How Many Journalists Realise what the Education Policy Institute Is?
Who and what are the Education Policy Institute?
How many journalists , broadcasters and politicians understand who and what the so-called ‘Education Policy Institute’ are? The EPI are once again attracting coverage for a so-called ‘study’ of grammar schools which attacks the government’s claim that new academically selective schools will improve social mobility. Here is their latest effusion:
http://epi.org.uk/report/grammar-schools-policy-options/
The full report is here
This an example of the sort of coverage it has received:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-38266726
(NB, the BBC is generally quick to label any think tank which has conservative leanings as ‘right wing’. I see no such equivalent labelling here).
Some months ago the EPI published its first hostile pamphlet on academic selection, here http://epi.org.uk/report/grammar-schools-social-mobility/
Full report here http://epi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Grammar-schools-and-social-mobility_.pdf
I analysed it in detail here
Independent? Impartial? Evidence-based?
The document (like its forerunner) asserts in its text that the EPI ‘is an independent, impartial and evidence-based research institute that aims to promote high quality education outcomes, regardless of social background.’
Is this true? You decide.
The slightest investigation shows that the EPI started life as a declared Liberal Democrat think tank, ‘CentreForum’ (itself the inheritor of an earlier Liberal Party think tank) and that many of its leading figures are Liberal Democrats such as David Laws, EPI’s Executive Chairman, and Cameroon Tories – such as Lord (David) Willetts, a member of EPI’s advisory board - plus one full-power Blairite, Baroness (Sally) Morgan of Huyton, a Trustee of EPI. I see no sign of any guiding figure outside the Blairite-Cameroon consensus on education, which now of course focuses on ‘academisation’ and is dismissive of academic selection.
Its luminaries also include persons closely linked to ‘Academy’ schools and trusts notably Sir Paul Marshall, Chairman of ARK Schools and also Chairman of EPI, and Sir Theodore Agnew, a Trustee of EPI and also chairman and sponsor of a multi-academy trust based in Norfolk. Academies have long seemed to me to be the most dogged opponents of a revival of academic selection, alongside the similar but much rarer ‘Free Schools’ pioneered by Toby Young.
(All these details of affiliations are in fact clearly displayed on the EPI website and can be found there without much effort, which makes the claim of independence even odder.)
I really do not see, especially when grammar schools are concerned, how such a body can describe itself as either independent or impartial. The Lib Dems, plainly the political origin of the EPI, have for years been against academic selection, as have Blairites such as Sally Morgan and Blairite Tories such as David Willetts and Michael Gove ( as discussed in detail herehttp://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2014/05/more-details-of-michael-goves-attitude-towards-grammar-schools.html0
Academies may be the main foes of Grammar Schools now
The ‘Academies’ which in my view badly need a thorough examination by a truly impartial research body, generally assert that they do not select (always questionable in fact) and generally do not select academically. Their political progenitors and supporters, especially Lord Adonis and Michael Gove, do not approve of academic selection. I am aware of the many anomalous existing grammar schools which have converted to ‘Academy’ status, presumably because this provided them with access to more generous funding, and more control over their own governance, than they had under local authorities. But they are anomalous. New ‘Academies’ do not select academically, and LEA comprehensives which convert to ‘Academy’ status do not select academically either.
I think the EPI should stop describing itself as either ‘independent’ or ‘impartial’, and that journalists and politicians should stop treating its contentious pamphlets as if they were neutral, scholarly reports.