Opinion
Cartoon by Polly Donnison
The perils of pitting parents against teachers Warwick Mansell
is a freelance education journalist and founder/writer of educationuncovered. co.uk
PERHAPS it was inevitable that yet another Department for Education move would backfire spectacularly. In a remarkable act of timing, Gavin Williamson – who at the time of writing remains the Education Secretary – chose the start of term to announce that any parent unhappy with the quality of remote education on offer from their school should report them to Ofsted. This came barely 36 hours after the Prime Minister unveiled probably the most significant of education U-turns – with news that schools across England would, after all, be closed to most pupils, just a day after most had fully reopened after Christmas. The Ofsted move appears to be another in a long line of public relations disasters for Williamson. Within two weeks it emerged
that parents had reacted by deluging the inspectorate with positive comments about their children’s schools. Some 13,000 emails had been received praising schools, and just 260 complaints, Schools Week reported. I wonder if this episode might have tested to destruction an assumption that has blighted English education policymaking for perhaps 35 years. This runs as follows. The interests of pupils and teachers are radically different. Without the intervention of national politicians and an accountability structure they create and oversee, schools and their staff would let down their charges. So ministers need constantly to announce measures that will “raise standards”. This, in turn, will win them good headlines and thanks from a grateful public. This thinking is clearly evident in policy announcements dating from at least the New Labour era. As discussed in my 2007 book Education by Numbers: the Tyranny of Testing, it is the philosophy on which school league tables, operating since the 1990s, rest. This may have reached its nadir in Michael Gove’s hideous 2013 claim that professionals who opposed him were the “enemies of promise”.
This strategy has always had shaky foundations. The teaching profession’s guiding ethos is one of helping others. Their interests should not be seen as against those of pupils. Williamson’s gambit may have proved valuable in testing this thinking to the limit: how would the strategy fare when put forward by a hopelessly unpopular Secretary of State, who is part of a tragically misfiring government, against professionals who have been putting their own health at risk? The Ofsted statistics suggest an answer. Of course, it is important education out of school works as well as possible at this super-challenging time. But simply making an announcement, believing you are on the side of the angels and then waiting for public acclamation is misguided. Policymakers need to get away from the idea that the way forward is to seek enemies and portray themselves as against them. If this crisis has taught us anything, it is surely that directives implemented from on high don’t work. For everyone’s sake, politicians need to understand that working with people – including hard-working professionals and their representatives – is the way forward.
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