Wednesday, December 12, 2007 

Something positive for a change?

It's not often that this blog (or indeed, many others) praise government policy or legislation, so let's break a habit and give Ed Balls' 10 year children's plan a cautious welcome. Some of it, inevitably, is old measures being re-announced and given a lick of new paint, and some of the reviews seem to be happening just for the sake of it, but for the most part the new initiatives proposed for example on money for new playgrounds and youth centres are long overdue.

The SATs testing regime, which over the years has become vastly more important than they really should be, and attracted the ire of teachers as a result, is to be looked into if a pilot of flexible testing that has shown favourable results so far reports in the affirmative. More important, and understandably overlooked has been the development of teaching to the test, which becomes much more of an issue post 14, where almost everything not likely to be on the exam paper is discarded and simply not taught. Far from being based around learning, lessons are being turned into endless repetitions of facts, and in some cases subjects are no longer even resembling what they once were supposed to be teaching. It seems unlikely this will be changed when such ambitious and most likely unachievable targets as 90% of students getting 5 A-Cs at GCSEs by 2020 are still being considered.

More favourable are the well-rehearsed recommendations for schools to become centres of the local community, with social workers, police, libraries and sports hall all being available in one location making good sense. The insistence sadly on the continuation of the academy program, the results from which have so far been less than conclusive, with Lord Rothermere and even BAE Systems considering sponsoring such schools, but not any Oxbridge institutions as the government hoped, undermines it somewhat. Also yet to be explained is how this will function in reality, with the funding necessary for such err, centralisation, yet to be forthcoming.

Also promising are the proposals on parental involvement and on one to one tutoring, which are vital if underachievers are to be focused on and given the help when they need it most. Teachers can no longer be relied upon to do everything - parental attachment and interest into what their children are doing is often stifled simply by how kids hating talking about what they do at school, or at least how some do. The policy on reintroducing foreign languages at an early age, rather than starting them at some point in the middle of schooling is also a sound one. Trying to interest a class of 28 14-year-olds in speaking French or German is a little like attempting to teach a fish to ride a bicycle - pointless and cruel. The whole reason why those in continental Europe have been so successful in teaching English is that they start early, while with our advantage of speaking it in the first place we imagine ourselves to be superior and not needing to bother with other languages when it's a skill that's as vital as ever.

Some of this might be undermined if the government doesn't drop its ideation about schooling being compulsory until 18, or at least until it properly sorts out secondary education from its current woes over the divide between the academic and vocational routes. Tomlinson's recent report might have achieved it, and the introduction of the new diplomas might also, but I'm not holding my breath over that. Of all the things the tabloids decided to pick up upon from the report, the one they did was that "yobs" who said sorry would get off scot free, or something similar to that effect. The report actually suggests "restorative justice" to deal with first-time offenders, getting them to meet with those who they offended against, i.e. supermarket managers or similar if they shoplifted, the owners of the house they damaged if it was vandalism etc, schemes which have already been operating in some areas for a while and which have been on the whole a success. It's not going to apply to those who assault people or otherwise, who'll still get charged. As always, reporting some scandalous new insult to justice comes above the actual reality.

On the whole though it was a decent package which with minor changes would have been a lot better, such as the abandonment of the child database, ContactPoint. It was certainly far more authoritative than anything the Conservatives have come up within years, whose main policy up until Blair left was supporting whatever he did, but then the most annoying MP in the Commons in the form of Michael Gove was never going to say anything that might be considered complimentary. Ed Balls it seems is a lot better at putting policies together than actually advising Brown on what to do in the here and now.

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12/12/2007 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, November 06, 2007 

Around as enthralling as a dead dog.

Part of the reason why the Queen's speech (how much longer does the ridiculous and inane opening of parliament have to continue? Until Brenda's legs stop working?) was both so underwhelming and stale was that we really had heard it all before. As part of Brown's initial attempts to re-engage the public and prove how he was nothing like that control freak Blair was to "preview" the bills likely to be announced before the rise of parliament in the summer. All well and good, but it allowed David Cameron to continue his similarly moribund claims that Brown is offering nothing new. Reasonably accurate, but then neither are the Tories.

For once, the Tories actually have something of a point over their opposition to the extending of the compulsory education age to 18, which will be enforced with a great big stick rather than carrots. Those who refuse to turn up will get fined - the perfect way to enthuse our disillusioned youth with the idea that it's for their own benefit. Either you turn up or we take the (tiny) amount of money you might be earning. The next year will see reforms to secondary education that might well help with the actual problems faced: that at 14 most are already either so disenfranchised with school or accepting of failure that they don't even try. The introduction of diplomas, both vocational and academic, could prove to be vital. At 16 currently, those who go on to colleges or sixth forms are generally those who want to learn; the compulsion to keep learning until 18 will remove the relief that many feel on leaving behind those who either were disruptive or simply unpleasant. It's not their fault, it's that they're currently be failed by the strictness of the system, either taking the academic route with GCSEs or the more vocational course with GNVQs, which are decent qualifications but not worth the number of GCSEs they claim to. Getting the mixture between the two right will do far more to improve results than any threat of compulsion. By 2015 it might have been achieved, but I'm certainly not holding my breath.

As noted in the previous post, Labour is currently far too cowardly to come out with how it wants to double the pre-charge limit for "terrorist suspects", although everyone knows another battle is ahead. The latest knee-jerk on the criminal justice front is violent offenders' orders, which are bound to trouble the courts, while the sop to the tabloids is the long trumpeted and downright illiberal banning of "extreme" pornographic images, in the BBC's lexicon, which means the banning of "dangerous pictures" in actuality. The only truly radical piece of legislation is the climate change bill, and it's likely to be not radical enough.

It makes you wonder whether the government really was so set upon that autumn election, built around Brown personally, that it didn't bother to come up with any actual policies or details, both of which were wholly lacking today. This was less a vision than a panicky brainstorm in the middle of the night after Brown realised he'd forgotten all about having Brenda reading out his plans for the next year. There was talk of meritocracy, getting in tune with the aspirations of the people, but behind those rhetorical flourishes the bills themselves were as flat as the Queen's voice. It's a shame that Vince Cable is himself lacking in gravitas, as his spell as stand in Liberal Democrat leader has been something of a success. He certainly got it right on the tepidity of today:

"The anticipation was acute - but the anticlimax is deafening. The legislative programme is firmly rooted in the Blair era. There is very little new. No ideas, no vision. Is this what we have been waiting for?"

"The one-time editor of the Red Paper has penned a Queen's speech in the bluest ink. Across wide swathes of policy, his approach is indistinguishable from the Tories."

This though is intended. When the Electoral Reform Society identifies that the election could have been decided by 8,000 voters, the cross-dressing and tailoring of policies to those that most turns on the exalted floating voter is only natural. The lack of choice is acute, but no one's prepared to move beyond that dead end of radical centrism.

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11/06/2007 10:12:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, March 23, 2007 

Brilliant ideas pt. 94

The whole point of carrot and stick diplomacy is that as well as feeding those you are trying to persuade, you have to be prepared to potentially give them a few taps in order to steer them towards the right decision. Generally, even if the carrots aren't working, you're not meant to then whack the person so hard that you fracture their skull. Alan Johnson hasn't apparently learned this lesson.

On the face of it, his proposals for extending the school leaving age to 18 are at least worth considering. There are many teenagers who leave school at 16 with few if any qualifications who then spend the next few years of their lives in the cycle of employment in poor-paying unrewarding jobs, going on and off job-seekers allowance when they either get bored or when the work dries up, where further training and education would be a far better option.

However, that's about as far as it goes. For although Alan Johnson accepts that only a "hardcore" would be likely to not go along with his plans, he's already putting into place far-reaching sanctions for those who petulantly decide that school no longer has anything to offer them:

The government wants to introduce “education Asbos” and fixed penalty fines for teenagers who refuse to stay in education or training until the age of 18, the education secretary, Alan Johnson, announced today. A teenager who persistently refuses to follow an education or training path would be issued with an attendance order, similar to an antisocial behaviour order, or Asbo, compelling them to attend a specific training or education programme.

If an order is broken, the teenager would face a criminal prosecution that could end in a £50 fine or community sentence.


To say this is a bit harsh would be akin to suggesting that Little Britain is a bit unfunny. This wouldn't only apply to those who are simply leaving education, but also to those who already have jobs in family businesses, as well as teenage mothers, who would have to spend at least 16 hours a week in either education or training.

Many would additionally argue that once someone has reached 16 it might already be too late. The whole reason why so many become disillusioned with education during their GCSE years is that they feel what they're learning is going to be little help in the wider world, or that they're being taught to the exam. The Tomlinson report on secondary education may well have been the solution to this: it would have combined the vocational education which many currently miss out on with the more academic education which currently holds out. The biggest change in recent years is that the bog-standard or close to failing comprehensives have started to split the year groups into the brighter, academic sets which take the GCSEs, while those with the poorer SAT results go on to do GNVQs, which count for a number of GCSEs, but which few employers recognize as such. It means that their results therefore look better than they actually are.

This was the situation when I was in the sixth-form. A number of our teachers regularly complained, or even despaired at the behaviour of some of their classes of 14 or 15-year-olds, realising they were fighting a lost cause when they had already turned off. At 16 currently, a lot of those who disrupt lessons or who don't want to learn leave, with those staying on often coming out of their shells as a result. Johnson's reforms potentially mean that this situation carries on for a further two years for no real purpose, when the changes have to be made at 14 rather than 16. Johnson himself argues:

"There is a risk that it is those young people with lower aspirations, who perhaps come from families and communities that have themselves had a poor experience of schooling, who miss out as participation increases. Within this group are often the young people who would have most to gain from longer participation and higher attainment. We cannot allow the most disadvantaged to miss out."
He may have a point, as some at 16, having realised that they should have studied harder during their GCSEs are faced with few enticing options other than going back to the classroom. Whether dropping the current education maintenance allowance, which rewards those from low income families with £10-£30 a week for staying on is a good idea when these are the exact young people he's hoping to help the most seems to sum up the contradictory nature of Johnson's plans, and as Not Saussure notes, New Labour itself. It provides all these carrots, then it knocks your head off just in case.

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3/23/2007 10:39:00 PM | | | links to this post

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