Following the Green Party Conference's failure to approve a full review of its education policy, in consultation with teacher organisations, parents' groups and students, it appears that the Labour Party has also failed to grasp the full extent of Michael Gove's neoliberal revolution.
The following account has appeared on the Left Futures website LINK
The debate on the education section of the NPF report, on the first day of Conference, was opened by Peter Wheeler (NEC). Six delegates spoke: three prospective parliamentary candidates and three union delegates (GMB, Unison, Unite). Stephen Twigg replied to ‘discussion’. No teachers, local authority councillors, educational campaigners or university educationalists took part. This session lasted 36 minutes.
Although the nominal purpose of the session was to
debate the two sections of the NPF report devoted to education no one
spoke for or against anything in the report. It was a debate in name
only. Had the speakers read the education section of the NPF report? Did
they approve its contents? We will never know.
An innocent observer could be forgiven for wondering
why the party that came to power saying that its three priorities were
education, education and education could only find 36 minutes of its
annual conference for the subject. Such an observer might also be
forgiven for wondering how it was that all the Labour Party’s complex
policy-making machinery could result in educational material for
conference that passes no comment on the transformation of education
under the Coalition. Schools have been removed from local authorities
and made into “independent” units – often under the aegis of powerful
private sponsors. Local Authorities are being progressively removed from
the sphere of education and private operators play an increasing role,
but none of this seems to figure in Labour’s concerns.
How is it that Labour can present policies on
education which do not deal with these problem? The answer has to be
that Labour does not think that such things are problems. Labour policy
differs from that of the Tories/Coalition on matters of detail (which is
not to deny the importance of some of those details) but on basic
principles it would not be possible to get a cigarette paper between
Tory and Labour Policy.
In opening, Peter Wheeler for the NEC said that
Labour wants cooperation in order to produce the best education while
the Tories favour division and competition. And yet the reality is that
Labour and Conservatives believe that the way forward is to make schools
into independent units competing for parental choice. He said that only
Labour authorities were resisting Coalition policy. Sadly this is quite
untrue. Some Conservative Councils have put up more resistance to
Gove’s reforms than some Labour Councils.
Of the three union speakers two spoke about the
importance of teaching assistants and the Coalition cuts forcing a
reduction in their numbers. This is a good point but there is nothing in
the NPF report about this. One speaker called for the abolition of
tuition fees in FE/HE but this point was simply ignored as if it had
never been said – such was the nature of the ‘debate’.
The prospective parliamentary candidates tried to
raise enthusiasm with talk of Labour as the “Party of Aspiration”,
denunciations of the Tories on childcare and rising child poverty, the
demand for quality apprenticeships and the claim that the economy “must
be powered by the many and not the few”. However, this was all speech
making to move conference along and none of it had the slightest
implication for the NPF report which was supposed to be under
consideration.
Stephen Twigg replied to the preceding
non-discussion. He talked of growing child poverty and Labour’s plan to
provide child care as of right from 8.00 am to 6.00 pm. He denounced the
use of unqualified teachers and claimed that Labour’s “mission” was to
“place power and wealth in the hands of the many not the few”. This
radical sounding statement (which has no reality in Labour policy) was
immediately offset by an elitist discussion of opportunity. Success for
Stephen Twigg seems to be measured by getting to a “top university” (a
phrase he used three times in his eleven minutes on the podium). It
seems not to have occurred to him that if a small minority of
universities are designated as “top”, then by definition the great
majority will not go to them. Someone should tell him that if you focus
obsessively on “the best” you forget the rest.
Finally Stephen Twigg repeated Labour’s commitment to
providing high quality apprenticeships for all those who do not go to
university although he did not tell us how this would be achieved beyond
saying that firms with government contracts would be required to
provide quality apprenticeships.
For anyone following the dramatic changes to the
educational landscape in England the whole debate would have had a
strange air of unreality. None of the major political issues of the Gove
revolution in our schools were even hinted at. For the moment Labour is
still set on the educational course and the educational philosophy set
by New Labour. It is a path to fragmentation and division in education.
Its basis is in neo-liberal ideology and as far from a democratic and
socialist perspective it is possible to be.
