Alan Smithers: Primary schools need more teachers, Mr Blair

The trouble with the Blair government's education policies is that it never seems to want to do the simple thing simply. Take primary teaching, for example. The Government having, to its credit, accepted that the teachers need to be freed from 10 per cent of classroom time for planning, preparation and assessment, does not follow the logic through and fund the schools for 10 per cent more teachers. No, it speaks of "transformational change" and "radical restructuring for excellence". But what this amounts to, in practice, is that the lessons being taken by teaching assistants.

The evidence for more teachers in primary schools is compelling. There is currently in Engand, on average, only one teacher to more than 22 pupils. Recent figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development show that only three of the other member countries have fewer teachers – Turkey, Mexico and Korea. Countries such as Denmark, Hungary and Italy have twice as many. Even in English secondary schools there are proportionally about a third more teachers than in primary, and provision is more favourable still in the sixth-form. Independent schools thrive on ratios of about 10 pupils to every teacher.

Pupil-teacher ratios are often wrongly taken to be synonymous with class sizes, but of course they also relate to how many lessons a teacher takes. Understaffing means that primary teachers are having to teach all day and every day. Other duties have to be fitted in around lessons, and in the evenings and at weekends. There is no flexibility to support non-contact time, or to fill in for teachers who are off sick or away for training. Headteachers and other senior staff are drawn in to cover, in addition to everything else they have to do. It is not surprising then that it should be so difficult to retain teachers and so hard to recruit to senior positions.

It would not take much to put this right. In the recent Comprehensive Spending Review the Chancellor found an extra £12.8bn a year for education by 2005. The cost of a 10 per cent increase in primary teachers would only be £600m a year. What could be more important? Neither would it be difficult to find the teachers. There is no problem in getting people to train as primary teachers; the trouble is in holding on to them.

Why then has the Government not done what seems obvious? In part, it is because it has confused two aspects of being a teacher which are separable. Through lack of adequate back-up teachers have found themselves, among other things, clearing up, photocopying, displaying the children's work on walls, and ordering equipment and materials. Extra help in the form of teaching assistants here is wholly desirable and will enable more teachers to get a life. But this is not the same as teaching. That is the province of trained teachers.

Confusion may be one explanation, but I suspect the problem runs deeper. The Prime Minister's Office, the Treasury and the Department for Education and Skills seem to be in fierce competition over the education agenda. Within each, policy wonks have been vying to outdo each other in radicalism, modernity and cost savings. However, few of these gurus have their roots in state education or any appreciation of what school is like for the ordinary pupil or the ordinary teacher.

There are many other examples of consequent over-elaboration. Success in improving performance in literacy and numeracy has been turned into failure by the paraphernalia of targets. The A-level debacle stems from allowing the admirable intention of opportunity to study more subjects to become mired in assessment overload. The mess that is higher education funding flows from the government's rejection of the careful proposals of the Dearing Review for what it believed to be a cleverer solution.

Charles Clarke has a great opportunity. He is, by reputation and appearance, a big man. He should seize control of the education agenda for his Department. To do so he will have to cut through the miasma of wonkish ideas that will seek to envelop him. Evidence and logic would, however, lead him to solutions that are often simple and direct – and all the better for that.

The writer is the Sydney Jones Professor of Education and Director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at the University of Liverpool

education@independent.co.uk