On the way into 2010, a new decade, the media encouraged us all to reflect on the ten years past, what they had brought and how they would be defined, even what this decade would be called. But somehow it seems they failed to extract any really keen insights, at least as far as I saw.Here’s what I think was missing. In Britain, it was New Labour’s decade. But in amongst all the chatter generated I heard nothing about what Labour had done for Britain’s power in the world. It has degraded it considerably.
Of course, it had been steadily on the wane for some time before 2000 rolled around, which might be why nobody wanted to talk about it. And the belief that Britain is slowly losing its power and influence in the world is one that is now mainstream.
But in the last ten years it has been accelerated by three things; ill-advised and over-ambitious wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the financial and economic crash known as the Credit Crunch and by a general degradation in education.
Could do better
Let’s take the last first. In many ways education is the least obvious way in which British power is on the wane. But while it takes a long time for a population to become educated, it doesn’t take so long for it to get stupid, and fall behind in the transnational class. So in the long term, education policy gives Britain its competitive edge, and it has serious implications for the maintenance of British power in the world, or at least the attempt to slow its degradation.
Tony Blair came to power in 1997 promising a sharp focus on education. But it wasn’t long before disgruntled teachers were taunting him with his own chant of ‘education, education, education’.
Blair and his Chancellor Gordon Brown thought the best way to boost education was to boost spending by 75 per cent. Most went into schools. But despite the kids having shiny new interactive whiteboards at the front of their classrooms, results didn’t really improve. Teachers started chasing even more targets, and hitting them, but every time they did they were met with a wave of cynicism.
The exams were getting easier, the critics said. Other critics said that in fact, even if they weren’t getting easier, the improvement in results certainly didn’t represent value for money.
And there were far more exams. Too many. And not only did the kids have too many tests, like SATs, so did the teachers. They were unpopular all round. And league tables, something Labour had promised to do away with, actually became more prevalent.
Testing times
What’s more, while the kids and teachers were being put to the test more than ever before, so they were also losing the power to make their own decisions. Power was taken from schools and local authorities and accumulated at the centre and with big business. In Academy Schools, men who owned football clubs and sausage roll factories became sponsors.
And the Westminster politicians and the businessmen introduced a managerial approach, based on targets and results. It offered a narrow measure of success divorced from a wider concern for the general quality of the education. In many Academy schools, teachers weren’t allowed to join a union and kids were allowed to redo their coursework, better this time. It all helps hit the targets.
Then the Government said half of all children should go to university, and so it began turning colleges into universities and telling them to offer courses on a supply and demand basis. But with all the spending on schools, it couldn’t afford to pay for all those extra students, so in came the tuition fees. Labour conveniently forgot about the effect they might have on social mobility.
And with a new supply-and-demand approach to university degrees, Psychology boomed, so did Sports Science, but Maths, Science and Medicine sank. ‘Soft’ courses were all the rage.
Suddenly careers which had never needed degrees had them anyway. Secretaries went into the world of work with degrees in Administration Studies. But did they really need to go to university? Did it benefit them? Did it make them richer, or did it make them poorer? And did it give them any greater prospects?
As Patrick Ainley of the University of Greenwich complained to the Guardian on Tuesday, a “lost generation” was created “of over-schooled but under-educated young people leaving schools, colleges and universities overqualified and underemployed”. They were also overleveraged and under-earning.
And, it seemed, offering students the chance to study whatever they wanted didn’t help the individual or the country. The kids came out with spurious qualifications that were neither needed nor wanted by employers, and which gave them unrealizable aspirations. And the country came out with a population that was not very well trained in the skills that would give it a competitive edge and help it pay off its debts.
What’s more, while the kids and teachers were being put to the test more than ever before, so they were also losing the power to make their own decisions. Power was taken from schools and local authorities and accumulated at the centre and with big business. In Academy Schools, men who owned football clubs and sausage roll factories became sponsors.
And the Westminster politicians and the businessmen introduced a managerial approach, based on targets and results. It offered a narrow measure of success divorced from a wider concern for the general quality of the education. In many Academy schools, teachers weren’t allowed to join a union and kids were allowed to redo their coursework, better this time. It all helps hit the targets.
Then the Government said half of all children should go to university, and so it began turning colleges into universities and telling them to offer courses on a supply and demand basis. But with all the spending on schools, it couldn’t afford to pay for all those extra students, so in came the tuition fees. Labour conveniently forgot about the effect they might have on social mobility.
And with a new supply-and-demand approach to university degrees, Psychology boomed, so did Sports Science, but Maths, Science and Medicine sank. ‘Soft’ courses were all the rage.
Suddenly careers which had never needed degrees had them anyway. Secretaries went into the world of work with degrees in Administration Studies. But did they really need to go to university? Did it benefit them? Did it make them richer, or did it make them poorer? And did it give them any greater prospects?
As Patrick Ainley of the University of Greenwich complained to the Guardian on Tuesday, a “lost generation” was created “of over-schooled but under-educated young people leaving schools, colleges and universities overqualified and underemployed”. They were also overleveraged and under-earning.
And, it seemed, offering students the chance to study whatever they wanted didn’t help the individual or the country. The kids came out with spurious qualifications that were neither needed nor wanted by employers, and which gave them unrealizable aspirations. And the country came out with a population that was not very well trained in the skills that would give it a competitive edge and help it pay off its debts.
Money management
The basic principle that voters felt education was extremely important is right. So too was the belief in its importance for the nation. On a social level people should have the right to be educated and so fulfil their aspirations.
But education is also important in power terms, because as managers are fond of saying, a company (or a country’s) biggest asset is its people. A well-educated, skilled population puts Britain at a competitive advantage.
But Blair and the Labour Party didn’t plan their education policy with this in mind. They planned it on populism at first and pleasing big business later.
Their spending wasn’t sustainable, so after signing up big business and making students pay, they still needed to tighten their belts. The recession made it even more pressing.
But in election year you can’t take money away from the kids, so you take it from the students. University funding is being cut, and as the deans and rectors say, it has implications for Britain’s power in the world.
"Other leading economies are investing money in universities in order to help economic growth and improve social mobility, yet our government seems intent on doing the opposite. If higher education is allowed to go to the wall, the dreams of many hardworking parents for their kids to go to university and make the best of themselves will be over."
Some say this warning is hyperbole. But in the long term it is right.
Blair and Brown’s education policy has created a corrosive concoction of too many classes and not enough education. At school level, it is narrow. At university level, it is too wide and neglects the most important core subjects.
This neglect is now so serious the Government advertises on the radio and TV for kids to do maths and science. It pleads with the kids to help them plug the gaps its poor policies have created.
And of course, all this has implications for Britain’s power in the world. If the population isn’t as well educated as before, it doesn’t have the competitive edge it had before, and Britain is not the cultural, scientific, technological pioneer it once was.
This has happened over the last ten years. It has helped degrade Britain’s power in the world, just like the recession…
The basic principle that voters felt education was extremely important is right. So too was the belief in its importance for the nation. On a social level people should have the right to be educated and so fulfil their aspirations.
But education is also important in power terms, because as managers are fond of saying, a company (or a country’s) biggest asset is its people. A well-educated, skilled population puts Britain at a competitive advantage.
But Blair and the Labour Party didn’t plan their education policy with this in mind. They planned it on populism at first and pleasing big business later.
Their spending wasn’t sustainable, so after signing up big business and making students pay, they still needed to tighten their belts. The recession made it even more pressing.
But in election year you can’t take money away from the kids, so you take it from the students. University funding is being cut, and as the deans and rectors say, it has implications for Britain’s power in the world.
"Other leading economies are investing money in universities in order to help economic growth and improve social mobility, yet our government seems intent on doing the opposite. If higher education is allowed to go to the wall, the dreams of many hardworking parents for their kids to go to university and make the best of themselves will be over."
Some say this warning is hyperbole. But in the long term it is right.
Blair and Brown’s education policy has created a corrosive concoction of too many classes and not enough education. At school level, it is narrow. At university level, it is too wide and neglects the most important core subjects.
This neglect is now so serious the Government advertises on the radio and TV for kids to do maths and science. It pleads with the kids to help them plug the gaps its poor policies have created.
And of course, all this has implications for Britain’s power in the world. If the population isn’t as well educated as before, it doesn’t have the competitive edge it had before, and Britain is not the cultural, scientific, technological pioneer it once was.
This has happened over the last ten years. It has helped degrade Britain’s power in the world, just like the recession…
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