Tag: 2012

Below is the text of the speech made by Michael Gove, the then Secretary of State for Education, on 23 February 2012.

When I was a news editor at The Times I recognised that each branch of journalism had its own favourite phrases: cliches to some, comforting and reassuring prose landmarks to others.

Footballers would always have “intelligent” (or “cultured”) left feet. Restaurant reviewers would sooner or later find a pudding – but never any other course – “toothsome”. No political correspondent ever quotes a “junior” backbencher, ever refers to the 1922 Committee without reminding us that it is “influential”; or ever fails to remind readers, uncertain about which issue decides elections, that “It’s the economy, stupid”.

For TV reviewers the one genuinely indispensable favourite phrase is the praise offered to those rare television programmes which are “worth the licence fee alone”.

Considering that a boxed-set of Borgen sets you back just thirty pounds and the licence fee is four times that amount, it’s a rare programme which actually deserves that praise.

But this month we’ve been privileged to see one series which undeniably does.

The BBC’s three documentaries – Protecting Our Children – recently screened on BBC2 are in the very highest traditions of public service broadcasting.

They show, unsparingly, and without fuss, the reality of life for social workers and their clients in Bristol. Thought-provoking, unsentimental and humane, they are gripping yet uncomfortable viewing.

They also remind us that public service broadcasting is at its best when it reminds us of what those in public service are doing for all of us.

And no-one watching this series can be anything other than impressed with the calmness, patience, compassion, good judgement, professionalism and nobility of those in social work.

By giving an honest account of the fantastic job social workers do, the BBC is helping to bring a little balance to the media conversation about social work. A conversation which has been dominated for far too long by caricature, finger-pointing, recrimination and misjudgement.

The reality of Social Work

We ask social workers to operate in conditions most of us know nothing about; to engage with people in desperate need; to make extremely finely balanced ethical and practical judgements; to retain the trust of adults while thinking always of the best interests of children; to navigate bureaucracy and cope with heavy workloads. All the while knowing that if a mistake does occur then their career, indeed their professional status, may be ruined for ever.

So I am very glad that, today, Andrew Christie – one of the finest social workers in the country – has given me the opportunity to place on the record my gratitude to his profession and my admiration for the vital and under-appreciated work social workers do.

I’d like to think, and I’m sure I’ll be told if I’m wrong, that we are now moving towards a more mature relationship between social workers and central Government.

Building on foundations laid by my predecessor, Ed Balls, we now have a new College of Social Work, we have a prestigious new route into the profession for career-changers who’ve been successful in other fields, we’ve had superb work by Moira Gibb on how to improve support and training for the profession and ground-breaking reports from Professor Eileen Munro, which pave the way for progress to a more thoughtful development of improved practice.

Shortly we’ll be publishing the job specification for the role of Chief Social Worker – a new role which, like the Chief Medical Officer, will help bring balance and authority to the national debate on the profession does its job.

And we remain committed to publishing serious case reviews to encourage an informed debate when something goes wrong – as it inevitably will. A debate which will demonstrate that, if there is fault, it will very often reside not with social workers but with others – whether police, lawyers or whoever – and that far more important than any allocation of responsibility is a commitment to learn from the past so we can all do better in the future.

And it’s about learning from the past that I want to talk today.

Specifically, learning from the experience of those who have tried over the years to improve our child protection and adoption systems.

The relationship between care and disadvantage
One of those I have learnt most from is Martin Narey – Chief Executive of Barnardo’s for five years – a dedicated professional with a very special combination of moral courage and intellectual rigour.

Martin has come under fire for making one argument in particular.

He has been frank in acknowledging that earlier in his career he believed having children in care was a sign of failure. And believed that being in care condemned children, more often than not, to failure in the future.

But he has explained that, over time, he came to realise that the poor outcomes faced by looked after children were not a consequence of them being in care – they were a consequence of what had happened to them before they were taken into care.

It was the abuse or neglect they may have witnessed or endured in their earliest years which will have blighted their future. Neglect will have arrested their cognitive development; abuse will have made it more difficult for them to form secure relationships; the fatal mix of the two will have harmed them emotionally, intellectually, socially and personally.

Children and young people do not encounter disadvantage because they have been in care. They are in care because they have had to be rescued from disadvantage.

Martin also came to realise something else. Taking a child into care is not a failure on the part of social workers – but leaving children at risk of neglect or abuse is something none of us should wish to encourage.

Understandably, social workers do everything they can to keep families together. And, understandably, they fear being branded child-snatchers, do-gooders or anti-family if they initiate care proceedings.

But it is far better if social workers follow their instincts to intervene and rescue rather than acquiesce in abusive or neglectful parenting in the hope things will improve.

Because we know just how much damage is done to a child every day it spends in a home where there is no security, safety and certainty of affection.

Better to take children into care than allow them to be abused
So let me underline this. We in Government will back social workers who take children into care. We believe Martin Narey’s diagnosis of the problem is correct – and we know there are far too many children spending too long in homes where they are not receiving the care they need.

We do not regard more children being taken into care as a problem with social work which the profession must address. It is a problem with parenting, which our whole society must address.

My overriding approach to Government is to leave well alone when things are going well: to leave good schools, good parents, good companies to get on with it when they are doing a proper job. But when things go wrong – when cartels frustrate consumer choice, when schools fail their students and, most of all, when adults are neglecting, or abusing, children – then we should intervene, early and energetically, to put things right.

There is strong evidence that, in recent years, there has been too much reluctance to remove a child from circumstances of consistent and outright abuse and neglect – or to return them to those circumstances later.

Harriet Ward’s research into at-risk infants last year provided some horrifying examples of children left unprotected in dangerous and damaging environments:

– a baby whose parents so persistently forgot to feed her that she ceased to cry;

– a two-year-old left to forage in the waste bin for food;

– a three-year-old who could accurately demonstrate how heroin is prepared.

All these children remained with their birth parents for many months without being taken into care. Who knows how much damage they suffered, and how many children like them all over the country are suffering still?

This cannot be allowed to continue. The welfare of a neglected or abused child is more important than the rights of their parents, more important than the schedules of the courts, more important than ticking boxes on forms and much more important than the old saw that blood is thicker than water.

It is emphatically not the case that care is worse than a neglectful or abusive home. On the contrary, the research is undeniable: care is not perfect but, for some children, it can make life an awful lot happier. And, for some of the most vulnerable children, the sooner they are taken into care, the better.

A study by DEMOS in 2010, commissioned by Barnardo’s, showed conclusively that care improves the lives of many vulnerable children and young people. But those children whose entry to care is delayed by indecision or drift, risk longer exposure to damage and neglect; increased emotional and behavioural problems; and more placement disruption and instability.

Nor should we assume that returning a looked after child to their family is necessarily in that child’s best interests. A recent University of York study found that maltreated children who remained in care did better than those who were sent home to their families.

Research by Professor Elaine Farmer looking at children taken into care and then returned to their parents found that, two years after the children had been sent home, 59 per cent of them had been abused or neglected again.

We cannot let children down in this way.

I want social workers to feel confident that they can challenge parents in homes where there is alcohol or drug dependency, where there is no proper interaction between adults and children, where there is domestic violence, where boundaries between adult behaviour and children’s conduct are not properly policed.

And I want social workers to feel empowered to use robust measures with those parents who won’t shape up. Including, when an adult is not providing the home a child needs, making sure that child is removed to a place of greater safety.

Adoption and other permanent solutions

But where should that place be?

Well the most important thing is to find adults equipped to care, in circumstances that provide stability.

Sometimes that will mean fostering – and if there are one group of people who rival social workers in their unselfish commitment to helping our most vulnerable young people then they are foster carers…

But more and more often it should – must – mean adoption.

Because adoption provides what abused and neglected children need most – stability, certainty, security, love.

Of course I’m parti pris.

I was adopted at the age of just four months – given the stability, security and love which allowed me to enjoy limitless opportunities.

My experience of adoption has shown me how – whatever your start in life – being brought up by adults who love you, who are now your parents, is transformative.

Adoption is – in every sense of the word – for good. And the readiness of adults to make such a firm and unselfish commitment for a child they cannot know is, to my mind, an inspirational example of humanity at its best.

Adoption does not finish at the child’s 16th or 18th birthday, any more than biological parenthood does.

My adoptive parents are just as much my parents now that I’m a grown-up with my own children, as when I was a child myself.

And of all the possible permanent solutions, adoptions are the most likely to last. A study in 2010 by the University of York, called “Belonging and Permanence”, found that just 11 per cent of adoptions were disrupted after 3 or more years – compared to 28 per cent of fostering placements. When a child is adopted quickly, before their first birthday, the breakdown figure is only about 2 or 3 per cent.

Adoption gives a vulnerable child a home, and a family, for life.

Adoption rates have fallen

That is why it troubles me – more, angers me – that so few children today are benefiting from that generosity and humanity.

The decline in the number of children being adopted means a cruel rationing of human love for those most in need.

Adoptions have fallen by 17 per cent over the last decade.

The number of children adopted in England last year was the lowest since 2001. Only 3,050 children found new homes by adoption last year, just 2 per cent of them under the age of one.

These figures are even more remarkable when the number of children finding permanent routes out of care has actually increased. And we need to be careful that alternative solutions like special guardianship or residence orders are not used as a substitute for adoption when it would be the best option for a particular child.

As I pointed out earlier, the fact that more children are now being taken into care is not a problem we should lay at the door of social workers – but it is a problem if children in care are not found a proper home quickly.

I was lucky enough to be with my adoptive mother within four months of my birth. But many of those children available for adoption today have complex and challenging needs – and the average time between a child entering the care system and being adopted is now over two-and-a-half years.

What’s more, this average hides huge variations across different regions. Last year, five local authorities placed every single child within 12 months of their adoption decision.

But another four local authorities placed fewer than half its children in need of adoption over the same timescale.

We need a system that works for all children, regardless of where they live. A system which is quick, effective and robust.

Making sure the whole system works and improves for children
When a child can’t stay with their birth family, then the longer they wait for a permanent adoptive place, the more damage they will suffer – and the harder it will be to form a bond with a new family.

That is why it is so important to tackle delay throughout the system. We need to speed up care decisions, and work with local authorities to ensure they speed up their processes too.

In October last year we published new performance tables and we’re currently working hard to make this data more valuable for local authorities in identifying best practice and areas of weakness.

As we are here in the Isaac Newton Centre, I must pay tribute to the work that Andrew Christie, as Executive Director of Children’s Services for the three boroughs of Hammersmith & Fulham, Westminster and Kensington & Chelsea, has been doing with us to work out how local authorities can speed up decisions for the child at every stage.

As we develop our proposals further, I look forward to seeing similar leadership from every Director of Children’s Services, every Lead Member for Children, and every Family Court Judge.

Finding and assessing adoptive parents

Happily, there are now clear signs that more children are moving through local authority and court processes and being placed for adoption.

And I am sure that the reforms which will follow David Norgrove’s report into the Family Justice System will encourage that trend.

But as a consequence, we have an immediate and pressing challenge. We need radically to increase the supply of adoptive parents who are ready to give these children the love and stability they need.

I entirely reject the argument that there are too few people willing to adopt. I think there could be a vast supply: parents with their own children; couples – heterosexual and homosexual – unable to have children of their own; single individuals, both men or women.

But the barrier which looms between these prospective parents and their potential children is a process of recruitment and assessment which turns enthusiasm into exhaustion and optimism into despair.

Too many examples of the assessment process going wrong
We have been overwhelmed by stories from adopters and prospective adopters, telling us that the current system actively drives them away.

Let me mention a few examples:

Like the woman who made her first inquiry about adoption three and a half years ago. After meeting a social worker in her home and spending four days on a preparation course, she applied to adopt. It was another seven months before the assessment process even began – a process which took 15 months to complete. She was eventually approved to adopt, but that was well over a year ago – and she is still waiting to be matched with a child.

Or the white couple in London who knew that there were lots of black children in care and that those children have to wait 50% longer on average to be adopted. The assessment process dragged on for months, their files were lost, then they were told that the idea of their adopting a black child could not be countenanced.

Or the couple who had already adopted a daughter from abroad, and who wanted to add another child to their family. Eighteen months after their first enquiry, they are only now attending their first preparatory meetings. In the interim, hearing nothing, they chased up repeatedly only to discover that their address had been lost, and no effort made to find it. Despite repeated enquiries, they have been told nothing about how the assessment is decided, nor what particular qualities are sought in prospective adopters. In their own words, they feel that the “assessment of prospective adopters is based on the subjective opinion of a small group of people and…success is wholly dependent upon conformity to whichever set of political or social values happen to be flavour of the month”.

Or the couple wanting to adopt a child whom they already knew and loved, but who were turned down because one of them had not yet given up smoking for a long enough period.

Or the remarkable adopters of five disabled children who, just a few months ago, when they were ready to adopt a sixth, were turned away by nine local authorities because their previous assessments were out of date. When they persuaded the tenth local authority to give them a fast track re-assessment, they were told that a further adoption could not take place until they bought a new electric kettle with a shorter lead.

I could go on.

But I can’t continue without asking one fundamental question.

When so many children are in such desperate need of a loving home, and are waiting for months and years to find one, how can we treat would-be adopters this way?

The flaws in the assessment system

The current system of assessment has become bloated. Assessments regularly run to over 100 pages. They include huge areas of repetition and an astonishing amount of trivial detail, which seems to bear dubious relevance to adults’ capacity to be loving parents.

Highly trained social workers spend hours asking questions like whether there is a non-slip mat in the shower, whether the prospective adopters have a trampoline in the garden and, if so, whether it has a safety net.

A three page pet assessment form has been extended by one voluntary organisation to include a six page dog assessment – nine pages of forms to manage the risk of an adopted child living with a pet.

The quantity of material gathered has been confused with the quality of analysis – and there is no direct correlation between the two.

Understandably afraid of something going wrong, successive governments have tried to eliminate risk by maximizing form-filling.

But while they were right that risk has to be managed – adoption is too profound a step for us not to take care – we cannot eradicate risk with excessive bureaucracy. We must instead take steps to manage it, proportionately and sensibly.

I would like to take this opportunity to state that if something does go wrong (which we all know is bound to happen at some point) I have no intention of condemning social workers for decisions and recommendations which were sensible and sensitive at the time.

No system can be perfect – and it would be utter nonsense to pretend otherwise.

The Action Plan on Adoption

But we can do much better. That’s why, next month, we will be bringing out an Action Plan on Adoption.

We know that more bureaucracy is not the way to secure better outcomes for vulnerable children. And we know that the current system is leaving many children waiting for years to be adopted, and many would-be adopters disheartened and discouraged.

We need a system which helps professionals to assess prospective adopters, with better analysis and less form-filling;

We need a procedure which can be completed at speed, and which will not drive so many would-be adopters away;

We need to slim down pre-adoption assessment, and beef up adoption support;

And we need performance indicators which can help local authorities to measure how they’re performing against each other and improve.

As Jonathan Pearce, Chief Executive of Adoption UK, has pointed out, “it is rare to find an agency that is failing across the board”.

Equally, even the best performers always have scope for improvement.

I know that demanding a process which can be completed more speedily will mean that I run the risk of being called cavalier.

But I don’t mind. What I believe would be cavalier would be to allow the continuation of an adoption process which is so slow, so inefficient, that we condemn thousands of children to a life without parents.

A group of sector experts (including the CVAA, ADCS and BAAF) is already working hard on redesigning the assessment process to achieve this radical ambition, and we look forward to working with them over the coming weeks and months.

Matching children with adoptive parents

Another area which will need particularly close scrutiny is how to meet the challenge of matching children with adoptive parents.

This can be the most vital stage of the whole process. But all too often, it fails.

Many children waiting for adoption never get adopted. Many parents cleared to adopt never get the chance. And even when a successful match is made, parents and children have still had to endure an agonizing wait because the process just takes too long.

However conscientious they may be, practitioners who wait too long for any particular child, holding out for a perfect parental match, are not acting in that child’s best interests.

And we must bear in mind that matching a child to parents cannot be simply an intellectual process. We need to be more flexible and encourage would-be adopters to be flexible. The child they might go on to love and cherish may not be the child they first imagined – and I welcome the experimental adoption parties which BAAF has recently introduced to give potential parents and children the chance to meet.

The task of finding the right adoptive family is all the more important for children with challenging needs. Most often, the children who wait the longest to be adopted are siblings (including about 75 groups of three or more), children with disabilities or children from ethnic minorities.

These children are the most difficult to place – and that’s why it’s all the more important to welcome with open arms prospective adopters who are ready and eager to give them a home.

The Consortium of Voluntary Adoption Agencies is already developing a proposal for a Social Impact Bond focused on finding adopters and providing adoption support for hard to place children.

Innovative initiatives like this could achieve real improvements for the most vulnerable children, and we look forward to seeing how these plans develop.

One particularly sensitive element of the matching process is, as you all know, matching by ethnicity. Which is much more complex than simply race.

I won’t deny that an ethnic match between adopters and child can be a bonus. But it is outrageous to deny a child the chance of adoption because of a misguided belief that race is more important than any other factor. And it is simply disgraceful that a black child is three times less likely to be adopted from care than a white child.

I heard, recently, of a foster carer whose local authority refused to let her adopt her foster child. The child was happy, and contented – she loved him, and he loved her. But she was white, and he was black. And the local authority insisted that he would have to be moved to black adoptive parents.

Eventually, when no black adopters could be found, common sense prevailed and the adoption went ahead. But only after the mother had endured a nightmare lasting two and half years – during which, as she said, “each morning I thought my son would be removed because another family had been found”.

This mother is by no means the only adopter told that she cannot adopt a child with a different skin colour to her own.

And although the new guidance I issued to local authorities last year explicitly addressed this issue, evidence suggests that too many have failed to change their practice.

If there is a loving family, ready and able to adopt a child, issues of ethnicity must not stand in the way.

I won’t say too much now, in advance of the action plan – but I can promise you that I will not look away when the futures of black children in care continue to be damaged.

Conclusion

Adoption transforms the lives of some of the most neglected children in our country. It is a generous act – and it can achieve incredible results.

I know this from the advice of experts, the statements of parents, the stories of children and from my own experience.

That’s why we are determined that adoption should happen more often and should happen more speedily.

By changing our attitude towards adoption, reducing the unnecessary bureaucracy of the assessment process and freeing up professionals to rely on their own judgement, I feel confident that we will be able to create a more efficient and effective adoption system.

I know that some supporters of adoption will have heard this before, and will be sceptical.

But I can assure you that I will not settle for a modest, temporary uplift in adoption numbers, nor a short-lived acceleration in the process. Nothing less than a significant and sustained improvement will do.

The most neglected, the most abused, the most damaged children in our care deserve nothing less.

Below is the text of the speech made by Michael Gove, the then Secretary of State for Education, at Haberdashers’ Aske’s Hatcham College, London on 4 January 2012.

Last month, a headline appeared in the Hornsey Journal – a headline that would have been funny had its subtext not been so dispiriting. Stamped across the top of the page in stark, Nimrod Bold lettering were the words: ‘Campaigners: Hands off our failing school.’

Just think about that for a moment…

Futures are being blighted. Horizons are being limited. Generations of children are being let down. And yet the response of those ‘campaigners’ to an attempt to rescue the situation is ‘hands off.’

‘Hands off’ the unacceptable waste of talent.

‘Hands off’ the chronic, ingrained educational failure.

‘Hands off’ our failing school.

We’ve faced a good deal of opposition in the last year and a half. And I am certain 2012 will be no different. Because one thing I’ve come to realise during my time as Education Secretary is that the opposition we face is of a very particular kind…

It’s ironic, if you think about it. The popular critique of our reform programme has most often been of its underpinning motives. The talk was of an ‘ideologically-driven Academies programme’ and ‘ideologically-motivated school reforms.’ We’re supposed to be the ideologues. And yet…

And yet the truth is rather different. The Academies programme is not about ideology. It’s an evidence-based, practical solution built on by successive governments – both Labour and Conservative. The new ideologues are the enemies of reform, the ones who put doctrine ahead of pupils’ interests. Every step of the way, they have sought to discredit our policies, calling them divisive, destructive, ineffective, unpopular, unworkable – even ‘a crime against humanity.’

But the facts on the ground tell a very different story.

They said the reforms were untested…

A common attack is that our reforms – those that focus on school autonomy in particular – are experimental, untested and untried.

But the seeds of our reforms go back decades. The first City Technology Colleges were set up in 1988 – and indeed we are standing in one of the very first. These all-ability comprehensives enjoyed much more autonomy than other schools, and headteachers exercised their new-found freedom to extraordinary effect. Despite being overwhelmingly located in poorer areas, the CTCs achieved – and continue to achieve – great results: the proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals in CTCs who earned five or more good GCSEs at grades A* to C is more than twice as high in CTCs as it is for all maintained mainstream schools.

Some of the autonomy enjoyed by schools like the CTCs, and indeed grant-maintained schools, was eroded after 1997. But the best minds in the last Government knew that was a mistake. And when they were given the chance to shape policy we saw autonomy return and school leaders back in charge. Andrew Adonis knew it was headteachers, not councillors, not ombudsmen, not advisers or consultants, who made schools succeed. So he cut through the red tape and – as well as establishing the London Challenge, Black Country Challenge and Manchester Challenge – created the Academies programme.

In his memoirs, Tony Blair describes why academies proved so effective:

“An academy belongs not to some remote bureaucracy, not to the rulers of government, local or national, but to itself, for itself. The school is in charge of its own destiny. This gives it pride and purpose. And most of all, freed from the extraordinarily debilitating and often, in the worst sense, politically correct interference from state or municipality, academies have just one thing in mind, something shaped not by political prejudice but by common sense: what will make the school excellent”.

Labour’s Academies programme proved genuinely transformative and provided a solid basis for our reforms. But we had more than just the evidence of history to lean on. The principle of autonomy-driven improvement is solidly backed by rigorous international evidence. The best academic studies clearly demonstrate the effect of empowering the frontline. Trust professionals and they will exceed your expectations.

Research from the OECD and others has shown that more autonomy for individual schools helps raise standards. In its most recent international survey of education, the OECD found that ‘in countries where schools have greater autonomy over what is taught and how students are assessed, students tend to perform better.’ Two of the most successful countries in PISA international education league tables – Hong Kong and Singapore – are amongst those with the highest levels of school competition. And from autonomous schools in Alberta, to Sweden’s Free Schools, to the Charter Schools of New York and Chicago, freedom is proving an unstoppable driver of excellence.

Last November, Eric Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann – of the universities of Stanford and Munich respectively – submitted a report to the European Commission under the auspices of the European Expert Network on Economics of Education . While the primary focus was on the relationship between educational attainment and economic growth, Hanushek and Woessmann’s research also highlighted the critical role of autonomy as a driver of high educational standards.

They found that:

Across countries, students tend to perform better in schools that have autonomy in personnel and day-to-day decisions, in particular when there is accountability.

They say that:

Critics of choice-based policies often argue that a greater reliance on choice and private competition can lead to greater segregation of students. On the other hand, in particular the additional choice created by public funding for privately operated schools may particularly benefit disadvantaged students whose choices are otherwise most constrained, and thus boost equity in the school system. In fact, the cross-country patterns suggest that a larger share of privately operated schools is not only related to a higher performance level, but also to a substantially lower dependence of student achievement on socioeconomic status – as long as all schools are publicly financed…In such a setting, allowing choice among schools can even lead to reduced segregation because access to good schools is no longer tied to being able to afford to live in an expensive neighbourhood.

So we’ve been working hard to increase autonomy for all our schools. Part of this has been about reducing central and local government prescription for all schools to give heads and teachers the space to focus on what really matters.

– The hundreds of pages of FMSIS forms: gone.

– The mammoth Ofsted Self-Evaluation Form: gone.

– The fortnightly departmental emails: gone.

– The Performance Management guidance: slashed by three quarters.

– The capability procedures: radically simplified.

– The Ofsted framework: slimmed down and focused.

– The behaviour and bullying guidance: cut from 600 pages to just 50.

– There’s more to come. In total, departmental guidance will be more than halved.

But beyond these changes – which we’ve implemented for the benefit of all schools – we’ve gone further: every school now has the opportunity to take complete control of its budget, curriculum and staffing by applying to be an academy.

They said schools wouldn’t be interested in becoming academies…
Now the critics said that schools wouldn’t be interested. They told us that there would be fierce opposition from teachers, heads and parents. That we wouldn’t see the kind of numbers we were anticipating.

Well…

As of today, there are 1529 academies open in England. 1194 are converters and 335 are sponsored.

45 per cent of all maintained secondary schools are either open or in the pipeline to become academies.

There are 37 local authority areas where over half of secondary schools are already academies, and 64 LAs where more than half of secondaries are either open academies or in the process of becoming academies. Over 90 per cent in North East Lincolnshire; over 88 per cent in Bromley; over 82 per cent in Swindon; over 80 per cent in Thurrock.

Three in five outstanding secondaries – and nearly one in 10 outstanding primaries – has applied to convert to an academy.

Over 1,250,000 pupils now attend academies. This means around one in seven pupils in state schools now attends an academy – one in three pupils in state secondaries.

In an average week, the Department for Education processes 20 applications from schools to convert to academy status, brokers another five schools to become sponsored academies.

One can hardly say there’s been a lack of interest…

The last Government saw academies as a secondary-only programme. One of the first things we did was extend academy freedoms to primaries. This is a vitally important part of our reforms.

If pupils leave primary school without the basics – if they fail to get a Level 4 at KS2 – then they start secondary school at an extreme disadvantage. Pupils can’t read to learn if they haven’t learned to read. They can’t begin to deal with more advanced mathematical concepts – or physics, or chemistry, or any number of other subjects – if they haven’t grasped the fundamentals of numeracy. And however good a secondary school is, there’s a limit to the extent to which they can pick up the pieces.

There are more than 1000 primaries where fewer than 40 per cent of pupils reach Level 4 in reading, writing and mathematics. These schools are leaving children to face a life of drastically narrowed choices in this world.

Insisting that schools educate their pupils to Level 4 standard isn’t that big an ask. Level 4 is just the basics. To achieve a Level 4 in reading pupils need to be able to interpret and understand the meaning behind a simple story. And in maths, all that is required is to be able to understand simple fractions and add, subtract, multiply and divide without the help of a calculator. It’s unacceptable that so many children are being let down.

So we must act urgently to tackle underperformance in primary schools. Part of the strategy is encouraging more primary academies.

More than 700 maintained primary schools are either open or in the pipeline to become academies. These range from small rural primaries – like Kings Caple in Herefordshire with 32 pupils – to large urban primaries like 843-pupil Durand.

There are 16 local authorities, such as Darlington and Cornwall, where more than 10 per cent of primary schools have opened or are in the pipeline to become academies.

We’re encouraged by the enthusiasm primary schools have shown so far. In the most recent months, there have even been more primary applications than secondary. But there’s more to be done.

We have identified more than two hundred primaries with the worst records and we have identified ten local authorities with unacceptable high numbers of under-performing primaries. We are working now to transform them into academies.

Most local authorities are being cooperative and constructive. They recognise the benefits academies bring.

Some, however, are being obstructive. They are putting the ideology of central control ahead of the interests of children. They are more concerned with protecting old ways of working than helping the most disadvantaged children succeed in the future. Anyone who cares about social justice must want us to defeat these ideologues and liberate the next generation from a history of failure.

They said academies would hurt other schools…
And becoming an academy is a liberation. It gives heads real freedom to make a difference. Longer school days; better paid teachers; remedial classes; more personalised learning; improved discipline; innovative curricula – these are just a few of the things that academy heads are doing to give the children in their care the best possible education.

Even more impressive than what individual academies are doing by themselves is what they’re achieving through cooperation. And this is a critical point. Because the critics warned these new schools would be soulless, selfish islands of elitism. Fragmented. Isolated. Even aggressive. In fact, this cynical prediction couldn’t be further from the truth. Heads, teachers, governing bodies, showed more commitment, more devotion, and a greater sense of moral purpose than the critics gave them credit for. Academies are not islands unto themselves; instead, what we’ve witnessed is an outpouring of desire to help others.

The critics said we concentrated too much on extending autonomy to the powerful. Well, like Abraham Lincoln I don’t think you help the weak by punishing the strong. If you get it right, then by emancipating the strong you can support the weak. That is why I have been so delighted that so many outstanding schools have stepped forward to sponsor other schools. Like Sir Joseph Williamson’s Mathematical School, Altrincham Girls’ and Tollbar Academy in Grimsby. Already, 18 converter academies are sponsoring another academy.

Schools are continually finding new ways to work together and support each other. There are 403 converter academies in approximately 138 chains. These chains range from multi-academy trusts with shared governance and leadership to looser collaborative partnerships.

Like Kemnal Technology College – an ‘outstanding’ school in Kent – which became an academy in September 2010. It formed the Kemnal Academies Trust, a multi-academy trust that currently includes eight secondary schools and three primary schools, from Bromley, Bexley, Kent, Essex and West Sussex, with another school from Hampshire (Havant Academy) joining this month [January 2012]. A further five schools are expected to join by April. The academies in the Trust work collaboratively, sharing training and development of staff, working together on curriculum design, and using shared administrative and financial management services. And the schools are seeing the benefits, with results rising and vast improvements being made. Two of the schools in the Trust, Debden Park and Welling, were amongst the most improved in the country last year.

And chains offer the answer to many small primary schools thinking about how best to benefit from academy status. Take the 11 rural Devon primary schools who came together in November as the Primary Academies Trust. Church schools and community schools joining to share expertise and resources to serve the villages of north Devon with the inspiring leadership of two executive principals.

It’s clear that freedom need not be the enemy of cooperation.

They said academies wouldn’t really raise standards…
The critics also said academies wouldn’t deliver the promised academic improvements. They said our promises of rising standards were overblown, that effects would be, at best, negligible (if not – as some claimed – negative). Yet again, the facts on the ground tell a different story. In the 166 sponsored academies with results in both 2010 and 2011, the percentage point increase in pupils achieving five plus A*-C including English and maths was double that of maintained schools. Some chains are doing particularly well:

ARK results show an average 11 percentage point increase across their academy network.

The Harris Federation is recording an average improvement of 13 percentage points across its family of academies. Eight out of their 13 academies are outstanding.

ULT report a 7.1 percentage point improvement across their 17 academies – with six academies showing improvements of more than 10 percentage points.

The percentage of students at ULT’s Barnsley Academy achieving five or more A*-C grades including English and maths almost trebled in 2011. Fifty-one per cent achieved these results compared to 19 per cent in 2010. These are the academy’s best ever results and are a dramatic increase from the six per cent of students achieving these results in 2006 – the year before the academy opened.

These are not isolated cases. The Academies programme as a whole is raising standards. Recently academics at the London School of Economics published a landmark assessment of the scheme so far.

There we see three key findings. First, that ‘academy conversion generates… a significant improvement in pupil performance.’ Second, that – contrary to what the critics claimed was happening – this improvement is not the result of academies scooping up middle-class pupils from nearby schools. While it’s true that, increasingly, more middle-class parents want to send their children to the local academy, this phenomenon is a consequence of the school’s success, not the cause. And thirdly, beyond raising standards for their own pupils, academies also tend to raise pupil performance in neighbouring schools. Success is contagious.

They said the Academies programme would put SEN pupils at risk…
The critics also claimed academies would neglect their duty to some of those who need our attention most: pupils with special educational needs. They said academies would use their freedom to shirk their responsibilities.

But they were wrong. Twenty-three per cent of pupils in secondary academies have non-statemented special needs compared to 19 per cent for all secondary schools. And the percentage of pupils with statements in secondary academies is in line with the national average.

They said academies would neglect the disadvantaged…
Another group that critics claimed would be left behind by academies is disadvantaged pupils. They said autonomous schools would cream-skim the least challenging pupils and leave the rest to languish. But again, they were wrong.

The proportion of pupils on free school meals in academies – around 15 per cent – is comparable to the proportion for all state-funded schools. The crucial difference is that pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds tend to perform better in academies. The attainment rate for FSM pupils in academies improved by 8.3 percentage points between 2009 and 2010. This was over double the improvement rate recorded in comparable schools (4.0 percentage points) and also much higher than the national improvement rate for FSM pupils (4.6 percentage points). What’s more, the gap in attainment between FSM and non FSM pupils narrowed in academies between 2009 and 2010 (by 0.2 points). In comparable maintained schools, the attainment gap widened by 2.1 points over the same period.

They said we were creating Victorian-style exam factories…
When they can’t attack the popularity of the programme, and when they can’t attack the what’s being achieved, the critics move on to something more subtle: they attack the culture.

Some academies (so the argument runs) may get good results, but that’s only because they’re Gradgrindian exam factories. Creativity, child development, citizenship, well-being, and even fun are all being sacrificed to make way for merciless and unrelenting rote learning as part of an ideological push for retrograde Victorianism. It’s all about kings, dates, lunchtime detentions, and braid on blazers.

Well I’ve nothing against tradition. But the truth is that with more than 1500 academies, they embrace many educational traditions. Success comes from concentrating on the essentials.

Just last month, respected Harvard economist Roland Fryer published some very interesting research into the factors that drive pupil achievement. Together with his colleague Will Dobbie, Fryer identified certain startling correlations. He looked at the number of times teachers received feedback. The number of days pupils were tutored in small groups. The way data was used to drive instruction. The number of internal pupil assessments. What teachers expected of their pupils. The number of hours children actually spent at their desks. Fryer found that all these factors correlated with higher student scores:

Frequent teacher feedback, the use of data to guide instruction, high-dosage tutoring, increased instructional time, and high expectations – explains approximately 50 percent of the variation in school effectiveness.

These findings are fascinating in themselves. But there’s a particular nuance I want to highlight. Fryer and Dobbie introduced robust controls for three alternative theories of schooling: a model emphasising the provision of wrap-around services, a model focused on teacher selection and retention, and a ‘no excuses’ model of education. They concluded that, regardless of the particular education model of the school, the factors identified in their study – teacher development, data-driven instruction, a culture of achievement, and high academic expectations – produced similarly strong positive effects.

Why is this particularly important? Because it flies in the face of those critics who say that what we are advocating is a narrow, one-size-fits-all, Gradgrindian model. Critics who seek to set up false binary divides between rigour and creativity; between excellence and well-being; between an outstanding academic education and one which concentrates on character. Fryer’s work shows us that certain characteristics are related to high achievement with a variety of educational approaches. Expect excellence; offer intensive support; spend time in the classroom; use accountability intelligently; champion achievement… These are the principles that underpin great schools.

That’s why while academies come in different shapes and sizes, and while academy heads come from a variety of different educational traditions, and while the Academy programme is explicitly designed to let a thousand – or rather 1529 – flowers bloom, it’s nonetheless clear that the best academies share common characteristics. These are the characteristics clearly reflected in Fryer’s findings. These are the things we are advocating. And to say somehow this equates to demanding a return to the Victorian era is more than a lazy pastiche – it’s downright disingenuous.

I’ve spoken a good deal today about the facts on the ground. I’ve tried to show that the proof is in the proverbial pudding, and that the example set by the hundreds of existing academies is more than enough evidence to put the criticisms to bed.

But the sad truth is that, for some of these critics, the facts don’t matter much. And they’ll continue to view the spread of autonomy as an unwelcome onslaught. They’ll continue to talk about the Government ‘threatening’ schools with academy conversion.

Academy conversion is an opportunity. It’s only a threat to the complacent, to those who have been complicit in failure. It’s certainly not a threat for the children concerned; for them, it’s a liberation.

I have been asked not to challenge the leadership of the lowest performing schools in Haringey. But for years hundreds of children have grown up effectively illiterate and innumerate. In one of the most disadvantaged parts of our capital city poor children have been deprived of the skills they need to succeed.

Defenders of the status quo say these schools shouldn’t be judged in this way because they have a different approach – they are creative or inclusive. But you can’t be creative if you can’t read properly and speak fluently – you can’t be included in the world of work if you aren’t numerate.

The same ideologues who are happy with failure – the enemies of promise – also say you can’t get the same results in the inner cities as the leafy suburbs so it’s wrong to stigmatise these schools.

Let’s be clear what these people mean. Let’s hold their prejudices up to the light. What are they saying?

If you’re poor, if you’re Turkish, if you’re Somali, then we don’t expect you to succeed. You will always be second class and it’s no surprise your schools are second class.

I utterly reject that attitude.

It’s the bigoted backward bankrupt ideology of a left wing establishment that perpetuates division and denies opportunity. And it’s an ideology that’s been proven wrong time and time again.

Look at what’s been achieved in Harlem’s Children’s Zone or in the KIPP schools in America. The poorest children going to the best colleges because their teachers expect the best of every child.

And most importantly look what’s happened here. In the Harris Academies. In ARK schools like Burlington Danes or King Solomon or Walworth Academy. In Mossbourne Academy and Manchester Academy. Children from the poorest homes going to the best universities. Exam performances better than scores of schools in the leafiest suburbs. Ofsted ratings which are consistently outstanding.

So my message to those in Haringey and to others is: stop saying ‘hands off.’ Stop saying that the arrival of the expertise that can help your schools is a threat. They called Phil Harris a threat 11 years ago; he’s transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands. They said it was a threat when people from the City became involved in sponsoring schools – tell that to the children at King Solomon. The arguments being made in Haringey are the same ones that were made about Hackney Downs in 1995. Back then 11 per cent of children got 5 A* to C with English and maths. Now at Mossbourne 82 per cent in 2010 get 5 A* to C including English and maths, and ten students got offers to study at Cambridge this year.

And for those that say this approach is untested in primary schools you only have to look at what has happened right here at Haberdashers Aske Hatcham. In 2008 Monson Primary School was in notice to improve with falling rolls. Now 76 per cent of pupils are achieving Level 4 at Key Stage 2 and two more primaries have joined the federation.

But the teachers, parents and pupils of Hatcham and Mossbourne wouldn’t wish for a return to the past. We’ve heard a lot of arguments, a lot of excuses from those who don’t believe in giving children a better education. It’s time we called them what they are: ideologues.

It’s the same old ideologues pushing the same old ideology of failure and mediocrity. Who sought to cow anyone with a desire for change by accusing them of ‘talking down’ the achievement of pupils and teachers. The same old ideologues who strove mightily to make the world fit their theories – and damaged generations in the process.

What’s new is that the evidential basis of their policies, always thin, has now disintegrated altogether. Schools like Haberdashers’ Aske’s Hatcham, which we have the privilege of being in today, and hundreds like it across the country, are proof of what can be achieved – not just for some children, but for all children.

Change is coming. And to those who want to get in the way, I have just two words: hands off.

Below is the text of the speech made by Michael Gove, the then Secretary of State for Education, in Birmingham on 11 January 2012.

Introduction

As this is the SSAT’s first conference under its new name – The Schools Network – I thought it might be apposite to say a bit about networks and learning.

Life in the 21st century – and education in the 21st century – relies on us having systems that are flexible and adaptable. So I want to talk to you today about two of the flexible, adaptable networks we’re working on.

First, a flexible, adaptable education system, where schools have the freedom to innovate and collaborate in order to drive improvement.

And second, flexible, adaptable learning within schools, taking advantage of the way technology is transforming education.

A Schools Network

Underpinning our reforms is the principle – backed by the best international evidence – that autonomy drives improvement. In addition to having rigorous accountability mechanisms and a commitment to creating an outstanding teaching workforce, the highest-performing education systems are those where government knows when to take a step back. Rigorous research from the OECD and others has shown that more autonomy for individual schools helps raise standards. In its most recent international survey of education, the OECD found that ‘in countries where schools have greater autonomy over what is taught and how students are assessed, students tend to perform better.’ As the OECD points out, two of the most successful countries in PISA – Hong Kong and Singapore – are amongst those with the highest levels of school competition. And from autonomous schools in Alberta, Canada, to the Charter Schools of New York and Chicago, freedom is proving an unstoppable driver of success.

So we’ve been working hard to increase freedom for all our schools.

A big part of this has involved reducing central government prescription for all schools to make heads’ and teachers’ lives easier and give them the space to focus on what really matters.

The reams of FMSIS forms: gone.

The vast Ofsted Self-Evaluation Form: gone.

Fortnightly departmental emails: gone.

Performance Management guidance: cut by three quarters.

Capability procedures: simplified.

Ofsted framework: slimmed down.

Behaviour and bullying guidance: cut from 600 pages to 50.

There’s more to come. In total, departmental guidance will be more than halved. And our Curriculum Review will result in a clearer, slimmer core entitlement, which will free teachers up to get on with teaching.

Beyond these changes – which we’ve implemented for the benefit of all schools – we’ve gone further: we’ve given every school the opportunity to take complete control of its budget, curriculum and staffing by applying to be an academy.

There are now 1463 academies across England. More than 40 per cent of all secondary schools are now either academies already, or in the process of becoming academies. 1144 primary and secondary schools have converted since the general election. 319 are sponsored academies, of which 116 have opened since May 2010. 44 more sponsored academies are expected to open later this academic year.

Over 1.2 million pupils now attend academies – this means around one in seven pupils in maintained state schools are now attending academies and one in three pupils in secondary schools.

This million-strong group will benefit from the changes academy freedom can bring, like longer school days; better paid teachers; more personalised learning; improved discipline; and higher standards all round. Individual academies are using their new freedoms in a variety of different ways.

Like Seaton Academy in Cumbria, which was one of the first to open as a converter academy and to take advantage of academy freedoms. The school has been better able to tailor the curriculum to pupils’ needs. Having previously been bound by the local authority to implement new central strategies – regardless of how suitable such strategies were for the school – Seaton is now able to be more innovative. Greater budget flexibility has allowed Seaton to run more efficiently, and these savings have been ploughed back into the school. For example, they have introduced discretionary award payments for great teaching, which has been hugely motivating for staff. The academy has also started to rebalance the school year – with shorter summer holidays and a lengthened half-term.

Seaton is just one of many schools using their new freedom to do exciting things. The best scientific evidence proves that if you empower those at the frontline, they will exceed your expectations. A few months ago, academics at the London School of Economics published a landmark assessment of the academies programme.

They found three things. First, that ‘Academy conversion generates… a significant improvement in pupil performance.’ Second, that this improvement is not the result of academies scooping up middle-class pupils from nearby schools: the fact that more middle-class parents want to send their children to their local academy is a consequence of the school’s success, not a cause. And thirdly, beyond raising standards for their own pupils, academies also tend to raise pupil performance in neighbouring schools. Like CTCs and the Challenge schemes before them, academies are showing us all what amazing things can be achieved when heads are put in the driving seat.

But even more impressive than what individual academies are doing by themselves is what they’re achieving by working together. Under our plans, networks of schools are collaborating on a scale that has never been witnessed before. The facts on the ground are plain to see: increased autonomy and greater parental choice drive up standards and help tackle ‘the soft bigotry of low expectations’ – and freedom does not need to be the enemy of cooperation.

Sponsors

Some of these networks are small – often just two schools, with one sponsoring the other. Yet while small, they’re driving real change. Tudor Grange Academy, Solihull (a converter academy) has sponsored Tudor Grange Academy, Worcester. Since becoming the sponsor, the Solihull school has provided intensive support to its Worcester partner. Improvements have been made in discipline, behaviour, attendance and attainment, with Tudor Grange, Worcester being oversubscribed on first choice applications for the first time. The benefits haven’t all been one-way. Tudor Grange, Solihull has been able to increase staffing and improve the pupil-teacher ratio. School leaders have reported feeling a greater sense of responsibility and accountability to the communities that they serve.

Partners

Other networks are slightly larger, with one academy partnering with several other local schools. Altrincham Grammar School for Boys in Trafford became an academy in February 2011 and is now working with three underperforming schools in the area. The school has been working particularly closely with Broomwood Primary, with specialist French and Spanish teachers from the secondary school helping teach primary pupils. This has helped Broomwood set up its own provision for language lessons. Similarly, having achieved a science specialism, Altrincham Grammar shared its expertise by giving its partners access to its labs; assisting partner schools in rewriting the science schemes of work for Years 5 and 6; and supporting teachers in delivering these schemes. Gifted and Talented students from Broomwood and other local schools are also offered the opportunity to attend after-school science sessions at Altrincham Grammar.

Chains

Many academies are also forming chains – formal networks of schools federated together, usually as part of the same Trust. There are 111 chains of converter academies with a total of 337 schools. The Coopers’ Company, a good with outstanding features school, chose to convert in a chain with a local school at the other side of the borough, The Brittons Academy, rated satisfactory. Prior to conversion, the heads developed an action plan of how they would support each other in future. Both schools converted on 1st April 2011. Coopers are working closely with Brittons on combined CPD days and have arranged paired support of weaker departments. They have also set up a management link between the two senior leadership teams, and the head teacher from Coopers has become the School Improvement Partner for Brittons.

All these changes have been possible because we have been resolute in our commitment to spreading autonomy – from the introduction of the Academies Bill within our first few days in office, to the way we’re continually reducing constraints and burdens on schools. We’re doing all this because we believe – and the evidence confirms – that the best way to create a school system capable of adapting and responding to the challenges of the 21st century is by giving great teachers and heads real power.

That principle extends to the way we’re going about securing the next generation of teachers and school leaders. We’re putting our best schools in charge of training and professional development. We’re expanding programmes like Teach First and Future Leaders, so that the most promising are trained by the most inspirational. And we’re working with the National College on programmes like the SLE and NLE, to ensure that the school leaders of the future are mentored by the best leaders of today.

Overall, our vision for the future is of a self-improving network of schools, innovating and engaging, competing and collaborating, teaching and training, for the benefit of all our children.

Digital networks

I want to turn now from networks between schools to an altogether different sort of network: networks of the digital kind.

It’s an understatement to say our world has been transformed by technology. There was a particularly poignant and wonderful illustration of this in a recent New Scientist editorial, written to mark Steve Jobs’ death. “Nothing dates the 1987 movie Wall Street”, the piece argues, “like the $4000 cellphone clutched by financier Gordon Gekko. It was the size of a brick and he could only talk for 30 minutes before having to recharge it.” In the 1980s, the capabilities of today’s smartphones would have been unfathomable to consumers and engineers alike. They’d have thought it impossible that so much powerful technology could be packed into such a tiny case. If you were trying to build an iPhone using equivalent components from the 1980s, asks the author, just how big would that phone be? Running through all the parts – from the antennas to the batteries to the GPS to the gyroscope to the accelerometer to the cameras to the mobile computing capability and more – New Scientist concludes you would need a truck to haul around an iPhone built of 1985 parts. We’ve gone from an 18-wheeler to a pocket in just 26 years.

It’s not just the hardware. Entire sectors employing millions of people didn’t even exist a quarter century ago. And many of those that were around in the ’80s operate today in ways that are unrecognisable to those of the past. Given the extent of the transformation – and the pace at which it’s happening – it is imperative we have a school system capable of adapting to and preparing for the challenges ahead. If we don’t, we will betray a generation.

And yet there is a perception by some that my department isn’t especially concerned about such things. That we care more about Tennyson than technology. That our interest is in Ibsen, not iTunes. That we’re more Kubla Khan than Khan Academy.

This couldn’t be further from the truth. I am absolutely committed to ensuring that our school system not only prepares pupils for this changing world, but also embraces the technological advances which are transforming education. My department is thinking hard about this and we’ll be saying more in the new year. But I’d like to talk briefly today about some of the critical developments that have been shaping our thinking.

One of the greatest changes can be seen in the lives of children and young people, who are at ease with the world of technology and who communicate, socialise and participate online effortlessly. Two-thirds of five- to seven-year-olds use the internet at home, rising to 82 per cent for 8- to 11-year-olds and 90 per cent for 12- to 15-year-olds. Over a third of 12- to 15-year-olds own a smartphone, and typically use the internet for 15.6 hours every week. Children are increasingly embracing technology at a younger age: for example, 23 per cent of five- to seven-year-olds now use social networking sites.

Yet the classrooms of today don’t reflect these changes. Indeed, many of our classrooms would be very recognisable to someone from a century ago. While there has been significant investment in technology in education, it has certainly not transformed the way that education is delivered.

Part of the problem has been that investment has focused on hardware. My fear is that, in the past, too much emphasis has been placed on machines that quickly become obsolete, rather than on training individuals to be technologically as literate and adept as they need to be. What’s more, fixating on expensive, soon-to-be out-of-date kit represents a failure to understand the fundamental changes taking place.

One major change concerns content. Technology is having a huge impact on the way educational material can be delivered. iTunesU now gives everybody access to the world’s best lectures. The Khan Academy provides 2700 high-quality micro tutorials on the web, so that anyone, anywhere can access them for free. Brilliant scientific publications like Science are building their own ecosystems of educational content. And by definition, as we move to a world where we expect every child will have a tablet, the nature and range and type of content that can be delivered will be all the greater.

Educational gaming, for example, is a booming area – and ripe for even further development. Games developed by Marcus Du Sautoy, Professor of Mathematics at Oxford, are helping children engage with complex maths problems that would hitherto have been thought too advanced. And the Department for Education is currently working with the Li Ka Shing Foundation and the highly respected Stanford Research Institute on a pilot programme to use computer programmes to teach maths. We have not developed the programme – we are just helping them run a pilot. Stanford say it is one of the most successful educational projects they have seen.

These exciting advances are the sort of thing that a central government department could never hope to produce and maintain. And nor should it seek to: Whitehall must enable these innovations but not attempt to micromanage them. Such content is being created daily, and the vast majority is free to anyone with an internet connection. Our role is to help bring schools and these developments together.

To be absolutely clear: this isn’t about replacing teachers with YouTube videos – of course it isn’t. But it would be negligent of us not to look at how we can harness these developments for the benefit of all pupils. In Singapore, for example, I was lucky enough to witness how a superb lesson can be delivered through a mixture of online and teacher-led instruction. We can do it here too – and in the coming months we’ll be setting out how.

Another way in which technology is changing education is through its potential to create sharper assessment systems. Computer lab management software is now so sophisticated that an individual teacher can monitor how each student is doing simultaneously and then – without singling out that child in front of others – provide them with the direct amount of support that they need, accelerating the rate at which some children can learn and providing additional help for others. Problems can be picked up earlier. Students can be stretched when they’re ready. It’s the next step towards truly personalised learning – and it will also enable parents to have a better understanding of the level at which their children are operating.

Thirdly, technological advances can have a huge impact on teacher training. Teachers can more easily observe other teachers and learn more about the craft. Professional development content can be delivered in more accessible, engaging, and cost effective ways. Individual teachers can use the latest developments to refine their lessons to precision. As Michael Nielsen points out in his excellent new book, ‘Reinventing Discovery’, new developments allow teachers to get better feedback about how their lessons are being received. So not only does the spread of innovations like the Khan Academy mean there is more great teaching material on the web, but new tools like Google Analytics allow anyone to analyse video for attention, second-by-second, in a way that used to be very expensive and complex. All these are welcome developments.

Of course, in stressing the importance of digital content, I’m not saying we should neglect hardware altogether – far from it. But hardware means more than just the latest desktop – especially when many pupils are increasingly likely to have access to superior technology at home – or even in their pockets – than in their school’s computer lab. That’s why we need to think about how to give more children the chance to engage with truly cutting edge hardware, like 3D printers, or learn the fundamentals of programming with their own single-board computers, like the Raspberry Pi.

The challenge for us is this: how we can harness the many exciting technological leaps that are constantly being made? We will be saying much more early in the new year. Make no mistake: this is a priority for me. I believe we need to take a serious, intelligent approach to educational technology if our children are not to be left behind. As John Chubb and Terry Moe put it in their excellent book on the subject, a genuine engagement with the wondrous world of technological innovation will see children’s learning ‘liberated from the dead hand of the past.’ We owe it to pupils across the country to take this issue seriously.