A reader in the U.K. points out that education issues in the U.S. and U.K. have evolved differently. I am not sure that other readers in the U.K. would agree. There, as here, we have debates about how to educate, what to teach, and who should be in charge. When I visited London a few years ago, I toured “city academies,” which are schools that the government “gives” to wealthy businessmen who are willing to put up about $2 million dollars to build a facility; those I saw were oriented toward vo-tech studies. That seemed to me a clear movement towards privatization.
I don’t know which country is leading and which is following, or whether neither is the right term.
The battles in the U.S. over curriculum content and pedagogy have taken a back seat to the battles over the future of public education and the survival of teaching as a profession.
I hope that other readers in the U.K. weigh in.
As a teacher in England, I follow your blog (and read your books) with a fascination about both the similarities and differences between our education systems. Ideologically the US and England often go through similar fads and exchange thinkers all the time. The current UK government has flirted (I think that’s the best word) with the ideas of the American school reform movement. Most recently Michelle Rhee was over here promoting her own legend and being praised by ministers. However, there are differences as well as similarities.Schools are governed at different levels in our countries. In England (I am glossing over what happens in the other nations of the UK) education is controlled by the UK government, with administrative powers delegated to Local Education Authorities (now just “Local Authorities”) which are the locally elected councils covering cities, London boroughs and counties. These never had as much power as American states (teachers pay and conditions and qualifications were decided nationally) and in many ways may be more comparable to school boards in the US, but were often seen as powerful and unaccountable particularly prior to the 1980s due to the lack of autonomy in individual schools. Power has shifted significantly over the years, with the 1980s seeing an increase in both centralisation (with the setting of the national curriculum and new tests and exams and creation of OFSTED, the national schools inspectorate) and decentralised to schools (with schools being given more responsibility to run their own finances).A lot of political debate since then has centred over where power should lie. The underlying agenda of that article is about the power of local authorities and also the perception of central government (particularly under the Tories) as supporting traditional education and local government as supporting progressive education. The New Statesman magazine (along with the Guardian newspaper) is the voice of the middle-class left in England and for that reason will assume both that local authorities are good and that traditional education is bad. None of this necessarily maps onto reality, nor onto comparisons with the US. The two new(er) types of school that the article opposes are Academies, which are former local authority schools given more power and autonomy, and Free Schools which are new schools set up by parents. While comparisons can be made with Charter Schools and the US situation the following differences are probably key:
1) The English National Curriculum and testing system are already in place. Far from being part of a movement for standardised tests, Academies and free schools are given more freedom from the National Curriculum. 2) The closing of “bad schools” is not yet on the agenda. This may be because demographics mean new schools can be introduced to cope with a rising school population without closing old schools. It might also reflect the fact that there are not, as yet, very many free schools. 3) The traditional vs. progressive faultlines are more clearly on display in the debate here. That is why the charter schools mentioned are KIPP (who are quite traditional on discipline) rather than, say, the online charter schools you have been describing recently. Although some of the free schools can easily be described as “progressive” this is not something the media says much about, and the last thing the New Statesman would admit to. 4) Despite a lot of controversy over exam standards here, our exams have not become mutiple-choice, short answer messes like the American ones and only one of our three main exam boards is private. The government has shown a preference for essay questions, and more challenging exams. 5) Our teaching unions are terrible. They oppose everything but stop nothing and are barely able to work together. The government finds them a useful scapegoat but they really count for nothing. 6) The government has held off on privatisation. A lot of the debate is not about what they are doing to involve private companies, but what they might do in the future. There is definitely the potential for a US style reform movement lobbying for privatisation and union-busting. There is Teach First, an English equivalent of Teach For America, a lot of similar rhetoric and moves towards unqualified teachers. There are academy sponsors who resemble charter schools chains. But on the whole we are not there yet. I recognise more of the English debate in your older books like “Left Back”, than in “The Death and Life of the Great American School System”. Curriculum content is more controversial than anything else. To give examples, the most heated debates in English education recently have been over whether to teach phonics and whether exams have got easier and what to do about that. |
Thanks.
Inevitably I am going to end up commenting on my own comment.
Firstly, a day or two after I wrote that, it was announced that teachers in academies (which now make up most secondary schools, i.e. age 11-18) would no longer require Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) which immediately struck me as a US style move towards deprofessionalisation and has considerably reduced my confidence that we are not going in the same direction.
Secondly, the academies introduced a few years back were a bit like charter schools, but not too much. Although the talk at the time was of businesses sponsoring them, in practice it was only ever charities, universities or similar third sector or even public sector organisations. The 2 million pound price tag was soon removed and it turned into a scheme by which local authorities would pick a failing school and it would be rebuilt and rebranded (remember England has already had a policy of parental choice since the 1980s) with an outside organisation (or mix of organisations) behind it. They were given freedom from local authorities and some became controversial for being willing to exclude disruptive students or for having controversial backers. However, the main political objections tended to be based around a diminished role for local authorities and the possibility (only sometimes exercised) of changing teachers’ terms and conditions. Although some academies did move towards some pretty terrible dumbed down vocational qualifications, this also happened in schools which did not become academies and most new academies were fairly uncontroversial. A lot of academies continued to work well with their local authorities and a lot of councillors remained on school governing boards even though the council/local authority no longer ran the school directly.
A further, and more concerning change, is a push for even more schools (also including primary school) to become academies, this time with the local authorities having no say and in some cases with the school having no say. Again this doesn’t really indicate privatisation just a further weakening of local authority control and potential problems around terms and conditions.
Just explaining this makes me realise how convoluted and confusing this whole thing is. Probably worth pointing out that the UK already had state funded church schools, several different types of local management, and selective schools in some local authorities. It also has a remarkably large private sector for a European country. A lot of political debate is over selection and the existing degree of parental choice. The British government has praised the US reform movement and suggested that it is an influence. But then it has also praised Singapore, Finland, Sweden and parts of Canada. Perhaps the best indicator of how ideologically confused the situation is, the schools minister recently made a speech quoting both the ideas of Dan Willingham (the US psychologist) and Antonio Gramsci (the communist theorist). E.D. Hirsch is often named as a strong intellectual influence on the government, However, the Conservative party has a long history of hostility to the teaching unions and a strained relationship with the teaching profession. The relationship between the opposition Labour Party (who were in government when academies were introduced) and the world of education is even more confused.
Anyway, I’m sure I have confused things even more for any American readers. And I haven’t even mentioned that the British government only run the education system in England, not Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. All I would suggest is some scepticism at anybody trying to map the US reform movement onto this country too directly. There are worrying parallels but there are baffling differences. There’s also quite a vocal hard left tendency in education in this country who yell “privatisation” one moment and “centralisation” the next, often at the same things which can confuse matters considerably. But they will also tell you that teachers agree with them and are completely demoralised at the moment, whereas in fact there’s a lot for us to be happy about, which is what makes any hint of a US style reform movement a scary prospect.
Anyway, I seem to be followed on Twitter or on my blog by people from quite a variety of perspectives. I will encourage them to comment. I suspect it will confuse matters further.
“Just explaining this makes me realise how convoluted and confusing this whole thing is.”
Yes, it seems public education both here in the colonies and in the “Queen’s” land are converging in a mega-negative fashion.
Most folks on this side of the big pond have no clue as to what is happening as it has been kept quite hushed up, unless one knows where to look for information. But the average Joe and Jane have absolutely no clue. And I’d bet 75% of the public school teachers fall into that ignorant group.
Thanks for filling us in on what is going on in England!!
I think that the current British Government are seeking to emulate the worst travesties present in the US system. This is largely because emulating the best practice in more successful education systems will cost money and as such is the last thing they are likely to do.
I disagree the free schools and academies freedom from following the National Curriculum is not a move towards standardised testing. What it does is give them licence to not teach subjects that they view as peripheral (arts, Design and Technology, Food Technology, RE etc) which is likely to lead on more focus on the subjects that are EBAC subjects. This is likely to result in more standardisation of the curriculum and a significant narrowing of the curriculum. it also allows them to opt out of certain subjects that require expensive specialist rooms or equipment.
The governments decision that Qualified Teacher Status is not needed is a nonsense that can only harm children. It is an attack on the teaching profession and a transparent attempt to worsen teachers pay and conditions and make our ineffectual unions even less effective. It also proves that all their rhetoric about raising the status of the profession was nothing more than a lie.
Their making the process for sacking poor teachers part of the performance management process is ill conceived and makes a poor, meaningless process significantly worse. Their constant teacher bashing displays a dislike of and contempt for the profession that fits in with their decision to allow academies and free schools to employ unqualified teachers.
Sadly there are a large number of teachers that appear to be enthusiastic about the worst of these changes and are determined to be the turkeys that vote for Christmas.
There are those that support performance related pay and local pay bargaining because they for some reason believe these will result in them getting paid more.
There are those career-oriented types that vocally support any nonsense that is introduced without first engaging their brains and looking at it. So desperate are they to appear on message they will endorse any old nonsense and try to make us all embrace it too. When I think of the amount of money that has gone from our schools into the hands of private companies for all kinds of nonsense I despair.
My main concern is that government policy flies in the face of their stated aims.
They say they want to give schools more autonomy:
1) They have dramatically increased the number of schools that are only answerable to the secretary of state for education (and nominally the market).
2) The league tables essentially determine which subjects schools teach and which they focus on most
3) OFSTED (the inspection regime) have a staggeringly prescriptive definition of good teaching which is borderline facistic in its demands that certain things MUST be included in lessons if teaching is to be considered satisfactory or better. Many of these things have little or no evidence to support their inclusion in my opinion.
They say they want to raise the status of the profession:
1) They have removed that requirement that teachers have a teaching qualification
2) They constantly focus on coasting and bad teaching and incessantly denigrate the profession.
3) The constantly misuse statistics and mangle the english language to create the impression that the results are worse than they are.
They say they want to support teachers with behaviour issues:
1) The policy of penalising schools for excluding pupils remains and has in fact been worsened.
2) They constantly claim to have given us new rights. Mostly these are things we didn’t want, need or are not new. (Searching pupils bags, confiscating phones, no notice detentions etc)
3) They have not actually done anything that is likely to make behaviour in schools any better and their constant attacks on the profession are only going to make teachers less respected.
I think that all of these moves are a prelude to privatisation and the creation of a two tier system. The creation of academies once past a certain number of academies will make national pay bargaining impossible. The removal of national pay bargaining is an essential step for the right in the march towards privatisation.
OFSTED sounds eerily similar to the common core. My ‘successful’ public school wants all the Algebra I teachers teaching in lock step, etc. They want you to teach off a script, so that when they fire you and bring in cheap, no-nothing teachers, then they can teach off of your “script.” They want us to grade all our tests on a special multiple choice machine that will feed “data” to administrators’ computers. It is all about “data” over here. It’s good to hear that England hasn’t gone this route. Americans like multiple choice tests because they are easy. I had a German student come visit, and he didn’t know what a true false or multiple test was. I explained to him how it worked, and he shouted out, “That’s too easy!” Sad but true. Even with our multiple-guessing tests, many (most) end up flunking. I knew a British man who started a construction company in a large city here in the U.S. . He tried to hire local kids to work for him. On the first day, one of the local lads said, “You sure talk funny.” My friend said, “I come from England.” The teen asked, “What is England?” So, you can see we have our work cut out for us, and isn’t it great that our jobs will be tied to how these young scholars do on their standardized tests?? Perhaps if they made all the tests true or false… One can only dream!
I have seen this coming for awhile. Some reformers ultimately want to get rid of the teacher as we know it today. Students will sit in classes of 60 or even 70 students who will watch videos projected to them. The teacher will be there to answer questions and keep the students watching the videos. Perhaps they will throw in a few minimum-wage brutes with shockers. This is the future. I need to read “1984” again! I thought England was smarter than this. It is sad that they are going down a similar road. This is all corporate fascism- American style! You should have enough intellectual people in England to vote against this. We aren’t so lucky over here.
Beware– Michelle Rhee has been in England spreading her charm.
Michelle Rhee’s Washington lessons for Michael Gove: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18592184
Interview titled: Headteacher TV sacking: Mary Bousted and Michelle Rhee http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18592185