A few weeks ago I posted a piece about teaching assistants and their doubtful value after being told at a local authority meeting in London that the authority concerned was planning for the classroom workforce in their secondary schools  to contain less than 25% qualified teachers in the next two years.

At the time I predicted a U-turn on teaching assistants, my educated guess, is that it won’t be long before we hear the sound of DCSF tyres squealing under the stress of another U-turn, this time on the effect and value of teaching assistants.

At the BERA conference in Manchester this week,  IoE researchers led by Professor Peter Blatchford will show how children supported by classroom assistants do worse than those who aren’t. Their research, The Deployment and Impact of Support Staff (DISS) project surveyed 20,000 teachers and analysed the help received by more than 8,000 pupils in 153 schools, and consequently deserves to be taken very seriously.

Well the tyres aren’t quite squealing but they ought to be in the face of such obvious evidence that if you give a difficult or struggling child a babysitter instead of a teacher: they learn precious little that has anything to do with their curriculum.

When I was discussing this a few weeks ago with some colleagues I was working with at the local authority concerned, an antipodean who had only recently left teaching described the scheme as English language teaching on the cheap.  Only half joking she described classroom assistants she had worked with who were little better than an extra pupil, putting their hand up in class to ask, “Which page are we on?”  Yet New Labour have blithely expanded the number of classroom assistants to 322, 500.

I think it’s actually disingenuous of the report to qualify its criticism by defending the classroom assistants as hard working and sincere, and laying the blame on a lack of training for teachers on how to deploy assistants. The origin of the role came about as a classic let’s deal with the symptom, not the cure response.  I can just imagine the dim spark at the then Department who dreamed up the idea saying, “We can get disruptive kids out of the classroom; employ lots of well meaning mums and give their families a second income;  take some of the misbehaviour heat off teachers and win back their votes…it’s not just a win/win, it’s a win, win, win!”

What they should have done, is faced up to the profoundly anti-education culture that numerous children bring with them to school and which undermines many teachers’ best efforts, re-empower schools and teachers to exert meaningful discipline over children and parents, and create classrooms in which learning is a prized noun and not a paltry participle.

The report concludes that, It would seem appropriate to argue that all pupils should get at least the same amount of a teacher's time, and, indeed, that those in most need are most likely to benefit from more, not less. To which I would only add the words academically qualified, subject experts. 

Definitely much browner, possibly balder but undoubtedly a lot breezier I returned to the UK and work today after three blissful weeks nowhere near a computer, internet connection, or even a TV to discover Channel 4's Big Brother is being axed, and the usual froth about GCSEs dominating the educational news-waves. The former ought to be something James Murdoch contemplated seriously before writing his James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture at the Edinburgh Television festival tonight, given that his father’s speech two decades ago was largely responsible for the rise of it and much more televisual trash touted as “customer choice” we are told we should be grateful for.

The latter concerns me much more, as it has always done, but I guess the two are not unconnected. Behind this story in the Telegraph about the steadily widening educational gap between private and state schools, is a sorry tale of schools and teachers fooling a whole generation of children into thinking it’s actually worth studying media studies etc, instead of something genuinely intellectually challenging such as a science or another language.

The Telegraph’s story actually exposes starkly where the great dividing line really is between state and private education in the UK. On the one hand you have schools and teachers who strive to open their pupils’ minds and horizons, and on the other, schools and politicians masquerading as teachers who condemn their pupils to seeing as they do, which means thinking an education is a means to a job and nothing else.

Schools Minister Ian Wright even dutifully provides the model with his insistence that there are no such things as tough or soft subjects because, The bottom line is that post-16 education is no longer the preserve of the elite and privileged few – more students than ever before are carrying on studying until 18. Precisely the kind of crass social engineering posing as education, that gave us the comprehensive school forty years ago.

He might want to reflect on how he might square his view with Newsnight’s recent poll which shows 67% of those asked thought Labour hadn’t fulfilled Blair’s infamous education, education, education promise.

Unlike lots of colleagues I can resist technology, which is why when I’m on holiday pretty much the only technology I have anything to do with will be snippets of TV, and then only if the Olympics or the Tour de France are available. So before The Good-Morrow goes silent for a few weeks, I thought I’d post something genuinely worth dwelling on.

I’m reading some of the Trollope novels I’ve missed to date and in Can You Forgive Her? I came across this passage, which everyone voting in the UK ought to read before the next election. George Vavasor has just gained a seat in the House of Commons when Trollope remarks:

But though England does not send thither none but her best men, the best of her Commoners do find their way there. It is the highest and most legitimate pride of an Englishman to have the letters M.P. written after his name. No selection from an alphabet, no doctorship, no fellowship, be it of ever so learned or royal a society, no knightship, - not though it be of the Garter, - confers so fair an honour.

Chilling to reflect...isn't it.

Just to humour me, try this little experiment. Read the following and guess what x stands for?

The creation of a national college for x

This is needed to give the profession a stronger and more cohesive focus and voice. It could play an important role in representing x in public debates and policy development, promoting the profession and improving public understanding, spreading best practice and driving up standards.

Securing the resources xs need to be effective

20. In order to make a real difference to those they work with, xs need:

• time to spend working directly with service users, their families/communities, and other professionals who have a role in supporting them and to reflect on their actions, advice and judgements;
• high quality professional supervision and time for reflective practice and continuing professional development (CPD);
• manageable workloads for frontline practitioners and managers;
• basic tools, including IT and communications technology, which work effectively; and
• access to research and learning about how their practice can have most impact.

21. To support this, the profession needs clear guidance about how time should be spent, how supervision and CPD can be protected and how workloads can be managed. We will also make recommendations in our final report about how remodelling can help to make best use of professional x time, and also draw on the resources of others in x and administrative roles, to provide efficient and effective services.

No, the answer isn’t teachers: it’s social workers, and do I really need to spell out what the experiment demonstrates?

The extract is from the Social Work Taskforce’s interim report, published today, which draws attention to a lack of leadership and a lack of suitably qualified staff....where have I heard that before?

So I have a serious suggestion for the taskforce and for the DCSF. Target their recruitment at teachers, because years of bulldozing the playing field has created a teaching profession weighed down by individuals who would be far better off as social workers. The benefit would be that it would leave room for the department to start recruiting real teachers with real subject expertise, knowledge and skill.

I’ve only had time to read the summary and recommendations of Alan Milburn’s social mobility report, but it left me gasping in disbelief like a carpeted goldfish! For over a decade I have seen how one educational initiative after another has stifled anything vaguely resembling talent, or aspiration, because equality is far more important, and they now complain that Britain is too unequal! Like some evil little brat who has been found out by a teacher, yet determines to wreak revenge on the decent children who exposed them, this floundering administration seems intent on injuring whoever is unfortunate enough to have to clean up after them. Again and again the report refers to this or future governments.

The reality is that the equality they so desperately seek, is simply incompatible with the very things that fuel educational aspiration and success: competition and variety.

And they still don’t get it, after all this time! At one point the report makes this claim, The problem is not a shortage of parental aspiration. It is a shortage of good schools. I don’t know where to start with this. Do they ever speak to teenagers or parents in the communities they are so painfully earnest about helping? Do they understand just how “cool” a role model Katie Price is or how great the promise of success Simon Cowell holds out for thousands of kids who have completely and utterly turned their backs on school? And as for the latter half of the quotation, so after a decade of education, education, education we still don’t have enough good schools. And whose responsibility was that exactly?

Of course the report gives lots more work for Ofsted and seeks to create yet another quango, the Government should establish an expert social mobility commission, but for all its hand wringing and whimperatives ( a lovely word I’ve stolen from Stephen Pinker) it just smacks of desperation. To misquote Alan Bennett slightly, the sky is indeed black with chickens coming home to roost.