On Wednesday the fate of the surprisingly controversial Education and Inspections Bill will be determined. To secure a Second Reading, Blair and Kelly will have to succeed in pushing the reforms through Parliament. Which, despite the concessions made to the Bill in response to the concerns of Labour backbenchers, may prove problematic. A new BBC survey suggests that the proposed reforms will still probably only get through with the support of Opposition votes. What Parliament is unanimous on however, is the fact that the Bill is unsatisfactory. Rebel Labour MPs see the Bill as potentially fostering inequality, the Conservatives see it as overly ‘timid’ and the Liberal democrats see it as ‘a missed opportunity’.
But despite the hype, the promised ‘transformations’ won’t have much impact. As the BBC’s Education Correspondent Mike Baker put it this Bill is evolutionary rather than revolutionary. This description couldn’t be more apt, the reforms being exactly evolutionary in the sense that they strive to mitigate the adverse outcomes of existing education policy, rather than being revolutionary and scrapping the policies altogether. The root of the crisis in education today is that the government has stifled schools with a lethal combination of over-regulation and poor policies. If the Bill is passed, this situation will remain essentially unchanged.
The three key areas of remaining reform - the altered role of the local education authority, the new disciplinary powers for teachers and the introduction of Trust schools - will at best do very little to improve standards and at worst bring them down even further. The LEAs new function as guardian of standards will exacerbate their already heavily criticised pressuring of schools to focus on targets. New disciplinary powers for teachers don’t extend to expulsion and crucially fail to tackle the factors such as class size and poor curricula causing poor behaviour. And for all the build-up, Trust schools - the Bill’s centrepiece reform – don’t in fact signify much of a departure from what we already know: existing foundation and voluntary aided schools. What detail does distinguish them, namely their ability to form relationships with ‘external partners’, is of dubious worth. ‘Parent power’ has been central to the rhetoric on these external partners. Trust schools will mean that parents no longer have to watch their children perform poorly in poor provision, instead, the Bill proposes, parents themselves will be able to take action – set up a new school. But is this really empowering parents? Isn’t it rather saying we the government can’t improve schools so if you’re not happy you take responsibility for the education of your children?
Parents don’t want to manage schools, they want the people who’s job it is to manage them – and this doesn’t mean the CEO of IBM. Real parent power means providing parents with good options, not making them attempt to salvage the government’s mess.