school Denis Doran/Refle The Tories are attacking anti-racist curricula and ideology in education.
The new Tory education basic textbooks. ing methods from the 1960s on- wards. Their success was limited, but they nevertheless represent real gains which are now being rolled back. Thatcher served notice over a decade ago: "The pursuit of equ- ality is a mirage. Opportunity means nothing unless it includes the right to be unequal'. Now ine- quality has become a positive edu- cational programme, involving the discouragement of 'mixed ability teaching', increased segregation of pupils into different teaching pro- grammes within the same school, with different occupational desti- nies — academic, technical, basic - and increasingly between schools. This is not just the maintenance and future reinstatement of gram- mar schools, and the new 'City Technology Colleges' (joint government-private selective tech- nical schools) but the successful fostering of differentiation schools into 'good schools' "poor schools'. Thatcherite offensive is a full-scale The third major prong of the ideological offensive against both non- Thatcherite values, attitudes and € ideas within education - anti- racism, anti-sexism, peace studies, world studies, unpatriotic history, social issues in science... the list is endless — and non-Thatcherite ideologies about education, including the battle to define 'standards', what is a 'good school' and a 'good teacher' in Tory terms. Often broader Thatcherite themes are being played out on the stage of education, scripted by the media: freedom, democracy, morality, what it is to be British. Often the demons in education are linked in a wider unholy conspiracy, with for example left-wing councils and black International No 8 January/February 1987
EDUCA
The teachers' pay dispute and alleged racism
Tin Brent schools have attracted considerable attention from both the media and, more THE PROLONGED pay dispute between teachers and government is not, fundamentally, about pay. Of course, the Tories are anxious to cut spending on teachers' salaries, but behind that are higher stakes. The Tories have a coherent project to dismantle the school system that has grown up since the war on the basis of the 1944 Act, and replace it with the 'new Tory education'. It is a profoundly radical project, designed to transform every aspect of school education: its aims, its structures, its contents, how it is controlled. Until now the Labour Party and the teachers' unions have scarcely begun to address what is happening, let alone develop and mobilise support for an equally bold and radical First and most obviously, they plan a substantial reduction in spending on education leading to as well as the decline in teachers' salaries, a real deterioration in the level of provision such that, for example, many schools are reliant on finance from parents even to supply
Secondly the displacement of 'equality' as the central principle of post-war education, governing the creation of the comprehensive system and the development of progressive curricula and teach-
Cof and Leflex
TION importantly, the Conservative Party. The latter, argues RICK HATCHER, have radical designs on Britain's education. mes. 'manpower' (sic). backed up by constant media propaganda. • The use of parental pressure as consumers in the education market. credible alternative) to individualism, and to widespread popu- lar scepticism about education especially some aspects of pro- gressive teaching, assiduously promoted by the media, has
activists. The Brent affair currently embodies all these the- Fourth is a much closer tying of school to the 'needs of industry'. This has both an economic and an ideological aspect. Schools must be made more 'profitable', by producing the sorts of labour power that the employers want: hence the emphasis on basic skills for the future semi-skilled workers, the MSC-run RVEI programmes for the future technicians, and an overall concern for 'the right attitudes' through social and life skills training. This is highly ideological in two senses. The needs of the capitalist economy are becoming a prime yardstick of educational processes. And the blame for the failure of the economy is being successfully laid at the door of the schools, for not producing the right sort of The final aim of the Tory offensive is to implement these policies via new mechanisms of control. Making radical changes in education is difficult, for the Tories as well as for the left. The schools have a certain autonomy, power-relations are decentra- lised, vested interests representing the old liberal humanism persist even in the DES itself. And above all there are hostile Labour councils and uncooperative teachers. The boldness with which the Tories are dealing with opposition contrasts strikingly with the criminal failure of Labour in the 60s and 70s even to introduce legislation to compel local authori- ties to go fully comprehensive. There are a number of interre- lated elements to the Tories' stra- tegy of control: • Greater government control over education finance at the ex- pense of local authorities. Govern- ment has starved them of funds (destroying their opposition in the process), and is now making them an offer they can't refuse: cash grants, for which local authorities and schools have to bid in competi- tion with each other, for specific projects that coincide with govern- mental objectives. • Direct government intervention at school level, by-passing local au- thorities and/or even the DES. The most dramatic is the use of the MSC in schools, and the proposed City Technology Colleges. • Greater government control over the content of education, through a combination of measures including: abolishing the Schools Council to remove teachers' in- fluence over policy formation; creating new examination syl- labuses; issuing DES curriculum guidelines and using the so-called 'independent' Inspectorate to police them; selective funding and in-service training...and all Their relatively successful appeal (in the absence of a 27
enabled the Tories to seize the initiative in terms of 'democracy' defined as freedom to choose. Schools are under grassroots pressure to conform to the Tory ethos, both from the increased representation of parents on governing bodies, and from the competition between schools for pupils, especially in a situation of falling rolls.
Of course, a section of Tory opinion is in favour of much more drastic measures, effectively privatising the whole system of 28,000 schools. While this option is unlikely to win majority support, it is certain that another term of Thatcherism will see a series of further audacious measures combining strengthening government control of schools — perhaps even removing them entirely from local authority control - with subjecting them further to market forces.
greater government control and the use of parental pressure • In order to install the new Tory education, it is also necessary to have a teaching force which can be relied on to 'deliver' it. That means a teaching force that teaches the content the government wants - the new curricula guidelines and objectives; that is more hierarchically structured and subject to the power of the head through a system of 'appraisal'; that conforms to the new DES business-style management ideology; that looks to individual promotion, not collective action, for advancement. In other words, a teaching force that has been rendered compliant through defeat on the union front. That is why the pay compaign is crucial not for pay but for the character of school education in the next period. The left response What has been the response to the Tory project? The present Labour leadership is distinguished by an almost total absence of creative thinking about education. The precondition for an adequate response to the Tory project is to actually recognise it for what it is. Yet in a recent outline of Labour's education priorities, Giles Radice, the party's education spokesperson, asserts that 'The present government has not made education a priority'. His failure to recognise the radical root-and-branch character of the Tory project means that he also fails to address the issues that they raise.
Radice's ostrich-like posture, deliberately ignoring most of the contentious issues, is part of Labour's 'new realism'. The result is a moderate programme of prudent vagueness, uncosted and dependent, he repeatedly warns, on growth. It promises: to spend more on resources and buildings; to extend nursery provision; to end selection; to improve primary pupil-teacher ratios; to improve standards; to rationalise 16-19 education and training; to end the Assisted Places scheme and tax concessions to private schools; and to create a 'new educational partnership', including a national advisory council of parents, teachers, LEAs, unions, employers and acade mics.
This programme woefully fails to engage with, let alone offer a socialist alternative to, the lory project. It has no proposals, apart from some improvement in class size and a welcome end to selection, to seriously address issues of inequality, in terms of race, gender and especially, class. There is no mention of the content of education, no conception of a curriculum in the interests of the oppressed, building on the positive developments already being put into practice by radical teachers and some local authorities Further, there is no notion of a different kind of relation between school and work and no mention of the control of education, an issue out of which the Tories have made so much political 28 capital.
EDUCATION
The Socialist Education Association is the affiliated education body of the Labour Party. It restricts itself to playing the role of semi-official policy advisor, from a centre-left standpoint, and abstains from any involvement in union activity, or indeed activity of any sort. Symptomatically, the current issue of its journal Socialism and Education, published at the most critical stage of the teachers' pay campaign, makes no mention of it
Nevertheless, the SEA is the only organised educational current in the Labour Party, and as such represents left Labour thinking. It was responsible for the resolution on education passed at the 1986 Labour Party Conference, and in the current issue of the SEA journal its president Caroline Benn presents an alternative perspective for Labour based upon it. Unlike Radice, she acknowledges the failure of 1960s and 70s Labourism - its abandonment of comprehensivisation in favour of attempts to 'placate elitist and business opinion (which is still going on)'. (It was Callaghan in 1976 who launched the 'Great Debate' that prepared the ground for the Tories' pro-industry thrust).
However, Caroline Benn's recognition of the conflict of class interests and Labour's capitulation does not lead her to a clear statement of working-class education interests today. She recognises the need to reappropriate and redefine concepts of standards and equality, democracy and freedom, but she does not do so in terms of class, gender and race. Instead she appeals to the 'personal development of all'. As the SEA Conference resolution puts it, 'The purpose of education...is for the benefit of the individual'. This simply begs the real question. There is no 'individual' existing prior to social relations of class, race and gender from whose essential 'needs' a programme for education can be read off.
As ever, the Tories have a much clearer understanding of their class interests in education than Labour, and Caroline Benn and the SEA's alternative, though it contains specific proposals which should be supported, is not adequate to the task of engaging with the Tory project and articulating the educational interests of the oppressed. For example: is all we can say on the content of education that we need a 'broad and balanced curriculum'? Is challenging racism and sexism really just a question of assigning to LEAs the duty of overseeing equal opportunity
Is all we have to say on the rights of parents that they should be 'consulted', and have the right to see records — hardly an inspiring vision of popular democracy to seize the initiative from the Tories. Do we really need 'positive proposals for developing
The NUT hankers after the golden age of the '60s the private sector to serve the needs of the whole community? And can Labour simply lay hold of the DES and turn the system round with a new Education Act? 'Equality and the comprehensive principle... have never been more alive, nor in better health', says Benn, yet an opinion poll has just shown that half the population support the return of the grammar school system. The SEA minimise the problems, yet their solutions are insuffi ciently radical to achieve the sort of educational reforms that are capable of generating genuine popular support. The NUT The NUT leadership essentially occupies the same ground as the
abour leadership, and shares the same myopic interpretatio of the Tory project. As Ken Jones points out in the current issu of Socialist Teacher, the Tory politics of educational offensive are discounted as a smokescreen for the 'real issues' of the cuts. The
International No 8 January/February 1987
E D U C 8H 2 Exam time in a convent school in North London 'Broad Left' leadership of the union, largely Kinnockite with a small and declining CP component, hankers after the golden age of the sixties when class interests seemed to happily coincide, education was expanding and the NUT was welcome in the corridors of power.
The NUT is now faced with the choice, posed most sharply in the pay campaign, of adopting a class struggle perspective or pinning their hopes on the return of Labour and a re-run of the past. Baker is in the process of imposing a pay deal which worsens teachers' conditions and subjects them more closely to management. He is introducing a Bill in parliament which will remove teachers' rights to negotiate pay and conditions with their employers. If these moves are successful and the Tories win the next election, we are likely to see moves to break up the national pay structure in favour of local market forces, to remove teachers' right to strike, and perhaps to take the employment of teachers out of the hands of local authorities altogether. A socialist alternative? The Tories have a vision of education which they are beginning to translate into reality. What alternative conception should the left be advocating?
Developing elements of a socialist education isn't just a quesInternational No 8 January/February 1987
A TION Denis Doran/Refle Denie tion of replacing their policy-makers with ours and producing a blueprint; it is question of establishing a dialogue between educationalists, politicians, and popular interests, particularly the labour movement and the oppressed. Schools for most people are closed, often alienating places, where the 'professionals' exclude popular involvement except on their terms. They have to be opened up, made genuinely accountable, not to capitalist industry or the Tories' media-manipulated individualism, but to informed collective popular participation.
What are the implications of this for the control of education? How under Labour should power be distributed between government, local authority and school levels? There is no abstract 'democratic' solution: it depends on what is the most favourable balance of class forces at each level. Labour will need to skilfully combine two things: strong central powers capable of establishing and enforcing radical policy frameworks, particularly on Tory LEAs and uncooperative heads and governing bodies; and greater popular involvement at each level. This should entail importing radical staff into key positions in the DES (incorporating the MSC) and the Inspectorate, and the purging of reactionary elements. Labour can't simply lay hold of the state education apparatus as presently composed.
It also means the establishing of a national Education Council, representing popular and professional interests, with the role of 29
encouraging and focussing informed public debate and generating policy proposals. It should also entail the development of policy aims and frameworks at government level, and the vigorous use of selective funding to encourage their implement and similar measures by Labour LEAs including the maximum cooption of elected representatives of parents' groups, organisations of women, the black communities etc onto Education Committees.
Further elements of a democratic programme include firstly the opening up of school governing bodies, with equal representation of LEA, parents, teachers and the community (and in secondary schools, students), with the representatives to be elected and the meetings to be public. Secondly formally constituted teachers' councils in every school. Thirdly encouragement of governing bodies and teachers' councils to abolish the existing
radical education can provide the best development of basic skills role of headteacher if they wish, in favour of either the regular election of a head, or running the school as a collective (to which surely primary schools at least are ideally suited). And fourthly the encouragement of school students to organise: including the right to a pupils' council in every secondary school; the right to organise in, for example, girls' groups or on issues such as CND; full rights for the NUS in tertiary colleges. It must be acknowledged that there are many problems in education that we simply don't know the best way of dealing achievement' has proved intractable up till now: we have some ideas, but they need to be proved in practice. So the first point to make is that developing socialist education policies requires experiment, and a Labour government should inaugurate an explosion of progressive experimental projects, liberating the abilities and energies of teachers, pupils and communities. There should be two main themes to the left's programme for what is taught, and how, in schools. First, we will exhaustively rethink and rework every aspect of schooling necessary to root out the inequalities faced by working class pupils, and especially girls and blacks. Secondly, we will develop an education to change the world, not reproduce it as it is. These two themes are interdependent. We reject the counterposition that the right makes between radical egalitarian education and 'standards'. On the contrary, we will demonstrate that a radical education can provide the best context for the meaningful development of basic skills and of collective self-discipline.
There is general agreement on the left around such policies as nursery education for all who want it; increased funding for resources; a substantial reduction in class size; a broad common core curriculum for all; and moves to abolish streaming. But underlying these is the need for something more fundamental, and that is to change the relationship of working class pupils to knowledge. For middle-class pupils, school knowledge and the social forms it comes in correspond both to family 'cultural capital' and to their future work destinies. For working-class pupils, school knowledge is much more likely to be alien to the cultural capital they acquire through the family and through working-class youth cultures, and to their destinies in the labour
Of course there is nothing school can do to change the fundamental causes, which lie in the social division of labour under capitalism. But what it can do is to open up the whole of social 30 life outside school starting from pupils' own experiences to 1
EDUCATION critical educational investigation, both by bringing it into the classroom, and by exploiting it directly through off-site enquiry and participation, so helping to break down the barriers between school and society, between theoretical and practical, between school knowledge and personal knowledge. This is the real-life context for developing the curriculum, including anti-racism, anti-sexism and other aspects of political education, and a critical vocational education.
These conceptions are not utopian. On the contrary, they build upon what already exists, even under Thatcher, in many progressive classrooms and in the limited but significant experiences we have of popular involvement in the schools. Nor are they merely items for the agenda of a future Labour government. On the contrary, they have to be fought for now, and they will have to be fought for under Labour. The nucleus of their potential support can already be seen in the struggles taking place in education today and the forces active in them: the large radical minority in the NUT, whose clearest organised expression is the Socialist Teachers Alliance; the work of radical teachers; organisations of parents, including those who have supported the teachers' action; the black communities; left-wing councils such as ILEA, Brent and Haringey.
Many of the most advanced current examples we have are in relation to racism and education, and I want to mention three of them. Honeyford's views are well-known; less well-known is the militant character of the community campaign that forced his dismissal, involving demonstrations, pickets and a school boycott. Equally militant was the Campaign Against Racism in Schools' campaign for anti-racist reforms at Daneford school in East London in 1985. After eleven people were arrested on a picket of the Education Offices, over seventy schools took unofficial strike action and over two thousand teachers demonstrated in protest. And now in Brent the local Black Teachers Collective and the STA are jointly active in defending the left-wing black-led council's anti-racist policies against the right.
For one final example of what is possible, take the case of
Patten Infant School in North London, where the teachers used the school to collect food during the miners' strike, and took a half-day unofficial strike in their support; closed the school for a day to lead a deputation of parents to the Home Office to protest against the threatened deportation of two Turkish children; and demonstrated against an open day public
socialism will develop an education to change the world relations exercise at the local police station. Their commitment is also reflected in the work they do in the classroom.
Those are the forces struggling in and for education today. There is one significant weakness, and that is the absence of an organised current within the Labour Party with an adequate programme and above all an active campaigning orientation, integrating work in the Labour Party, the teachers' unions and the community. The SEA does not play this role. The STA does only as an organisation in the NUT, though many of its members are active as individuals on education in the party. It is positive that struggles in education are being taken up by left groupings like Labour Briefing, but sooner or later it will also be necessary to organise the equivalent of the STA in the Labour Party, either as a section of a broader left current, or as a single-issue campaigning body to transform or displace the SEA. • Notes 1. In Socialism and Education 12/3, Autumn 1986. 2. Socialist Teacher 34, December 1986. 3. TES 1-2-85.
International No 8 January/February 1987
or any movement to get rid of the bases. The compromised. At this stage the dismantling
Corazon Aquino The Philippines