Education for Tomorrow

1
Education for Tomorrow

• What price State education?

2
Advanced egg-sucking for grandmothers

• Our purpose...
• to explore what is happening in education
• in the context of the general political
  situation...
• in order to understand why it is happening
• so that we can determine a way forward.

3
Winning the war... post-war reconstruction

• The economy needed an
• advanced, newly skilled working class
• Workers demanded educational opportunity and
  fundamental social change
• Both sides were aware of the political
  significance of a literate, skilled, educated
  working class

4
A new Britain... 1944 and all that

• The 1944 Education Act
• GCT Giles, President of the NUT...
• A reconstructed, unified, democratic system of
  education
• Can equality be achieved within the three school
  types?
• The need to develop a school of a new type to
  reconcile the claims of vocationalism,
  citizenship and general culture
• (There are) those that argue that the experiment
  cannot flourish within a State system. How little
  they know of the rich and varied history of State
  schools
• Education, a necessary condition of developing
  and broadening democracy
• The reactionary die-hard forces, which too often
  in the past have succeeded in strangling
  educational social progress, have not undergone
  a sudden and miraculous change of heart.
• We will need all the strength, experience
  leadership of our great Union and of a united
  profession and the active sympathy
  co-operation of a public
• opinion more enlightened and more determined
  than ever before to
• sweep aside the obstruction of vested interest
  and privilege.

5
11 the fight for comprehensives

• 1960s 70s
• agitation, research, campaigning
• struggle for comprehensive education
• Govt. Circular 10/65 instructed LEAs to begin
• 1969 71 The Black Papers counterattack
• 1970 Tory Govt (Education Sec Thatcher)
• 1975 Labour Govt (Ed Sec Shirley Williams)
• Threats of legal action against non-compliance
• 1976 PM Callaghan launches
• The Great Education Debate
• 1979 Tories elected with PM Thatcher

6
Thatcher arrives...

• The Tories gave us
• Defence of Grammar Schools
• Assisted Places scheme subsidising private
  education
• Local Financial Management then LMS
• Funding famine
• Compulsory Competitive Tendering

• Opting Out
• City Technology Colleges
• EAZs
• SATs League Tables
• Punitive Ofsted Inspection
• Parental Choice
• Outsourcing of LEAS
• Private Finance Initiative

7
..and then came Tony

• CCT footage from the crime scene
• Education, education,education
• Essential challenges of modernisation
• to create an economy fully attuned to a new
  global market
• to fashion a modern welfare state where the role
  of government changes so it is not necessary to
  provide all social provision...
• the process is irresistible and irreversible
• Speech to TUC 1997

8
They know the truth...

• We also fail our most disadvantaged children and
  young people internationally, our rate of child
  poverty is still high, as our the rates of
  worklessness in one-parent families, the rate of
  teenage pregnancy and the level of poor diet
  amongst children. The links between poor health,
  disadvantage and low education outcomes are
  stark.
• The 5 year strategy for Children Learners

9
Some contradictions

• Mass state education is the source of skill and
  knowledge, which generate wealth
• Globalisation demands privatisation, and the
  surrender of the public sector to the world of
  profit
• Education for all demands increasing levels of
  public spending but..
• There are pressures - including domestic and EU
  pressures - to reduce public spending

10
..which brought usthe Governments 5 year
strategy

• Diversity Choice attack on bog standard
  comprehensives
• Extension of PFI - Building Schools For The
  Future
• Specialist Schools
• Extension of Foundation Status for schools
• Further reduction in the role of LEAs and
  increase in outsourcing
• City Academies - now Academies and Skills
  Academies
• Workforce Remodelling - through Social
  Partnership divide rule
• Enforced school staff and pay restructuring
  attacks on pensions
• Academic vocational pathways at 14
• Schools run by private companies, individuals,
  voluntary groups, parents, faith groups
• Higher Education fees increasing student debt

11
and now, The Education Bill (Act) 2006

• Schools to be encouraged to opt out of LA as
  Trust Schools to
• take increasing control the curriculum
  teachers pay conditions
• Businesses, faith groups, parents universities
  to be allowed to set up schools and help form
  clusters or federations of existing ones.
• Popular schools to be allowed to expand to
  take in more pupils.
• Private schools to be allowed to "opt in" to the
  state sector. Faith schools, in particular, are
  expected to take advantage of this.
• Parents to be given a bigger say in the running
  of schools
• Failing schools to be given a year to improve
  or face closure.
• Cut-price transport for families in poor
  neighbourhoods to give them access to
  better-performing schools in wealthier suburbs.

12
Globalisation educationexternal pressures

• Andy Green, reader in Education at
• University of London Institute of Education.
• As the national state becomes a marginal force
  in the new world order, so education becomes an
  individualised consumer good delivered in a
  global market and accessed through satellite and
  cable links. National education ceases to exist
• Education, Globalisation The Nation State
• Why educate your own people when you can import
  some cheaper, or export the jobs?

13
Education for global profit

• Global spending on education exceeds one thousand
  billion dollars
• World wide there are 50 million teachers employed
• Over one billion students are taught in hundreds
  of thousands of educational establishments
• Education International - the international
  education union organisation says,
• Some see this immense bloc as a dream market
  for future investment

14
Liberalisation world-wide

• World Trade Organisation,
• General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS)
  GATS is the first ever set of multilateral,
  legally enforcable, rules governing international
  trade in services
• The European Commission publication World Trade
  In Services Services negotiations should
  extend liberalisation world-wide, creating new
  trade and investment opportunities in all service
  sectors
• The European Union Constitution and the European
  Services Directive reinforce these messages

15
Speaking personally...

• Prof. James Tooley, privatisation theorist and
  practitioner, Newcastle University,
• We mustnt be tempted by the reassuring spin
  that the public sector can hope to match the
  incentives of the private sector. The way forward
  for education is to bring in (these) incentives
  Education is far too important to be excluded
  from the virtues of the profit motive

16
and from the USA...

• Michael Milken, a leading US finance capitalist,
  speaking to Arthur Levine, President of Teachers
  College, Columbia University
• You guys are in trouble
• and were gonna eat your lunch

17
The end of state education?

• As Education International puts it
• In the wake of other major public services
  which have been subject to extensive
  privatisation deregulation, public education is
  being increasingly targeted by predatory and
  powerful entrepreneurial interests. The latter
  are aiming at nothing less than its dismantling
  by subjecting it to international competition.

18
Possible outcomes?

• Academic, privately run, high flying top up fee
  paying schools staffed by qualified teachers,
  with locally negotiated pay and conditions - and
  financially supported by the private sector or
  owned by them.
• Vocational schools, providing core curriculum -
  and post 14 training in FE colleges and on
  employers premises. Many classes run by non QTS
  staff.

19
Social Partnership and Divide Rule

• The Government attempts to incorporate potential
  opposition
• The Workload/Remodelling Agreement and WAMG
• The School Workforce Restructuring Agreement
• Rewards and Incentives Group
• The pre-election Warwick Agreement
• Performance management regulations
• Teachers duties

20
Off the back foottaking the initiative...

• NUTs Bringing Down The Barriers
• A new Great Education Debate
• A Good Local School For Every Child
• Re-organising our Unions to meet the task
• Professional Unity and broad coalitions
• TUC policy for An integrated programme of
  educational, vocational training and youth
  employment