ROY Hattersley was right to call for action to defend the principle of comprehensive schooling. Labour's new policy document Diversity and Excellence is an attack on the comprehensive system.
Diversity and Excellence proposes nothing to break the constraints of governmentdetermined curriculum and testing. There is no room for grassroots initiatives to challenge educational policies designed to maintain the status quo.
The document is an ingenious "historic compromise" designed to get Labour off the hook on opted-out grant maintained (GM) schools while not offending the privileged interests represented in them.
Centralised
Labour is preparing to abandon the comprehensive principle, further centralise control in Westminster, weaken local government and wrap it all up in the spurious rhetoric of parental accountability.
Blairs new foundation' HOME schools will perpetuate division and privilege, for two TeasonS.
• A school which acquires an image as being 'advantaged' will act as a self-fulfilling prophecy in attracting parents. This image is underpinned by real advantage, in that they, and not the LEA will own their buildings and employ their staff.
• Labour's policy encour- comed - as is the commitment ages diversity, not just by cre- to return GM teachers to the ating three types of schools - framework of national pay community, aided and foun- and conditions. datio - but by encouraging But there is a danger that schools, as the Tories have the jobs of GM school teachdone, to specialise and to se- ers and other staff will be at lect. risk. This is why the staff of Of course the document re- foundation schools should be peatedly rejects 'selection by employed by the LEA not the 11-plus'. But there are no school itself. They need the plans to bring the existing 154 safety net of an alternative job grammar schools back into in another school - an importhe comprehensive sector. tant issue given the huge numThis would only happen if ber of surplus places in GM there were 'a clear demonstra- schools. tion of support from the par- The document goes too far ents affected by such in trying to placate the anti-lodecisions.' cal government lobby. It proposes to delegate even more Minority of the LEA budget than under the Tories - up from 85 to 90 Does this mean the parents of the minority of students at per cent.
It nevertheless admits that the grammar schools - in some services, like special which case clearly nothing will change? Or does it mean needs, cannot be met by the remaining ten per cent, and all the parents in a locality, where a vote for abolition that LEAs will have to find a could be campaigned for and way of negotiating some kind won? of claw-back from the The document backs other schools. types of selection. By encour- The sensible answer is to allow LEAs to retain enough aging selection by so-called "aptitude", the policy risks in the first place.
The advantage to Blair of the premature labelling of children - in oversubscribed the 90 per cent figure is that it schools "aptitude" becomes a denies LEAs the capacity for intervention. The important code word for ability.
Existing patterns of educa- innovations in anti-racist and tional inequality, especially anti-sexist education funded for working class school stu- by LEAs in the 1980s would dents, are reinforced. become near to impossible.
The end of extra funding to The document makes big GM schools is to be wel- claims for involving parents. Labour is preparing to abandon the comprehensive principle, further centralise control in Westminster, and weaken local government. SON There would be more parents on governing bodies, and one elected parents' representative on education committees. LEAs wilbe encouraged to set up Parents Forums.
This hardly opens up local government to popular involvement. Why not establish statutory Education Forums, involving teachers and other educational interests, with full rights to information, full consultation, with the right to put resolutions to Education Committees?
Accountablilty
Putting more parents on governing bodies does not necessarily address the key issue of their accountability to the mass of parents. Once elected they can do what they like. Parents are to be given no right of representation of their views.
This document does nothing to break from the Conservative agenda for education.
Once again Labour is dragging along behind the level of popular opposition to the Tories. Many towns and cities across the shire counties have seen big demonstrations opposing cuts in education, reflecting a new, more radical involvement, many of the activities organised by the Fight Against Cuts in Education.
As campaigners prepare to mobilise for the second nationa FACH demonstration in London on September 30, Labour's leadership remains again on the sidelines, handing the initiative back to the Tories on terrain where important inroads could be made into the middle classes.
OUT SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 87, July 15 1995, Page 5. June 24