Whose Responsible?

Crisis Creation and the Transfer of Responsibility

Disasters are often depicted as ‘natural’, something for which no-one is to blame. Economic crisis don’t afford governments that luxury. There must be something to blame for this mess? There are two tactics, it was the last lots fault or it is out of our hands. Incoming governments have a period of grace, a honeymoon, where they can get away with blaming the last lot. Depending on how likeable they are they can get away with this for six months at most. The other tactic is more long-term and has more diverse ploys. The recent election of a coalition government with a decidedly neo-liberal agenda, at least in the policies of one of the partners, provides an opportunity to see the ploys in action. The key policies already announced and the tone of the government entering into negotiation with the electorate on what to cut all point to a ploy of transferring responsibility for the functions of government as well as the blame.

Free schools, GPs running NHS and ‘The Big Society’ are all policies seemingly designed to deliver power to the people but a moments critical thought, or two or three, reveal a different possible interpretation. Each policy questions, in a fundamental way, exactly what it is people should expect from government. Each policy redefines the limits of government and, potentially, extends the reach of the commercial. At first glance it seems the policies empower the people. Local people take control of schools, displacing the faceless beauocrats of local government. Your friendly GP, who understands your real needs, listens to your woes, they know what the NHS really needs to do. Local people running local amenities for local people – despite the echoes of Royston Varsy – what could be more English; warm beer, afternoon tea, cricket on the village green. Except does this vision of tranquillity transfer to reality?

I may be wrong, I may be doing the coalition a great disservice. They may really believe that by providing these opportunities, local people will effectively and efficiently manage the vast resources that will be allocated to these tasks. I don’t mean just money, although I am sure that will be ploughed into the policies. I also mean the valuable time of individuals, physical and mental effort and their hopes. I am sure there will be some shining successes, but will these be the exceptions to the rule?

Take free schools. The idea of devolving and allowing parents to take control of local schools sounds like a wonderful idea. Parents believe they know that their children aren’t taught what they should be. They know they could run the school better than the local authorities. Is this going to happen? What is really being done with this policy? The policy begins the redefinition of the role of government that the Conservative party promised. In this context, the policy questions the role of local government in providing a local service. It implies that devolution of this service to interested individuals is more appropriate and will be more effective. Effective in what sense? In ensuring the interests of local people are put into practice? Will all individuals have the same view of what education their children should get, in the nature of the teaching, in the type of dinners they should have, ni the quality of the environment they are taught in? What happens when the teacher they hired tells them that their son or daughter isn’t performing well? Devolution of such power can never be to the individual; some form of representative organisation is required to implement policies. So what form of organisation is representative and who should be represented, who should participate? The most vocal, the most intelligent, the most worldly? Is that going to be a skill set characteristic of a particular class, a particular type of person? Who decides and how do they decide?

Even supposing this minor detail can be overcome; the next question is how do they (whoever they are) sort out running a school? What parents have the time and the skills to organise a vast and complex organisation that is a modern school? Hovering in the wings private companies are more than willing to aid in the complex logistics of running a school, for a price obviously. So a local service becomes a local service organised and run, on a day-to-day basis, by a private company or companies. The local authority is hollowed out; the function removed and out-sourced, but national government pays for it, the taxpayer subsidies private enterprise mediated through the empowering of the people.

Think on a few years. Examination time, written examinations of course as these are the only ones that the parents really believe are proper examinations, and their sons and daughters don’t do as well as the ‘other’ schools that have followed the ‘other’ curriculum and done module assessment. Is this likely to be allowed to happen? Will a private examination company emerge to assess these scripts in the proper manner, to give them the appropriate weight they should have as ‘harder’ forms of assessment for which the free schools will have to pay as it takes longer to assess such work? Will ‘proper’ universities recognise the value of these ‘proper’ examinations and privilege them over the inferior ‘other’ assessment thus allocating places preferentially to free school students? I don’t know, but what I can say is that if you think of the school as a single component of an educational ecosystem, you can’t change one component without that change reverberating through the rest of the ecosystem and, as ecosystem as large, complex webs of relations, such changes could be non-linear and highly unpredictable.
What if the experiment fails? What if a free school doesn’t live up to expectations? What if it goes bust? Who is to blame? The local authority is not responsible. The government is not responsible. Neither now have any input into the school other than the government providing the funds to run the school, which as a free market entity it can obviously be given less of each year as it increases its efficiency. Responsibility, and blame, is now firmly located at the feet of the parents, except I am sure it won’t rest there. The teachers they hired will be to blame. The firm they hired to run the school will be to blame. Problem is there is no one left to complain to as no one is listening. It is your problem.