Louise Bagshawe: Educashun, educashun, educashun – Labour’s slumping standards

In a government of spin and soundbites, it was the most celebrated one of all. Blair promised us his priority was the education of our children. That struck a chord; the feckless Labour party of the past suddenly sounding responsible, and though it intended to deliver on the future of Britain.

There’s a lot of competition for the title of “worst Labour failure”. Where do you start? If I were to go into every area of Labour failure, your eyes would glaze over. But today, let’s consider the claims of education. For the way Labour has betrayed our children is a complete scandal, and the compliance of the media in this betrayal only marginally less so.

I was in the penultimate year that sat O Levels, and I didn’t do as well as I’d hoped. Two years later, my little sister sat the first GCSEs, and she got straight As. How I glowered with resentful envy. ‘Her exams were easier,’ I complained to my highly unsympathetic mother.

That was the first year that ‘grade inflation’ was discussed. It has barely ceased to be discussed since. But under Labour, with its apparent commitment to education, the problems in our schools are endemic. Things are at such a pass that employers complain their workers are illiterate and innumerate; the great universities have no idea whom to admit, since A grades are so common; mainstream subjects that are the bedrock of a basic liberal education are under threat because of declining standards and easier options – subjects like history and French.

What is the result of ten years of Labour? We learned some of that this week. The Press Association reported:

“Four out of 10 children left primary school this summer without mastering the basics of reading, writing and maths, figures showed today.”

Forty percent of our children not even up to speed on the basics. What do you reckon the figures are for the sciences, for history, for foreign languages?

And how did the BBC report this staggering announcement? With full Labour spin as (ahem) “the best results ever” because these appalling figures showed a 1% improvement on the prior year.

How did we come to such a pass? Practically half the nation’s young children being left behind? And where is the outrage? Why are our newspapers so silent? If they are not careful, future generations of Britons may not be able to read their product.

But maybe this is confined to younger children. Pupils can make it up in secondary school. Can’t they?

The Burning Our Money blog had an unmissable post this week.Referring to a Sunday Times report for the Office of National Statistics, ie the government’s own body, it describes how A levels have got easier:

“Thus, for English Lit, pupils with the same ITDA score are now getting an A Level over one grade higher, and for Biology, nearly two grades higher. For Maths, the increase is an astonishing three and a half grades. Overall, the change is about two grades, as reported.”

So if you got once got a D in your maths A level, today you’d get an A for the identical paper.

Let’s review, then, as we used to do at the end of my German lessons.

a) Examination grades have been inflated
b) Basic subjects required for an all-round education, such as history and languages, are being dropped
c) The syllabus that remains has been dumbed down

And, worst of all,

d) even with these easier standards, 4 out of 10 11 year olds do not have the basics of literacy and numeracy.

Is this an accident? Or is it due to Labour pushing a stale ideology that puts (discredited) theories ahead of children and their needs?

I’m sorry to say it’s the latter. Even Blair’s limited educational reforms passed only with Tory help. Tories had to lead the charge, against the teaching unions, to get synthetic phonics restored as the only way to teach children to read. Now Labour has put an Aussie ideologue – I do not hesitate in calling him a lefty ultra – in charge of its quango, the Qualifications and Curriculum authority.

Wat Tyler’s blog quotes this man as follows:

“Surely the standards debate is tired and stale now? It's only the rightwing fringes that want to return to norm-referencing [which limits the number of passes] and fail 95% of kids so the rest can be seen as achieving.”

Oh yes – all must have prizes. Tyler links to a blood-curdling article by the man Labour have commissioned to dumb down our children. Read it – if you have a strong stomach. It’s here. In 2002, Ken Boston gave us perhaps the classic definition of socialism vs. conservatism – Conservatives believe in equality of opportunity, socialists in equality of outcome. He wrote for The Australian:

“Do we want to educate our children mainly in government-assisted fee-paying private schools, based on an exclusive clientele identified by socio-economic status, religion, ethnicity or some other dimension? Or do we want them mainly to be in inclusive government-funded public schools, mixing with children from a wider range of backgrounds and experiences?... The council of the Australian College of Education has reached unanimous agreement….There should be equal educational opportunity, and potential equality of outcomes.”

Ken Boston’s “equality of outcomes” is delivered by gerrymandering the system so that we cannot tell who is succeeding and who is not. Is it a wonder that Labour has delivered a generation of children who will have no foreign languages, no grasp of history, possibly no real ability to write a letter? It is inconceivable that our national intelligence level has slumped; it’s not the nation’s children who are failing – it is our government and its quangoes.

Comments

[TomTom]

Tomtom, Kein Deutsch, das kann nicht sein!

Tony Makara - for some reason HTML disappears occasionally and the inverted commas disappeared from the first line of my earlier posting.

Deutsch ist die Sprache des maechtigsten Staates Europas und No1 weltweit beim Auslandsgeschaeft. Wer behauptet Deutsch unwichtig als Sprache sei, hat sich fuer eine Karriere als Englischer Butler vorbereitet, wobei die Englaender fuer solche Dienstleistungen wohl geeignet sind.

Wenn man mit Japanern zu tun hat, weiss man wie die die Deutschen als Konkurrenten schaetzen und die Chinese auch. Die Deutschen sind bei Metallverarbeitung an der Weltspitze und wenn ich die Aussage Huntsmanns hoere, bemerke ich die traditionelle britische Eigenschaft immer daran zu glauben mit Englisch ueberall rumzukommen.

[Tony Makara]

Tomtom, Ich habe kein interesse fur ein berufsleben als Butler! Auch wenn ich bin Englander. Aber ich bin ganz vollig inubereinstimmung uber ihre ausage das kina und Deutschland sind etwas engmaschig heutzutage, sogar gefahrlichabhangig! Solche interdependenz ist nicht ein besonders gute plan in beziehung zu die zukunft.

[Ken Stevens]

Tony und TomTom
Ruhe, meinen Kinder. Ich kann Sie nicht verstehen!

The best argument I heard for learning a foreign language for business was along the lines of:
"I sell in your language, aber ich kaufe in meine Sprache"

(apologies for errors in rusty schoolboy German)

[Tony Makara]

Ken, Your german is fine. Yes, I think we had better stick to good old english, besides its hard work trying to argue abstract points og political polemic in foreign languages. Business can certainly be done in any language if the price is right!

[Lucy]

Show offs ;)

[Ash Faulkner]

Reading this, I despair. What's worst is that these kids aren't going to resit school again. This is their one real chance, ruined. It's a disgrace.

[TomTom]

Show offs ;)

Posted by: Lucy | August 09, 2007 at 05:53 PM

Just trying to help you balance your sheets Lucy !

[Patsy Sergeant]

You are never going to have a practical approach to education from a socialist government for whom 'principles and dogma' always come first, and therefore even before people.

[TomTom]

Patsy, the 1944 Education Act empowered a Secretary of State for Education - Germany does not have one.

Education grew up locally and was destroyed centrally. Once elected School Boards wrre replaced by Councillors (Lord Salisbury's Government) the slide into unaccountability started

Politicians will debase Education if they cannot debase the Currency - it is part of their Utilitarian doctrine

[Rachel Joyce]

This is an excellent article. I want to signpost this on my blog, but for some reason the permalink doesn't seem to be working - just keeps coming up with the main website title (conservativehome.co.uk), rather than a unique page.
Is this a change in website configuration?

[Victor, NW Kent]

Good, we are all agreed that the education system fails the nation's children and that Keith Joseph, Tony Crosland and lefty teachers are the cause.

Does anybody have any real solutions? Each succeeding government makes clear promises to improve things dramatically but only the statistical methods change.

So, if we Conservatives want to govern, who will state clearly what we will do when we achieve No. 10?

Why do Holland, Denmark, Austria, Sweden and so many other countries outperform us on education? What do they do that we don't do?

[TomTom]

What do they do that we don't do?

LOCAL CONTROL

Education in England is delivered by the National Education Service headquartered in Whitehall.

Why go to Denmark, Netherlands, Sweden or Austria ? what about Northern Ireland with its high-quality academic results ?

[Rachel Joyce]

thanks Tim - it is working now.
as an aside to this - sometimes I follow your links to things, and because it always maintains the link "conservativehome" at the top, it is not always easy to work out where it came from if wanting to signpost it to people - anyway of making it more user friendly without losing your conhome branding?

[Rachel Joyce]

thanks Tim - it is working now.
as an aside to this - sometimes I follow your links to things, and because it always maintains the link "conservativehome" at the top, it is not always easy to work out where it came from if wanting to signpost it to people - anyway of making it more user friendly without losing your conhome branding?

[Rachel Joyce]

thanks Tim - it is working now.
as an aside to this - sometimes I follow your links to things, and because it always maintains the link "conservativehome" at the top, it is not always easy to work out where it came from if wanting to signpost it to people - anyway of making it more user friendly without losing your conhome branding?

[Rachel Joyce]

thanks Tim - it is working now.
as an aside to this - sometimes I follow your links to things, and because it always maintains the link "conservativehome" at the top, it is not always easy to work out where it came from if wanting to signpost it to people - anyway of making it more user friendly without losing your conhome branding?

[Dave Bartlett]

Civitas have produced a report called 'Results Generation', that points out that gov't education policy is no longer about educating children to prepare them for employment/university, it's about producing statistics for election manifestos.

http://www.civitas.org.uk/blog/2007/08/what_do_they_take_them_for.html#more