Newsnight Education Special

Although spoiled rather by politicians continually talking over oneanother, last night’s Newsnight education special was an important one. In these times of budget cuts our schools look set to be a key electoral battleground in a way that perhaps they haven’t been since Tony Blair’s famous ‘education, education, education’ pledge in 1997.

It’s a pledge that continues to haunt Labour today. The BBC’s poll for last night’s programme shows that only 25% think Labour have delivered on his promise. A similar number said they believe Labour have used the money it has spent on schooling wisely.

Here lies the key problem for the Government. The last 13 years have certainly seen some improvements in certain areas, but those improvements are completely out of step with the huge amounts of money that have been spent. Not enough has gone on front-line teachers and school funding, but instead into targets, additional tests, nonsensical initiatives, and a huge increase in regional beurocracy. Just ask my mother, a special-needs teaching specialist, who has moved further and further away from the classroom and now spends the majority of her time in a LEA office ‘co-ordinating’.

The challenge for the other parties is to show they would spend the money more wisely. Gove did a reasonable job of this last night, aided by a mother from Yorkshire whose local school is being closed and who wants to start her own up to replace it. Ed Balls could only point her in the direction of the LEA, but under Gove’s more radical plans, she would be funded directly from the central education budget.

Perhaps this is the way for the Conservatives to overcome the difficulty people have in clearly understanding their plans (the BBC poll showed that only 25% think that the Conservatives have the best education policies, a 10% drop from 2009 largely explained by a huge increase in the ‘don’t knows’). Get more people like Lesley to put the simple facts in front of the electorate. Labour has failed on education in some areas. When schools are closing, or are not good enough to stay open, rather than asking LEAs to sort out the problem it is far better to leave education in the hands of those with the greatest vested interest in seeing their children succeed, the parents.

p.s. I realise that I haven’t said much about the Liberal Democrat plans. As with so many of their policies, I find they seem completely uncosted. An increase in funding for schools to take on ‘difficult’ pupils is laudable, but they are ringfencing education spending, NHS spending – as David Laws seemed to indicate last night – and spending approx. £10bn taking the lowest earners out of income tax. They are also promising no tax increases. You have to wonder what kind of calculator they are using…