Shortly after I submitted the following to the Commons Select Committee on Education, its chairman, Barry Sheerman MP, himself condemned the White Paper as ill-written

Ill-written, ill-argued, ill-thought: The Education White Paper

Comments by Richard Heller

Wet cardboard and the Orwell test

The White Paper is an appalling piece of writing, turgid, preachy, and cliché-driven, and littered with avoidable errors of English or style (including within the forewords by the Prime Minister and the Education Secretary).  It is billed as a radical document but most of its content is a statement of the obvious. Banal, empty platitudes fill its pages like wet cardboard clogging a dustbin. To give only one of copious examples, paragraph 2.67 informs us that “It is important that schools make the best use of the very substantial financial resources that we are making available. We will look to all schools to improve the efficiency and effectiveness [what’s the difference?] with which they use their resources, so that they can free up resources to invest in better outcomes for children and drive up standards for all pupils.” And there was silly me thinking that schools should spend their resources on a new Porsche for the headteacher…

In fairness, the White Paper offers occasional unintended light relief. Page 9 talks of “piloting transport” for poorer children, conveying a delightful picture of them being taken to school by helicopter or light aircraft. Page 10 offers gifted children “more stretching lessons”, presumably in gymnastics or tai chi. Paragraph 5.2 promises to put “engaged parents” at the centre of everything. Even today, there are more parents who are married than engaged, and if engaged parents have acquired school-age children they must be having a very long courtship.

Paragraph 5.3 repeats an error throughout the White Paper of using a plural pronoun they/their for a singular child. In this case it produces an unexpected result, by promising firm steps against parents whose behaviour disrupts learning. There are many such parents and they should be dealt with, but this is not what the White Paper meant to say.

These may seem footling criticisms. But this is an Education White Paper, and one which regularly prattles about the high standards it expects from pupils, teachers and parents. I would not allow any of the authors of this White Paper to teach children English.

Moreover, I believe strongly in the Orwell test. George Orwell regarded bad writing as an indicator of bad thinking or outright dishonesty. On the basis of the Orwell test, the authors of this document are either inept or anxious to conceal its real purpose.  

No evidence base

The White Paper offers some evidence that the government’s current policies have brought improvements to educational results. It offers other evidence to suggestthat inequalityis a barrier to further improvement: see for example the Tables on pages 18 and 19 on Free School Meals and paragraph 6.24 on the results for “Looked After Children” (the new euphemism for children in care).

One might conclude from such evidence that current policy should be reinforced by measures to relieve deprivation and reduce inequality.  The White Paper draws a quite different conclusion – that schools need different kinds of providers and a different kind of governance – but this is supported by no solid evidence at all.  The White Paper offers only anecdotes of individual achievements. None of these are contingent on any of the structural reforms proposed in the White Paper and indeed many show what can be achieved by current local authority schools. (See for example Parrenthorn High School on page 32 and Leighton Primary School on page 53)

No overseas evidence

It is striking that the government does not offer a single example from overseas to show why the White Paper’s reforms might work – although it remarks in paragraph 1.27 that no fewer than 26 of our industrialized competitors send more of their 17-year-olds into continued education and training. [1]Does the government think we have nothing to learn from overseas? Or (more likely) have none of our more successful competitors chosen to follow the government’s path in education? (The Finns have built the world’s best secondary education on the basis of non-selective comprehensives, without testing, without League Tables, without punitive measures for “Failing Schools”  and above all, without handing over schools to businessmen or faith groups).

No evidence from schoolchildren

Another singular omission from the White Paper is any first-hand evidence from school children themselves. I cannot find any proposal in the White Paper that shows any insight into the actual lives, experience and feelings of of school children, whether in school or out of it. In paragraphs 7.35 to 7.38 the treatment of bullying – a vital issue for children – is perfunctory. It does not recognize that bullies are often victims in another context, or that bullying plays a role in truancy.  The White Paper has no new policy to offer on bullying – only the reissue of an existing Charter. It does not offer even anecdotal evidence of anti-bullying strategies which work for victims and bullies. It is particularly sad that the White Paper contains no recognition of the needs of the thousands of children – some as young as 8 – who have caring responsibilities at home. Their education often suffers and they receive very little support.

No evidence from home schooling

Still another omission from the White Paper is any evidence from parents who have opted for home schooling. It assumes that the only place children can be educated is a school and if parents want to organize their children’s education it demands that they go to the trouble and expense of creating a school for them.

No input from the Children’s Commissioner

Unless I nodded off somewhere, I could not find any input into the White Paper from the Children’s Commissioner or any proposal that he should be involved in any future school policy.

Self-Governing Trust schools

The government of course faces a major problem in producing evidence – because its major reform relies on creating a kind of school which does not yet exist, and whose description is singularly opaque.

I am a professional writer. I have a law degree and much experience of public administration and I cannot understand how a self-governing Trust school comes into being, how it is governed and what powers it will have. 

I can best illustrate this by asking seven grouped questions based on paragraphs 2.5 – 2.28.

a) what sort of legal entity is a Trust school? Is it a trust, with a board of Trustees? I do not think so. Paragraphs 2.5 and 2.13 talk about schools “acquiring a Trust”, but in law a trust is something that cannot be acquired: it is created and it stays in being so long as it has beneficiaries or serves a charitable purpose. Significantly, in the Annex the word “Trust” acquires inverted commas. Evidently, some new form of legal creature is being created.

b) Whatever creature a “Trust” turns out to be, who pays the legal costs of creating it? There will be large legal bills for conveying land and buildings and transferring contracts and liabilities from a local authority to a “Trust” – which will have to be met from education budgets.

c) which comes first – the governors or the Trust?  Paragraph 2.12 suggests that current school governors can create a Trust, but paragraph 2.11 suggests that Trusts appoint governors.

d) how will Trust governors be elected or chosen? Will they have the same terms of office?  How will casual vacancies be filled? Will there be any form of disqualification? (For example, could governors serve on more than one trust? If a Trust operates more than one school must it appoint parent and staff governors for each separate school?  Could a businessman serve as a governor of a Trust school with which he was doing business?)  Will governors set their own decision-making procedures or will there be some outside standards or supervision? Will all decisions be made by simple majority? (Even if say, all the parent governors are opposed?) Will there be any appeals procedure against Trust governors?

e) Will there be any rules to prevent a single Trust from monopolizing all the schools in a particular area? If a Trust operates more than one school will it be obliged to devote resources equally to each one, and who will prevent it from favouring one school over another?

f) The $64,000 question: will Trust schools control their own admissions? Paragraphs 2.16 and 8.34 seem to say “yes”: paragraph 3.27 seems to allow local authorities to modify Trusts’ admission policies. I can find nowhere in the White Paper any proposed sanctions against Trust schools which use covert methods of selection or even directly violate the Admissions Code. On this vital issue, the White Paper offers a recipe for endless confusion and litigation – more money for lawyers at the expense of education.

g) Could a Trust change its mind and ask to transfer its school(s) back into local authority control?

Rewards and punishments for parents

The White Paper offers a series of rewards and punishments for parents – but the punishments are much more clear-cut than the rewards. 

Indeed, many of the rewards look more like a punishment, especially for hard-working single parents.

At the very least, parents will be bombarded with more information about schools. They might have to receive visits from “choice advisors”.  In general terms, they will be expected to take more responsibility for securing their child the personalised, tailored education offered by the White Paper.  If they choose to serve on a Parents’ Council or even become a parent governor they will take on a great deal of voluntary work, including responsibility for other people’s children. They may face hostility from other parents or children.

All of this is true now but it would become much worse under the White Paper, because it expects parents to make many more decisions not only about their own children but about their schools as well. The White Paper makes more demands on parents but offers them little extra power or support. Even if parents become governors of a Trust school – the supreme position for parents under the White Paper – they can always be outvoted.

In my view, the only parents who would seriously profit from the new powers in the White Paper are those who are already powerful. For children, it could well increase the rewards of having good parents, and increase the penalties of having bad or indifferent ones – or none at all.

Is parent power really the answer?

Underlying the White Paper is a critical assumption: the interests of children’s education are invariably best represented by their parents. Therefore the key to improving children’s education is to give parents more power over it.

But that proposition cannot be true of every child. There are all kinds of parents – and the White Paper recognizes that some are the scum of the earth, selfish, idle, irresponsible, who deserve to be fined and punished. Others (says the White Paper) are clearly ignorant or nervous, and need visits from “choice advisors” and “champions” to help them get involved in their children’s education.

There are all too many parents – including apparently “good” parents – who for their children’s sake should not be let near their children’s education. There are parents who push their children into unsuitable subjects and careers. There are parents who want their children to be educated as they were, in subjects or methods which are obsolete. There are parents who do not want their children to ask questions or challenge authority. There are parents – particularly in some  minority ethnic communities – who do not want their girl children to be educated at all.

In short, parents are not a class of people or a community of interest, any more than NHS patients.  Empowering parents is not the same as empowering children. That is a central fallacy of the White Paper, including the introductions by Tony Blair and Ruth Kelly.

Even if parents were invariably the best judges of their own children’s education, why should that give them the right to make decisions about other people’s? That is what the White Paper would do, if it were serious about giving parents power over school policies. Under the White Paper, who would  prevent parent governors of a Trust acting in their own children’s interest rather than the whole school’s?

Imagine a governors’ meeting with a choice between funding theatre studies or swimming. Mrs Worthington is a governor: her daughter is stage-struck, and she votes for theatre studies. By the time Mrs Worthington’s behaviour is discovered it is too late to do anything about it – the money is spent and the school is full of actors who cannot swim.

 Conclusion

Children, parents, teachers and taxpayers alike deserve something better than this ill-written, ill-argued and ill-thought White Paper. I sincerely hope that MPs of all parties and persuasions will deliver it to them.

Richard Heller

204 The School House

Pages Walk

London SE1 4HG

richardkheller@hotmail.com

Appendix A: Tony Blair’s references to choice in Florida and Sweden

Florida is a curious choice to support the government’s education proposals. The Morgan Quitno Press produces a standard annual index of “smartest states” based on measures of student achievement, outcomes from education and quality of teaching.  Florida came 36^th out of 50 states, trailing a number of southern states with lower per capita incomes. Florida achieved an overall score of – 4.41: that is to say its overall educational performance was more than four points below the national average.

The smartest state is Vermont, followed by Connecticut, Massachussetts, New Jersey and Maine. Four out of these five are states with the highest spending per pupil. Under Governor Jeb Bush, Florida is 47^th  out of 50 in spending per pupil. In the South, only dirt-poor Mississippi manages to spend less.

Blair’s mention of Sweden is disingenuous. Sweden gives parents choice through a voucher system, which allows parents to choose a fee-paying independent school. Fees are capped and paid by the state. These schools are not allowed to set their own admissions policies – they take children on a first-come first-served basis. This is of course quite the opposite of the White Paper’s proposal that “trust” schools should control their own admissions. 

Richard Heller