It’s the May half-term holiday at last. The paraphernalia of teaching can be laid aside for a week. But the pursuit of leisure is made harder by the fact that the sunny warmth of the past month is disappearing and some cloudy days are in prospect. To keep the family occupied, it’s time to unearth a few board games.
Monopoly - “the fast-dealing property game” - has always been a family favourite. It now exists in many versions. Some have been specially adapted to places: there are, for example, customised versions for East Grinstead, Swindon and the Isle of Wight. Others match aspects of modern culture: there are versions for The Walking Dead, Arsenal Football Club and Peppa Pig. It isn’t difficult to spot a gap in the market.
This got me wondering about how a Monopoly board game, with its profit-making imperative, might reflect the Gove-ian education reforms - and whether such a product might be worth patenting. Thanks to radical change over the last 10 or more years, there are all the right ingredients here, particularly when you take into account the number of different stakeholders that could take over the squares occupied in the original version by London properties.
The board
So, going anti-clockwise around the board, in a hierarchy from top to bottom:
How about the education secretary’s Cabinet Office and the DfE as the equivalent of Mayfair and Park Lane, followed by the educational thinktanks advising the minister (usually behind closed doors) in the prestigious green Bond Street/Regent Street/Oxford Street sector? The regulators (Ofsted, Ofqual and JCQ) would be next (Piccadilly Circus) and fittingly adjacent. Their next neighbours, in Fleet Street, could be Oxbridge and the Russell Group universities, who are never out of the papers for long.
On the opposite side of the board from the policy setters would be the creations of that government policy: the various multi-academy trusts, the grammar schools, the free schools. Then, as we move along the less expensive side of the board (Pentonville Road and the Angel Islington), we see the least-favoured bodies: the local authority schools, pupil referral units and special schools. Last, under-funded and almost forgotten (Whitechapel Road and the Old Kent Road), we find the further education colleges.
The services set
As with the traditional version of Monopoly with its water and electricity, there is money to be made from services - sometimes lots of it, as heads are responsible for their own budgets. Today we face a bewildering landscape of competing services: from teacher supply agencies to education consultants, stationery and materials vendors, not to mention building repairs now carried out under the Private Finance Initiative. These could easily occupy the spaces taken up by Marylebone, Fenchurch Street, Liverpool Street and King’s Cross. As any ardent Monopoly player will tell you, there’s plenty of cash to be derived from the possession of all four stations, so holding the complete services set should put you in a commanding profit-making position.
It seems reasonable to keep on the energy and water providers combined, to reflect current flexible provision. Then we can put information technology together with baseline data generators for evaluation and monitoring to complete the parallel with the original Monopoly board.
The pieces
American versions of Monopoly refer to the pieces as “tokens”. It would be easy to replace the top hat with a teacher/graduate mortar board, the car with a school bus (hybrid, of course, in these ecologically friendly times), the Scottie dog with a shape representing a child, the iron with a schoolbag or laptop bag. Personally, I quite liked the ship because of the connotations of “when the boat comes in”. The more recent introduction of the dinosaur seems rather fitting…
A game of chance
The dice provide momentum and uncertainty. Progress through the game (like progress through the education system) is never completely assured. But my favourite is definitely the use of Community Chest and Chance cards to introduce disaster or opportunity: tax bills, income tax refunds, parking fines, “Go to Jail” and “Get Out of Jail Free”. It’s not difficult to imagine the Educopoly equivalents:
- Your photocopier breaks down - miss a turn
- The school budget is still shrinking so a pay rise will not be coming your way. Go back three spaces.
- The school roof is leaking and your repairs budget is in the red. Miss three turns.
- You can’t find enough maths and physics teachers…
These are just a few of the examples to keep the adrenaline flowing. Where my Educopoly concept falls down is that there are few rewards that are anywhere near the equivalent of the penalties currently experienced by the main players: the teachers, pupils and leaders.
Perhaps better exam results than expected? After all, if there are losers there must be winners somewhere in the system. Or a royal visit to the school? An award or some recognition? For the very few there is the tremendous achievement of getting a school out of special measures, but is the excessive inspectorial scrutiny and bureaucracy built in to this part of the game worth it?
I have to admit that I’ve constructed the game from the perspective of those at the heart of the experience, but just think of the rewards and opportunities if Educopoly were to be constructed with the education market in mind:
- The education secretary has reformed all public exams. Your textbook company has the contract for all core subjects. Collect £100.
- New schools in your area need to update or replace old buildings. Advance to Go immediately.
The rewards of enterprise
Michael Gove deregulated and destabilised the education structure, and insisted on rewriting the system. When he accelerated his forced academisation programme, he paved the way for enterprise - not just around the edges of the system, but right at its very core.
As it’s the holidays, I won’t press home the obvious message. Let’s just say that the education sector is open for business.
Roll the dice, someone, and pass the crisps.
Yvonne Williams is head of English and drama at a school in the south of England
