THE Socialist Educational Association (SEA) has laid down a challenge to the Labour front bench to tackle the crisis in our education service by introducing radical change to reverse the years of damage, both ideological and literal, done to it by the Tories.

A Manifesto for Education tackles marketisation and privatisation from early years through to higher education, as well as the creeping centralised control imposed on the service by Ofsted and multiacademy trust bosses.

Unless urgent and far-reaching reform is implemented, teacher recruitment in schools will continue to nosedive and university courses for the working class will be threatened.

Building on work already done on reversing academisation, the manifesto was put together by working groups on higher education and lifelong learning, and the curriculum plus a conference on specials needs. The final version was agreed by an all-member meeting.

The SEA believes that education is a universal right not a privilege and that all educational institutions should share knowledge and skills.

They should also assist in enlightening and interacting with their local communities.

These communities are best served by inclusive democratic structures which enhance accountability to students, parents and carers, staff and trade unions.

These socialist principles should apply to all sectors of the service from early years through to primary and secondary schools, further education colleges, universities and youth services.

The SEA believes too that everyone should have the right to access higher education and life-long learning whatever their age or background.

Education which is accessible throughout people’s lives enhances the well-being and capacity of individuals to enjoy life, supports intergenerational aspiration and adds value to communities and workplaces. 

The document contains a series of proposed actions on curriculum, assessment, school structures, funding mechanisms, teacher education, higher and further education plus accountability.

The higher education section demands an end to tuition fees, marketisation and control by the Office for Students.

An immediate response might well be that the education service has had enough of initiatives and that radical reform now will increase teacher workload just at a time we should be looking to reduce it.

In reality though, teachers are tired of top-down initiatives over which they have no say. This is a major factor in the teacher shortage crisis.

Teachers have lost professional respect and the responsibilities which go with that.

The SEA is asking Labour to look seriously at successful jurisdictions such as Finland and Canadian provinces.

England (less so Scotland and Wales) has become addicted to imposed curriculums and pedagogy.

As Sally Tomlinson points out in her new book, Ignorance, the right, through the Black Papers in the ’70s, did everything they could to undermine and denigrate the emergent and newly flourishing comprehensive era.

Teachers were devising their own curriculums and even their own qualifications. This came to an end when the 1988 Act imposed a detailed national curriculum for the first time dressed up as “entitlement.”

New Labour followed with the micro-management of teaching by means of its series of “strategies.” Now teachers are being further constrained by being required to deliver a narrow fact-based curriculum in a prescribed way.

What Labour should be doing is, not thinking of more initiatives, but liberating teachers from the yoke of Ofsted-imposed bureaucracy and the dead hand of multiacademy trusts imposing their corporate ways of doing things.

The most successful jurisdictions highly respect their teachers and hand over to them and university education departments, responsibility for curriculum development and pedagogy through extensive professional development programmes. Yes, it will cost more in teacher time but rewards will be substantial. 

Labour need not worry either about replacing the current rubric with a more open and flexible curriculum framework.

Academics, teacher unions, local authority advisers and others have all been shut out of contributing their expertise for the past 12 years and are champing at the bit to contribute ideas.

Teachers will still be able to refer to and use materials developed under this government. The major difference would be that it is their choice. 

The SEA contests the mantra coming from the Labour front bench that structures are irrelevant. The Tories clearly think they are instrumental in achieving their goals and so should we.

Without abolition of academisation there will be no serious change to what happens in classrooms.

“In no comparable democracy do so few people at the centre make decisions so far away from so many. Other countries of similar size to the UK spread political and economic power across different levels of government. With multiple centres of power, initiative and influence across the whole country, communities can see administrations more responsive to their needs.”

– Brown commission 2022

It is surprising that Brown fails to mention democratic oversight of schools and colleges in his report.

Having liberated teachers, Labour should liberate communities, parents, education staff and students and give them all back a voice in the running of schools and curriculum initiatives.

Again, this is the case in successful jurisdictions. In Scotland and Wales local communities retain a voice in their schools. Under the current academised system where large multiacademy trusts run schools across the country and are often entirely disconnected from local communities, local democratic oversight cannot take place effectively, if at all.

The SEA recognises that bringing schools back under local democratic control will require complex legislation but has researched a way forward in its paper, Restoring a Democratically Accountable Schools System.

The biggest barriers to opportunity are poverty and deprivation. They cannot be removed by even the strongest education service, acting on its own.

Current education provision is a barrier for many. It labels children as failures, excluding some altogether; it imposes an increasingly irrelevant curriculum and there are few second chances.

The SEA welcomes Labour policies announced so far on early years expansion and increased teacher recruitment funded by receipts from extra taxes on private education.

However, a radically reformed education service, designed as part of a socialist programme to redistribute wealth, rejuvenate public services and tackle discrimination, is required to break down the barriers that increasing numbers of children, young people and adults face. 

The document contains detailed proposals for change across the service. A brief summary is as follows:-

• • Restore state education funding to 6 per cent of GDP (it was 5.8 per cent before Thatcher and is now 3.9 per cent)

• • Provide free school meals for all primary school children as a first step to free school meals for all

• • Bring all schools back under local democratic oversight, end academisation, stop selection by ability and give parents back a voice in the education of their children

• • Give teachers back respect and professional autonomy. Abolish the Ofsted straight-jacket and return teacher education to universities

• • Make child care and early years education available to all our children from age six months

• • Introduce a culturally responsive and flexible curriculum framework which recognises and affirms learners’ diverse experiences, encourages creativity, restores access to the arts and includes the climate emergency

• • End grade rationing and SATS. Brining in an assessment regime which celebrates success rather than stigmatises failure

• • Build an inclusive education service where mainstream schools and colleges meet the wider diversity of need of al pupils including those with SEND

• • Abolish tuition fees for further and higher education, end marketisation and bring back the education maintenance allowance

• • Rejuvenate youth services so that all young people have access to high quality provision

• • Guarantee jobs to young people successfully completing apprenticeships

• • Enable all leaners to access education throughout their lives.

James Whiting is SEA general secretary.