Meeting held on Tuesday 16th April 2024
Ten people were present. Two gave their apologies.
Our Discussion was initiated and focussed with prepared notes on the theme ‘Education’ circulated in advance of the meeting. These raised two questions: Why did education appear to be so low on the agenda of political parties; and what observations do group participants have on the current educational scene?
It was suggested that education is, in fact, important to many (especially parents) but we were not aware that it figured in political opinion polls. There was a general agreement that education was indeed in a parlous state, but then so were the other public services (NHS, police Social Services, Judiciary, etc). As with the other services, Starmer refuses to promise the increased funding needed by education. There was also a lack of agreement about the purpose of an educational system that has become increasingly managerial in its outlook and undermining of creativity amongst teachers and learners. Is this why so many teachers leave the profession after very few years? There is now very little support of teacher development and curricula materials play scant regard for the nature of student learning. Consequently, teachers were reluctant to address any controversial issues with students. Perhaps this was the deliberate policy of a political system that prioritises obedience over critical thinking. There was even the suggestion that Hallam University had been removed from the preferred list of un universities in China as a consequence of a critical publication by a member of staff.
Assessment is narrowly conceived in terms of PISA results which lead to dubious cross cultural comparisons.
There was a very general distaste for private education which privileges the few and maintains our unequal class society. We liked the idea of a unified national educational service for all ages as proposed by Corbyn, but saw little prospect of Labour making any such changes. We also felt strongly that Labour should develop a new version of Sure Start, which had been so successful.
There was some discussion of how educational policy is derived in the political parties. It appears that while the Green Party is quite transparent in the process, Labour’s policy making is hierarchical and obscure with constituency parties and annual conference having little significance in the process.
Reflecting on the discussion, there was an appreciation of (and widespread agreement with) the prepared notes and the focus they provided, but it was suggested that the discussion was not so very different from our ‘normal’ unstructured discussions.
The next meeting will be on 21st May.