We have been told more times than we care to remember that Tony Blair’s priority in government has always been education. “At every level, radical improvement and reform,” he once promised. “Ensure that every primary school child leaves school able to read to an adequate standard . . . Continual assessment . . . Targets set . . . Instant action where they’re not met . . . Zero tolerance of failure in Britain ’s schools . . . I want a state education system in Britain so good, so attractive, that parents choose to put behind us the educational apartheid of the past, private and state.”
As the prime minister surveys the wreckage of his latest attempt to reform Britain’s education system, even he and new Labour’s spin machine must concede that this has been a spectacular failure. A quarter of children still leave primary school having failed to achieve the required standard in reading and maths, despite the fact that the literacy test has got easier.
Fewer than 50% of 16-year-olds in England get five or more GCSEs at grades A*-C including English and maths. Under Labour, poorer children have suffered; the proportion of pupils qualifying for free school meals who get five good GCSEs is less than one in three. Independent schools prosper because for many parents they offer the only route to a decent education.
The stakes could not be higher. Education is a once-in-a-lifetime throw. Fail at school and you are more than likely unable to make up for it later. The generation that started at school in the autumn of 1996, when Mr Blair was wowing the party faithful with his education promises in Blackpool, has the finishing post in sight. For far too many the prospect is only of disappointment. They have been let down by the system and by the government that has presided over it.
Research by Professor David Jesson of the University of York demonstrates just how badly the schools once described by Alastair Campbell as “bog standard” fail the brightest and best. He tracked the progress of 28,000 children who were in the top 5% of their age cohort at age 11, based on test results in English and maths in 1999. At that age their paths divided; some went to independent or grammar schools, some to high achieving comprehensives and the remainder to comprehensives with a record of low achievement.
The results showed, as might be expected, that talented pupils who went to good schools prospered, staying at the top when they took their GCSEs in 2004. Those who went to the low achieving schools fell back. A similar exercise for the 2000 cohort, which took GCSEs last summer, suggests that 7,000 were let down by poor schooling, failing to get five or more A or A* GCSEs, in contrast to those who went to grammars or high achieving comprehensives. If new Labour’s experiment was to demonstrate that even poor comprehensives could raise their game given enough cash — a 45% real increase in funding since 1997 — it was an experiment that succeeded only in destroying the guinea pigs.
The key influence on performance, Professor Jesson found, was peer ability. An able pupil in a class of low achievers gets dragged down to the level of the rest. Even the brightest child will be corrupted by being in a noisy and disruptive class, full of fellow pupils who do not care about learning and whose parents don’t care, either. Put that same pupil in a class of equally bright and eager students and his or her performance is transformed. When 20 pupils from the most able 5% were put together in the same class, their achievement at GCSE averaged seven A or A* grades.
This pattern goes through to A-levels. Across all comprehensives, only 5% of pupils taking these exams get three or more A grades. This rises to 19% among those at state grammars and 23% for those whose parents have sent them to independent schools.
An education system cannot, of course, cater only for the top 5%. But the same principle applies down the scale. The bog-standard comprehensive drags everybody down to the level of the lowest common denominator, ruining the lives and throwing away the potential of so many. Mr Blair’s rebels want to take the principle of mixed ability schools back to first base. Schools in leafy suburbs would have to take the same proportion of pupils with high, medium and low ability as those in rundown inner-city areas. The most able pupils would be spread thinly, unable to benefit from being taught alongside their peers.
The prime minister understood this which is why, belatedly, he set about trying to do something about it. His plan for “self-governing, independent state schools”, or trusts, freed from the dead hand of local authority control and managing their own admissions, struck the right chord after years of dithering. It offered a route out of state sector mediocrity. Trusts could be run by groups of parents, businesses, churches or universities. Most importantly, without reintroducing the 11-plus and grammar schools, it would provide an opportunity for the most able pupils to learn in the right environment. Good schools would serve as a beacon to the rest, bringing the system up to standard.
That, at least, was the idea, however unpalatable it was to some Labour backbenchers. David Cameron even offered the prime minister the support of the Tories to get these necessary reforms through the Commons, a good example of cross-party co-operation in the national interest.
Now, however, the air is thick with compromise. A prime minister who tells us he is best when he is boldest and who has never introduced a reform without wishing he had gone further, is about to backtrack. Local authorities will be offered “strategic oversight” over the schools in their area, ensuring that they do not become too independent. The admissions code for schools will become legally enforceable and not just a guide. Interviews with prospective pupils and their parents, let alone aptitude tests, may be outlawed. Once again the prime minister will have held out the prospect of reform only to disappoint, failing another generation of children. By the time they realise it, Mr Blair will be gone, enjoying life on the international lecture circuit.
That day has not yet arrived but it is fast approaching at a time when the prime minister is still in search of a legacy. “You have sat too long for any good you have been doing,” said Cromwell. Mr Blair, displaying his timidity, is in danger of having that as his epitaph.
Everybody in politics knows Cromwell’s next line: “In the name of God, go!”
