our number one priority:' So what is the verdict on the last eight years? Richard Hatcher investigates.
In its "Five Year Strategy for Children and Learners" published in 2004 the government itself identifies:
".. a fundamental weakness in equality of opportunity. Those from higher socio-economic groups do significantly better at each stage of our system than those from lower ones. The gap between the best and worst performers in system actually widens as they go through education; and it is both significantly wider and more closely related to socioeconomic status in this country than elsewhere."
Some of the reasons lie outside school, in particular in the high level of child poverty. Only four countries in Europe have a higher proportion of child poverty than Britain.
Although Labour has reduced child poverty by one quarter from its Tory peak, a It didn't take long for disillusion to set in study published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation shows that if the government is to meet its long-term target of halving child poverty by 2010 it would need to substantially increase redistribution of wealth towards the poorest families.
It is the market that prevents this redistribution. There is a contradiction at the heart of government policy between New Labour's attempts to reduce deprivation by a range of anti-poverty measures and its commitment to the market, which functions to increase inequality. by lum which is the intellectual equivalent of a 37p school dinner, puts working class children at a disadvantage because they don't have same home support as the middle classes.
A regime of targets, tests, heavy workload and performance management, in a context of large classes, prevents teachers meeting the real needs of children and young
A school market of competition and choice benefits middle class families.
Comprehensive education is being dismantled in favour of a fragmented and more broad curriculum for all till 16. At age 14, it erects a roadblock on the road to full access to knowledge and culture, with a sign saying "Deviation: working class this way" pointing to the world of work-related training.
The White Paper puts forward what it claims is a broad and balanced compulsory curriculum until age 16 , requiring students of 14-16 years "to study English, maths, science, citizenship, RE and sex education; and to learn about careers and experience workrelated and enterprise learning".
This is the new 'functional" turkey twizzler English and maths. Not even Jamie Oliver could turn this hotch-potch of ingredients into a curriculum equipping young people for the wider world.
No history, no geography, no arts, no literature, no social sciences, no modern languages...it is the curriculum equivalent of the national minimum wage, and for many that is where it will lead.
From age 14 the majority of working-class in schools, FE colleges and skills needed to understand the world and to change it.
The Blairite model of the flexible, adaptable worker requires just basic competences and the right attitude to work - the rest you can learn on the job or on a training scheme.
Education is Labour's 'number one priority because it is all about creating the future profitable workforce.
And the 'human capital" agenda connects with another key theme of Labour policy -privatisation. This involves not only the outsourcing of education services and policy implementation to educationfor-profit companies but the equally dangerous growth of
sponsorship of schools.
Why do these multi-millionaire entrepreneurs and companies want to put their money into sponsoring academies and specialist schools? Their interest is in profitable future workers, not profitable schools. Over the next year we will increasingly see business sponsorship gearing schools directly to training specific future sectors of the workforce.