We want to take ‘private-sector involvement in education to another level’ says the Head of Cambridge Education Associates (CEA) which took over education services in the London Borough of Islington in 2000. Education firms want to extend control of teaching and learning in schools for up to 30 years in deals that would enable them to employ staff including teachers. So far this has only been possible in a handful of so-called city academies. To get a taste of what this might mean we can look at Waltham Forest Council in Outer London where EduAction, a new and highly competitive business, has just taken over the council’s education service. Nearly 50 employees, some with over 20 years experience, have had to re-apply for their own jobs and been forced to accept pay cuts of up to £4,000.
While the education companies are not private enterprises in the sense that capital is transferred to them from the state sector, they do operate like normal businesses. And like other share prices on the stock market they have taken a battering recently. Education services firms such as Capita, Serco and NordAnglia lost around half their market value in a couple of months. More badly hit still are the share prices of the government’s Private Finance Initiative (PFI) partners who get the building contracts, like Jarvis who were damaged by bad publicity about rail maintenance and their Railtrack contracts.
Clearly with the squeeze on share prices the education companies will lobby all the harder to get business diverted their way and in this schools standards minister, David Milliband, is a great help. His plans promise further privatisation and PFI projects despite January’s review by the audit commission that concludes that PFI schools are significantly less satisfactory than those built with traditional state funding. The grovelling admiration for private business that is shown by this Labour government will lead to continuing casualisation and outsourcing of the state education sector in the future. We can predict that the drive for profitability will lead to staff and wage cuts by the top nine education firms as they bid for contracts against each other.
Standards? That must mean tests
While the government is selling off the public sector it holds on tight to what it calls performance indicators, or targets to sustain the illusion of political responsibility. In schools the Sats (standard attainment tests) dominate the lives of children at the ages of 7, 10 and 14 years and determine what their teachers do. Last year the government failed to reach its Key Stage 2 targets: 73% achieved a level 4 in maths and 75% in English compared with the targets set of 75% and 80%. This despite the fact that teachers now suspend education for five months of the year and put children through an extensive revision course teaching to the test so that a school will move up the league table of results. Jump! says the government and they all do. While the government has ignored children’s authors like Anne Fine, Philip Pullman and Michael Rosen who have criticised Sats, they now have to see off David Bell, chief inspector of Ofsted who recently suggested that the over-concentration on targets could be a major block on improving school pupils’ achievements. Beyond measure: Why educational assessment is failing the test has just been published by Demos. The author, Paul Skidmore says, ‘If you want to look at why so many 14-to-19-year old kids are leaving the education system -by the age of 14 many children have become terrified of assessments and have been put off the whole idea of learning’.
Fast-track to Essex
Thurrock Council in Essex became the first council to use a new ‘fast-track scheme to clamp down on truancy’ when it summonsed ten families to court within 12 weeks of their child’s first unauthorised absence. Councils have had powers since 1966 to take parents to court if their children miss school repeatedly without permission but this was to be a new trail-blazing example of just how quickly and how much punishment can be handed out to offending parents. Fines of up to £2,500 or prison sentences of up to three months are now possible for parents, including those who take their children on holiday during term-time. Further legislation being prepared this year will allow £50 on-the-spot fines for parents of truants.
Unfortunately for the council there were no simple conclusions at February’s court appearances – no shutting of prison gates behind feckless parents. Six families did not turn up (that’s what truants do) one mother made a moving speech from the dock about her refusal to send her child to an unsafe, bullying environment and the rest claimed a medley of social and welfare situations for which they were supposed to be receiving council support.
Susan Davidson
