Towards a National Education Service… A Study in Empty Rhetoric?
Does the Labour Party’s ‘National Education Service’ deserve comparisons to our NHS?
UK Politics
By Joe Perry
Labour’s education policy has featured heavily in the news in the last month. In the build-up to the recent general election, a rumour began to circulate that Labour planned to erase historic student debts — an idea that excited many students including myself. However, such a proposal was never outlined in the pages of Labour’s manifesto.
So where did this rumour appear from? A few weeks ago The Telegraph reported that Jeremy Corbyn said he would ‘deal’ with student debt — something many people interpreted as a plan to cancel historic debts. Adding to the rumour mill, the right-wing website Guido Fawkes then released (or re-shared) a campaign video for the now Shadow Secretary of Justice, Imran Hussain, claiming Labour would ensure that ‘every existing student will have all their debts wiped off’. For many, Corbyn, Hussain and other Labour MPs’ remarks (such as Sharon Hodgson in her tweet below) indicated that Labour would write off historic student debts if they won the election. A very costly proposal but one that would be welcomed by many current and former students.
However, a few weeks ago in an interview on the Andrew Marr Show, Corbyn was forced to clarify Labour’s position. Here, Corbyn put the idea to rest and told viewers that the rumours came from interviews with both NME magazine and the Independent. In his interview with NME, Corbyn had said:
“I don’t see why those that had the historical misfortune to be at university during the £9,000 period should be burdened excessively compared to those that went before or those that come after. I will deal with it.”
In retrospect, Corbyn’s remarks made a lot of sense. Labour had toyed with the idea but unfortunately found no concrete solution to the issue in time for the general election. As a consequence, Labour’s manifesto made no mention of such a plan. Instead, Hussain and Hodgson’s remarks were simply mistakes in communication.
Did Labour mislead people? Perhaps (Hussain certainly did). However, the ‘student debt’ scandal is reflective of a bigger issue within Labour’s recent manifesto: supporters exaggerated the policies because their expectation of Corbyn’s words were greater than the reality of them. In truth, Corbyn himself acknowledged that parts of the manifesto were rushed and more rhetoric than concrete policy (the online version even contained spelling errors).
In this article, I will use the manifesto to analyse Labour’s ‘National Education Service’ (NES) and in doing so, hope to deduce the content from the rhetoric.
The National Education Service (the NES)
After seeing Labour’s Twitter announcement of the NES I was particularly excited by the concept. As a student interested in the history of education, I have been waiting for a big change to happen for a while. At present, our education system is (ironically) incomprehensive. The national organization of schools lies somewhere between the Butler Act (establishing a tripartite system of Grammar, Secondary Modern and Secondary Technical Schools in 1944) and the Comprehensive System (ending the tripartite system in most boroughs in 1965).
In some boroughs, Grammar and Comprehensive Schools exist simultaneously causing each other to fail to reach their full potential. Theresa May’s previous call for a return for Grammar Schools marked a renewed fixation on ‘social mobility’ as the ultimate goal of education — an objective that has long since been dismissed by leading academics in education. A recent report by the Education Policy Institute, for example, detailed very clearly the effects of a return to a Grammar School system: an expansion of Grammar Schools ‘could lead to lower gains for grammar school pupils and small attainment losses for those not attending selective schools — losses which will be greatest amongst poor children.’ Fortunately, May’s proposition for more Grammar Schools suffered as a result of her dismal election performance. At present, the idea seems to have been shelved and rightfully — a revolution in education can not just be a return to an old way of doing things. Consequently, Labour’s announcement of the NES (with its strong semantic parallels to the NHS) really got me interested.
When the NHS was created after the Second World War it sought to not just establish a new public service but to change the ideology of the nation’s perception of public health. The Beveridge Report (recommending the creation of the NHS) was said to entrench a belief in the need for ‘cradle-to-grave’ welfare — support for all citizens at any point of vulnerability in their lives. Consequently, the British Government accepted the huge cost of the NHS on the understanding that it represented a public need rather than a public wish.
Accordingly, the Labour manifesto made a number of direct parallels to the NHS: ‘When the 1945 Labour government established the NHS, it created one of the central institutions of fairness of the 20th century. The NES will do the same for the 21st, giving people confidence and hope by making education a right, not a privilege.’ Even the name ‘National Education Service’ welcomes comparisons.
Similarly to the NHS, the NES aims to develop an ideology (‘cradle-to-grave education) and not just as a policy. A blogger for the Institute of Education recently described the service as ‘a scheme to join up the disparate elements of education, providing free lifelong learning from nurseries through schools to universities and adult education’ — a very intuitive idea and one that would be welcomed by many leading education researchers. It has always seemed trivial to me that we see eighteen as the magic age for when an individual no longer requires education. Humans continue to learn and develop (albeit at a progressively slower speed) throughout our lives and I strongly believe the opportunity to retrain, re-educate or change career at all ages offers a real opportunity for many individuals to better their quality of life.
However, just like Labour’s position on tuition fees, there seems to be very little detail on how Corbyn and Rayner hope to implement their idea. In reality, the NES appears to be a plan to consolidate existing education institutions into a single, comprehensive system (whilst also injecting it with much needed capital). Whilst this programme is absolutely necessary, Labour also needs to concentrate on a few finer details in order to create an institution comparable to the NHS. Here are three brief questions Labour must find an answer to:
- Will there be a universal plan for secondary school education? (should we have Grammar schools, Comprehensive schools or a different system entirely?)
- Will Labour commit to developing a fully-accessible early intervention mental health service for schools?
- How will Labour reform the National Curriculum?
Only after Labour answers these questions (and a few others) can the NES truly begin to be compared to our sacred NHS. I welcome Labour’s attempt to revolutionize education and the shift away from an education system based on facilitating social mobility for 5–18 year olds is particularly intriguing. Fairness and age-free entry are much more appropriate goals. I am looking forward to finding out more detail about Labour’s plan for the NES — ideas thought up over months rather than weeks seem much more promising. My only wish was that they saved the name ‘National Education Service’ for when their scheme could actually live up to its name.
