Category: Education

The speech made by Michael Gove, the then Secretary of State for Education, at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in London on 11 January 2012.

Education for economic success

There could be no better way to start 2011 for me than by welcoming you all here to London.

Because this second decade of the twenty-first century will be characterised by uniquely daunting challenges – but it also holds out amazing opportunities.

The challenges are so daunting because they are global in scope and as testing as any our generation has known.

But the opportunities are even greater because there is the chance – in this generation – to bring freedom, opportunity, knowledge and dignity, material plenty and personal fulfilment to many more of our fellow citizens than ever before.

The great Italian Marxist thinker once enjoined on his followers an attitude he defined as pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.

What he meant was that we should be clear eyed about the difficulties we face, but undaunted, determined and resolute in our belief they can be overcome.

Our world does face huge problems.

A resurgent wave of ideologically motivated terrorism and renewed conflicts between peoples threaten millions. Our global environment is threatened by resource depletion and thoughtless exploitation. A dramatically growing, and increasingly youthful, world population chafes against constraints which deny millions the chance to live their dreams. Economic growth has been spread inequitably and nations which are adjusting to reality after years of folly are finding the process, inevitably, painful.

But bumpy, indeed turbulent, as the journey ahead might be, we are also fortunate in knowing what the best route not just to safety, but to plenty, will be.

It is the pursuit of knowledge.

Nothing is so effective a solvent of hatred and prejudice as learning and wisdom, the best environmental protection policy to help the planet is a scientific innovation policy which rewards greener growth, the route to fulfilment for the next generation is dedication to study, hard work and restless curiosity and the single most effective way to generate economic growth is invest in human and intellectual capital – to build a better education system.

So, in that sense, in talking to those who lead the world’s education systems I have the unique privilege of talking to those who will lead the world out of the dark valley we are currently navigating and onto sunlit uplands where opportunity beckons.

It is, certainly, a special privilege to be involved in shaping education policy at the moment. Because as well as laying the foundations for a world which is better, we are also ensuring that we live in societies which are fairer.

For most of our history people have been victims of forces beyond their control.

Accidents of birth – like where individuals were born, both geographically and in class terms, as well as what their parents did for a living – proved overwhelmingly likely to dictate people’s future.

But education is the means by which we can liberate people from those imposed constraints. It allows individuals to choose a fulfilling job, enrich their inner life and become authors of our own life stories.

And that is why education reform is the great progressive cause of our times.

The Education World Forum is so important because it demonstrates our shared belief that we can educate our children to an ever higher standard and achieve the levels of fairness and social mobility that have long eluded us.

In the coming days, we have an opportunity to talk in detail about the issues that we face, share our expertise and strengthen the bonds between our countries. I’m also delighted that many of you will have the chance to see for yourselves the very best of the British education system.

I am pleased that so many young people in Britain today are enjoying a superb education – and pleased that in many areas we have made progress over the years. In particular, I am overjoyed that we have so many great teachers and headteachers who are playing an increasingly important part in transforming our system for the better.

But I am also conscious that in the world of education, by definition, the quest to improve never ends.

Education is a process of continual learning, of crossing new boundaries, exploring new territory, restless curiosity and perpetual questioning.

And as I have been in this job one of the things I have learned is that we can only improve our own education systems if we make them as open to new thinking, as free to learn, as flexible and innovative, as possible.

Because with every year that passes we are privileged to enjoy new insights about how best to organise schools, how best to inspire pupils, how to use new technology, how the brain absorbs knowledge, how teachers can best motivate, how parents can better support, how governments can best invest.

And we are uniquely fortunate that speaking at this conference are two men who have done more than any others to help us understand what works in the world of education. And by listening to them we can see how much further we all have to go.

Yesterday, you heard from a man I recently have described as the most important man in the British education system – but he could equally be the most important man in world education.

Later this morning, you will hear from the man who is vying with him for that accolade.

Neither will teach a single lesson this year, neither are household names, neither – unsurprisingly – are education ministers – but both deserve our thanks and the thanks of everyone who wants to see children around the world fulfil the limit of their potential.

They are Andreas Schleicher and Michael Barber.

Andreas Schleicher is a German mathematician with the sort of job title that you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy – head of the indicators and analysis division (directorate for education) at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

On the face of it, a job description like that might seem like the title of the bureaucrat’s bureaucrat – but in truth Andreas is the father of more revolutions than any German since Karl Marx.

Because Andreas is responsible for collating the PISA league tables of international educational achievement. He tells us which nations have the best-performing education systems and then analyses that data to determine why that is the case.

When the first PISA league tables were published they demonstrated, to the amazement of the German political classes, that their education system was nowhere near the position of world leadership they had fondly imagined.

The phenomenon of discovering just how relatively poorly the German education system performed was termed ‘Pisa-Schock’ and it stimulated a furious debate about how Germany could catch up.

In the US, education experts described the 2006 PISA report as our generation’s ‘Sputnik moment’.

The evidence that 15-year-olds in the Far East were so comfortably outperforming American pupils in maths and science sent the same shockwaves through the West as the Soviet Union’s surprise satellite launch in 1957, an event which prompted a radical reform of science education in the US.

But just because you come top in PISA these days doesn’t mean you rest on the laurels Andreas fashions for you. Far from it.

What characterises those nations which are themselves top performers – such as Singapore and Hong Kong – is that they are restless self-improvers.

They have also eagerly examined every aspect of Andreas’s research to see what their principal competitors are doing with a view to implementing further changes to maintain their competitive edge.

Sir Michael Barber is another visionary educationalist.

In the early part of the last decade, he played a direct role in shaping the English education system as a leading advisor to Tony Blair’s government. As a result of policies that he helped introduce – including an uncompromising focus on literacy, floor standards for school performance and higher standards for teacher performance – improvements were undoubtedly made.

But, rather like Tony Blair, Michael has arguably had an even bigger influence globally than at home in recent years. His seminal 2007 report, How the world’s best-performing school systems come out on top, which he produced for McKinsey provided those nations that were serious about education reform with a blueprint of what they needed to do to catch up.

And his recent report, How the world’s most improved school systems keep getting better, provides further invaluable insights for all nations aspiring to improve their education system or hoping to remain amongst the best.

No nation that is serious about ensuring its children enjoy an education that equips them to compete fairly with students from other countries can afford to ignore the PISA and McKinsey studies.

Doing so would be as foolish as dismissing what control trials tell us in medicine. It means flying in the face of the best evidence we have of what works.

And just as the evidence that Andreas and Michael has gathered has influenced education reformers in North America, Asia and Scandinavia, so it is influencing the Coalition Government here in Britain.

Not least because it shows that we are falling further and further behind other nations. In the last ten years, we have plummeted in the world rankings from 4th to 16th for science, 7th to 25th for literacy and 8th to 28th for maths.

These are facts from which we cannot hide. But while they may encourage a certain pessimism of the intellect, the examples of transformed education systems which Andreas and Michael have highlighted, certainly encourages optimism of the will.

From Shanghai to New Orleans, Alberta to Hong Kong, Singapore to Helsinki, nations which have been educational back markers have become world leaders.

And our recently published schools White Paper was deliberately designed to bring together – indeed, to shamelessly plunder from – policies that have worked in other high-performing nations.

It was accompanied by a detailed evidence paper, The case for change, that draws on the insights generated by successive PISA studies and McKinsey reports.

And it is based on the three essential characteristics which mark out the best performing and fastest reforming education systems in the landmark PISA and McKinsey studies.

Importance of teaching

First, the most successful education nations recruit the best possible people into teaching, provide them with high-quality training and professional development, and put them to work in the most challenging classrooms.

Our schools White Paper was called The importance of teaching because nothing matters more in improving education than giving every child access to the best possible teaching and ensuring that every moment of interaction between teacher and student yields results.

We are committed to raising the quality of new entrants to the teaching profession by insisting they are better qualified than ever before, we are determined to improve teacher training by building on intellectual accomplishment and ensuring more time is spent in the classroom acquiring practical teaching skills, and we plan to establish new centres of excellence in teaching practice – teaching schools modelled on our great teaching hospitals – so that new and experienced teachers can learn and develop their craft throughout their careers.

We have learnt from Finland – a consistently strong performer in PISA studies – about the importance of attracting the very best graduates into teaching, which is why we are expanding our principal elite route into teaching, Teach First, as well as providing extra support for top graduates in maths and science to enter teaching.

And we are increasing the number of national and local leaders of education – superb heads who lend their skills to raise standards in weaker schools – so that the best support the weak in a concerted effort to improve education for all children, not just some.

The principle of collaboration between stronger and weaker schools, with those in a position to help given the freedom to make a difference, lies at the heart of our whole approach to school improvement.

Greater autonomy

The PISA and McKinsey reports clearly show that the greater the amount of autonomy at school level, with headteachers and principals free to determine how pupils are taught and how budgets are spent, the greater the potential there has been for all-round improvement and the greater the opportunity too for the system to move from good to great.

The Coalition Government agrees that headteachers and teachers – not politicians and bureaucrats – know best how to run schools.

That is why we’ve announced a review of our National Curriculum with the aim of reducing prescription and are taking action to shed all unnecessary bureaucratic burdens on schools.

It is also why we’re freeing schools from central and local bureaucratic control by inviting them to become academies.

Schools are taking up our offer because they recognise the huge benefits that being an academy brings – more autonomy, more resources, less bureaucracy and an opportunity to thrive, free from interference from government.

Since the start of the school term in September, more than one school has converted to become an academy every working day. As of last week, more than 400 academies are now open and enjoying many of the same freedoms which are enjoyed by schools in the best-performing education systems. And many more are in the pipeline.

Alongside this, we are also further extending autonomy and choice by making it easier for teachers, parents, academy sponsors and other groups to start their own free schools.

In Sweden, free schools have driven up standards in those schools but also in neighbouring schools too.

And as the OECD points out, two of the most successful countries in PISA – Hong Kong and Singapore – are among those with the highest levels of school competition.

But while increased parental choice can help tackle ‘the soft bigotry of low expectations’, which continues to blight the life chances of many children from deprived backgrounds in particular, it does not need be the enemy of cooperation.

Our plans foresee schools collaborating on a scale that has never been witnessed before, which is why all new academies are also working with weaker schools to help them improve.

And this week will see a major advance in that drive.

We will identify those of our schools most in need of support – those where attainment is poor and where students are not making progress.

These are the schools whose children most need our help – those underperforming institutions where opportunity is restricted.

We will work with these schools – all of which have great potential and all of which will have staff ready to accept the challenge to improve.

We will provide them with extra resources.

But on condition they work with us to develop tough, rigorous, immediate plans for improvement.

Those plans will involve weaker schools being taken under the wing of high-performing schools, entering academy chains, changing the way they work, implementing reforms to the curriculum and staffing and putting in place new, tougher approaches to discipline and behaviour.

This drive will be led by an inspirational former headteacher – Liz Sidwell – who has experience of the state and private sector and who has helped turn round underperforming schools as well as setting a benchmark for excellence in the state system.

Proper accountability

The reason we’re able to identify great heads like Liz – and the schools which need her help – is that we have, over time, developed ways of holding schools, and education ministers, accountable for the money they spend.

Because the other, central, insight from the PISA and McKinsey reports into what makes great education systems so successful is that they all use data to make schools accountable and drive improvement.

Data allows us to identify the best so we can emulate it, and diagnose weaknesses so we can intervene before it’s too late.

I know that some in the education profession fear that data has been used – perhaps I should say abused – to constrict the autonomy which we know drives improvement.

But the lesson from PISA is that autonomy works best when it’s combined with intelligent accountability. That means making comparisons which are fair. And trying to limit the extent to which measurements can be ‘gamed’ by those in the system.

It’s because it’s so important that the public can make fair comparisons between schools that we are revamping performance tables to place more emphasis on the real value schools add as well as the raw attainment results they secure.

Pupils need qualifications to succeed in life, so I won’t shy away from saying we expect more and more young people to leave school with better and better qualifications. That is non-negotiable.

But we must also recognise that schools succeed when they take children from challenging and difficult circumstances and ensure they exceed expectations and progress faster than their peers.

And because we want to limit the extent to which accountability mechanisms are ‘gamed’ we will also ensure much more information is put into the public domain so that schools can be compared on many different criteria.

That will help schools which believe they have special qualities, undervalued by current performance tables, to make the case for their particular strengths.

And I expect that we will see new performance tables drawn up, by schools themselves, by active citizens and by professional organisations which will draw attention to particular areas of strength in our school system.

In this year’s performance tables we are introducing a new measure – the English Baccalaureate – which will show how many students in each school secured five good passes in English, maths, science, languages and one of the humanities.

It’s been introduced this year to allow us to see how the schools system has performed in the past – in a way which manifestly can’t have been gamed.

And I expect it will reveal the way in which past performance tables actually encouraged many many great schools and great heads to offer certain non-academic subjects rather than more rigorous academic subjects.

I am open to arguments about how we can further improve every measure in the performance tables – including the English Baccalaureate.

But I am determined to ensure that our exam standards match the highest standards around the world.

And in other high-performing nations there is an expectation that children will be tested in a wide range of subjects at 16.

In Singapore children sit compulsory O Levels in their mother tongue (which will be Chinese, Malay or Tamil), in the English language, in maths, in combined humanities, In science and in at least one other subject.

In Germany graduation to sixth form follows on from passing exams in German, maths, English and three other subjects.

In Alberta there are compulsory tests at age 15 in maths, science, English, French and social studies.

In France the brevet diploma is awarded at age 15 depending on performance in tests of French, maths, history, geography, civics, computer science and a modern foreign language.

In Japan there are tests at age 15 in Japanese, social studies, maths, science and English.

In the US at age 17 there are exam requirements in English, maths, science and social studies.

And in the Netherlands at 16, 17 or 18 students are expected to pass tests in Dutch, English, social studies and two other subjects – such as science, classical culture or a second modern foreign language.

England’s current expectation that only English and maths be considered benchmark expectations at 16 marks us out from other high-performing nations.

I am delighted to have a debate about how we both broaden and deepen our education system, but we cannot be in any doubt that while reform accelerates across the globe no country can afford to be left behind.

I’m in no doubt that what we are attempting in England adds up to a comprehensive programme of reform for schools here – but if we are to learn one thing from the groundbreaking work done by Andreas Schleicher and by Sir Michael Barber, it is that whole-system reform is needed to every aspect of our education system if we are to build a truly world-class education system.

It is only by paying attention to improving teacher quality, granting greater autonomy to the front line, modernising curricula, making schools more accountable to their communities, harnessing detailed performance data and encouraging professional collaboration that a nation can become one of the world’s top performers.

The evidence shows us it can be done.

And the challenge facing us in 2011 is to follow the path which the evidence, so patiently acquired by Andreas Schleicher and by Sir Michael Barber, tells us can liberate our children.

What better New Year’s resolution could any of us make this week.

The speech made by Michael Gove, the then Secretary of State for Education, in Birmingham on 26 March 2012.

Good morning – and thank you for the very kind invitation to come to Birmingham this morning. My last visit here was made memorable by the warmth of the welcome I received from Ninestiles School, a secondary in a challenging area which has made fantastic progress under the leadership of Chris Quinn. It was a pleasure for me to talk to the students there and especially one sixth former – Cameron Kigonaye – whose parents are from Kenya and Cameroon and who is now course to read law at Oxford. It was a reminder of just how much latent talent we have in this country.

I visited another outstanding school in challenging circumstances earlier this week – Freemantle Academy – in one of the most deprived parts of Southampton.

The head there, Kevin Barratt, became a teacher after a successful career in consulting engineering – something that has proved useful in helping design the new buildings he has delivered for his school in record time. I was intrigued as to why Kevin had left one high-paying profession for another profession and why, having become a teacher, he wanted to become a head. “Simple, really” he replied. “I wanted to help children. And being a head gave me the chance to help more children.”

In one sentence Kevin, I am certain, spoke for everyone in this room.
The reason we work in education is because we want to help children.
And the reason people take on leadership positions is they want to help as many children as possible. That is the central moral purpose that brought all of you into education.

And it is what animates the work of the leaders whose schools I have been fortunate enough to visit in the last year.

The magificent seven

Like Amanda Philips in Old Ford Primary in Bow – whose students come from one of the poorest parts of one of the capital’s poorest boroughs but who leave with the sort of love of literature you’d expect of English undergraduates.

Or Yasmin Bevan in Denbigh High in Luton- whose students again come from some of the most challenging areas of one of our most ethnically diverse cities and who again excel – securing superb results in the GCSEs which set them on course for the best universities.

Or Pete Birkett – who leads the Barnfield Federation – whose studio school is delivering an amazing technical and academic education for those students – overwhelmingly from disadvantaged homes – who have struggled most at primary…

And then there’s Jerry Collins from Pimlico – the head who has recorded the fastest progress yet in taking a school from categories to outstanding – and who is now devising a whole new secondary curriculum designed to ensure his students – again overwhelmingly from disadvantaged backgrounds – can out-compete privately educated children.

Or Patricia Sowter – at Cuckoo Hall in Edmonton – whose students come from one of the poorest areas of the Labour borough of Enfield and who secures for every student – including those with special needs – Level 4 at Key Stage Two.

Or Greg Wallace at Woodberry Down -whose students are drawn from the poorest parts of Hackney and who have benefitted hugely from a rigorous approach to reading in the early years which makes them enthusiastic devourers of every book they can get their hands on by years 4, 5 and 6.

And I cannot miss out Barry Day – in Nottingham – who again draws his students from the most challenging neighbourhoods in an ethnically diverse city – and who generates outstanding academic results in an environment where grace, civility and cultural ambition are expected of every child.

The reason I mention these – and I could mention many more – is that I don’t think any leader in education should give a speech – or appear in public to talk about education – without celebrating success and giving a shout-out to those who’ve achieved it.

But there’s a special reason I mention these magnificent seven today.
And it goes to the heart of the moral purpose of this Government.
I’ve said in the past – will say again – and the evidence backs me up when I say it.

We have the best generation of young teachers ever in our schools.
We have the best generation of heads ever in our schools.
And our whole school system is good- with many outstanding features.

But our education system – our country- is still held back by two weaknesses.

We have – for generations -failed to stretch every child to the limit of their ability.

And we have – for all our lifetimes- failed the poorest most of all.
And tackling these problems for me isn’t just business, it’s personal.

When you spend the first months of your life in care. When you know your life could have taken many, very different, courses. But you know that education liberated you to enjoy opportunities your parents could scarcely have dreamt of, then you know that it’s a sin not to do everything in your power to help every child transcend the circumstances of their birth to achieve everything of which they’re capable.

Which is where the magnificent seven come in.

Every single one of them proves -every single day of their lives – that deprivation need not be destiny. That the assumptions of a generation ago of what students were capable of were narrow, limiting and unfair.
And that with great teaching – and that’s really it – we can democratise access to knowledge, find the talent in every child and make opportunity more equal.

We’re all in this to help children- as many children as possible.
But when there are schools where more than forty per cent of children don’t reach an acceptable level of reading, writing and maths then there are more children who still need our help.

And when children eligible for free school meals are in schools where they fall further and further behind their peers at every stage of their education then there are more children who still need our help.

And when children from wealthy homes who go to schools in comfortable areas are getting the GCSEs that give them a wide choice of futures – and poorer children going to schools in poorer areas aren’t getting those GCSEs then there are more children who still need our help.

The terrible temptation of fatalism

Yet from some quarters in the political world there’s still a lack of rooted determination to make all our schools excellent, because there are individuals who have succumbed to the terrible temptation of fatalism.
They believe that there are some children who cannot be expected to succeed.

They hold that there are some students who will never transcend the circumstances of their birth.

For some – usually on the right – there can only ever be a small percentage of children who either can – or even deserve – to make it to the top. They see society either as a pyramid or a bell curve. Those with the intelligence to make something of themselves are the minority at the far right of that bell curve – the cognitive elite – those with a higher than average IQ who are – by definition – only ever a minority of the population.

Sometimes injustices, or inefficiencies, mean that those at the far right of the bell curve do not make it to the top of the pyramid – but beyond ensuring that the minority who are smart are also the minority who are rich there is nothing much more to be done.

For others – usually on the left – the existence of material inequality determines everything – and as long as there are differentials of wealth and background you can never expect real progress to be made.

From their point of view, poor children cannot succeed because their circumstances prevent it. Poor children will lag behind their wealthier peers in any school that educates both. And a school with a large number of poor children will be so weighed down – or held back – by the socio-economic background of its intake that those children will always be at a disadvantage.

Only if every school has as close to an identical intake as possible will every child have as close to an identical chance as possible. You cannot solve in the classroom the problems created by fundamental class divisions. Both the Bell Curve Right and the Class Struggle Left agree on more than they might like to admit.

Both agree that there are some children who won’t succeed because of their background.

Both would say of our weakest schools – where poor students from poor homes do poorly – well, what do you expect?

Both of them, however, are wrong.

We know they’re wrong because there are schools in this country with very challenging intakes – with a higher than average proportion of children with special needs, a higher than average number eligible for free school meals, a higher than average number who don’t have English as a first language – that outperform schools with much more favoured intakes in much wealthier areas.

Schools such as those I mention run by the Magnificent Seven, and by so many others of you here in this hall.

More than that, many of these schools prove that there need be no difference in performance – none – between students from disadvantaged circumstances and students from wealthier homes.

No such thing as an attainment gap

There is no such thing as an attainment gap at Cuckoo Hall or at Thomas Jones Primary in North Kensington. In both schools exactly the same percentage of children eligible for Free School Meals reach an acceptable level in English and Maths as children from wealthier homes – and in both cases that is 100%.

There are more than forty primaries across the country which have achieved the same – eliminating any attainment gap between rich and poor. The same has been done at secondary level as well. At Paddington Academy, which has an especially challenging intake, there is no difference in pupil performance on the basis of background.

These schools demonstrate on the ground what brain science is telling us in learned journals and best-selling paperbacks. There is nothing determined, fixed or immutable about a child’s chances of success.

Neither the genetic or material inheritance of any child need automatically determine how far they will rise, or what achievements they might secure.
In Matthew Syed’s ‘Bounce’, in Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘Outliers’ and – most comprehensively of all – in David Shenk’s The Genius in All of Us, the evidence shows that hard work, application and properly directed activity can produce phenomenal results in almost any individual.

If an individual has the will, if we as society have the will, we can achieve far, far more than we may have ever imagined.

Shenk shows us that genes do not immutably dictate our destiny – it is the interplay between what we inherit and the environment and culture in which we grow up which determines what we become.

He, and Syed, and Gladwell, all prove with countless examples that effort and application can generate success in almost any field. And if children are educated in an environment where hard work is expected, where every child is assumed capable of success, and no excuses are allowed for failure, then children will succeed – from any background.

What Shenk, Syed and Gladwell believe is what the best schools ¬ in this country and across the world – are putting into practice.

In King Solomon Academy in Lisson Grove – in the top 10 per cent of the most deprived schools in London – it is expected that every student – every student – will make it onto higher education.

The school hours are longer – the homework is demanding – the expectations pitched deliberately high. Children study Shakespearean tragedies in depth, Jane Austen, Aldous Huxley and Primo Levi.

In Pimlico Academy – which again draws students from some of the toughest parts of London – every young person is equipped with a level of cultural literacy designed to make university natural. They study the Renaissance architecture of Brunelleschi and Bernini alongside the role of Archbishop Laud and Henrietta Maria in provoking the English Civil War.
In Thomas Jones, a primary, children who are ten and eleven – again drawn from some of London’s most challenging areas – are called scholars and taught what scholarship means – through the medium of works by Dickens, Wilde, Blake, Larkin, Matthew Arnold and Tennyson.

These high expectations – and the hard work required to meet them – generate not just statistically astounding results, they also transform the lives of children from the poorest homes.

They are given access to the same cultural heritage wealthier children expect as of right, they are capable of exceeding the performance, in any test of knowledge or ability, expected of far wealthier children, they are set for success in any field.

It is because we cannot allow children to suffer – when we know they can achieve so much more – that we are pressing ahead with our reform programme.

And it is because all of you I know are dedicated to making opportunity more equal that I am so grateful for your support in this work.

The World at an inflection point

And lest anyone think we should slacken the pace of reform – let me reassure them – we have to accelerate. Over the next ten years the world we inhabit will change massively. We are at an inflection point in the economic and educational development of nations.

Technology will change out of all recognition how individuals work, how we teach and how students learn. Millions more across the globe will go onto higher – and post-graduate education.

Globalisation will see the number of unskilled or low skilled jobs in this country diminish further and the rewards to those with higher level qualifications continue to soar further ahead.

We cannot ignore, wish away or seek to stand aside from these developments. Not least because they promise a dramatic step forward in the unleashing of talent, the fulfilment of human potential and the reach of our creativity.

So we need to have an education system equipped for that world – one which equips young people for all its challenges – and opportunities.
We need to cultivate higher order thinking skills and creativity.
We need to be adaptable and fleet-footed. We need to welcome innovation and challenge as a way to ensure we lead rather than meekly follow.

And it’s a consciousness of the changes which are sweeping across the world which drives our education reform programme.

We need to ensure every child achieves their fullest potential because we need every mind motivated to succeed if our society as a whole is to prosper.

The five pillars of reform – a vision beyond 2020

And it’s an awareness of the scale of reform needed which is driving change in each area of our policy programme.

In funding
In human capital
In the curriculum and qualifications
In accountability

And in the structures we create to drive innovation and excellence.
In funding – we must over the next ten years move away from a system in which no-one ¬ literally no-one – can explain why schools receive the sums they do. Where pupils with the same needs in different parts of the country receive wildly differing sums for their education. Where the amount spent to help the poorest is arbitrarily distributed and where accountability for how money is spent is opaque and confused, to a much more rational system with a set amount for every child – related to their age – and course.

With an additional sum – the pupil premium – for every poor child and special support for schools in exceptional circumstances or children with special needs. Money should more transparently follow students, schools should be freer to expand, and accountability for what is done with that money must be clearer. If we move to such a system – the unfairness of our current funding arrangements will become a thing of the past.

On human capital – we must continue the trend we’ve seen over the last fifteen years of recruiting more talented people into teaching – no education system can be better than its teachers.

So we need to remove one of the biggest barriers to people staying in teaching – poor behaviour and discipline – which we’re doing with reforms to make detention simpler, exclusion easier and fairer, attendance easier to police and adult authority unquestioned.

We also need to support the best students, particularly in disciplines such as maths and science, to come into the classroom – which we’re doing by paying them more.

We need to ensure they are prepared better for the classroom – which we’re doing by reforming teacher training to reward those institutions with the highest standards.

And we need to ensure there is high quality and well-funded continuous professional development – which we’re doing through the National College, Teaching Schools, the growth in academy chains and the work of organisations like the Prince’s Teaching Institute.

And if we embrace these changes media and political criticism of professional standards in teaching will become a thing of the past.

On the curriculum and qualifications:
We need to encourage much greater creativity – led by teachers -which is why we’re allowing academies total curriculum freedom and stripping back prescription in the national curriculum for non-core subjects.
We need to move away from an expensive and time-consuming culture of proliferating external examinations – modules, re-sits and retakes – towards fewer high quality qualifications overseen and conferred not by commercial organisations but by institutions of academic excellence such as our best universities.

We need to see innovation in new areas such as computer science.
And we also need to ensure a higher level of cultural literacy and greater familiarity for all students from all backgrounds with the best that’s been thought and written globally.

And if we ensure we deliver these changes concerns about dumbing down and sheep and goat divisions between academic and vocational will become a thing of the past.

On accountability:
We need more data not less. We must move away from reliance on just one or two benchmarks to a rich and nuanced account of achievement. Every month, week, day and hour we have data about the economic performance of the nation.

But for years we have only two reliable – and publicly shared – data sets about our children’s development – at 11 and 16 – based on levels which few parents understand or GCSE performance narrowly measured.
We need to know more about how our children are doing. Which schools are succeeding – and why. Which pedagogies are working – and why. Which leaders are proving transformational – and why. And that data will of course be complemented by thoughtful inspection from professionals.

Which is why I want Ofsted to be run by, with, and for school leaders.
And why I think Michael Wilshaw is absolutely right to say he wants more and more inspection to be done by and with the people in this hall – not to them. And if we secure those changes then accountability as a crude filter will become a thing of the past and instead it will be a powerful means of continual self-improvement.

And on our structures:
I think we need to welcome innovation and flexibility. That’s why I am delighted so many of you have chosen to become academies – more than 40% of secondaries now enjoy academy freedom and now more primaries are applying than secondaries every month.

That’s why I am delighted that free schools are up and running – and more are opening – led by great heads and pioneering new ways of teaching and learning.

It’s why I welcome the injection of new thinking which has come into communities where under-performance has been entrenched as more and more academies – many represented in this hall – open their own free schools, sponsor existing schools and enter new partnerships and federations.

Because access to the education children need is still rationed by the inflexible structures we all inherited.

Just a few days ago we had the annual recording of how many parents had failed to secure a place for their child at the school they hoped for.
Under the system we want to build – with good schools expanding, sponsoring others, new entrants providing choice and challenge and parents empowered to choose – the annual wrangle over admissions and the creation of fixed hierarchies of schools will become a thing of the past.
But the thing which I wish most of all to consign to the past is the fatalism which holds that this country cannot be the best-educated in the world, the fairest and the most open.

Because I know how offensive that is to the people in this room – how belittling of their talent, how dismissive of their ambition, how ignorant of the moral purpose which drives you to all work so hard.

We all know the truth of the words of Martin Luther King in his letter from a Birmingham jail:

Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability – it comes through tireless effort – and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. I am an enemy of all the forces of social stagnation.

And there are no better allies to have in defeating those forces than all of you in this room. It is to defeating those forces that I know all your amazing hard and tireless work is dedicated – for which I thank you.