The Horsell's Mouth Politics, pedantry and personal interests

Hands up - DC has outflanked Labour on teaching

We were overdue a clever piece of PR from the Conservative Party and I’m delighted to see that the latest draft piece of the manifesto has prompted one. DC and his front bench have been open to the charge of “elitism” when it came to their educations and what a great idea for them to turn that notion on its head by saying that the education should be “brazenly elitist” about the quality of trainees entering the teaching profession.

Brilliant. Michael Gove’s team can turn a negative into a positive, the Labour response has been weak and it provides a great way to repel any future elitism jibes – yes, Conservatives should be elitist about education; we should let only the very best enter into the classroom to teach our children.

It’s long overdue. Several of my contempories during my first degree are now teachers – and very good ones too – but there are also others who went into it initially at least for the money received during training. Well, needs must I suppose but it would be good to think that teaching inspired people who were passionate about knowledge and about the importance of education.

I think the Conservative approach of brazen elitism in teaching standards is exactly what is needed – it changes the meaning of the word elitism to mean what it should mean; that every child in this country deserves an elite education. They won’t get that under Labour, which believes all children should have the same education.

But we need to go further and hand control of school administration, budgets and discipline back to governing bodies and the communities they serve. At the moment there are far too many visionary headteachers bound and gagged by government interference and far too many headteachers who don’t have a vision for their school because they don’t need to.

In addition, children are not the only ones who should be learning from school; often parents need support to support their children’s learning. I did my second degree with a former teacher – she said that every single problem she had ever, ever encountered with a child could be traced directly back home and that children’s performance at school was always a reflection of their life away from it.

It is easy to forget that while children enjoy the support of teachers, often there is no-one supporting parents and I’d like to see plans for widening education in many parts of the country to include the whole family, not just the children. From talks on how to support their kids, explaining about discipline to adult learning itself – this kind of long-term thinking won’t reap benefits for 15 years but it is necessary for us to think about if we truly want to get our society mobile again.