“The announcement from Rachel Reeves that Labour would honour the 5.5% set out by the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) was welcome [but] this will not be enough to arrest and reverse the deep and wide recruitment and retention crisis” – Ed Harlow
Ed Harlow examines the Government’s sizeable in-tray.
Resetting the relationship
Labour is back in government after 14 years of Conservative chaos in education. 14 years of funding cuts, pay restraint, narrowing curricula, ever more regressive assessment systems, privatisation through the academies programme, and a fractured relationship between the DfE and the profession, led by a revolving cast of education ministers.
Sadly, for millions of children, it will be too late. 14 years is the time children spend in schools between early years and A-levels. Children born in 2006, just before the financial crisis that ushered in the era of perpetual austerity, started school a few months after Michael Gove was installed as Secretary of State for Education in 2010. Those children have recently left school, and many are weighing up whether a lifetime of debt is a worthwhile price to continue their education.
Since the election, there has been a noticeable attempt to reset the relationship between government and the profession. Meetings with the General Secretaries of the four education unions were followed by open conversations with the profession. This is a big step. It’s hard to overstate how toxic the relationship had become between the profession and the ever-changing Secretaries of State under the Tories. Gillian Keegan’s final act was to leave the School Teachers Review Body report sitting on her desk.
Pay is the starting point…
The announcement from Rachel Reeves that Labour would honour the 5.5% set out by the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) was welcome, as was the £1.2bn to fund it. But the STRB’s rationale for the rise was that private sector pay had risen by this much. So, despite this being above inflation for the first time in a generation, this is essentially treading water and will not be enough to arrest and reverse the deep and wide recruitment and retention crisis.
Longer term, many in education would prefer to see an end to the pay review system altogether, and return to collective bargaining with the unions. Whatever happens, there will need to be a timely pay correction if teaching is to remain a viable profession for future graduates.
…But there’s a lot more
Pay is not the only issue driving the recruitment and retention crisis in schools. Workload is also a major factor, driven by the culture of fear and high stakes accountability that emanates from Ofsted. Labour has promised to reform Ofsted and to replace one-word assessments with a report card system. However, many in education feel that Ofsted is beyond reform and abolition is needed. Nobody is seriously arguing for there not to be an inspectorate, but a conversation around the purpose and operation of that inspectorate is overdue. In its current form, it has no demonstrable impact on standards in schools, but contributes massively to a mental health crisis in education and unmanageable workloads. Many would prefer a supportive, collaborative system of school improvement.
Labour has already committed to a review of the curriculum, the results of which will be crucial. The curriculum has dramatically narrowed over the last decade as the English Baccalaureate (EBACC) and school accountability measures such as Progress 8 key pillars of Michael Gove and Nick Gibb’s reforms have taken their toll on the uptake in the arts, PE, technology, and other vocational subjects deemed unworthy of inclusion. The primary curriculum has been driven by ever more dogmatic approaches to teaching, and ever more focus on English and Maths brought on by SATs pressure.
Of course, schools are not islands and must work in the context and communities in which they sit. Child poverty rates soared to shameful levels under the Conservatives, and alongside the decimation of essential front-line services, schools have been left to fill the void time and again. Put simply, hungry children do not learn well. A commitment to eradicate child poverty should be the core aim of any Labour policy.
… Including clear structural issues
Clear structural issues remain in education. There is a strong argument to return all schools to local democratic control and to end the academies programme, but this must be a long-term goal given the decimation of local education authorities. Removing the threat of forced academisation, however, could be done immediately and would help to alleviate the pressure caused by a punitive Ofsted system.
There will be a lot of goodwill within the profession towards the new Government, but much of what needs to happen is contingent on funding. It should be an ambition of the Government to increase overall education spending and a commitment to raise it to 5% of GDP (from the current 4.2%) would be a worthy aim. And with half a million fewer children in schools by the end of this parliament it is high time we revisited per pupil funding, which acts to the detriment of fixed costs such as school maintenance.
There will be sympathy for Bridget Phillipson and her team, given the scale of the challenge and the number of issues that need urgent attention. But swift progress will be expected by most in the profession. Any return to the distrust and division fostered by her numerous Tory predecessors in the role must be avoided at all costs.
- Ed Harlow is National Education Union Junior Vice-President.
- This article was originally published in CLPD’s Campaign Briefing Newsletter. Read it in full here.
- You can also read Labour Outlook’s 2024 Autumn Conference bulletin here.
