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Educationfor theGoodSocietyThe values and principles ofa new comprehensive visionEdited by Neal Lawson and Ken Spours

Educationfor theGood SocietyThe values and principles ofa new comprehensive visionEdited by Neal Lawsonand Ken SpoursOctober 2011

Acknowledgements:Compass would like to thank the Friedrich EbertStiftung for their invaluable help, in particulartheir support for the seminars and conferencethat helped shape the thinking behind thisbook. In addition we would like to thank allthe members of the Compass Education Groupwho have attended events and offered ideasand thoughts. We are especially grateful for thetime and effort given by all the contributors tothis publication, their knowledge, insight andcommitment have helped produce an importantpublication. Finally, we would like to thankKen Spours for his exemplary leadership ofthis project and the Compass Education Group.None of this would have been possible withouthim.Published by Compass − Direction for the Democratic Left LtdSouthbank House, Black Prince Road, London SE1 7SJt: +44 (0) 207 463 0632e: info@compassonline.org.ukwww.compassonline.org.ukDesigned by soapbox, www.soapbox.co.uk

ContentsContributors 4Foreword by Lisa Nandy MP 5Introduction by Neal Lawson and Ken Spours 61. Education for the Good Society: an expansive vision, Neal Lawson and Ken Spours 82. Historical perspectives, Jane Martin and Gary McCulloch 143. Education and fairness, Rebecca Hickman 194. Education and gender, Becky Francis 225. Well-being and education, Charles Seaford, Sorcha Mahony and Laura Stoll 266. Education for sustainability, Teresa Belton 307. Schools for democracy, Michael Fielding 348. What kind of society values adult education? Tom Sperlinger 409. Lifelong learning: chimera, head-nodder or awkward customer? Tom Schuller 4410. Education and the economy, Ewart Keep 4911. Re-taking the high ground: steps towards a persuasive progressiveposition on schooling, Martin Yarnit 5312. Rethinking the comprehensive ideal – new ways of conductingeducational politics, Ken Spours 583

ContributorsLisa Nandy is Labour MP for Wigan and amember of the Education Select CommitteeTeresa Belton is Senior Research Associate atthe Centre for Applied Research in Education,School of Education and Lifelong Learning,University of East Anglia.Michael Fielding is an Emeritus Professor at theInstitute of Education, University of London.Becky Francis is Director of Education at theRSA and a visiting professor at King’s CollegeLondon and Roehampton University.Rebecca Hickman works as a freelancecommunications consultant and writer in thepublic and voluntary sectors, dividing her timebetween the UK and South Africa.Ewart Keep is a professor and deputy directorof the ESRC Centre on Skills, Knowledge andOrganisational Performance at the School ofSocial Sciences, Cardiff University.Neal Lawson is Chair of Compass.Sorcha Mahony is a researcher at the Centre forWell-being at the New Economics Foundationand is currently working on projects on thebarriers to achieving population-wide well-beingand on children’s well-being.Jane Martin is a professor at the Institute ofEducation, University of London.Gary McCulloch is the Brian Simon Professor ofHistory of Education at the Institute of Education,University of London.Charles Seaford is Head of the Centre for Wellbeingat the New Economics Foundation.Tom Schuller is director of Longview, a thinktank promoting longitudinal and life courseresearch, and a visiting professor at theUniversity of Edinburgh, Birkbeck, Universityof London, and the Institute of Education,University of London.Tom Sperlinger is Director of Lifelong Learningin the English Department at the University ofBristol.Ken Spours is a professor at the Institute ofEducation, University of London.Laura Stoll is a researcher at the Centre for Wellbeingat the New Economics Foundation; sheco-ordinates the All-Party Parliamentary Groupon Well-being Economics.Martin Yarnit (www.martinyarnitassociates.com) is an educational innovator specialising ineducation and urban regeneration.4 | www.compassonline.org.uk

ForewordSince last year’s election, education has takencentre stage as one of the most heated debatesin British politics. But while radical reformsare changing the landscape of state fundededucation, there is a distinct feeling of drift andfragmentation on the left.In Government New Labour transformedcrumbling, leaky buildings into shining, wellequippedcentres of learning in some of the mostdisadvantaged areas of the country. For somegroups of children, opportunities were opened upand lives transformed.But too often education equipped childrenfor the workforce, not for life, and teacherscomplained that their skills and judgment weresidelined by central diktat. Schools were pittedagainst one another in a quasi-market where onlyacademic results seemed to count and BobbyKennedy’s words echoed around the educationsystem: “it measures everything, in short, exceptthat which makes life worthwhile”.In the face of fundamental change sweepingacross the education system there is anurgent need for an alternative vision based oncollaboration, not competition. This is as mucha journey of rediscovery as it is redirection. AsJon Cruddas points out, education in its broadestsense – as the basis of a fulfilled life – was a richpart of the working-class socialist tradition; it’stime to reclaim it.Taken together the essays in this book setout a vision of an education system that lies atthe heart of a good society. It is a vision wherechildren get not just an academic but a socialeducation and where school becomes a place forsocial enlightenment, not social advantage. Atits centre is a commitment to lifelong learningand communities that are empowered to driveimprovements, where schools are democratisedand children’s well being and academic attainmentare not alternative but synonymous. It is a visionof a system where children are equipped forlife, not just the workforce and where what iscounted is wider than narrow academic results.But equally, and importantly, it is a vision whereacademic attainment really matters and wherebeing equal doesn’t just mean being the same.The book strays into important butuncomfortable territory by taking on questionsthat have gone unasked and assumptions takenfor granted for far too long. Does choice alwaysconflict with the common good, or are the twofundamentally tied together? Was raising theschool participation age an important protectionfor the poorest, or was it a missed opportunity toreshape the education system to meet the needs ofa more diverse range of young people? And doesachieving equality have to mean central control,or is there a way to empower communities andrespect teachers’ expertise without entrenchingdisadvantage?In Britain we have never had a trulycomprehensive education system and this posesa significant challenge. As Neal Lawson andKen Spours point out at the outset, educationhas never achieved the same golden status in thepublic mind as the NHS; it has never had its ‘1948moment’.But while the scale of the challenge is daunting,it is clear that there has been never been a moreimportant time to rise to it. The essays in thisbook are not without controversy and, I hope,will spark the sort of heated debate throughwhich a good education system and, ultimately, agood society are born.Lisa Nandy MPEducation for the good society | 5

IntroductionEducation for the Good Society is part of theGood Society project of Compass: Direction forthe Democratic Left. In contrast to Cameron’sprivatising, anti-state Big Society, the concept ofthe Good Society is rooted in equality, democracy,sustainability and well-being, providing a visionand path of transformation capable of drawingsupport across different groups in an increasinglyfragmented society.However, envisaging education as a force forprogressive change is a difficult mission because,since its formation in the late nineteenth century,mass state education has served to reinforceprevailing economic and social relations. But, atthe same time, it has contained within it visionsof a better world, not only for individuals but alsofor communities and wider society. Education forall was born out of a wide social and ideologicalstruggle and this continues to be the case today.The starting argument of this ebook is thatthe present condition of English educationresults from a hegemonic defeat of 30 years ago.Despite some rises in achievement, more teachersand the improved school buildings of the lastdecade, education suffers from an impoverishedvision, particularly in the popular psyche. BothConservative and New Labour governments,albeit in different ways, reduced education tothe search for family and personal advantage,performativity and bureaucracy.If there was ever a time for a fundamentalreappraisal it is now. In some ways New Labour’s2010 general election defeat was the ultimateignominy. Despite the opportunities offered to itin 1997, the unwillingness and inability of NewLabour in government to transform public understandingof education and other public servicesmeans that the quantitative gains of those yearsare easily reversed. The Coalition Governmenthas been setting about this at lightning speed asit imposes a traditional curriculum and extendsschool autonomy.Education for the Good Society is a vehiclefor this reappraisal because it is starting fromvision of a different kind of society to inspireour approach to educational reform. At the sametime, as Chapter 1 argues, it remains groundedbecause of a recognition that the Good Societywill emerge from the conditions we create now,building on the best we have and an educationexperience as part of a ‘life well led’. In this sense,Education for the Good Society can claim to be a‘serious utopianism’.The chapters that follow articulate in theirdifferent ways a unifying thread – the idea ofa more expansive and comprehensive visionof education as togetherness, building on andrearticulating cherished traditions. In Chapter2, ‘Historical perspectives’, Jane Martin andGary McCulloch suggest that building Educationfor the Good Society requires a long politicalmemory (not just from the 1960s onwards),which acknowledges the contribution of pastideals of liberal education, freedom, universalismand ‘educability’ to today’s struggles. A longerhistorical perspective can help with the renewal ofthe comprehensive vision, as part of a long-termprocess of change.In Chapter 3, ‘Education and fairness’, RebeccaHickman uses international research to argue forthe principle of the ‘spirit level’ – that fairnessshould be a deliberate educational act because itwill allow all children to prosper and as a resulteveryone will gain. Becky Francis in Chapter 4also addresses issues of fairness when lookingat education and gender. She reminds us thatthe education system still reproduces dominantsocial relations and has a long way to go to reflectthe agenda of equality and respect required forthe Good Society. Echoing themes from Chapter2, however, she asserts that research shows thata less differentiated school environment helpsthe progress of both girls and boys. A similartheme is taken up in Chapter 5, ‘Well-beingand education’, where Charles Seaford, SorchaMahony and Laura Stoll suggest that a profoundconcern with well-being in education helpsimprove educational achievement for all learners.Similarly in Chapter 6, ‘Education for sustainability’,Teresa Belton argues for a much moreconnective and holistic approach to educationfor all, which has as one of its central concernsclosing the gap between ourselves and the Earth.Elsewhere we have argued that democracydraws together the fundamental pillars of theGood Society – equality, well-being and sustainability.In Chapter 7, ‘Schools for democracy’,6 | www.compassonline.org.uk

Michael Fielding takes the traditional concept of‘fellowship’ to a new level. His concept of ‘democraticfellowship’ is used to recognise an interdependencybetween teachers and students as thebasis for greater democracy in our educationalinstitutions, a pre-condition for wider democracyin the educational system as a whole.Chapters 8, 9 and 10 explore other dimensionsof expansiveness. In Chapter 8, ‘What kind ofsociety values adult learning?’, Tom Sperlingerfinds that the road to the Good Society will belittered with imperfections and thus there is aconstant need to learn and relearn. Followingon from this Tom Schuller in Chapter 9 arguesfor the wider benefits of lifelong learning andsuggests there should be a ‘longer and different’approach to learning throughout the life-course– arguably the hallmark of the Good Society inaction. Ewart Keep takes the analysis into therealms of the economy and labour market inChapter 10. He recalls that New Labour wasover-ambitious about what education and skillscould achieve on their own and under-ambitiousabout the need to forge the Good Societyin the wider economy. He persuasively arguesthat education, as a transformative force, cannotdo this in isolation from a wider social andeconomic strategy.The final two chapters aim to act as a bridgebetween this volume, which is primarilyconcerned with vision, and the education ebooksto come, which will increasingly focus on debates,strategy and structure. In ‘Re-taking the highground: steps towards a persuasive progressiveposition on schooling’, Martin Yarnit suggeststhat the Left’s failure has been, in large part,its inability to learn from successful politicalcampaigning. He argues for a new cultural revolutionto transform popular commonsense, basedon an underlying optimism that all learners cansucceed given the right conditions. In Chapter12 Ken Spours suggests that Education of theGood Society and the renewal of the comprehensiveideal will require a new type of educationalpolitics based on a values-led approach.This ebook will be the first of several Compasspublications to contribute to an agenda forprogressive education reform. The CompassEducation Group was formed in 2010 and has over200 participants. It has developed an Educationfor the Good Society Statement, a micro-site andholds regular meetings, seminars and conferences.The next step will be a series of seminarsduring 2011/12 to build on this volume, and tofocus on its omissions – the education sectorsfrom primary through to higher education, howinstitutions are organised, how the curriculumand qualifications system can be transformed,and the practicalities of a genuine approach tolifelong learning.Neal Lawson and Ken Spours(September 2011)For further information about the CompassEducation Group and education for the GoodSociety please contact Ken Spours(k.spours@ioe.ac.uk).Education for the good society | 7

1 This article has been developedout of an initial statement‘Education for the Good Society’(February 2011), which hasprovided a reference point for theCompass Education Group and itsGood Society project.2 The vision of a comprehensivesystem is now being revisited. Seefor example, Michael Fielding’seditorial in the spring 2011 editionof Forum, ‘A comprehensivecurriculum: reaffirmation andrenewal’, Forum, 53(1), pp.3–9.3 For recent critiques ofpoliticised policy-making ineducation see, for example,David Raffe and Ken Spours,Policy-Making and Policy Learningin 14–19 Education, Bedford WayPapers, 2007, and Richard Pringet al., Education for All, Routledge,2009.4 Michael Gove, ‘What iseducation for?’, speech to theRSA, 30 June 2009.1. Education forthe Good Society:The values and principlesof a new comprehensivevisionNeal Lawson and Ken SpoursWhy this debate and why now?The Left has suffered a huge defeat. No not thedefeat and the election of the Conservative-ledCoalition Government in 2010 but the intellectualand hegemonic defeat of over 30 years ago.That defeat transformed education into a battlegroundfor the soul of our young people andtheir teachers and parents. What sort of peopledo we as a society want to create? What is ourvision of humanity? In the face of such immensequestions and the onslaughts of the Right, theLeft crumbled. New Labour did some goodthings about school investment and standards,but its purpose was almost entirely neo-liberal– to better create a workforce fit for free marketfundamentalism. This enlightened neo-liberalapproach was better than its crude Thatcheritealternative, but has allowed Gove and Cameronto slip into its jet stream and continue the samelineage of reforms based on break-up, individualisationand commercialisation. While thesereforms need to be fought and resisted there is adeeper struggle to be engaged in. The Right wonbecause they dared to dream of a different world– and they made their dream a reality. The Leftwill only set the terms of debate again once wehave a vision of the world we want to create andunderstand the role of education in pre-figuring,making and sustaining that world. This is theGood Society project. 1Arguably the greatest problem arising fromthat hegemonic defeat has been the narrowingof a vision of education and a disconnectionbetween much of professional and popularopinion. This is despite the fact that we nowknow more about how people learn and increasinglyappreciate the relationship between widerfactors in the economy and society and theexperience of education. It is interesting tocompare people’s attitudes towards health andeducation. The National Health Service remainssacred to the public despite repeated assaultsfrom the Right, because of the compelling visionof free health care, regardless of waiting lists,rationing and persistent inequalities. Educationin England, on the other hand, never had its1948 moment, nor did ever really experience agolden age that captured the public imagination.The comprehensive school movement remainedunderdeveloped, despite islands of inspirationin Leicestershire, Oxford or the Inner LondonEducation Authority, and the idea of an inclusiveand comprehensive curriculum and qualificationssystem did not emerge until the 1990s. 2Instead, education became increasingly associatedwith the search for social advantage anddivisions deepened, even though the educationsystem expanded and became better resourced.At the centre of this ‘modernisation’ was arestrictive vision of education and a loss ofoptimism, a process that began in the mid-1970sand continued under Thatcherism, New Labourand now the Coalition.The concept of education for the GoodSociety is an attempt to address the crisis ofeducational vision. This is not the first attempt– many others have tried before. However,looking across Left interventions it is possibleto see negativity, where a positive vision ofeducation has become subordinate to a fear ofthe adversary. As the Right advanced its agenda,so the Left’s vision of education also appeared tonarrow, often retreating into a set of apprehensionsabout unequal outcomes as a result of thevery successes of neo-liberalism. Furthermore,New Labour did not help. It adopted much ofthe tone of neo-liberal thinking and conductedan extremely complex educational policyin a top-down and politicised way. 3 As the2010 general election approached, it was theRight that came to talk in more positive termsabout change, taking command of key termsconcerning rigour, knowledge, freedom andinnovation. Michael Gove, Secretary of State forEducation, has taken this ideological offensiveto a new level. 48 | www.compassonline.org.uk

The Education for the Good Society Projectcan be seen as a response to the narrowingof the vision of education and to the Left’spartial response, by connecting the meaning ofeducation with the kind of society we want tobuild for the future. 5 It has to be morally courageous,yet thoroughly grounded. Moreover, aprogressive vision is not about constant innovationor permanent revolution, something thatis increasingly associated with the radical right.Education for the Good Society may be about arecognition of old truths and beliefs about whatshould be treasured – for example the joy oflearning; inspiring teachers and how educationcan transform lives – to be applied to the age inwhich we live and to the future we seek to create. 6Expansive and restrictive education:the neo-liberal turn and its effectsIt is worth pausing in order to reflect on thepromise of education. In its most ambitious form,education is a most remarkable endeavour. Theidea of devoting years of our lives to learningand reflection, which some would say requires alifetime, is what helps mark us as human. Educationfosters the skills and knowledge to participate inthe world and can provide ways of seeing beyondour current condition. Such a vision of education,for all and not just a few, did not simply happen.It had to be fought for and we are struggling forit still. What we are fighting for is the idea of anexpansive education that develops the talents ofall individuals throughout the life-course, helps usunderstand how we live together, contributes toa vibrant economy and promotes the ability anddesire to participate in wider society.Over the last 30 years an expansive and humanvision of education has been over-shadowedby the ‘neo-liberal turn’. 7 Forces of the Right insuccessive governments, including New Labour,have promoted a marketised view of educationin which the main aim has been to gain the bestresults to secure social advantage; this is educationas the means by which we learn to compete. Aview of education that reduces a noble venture to acommodity has permeated the popular psyche. Theinterests of competing schools, colleges and profitmakingcompanies in an education market are theinstitutions to create possessive, calculating andcompeting individuals. Education has also becomethe object of electoral politics, as governmentshave stirred up a climate of permanent revolutionin order to seek political advantage. In a worldof markets and political manipulation, the voiceof the teacher has been marginalised and experteducational research belittled, and there is littlegenuine regard for the learner. An artificialquasi-market, with its narrow culture of targets, aburgeoning of bureaucracy and a regime of overtesting,has acted as a surrogate for the real thing.It has produced a system that essentially servesan elite and fosters wider discontent. Nothing isallowed to settle and, like the market, everythingthat is solid melts into air.Yet there have been quantitative gains. Post-16participation rose rapidly under the Conservativegovernments of the 1980s, although this wasfuelled by economic recession and the collapseof the youth labour market. Later in the decade,the GCSE common examination developed, asurprising outcome from Thatcherism, althoughmuch of the early 1990s was spent trying to reversesome of developments through, for example, thedivision of GCSEs into A–C grades and below.New Labour subsequently provided the educationsystem with more teachers, assistants and betterbuildings, one of the major achievements of13 years in office. As a result of New Labour’sinterventions, it is generally accepted that students(and their teachers) are working harder than everto promote educational attainment and, as a result,more young people are staying on beyond 16 andin higher education. However, the prime motiveof New Labour’s policies was economic efficiencyand it was part of a now flawed political economy.This was based on not only a deregulated financialsector, rising house prices and increased personaldebt, but also supply-side measures to educate andtrain people for jobs that did not exist.However, quantitative gains cannot conceal asense of concern about the restrictive mindsetof neo-liberal education, which has reduced themost impressive of human achievements to anindividualised, commodified, utilitarian act withlittle meaningful sense of a better future. It alsohas proved to be a regime of winners and losers.The losers, usually from low-income groups, areoften filtered out of general education and offeredinstead a future in vocational education, althoughincreasingly without a prospect of a job or a5 ‘Education for the GoodSociety’ is part of the widerdeliberations of Compass: NewDirection for the DemocraticLeft in building an alliance fordemocratic and social change. SeeJonathan Rutherford and HetanShah (eds), The Good Society,2006, www.compassonline.org.uk/publications/item.asp?d=182.6 A debate about ‘radicalconservation’ can be found in therecent Compass and Soundingspublication edited by MauriceGlasman, Jonathan Rutherford,Marc Steers and Stuart White,The Labour Tradition and thePolitics of Paradox, www.lwbooks.co.uk/journals/soundings/Labour_tradition_and_the_politics_of_paradox.pdf.7 The concept of the ‘neo-liberalturn’ refers here to thedominance of ideas and practicesin wider economic and publiclife over the last 30 years, whichhave emphasised privatisation,competition and performativity.Education for the good society | 9

8 See Ann Hodgson, Ken Spoursand Martyn Waring (eds), Post-Compulsory Education across theUnited Kingdom: Policy, Organizationand Governance, IoE Bedford WayPapers, 2011, for an analysis ofcommonalities and differences ineducation and training systemsacross the UK.9 A number of campaigns forprogressive education haveemerged in recent years, suchas Whole Education (www.wholeeducation.org/), which actsas an umbrella for a range ofrelated initiatives.10 An interesting set of articleson mutualism and reciprocity(e.g. by Anthony Painter) can befound in Jonathan Rutherfordand Alan Lockey (eds), Labour’sFuture, Soundings and Open Left,www.lwbooks.co.uk/ebooks/laboursfuture.html.proper apprenticeship. Even the so-called winners,the ones with the top results, cannot claim tohave had a rounded education in the narrowA-level regime. Moreover, these quantitative gains,which have held the neo-liberal project togetherover the past three decades, now look in doubt.Severe reductions in public expenditure and aConservative-led Government bent on a moreelitist and static view of education could see anactual reversal of attainment and educationalparticipation. Everyone outside the top 25 per centcould suffer setbacks, not least those deprived of aneducation maintenance allowance (EMA).The Good Society – challenging theneo-liberal settlementWhat we have described here has been theexperience of England. However, you do nothave to travel to Finland or Sweden to see adifferent approach to education: you merelyhave to visit Cardiff or Edinburgh. Scotland hashad its own distinctive system of education fordecades and, since parliamentary devolution,Wales is developing its path along more socialdemocratic lines. 8 Within England, too, there isan undercurrent of alternatives and progressiveideas – policies from teachers’ unions, civilsociety organisations, research and campaignslike Whole Education. 9 At grassroots level, eachand every day, teachers and others involvedin schools, colleges and work-based trainingstruggle to make education the enlightening andlife-changing process it ought to be. A vision ofeducation, which is both very new and very old,is stirring beneath the surface of politics, with thepotential to break the neo-liberal mould.Building on progressive policies of ourmost immediate neighbours and innovativeprofessional, research and policy developments,the Good Society is a route map out of thiscondition that has come to dominate ourlives over the past three decades. We have torediscover hope and the possibility of a differentfuture that emerges from the globalised worldin which we live. There is no shining city on thehill, an opposite and existing world to inspireus. But there is injustice that, combined with thecrisis of neo-liberalism, gives us the potentialfor something different and better. Inequalityhas widened nationally and internationally; theeconomic system is highly unstable and ourvery existence is threatened by climate change.But collective responses have been underminedby the sense of disconnect between peoples andgovernments and the lack of a popular alternative.The old is dying and the new is yet to be born.In this complex context, the Good Societyhas to be a qualitative extension of our verybest experiences. It will involve treasuring someof things we have lost because of uncontrolledcapitalism, particularly the solidity of publicinstitutions that can embody collaboration andreciprocity. 10 Public libraries, for example, arenot just for the middle classes; they are hubs forthe wider community. What we founded in thepublic realm will have to be defended even inthe most difficult times. But the Good Societyalso has to envisage relations beyond our currentcondition, built around a profound sense ofequality, democracy and sustainability, with afocus on community, time, care and well-being.At its heart it is a project centred on the humancondition.These features imply, in the first instance, adifferent form of capitalism in which the marketis controlled and socialised. In the longer term,the full realisation of the Good Society suggestsits complete transformation, but the word thatconjures up the Good Society more than anyother is freedom. It is a word we have allowedthe Right to capture and we need to take itback. Not just the freedom to earn and own butreal freedom; the freedom to shape our lives,which we can only do in a meaningful sensecollectively and if we have sufficient resourcesand are, therefore, much more equal. Freedomin this deeper sense starts with the individual,but recognises that we only have meaning inrelation to others. Given this starting point,education is about the most important thing wecan ever learn, teaching us to live together and tocollaborate to build a better future.The Good Society will be signalled by agreater willingness to build social relationships,strengthen the sense of community to combatthe ‘social recession’, exercise a different lifestylein support of sustainability, and tackle inequality.These ambitious aims can only be pursuedwhen ordinary citizens take greater control overtheir lives and communities. They cannot be10 | www.compassonline.org.uk

imposed successfully from above. Democracy isthe means by which the four pillars – equality,sustainability, democracy and human well-being– are bound together. But it will be a far moreparticipative and deeper democracy than wecurrently experience. It will also bring a greateraccent on the local and civil society, a tolerationof differences and a greater belief in persuasionand argument rather than force. Such a visionof the Good Society has the potential to bepopular and to span political, social and culturalboundaries. The Good Society is fashioned by apolitics that gives primacy to means over endsand the recognition that social institutions arethe places in which progressive values live, breathand thrive; that is why education is critical tobuilding such a society.The Good Society – a vision foreducationWe need a ‘serious utopianism’, both visionaryand practical, to create a new common senseabout education. Education must become bothmeans and ends. The meaning and practice ofthe Good Society will be realised by developingconfident, empowered and aware citizens,through a process that is profoundly democratic,egalitarian and considerate of others. Educationthus forms an integral part of the Good Societyand its realisation. Becoming educated is aboutdeveloping awareness and higher levels ofknowledge and skill, and learning to live together,all of which will be needed in building a differenttype of society from the one we have presently.Education, understood in this broadest sense,will need to be guided by clear and explicitprinciples that fulfil our current needs andcontribute to a possible future.Fairness and equalityThere are several reasons why this principle shouldbe the first for consideration. The neo-liberalvision of education for personal advantagehas unfairness built into it. One person’s gainis another’s loss, producing a system of the‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’. Within these divisivearrangements operates an ‘inverse law of care’;those who have the most tend to get the most.Interacting with social and economic unfairnessis also race and gender discrimination, addingadditional dimensions of difference. If educationis about a wider sense of togetherness, in whichgreater equality benefits all, then disadvantagehas to be tackled head-on and resources allocatedaccording to need to ensure that everyone canparticipate fully and realise their potential.Moreover, the battle for fairness and togethernessprovides a renewed rationale for the commonschool and an education linked to communityand place. Conservatives argue that schools basedon communities will accentuate difference. Tocounter this, the linking of the common school towider issues of fairness means having to confrontsocial and economic inequalities in localities thatdrive divisions.Personal development and the freedomto exercise democratic controlFollowing arguments about fairness, educationhas to be universal in order that everyone is ableto develop their full potential. Yet the aim ofeducation is more than individual fulfilment – it isabout developing the collective capacity of peopleto be able to govern themselves, to transformwider civil society, the economy and government.Education is, therefore, a fundamentaldemocratic issue. It can only truly promote thevalues of democracy when education itself ismore democratically organised. This suggests ademocratising agenda that includes greater localaccountability, a stronger voice for professionalsorganised in communities of practice, the developmentof inter-dependent relations betweeneducators and their students, and devolvingresponsibility to the local level so that communitieshave powers to actually change their localities.This means moving from ‘freedom from’ andinstitutional autonomy to ‘freedom to’, wherebysocial partners working together exercise moredemocratic control. 11State education and self-organisationThe Left has traditionally argued that only thestate can guarantee equity. The problem is thatthe state has also delivered privatisation (the aimof the Coalition Government) and bureaucratisation(the record of New Labour). 12 A democraticvision of education for the Good Society askswhat is meant by ‘state education’. The scale andquality of freedom envisaged requires reform of11 Lawrence Pratchett suggeststhat strategies for localism haveto distinguish between ‘freedomfrom’ higher authority and‘freedom to’ bring about changethat involves possessing thepower to collectively reshapelocalities. See L. Pratchett, ‘Localautonomy, local democracy andthe new localism’, Political Studies,52(2), 2004, pp.358–75.12 Janet Newman offers anexcellent account of NewLabour’s ‘adaptive managerialism’in Modernising Governance: NewLabour, Policy and Society, Sage/OUP, 2001.Education for the good society | 11

13 The most comprehensiverecent researched case for lifelonglearning is Tom Schuller andDavid Watson’s Learning ThroughLife: Inquiry into the Future forLifelong Learning, NIACE, 2009.14 See, for example, RichardSennett’s The Craftsman, AllenLane, 2008.15 See an upcoming pieceby Michael Young for anargument from the Left aboutthe importance of subjects inthe school curriculum: ‘Thereturn to subjects: a sociologicalperspective on the UK CoalitionGovernment’s approach to the14–19 curriculum’, The Curriculum,forthcoming.16 This is an aim of UnionLearnand its approach to workplaceskill development through unionbargaining (see www.unionlearn.org.uk/).17 See Allson Fuller andLorna Unwin, TowardsExpansive Apprenticeships,ESRC Teaching and LearningResearch Programme, www.tlrp.org/pub/documents/apprenticeshipcommentaryFINAL.pdf.the formal education system and greater capacityfor the self-organisation of education by thecommunity, civil society organisations and individuals.It points us towards more emancipatoryconcepts of organisation associated with theearly days of the labour and socialist movementsand an understanding of why the concept of freeschools might possess a grain of truth, despite theall too evident flaws. Education for transformationcannot be rooted solely within the state as itis currently constructed.Institutions that promote learningand living togetherThe values of mutualism, reciprocity and a senseof place require educational institutions thatembody these values. The Right advocates institutionsof segregation and selfishness – eachfor themselves – despite its more rational casefor independence and freedom. The vision ofthe Good Society, on the other hand, suggeststhe remaking of the moral argument for thecommon school, and democratic participationand accountability in communities and localitiesto meet the needs of all learners and to promote asense of inter-dependence.Lifelong learningAn expanded concept of education, formal andinformal, has to be nurtured over the life-courseand is not simply confined to schooling forchildren and young people. The idea of lifelonglearning is compelling because it improveseconomic, social and individual well-being. Theeducation of adults is, therefore, a key indicatorof a successful education system for the GoodSociety. 13A curriculum and qualificationsLearning, curriculum and the process of becomingqualified are of vital importance. Learning shouldbe about openness and discovery. Young peopleand adults learn more effectively when they aremotivated, understand why they are learning andcan use knowledge to make sense of the world. Acurriculum for the Good Society will thus placevalue on all types of knowledge and skill. The skillof the craftsperson, doing a good job for its ownsake, 14 deserves as much recognition as the questfor knowledge and greater awareness. The curriculumwill have to encourage confrontation withthe great challenges of the age – poverty, oppressionand the climate crisis – so that educationplays its role in helping society address its deepestproblems.Learning for the Good Society will also meaneducators finding ways to help all learnersengage with what has been termed ‘powerfulknowledge’, so this does not become the preserveof the few. 15 In the future, educators will haveto focus far less on selection and far more ondeveloping the highest standards and nurturingpersonal development – the music test principlein practice.Education, the economy and innovationin the workplaceWorkplaces are prime sites of learning andhave enormous educational potential. However,evidence suggests that existing workplaces –often exploitative, oppressive and undemocratic– provide restrictive learning opportunities andcan fail to harness creativity. Education for theGood Society needs to have a vision of theworkplace that promotes democratic participationand more collective control as an integralpart of learning, 16 moving them from a restrictiveto more expansive learning environments. 17The first stage of the education for the GoodSociety project is to establish the principles andpoint of education. Then and only then will wediscuss and debate the shape of the educationsystem. Form must follow function. An e-bookwill shortly be published by Compass dealingwith these big themes and issues. After they havebeen debated, refined and developed we willbegin the second stage to discuss how. This iswhere it will get hard and we will need help, ideas,experience and critical engagement from all whowant a Good Society and know education has acentral role in delivering and being that GoodSociety. So we finish by addressing some of thedifficult questions we know we must face.Facing difficult questions in order tocreate a new common senseEducation for the Good Society will involve abattle of ideas and practices. A humanitarianand transformative vision of educationwill be strongly opposed by those seeking to12 | www.compassonline.org.uk

preserve division and privilege and to narrowthe purposes and functions of education.This contest is much more explicit under theConservative-led Coalition than it was underNew Labour and, in many ways, the challengeshould be welcomed. But it is much more thana struggle for policy; it involves the longer-termtransformation of popular common sense. Herethe task is enormous because neo-liberal ideashave become deeply embedded in cultures andinstitutions, and the Left has not really learnedimportant lessons from wider successful politicalcampaigning (see Chapter 11, ‘Retaking thehigh ground’, by Martin Yarnit). Nevertheless,neo-liberal ideas and policies are also vulnerable,not least because of the looming economic crisisof education and because they cannot adequatelyspeak to the world in which we live and to whichwe aspire.Precisely because this is a battle of ideas,practices and structures, the journey of educationtowards the Good Society will involve confrontingdemanding issues. The greatest difficulty mayarise from the very strength of this new andexpansive vision – its utopianism – and thesense of distance from where we find ourselvespresently. The Good Society concept has to beseen as a general moral guide and compass thathelps us steer through the rapids of difficult deliberationin order to make mature and balanceddecisions. These are just a few of the challengesnow faced by the Labour Party and the widerprogressive movement:• How can individual choice and freedom becombined with the common good? Peoplelike choice, but choice-based systems tendto lead to division. The challenge may be tocreate strong frameworks (organisational andcurricular) within which effective and moreequitable choices can be made. Indeed, howdo we humanise and the system to permit andencourage participation but at the same timestay true to universalist principles?• What needs to be taught and learned in orderto create the basis for wider change? This is along-standing debate, which has resurfacedagain under the Coalition. Can traditionalor difficult subjects, referred to as ‘powerfulknowledge’, be the basis of a curriculum forall, or should low achievers (often studentsfrom working-class backgrounds) experiencea more practical and motivational curriculum?The challenge is to combine both, but this iseasier said than done.• How do we resolve the tension between theeveryday need to learn to earn alongsidethe priority of education being the meansby which we learn to co-operate rather thancompete? How do we protect and extend asocial form of education and its institutionswithin a society that itself its being steadilycommercialised and individualised?• How should policy be made? Both NewLabour and now the Coalition have treatededucation as a political object – what EwartKeep referred to as the ‘playing with thebiggest train set in the world’. 18 Should we beproposing that education decision-makingbe made less political by devolving powersto commissions that include a wide range ofsocial partners and aim to provide a sense ofcontinuity and solidity? And linked to this,how can respect for achievements of the pastbe part of the mission to create a new type ofeducation and society? See Chapter 12 for anelaboration of this argument.To succeed in this contested world, transformativestrategies for education will have to work intandem with wider change in the economy andsociety so that new ideas can be seen to workin practice, becoming embedded in new structuresand cultures and thus become part of anew common sense. These are just some of thechallenges to which we commit ourselves as wecontinue to strive to build the Good Society withand through education.18 Ewart Keep, ‘State control ofthe English VET system: playingwith the biggest trainset in theworld’, Journal of VocationalEducation and Training, 58(1), 2006,pp.47–64.Education for the good society | 13

1 See for example B. Simon, ‘Caneducation change society?’, in B.Simon, Does Education Matter?,Lawrence & Wishart, 1985,pp.13–31; and chapter 4 in G.McCulloch, The Struggle for theHistory of Education, Routledge,2011.2 Simon, ‘Can education changesociety?’, p.28.3 See for example J. Purvis,Hard Lessons: The Lives andEducation of Working-class Womenin Nineteenth-century England,Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989; andC. Dyhouse, Students: A GenderedHistory, Routledge, 2006.4 I. Grosvenor, AssimilatingIdentities: Racism and EducationalPolicy in Post 1945 Britain,Lawrence & Wishart, 1997.2. Historical perspectivesJane Martin and Gary McCullochIdeas about education for the good society havebeen expressed and debated for thousands ofyears. It is vital that current discussions abouthow to develop these ideas for the future recognisetheir historical significance, and that they shouldseek to build on the legacies of the past in aconstructive but critical way. In this short chapter,we aim first to discuss some general issues abouthistorical perspectives on education and then todevelop some specific historical examples of theways in which education can seek to promote thegood society.New perspectives on education historyHistorical perspectives should remind us that weshould not idealise the past. The work of BrianSimon a generation and more ago documentedthe social inequalities and differences that havebeen endemic in our modern system of schoolingsince the nineteenth century, rather than simplythe last three decades. These inequalities wereinitially framed mainly in terms of social class,and these remain well entrenched today. Simonobserved that in the English context, the nationalsystem of schooling had been established inorder to reinforce existing social and economicrelations, but had itself become a site of conflict. 1He did not expect education systems with sucha historical background ‘to act directly andimmediately to transform that society – sayin a socialist direction’. 2 Such initiatives ascomprehensive education should not be judgedor evaluated by their success or otherwise inachieving such a change. Rather, according toSimon, it was the long-term outcomes overdecades and even centuries that were of greaterimportance, and in this sense he was confidentthat education could change society.The research that has followed over the past40 years has extended this analysis furtherto reveal other types of inequality based forexample on gender, ethnicity, locality, urbanityand disability. It has highlighted the educationalstruggles of working class girls and women andthe historical aspirations of women for accessto higher education. 3 It has also increasinglydrawn attention to the inequalities surroundingeducation for ethnic minorities 4 and otherdisadvantaged groups in society such as disabledpeople. 5 No prescription for change can bemeaningful that fails to understand and takeinto account the historical features of the issuesinvolved, because it will mistake the problemsof the current period as the causes rather thanthe symptoms of deeper and highly resilientcharacteristics of our education and society.At the same time, historical perspectivesshould also remind us that ideals of educationfor the good society have been embedded intheory and practice in this country throughoutthe past two centuries. We have a rich heritage ofexamples for us to draw on and to build on fromour own history, which reach across the politicaland social spectrum. These should be a vitalresource for us in visualising potential changeand developing route maps for the future.In the nineteenth century, for example,educators advanced ideals of ‘liberal education’,which were intended to promote humanevalues and civic awareness. Drawing on theideas of the ancient Greek philosophers Platoand Aristotle, these sought to emphasise themoral and social relationships of education andexpressed profound ambitions for education andits implications for the good society. Thomasand Matthew Arnold, Cardinal Newman, JohnStuart Mill and T.H. Huxley were among thebest known of these educators, and their keyworks remain relevant to today’s debate. Theyneed to be understood in their historical context,in relation to the inequalities and divisions ofnineteenth century society, which encouraged theemergence of a group of privileged and powerful‘public schools’ while delaying the developmentof a national system of compulsory schooling.Nevertheless, the ideals of these educators arefundamental to education for the Good Society;indeed, education for the Good Society cannot beadequately understood without reference to them.In the twentieth century, too, progressive idealsof education for the good society were widelyexpressed in a changing social and political contextby educators including R.H. Tawney, A.S. Neill,Fred Clarke and Bridget Plowden, among manyothers. Again there were many compromises14 | www.compassonline.org.uk

and contradictions around their ideas, whichhave to be taken into account. Tawney’s visionof ‘secondary education for all’, for example, hadto contend with entrenched prejudices aboutthe lack of ability of the mass of the population.A.S. Neill’s ideas about freedom were rehearsedmainly for the benefit of fee-paying parentsoutside the state system of schooling. Yet the ideasthemselves were indispensable for further growthof educational idealism in the twentieth century.History and education policyThe loss of historical perspective in recenteducation policies has meant both a forgetting ofthe deeper problems of schooling and a foreclosingof vision. As Raffe and Spours have pointed out,there has been a failure of policy learning, whichhas led to a failure to inform policy developmentby drawing lessons from available evidence andexperience. 6 For example, taking the EducationReform Act 1988 as Year Zero, as many do,signally fails to illuminate the enduring patternsand preoccupations of provision in England. Aneffective and strong alternative to the policies ofthe past 30 years must give priority to fostering agreater awareness of our own history. History hasthe potential to contribute fundamentally to themaking of education for the Good Society, throughits documentation and analysis of the political andpolicy context, the ‘voices’ of educational workersand some of the major ‘actors’ in the system.Teachers as an occupational grouping have playeda vital role in uncovering problems and remediesbesides acting as resources for social movementsof various kinds including the early labourmovement. To illustrate these points, we willstep into the spirit and nature of the Left’s radicaltradition in education as a way of envisaging andrealising possibilities and providing an alternativeview of the world of mass education. There is ahistorical amnesia about left educational politics,and left radicalism is in danger of forgetting itsrecent past.The Left’s radical tradition in educationOur starting point is a quote from William Morriswriter, designer, artist and socialist. Writing inthe 1880s, Morris said: ‘I do not want art for a fewany more than education for a few or freedomfor a few.’ 7 These words decorated studentbanners heading the anti-fees demonstration thatmarched from London’s Bloomsbury district on9 December 2010. We quote them because theytraverse and connect past with present. Whereastoday’s protestors quoted Morris to highlighttheir desire to defend access to education, inMorris’s lifetime the struggle was to secure accessto education for working people.In Assessing Radical Education, Nigel Wrightsays ‘the history of education may be viewed asthe history of policies which failed to achievetheir aims’. 8 He also identifies the 1890s,1920s and 1960s as favourable decades for lefteducational radicals because their views werelistened to. We offer some brief pieces fromthese periods because they are of interest tothose who wish to ‘rediscover’ previous examplesof attempts at education reform and usingthem. To avoid repeating the struggles of thepast we need an understanding of the ways inwhich those patterns (such as a central–localbalance of power, equality and elitism, hierarchyand differentiation) permeate the workings ofpolicy in the current context. Collective policymemory is a starting point from which to addresslegacies and make continuities, enabling a crossgenerationalsolidarity to produce a reading ofthe past, from the present, for the future in thetradition of critical writing on social reform, andthe quest for the common good.‘The Socialist movement is teaching, and themost important people in the world from theSocialist’s point of view are those who teach.’ 9These stirring words come from New Worldsfor Old, the last of H.G. Wells’ quartet of bookson the socialist future, first published in 1908.They give expression to the political traditionrepresented by Fabian gradualism convertedto the enthusiasms of the Independent LabourParty, calling on fellow citizens to act as changeagents. Others drew on the arguments of Idealistphilosophers such as T.H. Green, whose ideasformed a dominant idiom at the beginning of thetwentieth century, where the emphasis was on awhole philosophy of education, of its purposes,directed towards active citizenship and reform.This was a call to action viewed as a means tothe end of attaining perfect justice and creating5 F. Armstrong, ‘Disability,education and social change inEngland’, History of Education,36(2–3), 2007, pp.551–68.6 D. Raffe and K. Spours (eds),Policy-making and Policy-Learningin 14–19 Education, Institute ofEducation, 2007.7 See www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/1882/hopes/hopes.htm.8 N. Wright, Assessing RadicalEducation, Open University Press,1989, p.182.9 H.G. Wells, New Worlds for Old,George Allen and Unwin, 1909,p.265.Education for the good society | 15

10 J. Martin, Making Socialists: MaryBridges Adams and the Fight forKnowledge and Power, ManchesterUniversity Press, 2010.11 C. Benn, ‘Common educationand the radical tradition’, in A.Rattansi and D. Reeder (eds),Rethinking Radical Education: Essaysin Honour of Brian Simon, Lawrence& Wishart, 1992, pp.142–65; andMartin, Making Socialists, p.106.the ideal state. Green provided an intellectualschema at the level of general moral values, whichsought to provide a meeting ground betweenmiddle class reformers and what they consideredthe ‘better part’ of the working class. Since thesecondary schools charged fees and were largelybeyond the reach of the ordinary child, teachersworking in elementary schools held the gaze asstate officials who might promote the morality ofthe common good through universal education.In this context, teaching and learning provideda sounding board for teachers’ civic engagement,acting within education, teacher associations andcommunities.Brian Simon argued that local authoritieshave been a progressive force in education. Theperiod from the 1870 Education Act to thefirst decade of the twentieth century broughtuniversal basic education. Popular educationalpolitics depended on locally elected singlepurposeelementary education authorities called‘school boards’, valued for the width of theirfranchise. The democracy of the boards wasprized in comparison with the proprietary rightsof clergy over the voluntary schools and workingclassradicals tried to extend opportunitieswithin the elementary system, advancing it in acommon direction. In the 1890s, Labour leaderslike Keir Hardie demanded a comprehensive‘broad highway’ that all could travel; othersdemanded that the system be organised basedon age divisions rather than those of social class.There was a tendency to see state schools as ‘thepeople’s own’. The policies favoured were localcontrol and ‘common schools’ rather than theworkable ‘ladder of opportunity’ that the 1902Education Act put into operation.The common schoolThere are similarities between the predicamentfacing activists in the National Labour EducationLeague (set up in 1901) and current hopes ofrenewing social democratic ideas in education.Espousing the common school as part of thesocialist vision of a better society, agitators raisedquestions of control: who decides the forms andcontents of schooling; what does democracymean in this sphere? The League organisedaround two key demands: the formation of asecular (not spiritual or religious) state educationsystem that would be free and compulsory for all,and the provision of state-funded maintenancegrants, school medical inspection and feedingof schoolchildren. 10 All were funded throughthe restoration of the educational endowmentsprovided by ‘do-gooders’ including religiousbodies to establish schools and colleges. TheEndowed Schools Commissioners, charged withreviewing their operation from 1864 to 1868,triggered several key changes at the expense ofthe working classes. These included empoweringsuch schools to charge fees and makingadmission to the schools dependent on winninga scholarship through ‘merit’, which usuallymeant proficiency in Latin or Greek, subjectsto which the ordinary child was unlikely to beexposed. This involved the adaptation of ancientfoundations, old statutes and trust deeds, whichhad begun as endowments for the educationof poor and indigent scholars. In practice, thisled to the abolition of the free education willedby benefactors in the past, and the removal ofrestrictions on curricula. The commissioners alsoconfiscated funds from charities providing foodand cash for poor families, which they regardedas outmoded, and handed them over to theendowed secondary schools. 11Offering a clear perspective on the scope ofeducation, the League believed a school had todo three things: train for a working life, for aninner life and for a communal life as a citizen.Campaigning for improvements in working-classeducation, they believed that everyone (regardlessof class, ethnicity or gender) should have accessto a common curriculum that combined physicaleducation, manual and mental labour and learningto use one’s hands in manual crafts. They foughtfor maintenance grants and welfare provisionto secure meaningful access to high qualityeducation delivered to a maximum class size of30 pupils. The restoration of the misappropriatededucational endowments was an important rootof the popular politics of education in this periodand crucial to the realisation of the League’seducation programme. Activists campaigned forpopular control over them, reinterpreting thecontent of culture by giving status to ‘modern’subjects (living languages, mathematics andscience) in opposition to the liberal–romantictradition in the hands of England’s elite. 1216 | www.compassonline.org.uk

Outflanking all opposition, Fabian SidneyWebb’s vision of a ‘ladder of opportunity’ andthe making of a meritocracy that it encapsulateddo much to explain tensions in the currentprovision, with its roots in the hierarchy of valuesof Victorian administrators, founded in theirturn on the Aristotelian–Platonic philosophythey studied in public schools: ‘The world isgoing your way at present, Webb, but it is not theright way in the end,’ William Morris told Sidneyin 1895. 13There are different versions of the prescriptionfor the Good Society and prescriptions forrealising it. Morris and others felt that it wasnot wealth that civilisation had created butriches. Shocked by the social consequences ofindustrialisation, Morris’s dreams were of asocialist utopia that would provide for all itscitizens a free and full life, with pleasurableand useful work, a decent standard of living,and leisure for art and recreation. For Morris,education was a completely dominating centralconcern needed to prepare people both forsatisfying work and proper use of leisure. Incommon with Tawney after him, Morris insistedon equality of condition rather than equality ofopportunity.Tawney was politician and educationalreformer Shena D. Simon’s great politicalmentor. In common with Morris, Tawney andher son, Brian, Shena Simon was committed toa belief in human educability, an insistence onthe right of all human beings to develop theirintelligence and responsibility. While Tawneyadvocated ‘secondary schooling for all’ in the1920s, he assumed there would be different typesof schools. Shena Simon began arguing for acommon secondary schooling in the 1930s,optimistic that the common school could createsocial cohesion and provide the space in whicha democratic community could be attained.Against the grain of ideas of class power andclass disadvantage that dominated the left radicalagenda, she was also overtly feminist, promotingequal opportunities for women and girls. 14By the 1960s, the weight of support forcomprehensive schools grew out of the experienceof teachers, children and parents at the hands ofa divided education system, which not only failedhuge numbers of young people, but also restedon spurious educational thinking (to do withIQ testing) that was perceived as riddled withfailure. However, particular attention was paidto the structural framework of schooling that leftunanswered the question of what should be theguiding principle of comprehensive education.Equality of opportunity was conceptualised asgrammar school education for all or the searchfor new common principles and a distinctivecomprehensive learning programme. Weshould recall Bernard Barker’s advocacy thatthe ‘comprehensive experience’ ‘has to berescued from its own meritocratic assumptionsabout children and teaching before it can besaved from politicians, falling rolls or shrinkingfinances’. 15 Similarly, we should be in no doubtas to the nature and severity of the harm that willbe done to the education of current and futuregenerations by the model of higher educationof the Department for Business, Innovation andSkills, which may signal the return to a moreunequal distribution of cultural capital.Back to the futureTawney founded his conception of the GoodSociety on the principles of freedom, equality andsolidarity. Eighty years ago, he observed,‘The boys and girls of well-to-do parents…continue their education as a matter of course,not because they are exceptional, but because theyare normal and the question of the ‘profit’ theysucceed in deriving from it is left, quite rightly, tobe answered later. Working-class children havethe same needs to be met and the same powers tobe developed.’ 16Crucially, boys and girls are both much moresuccessful at school than in the 1920s and 1930swhen only one in five elementary school leaversreceived any kind of further education after14 years. If we move fast forward to judgethe comprehensive experience by the narrowcriterion of academic success, we find one in fivestudents gains at least one GCE A-level pass in1983, compared with one in seven who obtainedthis qualification during the 1960s. 17 However,when considering the life chances of all those whopass through the educational system, we shouldnot lose sight of the fact that young people from12 M. Vlaeminke, The EnglishHigher Grade Schools: A LostOpportunity, Woburn Press, 2000.13 R. Page Arnot, William Morris:The Man and the Myth, Lawrence& Wishart, 1964, p.108.14 J. Martin and J. Goodman,Women and Education, 1800–1980,Palgrave, 2004.15 B. Barker, Rescuing theComprehensive Experience, OpenUniversity Press, 1986, p.xvi.16 R.H. Tawney, Equality, UnwinBooks, 1931, p.143.17 C. Chitty (ed.), ‘The wayforward’, in C Chitty (ed.),Redefining the ComprehensiveExperience, Bedford Way Papers,1987, p.87.Education for the good society | 17

the poorest homes (as measured by eligibility forfree meals) still have fewer qualifications at GCSEand A-level. 18With this in mind, we need a demolitionof a simple idea of history as progress. Thereis constant movement. Clarification of thehistorical context and the prevailing ideologiesthat underpin education policy making continueto be framed as a necessary part of any responseto the call for a ‘serious utopianism’. We needto understand the diverse ideological origins ofthe Left oppositional tradition in state educationand ideologies of social action derived from thesesources. If we exclude them, we are not providinga comprehensive picture. Only then can we beginto examine competing conceptions of citizenship,in the sense of ‘crusading activist’, ‘entrepreneur’and ‘volunteer’, and to tease out conditionsthat facilitate or hinder translation of the GoodSociety into political practice.18 J. Shepherd, ‘Poor studentsfail to make the grade at A-level’,Guardian, 20 April 2010.18 | www.compassonline.org.uk

3. Education and fairnessRebecca HickmanCui bono – who benefits?It is familiar territory to consider the principle offairness in relation to public service delivery andoutcomes. The concept of fairness is sufficientlyvague to make it an appealing touchstonefor politicians of all hues. It is convenientlysusceptible to being invoked to lend credibilityto an ideologically driven political agenda andless often used to direct and shape the content ofthat agenda. As Roy Hattersley once commented,‘We all believe in fairness and define it accordingto taste.’So we need to define terms; craft a meaningfuldefinition of fairness, capable of a degree ofobjective application. To this end, in the sphereof education policy, the cui bono principleprovides us with a useful tool. Who stands tobenefit? Who do the structures, operation andrepercussions of a particular education systemreward, and who finds their starting position ofrelative disadvantage unchanged or worsened?Fairness would demand that everyone benefits,that outcomes improve across the board, whileinequality and socially determined attainmentreduce. In that case, our vision of fairness mightbe summed up as educational systems andprovision that redistribute opportunities, powerand resources across lifetimes and generations.Conversely, unfairness would be educationalsystems and provision that reproduce andentrench existing patterns of (dis)advantageand social inequality, thereby creating a kindof social closure. Crucially, this definition offairness clearly speaks of ends as well as means,destinations as well as journeys.The application of such a definition requiresattention to a number of questions. First, whereis the locus of responsibility: to what extent doesit rest with the state, and should the achievementof fairness ever depend on, say, the degree ofactive participation by parents? Second, mustfairness be universal: morally and practically,can it be achieved for one child if it has beendenied another? Third, what is the relationshipof fairness to democratic accountability at localand national levels? Fourth, in what respectsis fairness unavoidably eroded by a faithfulattachment to market mores, and what level ofempirical evidence must we demand of market orany other solutions?Markets and schoolingResearch suggests that the expansion in educationprovision of the past 60 years has helped the‘haves’ to entrench their privileged position atthe expense of the ‘have nots’ and that the relationshipbetween family income and educationalattainment in the UK has actually strengthenedover time. In other words, having notionally‘equal’ access to educational opportunity is notthe same thing as having equal prospects of benefitingfrom educational provision. To achieve thelatter, proactive interventions are required onbehalf of those who bring fewer resources andlesser know-how to the table.In education, the Conservatives havetraditionally focused more on the enablingstructures for equivalent learning inputs than onthe actual and measurable outputs of the system.In other words, they stand accused by Labour(and, once, the Liberal Democrats) of neglectingthe wider circumstances and factors that mediateeducational destinies – factors such as individualcapabilities, household income, family practicesand social capital. The Conservatives mightnonetheless argue that the system they create isfair – providing theoretical equal opportunities toprogress to children from all backgrounds.But the current Coalition Government’sunseemly dash towards all-out marketisationbetrays an idolatry of means that is not consistentwith a commitment to just outcomes. Cui bono?Who stands to benefit from academies, freeschools, diminished local education authoritiesand the proliferation of admissions authorities?Certainly central government. For all the rhetoricof localism, the secretary of state is taking back tohimself considerable direct powers over schools,exercised through funding agreements withacademies and free schools, not to mention directresponsibility for areas such as teacher trainingand curriculum and exams.Education for the good society | 19

1 In 2008, 15 per cent ofacademies and communitytechnology colleges wereestimated to use partial selectionby aptitude in subject, comparedwith less than 1 per cent ofcommunity and voluntarycontrolledsecondary schools.See Anne West, Eleanor Barhamand Audrey Hind, SecondarySchool Admissions in England:Policy and Practice, EducationResearch Group, London Schoolof Economics, 2009, p.18, www.risetrust.org.uk/Secondary.pdf.2 Jens Henrik Haahr, ExplainingStudent Performance: Evidencefrom the International PISA,TIMSS and PIRLS Surveys, DanishTechnological Institute, 2005,p.150, www.ec.europa.eu/education/pdf/doc282_en.pdf.Governing bodies may have an enhancedrole, but their statutory responsibilities extendprimarily to Whitehall, not to parents or thewider community. There is no requirement forschools to consult parents before converting toacademy status and while maintained schools arerequired to have at least three parent governors,academies must have only one. In fact, academiesonly have to have three governors in total, hardlya model of accountability to the local communitywhen, at the same time, the ability of localauthorities to plan for and support fairnessand quality across the board has been fatallyundermined. Academies also use selection byaptitude more than community and voluntarycontrolledschools, 1 so as academies spread, sowill selection; and by definition parents’ ability tochoose will be constrained.So if parents do not stand to benefit fromchoice and voice, will children benefit fromimproved quality of provision and attainmentlevels? The evidence suggests not. A 2005 metastudy by the Danish Technological Institute forthe European Commission considered threeinternational surveys of students’ skills, PISA,TIMSS and PIRLS, and found that:‘More differentiated school systems are associatedwith higher variance in student performance.…Students’ socio-economic background mattersmore for their performance in more differentiatedschool systems than in less differentiated schoolsystems. Or in other words: Less differentiated,more comprehensive school systems are moreefficient in adjusting for students’ socio-economicbackground and thus in providing equal learningopportunities for students.’ 2Markets have a multiplier effect – they do notredress the different resources and capabilitiesthat people bring to the table, they amplifythem. This is partly because markets rest onderegulation and choice, and when choice issupreme an equal ability to understand andnavigate the system is a precondition of fairoutcomes. But social capital is not and will neverbe evenly spread. So the increasingly clutteredlandscape of multiple school types and complexadmissions processes will continue to work to thebenefit of those parents with the understandingand wherewithal to engage most successfullywith the system. In other words, as a result ofthe superior social capital of the better-off, aneducational market simply becomes a mechanismfor them to bequeath their advantages to the nextgeneration.Furthermore, market logic requires thatschools are differentiated hierarchically notlaterally, in order to provide incentives. Or toput it more starkly, for educational marketsto operate effectively their own internal lawsdeem it desirable that some schools – andhence some children’s learning opportunities– are worse than others. As a result, our schoolsystem becomes unavoidably characterised bycompetition and struggle. Winners and losersare created as parents and children are forced toengage with the system as consumers pursuingrelative advantage, rather than as citizens witha crucial wider role to play as co-producers ofeducation in a collective project.Under the Conservatives’ market model,vital services provided centrally by educationauthorities for all local schools and particularlyvalued by those serving disadvantagedcatchments, such as educational welfare andethnic minority achievement, become unviable asbudgets are dispersed. At the same time, evidenceis emerging that local authority budgets are beingtop-sliced to pay for the costs of the academyscheme – resources being taken away from themajority to benefit the minority. We might callsuch a system educational Darwinism. If it is fair,it is the type of fairness propounded by those whobelieve that it is right and inevitable that only thestrong and able will succeed.The USA and Sweden have experimented withschool models akin to the academies and freeschools now being championed by the CoalitionGovernment. Not only is there evidence of fallingstandards in both countries, recent studies havealso pointed to greater racial and socio-economicsegregation between schools, as well as greaterdifferentiation in attainment between childrenfrom different backgrounds.In 2010, Swedish education minister BertilOstberg warned the UK against adopting hiscountry’s free schools model:‘We have actually seen a fall in the quality ofSwedish schools since the free schools wereintroduced. The free schools are generally20 | www.compassonline.org.uk

attended by children of better-educated andwealthy families, making things even moredifficult for children attending ordinary schools inpoor areas.’ 3In 2009, Stanford University published the firstnational assessment of charter schools and foundthat ‘37 per cent deliver learning results that aresignificantly worse than their students would haverealised had they remained in traditional publicschools’, while nearly half were no different. 4In 2010, the University of California publishedthe report Choice Without Equity, which foundthat charter schools ‘continue to stratify studentsby race, class, and possibly language’, and thatthey ‘are more racially isolated than traditionalpublic schools in virtually every state and largemetropolitan area in the nation’. 5An alternative agendaOf course, markets in education have not onlybeen the obsession of the right. New Labourassiduously took up and ran with the agenda. Ifthe debate is now to move on, the progressiveleft must do more than provide the broadbrush-strokes of an ideological alternative. Itmust be clear and specific about the reformsand innovations required to make fairness ineducation a realisable goal. What would be thecentral planks of such an agenda? Here are sixsuggested dimensions:1. School admissions are a collective projectoverseen by empowered local admissionsforums, in which the rights and interestsof all children are prioritised above a rightto choice exercised by some parents andsubverted by increasing selection, througha locally determined combination of ballotsand banded intakes.2. School status is standardised, includingthe abolition of remaining grammarschools, halting the academies and freeschool programmes, and outlawing specialadmissions policies for faith schools.3. Funding is allocated to schools on an equitableand transparent per capita basis, using aformula that takes account of social need.4. Local education authorities have clear andproperly resourced functions where this is inthe interests of efficiency and local democracyand accountability – for instance, schooladmissions, new schools and mergers, specialeducational needs and curriculum support.5. Schools have the freedom to develop theirown identity and ethos, through easing thestifling demands of the national curriculumand recognising and trusting teachers’professionalism and expertise.6. Education is treated as much more than aprotracted process of university entrance,children as more than latent units ofeconomic production. We should seek tocreate a school experience in which the fullspectrum of children’s talents are released,the individuality of children’s interestsand preferences is properly valued, andpersonhood in its fullest sense is fostered.By comparing what exists and what we mustwork towards, we see that fairness requireschoices between values and goals that are notalways in harmony. Where there is conflictbetween, say, individual choice and the commongood, competition and collective responsibility,efficiency and democracy, one must be chosento lead, the other to follow. Politics is at its mostdismal when it pretends that no such choicesexist. It is at its most courageous when the ethicalcase is made for constructing our public spacesand institutions in ways that mean we are allbetter off by paying particular attention to thetrajectory of those who start from a position ofrelative disadvantage.In conclusion, fairness is about championingan educational ethic that goes beyond selfactualisationand that assumes and fostersconcern for the other. This is not only about amoral–philosophical observation that my selfrealisationand authenticity depend on yours, butalso engages the emerging evidence that whensome are allowed to fail and social divisionswiden, outcomes suffer for everyone. 6At the end of the day, fairness sings its ownname. If we are trying too hard to explain howand where it exists, it probably does not. For weknow it when we see it – when all our childrenprosper.3 Gary Anderson, ‘Flagship Toryfree schools scheme condemnedby Swedish education ministerBertil Ostberg’, Sunday Mirror,30 May 2010, www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/2010/05/30/flagship-tory-free-schoolsdoomed-115875-22296075/.4 CREDO, Multiple Choice: CharterSchool Performance in 16 States,Centre for Research on EducationOutcomes, Stanford University,2009, p.1, http://credo.stanford.edu/reports/MULTIPLE_CHOICE_CREDO.pdf.5 Erica Frankenberg, GenevieveSiegel-Hawley and Jia Wang,Choice Without Equity: CharterSchool Segregation and the Needfor Civil Rights Standards, CivilRights Project, University ofCalifornia Los Angeles, 2010,p.4, http://civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/integration-and-diversity/choicewithout-equity-2009-report/frankenberg-choices-withoutequity-2010.pdf.6 See Richard Wilkinson andKate Pickett, The Spirit Level: WhyEquality is Better for Everyone,Penguin Books, updated 2010.Education for the good society | 21

1 Angela McRobbie, The Aftermathof Feminism: Gender, Culture andSocial Change, Sage, 2008; JaneKenway and Elizabeth Bullen,Consuming Children, OpenUniversity Press, 2001; andBecky Francis, ‘Gender, toysand learning’, Oxford Review ofEducation, 36(3), 2010, p.325.2 David Gillborn and DeborahYoudell, Rationing Education:Policy, Practice, Reform and Equity,Routledge, 2000.3 This marketised, competitivecontext has resulted in an acuteawareness (and often increasedanxiety) concerning pupils’ relativeeducational ‘achievement’, amongpolicy-makers, practitioners,parents and young peoplethemselves. See also Diane Reayand Helen Lucey, ‘The limits ofchoice: children and inner-cityschooling’, Sociology, 37, 2003,p.121, for an analysis of theeducation system’s production of‘success’ and ‘failure’.4. Education and genderBecky FrancisGender equality is a fundamental aspect ofthe Good Society. Yet as with other aspects ofsocial distinction wherein inequalities currentlyabound, such as social class and ‘race’, our currenteducation system exacerbates gender inequality,rather than reducing it.Second-wave feminism mounted a devastatingcritique of the education system, identifying themultiple ways in which it perpetuated genderdistinction and inequality. These included thecurriculum, which reflected masculinist agendasand preoccupations, and which appeared toconceive a male recipient; institutional andclassroom organisational and disciplinarypractices in which boys and girls were treatedas distinct groups; teacher perceptions andprejudices, including the classic construction ofboys as ‘naturally brilliant but lazy’ and girls asdiligent plodders; channelling of girls and boysdown different career routes; peer expectationsand pressure; and a culture of sexual andhomophobic harassment applied to teach girlstheir place and police ‘different’ expressions ofgender and sexuality.As we shall see, things have changed relativelylittle in schools in the intervening decades.Outside schooling, more women enter highereducation and engage paid work than in the1970s and 1980s, and middle-class womenhave certainly taken up diverse career routes(albeit gender distinctions remain concerningoccupational sector and remuneration).Nevertheless, women remain overwhelminglyresponsible for childcare and domesticwork. And patterns of gendered marketingand consumption have meant that genderdistinction is culturally more entrenched thanever. 1 However, crucially, public perception haschanged. There is a tendency to believe thatequality has been achieved. Indeed, if anything,it is perceived that boys are educationallydisadvantaged, having been ‘overtaken’ bygirls. The overwhelming preoccupation withattainment and the consequent moral panicaround boys’ ‘underachievement’ have ratherput feminist work in education on the backfoot. It is, therefore, worthwhile to spend sometime unpicking the context for this moral panic,before I go on to justify my claim that thestatus quo remains with the education systemcontinuing to perpetuate inequality.Gender and achievementAs discussed elsewhere in this collection, andin the Compass statement ‘Education for theGood Society’, neo-liberalism has positionedthe role of education as supplying humancapital in a competitive global market place. Tothis end, neoliberal faith in markets as driversof quality has underpinned the developmenteducational quasi markets; and the exclusivelyinstrumental view of education has beenmanifested in contemporary policy obsessionswith ‘standards’ as indicated by educationcredentials, and competition at all levels(between pupils, schools, areas and nations) inan increasingly segregated system. Perceptionsof policy success and the success of individualschools within the market rely on the drivingup of educational achievement, with a resultingfocus on underachieving pupils. ‘Teaching tothe test’ is rampant and a widely acknowledgedproblem, and forms of ‘educational triage’ 2 havebecome the norm, with resources focused onyoung people on ‘grade borderlines’. In thisenvironment, underachievement becomes aliability, while simultaneously (and ironically)unavoidable – in any competition there mustalways be losers as well as winners. 3One unanticipated outcome of the publicationof school league tables in England – the keymechanism supposedly informing parentconsumers in the education ‘market’ – was themoral panic about boys’ underachievement. Theleague tables published exam results for eachschool, and for the first time included a genderbreakdown. Media commentators were surprisedto see that boys were not outperforming girls tothe extent that had apparently been supposed(we surmise from the shocked response): girlswere catching up with boys in the traditionallymasculine subjects of maths and science, whereasboys had made no similar gains in the traditionallyfeminine fields of English and languages. Henceit appeared that girls were outperforming boys22 | www.compassonline.org.uk

overall and, since that time, girls have gone onto close the gap with boys at maths and science(although boys still outperform girls at higherlevel maths), while boys as a group continue tolag behind at language and literacy.This has precipitated a now long-standingstream of media comment bewailing boys’‘underachievement’. Such has been theobsession among media and policy-makersthat feminists branded the preoccupation withboys’ educational attainment a moral panic,identifying how, in searching for explanations,commentators frequently constructed boys asvictims of a feminised schooling system, feministeducators, or the crisis in masculinity. Feministresearchers conversely mobilised evidence todemonstrate several key points; for example,that educational attainment is informed byother factors such as ethnicity and social class(the latter being the strongest predictor ofachievement in the UK), so that some groupsof boys continue to outperform other groupsof girls; and that an obsession with overallpan-subject statistics masks wide variations inachievement in different subject areas. They alsoobserved that there had been no national outcryand panic in the preceding period when boyswere seen to be outperforming girls!Nevertheless, the concern with boys has beensustained, and demands and ensuing strategiesto ‘raise boys’ achievement’ have generatededucation policies, materials, diktats to schools,snake oil consultancy and research funding.Moreover, the phenomenon has been mirroredin a number of other countries, most notablyAustralia (and more recently others, including theUnited States). Much research has demonstratedhow the focus on boys and direction of materialsand resources towards them has been detrimentalto girls’ education, and sometimes to that ofboys too. 4 There tends to be an assumption incommentary on ‘boys’ underachievement’ that allgirls are now achieving and, hence, they are nota concern as their needs are being met. However,not only does research show that certain groupsof girls – including white and minority ethnicworking-class girls – continue to underperformin comparison with other particular groups ofgirls and boys, but also evidence shows thatgirls continue to face a host of issues in theirschooling.Schools continue to perpetuate genderinequalityAnyone who spends time in the classroom isaware that pupil behaviour is affected by gender.Girls and boys tend to sit and play separately, 5unless organised differently by the teacher.Moreover, as groups, girls and boys also tend tobehave in quite different ways. Bronwyn Davieshas analysed how, from pre-school ages onwards,children understand that gender forms a keypillar of social identity, and engage in what shebrands ‘gender category maintenance work’ toproduce these behavioural differences. 6It is important to sound a note of cautionin discussing such gender differences. Theretends to be an assumption that biologicalsex differences programme boys and girls tobehave in different ways – from this perspective,distinctions in classroom behaviour amonggroups of girls and boys are taken to be simply‘natural’ expressions of sex differences. But, infact, evidence of biological differences that mightlead to behavioural differences is extremelyslight. On the other hand, a large body of childdevelopmentaland sociological evidence showshow children (and adults) actively constructtheir gender identities. Gender research haspresented an increasingly nuanced conception ofgender, illustrating the illusory nature of genderboundaries, the diversity within gender groups,and the highly complex relationship betweenbiological ‘sex’ and socially constructed ‘gender’(with research demonstrating the often sociallyconstructed elements of ‘sex’ allocation, and theblurriness of boundaries here). Indeed, giventhe illumination of gender diversity in researchsuch as my own, 7 it becomes a challenge forfeminist researchers to simultaneously analysethe continued resonance and impact of ‘sex’categories for patterns of inequality. Yet as Iobserved above, real inequalities remain. Indeed,they are especially evident in the educationsystem, which often continues to organise pupilsinto ‘male’ and ‘female’ categories, and to arrangeclassrooms and activities accordingly. And theperpetuation of gender distinction throughschooling has a significant impact on future lifechances and experiences – not just in occupationalsegregation and remuneration outcomes and soon (important though these are), but also for value4 Christine Skelton and BarbaraRead, ‘Male and female teachers’evaluative responses to genderand the learning environments ofprimary age pupils’, InternationalStudies in Sociology of Education,16(2), 2006, p.105; and EmmaCharlton, Martin Mills, WayneMartino and Lori Beckett,‘Sacrificial girls: a case study ofthe impact of streaming andsetting on gender reform’, BritishEducational Research Journal, 33(4),2007, p.459.5 Of course, there are exceptionsto this trend, including properfriendships formed among aminority of girls and boys, andsome heterosexual romanticrelationships between pupils.6 B. Davies, Frogs and Snails andFeminist Tales: Preschool Childrenand Gender, Allen & Unwin, 1989.7 See for example Becky Francis,‘Teaching manfully? Exploringgendered subjectivities and powervia analysis of men teachers’gender performance’, Gender andEducation, 20(2), 2008, p.109;and Becky Francis, ‘Re/theorisinggender: female masculinity andmale femininity in the classroom?,Gender and Education, 22(6),2010, p.477.Education for the good society | 23

8 Christine Skelton, Schooling theBoys, Open University Press, 2001.9 See e.g. Michael Younger, MollyWarrington and J. Williams, ‘Thegender gap: reality or rhetoric?’,British Journal of Sociology ofEducation, 20(3), pp.325–41, 1999.10 Such harassment and abusehas been shown to be extensive,and even to extend to femaleteachers. See Martin Mills,Challenging Violence in Schools:An Issue of Masculinities, OpenUniversity Press, 2001; andCaroline Herbert, Talking ofSilence: The Sexual Harassment ofSchool Girls, Falmer, 1989.11 See Becky Francis, JaneOsgood, Jacinta Delgety andLouise Archer, Gender Equality inWork Experience Placements forYoung People, Equal OpportunitiesCommission, 2005.systems and gendered behaviour, manifesting inthe continuing (hierarchised) differentiation ofgender roles and behaviours.So to present girls and boys as distinct, uniformgroups that behave differently from one anotherclearly misrepresents by oversimplification.Nevertheless, it is certainly the case that children’s(and adults’) performance of gender results indifferent behavioural trends. In schools, suchgendered trends can be seen, for example, in thefollowing areas:• boys’ physical and verbal domination of theschool space• constructions of (hetero) sexuality• patterns of bullying and/or sexual harassment• curriculum subject preference.Boys’ physical and verbal domination ofthe classroomBoys’ physical and verbal domination of theclassroom and playground space has been welldocumented, and remains as evident now as whenit was first identified by feminist researchers inthe 1970s. Boys tend quite simply to take upmore space than do girls: they sprawl and moveabout the class more, and engage in frequentphysical contact (often aggressive, albeit ‘playfighting’). Maintenance of a construction ofmasculinity via what Skelton calls a ‘hardnesshierarchy’ involves constant confrontation andchallenges between boys. 8 As well as beingintimidating, these sorts of practices disrupt theclassroom, impeding the learning of boys andgirls alike.Moreover, classroom observation continuesto show that boys gain far more of the teachers’attention than girls in the same classes, leadingfeminists to argue that boys secure more teachingtime than girls, and that girls are marginalised,underestimated and ignored both by boysand by teachers. However, recent research hashighlighted the complexity in this area: not onlyhas it been shown that occasionally girls ‘outvoice’boys in classrooms, but also teachers mayrespond to pupils’ behaviour and discipline themdifferently depending on their social class andethnicity, as well as gender. And some studieshave suggested that much teacher interactionwith boys is actually disciplinary rather thanfocused on learning. 9Constructions of heterosexualityand patterns of bullying and sexualharassmentGendered aesthetics, and productions of sexualisedfemininity for an assumed male gaze, are alsomaintained in school through differentiatedschool uniform and students’ creative re-workingsof their uniforms. Research has shown how activeconstructions of heterosexuality remain ubiquitousin schools, and strongly gendered (boys as activelysexual, girls as passive), with gendered expectationsconcerning sexuality also promoted by schoolsthrough discipline and policies regarding uniformand the like. Homophobic abuse remains routinein classrooms and playgrounds. Girls and lesspowerful boys are often silenced through ridiculeor by misogynist, and/or homophobic abuse. 10Hence patterns of bullying and sexual harassmentare also gendered, and work to maintain genderconformity in schools.Gender-distinct subject choicesThe move to a national curriculum in thelate 1980s undoubtedly had a strong effect inmediating gendered inequalities resulting fromgender-distinct subject choices. Girls’ curriculumpreferences have been found to be somewhat lessgendered than was the case when second-wavefeminist researchers began documenting thetopic in the late 1970s. However, subjects pupilsdislike have been shown to remain stronglygender-associated and once an element of subjectchoice is introduced at school – notably invocational qualifications – gendered patternsremain. An investigation of work experienceplacements showed that such school ‘support’programmes actually exacerbate, rather thanmediate, gendered trends. 11 Likewise, although atA-level and undergraduate level there have beensome notable changes (for example, more womenentering medicine), subject choice again remainsstrongly gender-differentiated, with womenpredominating in arts, humanities, some socialsciences and professions allied to medicine, andmen predominating in the ‘hard’ sciences, ICT,business and engineering.Other impacts of constructions of genderdifference on achievementBeyond these examples, constructions of genderdifference have themselves been shown to24 | www.compassonline.org.uk

impact on achievement, in a variety of ways. It isdominant constructions of femininity that renderhigh achievement potentially problematic forgirls (as such constructions render ‘braininess’and competitiveness problematic), but also araft of research has suggested that high statusconstructions of ‘laddish’ masculinity in schoolsinterpolate boys in behaviours detrimentalto their achievement. 12 Certainly being loud,disruptive and rebellious is an expression of ahigh-status form of masculinity in school. Whatis evident is that such behaviour interferes withthe learning of both the boys concerned, and thatof their fellow classmates.It is not just the behaviour of pupils thatperpetuates gender distinction and inequality. Ihave already noted the ways in which the school’sorganisational and disciplinary systems heightengender distinction, and traditional assumptionsreflected within the curriculum and educationalmaterials do the same. But also, research hasshown how the perceptions and expectationsof teachers of their pupils, and their day-to-dayinteraction, often remain highly stereotypical. 13Indeed, the focus on ‘the needs of boys’ in recentyears has magnified such gendered assumptionsand generated a rejuvenation of genderedclassroom practices. It has driven application of‘boy friendly’ strategies that have often resultedin a range of inequalities. For example, it wasfound in one Australian secondary school thatgirls were being allocated to a set below theirlevel so that they could be replaced in highersets by lower-achieving boys – this was seento achieve ‘gender equitable’ streams, and toaddress classroom management problems in lowsets. This practice was branded by Charlton etal as ‘sacrifical girls’. 14 In England, practices thatdisappeared in the 1980s, such as lining boys andgirls up in separate lines, have made a comeback.Concepts of ‘gendered learning styles’ are rifeand applied to teaching practice in spite of alack of evidence, and in mixed-sex classes suchstrategies – which usually reduce to the crudestof gender stereotypes – are inevitably applied tomeet the perceived needs of boys. 15 As GemmaMoss, Chris Skelton and I illustrated in ‘Genderand education – mythbusters’, published by theDepartment for Children, Schools and Families,many of these ‘boy friendly’ strategies are actuallydetrimental to boys’ learning, and encouragethe stereotypical productions of gender thatcontribute to underachievement. 16ImplicationsThe practices outlined here amount to a hiddencurriculum that teaches girls (and boys) ‘theirplace’ in the classroom and the world outside. Theoverwhelming message to girls remains that theyare of less value than boys. Boys’ domination ofattention, space and verbal interaction is quicklyseen as unremarkable – and simply extends thenorm in other aspects of societal interaction.Meanwhile, boys experience a competitivemasculinity hierarchy in which those who fall atthe bottom, and/or fail to conform, risk routineridicule and punishment. Yet such distinctionsand inequalities are largely unchallenged – indeedare often routinely supported and exacerbated– by the schooling system. These inequalities,and the gender-distinct post-16 educationaland occupational routes they promote, resultin inequalities in work and family life beyondschooling.Existing assumptions and resulting strategiesto support boys’ achievement that are basedon stereotypical assumptions about genderdifference risk exacerbating exisiting inequalities,in patterns of achievement and educationalexperience. The DCSF’s recent research for its‘Gender Agenda’ supported my conclusion withChris Skelton: ‘It is in schools where genderconstructions are less accentuated that boys tendto do better – and strategies that work to reduceconstructions of gender difference that are mosteffective in facilitating boys’ achievement.’ 17 Butthere is little evidence yet of changing attitudesin schools. A significant injection of resourceswould be needed to address the highly challengingand embedded area of gendered behaviours andexpectations in schools. A radical effort will berequired if we are serious about addressing theseissues; a necessary step in educating for the GoodSociety.12 For a review of the literature,see Becky Francis and ChristineSkelton, Reassessing Gender andAchievement, Routledge, 2005.13 Ibid.14 Emma Charlton, Martin Mills,Wayne Martino and Lori Beckett,‘Sacrificial girls: a case study ofthe impact of streaming andsetting on gender reform’, BritishEducational Research Journal, 33(4),2007, p.459.15 Christine Skelton and BarbaraRead, ‘Male and female teachers’evaluative responses to genderand the learning environments ofprimary age pupils’, InternationalStudies in Sociology of Education,16(2), 2006, p.105.16 G. Moss, B. Francis and C.Skelton, ‘Gender and education– mythbusters: addressinggender and achievement:myths and realities’, Dept forChildren, Schools and Families,2009, https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/standard/publicationDetail/Page1/DCSF-00599-2009.17 Christine Skelton, BeckyFrancis and Yordanka Valkanova,Breaking Down the Stereotypes:Gender and Achievement in Schools,Equal Opportunities Commission,2007.Education for the good society | 25

1 See www.education.gov.uk/b0065507/gttl/health-safetywelfare/wellbeing.2 See http://education.gov.uk/publications/standard/publication-Detail/Page1/DCSF-WBL-01-08.3 UNICEF, Child Poverty inPerspective: An Overview of ChildWell-being in Rich Countries,Innocenti Report Card 7, UNICEFInnocenti Research Centre, 2007.4 CPAG, Child Wellbeing andChild Poverty: Where the UKStands in the European Table,Child Poverty Action Group,2009.5 See www.oecd.org/pages/0,3417,en_32252351_32235731_1_1_1_1_1,00.html.6 The United Nations Conventionon the Rights of the Child alreadygoes some way towards this.Article 27 recognises ‘the right ofevery child to a standard of livingadequate for the child’s physical,mental, spiritual, moral and socialdevelopment’. In addition, Article29 states that ‘the education ofthe child shall be directed to…the development of the child’spersonality, talents and mental andphysical abilities to their fullestpotential’.5. Well-beingand educationCharles Seaford, Laura Stolland Sorcha MahonyLast November, the Prime Minister announcedthat the nation’s well-being was the ultimatetest of policy. Afterwards, a number of officialspondered with us whether this would lead toa real change in the emphasis of policy, orwhether it was just another ministerial speech.In this article, we ask what the implicationswould be for educational practice, policy andaccountability if policy really were to becomewell-being focused.Delivery not aspirationAt first sight the implications for educationpolicy and practice are less radical than theyare for economic policy. The present and futurewell-being of pupils is better established as anobjective for education than are comparableobjectives for the economy, and GDP growthdominates economic policy in a way that is notthe case for education policy (despite the bestefforts of Lord Browne). The Education andInspections Act 2006 places an explicit duty onschools to promote well-being, 1 understood inline with the Children Act 2004. The Every ChildMatters initiative emphasised physical, mental,emotional, social and economic well-being, aswell as protection, enjoyment and achievement.According to the DfE, concern for the well-beingof children in the UK is ‘reflected in Governmentpolicy, which is placing increasing emphasis notjust on educational achievement, but also on thewider well-being of the child, both in and out ofschool’. 2 Of course, many teachers have alwaysseen their role as helping their pupils to flourish,and this sentiment lies at the heart of seriousattempts to use well-being and its measurementto guide policy.But of course aspiration and reality are wideapart. A UNICEF study showed that the UKscored 21st out of 21 developed countries forchildren’s well-being. 3 In particular, it showedthat the UK scored 17th for educational wellbeing,a domain covering objective measures ofeducational achievement and participation. Astudy by the Child Poverty Action Group andresearchers at the University of York also foundthat young people in the UK scored low forwell-being: they ranked 24th out of 29 Europeancountries for overall well-being, and 22nd outof 27 countries for educational well-being –also understood and measured objectively forattainment and participation. 4 The OECD’sProgramme for International Student Assessmenthas shown that educational attainment rankingsof UK pupils in the core areas of reading, mathsand science have been falling for the last decade. 5At the same time, activities outside the corecurriculum such as music and sport, which helpdevelop the skills needed for flourishing as achild an adult, are all too often marginalised.And the UNICEF study showed that youngpeople’s educational well-being, understood andmeasured subjectively, is also a cause for concern:the UK ranked 15th out of 21 OECD countries onmeasures of young people’s feelings about, andexperiences of, school.This cannot be attributed only to the educationsystem of course. Many other factors, from familylife to access to green spaces, influence whether achild flourishes and will grow into an adult whoflourishes.In short, what matters is not the aspirationbut the delivery, and not simply delivery in theeducation system but delivery across a range ofpolicy areas that impact on children. If makingwell-being the ultimate test of policy ends upmaking a difference, it will be because it hasstimulated new political pressures. These inturn will have led to policies and accountabilitystructures that deliver aspirations more effectivelyand universally than they do now. The trade-offswill be different, and the objective of ‘flourishingchildren’ will do better than it does now in thecompetition of priorities. We might even be ableto turn the aspiration that every child shouldflourish into a right. 6What it means to flourishThis all depends on a shared understandingof what it means to flourish, and what26 | www.compassonline.org.uk

makes flourishing possible and likely. Thisunderstanding then needs to inform both policyand the metrics through which everyone fromteachers to ministers are held to account by thepublic. The following is a starting point, andis the model of well-being that we use at thenew economics foundation (nef) (Figure 4.1). 7This is based in part on Deci and Ryan’s selfdeterminationtheory, 8 which draws attentionto the basic psychological needs of autonomy, asense of competence and relatedness.While this model was developed for adults, 9children’s well-being can be conceptualisedin the same way, although we may find thereare additional feedback loops, and that somecomponents, particularly personal resources,need more emphasis as they support thedevelopment trajectory of children from ‘wellbecoming’to ‘well-being’. By focusing on thecomponent parts of this model we can start to askthe right kinds of questions about what this maymean for the practice of education.The evidenceWell-being and achievement are not alternatives.There is plenty of evidence that flourishing isgood for learning. For example, research hasdemonstrated that greater autonomy leads togreater conceptual learning 10 and that choice,acknowledgment of feelings and opportunitiesfor self-direction enhance intrinsic motivation,in so far as they lead to greater autonomy. Fieldstudies have shown that teachers who encouragedtheir pupils to be autonomous catalysed intrinsicmotivation, curiosity and the desire for challenges. 11And more generally, it has been shown that thosewho flourish, whether this is manifest in greaterautonomy, a sense of competence or better socialrelations, are better able to improve their externalcircumstances, including their educationalachievement. 12 Experiencing positive emotionshas been shown to actively broaden people’s abilityto adopt new patterns of thinking, beneficial tosituations requiring problem-solving. This is ofFigure 5.1 Model of well-being used at the new economic foundationGood feelingsday-to-day and ovealleg happiness, joy,contentment, satisfaction7 This was adapted from themodel developed by nef as partof the report commissionedby the Foresight Project onMental Capital and Well-being,Government Office for Science,2008.8 Richard Ryan and EdwardDeci, ‘Self-determination theoryand the facilitation of intrinsicmotivation, social developmentand well-being’, AmericanPsychologist, 2000, pp.68–78.9 Although much of the evidencefor self-determination theoryactually came from fieldwork ineducational settings.External Conditionseg material conditions,work and productivity,income (levels of stability)Good functioning andsatisfaction of needseg to be autonomous,competent, safe and secure,connected to othersPersonal Resourceseg health, resilience,optimism, self-esteem10 Wendy Grolnick and RichardRyan, ‘Autonomy in children’slearning: an experimentaland individual differenceinvestigation’, Journal of Personalityand Social Psychology, 1987, p.890.11 For example see Edward Deci,John Nezlek and L Sheinman,‘Characteristics of the rewarderand intrinsic motivation of therewardee’, Journal of Personalityand Social Psychology, 1981,p.1; Cheryl Flink, Ann Boggianoand Marty Barrett, ‘Controllingteaching strategies: underminingchildren’s self-determinationand performance’, Journal ofPersonality and Social Psychology,1990, p.916; and Grolnick andRyan, ‘Autonomy in children’slearning’.12 Grolnick and Ryan,‘Autonomy in children’s learning’.Education for the good society | 27

13 Barbara Fredrickson, ‘Therole of positive emotions inpositive psychology: the broadenand-buildtheory of positiveemotions’, American Psychologist,2001, p.218.14 Julia Margo and Sonia Sodha,Get Happy: Children and YoungPeople’s Emotional Wellbeing,NCH, 2007.15 See www.learningtolead.org.uk.16 Lucie Stephens, Josh Ryan-Collins and David Boyle,Co-production: A Manifesto forGrowing the Core Economy, nef,2008.17 For example see Jane Gillham,Karen Reivich, Derek Freres,Tara Chaplin, Andrew Shatté, B.Samuels, Andrea Elkon, SamanthaLitzinger, Marisa Lascher, P.Gallop and Martin Seligman,‘School-based preventionof depressive symptoms: arandomized controlled study ofthe effectiveness and specificityof the Penn Resiliency Program’,Journal of Consulting and ClinicalPsychology, 2007, p.9.18 Amy Challen, Philip Noden,Anne West and StephenMachin, UK Resilience ProgrammeEvaluation: Final Report, 2011,www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/DFE-RB097.pdf.19 Nic Marks, ‘Happiness is aserious business’, in Reflectionson Employee Engagement,Chartered Institute of PersonnelDevelopment, 2006.20 Rob Briner and ChrisDewberry, Staff Wellbeing isKey to School Success, WorklifeSupport, 2007, available at www.worklifesupport.com.obvious importance in educational settings. 13None of this will be news to teachers.Analysis of the British Cohort Study (whichtracks a group of children born in 1970) hasshown that emotional well-being in childhoodand young adulthood is one of the most importantfactors predicting whether an individual willbe socially mobile and experience good mentalhealth. The evidence suggests that emotionaland personality attributes like self-esteem andfeelings of control are equally, if not more,important than cognitive abilities (literacy andnumeracy skills) in predicting labour marketearnings in adulthood. 14Of course, what matters most is how individualteachers teach in individual classrooms. However,it is worth mentioning one or two initiativesthat may also play a role. The Learning to Leadprogramme, which has been developed and pilotedin a number of schools in Somerset, creates selfelectedschool community councils, where pupilsoperate in self-managing teams to undertakeprojects with outcomes that demonstrablyimprove aspects of school life. Learning to Lead isnow being piloted nationally and will be robustlyevaluated to examine the extent of its impact onwell-being outcomes. 15 More generally, it hasbeen argued that co-producing education, sothat the promotion of pupil well-being is a jointresponsibility of pupils themselves, parents andschool, not only improves people’s autonomyand sense of control, but also connects them totheir local community. 16In September 2007, three local authorities(South Tyneside, Manchester and Hertfordshire)piloted the UK Resilience Programme with Year7 pupils in 22 of their schools. Improving theemotional resilience of young people equipsthem to better deal with their emotions andhas the potential to develop a more positiveapproach to the way they live their life. Researchhas also indicated that the implementationof the programme may improve educationalattainment, reduce teenage pregnancy, preventschool exclusion, fend off teenage depression,improve teachers overall skills and promoteeducational inclusion. 17 The participants areencouraged to identify and challenge negativebeliefs and to use effective coping mechanismswhen faced with adversity. Participants alsolearn techniques for positive social behaviour,assertiveness, negotiation, decision-making, andrelaxation. The final evaluation report found asignificant short-run improvement in pupils’depression symptom scores, school attendancerates and academic accomplishments in English. 18It is also worth remembering that teacher wellbeingis vital. In any occupation, experiencingpositive emotions at work is correlated withhigher job satisfaction, engagement with workand job performance. 19 Not surprisingly, recentresearch has found that levels of teacher wellbeingwithin schools are linked to measuresof pupil performance. 20 The evidence suggeststhat an atmosphere within teams that is bothsupportive and appropriately challenging, andwhich allows staff to exercise their personalinterests, strengths and skills, is one most likelyto lead to staff’s well-being – and thus children’swell-being.Measure what mattersHowever, the reality is that we prioritise what wemeasure, and that despite the efforts of individualteachers and heads, the impact of individualprogrammes and the fine words from the DfEwe continue to measure quite narrowly definedstandards of academic achievement. It is not,of course, that academic achievement does notmatter. It is rather that other things matter aswell, such as well-being, and that the current focusleads, as is well known, to a particularly narrowinterpretation of achievement, notably ‘teachingto the test’. Measuring well-being is to measuresomething that both matters in itself, and cancontribute to deeper forms of achievement.Measuring well-being means usingsubjective measuresThe best way of monitoring good feelings andgood functioning, as set out in our dynamicmodel, is by asking people for their ownassessment. There are always measurementissues in any survey, but survey design, includingchildren’s survey design, is now a sophisticatedscience. The result is that schools can ensurethat they place children and young people atthe centre of the evaluation process rather thanrelying on the indirect measurement throughparents, teachers and other adults’ perceptions of28 | www.compassonline.org.uk

children’s experiences.But does this mean a new form of league tablereporting, perhaps, on ‘contextual well-beingadded’? Not necessarily. It may be better if theparents, teachers and children at a school decidefor themselves, after advice, on the metrics theywill use to measure progress, with the role ofthe DfE merely to ensure that these metrics arerobust and that good processes are adopted. It istrue that schools will have to be held accountableif more attention is to be paid to well-being, butthat does not necessarily mean league tables orcentralised control. The accountability can itselfbe local. Indeed, given the value of co-productionand the importance of flourishing staff, rigidcentralised mechanisms may well be counterproductive.Having said this, we do believe that measuringthe well-being of children across the country –and establishing statistical relationships and, indue course, causal pathways between levels ofwell-being in different places and the objectiveconditions that apply in those places, includingschooling – will play a crucial part in makingchildren’s well-being a higher priority than itis now. There will be lessons for governmentpolicy-makers and individual schools from theresults of this analysis.And this may happen. The Office for NationalStatistics has started to measure adult subjectivewell-being and work is now under way to developeffective measures of children’s well-being. In duecourse, annual figures could be published on theproportion of children who are flourishing alongwith an analysis of what is driving movements inthese figures in different places. The task now isto ensure that these figures and this analysis arepublished, and that teachers, educationalists andpolicy-makers can learn from the results so as toimprove children’s well-being.Education for the good society | 29

6. Education forsustainabilityTeresa BeltonClosing the gap between ourselvesand the EarthThere is no doubt that the rich and the relativelyaffluent of the world are living unsustainably.The burning of fossil fuels to create energy withwhich to manufacture consumer goods, powerelectrical equipment of all kinds, and transport usand our commodities by land, sea and air is in theprocess of generating changes to global climatesystems, which are likely, in time, to make humanand other life impossible in some parts of theworld and difficult in many others. Excessive orunwise use of other natural resources, such aswater and land, also poses a growing threat tohuman well-being.But capitalism and the dogma of perpetualeconomic growth stoke a motivation to createfinancial gain at every turn. Coupled withthe widespread human desire for acquisition,comfort and convenience, this means that wein the UK are living well beyond the means ofthe Earth to support us. It means, too, that thepoor and disenfranchised of the world continueto be exploited in order to maximise profit, atthe cost of social cohesion. The urgent needfor environmental (as well as intertwined socialand economic) sustainability demands that wemust find ways of learning to live differently.Education, in the widest possible sense of theword, is surely our best hope and means ofachieving this. It has the potential to make adifference on several fronts.The globalisation of trade has made the infrastructureand interconnections of everyday lifeincreasingly complex. Every country works tomaximise its exports, and rising affluence haswitnessed ever-increasing material expectations.We no longer produce very much in the UKof what we buy here, and very few indeed ofour everyday needs for food, clothes, furniture,means of transport and so on are supplied withinour own localities. Take fruit and vegetables, andeven apples, a basic foodstuff which once grewabundantly in England, are now imported fromChile, New Zealand, the US and other farawayplaces. In addition, we have come to expect to eatany type of produce all the year round, regardlessof growing season, and have developed a taste forexotic fruits.The result of these disarticulated patterns ofproduction and consumption is that many peopleare no longer aware, as our ancestors were, ofthe dynamic, interactive essence of the naturalenvironment. If a factory near where we live leakseffluent into a river the pollution of the water isregarded as a shame for wildlife, but the significancedoes not go much further: it does not meanthat we could go hungry for lack of fish to eat.If a vegetable crop fails because of unfavourableweather conditions we shrug our shoulders andbuy something else instead, possibly from thefreezer cabinet of the supermarket. Our highlycomplex and sophisticated way of life meansthat many have lost awareness of and feeling forthe natural environment’s sensitivity to changebecause we are no longer in intimate contact withit, nor immediately dependent on it. The damagecaused by our habits tends to be geographicallydistant from us, develops over time, or maybe obscured by technology, and therefore goeslargely unnoticed.Specialisation and the bigger pictureAt root, much of the activity whose effects nowthreaten the natural world on which we dependstems from individual choices and decisions.These may be enacted in either personal oroccupational life. Education therefore has acrucial responsibility to enable people to appreciatethe actual, if hidden, consequences of theireveryday behaviours and expectations. It needsto balance a focus on product with a focus onprocess, both in general and in particular, andto complement a respect for knowledge withthe encouragement of a questioning stance.It comes as a surprise to most people, forexample, just how many common productscontain oil. Dependence on this commodityis doubly problematic: its supply is becomingpolitically, financially and environmentally less30 | www.compassonline.org.uk

and less secure, and its use, whether in the formof fuels or plastics, poses a very real danger tothe natural environment. It is the responsibilityof education to equip citizens with a degreeawareness of the physical realities of the worldin which we live, and with critical faculties andindependent thinking skills.The blame for our continuing to degrade theenvironment with chemical pollution, deforestation,extraction and so on has been said to lie atthe door of the over-specialisation of education.This view sidesteps both the role of economicsystems and matters of human psychology inthe despoliation of the Earth. It could be arguedthat educational curricula are fundamentallyshaped by the needs of the political economy,or that patterns of production simply meet thedemand of the majority of humans for comfortand status. But whether or not there is animplicit political agenda inherent in prevalentapproaches to education, the pigeon-holing oflearning into discreet subjects the world over,at all levels from primary to tertiary education,means that the way that things connect andinteract in the real world is largely neglected.Hence, for example, mainstream economistsdo not take into account in their calculations ofannual agricultural profits the long-term damagedone to soil or water quality or to biodiversity bythe massive use of agro-chemicals. Indeed, sucheffects may be hard to quantify in conventionalterms; but ultimately we ignore them at ourperil. This is not to say, however, that specialistsare not important. The complexity of naturaland human systems and effects demands a veryhigh level of expertise to penetrate and understandthem, and well-honed skills of enquiry,analysis and interpretation. We need to continueto train individuals in specialised areas, butdelving deep into subjects without also lookingaround at what is going on elsewhere producesdangerous tunnel vision.An important aspect of education for sustainability,then, is the contextualisation of knowledge,the consideration of the bigger picture. Theexercise of joined-up thinking – a practice atwhich politicians are often found to fail – shouldbecome an aim of the educational process.Education for sustainability needs both to beecological in itself and to include the specificstudy of ecology.Educating the whole personThe idea of the ‘educated’ person as a wellroundedindividual with an appreciation ofhuman history and culture and a grounding inscience, who is equipped to take an active andresponsible role in the world, is but a distant,dream-like memory. Contemporary educationaldiscourse, at least at policy level, if not ownedby teachers themselves, is all about testing,‘driving up standards’ and increasing employability,about academic attainment and vocationallearning. It serves the agenda of economicgrowth, ‘wealth creation’ and the maximising ofindividual incomes. Yet it is this economic enginethat is propelling environmental devastation.Education for sustainability, then, must involvethe education of the human heart, mind andspirit, not merely the training of the potentialemployee, earner and spender. In order to sustainhuman life, and at a level of existence that makeslife a pleasure, we need to learn to consume agreat deal less of material goods and energy, andto focus a great deal more on the non-materialriches that life well lived has to offer.In fostering these different objectives, educationwould wield enormous power to challenge thevalue system that puts profit for its own sake first,regards the human spirit as an optional extra, andin the end effectively threatens environmentalviability. There is currently an emphasis insecondary and tertiary education on ‘transferrableskills’, clearly useful skills like delegatingresponsibility, presenting material, organisingevents, and using particular computer software.However, if we are going to take sustainabilityseriously we need to learn and to teach other skillstoo – not just horticulture and all kinds of practicalmaking and mending skills but personal skillssuch as imagination and creativity, reflectiveness,self-restraint, co-operation and problem-solving.Music-making, appreciation of literature andother enriching activities that require virtually nomaterial consumption are other thoroughly usefulskills for living both sustainably and enjoyably.Experiential learningThe best and most enduring kind of learningis that which engages the learner affectively asEducation for the good society | 31

well as cognitively. Real understanding is mostlikely to be absorbed from active involvement,from doing, questioning or reflecting and thusdiscovering, rather than from acquiescing aspassive recipient in an intended process ofinformation transfer. Playing on a swing in thepark will convey far more effectively than beinginstructed in the classroom, if less consciously,the fact that a body needs the input of energy toremain in motion. Attempting to grow a planton the windowsill or in the school garden will begreatly more productive in nurturing a sense ofexactly how much water and shelter are neededfor successful cultivation than any textbook orteacher. Experiential learning trumps abstractlearning in most contexts. It creates the fertile soilin which intellectual concepts can grow.Given the crucial and urgent importance ofdeveloping sustainable ways of living, every effortshould be made to find practical means of bringinghome the relevant issues at different stages ofeducation. Hands-off learning, de-contextualisedparcels of information taken on trust from ascreen, book or teacher, which do not exist inreal time or space can, of course, be usefullyemployed to support practical exercises that haverelevance to issues pertaining to sustainability,but are not sufficient in themselves to build aproper understanding.New ways of living and localenvironmentOne way in which to increase awareness of theconditions obtaining in the natural and builtenvironment of a particular area and of howthese change over time would be to incorporatelocal studies into the curriculum so that allpupils learn about the history of their own areaand effectively conduct longitudinal researchinto it throughout the course of their schooling,considering different aspects of the localityduring their school career. Not only would thisdevelop in them a sense of identity and place, butit would also sensitise them to the significance ofchanges to other environments.Beyond the classroom and the lecturetheatre, part of the educative role of educationalinstitutions can be exercised through leadingby practical, explicitly explained example.Schools, colleges and universities should embodysustainability as a priority in their material policiesand practices, and create high expectations oflearners’ compliance with certain principlesof sustainability. Measures could include, forexample, the maximum use of local, minimallypackaged and fairly traded food, the provisionof drinking water fountains and the banning ofbottled water, strict rules for procurement andwaste disposal that fully incorporate the precept of‘reduce, re-use, recycle’, and active minimisationof the use of car journeys and air travel bystudents and staff. The growing of food on siteand the involvement of students and the localcommunity in this fundamental survival activitywould be of great benefit wherever feasible. Theaim should be social cohesion through maximumcommunal self-sufficiency.Building a relationship with thenatural worldIf children are to grow up with a desire to protectthe natural world, as well as an understandingof the importance of doing so, they must, at thevery least, have some familiarity with that world.But to develop the motivation to live in such away as not to damage it they need more thanacquaintance: they need to love it, and to respectits power, both as a provider and as a potentialdestroyer.There is only one way an affection for and trueknowledge of places, plants and creatures canbe engendered, and that is being among them,being part of the natural environment; it cannotbe inculcated by books, teachers in classroomsor anything a screen can provide. Abundantresearch evidence demonstrates this. Earlychildhood contact with nature really matters;it leaves a lasting mark. There is simply nosubstitute for going out into the woods, onto thebeach, into the fields and hills, feeling the wind,the rain and the sun, seeing the sights, smellingthe smells, hearing the sounds of birds, animals,insects, trees and plants. Not only does interactionwith nature foster a personal relationship withthe natural environment, but it benefits wellbeingand cognitive functioning too. Lack of suchexperience constitutes real deprivation, far greaterthan the lack of money to buy the latest fashion32 | www.compassonline.org.uk

in trainers or mobile phones. The Forest Schoolprogramme, which provides young children withopportunities to experience both structured andfreer activities in woodland settings, has beenincreasingly adopted by UK schools and nurseries.Such initiatives should be a mandatory element ofthe curriculum for every child.A holistic perspective on nature,education and societyIt is high time we took on board in the way welive individually and collectively, and the way weconstrue education – which is personal inductioninto and development for both the possibilitiesand the constraints that life offers – that humanbeings and the natural world are inextricablybound up together in a two-way relationship.For environmental sustainability and humanequitability to be possible, the natural world mustbe regarded as a common good shared betweenall peoples – and other species – wherever theymay be. The local environment contributes tolocal communality and its particular culture,and bestows a sense of individual identity andbelonging. As well as the fundamental supplysource for basic needs for food, water, clothingand shelter, the natural world is the supremesource of personal inspiration, challenge andrepose. Education that truly promotes environmentalsustainability will embrace all thesematters, matters that lie at the heart of the valuesof a Good Society.Education for the good society | 33

7. Schools fordemocracyMichael FieldingCompass’s articulation of what it means by‘Education for the Good Society’ includes aninsistence that we pay attention to personaldevelopment and the ability to exercise democraticcontrol. ‘Education is, therefore, a fundamentaldemocratic issue.’ In part this entails‘greater local accountability, a stronger voicefor professionals organised in communities ofpractice and the development of inter-dependentrelations between educators and their students’(see Chapter 1). It is this last injunction – thedevelopment of inter-dependent relationsbetween educators and their students – I wishto explore and extend here. Unless we take thismore seriously and interpret it more radically thefuture of local accountability and professionalcommunities of practice will be compromised.Indeed, unless schools themselves become morefully democratic institutions, unless democracyshapes the way we live and learn together, wewill fail to achieve our wider democratic aspirationsand continue to perpetuate the presumptionof privilege and the smiling face of unguentcondescension that so disgracefully disfigure ourcurrent political arrangements.Beyond student voice to democraticcommunityFirst off, it is important to remind ourselves ofthe nature of the interdependence we are advocatinghere and the practical difference it makesto what goes on in schools and other sites offormal education. One way in to this is to reflecton the latest phase of student voice work that hasflourished in the last 20 years or so. In its mostrecent manifestations it has included a remarkableflowering of activity, for example:• peer support – activities that suggest youngpeople benefit socially and academicallyfrom listening to each other’s voices whetherindividually (e.g. buddying, coaching,mentoring and peer teaching) or morecollectively (e.g. through prefects, studentleaders and class and schools councils)• student–teacher learning partnerships – inwhich students are given responsibility forworking alongside teachers and other adultsin a developmental capacity (e.g. throughstudent-led learning walks, students asco-researchers and lead researchers, Studentsas Learning Partners, student ambassadorsand student lead learners)• student evaluation of staff or school –activities in which students express theirviews on a range of matters, sometimes aftercollecting and interpreting data, either onindividual members of staff, school teamsor departments, the school as a learningcommunity, or the wider community towhich the students belong (e.g. students asobservers, governors, informants in teacherconsultation about effective teaching andlearning, and key informants in the processesof external inspection and accountability;students on staff appointment panels; studentfocus groups and surveys; junior leadershipteams; and student action teams identifyingkey community issues to be addressed).Listening to the voices of young people, includingvery young children, is now something that isnot merely espoused, but actively advocatedby government departments and their satelliteorganisations. There has also been very substantialgrass-roots interest in student voice from staffin schools and from young people themselves.In many respects this might seem surprising,since these kinds of developments appear tooutstrip their equivalent explorations in the moreadventurous decades of the 1960s and 1970s.However, if we reflect on the slide from publicservice to private profit, from engaged citizento querulous consumer, another reading of therise and rise of student voice begins to emerge.In what I call the ‘high performance’ neo-liberalmarket perspective young people are seen asconsumers or customers who are required toconstantly re-invent themselves in an unendingpursuit of material and instrumental gain. At acollective level, high performance schools seetheir main task as maximising their position incompetitive league tables by producing better34 | www.compassonline.org.uk

measured outcomes for students, with youngpeople themselves as key informants and/orcollaborators in this process.In contrast, a person-centred, democraticapproach to education presumes quite differentintentions and processes, which include a moregenerously conceived account of process andoutcomes. It is also an approach which submitseverything that goes on in the school to themost important educational question of all: Howdo we become good persons who lead goodlives together? Student voice is important here,not so much through representative structures(though it will have these and operate themwell), but rather through a whole range of dailyopportunities in which young people can listenand be listened to, make decisions and take ashared responsibility for both the here-and-nowof daily encounter and for the creation of a betterfuture.At a communal level, the main concern is howbest to co-create, with adults and other youngpeople, a good society, a democratic fellowshipand a better world. My reaffirmation of democraticfellowship is deliberate. It is central to a numberof key socialist writers to whom we are now,rightly, returning (e.g. William Morris, G.D.H.Cole, R.H. Tawney and John Macmurray), tocommunitarian anarchism (e.g. Peter Kropotkin)and to participatory traditions of democracy.Fellowship is a very old, foundationally importantnotion, and if it is appropriately linked to thevalues of democracy it energises and names thecrucial synergy between justice and care. It insistson the essential link between the political andthe personal, between how we go about makingdecisions and forming judgements about thecommon good while attending and celebratingthe lived diversity of those actual persons whoseaspirations and fulfillment is both the point ofpolitics and the means of its realisation.Patterns of partnershipThe impressive range of student voice activityalluded to earlier has much within it that deservessubstantial support, providing it is guided byemancipatory values and motivations that makeclear the nature of the power relations andthe orientation of the dispositions and intentionsinvolved. Building on the work of activistwriters like Roger Hart 1 and Harry Shier, 2 I havedeveloped a typology – ‘Patterns of partnership:how adults listen to and learn with students inschools’ – that is mindful of these considerations,rooted in the complexities and specificitiesof school-based contexts and explicitly insistenton participatory democracy as a legitimate andincreasingly urgent aspiration. Within both thestate or publicly funded and the private sectors ofeducation, participatory traditions have alwaysbeen in the minority. Yet, it seems to me thatpioneers like Alex Bloom in Stepney, London, 3and researchers like Lawrence Kohlberg, whopioneered the Just Community School movementin the USA in the 1970s, are correct in theirinsistence that ‘the educational aim of full individualhuman development can be reached onlythrough an education for full participation insociety or in a human community’ 4 and that it isthe duty of schools themselves to strive towardstheir own development as fully democratic institutionswithin the participatory tradition. Why?Because representative democracy privilegesthose who are already politically mature. InKohlberg’s view, unless young people experienceparticipatory engagement in a rich way at school,when they leave they are likely to avoid opportunitiesfor participation and public responsibility,not seek them. For him, and for me:The most basic way in which the high school canpromote experiences of civic participation is togovern itself through a process of participatorydemocracy… The only way school can help graduatingstudents become persons who can makesociety a just community is to let them try experimentallyto make the school themselves. 5There is one other matter that seems to meimportant in all this and it concerns the inadequaciesof developing an account of collaborativeways of working, of patterns of partnership,which frames its concerns purely as powerrelations and wider contexts of social justice.Issues of power, rights and justice are of foundationalimportance, but they are not enough.Justice is never enough: it is a necessary butnot a sufficient condition of human flourishing.Justice, and indeed any form of politics, is for thesake of something else, for the sake of creative1 Roger Hart, Children’sParticipation: From Tokenism toCitizenship, UNICEF, InternationalChild Development Centre, 1992.2 Harry Shier, ‘Pathways toparticipation: openings, opportunitiesand Obligations’, Children andSociety, 2001, 15(2), pp.107–17.3 See Michael Fielding, ‘AlexBloom: pioneer of radical stateeducation’, Forum, 2005, 47(2–3),pp.119–34; and Michael Fieldingand Peter Moss, Radical Educationand the Common School: ADemocratic Alternative, Routledge,2011.4 Lawrence Kohlberg, ‘Highschool democracy and educatingfor a just society’, in R. Mosher(ed.), Moral Education: A FirstGeneration of Research andDevelopment, Praeger, 1980, p.34.5 Ibid., p.35.Education for the good society | 35

and joyful relations between persons. Thus, inaddition to undergirding a collaborative typologywith overt reference to power there is also a needto include explicit reference to relationships,dispositions and orientations to each other aspersons. Hence my revival of the notion of democraticfellowship.The six-fold typology presented in Table 7.1is thus not just about power relations, importantas these are. It is also about our encountersas persons within two very different orientingcontexts – what I have called ‘the instrumentaldimension’ typified by high performanceschooling through market accountability andthe ‘fellowship dimension’ typified by personcentrededucation for democratic fellowship.With the possible exception of Pattern 6, allof the patterns of partnership can be approachedfrom either an instrumental or a fellowshipstandpoint, or indeed from any other standpoint. 6For example, on the one hand, a joint projectinvolving different groups or classes providingmutual critique can be approached atomisticallywith prime emphasis being placed on individualskills acquisition, team work as a saleable CVcommodity, and a competitive ethos re-enforcingthe virtues of extrinsic motivation and the cutand thrust of the marketplace. On the otherhand, it can be approached in a spirit of criticalfriendship, with prime emphasis being placed onindividual learning within the context of overtreciprocity, collegial work within a communalnexus, and emulative striving within the contextof an inclusive, emergent common good. Thecrucial point to make here is that it matters whichone chooses, whether deliberately or by default:it matters for our desire and capacity to flourishas persons; it shapes and limits our learning, andit enables or prohibits the kind of democraticsociety we aspire to.Schools for democracyEach generation has a duty to re-imagine andremake democracy and to do so not only withregard to contemporary challenges, but also in thelight of its multiple histories. Which genealogywe chose is crucial, for in the fabric of thetradition to which we give our allegiance is wovenTable 7.1 Patterns of partnership – how adults listen to and learn with students in school6 See Michael Fielding, ‘Patternsof partnership: student voice,intergenerational learning anddemocratic fellowship’, in NicoleMocker and Judyth Sachs (eds),Rethinking Educational PracticeThrough Reflexive Research: Essaysin Honour of Susan Groundwater-Smith, Springer, 2011, forthcoming,for detailed practicalexamples.InstrumentaldimensionHigh performanceschoolingthrough marketaccountabilityPatterns of partnership6. Intergenerational learning as lived democracy:• shared commitment to and responsibility forthe common good5. Students as joint authors:• students and staff decide a joint course ofaction together4. Students as knowledge creators:• students take lead roles with active staffsupport3. Students as co-enquirers:• staff take a lead role with high-profile, activestudent support2. Students as active respondents:• staff invite student dialogue and discussion todeepen learning and professional decisions1. Students as data source:• staff use information about student progressand well-beingFellowshipdimensionPerson-centrededucation fordemocratic fellowship36 | www.compassonline.org.uk

the unity of process and possibility. We have fortoo long marginalised participatory traditions ofdemocracy and the radical educational pioneerswhose prefigurative practice lived what many ofus still only aspire to. Now is as a good a time asany to take stock: there is an urgency to our task,heightened by the literal and metaphorical nearbankruptcyof the economic and political systemunder which we live.If ‘Patterns of partnership’ suggests a variety ofways in which we can develop more democraticways of working together in schools, myten-point ‘Schools for democracy’ suggests awider institutional framework within which theycan contribute to radical democratic practice. 71 Education in and for radical democracyThere should be:• a proclaimed, not just an intended, democraticvitality, albeit one that bears in mind thedemands of context and circumstance.2 Radical structures and spacesThere should be:• permanent and proper provisionality• residual unease with hierarchy• transparent structures that encourage ways ofworking that transcend boundaries and invitenew combinations and possibilities• emphasis on the spatiality of democracy, oninterpersonal and architectural spaces thatencourage a multiplicity of different formsof formal and informal engagement with amultiplicity of persons• pre-eminence of the general meeting withinwhich the whole community reflects on itsshared life, achievements and aspirations.Here young people and adults makemeaning of their work together, returningtenaciously and regularly to the imperativesof purpose, not merely to the mechanics ofaccomplishment.3 Radical rolesThere should be:• ‘role defiance and role jumbling’ (RobertoUnger) among staff but also between staff andstudents. See ‘Patterns of partnership’ above.4 Radical relationshipsThis involves:• ‘re-seeing’ each other as persons rather thanas role occupants• nurturing a new understanding, sense ofpossibility, and felt respect between adultsand young people• having a greater sense of shared delight, careand responsibility.5 Personal and communal narrativeThere should be:• multiple spaces and opportunities for youngpeople and adults, to make meaning of theirwork, personally and as a community• necessary connection with radical traditionsof education.6 Radical curriculum, critical pedagogyand enabling assessmentFormal and informal curriculum must:• equip young people and adults with thedesire and capacity to seriously interrogatewhat is given and co-construct a knowledgethat assists in leading good and joyful livestogether• start with the cultures, concerns and hopes ofthe communities that the school serves• include integrated approaches to knowledgewith students and staff working in smallcommunities of enquiry.Critical pedagogy is:• a reciprocity of engagement and involvementnot only with the immediate community, butwith other communities and ways of being,at a local, regional, national and internationallevel.Enabling assessment involves:• forms of assessment at national and locallevels that have the flexibility to respond tothe particularities of context• high levels of peer and teacher involvementthrough assessment-for-learning approachesand additional community and familyinvolvement through public, portfolio-basedpresentations.7 See Fielding and Moss, RadicalEducation and the Common School,Chapter 2, for a more detailedaccount.Education for the good society | 37

8 Wilfred Carr and AnthonyHartnett, Education and theStruggle for Democracy: ThePolitics of Educational Ideas, OpenUniversity Press, 1996, p.194.9 Hywel Williams, ‘Schoolsthat teach children to lie’, NewStatesman, 9 October 2000.7 Insistent affirmation of possibilityThere should be:• a generosity of presumption that requires us tokeep options open, to counter the confinementof customary or casual expectation• no ability grouping, emulation rather thancompetition, and intrinsic motivation andcommunal recognition rather than theparaphernalia of marks and prizes.8 Engaging the localThis involves:• education as a lifelong process and the school asite of community renewal and responsibilityin which young and old explore what it meansto live good lives together• school and community seen as reciprocalresources for broadly and more narrowlyconceived notions of learning.9 Accountability as shared responsibilityWe should:• understand and enact democraticaccountability better as a form of ‘sharedresponsibility’ – morally and politicallysituated, not merely technically andprocedurally ‘delivered’• develop new forms of accountability bettersuited to a more engaged understanding ofdemocratic living.10 Regional, national and globalsolidaritiesThis involves:• regional, national and global solidarities madereal through reciprocal ideological, materialand interpersonal support through valuesdrivennetworks and alliances, which drawon and contribute to the dynamic of radicalsocial movements.No doubt there are emphases, omissions andpoints of contestation that readers would wish toraise. The key point, however, is that together wedevelop a framework for democratic schoolingthat is theoretically robust, practically achievable,and humanly inspiring. Without a framework ofthis kind we will be in danger of slipping backinto the insidious, sometimes unwitting, betrayalsof quietism, condescending statism or neo-liberalincorporation that have at different times robbedthe comprehensive school movement of its emancipatorypotential. Writing 15 years ago WilfredCarr and Anthony Hartnett observed that:‘despite its portrayal as an institution of democraticeducation all the evidence suggests that thecomprehensive school has reinforced rather thanchallenged those non-democratic aspects of theEnglish education tradition –exclusiveness, separation,segregation – that have always frustrateddemocratic educational advance.’ 8‘Although many readers would quarrel with suchan interpretation, the challenge it poses needsto be taken as seriously as ever. So, too, doesthe even deeper challenge R.H. Tawney posedtowards the end of the 1945 Labour Government,when according to Hywel Williams, he insisted.’‘The failure to abolish public schools wouldundermine everything the Labour movement hadachieved in other areas. It was the one reform thatmattered – the profound one from which all otherchanges in the way the English treated each otherand looked at the world would flow.’ 9‘Although the contemporary political caseremains disgracefully unargued, the moral, civicand democratic case remains as strong as ever.’‘Some changes have to start now –else there is no beginning for us’If we believe in deep democracy we must putdemocratic schools – schools as democratic institutionsin which adults and young people liveand learn democracy together – at the centre ofEducation for the Good Society. While we maynot immediately be in a position to emulatepioneers like Alex Bloom there is much we cantake from current advances in student voice andincreasingly inclusive approaches to leadershipin schools. If harnessed to the patterns of partnershipand democratic frameworks for whichI have been arguing, they have the potentialto contribute to a new phase of democratic38 | www.compassonline.org.uk

advance. If we nurture developments of this kindwithin a wider strategy of what has variouslybeen called ‘real utopias’ (Erik Olin Wright),‘democratic experimentalism’ (Roberto Unger)or ‘prefigurative practice’ (Carl Boggs), we mayyet create a Good Society worthy not just of thename, but of the radical democratic traditions towhich it belongs. In the resonant words of SheliaRowbotham, ‘Some changes have to start now,else there is no beginning for us.’ 1010 Sheila Rowbotham, ‘Thewomen’s movement and organizingfor socialism,’ in SheilaRowbotham, Lynne Segal andHilary Wainwright, Beyond theFragments: Feminism and theMaking of Socialism, Merlin Press,1979, p.140.Education for the good society | 39

1 Winston Churchill, quoted inNIACE, The Future for LifelongLearning: A National Strategy,National Institute of AdultContinuing Education, 2009, p.2.2 Iris Murdoch, Existentialists andMystics, Chatto & Windus, 1950,p.342.3 For this chapter I assume that‘lifelong learning’ refers to abroader way in which learningis conceptualised across the lifecourse; my focus is specificallyon the provision of educationfor adults.4 See for example Joe Cox, ‘Onthe “big society” vs the “goodsociety” – a case in point’,Compass Online, 28 February2011, www.compassonline.org.uk/news/item.asp?n=12260.5 See Toby Helm, ‘Small isbeautiful: the father of DavidCameron’s big society’, Observer,27 March 2011, www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/mar/27/small-beautiful-david-cameronbig-society.6 Quoted by A.C. Grayling inDavid Utting, Contemporary SocialEvils, Policy Press, 2009, p.122.8. What kind of societyvalues adult education?Tom SperlingerThere is, perhaps, no branch of our vast educationalsystem which should attract… the aid andencouragement of the state [more] than adulteducation.Winston Churchill 1Goodness appears to be both rare and hard topicture.Iris Murdoch 2What kind of societies do (and do not)value adult education?My purpose in this chapter is to think aboutthe role of adult education in the Good Societyand also about how it might help us define ournotions of the ‘good’ in this context. 3 There hasbeen some debate recently about the differencebetween Compass’s idea of the Good Society andthe Conservative idea of the Big Society. 4 Oneway in which to reflect on differences betweenthem might be by understanding the supportingor opposing terms in each case. For example, theopposite of the ‘big’ society is presumably the‘small’ society, one that is relatively self-enclosedor exclusive. A rhetorical sense of inclusion has,in fact, been one of the Big Society’s more attractiveelements. Yet this big–small dichotomy isof limited use, since the Big Society is oftenabout supporting relatively small-scale, local andself-organised projects; the reported influence ofSchumacher’s Small is Beautiful on it underlinesthat ‘small’ is just as operative a word in thisconception of how society works. 5 In fact, theopposing term to the Big Society seems to be notthe ‘small society’ but the ‘big state’, as is underlinedby one of David Cameron’s most effectivelines of recent years: ‘There is such a thing associety, it’s just not the same as the state.’ 6 The BigSociety is as much, if not more, of an attempt tore-conceptualise the role and size of the state as ofsociety. It is also thus a vision of society in whichthe state has a predefined (and limited) role.The Good Society, in contrast, can presumablybe opposed by a notion of the ‘bad’ or dysfunctionalsociety and one might imagine a spectrumof less good societies, with a sense of progressiontowards the ‘good’ as either a set of concretepossibilities or utopian aspirations. One mightargue that the Good Society is itself inherentlypragmatic, since it could also be compared tothe perfect society. In contrast, ‘good’ implies apermanent relationship to ‘bad’ or less good; asense of continual action to achieve whatever‘goodness’ is possible. It is also crucial here thatthe Good Society does not, within the term itself,specify a relationship to the state – and thusneither places the state outside such a society nordefines in advance its role within it.In turning to the question in my title, I want tothink similarly about opposing terms, to imaginethe kind of society that would not value adulteducation. Here too it is worth noting that onesuch society might be a perfect society or one thathad achieved a level of perfection in the educationof its children. Adult education would not beneeded if education as a child could completelyprepare a person for life. There would needto be a relatively unforgiving form of equalityin this provision, with each citizen offered a‘perfect’ form of education as a child and littleor no opportunity for a second chance if theyfailed to use it. This model would also imply thateducation is designed to prepare one for experience(rather than respond to it) or that one of thequalities that might be learnt as a child would beto be a ‘lifelong learner’ on one’s own. The othernotable aspect of this imagined society is that itwould presumably be relatively or entirely static.If the society succeeded in preparing children forlife, this implies that there would not be radicalchanges in the nature of the society in theirlifetime or in its composition (since outsiderswould require education at a later stage).This is not the only sort of society one canimagine that would not value adult education.Another example might be a society in whichindividuals did not live long, making the ideaof adult education almost redundant. Otherexamples would include societies with particularconceptions of a working life or of each citizen’srelationship to the body of knowledge the societyholds. For example, a society with a relativelylimited range of employments or professions –40 | www.compassonline.org.uk

of tasks for its citizens to perform – might notrequire the sort of ‘re-skilling’ adult educationoften performs. Similarly, a society that held fastto a particular set of truths (religious, scientific,political or other) might see little need for itscitizens to pursue other lines of enquiry or mightactively seek to suppress them.These examples suggest that the sort of societythat does value adult education is likely to be animperfect one – and one that acknowledges itsimperfections; a society that acknowledges thattotal equality in childhood is impossible, as muchthrough accidents of circumstance as materialdifferences; a society that realises the possibilitiesand threats posed by change; a society thatis not static but is changed and challenged bynewcomers and new developments; and one witha relatively high life expectancy. This remindsus that a ‘good’ society is one that is constantlyin a dialectic relationship to ‘less good’ aspectsof itself and to the necessity of change. It mighteven follow from this that adult education ismore likely to be valued within a society thathas experienced profound change – such as awar or other devastation, or the collapse of thedominant economic model, with consequencesfor the worldview, quality of life and futureprospects of its inhabitants (and for the hierarchiesbetween different people, which adulteducation itself can do so much to disrupt). 7 Sucha society might need adult education to equip itscitizens to survive, existentially and practically,in new circumstances and so that they could helpthe younger population to adapt as well.Where are we now?Our society places some value on adulteducation, but we value it (at best) in an ambivalentway. New Labour’s record was contradictory,with notable investment in adult andfurther education after 1997 but patchy results.Further education faced devastating cuts beforethe change of government in 2010 and adulteducation as a coherent entity within universitieshas all but disappeared. The creation of theCampaigning Alliance for Lifelong Learning(CALL), in the last years of New Labour, was justone symptom of the unease felt by professionalsand students in both sectors. 8Nor is the situation improving under theCoalition. For example, the new funding arrangementsfor universities post-2012 are designedfor a model in which the vast majority of undergraduateentrants are school leavers. This hasprofound implications for the scope and range ofany efforts to widen participation, as opposed tosimply increasing it, since it excludes those wholeave school at an earlier stage.Even when the New Labour governmentsmade some attempt to support adult learning,they seemed rather vague about what they weretrying to do. For example, in 2009 the LabourGovernment launched a £20 million ‘transformation’fund for ‘informal adult learning’. SionSimon, the further education minister, explainedhow it was designed to work in a BBC interview:Sion Simon: [It’s] kind of an innovation fund, toback people who’ve got new ideas about innovativeways of doing informal adult learning, i.e. thekind of learning that people do for pleasure, forfun, rather than for qualifications or for work.Interviewer: We’re talking about perhaps learninga foreign language [because] you want to have asecond home, in the days when people still boughtsuch things… rather than doing learning that isfor skills?Sion Simon: Yeah the focus of governmentpolicy over the last few years and indeed nowin these straitened times has been very muchon skills, on qualifications, on giving people –particularly the lower skilled – the skills andqualifications they need to get back into work. Butwe also have a commitment, and that’s what thiswhite paper is about, to the kind of learning thatpeople do for pleasure… and what we’re trying todo is find new and exciting ways of helping peopleto do that more.Interviewer: When you say ‘new and exciting’,you immediately think this all has to be done onthe cheap somehow. And you’ve got to get peoplein there to staff it as well. It sounds a rathercuriously unfocused plan…Sion Simon: I’m not talking about theGovernment setting up courses for people. Whatthis is really about is, er, helping people to domore of things that they already do. So, forinstance, there’s a huge amount of learning thatgoes on that is self-organised and with the adventof the world wide web, which itself is fundamen-7 This is not to ignore the factthat, within such a society, theremight still be particular andacute constraints on how sucheducation could be organised orfunded.8 See www.callcampaign.org.uk/.Education for the good society | 41

9 See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7958945.stm.10 Quoted from personal correspondence.tally self-organised and individual, but peoplefind they want to put a group on, but they’ve gotnowhere to do it; or they’ve got a reading groupthat doesn’t cost any money but it just needssomewhere to meet and there are 20 people thatwant to come and they don’t quite fit in anybody’sfront room. 9It was admirable that the Government (in ‘straitenedtimes’) found a sum of money like this forinformal learning and that a minister was willingto defend a vision of education broader than‘qualifications for work’ (while acknowledgingthat such qualifications are important). Yet thisdefence of the policy is unsatisfactory, especiallyas Simon is probed by the interviewer. It is astrikingly attenuated vision of education in whichit is either for pleasure/fun or for qualifications.Within this context it is no surprise if anythingnon-utilitarian is relegated to marginal categoriessuch as ‘informal’ or ‘leisure’ learning. It alsobecomes apparent that there is a hierarchicaldistinction at work. The ‘lower skilled’ need qualificationsto get ‘back into work’, while informallearning is resolutely middle class. It operatesas a consolation for those who can no longerafford their second home or whose front room isnot large enough for their aspirations. Informallearning is ‘fundamentally self-organised andindividual’ and ‘self-directed’, designed to help‘people to do more of things that they already do’and it is definitely not ‘about the Governmentsetting up courses for people’. Indeed, what ismost striking about this description of the fund ishow much it resembles the aims of, and tensionswithin, the Big Society.How else might we talk about adulteducation?What is missing here? How else might we talkabout adult education? Jon Cruddas has written:What interests me is why we have lost that senseof education and a broader sense of fulfilment,self-realisation, human flourishing – which wasalso central to the democratic socialist tradition.Knowledge was everything and was [a] rich partof the working class socialist experience. Nowwhere did all that go? 10The language and tradition highlighted byCruddas are absent in Simon’s account of adultlearning. Simon gives no sense of educationfor the public good or for a social purpose;of its benefits to families and communities, aswell as to the individual; of the transformativepower of education’s implicit benefits for theindividual, such as in renewed confidence ora changed worldview; or of skills that are notjust for work. Nor is there a sense of how adulteducation can be transformative when it bringstogether students from wildly different social andeducational backgrounds. There is also, as ever, aconfusion of ends and means. We seem to haveforgotten that qualifications (sometimes) help usto measure what is valuable in education but arenot the value in themselves.How can we understand the value of adulteducation? We talk too easily sometimes of‘education for its own sake’, which risks makingit sounds as though it exists apart from humanconcerns. Similarly, we may forget that the kindof economic transformation that education canfacilitate should be utilised to create better humanlives, not as an end to which such lives might besacrificed. I have come across many students, oncourses for a qualification and those for ‘leisure’,who were seeking to re-make their lives throughadult education: as they recovered from mentalor physical ill health, or a period of caring fora loved one; to make up for an unhappy schoolexperience or a turbulent young life; to changecareer or after a period of unemployment; inorder to have a place to think in, outside work,or to gain a new skill that was not for their job;to adjust to life as a single parent; to re-makethemselves after a period in prison; to understandtheir own racial, religious or cultural heritage; orwith a sense of urgent need that they could notimmediately articulate.Education is the process by which we makeand re-make a sense of our lives, of the world andour part in it. It should be part of how we make aGood Society. Only if a wide range of opportunitiesfor adults exists, in all sectors, can educationfulfil its radical and transformative potential, tochange individual lives and also to challenge thehierarchies and assumptions within which we allexist.There is enormous scope for debate about whatforms of adult education provision are needed or42 | www.compassonline.org.uk

wanted, how they should be organised, whensuch provision should be state-funded and/orwhen it should be self-directed and privatelyfunded. Such debates are beyond the scope ofthis chapter, though they are discussed elsewherein this volume. But we need to have those debateswith renewed confidence about the value of adulteducation. We live in an imperfect society,whose defining features at present are an ageingpopulation and the slow-motion collapse of ourdominant economic model. Adult educationintrinsically acknowledges imperfections andis a means by which people and communitiescan change direction, at however late a stage;it is both a practical and a utopian endeavour.If we are to build something closer to the GoodSociety, adult education will need to be at itsheart.Education for the good society | 43

1 The Learning Age: A Renaissancefor a New Britain, Cm 3790, TheStationery Office, 1998.2 Tom Schuller and DavidWatson, Learning Through Life:Inquiry into the Future for LifelongLearning, NIACE, 2009.9. Lifelong learning:chimera, head-nodderor awkward customer?Tom SchullerLibrarians are rumoured, entirely unfairly, to befond of saying ‘which part of “no” is it that youdon’t understand?’. Sometimes I feel the sameway when I’m asked about lifelong learning.After all, the words which make up the term areall part of day-to-day discourse. But that is beingunfair to the questioner, since it remains truethat lifelong learning is still a concept which is farfrom clearly defined and understood.An alternative, equally common, response,is a sympathetic but slightly impatient nod: yesyes, of course we all agree lifelong learning is aGood Thing, but let’s get on to the issues thatreally have a grip on the political imagination:school selection, or higher education funding.Again, this is an understandable reaction, as theseare indeed the items that are foremost in manyfamilies’ minds, and therefore in the ruminationsof politicians.These are just two of the reasons why it isso hard to get a solid debate going on lifelonglearning. Another is the perennial difficulty oftackling an issue that spans sectoral boundaries:not just several educational sectors, not justeducation and training, but these plus health,social care, community development and so on.I’m not going here to do the job of definitiveclarification, nor offer the compelling rationalefor lifelong learning. The acknowledged sourcefor this is David Blunkett’s foreword to the 1998green paper The Learning Age, a (sadly typical)example of the unfulfilled promise held out byearly New Labour. 1 Instead I want to address thepolitics of lifelong learning in quite a pragmaticway but raising, I hope, some awkward questions,which political rhetoric on its own will not beenough to deal with.However, just to be clear about the scope oflifelong learning as I understand it, I’m stickingwith the approach we used in Learning ThroughLife, the main report of the Inquiry into theFuture of Lifelong Learning:Lifelong learning includes people of all ageslearning in a variety of contexts – in educationalinstitutions, at work, at home and through leisureactivities. It focuses mainly on adults returningto organised learning rather than on the initialperiod of education or on incidental learning. 2Some of the awkward issues for me about thepolitics of the issue are:• What is the nature of the educational contractbetween generations?• What is the desired balance between marketand non-market provision?• How do we reconcile personal aspirationsand preferences with education’s role as apromoter of social cohesion?By ‘awkward’ I mean politically challengingissues on which people who share similar valuesmay well disagree.Intergenerational justice andeducational effectivenessIn Learning Through Life we show the grossimbalance in the way public and private expenditureon education is weighted towards theyoungest adult age group. We defined this as18–25, the other three groups being 25–50, 50–75and 75+ (for the social and epidemiologicalrationale for these divisions, see www.niace.org.uk/lifelonglearninginquiry). We estimated thetotal to be of the order of £55 billion annually; 86per cent of this goes to the first age group, 12 percent to the second, with trivial amounts to theThird Age and virtually nothing to the FourthAge. There is now a window of opportunity,with the demographic decline in the numbersof young people, to achieve a rebalancing acrossage groups without this resulting in per capitareduction in expenditure on young people. Thatproposition, of course, looks implausible in thelight of the furore over student finance. Reducingstill further the public investment in youngpeople would not immediately recommend itselfto anyone just now. Yet the argument remains.What we need is a serious debate on educationas part of the intergenerational contract. Thebooks by Ed Howker and Shiv Malik (Jilted44 | www.compassonline.org.uk

Generation) and David Willetts (The Pinch) are agood start on this.3 But neither of them deal withlifelong learning, predictably enough. We needtwo kinds of arguments here. First, a cohortspecificone: for all the arguments about well-offThird Agers, many of today’s older people missedout on all the educational expansion of the 1960sand 1970s. This is especially true of older, poorwomen, whose working lives will also often havebeen in low-paid and low-skilled jobs, thereforewithout training and learning built into them. Sothe argument has specific application now.Second, though, we need a more generalargument about the appropriate distribution oflearning opportunities across the life-course.The argument should combine efficiency andequity angles. Continuously extending the periodof initial education makes sense on neitherground. Levering more young people intohigher education is not the solution. Can weget real about this: can we look at ways in whichpeople are enabled to leave the education system(though not necessarily the learning system) butare guaranteed ways of returning and offeredencouragement and support to do so? Are weusing both our common sense experience andour research knowledge when it comes to thetiming of learning?Markets and non-market provisionIt’s not surprising that so much of the educationdebate today turns around money, and especiallyaround how much public money is available.I totally deplore the abolition of EducationalMaintenance Allowances (EMAs), and thereduction in public investment in highereducation. I also deplore the language used byLord Browne in his report on higher educationfunding. As David Marquand pointed out inhis impressive Compass annual lecture, Brownethrusts marketisation on higher education in away that is objectionably gratuitous (my wordsnot Marquand’s). 4That said, we need to think harder about whatthe relationship is between markets and nonmarketprovision. I use the plural term deliberatelysince there are many markets involved. Inlifelong learning especially, there will always be aprivate sector: people will buy self-help manualsand pay for tuition of various kinds, unlesswe attempt some kind of Maoist ban on suchactivity (even then they still will). The internetnow provides massive further opportunities foronline learning. Some of these offerings are puremarket goods, sold for profit by large or smalloutfits, with price and quality probably the maindeterminants of success. Is there any reasonto discourage this market? What steps shouldwe take to encourage it as a true market, notdistorted by monopolistic practices?Other provision is of a quasi-market kind: forinstance my own main past area of universityextramural provision, where we used to set heavilypublicly subsidised fees for all kinds of courses,with institutions in some sense competing witheach other. I deeply regret the passing of thistradition, as fees have soared to meet marketlevels. I would (of course) defend the subsidy,mainly on the grounds that such programmesare a part of a healthy democratic culture, evenif they benefit the well off at least as much asthe poor. But we could not avoid the argumentsaround the nature of public subsidy: what kindsof activity and services it is most reasonably andfairly spent on (think opera and football).In any case, this issue will come to the fore ifpersonal Lifelong Learning Accounts get a firmhold, as I hope they will; setting up a propersystem of such accounts is one of LearningThrough Life’s main recommendations. The ideaof a mechanism, which enables citizens to buildup the means to choose learning opportunitiesfor themselves, is deeply attractive. The publicfunding for such accounts can be generous orlimited. It can encourage employer contributionsin a co-funding system; and it can be weightedtowards particular groups. Scotland did not losefaith in the idea after the debacle of the firstIndividual Learning Account (ILA) trial ten yearsago, and the Scottish ILA initiative has shownhow groups from unsuccessful educational backgroundscan be encouraged.The Scottish system allows the accounts tobe spent only on public-funded provision, quitenarrowly defined. I’m not at all sure how possible,or desirable, it will be to maintain this distinction.The important thing is to open up the debate onwhich kinds of instrument function best. Moregenerally, we need to think about how to tap intoall kinds of different sources of learning opportu-3 Ed Howker and Shiv Malik,Jilted Generation: How Britain hasBankrupted its Youth, Icon, 2010;and David Willetts, The Pinch:How the Babyboomers Took TheirChildren’s Future – and Why TheyShould give it Back, Atlantic Books,2010.4 David Marquand, ‘Towardsa realignment of the mind’,Compass lecture, 10 February2011.Education for the good society | 45

nities, and not have the public–private, market–non-market polarisation as it currently standsshape our thinking. How ready are we for this?Aspirations and cohesionI was very struck by the trio of attributesoffered by Marquand as fundamental goals foreducation: imagination, empathy and criticalthinking. He was referring to higher education,but there is no reason to restrict these to highereducation. In one sense, admittedly, these arewords which generate warm feelings and noone would disagree with. But they can alsoserve as a platform for thinking about how wecan reconcile people’s individual aspirations forcareers and good personal living standards withthe broader function of education as somethingwhich promotes closer understanding betweenhuman beings, locally and globally.To some extent these goals can be aimedat directly and explicitly. But there is a realchallenge in working out how far this can bedone directly. There is a range of issues here, ofa very political kind: how to reconcile people’ssense of identity with the flux and menace of themodern world; how to build trust in institutionsand other people while encouraging a scepticaldemocracy; and how to maintain some sense ofpublic authority on what counts as truth in theface of the swirling flux of new global communicationpatterns.The challenge here is to maintain public spaceswhich are in a sense authorised as legitimateplaces for the encouragement of good communicationbetween citizens, but maybe to do that inan oblique rather than explicit way. In LearningThrough Life we strongly supported this publicspace idea, especially through experimentationwith what we called local learning exchanges.We also floated the idea of a ‘citizen’s curriculum’,with four key capabilities – digital, health,financial and civic – a national framework to beinterpreted locally in very diverse ways. Thereis no suggestion that this should be a nationalcurriculum such as we have in schools. But,linked with Lifelong Learning Accounts andspecific learning entitlements, it is one way inwhich adult learning might help to promote astronger sense of social cohesion.Future scenariosThese three ‘awkward’ questions concerningjustice, markets and cohesion can be addressedin different ways. Below are the outlines of twopossible profiles of the system in the future:‘Bigger and better’ and ‘Longer and different’.They are extremely sketchy, but designed to focusdebate on alternative ways forward. PersonallyI favour the second scenario, but the first willfind many defenders, and they do not present anobvious ‘winner’ and ‘loser’. Each contains someaspects that will appeal to different people, and sothey are an elementary tool for opening up debate.Scenario 1 ‘Bigger and better’An enlarged post-secondary sector based on:• a more consistent and less diverse and divisiveschool system• more public support for students from poorbackgrounds (e.g. restoration of EMAs)• consolidation of further education progress,with colleges as institutional heart of lifelonglearning• general expansion of numbers of younggraduates, abandoning stem emphasis; focusmaintained on supply side to meet knowledgeeconomy claims• lower higher education fees, restored (in part)teaching funding• some greater success in recruiting poorerstudents to elite universities• stronger professional training and supportfor those teaching adults, in all parts of thesystem• Lifelong Learning Accounts restricted topublic providers.Implications: caters for aspirant younger generationand their parents; builds on current positionof equity-through-expansion, strengthening theparts of the system which favour disadvantagedstudents but sidelines arguments about horizontalequity (within generation); meshes easilywith established view on investing early in life;defers re-examination of efficiency argumentsand misses the demographic window.Scenario 2 ‘Longer and different’This would involve:46 | www.compassonline.org.uk

• much more diverse provision for 18–25 yearolds, including part-time and civic service,lower retention rates in secondary schools,and less emphasis on direct progression touniversity• stronger stress on work-based learning,intermittent and supported by recognisedmentors, guides or trainers• distributed learning becoming much moreimportant, breaking down the boundariesbetween teacher and learner• more emphasis on learning infrastructureswhich enable people with different learningor teaching ambitions and motivations to linkup with each other• lifelong learning accounts liberalised, so newproviders can enter the market• particular emphasis on collective forms oflearning (e.g. family, intergenerational).Implications: goes against many orthodoxies, onthe left as well as the right; potentially addressesboth equity and efficiency aspects in a newway, but involves risks, and a bigger shift in thebalance of the system; less easy to control, anddemands more effort and imagination on monitoringand evaluation.In short, we have choices. We can openlydismiss the notion of lifelong learning as an unaffordableluxury, a fancy notion whose time cameand went, or an area where the UK does passablywell already and no further effort is needed.We can continue to nod our heads at thenotion of lifelong learning, be pleased when wehear stirring stories of adult learners succeedingagainst the odds but continue to focus ourattention on the serious, vote-winning activitiesof schools and mainstream higher education. Itwould be wrong to say that this is the easy wayforward – not much about education will be easy.But it is the path of least resistance, politically andintellectually.We can revisit the past, recreating universityextramural departments and community adulteducation; I’m being neither sarcastic nor cynical,both of these are legitimate goals. There is muchto be safeguarded and even retrieved from pasttraditions. But there is always the tendency topaint the past a suspiciously rosy colour. In myexperience, those inside the system, includingoften academics who might be expected to take amore imaginative and rigorous stance, are surprisinglyquick to abandon their intellectual standardswhen it comes to appraising that system’s particularcharacteristics and effects. It is worth askingwhy this should be so, if it is so. If we want toproduce a genuine system of lifelong learning, itwill need a hard-headed look at where we have notsucceeded in the past; what key shifts are neededin the overall shape of the system; which interestsand blinkers need to be confronted; and what thearguments are for the twenty-first century. Thelong, slow tide of demographic change might justhave enough swell to do it.Appendix: Learning Through LiferecommendationsOur vision is of a society in which learning playsits full role in personal growth and emancipation,prosperity, solidarity and global responsibility.We begin from the premise that the right to learnthroughout life is a human right.1 Basing lifelong learning policy on a newfour-stage modelThe United Kingdom’s current approach tolifelong learning is not responding adequately totwo major trends: an ageing society and changingpatterns of paid and unpaid activity. A genuinelylifelong view means that a four-stage model – upto 25, 25–50, 50–75, 75+ – should be used as thebasis for a coherent systemic approach to lifelonglearning.2 Rebalancing resources fairly andsensibly across the life coursePublic and private resources invested in lifelonglearning amount to over £50 billion; their distributionshould relate to our changing economicand social context. We need public agreementon the criteria for fair and effective allocation ofresources for learning across the life course.3 Building a set of learning entitlementsA clear framework of entitlements to learningwill be a key factor in strengthening choiceand motivation to learn. Funding of entitlementsshould be channelled through a nationalsystem of learning accounts, giving individuals themaximum control over how they are used.Education for the good society | 47

4 Engineering flexibility: a system ofcredit and encouraging part-timersFaster progress is needed to implement a creditbasedsystem, and to support people to combinestudy with other activities. We should movequickly to implement fully a coherent system ofcredits as the basis for organising post-compulsorylearning.5 Improving the quality of workThe debate on skills has been too dominated byan emphasis on increasing the volume of skills.There should be a stronger focus on how skillsare actually used. We need increased understandingof the kinds of work environment whichencourage formal and informal learning as ameans of raising performance and productivity.6 Constructing a framework for acitizens’ curriculumA common framework should be created oflearning opportunities, aimed at enhancingpeople’s control over their own lives. An agreedframework for a citizens’ curriculum should bedeveloped, built initially around a set of fourcapabilities: digital, health, financial and civic,together with employability.7 Broadening and strengthening thecapacity of the lifelong learning workforceStronger support should be available for all thoseinvolved in delivering education and training.There should be a broad definition of who makesup the lifelong learning workforce, includingschoolteachers and early years practitioners, andlearning support staff.8 Reviving local responsibility…The current system in England has become overcentralised,and insufficiently linked to localand regional needs. We should restore life andpower to local levels. The idea of local learningexchanges should be developed to connect peopleas socially networked learners, and to providespaces for local groups to engage in learning.9 …within national frameworksThere should be effective machinery forcreating a coherent national strategy across theUK, and within the UK’s four nations. A singledepartment should have the lead responsibility forpromoting lifelong learning, with cross-governmenttargets for lifelong learning.10 Making the system intelligentThe system will only flourish with consistentinformation and evaluation, and open debateabout the implications. A three-yearly reporton the state of learning should be published,covering major trends and issues, includingevidence collected by and submitted to internationalbodies. We need stronger and broaderanalysis of the benefits and costs of lifelonglearning over time, and systematic experimentationon what works.48 | www.compassonline.org.uk

10. Education and theeconomyEwart KeepIntroductionThis chapter aims to identify the root causesof our problems with the relationship betweeneducation and the economy and labour market. Itdoes not seek to provide a detailed blueprint forfuture policies in this area, but instead tries to laydown some basic ground rules for formulatingsuch policies.The nature of the problemThis paper starts with a paradox – one that hasdogged policy towards education, learning andskills in England for at least the last quarter of acentury (perhaps longer) and which has underminedmany policy ambitions in this field. It isthe paradox of simultaneous over and underambitionabout what education (in its broadestsense) might best be provided with publicsupport, and what social and economic problemsit might be expected to address.This problem was at its most intense underNew Labour, whose political project was riven bya massive tension between pessimism about whatwas ideologically and practically possible andpermissible in the broader social and economicspheres and the very high levels of ambitionthat were loaded onto one area – educationand training – as the key vehicle for deliveringprogressive social and economic outcomes. Asthe author has argued elsewhere, 1 educationand training came to provide a form of magic,get-out-of-jail-free card for politicians, wherebygovernments could achieve intervention-freeintervention in the economy (boosting the supplyof skills, but not intervening in the product orlabour market) as well as loser-free redistributionfor individuals, whereby everyone could becomebetter educated and therefore obtain access tobetter jobs.Over-ambitionThe over-ambition has been the expectation thatthere is an almost endless list of policy problems,most of them complex, messy and often of longstanding(for example, low levels of inter-generationalsocial mobility, and low waged employment)that the education and training systemcould be expected to address. Issues which haveroots in our class structure, the organisation andregulation (or the lack thereof) of our labourmarket, and the division of income and wealththat the economy and labour market dictate haveall been heaped at the door of publicly fundededucators and trainers. This has left schools,colleges and universities to try to do what BasilBernstein long ago warned was impossible: tocompensate for the failings of wider society.The biggest ghost at the policy feast has beenthe nature of the relationship between educationand the labour market. Put simply, policy-makers,and on occasion educationalists too, have chosento believe that changes in education can act as asubstitute for structural change and reform in thelabour market. Many of the goals that educationhas been set – higher levels of social mobility,better jobs for young people, gender and otherforms of equality, reducing in-work poverty –are not solvable by education alone, particularlywhere the supply of jobs, and therein the supplyof good jobs, is limited and finite and where alleducation can do is alter an individual’s place inthe job queue and in zero-sum game positionalcompetition for what is on offer from employers.The actual policy goals in all these areas are onlyrealised inside the labour market and, in manyinstances, the underlying causes of the problemalso reside there.Let us take one example: our abiding record ofrelatively low levels of post-compulsory participation,which is ceaselessly blamed on inadequaciesof teaching, school and college organisation,and curriculum and assessment regimes. AsFrancis Green has noted, in reality much of theproblem lies with the lack of demand (and thelack of incentives to learn that this creates) for abetter-educated workforce by UK employers:Unfortunately, Britain has long been caught in alow-qualification trap, which means that Britishemployers tend to be less likely than in most1 See Ewart Keep and KenMayhew, ‘Moving beyond skills asa social and economic panacea?’,Work, Employment and Society,24(3), 2010, pp.565–77; and EwartKeep, ‘The English skills policynarrative’, in Ann Hodgson, KenSpours and Martyn Waring (eds),Post-Compulsory Education andLifelong Learning across the UnitedKingdom: Policy, Organisation andGovernance, Institute of Education,2011, pp.18–38.Education for the good society | 49

other countries to require their recruits to beeducated beyond the compulsory school leavingage. Among European countries, only in Spain,Portugal and Turkey is there a greater proportionof jobs requiring no education beyond compulsoryschool. There is some way to go beforeBritish employers place similar demands onthe education system as are placed in the majorcompeting regions in Europe. 2Education policy cannot directly address thisissue, but labour market and employment policycan, for example through the imposition of awidespread requirement for licence to practice.This is not to say that education does not havea part to play in the solution of some of theseproblems, but the expectation that on its own oras prime mover it can be tasked with dealing withstructurally embedded failings over the causes ofwhich it has no direct influence whatsoever isa recipe for setting educational institutions andtheir staff up to fail, while leaving the originalpolicy problem unresolved.Under-ambitionoriented or gifted. The end result has been asteady drift away from any notion of a liberal orexpansive education (however conceived) andits substitution by low-level, narrowly focusedworkforce training. What has been deemedacceptable fare for the lower end of the abilityrange, occupational ladder and socio-economicstrata has been the very thin gruel offered by animpoverished version of vocationalism.Lord Adonis, writing on the 30th anniversaryof Callaghan’s ‘Great Debate’ speech at RuskinCollege, gave the following somewhat disingenuoustake on progress:At Ruskin, Callaghan made school improvementnot simply a national issue but, more particularly,a Labour and working class priority... he pouredscorn on the idea that working class educationwas about ‘fitting a so-called inferior group ofchildren with just enough learning to earn theirliving in the factory’. Instead, first-rate schoolingshould be the birthright of ‘the whole labourmovement’. Three decades later, educationalexcellence for ‘the whole labour movement’ –in its broadest sense – is at last Labour’s coremission. 32 Francis Green, Job Quality inBritain, UKCES Praxis Paper 1, UKCommission for Employment andSkills, 2009.3 Andrew Adonis, ‘30 years on,Callaghan’s words resonate’,Education Guardian, 17 October2006, p.3.4 See evidence for this argumentfrom Andy Green, ‘Core skills,key skills and general culture:in search of a common foundationfor vocational education’,Evaluation and Research inEducation, 12(1), pp.23–53, 1998;and Michaela Brockmann, LindaClarke and Chris Winch (eds),Bricklaying Is More than FlemishBond: Bricklaying Qualifications inEurope, European Institute forConstruction Labour Research,2010.When it comes to under-ambition, the problemhas been more insidious, but every bit as serious.Here the difficulty has been on two levels. First, abelief at the core of both the Thatcher–Major andNew Labour projects, that reform of the economyor the labour market (except for further liberalisation)was either impossible or undesirable (orboth) and that therefore education and trainingwas one of the only ways that government couldbe seen to be doing anything about problemswith competitiveness and employment and therewards it generates. As a result, education andtraining providers were left trying to deliveroutcomes that would in some way sidestep orcounterbalance and compensate for wider andlarger forces and incentives within the structureof the labour market and the economy.At a second level, problems have sprung fromthe unwillingness of policy-makers to understandthe deep pessimism and narrow utilitarianismthat is now an integral part of their basic assumptionswhen thinking about what can be offered byway of initial and continuing education, particularlyto those who are not seen as academicallyIn reality, much of what continues to be on offerhas little in mind beyond ‘fitting a so-calledinferior group of children with just enoughlearning to earn their living in the factory’, thoughthis objective now tends to be labelled ‘employability’and the work is now more often stackingsupermarket shelves. Thus the UK continuesto be distinguished by having vocational qualificationsthat offer no substantive broad-basedelement of general education (on which returnto learning and subsequent progression couldbe based). 4 For example, National VocationalQualifications were designed to provide onlythose narrow, job-specific competences thatwould indeed fit those unlucky enough to beoffered them with just enough learning to beable to perform the bundle of tasks that madeup a particular job at a particular moment intime. The retreat from lifelong learning and itssubstitution by workforce training, via initiativessuch as ‘Train to Gain’, is another reflection ofthe highly utilitarian strand of thinking that cameto dominate New Labour thinking on what adultlearning might be for and about.50 | www.compassonline.org.uk

The combination of policy over-ambition forthe role of education and under-ambition forunderlying economic and labour market factorssuggests the need to start afresh, rather thantweak or revise the policy legacy of the recent past.The need for radical re-thinking is clear. Besidesthe very significant failings outlined above, thelikely future state of the public finances almostinevitably rules out a return to the status quoanti through a re-run of New Labour’s attemptsto generate a ‘skills revolution’ through publiclyfunded education and training.So what’s the answer?If there is a desire for a new policy approach tothe links between education and training andthe economy and labour market that leads ina different direction from that which has gonebefore, and which deploys fresh analyses to policyformation and implementation, then the authorwould argue there are a number of relativelysimple rules that might be deployed to guidethinking:1. Develop a vision of the kind of society,economy and labour market you would liketo see our country have in 10 to 15 years’time, and then work back from that in orderto determine what kinds of policies might beneeded to deliver this vision, and what stagesof development might be needed to be gonethrough on the journey towards that vision.Notions of the Good Society need to extendbeyond education into the economy andlabour market if they are to have any chanceof generating lasting change and success.2. Avoid the trap of thinking that you can gofrom where we are now to where you wantto be in one giant step. The history of Englisheducation and training policy (and manyother areas of policy) over the last 30 yearsis littered with instances of policy-makersannouncing that ‘this is the moment’ whena step change in outcomes will commence.The chief result has been subsequent disappointment.3. Be realistic about what the education andtraining system can and cannot be expectedto do to help achieve this vision, both actingon its own and in connection with other areasof policy development and activity. Paintingeducation and training as a universal ‘cure-all’carries a huge price for education and trainingproviders (though one not usually paid bysenior policy-makers) and often displacespolicy attention and political resourcesfrom areas that need to be addressed beforeeducation and training can contribute muchto further progress.4. Recognise that education and training fulfilsmany roles, only some of which are to dowith employment and the economy, and thatmaintaining a balance of policy priority andresources between objectives to do with socialand societal outcomes, economic gain andlearning for its own sake is vitally important.There are many wider social, political andcultural goals that education policy needs toaddress, not least the notion of learning asa good in its own right and as a part of individualand collective development and theenrichment of life. It is extremely importantthat whatever priority is afforded to education’srole within economic life, its potentialcontributions to other needs and goals are notdisplaced as a result.5. Be clear about the linkages between educationand training policy and other strands ofpolicy development and think through howarticulation between these different areascan be achieved. For instance, the failure tojoin up the economic aspects of educationand training policy and investment withpolicies on economic development, businessimprovement, innovation (in its widestsense), employment and productivity hasbeen one of the key reasons why publicinvestment has not reaped the dividends thathave been expected; and why the supply of,demand for and productive utilisation ofskills have all fallen short of what has beendesired. 5 Improving education works best inthe context of more and better employment,firms that are ambitious in how and withwhom they choose to compete, and forms ofwork organisation and job design that seekto maximise skill usage to productive effect.Quality education for quality jobs makes agreat deal more sense than quality educationfor rubbish jobs!5 Ewart Keep, Ken Mayhew andJoan Payne, ‘From skills revolutionto productivity miracle – notas easy as it sounds?’, OxfordReview of Economic Policy, 22(4),pp.539–59, 2006.Education for the good society | 51

6. Remember that many of the outcomes thatcurrently disappoint within the education andtraining system are often, at least in part, theresult of structures and incentives that residewithin the labour market, and the patterns ofdemand and reward for skills that it creates.At present, almost a quarter of all jobs in ourlabour market are low paid (less than twothirdsmedian wage) and this rises to aboutone-third for female employees. Upskillingthe workforce will not, of itself, magic thiswork away. Unless and until reform starts toimpact on these jobs and the employers whocreate them, and to increase underlying levelsof demand for skill, incentives to learn willoften be weak, patchy and limited.7. Remember also that within a labour marketwhere good job opportunities are finite anda society where strong class structure stillpertains, education is constantly trying tomeet the diametrically opposing needs of twodifferent constituencies. On the one hand, itis supposed to be increasing opportunitiesfor social mobility for those at the bottomof the class structure, while at the sametime certain institutions (particularly privateschools, but also many state secondary institutionswith a largely upper middle classintake) exist to ensure that their studentsgain a disproportionate access to the elitehigher education institutions that in turntend to be the route into many of the ‘bestjobs’. These objectives are mutually exclusive.In other words, education exists within onerhetorical tradition to contest current classstructures, while also being part of anothertradition (possibly the stronger at present)that measures its success through its abilityto reproduce existing patterns of advantage.Progress is only liable to be achieved if thereis reform within education and also withinthe labour market. This means the number ofgood jobs needs to grow more rapidly (whichit is not at present), and the gap between goodand bad jobs needs to be reduced so that theconsequences of not achieving elite employmentare smaller. 6 At the same time, governmentand wider society need to acknowledgeand accept responsibility for the problemof competition for a finite supply of goodjobs rather than leaving the responsibilityfor resolving this up to individual educationand training institutions, some of whichcurrently have no moral or material incentiveto support egalitarian objectives – e.g. publicschools.Final thoughtsThe official discourse around English educationand training policy has not moved a very greatdistance in the last 30 years. Unfortunately,nearly all of the problems that could be solvedby a simple, publicly funded, supply-led strategyhave now been solved, and what remain are aset of complex problems whose roots largelylie outside the education and training systemand are imbedded in the ways UK businesseschoose to compete, deploy and reward theirworkers, and how the labour market structuresand apportions opportunities. Unless and untilpolicy analysis and resultant policy action movesforward to embrace these broader issues, theroom for progress will be very limited indeed.A Good Society requires not merely a particularkind of education and education system, but alsoa particular kind of labour market and economy.6 John Goldthorpe and MichelleJackson, ‘Intergenerational classmobility in contemporary Britain:political concerns and empiricalfindings’, British Journal of Sociology,58, pp.526–46, 2007.52 | www.compassonline.org.uk

11. Re-taking the highground: steps towards apersuasive progressiveposition on schoolingMartin YarnitGetting beyond polarised debatesIf we are going to get beyond a tit-for-tat debateabout schooling that fails to connect with publicopinion, the centre-left needs to find a new way offraming shared aspirations and showing why we arethe best advocates for closing the learning divide.In the US, much political debate is paralysed andpolarised with highly ideological positions takenby left and right on key issues such as gun law,abortion, race discrimination, federal spendingand gay marriage. In English politics, schoolingis the issue that is similarly benighted with everysuccessive government determined to re-makeeducation policy and to save schools from thehands of the enemy. People on the centre-left findthemselves at a particular disadvantage because thetit-for-tat form of the debate favours traditionalviews of education that chime with the experienceof much of the public, with conservatives andtheir newspapers adept at playing on the fears ofparents about poor standards and behaviour. Forthe left, winning the educational arguments is anup-hill battle that we can never win, unless we canre-frame our case and use a new strategy to presentit. The mantra ‘a good school for every neighbourhood’makes perfect sense, but cuts little ice withpublic opinion. It is just not enough to take themoral high ground unless we can also set the styleof the debate. So this is an argument for re-thinkingthe content of our position and for re-shaping theway we go about winning support it.Learning from successful campaignsHaving moral and intellectual force backedup by well-known experts who can wheelout the supporting evidence is a useful aid incampaigning, but history suggests it is rarelyenough to win the day. Shifting public opinion onbig issues involves a paradigm shift so that peoplecan view the world in a new way and recognisethe potential for change. The campaigns for theabolition of Third World debt, to abolish slavery,to ban smoking and to introduce gender equalityall began to gain traction when people began tosee the world through new eyes and to make uptheir own minds about thinking and behavingdifferently. Here I argue that there are six stepstowards bringing about paradigm shifts in publicopinion.1 Develop an inspiring visionFirst, there has to be a vision of a different order,one that inspires as Martin Luther King’s dreamdid. Traditional interpretations of educationalreality are very powerful because they play onwidely accepted truths and images. Most peopleare comfortable with images of schooling thatinclude classrooms with a teacher to transferknowledge to respectful students, the preeminenceof certain intelligences and subjects,and the importance of a broad liberal educationfor the academically able but practical skills forothers.In the notion of the Good Society, Compassprovides the basis for an educational vision witha capacity to inspire rooted in a profound senseof freedom, which starts with the individual butrecognises that we only make sense and havemeaning in relation to others through interdependence.In this sense education is about themost important thing we can ever learn; teachingus to live together and to collaborate to build abetter future. From this are derived a set of principleswith which we can shape the debate abouteducation and which provide the basis for a newvision. 1 That vision values:• not simply the ability of every student torealise their potential to the full but also theability to develop their capacities to playa part in shaping both the society and theschool, a fundamental democratic issue• the common or comprehensive school as aninstitution that promotes inclusive learningand social solidarity, and a secure, caringenvironment1 See http://compassoneducation.org.uk/education-for-the-goodsociety-statement-version-2.Education for the good society | 53

2 Adrian Elliott, State SchoolsSince the 1950s: The Good News,Trentham Books, 2007, p.50.• lifelong learning – learning throughout thelife course• fairness and equality for all• a broad, liberal curriculum and qualificationsystem that promotes self-discovery and thepublic good and that values equally vocationaland academic, formal and informal learning.A school system capable of supporting suchchange will require both reform of the formaleducation system and a greater capacity for theself-organisation of education by the community,civil society organisations and individuals. Thismeans going beyond the forms of state educationthat we have experienced to date. Education fortransformation cannot be rooted solely withinthe state as it is currently constructed. Providingthey reflect the vision set out above and promotethe public good rather than education as acommodity, schools might take a diversity offorms including, for example, the schools oracademies sponsored by the RSA, Edge, theCo-op and Nottingham University.2 Challenge received wisdomsTo help pave the way for viewing the world ina different way, through new spectacles, it isnot sufficient to offer a coherent and inspiringvision. In addition, we have to challenge thetruths that people take for granted. We have tolift the curtain on anomalies and misconceptions.The theatrical analogy is very deliberate becauseit is often best drawn through telling stories andhumour, backed up by research evidence andfacts.Here are two examples of received wisdoms,which can be challenged.Increasingly, the debate about schoolinghas been reduced to a polarised dispute aboutstandards and behaviour, with the main politicalparties presenting themselves as the championsof unremitting classroom learning. Yet someof the most successful exemplars of learningare those private schools that pride themselveson educating the whole person, with a broadcurriculum that stresses excellence in art, sport,extra-curricular clubs and external visits. Thatmore holistic and enlightened vision is surelyevery young person’s entitlement, rather thanthe narrow diet of book learning on offer inmany schools. Ironically, it is this more progressivecurriculum that is more likely to be theeducational experience of Conservative cabinetministers rather than the narrow version of theBaccalaureate they now want to impose on stateschools.Although only a tiny minority can talk fromfirst-hand experience about grammar schools,they have achieved an epic status that is totallyat odds with the reality. Above all, there is totalignorance of their failure to help any but a tinyminority of mainly well off kids. Only 20 percent of children went to grammar schools inthe 1950s and 1960s, few of these were workingclass and 40 per cent of unskilled working classpupils left without a single O-level in 1954. Outof 9000 children whose progress was tracked forthe Crowther Report, only 23 from unskilledbackgrounds ended up with two A-levels. 2 Thenostalgia for the grammar school is imperviousto evidence such as this. Much better to demonstratethe way the system actually operates incounties as such as Buckinghamshire and Kentat the expense of the vast majority of children instate schools. What would you prefer for yourchild: to have failed the 11 plus in a grammarschool county or to attend a successful comprehensiveor academy?3 Build faithAnd this leads us to the importance of buildingfaith that a new way is possible. Often it is notthe logic or reasoning or lack of evidence thatprevents people changing their viewpoint, it is thefear of the unknown and the uncertainty of howsomething new will affect them. On the whole,the middle classes in our society fare pretty wellin educational terms, whatever their individualviews or philosophy might be. Yet they need to bereassured that change is in their interests. Here,personal accounts may carry more weight thanabstract arguments, showing why the universityroute does not suit all young people, demonstratingthat practical, hands-on learning canoften lead to more satisfying career options.Working class parents, even if they often haveless to lose, similarly need to be convinced thata step away from the familiar will benefit theirchildren. Building faith is all about the continualrelaying of stories of how things can be donedifferently and great success achieved. There54 | www.compassonline.org.uk

is no shortage of inspiring examples of goodeducational practice in Britain, and a constantflowering of educational initiatives. We can drawon the expertise and good will of headteachersand other education professionals, and the workof think tanks and inspiring initiatives such asWhole Education and the RSA’s Opening Minds.Film is a powerful medium for conveyingalternative realities, often more effective than therelaying of evidence in written form. The story ofthe transformation of the Alberta school system,told on film by students, teachers and parents,has an impact because seeing is believing andbecause skillfully made documentary brings tolife debate about values. Rhonda Evans’ filmsopen up the complexities of curriculum choice,collaboration and public value to a lay audience,demonstrating that an inspiring vision can betranslated into a reality that benefits all. 34 Recongise candour as a political weaponTruth is one of the first victims of political debate,as we try to pretend that it is only our opponents’case that is weak and inconsistent, their argumentis totally lacking merit, or there is no commonground between our position and theirs. Withbigoted opponents, this style of debate may winus supporters, but not with a sophisticated politicianlike Michael Gove, the current Secretary ofState for Education.Despite his maladroit handling of the BuildingSchools for the Future programme, Michael Govehas shown himself a skilled media operator, withhis defence of academies and free schools and,above all, his determination to take the fight tothe enemy.Who said, ‘The gap in attainment betweenrich and poor, which widened in recent years,is a scandal’? Yes, Michael Gove. Who said,‘By the time they reach university age just 45children out of a cohort of 80,000 on free schoolmeals make it to Oxbridge’? Who said, ‘On amoral level, this waste of talent, this blightingof individual lives, is an affront to decency. Andin economic terms, as we face an increasinglycompetitive global environment, it’s a tragedy’?Michael Gove, again.Not only is he determined to usurp the left’sterritory on educational inequality, he is alsoadept at rooting his policies, when it suits him, inevidence. There are three essential characteristicsthat mark out the best performing and fastestreforming education systems:• Rigorous research, from the OECD and others,has shown that more autonomy for individualschools helps drive higher standards.• Landmark work by Professor Michael Barberfor McKinsey, backed up by the researchof Fenton Whelan, has shown that teacherquality is critical, with the highest performingeducation nations having the best-qualifiedteachers.• And research again from the OECD underlinesthat rigorous external assessment –proper testing you can trust – helps improvestandards.Gove is also rather good at spotting the weaknessesin traditional Tory stances and fendingoff attacks:In particular we have to move beyond the steriledebate that sees academic knowledge as mutuallyexclusive to the skills required for employment;and rigour as incompatible with the enjoyment oflearning.Failing to grasp the complexity and appeal ofthe Tory message would be a big mistake. Sothe fourth step in our strategy is about taking aleaf out of Gove’s book. That means addressingstrongly held popular conceptions, or misconceptions,recognising shortcomings in the traditionalstances of the left, and beginning to tella new story about education that reflects thevalues of the Good Society. Above all, it meansgiving more attention to the way we frame ourarguments.Too often, we prefer to speak to ourselves,using language that excludes all but the educationprofessionals. The challenge to the centre-leftis to reach out to embrace wider concerns andbroader perspectives. One way of doing thatis by reminding our audience that improvingschooling involves a constant balancing actbetween doing the best for your child and doingthe best for all children: never one or the other.We have to provide evidence with accounts ofhow both have been achieved. And we will needto reassure our audience that we want what theywant for their children.3 See www.evanswoolfe.com/player/alberta1.html and www.evanswoolfe.com/player/alberta2.html.Education for the good society | 55

4 Peter Hyman, ‘Fear on the frontline’, New Statesman, 27 January2011.5 See www.pisa.oecd.org/dataoecd/31/28/46660259.pdf,p.805 Address popular (mis-)conceptions andshortcomingsIn doing so, we have to address a number of ideasthat are very widespread and have the status ofcommon sense.The most damaging notion – because there is agrain of truth to it – is that the left does not careabout knowledge and the three Rs. There havebeen times when progressives got the balancewrong between engaging students and ensuringthat they were properly equipped with the skillsand knowledge essential for independent andcreative learning. In a recent piece for the NewStatesman, Peter Hyman argued that the classdivide in his south London comprehensive isabout reading:Sometimes – weirdly, in my view – those whobelieve in proper teaching of phonics, grammarand fluent writing are pigeonholed as traditionalists.But for me and, I believe, for anyone on theleft, striving for high levels of literacy is a moralimperative. Our greatest challenge in education isto ensure that the children leave school with highqualitycommunication skills. 4He is right, but the best progressive educationhas always been about combining literacy andenlightenment.‘Vocational is second best.’ Although everyonejoins in the national clamour for more plumbers,parents and teachers are notoriously resistantto the value of apprenticeships when it comesto their own children. Our vision is of the equalvalue of practical and academic learning to individualsand society.‘Good behaviour and firm discipline disappearedwith the rise of the comprehensive.’ Itdid not, but the commitment of young people toschooling cannot be taken for granted as it wasin a more deferential era. Gove recognises theobstacles to engaging students, talks about theneed to ‘excite and challenge’ them, but in theend calls for a highly restrictive curriculum – theEnglish Baccalaureate. We can present a trulyexciting alternative vision that is more in keepingwith the demands of the modern world.‘Streaming is essential for every child.’ Fewitems of educational common sense are as widelyreceived as the notion that children thrive inthe company of their intellectual peers. Yet, theevidence points in the opposite direction towardsmixed ability learning. The OECD, based on thePISA – Programme for International StudentAssessment – studies, concludes:The more schools group students by ability acrossall subjects and the more frequently schoolstransfer students to other schools because of theirlow academic achievement, behavioural problemsor special learning needs, the lower the schoolsystems’ overall performance. 5In other words, too much differentiation byability lowers overall performance.We should strenuously avoid defending theindefensible: there are state schools we would notwant our children to attend.6 Promote learner voice and agencyFinally, we need to amplify the voice and agencyof students (and parents). Has any movementfor change ever been successful unless at somestage (not necessarily initially) it truly engagesthose most affected – in this case students andtheir parents? No new product or type of servicewill succeed unless there is a constant focuson understanding how it meets the needs ofthe customers, again, in this case students andparents. This must involve deep ‘insight’ intotheir needs, not just surveys or focus groups.While many middle-class parents may be fearfulof change if it involves their children, the sameis not necessarily true of the children themselveswho may feel they are succeeding despite thesystem not because of it. The views of studentsare a vital piece of the jigsaw, though becausethey are young, it is one that most people ignore(or pay lip-service to).Movement for changeIn many ways, our biggest challenge is to createor support the development of a network ormovement that campaigns for a new educationfuture. The movement must be focused on thevision, revealing the anomalies and building faith.It has to be equipped with the means to reach outto promote a positive vision. It should also actas a lighthouse, warning of the dangers of traditionaleducation policy, holding the Government56 | www.compassonline.org.uk

to account when it talks about social mobility andprovides instead greater educational inequality,and offering the practical tools to steer a differentpath.We do have a credible and progressiveeducation policy alternative to the Conservatives,but our argument here has been that we willfail to make headway unless we give moreattention to the way the message is projectedand received by the people we need to persuade– young people and their parents. We need tothink more clearly about the way we frame ourarguments and recognise that we need a strategyfor winning support and building a movement.Policy proposals alone, however brilliant, will notdo the trick.To strengthen our position and tackle thestrengths of the Tories, we have to develop a newstory about schooling in language that parentsand students can understand – a new commonsense. At its heart should be the notion thateducation is about the creation of a good society,about learning the knowledge and skills neededto live together, to earn our living, to developfulfilling relationships and to realise our capabilities.To bring that about we should propose a neweducation cultural revolution:• every child can succeed – every child canbecome a reader and an explorer, aware oftheir talents, confident in their abilities froman early age; every child is capable of universityentrance, a good work-based qualificationor an apprenticeship• tackle ghetto schools – every mainstreamstate school should have a comprehensivelocal intake and no more faith schools shouldbe funded.After proper debate, let us decide on our strategy,use the emerging Compass brand – open, honest,inclusive and committed to a vision of the GoodSociety – to collaborate with students, parents,educational professionals, employers, localauthorities, think tanks and campaign groups tobuild a campaign to win the majority.Education for the good society | 57

12. Rethinking thecomprehensive ideal –new ways of conductingeducational politicsam not arguing for a separation of education andpolitics, but for a new relationship between thetwo. A priority for all political parties, particularlysocial democratic, liberal and green, shouldbe not only the creation of new policy content,but finding new ways of practicing educationalpolitics – a new policy style.Ken SpoursParty politics and education – a toxicmixParty politics and education, in England at least,have represented a toxic mix for several decades.There was never a golden age, but in recent timeswe have plumbed the depths. The problems havebeen well documented and the record appliesto all the major parties. The last 30 years haveseen education reforms guided by political andelectoral calculation or ideological dogma, leadingto constant change tied to ministerial careers andan obsession with structures, whether these beschools or qualifications. Moreover, an addictionto ‘dog whistle politics’ has meant that bothmajor parties felt they knew what the electorate(or their part of it) wanted. For Labour, it wasperformance at any price, leading to a regime oftargets and accountability. For the Conservativesit is a conviction that parents understand theeducation they themselves experienced and thereis political gold to be mined in traditionalism andthe educational image of the 1950s.This kind of educational politics has resulted inthe marginalisation of the voice of professionalswho, time and again, have been blamed for the illsof education. A politically informed agenda hasproduced little continuity or the sharing of ideasbut, instead, has fuelled the polarisation of debates– teachers v. parents; knowledge v. skills; academicv. vocational. The dichotomies comprise a longlist and David Cameron and Michael Gove aretrying their best to add to it. The result has beena chaotic and recriminatory reform process thattires teachers, puzzles parents and employers, andcreates a permanent sense of discontent.Having said this, education is fundamental tosociety and is, therefore, bound to be political. IRethinking the comprehensive ideal –five ways of doing things differentlyThis first Compass ebook has discussed the valuesthat inform the building of the Good Society –fairness and equality, democracy, sustainabilityand wellbeing. Doubtless, in time, more will beadded. These need to contribute to our thinkingabout education because it is a crucial dimensionof the Good Society and its realisation. Theyhelp us understand that means are as importantas ends; remind us of what is worth strugglingfor and provide us with a moral compass. Theyshow that our politics will be led by fundamentalcommitments and, crucially, they can be thebasis of a wider dialogue, which aims to educatethe population more generally about the widerpurposes of education itself.Drawing on the chapters in this book, I wouldlike to suggest five ways of thinking about thepractice of transformative educational politics.1 Have a long political memoryPoliticians tend to suffer from policy amnesia,exhibiting little if any policy memory. Everythinghas to be shiny and new. However, for Labourand other parties to renew the comprehensiveideal will require the opposite – a very longpolitical memory that stretches back to themutualism, solidarity and reciprocity that wasat the birth of the labour movement. It has toinject this kind of memory into its concept ofwhat is meant by state education if it to becomea force for innovation and liberation and notfor bureaucracy. A long memory that goes backnot only 50 but 100 years reinforces a commitmentto pluralism, democracy and collective selforganisation– those things we should cherishand that we lost in statism. A long memory alsoprovides connections with the liberal traditionsthat also contributed to progressive change in thelate nineteenth century.58 | www.compassonline.org.uk

2 Recognise that strong values groundedin reality are the drivers of changeValues become powerful drivers of change whenthey are connected to the realities everyone cansee. Our young people face an unprecedentedcrisis of opportunity with one million unemployedand the prospect of being part of a generationthat could be poorer than their parents. Herewe can lead with the values of fairness and intergenerationaljustice as a call to arms3 Look for the different ‘adhesives’ thatbind us togetherThe left is understandably concerned about institutionaldiversification and the lack of democraticaccountability that exacerbate social differencesin localities. In response, it has traditionallyprioritised one type of ‘glue’ – fair admissionspolicies and the ideal of the common school.While these are worth fighting for, we also needto look to different types of glue or ‘frameworks’that bind people together. These include a moreunified 14+ curriculum, more equitable fundingentitlements and institutional commitment toall students in an area. There are many differentdimensions of ‘comprehensiveness’ and we mustexplore the power of them all and particularlyhow they might work in combination.4 Realise that education can changesociety, but only under certain conditionsBasil Bernstein’s famously pessimistic statement‘education cannot compensate for society’ hasbeen countered by politicians who think it canachieve everything, hence Tony Blair’s ‘education,education, education’. Here we suggest, followingEwart Keep in this volume, that education can bea vital contributor to transformation so long as itis part of a wider political, social and economicstrategy. In this sense, education is at its mostpowerful when it is allied with other strandsof reform. Education for the Good Society,therefore, is an integral part of a wider societalvision of change.5 Understand what the central stateshould and should not doSome on the left are still obsessed with centralismand demonstrate weakness when it comes todemocratic intent. We should be reducing thepower of the state away from the centre so thatits role in guaranteeing fairness and standardsis balanced by greater powers exercised by awider range of social partners and in localities.This is what might be referred to as ‘democraticlocalism’. Social democratic and progressivepolitical parties should commit themselves togiving meaningful power to the local level wherethere are many local authorities, schools andcolleges, civil society organisations and parentstrying, often against the odds, to implement acomprehensive ideal.Towards an expansive and comprehensivevision – seven fundamental idealsThroughout the various chapters of this book, aset of comprehensive values for the modern agehas been proposed as part of the building of theGood Society. Some of these are not new, representingthings from the past we should cherish;some have flourished in recent years at the locallevel, but have not informed national policy; andsome are in their political infancy. Rearticulatingthemes from the first chapter, here are sevento start with: they span different phases andlocations of education and training and representvarious dimensions of what might be regarded asa truly ‘comprehensive’ system of education.1 The belief in educability and humanpotentialFundamental to any progressive and inclusivevision of education is the belief in ‘educability’;that everyone can benefit from education in allits forms; that everyone can think as well as do;and that education in this form can support individualwellbeing, reinvigorate communities andtransform society. Such a belief strengthens theresolve to extend education throughout the lifecourse,to link general and vocational educationand to have a deep commitment to those withspecial education needs.2 Educating for togethernessHow can we encourage togetherness in a worldof growing institutional diversity? The key maylie in the values of togetherness and fairness andactively promoting a wider sense of responsibilitythat institutions should cater for all types oflearners or, in the case of post-14 education andEducation for the good society | 59

training, be part of a local system that does. In aworld of academies, free schools and state schools,school sixth forms, colleges and the workplace,we have to find the glue. Any local regulationaround admissions by reinvigorated local authoritieswould have to be based on a strong moral andeducational case. Rather than seeing commonalityas imposed from above, we need to createthe situation where government empowers thosewho seek fairness and cohesion from below. Thissuggests that a moral and political battle has toprecede organisational change and a recognitionthat educating for togetherness takes place indifferent ways. Commonality and cohesion canbe pursued, for example, through the notion ofthe ‘strong area’, in which diverse institutionscollaborate. In the current or foreseeable politicalcontext, the idea of the strong area or locality mayhave to prefigure the eventual widespread developmentof the ‘common school’.3 A more common, yet more openform of learningThe left has traditionally tended to overestimatethe reforming power of organisation and underestimatedthe power and controversy of the curriculumand of pedagogy. What should be taughtand how learning should take place has become apolitical battlefield. As Martin Yarnit observes inChapter 11, education is full of unnecessary polarities.It is here that we have to show the greatestimagination as we try to turn the term ‘versus’ into‘and’. It would seem that the fundamental valuesof educability and togetherness point us towardsa relationship between apparent opposites. Onthe one hand, education is about what we share incommon. On the other, innovation and maturationlead to specialisation and diversity. We haveto relate the two. A comprehensive curriculumwould need, therefore, to be underpinned by anew set of balances – knowledge and skill; understandingthe past and discovering the new; theindividual learner and the curriculum; fosteringlearning for its own sake and understanding thepower of relevance; individual subjects and theirintegration; the value of established texts and theopen excitement of the web.4 Educators and democratic relationshipsWho is best placed to make sense of all of this?It is well-trained professional educators, collaboratingwith others and through the art of teaching,who translate these opportunities into practicesthat meet the needs of their students. Thus farunfortunately, teachers and lecturers have spenta good part of their time and energy on policydamage limitation. A new approach to policymakingcould slow down the rate of change andcreate new freedoms of interpretation in orderthat professionals can play a full role in the policyprocess. The kind of ‘democratic fellowship’Michael Fielding has talked about in Chapter 7 inrelation to students can be broadened to includea range of educational relationships.5 The Good Economy and the potentialpower of ‘situated learning’Learning is about much more than schools,colleges, universities and their teachers andlecturers, critical though they are. The mostpowerful forms of learning can take place outsideeducational institutions – in the workplace, thehome and community, through a variety offormal and informal learning opportunities. Seenin this way, the role of educational institutionsis to prepare people to take advantage ofthis learning landscape although all too often,because they are pressurised by national examinationsand other accountability mechanisms,these institutions fail to fully grasp this essentialpoint. Learning in this wider sense, however,does not happen by chance. It has to be fostered.Here workplaces can play a fundamental role, butthese have to be places that offer expansive ratherthan restrictive learning opportunities.6 Lifelong learning: the ultimate comprehensiveidealA commitment to education throughout the lifecoursecan be regarded as the ultimate comprehensiveideal. Among its many virtues is thefact that lifelong learning can re-engage thosewho did not succeed in school as well as providesupport for individual and community wellbeing.7 Thinking ecologicallyThe ideals discussed here could also be viewedas part of an ecological perspective on education– the nurturing of balance, evolution, interdependence,adaptation and resilience. We haveto now make critical choices– either educationcan be about the reproduction of the divided60 | www.compassonline.org.uk

and unsustainable consumerist society in whichwe presently live, or it can begin to reflect thethinking of a future condition in which sustainabilityin all its senses becomes a guiding principleTurning ideals into a sense of commonpurposeViewed historically, as we stated at the beginningof the book, the last 30 years have not been allbad. They represent a fine balance of improvementsin resourcing and formal achievementsoffset by entrenched inequalities and a loss ofoptimism. This has created a static equilibriumand a feeling of being stuck. We have a longway to go to create a sense of direction in whicheducation as a national and unifying public idealcould be held in the same reverence as the NHS.This book has focused on fundamentalpurposes, values, principles and lessons to belearned. At a time of political defeat we argued inthe opening chapter for a return to consideringthe real purposes of education. In doing so wehave argued for the supremacy of a new (and yetold) set of educational and societal values.By way of a conclusion, I suggest that thenext stage of a long journey could begin by theswearing of an oath – a Hippocratic Oath forEducation – in which, for example, teachersdeclare their duty to all their students; institutionalleaders commit themselves to 100 per centof learners in their area; social partners promiseto support public education in whatever waythey can; and politicians vow to spread the poweraround so that a permanent, fairer and moredemocratic settlement could start to take shapein the English system. This would soon becomean act of common purpose.While ministers still seek to peddle conflict,a growing appetite for dialogue, agreement andcreatively seeking out solutions can be detected.Education is simply too important to be treatedin any other way and it is the democratic left,working in an open and pluralistic way, that hasto publicly say so.Education for the good society | 61

About CompassCompass is the democratic left pressure group whose goal is both to debate anddevelop the ideas for a more equal and democratic society, then campaign and organiseto help ensure they become reality. We organise regular events and conferences thatprovide real space to discuss policy, we produce thought provoking pamphlets andwe encourage debate through out website. We campaign, take positions and lead thedebate on key issues facing the democratic left. We’re developing a coherent and strongvoice for those that believe in greater equality and democracy as the means to achieveradical social change.We are: An umbrella grouping of the progressive left whose sum is greater than its parts. A strategic political voice – unlike thinktanks and single-issue pressure groupsCompass can develop a politically coherent position based on the values ofequality and democracy. An organising force – Compass recognises that ideas need to be organised for,and will seek to recruit, mobilise and encourage to be active a membership acrossthe UK to work in pursuit of greater equality and democracy. A pressure group focused on changing Labour – but Compass recognises thatenergy and ideas can come from the outside party, not least from the 200,000who have left since 1997. The central belief of Compass is that things will only change when peoplebelieve they can and must make a difference themselves. In the words of Gandhi,‘Be the change you wish to see in the world’.CompassFreepostLondonE9 5BR020 7463 0633info@compassonline.org.ukwww.compassonline.org.uk

Southbank House, Black Prince Road, London SE1 7SJT: +44 (0) 20 7463 0632 | info@compassonline.org.ukwww.compassonline.org.uk