I am passionate about education. Maybe it is because I didn't receive a great education myself. I didn't get great 'O' Level grades and it was the same story for my 'A' Levels. Looking back, I can see the subjects that interested me the most are more or less the same that interest me now; Music, English, History, Geography and French. I never studied politics, but I did have a couple of teachers who were always willing to talk politics with me. Both of them always said I would become an MP one day. These days I will settle for being a councillor.
You could say I am an arts and humanities man, and that would be right. Maths and science never appealed to me, however, the teachers I had were largely responsible for my interests. My music teacher was great and is a passionate musician. My French teacher was equally passionate about everything Gallic. Those two teachers regularly talked politics with me. My English teacher presented her subject imaginatively and always kept our interest. She was good looking too and all the boys fancied her. The history I studied was varied and the sheer range of the Geography syllabus kept my attention.
As for the other subjects, the teaching of them was pretty appalling, starting from primary school. I have always been very numerate, so I excelled in arithmetic. Other branches of Maths confuse the hell out of me, and the Maths teachers I had were poor teachers, who gave up on anyone who didn't understand the subject quickly. My chemistry teacher only wanted to teach those who were naturally scientifically gifted. When I couldn't understand atomic theory, I can still remember the look of exasperation in his face. He was a nice guy, and he used to produce the school musicals, but he didn't have the patience for those pupils who found chemistry difficult.
One of the reasons I became a school governor was because I wanted to get actively involved in the education of our children. I have been hugely disappointed with the job. I don't have a real say in what happens with the school, even though I was on the interview panel for a new headteacher last year. Governors' meetings are full of educational jargon and endless statistics. This government's preoccupation with statistics and league tables is breathtaking, but more of that later.
Yesterday, Gordon Brown made a speech about education. I have no doubt he made the speech to divert some of the heat away from him and his government, however, what he said resonated with me. It was yet another example of why I could never be a socialist.
The National Curriculum has been a disaster, and before anyone tries to inform me, I know it was introduced under a Conservative government. It takes away the choices from teachers, parents, governors and most importantly, pupils. It is micro-managed education. Instead of the government setting the standard that needs to be achieved by the time our children reach school leaving age, it sets out in great detail the route that needs to be taken. It is the worst form of government meddling and interference you could possibly want to witness, but Labour has built on this and has made the situation much worse.
In his speech to the last year's Conservative Party Conference, David Cameron quoted David Miliband who said you have yourself and then the state. Nothing in between. If I really thought this, I would start organising a joint suicide jump from the Humber Bridge for as many people who wanted to join me. This ethos, though, sums up Labour's education policies. Labour thinks the way to drive-up education standards is to take good schools, lump them together with failing schools, and hey presto, all is well with the world. Hogwash. We all know that it only takes a few disruptive students to completely ruin a lesson for the rest. We know those who under perform tend to drag down the standards in the school. The only way to improve standards is to hand to headteachers and governing bodies the right to permanently exclude disruptive pupils, allow schools to develop their own curriculum (thereby scrapping the national curriculum), totally scrapping SATs (there are other ways of measuring success, such as parents' beating down the door of the school to get their children on the roll and inspectors' reports), scrapping GCSEs and 'A' Levels and replacing them with an internationally accepted Baccalaureate and finally, stop the endless intrusion and policy changes emanating from Whitehall.
There are good schools and there are bad schools. 'Twas ever thus. The same goes for good and bad teachers and good and bad teaching methods. Give parents the real choice of where to send their kids, including a voucher if necessary as part payment in a private school. All these things will drive up standards. What Gordon Brown announced shows the bankruptcy of ideas that dogs this government. We need to take a radical approach, rather than stale policies reheated and presented as the best thing since sliced bread.
