There’s much that’s right about English schools, so it’s pleasing to see that reflected in the major party manifestos.
The Conservatives rightly stand on their record, which has seen England shoot up international league tables and remain one of the few nations ranked in the ‘golden quadrant’ – strong on outcomes and equity.
Labour implicitly acknowledges this by declaring that it will ‘build on the hard work of teachers who have brought their subjects alive with knowledge-rich syllabuses’, ‘protect the important role of examinations’, and that ‘accountability is non-negotiable’. This is a long way from Corbyn.
The profession will welcome the parties looking to build on what is working rather than tearing it up and starting from scratch.
Labour’s proposal to focus on early years mathematics, for example, is the natural complement to the Conservatives’ success in embedding phonics. Moreover, a debate on how Ofsted should best assess and grade schools is likely to be far more fruitful than pledges to abolish it.
Encouragingly, Labour and the Conservatives also appear to be resisting the temptation to embrace ‘progressive’ ideas like ‘skills-based’ curriculums and trendy teaching methods, implemented in Scotland and Wales to disastrous effect.
Of course, there are areas that can be improved – and each of the main parties has a number of helpful suggestions.
Labour plans to guarantee two weeks of work experience for every child. The Liberal Democrats propose to extend Pupil Premium to 16-18 year olds (a policy first conceived at Policy Exchange over fifteen years ago). And the Conservatives pledge to ban phones in school, guarantee parental rights to see what their children are being taught and to reform Relationship and Sex Education (all three the subjects of recent Policy Exchange reports).
On the biggest challenges, are questions to answer
However, on the biggest challenges facing our school system there are questions to answer.
The teacher recruitment and retention crisis, crumbling infrastructure and the exploding demand for SEND provision are thorny problems which demand weighty answers. You will not find these answers in any of these manifestos.
It is heartening, of course, that Labour is campaigning on a pledge to ‘recruit an additional 6,500 new expert teachers’. But how? Government already spends almost £200 million on bursaries and golden hellos; perhaps this could be optimised further, but there are no glaring inefficiencies that a review would solve.
Meanwhile, their manifesto only mentions behaviour once, in the context of breakfast clubs. Yet Policy Exchange has found that over 60 per cent of teachers have considered leaving the profession due to bad behaviour.
A genuine attempt to improve recruitment and retention will require action on multiple fronts. This will need to include a transformation in the sector’s attitude to part-time and flexible working. It could also include a significant pay rise (perhaps funded by a rebalancing of compensation from pensions to headline salary). And it will have to include a ruthlessly serious drive to reduce teacher workloads.
That, incidentally, is the biggest reason to be sceptical about Labour’s pledge for supervised tooth-brushing: not because ‘brushing teeth is woke’, but because it signifies a willingness to heap yet more duties upon an overburdened workforce.
Similarly, while all three parties have warm words about SEND, none are willing to get to grips with the brutal realities of exploding demand, pressures on schools and local authority budgets and – most fundamentally –big uncertainties about what is driving this and how we should respond.
These are big, systemic issues, which cannot be solved simply by money – or at least, not by the amount of money likely to be available after the election. Love or loathe the policy, Labour’s decision to use our newfound Brexit freedoms to put VAT on independent schools is at best a gimmick in budgetary terms.
With such pressing challenges, it is disappointing that all three manifestos cannot resist the urge to meddle with the curriculum – a major time sink that seldom delivers the results promised.
Unsurprisingly, Teacher Tapp found secondary school teachers rated Labour’s ‘curriculum review’ only eleventh of 15 policies polled. Any new government would be wise to tread cautiously and modestly here.
All in all, there is much to like in the major parties’ manifestos. However, each is guilty in places of being better at identifying problems than solutions. Whoever enters Downing Street, there remain difficult choices ahead.
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