What happens inside the classroom matters most

Glad to read some of this. Standards are more important than structures. Free schools will mainly contribute a few prestige projects that will be too popular for Labour to attack, but will not achieve lasting change.

However, the issue of “what happens in the classroom” is not an easy one for Labour. The main problems are 1) the Behaviour Crisis, 2) dumbing-down and 3) bureaucracy. All of them date back to the Tories, but have been made worse by what has happened in the last ten years and to a lot of the public are Labour’s fault, partly because of policies like Every Child Matters, but mainly because Labour has spent at least the last 5 years pretending there is nothing wrong with our broken school system. Worse, your policy review group is full of people who have supported poor discipline and dumbing-down. It is the voice of the education establishment and the Tories will be delighted to make sure the party lines are between them as the advocate of parents and Labour as the advocate of educationalists, consultants and teaching unions.

Within education the debate about the classroom has been the same since at least the sixties, and in some form since at least the turn of the twentieth century. On the one hand there is the “traditional” view that teachers are experts passing on subject knowledge by directly teaching the class and controlling their behaviour. On the other hand there is the “progressive” view that teachers are facilitators, letting the class solve problems, explore their own interests, express themselves and become well-adjusted through being treated with kindness and not confronted about their behaviour.

There is no middle way that resolves this conflict. There are positions that are more or less traditional or progressive. There are narratives that try to rebrand each position as a new idea (Jim Sweetman’s talk of the 21st century is the latest code for progressive education, David Blunkett’s national strategies were warmed-up traditionalism). There are people (like Matthew Taylor at the RSA) who claim the whole debate is outdated and then staunchly support one side of it. However, ultimately you are one or the other. The Tories have been largely traditionalist with odd forays into progressive ideas when that better advanced their elitism. Labour has been all over the shop. Traditional under Callaghan; progressive in the eighties and early nineties; traditional under  Blair and Blunkett; then after much confusion, settling on progressive under Brown and Balls.

Traditional is more popular with the public. Progressive is more popular with the educational establishment. You have to make your choice. There is no conversation to be had about what happens in the classroom that doesn’t take a side on the progressive/traditionalist divide. However, if you take the progressive side you will be giving an electoral gift to the Tories. If you take the traditional side you will be condemned by the educational establishment and by vocal parts of your own party. You will be accused of every kind of betrayal under the sun (including secret support for grammar schools). I personally hope you take the traditional option. The controversy over free schools suggests that you don’t mind ruffling a few feathers.  But it is much easier to fudge, talk about BSF and dodge the tough choice. No Labour education secretary or shadow education secretary has put forward a strong view about what should happen in the classroom since David Blunkett. This is not a safer topic than talking about free schools and academies; this is the true heart of the education debate.

It’s time education stopped being a political football kicked around to try and get a party elected it’s more important then that. Labour last thirteen years  was a target orientated education fiasco and I’m sure the Tories will end up the same.

 I do not blame parents for wanting to educate their children away from the political battle ground, private school are now the best way to go away from people who think they can get elected by messing with education.

Well raising the standard of teachers what a bloody nerve after you lot made people pay to go to University.

No wonder people in Scotland Wales and England voted you out, yet did not give a mandate to the Tories the both of you are bloody useless

Speak to people in business and again and again the message is that schools are turning out too many semi literate kids with no soft skills or workplace ethics.

So we won’t employ them…. reread that bit carefully Mr Twigg…. WE WON”T EMPLOY THEM.

We don’t have to employ them, we can take on an older worker, an immigrant from the EU or maybe from further afield.

For years you, and the tory government before, have presided over left wing teaching unions pushing trendy policies that led to falling standards, dumbing down, grade inflation and a lack of discipline in schools.

If you have money now the best bet for children is private schools or if avaible a grammar school.

I’m sure your whole fixation though will be on “narrowing the gap” whilst never realising it’s an impossibility to ever fully close and that it would likely be better for all if you accepted schools are about education AND getting young people ready for the world of work.

It’s a large flexible workforce in the EU and globally now, so there is no hiding place for dysfunctional products of failing UK schools. Hence there are over 1 million NEETS. No one is obligated to give them jobs and a lot of us avoid them like the plague due to the failings of politicians.

Some pretty good points, though I have to agree as an ex-teacher that the league tables were on paper a wonderful way of ensuring accountability in schools, but ended up being contrived paper exercises that merely made kids good at passing exams (and god-forbidden sats), with certain kids left at the wayside because further success would not improve league tables.

No wonder that the Tories feel justified in changing the system. I just think it speaks volumes about the academy system as the Tories are expanding it.

All schools have ever needed is more money, more teachers and smaller class sizes with teachers given more time to teach and improve their students. Teachers didn’t seem to be trusted with any aspect of education, and I agree their should be accountability, but schools should be trusted a bit more in this respect.

Why were my comments critisizing Twigg not published?