Former Commissioner for London Schools Asks Which UK Political Party Will Put Education First? (March24, 2009)

Recently the Guardian reported that: "A recent poll shows that 'virgin voters' regard education as a top priority in the forthcoming [UK] election. Tim Brighouse, formerly Commissioner for London Schools and now a school governor, has written an open letter to first-time voters suggesting issues to consider before casting their vote." Much of what he writes would be pertinent to the forthcoming Australian federal election. Below, some excerpts:

The first issue I hope first-time voters will think about is values: it concerns the main purposes of education. Most politicians focus on the economic purpose. They also stress the need for schools to pass on the best of our ever-changing cultural knowledge. There is a third main moral purpose of schooling, however, which politicians tend to underemphasise. It is to do with treating young people as they might become rather than as they infuriatingly are. It is a commitment to find and develop talent in every pupil. Until this happens, there will exist for some individuals a mental slavery as profound as any economic deprivation.

A second issue to consider is surely which party will do most to reduce the number – perhaps 10% – of youngsters who have learned to regard themselves as failures and end up ruining their own lives and those of others.

Another key issue is how the system is managed. For nearly 30 years politicians have fallen more and more under the thrall of applying market principles to the running of schools.

A fourth issue is the extent to which the government micromanages schools... The Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency should be scrapped and replaced by a commission on the curriculum that would meet every five years to review broad aims while leaving the detail to schools.

[Finally,]it is pointless spending so much on recruiting and initial training [of teachers] and then losing one in three within five years, as we do now, for want of investment in further training. The cost would easily be found from the savings in reforms of Ofsted and the curriculum.

In the end, you need to decide which party is committed to preserving the gains of the last dozen years – and, most importantly, what their track record has been over the years.