Can Twigg light some fires?

Although he is not universally popular with party members and has already said some inappropriate things about free schools, it is good to see Stephen Twigg back to shadow the education portfolio. He was a popular minister with teachers who thought that he knew his stuff. You can’t help feeling as well that Andy Burnham will be much happier back with Health.

When Andy Burnham was looking after education the message often was that there wasn’t much to say. The headline was that university fees would drop under the next Labour administration or, perhaps, go back to a little more than they used to be in the pre-coalition days. Well, that was fine, and hunky-dory for those who wanted their children to be lumbered with a £30,000 debt instead of £40,000 plus but maybe there was an overlooked bit of space for some kind of vision about what higher education and degrees were all about when Chinese and Indian universities apparently had the capacity to turn out fifteen fully-trained city slicker graduates every minute.

Of course, every step was difficult. Labour did a lot to education apart from massively investing in it and it wasn’t all good, which left Andy Burnham sometimes defending the indefensible. So, he said things which suggested he was in favour of things which didn’t work in the past. He hinted at the value of centralised policy making as if telling schools that they have to have a literacy hour and a numeracy hour for every child and every day could still be helpful, and as if that might make teachers feel valued and the lessons more appropriate to the needs of individuals. He was always on the back foot in defending the overcomplicated, and now unlamented, diplomas as he was in attacking the extension of the academies programme or the underpinning ideology of the English Baccalaureate.

Meanwhile, Michael Gove had, and continues to have an easy ride, considering the huge cutbacks he is implementing. He is the man who stopped all those expensive Schools for the Future being built, who introduced Free Schools in new premises which still have to be paid for, and is turning lots of failing schools into academies. He continues to avoid, by the skin of his teeth, being named for anything to do with News International which once gave him a lot of money for doing very little.

However, parents, even if they are uncomfortable with the reduced role of the local authorities and the increasing lack of local accountability sense that, in their backyard, an intolerance of underperformance and more school to school support might pay off. Gove’s insistence on basic skills in reading and writing, raising standards, fostering excellence, supporting the traditional curriculum and examinations, pooh-poohing innovation and vocational courses, and emphasising choice has a superficial appeal to many parents and is not a million miles away from what Tony Blair might have said during one of his regular forays into education.

Someone now has to challenge the ideology which lies behind this. There is an intention in the Gove agenda to fragment maintained education into routes and pathways which benefit elites and foster backdoor selection. The emphasis on excellence hides a belief that some people are simply better than others and should go to better schools. The requirement for a variety of education providers is just one small step away from allowing education for profit in the maintained system.

So, what we really need from Stephen Twigg is a new vision based on the 21st-century rather than the 19th, a system which is not preoccupied with testing but focuses on learning, and teachers who are trained to know a lot about their subjects and to communicate that knowledge with enthusiasm.

We also need him to rubbish the teaching of Latin, be critical of the limited reach of the EBacc and expose the snobby reality of the Acton Free School for four wheel drive parents. In between, we need him to challenge Michael Gove at every opportunity over whether he is still a headline seeking journalist or simply the mouthpiece of right-wing unreformed elitism. The need for education, education, education – and for everyone – is as real and compelling as ever.