Theresa May’s unimaginative approach to education is no surprise, but Jeremy Corbyn should be making the running
Europa |ReinoUnido/TheGuardian
Resumen: Propuestas para revisar las evaluaciones comparativas en educación,
al menos 100 nuevas escuelas libres al año se construirá, inclusión de viveros en las escuelas, garantía de 30 horas de cuidado infantil gratis, Universidades que cobran tarifas máximas (£ 9.000 +) deben patrocinar escuelas libres o academias, los nuevos maestros no tendrán que pagar los préstamos estudiantiles mientras permanezcan en la profesión, son algunas de las ideas que sobre educación plantea el programa laborista de Jeremy Corbyn.
It is not a great start to an election campaign, or a piece of journalism, to say you feel bored and uninspired by what is on offer. But there you have it.
There haven’t been many elections in recent years when education has been either a gamechanger or a grand talking point. The Labour landslide of 1997 maybe, preceded by Tony Blair’s 1996 Education Education Education conference speech. And Michael Gove’s passionate proselytising about the curriculum and Swedish free schools certainly livened things up in 2010, whatever we may have thought about the implications.
Apart from grammar schools, on which No 10 seems fixated, the Tories seem numb from the head down when it comes to education policy. Even this dreadful idea may be played down in the campaign. Every new version of the grammar school plan seems to come with the rider that it will affect only some areas, have a moderate impact and be nothing like the selective system in the past.
But if you hear a Tory spokesperson suggest they may only create a few new grammar schools, just remember that 30 years ago the Conservatives promised only a handful of city technology colleges, the original “independent state schools”. Legislation was duly passed and now there are 5,000 academies.Grammar schools on that scale would be very much like the past, so let’s not get fooled again.
But Conservative conservatism on education policy may not be surprising. Parties in government tend to be less good at developing compelling new ideas than parties in opposition, and Theresa May does not come across as a person with much driving vision or imagination.
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Over to Labour then, which could, and should, be making the running. Just imagine how it would liven things up if Jeremy Corbyn promised to ditch his party’s fudge of being both for and against grammar schools at the same time.
If children in comprehensive areas shouldn’t be subject to the evils of selection, why should those in existing selective areas have to live with it? The 11-plus, where it still exists, could be phased out over a 10- to 15-year period. No schools would be abolished and no children currently educated in those areas affected.
But even that would only require Labour to engage on the minuscule piece of territory the Tories have carved out. Where are the imaginative solutions to the ever more fragmented local oversight of schools, or brave thinking about a curriculum and qualifications to address the skills shortage in a post-Brexit world?
And what about the wider issues of school accountability, teacher recruitment and retention, workload, unfair admissions and market-driven segregation in the non-selective sector?
The promises so far of free school meals for all primary children and smaller class sizes are irrelevant to the big systemic issues. Evidence of their impact is unclear at a time when every penny spent should be making up a £3bn shortfall the government prefers to describe as “record levels of funding”, while ensuring there is enough money for a genuinely fair distribution across the country.
These are really the bread and butter issues of schools policy, which need to be illuminated with radical thinking. It is a sign of the dismal times that there seem to be no thinktanks on the left churning out ideas in the way that Policy Exchangeor Reform did pre-2010. Corbyn’s office apparently employs 28 people; the output in policy terms seems non-existent.
It isn’t even difficult these days to pick up the germ of good ideas from outside. In a turnaround from earlier elections, most interesting policy thinking now comes from educationists themselves.
The Headteachers’ Roundtable, soon to celebrate its fifth birthday after its initial Guardian meeting, has grown in stature and just published its owndoorstep manifesto [pdf]. Its offshoot, theNational Baccalaureate Trust, is developing and piloting the idea of a real Bacc for all 18-year-olds, incorporating academic and vocational qualifications with an ethos and values that could start in primary school.
At a recent party to celebrate the second birthday of Education Datalab, a new research and analysis organisation, guests were entertained by high-profile writers and practitioners pitching their ideas for reform “without policymakers”.
A pact in which all schools ignore Ofsted; a refusal to implement any policy not based on evidence; a plan to ditch marking in favour of comparative judgments; instructional rounds (as practised by the medical profession) rather than formal lesson observations – these were the solutions that emerged.
These ideas may not all be suitable for an election manifesto, but at least they show signs of a pulse. Someone just needs to feel it.
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There haven’t been many elections in recent years when education has been either a gamechanger or a grand talking point. The Labour landslide of 1997 maybe, preceded by Tony Blair’s 1996 Education Education Education conference speech. And Michael Gove’s passionate proselytising about the curriculum and Swedish free schools certainly livened things up in 2010, whatever we may have thought about the implications.
Apart from grammar schools, on which No 10 seems fixated, the Tories seem numb from the head down when it comes to education policy. Even this dreadful idea may be played down in the campaign. Every new version of the grammar school plan seems to come with the rider that it will affect only some areas, have a moderate impact and be nothing like the selective system in the past.
But if you hear a Tory spokesperson suggest they may only create a few new grammar schools, just remember that 30 years ago the Conservatives promised only a handful of city technology colleges, the original “independent state schools”. Legislation was duly passed and now there are 5,000 academies.Grammar schools on that scale would be very much like the past, so let’s not get fooled again.
But Conservative conservatism on education policy may not be surprising. Parties in government tend to be less good at developing compelling new ideas than parties in opposition, and Theresa May does not come across as a person with much driving vision or imagination.
But even that would only require Labour to engage on the minuscule piece of territory the Tories have carved out. Where are the imaginative solutions to the ever more fragmented local oversight of schools, or brave thinking about a curriculum and qualifications to address the skills shortage in a post-Brexit world?
And what about the wider issues of school accountability, teacher recruitment and retention, workload, unfair admissions and market-driven segregation in the non-selective sector?
The promises so far of free school meals for all primary children and smaller class sizes are irrelevant to the big systemic issues. Evidence of their impact is unclear at a time when every penny spent should be making up a £3bn shortfall the government prefers to describe as “record levels of funding”, while ensuring there is enough money for a genuinely fair distribution across the country.
These are really the bread and butter issues of schools policy, which need to be illuminated with radical thinking. It is a sign of the dismal times that there seem to be no thinktanks on the left churning out ideas in the way that Policy Exchangeor Reform did pre-2010. Corbyn’s office apparently employs 28 people; the output in policy terms seems non-existent.
It isn’t even difficult these days to pick up the germ of good ideas from outside. In a turnaround from earlier elections, most interesting policy thinking now comes from educationists themselves.
The Headteachers’ Roundtable, soon to celebrate its fifth birthday after its initial Guardian meeting, has grown in stature and just published its owndoorstep manifesto [pdf]. Its offshoot, theNational Baccalaureate Trust, is developing and piloting the idea of a real Bacc for all 18-year-olds, incorporating academic and vocational qualifications with an ethos and values that could start in primary school.
At a recent party to celebrate the second birthday of Education Datalab, a new research and analysis organisation, guests were entertained by high-profile writers and practitioners pitching their ideas for reform “without policymakers”.
A pact in which all schools ignore Ofsted; a refusal to implement any policy not based on evidence; a plan to ditch marking in favour of comparative judgments; instructional rounds (as practised by the medical profession) rather than formal lesson observations – these were the solutions that emerged.
These ideas may not all be suitable for an election manifesto, but at least they show signs of a pulse. Someone just needs to feel it.
Fuente: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/may/09/labour-education-policy-jeremy-corbyn