimately this would probably lead to the demise of the GCSE and possibly the A-level, but would that really matter?
In his recent speech, Starmer also condemned the “sheep and goats” mentality that has bedevilled English education for generations. I wonder if he is aware that this language stems from the grammar and secondary-modern era and that overt and covert selection is still rife all over the country.
The remaining grammar schools are fuelled by a prohibitively expensive private tuition industry that ensures they take far fewer children with special educational needs or disabilities, or those who are eligible for free school meals, than their neighbours. Meanwhile a variety of state-sanctioned forms of covert selection allow other schools to pick and choose the children most likely to benefit their league table position.
All the international evidence suggests that the most successful systems, those that do break the class ceiling by reducing the gaps in achievement linked to family background, don’t segregate children into different types of schools. Labour should pledge to phase out the 11-plus test, tighten up the admissions code to end flagrant social selection and ensure that no school can achieve the best Ofsted grade, or whatever alternative Labour brings in to judge schools, unless its intake is representative of its local community.
Finally, Labour needs an inspiring overarching narrative about children. It is 20 years since the Blair government unveiled Every Child Matters. This was an ambitious multi-generation project embracing all services around children in the joint endeavour of improving children’s life chances beyond simply test and exam results.
Naturally it was swiftly dismantled by Gove when he became education secretary in 2010, for being too touchy feely when all children really needed in his view was more classics and trigonometry and his pound-shop version of a baccalaureate. But it is common sense that children are more likely to flourish if they are healthy, safe, free of poverty and with services to support families through difficult times. This work can’t be done by schools alone.
Every Child Matters needs to be modernised to recognise the impact of austerity and Covid, as the social problems facing schools are overwhelming. School absence figures, double those of the pre-pandemic years, are just one symptom of this. Some of these ‘ghost children’ are the ones who most need to be in school. Starmer says he wants reform not spending and will only borrow to invest. But we live in a world of other people’s children, so this is not a cost to government but an investment in all our futures. Labour’s airy education goals will not be achieved without it.
The socialist, historian and campaigner RH Tawney neatly summed up what Labour’s approach could be: “What a wise parent would wish for their children, so the state must wish for all its children.” People are waiting for something from Labour that will give them hope and make their hearts soar, rather than sore. Sadly, the recent decision to uphold the Tory two-child benefit cap suggests that to Labour, every child doesn’t matter (yet).
But there is still a chance to paint a very different education landscape to the one we face today. One in which all young people could follow their interests and aptitudes and still achieve recognised success, in true comprehensive schools that bring children together rather than divide them, and where every single child could be supported. This would be aspirational, inspirational and indeed, something to actually remember.
Fiona Millar is a writer and journalist specialising in education and parenting issues
