Blair legacy: Education

ePolitix.com Stakeholders comment on Tony Blair's record on education issues.

 

Stakeholder Response: IOE

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Professor Geoff Whitty, director of the Institute of Education, said: "Tony Blair's governments have undoubtedly given education a high policy profile and significantly increased educational expenditure.

"While standards have risen overall, the big disappointment is their limited success in closing the achievement and participation gap between socially advantaged and socially disadvantaged groups.

"Academic selection at 11 plus remains an unresolved issue and the loss of nerve over Tomlinson may well haunt Blair's successors.

"Blair's own personal commitment to choice and diversity as a key instrument of improvement has not always sat easily with his government's proclaimed commitment to evidence based policy."

Hugh Starkey said: "A possibly overlooked but strategically important dimension of the Blair legacy for the future of democracy in Britain is the introduction of citizenship education as an entitlement in schools in England.

"Initiated as a major innovation in education policy in 1997, citizenship education has taken some time to get established, but at last all young people in England have a right to learn about and discuss politics and the issues of human rights that affect them as young citizens (e.g. discrimination, stereotyping, racism and sexism).

"They can also learn from each others’ perspectives and learn strategies for changing the world without resorting to violence."

 

Stakeholder Response: ATL

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ATL said: "He has achieved a great deal.  When he came into power we were haemorrhaging teachers from the profession, and there was a recruitment crisis. He recognised this, and there are now 40,000 more teachers. In addition, teachers’ salaries have gone up by 45 per cent and they now earn a decent wage. 

"The Blair government was intolerant of education failing children by social class and set about tackling this. It is an honourable objective, but we are not happy about some of the ways the government has sought to address the problem. Yes, there has been a 68 per cent increase in funding per pupil.  And the very ambitious Building Schools for the Future programme is having a huge impact on improving schools, so that children will no longer be taught in unfit buildings and pupils really feel that every child matters.

"There have also been a host of other achievements – setting up the social partnership between unions, employers and the government; workforce reform; cutting working hours; introducing (PPA) planning, preparation and assessment time.

"The reason we wouldn’t give him an A+ is because of the means he has used to achieve some of his objectives. Too often it has been a case of using a sledge-hammer to crack a nut.  There has been the huge increase in testing throughout schools. 

"At primary level this has led to pupils in year six spending an average of four hours a week preparing to do tests. Schools are also far less interesting places for pupils - the national strategies have lead to a loss of creativity and stifled innovation as teachers have been afraid to stray from the rigid national curriculum. 

"To be fair, Blair has realised the problems resulting from some of his changes.  But you can’t pick and mix in the way the government is attempting. 

"It is not possible to have continuous testing and a full and varied curriculum.  Nor to have schools run how they chose and at the same time give all children, regardless of their background, equal access to a school of their choice.  It just ends up with no one getting what they need."

 

Stakeholder Response: ASCL

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ASCL general secretary Dr John Dunford said: "I was a headteacher in the 1980s and 1990s, through the years of Conservative rule, and I remember how it felt to be leading a state school at a time when the government neither valued nor supported state schools. It is through the hindsight of this experience that the Blair years should be assessed.

"While I don’t hesitate to criticise the initiative overload, the excessive testing and the over-accountability, credit should be given to him for leading a government that placed a high value on the work of state schools, and of school leaders in particular.

"At the top of the list of Tony Blair’s positive legacy to education must be funding and, in particular, the injection of capital to start to put right the serious neglect of school buildings over the previous 18 years.”

"However, while it was good that Mr Blair put education (in triplicate) at the top of his priorities, this has led to incessant headline-grabbing initiatives which have often been more about politics than the benefit of education. Heads and principals are now initiatived out.

"Gordon Brown has said that he places the same priority on education as Tony Blair. We hope that as prime minister he will build on the successes of recent years and not introduce a whole new set of initiatives when there are already too many in the pipeline for the next few years."