Wednesday 26 May 2010

Michael Gove: Encouraging Educational Leylandii

Michael Gove is a very, very clever politician - probably the most dangerous person in government at the moment from my point of view, despite the odd spot of entertaining hypocrisy in his past. (yes, there's a reason for the dodgy photo - follow the link).

I think he is dangerous because he is the one who seems to have properly thought through how to dismantle the support for - as oppose to simple cut - a basic state funded service. I suspect him of being one of those right wingers who have read their Gramsci and really understood the concept of 'hegemony'. If his educational policies are successful he will have moved education out of the 'health' box - where there remains strong public support for an universalist service - into the 'housing' box -where private satisfaction of our needs is seen as normal and 'social' housing is seen as residual, welfare provision.

His plans focus on two main points: 'enabling' parents to set up so called free schools, and 'liberating' high performing state schools to become Academies. Note the language of freedom implicit in the presentation: both polices are suppose to give consumers (parents) and staff (well, managers) powers now held by town halls. This was once the language of the left. The danger for the left is that in opposing them they sound as if they're defending bureaucrats and stuffy procedures against the wishes of ordinary people. What's more, New Labour - not a group I consider co-terminus with 'the left' - has the not inconsiderable problem that Academies were their idea in the first place.

Let's get one thing clear however: there is nothing to stop Toby Young and co going off to start a school for their children as it is. But what they're actually asking for is the right to take large chunks of public money and set up a school which they can run as they like, more or less - or rather appoint any private sector provider they might like. &, here's the rub, they'd be taking this public money from the national government, not the town hall, riding rough shod over the local educational ecology. Contrast this with the local partnership approach of Britain's first parent promoted school. It's a different world view.

Similarly, the so-called freedoms of Academies should be carefully picked apart by the left. The freedom to ignore large parts of the National Curriculum? Bring it on - but do it for all schools, and let's have some backstops to prevent nutty creationists taking over the show. Given these caveats there is nothing to oppose here. Nor is there any in principle reason to get too hot under the collar about devolving currently centralised budgets to schools - and even introducing some flexibility into nationally negotiated pay scales is a pill which, after careful union negotiation, the left might be able to swallow. The key issue is admissions. Who controls who gets to go to which school? Again, this is about the local educational ecology.

All schools have what economists call 'externalities': by virtue of their very existence they don't just affect the children who attend the particular school they also affect the choices open to children who don't.

So let's try the Gove trick: let's try and put the case against his reforms in the language of our opponents. To take a favourite Daily Mail theme, schools are like leylandi: they don't just affect your own garden when you plant them. They can bring your neighbours' pleasure and appreciated privacy, sure - but they can also block out the sun. It really ain't a private matter when you put them in the soil - it's a community matter. It's a matter of local social ecology.

Education is a community garden and Toby Young or prospective Academy Heads shouldn't be able to plant just what they like without some say for the rest of us.

5 comments:

  1. "Similarly, the so-called freedoms of Academies should be carefully picked apart by the left. The freedom to ignore large parts of the National Curriculum? Bring it on - but do it for all schools, and let's have some backstops to prevent nutty creationists taking over the show."

    Charlie, great post but I don't think you make enough of the central problem with this. Which is, outside of a few areas of inner West London inhabited by the Toby Youngs of the world, are not the "nutty creationists" literally going to be the only people interesting in setting up a free school?

    I don't know much about the national curriculum, but my guess is that it's a better secular education than you're going to get from the network of fundamentalist madrassas (Christian and Muslim) that you spring up from a "free school" system "free" of a national curriculum.

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  2. Strategist,
    I have previously posted about my support for the Accord Coalition - a campaign aiming to ensure that faith schools cannot discriminate against non members of that faith when considering admissions or employment applications.

    This is my idea of a secular society. I don't care if people of faith manage schools as long as they don't prevent my children going to them, stop my friends being employed in them or teach the kids unbalanced stuff about religion, science or personal relationships. & I'm happy to say lots of religious people agree, as well as atheists and agnostics.

    Now, I do think there is an open question about how many people might want to set up a 'free' (sic) school but I suspect it is more than you might allow. People seem prepared to do remarkable things to get their kids into the school they want - spend thousands moving, lie, pretend to separate so one parent can claim to live in a bedsit in the school's catchment area and so on. So why not invest the time in getting involved?

    & I do think it would be a pretty poor show if the left decried even the idea of popular control of services and mass involvement.

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  3. "People seem prepared to do remarkable things to get their kids into the school they want - spend thousands moving, lie, pretend to separate so one parent can claim to live in a bedsit in the school's catchment area and so on. So why not invest the time in getting involved? & I do think it would be a pretty poor show if the left decried even the idea of popular control of services and mass involvement."

    Fair point, Charlie, I'll stand corrected.

    Good luck to the Accord Coalition's objectives, but whilst the status quo stands that faith schools can select their own religion ahead of others, and can teach unbalanced stuff (how can you ever really stop them?), I'll remain unhappy about faith schools being entitled to taxpayers' money (or indeed, existing).

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  4. "Charlie, great post but I don't think you make enough of the central problem with this. Which is, outside of a few areas of inner West London inhabited by the Toby Youngs of the world, are not the "nutty creationists" literally going to be the only people interesting in setting up a free school?"

    Isn't this the argument that the apologists for Capital have always used? Their argument has always been that Capitalists and the Capitalist State are needed because you see its only those forces that have the drive to set up firms, take risks, and organise production. Workers they argue, even if they were capable of doing such things simply aren't interested in doing so. They would rather leave it to someone else to do.

    Its also the basis of Thatcher's argument that there is no such thing as society, only individuals with no reason to act collectively or solidaristically, but only to look to their own individual immediate needs and concerns.

    I agree with Marx that the idea of State involvement in Education is wholly obectionable. On the contrary as he pointed out it is the State which is in need of a stern education from the people.

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  5. Boffy,

    in my view, Marx was just plain wrong about Education and the State.

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