A Manifesto for Education

Posted on 15/08/2023

In the first of two guest blogs, James Whiting (SEA General Secretary) and Ian Duckett (SEA NEC) introduce the Socialist Educational Association’s Education Manifesto, a document which challenges the Labour Party to think in radical and thorough-going ways about the education service.

The Socialist Educational Association (SEA) launched its Manifesto for Education in June. In so-doing, the SEA laid down a challenge to the Labour front bench. Tackle the crisis in our education service by introducing radical change to reverse the damage, ideological and literal, caused by years of Tory rule!

The SEA’s Manifesto for Education tackles marketisation and privatisation from early years through to higher education. It tackles the creeping centralised control imposed on the service by OFSTED and MAT bosses. It argues for a bigger, braver and more rounded curriculum, one that is truly broad and balanced. This has been a longstanding aim of progressive educationalists. The next Labour government, if it has the courage to take on the siren voices of the right embedded in the education establishment and the media, must establish a National Education Service comprising all this and more.

The SEA believes that education is a universal right not a privilege and that all educational institutions should share knowledge and skills. Communities are best served by inclusive democratic structures which enhance accountability to students, parents and carers, staff and trade unions. These socialist principles should apply to all sectors of the service from early years through to primary and secondary schools, FE colleges, universities and youth services.

The SEA believes, too, that everyone should have the right to access higher education and life-long learning whatever their age or background. Education which is accessible throughout people’s lives enhances well-being and the capacity of individuals to enjoy life. It supports intergenerational aspiration and adds value to communities and workplaces.

The Manifesto proposes action not only on curriculum but also on assessment, school structures, funding mechanisms, teacher education, higher and further education, and accountability. The higher education section demands an end to tuition fees, marketisation and control by the Office for Students.

An immediate response to such a thorough-going programme might well be that the education service has had enough of initiatives! Won’t radical reform increase teacher workload just when we should be looking to reduce it?

It’s true teachers are tired of top-down initiatives over which they have no say. This is a major factor in the teacher shortage crisis. Teachers have lost professional status and respect, and the responsibilities which go with that. The SEA is asking Labour to look seriously at successful jurisdictions such as Finland and the Canadian provinces and learn from their more collegiate approaches. England (and to a lesser extent Scotland and Wales) has become addicted to imposed curricula and pedagogy.

Labour should not be thinking of piling on more initiatives, but of liberating teachers from the yoke of OFSTED-imposed bureaucracy and the dead hand of Multi Academy Trusts and their corporate ways.

The SEA contests the mantra coming from the Labour front bench that school-structures are irrelevant. Without abolition of academisation there will be no serious change to what happens in classrooms.

The Manifesto contains detailed proposals for change across the service. A brief summary of key demands is as follows:

• Restore state education funding to 6% of GDP (it was 5.8% before Thatcher and is now 3.9%)
• Provide free school meals for all primary school children as a first step to free school meals for all
• Bring all schools back under local democratic oversight, end academisation, stop selection by ability and give parents back a voice in the education of their children
• Give teachers back respect and professional autonomy. Abolish the OFSTED straight-jacket and return teacher education to universities
• Make child care and early years education available to all our children from age 6 months
• Introduce a culturally responsive and flexible curriculum framework which recognises and affirms learners’ diverse experiences, encourages creativity, restores access to the arts and includes the climate emergency
• End grade rationing and SATS. Brining in an assessment regime which celebrates success rather than stigmatises failure
• Build an inclusive education service where mainstream schools and colleges meet the wider diversity of need of al pupils including those with SEND
• Abolish tuition fees for further and higher education, end marketisation and bring back the Education Maintenance Allowance
• Rejuvenate youth services so that all young people have access to high quality provision
• Guarantee jobs to young people successfully completing apprenticeships
• Enable all leaners to access education throughout their lives.

You can read the full manifesto here.