THE SPECTATOR
THE RIGHT SCHOOL
T is is how the Labour Manifesto intro- duces its proposals for schools: Our children are our future. We have a moral and material duty to see that children and young people are fully equipped to deal with the complexities and challenges which face them now and which they will meet as citizens, parents and workers in the future. They must be provided with a system of education that enables them to control that finure. We must see that it is democratic and just, that it is creative and compassionate, and that it is one in which they can fully exploit the advantages of science and technology with confidence and in safety. In pursuit of these objectives, Labour will invest in education so that the abilities of all children and adults from all home back- grounds and in every part of our country are discovered and nourished.
The comparable preamble in the Con- servative Manifesto says: Parents want schools to provide their children with the knowledge, training and character that will fit them for today's world. They want them to be taught basic educational skills. They want schools that will encourage moral values: honesty, hard work and responsibility. And they should have the right to choose those schools which do these things for their children.
Neither speaks in magical prose. Both mouth pieties. But there is an important difference between the two, which express- es the difference between the two main parties at this election: Labour do not plan any serious reform; the Conservatives do. Labour merely wants to give an amiable impression; the Conservatives actually have something in mind.
If a Labour government were formed after the election, nothing would be done to change the way in which state schools are run. More money would be spent in some areas (though one suspects that the spree would not last long). Otherwise the only changes would be attacks on all remaining non-comprehensive schools, whether state or independent.
If the Conservative Government con- tinues in office, the running of state schools will change fundamentally for the first time since the war. Within five years, the manifesto says, all secondary schools will be made responsible for their own budgets. Local authorities will no longer control the allocation of money within the school. Even more important, in the long term, state schools will be free to opt out of local authority control altogether. They will become autonomous, living off a grant from the government given on the basis of pupil numbers.
It says much for the timorousness of British attitudes towards social reform, and for the ability of the Tories to mess up their own case, that these proposals have been used to embarrass the Conservative cam- paign. Would the autonomous schools be allowed to charge fees? questioners asked, and would they be able to operate a system of academic selection? Mrs Thatcher's answers were, roughly, yes and yes. Mr Kenneth Baker's were no and maybe. This contradiction, brought forth criticism of the plans. Mr Giles Radice, Labour's educa- tion spokesman, said that they would produce 'a privileged education for the lucky few and secondary moderns for the rest' (isn't this, in effect, what we have at present?). The Guardian thinks that 'state education is progressing pretty smoothly' and describes the government plan as 'a school shake-up which will hugely reduce the educational and life chances of swathes of children'.
All the objections amount to this: that it is wicked that parents will be freer to choose. It is wicked because the more determined parents will do better by their children than the less determined, wicked because schools will be forced to disting- uish between the abilities of different pupils, wicked because schools with falling rolls will have to.close. The Sunday Times quoted Mr David Blunkett, the Labour leader of Sheffield Council, as saying that `The Tory proposals would mean that we will end up giving teachers and resources to the academically popular schools'. Mr Blunkett was advancing this as an objection to the reforms.
The objectors are the upholders of an ancien regime, and one entirely lacking in the romantic charm which caused Burke to enthuse about the France of Marie Antoinette. State schools in Britain are part of a national system. The system denies schools mastery of their own fates. Local authorities impose uniformity and restriction, although they are much too incompetent and disorganised to impose rigorous control either. Schools provide a classic example of how bureaucracy stifles independence and initiative and devotes all its energies to frustrating the wishes of the consumer. The defence of the ancien regime is couched in phrases about social justice, but its motive is social control. The chief characteristic of state schools at present is that parents cannot choose. From this flows their other problems. It is this characteristic which Labour (and the Alliance) want to preserve. At this election, the Conservatives had an alternative. They could either repeat the guardedness of their 1983 campaign, or they could explain in some detail what they intended to do next and why. They have taken the second course, rightly, because to do otherwise after eight years would have seemed cowardly and complacent. .Their next moves, late, but much better late than never, are to extend freedoms which well-off people take for granted to the people at large. People should be, able to rent accommodation, rather than suffer from laws which prevent them from getting it on the grounds that if they did they might be exploited. People should be freer to buy shares — in the businesses in which they are employed and in the whole range of equities as well as in the big sales of public utilities. And they should be free to choose which method and place of education they prefer for their children. In all these areas, the Tories explain how they mean to achieve their aims. They are too timid in housing, and in health, they are so fearful that they propose nothing helpful at all. But in the schoolS they are trying to do the right thing. Like all such transfers of power from public authorities to private indi- viduals, the process of change will be complicated. It will probably be slow at first so long as people are uncertain about how it will work. Its diversity — some fees in some schools (why not?), some selection in some schools (why not?) — will appear bewildering. But after a few years it will be as irreversibly popular as the sale of council houses. No government will dare to take schools away from headmasters, gov- ernors and parents and return them to bureaucrats; future generations will be amazed that we put up for so long with arrangements which systematically denied parents choice.
With most consumer goods, freedom already exists in Britain. Everyone is per- mitted to buy foreign holidays and televi- sion sets and cars and fridges; but in areas which matter more — health, housing and education — it is still believed that the people cannot be trusted and that the man in Whitehall, or county hall, knows best. Mrs Thatcher does not believe this. Her preference for the private citizen over the bureaticrat is one of her chief justifications. The policies of the opposition parties prefer the bureaucrat to the private citizen. If that contrast is clearly presented, the electorate (in which private citizens out- number bureaucrats) will know which to choose.
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