THE ENEMIES OF LEARNING
Michael McMahon on the
sinister implications of `school contracts'
SUMMER is slipping away now and in the educational calendar a new year is about to begin. We used to call them 'academic' years but, now that schooling has been com- prehensively recast as mere preparation for work, that phrase seems as quaintly inappro- priate as the names of the Christian festi- vals that once were used to mark its progress: Michaelmas, Lent or even Christ- mas. This time round, state-school children will not just be returning for new terms, but on new terms, too. The Department for Education and Employment has ordered that from 1 September schools must have a written 'home-school agreement' in place, and as soon after that date as is reasonably practical all parents of pupils of compulsory school age must be invited to sign it. Educa- tion, like the employment that our rulers believe to be its sole fruit and purpose, is now a matter of contract.
Moreover, according to the DfEE's offi- cial booklet on the matter, Home-School Agreements: Guidance for Schools, govern- ing bodies are 'free to invite pupils to sign' this document 'where the governors con- sider that the pupils concerned are suffi- ciently mature to consider the contents of the agreement'. After a couple of sen- tences arguing the case for such a practice — it will, we are told, make the children feel very 'grown-up' — the text then turns to bold type: 'The pupils' commitment is very important to the success of the home- school agreement.' In case this typographi- cal emphasis doesn't make the point strongly enough, the model agreement presented as an example for primary schools to follow includes a box for the child to sign under a list of promises he or she must keep: 'I will take good care of the equipment and building; I will walk inside the building; I will talk quietly; I will be friendly; I will keep my hands and feet to myself; I will be helpful.' It is clear that the Department for Education and Employ- ment wants even the youngest of our schoolchildren to sign such contracts.
In National Post-Socialist Britain, what the DfEE wants is what the DfEE gets. Under Napsism, education is no longer the pursuit of what we used to mean by learn- ing, but a medium through which to exer- cise political control. In the six years to last April, I saw for myself how this increasingly ruthless line-management works: I taught, until driven out by the system's anti-educa- tional absurdities, in an inner-city compre- hensive. The only way to survive such places (and many of the best of my colleagues, broken by stress and exhaustion, didn't) is to go through the externals of obeying the endless governmental edicts, follow their increasingly detailed script, and toe the party line. On 1 September, that line of management will be formally extended to include parents and children. You can be pretty sure that it will soon be the norm for five-year-olds everywhere to screw up their faces, hang out their tongues, and spell their irregularly capitalised names with fat 2B pencils below pre-printed promises to be co-operative, biddable and obedient.
Of course, as the explanatory booklet for schools concedes, neither parent nor child can be legally forced to sign, though such an admission is skilfully avoided in the information offered on the Internet to parents. But schools will be under enor- mous pressure to demonstrate that they have harnessed the co-operation of those parents by collecting their signatures. They have been told that they will be monitored to ensure that they comply with these legal requirements 'primarily through Ofsted inspections'. Thus, another statistic is born, and when the percentage of parents and children who sign has been recorded by the inspectorial mince of the unassail- able Mr Woodhead, it will inevitably mutate into a target. Teaching is now such a terrorised subprofession that primary school heads will feel that, if they do not get their tinies to go through the motions `I was line-dancing and I fell of ' of signing on the grounds that they are too young to understand, they will invite the criticism that they have failed to teach them how to. Better to keep their heads down, get their pupils to sign, and be done with it, even if to do so is meaningless.
In one sense, of course, this whole exer- cise is indeed a nonsense. It is acknowl- edged that children cannot be excluded or disciplined because their parents refuse to sign or comply with the terms of their home- school agreement. These might be expressed as promises, but, as the Appeal Court acknowledged last week, promises such as New Labour's pre-election assur- ance that those children with assisted places at fee-paying schools would not have their education interrupted — can be broken. Parents and children who are co-operative in what is demanded reasonably of them by schools would be so whether they signed or not. Some will see it as an insult to their integrity or intelligence, and be affronted by being invited to promise to do what they would anyway have done. Most will sign without thinking about it: it is, after all, just another bit of paper. In theory, the terms of these agreements are drawn up after consul- tation between all parties; in practice, few parents are very interested, and even fewer in the kind of schools where their lack of support is most significant. These contracts will rapidly become just another of the administrative externals of an increasingly bureaucratic educational machine.
For children below the age of reason (`seven, or thereabouts', as the old penny catechism had it), and for those of their parents who are hostile or indifferent, all this will mean little. The few letters of the affronted will soon be filed and forgotten. But, in another sense, the introduction of these 'home-school agreements' is deeply significant. It reveals a government which is so confident that it is in control that it can press people to make declarations of adherence to an educational cult which, it repeatedly promises, will bring about our national salvation. It shows a leadership that considers achieving external conformi- ty so important that it will compel schools to strive for it, whether or not minds and hearts follow.
Still, it could be worse. At least the Nap- sis have not ordered head teachers to arrange torch-lit processions through the streets, followed by mass swearings of loyal- ty to their New Order — not yet, anyway. These home-school agreements are only to be metaphorical declarations of allegiance. But in a country which did not laugh to scorn a televised 'Oscar' ceremony con- vened to reward popular yet obedient teachers, it cannot be long before such a para-liturgical celebration of subservience is at least suggested. Even now, a dark-souled, grey-suited enemy of learning is giving the ironic suggestion some serious thought.
The author was a teacher at an inner-city com- prehensive. He resigned earlier this year.
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