Peter Kyle (the new shadow Minister for schools) said on Question time last night (03/06/2021) that he had heard from a constituent whose son and friends had jumped over a wall of their local school to use the facilities. You might have expected some understanding of the veracity of this story in a week where Sir Kevan Collins has resigned as education task force head. This after ministers rejected his proposals for a £15 billion package for students to catch-up on learning and opportunities missed during the pandemic. In my experience the majority of students couldn’t wait to get back into school after the lockdowns and enjoy learning and develop skills. Instead there were the usual sneering posts online that Kyle’s comment ‘Sounds like they broke in to play a bit of footy’ or ‘They were trying to steal something.’ Transference surely. Other voices were claiming that Kyle’s Statement showed that the Labour party has ‘no talent’ and reported speciously that he had apparently supported Jess Phillips in the Labour leadership contest as if to explain why a Doctorate former Chief Executive of Working for Youth should have uttered such an ‘embarrassing’ statement on TV. In fact, of course, Peter Kyle was actually listening.
In a way these responses are typical of the polarised way in which politics is received in England where the original story and the really important idea that schools could and should be community hubs for local people were completely ignored. Many of the comments about young people in response to Kyle’s story created typical negative stereotypes -cue a tutorial on Stanley Cohen’s ‘folk devils and moral panics’ theory. No wonder conservatives typically rubbish Media Studies! The reality is students are very interested- particularly if there is some relevance to their learning. As an illustration I have taught Democracy for Citizenship recently- (being even handed about right and left ideology as is my brief) and a 6th form student told me that Year 9’s were later discussing political ideology in the playground of the comprehensive school I work at. They were not fighting… Student evaluation of the course was strongly positive.
We could certainly do well to listen to educational stakeholders. As I was having my feet treated by my podiatrist yesterday (go with it!) we were discussing her daughter who has just finished year 11. She is intending to go to our local college to study Health and Beauty. She has already mapped out going to a provider post 18 specialising in training Film and TV makeup artists. Mum was a little worried about others’ attitudes towards the subject that her daughter intends to follow. Her first daughter had gone to university- should her second do the same? I was able to say that I understood entirely the way in which attitudes towards traditional subject content and what constitutes’ knowledge’ might impede her daughter’s confidence in her choice -but that many of us are working hard to change the government’s direction of travel and dispel this. I spoke of the growth area of TV and Film in the UK as the big streaming services develop prestige-often heritage productions- and base them here. I explained how I had met a makeup artist whilst working on the Crown recently who had spoken about how exciting and rewarding her job was. Yes, I would say her daughter should certainly pursue it if that is her passion. She also told me her first daughter had found 12 GCSE’s too many to study resulting in stress and how the current Curriculum seems to squeeze Arts subjects out. We discussed the English Baccalaureate, Tomlinson’s diplomas and the strange view that choice must be limited at Key stage 4 so that ‘easy’ subjects (Which ones are those exactly Mr Gibb?) do not distort the importance of the accountability statistical models we use in England. Save to say it was an interesting discussion.
I’ve no idea whether my podiatrist votes Conservative. What I am certain of (having campaigned recently in our town) is there is a large constituency out there of people who are ready to agree and vote for policies that are genuinely going to be fair and equitable ( As is evident in Manchester and Wales, for instance.) Evidence on the doorstep suggests they are far less likely to agree with sleaze point scoring against that serial election winner, the vote harvester, Johnson. Let me give you an example. Friends of my in-laws regularly post pro-Boris Pro-Hancock material. ( They used to vote Labour.) Earlier this week they copied and pasted the following on their Facebook page.
‘I would like to expose a situation. If your children don’t learn with children with special needs at school and have never been taught that not everybody is treated equally perhaps you should explain it to them’ They went on to talk about a child with autism excluded from attending a school trip and inviting others for online support.
It reminded me of our recent Fabian Education policy group meeting and our examples of pernicious selection in a variety of contexts-lack of inclusion being a particular variant of concern. The point is there is a constituency of people out there- who are ready to support a Labour party that expresses strong policies around equality and equity. There always has been. The National Educational Service under Corbyn and Rayner was a good idea. There were transformational educational policies under Blair and Brown. Listening (and speaking ) with educational stakeholders can assist us in winning again.
I was pleased to see Keir Starmer mention education first as a key policy area for the future in the Life stories programme earlier this week with Piers Morgan. It certainly is a fertile area for Labour and with a series of strong policy offers it can assist Labour in winning again.
Chris Harris is vice-chair of the Fabian Education Policy Group.