Save the NES

The SEA is proud to be the only educational organisation affiliated to the Labour Party. The Association has a proud history. Since its inception as the National Association of Labour Teachers in the 1920s, it has grown into a broader church and in the 1960s was re-named the “Socialist Educational Association”. Over the years the SEA has fought and won many battles for a socialist perspective on education within the Labour Party. We engaged in what is fair to describe as a ‘spirited’ dialogue with the Party when it was in power from 1997 onwards, particularly regarding academies and selection.

Time has moved swiftly on and we are now in a real battle to preserve coherent and equitable provision of state education. Michael Gove should never be underestimated. He is a man with a very bad plan indeed. Despite his incompetence in a number of areas, e.g. over the ‘Building Schools for the Future’ decommissioning debacle, he has been given free rein by a sympathetic press to espouse and implement his views on free schools and Academies.

Stephen Twigg has, refreshingly, called for an evidence based approach to education policy making and it is evidence that ultimately will be the undoing of Gove’s policies. The evidence, from Terry Wrigley for example, demonstrates that Academies are not improving more rapidly than their remaining community comprehensive school counterparts. The widespread use of ‘gaming’ in the deployment of dubious vocational equivalences has led to widespread distortion of key GCSE indicators for hundreds of schools.

ATL General Secretary, Mary Bousted, recently pointed out the difficulties of highlighting the disadvantageous effect of social class on educational outcomes. As she said, ‘I contend that it is difficult for evidence-based education policy to have any traction in this country where the educational debate is so toxic and so polarized. Where to speak of the effect of poverty and inequality upon educational performance is to run the risk…of being accused of low expectations, of condoning failure.’

And Michael Gove has had the nerve and unbridled hypocrisy to accuse those on the left who oppose Academies of being happy with failure. Those who have worked for years if not decades in the state sector endeavouring to raise achievement levels as well as levels of aspiration will find his comments utterly appalling. But it is also free schools where the real ideological battle is taking place.

The Anti Academies Alliance has delved into the recent decision by Gove to allow a for profit organisation to run a ‘free’ school in Suffolk. As they say,’ The Breckland Free School in Brandon, Suffolk, has awarded a £21 million contract to Swedish for-profit education company IES UK. The decision to appoint a for profit provider to set up a ‘free’ school in Brandon, Suffolk, is a clear signpost of the direction of travel of Michael Gove’s ‘supply side revolution’. Privatisation and deregulation, not system wide school improvement, appear to be the destination. Internationella Engelska Skolan (IES) is a successful profit making company. Their turnover is 680 million
SEK, roughly £60 million.’ Whilst the company may not be allowed to make ‘profits’ this side of a general election, due to Liberal Democrat sensibilities, Gove’s real and admitted views are reflected in a new report from the Adam Smith Institute.

It believes that schools should be run for profits and has produced a report called ‘Profit Making Free Schools – unlocking the potential of England’s Proprietorial schools sector’ in which they look at the profits made by IES and the other major Swedish education company Kunskappskolan.

So education beyond 2015, unless the Tories are defeated, will become largely privatised with a minimal role for the state. Local Authorities are already on their way to becoming empty shells with no power to intervene when things go wrong. This is not being alarmist. This is the dysGovian reality. He wants every school to lose the influence of and accountability to the local community; he wants companies to run schools for profit; he wants Rupert Murdoch et al to introduce costly and profitable software programmes into each school; he wants teachers and other staff to lose their rights to union support and protection; he wants teachers and others to lose their national pay agreements – and so far he is getting his own way.

What can the left do? Well a broad alliance of like-minded groups fighting for the same broad cause is a tried and tested starting point. The SEA has already run a very successful and very well attended conference along these lines, working with CASE, Comprehensive Future and the AAA. We must build on that foundation to establish a broad coalition to save the National Education Service. We don’t have long before it will be too late.

Martin Doré is the SEA General Secretary