The Tories’ draft education manifesto completely misunderstands modern schools

By Jim Sweetman /@jimbo9848

One of the oddest things about the Conservative Party’s plans for education is that they are targeted at people who have not been anywhere near a school for years. A Conservative’s typical school is too big and too unruly: the headteacher is under the whip of local politicians and working with a disgruntled and unqualified gang of rogues masquerading as teachers; the teaching is a ragbag of trendy subjects, the examinations are too easy, and violent children are never challenged or excluded.

Somebody needs to be blamed, so teachers are obviously the number one targets. Insisting on a GCSE grade B in English and mathematics for primary initial teacher training courses and at least a 2.2 degree is a nonsensical solution to a nonexistent problem. Teachers are more highly-trained now than they have ever been. Their subject knowledge is not a problem. The curriculum they have to deliver, however – introduced by a Conservative Government – has become increasingly straitjacketed and less relevant in the 21st century, but that’s a different issue.

How about getting new people into teaching? It’s true that many people who do make the crossover from private sector industry to state education are successful and there are plenty of schemes to help them. The Conservatives’ Teach Now replicates current provision although it might let a few ex-bankers into schools while Troops to Teachers harkens back to the post Second World War schemes where demobilised and traumatised officers were allowed to work off their psychological disorders on children! That’s just pre-election floss and a non-starter.

There are several windmills being tilted at:

* There is a call for a simple reading test at age 6 but, of course, there is already one in the national curriculum at Key Stage One.

* There is talk of teaching reading by phonics as if that is not the norm in every primary school.

* There is a proposal to publish all performance data as if the DCSF keeps secret files rather than occasionally preferring to refuse to provide ammunition for the BNP.

Another complication is that the Conservatives want to introduce changes that are already in place. Headteachers are not overwhelmed by bureaucrats these days and exclusion policies have been changed to give the school community more weight. Home-school parental contracts have also recently been strengthened and teachers now have more defence against false allegations.

The Conservatives would encourage more setting and streaming but there is already one-to-one tuition for those who need it most. Examinations will be more rigorous, as if English children are not already the most tested in the world and as if schools did not already spend more money than they should on examination fees. There will be more academies, some of them technical and possibly similar to the City Technology Colleges set up by the Conservatives in the 1990s.

Anyone will be allowed to open a school but, luckily, the outcome will be a new generation of ‘good small schools with high standards of discipline’ – Dotheboys Hall comes to mind! Ofsted will be more rigorous and targeted – there is a lot of rigour in this document – but those good schools won’t have to worry as they will not be visited! Inspection will be focused on the poor and the disadvantaged.

Of course, if you are proposing a 20% cutback in the education service, then you probably do have to rely on a lot of waffle to make the case that you are taking the service forward but this draft manifesto is extraordinarily flimsy as a way to mend a “broken society”.

It is hard to know what parents will make of it. This picture simply doesn’t correspond to what schools are like these days. Schools are modern, painted and discipline is generally better. One of the key reasons is the number of support staff available and a remorseless focus on teaching and learning. Another has been the recognition that school leaders have been overloaded by bureaucracy in the past and an understanding that the role of the local authority is to support schools.

There is at least one big unmentionable elephant in the Conservative strategy room and that is pre-school education. Labour did much better than expected in the urban sprawl of the South-East at the last election. The pollsters missed a swathe of mothers with small children who came out to vote for preschool education but, this time, everybody knows that a 20% cut will hit non-statutory education hardest and that means 3-5 year olds. Parents will need to vote on education policy in the light of what they know about schools – which is perhaps why David Cameron is talking to the grandparents!