I was reading through Gordon Brown’s big speech on education yesterday: http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page19209 (I was a little surprised at the lack of full stops, but that’s not the main point of this post) I really liked the main thrust of his argument: that we get out of recession by making education better and fairer rather than cutting back on spending. That said, I think he really misunderstands who schools are there to serve. Well, maybe ‘misunderstands’ is a bit strong, but he does neglect the key group: pupils.
It’s amazing, compared to parents they’re hardly mentioned at all, and especially not as stakeholders in their own education. ‘Pupil’, ‘student’ or ‘young person’ features 20 times, ‘parent’ 48; more than twice as often. Now, don’t get me wrong, the more parents are involved in education and schools the better, but this speech puts a huge amount of weight in what parents, school leaders and teachers can do to improve schools, but completely overlooks the fact that schools will only really improve when they engage their pupils in school improvement. Alongside school staff, who has the best view of how a school is doing, and how it needs to improve? Pupils.
Gordon says that he doesn’t want to just advantage the educated, able parents; but a system that relies on parents and excludes pupils will do just that. It will be just those parents who lobby the school and LA in an effective way. If we train up all young people to use their critical faculties in a constructive, collaborative and sensible way, then we can have a universal view of schools from a pupil’s perspective.
This would also lead to far more praise of the good work schools do, not just criticism where they get things wrong. Ask any teachers you know how often a parent has rung up to tell them what a great job they’re doing, and then ask them to compare how many times they speak to parents with complaints. Pupils, having a full picture of life in school can reflect on the positive and the negative, not just focus on the one time Jimmy comes home crying.
Well, anyway, rant over. Hopefully Gordon Brown’s office are reading this post and writing his next speech without this big black hole in. Now the rant’s really over.
Asher