February 14, 2010

Social Justice, Education and New Labour

Posted in Conservatives, Education, History, Labour, Lib Dems, Politics, Society at 1:35 am by Paul Sagar

A defining feature of the New Labour project was to deny that inequality mattered. What mattered was poverty, and the two were seen as separable. Hence New Labour was “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich” – so long as those at the bottom got better off too.

That view is now largely out of fashion. Even the Conservatives claim to be responsive to Wilkinson and Pickett’s powerful case that almost everyone does better in more equal societies (though the Tories are faking it). Some New Lab dinosaurs still don’t understand, but they conveniently offer demonstrations of their own stupidity in the process.

Yet as we approach what is likely to be the end of the New Labour project, it’s worth reflecting on a core aspect of its “poverty, not inequality” legacy: education.

New Labour explicitly ruled out overt and large-scale redistribution away from private individuals and big companies towards the poorer. This was considered “statist” and “old” Labour, likely to drive middle-England and (big) business into Tory hands. Similarly, taxes for the rich would stay low (witness Blair’s continued opposition to the 50% top rate) and spending was initially pegged to Tory levels. Yet these re-branding and electoral ploys removed key weapons from the government arsenal in tackling poverty (and inequality).

As a result, enormous reliance came to be placed upon the education system. The New Labour vision was that by increasing the quality of – and access to – education, the least advantaged would nonetheless be able to develop their talents. The best would rise to the top, whether from the council estates of Hackney or the country estates of Hertfordshire.

Indeed New Labour’s vision of social justice was shot through by a vision of meritocracy, and the belief that if genuine equality of opportunity could be introduced then poverty levels would fall as unfair artificial barriers to success were removed. Hence education became of paramount importance as the only available vehicle for achieving New Labour’s (somewhat restricted) vision of social justice. When Blair intoned “education, education, education” that went much deeper than a mere campaign slogan. It was a statement of New Labour’s philosophy of social justice.

And on some measures Labour has achieved a lot by pouring massive amounts of money into the education system. As David Laws of the Lib Dems recently noted, inner city schools in London underwent an “astonishing, dramatic, unbelievable” improvement.

More generally, the comprehensive system has in many ways turned out to be a much better deal for children of middling ability than any British education system has ever been. The view that it’s been “all down hill since the end of the grammar schools” is on some metrics wrong. Take a look at these basic stats from state schools in the area where I grew up, for kids achieving 5 or more A*-C grades at GCSE in 2009:

Birkdale High: 76%; Christ the King: 87%; Greenbank High: 86%; Meols Cop: 75%; Stanley High: 76%.

In the entire borough of Sefton 74% of kids were leaving school with 5 or more A*-C GCSE grades. This is really quite remarkable. It indicates that students of middling ability are now getting a great deal out of modern secondary education, not just in terms of raw qualifications but of a system geared towards fostering the abilities of ordinary children. Something which, frankly, could not be said of the old tripartite system whereby those who didn’t make the Grammar Cut at age 11 were effectively abandoned from an educational point of view.

New Labour’s much-commented-upon aim of 50% of school leavers continuing to higher education has also had a big impact. More people under New Labour went to university than ever before. The vast expansion of institutions and places for students meant that kids whose parents would never have dreamed of going to university progressed there as a common-place.

But there have been drawbacks too. Although the education system now seems to take better care of the middling students, there can be little doubt that there has been significant grade inflation within the GCSE and A-Level assessments. The value of qualifications has been seriously corroded at the top end, and bright students now receive worse educations than in the past. The price of replacing a tripartite system that rewarded the middle classes at the expense of the poor has been a worrying devaluation of standards.

Similarly, university expansion hasn’t translated into straightforward meritocracy. There are long-established concerns that the clued-up middle classes know the unspoken but important differences between Poppleton and Poppleton Met, but that working class newcomers are often unaware of these. There are also concerns that grade inflation has devalued the quality of many degrees, making post-graduate qualifications increasingly important…but available only to the better-off who can afford them. (Though bear in mind the counter-argument).

Perhaps most interestingly of all, despite the fact Labour has done a great deal to improve the educational lot of the average joe, there nonetheless seems to be a dominant popular perception that Britain’s education system is broken, and failing everybody. Hence the frequent calls for the restoration of grammar schools, and complaints that too many now go to university and that all qualifications are now devalued.

With so much weight placed on the education system to deliver New Labour’s vision of social justice, it now seems almost inevitable that it failed to live up to expectations. Although it is untrue that poverty got worse under Labour, with the return of recession there’s a wide sense that 13 years of Blair and Brown didn’t do anything like enough to relieve the lot of Britain’s worse off.

State schools are seen as failing (perhaps against the actual evidence) to the point where the Tories are likely to find widespread support for their plan to introduce the most dramatic overhaul to the education system in 30 years. Yet this is worrying, as the Swedish experiment the Conservatives take inspiration from may be counterproductive in the aims of reducing poverty and educational opportunity. (Though consider the Tory defence, h/t Dan).

Finally, higher education institutions are now bracing themselves for dramatic cuts. This is likely to severely reduce the numbers of students gaining access to higher education,whilst pushing up class sizes and reducing contact hours. It will also devastate university research abilities, thus downgrading the long term strength of universities and in turn the economy. And a weaker economy with less good educational prospects hardly bodes well for addressing poverty (and inequality) in the long term.

So here’s the sting in the tail of the New Labour “education, education, education” philosophy. When the times were good the money existed to be pumped into the sole vehicle charged with achieving New Labour’s surviving aims of social justice, watered-down to fit a right wing post-Thatcher consensus.

Now that the money has dried up, education is going to seriously suffer. Today it’s the universities, but sooner or later it will be the schools. Not least because all but the most severe of education cuts will take their time to be felt in people’s day-to-day lives, hence making such cuts relatively politically attractive.

In the good years Labour achieved a lot through its significant education spending – though the constant meddling and the attack on teacher and university autonomy betrayed one of the most distasteful streaks of NewLab managerial authoritarianism. More widely, the limits of putting all your social justice eggs in one basket were clearly demonstrated.

Yet now that the bad times are here, even the education basket is being drastically reduced in size. One more bitter irony in the final New Labour legacy.

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