The rhetoric of decentralisation dominates the election agenda - borne of a convenient consensus between the economic merit of shrinking central government and the acknowledgement that Labour's initiatives and targets have corroded creativity and professionalism. The Conservatives call for a community 'right to bid' to run services and a 'right to buy' local facilities threatened with closure; Labour pledges that constituents will be able to recall their MPs and - since we're all taking them seriously - the Lib Dems propose scrapping central targets on health and the creation of directly elected health boards.

Decentralisation could go various ways. The beginning of April saw the denouncement of 'pupil power' - teachers forced to endear themselves to pupils on appointment panels and in teaching trials. The ability to sing and dance to the tune of pupils' requests (most notably of a rendition of Michael Jackson's 'Bad' ) led candidates with approaches to education which centred on their personal appeal to be fast tracked into the classroom. This doesn't bode well for the day-to-day exigencies of teaching: namely stimulating pupils' interests where they might not initially lie. Frank Furedi wrote in Saturday's Guardian, in the wake of two 'not guilty' verdicts against teachers subject to pupil accusations, of these 'predators in the classroom'. He claims that pupil power has obliterated the capacity of teachers to provide leadership authority.

He also criticises the current interpretation of decentralisation - 'parent power' - accusing parents of being quick to vilify teachers and too slow to take joint responsibility for their children's education. The model of 'parent power' that the politicians envisage is often similarly retributive. They will allow parents to ballot to fire a head teacher and to create a new school where an existing one is failing. They will be able monitor school progress not only from the outside, via School Report Cards and ballots, but from the inside, selecting an educational provider and pedagogy and on governing boards. Such a focus occludes a central paradox: by focusing on greater power for parents, politicians continue to peripherialise their most obvious partner in decentralisation: the teachers.

Just as in health policy, parents and pupils are the consumers, beneficiaries whose experience of education must be crucial to its formulation. However, it is unimaginable that health professionals - doctors in particular - would ever be merely the object of policy change, their co-operation is valued as insightful, and essential, to any productive reform. However, when it comes to education, government policy remains dismissive of teachers - they remain in the political wilderness and forced to deliver an extremely narrow curriculum with limited scope for professional judgement. This is well illustrated by the simple fact that the vast majority of teachers do not like academies. A YouGov survey in February 2010 found that 47% of teachers thought that academies were a negative development; only 9% viewed them as positive. So it is astounding that the expansion of the academy model stands as the flagship education policy of the Conservatives and Labour and is found in a modified form within the Liberal Democrat manifesto. It is indicative of their disinterest and disengagement with the views of the teaching community.

Instead of consultation, teachers are reduced to direct action to communicate their views on education policies. A short letter to the Guardian last week set out the misgivings of 50 head teachers and leading educationalists about the Conservative-proposed 'free schools' which they claimed to be contrary to 'steady investment in the whole system' and the existing 'shared vision'. In the conferences of the main teaching unions earlier this month, a myriad of resolutions were passed in favour of direct action. They expressed opposition to pay freezes, threats to pensions, cuts to services, demanded a 35 hour working week (teachers are the most profession most likely to work unpaid overtime - an average of 18.7 hours a week) and stated that the proposed revival of technical schools would further entrench class division. On Friday, we learnt that in the first national ballot of teachers for almost a quarter of a century, senior members of staff had overwhelmingly voted to boycott this year's Sats exams. The first working day of the new government - May 10th - will see chaos as teachers express their discontent using the only channel available to them.

Central government must devolve power to localities in such a way that builds up allegiances between parents and schools. We learnt recently that parents do not choose schools, as the current government assumes, on the basis of their exam results but by locality, and the experiences of friends and siblings. Parents and teachers are likely to have similarly holistic ideas of education which are little served by government's micro-management, reductionist targets and external exams. Political intervention has consistently failed to serve the interests of the child and genuine decentralisation must be forged through parent-teacher relationships which reinforce rather than undermine each other.

back to top