Q&A Mike Baker

The full text of an interview that featured in summary form in the magazine.

Teaching: the GTC magazine, spring 2008

If you think you recognise the face, you would be right. Mike Baker spent 27 years with the BBC,much of it as senior education correspondent, so he’s been responsible for breaking pretty much every major education story since the 1988 Education Reform Act. He left the Beeb last year, but is still as involved as ever. And freer to comment too…

Any regrets about moving on from the BBC?

It was a big step. I had been with BBC News for 27 years, having joined as a graduate trainee and enjoyed it immensely. I spent the 1980s as a Political Correspondent at Westminster. These were the Thatcher years and politics was fascinating. Yet, what caught my imagination was the 1988 Education Reform Act, which created so much of today’s education landscape.

So in 1989 I followed the Act into schools, becoming the education correspondent for BBC TV News. Colleagues thought I was crazy:  to abandon politics, always top-of-the-bulletin, for a ‘softer’ subject that was lower down the running orders or sometimes dropped off them altogether. 

But I had a hunch this would change, mainly because the Education Reform Act was effectively ‘Year Zero’ for schools; it would be controversial and problematic to implement. So I was sure education would become a bigger political topic and therefore a bigger news story. What I could not have predicted was Tony Blair’s focus on ‘education, education, education’.

So from 1989 until 2007 I had a fascinating time covering education. But more recently, I felt the need for more time and space for analysis. So I chose to go freelance, allowing me to work for specialist newspapers and broadcasters, like The Guardian, Teachers’ TV and bits of the BBC, to write my own blog (www.mikebakereducation.co.uk), whilst still writing a weekly column for the excellent BBC News education website.

Is the public interest in teaching different from the teacher’s interest?

At root, the interests should be the same: ensuring that everything is geared to helping all children achieve their maximum potential. That is why I welcome the way the discourse on education has moved beyond academic circles to embrace the wider public. It is very striking, if you go back into the newspaper archives, how little educational issues were part of the mainstream political and public debate until the 1980s.

However, I wouldn’t pretend that the media has always raised the quality of the debate. So I think the next step is for the profession to do more to educate the public to make more informed and mature judgements about schools and to see past their own narrow, personal interests.

There are real gains from being under the spotlight: education now attracts a bigger slice of the nation’s wealth than before and I am sure this is because it has moved beyond the ‘secret garden’.

Of course, the public debate has to be informed by a professional debate. Up until the late 1970s, the NUT was not only consulted on all schools’ policies but often initiated them too. Then the teaching unions were marginalised. Consultation became a mere formality and governments almost made a virtue of doing the opposite of what teachers wanted.

We are now beginning to return to the position where teachers, and their representatives, are influencing policy again. This is how it should be.

How has the GTC changed the education landscape?

Well, picking up from my last answer, I think the discourse between the profession and the policy-makers is now much healthier and the GTC can take some credit for that. I also think the public is beginning to get a better handle on educational issues. The GTC has helped by stimulating public debate and by showing that teachers are a self-regulating profession. 

My impression is that the public esteem of teachers has risen again. The GTC has helped the public to see teachers on a similar footing with doctors, lawyers and others who regulate their own profession and contribute to policy development.

What is the most distinctive contribution the GTC can make in the near future?

I would like to see the GTC becoming the leading ‘think-tank’ for schools issues. It should continue to commission and distribute research evidence, leading the debate about future change. While the teacher unions have an important role defending members’ pay and conditions, the GTC should be seen as a disinterested expert body. In other words, it must not be a lobby for teachers, but a lobby by teachers for education. 

There are many others trying to set the agenda. But if the GTC can be the single voice of teaching it cannot be ignored. There may never be a single teachers’ union; there is a single GTC.

The GTC has argued strongly for an assessment system without SATs but with rigorous teacher assessment and cohort sampling. Can government be convinced?

Not yet. Or at least not to the extent of abandoning all external, summative testing. However, I see signs of movement in all political parties. Cohort sampling could certainly meet the accountability requirements. But there are also the consumer-related issues: the need to give parents the data to help make school choice decisions.

I do believe the arguments of the GTC and others are having an effect. Parents now see the risks from schools being under pressure to focus on what is tested, and set in the targets, rather than on the many other important aspects of education. Devolution has brought change elsewhere in the UK; the GTC could work with its sister organisations to show this has not damaged standards. 

Has the media’s influence on education changed over the years? For good or ill?

Yes, as mentioned earlier, I do believe the media is now much more interested in education. It is no longer a minority interest; like the days when the only league tables published in The Times were for Cambridge colleges. This more intense focus has not been all good; there is still a tendency for the media to lurch into moral panic mode – on behaviour, truancy, or standards. But it has also helped to highlight problems, such as the quality of school meals, teacher shortages, or inadequate school buildings, and this has put greater pressure on policy-makers to find solutions. Overall, I think it is healthier for education to have a media that shows an interest rather than regarding it as worthy but dull.  

Have you ever thought about being a teacher?

When I was a sport mad teenager I wanted to be a PE teacher (or play for Ipswich Town!). Later, I wanted to teach English as I was inspired by my own 6th form teachers. Then I started writing for my local newspaper on another of my passions, local history. So by the time I was at university I had been seduced away from a serious and worthwhile career in teaching to the frivolous and ephemeral world of journalism! Actually, I think there was another factor. Most of my family were, or are, in education – my father was in FE and HE, my mother taught at both secondary and primary levels, and I have a brother, a sister, and various in-laws and cousins who are also teachers. So, being perverse, I didn’t want to follow the obvious route. Also, to be honest, I don’t have the patience needed to be a good teacher but I admire those who do.