Government education policies ‘failing a generation’ says ATL

29 Aug 14
The government’s education policies are damaging the life chances of a generation of children and must be reversed, the new president of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers has said today.

By Andrew Pring | 1 September 2014

The government’s education policies are damaging the life chances of a generation of children and must be reversed, the new president of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers has said today.

School children

Mark Baker, who takes over as ATL president today, says the coalition’s ‘competition agenda’ such as the creation of free schools and extending academies, was fragmenting the education system and has gone too far’.

He urged teachers, lecturers and support staff to ‘take back our profession’.

‘We have the opportunity to take control of our profession ahead of the general election next year and say what works best based on the experience of the whole profession.

‘I see it as make or break – we’re at a fork in the road where we have the tensions of big business against the ideals of a profession. We need to be able to make a stand on that.’

Among the campaign’s priorities are ‘allowing teachers the autonomy to teach’ and employing only fully trained and qualified teachers in the classroom.

Unless new policies, including these changes, are introduced, Baker said, ‘more and more children will lose out as education policy continues to be based on the survival of the fittest, with school pitted against school, staff against staff, and parent against parent’.

Baker, who is a teacher at Redwood Secondary School, Rochdale, added: ‘If schools are encouraged to act like businesses they are likely to see education as an industrial process with children as the products which have to generate returns for the business.

‘You can’t then be surprised if schools focus on children in the middle because the least resources bring the greatest returns in terms of exam grades and a good position in the school league tables.’

Baker also said that the intense competition for schools to prove themselves was having an adverse impact on relationships within schools to the detriment of children. ‘The sense of autonomy has been lost by teachers because school leaders issue directions and teachers just have to do as they are told. Schools have lost the benefit of a team approach and the generation of lots of ideas.’

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