Tories will founder if they veer to the right

At the very moment when there is a real opportunity to create a cross-party consensus behind a drive for higher standards, the political dividing lines on education have become more clearly defined than ever.

Two recent speeches, one by David Blunkett and one by Tony Blair, have staked out Labour's position. At the headteachers' conference in May, Blunkett made clear his determination to develop a strategy to improve standards of performance in the three Rs at primary level. The speech was hardly easy listening, but the fact that roughly a third of all 11- year-olds have reading ages of nine or less underlines the importance of the message.

A week later Tony Blair set out Labour's plans to revitalise comprehensive education. He argued for pragmatism from both politicians and teachers. He rejected any attempt to waste the energies of a Labour government in an ideological dispute over the remaining 160 grammar schools. Labour would, he said, pose no threat to good schools, whatever their type, a message repeated in "The Road to the Manifesto". Instead, it would focus on the improvement of all schools.

There is therefore no doubt that education has become a central priority for New Labour. Meanwhile, although there have been some forlorn mutterings on the left and from the teaching profession's hard-boiled fringe, the popularity with the wider public of Labour's stance is not in doubt. Opinion polls on the education question show Labour's already-substantial lead growing steadily. While Labour has unashamedly adopted some of the language of the right, its determination to raise standards, especially for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, and to face up to the question of school failure, could hardly be more socialist.

Labour's toughest position on standards enables it to target more effectively the flaws in what the Government has actually done. After all, a government that has been in power for 17 years can hardly escape responsibility for the failure of standards in this country to match those elsewhere.

Although the Government's rhetoric on literacy and numeracy is clear, its record is mixed. Instead of a consistent strategy, all too often it has provided a series of unrelated initiatives. Reading Recovery was funded briefly and then abandoned; now we have literacy centres. The ideas are fine but the inconsistency has diluted their influence.

Labour's new line of attack has provided the Government with a dilemma. On the one hand, it could argue that Labour has joined it on ground carved out, with some courage, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It could emphasise the upward trend in most educational indicators. It could, too, make a political asset of Labour's shift of emphasis. It could claim, as Kenneth Baker did in a recent interview, that Blair and Blunkett are now talking the language he began using in the late 1980s, the language of standards and choice. It need not, then, have felt apologetic for pinching some of David Blunkett's best ideas, such as qualifications for headteachers, school performance targets and inspection of local authorities.

On the other hand, it could abandon the centre ground in search for a more distinctly right-wing agenda. Rather than argue that a consensus on standards has emerged, it could choose to prioritise a return to selective schooling and the increasing use of vouchers. Educationally, the politest that might be said of these policies is that they would represent unnecessary risks.

It is not easy to see how this will benefit the Conservatives. The widespread reintroduction of selection would undoubtedly result in many more losers than winners. A technical argument about how education is funded, which is where a voucher debate would lead, is hardly the stuff of election- winning politics either.

There is much more than politics at stake here. In many of our competitor countries, part of the cause of their success is the unity of the whole society in support of education policy and investment.

In 1995 and 1996, as a result of the combined efforts of Gillian Shepherd and David Blunkett, it has sometimes seemed possible that we could achieve a cross-party unity on standards here too. The Government has not yet chosen to grasp this prize.

As the election approaches, the Government risks sailing into waters that might be clear and blue but are certainly uncharted. If that is its chosen course, it may discover that it has left Labour to sail home on a flood tide of popular concern about standards.

MICHAEL BARBER

The author is Professor of Education at the Institute of Education, University of London, and author of the forthcoming book 'The Learning Game' (Gollancz).