BY JOE NUTT
It has to stop. Some situations are so fundamentally detrimental to healthy human families, which are after all, all that really matters when you can genuinely see the wood, they simply cannot be tolerated. Listening to a series of well-informed, often passionate debates about the current state of State education recently, has brought me to this conclusion.
Our schools must be freed from abuse by all politicians and activists.
No more campaigning groups using children’s classrooms to campaign; no more charities given a free pass to exploit children’s linguistic and emotional vulnerabilities to bolster their bank balance; and absolutely no more photo opportunities by ministers who care so much that they regard other people’s children as their personal, unpaid, photo opportunity props. Get them out. All of them, and preferably, next week.
Over decades, politicians of all breeds and brands have steadily imposed their insidious will on the nation’s schools, so comprehensively and effectively; few people, even those who work in the nominally independent schools sector, have stopped to consider whether or not their use of schools as their lever of choice, for every imaginable policy whim, is educationally justifiable, never mind a culturally positive thing.
It has just become accepted. It appears that merely because government funds education, that gives individual politicians and the politically minded, a right to exploit them and use them at will, however disruptive or damaging their visit to the day-to-day running of any successful school.
Stop, for just a moment, to think about this. Schools, places parents entrust with the education of their children, are the favoured targets of politicians and activists; arguably the least trustworthy adults in our entire society. It is educational insanity. The familial equivalent of cutting a hole in the fence to let the wolves in.
The policy that exemplifies this most dramatically is the ubiquitous lie that schools drive social mobility. Just pause to appreciate the staggering weight of responsibility that takes away from politicians but places on teachers’ shoulders. It is every education minister’s favourite lever to pull. A deceit so widespread and seductive, you will find hardly anyone working in the sector itself willing to stand up and question it. There must be a small army of charities and campaigning groups dedicated to disseminating this deceit because it’s so appealing and easy, so guaranteed to make you feel like a good person.
But schools don’t drive social mobility. A vibrant economy does, and marriage. I could waste thousands of words here explaining why, because I was employed to find out, but I’d rather point you to just one leading researcher in this field, Oxford sociologist John Goldthorpe, then if you’re interested, you can do your own homework.
Some years ago a Free School headteacher linked to the Conservative Party established a kind of Fantasy Schools website, recording the insanely lengthy list of things schools were supposed to deliver on top of their day job; teaching children a range of subjects in classrooms, ideally by teachers suitably qualified in those subjects. Nobody was listening, least of all his own party. The open goal that schools offer weak and unscrupulous politicians and activists is just too wide and inviting. Free breakfasts is merely the latest stupid initiative in a foolish and shameful series.
When I argue that there needs to be a moratorium on all external visits to schools, I inevitably receive push back from the organisations that benefit most. But a moratorium is by definition a temporary solution. There is no reason decent, responsible, well-run organisations should necessarily suffer as a result in the long term because I’m absolutely not advocating this should be government policy. That would be as crassly and grotesquely hypocritical say, as an Education Minister who regularly talks about caring for all children but who forces thousands of them out of the schools their own parents chose for them. When I say I want the politicians out: I mean it.
What I want to see is the schools themselves start taking their professional responsibilities seriously and genuinely independently of the people who are just abusing them. They need to step back and initiate a moratorium themselves; either in groups like Academy Trusts, or as single entities. It really doesn’t matter as long as they do it for themselves but more importantly, for the children they are paid and trusted to educate.
A moratorium only needs to last as long as it takes any school to work out precisely and professionally the process they need to be able to run in order to invite external speakers into the school who they can genuinely trust. In the business world quality assurance work like this is standard practice. No good business spends large sums on a conference or event, without checking the professional credibility of anyone they invite to speak at it.
There is no reason school leaders shouldn’t demonstrate the same levels of professionalism. All it takes is a few hours researching an organisation’s evolution and funding links thoroughly, or an individual’s career history and publication track record. I mean LinkedIn has to be good for something.
And just one more thing. No more English teachers abusing their subject to make eleven or twelve year olds read trite books about racism, sexism or any other ism, because all the job done well really demands, is the fundamental pragmatism needed to show any child that good books – are worth the trouble.
Joe Nutt is the author of several books about the poetry of Donne, Milton and Shakespeare and a collection of essays, The Point of Poetry and he writes regularly for a number of magazines.