Education matters
5th February 2010
Read Anne Marie’s views in her weekly column; an advertisement sponsored by Conservative supporters.
Education matters
The incomes of the bottom ten per cent of families fell by £9 per week after housing costs between 2002 and 2008. Inequality is at a record high and social mobility has stalled. Improving our schools system is the most important thing we can do to address that.
Too many of our schools are falling down the world’s league tables in Maths and English. At least 25,000 of the teachers who have qualified since 2000 left full-time teaching in state schools without even entering the classroom.
We have to make teaching more attractive as a career- if we don’t we will lose some of the best teachers and not replace them. If teachers can’t teach, children can’t learn.
Attracting the best
We should give all head teachers the power to pay good teachers more. If we recognize a shortage of maths and science teachers we should look at how to attract the best – for example by paying their student loan repayments for as long as they remain teachers.
Good teachers have a broad range of life skills as well as academic ones. We need both because we need teachers who have a grasp of their subject but who will also provide role models for young people. So we need to review where we look. We need to consider those looking for a second career.
But we also need to ensure the academic underpinning is there. One way of doing this is to say if you want to be a primary school teacher, you need to demonstrate a B grade at GCSE in English and Maths. And if you want the taxpayer to pay for your teacher training, you will need at least a second class degree for secondary school.
A rigorous curriculum
We must reform the primary curriculum so that it is organised around subjects like Maths, Science and History. We need our children to be literate, numerate and understand what being British all is about. Children who need extra help should get it and not be left to drift – setting can help.
At secondary level, pupils in the state system should be allowed to take the same range of exams as those in independent schools. Universities and subject academics should be given an input into exams to make sure young people reach university age having the key skills they require – sadly this is now too often not the case.
Making change visible
But any change must be visible – to inform parent choice. League tables and web-based information must show how we have stretched the able and given extra support to the less able. It also needs to show how we are improving the performance of the average child – the forgotten middle – by driving up standards for all.
The latest OECD study of educational performance between 2000 and 2007 shows Britain has fallen from 7th to 17th in reading, from 8th to 24th in Maths and 4th to 14th in Science compared to other countries. We can’t go on like this - the system has to change.
