Having abandoned every pledge that he made in his run to be Labour leader, Keir Starmer has recently made education reform one of his party’s nebulous ‘missions’.
Styling themselves as the party of no promises and no hope, Labour’s latest 10,000 word policy document is another empty vessel.
Workers and youth – in education and across the country – must trust only in themselves to save our schools.
I know it’s disappointing when we don’t sign up to every good cause.
But it would be so much worse to make promises now and then break them after the election.
Because we are making hard choices, you can trust us to keep our promises.
✍🏻 @ObserverUK 👇🏻https://t.co/E9pqspEuTe
— Wes Streeting MP (@wesstreeting) July 9, 2023
Strains and pressures
The Tories have run education into the ground. And an already-dire situation has been exacerbated by the government’s below-inflation 6.5% pay offer to teachers. This deal will be funded mostly by slashing already overstretched budgets, placing additional strain on schools and staff.
Teachers, meanwhile, are under unsustainable pressure. In one tragic recent case, a headteacher took her own life following an Ofsted inspection. This has exposed the punitive nature of this government organ, which the National Education Union (NEU) is demanding should be abolished.
According to research by Mental Health UK, 86% of teachers feel a lack of support at work. And 59% are actively considering leaving the profession.
All these issues have deep structural roots – linked not only to the savage cuts that the education sector has suffered under the Tories, but also to the ongoing process of academisation, which was initiated by Blair’s New Labour government.
The rise of academies – which now make up 80% of secondary schools and 43% of primary schools – has introduced private funding into state-funded education; reduced the democratic oversight of schools; and turned pupils into cash cows for CEOs.
As with the privatisation of public utilities, the anarchy of the market has been brought to bear on education, with disastrous consequences.
Broken system
Instead of confronting these problems head-on, and calling for schools to be brought under proper democratic control, Starmer’s Labour are only offering to tinker around the edges of this broken system.
In the party’s newly-published policy paper, there are allusions to improving mental health in early childcare and sixth-form colleges, as well as providing breakfast clubs for primary schools.
But such measures are a sticking plaster for the 1-in-3 children living in poverty in the UK – a figure that is likely to increase, with Starmer promising to continue the Tories’ approach of making the working class pay for the crisis.
Pupils vs profits
Labour’s proposals on education – like their hot air about green investment, or their abandoned pledges around the nationalisation of rail, mail, energy, and water – only shows how deeply the current leadership is in the pocket of big business.
The party’s plans for reforming the national curriculum and apprenticeships are dictated by the needs of the bosses, not those of students or society. Even when criticising the Tories for cutting funding to creative subjects such as music and art, for example, Labour’s argument is that these are skills that the employers value.
I have such fond memories of playing music at school.
It doesn’t just give young people joy, it teaches the skills and creativity essential to future learning and work.
That’s why I will change the curriculum so that all young people have access to music.https://t.co/cTScfIBU3w
— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) July 11, 2023
On Ofsted, Labour’s proposals are equally unsubstantial. Abandoning Corbyn’s call to abolish this body, and to replace it with an alternative that would support schools, Starmer has suggested simply changing the names of the inspector’s gradings. The organisation’s bureaucratic and unaccountable nature, meanwhile, would remain untouched.
Labour also has no plans to empower workers in schools, or to reduce their heavy workload. Instead, the impasse of British capitalism requires schools – along with other public services – to be squeezed, with staff working harder for less.
This is why Labour is happy for academy trust bosses to pocket huge paychecks, and to run their workplaces like despots. The overseer must be handsomely rewarded, after all.
Unite and fight
Few are under any illusions that Starmer’s Labour will represent any real change from the Tories.
Indeed, during the party’s recent education policy announcement, several students took the Labour leader by surprise, as they protested against Starmer’s U-turns – particularly in regards to the environment.
The only way forward is for teachers to organise and prepare for struggle: both against the Tories, in the here and now; and against a future Starmer government that has nothing to offer staff and students.
In place of Starmer’s hollow rhetoric, teaching unions must put forward a clear socialist programme: to kick the bosses and bureaucrats out of schools; to put power in the hands of workers, parents, and students; and to fund high-quality education through expropriation of the bankers and billionaires.
Workers and students, unite and fight!
