UNDER the leadership of one of Tony Blair’s education secretaries, Estelle Morris, Labour’s Bright Future Taskforce is charged with developing “a national strategy to ensure all children recover the learning and social development lost during the pandemic.”

The taskforce includes a secondary head teacher, an NUS vice-president and a number of education sector worthies — most of whom have extensive experience based in big cities. 

It prompted this comment from a comrade “…good people, but no-one who you would describe as being on the left.” 

Which raises the question, what is leftist education?

Education is, arguably, the most politically charged of Britain’s social enterprises. 

Its every dimension — provision, funding, curriculum, assessment and pedagogy — contains political juxtapositioning. 

Michael Gove, when he was education secretary (2010-14), made substantial curriculum and pedagogic changes, mostly for the worse. 

He made (so-called) literacy and numeracy the focus of the primary school curriculum. 

He narrowed the pedagogic approach to teaching with a massive emphasis on phonics and the memorisation of times tables — approaches which kill curiosity and enjoyment. 

Writing in The Observer earlier this year, Philip Oltermann gave a description of Steiner education, which aims to develop children’s skills in a holistic manner, as “left-leaning schools focused on self-directed play with wooden toys.” 

Is Oltermann suggesting that child-centredness is politically “left” and didactic practices “right”? If so, are there also right-leaning schools? 

Generalising, we can ask what is a left-leaning curriculum? Is it compatible with right-leaning pedagogy? What constitutes centrist education?

In the areas of funding and provision it seems comparatively simple to see left-right divisions. 

Stereotypically, the right would favour independent schools, directly funded schools, grammar schools and parental choice, whereas the left favours comprehensives, state provision with local democratic oversight by local education authorities (LEAs).  

There is widespread consent, however, among Labour centrists, Lib Dems and Tories over the neoliberal orthodoxy of multiple types of school and parental choice. 

Only the left of the Labour Party seems to be interested in the abolition of selection and independent schools in favour of good, LEA-run comprehensives.

Of course it is an oversimplification to suggest that a right-leaning curriculum is white Anglocentric, extolling the pre-eminence of English literature, cultural and scientific achievement, that emphasises Britain’s industrial revolution and Whiggish political development, all driven by a virtuous Protestant ethic and wrapped up in a knowledge-dominated style which resembles a test-prep school or “crammer.” 

It is similarly simplistic to think of a skills-based curriculum focusing on world history, music and literature, and valuing diverse cultural values and heritage as left-leaning. 

Sometimes, however, it does look this way. For example, in October 2020, writing in Conservative Home, Chris McGovern, the chairman of the Campaign for Real Education and former policy adviser, asked: “Do we need to call time on Black History Month?” while on the other side of the spectrum, Labour MP Afzal Khan has recently launched the Diverse Curriculum Charter for a truly anti-racist education in schools across his Manchester constituency. 

In terms of assessment, the current Tory administration has shown that it is very keen on traditional exams and largely distrustful of teacher assessments. 

The biggest political difference might be that while the centre and right seem wedded to norm-referenced assessment, which will always produce “failures,” there is discussion on the left of the wider use of criterion-referencing.

When he brands Steiner schools left-leaning, Oltermann is focusing on pedagogy. Is it a left-leaning pedagogy? 

He is referring to what education experts and students know as “child-centred” pedagogic practices which favour child-led learning. 

In early years, for example, this would take the form of learning through play (with varying degrees of structure, depending on the teacher, the child and the setting) and could be seen as the diametrical opposite of schoolchildren sitting in rows, chanting times tables. 

Far from being “left-leaning,” however, child-centredness fits with the liberal, progressive views which gained favour in the late 1960s and ’70s following the publication in England of the influential Plowden report.

There are important questions here for the left generally and Labour in particular. 

For the left — especially those with strong interests in education — an answer must be found to the valid question: “What constitutes a left-leaning education?” 

For Labour it is a repeat of previously iterated questions about its aspirations. 

Will Labour be content to manage the status quo better than the current administration, at best tinkering around the edges, or will it plan for a comprehensive root-and-branch review of education from provision to pedagogy?

Tony Rea is a councillor in Ivybridge, South Devon, and a member of the Socialist Educational Association’s national executive committee. He is now retired, having worked in secondary schools and universities in Britain and overseas. Tony has a PhD in education from the University of Plymouth. All views expressed here are his own.