David Johnston was the MP for Wantage from 2019 to 2024, and a former minister for children, families and wellbeing.
I should have been pleased.
Having spent 16 years running organisations to improve social mobility, the first Cabinet composed of entirely state-educated ministers should have felt like a moment to celebrate. But it didn’t feel like that at all. This state-educated cabinet is already proving terrible for state education, showing low expectations for young people from similar backgrounds at every turn.
Just days ago, we got the latest move in that direction, when the Government reversed the phasing out of various low-quality BTEC courses that do not improve employability. They did so on the basis that ‘learners need more choice’. What young people actually need, especially disadvantaged ones, is not more choice but more guidance towards the things that will improve their prospects and away from the things that won’t.
As with Labour’s defence of rip-off degrees which give students nothing but a huge pile of debt (on the ludicrous basis that it is ‘anti-aspirational’ to say anything against them), it is a move to protect education institutions and their staff, not the young people wasting their time and money.
We should be clear it’s not middle-class students from professional families taking pointless courses, it is disadvantaged ones. I’d mind slightly less if it wasn’t for the fact the members of this Cabinet know very well that course and university choice makes a big difference to your prospects: 70 per cent of them went to a Russell Group University and 40 per cent went to Oxbridge.
Where qualifications have been reviewed, so the curriculum is currently being ‘reviewed’ to ensure it has more focus on skills, seemingly imitating Scotland’s ironically-named Curriculum for Excellence, which contributed to the country’s education standards falling markedly. As even one of the architects of Scotland’s curriculum later admitted, “Without knowledge, there can be no skills.”
We’ve already had enough clues that the review is likely to see more children doing exams in Drama and P.E., ignoring the fact that the best schools tend to do these as extra-curricular activities alongside a more traditional, academic set of exams. Families in the know know that doing drama and sport as GCSEs rarely improves someone’s general employability, nor even their child’s chances of a career in the arts or sport – any more than doing media studies secures a job in the media. Diluting the traditional curriculum in our state schools will only widen the disadvantage gap in attainment.
But then this Government has said it intends to treat attainment as on a par with pupil wellbeing. Wellbeing is, of course, important, and schools do have a role to play alongside families in supporting it, but it is difficult to see how young people will be able to persuade colleges, universities and employers to accept them by showing the right level of wellbeing rather than the right level of grades.
Step by step the things that saw us rise up the international league tables are being reversed, and we should expect we will fall down them again. Not that this is likely to be greeted with much more than a shrug by this Government. In opposition, Bridget Phillipson declared that “Education is not a contest between nations”, an extraordinary statement that betrayed no understanding of the link between education standards and a country’s competitiveness. Is it any wonder that as Conservative-run England rose in the reading, maths and science league tables, Labour-run Wales tumbled?
Everywhere you look, you see a lowering of standards and rigour. The shift away from high academic standards looks set to be mirrored by a shift away from high behaviour standards. The Guardian reported earlier in the year that ‘strict behaviour regimes look set to be phased out in England’ – which will make it harder for teachers to teach and children to learn. Funding for the last Government’s Behaviour Hubs will apparently be stopped, despite an evaluation recently showing ‘The largest positive changes were reported by staff in schools receiving extended support and in schools with high deprivation levels.’
And, of course, the very way that enables parents to judge which school to send their children to was one of the first things to be diluted. In response to union demands, the Government scrapped the clarity of one-word school judgements almost immediately. Instead of the easily understood ‘outstanding’, ‘good’, ‘requires improvement’ and ‘inadequate’, parents will have to navigate a complicated 10-area scorecard that obscures which schools are effective. Good practice will be allowed to have the label ‘exemplary’, but bad will only be allowed to be judged ‘causing concern’. The children are all failing their exams and running riot in the corridors? Merely a cause for concern.
As someone who attended a failing state school and worked with disadvantaged young people my entire pre-politics career, this makes me angry. But I can’t say I’m surprised. In opposition, Labour had no vision for education. In government, it still doesn’t. Alongside the reversal of the things that improved education standards in this country, all it offers are a small handful of ideological and bitty announcements that it can’t even get right.
It didn’t think through its VAT on school fees policy, meaning families who have a child with special educational needs at an independent special school are facing a 20 per cent fee hike unless their local authority endorsed their child attending it. A much trumpeted free breakfast club policy announced and reannounced for more than 3 years has to be delayed as they’ve only just realised schools don’t have the right facilities to make it work.
From defending low-grade courses to diluting Ofsted, lowering curriculum standards to treating wellbeing as ‘up there’ with attainment, this Government continually shows the soft bigotry of low expectations that Michael Gove and fellow ministers did so much to fight.
So I’m afraid I can’t celebrate having a state-educated cabinet. Its actions are going to stop other state school children from getting to the top.
David Johnston was the MP for Wantage from 2019 to 2024, and a former minister for children, families and wellbeing.
I should have been pleased.
Having spent 16 years running organisations to improve social mobility, the first Cabinet composed of entirely state-educated ministers should have felt like a moment to celebrate. But it didn’t feel like that at all. This state-educated cabinet is already proving terrible for state education, showing low expectations for young people from similar backgrounds at every turn.
Just days ago, we got the latest move in that direction, when the Government reversed the phasing out of various low-quality BTEC courses that do not improve employability. They did so on the basis that ‘learners need more choice’. What young people actually need, especially disadvantaged ones, is not more choice but more guidance towards the things that will improve their prospects and away from the things that won’t.
As with Labour’s defence of rip-off degrees which give students nothing but a huge pile of debt (on the ludicrous basis that it is ‘anti-aspirational’ to say anything against them), it is a move to protect education institutions and their staff, not the young people wasting their time and money.
We should be clear it’s not middle-class students from professional families taking pointless courses, it is disadvantaged ones. I’d mind slightly less if it wasn’t for the fact the members of this Cabinet know very well that course and university choice makes a big difference to your prospects: 70 per cent of them went to a Russell Group University and 40 per cent went to Oxbridge.
Where qualifications have been reviewed, so the curriculum is currently being ‘reviewed’ to ensure it has more focus on skills, seemingly imitating Scotland’s ironically-named Curriculum for Excellence, which contributed to the country’s education standards falling markedly. As even one of the architects of Scotland’s curriculum later admitted, “Without knowledge, there can be no skills.”
We’ve already had enough clues that the review is likely to see more children doing exams in Drama and P.E., ignoring the fact that the best schools tend to do these as extra-curricular activities alongside a more traditional, academic set of exams. Families in the know know that doing drama and sport as GCSEs rarely improves someone’s general employability, nor even their child’s chances of a career in the arts or sport – any more than doing media studies secures a job in the media. Diluting the traditional curriculum in our state schools will only widen the disadvantage gap in attainment.
But then this Government has said it intends to treat attainment as on a par with pupil wellbeing. Wellbeing is, of course, important, and schools do have a role to play alongside families in supporting it, but it is difficult to see how young people will be able to persuade colleges, universities and employers to accept them by showing the right level of wellbeing rather than the right level of grades.
Step by step the things that saw us rise up the international league tables are being reversed, and we should expect we will fall down them again. Not that this is likely to be greeted with much more than a shrug by this Government. In opposition, Bridget Phillipson declared that “Education is not a contest between nations”, an extraordinary statement that betrayed no understanding of the link between education standards and a country’s competitiveness. Is it any wonder that as Conservative-run England rose in the reading, maths and science league tables, Labour-run Wales tumbled?
Everywhere you look, you see a lowering of standards and rigour. The shift away from high academic standards looks set to be mirrored by a shift away from high behaviour standards. The Guardian reported earlier in the year that ‘strict behaviour regimes look set to be phased out in England’ – which will make it harder for teachers to teach and children to learn. Funding for the last Government’s Behaviour Hubs will apparently be stopped, despite an evaluation recently showing ‘The largest positive changes were reported by staff in schools receiving extended support and in schools with high deprivation levels.’
And, of course, the very way that enables parents to judge which school to send their children to was one of the first things to be diluted. In response to union demands, the Government scrapped the clarity of one-word school judgements almost immediately. Instead of the easily understood ‘outstanding’, ‘good’, ‘requires improvement’ and ‘inadequate’, parents will have to navigate a complicated 10-area scorecard that obscures which schools are effective. Good practice will be allowed to have the label ‘exemplary’, but bad will only be allowed to be judged ‘causing concern’. The children are all failing their exams and running riot in the corridors? Merely a cause for concern.
As someone who attended a failing state school and worked with disadvantaged young people my entire pre-politics career, this makes me angry. But I can’t say I’m surprised. In opposition, Labour had no vision for education. In government, it still doesn’t. Alongside the reversal of the things that improved education standards in this country, all it offers are a small handful of ideological and bitty announcements that it can’t even get right.
It didn’t think through its VAT on school fees policy, meaning families who have a child with special educational needs at an independent special school are facing a 20 per cent fee hike unless their local authority endorsed their child attending it. A much trumpeted free breakfast club policy announced and reannounced for more than 3 years has to be delayed as they’ve only just realised schools don’t have the right facilities to make it work.
From defending low-grade courses to diluting Ofsted, lowering curriculum standards to treating wellbeing as ‘up there’ with attainment, this Government continually shows the soft bigotry of low expectations that Michael Gove and fellow ministers did so much to fight.
So I’m afraid I can’t celebrate having a state-educated cabinet. Its actions are going to stop other state school children from getting to the top.