Time for the Labour leadership contenders to speak up about Gove’s plan

Link to original article in the Independent on Sunday

The Labour Party has been strangely silent on the issue of coalition education plans for thousands academies and free schools run by parents, charities and private companies, as have all the candidates for the party’s leadership.

All but Ed Balls, currently shadow schools spokesman, might argue that they are tied to their current portfolios. However all are also keen to try and persuade voters and party members that they want a fresh approach to both Labour and national politics. The forthcoming hustings provide an opportunity to ask some probing questions and hear what that fresh approach might entail.

Here are some ideas for the candidates:

• Admit that simply giving a school ‘independence’ is not a magic bullet that will guarentee success. Campaign for parents to be allowed a full consultation, with all the facts freely available, before any ‘opt out’ is allowed and also for parents to be allowed to ask for their school to opt back in. Independence brings with it considerable risks of an increasingly atomised, hierarchical education system with thousands of schools receiving preferential funding to their neighbours and with freedoms to admit and exclude pupils in a different way. This will only create more confusion and division amongst parents and will almost certainly disadvantage the most vulnerable and hard to teach pupils, many of whom will remain in schools under the auspices of local authorities with diminished funding.

• Promise a new look at admissions, especially the continuing use of academic selection in over a quarter of all education authorities. All the main political parties admit that it disadvantages poor pupils, many of whom end up in secondary modern schools with disproportionate numbers of children from families that can’t afford to pay for private tuition to get their children through the 11 plus. Other local schools also have their intakes diminished as a result. Comprehensive Future has produced a plan for how selection could be ended without disadvantaging any current grammar school pupils.

• Champion a strong role for local authorities, not in ‘running’ schools, which they haven’t done for several decades, but in ensuring that funding is shared fairly between schools, in holding the ring when it comes to special needs, admissions and exclusions and in encouraging partnerships, rather than competition , between schools.

• Commit to acting quickly on the curriculum and qualifications. Heads and teachers should have more autonomy over what and how they teach, but every child should have access to a real choice of subjects within a broad, balanced  curriculum. Thousands of free schools with control of their curricula will work against that objective and the development of  a diverse range of qualifications, IGCEs , IGCSEs, A levels, diplomas, IBs, Pre-Us, GNVQs, BTECs, all with differing status and value, will only contribute to the ‘us and them’ world that parents have to navigate. Revert to the Tomlinson proposals for a single diploma qualification to replace all the rest.

• Prioritise standards not structures. Most parents want  some choice, not of schools that are radically different, but of good local schools with balanced intakes, pleasant and well resourced buildings, good behaviour, teaching and leadership. Every school should have a good or outstanding head and a focus on tailored, fully funded programmes of professional development for staff, allied to clear procedures for removing staff who are unable to improve.

The good local school, offering a high quality  education to  children from all backgrounds is a simple, powerful message. Prioritise that. Other policies will automatically fall into place and many parents will breathe a huge sign of relief.