Today the Conservatives launched their manifesto for the upcoming UK election, and I thought i’d unpack what we think this means for our teacher members. Here are some extracts (the bolding is our addition):
Restore discipline and order to the classroom … We will abolish the legal requirement of 24 hours’ notice for detentions; reform the exclusion process; and give headteachers the power to ban, search for, and confiscate any items they think may cause violence or disruption.
Sounds sensible, although it is not a major shift in power to the teacher. Savvy pupils will still have their ‘human rights’ and ‘Items they think may cause … disruption’ could mean anything from a games console to a lads mag, so it will be interesting to see how that is worded!
Raise the status of the teaching profession. Move to a high quality system of teacher recruitment and training by raising entry requirements, expanding Teach First and incentivising top maths and science graduates.
Teachable strongly believes in raising the status of the profession, but the only good way of ‘incentivising’ those top graduates, and retaining the talented teachers we already have is to pay more. Until we have more graduates wanting to become teachers there is no chance of raising the bar.
We love that they have mentioned our friends at Teach First specifically – it’s a great programme – but similar schemes are needed in other areas of the UK and for primary schools.
We will reform the National Curriculum, remove political interference from GCSEs and A-levels, and allow state schools to do the same high quality exams as private schools.
‘Political interference from GCSEs’ implies there is a big conspiracy to inflate grades. Of course there isn’t. It’s just that modular courses, coursework, teaching to the test and exam boards falling over themselves to offer the easiest course have meant it is a lot harder to do badly than 15 years ago. Schools also have every incentive to make sure their pupils get top grades.
Those ‘high quality exams’ (International Baccalaureate, IGCSE and Pre-U, rather that the not-so-favoured Diplomas) might be subject to same kind of grade inflation if the exam league table obsession of secondary schools isn’t tempered. That should be the priority.
We will replace Key Stage 1 Sats with a simple reading test, reform Key Stage 2 Sats, and make Ofsted report on schools’ setting policies and reading schemes.
Reforming Sats for primary schools is not exactly controversial, but making Ofsted report on anything extra isn’t going to help the Tories’ general focus on reducing bureaucracy.
A Conservative government will give every child the kind of education that is currently available only to the well-off: safe classrooms, talented and specialist teachers, access to the best curriculum and exams, and smaller schools with smaller classes and teachers who know the children’s names.
The most controversial of the lot. Education has implicitly been left out of the Tories’ funding commitments, which means funding will have to be cut in real terms over the parliament. But hang on – smaller classes = more teachers = more salaries. Surely. So unless they literally mean cramming the same number of pupils into a smaller room, this can’t possibly be a funded commitment.
There is every indication that the average pupil does better in a small class in a small school, but that costs real money that this country does not have currently. Rewarding and retaining great teachers would be our priority, assuming no more overall funding. That can be achieved by making schools a better place to work: attacking the target-led quangocracy that has grown up over the last 10 years, and is so sapping of school management and teaching time, would be a good place to start.
