dave hill - university of · web viewthese three quotes encapsulate, or prefigure, most of the...

Ref:BERATED97FINALversion of 8.9.97

Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual

Conference, University of York, September 11-14, 1997

NO BOLLOCKS, NO WIDTH? ‘NEW LABOUR’ AND ITS CONFIRMATION OF THE CONSERVATIVE RESTRUCTURING OF INITIAL TEACHER EDUCATION 1984-97

Dave Hill Nene College of Higher Education

This paper is part of a linked three paper presentation. The papers are: `What? All Kids and No Theory?’: NQTs and Final Year Student Teachers and their Evaluations

of their ITE courses validated under the 1989 CATE criteria: a Tale of Little Discontent ; No Bollocks, No Width?: ‘New Labour’ and its Confirmation of the Conservative Restructuring

of Initial Teacher Education 1984-97; Promoting Equality in Primary and Secondary Schools, (with Mike Cole).

(Note: This paper was originally entitled `No Bollocks, No Width?: `New Labour’ and Initial Teacher Education. This title reference was to the East End London market trader aphorism, `Never mind the bollocks, feel the width’, a corruption of the phrase, `never mind the quality, feel the width’. This comment compares quality with quantity, and is an implicit admission that even if there is not much quality in evidence, there is certainly a marked quantity of ´New Labour`policy in evidence. Socialists would assert, a lot of activity, but precious little socialism or even classic social democracy.)

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STRUCTURE OF THE PAPER

The structure of the paper is:

1. Introduction;

PART ONE; CONSERVATISM AND THE RADICAL RIGHT

2. Conservative Government policy on ITE, 1979-1997;

3. Conservative ITE policy and Ideology;

4. Conservative education policy;

5. Conservative Ideology: Thatcherism, neo-Liberalism and neo-Conservatism;

PART TWO: LABOUR AND ŃEW LABOUR`

6. Labour policy on ITE 1991-97, out of Government and in Government;

7. `New Labour’ ITE policy and ideology, and its continuity with Conservative policy and ideology;

8. `New Labour’ education policy;

9. Ńew Labour`s` Ideology

PART THREE: THE RADICAL LEFT

10. A Radical Left model for ITE.

1. INTRODUCTION

The Conservative Governments of 1979 -1997 revolutionised Initial Teacher Education. This was

through the classic Thatcherite combination of implementing a combination of neo-liberal and neo-

Conservative measures within the context of a series of media panics. New routes into teaching were

established, instituting a neo-liberal market in ITE, breaking the professional monopoly held by

higher education professionals. Side-by-side, a neo-Conservative national curriculum was imposed

incrementally through the various CATE (Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education)

circulars of 1984, 1989, and 1992/93. This curriculum was- technicist, anti- theoretical and anti-

critical, and increasingly school-based on an apprenticeship pattern. These curricular changes

culminated in the highly detailed Draft National Curriculum put out for consultation just prior to the

Conservative Party’s electoral defeat on May Day 1997 (TTA, 1997a-d). This was substantially

implemented by the Ńew Labour` government in its (July 1997) Letter 1/97 (TTA, 1997).

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So, if the Conservative Party, and its programme for ITE has been defeated, has conservatism? `New

Labour` policy, and discourse, on ITE displays both continuities and differences. This is, of course,

characteristic of the wider schools’ and education policies of the Blair government, as of its other

policy positions and decisions. The analysis of this paper is that there is an essential continuity

between Conservative Party and `New Labour’ policy on ITE. This contrasts with the lack of

continuity between Ńew Labour` and both Òld Labour’/`Traditional Labour’/social democratic, and

with Radical Left policy on ITE. In the field of ITE, `New Labour’ policy is, essentially, continuing

the previous government’s neo-liberal and neo-conservative policies. It is, however, modifying them

slightly in classically social democratic fashion, in a way in which spaces for theoretical and equal

opportunities work has been re-legitimated. Ńew Labour` has also, thereby, (albeit in the name of

equal opportunities and a recognition of cultural diversity), opened some space for the development

and implantation of egalitarian and critical ITE, critical pedagogy and critical reflection. These

spaces were virtually closed down by the 1992/92 CATE criteria, and would have been even more so

in the putative Conservative Party National Curriculum for `Teacher Training’. However, to reiterate

the analysis of this paper, Ńew Labour` has, to an overwhelming extent, accepted the Radical Right

revolution in Initial Teacher Education.

PART ONE

2. CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENT POLICY ON ITE, 1979-1997

In this section, I describe and analyse Conservative policy on ITE between 1979 and 1997. In the

second part, through a study of eighteen selected themes, I relate this to Radical Right ideology,

firstly on teacher education, and secondly, to `Thatcherism’. Here I look at the sometimes

complementary and sometimes contradictory components of Thatcherism, neo-liberalism and neo-

conservativism.

The Restructuring of Initial Teacher Education in England and Wales, 1979-1997

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The first statutory change to ITE in England and Wales under the Conservative government first

elected in 1979 was the setting up the Committee for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (CATE)

to regulate and monitor ITE. This had been preceded by Secretary of State for Education and Science,

Keith Joseph’s, 1983 White Paper, Teacher Quality, (DES, 1983. See McIntyre, 1991; Wilkin, 1996).

CATE promulgated the first CATE criteria, regulations governing the validation of both primary and

secondary ITE courses, in Circular 3/84 (DES, 1993) . CATE’s composition and brief were more

rigidly controlled by the Government than those of its predecessor body, the Advisory Committee for

the Supply of Education and Training (ACSET). ACSET had been a body representative of the

teaching and teacher education professions. This was unlike CATE, whose members were handpicked

by the Government (McIntyre, 1991; Wilkin, 1996).

Wilkin (1996) in her survey of teacher education policy (from the 1960s through to the 1990s),

discusses Thatcherism and the CATE criteria of 1984 in depth. These criteria were, she notes,

moderate in terms of (their) curricular demands but unprecedented in terms of the control’ (Wilkin,

1996:148).

While not part of the marketisation of ITE, this initial phase of Thatcherite policy on ITE under Keith

Joseph, was about controlling the curriculum- exorcising anti-competitive, anti-economistic, anti-

national devils.

Since1984 the Conservative government has thoroughly restructured, regulated, re-oriented and

relocated Initial Teacher Education, both secondary and primary, in England and Wales.

The two pre-1988 routes of entry into teaching, the Higher Education Institution (HEI)-based B.Ed and

PGCE courses) have been supplemented by six `alternative’, (i.e. non-HEI-based), routes into teaching.

These are the Licensed Teacher, the Articled Teacher, the Open University PGCE distance learning,

the Overseas Trained Teacher scheme, and the two types of School-Centred Initial Teacher Training

(SCITT) schemes - those with HEI involvement and those without (1).

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Not only is there now a diversity, a market in the provision of ITE, but the remaining HEI-based

courses have been substantially relocated inside schools. In addition, HEI based courses are now

constrained by CATE Circulars 9/92 and 14/93 in what is, in effect, a technicist national curriculum.

The Conservative government intended that this technicist, tightly prescribed and regulated constraint

would be further controlled in the Consultation on the Training Curriculum and Standards for New

Teachers (TTA, 1977a-e) issued in February 1997. This was to be achieved, in particular, through the

Primary National Curriculum for Primary English and the Primary National Curriculum for Primary

Mathematics.

ITE is now, in Autumn 1997, very tightly monitored. Even when Ofsted gave Primary ITE, in general,

a clean bill of health, it continued to be under public suspicion of not being up to the job. Thus, Chris

Woodhead, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Schools, dissatisfied with what he regarded as the `rosy’

or `over- optimistic results of Ofsted’s `sweep’ inspections of sixty- eight primary ITE courses in 1995-

96, announced (in July 1996), a series of re-inspections using `tougher rules’ (Gardiner, 1996a; Ofsted,

1996). (This annoyed the HEI providers considerably, and Woodhead subsequently backed down

somewhat on the scale of his re-inspection proposals).

Furthermore, funding for HEI-based ITE has been considerably reduced. The 1994 Education Act

transferred a substantial proportion of funding for ITE schools, away from Higher Education

Institutions (HEIs) through the Teacher Training Agency (TTA).

In more detail, since 1984, and in particular since 1989, Conservative government policy has

comprised the following:

1. The Setting Up of a Market in Initial Teacher Training/ Education with a Diversity of Entry

Routes:

In England and Wales most ITE is still, as yet, (summer 1997), based in HEIs. It takes the form of four

year or three year full-time undergraduate B.Ed. (Bachelor of Education) degrees - sometimes called a

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BA.Ed. or BA(QTS) - and the one-year full-time Post-Graduate Certificate in Education, the PGCE. In

1996 - 1997 there were 10,111 student teachers on conventional undergraduate courses and 16,741 on

PGCE courses (2). The projected target for Initial Teacher Training for 1997-8 is 11,050 primary and

19,500 secondary entrants into ITT courses (DfEETSTQ, 1997). Of these, around 2,150 will train

through `alternative routes’ into teaching introduced since 1988. This is around 7% of the total.

The Conservative government added six new routes into teaching. These are the Open University

distance learning scheme, the two types of School Centred Initial Teacher Training (SCITT) scheme,

the Licensed Teacher scheme, and the Articled Teacher scheme, and the Overseas Trained Teacher

scheme. Other than the Licensed Teacher scheme, these all started in the 1990s.

The Open University distance learning PGCE had, by 1994, become the largest single provider of

postgraduate ITE in the country (Times Educational Supplement, 1994:12). The projected intake for

1997-98 for the Open University was around 300 primary and 850 secondary. This, respectively, was

2-3% and 4-5% of national targets respectively (DfEETSTQ, 1997).

The second and third alternative routes, two types of SCITT scheme, started in September 1993. The

SCITT schemes are school- based ITE for which consortia of schools recruit, receive funding for, and

train student teachers themselves. One type of scheme includes minimal HEI involvement, for example

in quality control and in validating the course. The other type of SCITT scheme has no HEI

involvement whatsoever. 198 graduates started their SCITT training in 1993- 94, and a further 195 in

1994- 95. (These are the composite figures for both types of SCITT scheme). To date, (April 1997),

781 people have qualified from SCITT courses. The projected intake for 1997-8 is around 600, of

whom three quarters are secondary. SCITT represents 1-2% of the primary ITT target and 2-3% of

secondary.

The fourth scheme is the Licensed Teacher Scheme. To date, 2,306 people have qualified as Licensed

Teachers, around 70% of them graduates, around 30% non-graduates. Thus around 700 Licensed

Teachers have received their QTS without having a degree. In 1994, 498 LTs gained Qualified Teacher

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Status (QTS). In that year, a further 367 embarked on Licensed Teaching. Present throughput is around

400 people per year.

The fifth scheme is the Articled Teacher scheme. It attracted 1,159 entrants in its three years of entry

(1990, 1991, 1992) (TTA, 1995). The sixth scheme is the Overseas Trained Teachers scheme.

As can be seen from Table 1 and Table 2, as far as the first five alternative routes are concerned, in the

three years 1992-3 to 1994-5 approximately 1,300 Articled Teachers, and SCITT teachers and Open

University PGCE student teachers were listed in DfEE statistics as successfully completing their initial

teacher training courses. In these same three years 1992-3 to 1994-5 approximately 1,300 Licensed

Teachers were listed in DfEE statistics as enrolling on initial teacher training courses. Thus , in these

three years, approximately 2,600 teachers gained their Qualified teacher Status (QTS) through the

new Àlternative Routes’. This is out of a total for the United Kingdom of 87,300 Newly Qualified

Teachers (NQTs), or 3%. However, as the Àlternative Routes’ came on stream, by summer 1996,

1,823 NQTs were SCITT or OU trained, compared with a total of 26,262 HEI-based NQTs. This is

6.5% 0f the total. The figures for Licensed teachers completing/ gaining their QTS are not included in

the TTA October 1996 Survey. Thus the percentage of NQTs trained through the new Àlternative

Routes’ into teaching in 1996 is probably above 7% of all new NQTs.

Table 1: Expected Number of NQTs graduating/ certificating in 1996 from different types of routes into teaching. (percentage total in brackets) (TTA, 1997b) Note: These statistics do not include Licensed Teachers.

Undergraduate Primary (HEI based) 7955 (28.3 %)

Undergraduate Secondary (HEI based) 2313 (8.2% )

PGCE (Primary) (HEI based) 4069 (14.5% )

PGCE (Secondary) (HEI based) 11925 ( 42.5% )

Open University PGCE (Primary) 590 ( 2.1% )

Open University PGGE (Secondary) 678 ( 2.4%)

SCITT (Primary) 236 ( 0.8% )

SCITT (Secondary) 319 ( 1.1% )

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TOTAL 28085 99.9%

Table 2: Number of Student Teachers Successfully Completing Different Routes into Teaching in Summer 1996. (In the United Kingdom) (DfEE, 1997b)

1992/3 1993/4 1994/5(provisional)Higher Education Institutions: Courses for Graduates.

16.8 17.5 20.4

of which Articled Teacher, Distance Learning and SCITT (England and Wales)

0.2 0.1 1.0

Higher Education Institutions: Courses for Undergraduates.

10.3 10.5 11.7

of which Licensed Teacher/ overseas Teacher (England and Wales)

Total (Higher Education Institutions)

0.6

27.0

0.5 0.2

28.1 32.2

2. The Attempt To Recompose the Teaching Force.

Government policy is clearly to attract into teaching two new types of teacher, in an attempt to re-

stock the teaching force with new teachers who are constituted, in ideological terms, differently to

teachers whose initial professional socialisation has been mediated through B.Ed type and PGCE

HEI based courses.

The first `new' targeted group is ex-businessmen (sic) and ex-Armed Forces Personnel, that is,

mature men and women variously accustomed to commercial and competitive-exploitative human

relationships and/ or to disciplinary/authoritarian relationships. Their view of education (content and

pedagogy), it might be arguably assumed, tend to be instrumental, managerial, technical and

vocational.

My own limited experience students in interviewing and discussing with student teachers (3) is that

former commercial and Armed Forces personnel wishing to embark on a 4 year undergraduate ITE

degree course frequently claim to wish to do so precisely to escape such competitive- exploitative

and or disciplinary-authoritarian relationships. They are opting for a four year undergraduate

`professional’ degree. This, in itself, would appear to betoken a commitment to a teaching career,

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prior to commencing higher education. They are not opting for a for a one year postgraduate school-

based SCITT scheme. Nor are they selecting PGCE course, some of whose students have decided to

teach, or have become committed to teaching, at some stage after starting higher education. Many

teachers, secondary teachers and student teachers in particular do, of course, prefer the three year

subject specialist degree followed by the one year PGCE, believing this will prepare them better with

respect to their subject knowledge.

Unless they are simply not aware of the one year SCITT schemes, or unless there are not any such

schemes available locally, it could be assumed, arguably, that B.Ed./ BA(QTS)/ BA(Ed) student

teachers deliberately accepted the need for a long term course with its college based theoretical

components accompanying school based experience. In contrast, it is possible that those entering, for

example, the totally school based SCITT schemes might- where there was a personal choice for them

over routes into teaching- have rather less regard for 'theory' and more for `practical teaching

practice’ than the student teachers choosing an HEI- based route into teaching.

The second major group targeted by this Government recruitment tactic- for primary schools- is

`Mums'. Not any `mums’, such as those wishing to study for a four year teaching qualification, but

those `mums’ who happy/prepared to `speed-train’ as teachers and to qualify at sub-degree level. For

example, the June 1993 proposal by the then Minister of Education John Patten was to recruit

mothers (who, generally, left school at 18) with `A' level qualifications, and thence to crash- course

train them in one year, (as opposed to the currently required four year undergraduate B.Ed course for

such recruits). Such `Mums' Army' courses would, in fact, have been of the same duration as the

(academically) lower level one year Nursery Nurse courses. (As stated above, the `Mums Army’

proposal was dropped after widespread criticism).

The last time such a scheme was tried in Western Europe was in Portugal in 1936. Then the Salazar

Fascist government, despairing (like, I shall seek to show, the Thatcher- Major governments), of the

oppositional proclivities of school teachers, and of the cost of educating/ training them, instituted a

system of `regentes escolares' (school regents). These were women of church going, middle class

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background (Cipriano Estrela, 1994) - who themselves had had only (four years) primary education.

They were crash-coursed in one year and sent to teach after minimal training and education (Stoer,

1986:48-49). Three year Primary Teacher training courses and colleges were closed,

as `pedagogical objectives' for teachers of primary schools was a waste of time, money and intelligence ... the emphasis in (teacher training) curricula was on the removal of anything that might have, even remotely, `problematized' education ' (ibid: 48- 49).

By 1940 18% of Primary School teachers were `regentes', their salary was less than that of school

caretakers (Cortesao, 1982:101, quoted in Stoer, 1986:48).

However, with the STA (Specialist Teacher Assistant) scheme now in operation in England and

Wales since 1995 (?), giving a one year, primarily school-based, training for Primary School

assistants, many `Mums’ who are not qualified teachers are now working -alongside teachers- in

Primary school classrooms.

'New Style Training' In The Non-HEI-Based New Routes

Both these groups targeted by the Thatcher- Major governments would have a number of

characteristics in common. They would: (i) be 'trained' rather than 'educated', (ii) largely on-the-job

in school, (iii) learn largely in an apprenticeship system, (iv) without experiencing a variety of

school ethoses and styles, (v) having minimal opportunity to collaboratively critique and evaluate

what they have seen or done, and (vi) largely denied theoretical and analytical perspectives, other

than those of their school mentor and class teacher. They would be 'trained' but not 'educated',

trained to deliver but not educated to systematically question and evaluate (c.f. Hill 1992a; b; 1993;

1994a; b; 1997a). They would also, in some cases, (vii) be non- graduate. This would have clear

implications for both their pay and their status in the staff room.

It is likely that such new recruits would, by and large, be different when compared to teachers

undergoing a four year B.Ed, or, a three year first degree plus a one year PGCE. In comparison,

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they might be relatively uneducated, unintellectual and, (crucially for the Conservative

Government), unaware of and uninducted into critiques of Conservative and non-Conservative

views and philosophies of schooling and education.

3. The Introduction of What Is, in effect, a New, Highly Prescriptive and Monitored

`National Curriculum' for HEI Based ITE:

While it was not until 1997 that the Conservative Government issued what it formally termed a

`National Curriculum for Teacher Training’, in effect it had introduced one for both Secondary

and Primary student teachers in 1989. Since then, the curriculum has become progressively more

tightly and prescriptively defined. This tighter definition has been achieved through the setting of

ever more narrowly defined competencies.

In 1989, the 1984 CATE criteria for the accreditation of Primary and Secondary ITE courses were

tightened up through CATE Circular 24/89 (DES, 1989). This had the major effect of reducing the

amount of time in B.Ed. and PGCE courses devoted to theoretical/ education studies, replacing

that student contact time by increased time for professional/ curriculum studies.

In 1992, Secretary of State for Education Kenneth Clarke issued CATE Circular 9/92 for

Secondary B.Ed and PGCE courses which are considerably more prescriptive than the 1989

CATE criteria (DFE, 1992).

In similar vein, in November 1993 the, then new, Secretary of State John Patten, issued CATE

Circular 14/93 (DFE, 1993a) which substantially reorganised and prescribed the content,

organisation and location of Primary B.Ed. and PGCE courses (3).

In September 1996 Education Minister Gillian Shephard announced that all student teachers

entering Primary teacher training in 1997,

will have to follow a curriculum which for the first time explicitly prescribes what they should learn and how they should teach it…(she) has asked the Teacher Training Agency

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to design a draft core curriculum for Primary English and Maths by the new year. This would take effect from next September, with the curriculum for secondary English and Maths, plus Science for all age groups following in 1998 (Gardiner, 1996b).

The National Curriculum was to cover: knowledge of subjects; what pupils should be taught;

effective teaching and assessment methods; and standards of achievement expected of pupils

(Tysome, 1996). A Consultation Paper on what Gillian Shephard termed, `new National

Curriculum for Primary teachers’ was issued in February 1997 (see TTA, 1997a-d; and The

Guardian, 1997, for the detailed outline requirements).

One aspect of all of these pronouncements and circulars since 1989 has been the introduction of

competency based criteria, in a particularly rigorously specified form in the 1992, 1993 and 1997

criteria. As we shall see, the ´New Labour` amendments of the Conservative Draft National

Curriculum for Teacher Training has amended this in favour of a broader, more generic, more

holistic approach to the assessment of ITE students.

Effects on the ITE Curriculum

Some of the effects on the curriculum of HEI-based ITE courses, and on their B.Ed./ B.A.(QTS)

and PGCE students, are to:

(i) Prescribe, regulate and monitor the content of, or input into B.Ed and PGCE courses. B.Ed/ BA

(QTS) and PGCE courses themselves are now more rigidly circumscribed than at any other time in

living memory.

(ii) Furthermore, TTA controls over HEI providers of ITE, the quality rating systems introduced, and

the move to competence led assessment, all combine to provide greater surveillance over course

outputs, and greater self- monitoring by student teachers and their teacher educators, than prior to the

introduction of the 1992 and 1993 CATE criteria, and prior to the setting up of the TTA in 199x (?).

Since the funding of individual ITE providing institutions is related to their meeting these tightly

prescriptive performance indicators, the HEIs are very keen to collude with and meet the TTA

guidelines and requirements.

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(iii) Take ITE students out of HEIs. Their location is now, for far longer periods, in schools. (See

Table 3 below.) This move complements the new school- based courses set out above which takes

some ITE out of College/ Universities altogether (as with some SCITT schemes) (or virtually

altogether as with other schemes). The section of the 1994 Education Bill stating that school-

based teacher training schemes need have no validation by, or connection with, HEIs was

defeated in the House of Lords in March 1994, but was re-inserted in the House of Commons. The

intention of the government to divorce ITE from Higher education is clear. Thus far, (April 1997),

one SCITT scheme has no links with HE.

(iv) Circumscribe alternative liberal- progressive and social democratic, and oppositional

socialist- egalitarian principles and practices. This conservative circumscription is part of an

attempt removing critique and oppositional thought/ analysis from the `official knowledge'

(Apple, 1993; 1996) of the ITE curriculum. As part of this process, the type of reflection engaged

in by teachers is primarily restricted to 'technical reflection’ (reflection on techniques of teaching

and communication/ organisation skills). As I argue below in the second half of this chapter, (on

the Radical Right and its ideology relating to teacher education), this is deliberate government

policy. And, by virtue of the `closing down’ of `free spaces’ within a heavily prescribed

curriculum, I argue that this has a marked effect on the practice of teacher education.

In more detail, these four tactics and aspects of the strategy of ITE curricular change are as

follows:

(i) The Content Of B.Ed./ B.A.(QTS) And PGCE Courses- Domination By The National

Curriculum For Schools.

The first tactic has been to `lock in’ the ITE curriculum to the schools’ National Curriculum. This

has taken the form not simply of making sure that student teachers learn how to teach the relevant

(school) National Curriculum subject(s), (itself an uncontentious requirement), but that other

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forms of learning are now, to a considerable degree, excluded or marginalised from the ITE

curriculum.

A comparison of course content of B.Ed and PGCE courses (from three Higher Education

Institutions in the south of England) written prior to CATE Circulars 9/92 and 14/93 with those

written after their promulgation reveals a number of significant changes. A number of aspects of

education have been considerably reduced. These are education issues such as 'race', gender,

sexuality and social class factors in schooling; policy responses to counter stereotyping and

educational underachievement; and the ideological and political analysis of classroom and

school pedagogy, and of national policy and legislation (such as the 1988 Education Reform Act,

Opting Out, the National Curriculum, Assessment). What has also been the affected, in the

'squeeze' on time for 'education' courses, are issues such as bullying, styles of classroom

management, child abuse and the study of cross-curricular issues. This has resulted in what the

TES editorial of 20th September 1996 called, `Basics Training’ (TES, 1996).

Core course units in the late 1980s focusing on contextual and egalitarian issues in education, at

Brighton Polytechnic (now University) and at West Sussex (now Chichester) Institute of Higher

Education (set out in Hill, 1989) have now been replaced. Their content/ concepts are relatively

invisible in the latest BA (QTS) courses at both successor institutions. Maguire (1993) and

Gardiner (1995) describe similar processes at 'Sacred Heart' College of Higher Education and

Roehampton Institute of Higher Education in similar terms. Indeed, one major component of

critical analysis of education, the Sociology of Education, has all but disappeared from

undergraduate and PGCE ITE courses. Ivan Reid and Frank Parker describe 'a marked decline in

the opportunities to confront student teachers with aspects of the sociology of education' (Reid

and Parker, 1995:400)

For example, while Circular 3/84, the CATE criteria of 1984 (DES, 1984), called for students to

be prepared for pupils' 'diversity of ability, behaviour, social background and ethnic and cultural

origins within the criteria for the Initial phase of teacher education', CATE circular 9/92 (DFE,

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1992), for the secondary phase of initial teacher training reserves these topics, traditionally

addressed by the sociology of education, for 'Further Professional Development'. That is to say,

these are reserved for development after the Initial phase of teacher education.

Circular 9/92 (for Secondary ITE) states that the 'newly qualified should have acquired ... the

necessary foundation to develop ... an awareness of individual differences, including social,

psychological, developmental and cultural dimensions' (para 2.6.4). Mention is also made of

special needs (para 2.6.6), gifted pupils (para 2.6.5) and 'an understanding of the school as an

institution and its place within the community' (para 2.6.1). There are few such competencies

prescribed for the initial stage of teacher education. They are, effectively, lost among the rest. For

example on the ChIHE Secondary BA (QTS) course there are x competencies of which only one

explicitly refers to equal opportunities or egalitarianism, 'xxxx'.

(ii) Funding, Control and Staffing of ITE

The second tactic in the conservative restructuring of ITE is that of diverting funding for ITE away

from HEIs towards schools, a move which has substantially reduced the human, equipment, and

research base of ITE HEIs. (HEIs receive two types of funding for students. The first is funding from

the Higher Education Funding Council (HEFCE) and the TTA, the two relevant funding councils.

The second is the fee paid by the student’s LEA).

Not only are funds being diverted to school-based SCITT schemes, but, according to UCETT,

`Postgraduate Certificate in Education programmes in Universities and colleges were out of pocket

because of the introduction of inflated fund weighting for the exclusively school-based SCITT

programmes’ (Baty, 1997). Similar concerns have been expressed by the Committee of Vice-

Chancellors and Principals. The TTA response was that `the fact that the schools programmes were

new had to be taken into account’ (idem).

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This transfer of funds from HEIs to schools has had significant effects in cutting the income of HEIs.

This funding diversion was accompanied by a reduction in the government funded fee element per

capita funding for undergraduate ITE students. For example, in 1994, it was cut by virtually half for

1994-5, (from c.£1300 per student per annum to c.£700).

One effect has already, (Autumn 1997), been felt in HEIs as a consequence of changes in the B.Ed.

and PGCE course curriculum, a reduction in funding per student, and the competition from non- HEI-

based routes into teaching. This is a considerable reduction in èducation’ lecturers in the ITE sector.

Not only are such (potentially or actually) oppositional intellectuals, professionals, to be

circumscribed. Many will be, and have been, made redundant. In 1994 it was reported that, for

example, Warwick University had lost 16 staff so that it could afford to pay the £1,000 per year per

student to schools that then appeared to be standard (TES, 1994:12). It was further reported that

Èxeter University will have to lose 12 posts. South Bank University is pulling out of postgraduate

teacher training' (idem).

Other staff are being redeployed away from teaching Èducation issues' courses . At Chichester

Institute of Higher Education, for example, it was estimated that the cumulative effect of funding and

ITE curriculum changes would result in a reduction of Èducation' lecturers of around 25- 30%

between 1994- 95 and 1996- 97. By January 1996 ChIHE was paying £250,000 per annum in fees to

schools in return for student placements and school teacher mentoring. By March 1996 it was seeking

six redundancies among education lecturers. By August 1996 I had been made redundant, the

nationally renowned specialist on `race’ and education, (Chris Gaine) had been redeployed for half of

his timetable to a different School within Chichester Institute of Higher Education, as had the

specialist in Special Needs and education (Hill, 1997c; d; e).

Furthermore, it may not simply be the individual people and their particular expertise which are

made redundant, it can also be the book and informational physical resources with which they have

been associated. Thus, for example, the resource collection on `Race’ Equality, built up at Chichester

Institute of Higher Education over ten years, was closed down and dismembered in summer 1996.

16

(iii) The Location of HEI-Based ITE Courses

A third tactic in the conservative restructuring of ITE has been to cut the time spent in

college/HEI by students. This has partly been occasioned by an increase in time spent in school,

and partly by an overall cost-cutting exercise reducing student-tutor contact time.

There have been significant changes in the minimum number of days to be spent by ITE students

in schools, and the maximum time left for HEI- based work (Hill, 1993; 1994a). The changes

between 1989 and 1997 can be seen from Table 3 below. In brief, the time spent in school by

undergraduate student teachers on four year courses has increased from 20 to 32 weeks. This is

equivalent to one half of the `professional strand’ of their ITE course, i.e. that part which is

connected to preparing them as teachers. (Students on four year undergraduate ITE course have,

since the 1989 CATE Criteria [DES, 1989] spent the equivalent of two out of their four years on

the `subject study’ of an academic subject). For Secondary PGCE students a minimum of 24

weeks of their 36 week course is spent in schools, for Primary PGCE students the requirement is

that they spend a minimum of 18 weeks in schools out of a 38 week course. Student teachers on

school based schemes such as Articled Teacher, Licensed Teacher and some- but not all- SCITT

schemes of course, do attend some HEI based sessions as part of their courses.

At the same time as the number of weeks in college have been cut, so has the tutor contact time

per student, per week. For example at Chichester Institute of Higher Education, students on the

Secondary and on the Primary BA (QTS) routes have, (on the BA/QTS course which started in

September 1993), 12 hours contact time per week with staff for their HEI courses. This is less

than half the hourage contact time of student teachers on the preceding B.Ed., whose last cohort

graduated in September 1995.

On the ChIHE Secondary and primary BA (QTS) courses there are 3 x 30 hour modules (out of 18

Professional/ Education modules i.e. the Education/ Professional half of the degree) which enables

17

students to examine contextual, sociological, political and macro issues). This compares to 6 x 30

hour modules on the predecessor Primary B.Ed course and xx modules on the predecessor

Secondary B.Ed course.

TABLE 3: Initial teacher education courses: time in school, time in college and length of

courses

Secondary B.Ed.

Primary B.Ed.

Secondary PGCE

Primary PGCE

i CATE CRITERIA (DES) 1984

school mincollege maxlength

ii CATE CRITERIA (DES) 1989

20464 yr*

20 15 46 334 yr* 3 yr

152136w

152136w


iii LICENSED TEACHER SCHEME 1990


iv ARTICLED TEACHER SCHEME 1990

58142 yr (72w)

58142 yr (72w)


v MOTE SURVEY 90-91 i.e. What's actually happening in 1990-91

26404 yr*

26404 yr*

ave. 18ave. 1836w

ave. 18ave. 1836w


vi JOHN PATTEN/ DFE CIRCULAR 9/92 MAY 1992 (SECONDARY B.Ed. AND PGCE)

32324 yr*

241236


vii JOHN PATTENSCITTDFECIRCULAR 14/93 (PRIMARY B.Ed AND PGCE)

32

324 yr

24243 yr

18

2038w

school min

college max1 yr length


viii INFANT TEACHING PROPOSAL (withdrawn)Jun 1993

18141 yr


ix SCHOOL CENTREDINITIAL TEACHER TRAINING (SCITT)

primarily0

primarily 0


x LETTER 1/97

18

(Labour Government)

* Four year B.Ed. courses include 2 years study at degree level of one or two academic subjects. The length of professional training on B.Ed. courses is therefore years. This two years, on this table, is then divided in school-based and college-based components.

References for Table 3i DES 1984.ii. DES 1989aiii. DES 1989c?iv DES 1989bv. Barrett et al. 1992vi. DFE 1992bvii DFE 1993aviii. DFE 1993c ix DFE 1993?x. TTA 1997

(iv) The Ideology of B.Ed./B.A.(QTS) and PGCE Courses -the

Conservative ITE Curriculum.

The fourth tactic in the conservative restructuring of ITE has been to marginalise alternative and

oppositional ideologies and their associated practices. The main features and principles of these

alternative and oppositional ideologies are described below.

Part of this move to a Conservative in ITE Curriculum is the move to technicist ideology and a

technically reflective and competent model of the teacher. A categorisation of different types, or

levels of reflection, were developed by United States teacher educators Zeichner and Liston. Their

threefold classification of reflection (Zeichner and Liston, 1987; Liston and Zeichner, 1987) into

`technical, contextual, and critical, are developed in Hill 1991a; 1992a; 1994a; 1997a; and in Adler,

1991 (4).

The final Conservative Government proposals for the ITE curriculum of their 18 year period in office

were contained in the Consultation documents, Standards for the Award of Qualified Teaching Status

and its accompanying documents, Initial Teacher Training National Curriculum for Primary English,

Initial Teacher Training National Curriculum for Primary Mathematics and Revised Requirements for

all Courses of Initial Teacher Education. (TTA 1997a;b;c;d). I want now to comment on the first two

19

of these documents, (and will also discuss `New Labour’s amendments to these Conservative proposals

below, pp.45-52 as part of a critique of ´New Labour` policy and ideology on ITE).

The first of the two above Conservative documents, Consultation on Standards for the Award of

Qualified Teacher Status (TTA, 1997a),was characterised by the following:

1. It did not confirm degree status for all teachers;

1. It failed to make clear that teaching is an intellectually and managerially challenging profession.

Instead, it presented a mechanistic view of teaching, and implied that discrete assessment of each

competency standard would be required;

2. It was relatively silent on equal opportunities issues. Three exceptions are:

standard Da iii, which required student teachers to have a working knowledge and understanding of

anti-discrimination legislation;

standard B2 k xiii, requiring student teachers to set ´high expectations for all pupils notwithstanding

individual differences, including gender, and cultural and linguistic backgrounds`; and

standard B2l which required student teachers to be ´familiar with the Code of Practice on the

identification and assessment of special educational needs` and associated matters.

3. It was silent on the necessity for student teachers to know about the effects of pupils´ emotional,

social, intellectual and physical development on their learning, i.e. about child development, child

and adolescent psychology, and social psychology. (There was a standard, 2d, which required

teachers to be able to plan opportunities to contribute to ´pupils´ personal, spiritual; moral, social

and cultural development`, and standard 2k, which required student teachers to be ´able to exploit

opportunities to contribute to the quality of pupils´ wider educational development, including their

personal, spiritual, moral, social and cultural development`);

4. It contained a highly restricted list of teachers´ legal responsibilities and liabilities.

The second of the two above documents, Consultation on the Initial Teacher Training national

Curriculum for Primary English (TTA, 1997b), can be characterised by:

1. An almost exclusive emphasis on phonics as a strategy for teaching reading, virtually ignoring

contextual and syntactic strategies for teaching reading at sentence and at text level.

20

The method of teaching reading clearly and almost exclusively prioritised in the Conservative

proposals is not appropriate when dealing with a non-phonetic language such as English. The approach

suggested in the document, in standards A1 c and d, can result in reading being decontextualised and

assumed to comprise a series of segmented skills, taking no note of its unitary character. Apparently,

from this document, children start to look at the context of a meaning or story only when they can read

individual words. It is only when ´´trainees` seek to develop pupils´ reading and writing skills` that real

books are brought in. This ignores the motivational value of books, the motives that come from

recognising oneself in a situation, finding something out , such as information, or experiencing

something wondrous or exciting in a book. Thus Mr. Pinkwhistle (Blyton), or The Hungry Caterpillar,

or Put the Kettle on Ma, are likely, for many children, to be more motivational than Janet and John.

2. Giving very little recognition of the needs and incorporated in the within the curriculum of Home

Language, such as Haringey Black English, or Bengali, or Portuguese.

In standards A 1 a and b the use of non-standard English is alluded to but is not spelt out. In

metalinguistic terms it can be very useful to have a detailed knowledge and use of more than one

language. This is a major omission, there is no encouragement given to bilingual (or trilingual) pupils

to continue to use their own domestic language. This is despite the social and cognitive advantages of

so doing. There is also no reference to the advantages of pupils´ exposure to oral language in their

mother tongue. If a child has little command of English, then it is in the mother tongue that such

children will be exposed to oral language, with the advantages that brings for E2L children to develop

cognitively and to catch-up.

3. Again, (as with standards A1 b1 and ii (mentioned in point 2 above)), standard A1 biii, while not

explicitly denying or forbidding the use of the home/ domestic/ mother tongue, misses the opportunity

to note the potential of using minority ethnic group parents, or, indeed, working class parents´ (or

grandparents´ or relatives´) experiences. Such pedagogies can be an important way of valuing aspects

of the experiences of those non-standard subcultures.

21

3. CONSERVATIVE ITE POLICY AND IDEOLOGY

How does this restructuring of ITE derive from Radical Right theory and ideology?

In this section I look at eighteen Radical Right themes and show how they relate to Initial Teacher

Education. The themes appear as a dozen policy positions which have resulted in the restructuring of

ITE already described.

The eighteen themes recurring at these three levels are the neo-liberal themes of privatisation,

competition, market, cost, and choice. The neo-conservative themes are tradition, basics, nation,

`race’, authority, control, elite and hierarchy. There are a number of themes appropriate to both neo-

liberalism and neo-conservatism. These are: derision, distrust and disrespect for: public services,

socialist/Marxist egalitarianism; liberal-progressivism; and for both the theory stemming from those

beliefs, and for the theory purporting to underlie what the Radical Right see as essentially practical

activities such as teaching and Initial Teacher Education. The concomitant therefore of the anti-

theoretical bias of Thatcherism is an emphasis on practice. This list of eighteen themes is not an

exclusive list. However they do seem, to me, to be the dominant themes with respect to education.

Radical Right Discourse and Justification of Policy on Initial Teacher Education

As far as the Radical Right were concerned, some `teacher training colleges’ were simply being too

successful in developing, disseminating and reproducing liberal progressive values, or socialist

egalitarian values. From the Radical Right, Michael Trend, (1988); the Hillgate Group, (1989); and

Margaret Thatcher, (1993) criticised `The Social Contexts of Schooling’ course run by Mike Cole at

the then Brighton Polytechnic, though they did not name him. (This course is replicated, in part, in

both Hill, 1989, and in Hillgate Group, 1989).

Thatcher wrote in her memoirs, in reaction to Mike Cole´s course, ´The Social Contexts of Learning`

that,

22

there was the need to radically improve teacher training. Unusually, I had sent a personal minute to Ken Baker in November 1988 expressing my concerns. I said we must go much further in this area and asked him to bring forward proposals……There was still too little

emphasis on factual knowledge of the subjects teachers needed to teach, too little practical classroom experience acquired and too much stress on the sociological and psychological

aspects. For example, I could barely believe the contents of one of the B.Ed. courses- duly approved by CATE- at Brighton Polytechnic about which one concerned Tory supporter sent in details. Entitled `Contexts for learning’, this course claimed to be enabling teachers to come

to terms with such challenging questions as `To what extent do schools reinforce gender stereotypes?’ It continued: `students are then introduced to the debate between protagonists of education (sic) and those who advocate anti-racist education’. I felt the protagonists of education had the better case.

The effective monopoly exercised by the existing teacher training routes had to be broken.. …There was no evidence that there would be a large enough inflow of teachers (from the Licensed Teacher and the Articled Teacher schemes) ..significantly to change the ethos and raise the standards of the profession. So I had Brian Griffiths begin work on how to increase

the numbers: we wanted to see at least half of the new teachers come through these or similar

schemes, as opposed to teacher-training institutions (Thatcher, 1993:598).

Thus, much ire was expressed, from the Prime Minister downwards, against 'teacher training colleges'.

Conservative Ministerial rhetoric on education reached a public climax at the 1992 Conservative Party

Conference. Prime Minister, John Major, pronounced,

When it comes to education, my critics say I'm `old fashioned'. Old fashioned? Reading and writing? Old fashioned? Spelling and sums? Great literature - and standard English Grammar?

Old fashioned? Tests and tables? British history? A proper grounding in science? Discipline and self respect? Old fashioned? I also want reform of teacher training. Let us return to basic subject teaching, not course in the theory of education. Primary teachers should learn to teach children

how to read, not waste their time on the politics of race, gender and class (Major, 1993:144).

John Patten, then Secretary of State for Education, speaking to the same conference proclaimed that,

‘All too often the problems in education lie - not with parent, not with teachers - but with 1960s'

theorists, with the trendy left and with the teachers union bosses’ (Patten, 1993:146).

Introducing the consultation National Curriculum for Primary Teacher Training, Gillian Shephard, the

then Secretary of State for Education and Employment, asserted that,

23

Through no fault of their own, teachers are being allowed to leave some teacher training colleges without the essential knowledge to ensure all pupils learn basic literacy and numeracyskills….Young people are impressed by image. I think that if they perceive that a teacher regards his or her work as important enough to warrant smart dress and good presentation then

young people will accept teaching (Carvel, 1997).

These three quotes encapsulate, or prefigure, most of the following dozen Radical Right policy

positions on ITE, and the discourses associated with those policy positions.

The restructuring of Initial Teacher Education (and of schooling) has been accompanied by a

discursive assault at four levels. First, the radical right media (in particular the Daily Mail and The

Mail on Sunday) (5); second, radical right ideologists, think-tanks and academics; third, (since 1991),

the Conservative Education Ministerial teams. This culminated in Prime Ministerial and Ministerial

speeches at the 1992 Conservative Party Conference, in the salience afforded in teacher education in

the Government's November 1993 legislative programme, and in the Conservative campaign for the

1997 General Election. And fourth, since Chris Woodhead became Chief Inspector of Schools these

have been supplemented by an official Radical Right level of discourse replacing the previously,

(arguably), non- partisan official discourse of HMI and Ofsted.

The four levels of discourse used to validate such changes (media, academic/ ideological, ministerial,

official) are aimed at different audiences. They might be expected to use very different vocabularies,

sentence structures and sentence lengths. While there are differences, in general they do not. All deride

'trendies' and 'progressivism' in education. All use populist, punchy, and social panic metaphors, and

all use, not only a `discourse of derision' but also a `discourse of treachery', scapegoating teachers and

teacher educators as 'enemy within'. In addition to being scapegoated as 'trendies' and 'loony left',

teacher educators- and the teachers they `produce’- are also scapegoated as incompetent. Thus the

Chief Inspector of Schools has demanded the dismissals of 15,000 `incompetent’ teachers (Woodhead,

1995).

24

The Radical Right of the Conservative Party has viscerally abhorred, in particular, two types of

ideology, their associated developments and practices and their institutional support base in `teacher

training colleges’, (and also in schools, and in Local Education Authorities, the Ministry of Education

and the Inspectorate).

The first target of their attack over a long period has been the liberal, progressivist ideology (6) and

credo most famously set out in the Plowden Report of 1967 (CACE, 1967), which was for so long, the

claimed `Bible' and dominant ideology in ITE and of progressive primary education. It also had a

significant presence within secondary ITE. Plowdenism was commonly understood by both its

protagonists and its antagonists to have espoused the following dozen characteristics. These are:

1. child-centredness, in terms of the individualistic and individualised nature of the curriculum;

2. `readiness' (e.g. reading readiness);

3. a curriculum emphasis on interdisciplinary topic work;

4. the curriculum organised in an `integrated day';

5. a curriculum emphasis on `relevance' (e.g. of the curriculum to working class children in general

and to Asian, black and other ethnic minority group children in general);

6. the teacher as a guide to educational experiences rather than a distributor of knowledge;

7. the non-authoritarian teacher as friend and guide;

8. 'discovery learning';

9. little competitive testing;

10. an emphasis on individual and group co-operation and group work rather than competitiveness

(6);

11. a desire to develop a contextual (or situational) type of teacher reflection;

12. a schooling system the aim of which is the flourishing of the individual.

Liberal-progresssivism is one of the alternative, Centrist, ideologies, and associated practices to be

determinedly marginalised by Conservative state strategy.

25

Other than liberal-progressivism, more commonly known, (with respect to Primary Schooling), as

`Plowdenism’, the other major alternative ideology is Social Democracy. Ten major aspects of Social

Democracy in education are:

1. a commitment to policies of equal opportunities;

2. a curriculum which recognises issues of social justice and which aims at producing a technically

efficient, but fairer, capitalist society;

3. the teacher as authoritative but relatively democratic and anti-authoritarian;

4. a degree of positive discrimination and redistribution of resources within and between schools;

5. a desire to develop a contextual (or situational) type of teacher reflection;

6. an organising principle of comprehensive schooling;

7. a degree of local community involvement;

8. a degree of local community control over schooling.

9. the organisational (redistributive, quality control and democratically accountable) structure of

the Local Education Authority with political and financial power.

10.A schooling system, the aim of which is the flourishing of the collective economy as well as the

flourishing of the individual.

The oppositional ideology that the Conservative Governments have sought to destroy, is radical

socialist/ Marxist egalitarianism. Conservative governments systematically tried to delegitimate, to

marginalise, and to remove socialist- egalitarian principles and practices from ITE (and from

schooling and classroom). These egalitarian practices had been expressed materially in the selection

and organisation of curriculum knowledge (Apple 1979; 1982; 1989; 1993; 1996), in the teaching-

learning pedagogical relationships between teachers and pupils/ students (Giroux, 1983; 1988;

Aronowitz and Giroux, 1986; McLaren, 1986; Giroux and McLaren, 1989), and in the selection,

development and dissemination of local state (Local Education Authority') equal opportunities or

egalitarian policies, both within ITE and within schools (Troyna, 1995; Hill, 1997f).

Major aspects of a Radical Left/ Socialist approach to education are:

26

1. a commitment to egalitarian policies.

2. a curriculum which seeks to transform present capitalist society into a democratic socialist one

3. an anti-elitist formal and informal (hidden) curriculum.

4. the teacher as authoritative but as democratic, anti-authoritarian and engaging in critical

pedagogy.

5. egalitarian redistribution of resources within and between schools, via both positive

discrimination for under achieving individuals and groups, and an increase in educational

resources.

6. A commitment to developing critical reflection.

7. an organising principle of comprehensive schooling.

8. local community involvement in the school and its management.

9. A degree of local democratic and accountable control over the school.

10. the organisational (redistributive, quality control and democratically accountable) structure of

the Local Education Authority with political and financial power, engaging, inter alia, in the

development and dissemination of policies for equality (e.g. anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-

homophobic polcies).

11. a schooling system, the aim of which is the flourishing of the collective society and economy as

well as the flourishing of the individual.

12. the teacher as political activist, committed to social justice and equality. (There are a variety of

views on this within the radical Lrft, which are discussed in detail in Hill, 1991?)

This socialist, Radical left egalitarianism with its anti-elitism, its redistributionism, its stress on

democracy, and its stress on overtly confronting racism, sexism, homophobia, social class

inequalities, and discrimination against the disabled and those with special needs in schooling and

society, is anathema to the Radical Right.

Indeed, in terms of egalitarian pedagogy, in the valuing and affirming of children's domestic culture

against, or in addition to, elite culture, and in terms of formal curriculum content, a number of `teacher

27

training college’ and University Departments of Education were/ are indeed centres of resistance

against Thatcherite and post-Thatcherite ideology. I would classify the Education Department at West

Sussex Institute of Higher Education (WSIHE) as a centre of such resistance in the late 1980s. While

not all members of the department shared a strongly socialist anti-Thatcherite perspective and

commitment, the dominant ideology was, for a few years, strongly committed not only to anti-sexism,

to and to anti-racism, but also to what I have elsewhere termed `anti-classism’ (Hill, 1994a) (7) or

social egalitarianism. And WSIHE is in the `white highlands!’ Various inner-city universities and other

HEIs were much more obviously centres of resistance to Thatcherite policies and values.

A number of ITE Education Departments, together with schools and Further Education Colleges did

become poster sites for a variety of protests, for example, against deportations of immigrants deemed

to be illegal, against financial cuts, against the abolition of the Inner London Education Authority, and

against other Conservative legislation.

With respect to ITE there is empirical evidence to substantiate such Conservative fears that teacher

educators- and teachers- are oppositional. Some lecturers are indeed socialist, many (probably most)

are centrist/ social democratic/ liberal democratic, or one-nation liberal Conservatives. Very few

indeed appear to subscribe to the Thatcherite and post-Thatcherite Radical right ideological amalgam

of neo-liberal laisser-faire anti-statism and neo-Conservative social authoritarianism. For example very

few lecturers expressed their intention to vote Conservative in either the 1992 or the 1997 General

Elections (TES, 1992; 1997).

A Dozen Radical Right Policy Positions On ITE

Below I set out a dozen examples of anti-liberal and anti-egalitarian discourse on Initial Teacher

Education. Neo-conservative and neo-liberal policy for ITE have come together in the following dozen

positions. These positions overlap with each other.

28

1. College-based teacher education concentrates too little classroom discipline skills (Shaw, 1986;

Sexton, 1987; O'Hear, 1988, 1991b). It should concentrate more on practical teaching.

Beverley Shaw's 'Teacher Training: the Misdirection of British Teaching' in Dennis O'Keeffe's book,

The Wayward Curriculum, is a typical and representative attack. Shaw criticises colleges for 'the

neglect of the essentials of good classroom discipline' with 'too many teacher trainers more interested

in radically changing society than in preparing their students for the demanding career ahead of them'

(Shaw, 1986:202).

2. College-based teacher education is too progressive and child-centred in the teaching methods and

content it encourages in their student teachers.(The Hillgate Group, 1986; 1987; O'Keefe, 1990a, b).

Shaw inveighs not so much against the 'collectivist-egalitarian views' of the 'irredeemably Marxian

teacher trainer' but more against the general beliefs of the occupational group of teacher trainers, in

particular 'the subversion of authority' (1986:207). Similarly, the Hillgate Group's Whose Schools: A

Radical Manifesto, diagnoses what is wrong with British education as its ideology of 'curriculum

reform, relevance, and child-centred learning'. It asserts that 'constant reform of the curriculum has

undetermined the attempt to preserve, enhance, and pass on the precious heritage of our culture'

(1986:3).

3. HEI- based ITE accepts and perpetuates a disrespect for authority. Teachers should be `well

dressed’ and `well spoken’ authority figures.

Part of the desire to return to what might be termed `authoritative’ and `traditional’ teaching extends

also to teacher’s dress and appearance codes. The Daily Mail greeted Gillian Shephard’s Consultative

document on a Primary National Curriculum for ITE with,

Trash the T-shirts, tatty teachers are told…trainee teachers who wear T-shirts and jeans to work

are in for a dressing down. They are to be barred from classrooms until they learn to set an example to children with their appearance….Teacher Training Agency chief executive Anthea

29

Millett, who has drawn up the `national curriculum’ for training colleges, commented: Part of the problem about the content of lessons relates to the way teachers present themselves and work with their classes’. Parents and employers have repeatedly complained about the example set for pupils by teachers who wear jeans and T-shirts. Many are also unhappy about male teachers sporting earrings (Halpin, 1997).

4. ITE should concentrate on `back to basics’- on `traditional’ content and methods of teaching

reading, arithmetic, and morality.

Particular opprobrium has been attached to the ways in which HEIs teach `the three Rs’ - reading,

writing and arithmetic. The 'Back to Basics' movement of John Major in the early 1990s was partly an

appeal for a literate and numerate workforce. It insisted on numeracy and mental arithmetic, appealed

for a restoration of correct grammar and spelling in children's writings to assume a greater importance

via-a-vis child- centred 'creativity', and called for a return to traditional reading - phonics in particular

(and 'look and say') as against the 'real books' method. But, just as importantly it was an appeal to and

for 'traditional schooling', a discursive - and policy (National Curriculum) move to reassert back to

basics traditional content and also methods of teaching. Other Ministers too, condemned 'trendy'

'progressive' and 'child- centred' teaching methods.

For example, Kenneth Clarke, the Secretary of State for Education and Science, 1989-92, encouraging

and encouraged by the Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday, fulminated against `cranky' approaches to

the teaching of reading. Clarke damned not only the real books method but also the `look and say'

method, in favour of the `phonics method', a condemnation extended to the institutions of teacher

education propagating such approaches. Gillian Shephard´s proposed `National Curriculum for Primary

Teacher Training’ Consultative document of February 1997 ( DfEE, 1997), as noted above,

concentrated on the importance of student teachers being proficient at grammar, spelling and mental

arithmetic.

5. College-based teacher education is too much concerned with changing society and/ or developing

egalitarian or liberal perspectives on schooling and society (Shaw, 1986; O'Hear, 1988; The Hillgate

Group, 1986; O'Keefe, 1990a, b); It should concentrate more on 'practical teaching', traditional content

and pedagogy, and less on criticising government and policy.

30

If, in the words of the Daily Mail 'Riots (are) blamed on the trendy school staff', then who is to blame

for the 'trendy school staff'? In the Mail's words,

The explosive mixture being produced in the eighties is the direct result of second generation education in the comprehensives over the last two decades, stimulated by 'well meaning but malignant philosophies' of trendy teachers coming out of college with half baked ideas on mixed ability teaching, egalitarianism, and the abolition of corporal punishment and classroom discipline (Daily Mail, 1982).

O'Hear, a high profile member, first of CATE, and then of the TTA, attacks 'examples of obsessions

with inequality, with racism and sexism and other passing political fashions ... much of this is anti-

educational'. He attacks,

the assumption underlying many curriculum and teaching studies courses if outcomes in a given subject of study are not equal across social, sexual and ethnic divisions, is that something must be wrong with the subject as it is taught and should be 'combated'. Thus one not atypical syllabus, after having listed as topics for consideration 'racism, sexism, heterosexism, able bodyism, classism and curriculum' goes on to speak in presumably terms of tackling

inequalities through the curriculum- multicultural and anti-racist approaches to education; non-sexist and

anti-sexist curriculum provision; 'positive image' approaches within the context of anti-heterosexist and anti-homophobic curriculum provision (O'Hear, 1988:xx).

The Sun newspaper was in no doubt that the introduction of the Licensed Teacher scheme was an

attack on the Left. Its headline of 16 January 1989 was 'Lefties face sack in big purge on teacher

colleges'. The article proclaimed,

Hundreds of Left-wingers and failed academics face the sack in a dramatic plan to shut down many teacher training colleges ... Education Secretary, Ken Baker blames much of the 1980s education crisis on training colleges. He believes many schools are staffed by political

activists and academic failures who damage discipline and reject the importance of the three

Rs! (The Sun, 1989).

6. College-based teacher education promulgates a model of the multi-cultural and anti-racist teacher

(O'Hear 1988; The Hillgate Group 1986; 1987). It should not.

31

The Hillgate Group's The Reform of British Education - from Principles to Practice (1987) highlights

'two slogans' that have 'dominated the thinking of educationalists in slogans of 'relevance', and 'multi-

culturalism' - the latter being 'more serious' (1987:xx). O'Hear gives,

As an example of fashion dominating the field of education, we can point to a quite disproportionate emphasis on questions of race and inequality, an emphasis which is surely unhealthy in its implicit assumption that education is to be seen in terms of its potential for social engineering, rather than as the initiation of pupils into proven and worthwhile forms of knowledge. (O’Hear, 1988:xx)

7. The essence of good teaching is knowledge and love of the subject to be taught, and mastery of the

practical skills of teaching, `the first comes through study of the subject taught, the second from

supervised practice’ (O' Hear, 1988: xx, c.f. Trend 1988).

In 'Getting the teachers we deserve', O’Hear suggests that, 'The knowledge teachers require, though is

first and foremost that of their subjects. Success as a teacher ought to be judged in terms of the degree

to which their pupils have more knowledge of the subject after being taught than they did before. He

continues,

The ability to put a subject over is not some further bit of knowledge over and above one's subject… even allowing that there is a subject called education, studying it oneself would not itself enhance one's ability to teach. To adapt the hackneyed example so often used by those who disagree with me, one could be a Nobel Prize winner in education and still be completely useless with the restive fourth form on a wet Friday afternoon. How does one learn to teach effectively? Everyone involved in the sometimes bitter disputes about teacher training seems now to argue that the key component is practice. This is hardly surprising since teaching is fundamentally a practical ability (O’Hear, 1991a).

8. Education theory is of no, or of little value for student teachers, indeed there is no academic

discipline as such of 'Education' (Sexton, 1987; Lawlor, 1990a; 1990b; O'Hear, 1991a,b). College-

based courses should leave education theory, if it is to be studied at all, to in- service training.

Teacher trainers are accused by Sheila Lawlor of including in their courses topics such as special

educational needs, multicultural education and equal opportunities, which she calls 'a series of random

topics, chosen, it appears because of their fascination for educationalists'. (As UCET pointed out

[1990], all these topics were required by the Government in the DES Circular 24/89.)

32

Similarly Sheila Lawlor's, Teacher Mistaught: Training in theories or education in subjects? (1990)

proclaims that,

Whereas the individual subjects which teachers will require academic study, the skills of teaching are essentially practical ones. They can be acquired only through experience, trial

and error and careful, individual supervision. Who would imagine that a man could learn to act, or play the piano, or swim, or drive a motor car by studying manuals of acting, piano playing, swimming or driving theory? It is no less foolish to suppose that the study of educational

theory will make him able to teach. (Lawlor, 1990a:8)

Likewise Anthony O'Hear's, Who Teaches the Teachers (1989), claims that,

There is, I suggest, no well-established and comprehensive body of theory covering teaching and learning. For practical purposes, I argue, this would not matter, since teaching is a practical matter, one best learned by doing, under the guidance of experienced practising teachers. But

in colleges and departments of education students have to be taught something, and in the

vacuum created by lack of solid theoretical knowledge, spurious and questionable studies flourish, sustained by fads and fashions in the teacher training establishment, rather than by

any solid grounding in the real world (1988 ?).

9. The present college-based system of teacher education should be scrapped (either totally or

substantially) (The Hillgate Group, 1989; Sexton, 1987; Lawlor, 1990a; Trend, 1988; Boyson, 1990;

O'Hear, 1991a);

The Hillgate Group's Learning to Teach (1989) is one example of a Radical right publication to attack

and urge the scrapping of the present system of teacher-training and replace it with on-the-job school

based skill development. The Group actually argue that a Licensing teaching scheme should become

the major route into teaching. Sheila Lawlor's, Teachers Mistaught (1990a) argues that,

the existing Education Departments' (in ITE institutions) 'should be disbanded. Their members

could be offered the choice of going into school- teaching at a senior level; of taking early retirement; or, if they were distinguished academically, of moving to the department of a university where their subject (English, maths, physics etc.) is studied (1990a:38).

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Ministers and some of the Press, such as the Daily Mail pre-judge in favour of such school- based ITE

schemes. Proposals to base teacher education courses in schools made in the winter of 1991/92 were

met with such right-wing media headlines as `Training shake-up to beat college trendies' (Daily Mail, 4

Jan 1992); `Is this the Right way to teach the teachers? Clarke aims for return to traditional methods as

standards plummet' (Sunday Express, 29 Dec 1991) and `Do we really need these colleges?' (Sunday

Express, 5 Jan 1992). Long- time radical right ideologues rushed to welcome such moves, for example

Sheila Lawlor with her Times article `Touch of class for teachers: Plans to train teachers on the job

should be welcomed' (Lawlor, 1992).

10. School-based on- the- job skill development, such as the Licensed Teacher Scheme and School

Centred Initial Teacher Training (SCITT), should become a, or the, major type of teacher training

(The Hillgate Group 1989; Sexton 1987; Lawlor 1990a; Trend 1988; Boyson 1990; O'Hear 1991a,

Thatcher 1993).

This is the corollary of scrapping or diminishing college- based ITE.

11. HEI-based ITE costs too much- it is too expensive.

The attempt to reduce the cost of ITE is part of the rationale for the attempted introduction of the

`Mums’ Army’ scheme, the introduction of the Specialist Teacher Assistants Scheme, the introduction

of the three year undergraduate teaching qualification for some primary student teachers, the

introduction of the Licensed Teachers’ Scheme, the reduction in per capita funding per ITE student in

real terms, and the non-continuation of the (relatively expensive) Articled Teachers’ Scheme.

12. ITE and the quality of new teachers need to be regulated. ITE is best regulated by introducing

competencies into the process and assessment of `training’.

In Wilkin’s words,

the introduction of competencies into training can be regarded as an ideological tactic for several reasons. They are perceived as a-theoretical, being measures of observable behaviour and hence facilitating the assessment of practical skills. They thus represent the anti-theoretical stance of Thatcherism and once drawn up they can be administered by anyone and

34

their application is not hindered by self-interest groups, such as the profession, claiming specialist expertise’ (Wilkin, 1996:157. See also Hustler and McIntyre, 1996).

In these dozen policy positions on ITE, the eighteen Radical Right themes appear individually and in

combination. The themes are, it will be recalled, the neo-liberal themes of privatisation, competition,

market, cost, and choice, the neo-conservative themes are tradition, basics, nation, `race’, authority,

control, elite and hierarchy, and themes of derision, distrust and disrespect for: public services,

socialist/Marxist egalitarianism; liberal-progressivism; and for both the theory stemming from those

beliefs, and for the theory purporting to underlie what the Radical Right see as essentially practical

activities such as teaching and Initial Teacher Education.

These themes are features, too, of Radical Right discourse on schooling, and, indeed, on education in

general. Schools were also attacked rhetorically and in policy-making and implementation, and so were

LEAs- in particular `loony left' councils, identified as Brent, Haringey, Lambeth and the ILEA with

their anti-racist, anti-sexist, in the cases of Haringey and Brent, anti-heterosexist, and, in the case of the

ILEA, anti-classist policies (8).

4. CONSERVATIVE EDUCATION POLICY

It will be noted that Conservative policy on schooling has many of the same major features as policy

on ITE. Thus, to refer back to the categories used in the earlier analysis of ITE policy, Conservative

policy has:

1. Established a competitive market for consumers, (children and their parents);

2. Attempted to ideologically recompose the consumers (children/ school students, via changes in the

formal curriculum and the hidden curriculum);

3. Created, with Circulars 9/92 and 14/93, a new, prescriptive Conservative National Curriculum,

regulated with financial penalties, which is:

prescriptive in the detail and outcomes it requires;

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ideologically circumscribed as a Conservative curriculum seeking to marginalise alternative and

oppositional beliefs.

(iii) surveyed, regulated and monitored, with funding advantages and penalties for those who adhere

to and work the system and its requirements effectively (in terms of per capita funding which may

rise or fall according to `league table performance);

4. Cut the cost of schooling with the effect that class sizes in state Primary Schools have increased

under Conservative governments (9).

5. CONSERVATIVE IDEOLOGY: THATCHERISM, NEO-LIBERALISM AND NEO-

CONSERVATISM

Thatcherism

Conservative policy on ITE, on schooling and education generally, and in state policy overall (such as

employment, fiscal, housing, health, and criminal justice policy) can be seen as classically

`Thatcherite', that is to say, a populist amalgam of neo-liberal and neo-conservative ideology and

policy (10).

Although the term ‘Thatcherite’ has been applied, there was no let- up by the Conservative

Government in the application of Radical Right policies on Initial Teacher Education and schooling

since Margaret Thatcher left Prime Ministerial office in 1990. Indeed the most dramatic Conservative

government attempts at restructuring ITE took place under the John Major governments of 1990-97.

These are, the imposition of what is, in effect, a national curriculum for ITE under Circulars 9/ 92 and

14/ 93; the proposed `National Curriculum for Primary Teacher training’ of February 1997; and the

commencement of totally school-centred ITE schemes (SCITT) without Higher Education

involvement.

In the following section, I analyse those two strands of Conservative ideology and education policy, the

free- market neo-liberals' position and the moral/social authoritarian neo-conservative one. I point out

what is distinct about them in relation to education policy, and then what they have in common. I do

this by presenting and analysing Radical Right and Government discourse. This discourse is pre-

36

eminently characterised by its 'equiphobia' (Myers in Troyna 1995, c.f. Hill, 1997f) -its hostility to

equality and equal opportunities in schooling as elsewhere, and, in particular, its hostility to two

agencies or apparatuses thought to be involved in promoting equality and equal opportunities - Local

Education Authorities and what Right wing Press terms 'Teacher Training Colleges'.

The Neo-Liberals

With its emphasis on the social morality of individual choice, competition, inequality, and neo- liberal

economic policies, the neo-liberal section of the Radical Right in Britain has been influenced in

particular by the philosophy of Friedrich von Hayek (Ball, 1990a; Gamble, 1983). Neo- liberals stress

the efficiency and increased production of wealth and profit that they believe results from competition.

They therefore attack any group which stands- or argues for a policy- in restraint of trade. They believe

that the application of market forces, competition, diversity of provision and freedom of choice by

consumers will raise standards in areas of public social provision such as health and education as well

as in the commercial sector.

Wilkin also points out the emphasis on practice, and the concomitant anti-theoretical bias of neo-

liberalism. She notes that,

Thatcher herself often spoke out against theorists. Her mistrust of the theorist was matched by her admiration for the practitioner and for the common sense of the ordinary people- preferences which are directly derived from the philosophy of the market. It is the practitioner, not the theorist dreamer, who gets things done, creates wealth and generates further business (Wilkin, 1996:146).

Of course, such an anti-theoretical bias does not extend to social market and neo-liberal philosophy,

but applies more to the theory of the professions- such as social workers, teachers, probation officers.

The influence of Hayek on Radical Right thinking in Britain, and the transmogrification of the

educational implications of Hayek's theory into the 1988 Education Reform Act have been discussed in

depth (11). This philosophy emphasises privatisation, the untrammelled operation of the free market,

37

the importance of free competition, of incentives and of the necessity for unequal pay and rewards.

Hayek's philosophy heavily influenced a whole range of policy of the Radical Right Conservative

governments in Britain (1979- 97) through the use of neo-liberal `think-tanks' such as the Centre for

Policy Studies, the Adam Smith Institute, the Social Affairs Unit, and the Institute for Economic

Affairs. As Ken Jones points out, The Omega File, produced by the radical right- wing Adam Smith

Institute in 1983- 84 was `the most systematic and influential work of the free market right' (Jones, K.

1989:46) and presented a blueprint for a reorganisation of schooling based on market principles.

A number of Conservative government policies are classic manifestations of neo-liberal, free market

ideology. These include: the introduction of a diversity in schools; the setting up of a competitive

market place in schools; the funding support given to private schools via the Assisted Places Scheme;

schools’ open enrolment of pupils; and the transference of a substantial percentage of funding and of

powers away from local education authorities to `consumers', (in this case, schools). ´Ostensibly, at

least, these represent a "rolling back" of central and local government's influence on what goes on in

schools' (Troyna, 1995:141).

Whitty notes that,

For the neo-liberal politicians who dominated educational policy making in Britain during much of the 1980s, social affairs are best organised according to the `general principle of consumer

sovereignty', which holds that each individual is the best judge of his or her needs and wants, and of what is in their best interests. The preference for introducing market mechanisms into education, partly from a predilection for freedom of choice as a good in itself, is also

grounded in the belief that competition produces improvements in the quality of services on offer which

in turn enhance the wealth producing potential of the economy, thereby bringing about gains for the least well off as well as for the socially advantaged (Whitty, 1994:xx).

The Neo-Conservatives

The second Radical Right strain is neo- conservatism. This embraces social and moral

authoritarianism. Its agenda is to return to some aspects of Victorian values. It espouses a `back to

basics' philosophy. Apple refers to neo- conservatives as `cultural restorationists' (Apple, 1989a;

1989b). Luminaries include Roger Scruton, Caroline (Baroness) Cox, Rhodes Boyson, Frank Palmer

38

and Ray Honeyford, who stress traditional values such as respect for authority and `the nation',

`Britishness', the values of a social elite, the importance of a common culture, that of the elite. Neo-

Conservatives seek a disciplined society, a strong government, a Britain that veers selectively between

Victoriana, and John Major's childhood recollections of a time of warm beer, cricket matches on the

village green, and golden sunsets. These ideologues criticise what they see as the destruction of

`traditional educational values', indeed, of `traditional Britain'. The Hillgate Group (1986; 1987; 1989)

in its various pamphlets calls for a reassertion of traditional teaching methods and content.

They have been strikingly influential, or, at least, predictive of government legislation, in particular on

the National Curriculum. In similar vein Rhodes Boyson (in a Sunday Times reaction to the `Three

Wise Men's Report' on Primary Education (by Alexander, Woodhead and Rose (DES, 1992) which

demonised the Plowden Report (CACE, 1967) as `The Great Betrayal'), commented,

The whole emphasis on individual learning and children discovering things for themselves was

wrong. If children could discover things for themselves, then what's the point in having schools? It destroyed the status of the teacher. If children can discover things for themselves, then the

teacher becomes a group leader rather than someone who has to pass on knowledge (Boyson, in

the Sunday Times, 1992).

The 'Three Wise Men's Report' itself had concluded that 'there is a persistent and damaging belief that

teachers must never point out when a pupil is wrong' (1992:xx). The then Secretary of State for

Education, Kenneth Clarke, responded to it by criticising,

the anti-academic, anti-intellectual eccentric views have permeated too many of our schools and must have contributed to the unacceptable variations in standards that our league tables are to

expose (Clarke 1992, in the Sunday Times, 26 Jan).

The tone of comments by Chris Woodhead the Chief Inspector of schools is clearly different, more

acerbic, and more in tune with Conservative thinking than that of his predecessors. One example is his

assertion in 1995 that 'class size does not matter' in terms of teaching effectiveness (12). This is

connected with his call for a return to more traditional, teacher centred teaching methods and

streaming or setting of pupils in both primary and secondary schools.

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The list of chapters in Dennis O'Keefe's book The Wayward Curriculum: A Cause for Parents' Concern

(1986) give a clear indication of neo-Conservative targets for removal. They include, `The Wayward

Curriculum: A Cause for Parents' Concern', `The Attack on the Culture of Quality', `English: Two

Decades of Attrition', 'English: Reducing Learning to Short-cut "Skills"', 'Religious Education:

Defending Christian Values' and 'Mixed-Ability Teaching: A Threat to Learning?'

Roger Scruton's influence and that of his proteges Frank Palmer and Ray Honeyford (Palmer, 1986;

Honeyford, 1984, 1985, 1988), has been described as seminal, (Jones, K. 1989:54- 64), not only

through Scruton's co-authorship of Hillgate Group booklets but also through his assault on anti- racism,

the acceptance of xenophobia as natural, and the assertion of a historic `Englishness' and 'Britishness'

(13). At the media level of discourse, this particular type of anti-egalitarianism or equiphobia has been

particularly pronounced - that is anti- anti- racism. Such views, set out typically by Honeyford and by

Palmer from a monoculturalist cultural nationalism, attack both multiculturalism and anti- racism.

Such monoculturalist supremacism is also gender and class based, asserting the cultural necessity of

social elitism (Lawton, 1994). Thus, for Scruton `... nations depend on the creation of new elites [and]

[T]he only way to save our education system is to spend less public money on it. Schools need to be

taken out of the public sector once and for all' (Scruton, 1990).

The Unity of the Radical Right?

In Radical Right discourse it is sometimes difficult to disentangle neo- liberal and neo- conservative

theories. This is not simply because they are usually mutually supportive. It is also because 'traditional

England' not only contained golden sunsets, stiff upper lips, dutiful marriages and workforces and a

tear in the eye for Empire. 'Traditional England' also comprised laissez- faire entrepreneurs, the

playing fields of Rugby, competitive school ´House systems` and dockers and labourers queuing up to

be chosen for work. Thus competition and individualism figure in tradition. Transportations, Trade

Unionists, Red Scares and 'Reds under the beds' are as much a part of English tradition as imperial

conquest, the Royal Family and fagging.

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At the micro-policy level, of policy towards schools, both neo- liberals and neo- conservatives have

common views on some policies, but disagree on others. For example a number of free marketeers

oppose the National Curriculum, or any state legislation for and control over the school curriculum, as

being inconsistent with the rolling back of the state (c.f. Flew, 1991; Tooley, 1996), and with the full

free-play of market forces. However,

In formal terms these two tendencies are contradictory and at points these contradictions have recognisable effects at the level of policy and action. In reality however, they generally complement each other, even to the extent of inhabiting the mind of the same individual ... Jointly they have popularised the most powerful theme of right-wing educational discourse:

that the decades long quest for equality has resulted only in the lowering of standards. Cultural analysis of what Scruton has called "the impractical utopian values that will destroy all that is most valuable in our culture", and free market assertion about the evils of state monopoly combine' in an anti-egalitarian crusade (Jones, K. 1989:38; c.f. Lawton 1994).

At the macro-policy level both seek to perpetuate the interests of capital untrammelled by strong trade

unions, professional restrictive practices, an inclusivist welfare state, and a permissive non-work-

orientated unproductive culture. `For both traditions the good society is best understood in terms of a

strong state, free economy and stable families' (Barton et al., 1994:532) See also Gamble, 1983:31-60;

Hill, 1997f). In Gamble's words, `[I]f the New right has a unity and if it deserves to be distinguished

from previous `rights' what set it apart is the combination of a traditional liberal defence of state

authority' (Gamble, 1983:28).

PART TWO: LABOUR AND ´NEW LABOUR`

6. LABOUR POLICY ON ITE 1991-97, OUT OF GOVERNMENT AND IN GOVERNMENT

As with the discussion of Conservative Party policy and government ideology, I will discuss Labour

Party and Government ideology and policy in four sections.

The first is Labour and ITE policy. The second is an ideological analysis of ´New Labour` and its

ITE policy. As part of this, I will analyse `New Labour’s’ ITE policy in terms of the extent to which

41

it is a continuation and confirmation of Conservative Government policy, the dozen Radical Right

principles, and the eighteen Radical Right themes identified in the section discussing Radical Right

ideology .

The third is a section on wider education policy. The fourth section is concerned with the Labour

Party and ideology. Here, I will highlight a number of policy decisions by the `New Labour’

leadership and Government across abroad range of policy, and engage in an ideological analysis.

The Labour Party and ITE: Introduction

Prior to the General Election of May 1997, The Labour Party's proposals for teacher education, were

set out in a series of discussion and policy documents, (Labour Party 1991a; 1991b; 1993; 1994; 1995;

together with M.P. Colin Pickthall's unofficial 1996 consultation paper). Three documents written by/

for the left wing think tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), (Tomlinson and Ross

1991; Barber and Brighouse 1992; IPPR 1993) also fed in to Labour policy making. With one

exception these nine documents can be regarded as classically social democratic (Castle 19xx) or `Old

Labour’. The exception is the 1995 official party publication, Excellence for Everyone- Labour’s

crusade to raise standards. This 1995 document, together with the Labour Government’s July 1997

White paper on Education, Excellence in Schools (DfEE, 1997) are not, as I shall proceed to

demonstrate, characteristic of social democracy, let alone of socialism. Instead they are, self-

proclaimedly `New Labour’, a very different kettle of neo-Thatcherite fish, larded with technical

proficiency and only occasionally spiced with a social democratic garnish.

Since being elected to government, Labour has initiated two new routes into teaching and has issued

Letter 1/97, the new national curriculum for what it now calls `teacher training’. One of the new routes,

the Registered Teacher Programme (RTP) replaces the Licensed Teachers Scheme, the other is the

Graduate Teacher Programme, (GTP). As for the Labour National Curriculum for ITE, it keeps most of

the Conservative Party proposals of the February 1997 Consultation Paper, while making a number of

additions and different emphases- for example giving notably more emphasis to equal opportunities

and cultural diversity.

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Pre-1997 policy on ITE

Prior to the election Labour Party policy for ITE supported the role of theory, and the role of higher

education in ITE, and made a commitment to equal opportunities as part of a national core curriculum

for teacher education (e.g. Labour Party 1991; 1994).

The 1991 policy document, Investing in Quality: Labour’s plans to reform teacher education and

training, (drawn up by Andrew Smith, then the party spokesperson on teacher education in a process in

which I was peripherally involved as an adviser), was characterised by its insistence on the value of

theory and of the place of higher education in ITE, and the value of critical thought.

The 1994 Labour policy on ITE, as set out in Opening Doors to a Learning Society, promised to:

1. Keep teaching as an all-graduate profession;2. Keep a balance in ITE `between classroom based practical experience and a theoretical understanding of the processes of learning gained in higher education institutions' (Labour Party 1994: 16);3. Keep HEI’s ìmportant role in the provision of initial teacher education' (idem) because, not to do so represents à dangerous threat to the quality of newly trained teachers, to the long term viability of higher education departments of education, and to the professional status of teaching' (idem);4. àbolish the Teacher Training Agency and restore the partnership of schools and higher education institutions' in the provision of ITE (ibid: 17);5. Set up a General Teaching Council which `will fulfil a genuinely independent role in the regulation of the teaching profession ... (re) .. the professional development of teachers' (idem);6. `widen access to teaching without diminishing levels of qualification' (idem);7. Introduce a framework National Core Curriculum for Teacher Education after consultation with interested parties' (idem).

All of the principles and policies in this 1994 policy document are acceptable to the Radical Left other

than in the sense that they are neither radical nor socialist enough. Little of it is acceptable to the

Radical Right.

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To extend the Radical Left critique of what might be termed a social democratic document, although

there was space within these seven points for a Radical Left policy interpretation, as it stood, the

Labour Party Policy did not subscribe to Radical Left, egalitarian principles. Nor did it, claim to do so.

There was nothing here, for example about a `Curriculum for Equality', nothing about changing what

is, in effect, a highly restrictive Conservative ITE national Curriculum, neither in the social

democratic/Centre-left’ policy (e.g. the 1994 and the subsequent 1996 Colin Pickthall documents,

described below), or in `New Labour' utterances on teaching and teacher education.

The pre-election (December 1995) Labour Party document Excellence for Everyone - Labour’s

crusade to raise standards- was briefer on ITE. Its main points were that it would set up a General

Teaching Council 'for regulating the teaching profession'. Labour promised to 'consult on the make- up

and role of the GTC to ensure that its membership reflects both the community as a whole as well as

the teaching profession'. Labour also proposed to transfer various functions and resources of the TTA

to the GTC.

In Excellence for Everyone: Labour’s crusade to raise standards, Labour was, for the first time in a

party policy document, expressing `concern about the lack of consistency in teacher education'. The

document achieved press prominence (and a hostile Trade Union response) because of its proposals

‘to root out bad teaching’ (pages 10-11).

However, in stark contrast to Conservative actions, Labour’s 1995 policy document said that it would

explore the idea of raising entry requirements into teaching. Finally, as with the 1994 document, in

response to the widespread concern about the diminishing role of theory and of higher education in

ITE, Labour said it,

must ensure a proper balance between theory and practice, and address the concerns about school- based training and ensure that there is a satisfactory partnership between higher education and school is in using effectively the expertise of all concerned' (Labour Party, 1995: 9-10)

44

In 1996 Colin Pickthall M.P., then a member of Labour's Education team, drew up a consultation

paper - (in which I was peripherally involved). Pickthall’s document presented, inter alia, much the

same points as the 1994 and 1995 policy statements, giving particularly forceful recognition to the

role of higher education, and of the role of theory in ITE. However, differences within the then

Labour education team between Óld Labour` and ´New Labour` became obvious over the level and

type of prescription for a teacher education national curriculum. Pickthall, presumably in a sideswipe

at the Party leadership’s comments in favour of whole class teaching methods, argued against

‘Stalinist centralism’, against prescribing content and specific teaching methods.

When, in August 1996, he publicised his draft policy document on teacher education, this was

greeted with some concern- and disclaimers- by David Blunkett’s office. Pickthall was described as

`a backbencher’, (x) coverage of the draft was described as ‘substantially inaccurate’ and it was

emphasised that David Blunkett would be producing a policy statement in Autumn 1996, after the

Party Conference. This would include ‘proposals for a Core Curriculum for Initial Teacher Training’.

The tone of `New Labour’s` new official policy can be seen from the various ex cathedra statements

on education by Blair and Blunkett during 1996-97 and in the 1996 general policy document `New

Labour, New Life for Britain’. The Guardian´s analysis of this document was that, `Blair lays ghost

of old Labour’. This policy document announced that ‘we favour fundamental reform of teaching

training’ with emphasis on teaching strategies and pupil discipline.xxx??? Blair’s speeches have

suggested that the Teacher Training Agency should ensure that trainee teachers ‘understand the

balance of advantage and disadvantage of mixed ability teaching and the alternative approaches.’

This is in the context of his claim that ‘in government we will start from a general presumption in

favour of grouping according to ability or attainment unless a school can demonstrate that it can meet

the heavy, demands of a mixed ability approach' (Times Educational Supplement, 14 June 1996).

All in all, the `New Labour’ message being given by Blair and Blunkett prior to the election was that,

the Labour Party intends to launch a back to basics drive in the classroom if it wins the next election. More emphasis on basic skills, classroom discipline and whole class teaching will become part of a drastic overhaul of teacher training. The plan has been sparked by the

45

party’s dissatisfaction with the quality of newly qualified teachers (Times Educational Supplement, 31 May 1996).

`New Labour’ Government policy on ITE

Ńew Labour`s` two new Employment Based Routes into Teaching

Labour’s two new proposed schemes for attracting over-24s are the Graduate Teacher Programme

(GTP) and the Registered Teacher Programme (RTP) (TTA, 1997j). They retain the same features as

those proposed by the Conservative Government in October 1996 and March 1997, other than in two

respects. These are `firstly that trainees should be at least 24 years old unless they are already fully-

qualified to teach in another country; and secondly that those who are not already graduates should

study for a degree while they train’ (TTA, 1997?:letter).

The GTP, which the Ńew Labour` Government hopes to introduce from January 1998, will require,

if implemented, between one term and one year’s school-based training. The RTP is intended to

enable non-graduates, who have successfully completed the equivalent of at least two years’ full time

higher education, to take a course lasting between one and two years in order to gain both a degree

and Qualified Teacher Status. It is intended to replace the Licensed Teacher Scheme, introduced in

1988 by the Conservative Government, and the Overseas Trained Teacher Scheme, introduced in

1994. Unlike the LT scheme, the RTP scheme would require its graduates to be just that, graduates.

Òn the RTP, candidates will also be studying for a degree and will not be awarded QTS until they

have successfully completed their studies’ (TTA, 1997:3) (as assessed by the degree awarding

institution).

In a departure from Conservative Party policy, the consultation document on the GTP and RTP

(TTA, 1997), stresses that ´the same standards are required for the award of QTS whether trainees

follow an employment-based route or any other course of Initial Teacher training (ITT)` (TTA,

1997:1).

46

These Labour proposals can be criticised on four grounds.

Firstly, in a move which perpetuates the exclusion of higher education from a part of ITE, the

`Recommending Body’ (RB) for organising and running the scheme can, as with the Conservative

Government’s SCITT schemes, be a school or consortium of schools with no HE input in terms of

course design, validation and monitoring. The consultation document also specifically invites, or

suggests that `organisations interested in the scheme may include not only accredited providers other

HEIs and LEAs but also educational employment agencies, charitable institutions and other

educational bodies’ (idem:2).

Secondly, the requirement that overseas trained teachers have a recognised degree in Education or a

degree plus a teacher training year leaves a problem which may be discriminatory, indeed structural

racism, for some applicants such as some supply teachers without QTS, bilingual teaching assistants

and ancillary workers. The problem is that the assessment of course equivalence (referred to in idem:

para 30) carried out by the British Council may be an unjust and an out of date assessment. Rather

than apply this one-off assessment of qualification and suitability, such applicants could advisedly be

assessed against the standards proposed for the ITE standards- in the same way that Non-Standard

Entry applicants for undergraduate ITE courses have their suitability assessed via a portfolio of work

and experiences. In my own experiences as a B.Ed. and PGCE course admissions tutor, I have

frequently felt the injustice of non-recognition of what would appear to be satisfactory sets of

qualifications and teaching experience. For example, a number of teachers from Kenya or Pakistan

have had their qualifications and experience automatically regarded as A level equivalent. Such

applicants have been rejected for the PGCE course and have been require to study for a three or four

year undergraduate ITE course. In some of these cases this decision has seemed, to me,

inappropriate.

Thirdly, the GTP/RTP document is too permissive when it suggests that such trainees `may profitably

experience teaching in at least one other school` (than their training school) (idem:4, para 22-23).

Student teachers need to benefit from a variety of school ethoses and approaches in order to evaluate

47

the effectiveness of their own and of others´ and of schools´ practices. These same points were made

in relation to the Licensed Teachers´ Scheme, and, to an extent, the Articled Teachers´ Scheme (Hill.

1989; 1990; 1991,1993?).

Fourthly, the GTP proposals can be criticised, again, as with the LT and AT schemes, and the SCITT

schemes, as minimising the opportunity for developing HEI based critical reflection. Although the

new document Standards for the Award of Qualified Teacher Status is, quite rightly, to apply to the

GTP and RTP routes into teaching, there is the particular danger with school-based routes of

denigrating, denying or omitting the critical, comparative and theoretical aspects of Initial Teacher

Education.

Ńew Labour´s` National Curriculum for ITE

With respect to the National Curriculum for Teacher Training, Ńew Labour` has retained most of the

Conservative proposals, but has made a number of significant changes. These are in the areas of the

overall nature of teaching ability; the recognition of cultural diversity and underachievement; and the

recognition of the variety of ways of teaching reading- that it is not just phonics.

I will now comment on Ńew Labour`s` July 1997 National Curriculum for what it terms Ìnitial

Teacher Training`, in the same order in which I commented, above, on the then Conservative

Government proposals of February 1997.

The Ńew Labour` Government criteria and standards for ITE are contained in four documents. These

are, Training Curriculum and Standards for New Teachers: a Consultation Summary, (TTA, 1997f),

Standards for the Award of Qualified Teacher Status (TTA, 1997g) and its accompanying documents,

Initial Teacher Training National Curriculum for Primary English, (TTA, 1997h) and Initial Teacher

Training National Curriculum for Primary Mathematics (TTA, 1997i).

As with my comments on the Conservative documents, I want now to comment on the `Standards´ and

the ´Primary English` documents, highlighting `New Labour’s amendments to the Conservative

48

proposals as well as the continuity between the two sets of criteria/requirements/Standards. I will

conclude by critiquing Ńew Labour` policy and ideology.

Unlike the Conservative document, Consultation on Standards for the Award of Qualified Teacher

Status, the Ńew Labour` version does:

1. confirm degree status for all teachers;

2. emphasise that teaching is an intellectually and managerially challenging profession. A less

mechanistic view of teaching is presented than the Conservative proposals, and Ńew Labour`

avoids the implication in the Conservative document that discrete assessment of each competency

standard would be required. The Ńew Labour` document states that,

Professionalism… implies more than meeting a series of discrete standards. It is necessary to consider the standards as a whole to appreciate the creativity, commitment, energy and enthusiasm which teaching demands, and the intellectual and managerial skills required of the effective professional. While trainees must be assessed against all the standards during their ITT course, there is no intention to impose a methodology on providers for the assessment of trainees against the standards (TTA, 1997f:2)

3. is more vocal on equal opportunities issues. The Conservative document did include standards:

D a iii, which required student teachers to have a working knowledge and understanding of ánti-

discrimination legislation`;

B2 k xiii, requiring student teachers to set ´high expectations for all pupils notwithstanding individual

differences, including gender, and cultural and linguistic backgrounds`;

and B2 l which required student teachers to be ´familiar with the Code of Practice on the

identification and assessment of special educational needs` and associated matters.

Ńew Labour` goes further. As well as extending the first of the standards above, and keeping the latter

two standards above, as the same numbered standards B2 k xiii, B2 l, it adds to the Conservative

proposals in a number of ways. These are as follows.

49

Standard 2 a v (?) requires student teachers to be able to identify ´pupils who are not yet fluent in

English`. The word yet is an addition to the Conservative formulation, and is a recognition of the

needs, and, perhaps the advantages, of children/ school students whose English is emergent.

Standard D a ii specifies, inter alia, knowledge not just of the requirement that student teachers ´have a

working knowledge and understanding of teachers legal liabilities and responsibilities relating to

….anti-discrimination legislation`, but specifies the Race Relations Act 1976, and the Sex

Discrimination Act 1975.

Standard B3 D d requires that student teachers ´are committed to ensuring that every pupil is given the

opportunity to achieve their potential and meet the high expectations set for them`. Standard B3 D g

specifies that student teachers need to ´recognise that learning takes place inside and outside the school

context…..`. Both of these standards are additions to Conservative proposals. They require, and create

spaces for, the inclusion within the ITE curriculum of the sociological and political contexts of

schooling.

4. It is not silent on the necessity for student teachers to know about child development, child and

adolescent psychology, and social psychology. The Conservatives had included the following:

standard, 2 d, which required teachers to be able to plan opportunities to contribute to pupils´ personal,

spiritual; moral, social and cultural development;

standard 2 k, which required student teachers to be able to exploit ´opportunities to contribute to the

quality of pupils´ wider educational development, including their personal, spiritual, moral, social and

cultural development`.

Labour has retained these, in renumbered form as standards B2 d andB2 k 12 respectively. But it has

added a further standard. This is (Secondary standard A1 xi and Primary standard A2 c), that,

those to be awarded Qualified Teacher Status must, when assessed, demonstrate that they: Understand how pupils´ learning… is affected by their physical, intellectual, emotional and social development

50

The second of the two sets of documents that I wish to compare are the Conservative and `New

Labour` versions of the Initial Teacher Training national Curriculum for Primary English.

Unlike the Conservative document, Ńew Labour` does not,

5. Place an almost exclusive emphasis on phonics as a strategy for teaching reading, other than at word

level. As the Ńew Labour` document (TTA, 1997f) states,

The emphasis on phonics as the fundamental basis for learning to read at word level has been retained. Additional material has been added, however, to stress the importance of using syntactic and contextual strategies at sentence and text level (TTA, 1997f:9).

The Conservative document virtually ignored contextual and syntactic strategies for teaching reading

at sentence and at text level. The method of teaching reading clearly and almost exclusively prioritised

in the Conservative proposals is not appropriate to that extent when dealing with a non-phonetic

language such as English. The approach suggested in the Conservative document, in standards A1 c

and d reading was decontextualised and assumed to comprise a series of segmented skills, taking no

note of its unitary character. The Ńew Labour` document does, for example, include a standard, B5 b,

Trainees must be taught the importance of building pupils´ skills in English from word level, to sentence level, to text level`, and, an important addition here, ás well as from the text “down” i.e. starting with the text and analysing its component parts at sentence level and word level` (TTA, 1997h:B5 b)

7. `NEW LABOUR’ ITE POLICY AND IDEOLOGY, AND ITS CONTINUITY WITH

CONSERVATIVE POLICY AND IDEOLOGY;

The Ńew Labour` policy makes the above changes to the Conservative proposals, and thereby

legitimates and validates- indeed, requires- a more multicultural and contextual ITE curriculum, when

compared to the Conservative proposals of February 1997. They thereby give more space, potentially,

for radical, egalitarian interpretation, and course design and implementation, than would have the

Conservative proposals. (There are, of course, various radical critiques of multiculturalism which

51

suggest that it exoticises diverse cultures. See, for example, Cole, 199x. For a brief discussion, and

espousal of radical multiculturalism, see Hessari and Hill, 1989, Ch.2).

However, when compared to the CATE Criteria of 1894 and 1989, and when set in the context of what

could have been done to promote critical reflection and a more egalitarian curriculum for ITE, the

Ńew Labour` proposals are modest indeed- a catalogue of missed opportunities. The Conservative

proposals, based as they are on a neo-Conservative cultural nationalism and authoritarianism and a

neo-liberal competitive, individualist anti-egalitarianism, have been adopted, almost in toto, by the

Ńew Labour` government.

There is still, in Ńew Labour` policy, very little recognition of the needs and advantages of those

whose Home Language is not standard English, such as, for example, Haringey Black English, or

Bengali, or Portuguese. In standards A1 (the numbering of these two standards are the same in both

Conservative and Ńew Labour` documents), the use of non-standard English, and of Home Language,

is alluded to but is not spelt out.

These five standards are:

As part of all courses trainees must be taught the importance of ensuring that pupils progress from:

A1 a their implicit knowledge of how language works, to understand it explicitly so they can evaluate how they and others read and write;A1 b using predominantly informal and personal forms of language in both writing and talking, to being able to select and use formal and impersonal formsA1 c a limited awareness of audience, to writing and speech which shows adaptation to different audiences;A1 d their use of non-conventional writing, to the use of conventional letter formation, spelling and grammar; A1 e reading, writing and speaking where fluency is dependent on adult intervention, to independent control of a variety of forms of language.

As noted above, with reference to the Conservative proposals, in metalinguistic terms it can be very

useful to have a detailed knowledge and use of more than one language. Both Conservative and Ńew

Labour` documents fail to encourage to bilingual (or, as I discovered in my teaching in Tower

52

Hamlets, trilingual or quadrilingual) pupils to continue to use their own domestic language. This is

despite the social and cognitive advantages of so doing. In neither the Conservative nor the ´New

Labour`document is there any reference to the advantages of pupils´ exposure to oral language in their

mother tongue. If a child has little command of English, then it is in the mother tongue that such

children will be exposed to oral language, with the advantages that brings for E2L children to develop

cognitively and to catch-up.

With respect to ´New Labour` policy, in neither the Standards for the Award of Qualified Teacher

Status nor the Initial Teacher Training Curriculum for Primary English is there recognition given to

the needs and the strengths of children/ school students with English as an Additional Language. This

is still the case, despite the revisions to the sections concerning pupils not yet fluent in English.

The standards set out above, while not explicitly denying or forbidding the use of the home/ domestic/

mother tongue language, do miss the opportunity to note the potential of using minority ethnic group

parents, or, indeed, working class parents` (or grandparents´ or relatives´ experiences, thereby

(potentially) valuing aspects of the experiences of those non-standard, or minority ethnic subcultures.

(This is not to deny that radical left teachers will interpret the above permissively and progressively,

and continue to use the pedagogies mentioned here).

There is no requirement set out for student teachers concerning First Language Acquisition (FLA),

Second Language Acquisition (SLA), or bilingualism. Student teachers need to know the theories

underlying these, and to be able to evaluate them in terms of their usefulness and effects. With regard

to student teachers needing to be able ´to identify pupils who are not yet fluent in English`, student

teachers need more than that. They need to know where to get help, in order to give targeted and

positive support.

Another example of missed opportunities is with respect to standard D f. This concerns teachers´

pastoral responsibilities. There is no mention here of equality or equal opportunities. Such a mention,

as part of a list to extend the reference to ´bullying` would have served to give greater legitimacy to

these issues.

53

What is startling about the Conservative and the Ńew Labour` policies is the extent to which they are

similar. To take one final, and telling, example, both Conservative and Ńew Labour` standards include

the requirement that student teachers must demonstrate that they can,

Use teaching methods which sustain the momentum of pupils´ work and keep all pupils engaged through: i stimulating intellectual curiosity, communicating enthusiasm for the subject being

taught, fostering pupils´ enthusiasm and maintaining pupils´ motivation (TTA, 1997g:7)

There is nothing here about extending from intellectual curiosity into critical reflection, the ability to

intellectually discriminate, evaluate, critique. Indeed, the word ćritical(ly)` appears only once in that

Ńew Labour`s ` Standards for the Award of Qualified Teacher Status. This is in standard B2 n, that

student teachers should évaluate their own teaching critically and use this to improve their

effectiveness` (TTA, 1997g:10). Without standards- and thereby validation requirements- being

included which relate to theoretical issues- such as the economic, political and social context of

schooling and education, the (competing) aims and philosophy of different historical and contemporary

schooling and education systems, the comparative evaluation of different theories of child and

adolescent development- and associated practices in schools, then an educated and well-informed

critical reflection on one´s own and other´s classroom and school practice becomes very much less

likely.

This lack of critical reflection applies, as a whole to Ńew Labour`s` substantial adoption of a Radical

Right creation of the new National Curriculum for ´Teacher Training`. It is highly symbolic that Ńew

Labour` has now started to continue with the Conservative tradition of dispensing with the term

´teacher education` and, likr the Conservatives, have replaced it by ´teacher training`. (The 1994

Opening Doors to a Learning Society was still using the term `teacher education and training’).

The Ideological Positioning of Ńew Labour`s Policy on Initial Teacher Education

54

In order to ascertain Ńew Labour`s` ideological position on ITE it is instructive to list the twelve

policy positions of the Radical Right on ITE and the eighteen themes, and to identify the degree of

congruence between `New Labour` and the Radical Right. In doing so, it is also instructive to

identify social democratic and Radical Left positions on these positions and themes. (As noted

earlier, there are a variety of Radical Left perspectives on and policies for ITE. The main features,

and mutual criticism of each other, is contained in Hill, 1991?)

The radical Right, Ńew Labour`, Social Democratic and Radical Left positions can be expressed

diagrammatically. In situating Ńew Labour` I have considered not only what the various Ńew

Labour` speeches and policies indicate or require, but also what Ńew Labour` is silent on- and

thereby what it presumably accepts in the Radical Right restructuring of ITE.

What becomes readily apparent from the two charts is the proximity of Ńew Labour` to the Radical

Right. This is the justification for describing Ńew Labour` policy and ideology in relation to ITE as

Thatcherite with minor social democratic amendments.

55

Table showing Policy Positions in ITE

RADICAL RIGHT

´NEW LABOUR`

SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC

RADICAL LEFT

1. Pro-Emphasis on Practical Classroom and Discipline Skills

2. Anti-Progressivism/ Child-centredness

X ?X?

3. Pro-Teacher as Authority Figure X XX

4a. Pro-Traditional Curriculum Content and Methods

O XX

4b. Pro-Traditional Morality O? X? X XX

5. Anti-Changing Society/Pro- Status Quo

X XX

6 a Anti- Multiculturalism, XX XX XX

6b Anti-anti-racism O?X? X XX

7. Priority for Subject Knowledge and PracticalSkills

O O

8. Anti-Educational Theoryin ITE

X XX

9. Anti-HEI Involvement in ITE

O XX XX

10. Pro-TotallySchool Based ITE Routes

XX XX

11. Pro Cutting Cost of ITE O XX

12. Pro-Regulation of ITE via Competencies

X X XX

Table showing Endorsement of Themes in ITE

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RADICAL RIGHT

´NEW LABOUR`

SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC

RADICAL LEFT

1. Pro-Privatisation X XX

2. Pro-Competition X XX

3. Pro-Market X XX

4. Pro-Cost Reduction X XX

5. Pro-Choice X XX

6. Pro-Tradition O XX

7. Pro-Back to Basics ? XX

8. Pro-Nation ? O XX

9. Anti-discussion of ´Race` O X XX

10. Pro-Authority ? O XX

11. Pro-Control X? X?X

12. Pro-Elite ? X XX

13. Pro-Hierarchy ? X XX

14. Anti-public services X XX XX

15. Anti-liberal progressivism XX X

16. Anti-socialist/Marxism XX

17. Anti-theory of 15 and 16 XX XX

18. Anti-theory of education O XX XX

KEY

8. `NEW LABOUR’ EDUCATION POLICY

The ideological orientation of the Labour Party in its education policy, as in its wider policy has

historically been social democratic (Benn and Chitty, 1996, Hillcole Group, 1997), although some,

such as Lawton., consider that,

attempts by the Labour Party since 1945 to develop a comprehensive and coherent set of policies on education...show that far from being dominated by ideology the Party has

suffered from a lack of ideology (1992:30).

57

However, while there may not have been consistency, Labour policy on education since 1945,does

appear, broadly, and sometimes contradictorily, to accord with a number od defining social democratic

principles. Thus, Labour's pre-Blair 1994 policy statement on education, Opening Doors to a Learning

Society, asserted five key principles. They were àccess for all' viz. èducation should be about opening

doors and keeping them open as wide as possible. At the moment too much educational provision is

concerned with excluding people and providing a prize for the few' (Labour Party 1994: 4). The second

principle is `continuity' viz. Èducation is a lifelong process and it should not be terminated at arbitrary

points. Individuals must be able to continue in, and return to, a flexible system of education over the

course of their lives' (idem: 5). The other three principles were, `quality and equality', viz. `there must

be a fair distribution of resources, countering disadvantage not reinforcing privilege. Priority in

education provision must be assessed according to need' (idem: 4). The principles of àccountability'

and `partnership' suggested that èducation services belong to the whole community' (not the Minister

or unelected quangos), and `central government should create the framework for education whilst the

local delivery of services must be the responsibility of those who are democratically and professionally

accountable' (idem: 5)

The section on `Schools make all the difference' said that `schools must ... work to remove barriers to

equal opportunities'. This means that schools must take on board ìssues of ethnicity and sex ... Local

Authorities should draw up a statement of aims on multi-cultural education' (idem: 12).

All of those principles are acceptable, in varying degrees, to both liberal- progressive and to Radical

Left ideologies of education, even if, for the Radical left they are not radical or socialist enough.

On the school curriculum, the 1994 document criticised the unduly prescriptive nature of the

curriculum and gives status to cross- curricular teaching, `the curriculum should support the physical,

social and intellectual development of the child through cross- curricular teaching and specific subject

teaching as appropriate' (idem: 15). It also used the word `critical' regarding education, thus,

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the national curriculum should encourage critical understanding of the responsibilities of citizenship, of national and international relationships, of social, political, and economic arrangements ... while not becoming and instrument of indoctrination. It should not be prescribed by the Secretary of State ... it will apply to all schools, including those in the independent sector (idem: 15).

However, despite this potential radicalism of the 1994 document, the gloss given to it by Michael

Barber (one of Tony Blair's closest advisors on education) stressed Blair's criticism of the traditional

idea of comprehensive schooling (because `it did not come to terms with the diversity and flexibility of

provision needed to meet the diverse needs and talent of all our people').(Barber 1994:xx). This was to

prove a forerunner of a number of sharp changes to traditional 'Old Labour' policy on both schooling

and on teacher education.

Press Reception of the December 1995 education policy statement, Excellence for Everyone:

Labour's Crusade to Raise Standards, routinely noted the difference between 'Old Labour' and 'New

Labour' on the one hand, and the similarities between Conservatives and 'New Labour' in respect of

policies on Teachers, on Tests, on Failing Schools and, to a lesser extent, on Local Education

Authorities (e.g. Carvel, J. 1995). The Times Educational Supplement was not alone in noting that

'both Labour and Conservatives declare education their national priority. Many of their policies also

now bear striking similarities` (T.E.S., 1995). According to Hackett, a mark of how far Labour had

shifted by 1995 was that Dr. Madsen Pirie of the right wing Adam Smith Institute can claim that the

(Labour) party has taken bold steps in adapting its policies on the need to close failing schools and its

stress on the need for parental responsibility.` (Hackett, 1995, in an article headlined `Labour accused

of "teacher- bashing"').

The then Shadow Education Secretary David Blunkett, in another reversal of `Old Labour' policy,

refused to commit a Labour Government to comprehensivisation - i.e. abolition of grammar schools,

a refusal maintained since then. This acceptance of a hierarchical diversity in schooling created, or

exposed major divisions in the Party- as exemplified, for example, in the reactions surrounding the

decisions of Labour Leader Tony Blair (in 1995) to send his son to an opted out school and of

shadow cabinet member Harriet Harman (in 1996) to send one of her sons to a selective grammar

school.

59

Since the election, the hackles of teachers, (a massive majority of whom had voted Labour), were

raised by Blair’s publication, days after his victory, of a `hit-list’ of 18 `Failing Schools’- all of them

in areas of high social deprivation. The `naming and shaming’ policy was exacerbated by the new

Government’s decision to keep in office the widely excoriated Chief inspector of Schools, Chris

Woodhead, regarded very widely as the chief `teacher basher’ of recent years, albeit in conjunction

with the appointment of `New Labour’ educationalist Tim Brighouse as co-ordinator of a School

Improvement task force.

The July 1997 Labour government White Paper Excellence in Schools (DfEE, 1997) promises

education for all four-year olds whose parents want it, greater intervention in the Primary curriculum,

with an hour per day for literacy and numeracy, school performance league tables to include `value

added’ information as well as raw data for each school, a furtherance of specialist schools, fast-

tracking for the brightest Secondary school pupils, an end to mixed ability teaching, replacing it with

`setting’ by ability for different subjects, compulsory home-school contracts and homework, and

increased supervisory powers for local education authorities, emasculated by the previous

government.

What `New Labour’ will not do- and what is patently missing from the White Paper- is to use the

language of equality and implement egalitarian policies. As Richard Hatcher puts it,

'It is striking that in Blair's 'Realising Our True Potential' speech, the word 'inequality' in any sense, does not occur at all. For Blair, Labour's educational aim now is 'raising standards for all'

and while it is emphasises that this applies particularly to the disadvantaged, there is no implication that it will entail reducing inequalities between social classes in education. It is in

the sense that the use of the word 'equality' in Diversity and Excellence should be understood: not as a more radical notion of equality, but as the limited goal of greater fairness than is

offered by Conservative Education Policy. (1994:xx).

Hatcher notes that the Labour Party (in, for example, its 1994 Green Consultation Paper on Education

`is extremely weak on the issue of tackling inequalities of gender, "race" and class .... it assimilates the

issue of social class inequalities into the general rubric of raising standards' (Hatcher 1994). It is

insufficiently egalitarian, having turned its back even on its rhetoric, in its 1976 Programme, that,

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Òur programme is founded on the principles of democracy and socialism. At its head is a basic socialist priority: to bring about a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of power and wealth in favour of working people and their families' (Labour Party 1976: 10).

Hatcher quotes 'Cohen's (1994) observation that in its quest to occupy the supposed middle group of

British politics, Labour is abandoning even its traditional moderate goals. It represents an important

accommodation to conservative education discourse of the 1980s.' He quotes Walter Secada,

describing the similar situation in education in the US, says that 'equity has become little more than

trickle down excellence' (Secada 1989: 3) where 'the original concern for the education of women,

minorities and individuals from lower socio- economic background was submerged to a concern for

improving education for 'everyone' (ibid: 2).

A similar comment is appropriate for Labour’s 1997 White Paper, and, indeed, to `New Labour’

education and wider policy (see, e.g. Hillcole Group, 1997:6-9, in a section entitled, `New Labour:

How new a policy?).

8. `NEW LABOUR’ POLICY AND IDEOLOGY.

`New Labour’- Labour’s Changing Ideology In The 1990s

Tony Blair and `New Labour’ have been variously depicted in terms of their political ideology in

both press coverage and books since 1995. The analyses of `New Labour’s’ positions range from

describing it as ùpdated social democracy’ (Gray, 1996, see also Footnote 17, Marquand, 1991,and

see Jones, 1996:154));`Liberalism’ (White, 1996), the `Radical Centre’ (Blair, 1997); Ćentre-Right`

(Tribune, 1997); `right of centre´ (Benn, 1995; Livingstone 1997); a combination of Thatcherite

economics with social democratic political radicalism (Marquand, 1997, neo-liberal (Heffernan,

1997) and `Thatcherite` (Foot, 1997). For Shaw, in The Labour Party Since 1945 (1996), Labour’s

position is `post-revisionist social democracy’ (1996:103), in which Labour’s ideological revision has

involved the `dilution or renunciation of Keynesian social democratic tenets (ibid:201).

Mike Cole and I have described it as ńeo-Thatcherite` (Cole and Hill, 1997), and the analysis of this

paper is that it is neo-liberal with social democrat moments. In the 1997 Hillcole Group book

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Rethinking Education and Democracy: a socialist alternative for the twenty first century , we,

together with the Hillcole Group, suggest that,

Labour policy offers a soothing scenario, as in the economy at large: socio-economic change of the degree and kind required to end polarisation and economic security by means that are wholly `benign’ and involve no real change or fundamental challenge to economic policy or social system…..emphasis on the market, at the core of conservative policy on education, accentuates inequalities. Unfortunately, a change in government has yet to produce any definite alternative in the overall sense- other than promises of better management’ of the existing setup along with exhortation to serve the many and not the few’ (Hillcole Group, 1997: 6-8).

What `New Labour’ is not being accused of, other than by the Conservative Party and the Radical

Right, (e.g. see Tooley, 1997), is of being either social democrat or socialist. Tudor Jones’

discussion of `New Labour’s’ ideology in Remaking the Labour Party: from Gaitskell to Blair

(1996) discusses a number of varying interpretations of the Labour Party’s ideological position under

Blair. However Jones places these various interpretations within the context of `New Labour’s’

abandonment of both

Social Democracy and Socialism

The main principles of social democracy are, according to Heffernan, full employment, the welfare

state, redistributive taxation as a positive social good, and what he calls `a mixed pseudo-Keynesian

economy’. Heffernan disagrees with those who see `New Labour’ as the natural successor to the

social democracy of Anthony Crosland and Hugh Gaitskell , with their belief in egalitarianism, (in

the sense of more equality), progressive taxation, the redistribution of wealth and state intervention

(Heffernan, 1997). Gray adds `support for and co-operation with a strong Labour movement as the

principal protectors of workers’ interests’ (Gray, 199x)

Hattersley quotes from Tony Crosland’s (1956) The Future of Socialism to encapsulate what he calls

democratic socialism (but which can more commonly be seen as social democracy) as demanding more

equality of outcome- `equality of opportunity, though it leads to the most admirable distribution of

intelligence, is not enough’. Crosland did not believe in a meritocracy, but `the distribution of rewards

62

and privileges so as to diminish the degree of class stratification, the injustices of large inequalities,

and the collective discontents which come from too great a dispersal of rewards’ (Hattersley, 1996).

Ian Aitken depicts the difference between social democracy and socialism as, in the first case a

`limited kind of egalitarianism- which was to be delivered via the tax and benefit system’ (social

democrats such as Roy Hattersley), and those (socialists) who believed that because inequality sprang

from the private ownership of capital, it required extensive public ownership to correct it, (Aitken,

1997). Public or collective ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange is part of

the programme of socialist and Marxist parties in contemporary Britain such as the Socialist party, the

Socialist Workers Party and the Socialist Labour Party. A number of books set out basic principles and

policies of socialism from a variety of different perspectives. From an SWP perspective there is Leon

Trotsky, Where is Britain Going (1970), Paul Foot, The Case for socialism: What the Socialist Workers

Party Stands For (1990); John Rees, The ABC of Socialism (1994). From a Democratic Socialist

perspective there is for example, Hilary Wainwright, Labour: a Tale of Two Parties (1987), David

Coates, The Labour Party and the struggle for Socialism (1975), and the writings of Tony Benn (e.g.

Arguments for Socialism,1979). From a `New Labour’ perspective, there is Tony Wright and Matt

Carter, The People’s Party: the History of the Labour Party (1997). More theoretical academic

analyses are in Geoffrey Foote, The Labour Part’s Political Thought: a History (199x), Henry Pelling,

The Origins of the Labour Party, ((19xx), and Martin Smith and Joanna Spear, The Changing Labour

Party (1992).

With respect to teacher education, at the conclusion of this paper I set out a series of radical left-

socialist- principles for education, principles which have a resonance for wider policy.

Paul Foot, and the Socialist Workers Party of which he is a member, are not alone in suggesting that

this is now 'a Labour Party Thatcher can be proud of', that,

'only one set of politicians still believes in Thatcherism on principle. They sit on the Labour front bench. As every day brings more news of free market disasters, Labour changes an old policy or invents a new one to prove its commitment to the free market. As a result, it is hard to find a single issue which divides Labour from the Tories' (Foot 1996: 11).

63

Similar analysis is extended in (the SWP) Cliff and Gluckstein’s The Labour Party: a Marxist History

(1996), suggesting that `New Labour’ is more right-wing than at any other time in its history. While it

has always been a `capitalist workers’ party’ (p.2), now it has abandoned reformism and is attempting

to stifle such aspirations in a working class wedded to reformism’ (p. 418).

Since his election as Labour leader in 1995, Tony Blair has gone out of his way to recreate the Labour

Party as 'New Labour', as opposed to 'Old Labour' party which combined socialists and social

democrats. Thus Clause 4 of the Labour Party constitution committing the Party to collective

ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange has been abolished (see Cliff and

Gluckstein, 1997), and across a whole range of policies the Labour Party has been adopting what

regular issues of 'Tribune' and 'New Statesman and Society' (14) - as well as the popular/ tabloid and

the broadsheet press - have seen, prior to, during and since the election, as Thatcherite ideology,

leading to numerous press articles during the 1997 General Election campaign noting that `Similar

policies leave voters baffled’ (Wainwright, 1997), and Steve Bell’s cartoons in The Guardian such as

that of 10 April depicting Tony Blair’s slogan as `I can’t believe I’m not Tory’ (Bell, 1997).

What might be regarded as an unofficial manifesto for and theoretical underpinning of 'New

Labourism', The Blair Revolution, (Mandelson and Liddle 1996) appears to its left critics (e.g. Hatcher

1995; Benn 1995; Cole 1996; Hattersley 1996a; b; Cliff and Gluckstein, 1996; Hill and Cole 1997b;

Hillcole Group 1997; McPherson 1996; Rostron 1996a; b; Socialist Teachers Alliance 196a; b;) as well

as non- left observers (e.g. The Independent on Sunday 1996; The Sun 1996) to have moved very far

onto Centrist and, indeed, neo- or post-Thatcherite territory. (Perryman’s The Blair Agenda (1996)

is, like Mandelson and Liddle, one of a number of apologias for `New Labourism’ , stressing the

defunct nature of socialism).

The Labour Party has shifted to the right to an extent when Roy Hattersley, formerly deputy leader of

the Party, traditionally associated with the right of the Party, is now attacking Labour's education

policy, and , indeed, policy in general, from a left perspective, arguing that the ideological lodestar of

any Labour policy should be whether or not it will lead to `equality of outcome' (Hattersley 1996),

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and, throughout 1997 has been arguing in favour of èquality of outcome’ as opposed to the èquality

of opportunity’ (Hattersley, 1997a; b; c), argued for, for example, by Gordon Brown (Brown, 1996;

1997. See also the discussion in the letters pages, Guardian, 1997.).

Together with Mike Cole, I have suggested that,

to accuse `New Labour’ of ideological vacuity is incorrect. 'New Labour' was coined as part of an orchestrated campaign to distance the Party from its socialist roots and to establish an unequivocal pro-capitalist base for itself (hence the crucial importance, for Blair, described by Lady Thatcher as 'probably the most formidable Labour leader since Hugh Gaitskell' (The Sun, 21 July 1995)), of abandoning the anti-capitalist Clause IV from the Party Constitution (Cole and Hill 1997:xx)

Jones (1996), Cliff and Gluckstein, (1996) and Perryman, (1996) discuss this emblematic shift in the

Labour Party’s ideology, with varying degrees of approbation (Perryman), and disapprobation (Cliff

and Gluckstein). Jones views it as `the culmination of a revisionist project within the party (p. 149), `by

April 1995 Labour’s acceptance of th market economy had been officially legitimized by the rewriting

of Clause IV in terms which both celebrated `the enterprize of the market’ and `the rigour of

competition’ and removed any trace of commitment, however imprecise or symbolic, to wholesale

public ownership’ (p.154).

The pro-Labour Party, socialist weekly Tribune has regularly depicted `New Labour’ a party of the

Centre-Right (e.g. the editorial of 14 Feb. 1997) suggesting, prior to the election, that,

`New Labour is not so much Centre-Left as Centre-Right. As yet not a lot of people know that…. The 1997 general election will be characterised by two parties who believe,

albeit to a differing extent, in the primacy of the free market and who are engaged, as (the then Conservative M.P.) John Biffen observed …ìn a consensus “more profound than the

Butskellism of the fifties”. There is now no major political party prepared to argue for a progressive, redistributive tax system, increased powers for trade unions, an end to selective education or…monetary union. When it comes to defence, they all agree that we need

Trident. When it comes to crime, they all know that they have to be tougher’ (Tribune, 14 Feb. 1997)

Such a view is not restricted to the Left. As the centrist Independent on Sunday newspaper put it,

prior to the election,

In education too, Labour's language is almost entirely Tory language: choice, standards, and weeding out of incompetent teachers) are the central concepts.'

'Hardly any of the developments of the past 17 years will be reversed, not even those, such as rail privatisation, that will come into effect with the Government's last dying gasp. Labour

promises to tinker on the edges, changing the mechanisms for subsidising rail, giving opted-

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out schools a new name. The Tories promise to press on with their own agenda: a grammar school in every town, competition in water supply. Some of these ideas may be absurd, but the language in which they are expressed has been so unchallenged for so long

that Labour finds it hard to contest them with any conviction. (Independent on Sunday, 14 April 1996).

In his speeches both prior to and following his election victory, Tony Blair has constantly alluded to

some new middle ground, `the Radical Centre’, by eliding aspects of both Old Left and New Right

policy. However this is a smoke screen to hide the real ideological position held by New Labour.

Tony Blair’s declaration in Hayman Island to Rupert Murdoch and the world, that '[t]he era of the

grand ideologies, all encompassing, all pervasive, total in their solutions- and often dangerous - is

over' (1995a:12. See also Cole, 1997a; b ). This postmodernist assertion is unvonvincing-

euphemising (for Blair) the end of socialism, thereby acquiescing with conservative hegemony (Cole

and Hill, 1995; 1996).

It is significant that Blair immediately followed his 'end of ideology' commitment to Murdoch with

the reassurance that 'the battle between market and public sector is over' (1995a:12), signalling that

although `New Labour’ is not ideologically committed to continue privatising anything which moves,

he is on the same side as the conservatives as far as a general acceptance of the centrality of the 'free

market' is concerned. Indeed it is not just market capitalism on which there is all- Party agreement

(indicated for example in policy terms by `New Labour's’ decision to retain the major utilities in

private hands- to take absolutely nothing back into public control). When one looks at other major

policy issues - low levels of taxation with no major increase in public expenditure, the bulk of

immigration legislation and of anti-trade union legislation, a crackdown on 'welfare fraud', the major

part of arms sales, the retention of a nuclear armoury, keeping the divisive market in schooling, the

continued redundancies and dismissals from schools, and colleges of expensive (i.e. older) and

radical leftist teachers and lecturers (Hill, 1997b)- `New Labour’ is, after a deeper look, virtually

indistinguishable from the Conservatives. In Elliots’s words,

Over the past 18 years, the Conservatives have transformed society- and Labour is content to justify what has happened. None of the big reforms of the Thatcher years- trade union reform, privatisation and the huge reductions in taxation for the better off- will be challenged. Labour shares with the (Conservative) government’s obsession with free

66

markets, free trade and competition…capitalism’s `efficient emptiness’.. in essence, Britain now has two parties supporting the status quo (Elliot, 1997).

Blair described his guiding ideology, during his post-election amity with Bill Clinton, when he

depicted ` New’ Labour as `the radical centre.. a new era…. strong on ideals, not on ideology…. a

politics going beyond left and right’ (Channel Four News, 29 May, see also The Guardian, 30 May).

This message was repeated at the early June meeting of the Socialist International, prompting a

number of member parties to comment that Blair’s policies were too right-wing. In the words of the

pro- business broadsheet, The European, (5-11 June), `Britain’s new Labour leader, Tony Blair, is to

the right of many Christian Democrats’. Blair’s message to that meeting complemented his lukewarm

reaction to the 1st June French Socialist Party victory- with its more recognisably left-wing promises

of massive job creation, increased social security benefits, and stress on equality- and coalition

government with the Communist Party.

In the European Union, Blair’s economic argument, emphasising labour flexibility and cheapness in a

global economy, is virtual copy of the Conservatives’. This infuriated, for example, the more

traditionally interventionist French Socialist Party,- with its more recognisably left-wing promises of

massive job creation, increased social security benefits, and stress on equality- and its coalition

government with the Communist Party. This labour flexibility policy has been denounced not only by

the Left, but also by the OECD. The OECD conclusions were that that such a policy, with its de-

unionisation, job insecurity, lack of collective bargaining and impoverishment of the poorest does

not, in fact, lead to more job creation and more employment (The Guardian, 7 July, 1997).

The Election and its Aftermath- Blair in Power

Day by day, after the General Election of 1 May 1997, came an announcement of what was widely

seen as plain good sense, of popular wonderment that the Tories were gone, that Britain, apparently

was now to be a more liberal, fairer society. Headlines about `an end to xenophobia’ (The Observer,

4 May), the abolition of the Assisted Places Scheme for a few children to attend private schools (at

public expense) in order to reduce class sizes in state schools for all 5-7 year olds to a maximum of

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thirty, the apparent and highly publicised softening of immigration rules, the promise of a National

Minimum Wage, the restoration of the right of trade union membership to workers at GCHQ, the

promise to join the European Social Chapter, with its increased rights for full-time and part-time

workers, the new spirit of co-operation instead of perennial confrontation with the European Union,

the `Windfall Tax’ in the July 3rd Budget on the profits of privatised utilities in order to fund an

education and employment programme for the a quarter of a million young unemployed, the attack

on and dressing down of the National Lottery `fat cat’ directors and their massive pay bonuses, the

ban on the production and export of land mines- and a pre-publication leak of what was apparently a

proposal (subsequently dropped) by the Kennedy Report to effect a major redistribution of funding

from the (predominantly middle class) Higher Education sector to the Adult and Further Education

(primarily working class) sectors. All these amounted to, what was for the Centre of British politics,

(if not the radical left), a heady and an almost unbelievable brew of common sense, social justice,

and redistribution of power away from the richest towards the mass, the majority as a whole. And the

new government remained very popular beyond its first hundred days in office. Six weeks after the

election, Blair was the most popular Prime Minister in modern British history (The Independent on

Sunday, xxxxx)

However welcome some of the Labour Government measures are, (nursery education, the reduced

class sizes, for example), they are largely extensions of Conservative Party policy- the unwarranted

attack on mixed ability teaching actually outreaches Tory policy. It is evident that the `New Labour'

government is accepting the neo-liberal and neo-conservative settlement of Thatcherism. It will

accept the competitive market in schooling and the neo-conservative national curriculum in

schooling and in Initial Teacher Education and in Further Education. It will also, albeit in a modified

form with some extra powers given to LEAs and an increased number of parent governors on school

governing bodies, accept the lack of locally elected democratic accountability across much of the

education system.

`New Labour’ is certainly radical- to the extent that in accepting and perpetuating much of

Thatcherite ideology and policy, it represents a major change from `Old Labour’. By radical I mean

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major, root as well as branch changes. Radical changes- to a political, social, economic or education

system, for example- challenge and are significantly different from the underlying principles of an

existing or pre-existing order. Thus Thatcherism, challenged the rhetoric and practice of the one-

nation hegemonic consensus that was the dominant paradigm in Britain from 1945 until the late

1970s. Thatcherite ideology and policy fundamentally changed the rhetoric and discourse, the

principles, organisation and social effects of the Welfare State in Britain. `New Labour’s radicalism

is to continue this Thatcherite tradition, albeit in modified form, and with reference to a òne-nation’

ideology instead of two.

Mike Cole and I have suggested that,

Margaret Thatcher, almost singlehandedly, wiped socialism off the agenda of political change in Britain, and, by example, to an extent, in Britain. She did this, partly, through updating a simplistic and fundamentally false equation implanted in commonsense. Thus the old adage of Socialism= Communism= Soviet style dictatorship= Old-style Labour Party= Real Labour (lurking behind New Labour). Following the late 1980s revolutions in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, Marxism, Margaret Thatcher argued, was now extinct. Therefore the Labour Party was, by definition, also extinct. It is precisely the success of this formulation which projected Tony Blair to centre stage as `saviour’ of the Labour Party but only if the Labour Party became reformulated free market forces, rejecting the now extinguished socialist components of its Constitution. Old Labour is dead! Long live `New Labour’ (Cole and Hill, 1997:xx)

However welcome these reforms are to the Left, they are not designed in any way to radically

restructure society, the economy, or their social, economic and political relationships. They are

characteristic of àlternance’, the alternation in power of political parties with fundamentally similar

political programmes- whatever the party rhetoric, or hopes of their more militant supporters and

members. They are not socialist, though they will be welcomed by most socialists as improvements

over Thatcherism. They are, in many fundamental respects, to the right of the Òld Conservative’,

Òne- Nation’ moderate Conservatives such as Edward Heath and Harold Macmillan. They certainly

appear well to the right of the democratic socialism and extensions of the public sector and civil

rights policies of the Attlee and Wilson Labour Governments, flawed and sabotaged by capital

though they might have been.

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The rhetoric and exhortations of Blair’s reforms appear to be attempts to make capitalism more

humane, and more meritocratic. As such, some of the policies will make a difference, albeit in many

cases modest, to millions of lives. They are, in many cases, improvements on Conservative

government policies. But such improvements are located within a grossly unequal- and increasingly

unequal- economic, social and political system. The Radical Left, and democratic socialists are

radical in the sense that they challenge, in a root and branch fashion, the underlying class-based,

exploitative, individualist and consumerist hegemony of capitalist societies. They seek to replace this

with a just society where wealth is equally distributed and is under democratic workers’ control. It is

apparent that such aims are certainly not part of Ńew Labour´s` project- for Initial Teacher

education, for schooling, or for society at large.

10. A RADICAL LEFT MODEL OF ITE

Ńew Labour`, and 'New Times' criticisms of the Radical Left - A Radical Left Response

With the demise of the Soviet bloc the Radical Right and its various implicit and explicit ideological

supports, have, together with Ńew Labour`, triumphantly proclaimed the death of Marxism. And 'New

Labour' rapidly distanced itself from 'socialism' - preferring the term 'socialism' (Blair, 1994,

discussed, for example, in Cliff and Gluckstein, 1996:417, and in Jones, 1996:137). Empirically, the

number of MPs within the Parliamentary Labour Party who would claim to be left socialist, or, in a

handful of cases, Marxist, was, prior to the 1997 general Election, reduced to around 30, the

membership of the (Parliamentary) Campaign Group (The Guardian, 1996). A similar number surfaced

in August 1997 within the Parliamentary Labour Party (xxxx).

Postmodernist writers and theoreticians, some (such as Stuart Hall and Martin Jacques) of whom were

associated with the (now defunct) British Communist Party, reconstituted as `the Democratic Left') and

its 'New Times' thinking, have also seen the death of Marxism and the irrelevance of Marxist analysis

and policy in what they see as 'postmodern or New Times' (see Cole and Hill, 1995; and Cole, Hill and

Rikowski, 1997, for a detailed discussion).

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Indeed sections of the Radical Left itself, such as the Zeichner 'school' within Radical Left discourse

on teacher education (Zeichner and Liston 1987; for a critique see Hill 1991? And 1997) distance

themselves from transformativist political pedagogy within classrooms Jack Demaine’s criticism is

typical of 'New Labour' attacks on 'Old Labour' and on the Radical Left. Other than attacking 'the tone'

of my own (1991) What's Left in Teacher Education: The Radical Left and Policy Proposals (in

Demaine 1995:184) Demaine's main points about Hillcole Group publications on teacher education

(Hillcole Group 1991; 1996?) and three of my own publications (1991a, 1991b, 1993a) are that:

1. 'it is questionable whether, in the present climate, the label 'radical left' is at all helpful ((Demaine

1995:184);

2. 'Socialists who are serious about attempting to contribute to New Labour policy will do so only if

they learn to speak its language' (ibid:185);

3. 'and to recognise the seriousness of Blair's project’ (idem).

A number of principles, differentiate a Radical Left project from a either an `Old Labour’/social

democratic/or a `New Labour’/ Blairite project. A Radical Left model stresses the development of

teachers as critical, emancipatory, transformative intellectuals. It is concerned with democratic

management and pedagogy within education (at classroom level as well as at school and college/ HEI

level). Finally, important though they are in the development of teachers as intellectuals, the model

encompasses a broader definition of `standards' than, important as they are, individual academic

attainment. A set of Radical left principles, together with proposals for a core curriculum and for the

organisation of ITE, are set out in the final part of this paper.

Demaine's other points need addressing. He suggests that socialists/ the Radical Left should fall in

behind the Blairite agenda both in its policy terms and its discourse/ language. However, this would be

'to vacate the cultural battlefield' (Hill 1994:x). Part of any cultural battle is the battle over linguistic

and other symbols, a battle to propagandise, proselytise, perpetuate concepts such as 'equality', 'left',

'radical' through language and accompanying policy proposals. This cultural conflict is not only

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between Radical Left, the Centre and the Radical Right nationally - it is also between the socialist

(radical) Left of the Labour Party, the `Old Labour’ or social democratic Centre Left of the Party (for

example Roy Hattersley), and the Right of the Labour Party, the `New Labour’ project. The Radical

Left is represented in publications such as Tribune as well as in the smaller circulation Briefing and

The Socialist (formerly Militant) (many supporters of The Socialist Party, formerly Militant Labour,

are still in the Labour Party). Organisationally the Socialist Society and the Socialist Movement, and

the magazine Red Pepper, outside Parliament, and the Campaign Group of Labour MPs are the major

groups campaigning for socialist/ Marxist/ radical left policies within the Labour Party. They do not

agree in keeping silent and invisible in what they see as the battle for the soul and programme of the

Labour Party. They criticise what they see as the adoption of Thatcherite agenda by the Blair

leadership, which they believe is resulting in British political parties resembling the Democrats and the

Republicans in the USA, two parties which are right of centre. They also fear the models of the

Australian (Pilger 1995, Hatcher 1996) and the New Zealand (Tribune 1995, Hatcher 1996) Labour

Parties' lurch to the right in welfare and social policy and in their adoption of forms of free market

economics.

Faced with this take-over of the Labour Party by what many see as a neo- or sub- Thatcherite

leadership, Radical Left activists have the choice of joining the (Trotskyite) Socialist Party (formerly

Militant Labour), or Socialist Workers Party; other leftist groups or Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour

Party; of ignoring the SLP and waiting/ working for the setting up of a socialist party based around the

red-green politics of The Socialist Movement, a non-centralist organisation such as the umbrella

Scottish Socialist Alliance; of quitting politics (the decision of more and more layers of politically

experienced socialists; or of 'staying put to save the party they love'. But, as Tony Benn (1995) has

written, there will come a time when,

'after the election ... the high expectations ... are bound to be disappointed ... the media would call for a national government ... it is at this moment that the Labour Party and the public will

turn to the Left for an alternative, and if we are not there when that demand occurs, people could turn further and further to the right. ...This is when all socialists and democrats and radicals and

individual trade unionists should join the party and be active in it (Benn 1995).

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Eight Radical Left Principles for Initial Teacher Education (15)

I will conclude this paper by setting out some proposals as to how teachers and student teachers can

be trained and educated to promote equality, that is, to facilitate a transformative egalitarian process.

Firstly I focus on principles, a number of them specifically Radical left principles, which should

underlay the organisation and curriculum of ITE.

Radical Right and Centrist models, such as 'New Labour' policy, are of little relevance in this

endeavour. ITE and school practices need to be changed, rather than accepted and reproduced. The

emphasis should be on challenging the old dominant cultures, with schools reproducing and

reinforcing inequalities. Radical Right and Centrist ideologies on ITE have little to offer a society

aiming, not for the hegemony of the few and the entrenchment of privilege, but for the promotion of

equality and social justice which celebrates difference.

All undergraduate and postgraduate `teacher training'/ teacher education courses should consider

issues of social justice and therefore actively combat racism, sexism, homophobia, discrimination

against the disabled, and the systematic exploitation of and discrimination against the working class

(see Hill, 1989; 1990; 1991a; b; 1994a; d; e; 1996a; 1997a; Hill, Cole and Williams, 1997; Cole, Hill,

Soudien and Pease, 1997). At present, these issues in B.Ed./ BA (QTS) and PGCE courses are very

patchy, with some, like social class and sexuality, frequently untouched (see Siraj-Blatchford, 1992;

Clay and George, 1992; Hill, 1994a; Hill, Cole and Williams, 1997).

Defining features of a Radical Left model for ITE are:

1. Its concept of equality as being egalitarian rather than `more efficiently meritocratic', that is to say

its striving for significantly lower differentials in society, (and in schooling outcomes) as opposed

(for example) to the ‘New Labour’ vision of high differentials between top and bottom strata albeit in

a more socially mobile meritocracy. This concern for equality embraces a policy to achieve far more

equal outcomes - moving towards eradicating the gap, for example, in the academic attainments of

working class children and those of middle and upper class children the way in which comprehensive

schooling in Scotland has raised the academic attainment of both working class and middle class

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children while at the same time narrowing the differentials and indeed eradicating the gaps in

attainment with respect to ethnicity and sex too (ref ?). Similarly, in the economic domain, it

involves a commitment to narrowing differentials in wages. Teacher education should have a

commitment to social justice and equality as well as to improving academic standards. Indeed in a

concern for the standards of attainment of all, the two commitments (of equality and standards) are

inseparable.

2. In addition the particular Radical Left model advanced in this paper stresses the development of

teachers as critical, emancipatory, transformative intellectuals. This involves teachers and teacher

educators being democratic and active citizens and professionals committed to a morality of social

justice (16). This entails facilitating and encouraging the development of teachers as transformative

intellectuals, among whose motivations and skills are to transform children's/ students' awareness of

scholastic, social, political, ideological and economic life into a critical awareness. This necessitates

an awareness of power relations and structures in micro-and macro-societies and ideologies, and a

commitment to render power relationships more equal. This therefore locates schooling within the

wider societal context and recognises the limitations of school-based movements for social and

political change.

These first two principles have clear implications for what should be included in a radical Left core

curriculum for ITE, in order to develop `critical reflection' among student teachers and teachers.

This core curriculum should include macro-and micro-theory regarding teaching and learning, in

which the socio- political and economic contexts of schooling and education are made explicit. It

should include not only classroom skills and competencies, but also a theoretical understanding of

children, schooling and society, their inter- relationships, and alternative views and methods of, for

example, classroom methods and organisation, schooling, and the economic and political relationship

to society. Such a core curriculum should embrace and develop equal opportunities so that children

do not suffer from labelling, under-expectation, stereotyping or prejudice from their teachers, or

indeed, from their peers. It should also enable student teachers to develop as critical, reflective

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teachers, able, for example, to decode ministerial (and indeed, Radical Left) distortion, bias, and

propaganda on falling standards in schools and institutions of teacher education. Such a core

curriculum can encourage the development of effective classroom skilled teachers able to interrelate

and critique theory and practice, their own and that of others.

Teacher education has to be about more than classroom abilities limited to passing out pre- set

nationally approved `facts', plus competence in crowd control. Teachers without the capacity to

stimulate critical enquiry leave education always on the edge of indoctrination and quiescence. A

course limiting teachers to a single view of one set of classrooms - with little theoretical

understanding of the process or history of education - lacks intellectual rigour. I am not arguing here

for egalitarian indoctrination. Critical transformative intellectuals seek to enable student teachers and

teachers (and school students) to critically evaluate a range of salient perspectives and ideologies -

including evaluating critical reflection itself- while showing a commitment to egalitarianism. This

does not imply forced acceptance or silencing of contrary perspectives.

All who teach or lecture need some understanding of views on what education is for, and what

research and study make up the field. They need to hear the controversies rehearsed and to examine

the evidence. Conservative policy suggests - ominously - that there is only one correct answer,

indeed, only one answer to particular problems. And `New Labour’ currently shows little sign of

altering the Conservative settlement in ITE. There is the assumption by both major political parties

that there is no need to bother developing critical reflection

3. It is concerned with democratic management within education (at classroom level as well as at

school and college/ HEI level), in opposition to the increasingly hierarchical, elitist and brutal

systems of school, college and classroom management.

4. There should be democratic pedagogy- among a variety of pedagogies- within ITE sessions and

within schooling. Learning processes in classrooms at all levels, an important part of the hidden

curriculum, should themselves not escape critical appraisal and evaluation. Further, pedagogical

strategies should be based on the premise that when learners are equipped to recognise injustice and

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develop strategies to challenge it, they are more likely to feel confident enough to be participative

citizens later.

However, to reiterate, teachers at all levels of education should adopt a variety of teaching and

learning methods. This much has been recommended by research observations on effective methods

for teaching and learning from the work of Neville Bennett, Maurice Galton, and Robin Alexander

(Bennett, 1976, 1992; Bennett et al., 1984; Galton and Simon, 1980; Galton et al., 1989; Alexander,

1992; Alexander et al., 1992). Within this variety of pedagogies, the `back to basics' Right- wing

stress on a return to didactic authoritarian teaching methods is retrograde. On the contrary there

should be collaborative problem solving and creative learning methods, in tandem with

individualised work.

However, to reiterate, there is also a substantial place for authoritative didactic lecture- type

instructional methods where appropriate (see Sarup {on Gramsci}1983; Stone, 1981). Pedagogies

should be critically appraised in terms of their fitness for purpose.

5. Important though the above points are in the development of teachers as critical intellectuals, the

model encompasses a broader definition of standards than narrowly defined and tested academic

attainment. Such standards include personal and social behaviour and responsibility. This is not at all

to derogate academic standards and the role they can play in enhancing the career and life chances of

individuals, and of a national economy in an internationally competitive system. Adherence to high

academic standards, avoiding labelling and stereotyping, which in practice writes off many working

class and black, Asian and other minority ethnic group children (as pointed out, for example by the

1993 Ofsted document `Access and Achievement in Urban Education') (Ofsted, 1993a) is especially

important. Satisfaction with low academic standards is like a plague on specific groups of children/

students. It should also be noted that under- expectation typifies the attitudes and practice of teachers

of all ideological types - Radical Left as well as liberal progressive and Right wing. But, what I am

arguing for here is that, in addition to academic standards being the preserve of all rather than of the

few, schools and ITE should also emphasise personal and social education. This should include

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ability and commitment to the collective good as well as individual good, and the ability and

commitment to work collaboratively as well as competitively.

6. Schools and colleges must work together as a partnership to educate teachers. The teachers for the

future need to be full professionals. This entails more than just practical experience and more than

just a theoretical perspective. What is needed in schools are professionally prepared teachers who are

able to do a professional job, teachers whose courses have prepared them to use their theory to

critique and inform their practice, and their (and others') practice to inform their theory.

Teacher education can best be achieved through dialogue between schools and institutions of higher

education, where time and care are taken to build on the strengths of past experience and expertise

while encouraging the future teachers to maintain flexible and open minds. A sound relationship

between HEIs and schools is essential to good teacher education. But a full partnership has to be

based on what both school and HEI partners are best able to do. Here, the data, derived from the

various members of the teacher education community (student teachers, teacher educators,

headteachers, teachers, HMI/ Ofsted) (set out for example in Hill, 1993; 1996c; 1997a; SCOP, 1994;

Blake and Hill, 1995; UWE/NUT,1995; Hill and Cole, 1997b;) can offer some pertinent guidelines.

7. ITE should be based on research evidence and evaluations of, for example, different routes into

teaching. There is a need for continued research evaluations of the various aspects of ITE and the

adequacy of the various different routes into teaching in preparing student teachers/ NQTs. In this

respect the questions used in the 1993 Ofsted New Teacher in School Report (Ofsted, 1993b) are

inadequate far more limited than the already limited range of questions set out in the HMI New

Teacher in School Reports of 1983 and 1988 (HMI, 1983;1988).

8. ITE developments should be based on what is widely regarded as good practice- this should

include aspects of the CATE criteria for 1984 and 1989, and evidence from a range of organisations

with an interest in schooling and ITE, such as the National Commission on Education.

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Conclusion

Clearly, in such a vigorously contested ideological field as teacher education there will not be

unanimity on the above eight principles, nor is any being sought. Some of them can be accepted

across the ideological continuum, save for the Radical Right. However it is the first four principles

that are distinctively Radical left. It is these which differentiate a Radical left approach from, on the

one hand, both social democratic and `New Labour’ approaches within the Labour Party and its

admirers, and, on the other hand, radical right approaches.

Teacher educators from various other ideological and political perspectives may well agree with a

number of the recommendations. What they may not agree with is the explicit emancipatory, critical

and transformatory role of teacher educators, education, and schooling in the interests of social

justice and egalitarianism. It is this role, and the role of teachers as intellectuals instead of mechanics

or technicians, that is necessary for the development of a critical, active, interrogating, citizenry -

thoughtful, questioning, perceptive as well as being skilled - in the pursuit of a democratic, anti-

authoritarian, socially responsible and socially just society.

Under Radical Right governments, media offensives and attempts at strengthening control and

hegemony over the schooling and teacher education ideological state apparatuses, the Left has, with

few exceptions, vacated the ideological battlefield and become `New Labour’. This is true of the

caution of erstwhile Left writers, educationalists and ideologues in Britain in their alliances with

vapid liberal progressivism and uncritical pluralism - a retreat from the cultural and educational

advances of the 1970s and 1980s. It is a feature of education policy and analysis as is other policy

areas, typified by the rightward Labour Party shift since Neil Kinnock, which has culminated in the

`New Labour' Party of Tony Blair .

In keeping aloft ideals of plurality of thought, of social justice, of dissent, and in opposition to

threatened reduction of standards in education, teachers, teacher educators and the community must

resist the ideological hijacking of our future. Teachers and teacher educators are too valuable in

children's education to have slick media panaceas and slanted ministerial programmes attempting to

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dragoon them into being uncritical functionaries of a Conservative state and of the fundamentally and

essentially inegalitarian and immoral society and education system reproduced by the capitalist state

and its apparatuses.

The particular perspectives in this paper from a Radical Left position are based on a belief that

teachers must not only be skilled, competent, classroom technicians - they must be much more than

that. They must also be critical and reflective and transformative and intellectual, that is to say, they

should operate at the critical level of reflection. They should enable and encourage their pupils/

students, not only to gain basic and advanced knowledge and skills. They should enable and

encourage their pupils/ students to question, critique, judge and evaluate `what is', `what effects it

has', and `why'. And to be concerned and informed about equality and social justice. Not just in life

beyond the classroom door, but also within the classroom walls.

The Radical Left should mobilise and agitate not only for structural/ organisational changes in the

schooling and education systems (see the two Hillcole Group books(Hillcole Group 1991; 1997), but

also for a new common curriculum (17). In the meantime, what is to be done, indeed to be stressed, is

that, whatever the current near-total support for Blair across the mass media (itself, cause for

reflection, considering who owns the Press), that the 'New Labour' 'modernising' tendency exerts only

disputed control within the Labour Party, (not yet renamed 'the New Labour Party'). The leadership

may well currently exert hegemonic control over the party, but this is not monolithic control within

the Labour Party- either over its membership or over its MPs (see Kellner, 1997 on the radical

agenda of newly elected Labour MPs). The `New Labour' project is resisted by parts of the left, both

in the party and outside, not least within the main teacher unions.

In schools, teachers have not stopped promoting equality and equal opportunities. Spaces are still

there. Schooling, education in general, and teacher education, should be concerned with issues of

social justice and therefore actively combat racism, sexism, homophobia, discrimination against the

disabled, and the systematic exploitation of and discrimination against the working class. Only then

can we talk realistically of raising standards. At present, these issues in the National Curriculum for

schools, in the teacher education national curriculum, and in Further Education in general, are very

79

patchy, with some, like social class and sexuality, frequently untouched. Children, from a very early

age need to be introduced to alternative ways to run societies other than the unbridled free market.

This system, both nationally and globally, must not be taken at face value. We are doing young

people and society a serious disservice if, through our teaching, market capitalism and its anti-

egalitarian individualistic and consumerist exploitative selfishness is presented as God-given, natural

and uncontested; and possible alternative systems, such as socialism, are not fully addressed.

80

NOTES

1. The 1994 Education Act, via the SCITT scheme, legislated for the first time in a generation for the separation of some school- centred teacher training from Higher Education. These `alternative routes’ were also to have been further supplemented by a one-year trained non-graduate (Mums' Army) for infant teaching (Pyke, 1993). This scheme was dropped, though its replacement, a one year programme for `Specialist Teaching Assistants' (STAs), has a similar potential as a new route into teaching.

2. These, and the teacher recruitment and production statistics are taken from the DfEE, 1997b; TTA, 1997b.

Statistics from the DfEE (Christine Kane), given on 8 April 1997indicate the following number of Licensed Teachers and Overseas trained teachers (both categories without QTS) in maintained (i.e. state) schools, as follows: 1990,20; 1991, 0; 1992, 1059; 1993, 1083; 1994, 834; 1995,664; 1996; 467. Figures are, as yet, not available for Licensed Teachers alone. Also, these figures do not indicate how many LTs gained QTS. These are shown, in approximate form, in Table 2.

In recent years a number of two-year B.Ed degrees, and two-year PGCE courses have been established for subjects such as Maths, Science, Design and Technology in which there is a severe shortage of teachers. Government (CATE) circular 14/93 on Primary Teacher Education encouraged the development of three year Primary undergraduate ITE Courses to replace four year courses, in particular for what it termed `generalist’ as opposed to `specialist’ Primary teachers. A number of three year BA (QTS) course are now in operation.

3. Circular 14/93 substantially adopted proposals set out in earlier 1993 `White' and `Blue' Consultation papers (DFE, 1993b; 1993c). These Primary criteria have applied to, that is, been mandatory for, all Primary ITE courses since September 1995.(The major change following that consultation process was, as stated above, that the idea of a non-graduate, one year trained `Mums' Army' for Infant teaching was dropped).

4. The three levels of reflection suggested by Zeichner and Liston (1987) are Technical reflection, Situational, or Contextual Reflection, and Critical Reflection. Technical Reflection is reflection on unproblematic technical proficiency at achieving predetermined ends, where neither the ends of teaching or of curricula and pedegogies are treated as problematic. Situational, or Contextual Reflection is reflection on situational, contextual, institutional and theoretical assumptions underlying schooling and teaching, and their effects. Critical Reflection demands assessing teaching, learning, schooling and society in terms of justice and equality, and it demands a commitment to those moral and ethical positions (see Adler, 1991; Hill, 1992a; 1994a:228-231, 1997a).

5. Attacks on teacher education have been accompanied and preceded by 30 years of Radical Right wing attacks on democratic, egalitarian and progressive schooling and education (Ball, 1990b; Hill, 1989; 1990; Gilroy, 1992; Gaine, 1995). In addition to a discourse of derision (Ball, 1990b; Wallis, 1993) about egalitarian education, the above three examples, among many others, have been part of a `discourse of treachery' (Hill, 1994c) whereby teachers and teacher educators have come to be regarded as `the enemy within' .

6. Liberal-progressivism in education is defined, and the Radical Right attack on it exemplified in Hill, 1997f; Cole, Hill, Soudien and Pease, 1997. Neville Bennett contrasted characteristics of 'progressive' (he might well have used the term 'liberal-progressive') and 'traditional' (he might well have used the term 'conservative') schooling in his Teaching Styles and Pupil Progress (Bennett, 1976:30).

Sample headlines in the national British Press over the last few years have been, 'The curse of the comprehensives - as the nations 'all-in' schools are slammed for too high spending and too low results' by Rhodes Boyson, then an Educational Minister, (Daily Mail); 'Failed - the proof that comprehensives damage is more than just education' by Ray Honeyford, (Daily Mail, 1 May 1987); 'The classroom revolutionary - Inside and Outside school - I raise political issues', (Daily Telegraph, 14 April, 1986).

81

(An exposé of an SWP teacher's activities in one school) The educational writings of the Radical Right and speeches by Government Ministers are very clear. They loathe what they describe as the permissive society, `trendy teachers', `loony left' staffrooms, `the false cult of egalitarianism' (O'Hear, 1988; 1991b), `antiracism' (Hillgate Group, 1986; 1987; Honeyford, 1988; Thatcher, 1993; Major, 1993), mixed ability teaching (O'Keefe, 1990a; 1990b), collaborative learning, democratic classrooms and democratic management of schools. Terms of abuse such as `trendy', `permissive' and `caring' are applied indiscriminately to both liberal progressive and to social egalitarian schooling. These, frequently conflated, attacks on liberal progressivism on the one hand, and socialist ideas and policies in education, on the other, have a history stretching from `The Black Papers' of the 1960s and 1970s (see Cox and Dyson, 1969; 1971; 1975; Cox and Boyson, 1977) through to the Hillgate Group publications of 1986, 1987 and 1989.

7. ´Classism´……

8. The ILEA produced two major reports in the 1980s investigating the extent of working class underachievement and detailing policy responses to combat such underachievement. As the then largest local authority in Western Europe its resources were substantial and its 'Thomas Report' on Primary Schooling (ILEA, 1985) (and also its 'Hargreaves Report' on Secondary Schooling (ILEA, 1984)) may be regarded as a major contribution to the debate on, and proposals for a schooling system that is more egalitarian in terms of social class. The 'Thomas Report' and the 'Hargreaves Report' are radically different than those enacted by Conservative governments - in particular with its concern that schools should be community schools.

9. The number of primary age children in England taught by a single teacher in classes of more than 40 went up from 14,057 in January 1994 to 18,223 in January 1995. In January 1995 the number in classes of 36 or more taught by a single teacher rose by 11% over the year to 107,985 while, 1,155,726 primary children were in classes of 31 or more (Carvel and Wintour, 1995)..10. There have been many books and articles describing, analysing, and critiquing the effect of Thatcherism and the Radical Right on schooling, the wider education system, and teacher education. On the broader societal analysis see Gamble, 1983; Hall, 1983; Hall and Jacques, 1983; Hall, 1985; Levitas, 1987; Gamble, 1987, 1988; Jessop, 1990).

For educational analysis see, for example, Wragg, 1988; Chitty, 1989; Chapter Two in Hessari and Hill, 1989; Hill, 1989; 1990; 1994b; 1994c; Jones, K., 1989; Ball, 1990a; Knights, 1990; Whitty, 1993; 1994; Barton et al., 1994; Hillcole Group, 1994, 1997; Lawton, 1994; Whitty and Menter 1990; Whitty et al, 1994; Hill, 1997f. Knights analyses Radical Right influence on education policy from a Radical Right perspective.

Whole series of articles have been written on Thatcherism and the new Right, or Radical Right, in the Left Press in Britain, such as Marxism Today, New Socialist, Socialist Review, Militant International Review, throughout the 1990s. The resignation of Mrs Thatcher as Prime Minister in late 1990 triggered a spate of similar articles in the quality British daily and Sunday press.

11. Jones, K., 1989; Ball, 1990b; Lawton, 1994; Whitty et al., 1994.

12. This assertion, and reactions to it are set out in the Times Educational Supplements of 10.11.95 and 17.11.95. See in particular Passmore, (1995); Bassey, (1995) and the letters pages.

13. See Hessari and Hill, 1989; Jones, K., 1989; Menter, 1990; Massey, 1991; Cole, 1992; Hill, 1994a.

14. These criticisms were prior to its purchase by Geoffrey Robinson M.P., the departure of most of its leading staff and its immediate conversion into a `New Labour' mouthpiece

15. This section is a development of Hill, 1991a, 1994a, 1994d; Cole, Hill, Soudien and Pease, 1997; Hill, Cole and Williams, 1997; Hillcole Group, 1997.

82

16. This is based on a critically interrogated diversity of culture, social class, `race', sex and sexuality as part of a radical democratic egalitarian, and anti-authoritarian political project (Giroux, 1983; 1989; McLaren, 1986; Aronowitz and Giroux, 1986; Giroux and McLaren, 1991; Hill, 1991a; b; 1994a; 1997a; Cole, 1992; Hill, Cole and Williams, 1997; Cole, Hill, Pease and Soudien, 1997; Cole, 1997; Hill and Cole, 1997; ).

17 . See, for proposed curricular changes to the school curriculum in England and Wales, the various chapters in Promoting Equality in Primary Schools (Cole, Hill and Shan, 1997) and its companion book, Promoting Equality in Secondary Schools (Hill and Cole, 1998). The details of the education programme which we advance- the much wider ranging organisational, curricular and pedagogic changes across the wider educational system- are spelt out in the Hillcole Group’s two books, Changing the Future: Redprint for Education (1991) and Socialism and Education: Education for the Twenty-First Century (1997). For proposals on Initial Teacher Education, see Hill, 1991; 1994; 1997; Hill et al 1997; Cole et al 1997.

XX. Postmodernist analysis of and proposals for education are criticised from a Marxist perspective in Hill, 1993d; Apple 1993b; Sarup 1993; Green, 1994; Hill and Cole, 1995; 1996d; Cole and Hill 1995; 1996a; b, Cole, Hill and Rikowski 1997.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Mike Cole for our discussions and joint writing on `New Labour’s` policy and ideology and for his comments on this paper, and Jenny Ingham, consultant on reading, literacy and cultural diversity, for our discussions on the Labour Government’s National Curriculum, in particular, the Standards for the Award of Qualified Teacher Status and the Initial Teacher Training National Curriculum for Primary English.

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dave hill - university of · web viewthese three quotes encapsulate, or prefigure, most of the...

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