Toby on Tuesday 

“The dog ate my homework…”

 

I am one of those who believes that Middlesbrough is still a proper part of old North Yorkshire, and its people are Yorkshiremen and Yorkshirewomen. So I was thrilled last month to read that Dr. Richard Spencer, who teaches biology at Middlesbrough College, was on the short list for the Varkey Gems Foundation Global Teacher Prize. Worth a million dollars over 10 years, the prize is for teachers who make an outstanding contribution to their profession. Dr. Spencer inspires creativity in his pupils through experiments, videos, models, games, poems, songs and dance. This is a huge achievement in a challenging environment and he must carry all our good wishes for the prize. He has already visited the Vatican to meet good Pope Francis.

Yorkshire schools have certainly come a long way since Charles Dickens’ devastating attack on them in Nicholas Nickleby. They were a national scandal then and Dickens’ portrayal of the sadistic Wackford Squeers at Dotheboys Hall did much to ensure their reform. Dickens located his fictional establishment in the neighbouring constituency of Richmond and described it in passages such as, “With this, and wholly disregarding a piteous cry for mercy, Mr. Squeers fell upon the boy and caned him soundly: not leaving off indeed, until his arm was tired out.” That Yorkshire schools should now be known for teachers of the quality of Richard Spencer and not of Wackford Squeers is impressive, to say the least!

I was blessed with teachers who were of the quality of Richard Spencer, who saw their role as instilling a genuine love of learning and then letting their pupils do the rest. I was at Westminster School, which has always concentrated on the humanities, in the shadow of our old Parliament, now diminished and trashed by EU membership. There, it has produced 7 or 8 Prime Ministers, men of courage and conviction, and politicians of all parties from Nigel Lawson, Mrs. Thatcher’s great reforming Chancellor and now a fervent opponent of the EU, to the late Tony Benn, the kindest and most courteous of Parliamentarians, always a fervent opponent of the EU, and the one and only Nick Clegg, who has done such heroic work consigning the LibDems to permanent oblivion! Then I studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Christ Church, Oxford, where I founded the Edmund Burke Debating Society in memory of Malton’s greatest MP, Edmund Burke, whose whole life was based on the now-forgotten concept of government by consent of the electors. The same spirit of trust and encouragement continued there too and this is the spirit that we are now seeking in all of Thirsk and Malton’s schools.

This underlying trust in our teachers and their pupils underscores UKIP’s education policy. To ensure that a truly academic education is available to all, irrespective of means, existing schools will be allowed to apply to become grammar schools and select according to ability and aptitude. Selection ages will be flexible and determined by the school in consultation with the local authority. UKIP supports the principle of Free Schools that are open to the whole community and uphold British values. UKIP will also introduce an option for students to take an Apprenticeship Qualification instead of four non-core GCSE’s which can be continued at A-Level. Students can take up apprenticeships in jobs with certified professionals qualified to grade the progress of the student. To give comfort to parents, schools will be investigated by OFSTED on the presentation of a petition to the Department of Education signed by 25% of parents or governors. And UKIP will scrap the target of 50% of school leavers going to university.

Subject to academic performance, UKIP will remove tuition fees for students taking approved degrees in science, medicine, technology, engineering and maths on condition that they live, work and pay tax in the UK for 5 years after the completion of their degrees. And students from the EU will pay the same student fee rates as international students. These are all sensible ideas, predicated on confidence in the teaching profession and its heartfelt wish to inspire creativity in pupils wherever it can be found.
Finally, I have received a good deal of correspondence from teachers concerned about the increasing workload under which they find themselves, in large measure due to recent reforms and the impact of immigration on class sizes. Their union is calling for a reform of accountability so that it is based on a greater degree of trust. For my part, I have always been a profound believer in bottom-up, rather than top-down, solutions. Every school is different and I am happy to endorse the need to establish that trust so that model teachers, like Dr. Spencer in a difficult area such as Middlesbrough, can be relied on to exercise their own judgment in the interests of their pupils. Teaching needs fewer Wackford Squeers, or his modern equivalents, and many more Richard Spencers!

Until next Tuesday!
Toby