POVERTY, A FACTOR IN EDUCATION?

by Cliff Jones

THE Labour MP for Riverside in Liverpool does not like the report from the Tory dominated Commons Education Committee that downplays poverty as a factor in education. I taught in that constituency for eleven years. If there was a single dominant factor at work it was poverty. That had been the case for a very long time.

Local people rolled up their sleeves and began to build the then largest housing co-operative in Western Europe. I designed and obtained government approval for a Community Studies GCSE to support young people working on committees designing that co-operative. I felt so professionally happy.

The Tory government abolished it. Young people were to be taught only what government wanted them to be taught in ways that government approved and assessed only on what government wished them to be assessed. There is only one F in Ofsted.

When Tories talk about catching up they set the rules of the educational game in which young people AND teachers must participate and then tie together the shoe laces of some but not others. This is why I was a founder member of the Liverpool group of teachers examining the impact of unemployment on the curriculum. Long gone. Only for a while were we listened to.

A society that is more equal is what is needed. A society that is more equal is both healthier and happier. Alongside that must be an educational system that is fulfilling. Mere measurement of performance does not fulfil.

I admit that I have not yet read the Report that is causing all the fuss. I also admit that, as a member of the working party that produced the Report on Political Literacy in 1978, I have, since the arrival of Thatcher in 1979, failed to do enough to counter the effect of policies that have widened gaps in society. Widen those gaps and you produce poverty. It is a big factor in education.

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