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Architects, critics and prophets
How did schools come to assume their present form and function? How recognisable would schools for the twentieth century be to that ubiquitous time traveller? Who were the ideological architects who bequeathed us forms of curriculum and assessment which have been largely impervious to their critics and often sceptical of the prophets? Can schools be fundamentally re-designed when it is only in opposition that governments seem to offer radical solutions and visionary promise? Is there scope for something completely different in the face of public expectations and media pressures which push elected government relentlessly back to safer, shallower waters?
It is engrained in the fabric of recent history that on a momentous day in 1997 all would be different. On the first of May 1997 education came alive as the top priority for a new government. Without âEducation, Education, Educationâ, the recent history of education policy would have been very different and the impact on the day to day lives of teachers and young people an imponderable. All through the Labour Partyâs 13 year tenure of office education was to remain a top priority and many of the accomplishments under Blair and Brown were not disputed by Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. However, unlike the United States, education is not a bipartisan issue so that it is often difficult to perceive where the real and enduring successes lie and what the alternatives might have been.
With mediaâs penchant for the dramatic, one of Labourâs greatest success slipped under the radar. Raising funding levels for education to the OECD average may seem too unspectacular to report or celebrate but it signalled an intent to realise the promise of the three educations. Indeed one of Gordon Brownâs last acts as chancellor in his 2007 Mansion House speech was to call for the funding of each pupil in state schools to rise to ÂŁ8000 a year to match the current spending for pupils in private schools. In the fragile financial climate at the time such a commitment now seems hugely ambitious, although one of the Brown governmentâs last acts was to legislate targets for ending child poverty. As a result no future government will find it easy to compromise on the priority given by the Labour government to education.
We live in a global community in which education is widely accepted as the medium for economic success. Understanding the processes of education reform is vital in how we evaluate of the triumphs and failures of governments. Even more vital is an understanding of the relationship between those entrusted by governments to provide education â teachers and support staff on the one hand and policy makers on the other.
This book is about that relationship. At its centre are a set of interviews with key people who were, and are, responsible for education policies and educational reform. We are grateful to those interviewees for their honesty and insights, some of which unfortunately we have had to omit both in order to protect the innocent, and the guilty. For every interview, there could have been many more but we hope that those who appear in this book are a reasonably representative cross section of current opinion and historical memory. Their views are complemented by evidence from research, including four studies of primary, secondary and special schools between 2002 and 2009, carried out by two authors of this book, John MacBeath and Maurice Galton, and commissioned by John Bangs for the National Union of Teachers, the bookâs third author.
The evidence from our interviewees provides a complex mosaic of views, reflecting differing ideological, political and pragmatic standpoints, from inside and outside the âbig tentâ. They bring into sharp relief tensions and paradoxes that connect, or fail to connect, the world of classrooms and the world of policy makers. We have sought to be faithful to the emerging narratives and what we believe they imply for school life and learning under an incoming government.
If there are areas of debate, such as governance and funding that do not figure large in this account, it reflects perhaps the issues to which our witnesses gave most emphasis, or perhaps the nature of the questions we asked. We hope that the issues to which we have given priority are those that reflect the common aspiration for âa world class education systemâ and why that dream is so often frustrated.
A spring of hope
The book was written in the months running up to the general election. It was a time of reflection sharpened by the worst economic crisis since the 1930s. Our interviews took place in that climate and we were privileged to catch that moment.
The election of Margaret Thatcher as prime minister in 1979 and that of Tony Blair in 1997 had raised expectations for something completely different. Both governments, elected with substantial majorities, enough to give confidence that they would retain power at the following general election, allowed the possibility of thinking long-term and of developing policies designed to restructure the education system so as to meet the needs of the twenty-first century.
The legacy of âfirst past the postâ system of parliamentary democracy, and the need to seek re-election within five years of taking office, has tended to focus policy making on the short term with short life initiatives outnumbering strategic approaches. In education, as in other areas of government, the apparent lack of coherence and continuity in policy making is often attributed to a need for political parties to emphasise their differences, to be adversarial rather than consensual. The drive by parties to create clear blue political water between themselves tends therefore to be more important than embedding practical and effective education policies. However, the promise of at least a two term government, for both Thatcher and Blair, offered an opportunity to build on the best of what had gone before and think radically about the rest.
Coherence and continuity: a focus on curriculum
In 1979, Mrs Thatcher was unimpressed by the school curriculum her government had inherited. Education was not, for her, off limits. By the early 1980s incipient disquiet had grown to a serious concern about the extent to which pupils in different schools were being offered similar curriculum provision. Surveys by Bassey (1978) and Bennett et al. (1980) had shown, for example, that in primary schools the amount of time devoted to the teaching of English ranged from a minimum of four to a maximum of twelve hours. For mathematics the range was only slightly less. Among academic architects and critics there was an ongoing dialogue about the purposes of reforming the curriculum. Some tended to focus on learning as a social activity whereby, as argued by Bruner and Haste (1987), children attempted to reconstruct their world as social beings rather than as âlone scientistsâ where a seemingly ordinary occurrence, such as an apple falling off a tree, can trigger a flight of the imagination leading to a theory of gravity. A broad and balanced curriculum was therefore required; one based on social democratic ideals which should include aspects of citizenship and community education as well as traditional academic subjects (Lawton, 1975).
These views, however, were in marked contrast to those of the âNew Rightâ which had set the agenda for the incoming Conservative government (Tomlinson, 1992). In their view society was merely reflected in the uncoordinated actions of its individual members and there was thus no collective responsibility of the community as a whole, to nurture its weakest individuals. A common curriculum designed to empower the underprivileged, such as argued for by Lawton (1975), was therefore no longer in step with contemporary political orthodoxy. The main rationale for curriculum reform was economic; to allow the next generation of workers to compete effectively in the marketplace of the future (Lawlor, 1988).
The coming of the National Curriculum
By 1988 the Educational Reform Act was in place with the result that a system which for the previous 35 years,
In some ways the Act represented a compromise between those arguing for a free market approach and those wanting a greater degree of central control of education. Schools were encouraged to break away from local authorities either in the form of âgrant maintainedâ or âcity technology collegesâ. In addition more assisted places at independent schools were provided. At the same time schools remaining within the Local Authority framework were given delegated budgets and were free to enrol as many pupils as they felt able to cope with by recruiting from outside their designated catchment areas. Since the size of the budget depended on the number of enrolments, neighbouring schools were now in direct competition with each other for the available resources.
In a totally free market, however, schools would also have been permitted to design their own curriculum, as in the private sector. This would have left parents with the task of choosing a school whose offerings best matched what they judged to be their childrenâs needs or abilities. The eventual compromise between the âfree marketersâ and those wanting centralised control of the curriculum was that a testing regime should be put in place with the results made available to the general public so that parents could take an informed decision as to which school constituted the âbest buyâ.
Criticisms of the pace of change were largely ignored or viewed as ideological rather than genuine expressions of practical concern. Ministers were determined not to be âin thrall to the prejudices of academicsâ (Baker, 1993:198). Within two years of the Reform Act a statutory primary curriculum had been introduced in primary schools, assessment at seven plus was in place and trials at 11+ were underway. New agencies were established for determining the initial teacher training curriculum and establishing teachersâ conditions of service. By 1993 it was clear that teachers were faced with a massive curriculum overload, particularly at Key Stage 1 where time for teaching reading had to be reduced in order to meet statutory requirements (Campbell, 1993). Also the testing arrangements accompanying the National Curriculum had become a nightmare. Although excessive workload created by tests was ostensibly the trigger, the 1993 boycott of the Key Stages 1â3 tests by the NUT (National Union of Teachers), NASUWT (National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers) and ATL (Association of Teachers and Lecturers) was motivated also by the testsâ high stakes nature. The National Curriculum which had been a dream at conception had according to Professor Campbell become a nightmare at delivery.
Then there were three wise men
The move of Kenneth Baker to the Home Office and his replacement by Kenneth Clarke did little to improve matters although concerns began to shift towards the quality of current classroom practice. Among a number of scare stories was the 1990 equivalent of the William Tyndale affair (Auld, 1976) at Culloden Primary School which was singled out for strong criticism in an HMI (Her Majestyâs Inspectorate) report for its over-reliance on âprogressive practices,â particularly the use of âreal booksâ to teach reading (see Alexander, 1997: 187). The chief executive of the National Curriculum Council, Duncan Graham, came under increasing criticism from ministers for making the National Curriculum too complicated and for failing to âsort out the way that teachers teachâ (Graham, 1993: 111). On resigning, Graham was replaced by an existing member of the NCC team, Chris Woodhead, who was relatively unknown within the larger educational community but to âinsidersâ was seen as a likely replacement given his willingness âto work with increasingly right wing councils,â (Watkins, 1993: 66). There followed the setting up of the so-called team of âthree wise menâ consisting of Woodhead, the chief inspector of primary education, Jim Rose, and Professor Robin Alexander charged with reviewing:
From the start, according to Alexander (1997), Kenneth Clarke appeared to anticipate the conclusions of the review when, announcing the membership of the team, the next dayâs newspaper headlines described him as backing âthe return to formal lessonsâ and shutting âthe door on 25 years of trendy teachingâ. Indeed support for this assertion comes from Alexanderâs (1997: 245) account of the final drafting process where many of his original versions were changed to give a positive spin in favour of whole class teaching.
And then a reign of terror
One of Kenneth Clarkeâs last tasks as education secretary was to privatise the inspection process. HMI was abolished and the resources used by LEAs (Local Education Authorities) when conducting local inspections transferred to a specially created Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted). Clarkeâs successor, John Patten, stayed for under two years at the Department of Education. His resignation coincided with the appointment of Chris Woodhead as Her Majestyâs Chief Inspector (HMCI) and the first full time and head of Ofsted on the recommendation of the then prime minister, John Major. According to Mike Tomlinson (Woodheadâs eventual successor) one minister at least particularly admired the way Woodhead had âput real grit into the missionâ while head of the then School Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (SCAA) and had urged the appointment as HMCI on the grounds that he would do a similar job in sorting out schools and teachers, Woodheadâs regime has been described as a âreign of terrorâ by Tim Brighouse (1997:106) who later became vice chair of the New Labour Task Force on Raising Educational Standards.
This was not an isolated view. Writing in the Guardian (12 March 1997) the former deputy leader of the Labour Party, Roy [now Lord] Hattersley, argued that the chief inspector was âthe apostle of improvement by confrontationâ and accused him of rewriting reports to exclude passages of support for struggling schools and LEAs, and of misinterpreting research in pursuit of his own point of view. According to the chief inspector himself pupils were badly taught in half of all our schools, too many teachers saw themselves as facilitators rather than moral authorities, were apt to...