The Problems

In spite of the government pumping billions of pounds into education, many children are leaving school with a very low level of basic skills, and unfitted for the needs of commerce and industry.

Children of high ability and those with less ability are often both disadvantaged when in the same class. Those with proven academic ability are not stretched enough and those with special needs often cannot cope.

Unruly and badly behaved members of a class, putting stress on fellow pupils and also teachers, cause significant problems. This is not helped where discipline is lax. Teachers who spend a significant amount of class time trying to keep order rapidly become disillusioned. Many leave; their training is wasted. Those who leave often say that they are unsupported in their efforts to discipline pupils because the authorities are scared to enforce good discipline. This is made worse when the Police and the Crown Prosecution Service decide to bring to the court teachers who exercise even modest physical restraint over unruly pupils. Common sense juries have emphatically thrown out most of those cases.

Some parents continually send children to school lacking self-discipline, good behaviour and good manners.

Pressures from the Department of Education to keep down the number of excluded pupils means that seriously bad behaviour is tolerated in many schools. In this way, figures for excluded pupils are massaged. Press reports show that in some areas many pupils bring weapons to school or abuse and sell drugs at or outside school. Such pupils have an adverse effect on the hard-working majority who want to study. Seriously disruptive pupils must be offered suitable special education or excluded altogether.

Truancy hit record levels last year (2005), increasing by 10% in just one year.

There is a serious decline in the number of teachers willing to apply for vacancies to become Head Teachers. Governors therefore do not have enough depth of talent to select from. This is due to pressures of targets, red tape and interference from government.

Despite claims that educational standards are rising, and despite much hard work by teachers, there is evidence that far to many pupils reach the age of 11 with inadequate skills in reading, writing and arithmetic. Many employers also complain that the standard of school-leavers is declining, despite the record numbers achieving 5 or more GSCEs.

Recent surveys show that British secondary pupils have a shockingly poor understanding of their nation’s History and Geography. That must be remedied.

There has been much concern by parents over the introduction of sex education classes to ever lower ages and that this may include very explicit content. Even primary school children in some areas are being exposed to the idea that to experiment with homosexual relationships may be a desirable thing to do. In the meantime, these are some of the facts

:a) Teenage pregnancies are at record levels

b) Sexual diseases suffered by teenagers and young adults are at record levels in the U.K. and the highest anywhere in Europe.

These are matters the other political parties seem unwilling to tackle and are ignoring.

The school inspection service OFSTED costs the taxpayer approximately £88 million a year. It concentrates more and more on paperwork and data collection and consequently there is less time and focus on the teacher and pupil in the classroom. We believe that OFSTED has lost its way.

Our Solutions

School Targets and League Tables We believe that many of these could safely be abolished. This will, for example, enable teachers to guide pupils to obtaining passes in subjects that enable them to achieve their full potential, and not just the subjects to enable the school to meet the targets set by the Department of Education.

Boosting technical and vocational training

The Popular Alliance would put major investment into Technical Colleges and apprenticeships that are supported by recognised qualifications, which reflect achievement and pride in trades. We will support this with generous incentives for employers to release their staff for further education and training.

Some University courses will be transferred to Technical Colleges enabling universities to concentrate on the more academic subjects such as Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics, English and foreign languages, Physics and Engineering.

Top-Up Fees

We would reduce the numbers going to University whilst at the same time increasing the numbers going to Technical Colleges. We recognise that Universities need to have a secure source of funding for the longer-term but with fewer attending University and with the savings we shall make by leaving the E.U. we are confident that we could substantially reduce top-up fees.

Discipline in Schools

We would insist on strict but fair discipline in schools and these are some of the ideas we have as to how we would achieve this. We would:

a) Make it easier for Head Teacher and governors to exclude disruptive pupils

b) Offer a much wider range of practical courses to pupils who showed little aptitude or desire to pursue academic study

c) Change the law to allow teachers to use reasonable force in restraining seriously disruptive pupils. We cannot have teachers who are fearful of enforcing strict discipline and restraint

d) Allow all schools to conduct random searches and tests for drugs and weapons

Selection and the issue of grammar schools

We do not consider selection a dirty word. To enable all children to get the best from their schools, selection - or a method of streaming - is desirable in many subjects. The Popular Alliance recognises that grammar schools are a thorny subject with strong advocates and opponents on both sides of the debate. The Popular Alliance believes that there is often a case for selecting those with a more academic inclination from those with a more practical inclination at around the age of 11 or 12. In saying this, we emphatically do not say that academic pupils are any ‘better’ than more practically-minded pupils; on the contrary, we believe very much that all in society have the potential to contribute to each other’s welfare and so benefit society as a whole.

For these reason we would allow existing grammar schools to remain. We would also allow grammar schools to be reinstated if there was sufficient local support. In line with our proposals on allowing local and national referendums to be held, our policy would be to allow local people to choose whether or not they wished to have grammar schools in their local areas.

The National Curriculum

Geography, History and English Literature We would ensure that British Geography and History, together with English Literature, plays a significant part of children’s education from 5 to 16 in every school. Pupils should have a broad understanding of the history of the islands starting with our ancient history to the present time. A nation’s culture and national identity are derived from its history. Having a shared sense of history is a wonderful thing; it binds us together, promotes social cohesion and gives us pride in our country and of belonging to it.

Environmental and Energy

Issues increasing the teaching of environmental and energy issues in the National Curriculum would ensure that we have first class Fuel Technology departments and awareness of the importance of the environment in our Technical Colleges and Universities.

Sex Education

Teaching materials with explicit sexual material should be left until children are older - at least 12. Parents should be encouraged to teach ‘the facts of life’ themselves. The teaching of sexual matters to ever-younger children has had no effect at all on educating children about the dangers of sexual promiscuity and has probably had the reverse effect, since teaching children about something excites their interest in the subject.

The success in the United States of ‘abstinence programme’, where teachers and outside speakers educate children about the virtues and achievability of sexual abstinence, suggest to us that this should be tried here, in an effort to stem the rising tide of teenage pregnancies and sexually-transmitted diseases.

Teaching children to be tolerant of others, including those of other cultures and faiths, and of those who are homosexual, is part and parcel of education and we would encourage the teaching of such tolerance. It is quite another matter to actively promote the desirability of homosexuality as a lifestyle choice when so much is now known about the health risks and possible reduced life expectancy of those who drift into homosexuality in their teens. The benefits of a committed relationship, i.e. marriage, for the bringing up of children, would be part of the ‘Personal and Social Education’ in our new National Curriculum.

Physical Education

A minimum period of Physical Education will be required each week. We cannot expect our children to have alert, healthy minds with unhealthy bodies. More support will be given to both individual and team sports.

Traditional Teaching Methods There has been a gradual return to tried-and-tested traditional teaching methods, such as ‘phonics’. The Popular Alliance welcomes this trend. The top priority is to ensure that primary school children gain early confidence by developing the ability to read, write and understand how numbers work. When they have this, their confidence grows and they can learn other subjects quickly. It is appalling that standards of reading, writing and arithmetic have declined so significantly in recent years despite increased spending on education.

Class Sizes

Despite the extra money that the government has put into education over recent years, class sizes remain obstinately high and above the average for most other European schools. Our proposals on reducing data collection, league tables and target-setting should mean that more staff can be used in teaching than in management and administration.

Education and Asylum-Seeking

Without any doubt at all, teachers - especially in our inner cities - have performed heroically in dealing with the sudden influxes of asylum-seekers into their schools, especially those who have little or no knowledge of English.  Some - many, in fact, come from war-torn countries and bring all manner of behavioural problems with them. But also without doubt time taken attending to the needs of such children diverts huge amounts of resources away from basic teaching of reading, writing and arithmetic and other subjects. Our policy of setting very firm limits on the numbers of immigrants and asylum-seekers will benefit the classroom.


OFSTED

We would reduce OFSTED’s budget by at least 25% from £88 million a year to £66 million a year, with much more time spent by OFSTED Inspectors in classrooms. We would modify their role. Teachers sometimes are unfairly judged on their performance in just on or two lessons and some live in fear of the OFSTED visit. OFSTED inspectors should be opportunities for Inspectors to sit down constructively with those they are inspecting to discuss how to achieve improvements. That would be a far better use of time than going back to their offices and writing long reports, which may sometimes become out of date within months.

Pass Levels for GCSEs

Because so many pupils are now gaining ‘A’ and ‘A*’grades, the Popular Alliance would increase the pass levels for G.C.S.E. and upgrade them by stages to a much higher standard.

‘A’ Level

We will also return the A level by stages to the original standard.

If you have any questions, or wish to contribute ideas and suggestions for our education policy, then please email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it  

Popular Alliance - A Fresh Light on Politics