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The press release issued by the Department for Education on 16 May 2012.

Education Secretary Michael Gove has today submitted evidence to the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) – the independent body which makes recommendations on teachers’ pay reforms.

He has set out a strong case for reform, to free up the current system of teachers’ pay to ensure that teaching is a rewarding and attractive career.

The evidence highlights that in order to drive up the quality of teaching and standards in schools, we need arrangements for teachers’ pay which:

• reward good performance and attract the highest performing graduates and professionals into the profession;
• give schools as much freedom as possible to spend their money as they see fit to meet their pupils’ needs;
• ensure the best teachers are incentivised to work in the most challenging schools; and
• provide the best value for money for the taxpayer.

Earlier this month, a major survey of teachers found widespread support for a link between teachers’ pay and their performance, with three-quarters of teachers believing that annual salary increases should be linked to performance.

Evidence shows that improving the quality of teaching is essential to driving up standards in schools. Pupils taught by good teachers score nearly half a GCSE point more per subject than pupils taught by poor teachers. The impact is even more significant for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds, according to the Sutton Trust. For poor pupils, the difference between a very good teacher and a bad teacher may be a whole year’s education.

The Government’s initial teaching training (ITT) strategy – Training our next generation of outstanding teachers – published last year set out reforms to attract the best graduates into the profession. However, the current teachers’ pay system is too rigid, complex and difficult to navigate. It does not support schools in recruiting and retaining the best into the profession.

Under the current system:

• automatic pay progression means there is a poor link between a teacher’s performance and reward;
• national pay scales mean schools in some parts of the country struggle to recruit and retain good teachers, while others may be paying salaries which are significantly above local professional pay levels; and
• a number of other barriers prevent schools from responding to local labour market conditions.

In February this year, the Secretary of State commissioned the STRB to consider how reforms could be made to address this, along with teacher shortages in specific subjects and in certain areas of the country.

As a first stage in the process, the STRB has called for evidence from a wide range of stakeholders, including the Government and teacher and head teacher unions.

The Government sets out a number of possible options for reform for the STRB, as the experts, to consider. These include:

• varying level of prescription in national pay arrangements;
• setting a minimum and or maximum pay level; and
• exploring the possibility of having local pay zones.

Education Secretary Michael Gove said:

Ensuring there are enough teachers, and that those teachers are of the highest quality, is critical to driving up standards in our schools.

Reform of the current pay system for teachers is fundamental to driving up teacher quality. The current pay system is rigid, complex and difficult to navigate. It does not support schools to recruit and retain the high quality teachers or leaders they need to address specific shortages and benefit their pupils.

I look forward to the STRB’s recommendations in due course.

Following careful consideration of all the evidence submitted, the STRB will make recommendations for reform to the Secretary of State in the autumn. He will then, after considering the recommendations and having listened carefully to the profession’s view, ask the STRB to produce more detailed recommendations for implementation of the preferred options for reform. It is expected that the accepted recommendations will start to be implemented from September 2013.

The press release issued by the Department for Education on 16 May 2012.

Charlie Taylor, the government’s adviser on behaviour, speaks at the Academies Show on helping children who are in difficulty.

In our society when a child becomes ill we reach out to them, we instinctively keep them close and look after them. This response is sadly not always the case when children become emotionally distressed, especially when this distress is communicated through violence and aggression. Rather than being helped, children in difficulty are often pushed away and ignored. Let’s look at the numbers, only 1.4 per cent of pupils who go to PRUs leave with five good GCSEs, that is one fortieth of the percentage for children in mainstream school. The Ministry of Justice in research after the riots revealed that 86 per cent children in the criminal justice system had been in alternative provision.

Don’t get me wrong, these children can be extremely difficult to manage and they take an enormous toll on their teachers and their classmates. Many cannot, nor should remain in mainstream school, but we must have a system that gives them what they need to change. If we don’t then we will all pay a heavy price as we saw last summer.

In September last year as a result of the riots, Michael Gove asked me to conduct a review into Alternative Provision (AP) including Pupil Referral Units (PRUs). Many of the children in the riots had been excluded from school and were growing up on the streets. Children like these who crave boundaries and companionship look elsewhere for it, and for many, a local gang provides the structure and a sense of belonging that has been missing at home or school.

In many cases schools send pupils who are in danger of exclusion to an alternative provider. This provision can be anything from a day a week doing car mechanics to a full-time college course. The best are terrific, but in my travels round the country for the review I was been shocked by what some schools are doing. They find the cheapest provider, irrespective of quality. Sometimes they pay less money than they receive from the government for each pupil.

There is virtually no accountability in the system for the way schools use AP. With a lack of incentive or direction from schools, the worst alternative providers are little more than holding pens to keep children quiet until they leave school. They become prolific at pool or sit on Facebook all day, without making academic or any other meaningful progress.

Commissioning is piecemeal, there are no follow up meetings and no targets set for the alternative provider or the pupil. The message is pretty clear – “I don’t care what you do with this pupil as long as I never have to see him again.”

Children who are excluded from school usually end up in a PRU. The best PRUs do a remarkable job of engaging their pupils, helping them to change their behaviour and providing outstanding teaching which helps the pupils to move successfully on to the next phase of their life.

But many are bleak, depressing places where children fail to make any meaningful progress.

Often these PRUs are the council’s provision of last resort for children who, for all sorts of reasons, aren’t in mainstream education. There is a one-size-fits all approach that means that children with severe behavioural issues are in the same unit as, for example, a girl who has been severely bullied.

PRUs are often remote from the schools from where they have inherited pupils. There is not sharing of expertise from PRUs to schools on improving behaviour – or from schools to PRUs in improving learning.

Schools fund their local PRU through a top slice of their Dedicated Schools Grant whether they use it or not and irrespective of whether it is any good.

The Government is trying out a new approach to exclusions whereby schools remain responsible for the education of children they permanently exclude, but they, rather than the local authority receive the funding.

Cambridgeshire has developed this approach and the results have been impressive. The PRU has fallen in size from 700 places to just 150. Schools are using the money to make early provision for children before they have gone so far off the rails that exclusion becomes the only option.

This policy provides great opportunities for academies, they can now open alternative provision free schools in order to support these children. In September, East Birmingham Network free school will open. A group of mainstream schools have got together, pooled resources and expertise in order to provide for their most challenging children. What a fantastic, creative solution – imagine the possibilities nationally: the best academies bringing their academic rigour and first class teaching combine to create bespoke, effective provision for their most difficult and vulnerable children. They know their pupils, they know what they need to flourish and they will create free schools that will make a significant difference to the life chances of these children. More applications from groups of schools and academy chains to open alternative provision free schools are in the pipeline as head teachers begin to realise the possibilities.

From September this year the first PRUs will convert to become alternative provision academies. They are going to follow a range of routes from multi-academy trusts, to sponsored solutions to stand alone academies. In PRUs there are some of the best leaders in the education world and as academies they will be able to grow and adapt to the needs of their pupils and to those of local schools. No longer will they have to be pushed and pulled by the whims and priorities of local authorities as many currently are. They will sit in the heart of their communities using their expertise to help schools to help our most difficult children to succeed.

This government is changing the education world in England, the opportunities are limitless. We are already seeing how academies are transforming the lives and the life chances of our children. But as we head onwards we must not leave our most vulnerable children trailing in our wake. By setting up free schools or supporting or sponsoring their local PRUs academies will ensure that truly no child is left behind.