Welcome
As chair of the Liberal Democrats Schools Policy Working Group, I am delighted to present to you our consultation paper. This paper lays out the areas which the group has highlighted as some of the greatest challenges facing a 21st century UK education system, and will act as a stimulant for debate both within the Party and externally on these issues.
The working group was set up by the Liberal Democrat Federal Policy Committee to review Party policy on schooling between 5 and 19 years. Much has changed since we last had a fundamental review of policy in this area, but sadly many of the challenges of underachievement in our country remain unsolved. We are very keen to have your views on the ways in which we can create a world class UK education system for the 21st century.
The remit of the group is wide and ranges across issues such as funding for schools and pupils, dealing with social exclusion and underperformance, selection, the curriculum, school structures, the recruitment and retention of school staff, the physical learning environment and more broadly the purpose of education.
Having published this consultation paper to stimulate written evidence, the group will also be inviting a wide range of organisations and individuals to give oral evidence during May, June and July. We will be undertaking a formal consultative session and other education fringe events at the September 2008 conference. Taking into account all the evidence and consultation responses received, the group aims to produce a policy paper and motion to be debated at the Party’s conference in Spring 2009.
We would be extremely grateful to receive your thoughts and responses to the questions we have posed in this document as part of our evidence-gathering process. Please do not feel obliged to respond to all the questions in this document – we have laid them out in themed sections and anticipate that individuals and organisations will have different focuses and areas of expertise. Please feel free to address only those areas which are the most appropriate for you.
In addition, if you feel that an article or pamphlet you have recently published would be of assistance to us, then we will also gratefully receive contributions of that nature.
Our period of formal external consultation closed on Friday 30 May 2008 but we continue to welcome contributions from Liberal Democrat members and members of the public alike.
We will be holding a consultative session on Saturday 13 September at our Autumn 2008 conference, where Liberal Democrat members can input ideas into the 5-19 education policy review and meet the working group. More information will be available on this nearer to the conference.
I look forward to reading your contributions over the coming weeks.
Cllr James Kempton
Chair of the Liberal Democrat Schools Working Group
May 20th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Base the model for secondary schools in particular on the private (public) school system, but have it for all state schools i.e. benchmark against the best schools in the country. My younger son, now in his 20s, has dyslexia. When at secondary school he was about to be written off by the authhorities and not allowed to be in classes taking Scottish Highers. As my late father died a few years before, I had some money to be able to consider public school which a friend had suggested I consider. I had no experience of public schools in our family. The end result of my following up on this was that my son was accepted as a boarder at Fettes College Edinburgh (we lived in Inverness at the time). Due to my relatively low income, he got bursary funding plus an Assisted Place. However, what struck me the most was how parents were treated as customers, children were treated fairly but firmly, taught self-discipline and respect for others and themself, given a structure to include academic study in smaller class sizes with motivated and committed teachers who were rewarded by results and extra time spent with pupils if needed, all kinds of sport, drama and music plus community service e.g. older pupils volunteering in local hospitals, etc. The change in my son was amazing. He met people from various backgrounds and cultures and he matured in leaps and bounds. They looked for a child’s strengths and helped the person to develop in that area be it academic or sport, or some other area. Discipline was what we would now call old-fashioned, teachers had to be shown and earn respect, but it worked well. My son only had two years in public school, the lower and upper sixth, but he benefited and went on to tertiary education where the state school system had written him off. Not every parent is in a position to do what I did. My son’s former state school headmaster said that if he had the budget of the public schools, he could do more. However, it is not just about budgets, it is about attitude and having a more rounded curriculum and focussing on more than just the pure academic achievement. I also think principles such as Paul McKenna writes about in his book about gaining confidence should be taught. A friend who is a primary teacher was once involved in a pilot using Jack Black’s motivational techniques with children which had some positive results in motivating children to achieve their own potential. I believe that education policy should look at these more wide ranging areas which have lower resource costs but greater impact on motivating school children to want to achieve for themselves.