The State of Education in Hastings.

It was believed to be Mark Twain who said that you should never let your schooling interfere with your education, sadly the lack of education offered by schools in Hastings has borne out the eternal truth of this statement, with some schools performing very poorly for years, failing to provide a meaningful education for many children in Hastings, not getting the best educational outcome for the majority and causing direct harm to children with special educational needs.

Schools in Hastings, East Sussex, especially the ‘secondary’ schools as they used to be known are and have been, pretty much a disaster for the majority of children in Hastings since Academies were first introduced into the town. One of the most questionable legacies of ‘New Labour’ who introduced Academies to take over the very‘worst’ performing schools, The Conservative Government of Cameron (with the business community whispering in his ear) then expanded the concept and rolled out the Academy idea across the whole education landscape. As a result 50% of children in Hastings & St Leonards now leave school without a qualification in English and Maths. Academies were first introduced to address ‘poorly performing’ schools but the seeds of the disaster for towns such as Hastings were actually sown by John Major’s government in the mid 1990s with the introduction of ‘school league tables’

Schools should provide the best possible education for all the children in their local catchment area. Who could not agree with this ? - Well the minds which decided that schools should compete against each other and be ranked according to how well they scored in exam results didn’t share this philosophy it seems. The result of this absurdly simplistic measure of a schools performance resulted in a football league style of schooling where the ‘best’ get better and better at the expense of the ‘worst’ who drop into lower and lower divisions. Parents therefore clamour to get their children in the ‘best’ schools according to the league tables. As a result it becomes increasingly hard for the ‘worst’ schools to climb up the tables as the children with the best ‘life chances’ (eg: those who have parents from professional and middle class/affluent backgrounds) find themselves in the same schools as their fellow cohort and those children who ironically are in the most need of the best education the state can offer, find themselves in the poorly performing schools. Similarly young teachers coming out of teacher training try to get into those ‘best’ schools. Remarkably Hastings is just down the road from the second biggest teacher training campus in the UK in Brighton, but struggles to attract teachers from it’s neighbouring town. The education system only just narrowly escaped the idea of school vouchers being issued to parents to enable them to ‘buy’ a place at any school they chose in the country in 2019 - an idea dreamt up by Dominic Cummings which would have resulted in even poorer outcomes for the very children who need good quality education the most. So why did this happen - what was wrong with the old style of schools that just delivered education and didn’t have to worry about ‘league tables and business managers ? In order to answer this question you have to enter the world of wider politics and in particular the reaction from right wing politicians such as Keith Joseph in the 1970s who viewed school teachers and university lectureres as ‘lefties’ who were out to indoctrinate impressionable children and young adults into ‘Marxist ways of thinking’. The ‘outsourcing’ of Education into the hands of non-political organisations would as well as shaking up education so that it had to live in the ‘real world and drop the politics’ would also divest control of schools away from inefficient and often left of centre local councils and produce independent, efficient, politically non-biased and globally competitive schools and universities. What could possibly go wrong ? just look at our internationally renowned private schools such as Eton and Harrow, and our Universities like Oxford & Cambridge - recognised brands across the globe with representative offices in such far flung places as Shanghai - and so the commoditisation of education had begun. Unfortunately it would not be long before the world of business saw an opportunity. Businesses that satisfy a universal human need have a great product almost instantaneously they just have to find an effective way to distribute it and then ‘monitise’ it - look at facebook - we may deny it - but deep down we all have a need as human beings for the esteem and approval of our peers ( How many ‘likes’ did you get on that post ?) But the onward march of education into a carefully costed, commoditised product cannot be blamed on business people. Its what business does - it’s the politicians that are to blame no-one else.

So what’s so bad with these academies then ? The answer lies partly in money. I will use some figures that I obtained when I chaired a local scrutiny committee at Hastings Borough Council a while back - so they may be wrong and out of date given inflation etc., but you will get the general gist of the thinking of these organisations by ‘following the money’. Academies are run on a cost per ‘unit’ basis, roughly £6,000 per child per year. If you times that by 30 pupils that’s £180,000 per year, per classroom. Take off the salary of a teachers and teaching assistants (if there is one), rent, rates, heat and light, insurance etc and all other operational costs - then factor in the percentage of the salary of the executive head, financial officers, deputy executive heads, heads of department, safeguarding officers, school facilities staff to be apportioned to each classroom - and what you have left is the precious ‘profit - margin’ for the Academy Trust in question.

This can have a very negative effect on the quality of education and ultimately outcomes for children because the ‘cost per unit’ model leads to a restricted curriculum - resulting in demotivated and stressed teachers and children who feel anxious, frustrated and uninspired. Once teaching in English & Maths and a few other core subjects has been dispensed as efficiently as possible there is often little resource left for those activities which actually enrich the lives of children.

A boring and uninspiring curriculum can have a devastating effect on children especially if it is combined with a demotivated and stressed teaching staff. If there are no interesting subjects which can inspire children to learn such as Drama, Arts and Sport, Media Studies (including social media) combined with a home life that sees no discernible benefit in the education provided allied with poor nutrition and unhealthy life choices then the educational and life chances of children at the sharp end of this unhappy situation are limited.

So what’s the solution ? we often see reports of tragic violence in classrooms, with knife crime, racism and misogyny becoming ‘normalised’ on social media platforms. Are these unfortunate and very concerning problems anything to do with Academies or the symptom of a wider malaise in society ?

In my next article I will explore some lines of thinking to address the damage which has been done to our children.