The fundamental flaw with education policy after the election is that politicians will get in.
Talking to a couple of teachers, both now thinking of leaving, is which is worse a Labour win – with ‘a policy a day’ Balls or a Cameron government that is made of people, who have seen public schools, (that is the state run places), but have not been actually gone to them, except on official visits, and will obviously send their children to private schools.
The present set of fantastic initiatives, which are mainly designed to build the career of a minister, or as part of the government PR of we are doing a good job and such boo-hoo to the opposition.
The emphasis has been on buildings, computers, hardware and photo opportunities.
The emphasis should be on quality of staff, quality of teaching and a resultant number of qualified, confident students, with self awareness and aspirations.
One way to achieve this is not to have a Minister of Education and a Ministry of Education, but allow education to be organised on a local and regional basis. Then at least the voters can easily travel and complain to, or vote out the local politicians when they get it wrong.
To give an example. Cameron’s new scheme
Maths: In maths what is needed for the vast majority of children is someone who can understand the problems kids are having with maths. Someone with a first in maths or physics cannot possibly do this.
Ideal people should be numerate, able to control a class and probably had some life experience, working, bringing up children. Mature students, people changing careers will probably have more to offer than someone just out of university and teacher training.
Most will only need to be able to understand maths up to GCSE level.
The whizz-kids with firsts would only be needed for the higher level A level students.
Secondly:
Cameron’s scheme will only consider graduates from ‘good’ universities. It makes him elitist and the ‘playing fields of Eton’ is now fully justified. What he is really saying is all but a few universities are inferior.
Third:
Cameron has effectively stated that most of the current teachers are inferior.
One last point.
The best teacher I ever had was Mr Powell. He was an ex-sergeant, who had fought with Monty in Africa and was stationed in Palestine after. He had no degree and was trained up under a specialist scheme for ex-military.
Without hitting students or shouting he controlled classes. He knew how to motivate students.
He had us for the entire Friday afternoon. He made a deal with us. The first lesson he would teach us maths. The second lesson we would work through a set of maths exercises and when the entire class had finished those he would go through his war experiences, giving us details of the battles in north Africa, or have discussions, or play word games like hangman.
To make sure we all finished early most of the class would do our maths work at least a week ahead.
We would help the weaker kids and so the entire class by today’s standards was very numerate.
So invest in good teachers not elite teachers.
Only allow ministers to have one idea at the most a year.