Episode 212: What role does politics play in education?

So we wake up every morning to different political headlines. It's going to be the same forever, right? It's been the same for a long time and it will continue to be the same forever in a day. And education will sit within politics in terms of its profile, sometimes high, sometimes not on the radar at all.

But I guess what I was hoping we could talk about today is what role does politics play in education?

Should it play a role in education? Should we politicize education? Is that, I mean, it happens, but what do we think?

Okay, nice easy topic for the day.

So the worm, the can that was sitting in front of me absolutely full of worms has now been opened.

Education is highly influenced by politics because for the most part, in most places in the world and certainly in most schools in the world, the funding comes from, you know, the government, right?

So, and the government is always, you know, I know it varies from place to place, but certainly any place where I've lived, politicians always talk about healthcare. They always talk about education and increasingly they're always talking about housing.

Right. And those seem to be the three topics that, that no matter where you live, they're going to come up in any election or whatever. Right.

And I think that it's also something that people are tremendously opinionated about. So it can be an easy way to try to win votes, right? Say by stating things, but is that a good thing or is it a bad thing? Well, it depends.

I suppose if your ambition is to get elected, you might say it's a good thing. But if your ambition is to educate children or to build a nation or to build a strong economy or whatever, it's probably a bad thing because of the issue with education and probably healthcare as well, although I don't know very much about how the healthcare system works.

But I imagine a lot, there's a lot of parallels. Is that it takes decades for things to have an effect.

So, politicians don't stick around that long. Political parties don't stick around that long and policies don't stick around that long in education. So if you can't figure out a way to stay on the track for a long time, you're always causing more damage, you know, than you're solving. So yeah, meddling is a bad idea in education, right?

Well, it's near impossible to keep education out of politics, as you just pointed out, Andy. I mean, the government's funding education.

And depending on the country you're in, this might be at a federal level. In Canada, it could be at a provincial level.

And you've got all these different people and ideas of what, how the money should be used, of what's most important with education. And yeah, as you said, Adam, we're opening a can of worms here because I don't know how you could keep the two separate.

I think it's possible, So if you had cross-party support and you said, right, we're going to put in this amount or that amount, and they both agreed it was whatever percentage of GDP, right?

There's the potential just to have a chunk of money. And here's a body that we've decided this is the body that's an independent body that looks at education standards and makes changes, like you're saying, over time, and you know that. But I think that what is far too tempting for any political group is outside of healthcare, it is the most emotive topic for political buying.

Because we've all been to school, so we're all experts. Like you said, Andy, we've all got an opinion because we've all done it, or by and large, we've all done it. There's a massive chunk of the population that have got children currently in it.

So I just think the temptation is too great for the vote for it not to become something.

Because if you look at the sort of secretaries of state for education for, you know, down the years, and they'll have varying degrees of what the education world might think of them and varying degrees of success and whatnot.

And I'm not one of those that says you can't have someone who hasn't worked in education, working within education wholesale because I think that there's people that have done fantastic jobs.

I'm not one of those who says you can only have educationalists. I think there's some pretty clever people that can probably be really beneficial to it. But I think the problem is that there's not a political party…

I think it's just too emotive for it not to be part of a we want the vote. And it's like a game of chicken because I don't think that any political party, because if you don't do it, we will.

Because it has to be outside of health. I don't know if I'm missing anything, but it's got to be one of the most, or it's got to be the top or second top most emotive subjects.

Because I think that whilst, of course, there has to be a political element to it, there has to be because of its funding and decision making and those things. I just think, like I was listening to something the other day, and I could be slightly wrong with this, but I think it's in Northern Ireland, where now they've decided that infrastructure in Northern Ireland, is going to be cross-party, and they're going to agree on certain things.

I'm pretty sure I'm writing this. But the idea being is that infrastructure projects take far longer than a five-year session. So the idea being that we agree with this. So no matter who's in power, we see it through, because we really want a light railway through here. We really want this, and we really want that. So I think that...

that there's models in countries that, I don't know, it's not wholly sort of independent. But I just think that, you know, we've heard it too many times, it's the bloody times table. That's the one that seems to get dragged out most often.. you know, like Gove did it, Gove did it back in the day, we've had it with the testing, you know, those sorts of things. But forget the times tables per se. I just think that until the allure of those emotional votes is agreed that actually we'll look at this on the whole as a cross party thing, I just, I don't know that it's going to change. I think that it's too tempting.

Well, and I think what's happening right now is as people are finding ways to split.

groups apart further and further, right? You know, and, there's all kinds of specialist interest groups and politics are wrapped up in all this. And certainly in certain parts of the world, as we're seeing right now is pretty radical, right?

You know, so ideology is playing a big role. And I think in some instances you can see evidence of it's not a new thing. It's happened a lot, but now it's happening a lot in the Western sort of Western countries to sort of, you know, what we would say the first world, you know, it's starting to happen quite a lot.

This is that you're pushing your ideology through the education system, right? You're using the education system almost as a propaganda machine, you know, so when you have groups that are, have very strong views on something and it may be, you know, alternative lifestyles, for example, right? They see the education system as a way of pushing their ideology through to the population. So manipulating the curriculum, let's say, so I'm to use some extreme cases, but this kind of stuff actually happens and it happens in places you would think what that's happening there.

Can't believe it. You know, removing, removing, particular beliefs like scientific beliefs from the curriculum, because they don't line up with the religious ideology of the group that's in control of the education system.

Right? So a very practical example, we're not going to talk about dinosaurs because we all know that the world was created in seven days, right? Wasn't it? Or six days or seven days, right? I don't even like my biblical references are bad, but you know, okay.

So we're not going to talk about dinosaurs because it doesn't fit into what we want to teach. What? What, what? You know, and that, and when that stuff happens,

Well, you know, that is that good? Is that good? You know, so, so, so it does happen, right? Politicians do meddle with, with education systems like that.

Yeah, I think we have to agree that politics in education is broad and often a complex topic and it influences everything from curriculum decisions to school funding, whether we're going to talk about dinosaurs or not, teacher policies and you know, it's just..

I just don't know how the two can be separated because it seems to be, I mean, it just encompasses issues like education policies, standardized testing, we talk about, know, multiplication tables, teacher salaries.

And I don't think it can. I just think that it's how informed choices are made. I think that's the big thing for me, because at least on the face of it, and I believe this to be true, we've had some pretty significant decisions made in education, ones that maybe haven't landed so well within education by people. And I will refer back to, you know,

There's couple of decisions Michael Gove made, which in terms of the world of education, didn't receive well. But it's like, well, what was his, what, where was his validity to make decisions on that scale around education? And I think this is the thing. I think that there's been times where certain decisions have been made that I think are profoundly impactful.

which haven't gone through the filter that I think that at times they should.

And I think that whatever those bodies are, as you started out by saying, Andy, it's centrally funded. So the money's got to go, like all of us taxpayers, that money's got to be spent well. So there is a responsibility to make sure that money's spent well. But I think that if it's set up and there's a sense of independence, at least independent advice, and that's taken as you are a body of experts that are looking globally at education systems, then that's, you know, that's got to be a healthy thing.

And I'm not saying that there's aspects that doesn't happen. But we've also had plenty of examples in the 20 odd years, certainly it’s been in the UK, and this is true of other countries as well, where there's been some pretty radical decisions that are made, you know.

And, and it's largely because, largely because it's, it's a hot topic, like parents, you know, voters are very much interested in education.

And a lot of people have a lot of strong opinions about education. And, and they are just that their opinions are not necessarily, you know, and you can, you can run agendas around, know, it's about getting votes, right? And it's, I don't know that there's any solution really, right? I really don't know, but, but it's, it's not a good thing. But when you look at people or countries that can separate their political agendas or their politicals, you know, from education policy It's usually not a bad thing, right?

It's usually not a bad thing, you know, but unfortunately, it's not the trend right now. It's a highly politicized thing and and and and I think the danger is that politicians see education as A, a way to get votes

So, you know, they will say and do things that maybe they even know they shouldn't say and do just so they can get votes. And, you know, even worse than that, they see education as a way of, of, feeding propaganda to a young population, right. Which is also really bad, you know? So, yeah.

Stay away from education.

Well, yeah, unless that control seeded then you know that's that's the system. I think that's going to stick right. That's that's the one that we're going to have. Many years to come.

Well, the alternative isn't necessarily any better, right? You don't want a large bureaucracy running it either, right? Cause that's, you know, that doesn't, that also goes wrong in many ways. They should let us run it. They should let us run it.

Our homework for this week is to go away and find the sweet spot. What's realistic? What can we get? How can we get this to happen? We'll report back on the next episode of the School of School podcast. Yeah.

We have homework to do.