WHAT SHOULD BE DONE ABOUT STATE EDUCATION?

 

Introduction:  In stark contrast with the independent sector which, because it is accountable to its ‘consumers’, has retained its desirable reputation, the British state education system has been systematically undermined over recent years by politicians and the bureaucrats who control it. Unless the decline in standards in the state system is reversed, serious consequences are inevitable. In general terms, education should be a joint enterprise between parents and teachers (and, of course, the young person concerned): parents should be responsible for their child’s attitudes and values, and teachers for the professional teaching of subjects. Confusion and conflict about values, and who is responsible for what,  damages young people. Listed below are some recommendations for improvement.

 

Educational philosophies: There are two main educational philosophies, which are highly relevant and need to be understood.  The traditional philosophy advocates that education is the transference of factual knowledge (the cognitive areas) and a value-system (the affective areas) from one generation to the next. Progressives downgrade factual knowledge (the cognitive) in favour of using education to change attitudes and values (the affective) in order to produce a new, politically correct society.¹ 

Recommendation: All schools, colleges and universities should clearly state their philosophical ethos in their prospectuses. 

 

Purpose:  Because they don’t understand the two philosophies, most state school teachers have become confused about their primary purpose. They are unsure whether they are expert, professional educators/teachers or social workers/pseudo-parents.  It is often claimed by progressives that their opponents do not understand ‘modern’ education. That may be true:  those of a more traditional disposition do not always realise how progressive the British education system has become. But can any enterprise succeed if those involved are unsure of what they are supposed to be doing?

Recommendation:  The primary purpose of all educational institutions should be clearly stated and published, as should their record of performance in tests or exams over a 3-year period.

 

Standards: Academic standards should be set from the top (ie university-level) down, but implemented from the bottom (ie primary-level) up.  Each child’s  academic achievement should be pushed to the highest possible levels from his or her first days in school – without firm foundations (such as the ability to read well from the age of 5 or 6), higher levels of achievement are practically impossible. Standards in vocational education should be set by employers, who should have a veto on inadequate courses and qualifications.   

Recommendation:  Two small committees, one dominated by respected academics and the other by successful employers, should be set up to consider standards and how to improve them.  The chairmen of these committees could be appointed by the education secretary, but only individuals with a public  record of defending standards should be eligible for membership.    

 

Choice:  The state system favours ‘informed’ choice for children,  but the Human Right of parents to have their child educated in accordance with their own religious and philosophical convictions is ignored. Yet choice and competition between different types of school are essential for a free society and an effective education system.  Many grammar schools get 10 or more applicants to take their voluntary 11-plus exam for each available place. However, there are not even enough places available for all the children who pass the test. Furthermore, in the real world, anyone seeking to undermine the best-performing sections of an enterprise (such as grammar and high-performing faith schools) and to excuse the under-performers, as ministers now do, would probably be dismissed for incompetence. Why not in education?    

Recommendation: Wherever possible, parents and their children should have the choice of independent or state schools, selective or comprehensive schools, single-sex or co-educational schools, faith or secular schools, traditional or progressive schools

 

Accountability: State schools are only minimally accountable, and the bureaucrats and politicians who control the state system are completely unaccountable. School performance tables offer some accountability, but the political requirement to claim success and the ‘all must have prizes’ ethos  mean that wide variations in performance are usually hidden.

Recommendation: All educational institutions, especially their heads/principals/governors should be directly accountable to their ‘consumers’ (ie parents/pupils/students).  Making institutions financially  dependent on vouchers passed to them by their  ‘consumers’  (see below) would greatly enhance accountability.

 

Admissions: There are too few primary and secondary places in good schools to satisfy parental demand. It does not make sense to compel good schools and universities to accept sub-standard applicants as part of the class war  –  or as a means of social engineering.²

Recommendation: All educational institutions, from primary schools to universities, should have the freedom to set their own admissions criteria and the freedom to accept or reject applicants at their discretion.   

 

Inspections: With inspection reports emasculated because they are all written in accordance with a set formula, the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted), which currently costs around £200m a year, is wasteful and largely ineffective. It has, moreover, become a promoter of progressive ideology.  

Recommendation: Ofsted should either be abolished or radically slimmed down in favour of a small, totally independent, organisation which truly represents the interests of parents/consumers. The inspectorate should be limited to a small group of  people with genuine educational expertise and access to a range of inspectors with sound knowledge and experience. An inspection should automatically be triggered if the test or exam performance of an institution is seriously below average. Otherwise, schools and other educational institutions should only be inspected if significant numbers  of their clientele request an inspection. All inspections (which need not be expensive) should be paid for by the relevant institution.  Inspectors should unambiguously recommend the closure of ineffective schools and colleges.

 

Discipline: Effective learning cannot take place without firm discipline. Responsible adults should not surrender their authority to children – power currently rests with the delinquents and they know it. Good discipline cannot exist without a clear understanding that actions usually have consequences.

Recommendation: All schools should guarantee firm discipline by ensuring that bad behaviour will result in meaningful punishment, including permanent exclusion. Both teachers and parents must be free to administer whatever sanctions against bad behaviour they judge necessary in order to restore discipline and order.

 

Teacher training:  The state’s control of teacher training has permitted the universal enforcement of progressive ideology at the expense of  in-depth subject knowledge.³  The Teacher Training Agency (TTA), which costs taxpayers around £136m annually, is not providing a satisfactory service.  

Recommendation: The TTA should be closed down. So-called Qualified Teacher Status and other  restrictions on teacher employment should be removed and institutions should be allowed to employ anyone as a teacher, providing the applicant has the qualifications and experience (and passes   criminal record checks) required by the head/principal and governors. Practical teaching skills such as efficient class management should be acquired  in school.     

 

Teacher professionalism: Effective teachers are the most important single resource in the system. Yet the destruction of the professional standing of teachers by ideologically biased  politicians and teacher training colleges has caused  a crisis  in recruitment and retention.  There is now a serious shortage of competent professionals – almost 1,000 schools struggled to find a new headteacher in 2004.⁴

Recommendation: Teaching should be a research-based profession.  Teachers, including primary teachers, should be  expert, professional teachers of subject knowledge. They should not be expected to be social workers, pseudo-parents or political commissars.   

 

National testing: Although it provides useful information, national testing has become too bureaucratic, complicated  and expensive.

Recommendation: National testing of 7-year-olds should be limited to short tests of reading, writing and arithmetic. Reading tests should provide a comparison between each child’s chronological (actual) age and his or her reading age. The average results of all schools should be published.  National testing of 11-year-olds should include simple testing of basic English, maths and science,  plus geographical, historical and other knowledge. The average results achieved by each school  should continue to be published. National testing of 14-year-olds could be discontinued.

 

Exams:  The exam boards have failed to maintain standards and lost the confidence of their ‘consumers’.  As they are market driven, but within a closed market, they have a propensity to dumb-down exams to attract more clients. But having a single (nationalised) exam board seems dangerous. It does not make sense that a vocational qualification in cake decoration should carry more points than GCSE physics; or that a 16-plus qualification in Information & Communication Technology (ICT) should be worth 4 times as much as an academic GCSE. 

Recommendation: Honest competition between exam boards should be encouraged, but their standards for (academic) 16-plus and A-level exams should be set by respected universities.  Academic staff with a proven record of defending standards should regularly monitor academic exam standards and publicly report their findings. Overall control of standards in vocational education should be given to respected employers. The exam system should not be distorted to allow vocational qualifications to carry more weight than academic qualifications. Discrimination should be ended against International GCSEs, which are produced in this country and are more rigorous than the domestic versions. They, too, should be available to all and be counted in school performance tables. There should also be a general requirement that pupils/students must achieve the lower educational qualification in a subject before they are allowed to move up  to the higher levels in that subject.⁵  The Tomlinson proposals for subsuming GCSEs and A-levels into a single diploma should be rejected as  another attack on academic standards. The way to solve the problem of falling confidence in the exam system is to raise the standard of existing exams, not to replace them with a complicated, unproven system. 

 

Statistics: Both the DfES and LEAs withhold and manipulate statistics for political purposes.

Recommendation:  Statistical dishonesty should be punished with dismissal – as should the use of unnecessary, incomprehensible educational jargon. Whenever ‘weighted’ or manipulated statistics are used or published, the ‘raw’ figures should always be published alongside.

   

Value-Added: The current ‘value-added’ system of monitoring school performance is designed to disguise both success and failure. Pupils who perform extremely well in the early stages of their education are unable to ‘add value’ at the age of 16-plus and bureaucratic estimates of free school meal take-up and other social disadvantage are used to ‘level-out’ and justify poor performance.

Recommendation: If value-added performance tables are to continue, the methodology must be revised to allow both high and low levels of performance to be identified properly and honestly.    

 

Early years: The state has already demonstrated that it cannot provide effective education for 5 to 16 year-olds, so it is nonsense to extend the age range downwards (or upwards).  It is admitted that ‘75 per cent Sure Start [costing £1.3bn in 2005-06] is not really making much difference’. The Sunday Times has noted that current policies, which entail the state’s seizure of early years education from parents, can be seen as the introduction of ‘a fifty-hour week for toddlers’. Research shows that adverse consequences are inevitable.

Recommendation:  Parents (especially mothers) who are prepared to stay at home to look after their young children should be given tax breaks or other inducements to do so. Parents’ right to choose should not be undermined,  but the government should encourage responsible parenthood. It should not bribe responsible parents to surrender the rearing of their children to the state.   

 

Primary education: Despite the introduction of the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies, too many primary schools  are failing to equip their pupils with firm foundations on which to build the rest of their education.  The teaching of reading has improved slightly over recent years, but it is still ineffective in too many schools.

Recommendation: Primary children should receive a solid grounding in reading, writing and arithmetic, plus all the major subjects before they leave the primary sector. They should not be allowed to move up to mainstream secondary schools until they have objectively demonstrated their basic, general knowledge. All children should be taught to read by concentrating on systematic, synthetic phonics-first. Research shows that this method works and that it eliminates unequal performance between boys and girls.⁶   

 

Secondary education: Many so-called specialist (secondary) schools have been created simply to give parents the illusion of choice without the reality. What is needed is genuine choice between different systems (such as selective and non-selective) and between honestly different institutions.

Recommendation:  Schools should be given full autonomy and be allowed to specialise or diversify to meet the requirements of their ‘consumers’. They should not need bribing with taxpayers’ money to do so. For instance, whether to offer education for 11-16 year-olds or 11-18 year olds (ie sixth forms) should be decided by schools, not bureaucrats.   

 

Special Needs: When the proportion of pupils with genuine special needs is probably around 5%,  the educational establishment’s acceptance of 20% or more is intolerable.⁷

Recommendation: Immediate steps should be taken to reduce the artificially high percentage of ‘special needs’ by ensuring that only those that are genuine are specified – and properly catered for.  The widespread practice of exaggerating special needs to gain additional funding should be halted.  

 

FE and HE:  From 1998-99 to 2005-06, annual expenditure on Further Education has grown from £3.6bn to £8.5bn.  Over the same period, expenditure on Higher Education has increased from under £6bn to £8.1bn.⁸  Meanwhile, FE and HE lecturers complain that their incoming students lack basic knowledge and need remedial lessons. Employers make similar complaints about those who apply for jobs. 

Recommendation: Further and Higher Education should be available only to those who are properly qualified at the lower levels.  ‘Open access’/‘inclusion’ policies at taxpayers’ expense should cease.

 

DfES: Considering the size of its overall budget (some £60-70bn a year), the Department for Education and Skills does not provide a satisfactory service or value for money. It is a grossly inefficient Department with its own ideological agenda. For example, in January 2003, in answer to a Parliamentary Question about DfES grants to outside bodies, Charles Clarke could only produce a 75-page list of organisations, each page listing around 45 bodies receiving grants above £20,000 in 2001-02. No individual amounts were listed and the education minister admitted that the DfES’s accounting system was unable to distinguish between voluntary grants to outside bodies and contractual payments for goods or services supplied.⁹ According to its latest Departmental Report, for the financial year 2005-06, the DfES has set aside almost £1,500m for unidentified ‘Miscellaneous Programmes’.

Recommendation: The DfES should be closed down and replaced by a small office employing no more than 100 staff to support education ministers and the system generally. 

 

LEAs:  Between them, England’s 150 Local Education Authorities spend perhaps £11,000m a year on central services,  many of which are damaging, unnecessary and unwanted. 

Recommendation: Most of this money should be re-directed to front-line services. LEAs should have a statutory responsibility to ensure places are available for any child who cannot find a place directly with a school, for all children who have been excluded from school, and for those who have  genuine, quantified special needs.¹⁰   Such places should only be provided directly by LEAs when it is impossible to find a charitable or private-sector provider. Any other services LEAs seek to provide, which are educational rather than social, should be permitted only if individual institutions pay for them directly. 

 

Quangos: Educational quangos consume billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money which should be directed towards the ‘front-line’.  As with all bureaucracies, quangos keep growing and offer poor value for money.¹¹ They mainly benefit those seeking to undermine the system.   

Recommendation: All existing educational quangos, such as the QCA, the TTA,  Learning and Skills Councils and the General Teaching Council should be abolished. 

 

Funding: In 2003, ICM surveyed a cross section of ‘swing’ voters for the Reform think tank.  People were asked if they would like to be free to use the money the government spends on education (then about £5,000 per year per child) to send their child to any school they choose, including private schools where they could top up the fees. Of those polled, 55 per cent described the proposal as a ‘good idea’ and only 29 per cent rejected it. Among members of political  parties, 67 per cent of Conservatives and 54 per cent of Labour supporters favoured the proposal.  In 2004, the Centre for Policy Studies calculated that, in the year 2005-06,  the average cost per pupil in the state system will be £6,382 per pupil.¹² If this amount is divided between younger and older pupils, with primary pupils costed at 0.9 times the average and secondary pupils costed at 1.1 times the average, the amounts are very significant:  £5,744 per primary pupil and £7,020 per secondary pupil. These amounts, of course, are similar to the fees charged by many independent day-schools. 

Recommendation: All the taxpayers’ money currently spent on school-level education should be given directly to parents in the form of an annual passport/voucher to spend at the state or independent school of their choice. Parents willing and able voluntarily to top up their vouchers should be free to do so. Similar facilities should be extended to FE and HE as soon as possible.

 

Subjects:  The National Curriculum no longer fulfils the purpose for which it was intended. The QCA  has failed properly to prescribe the content required in each subject for each year-group. And it has meekly acceded to political requirements to promote progressivism. One way forward would be to publish the best available curricula used by high-performing schools, and to use these as models for the rest. In addition, the quality and provision of vocational subject options should be upgraded. The following minimal improvements are also required: 

 

English:  English language and literature should be more clearly separated, with different  tests and exams for each. Language should concentrate on grammar, spelling, punctuation etc. Literature should give due importance to the classics, which are part of our cultural heritage.

Maths: Emphasis should be on a solid grounding in basic arithmetic, especially mental arithmetic, algebra and geometry. The  use of calculators in primary schools should be halted. 

Science:  Moves to promote Combined Science at the expense of separate Biology, Chemistry and Physics should be halted and reversed.   

Geography:  Should place more emphasis on  physical geography, and less on  environmentalism and sociological studies.  

History:  Should emphasise knowledge, not skills. Up to age 16-plus,  it should cover the broad sweep of British history, examining Britain’s place in the world and the main cultural influences at work as Britain has evolved. Chronological understanding should be emphasised. After GCSE exams,  particular periods could be studied in depth.

Modern Foreign Languages:  Up to the age of 16, almost all pupils should study at least one modern foreign language. (Latin should be welcomed as an additional option.) The importance of learning vocabulary, grammar and doing accurate written translation from one language to another should be emphasised.   

Art:  Along with practical drawing and painting etc, all children should be introduced to classical art and architecture as part of their cultural education.    

Music:  All pupils should be given ample opportunities to sing and to play a musical instrument. Pupils should also be introduced to classical music.

PE/games:  Serious PE lessons and competitive games and sports should be encouraged and schools should not be allowed to sell off land or playing fields.    

RE: As required by law, all pupils should have the opportunity to study honest Religious Education (not just a value-free sociological study of comparative religions) and to participate in a daily Act of Worship according to the tenets of their own faith.¹³ Parental rights of withdrawal should be upheld.     

PSHEC: Personal, Social, Health Education and Citizenship lessons are concerned with values, so they infringe on the rights of parents.¹⁴  PSHEC includes sex education, drug education, socialisation and political education. Yet along with more sex education in schools, there has been a massive increase in sexually transmitted diseases among young people. Since 1998, an increase in drug education has been accompanied by a doubling in the numbers of young people taking drugs.¹⁵  This is probably because such lessons are based on ‘harm reduction’ rather than prevention; plus a widespread failure to provide young people with unbiased factual evidence on which to make their ‘informed choices’. Citizenship lessons, too, promote politically correct values, which many parents and youngsters find objectionable. These  areas of the curriculum are contentious and distract from efforts to raise standards. They should, therefore, be discouraged. Wherever they are offered, they should carry full parental rights of withdrawal, as with RE.

 

Conclusion: It is often remarked that the requirements, quality and standard of national tests and exams steer the curriculum and many other aspects of education. If standards are indeed rising, as most politicians and the educational establishment claim, why are the marks required to achieve particular  levels and grades reduced year after year?  Raising the standard and quality of tests and exams should be one of the first priorities. Others should include encouraging fully autonomous educational institutions, higher standards generally, and more parental choice. Above all, the aim should be to remove political ideology and the influence of politics from the state education system.

 

/12 February 2005.