"Less is more" is a quite useful rule in some fields, avoiding over-complication and delay. The current government, though, seems to believe that such an approach should apply to public services, with less money supposed to achieve wellbeing for a growing population. How may this apply to education under the upcoming Morgan [or is it Osborne] Education Bill?
Is less qualification of teachers likely to lead to more learning by pupils? Is less Local Authority oversight of admissions and provision likely to lead to more parent satisfaction with the places their children access, especially in rural areas with fewer options, far apart and poorly connected? How will reducing public assets of land and buildings increase State provision? Will lower pay, poorer terms of employment and working conditions for teachers raise recruitment, retention and standards? How will fragmentation of commonalities such as curriculum or teacher training give more families comfort? Will less parent and community governance end up with more village Primary closures at the behest of Trust finance directors? Could it even be that removal of education from the budgets of Local Authorities actually reduce their very viability?
The one certainty where less will mean more is that the loss of local accountability for education will mean more central bureaucracy, more Civil Servants at the failing DfE and more opportunities for private sector contractors to profit from Academy Trusts. Lack of evidence of competence or capacity to educate in either DfE nor Academy Trusts set up by Big Capital suggests a wholesale, arbitrary abandonment of a generation of children and a denial of the State's duty to educate all. Less indeed. Let us have no more of it.
Tom Serpell
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