.jpg)
We all know the story of the Lib Dems. Once upon a time, a man in a yellow tie called Nick Clegg promised to scrap university tuition fees. Suddenly, fees almost tripled, and university cost £9000 a year. Nick apologised and it became a funny YouTube video. We all laughed heartily as we filled in our student finance forms.
Next came Mr Gove, as he was affectionately known in the newspapers. The divisive Conservative Education Secretary fought for more exams, harder exams, and a return to 'traditional' (read uninspiring, regressive, elitist) teaching methods. Academies and free schools galore. Competition and performance. 'Get Gove Out' became the slogan for striking teachers. Meanwhile, David Willetts tried to sell off Higher Education.
The last five years have not been the whole story, with New Labour laying the foundations for many of these changes, but it has certainly been a strange five years to be a student. At the last General Election, I was fifteen, in my first GCSE year. Now, halfway through my degree, I'm gleefully harbouring a debt of (so far) nearly £30,000. With my arts degree (which doesn't amount to much going by the ever-pragmatic 'global market' rhetoric of both the Labour and Conservative parties), it's unlikely I'll ever make the money to pay it all back. There's about £30 billion of this apparently virtual money hanging around unpaid, according to recent statistics.
In light of the manifestos released in the last few days, the £9000 figure seems short-lived, and I'm still a bit unsure where it came from in the first place. Labour promise to cut fees to £6000. The Greens promise to cut them entirely. I get a piece of paper once a year with some numbers on telling me that some money is going from somewhere to somewhere and is vaguely attached to my name. I can't help feeling that this monetary value granted to university education is arbitrary, a confused formality. This is, obviously, very dangerous. One day not far from now, real, actual money will be leaving my account every month.
It never ceases to amaze me that for some students, the ones who have been educated at private or public schools, university education is comparatively cheap. Last month, some researchers published a report on how different types of schools prepare pupils for Cambridge University. Unsurprisingly, students from privileged educational backgrounds are the most at ease in an institution historically associated with students from privileged educational backgrounds. By contrast, students from state schools, although likely to have good independent learning skills, are also likely to experience social and intellectual anxiety at Cambridge. This can affect eventual performance, but also general day-to-day interaction. As a state school student myself, I can vouch strongly for these feelings of anxiety and inferiority. It's taken me two years to feel even remotely comfortable with the Cambridge 'supervision' system, and I wouldn't describe my background as disadvantaged (other than in the highly distorted relative terms that the Cambridge University demographic suggests).
Although reports like the one mentioned above are useful in that they highlight different lived experiences of elite universities, they elide complexities in the categorisation of the education system. State education is far from monolithic, and is becoming ever more complicated. For example, the year after I took my GCSEs, my school became an academy. The Tories claimed, and continue to claim, that academies encourage better teaching, better education, better results. But my school's GCSE pass rate (already significantly below the national target) dropped by a further 10% when granted academy status. Nobody really talked about the students whose futures would be dramatically affected by this.
The teething process of academisation did not ensure better results. The constant restructuring of schools like mine, accompanied by repeated changes to exam specifications, instead created dispossessed school leavers. My school was already failing, but it continued to fail, as did most of the other schools run by the the academy chain. Similarly, free schools, marketed by the Tories as beneficial for local communities, only make education a matter of private interests, in both financial and ideological terms. The Conservative manifesto proposes 500 more of these schools. They also pledge that every failing school will be academised.
Privatisation of the education system is not an answer to failing schools. Rewriting the system according to a competitive business model is dangerous. 'We will not allow state schools to make a profit', the government says, and yet somebody somewhere is already profiting from state education. The not-for-profit charitable trusts in charge of academy chains and free schools can use outsourcing and subcontractors for non-teaching staff. Similarly, in universities, zero-hours contracts and pay below the Living Wage allows a minority to continue to make money from the education system.
Consistent emphasis on numbers and measures to assess performance and value creates a culture which is alienating for young people. According to Conservative Party proposals, children that do not achieved the required results in SATs exams will have to resit them upon arriving at secondary school. Aged eleven, children will be told that they are not good enough, and that exams are the only way to show that they are good enough. Enforcing a rigid testing system as a way to reframe the importance of literacy and numeracy is not helpful. Neither is appointing an all white, all male Ofsted committee to regulate schools through testing for things like the teaching of 'British values'.
Writing these notes, I don't need political rhetoric to tell me that the education system is in crisis. The tuition fees scandal is an easy way to pinpoint the government's continued attempt over the last five years to define and redefine the value of education, but this is something that affects all levels of the system, including the places where there aren't strikes and protests and people holding up signs and shouting. Education will always face constraints, constraints of funding, constraints of time, but with 40% of teachers leaving the profession in the first five years, it's clear that current models of education are offering unstable futures.
Young people voting in the General Election for the first time in 2015 have been directly affected by the loose canon of recent education policy. The Lib Dems cannot expect the student vote this time round, and their failure to deliver seems instrumental in the shattering of the three-party dominance of previous elections. In 2015, we have more choices, but also more uncertainties. As young people, we are constantly asked to question what we are worth, especially as part of the potentially brief £9000 generation.
We've been the testing ground for experiments that have failed, ideas that have been retracted, the rapid increase in privatisation of the education system, and the constant restating of values. Young people who do not fit within the streamlining of academisation and the uncompromising ideas of what constitutes success have fallen by the wayside and will continue to fall by the wayside. I'm privileged in that I have access to a university institution in which my ideas and opinions are encouraged, and, more importantly, listened to. But, even more importantly, this story is about many more young people than just me.
The last five years have not been the whole story, with New Labour laying the foundations for many of these changes, but it has certainly been a strange five years to be a student. At the last General Election, I was fifteen, in my first GCSE year. Now, halfway through my degree, I'm gleefully harbouring a debt of (so far) nearly £30,000. With my arts degree (which doesn't amount to much going by the ever-pragmatic 'global market' rhetoric of both the Labour and Conservative parties), it's unlikely I'll ever make the money to pay it all back. There's about £30 billion of this apparently virtual money hanging around unpaid, according to recent statistics.
In light of the manifestos released in the last few days, the £9000 figure seems short-lived, and I'm still a bit unsure where it came from in the first place. Labour promise to cut fees to £6000. The Greens promise to cut them entirely. I get a piece of paper once a year with some numbers on telling me that some money is going from somewhere to somewhere and is vaguely attached to my name. I can't help feeling that this monetary value granted to university education is arbitrary, a confused formality. This is, obviously, very dangerous. One day not far from now, real, actual money will be leaving my account every month.
It never ceases to amaze me that for some students, the ones who have been educated at private or public schools, university education is comparatively cheap. Last month, some researchers published a report on how different types of schools prepare pupils for Cambridge University. Unsurprisingly, students from privileged educational backgrounds are the most at ease in an institution historically associated with students from privileged educational backgrounds. By contrast, students from state schools, although likely to have good independent learning skills, are also likely to experience social and intellectual anxiety at Cambridge. This can affect eventual performance, but also general day-to-day interaction. As a state school student myself, I can vouch strongly for these feelings of anxiety and inferiority. It's taken me two years to feel even remotely comfortable with the Cambridge 'supervision' system, and I wouldn't describe my background as disadvantaged (other than in the highly distorted relative terms that the Cambridge University demographic suggests).
Although reports like the one mentioned above are useful in that they highlight different lived experiences of elite universities, they elide complexities in the categorisation of the education system. State education is far from monolithic, and is becoming ever more complicated. For example, the year after I took my GCSEs, my school became an academy. The Tories claimed, and continue to claim, that academies encourage better teaching, better education, better results. But my school's GCSE pass rate (already significantly below the national target) dropped by a further 10% when granted academy status. Nobody really talked about the students whose futures would be dramatically affected by this.
The teething process of academisation did not ensure better results. The constant restructuring of schools like mine, accompanied by repeated changes to exam specifications, instead created dispossessed school leavers. My school was already failing, but it continued to fail, as did most of the other schools run by the the academy chain. Similarly, free schools, marketed by the Tories as beneficial for local communities, only make education a matter of private interests, in both financial and ideological terms. The Conservative manifesto proposes 500 more of these schools. They also pledge that every failing school will be academised.
Privatisation of the education system is not an answer to failing schools. Rewriting the system according to a competitive business model is dangerous. 'We will not allow state schools to make a profit', the government says, and yet somebody somewhere is already profiting from state education. The not-for-profit charitable trusts in charge of academy chains and free schools can use outsourcing and subcontractors for non-teaching staff. Similarly, in universities, zero-hours contracts and pay below the Living Wage allows a minority to continue to make money from the education system.
Consistent emphasis on numbers and measures to assess performance and value creates a culture which is alienating for young people. According to Conservative Party proposals, children that do not achieved the required results in SATs exams will have to resit them upon arriving at secondary school. Aged eleven, children will be told that they are not good enough, and that exams are the only way to show that they are good enough. Enforcing a rigid testing system as a way to reframe the importance of literacy and numeracy is not helpful. Neither is appointing an all white, all male Ofsted committee to regulate schools through testing for things like the teaching of 'British values'.
Writing these notes, I don't need political rhetoric to tell me that the education system is in crisis. The tuition fees scandal is an easy way to pinpoint the government's continued attempt over the last five years to define and redefine the value of education, but this is something that affects all levels of the system, including the places where there aren't strikes and protests and people holding up signs and shouting. Education will always face constraints, constraints of funding, constraints of time, but with 40% of teachers leaving the profession in the first five years, it's clear that current models of education are offering unstable futures.
Young people voting in the General Election for the first time in 2015 have been directly affected by the loose canon of recent education policy. The Lib Dems cannot expect the student vote this time round, and their failure to deliver seems instrumental in the shattering of the three-party dominance of previous elections. In 2015, we have more choices, but also more uncertainties. As young people, we are constantly asked to question what we are worth, especially as part of the potentially brief £9000 generation.
We've been the testing ground for experiments that have failed, ideas that have been retracted, the rapid increase in privatisation of the education system, and the constant restating of values. Young people who do not fit within the streamlining of academisation and the uncompromising ideas of what constitutes success have fallen by the wayside and will continue to fall by the wayside. I'm privileged in that I have access to a university institution in which my ideas and opinions are encouraged, and, more importantly, listened to. But, even more importantly, this story is about many more young people than just me.
