Education Reform, Open Government And The UK Technical Future
Will Cameron be a Heath or a Thatcher? That was the question posed by Fraser Nelson in his speech to the CPS last month.
Education policy will be a key battleground for deciding that question – specifically, how radical or ‘transformative’, to use one of the favoured political buzzwords, a Cameron government will be.
It seems that Tory education spokesman Michael Gove has the bit between his teeth at the moment, with a string of announcements in recent days.
This week we heard the proposal to return to a traditional non-modular A-level system and to involve academics and universities more closely in the development of the syllabus.
Unsurprisingly we are already seeing opponents of Gove’s school reform plans mobilising, with the teaching unions threatening to strike over an extension to the academy model.
The interesting question ahead is the tension the Conservatives face between greater school freedom (as seen in the ‘Swedish schools’ proposal) and prescribing what should be taught by laying down a more rigorous curriculum and a greater emphasis on what Gove has called the ‘neglected giants’ of science and history.
Anthony Seldon’s recent CPS report, An End to Factory Schools, proposes resolving the dilemma by allowing schools to choose from a range of validated programmes like the International Baccalaureate and to prescribe only the minimum level of attainment expected at each key stage.
At the same time, he argues, all children should be taught mainstream academic subjects until the age of 14.
Resolving this tension is going to be a key issue for an incoming government – and will be made all the more important (and difficult) by the opposition facing them from within the ‘education establishment’.
A step forward for web science
After the webcam state, the disastrous and repressive Data Protection Act, the Identity Card fiasco and many similar initiatives, is there sign of death-bed repentance in the Prime Minister: some commitment at last to openness and transparency of government data of the kind advocated by Liam Maxwell in his CPS pamphlet It’s Ours and practised by him in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead?
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the world wide web, and Nigel Shadbolt, a professor at the University of Southampton, have visited every cabinet member in the last few months, urging a policy of data openness, with as much government data being available on the web for everyone as possible, so that situation becomes the normal default situation, as opposed to what we have now, where the state divulges only what is dragged out of it.
Their lobbying seems to have borne fruit and the Prime Minister’s speech on Monday announces more of that and a Web Science Institute to pursue research in such scientific and social aims, a development one might hope was Tory-proof, something no incoming administration would wish to abandon if they are serious about our country’s technical future.
The Prime Minister did manage to tack on a promise of a web page for every citizen, provided and managed by the government; a slightly Orwellian offer that most wise burghers would decline politely, I would imagine.
Topics: academics, data, Data Protection Act, David Cameron, education, education establishment, election, Fraser Nelson, Gordon Brown, Governance, government, Identity Card fiasco, internet, Maidenhead, Michael Gove, non-modular A-level system, openness, policy, politics, school reform, schools, students, syllabus, teaching unions, transparency, web, Windsor
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