Teachers keep saying it, UNESCO said it, now a comprehensive survey report says our kids are being tested out of sight, or as the Independent (1/2/2008) has it “tested to destruction”.
As a teacher I felt disempowered. When I was a member of New Labour I was disempowered by a lunatic bunch who had all the answers and glory in their power to wreak havoc wherever they tread.
Education is a process of learning by discovery, not imposition of facts and figures. It bores children, it bores teachers rigid. A good recipe for education which Blair emphasised as so important. New Labour is full of …bl..ah. Blair (gone or has he?), Blears, Blunkett. All have blurred vision. Seven year olds everywhere else learn through play and adventure not ny being tied down to their desks to swot for tests, and tests and more tests. SATs at 7, 11 and 14 are being reconsidered, to do away with tests? Oh no, the proposals are for more tests every year. The model I suppose was USA again where they face similar problems from a similar idiot called Bush.

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The government are right to be worried about our young people. What they are unable to grasp is that their own ideas and policies have helped us into the mess we find ourselves. The insistence on mechanistic rather than humane processes have reaped their reward of disaffected and unhappy children.
It is not only the children who are suffering though, the burden placed on teachers has meant that they have to deal with the paperwork, so where is the time for the child? I was trained as a teacher in the now reviled 1960’s with a diet of radical education writing. The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, School of Barbiana, Learning to Labour and – yes – de-schooling. None of that has darkened New Labour’s Tory hand-me-down policies. The intention of this new administration looks OK but the methods look suspiciously like more of the same, so the pressures on schools to cure the country’s ills looks like intensifying if anything. It won’t work Gordon. It won’t work Ed. Nor will it work in policing, in health or the prison service.

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No the government are planning to scrap the academies, but questions are being asked. They’ve discovered the not targeting those most in need.
Last night I attended the annual incantation to Birmingham governors on what good things were on offer. Academies were among them. Outside teacher unions had joined forces with an alliance to stop their advance. Inside the assembled governors admitted their unfamiliarity with what was going on. Well there’s The Forum – haven’t you heard about the forum which tells you everything you’ll ever need to know. Deathly hush. Well the chair of the Forum is here to tell you alla about it.
One governor said he been a governor of a prison which had been privatized and now they were trying to claw these back realizing the terrible mistake. Wouldn’t this be the same again? Another sprang to the defence of the “inspiring” words of the Director. “We in Birmingham have to support these magnificent academies”. I don’t think so. Nothing should be accepted uncritically, certainly not from New Labour who continue to privatize even when successive ventures have come to grief. Railways, London Underground, prisons, you name it.
Academies? Well up north a company that has got its hands on some schools has dictated the curriculum and put, yes creationism on the menu. Just what has been going on in the neocon agenda in America responsible for the morass that is Iraq today.

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The education system in Britain maintains many forms of selection as the great comprehensive dream fades into history. Now a report on faith schools in London shows how schools there “Cherry pick” their pupils The characteristics of their intake are affluent, middle class, and yes, white. Racism is alive and sick here too.
New Labour’s ham-handed way of introducing league tables encourages schools to select children who are judged less problematic. The report above focusses on London and secondary education yet in Birmingham there are some primary schools who find ways and means of selecting their intake. Some of these are faith schools, some are not. One school in inner city Handsworth will only admit children who can show achievement in SATs results. It has been declared “a beacon school”!
Ed Balls speaking for the government declares it has “no policy” on faith schools. “Let the people decide” he declares. Here in Birmingham there is an appetite for privilege and division among different groups in the community. They are aggressive in their wish to get their children into the grammar schools while a local gurdwara campaigns for Sikh faith school at all levels. Since Blair encouraged faith schools some have been opened for Muslim girls in Birmingham. (It’s quite amazing how Blair’s zeal for faith-based institutions quickly gave him grief when they were then supposed to harbour and promote “extremists!”)
Seventh Day Adventists provide a school for mostly African Caribbean pupils. In the latter case there is some justification while racism pervades education elsewhere. Nevertheless the result is division upon division and the community is reaping the consequences.

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What passes for eduction in schools in England and Wales is being challenged by a report from no less a body than the General Teaching Council. Instead of giving children a broad education it says, teachers are having to drill pupils from 7. The result is stress levels rise both in children and teachers. New Labour’s inhumanity reaches everywhere it seems. One young teacher, accused of getting children to cheat, killed herself while under investigation.
The general effect is to turn children and young people off education. It might help to explain why we have unprecedented levels of offending with young offenders’ institutions bursting at the seams. Many of these are set up and rung by the private sector.
One idea being put forward is a new form of national service for young people. The government would be well advised to steer away from making such a scheme compulsory, bet rather give opportunities for volunteering allowing young people to follow their own motivation and choice.

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According to an Observer report (20/5/2007) children are needing more and more counselling and medical attention as a result of the exam-ridden culture that is Britain today.
I trained as a teacher in the reviled sixties, when the campaign for comprehensive education was alive and well, and before the onslaught on schools and other public institutions insisting standards had to be driven up. I would never argue that there wasn’t room for improvement in education provision, but those who cried “education, education” and “education” have had other agendas. The National Curriculum was a tool to impose a particular view on state schools. The private sector continued to do what it liked. The “nationalist” curriculum was more of a political weapon to fight against the “multiculturalism” that was creeping into the system. While this might have been expected from a Tory government, the take up and intensification of the onslaught by New Labour wasn’t.

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