Abstract
In this accessible book, Mortimore builds on themes he has been developing for a number of years to call for nothing less than a revolution in education. Here, he practises what he has been preaching over his career: reaching out to new audiences by using readily understandable language in order to effect change. This, then, is not primarily a book for researchers, although a number of useful studies are referenced – non-native master’s students particularly would find it useful in getting to grips with England’s education system. Rather, it is for lay people with an interest in education and who, by implication, Mortimore believes might be in a better position to change that system than left-leaning academics. He reflects on what he has learned over his career to produce a three-part work, which he calls, ‘part history, part policy critique and part memoir’ (p. xiii). First, he explains key concepts in education and states what he thinks the desirable outcomes of any system should be. Second, he describes the current state of England’s education system and finally he recommends a set of alternatives. The scope of this book is therefore considerable: teaching, learning and intellectual ability, for instance, are given fairly brisk and superficial treatment in their respective chapters in the first section in order to provide the overview necessary for the target audience to appreciate the manifesto to come. Mortimore’s extensive knowledge of the field is generally impressive, however, his book does contain occasional inaccuracies. He defines dyscalculia incorrectly as ‘excessive maths anxiety’ (p. 21) and refers to Schools Direct as ‘Teach Direct’, directing readers through the reference to that latter organization. Nevertheless, Mortimore largely achieves his objective in this section of introducing to a lay audience both sides of a range of sometimes complex concepts in education and their historical context.
The second section is sub-divided into three: the strengths, ambiguities and weaknesses of the current system. In the first two sub-sections, Mortimore moves from description to gentle analysis, drawing on his many years’ experience to reflect with wisdom and the benefit of hindsight on a wide range of elements and their relative worth, potential and deployment within the system. This methodology has its disadvantages; I felt that the supporting evidence (for example, from ILEA studies) was sometimes far too old to justify supporting views of the system as it is. The advantages and disadvantages of aspects categorised as ambiguities and strengths are presented, leading to an impression that all might as well have been ambiguities. Nonetheless, there are useful discussions of, inter alia, the system’s lack of aims (though inexplicably posited as a strength); the national reading strategy, which he argues represented the teaching of reading’s transformation ‘from a pedagogical into a political act’ (p. 145), and the market model of schooling. The last Mortimore categorises as a weakness, and it is from this section onwards that his passion is ignited, lifting both prose and argument. If the preceding sections had been a master class in the balanced exposition of complexity, then the later part of the book is where he reveals his left-leaning credentials. The usual suspects constitute the weaknesses section; political interference; private education; selection and ability grouping, for example, yet their incisive and withering deconstruction here is a pleasure to read.
The final section continues in this vein by proposing some radical changes, or rather sometimes, proposing that some recent radical changes be unmade. That, for instance, decommissioning the education market feels so impossible in the current climate merely underscores how successful neo-liberal administrations of Right and Left since 1988 have been. The recommendations appear to have been developed in part from a series of 47 articles Mortimore wrote for the UK newspaper, the Guardian, from 2006–2010. The stand-out proposals are undoubtedly that pupils should be allocated randomly to secondary schools to create a balanced intake; that teachers and school leaders should be assigned to a school, much like in the French system; that local authorities should be revived, with academies and free schools brought back under their control; that private schools should become maintained, or sixth-form colleges; and that an independent Education Commission should remove much of the remit of the Secretary of State for Education. It is easy to find problems with much of what Mortimore proposes; taking the role of local authorities, for example, he advocates essentially turning back the clock without addressing the reasons why it was possible for neo-liberal administrations to vilify local authorities so effectively. Furthermore, the steady increase in the intensity and reach of neo-liberal discourse means that many in local authorities conceive of themselves as market players, more or less enthusiastically commissioning and out-sourcing services. They are at best unready and at worst no longer suited to a return to a former way of conceptualizing ‘the public’. This is the problem in microcosm with these proposals; in privileging the structural, they omit the discursive. Neo-liberalism has won over hearts and minds and these recommendations do not address that.
Critiquing the substantive contents of the recommendations is, however, rather missing the point. The fact of publishing any counter-argument to neo-liberalism in an accessible fashion to this wide audience, of making these ideas ‘open to all’ (p. 239) is an important step in shifting the discourse. Mortimore concludes by exhorting readers to ‘speak out: at home, work, social events…Enlist leaders to take forward the ideas’ (p. 240). Make no mistake, for all the measured language, Peter Mortimore is very angry, and if I were a minister for education right now, I would be feeling quite nervous.