John Bald is a former Ofsted inspector. He is Vice-President of the Conservative Education Society.
A Hackney deputy headteacher, Susan Williams, with whom I’d worked for some years, summed up my approach thus: “Make everything perfectly clear, and then practise.” I found this aim confirmed by brain research, which identifies the formation and consolidation of neural networks as the underlying process of learning. Blakemore and Frith’s The Learning Brain, and Stanislas Dehaene’s How We Learn are a good introduction. This research goes beyond the statistical techniques commonly used to assess educational success, to show what is going on from the inside, which is what we need to promote. Unlike most progressive commentators, Dehaene is also frank about the consequences of neglect. Evidence from Romanian orphanages, where large parts of children’s brains were blank spaces, is often dismissed by British progressives but is the physical counterpart of some pupils starting school two years, or more, behind others. It is a matter of fact, not opinion.
This is why I despair of Labour’s making any improvement on the failures that dogged their good intentions last time. More money for childcare may well be a good policy, and its cost is alienating many natural Conservative supporters. But, as with any other intervention, the conditions that give rise to the problem continue after it finishes, and Labour’s grand strategies for improving literacy and numeracy fizzled out and had to be abandoned. Their current endorsement of Oracy will meet the same fate – spoken and written language are interdependent, and they share key areas of the brain. We cannot successfully develop one without attention to the other. Labour’s attempt to promote work-related education, by making one over-simplified BTEC the equivalent of four GCSEs, fooled no one and these fake qualifications did nothing to improve opportunities for employment or further study. And weaponised inspection started with Labour in 2005, as part of their botched amalgamation of education and social services.
Labour’s progressive advisers, whose evidence comes almost exclusively from sociology, cling to the idea that the purpose of education is to promote equality rather than to maximise each person’s achievement. Mixed ability is their vehicle, and they are still in their Party’s driving seat. Their approach is directly contradicted by the brain research, which shows the need for new learning to be closely matched to children’s starting points – i.e. the neural connections on which new learning must be based, and onto which it must be grafted. Their response is to ignore the brain research in favour of emotive propaganda that describes grouping children according to their learning needs as “symbolically violent.” When they are proved wrong, as they have been by Sir Michael Wilshaw and Katharine Birbalsingh, both of whom group children according to their abilities and learning needs, they resort to abuse. They play a long game and are winning.
This situation presents Gillian Keegan and her colleagues with an option of difficulties. Our support among teachers is at its lowest ever level, there is widespread dissatisfaction among parents, whether or not their children attend an Academy, and the extortionate fees and interest rate charged to university students are widely seen as no more than a brains tax. The apprenticeship route, which enables substantial numbers of people to avoid Lord Willets’ millstone of debt, is an important way forward, but is just beginning to make an impact. It does, however, have the advantage of giving people a good reason to vote for us. Too many other policies do not. If we are to limit the damage we will undoubtedly sustain whenever the next election happens, we need to ditch ideology and provide a practical alternative to Labour’s wishful thinking.