A Rethink on Education

The Education Manifesto of the Some-Other Party 

The state, parents and education 

The character of its education is one of the things that defines a nation. Education is both shaped by and does much to shape national character. The mess to which the so-called mainstream parties have reduced British education over the last fifty years is a natural outcome of that loss of belief in the nation that took us into the EU and kept us there for so long. 

Education is always induction into a language and, with it, a national culture. At school the child is introduced to the elements of the culture that cannot be expected to be fully inculcated in the home; and in school this introduction should be unashamedly Euro- or even Anglo-centric. All children should be introduced to the best of our own culture. English literature should be read, and British history; and for all children there should be a sketch of European history from Greece and Rome to the present. No child should leave school ignorant of the Bible. (The Koran can look after itself); all should have some acquaintance with Western classical music. (‘Pop’ can look after itself.) 

This does presuppose a culture. There are of course sectarian schools of various sorts which aim to lead children into particular subcultures, but the national standards of examination try to ensure that all schools share in the same community. Whatever quite is meant by a “multicultural” Britain, no one understands by it a Britain that is a mere geographical location of any number of different-sized separate cultures. The term “subculture” itself implies the existence of a culture which the subculture is subordinate to and which is not itself a subculture. Education is one of the means through which different subordinate communities make up a coherent whole. If education is treated as important only economically all this is implicitly denied. 

Education is one of the duties of the state, but the power the state exercises needs checking and balancing by the power of parents and of schools. The political problem here is how to reconcile these potentially competing claims, something which becomes especially difficult if a subculture aggressively asserts its own claims against those of the state. If it does, it cannot be allowed to succeed. 

The state’s power ought to be limited to (1) specifying a core curriculum (2) running a body of HMIs and (3) licensing examination boards. 

The influence of schools ought to be increased by (1) getting their funding directly (partly from government, partly from parental vouchers–see below) and (2) being left free to decide for themselves everything not already expressly decided by the state. 

The influence of parents ought to be increased by the simple means of giving them education vouchers and leaving them free to “spend” their vouchers wherever they choose in or out of the state system. This would, in effect, abolish the distinction between private and state schools and remove any argument for putting vat on schools. 

Education and training 

Under the Con-Lab-LibDem Party 

1. Education and training for jobs are the same thing
2. Spending on education is not a cost but an investment 
3.  Therefore the more of it the better.

This has led that Party to distort the relation between arts and science subjects by overemphasising the importance of ‘STEM’ subjects; making education until 18 compulsory; and so expanding the university system that half of 18-to-21 year-olds now feel compelled to spend three years in it. The predictable consequence for them is that at 21 or more, with a degree and a massive debt, they can now get the sort of job they could have got some decades ago at 16, with 5 O-levels and no debt at all. The equally predictable consequence for the state has been not only the direct cost of establishing and running this system, but the indirect cost of all those years of productive labour lost. 

Under the Some-Other Party
Education will be treated as having its own, not an economic, importance. 

The Some-Other Party policy will be based on five major principles, which will be applied to the different levels of education. 

1. Individual state schools to have more freedom to determine their own character. The influence of parents to be increased by the simple means of giving them education vouchers and leaving them free to “spend” their vouchers wherever they choose. 

2. The education of the more and less academically able to receive equally serious an attention, meaning that:

(i) Schools should be free to develop forms of education that reward more than just the ability to pass academic exams 

(ii) Pupils should be free to leave full time education at 16 if they have reached a certain standard in reading, writing and arithmetic

(iii) The formation of an “élite” or “élites” must be treated as a natural and desirable end of education. 

3. Education and training are often close together in our early experience but diverge more and more the higher in education we go, and must not be confused. 

4. Education is a legitimate public cost not an investment. It is not, therefore, the case that the more we have of it the better. 

5. Training, on the other hand, is an investment and in general should be paid for by those who expect dividends from it, that is, the employers of the trained and the trained themselves. 

Sixth Form and University 

We consider these two together because the one is a preparation for the other. Entry to the sixth form will be restricted to the minority with some potential for going on to three years’ study at a genuine university. 

The presence in universities of so many students who are incapable of university-level work has meant that useless non-subjects have proliferated and genuine ones been diluted. This means that most of the academics at present employed in higher education and the ‘cohorts’ of graduates they ‘produce’ are wasting their time. Who then can be surprised if students form a contempt for free speech or seek to entertain themselves by dressing up as Palestinians? 

The Some-Other Party will 

1. Phase out subjects that are neither use nor ornament, require all universities to
   award degrees in the traditional core of liberal arts as well as STEM subjects and
   transfer genuine training courses to other institutions. 
2. Fund the reformed universities adequately, pay British students’ fees, restore
   maintenance grants and prefer British students to higher-paying foreign ones. 
3. And then leave universities strictly alone to run themselves. 
4. Subject vocational training to market discipline. If a business cannot do without
   trained staff the greater part of the costs must come from the business and the staff. This will make the qualification-granting bodies, businesses and students more realistic about what courses are worth paying for. This can only be good for genuine wealth creation. Although, in the present educational fog, this proposal might look new, it is only an adaptation to the modern world of the old idea of apprenticeships. 

A caveat 

There are borderline cases. Teacher training should continue to be supported by the state, as should the medical schools and colleges of nursing and midwifery. Although Law, as an academic subject, should too, there is no reason why the supply of solicitors (so many of whom end up in the House of Commons) should. 

And thus the number of universities, number and variety of courses, and number of students will be reduced until all those that remain are genuine. 

The full version of this piece can be found on Duke Maskell’s Substack newsletter, Reactionary Essays, which you might like to follow here.

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