Education is something that is according to the polls of
great concern to the British public and although I know it to be a concern of
my mother’s, a member of the teaching profession, I personally have failed to
recognise this significance during this general election campaign. Last night
however, Pina Colada in hand, I began to realise that education is indeed a hot
topic.
Discussions surrounding education that attempt to engage the
public have always shied away from the actual workings of the system itself. “There
is rarely discussion surrounding the way Ofsted assesses, the inequity of
league tables, or how teachers are overburdened,” my Mum would say to me. This
was shown again this afternoon during the debate involving the Education
minister and all the hopefuls. When the James Humphreys, Education spokesperson
for the Greens mentioned Ofsted he was barely given the breathing space to
utter the word before being redirected by his questioner and it is not as
though generally politicians want to talk about the intricacies of education policy
they are happy to talk around its edges.
Last night I was watching Romesh Ranganathan joke about
teachers being pimped up, driving Ferraris and a fictitious world where, using
this as a sign of their economic wellbeing, they would be able to impress upon
their students that they are worth something to society and by extension an
aspirational figure. The way he put it was funnier but the point was valid and
he went further as you can imagine. He, a former maths teacher, inferred that
society as a whole didn’t value teachers, “showing up to school in knackered
old fiesta.”
This afternoon, when asked whether or not they thought it
was right for a serving Education Minister to be sending their children to a
private school the group of politicians on ‘tele’ gave a unanimous. Now, I am
not sure what most ‘politico geeks’ think on this subject but I have to say I
doubt that most parents who have their children enrolled in a state sponsored
comprehensive system would agree. It would be the inverse of allowing MP’s to
legislate on matters of tenants’ rights whilst they own property for rent.
Actually, wait a minute, I think they do that. More importantly these attitudes
the sort of which highlighted show, as Romesh did. It is not the education policy
itself this election but how each party views education and how that, in turn
reflects on each of the parties, which is at issue