PRAXIS

I saw some commentary on the news the other day about diplomas replacing A-levels in the UK over the next decade, with incentives from Ed Ballls the education minister. These diplomas would apparently contain more vocational and less academic content. This is all rather typical of the New Labour agenda, reflecting their ambition to vocationalise statutory education in the state sector. There is a great debate about the value of academic qualifications and the rich cultural, intellectual and deep subject-based expertise these foster in young people. We can see a time when vocational-focused diplomas are the only route for young working class people, heralding a rich-poor divide between the poor who are born to be educated in a purely training fashion and the rich who still have the option of attending traditional private education. Is it any wonder the private school sector (under the Academy Tust) is in league with the government to transform the state sector into specialist schools, thus removing working class competition to university places, the job market and the professions? We have already seen instances of 'specialist' academies which replaced state comprehensives dropping some modern languages and other academic subjects (see: http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/Database/secondary/specialistschools.html).
If we value education in its true sense, and would give all young people the chances we ourselves had, we should oppose the 'vocationalisation' of education and in particular the transformation of state schools to academies or 'specialist schools' - this process represents the abolition of LEA (Local Education Authority) controlled schools and return to the 19th C. model of state schools run by private business, charities, religious groups and other agenda-based parties.
This is yet another disgrace for social justice and equality of which the New Labour government is guilty - having turned its back on the general population and become an organ of the business elite, whose sole 'neoliberal' aim is to displace social mobility and entrench the class system, thus maintaining a vast pool of low-skilled, vocationalised labour to service the capitalist economy.

|  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this