.. so said Tony Blair at the start of his heady first term of office as British Prime Minister heading up the then exciting and shiny New Labour.
He was right. Good education, and particularly state education, is key to Britain pulling itself out of its trademark quagmire of a class ridden, socially and divided society which has hauled it downwards into underperformance and its historic problems of under achievement and poverty.
Michael Gove's current efforts to do something about it in state schools (it is generally , but not always, done anyway in the private sector) are resolute and progressive in that they put the interests of the children way ahead of those of the teachers. At last here is someone who proposes to tackle a problem everyone has always known about,-that of the poor performing or even hopeless teacher. They do exist and they blight the lives of those subjected to them. Thanks to the power of the unions and timidity of many head teachers it has been almost impossible to deal with them and few are ever actually sacked. Some are encouraged to leave but are provided with references which enable them to go on and inflict their inadequacies on other pupils somewhere else.
Gove is proposing to take the issue by the scruff of the neck and make it possible to dismiss a poor performer within a term rather than a year. This is excellent for pupils, parents and the standing of the teaching profession itself. As such it might reasonably expect a warm welcome from all quarters.
Not so. Given the opportunity to embrace a new, happier and better world in which children have the best chance to thrive at school, the unions have opted as ever to defend the barricades of the supply side,-their members as employees rather than the same people and others as customers of education. Their attitude is the same as encountered right across the spectrum of all activities,- "You will have the quality we say you can have, not a jot more." All very Soviet in style. As result they have labelled this initiative as "A bullies charter". They love the word bully. It crops up in all sorts of disputes as part of a bid for the moral high ground. Any union member who has tried to stand out against the crowd in an industrial dispute knows what bullying really is. In reality the idea that they might be positioned as a much bruised David fighting a Goliath on behalf of their members has long been and remains ludicrous. The truth here is that they are fighting for themselves and their membership numbers. It is these which make them viable as businesses. The fight for the vast majority of their members and the rights of everyone to the best possible education schools of all kinds can provide seems to be out of their radar range. maybe it's the concept they struggle with. Their simple overriding interest in power and control is further demonstrated today by some of their very hostile comments about Ed Miliband who they regard as their appointee (as indeed he was) daring to say that he agrees with the needs for "cuts" and the public sector wage freeze. They certainly aren't looking to play any part in the revival of a feel good factor in the near future. No change then and no search for a new and relevant role in designing a new and better Britain,-just a hankering for the broken down old one.
