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TERRY DIGNAN: Labour says schools have
been revitalised. In primaries basic skills have been raised and classes
for five to seven year olds reduced. Secondaries like Saint Marylebone's
can celebrate, too. This inner city London comprehensive is England's most
improved school. But progress has been slower in other comprehensives.
Ever since this Government
came to power it's been obsessed, and rightly so, many parents would say,
with the need to improve standards in our schools. But the effect on teachers'
morale of the way in which this policy has been carried out is said to
be causing an acute shortage of teachers, especially in our secondary schools.
Teachers feel the Government blames them when schools - typically in poorer
areas - struggle to achieve higher standards. In many other schools - as
the latest GCSE tables confirm - results are improving, often quite dramatically.
But has this been at the expense, as some would argue, of fairness in our
education system?
Most United Kingdom secondary
schools are, in theory, comprehensive. Saint Marylebone's says it has a
wide range of ability. But it's claimed many of the best performing comprehensives
in the GCSE league tables are able to select a disproportionate number
of brighter or well motivated children.
NIGEL De GRUCHY: So although David Blunkett said
watch my lips, no more selection, I think in practice, the Government has
allowed creeping back door selection, according to different criteria,
which places some schools in an advantageous position and they have therefore
done better as a consequence. I don't want to denigrate their efforts,
they've done very well, but let's not pretend that we have a truly comprehensive
system, because we don't.
ACTUALITY
DIGNAN: Labour has proved to be
surprisingly relaxed about selection. Eight-hundred comprehensives will
become specialist schools like Saint Marylebone's and be allowed to select
ten per cent of their intake on the basis of an aptitude for the arts,
for example. These specialist schools - already outperforming other comprehensives
- get extra money for more teachers.
MARGARET TULLOCH: If we're saying that those benefits
accrue and as result those schools do better, then I would say great, let's
have that amount of level of funding into all schools so that they can
all do better.
JOHN DUNFORD: At the moment I think there
is a danger that the government is introducing a two-tier system of secondary
education. The better funded specialist schools and the less well funded
non-specialist schools. That's unfair.
DIGNAN: Labour has named the schools
parents try to avoid because they are seriously under-performing. Saint
Marylebone's head knows how difficult it is to turn a school round. Naming
and shaming, she says, only worsen the problems schools face.
ELIZABETH PHILLIPS: When I came here, however bad
the school was, you told them how good they were, how lucky they were to
be here and you build up the culture of self-respect. Now how can a school
do that when it is being publicly named and shamed?
DIGNAN: But Labour is losing patience.
Nine out of ten pupils at Saint Marylebone's scored at least five A to
C grades in their GCSEs this summer. Less than fifteen per cent achieved
this at a hundred other secondaries, which means they face possible closure
in three years.
TULLOCH: If you do name and shame
schools like that, effectively they close themselves, because teachers,
understandably, if you're being told that the chances are your school is
going to close in three years, the teachers who can, will move and so what
happens is the schools close themselves.
DIGNAN: Inner city schools welcome
the help they're getting from the Government's Excellence in the Cities
budget. But they complain about targets to cut exclusions. How can they
improve results, they ask, when they're forced to cope with disruptive
children.
De GRUCHY: I think the government's
whole policy on inclusivity, whereby it's placed schools under enormous
pressure to continue with these very disruptive and sometimes violent youngsters,
has been quite unrealistic. It's piled an enormous amount of pressure upon
teachers and we do need to have relief.
DIGNAN: Many schools seem unable
to repeat Saint Marylebone's ability to mould a formula for success. Labour
has given some schools a so-called Fresh Start, a policy widely regarded
as having failed. Increasingly ministers are by-passing LEAs, Local Education
Authorities, and bombarding schools, even successful ones, with seemingly
endless initiatives.
DUNFORD: I think that most people
would recognise that in education now we have initiative over-load. That
we in the schools are still putting into effect last week's initiative
and the week before's initiative while you are reading in the newspapers
about next week's initiative.
PHILLIPS: Teachers have to do this
in the time when they are not teaching, when they should be preparing lessons
or marking, they have to do this as well as all the rest of it. And there
is a tremendous amount of it, it is just escalating and this is from a
Government that said it was going to cut bureaucracy and cut the red tape.
DIGNAN: Much of what teachers do
in their working day is now determined by the Government. Schools that
do ministers' bidding are rewarded with extra money. But it's meant schools
have to compete with each other to win whatever funds are on offer.
PROFESSOR ALAN SMITHERS: What is distinctive about this
government is that it is funding them on a 'something for something' basis.
That means that they have to bid - work out proposals. That's generating
an enormous amount of paperwork. A lot of effort is going into getting
those bids. For every successful school in those bids, there are perhaps
ten unsuccessful ones, so a lot of that paperwork is leading nowhere.
DIGNAN: Teachers don't feel loved
by this government. Yet David Blunkett is relying on them to bring about
a transformation in the education system so that all children can compete
in the marketplace when they become adults. He's being warned the effect
of his policies on teachers' morale is causing a crisis of recruitment,
mainly in secondary schools. So there's a shortage in the staff room
with some heads resorting to desperate remedies.
DUNFORD: Well there comes a point
at which you have to say if I don't have enough maths teachers I have to
reduce the number of maths lessons in school and that can't be good either
for government policy or for educational standards. There comes a point
where, as two schools have already said, and may be more will say after
Christmas, I am sorry we can't sustain a five-day week we have to move
to a four-day week.
DIGNAN: Some believe morale would
rise if ministers made fewer attacks on teachers. So in a speech on Thursday
Tony Blair went out of his way to praise them. Those involved in education
- who worry about low salaries for graduate teachers hope it's the start
of a change in attitude.
ACTUALITY
TULLOCH: Government has to be really
careful not to make speeches which can be interpreted as a blanket attack
on what teachers are doing because I think they feel very sort of fragile
at the moment.
DUNFORD: It is important that the
Government loves teachers because they will not deliver the improved results
in what is said to be their top policy priority area of education unless
the teaching force feels loved, unless morale is improved and unless the
Government works with the teaching profession in the pursuit of those higher
standards.
SMITHERS: The heart of the problem
is that teachers simply aren't paid enough. The latest figures show that
the starting salary for a good graduate teacher is two thousand three hundred
below the average for graduates. So an obvious thing to address would be
the starting salaries of teachers.
DIGNAN: These girls of Saint Marylebone's
are the lucky ones. Their school is heavily oversubscribed. Labour is proud
of the rise in standards at comprehensive schools like this and in many
primaries too. It's feared, though, that in other schools Labour's policies
may actually be making it difficult for standards to rise to the level
of the favoured few.
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