Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [370]
First, there was the need to go much further with ‘opting out’ of LEA control. I authorized John MacGregor to announce to the October 1990 Party Conference the extension of the GM schools scheme to cover smaller primary schools as well. But I had much more radical options in mind. Brian Griffiths had written me a paper which envisaged the transfer of many more schools to GM status and the transfer of other schools — which were not yet ready to assume the full responsibility — to the management of special trusts, set up for the purpose. Essentially, this would have meant the unbundling of many of the LEAs’ powers, leaving them with a monitoring and advisory role — perhaps in the long term not even that. It would have been a way to ease the state still further out of education, thus reversing the worst aspects of post-war education policy.
Second, there was the need radically to improve teacher training. Unusually, I had sent a personal minute to Ken Baker in November 1988 expressing my concerns. I said we must go much further in this area and asked him to bring forward proposals. The background to this was that Keith Joseph had set up the Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (CATE) in 1984 to approve teacher-training courses. But the position had barely improved. There was still too little emphasis on factual knowledge of the subjects teachers needed to teach, too little practical classroom experience acquired and too much stress on the sociological and psychological aspects. For example, I could barely believe the contents of one of the B.Ed, courses — duly approved by CATE — at Brighton Polytechnic about which one concerned Tory supporter sent in details. Entitled ‘Contexts for learning’, this course claimed to be enabling teachers to come to terms with such challenging questions as ‘To what extent do schools reinforce gender stereotypes?’ It continued: ‘students are then introduced to the debate between protagonists [sic] of education and those who advocate anti-racist education.’ I felt that the ‘protagonists’ of education had a better case.
The effective monopoly exercised by the existing teacher-training routes had to be broken. Ken Baker devised two schemes — that of ‘licensed teachers’ to attract those who wished to enter teaching as a second career and that of ‘articled teachers’ which was essentially an apprenticeship scheme of ‘on the job’ training for younger graduates. These were good proposals. But there was no evidence that there would be a large enough inflow of teachers from these sources significantly to change the ethos and raise the standards of the profession. So I had Brian Griffiths begin work on how to increase the numbers: we wanted to see at least half of the new teachers come through these or similar schemes, as opposed to teacher-training institutions.
The third educational policy issue on which work was being done was the universities. By exerting financial pressure we had increased administrative efficiency and provoked overdue rationalization. Universities were developing closer links with business and becoming more entrepreneurial. Student loans (which topped up grants) had also been introduced: these would make students more discriminating about the courses they chose. A shift of support from university grants to the payment of tuition fees would lead in the same direction of greater sensitivity to the market. Limits placed on the security of tenure enjoyed by university staff also encouraged dons to pay closer attention to satisfying the teaching requirements made of them. All this encountered strong political opposition from within the universities. Some of it was predictable. But undoubtedly other critics were genuinely concerned about the future autonomy and academic integrity of universities.