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Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 182 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 182, January 1995.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Labour has done a U-turn on education policy by supporting school league tables. They claim they will be ‘fairer’ because they will be based on measuring the difference that a school makes in pupils’ exam results, instead of reporting raw exam results like the Tories do.
There are a number of points to be made about this. First, any league tables create winners and losers – that is what they are for. They are designed to encourage competition, and will lead schools to concentrate only on the criteria they are being measured by.
Second, researchers agree that the best predictor of future performance is past performance. Value added tables will encourage oversubscribed schools to select pupils according to how well they did in previous tests. Pupils who do well in tests at 11 will be creamed off by the popular secondary schools. Tables will lead to a two tier education system of premier league and non-league schools. For this reason it is vital that the NUT continues to boycott SATs.
There is also a clear link between the use of performance indicators and appraisal and (ultimately) performance related pay. It is usually left to schools to decide who gets to know the findings of the research, and how that information is used. In future it is bound to be linked to pay by ‘performance’.
Labour’s retreat is wrong even in narrow electoral terms. Research shows that league tables are not popular with parents (which is why the SATs boycott received public support). There is a real political issue in education – Tory cuts in public spending. In Newcastle £11 million is being cut from the education budget over the next three years. This will lead to the closure of 12 to 15 schools and the loss of 200 teachers’ jobs. If Labour fought the government over cuts like this it would get overwhelming support from workers. Unfortunately, in Newcastle and elsewhere it is a Labour council wielding the axe. Labour will not win votes by aping the Tories’ unpopular education politics and implementing Tory cuts.
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