Tagged with Stephen Twigg

Tristram Hunt promises more of the same

Tristram Hunt 1Given the importance of education in any effort to create a more equal society, it may seem strange that the Labour Party has always found education a difficult issue to handle. The Party has within its ranks many well-informed campaigners for a truly comprehensive and high-quality school system for all (which includes parents, teachers, researchers and local councillors). The Party’s own affiliate, the Socialist Educational Association, also works hard for this objective. The problem is that the Party leaders are unwilling to these as the vital resource that they are for policy development.

The one big educational idea associated with Labour is comprehensive schools. However, Labour only ever implemented the idea in a half-hearted manner leaving a large independent and private sector which ensured that comprehensives were never truly such. This is well explained in Melissa Benn’s School Wars and the Blair/Brown years are analysed in Clyde Chitty’s New Labour and Secondary Education 1994-2010. Continue reading →

Labour Conference 2013: Education roundup

The debate on the education section of the NPF report, on the first day of Conference, was opened by Peter Wheeler (NEC). Six delegates spoke: three prospective parliamentary candidates and three union delegates (GMB, Unison, Unite). Stephen Twigg replied to ‘discussion’. No teachers, local authority councillors, educational campaigners or university educationalists took part. This session lasted 36 minutes.

Although the nominal purpose of the session was to debate the two sections of the NPF report devoted to education no one spoke for or against anything in the report. It was a debate in name only. Had the speakers read the education section of the NPF report? Did they approve its contents? We will never know. Continue reading →

Preparing for Labour’s conference: schools policy

Labour’s national policy forum (NPF) report 2013 for this year’s party conference is now available for all to read. Education is dealt with in the section devoted to the annual report of the Education and Child Care Commission on pages 70 to 76 and in a policy paper on childcare on pages 78 to 80. The discussion of schools and 16-19 training and education is found in the annual report and it is that section which is considered below.

The policy substance in this Report of just over 3000 words is slender. It can be summarised as follows:

  1. Labour’s approach to schools is based on “three key themes: Freedom, Devolution and Collaboration”
  2. Labour would give all (state supported) schools the same freedoms such as freedom over the curriculum
  3. Where freedoms are damaging they will be removed Continue reading →

Who’s in charge in Twigg’s vision for free schools?

School studentsInterviewed by Jeremy Vine last Sunday, Stephen Twigg repeated the proposal made in his recent RSA speech that Labour will support “parent-led academies”. He said that these will not be free schools because: (1) they will not be allowed to use unqualified staff; (2) not all free schools are parent-led; (3) they will be overseen by the local authority.

Lord Adonis, Michael Gove and free-school activist Toby Young have all hailed Twigg’s parent-led academies as free schools under another name. A free school, they say, is nothing but a start-up academy, some of which are parent-led (like Toby Young’s West London Free School). That is surely exactly what Twigg is proposing. This triumverate has accordingly declared victory in the battle over free schools. Who is right?

Continue reading →

A new direction for education under Labour?

school pupilsThe transformation of the English education system by Michael Gove has been one of the most far-reaching of the the changes made by the Coalition government. The majority of secondary schools have been removed from the framework of local democracy. Many have been absorbed into academy chains some of which have more schools than some local authorities ever had. They also exert a higher degree of control than while at the same time having no democratic mandate and operating outside of local democracy.

While Gove has rampaged through the education system, Labour has criticised details but has been without a substantial alternative. There have been valid criticisms of (1) control of schools from Whitehall, (2) the over-prescriptive national curriculum, (3) founding free schools where extra places are not required, (4) bullying schools into becoming academies (4) the abolition of the education maintenance allowance (5) the breaking of teachers’ national pay and conditions (though this is said sotto voce), (6) the use of unqualified staff, (7) the reversion to written exams only assessment; (8) admissions procedures that reinforce inequality. Continue reading →