A year ago, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats formed the country’s first peace-time coalition government for nearly 80 years. They immediately warned of spending cuts and belt-tightening, but also of a new era of education that would take schools back to the future and release teachers to teach. In the latest of our series marking the coalition’s first anniversary, Mark Tallentire considers how the coalition has lived up to its promise of reform.

TENS of thousands of students took to the streets of London, at least ten people were hospitalised, crowds laid siege to Conservative Party HQ and a Rolls Royce carrying Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall was attacked en route to the Royal Variety Performance.

It wasn’t meant to be this way.

Michael Gove, the former journalist and author given control of Tory education policy as early as 2007, was supposed to take schools back to the future: reintroducing discipline to classrooms, refocusing on the three Rs and releasing teachers to teach.

It was supposed to be oldfashioned conservatism everyone could agree with.

But the night of Friday, December 9, last year, showed just how divisive the Coalition’s education policies had become.

Mr Gove had first come under pressure in July, after scrapping Labour’s £55bn Building Schools for the Future (BSF) scheme, including about 70 projects across the North-East.

In October, Mr Gove scrapped the Education Maintenace Allowance (EMA), under which poor teenagers get up to £30 a week to help them go to sixth form; although he later introduced a cut-price replacement, known as “16-19 bursaries”.

But no reform, perhaps across the entire Coalition agenda, produced outrage comparable to that of raising tuition fees to £9,000 a year.

There were numerous protests across the North, including in Durham, Middlesbrough, Sunderland and Newcastle.

Sam Roseveare, the usually understated Durham Students’ Union president, warned: “If you’re going to make promises, people expect you to keep them.”

Fortunately for Mr Gove, much of the fury was targeted at Liberal Democrat MPs and ministers.

Six months on, despite teaching unions threatening strikes over pension changes and one, the NASUWT, having passed a motion of no confidence in the Government’s schools agenda, he seems more secure.

Anger now seems to have switched to the universities themselves. In this region, Durham and Newcastle want to charge £9,000 a year, Teesside, Northumbria and York St John £8,500 and Sunderland up to £8,500.

However, amid all the mudslinging, what about the young people themselves?

The Northern Echo visited two sixth form classes to meet some – and the results were striking.

First, teenagers feel under huge pressure to get into a university this year: before the higher fees come into force in September 2012.

But with university funding also facing the squeeze, many would-be undergraduates seem set for sorrow come Alevel results day.

Second, there appears to be a clearer two-tier university set-up emerging: the elite taking wealthy, able students from across the country and globe; and the others accepting local, poorer, live-at-home scholars.

At Durham City’s Durham Johnston School, a comprehensive, but one of the region’s best, students were determined to go to university, whatever the cost. In most cases, they will rely on financial support from their parents.

The youngsters had sympathy for their poorer contemporaries: “Tuition fees will make it hard for lower-class people who can’t afford it,”

Jack Carr, 17, said.

But money remains only one consideration: “The idea of spending three years of my life doing something I enjoy is very exciting,” Rachel Bryan, who hopes to study English literature at Cambridge, enthused.

Ten miles north, at Lord Lawson of Beamish School, in Birtley, it’s a different picture.

There, students still want to gain degrees; but almost all have their hopes set on studying at a local university and travelling from home to save costs.

Liam Kendal, who is likely to be among the first university intake to face fees of up to £9,000, said: “The Government has no experience of what goes on in the North. There’s a massive North-South divide.”

Charlotte Hollins, 18, added: “They’re thinking about themselves as opposed to looking at other people’s way of life. They’re not taking the whole country into account.”

Sean Seddon, who gets £10 per week EMA, said: “There should be no tuition fees. I believe in education for education’s sake, not just as a trajectory for employment.

Everyone benefits from an educated society.”

Not everyone feels the same.

Steven Beattie, who hopes to study web design at Northumbria University travelling from home in Birtley, said: “We had a Labour government that was out of control financially. I didn’t like what they were doing.”

Student numbers could be cut, the 17-year-old said, adding: “The number of people getting a degree has devalued it, to an extent.”

However, a recent report claimed some university towns could see student populations halve by 2020, as soaring fees force more youngsters to live at home.

Newcastle would be hardest hit, with student numbers dropping 52 per cent to just over 14,500, the research by insurance firm LV suggested.

But in Durham, where the university is regularly rated among the world’s best, numbers would fall by only 22 per cent, the study predicted.

On the evidence of these two schools, it could be right.

Jessica Baty, from Meadowfield, hopes to study accountancy at Newcastle under a scheme that would see Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) pay some of her fees.

The Government axed the quango her father worked for, meaning her parents, who were previously able to support her older brother through university, won’t be able to give her the same level of backing.

“The Government’s doing this for the right reasons, but it’s affecting young people and putting them off trying to get to university,” she said.

“There will be some people who don’t get as good a job because they can’t afford to go to university. It will put some young people off going.

“It’s wrong to put fees up so much. It’s a really big jump.”

Make do and mend after building programme axed

LABOUR’S £55bn Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme was bedevilled by massive overspends, frustrating delays, botched construction projects and needless bureaucracy, Michael Gove claimed.

Cancellations were “unavoidable”, the Conservative Education Secretary said, as he announced the scrapping of the scheme in Parliament last July.

Plans to rebuild or upgrade nearly 80 secondary schools across the North-East lost funding, causing much hurt for parents, pupils and teachers.

Ed Balls, then Labour’s education spokesman, called it “shameful”.

So, ten months on, what has become of the schools and communities affected?

Well, it’s a mixed picture.

Often, supporters and campaigners have pressed on, albeit with less cash.

In Darlington, Hurworth School, which missed out when the town’s £41m BSF fund disappeared, has gained academy status, bringing in an extra £500,000-a-year for new classrooms, refurbishment and recruitment.

Longfield School is bidding for academy status, with a view to then sponsoring the re-branded Branksome.

In County Durham, Spennymoor and Tudhoe Grange schools will still be merged, with the new Spennymoor Learning Community Trust school set to open in September next year. There will not be an entirely new school; rather some buildings will be maintained, some renovated and others expanded.

In Hartlepool, work has begun on a £12.4m scheme to transform Dyke House Sports and Technology College, one of a handful in the region that was able to keep its funding.

However, the picture is not entirely rosy and schemes which would have brought real improvements have been lost.

Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council was planning £90m-worth of BSF projects.

However, the planned closure of St Peter’s Catholic College of Maths and Computing, in South Bank, and the linked £2.7m expansion of Sacred Heart RC School, in Redcar, had to be reversed.

In Consett, Durham County Council, whose BSF programme topped £300m, received only £20.7m of the £32m previously promised for a new-build academy and then Durham University withdrew as lead sponsor; although the council is pressing ahead, with New College Durham as its new partner.

Leaders at Framwellgate School Durham were planning a £60m world-class science village. Its fate remains unclear.

And, as always, the local picture is more complex than it may seem from Whitehall.

Parents are fighting plans to merge Eston Park School and Gillbrook College, on Teesside, into a single-site academy.

Durham City will not get an academy brought about by the closure of Belmont and Gilesgate; but few parents or governors at either of the schools supported the plans in the first place.

In February, the High Court ruled Mr Gove had scrapped 58 projects in six council areas unlawfully; and ordered him to reconsider.

But even the most optimistic are not looking for BSF’s resurrection.

In the North, with funding dried up, it’s more a case of make do and mend.

Parents get free hand to take control

MICHAEL GOVE’S education revolution of allowing parents and teachers to set up “free schools” has often been criticised for attracting little interest outside of the wealthy South-East.

Instead of closing the achievement gap between rich and poor areas by challenging the tired statusquo, it will widen it; as pushy London parents demand ever better schools for their young ones, opponents say.

By last summer, of 725 applications received by the Department for Education, only 20 had come from the North-East.

However, some parents have embraced the idea.

The region’s first free school – which can be set up by parents, teachers, charities or voluntary groups, are free from council control and directly funded by the Government – is likely to be near Stockton.

Members of Barwick’s Own Second Secondary School (BO2SS) hope to open a 600-place school in Ingleby Barwick in September 2013.

Louise Stephens, from BO2SS, said: “I think the free schools policy answers parental demand for schools, which is positive.

The number of applications across the country proves there is demand.

“We pay the taxes that pay for the schools – why shouldn’t we have a say in where they are and how they are run?”

Mr Gove met BO2SS leaders in Stockton in February, encouraging them to move on with the next stage in the application process.

They have now submitted a detailed business plan, expect to hold a consultation later this month and hope to get a final decision from the Government next month.

Meanwhile, parents hope to set up County Durham’s first free school in Durham City, for families in Bowburn and nearby villages.

Talks have been held with education bosses, Whitehall chiefs and politicians, and a public meeting in March attracted about 70 people.

Often, it seems, campaigners seeking an improved education offer in their area are using the free schools initiative to achieve their pre-existing goal.

The Durham effort grew out of parental anger at their struggles to get their children into top-performing Durham Johnston School, following its £23m rebuild under Building Schools for the Future.

Ingleby parents have wanted a second school in their community for many years; saying, with the existing All Saints’ School hugely over-subscribed, it would stop youngsters having to travel to Eaglescliffe or Yarm for classes.

The prospect of parents satisfying a long-standing yearning for better schooling for their children may not displease Mr Gove too greatly.

But the impact or otherwise of his education revolution could only be fairly judged several years hence: on how many good intentions have produced new schools on the ground and how they are performing.