The government’s education agenda, so long condemned by teachers, headteachers and unions, has now even come under attack from parents in their “strike” against Sats. With this level of opposition, it ought to be clear that ministers are on the wrong course.

But how to rectify this mess? When driving to work the other day, it hit me: it is about time that we had a conservative education secretary with a conservative education policy.

I know this seems like a ridiculous statement and would likely invoke two reactions: “We already have one”; and “Are you mad?” At first glance, both responses seem entirely justified. Of course, we have a Conservative secretary of state. And, of course, the majority of teachers would rather we didn’t.

The clue, however, is in the lower-case “c” in my original statement. Neither the policies of Nicky Morgan nor those of her predecessor Michael Gove have been “conservative”.

Conservatism means a desire to conserve. At its heart lies a belief that, largely, everything is OK. The amassed knowledge of hundreds of years of trial and error - an idea that G K Chesterton referred to as the “democracy of the dead” - has left us with a system that, broadly speaking, works. Adherents believe that, however wise we think we are, we would be foolish, nay arrogant, to challenge the collective wisdom of the generations before us.

To elucidate further, in the view of pre-eminent conservative Edmund Burke, change is only permissible in order to conserve. Only if there is a huge problem should any action be taken. And even then, nothing too drastic, as we cannot fathom the multiple consequences of our actions. Conservatism, at its heart, has a healthy streak of preferring pragmatism to ideological dogma. It tends to follow the mantra of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.

By this definition, neither Morgan nor Gove, could be described as “conservative”. There has been no desire to conserve. At all.

Ministers have embarked on a total revamp of the examination and assessment system in England. They have argued that the GCSE system was irredeemably broken, raged against grade inflation and claimed that qualifications were too easy and failed to prepare students for the real world (a place that, it could be mused, they don’t spend much time in).

So what have ministers done to fix it? They have changed all the exam and curriculum systems at every key stage. Primaries have had levels removed - so clear tracking of students against a universal standard is far more difficult - and have been forced to test children with Sats designed by people who are obsessed with the minutiae of grammar rather than the holistic outcome. These are part of a raft of changes imposed from above by people with little or no experience of primary education that most professionals seem to reject.

Reckless gamble

And what of secondary schools? They also have to deal with the removal of levels of both A levels and GCSEs. In some subjects, they still don’t know what their new GCSEs will look like even though first teaching begins in just over three months’ time.

The reason for that, in my view, was that the Conservatives did not believe they would win the 2015 general election, so rushed everything: definitively not a conservative approach. It is, and I choose my words carefully here, a reckless politically motivated gamble with an entire generation of children as the chips.

Let us now turn to working conditions, taking in pensions and pay changes, and teacher expectations, all of which have been ripped up. The profession has been demonised throughout by the government. Ministers would no doubt dispute this, citing statements that teachers are “hardworking”, but the repeated comments that teachers opposed to reforms are opposed to higher standards is nothing less than a professional insult.

Their expert objections have been ignored. The implication is clear: if you disagree with the government’s education policy, you are wrong. Thus it is teachers who know nothing about education or, worse, it is only the government that cares about our children.

Statements from the government or Ofsted about shortening the school holidays or introducing school leaders with no teaching experience only serve to demonstrate the contempt they have towards the profession. The denial of an obvious collapse in morale, and the subsequent recruitment and retention crisis, reinforces this view. We are wrong. They are right. The relationship between the government and teaching has become toxic.

It should be pointed out that profound respect for professions and their collective knowledge and experience is a fundamental conservative idea - and one that is entirely absent from the big office at the DfE.

What of the big issue of the day, forced academisation? The original concept of academies could, perhaps, be seen as conservative - they were a limited attempt to improve underperforming schools where the local authority had been deemed to have failed. Thus, in these circumstances only, the private sector could be invited in and a fresh approach taken. A surgical incision to solve a specific problem. Burke might even have approved.

The same cannot be said for the current policy position: that nearly all schools should become academies, whether they want to or not. This clearly runs against the conservative value of pragmatism. The new mantra appears to be “It ain’t broke, but let’s fix it anyway”.

Why should any successful school be forced to change? There is no convincing evidence that academies are automatically better than local authorities, so, in a conservative, pragmatic sense, it makes no sense at all.

But - and here’s the problem - we’re not dealing with traditional conservatism any more. It’s a kind that arrived in the 1970s and that sociologists and politics students refer to as the “new Right”.

The “new Right” broadly falls into two categories: neo-liberalism, which venerates the free market and a small state as absolute virtues, much like in the 19th century; and neo-conservatism, which has an ideological commitment to strong government and is concerned with restoring traditional values.

As any A-level politics student knows, neither version of the new Right actually sits that comfortably with the rest of conservative tradition, and yet the Tory government’s vision for education is a blend of the two.

The exams policy harks back to an imagined golden age of rote learning and teachers in capes. The push for academisation is surely more neo-liberal, illustrating a complete faith in choice and the market to drive up standards.

In effect, the English education system is now an enormous “new Right” experiment.

This is wrong. The most widespread changes to education in the UK since the national curriculum’s introduction have been driven through from a narrow, ideological perspective, ignoring, even belittling, genuine concerns from within the education system.

So what to do? My answer is to stop. Conserve. Take a breath. Let the dust settle and see how things work. Teachers will pull through if you stop shifting the goalposts. After a period of reflection, maybe some things will need to change. But after a pause, it will be far easier to identify what works and to do what conservatives have traditionally excelled at: leave well enough alone.

Dan Edmunds teaches history and politics in Kent

This is an article from the 3 June edition of TES. This week’s TES magazine is available in all good newsagents. To subscribe, click here. To download the digital edition, Android users can click here and iOS users can click here

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