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Category: Education

  • Michael Gove – 2011 Statement on Industrial Action in Schools

    Michael Gove – 2011 Statement on Industrial Action in Schools

    The statement made by Michael Gove, the then Secretary of State for Education, in the House of Commons on 30 June 2011.

    On Tuesday I gave a statement to the House on this Government’s response to the planned industrial action by two of the teaching unions. In that response I outlined the action I had taken and I also provided data on likely closures based on early estimates from local authorities and Academies.

    We now have a fuller picture, updated this morning, based on data from all 152 local authorities and all 707 Academies.

    Our data show that 5,679 local authority schools were closed, 4,999 were partially open and 5,860 were fully open, while the situation with a further 4,320 has not been reported to us or the local authority did not know.

    The figures also show that of the 707 academies and City Technology Colleges, 201 were closed, 235 were partially open and 271 fully open.

    This means that 27% of all Local Authority schools were closed, 24% were partially open and 28% were open. Data were unavailable for the remaining 21%. 28% of Academies were closed, 33% were partially open, and 38% were open.

    I know that many teachers are concerned about the changes that have been proposed to their pensions. But I believe that we must resolve these differences through discussions and that the action today, while discussions are still going on, was disappointing and unnecessary. I am grateful to headteachers and governors who have worked hard to keep schools open. And I am particularly grateful to all those school staff who – while they may also have concerns about pensions – have decided to go into work today to minimise the impact on pupils and their parents. However I am also disappointed that there has been disruption to the lives of so many parents across the country. The Government remains committed to discussing pension reforms with all the teacher unions openly, honestly and constructively.

  • Nick Gibb – 2011 Speech to the Reform-AQA Conference

    Nick Gibb – 2011 Speech to the Reform-AQA Conference

    The speech made by Nick Gibb, the then Education Minister, at the Reform AQA Conference held on 28 June 2011.

    Thank you very much, Andrew, and thank you to AQA and Reform for hosting this conference, for your kind invitation to speak today and for your kind words just now. This is the last day of this year’s GCSE examinations, and I’d like to take this opportunity to wish pupils the very best of luck for their final exams, and a well-earned rest after all their hard work.

    It is always a pleasure to attend a Reform conference. Last year, I said confidently that I knew Reform would be a friend to the Coalition Government but, like the best of friends, wouldn’t be afraid to tell us when you thought we had got things wrong or could do better.

    Well, I think it’s fair to say that, by that measure, you have been a very good friend indeed…

    As you say, Andrew, I have been Minister for Schools for just over a year now, and Shadow Minister for Schools for five years before that. During that time I have visited hundreds of schools, observed hundreds of lessons, and listened to hundreds of teachers.

    So much of what I’ve seen has been deeply impressive. As we said in our White Paper in November, there is much in the English school system of which we can be proud.

    This country has some of the very best schools in the world. Every day, thousands of pupils receive stimulating, engaging and rigorous lessons. We already have thousands of wonderful teachers, and more are joining the profession every year.

    But among these examples of excellence, we know that some schools are struggling.

    The Secretary of State has established floor standards for both secondary and primary schools. We’ve raised the floor for secondary schools to 35 per cent of pupils achieving five GCSEs at grades A*-C including English and Maths, and at least as many pupils making good progress between KS2 and KS4 as the national average. Next year that floor will rise to 40 per cent. Our aim is to raise the standard to 50 per cent of pupils at each school achieving that floor by the end of the Parliament.

    At primary level we have introduced a floor standard for the first time. 60 per cent of pupils achieving Level 4 in English and Maths at Key Stage 2 and at least as many pupils making the expected levels of progress between KS1 and KS2 as the national average, will be the new floor for every primary school in the country.

    That means there are 216 secondary schools below the secondary floor standard at the moment, and around 1,400 primary schools below the primary floor – of whom more than 200 have been under the floor for five years or more. Raising standards in these schools is a priority for the Department.

    The UK is dropping down the PISA international rankings, falling from fourth to sixteenth in Science; seventh to 25th in literacy; and eighth to 28th in Maths. Our 15-year-olds are two years behind Chinese pupils in Maths, and a year behind their peers in Korea or Finland in reading.

    We’re not preparing our school leavers sufficiently well to meet the expectations of employers. The CBI’s annual education and skills survey just last month found that almost half of top employers are forced to invest in remedial training in literacy and numeracy when they hire someone straight out of school or college.

    And the attainment gap between rich and poor and between the state and private sectors remains, in our judgement, unacceptably wide.

    In 2010, 80.3 per cent of children achieved level 4 in English at the end of primary school – but only 55.6 per cent of white boys on free school meals achieved this level. In other words, only around half of white boys from the poorest backgrounds started secondary school able to read and write well enough to access the secondary curriculum.

    This isn’t a one-off occurrence, but a worrying pattern. Last year, 55 per cent of all pupils achieved five or more GCSEs at grades A*-C including English and maths. But the number of children on free school meals who achieved the same level was just 31 per cent.

    Whilst GCSE results go up every year, the gap of 28 percentage points between children from the poorest backgrounds and the rest of the population remains stubbornly wide.

    Figures released by the OECD this month have shown that poor children in this country are less likely to exceed expectations for educational performance than their deprived peers in most other developed nations. Britain’s record is well below the global average, coming 28th out of 35 leading nations in terms of social mobility on that measure – below countries like Estonia, Latvia, Mexico and Slovenia.

    These are the statistics which are driving us to make radical reforms.

    Reducing the gap in attainment between pupils from rich and poor backgrounds is a key moral objective of the Coalition Government. Children only get one chance at their education, but we believe these results show that too many of the poorest children are still being let down in English schools.

    Evidence from PISA, the OECD, McKinsey and others shows that the strongest education systems around the world – the education systems which are racing ahead of us in the rankings – are those which recruit and develop the best teachers.

    In the highest performing education systems around the world, teachers are consistently drawn from the brightest and best graduates . In Finland, for example, teachers are selected from the top 10 per cent of graduates. In South Korea, teachers come from the top 5 per cent.

    In these high-performing countries, there are strong systems of professional development, and teachers’ performance is carefully monitored. Teachers learn from successful teachers and schools learn from successful schools.

    And because the profession is so highly valued in those countries, it is seen as high status. In Finland, more than a quarter of young people describe teaching as their number one career choice . Yet in this country, only 2 per cent of first class honours graduates from Russell Group universities choose to teach after graduating .

    The quality of our teachers matters because international research shows that it is the single most important factor in determining a pupil’s progress. A report from McKinsey in 2007 found that “the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers” .

    Studies in the United States have shown that an individual pupil taught for three consecutive years by a teacher in the top ten per cent of performance can make as much as two years more progress than a pupil taught for the same period by a teacher in the bottom ten per cent of performance.

    At secondary level, in particular, research in this country indicates that teachers’ knowledge of their subjects will determine their pupils’ success, especially in the sciences and maths.

    For Physics, the subject expertise of the teacher is one of the most powerful predictors of pupil achievement at GCSE and A level. Similarly, in Maths, pupils taught by teachers with a high level of subject knowledge have been proven to achieve better results.

    Yet over a quarter of Maths teachers in years 7 to 13 in English schools do not hold a post-A level qualification in a subject relevant to Maths.

    40 per cent of teachers of Physics and Chemistry do not hold undergraduate degrees in subjects relevant to Physics and Chemistry. Half of all teachers of French or German do not hold undergraduate degrees in subjects relevant to French or German .

    We want to learn from the highest-performing education systems around the world to improve our own performance. To learn from those countries which are now out-performing us. And while they continue to reform and improve, we want to improve more quickly. As President Obama has said: “the countries that out-teach us today will out-compete us tomorrow.”

    All the evidence points in the same direction. As the most recent PISA briefing note on UK schools repeated: “the bottom line is that the quality of a school system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers.”

    The Government’s priority is to deliver high quality teaching to all children. This is why we called the White Paper which we published last year, “The Importance of Teaching”, and why we have focused on improving the quality of teaching.

    So the question is how: how do we “raise the bar” on teacher quality? We believe it’s a question of rebalancing the system in favour of teachers. We need to improve the support and opportunities available to teachers. And remove the obstacles that are hindering them.

    We want to make teaching more attractive to high-quality entrants and help teachers to develop their skills further still.

    We have expanded Teach First into the North East, so that it now operates across the whole country. We’ve also taken Teach First into primary schools so that children of all ages can benefit from some truly excellent young teachers.

    We’ve launched the Teachers’ Standards Review Group under Sally Coates, the principal of Burlington Danes Academy, to rewrite the QTS and other standards for classroom teachers, focusing them on the key skills and attributes effective teachers need.

    But we also want schools to take the lead in creating more opportunities for teachers to learn from their peers in continuing professional development and leadership training.

    We are establishing new centres of excellence in teaching practice – called Teaching Schools, modelled on Teaching Hospitals – where both new and experienced teachers can learn and develop their professional skills throughout their careers. Over 300 schools have applied to become Teaching Schools so far and we look forward to designating the first 100 Teaching Schools next month.

    Alongside Teaching Schools, yesterday we launched a discussion document about our strategy for reforming initial teacher training to focus on key teaching skills, including managing behaviour and handling pupils’ Special Educational Needs. We want to give schools a stronger influence over the recruitment and selection of trainees and the content of their training; and we want to allow schools to lead their own high quality initial teacher training in partnership with a university.

    In particular, we will ensure that teachers are trained to teach reading, to prevent the tragedy of thousands of children leaving primary school every year unable to read properly. Last year, 9 per cent of pupils started secondary school functionally illiterate, unable to read either for school or for pleasure. Over 15,000 children did not reach the lowest marking level in the Key Stage 2 reading test. Over 20,000 children could not even read well enough to take the test.

    Without the ability to read what’s on the interactive whiteboard or in their textbook, these children end up falling further behind their classmates, more likely to become disillusioned, disengaged and disruptive.

    Research overwhelmingly shows that the most effective method of teaching children to read is systematic synthetic phonics , but at present only half of newly qualified primary teachers rated their training as good or very good in preparing them to teach reading and phonics. We will ensure that teachers are properly trained so they can successfully teach early reading using synthetic phonics, and we’re working very closely with the university education faculties to achieve that.

    We are also proposing to offer financial incentives of up to £20,000 to attract more of the best graduates in shortage subjects into teaching; and enable more talented career changers to become teachers.

    We will no longer provide Department for Education funding for graduates to enter initial teacher training without at least a 2:2 degree, and we will require trainees to pass tougher literacy and numeracy tests before they start training – without the option of unlimited resits, as they have now.

    Finally, we know that teachers want opportunities for further study and continuing professional development to focus on enriching and enhancing their subject knowledge.

    We have therefore introduced a new, competitive £2 million Scholarship Scheme. This fund will enable a number of teachers every year to pursue post-graduate qualifications or other rigorous study in their subjects.

    Applications are being invited now with the first round of funding to be awarded in December. Funding in the first year will focus on the core subjects of Maths, English and Science, as well as special educational needs, where we also have shortages.

    Giving teachers and head teachers their professional autonomy is the driving force behind the acceleration of the Academies programme.

    One of our first priorities in office was to pass the Academies Act and one year on, 704 academies are now open – over twice as many as a year ago. By the end of the year, over a third of all secondary schools will be academies . Teachers in these hundreds of new academies enjoy greater professional freedoms, so that they can concentrate on doing their jobs as they know best.

    We’re encouraging new free schools to be established in areas of need – set up by groups of teachers, parents or educational foundations. In the latest 2012 round we received 281 applications. We expect between 10 and 20 new free schools to open this September. Of the 32 Free Schools that the Department is currently progressing, 2 are located in the most deprived 10 per cent of Lower Super Output Areas; a third are in the most deprived 20 per cent of such areas; and 59 per cent are in the most deprived 50 per cent of Lower Super Output Areas.

    We also want to sweep away the bureaucratic burdens being heaped onto teachers which consume energy and time, and sap morale.

    In just one year, under the last Government, the Department produced over 6,000 pages of guidance for schools – more than twice the length of the complete works of Shakespeare but, I would argue, somewhat less inspiring.

    Teachers in all types of schools told us that one of the biggest drains on their time was wading through overlapping, over-prescriptive diktats from the centre.

    We’ve started to cut this back by scrapping unnecessary bureaucracy and streamlining the duties, guidance and paperwork piled onto schools.

    We are also slimming down the Ofsted inspection regime. Rather than examining schools against 27 different headings, it will now focus on the four important core areas: quality of teaching, pupil achievement, leadership and management, and pupil behaviour and safety.

    Pupil behaviour affects both the current and the future teaching workforce. A survey of undergraduates found that the greatest deterrent to entering the teaching profession was the fear of not being safe in the classroom , while two-thirds of teachers say that poor pupil behaviour is driving teachers out of the profession .

    We have issued new and clearer guidance to help teachers to handle poor pupil behaviour, cutting more than 600 pages of guidance down to just 50.

    The Education Bill (currently going through the Lords) will further strengthen teachers’ powers so that they can control classrooms effectively.

    Reducing and simplifying guidance will greatly reduce the burdens on teachers’ time, and will enable them to spend more time focusing on actually teaching. Over the next few months we will be publishing shortened guidance in a wide range of areas. In total, departmental guidance will be more than halved.

    As well as guidance, we want to remove unnecessary central prescription and allow head teachers and governing bodies of maintained schools more freedom to manage their schools.

    The current arrangements for dealing with teacher performance are too complicated and fragmented and more than half of teachers and headteachers surveyed by the Sutton Trust last year agreed or strongly agreed that there was not enough freedom for schools to tackle under-performing teachers.

    We are currently consulting on new arrangements which will make it easier for schools to identify under-performance and to tackle it quickly, effectively and fairly.

    We’ve launched a review to slim down the National Curriculum. We want to move it to a clear, concise specification of core academic content, for teachers to teach in whatever way seems best to them – again, sweeping away reams of paper and lever arch files that specify the content of lesson plans and how to teach. How teachers teach should be left to their professionalism.

    We’re also concerned about the standards in our public examinations, and want to see A levels re-connected with the universities and with the learned societies. We want GCSEs to increase the emphasis on spelling, punctuation and grammar, and we’ve asked Ofqual to advise us on that.

    In the Economist this week, the Bagehot column cites Westminster School where in 1994, 21 per cent of GCSEs taken achieved the top A* grade. By 2004, 59 per cent of the grades at that school were A* and in 2009, 81 per cent.

    No one argues that pupil selection or the work ethic at Westminster School has changed since 1994, certainly not to this degree. We need to restore integrity and confidence in our GCSEs.

    In conclusion, Andrew, in essence our education policy has 3 overarching goals:

    to close the attainment gap between those from poorer and wealthier backgrounds
    to ensure our education system competes with the best education jurisdictions in the world
    and to trust professionals and raise the esteem of the teaching profession.

    It’s an ambitious programme and although self-praise is no praise, I hope you’ll agree that in the first 12 months of this administration we have made an energetic and expeditious start to achieving these goals. Thank you very much.

  • Michael Gove – 2011 Speech at Policy Exchange on Free Schools

    Michael Gove – 2011 Speech at Policy Exchange on Free Schools

    The speech made by Michael Gove, the then Secretary of State for Education, on 20 June 2011.

    As a nation, we are blessed with some of the best schools in the world. But at the same time, we also have too many that are still struggling. There are hundreds of primaries where the majority of children fail to reach an acceptable level in English and maths. Primaries where the majority of children leave ill-equipped to face the challenges ahead. On a human level, it is a tragedy. For many of those children, their time at secondary is marked by – at best – frustration and disappointment, and – at worst – defiance and disruption.

    On an economic level, it is a serious threat to our international competitiveness and puts our recovery at risk. As a country, only about half our pupils manage at least a ‘C’ in both English and maths GCSE – in Singapore, it’s four in five. In the last decade, we have plummeted down the international league tables: from 4th to 16th place in science; from 7th to 25th place in literacy; and from 8th to 28th in maths. British 15-year-olds’ maths skills are now more than two whole academic years behind 15-year-olds in China. While other countries have raced ahead we have – in the words of Andreas Schleicher, the OECD’s Director of Education – “stagnated.” This stagnation leaves children poorly prepared for the world we face.

    We have just suffered the worst financial crisis since 1929. Our economy is weighed down by a huge debt burden. Europe has major problems with debt and the euro. Meanwhile there is a rapid and historic shift of political and economic power to Asia and a series of scientific and technological changes that are transforming our culture, economy and global politics. If we do not have a school system that is adapting to and preparing for these challenges then we will betray a generation.

    Already, almost half of UK employers are unable to find the science and maths specialists they need, and the majority predict problems in finding such staff in the future. And what makes the situation so much worse is that, domestically, this unpreparedness, this poor performance, is so powerfully concentrated in areas of disadvantage. Far too often, deprivation is destiny.

    We have one of the most stratified and segregated school systems in the developed world. More than 70% of poor pupils in parts of China and Hong Kong exceeded the standard expected of them – compared to just a quarter here. The gap in attainment between rich and poor, which widened in recent years, is a scandal. Schools should be engines of social mobility, places where the democratisation of knowledge helps vanquish the accidents of birth. But in the system we inherited, the gap just widens over time. By age 16, a deprived pupil is only half as likely to achieve five or more good GSCEs, including English and maths. And by 18 the gap is vast. In the last year for which we have figures, just 40 out of 80,000 of our poorest pupils made it to Oxbridge – down from 45 the previous year. Far, far too many young people are being robbed of the chance to shape their own destiny. It is a moral failure; a tragic waste of talent; and an affront to social justice. We need nothing short of radical, whole-scale reform.

    When it comes to deciding what such reform should be, we need to start by looking to the best. And the best – and those who want to be the best – are changing fast. When you look at the highest-performing and fastest-reforming education systems, there are three essential characteristics that stand out.

    The best-performing nations – like Finland, South Korea and Singapore – all recruit their teachers from the top pool of graduates. Which is why we are reforming teacher training and expanding programmes such as Teach First, Teaching Leaders and Future Leaders, who attract the brightest and best into the classroom. And because the biggest barrier to talented people coming into or staying in teaching is poor behaviour by pupils, we are strengthening teachers’ powers to maintain order in our new Education Bill.

    Secondly, the top education nations are uncompromising in their commitment to rigorous accountability. The latest analysis from the OECD underlines that smart external assessment – proper testing you can trust – helps lever up standards. You need mechanisms that send a relentless signal that you believe in holding everyone to higher and higher standards. That’s why we introduced our English Baccalaureate: to encourage more children, especially from poorer backgrounds, to take the types of qualifications that open doors to the best universities and the most exciting careers.

    And thirdly, the highest-performing education systems are those where government knows when to step back. We want a school system in which teachers have more power and in which they are more accountable to parents – not politicians. It’s this characteristic of success, this driver of reform, that I want to focus on today.

    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.”

    In Singapore, often cited as an exemplar of centralism, the Government has deliberately encouraged greater diversity in the school system – and dramatic leaps in attainment have been secured as a result. Schools where principals are exercising a progressively greater degree of operational autonomy are soaring ahead. And as the scope for innovation has grown, so Singapore’s competitive advantage over other nations has grown too.

    In Sweden, the old bureaucratic monopoly that saw all state schools run by local government was ended. Over a fifth of Swedish schools are now non-selective, highly-autonomous, state Free Schools. Academic studies confirm that pupils at these schools get better results than pupils at traditional schools; that Free Schools improve standards across the local authority; and that parental satisfaction has significantly increased.

    In Canada, and specifically in Alberta, a diverse range of autonomous schools offer professionals freedom and parents choice. As a result, Alberta now has the best performing state schools of any English-speaking region.

    And in America – where the Charter Schools system implemented by New York and Chicago is perhaps the quintessential model of school autonomy – the results are extraordinary. One need only look at the figures. The median income of families in New York City Charter Schools is 30% lower than in the city as a whole. And ethnic minorities, who have historically been failed by the school system, are overrepresented in Charter Schools: Charter school neighbourhoods are 75 per cent more black and 30 per cent more Hispanic than across the City as a whole. Yet Charters are helping these pupils achieve amazing things. Pupils attending Charter Schools achieve better results than those who applied for a charter school but failed to secure a place in the admissions lottery. And the longer pupils stay in Charter Schools, the better they do: a pupil who attends a Charter School is 7 per cent more likely to get a high school diploma for every year they are there. So three years in a Charter means they are 21 per cent more likely to get a diploma than if they had attended a traditional state school.

    In his excellent article in this month’s Atlantic – which I would encourage you all to read – New York City Education Chancellor Joel Klein holds up Harlem Success Academy 1 as an example of just what autonomous schools can achieve. Harlem Success Academy 1 has a pupil intake of amongst the most disadvantaged in the state. Yet the school now performs at the same level as New York City’s gifted-and-talented schools – all of which have tough admissions requirements, while Success randomly selects its pupils by lottery. And when schools achieve those kind of results, parents sit up and take notice. As Klein says: “…[W]e should make sure that every student has at least one alternative – and preferably several – to her neighborhood [primary] school. We implemented this strategy by opening more than 100 charter schools in high-poverty communities. Tellingly, almost 40,000 families chose these new schools, and another 40,000 are on waiting lists.”

    Across the world, then, autonomy is proving a key driver of success. The good news in England is that we already have some excellent domestic examples to draw on. Granting greater autonomy has already generated success stories here. In the five or so years after 1988, the last Conservative Government created fifteen City Technology Colleges. These schools are all-ability comprehensives, but they enjoy much greater independence than other schools. Overwhelmingly, they are located in poorer areas – yet this doesn’t stop them achieving great results.

    Seeing the success of CTCs, the last government took the principle of autonomy forward under its Academies programme. The scheme took chronically failing schools away from Local Authorities and placed them under the wing of a sponsor, who was given the freedom and flexibility to implement real change. Last month, academics at the London School of Economics published a landmark assessment of the scheme. 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 ‘creaming-off’ 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 – and most significantly – beyond raising standards for their own pupils, Academies also tend to raise pupil performance in neighbouring schools. Success, it seems, is contagious.

    It would be negligent not to try and build on this success so we’re expanding on what’s already working well. We remain committed to this original strand of the Academies programme – and we are taking it further than ever before. This year, we will open more sponsored Academies than the last Government did in the first eight years of the Academies programme – and more than in any single year in the history of the scheme. 88 schools have already been identified and will open in the next academic year. We are also expanding the programme to failing primaries. We are working to identify the weakest 200 primary schools in the country; they will become Academies in 2012.

    But autonomy isn’t just a mechanism for reversing underperformance – it works for accelerating high performance as well. So we decided to allow those professionals who were already doing a brilliant job to really spread their wings. We began by allowing any outstanding school to convert to an Academy. And now we’re enabling more schools to reap the benefits of autonomy by letting any schools apply for academy status – provided it’s teamed with a high-performing school. The rapid conversion of so many great schools to academies means there is now a pool of excellent institutions to build chains of schools, simultaneously autonomous and collaborative, working in partnership to raise standards. Over 1,200 schools have applied for Academy status. Over 800 of these applications have been approved. Over 400 have already converted and are open – bringing the total number of open academies to over 700. Tony Blair, the architect of the reform programme his party has now rejected, said that reaching 400 Academies would have a “transformative effect” on the education system. Well, we’ve almost doubled that in a year. We are transforming education in this country at an unprecedented pace.

    And if it’s possible to become an autonomous school by partnering with another school, or by securing a sponsor, or by converting, then it should also be possible to start a truly autonomous, truly free, school from scratch. So we invited teacher groups, parent groups, charities and others to apply to set up their own schools. In the first year, over 300 answered the call, and I am delighted that over a dozen Free Schools are expected to open this September.

    Before the election, countless people told me that it was foolish to expect any Free Schools at all to open in September 2011. Pilot the scheme for September 2012, they said, and don’t expect any serious numbers until September 2015. But we proved them wrong. The first Free Schools will open just 7 to 12 months after submitting their initial plans to the Department. This is remarkable. In the past, it normally took between three and five years to set up a maintained school. Elmgreen School, one of the first parent-promoted schools, took four years to open from conception. JCoSS, a Jewish community secondary, took nine years. It took five years to create the first 15 CTCs. It took one term of office to create the first 17 Academies. Yet we expect to have more than a dozen new schools open in just over a year.

    And we’re not just getting great new schools open more quickly – we’re doing it more efficiently too. We are not being prescriptive about Free Schools and so they come in all shapes and sizes. Some are housed in existing schools. Others will be based in a range of refurbished and adapted buildings, including a former library in London and an office building in Norwich. The critical point is that we have been thinking creatively about how to secure excellent new schools at a time when budgets are tight.

    Delivering high quality education against the backdrop of public spending pressures is one of the two major challenges facing my department. The other is demography. Nationally, we could need around quarter of a million more primary school places by 2014-15 – with London feeling this squeeze more than most. So we announced in December that we would double the levels of ‘basic need’ funding spent by the last Government to £800m to help LAs provide new places. The Free Schools programme could help us alleviate some of the pressure as well. Schools like the Harris Free School in Peckham and Redbridge Primary will, from September, help meet local demand in areas facing a serious problem with places.

    But satisfying local demand is about more than the macro-level argument of basic need. On a human level, it’s about meeting parents’ desire for a good local school – a school that’s easy to get to, that feels like part of the community. Unsurprisingly, a number of applications come either from community groups trying to save a beloved local school or start one in a hitherto neglected area. Like Stour Valley Community School in Suffolk, or the SABRES group in Breckland, where parents’ ‘Save our School’ campaigns are protecting the ideal of great community education.

    And even where there are places at local schools, they’re not necessarily the type of school places parents are happy with. A choice between two things you don’t want is hardly a choice at all. Free Schools offer a genuine alternative – and they have the freedom to be different. Like the Norwich Free School, which will integrate high-quality education and child-care year-round. The school will be sited right in the heart of Norwich so that working parents can make full use of the affordable extended school provision which will be available on the school premises for 6 days each week, 51 weeks of the year.

    What is also remarkable is just how many Free Schools want to use this freedom to innovate specifically for the benefit of the very poorest. In America, the Charter School movement was started by idealistic young teachers who were sick and tired of the entrenched practices that were persistently failing the most vulnerable. There is the same appetite for change here, and it’s clearly manifest in the first tranche of Free Schools. The teachers running the outstanding Cuckoo Hall Academy, for example, have decided to set up a new school – Woodpecker Hall Primary Academy – so they can reach more deprived children in North London. Indeed, around a third of the Free Schools aiming to open in September are located in the 20% most deprived areas in the country, and we hope to see many more Free Schools targeting disadvantage in the future.

    The latest application round closed just two weeks ago and, as the Free Schools team in the department goes through the proposals, we’re already seeing some interesting things. Encouragingly, there has been no drop-off in momentum: despite introducing a more rigorous application process, we have received 281 applications to set up a Free School in 2012. For the first time, we called for groups to set up special Free Schools, so that children with Special Educational Needs could have access to more excellent state special schools. Twenty groups answered the call. For the first time, we invited applications for alternative provision Free Schools, so that we could provide more targeted intervention for young people at risk. Thirty four groups took up the challenge. And we are also encouraging businesses and universities to help tackle the shortage of high-quality technical education by setting up University Technical Colleges. Thirty seven groups have applied to open a UTC next year.

    Twelve applications came from existing Academy providers who, like Cuckoo Hall, want to use their expertise to help even more of the poorest pupils. Over half of applications – 126 in total – came from teacher, parent or community groups, ready to play a bigger role in shaping local children’s futures. We’ve even had an application from a Premiership football club: Everton FC is hoping to start an alternative provision Free School that would use sport to engage a wider spectrum of students.

    The process is continually evolving. We are constantly reviewing and refining the programme to help get high-quality schools open where they are most needed. We’ve always made clear that we want children from the very poorest homes to have access to the very best education. If there are Academy sponsors or Free School groups who especially want to target poorer children, then we need to think of ways we can help them do just that. We’re currently consulting about whether Academies and Free Schools should be able to prioritise children receiving the pupil premium. Schools would know that the more children they managed to attract from poorer backgrounds, the more funding they would get. The pupil premium gives schools the money need to help the poorest; changing the Admissions Code lets that money operate as a genuine incentive.

    While we’re in a hurry to get new schools open up and down the country, we are uncompromising when it comes to quality. The bar for entry is set high, and we make no apologies for that. In recent months, we’ve adapted the application process, making it more rigorous and learning from the best practice around the world. We’ve developed a new application form, requiring applicants to provide more detail about their school. We’ve introduced interviews for shortlisted proposals, so we can ensure only the strongest are successful. And we’ve introduced a single application deadline, allowing us to judge applications against each other and identify only the very best to take forward.

    As the Prime Minister made clear in his Munich speech, we are absolutely determined to ensure that no one who has an extremist agenda – whether it’s politically or religiously extremist – has access to public money. Of course, it’s a free country, and we’re not going to attempt to police what people believe. But we are determined to ensure that those who receive public funding – and especially those who are shaping young minds – do not peddle an extremist agenda. That’s why, in response to an excellent Policy Exchange report, we have set up a dedicated team within the Department who will rigorously police any application for public money, including Free School applications. And we make it explicit in the application guidance that we will reject any proposers who advocate violence, intolerance, or hatred, or whose ideology runs counter to the UK’s democratic values.

    Yes, the application process is rigorous. But clearing that hurdle doesn’t mean schools are off the hook. We know that autonomy works best when it’s paired with sharp, smart accountability. Last week, I announced that we would intervene in the weakest 200 primary schools in the country and put them in the hands of sponsors who could turn them round. I said we would identify a further 500 primaries for urgent collaboration with the Department. I said we would raise the floor standards and ask more of all our schools. Let me be clear: these tough measures apply to maintained schools, Academies and Free Schools alike. When it comes to failing schools, there are no favoured children, no ‘get out of jail free’ cards. When an Academy is failing, when a Free School is letting pupils down, then action needs to be swift.

    But just as we must be uncompromising in our vigilance, we must be unyielding in our resolve. There will be glitches and hurdles along the way. Reform is untidy business; sweeping reform even more so. There are no smooth revolutions. Still, we must press forward. We are, after all, spurred by a moral imperative: we simply cannot afford to let another generation of children down.

  • John Hayes – 2011 Speech at Warwickshire College

    John Hayes – 2011 Speech at Warwickshire College

    The speech made by John Hayes, the then Education Minister, at Warwickshire College, Rugby on 15 June 2011.

    Introduction

    Good morning everyone.

    I am going to speak today about the future of FE and I wanted the first people with whom I shared my thoughts to be some of those who know the sector best, care about it most and, critically, who will play a key role in delivering a new future for FE that is characterised by innovation, vocational excellence and a renewed sense of enthusiasm for and pride in skills.

    Many of you say that I am something of a tribune for our FE sector, in public, in Parliament and within Government. My commitment isn’t based on sentiment, although we should never be apologetic about the beauty of craft and the elegance of learning. The case for practical learning is far from merely utilitarian. Nevertheless, a hard-headed analysis proves how fundamental high-quality adult learning and skills are to achieving many of the key objectives of the coalition’s programme for government.

    Take, for example, our highest priority, the task of restoring economic growth.

    Higher skills bring higher productivity. But they also allow businesses to become more efficient and more innovative.

    In the rebalanced global economy, productivity, efficiency and innovation will be key to this country’s continued ability to be competitive. That applies not just to international markets, but in our domestic economy, too.

    New economic powers like India, China and Brazil are looking to increase their exports, and they will cater to our home market’s demands if British producers don’t because they can’t. Of course, the growing strength of countries like these isn’t an accident. It is based on years of focused investment, including in education and skills.

    People often speak of our economy in isolation, as if it were separate from the rest of our national life. Of course it isn’t. Growth coupled with a skilled workforce creates jobs, which in turn spread prosperity and spending-power. But even in an environment in which new jobs are being created – which they currently are, as a matter of fact – lack of the right skills still leaves people excluded.

    There are currently nearly a million young people not in education, employment or training. A further 80,000 people are locked up in our gaols. Targeted skills provision is at the heart of the Government’s strategies for getting people out of inactivity or out of the pernicious cycle of offending and reoffending and offering them productive lives.

    It follows from everything I’ve said so far that skills are also a powerful force in achieving progressive social aims. High skills have always been an enabler of social mobility. But even more importantly, we know that gaining and using skills gives individuals and their families a stronger sense of purpose and pride in their own achievements. It’s also clear that learning, including perhaps in its more informal settings, strengthens communities by helping to bring people together and encouraging active citizenship.

    The public health benefits of learning and its positive effects on reducing anti-social behaviour are well documented. The stronger our adult learning and skills system, the healthier and happier as a nation we are likely to become because achievement feeds contentment which in turn nourishes the common good.

    The challenges

    This vision of a stronger society based on an appreciation of what learning and skills can do poses great challenges. The Government set out its approach to meeting them last November in Skills for Sustainable Growth. But the skills revolution we seek and the benefits we look to it to bring cannot be led from above. It needs the active involvement of you and your learners as well.

    Let’s start with individual learners.

    I remember early last year seeing a young unemployed woman being interviewed on the BBC. She had been directed to one course after another and passed them all. But they had led to nowhere; certainly no closer to a job, because they were the wrong courses.

    How disappointing to have left her disenchanted about the value of learning and disillusioned about how much control she had over her destiny.

    Learners deserve to grasp the relationship between the skills they acquire and the outcomes they can gain in terms of work, social skills and social progress. So, learning needs not only to be “accessible”- in the sense of learners being able to participate in it; but “explicable” – in terms of individuals understanding the different impacts that different types of learning can have on their lives.

    Empowerment does not simply amount to giving people the right to choose. They must also be equipped with the information they need to make an informed choice. That is why, among other things, we are radically reforming and restructuring careers guidance services, which is something about which we will say more tomorrow.

    We must empower people to gauge the likely impact of learning for them before they begin it and to make informed choices on that basis. That means putting aside the last Government’s pre-occupation with inputs – on measuring things like how many people train – and instead concentrating on the outcomes of training for those trained.

    If we want it to be valued, learning must be seen to deliver on its promises.

    And if it does, we can renew shared public appreciation of the value of skills.

    There are challenges, too, for employers.

    There is no point continuing, as we have all done for years, listening passively to employers’ complaints when the skills system fails to meet their needs. We must challenge them by giving them the power to do something about it.

    But first, they must understand the importance of skills to their businesses, and then what their businesses’ specific skills needs are. Over and above this, more businesses must do what many do now; develop a willingness to engage more closely with their staff – Unionlearn is one good vehicle for that – and businesses and skills providers must be closer than ever.

    The model for this sort of close, three-way partnership is the Apprenticeships programme. That’s an important reason for the Government’s unprecedented commitment to it. We will create more apprenticeships in our nation than we’ve ever had in our history.

    The Government is continuing to make a substantial investment in adult FE and skills, but we also need to rebalance investment, with the costs of training being shared between employers, individuals and the state. We need employers to “own” training programmes, to put their stamp on the skills brand, curriculum and content.

    We are already beginning to see more employer sponsorship of workshops, academies and zoning of teaching blocks – this is an excellent start but we must do more.

    The final set of challenges will fall to you, the FE sector. You are the experts on how to train people. But you, too, must become more open to the views of learners and employers about how you could do that differently – better.

    You must think about the special strengths that each of your institutions has, and how to build on them, providing specialist, vocationally-focused offers that are unique and distinctive.

    Distinctive in focusing on the training needs of individual sectors and being highly visible to your employer communities. Distinctive in making your offer different from that of other providers, so that there is diversity and choice for employers and learners.

    Britain’s 21st century demands a rainbow of provision, not monotone grey uniformity. We demand scope for individuality, not collectivisation. A limited palette won’t allow us to paint the sharply focused, specialised employer-led provision that we need. Nor is uniformity likely to foster the type of relationship that must exist between employers and employees in individual sectors and their professional counterparts within and across colleges and providers. Learners, employers, lecturers and trainers are united by their shared interest in specific areas of vocational skills and this must be recognised in the way learning is organised and delivered, and how colleges and training organisations promote themselves to local communities.

    Our reform agenda also means we need to look again at the approach to addressing poor delivery. We need to take decisive action so that when minimum levels of performance go unmet, other providers, new and existing, can replace inadequate provision.

    So, for example, where a college is wholly failing, there has been a tendency in the sector to assume that merging it with another college is invariably the best option. We need to be more creative, including looking at potential new providers and new delivery models, including opening up opportunities for high-quality deliverers from the independent sector. An ever-smaller number of ever-larger and more similar institutions is not going to meet that demand in FE any more than it is in schools or higher education. I am not saying that mergers should never happen, but there needs to be a wide variety of approaches if we are to achieve a revitalised and dynamic system.

    We want to work with you to refine our approach so that change is catalysed, not by failure, but by innovation.

    We are giving the sector more freedom and flexibility to deliver the learning and skills their local communities want, and in return I expect you to transform the look and content of your provision.

    I want you to step up, to take advantage of the freedoms, and think laterally and creatively about the offer you provide. For me responsiveness is the baseline: innovation is our aim.

    My vision is of a revitalised, reborn FE sector which is more responsive to the changing needs of a dynamic economy. It will involve greater choice and a market opened up to a range of high quality and more diverse set of providers. It will encompass a wide ranging and evolving set of colleges and training organisations who can respond quickly to meet specific, specialist and/or localised demand as needs alter.

    Meeting the challenges

    In the past year, much has been done to create the conditions in which these challenges can be met.

    We have freed you from a whole raft of pointless rules and regulations and are removing more.

    Government off your back and on your side.

    We have announced funding which will deliver at least 250,000 more Apprenticeships by the end of this Parliament than the previous Government planned.

    We have protected funding for Informal Adult and Community Learning, whilst focusing on those who most need it.

    We are developing co-funding and loans for adult learners to achieve the rebalancing of public and employer or individual investment.

    At the same time, we have protected funding to help our lowest-skilled people, prioritising young adults who don’t have qualifications when they leave school and improving the quality of training for those without literacy and numeracy.

    We are working towards creating an independent, highly professional, impartial careers service that will ensure that people have the right information at the right time to make the right choices.

    And we are working with employers and expert bodies to encourage the development of new industry-led professional standards schemes and ensure the suite of qualifications is valued and of high quality.

    But I believe there is more to do and scope for new thinking.

    Though further education is time-honoured – for craft is rooted in our history – Apprenticeships pre-date degrees. As C S Lewis observed, “you are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream”.

    And this is not a Government like the last one, satisfied because it identified problems, concocted plans, restricted, regulated and repeatedly rebadged. Our strategy, Skills for Sustainable Growth is the start of a journey. We must, we will, maintain and increase the momentum we have created.

    So I want to hear your views on how we might develop our strategies further, demonstrating more clearly than ever the FE and skills system’s contribution to economic growth and social renewal, to individual opportunity and collective wellbeing.

    So let me share with you just some of the areas where there still remains significant work to do.

    There is much more to do on Apprenticeships, in particular in terms of making the system more straightforward, developing better access arrangements into an Apprenticeship for people with low skills, and also doing more to develop higher Apprenticeships at the higher end of the skills scale.

    There is important work to do in developing learner support arrangements, particularly introducing Lifelong Learning Accounts and tuition fee loans for adult learners. This is something on which we will be consulting very shortly.

    We have promised to review informal adult and community learning in order to ensure that we get maximum value from what I regard as the jewel in the learning crown going ahead. Here, too, a consultation exercise is pending.

    As most of you know, we have been discussing with the sector further ways in which to make your relationship with the Government and our agencies less onerous. They include introducing a single budget for colleges and streamlining monitoring and performance management arrangements.

    But perhaps most of all we should give thought to how to extend the beneficial influence of FE and skills providers across our education system, our economy and our society.

    FE is at the heart of learning for the common good.

    To be all we can be, we must ensure that that the landscape is revitalised and dynamic, where colleges and training organisations are constantly asking ‘can we do this better?’ There is no single prescription or ‘silver bullet’ – the structures that providers choose to adopt will vary according to their particular offer, itself shaped by demand. To excel we must dare to be different.

    Future developments might include skills centres where colleges and individual providers come together to provide specialist, niche or new skills areas. Or Community Interest Companies set up to progress business or activity for the community’s benefit.

    Or other types of partnership involving employers through National Skills Academies – ranging from centres of excellence based at existing colleges or training providers, to new stand-alone centres developed to meet changing markets, to networks of partners delivering learning through on-line provision.

    Or through colleges and training organisations engaged with Group Training Associations and similar models that can help SMEs access training advice and aggregate demand so that local training provision can be adapted.

    There is also scope to build on the model of University Technical Colleges or Technical Academies for 14-19 that I envisage, where the employer, the FE college and the associated university come together to prepare students for progression to higher education.

    We can also strengthen and develop FE’s already-significant role in providing higher education itself. And I have no doubt that the forthcoming Higher Education White Paper will suggest further ways to strengthen the sector’s contribution both in helping people progress into higher education and in delivering higher education courses in their communities.

    Demand side dynamism depends on supply side diversity.

    Underpinning these challenges, there is scope to look at a wide range of organisational and business approaches: for example forms of employee mutualisation that directly involve the staff in college management, via employee trusts. Or colleges could establish or acquire a company or set up a trust in order to meet a specific need or deliver specific services, or participate in alliances such as federations or joint venture models to agree how collectively to meet the needs of learners and employers in their local communities.

    All of this presents colleges with exciting opportunities to innovate and improve their provision in line with my vision for a reformed FE sector.

    Conclusion

    It has been an exciting year for FE and there is more excitement to come.

    The contribution to building a better Britain that FE and skills is already making, and our plans to help you contribute even more are central to the Government’s mission.

    Flagship policies for a flagship sector.

    Growing FE, a growing economy and a growing society.

    These three aims are inseparable and indispensable.

    You and your fellow Principals and Governors, and how you frame your own unique offer, are at the heart of our ambitions for skills and the contributions they make to national growth.

    Never has a Government believed as much in FE as I believe in you.

    So fulfil my vision, our mission.

    Renew our sector.

    Renew our nation.

  • John Hayes – 2011 Speech at the iCeGS Annual Lecture

    John Hayes – 2011 Speech at the iCeGS Annual Lecture

    The speech made by John Hayes, the then Education Minister, on 15 June 2011.

    Good afternoon everyone.

    Parliamentary business has to take precedence in a democracy and so sadly I am unable to join you today. But I do want to take this opportunity to underline some crucial points that my able deputy, Susan Pember, will explain more fully later on.

    My passionate belief in the value of careers guidance is well-known. I am convinced that, whatever the excellence of the courses on offer and the relevance to employers of the qualifications to which they lead, you cannot have a truly first-class skills system without a first-class advice and guidance service for learners. Careers guidance changes lives.

    That why, first of all today, I want to thank you, to thank you for all you’ve done, all you do and for the future too. It’s going to be an exciting journey we travel together, the destination – the best of careers services.

    Now, you will have seen the announcements on 13 April about careers guidance policy, reflecting my responsibilities across both the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Department for Education. So you know that under the Education Bill currently progressing through parliament, schools will have a new statutory duty to secure independent and impartial careers guidance. Whilst we are committed to freeing schools from bureaucracy, achieving the best career, work and life outcomes for all young people means having the right careers advice.

    It is absolutely right that careers advice must be at the heart of what schools do. We will put into place measures that allow schools to secure the best possible advice in an independent way. I don’t say that schools havn’t done a good job up until now, many have. But guidance frankly has been patchy and too often advice on vocational options has been neglected. I’ve notified schools already that they need to prepare for this new statutory duty from this September and I can assure you that we will exemplify best practice, we will ask Ofsted to ensure that schools take this duty seriously at a management level and we will take further steps, if necessary, to secure that the right advice is given at the right time.

    I believe that head teachers will take this duty very seriously. You know, we believe in trusting heads, governors and teachers to make the right judgments for their schools and there will not be a vanilla flavoured offer, different schools will take different paths that suit their students’ needs, but nevertheless the availability of independent careers advice in our schools is essential if all pupils are going to achieve their best.

    I understand that a significant cultural change is required in moving from a model of central Government blanket support to one where the market plays a stronger role.

    I know that, in that context, the service that’s provided will be tailored, tuned to the needs of different schools and different pupils.

    It is important that schools are held to account for the quality of the services they secure and the impact they have on the progression of their pupils. So, for the first time, we will introduce a measure of how well pupils do when they leave school. These destination measures will be a vital way of assessing the effectiveness of the advice that people have received.

    I want organisations which are part of the National Careers Service to provide information, advice and guidance of such quality that schools will commission their services.

    Giving Schools responsibility is vital to driving up standards.

    But the Service will do two vitally important things:

    First, it will provide a visible public platform which champions the quality and professional standards which I think are crucial for the re-establishment of careers guidance as a true, respected profession.

    Secondly, it will provide services which the market does not, or cannot currently provide. For young people, both in and out of school, there will be a helpline service and access to online information – we will continue to fund a high quality face to face guidance service in the community for adults. Provision of this guidance is crucial for adults because there is no routine institution that is responsible for their needs in this regard.

    But, there is more. The main professional bodies for careers are, for the first time, working as a unified force for professional standards and common principles for guidance, there are now plans to achieve chartered status within three years. This is not a small step, but a giant leap. I wholeheartedly endorse everything they are doing to address the challenge in the most direct way.

    The work that is being done by the profession, informed by the recommendations of Dame Ruth Silver which the government accept and driven by the efforts of Ruth Spelman, and others who are taking up this challenge is essential to delivering the best service in the world, which is what I want.

    I have spoken before, I hope with passion, about the need to raise the status of careers guidance. I want the careers profession to return to a position of public recognition, prestige and value, where guidance is seen as an essential part of life and experience. It is too important for us to do anything other.

    Connexions did good work and I know many of you were involved with Connexions, but its advice in terms of careers was often patchy. I think we ask too much of people to be professional careers advisors and to offer expert guidance on all kinds of other lifestyle issues.

    That’s why we need a dedicated service.

    And so we will develop a strong brand and identity for the National Careers Service, which will act as a beacon in the market, standing for excellence, widely recognised and valued by its customers.

    I believe there is a great cause for optimism. We are on a clear path towards the vision that I set out.

  • Nick Gibb – 2011 Speech to the HMC Deputy Heads Conference

    Nick Gibb – 2011 Speech to the HMC Deputy Heads Conference

    The speech made by Nick Gibb, the then Education Minister, on 7 June 2011.

    I’m absolutely delighted to be here today and I’m grateful to you for inviting me.

    First, because we have much in common. As Minister of State, rather than Secretary of State, I too am a fully paid up member of the ‘deputy club’.

    And secondly, because I’m a huge admirer of what the independent sector has achieved.

    While the state sector has, over the last half century, fallen victim to the vicissitudes of passing educational fads and ideology, the independent sector has remained steadfast to high quality, well-rounded education based on clear evidence of what works best for children and young people.

    HMC schools don’t just set the benchmark for every other school in this country, private or state, to aspire to.

    Their excellence is recognised all over the world.

    And as I saw on a visit to King Edward’s School in Birmingham in January, that success is rooted in independence, freedom and autonomy.

    The independence to develop strong teaching and curricula which maintains academic rigour across the board.

    To adopt high quality, internationally recognised qualifications like the IB or the iGCSE.

    And to use outstanding artistic, sporting and pastoral provision, to create broad-minded young people, ready to thrive in an ever-changing world.

    Our reform programme is based on the same principles of independence – that teachers and professionals know best how to run schools.

    Everything we’re doing is about giving the best state schools the same autonomy to get on with the job – without Whitehall dictating day-to-day details.

    And so today, I also want to set out how the independent sector and its leadership teams can play a part in raising standards across our education system.

    Unashamedly, we want to replicate the best of what the independent sector does – learning and applying the lessons from its success.

    But to do that properly, we need to draw directly on the excellence, ethos, and proven track record – what my predecessor, Lord Adonis, called the “educational DNA” of the independent sector.

    I was pleased to see that that the title of this conference – Meeting the Challenges – suggests independent schools are not resting on their laurels.

    Because the education system is facing some of its toughest challenges in decades.

    How do we meet the demands of business, universities and society to compete in a fast-changing, unpredictable global economy?

    How do we use early years’ provision and schools to drive social mobility?

    How do we drive up standards in the state system in the face of tighter public spending?

    Our White Paper last November, The Importance of Teaching, pointed out that there is much to admire and build on in England’s state education system: hundreds of outstanding schools; tens of thousands of great teachers; academies established and outstripping the rest of the maintained sector.

    But it was also made clear that too many children are still being let down because the system is not fulfilling its potential.

    We’re failing to keep pace with countries with the best education systems – falling back in the PISA international rankings, from fourth to sixteenth in science; seventh to 25th in literacy; and eighth to 28th in maths – meaning our 15-year-olds are two years behind their Chinese peers in maths; and a year behind teenagers in Korea or Finland in reading.

    We’re still not meeting the expectations of employers – with the CBI’s annual education and skills survey just last month finding that almost half of top employers had to invest in remedial training for school and college leavers.

    And we’ve still not closed the yawning attainment gap – which remains unacceptably wide both between rich and poor and between state and private sectors.

    Professor William Richardson’s excellent report for the HMC 18 months ago, showed the top ten universities’ increasing reliance on the independent sector – with 40% of all students on strategically important courses like engineering, science, maths and languages, drawn from private schools.

    And last year’s A-level results also showed a fifth of all entrants in chemistry, physics, maths and biological sciences and almost a third in further maths were independent school pupils.

    But as a nation, we can’t carry on relying on the seven per cent of young people the independent sector educates, to provide such a high proportion of future generations of scientists, engineers, medics or linguists.

    The key to both social mobility and a mobile economy is to realise the potential, ability and talent of young people from all backgrounds.

    That’s why we’ve introduced the English Baccalaureate.

    The Russell Group has been quite clear about the core GCSE and A-level subjects which equips students best for the most competitive courses – English; maths; the three sciences; geography; history; classical and modern languages.

    So the E-Bacc is designed to open up those same subjects to tens of thousands of state pupils currently denied the opportunity.

    We need to take clear action.

    It is a major concern to us that nine out of ten state pupils eligible for free school meals are not even entered for the E-Bacc subjects – and just 4% actually achieve it.

    It is a concern that the proportion taking a modern foreign language GCSE has slipped from 79% a decade ago to just 43% last year – and little more than a third when you take out independent schools.

    And it cannot be right that no pupil was entered for any of the single award science GCSEs in 719 mainstream state schools; for French in 169; for geography in 137; and for history in 70.

    The most academic subjects must not become the preserve of independent schools.

    They should be open to every single student, regardless of background.

    In the modern world, there is nowhere to hide for any school leaver. Jobs can be transported across international borders in a nanosecond. The pace of technological change means that new industries are evolving in the space of months not decades.

    So it is no longer good enough to judge state education simply by how much we spend or against rigid, centrally arbitrated targets – we need to raise our game.

    Our reform programme draws on the clear and consistent evidence base from the leading education systems around the world.

    PISA, OECD, McKinsey and others tell us that despite most developed countries doubling or even tripling their education spending since the mid-1970s, outcomes have varied wildly.

    Because it is not how much they’ve spent on education that counts most. It is how they spent it.

    The strongest systems recruit and develop the best teachers. They have strong leadership. They have internationally benchmarked curricula, assessments and qualifications. And above all, they give schools and professionals freedom to flourish.

    That’s why we are getting rid of much unnecessary, cumbersome bureaucracy that bedevils state schools – slimming down the National Curriculum; scrapping the Self Evaluation Form; focusing Ofsted inspections on teaching; closing down quangos; and cutting the overly complex Admissions Code and hundreds of pages of statutory guidance.

    But we want to go further.

    We want to complete the last government’s unfinished business when it comes to academies.

    We’ve enabled every single state primary, secondary and special school to become independent, autonomous institutions. Free to decide how to use their budgets. Free to vary pay and conditions. Free to decide the length of the school day. Free to offer qualifications in their pupils’ best interests.

    Academies have already proved a force for good in turning around underperforming schools in some of the most deprived areas. Mossbourne in Hackney; the Harris chain across south London and Burlington Danes in Hammersmith are now watchwords for the best of what the state sector can achieve.

    Just as your success is rooted in independence, the evidence is emerging that these early academies’ independence has driven up standards in neighbouring state schools – as new research from the LSE showed last month.

    We’re allowing good state schools to convert to academy status and the demand to do so has far exceeded our expectations.

    It took five years to open 15 City Technology Colleges and four years to open the first 27 Academies.

    But 1244 schools have applied to become an academy in the last 12 months and 430 have already converted – a rate of more than two every school day. A third of all secondary schools are either now academies or in the process of converting. And hundreds more are in the pipeline.

    This is a fundamental shift away from government and towards teachers and professionals.

    Academies are now reforming in ways never foreseen when the programme started a decade ago:

    • established multi-academy chains like Harris and ARK are raising standards in areas failed educationally for generations.

    • the first special schools are going through the application process.

    • the first generation of specialist technical academies are now opening – offering high-quality, work-based vocational education.

    • the door is now open to Further Education and Sixth Form Colleges and alternative provision to become academies through the current Education Bill before Parliament.

    • the first free schools are now set to open from September – and hundreds more coming through.

    Independent schools have already played an important part – acting as lead academy sponsors like Dulwich, Wellington and Canford; co-sponsoring like Marlborough, King Edward School, Bryanson and Tonbridge; or being active educational partners like Malvern, Winchester, Uppingham and Oundle.

    Organisations like ULT, Girls’ Day School Trust, Haberdashers’, Woodard Schools and the Skinner’s Company oversee joint families of academies and independent schools.

    And some have actually converted to the state sector like Birkenhead High School; William Hulme’s Grammar School; Belvedere Girls’ School; and Bristol Cathedral Choir School.

    But as the brakes come off the programme, scores more opportunities are opening up for the independent sector; HE and FE; charities; and business to play a greater role.

    Because crucially, we haven’t forgotten the programme’s roots – to turn round our most challenging, underperforming schools.

    Children only get one shot at education. So we’re clear that we will not hesitate to intervene in weak schools which are letting down parents and pupils.

    And that’s why we’ve appointed Dr Liz Sidwell, the Chief Executive of Haberdashers’ Aske’s Federation, as our new Schools Commissioner.

    Few in education have her track record or experience. And she hasn’t been shy in challenging local authorities and heads to come up with robust improvement plans – brokering academy arrangements; recruiting sponsors; enthusing heads and governors to go for academy status; promoting free schools to prospective proposers; and expanding our existing pool of sponsors significantly.

    Many schools in the independent sector have already established successful partnerships with neighbouring institutions through the Independent State School Partnership scheme. And we want that sort of collaboration to continue through the new national network of Teaching Schools; our Education Endowment Fund; and the National and Local Leaders of Education programme.

    But I believe that formally sponsoring, founding or partnering an academy must be the next logical step for many more independent and state schools.

    Because as academies become the norm in every single part of the system, how the best institutions are judged in the public’s eyes will also change.

    We have a clear expectation that the strongest state schools converting to academies should partner the weakest.

    And I hope that same expectation can apply in the independent sector too.

    Providing an opportunity for the sector to spread its unique ethos, culture and thinking to tens of thousands more children whose parents can’t afford school fees.

    Concepts like Brighton College’s plans for a consortium of independent and state schools to establish a sixth form college in East London to get gifted students to top universities.

    I know some schools have been hesitant to come forward. I understand those who may feel that the independent sector has enough on its plate – with many parents fighting hard to afford fees and many smaller schools striving to keep their heads above water in the current economic climate.

    But many independent schools were born out of a moral drive to help the poorest. That same moral purpose underpins our reforms – to give every single child, of whatever background, the opportunity to make the most of their talents.

    Mr Chairman, in the 12 months that I’ve had the privilege to hold the position of Minister of State for Schools I have done all I can to reduce regulation on the independent sector and I hope we can go further still.

    We’ve recognised the iGCSE in the performance tables – including from this year the Edexcel iGCSE – and we’ve made our admiration for what the sector has achieved clear at every opportunity.

    We all have the same goals when it comes to raising standards throughout the education system and I look forward to continuing to work with HMC and the independent sector to help achieve those goals.

    Thank you.

  • John Hayes – 2011 Speech on Recidivism

    John Hayes – 2011 Speech on Recidivism

    The speech made by John Hayes, the then Education Minister, at Prospero House in London on 18 May 2011.

    This speech is about recidivism. It’s about the frightening fact that 39 per cent of offenders re-offend. Countless extra crimes in every part of Britain. It’s about the £13 billion a year that costs the community. It’s about the broken lives of the parents, wives and children of those who go on breaking the law. And it’s about all the extra victims of those crimes. For all of them, things must change.

    The poet of the Parisian underclass, Victor Hugo, wrote that “He who opens a school door, closes a prison”.

    Perhaps that’s as true literally as he meant it metaphorically.

    Education can certainly save people from ignorance, from want, from frustration and from a whole host of other obstacles that would otherwise stop them leading a truly fulfilled life. But there are also countless examples, of how education can rehabilitate those whose lives have already taken the wrong turning.

    Just as in Hugo’s time, skills like those people can learn by taking an Apprenticeship can make the difference between a life on the right side of the law and a life trapped in the damaging cycle of reoffending and reimprisonment.

    Of course, however hard we try, we will never manage to rehabilitate all prisoners successfully. But we are nonetheless entitled to ask why, despite all the money and effort that we put into prisoner education and other forms of rehabilitation, reconviction rates remain so high.

    Like many of you, I watched the BBC’s recent documentary about The Clink prison restaurant. I was struck not only by what a great initiative this is, training young offenders – very much on the Apprenticeships model – for careers in the catering industry on release, but also by how well it exemplified some of the problems that bedevil our efforts to rehabilitate.

    For every youngster who seized the second chance they were being offered, there were several who could not seem to bring themselves to do so.

    If there were awards for most inspiring and most depressing television programme of the year, the story of The Clink would stand a good chance of winning both.

    But those of us who believe in the power of learning to accomplish social and personal good are surely duty-bound to ensure that prisoner education contributes as much as it possibly can to helping those who come out of prison to stay out of prison. That, most think, means delivering what’s needed to get and keep a job.

    Ensuring that even prisoners with very low skills, including the basics of literacy and numeracy needs, are shown a clear ladder of achievement to attain the skills they will need after release to hold down a job in the outside world.

    That’s in their interest, in their potential victims’ interest; it’s in all our interest.

    It also means ensuring that the skills towards which prisoners are guided are those employers need, especially in the localities into which they will be released.

    In essence, this is what the strategy we are publishing today seeks to do. It emerges from a lengthy review process and I want to take this chance to thank everyone who has contributed to it, including many of you.

    When you read it, you’ll see that some parts of the strategy address issues that are specific to prisoner education, such as the problems with disruption to learning that can occur when someone moves between prisons during their sentence. Others are familiar outside as well as in prisons.

    These include the disillusionment and demotivation that learners can often feel if they work hard to acquire new skills which do not, in the end, help them to find a job.

    I’ve no doubt that all of you will welcome some parts of the strategy. I’m equally certain that some of you will find others very challenging. But the thing that matters most is that we emerge with a system that fills those prisoners who are ready to be rehabilitated with enthusiasm for what learning and skills can do to help them. This is about changing lives by changing beliefs. What thousands of Britons who get on the wrong side of the law believe about themselves, their responsibilities, their duties, their futures.

    Many of today’s prisoners are behind bars because they think, for them, only crime pays. No-one amongst the many people they have come across in their chaotic lives has set their feet on the ladder that climbs from basic and foundation skills upwards to the skills that could make them employable and bring them a decent life by lawful means.

    That ignorance – that fear of failure – is the ultimate form of captivity.

    In future, I want everyone who is released from prison to come out with the realistic opportunity to find a job that leads to an honest and productive life. This matters to all of us: because of the costs involved; because of the number of victims created; because of the number of lives ruined if we don’t do better. There is an ongoing tragedy of lost souls within those parts of our communities at the bedrock of Broken Britain. The cohesive societies which we all want to see can only be built by individuals, families and social networks enriched by purposeful pride.

    Achieving what society deserves will take a lot more than money. But the first principle of our reform programme must be to ensure that what money we have goes where it is most needed and will do most good.

    Which means finding new ways in which to organise how we deliver offender learning so that it has greatest effect and to ensure that this is mirrored more closely by the way we allocate resources.

    For example, we will be trialling outcome incentive payments to give colleges and other providers a greater stake not just in delivering learning successfully, but that the learning goes on to have a positive impact on the prisoner.

    We will also be prioritising forms of training like preparation for Apprenticeships that are known to deliver the best results for individual and are attractive to employers.

    To help with that, we’re going to base the new structure on the clusters of prisons within which prisoners routinely move. That will go a long way towards addressing the problem of interrupted courses that I mentioned, as well as bringing more coherence to the system overall.

    This reorganisation will make it necessary to re-procure offender learning contracts. I understand that this is a worrying development for some of you, and I can assure you that we gave it very careful thought.

    The retendering process will allow us to strengthen the arrangements to assess prisoners’ prior attainment at the start of their sentences, ensuring that learning needs are met by the right training programmes. Our aim will be put in place arrangements that mean all prisoners are assessed using robust and consistent methods.

    Equally importantly, this will ensure that prisoners with learning difficulties and disabilities are identified. That will allow their needs to be met by drawing together the dispersed funding that currently supports them to produce a fund that offers support to learners in a way that more closely matches what their peers in FE colleges would receive.

    As a general rule, we will shift learning delivery towards the end of prisoners’ sentences, linking it firmly to the demand for skills in the labour markets into which prisoners will be released. At the same time, we will strengthen links with employers – again, the shared investment that employers and the Government make in training an apprentice can help here – as will employment support and the Department of Work and Pensions’ Work Programme.

    Making all that work will need a lot of effort, a more intensive focus for training on labour market needs and closer relationships with prospective employers. We will need in particular to build stronger relationships between the Probation Service, Jobcentre Plus, colleges and independent training providers to ensure that the needs of offenders in the community are considered as business plans are developed.

    I know that many British employers are every bit as far-sighted as the American Malcolm Forbes, who famously said that he cared not what an applicant to his company had done in the past, whether in Sing Sing prison or at Harvard, but what they could do in the future. The challenge is to make sure not only that released prisoners have something to offer prospective employers that shows that they could have a future with their businesses, but also, wherever possible, that a relationship with those employers has been established before release.

    To complement these links, it will be important to make sure that the advice and guidance that prisoners approaching release receive is both realistic and relevant. So we will use the planned merger of the prison careers information and advice service into the National Careers Service to join up advice arrangements in and out of custody.

    To increase the range and relevance of learning, we will also provide the skills training needed to support work opportunities in prison; And we will continue to provide an informal adult and community learning offer, including the arts, to support those who will be in prison for a long time, or for whom an immediate focus on work is unrealistic.

    The primary focus of learning provision must be on quality, with those responsible for delivering the service and for its outcomes accountable to their local partners. The role of Heads of Learning and Skills in prisons will need to change to support this.

    Clearly, prison Governors must also have a decisive role in shaping the skills offer in their establishments. In making these changes, we will encourage the engagement of charities, the private and voluntary sectors and social enterprises to make sure their capacity and expertise is utilised.

    At present, our prisons are full to overflowing. And part of the reason for that is that for far too many offenders, the prison gates are a revolving door.

    It may be that part of coming to terms with malevolence – a signpost of the journey back to virtue – is “to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments”. But there comes a point in almost any sentence when retribution must be tempered by rehabilitation.

    Crime is not an ill to be treated, but the result of decisions to be lamented. Nevertheless, lamentation is fuelled by regret and regret feeds hope; the promise of something better. Release must hold a prospect that is sufficiently bright to make reoffending unattractive. For most prisoners, that means gaining the skills and support necessary to find and hold down a decent job.

    Our strategy, some details of which I’ve described briefly this morning, is designed to accomplish that difference in outlook and expectation, leading to a determination to change life for the better … and to ensure that, for as many ex-offenders as possible, release is followed not by re-arrest, but by re-employment and reintegration into normal, law-abiding society.

    I said at the start that this speech was about recidivism, about the costs of crime in terms of money and in terms of the damage to society. The changes we will introduce are tough and far-reaching. They are honest in intent and central to the battle against reoffending.

    The plain, robust view that prisons should be workshops – and that, through the acquisition of skills, those there will become good citizens, should imbue all that we do.

    With your help and support, I believe that ambition is within our grasp.

    Thank you.

  • Michael Gove – 2011 Article in Times Education Supplement

    Michael Gove – 2011 Article in Times Education Supplement

    The article written by Michael Gove, the then Education Secretary, for the Times Education Supplement. The article was published as a press release by the Department for Education on 13 May 2011.

    The coalition trusts teachers. You’re the experts on the frontline. But for too long you’ve been stifled by bureaucracy and not had the tools you need to deliver. Over the past year we’ve tried to reverse that.

    We have stopped the weekly bombardment of schools with unnecessary directives and guidance from central government. We’ve scrapped the pointless form-filling that was the self-evaluation form and the financial management standard in schools. We’ve set up a curriculum review that will reduce prescription and ensure you have the freedom to teach the subjects you are passionate about in the way you think best. We’re restoring adult authority to the classroom by giving you the powers you need to keep discipline. And we’re ensuring that the law is on your side against malicious pupils.

    We’ve given all schools the opportunity to break free from local and central bureaucracy with more money for the poorest pupils. Schools want the freedom to decide what is best for pupils. They want to be free to innovate in the classroom, inspiring pupils to learn. There are now hundreds more academies and many more will follow. This is a decisive shift in the education landscape. A shift of power from bureaucrats to professionals. It is a shift for the better.

  • Nick Gibb – 2011 Speech to the NASUWT Conference

    Nick Gibb – 2011 Speech to the NASUWT Conference

    The speech made by Nick Gibb, the then Education Minister, in Glasgow on 24 April 2011.

    Thank you for that introduction.

    When Michael Gove asked me what I was doing on Easter Sunday, I thought, how nice, Sunday lunch at the Goves.

    After a few seconds, I realised it was because he was asking me to come to Glasgow for the annual conference of the UK’s biggest teaching union.

    And I’m delighted that he did.

    Having shadowed the Schools Minister post for 5 years in Opposition, I’ve waited a long time to have the opportunity of speaking at the Easter teacher union conferences. But, as they say, good things come to those who wait.

    I’ve learnt that it can be quite challenging speaking to large groups of teachers because some of you think that I believe I know how you should do your jobs better, and I know that all of you think you could do my job better.

    But I want to begin by putting on record my thanks to the NASUWT – and in particular to Chris Keates.

    It’s fair to say that Chris and I don’t always see eye to eye. As she recently remarked, we can at least always leave our meetings by agreeing to differ after having had a good debate. That’s the way it should be.

    I have great admiration and respect for the NASUWT – and I enjoy working with Chris – because of the wholehearted way that it campaigns and puts across its case. I never leave a meeting with Chris uncertain of the union’s position.

    One of the issues that the NASUWT has campaigned on is better protection for teachers from false and malicious allegations.

    I supported the NASUWT’s campaign in Opposition so I’m delighted that, within our first year in government, we are changing the law so that it will be an offence for a newspaper or media outlet to publish the names of any teacher faced by accusations of a criminal nature. And indeed they won’t be able to publish details of a case that could lead a reader to being able to identify the teacher involved.

    You campaigned for it – we are delivering it.

    It is also vital that pupils, parents and head teachers all fully understand their responsibilities and realise that there will be extremely serious consequences if a false allegation is made.

    If there are grounds to believe that a criminal offence like perverting or attempting to pervert the course of justice has been committed, the case should be referred to the police. And in all cases where malicious allegations against a teacher have been made, head teachers have a responsibility to take action, including, when appropriate, permanent exclusion.

    For a number of years, the NASUWT has also been a leading voice in drawing attention to the detrimental effects of poor pupil behaviour – both to attainment and to the recruitment and retention of good teachers.

    The discipline measures in our Education Bill will ensure that the pendulum, which has swung too far towards pupils in recent years, moves back towards teachers by strengthening the powers that teachers have to maintain order.

    Amongst the new measures we are introducing is a specific power to search for and confiscate items like mobile phones and video cameras.

    These powers may only be used very rarely, but I would rather teachers are able to decide for themselves whether to use them than have to tolerate pupils using those items to create disruption and, in the worst cases, to bully teachers and other students.

    The Government is supporting head teachers and schools, in taking action to ensure strong standards of behaviour prevail in our schools. In turn we expect head teachers to back and support teachers in the decisions they take on a day to day basis in the isolation of the classroom to ensure that pupils can learn in a safe and ordered environment.

    And with the backing of head teachers and government, I hope that teachers will be able to instill a culture of good behaviour where pupils behave well not just because they fear sanctions, but because they understand the right way to behave and have due respect for adults and one another.

    And let’s not forget the role parents have to play in ensuring their children are well-behaved at school and that they too support the school when teachers take action.

    An important campaigning issue for the NASUWT has been the incompatibility of teaching with the views of groups like the BNP.

    The Government agrees that the ideology of the BNP cannot co-exist with the education of future generations of young people.

    That’s why we want to ensure that head teachers and governing bodies can dismiss any teacher who promotes inappropriate views or behaviour or advocates discrimination in schools. The independent review of teachers’ standards will look at how best to achieve this. And I hope the NASUWT will contribute strongly to that Review.

    In the same spirit of partnership and dialogue, I want to say a few words about public spending and pressure on school budgets.

    Whichever political party came into office at the election, it would have faced the challenge of tackling the economic consequences of a spiralling budget deficit.

    A deficit in which we were spending £156 billion more than we were receiving in income. And an accumulated debt that was costing £120 million in interest each and every day – enough to build 10 new primary schools, every single day. The Office for Budget Responsibility reports that without any further action to tackle the deficit, interest payments would rise to a staggering £67 billion a year by 2014-15 – that’s almost two years’ total spending on schools; three times what we spend on the salaries of every teacher in England, just to service the interest on the debt.

    Very difficult decisions have had to be taken across policing, health and other vital public services. In education too, we have had to face some very difficult choices that we would not otherwise have wanted to make in order to help tackle that deficit.

    But I am pleased that we have managed to protect – at least in cash per pupil terms – spending on schools. I recognise that even this still means difficult decisions for schools – but in the context of cuts in spending in other Government departments – I am proud of the settlement that Michael Gove negotiated with the Treasury.

    I am also pleased that we have been able to honour the third year of the teachers’ pay deal agreed before the election.

    I know the pay freeze isn’t welcomed, but it’s a freeze that applies right across the public sector and it doesn’t include increments or pay rises due to promotion. Our priority is to be as fair as possible to all public sector workers and the freeze is helping to maintain the number of teaching posts.

    And while we are doing the best we can with the finances we have available, by far our biggest asset is the people working in our schools.

    There is nothing more inspirational than being on the receiving end of great teaching.

    There was one particular teacher who inspired me. His name was Mr Rogers. We called him Brian. It was after all the mid-70s. And he taught me A-level economics. At that time, he himself had only recently graduated and, despite his own left-of-centre politics, he provided me with a genuine understanding of how economics works and he enthused me so that I became a confirmed economic liberal.

    I owe him a huge debt of gratitude – but as I turned 50 recently, it’s horrifying to think that that young teacher I remember must now be contemplating retirement.

    A good pension has long been an important part of the overall reward package for teachers. We are committed to ensuring that continues to be the case.

    The issue of pensions is extremely important to the profession and I know that the recommendations of Lord Hutton’s Commission have given rise to huge anxieties. I wanted, therefore, to set out where we have got to in those discussions and negotiations and to say something about the long term problems the Government is forced to address.

    Over the last 10 years, the private sector has been moving away from defined benefit pensions to the much less generous money purchase schemes. We are not going to go down this route. We are determined – as is Lord Hutton – to keep defined benefit pensions in the public sector and for public service pensions to remain the benchmark standard.

    The Government asked Lord Hutton, with his experience as a Cabinet Minister in the last Labour Government and his strong commitment to the public service ethos, to head up a commission to review how we tackle the cost issues arising from increased life expectancy, while maintaining good quality defined benefit public service pensions.

    In 2005/06, the cost of paying teachers’ pensions was around £5 billion per year. By 2015/16, the cost is forecast to rise to almost £10 billion.

    Lord Hutton’s recommendations have already been the subject of some very constructive discussions between the Government and the TUC. A series of further meetings is planned and I am pleased that Chris is so actively involved to ensure that the specific interests of teachers are properly represented.

    What is needed now is more negotiation and discussion so that the specific issues that distinguish the teachers’ pension from other public sector pensions can be drawn out and addressed.

    And just to be clear – from the start, the Government has made an absolute and public commitment to protecting accrued rights. All the benefits that have been built up in a teacher’s pension will not be affected by any future reforms.

    So, false allegations, pupil indiscipline and bullying, BNP membership, pensions. These are all areas where the NASUWT and government are working together to address the issues that matter to practising teachers.

    Because at the end of the day, everything comes back to what teachers do.

    I’m sure that many teachers have been watching Jamie’s Dream School on Channel 4 with a combination of intrigue, horror and glee as celebrities have tried their hand at teaching a group of pretty difficult young people.

    There are some other valuable insights from watching a renowned historian like David Starkey, at least initially, struggle to convey his passion and expertise to his class.

    What the programme demonstrated so vividly is that good teachers not only need good subject knowledge, they also need to be able to communicate that passion, they need an understanding of how young people learn and they need to know their pupils too.

    And the most important thing it did was prove why teachers deserve so much thanks and respect for what they do.

    But one of my principal concerns with our education system is that teachers haven’t been afforded that trust and respect.

    Over the past decade, for every step forward, it has been a case of three steps backwards as yet more targets and responsibilities have been heaped upon teachers.

    There has been nothing short of a perpetual revolution inflicted on schools, which we have to bring to an end if we are to raise the professional status of teachers, which this Government is committed to doing.

    That is why we are so determined to give teachers more space and flexibility to teach by reducing central prescription and by cutting back on bureaucracy.

    We’re shrinking and clarifying guidance.

    We’ve scrapped the National Strategies.

    Our review of the National Curriculum has the express aim of reducing prescription in primary and secondary schools about how to teach.

    We’re reforming Ofsted so it focuses on a school’s core activities and removes the paper trail for inspection – and let me say too that written lesson plans aren’t a requirement for inspection, nor will they be in the future.

    The GTCE – by this time next year, it will be gone.

    And just as teachers are responsible for delivering high standards in schools, so we too as ministers will no longer hide behind arms-length bodies like the QCDA. Instead, we’re taking responsibility by bringing essential functions back into the Department where we can be held properly accountable for them at a national level.

    After years of hard work and training, it is only right that teachers are trusted to get on with their jobs.

    We also need to celebrate their achievements by ensuring that excellent teachers can continue to demonstrate their high quality professional skills.

    And we need to ensure that teachers can access more and better continuous professional development.

    We believe that one of the best ways to improve teaching practice and to allow teachers to become better professionals is by observing other, more experienced teachers.

    That is why we intend to reform teacher training and establish new centres of excellence in teaching practice – teaching schools – that will allow new and experienced teachers to learn and develop their professional skills throughout their careers.

    But this doesn’t mean the end of university-based initial teacher training. As a nation, we need about 35,000 new teachers each year so there will always be a major role for universities in preparing new teachers.

    Throughout teachers’ careers, keeping their knowledge of their subjects up to date is a vital part of being a good teacher.

    In the coming months, we intend to introduce a new Scholarship Fund, which will enable a number of teachers every year to study for post-graduate qualifications or other equally rigorous subject-based professional development that will benefit them and their careers.

    And alongside the other improvements we are making to strengthen professional development, it will ensure that teachers remain the intellectual guardians of the nation.

    I want to end by reflecting on why all of this matters.

    Why is it important that we support, protect and develop teachers and why should we enhance, raise and improve the standing of the teaching profession?

    The answer is the same reason that teachers get into teaching in the first place – to help all children, irrespective of their background and where they went to school, receive the support they need to succeed.

    Despite the hard work of teachers, the least likely to succeed are still those children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds.

    Only one in five young people from the poorest families achieve five GCSEs at grades A* to C including English and maths, compared with three-quarters from the richest families.

    And of course, it’s not just about qualifications. It’s the end result of unemployment, poor health, generational cycles of poverty and a greater likelihood of getting into trouble that really brings home the importance of a good education.

    The same mission to make opportunity more equal drives us in government – and in Michael Gove, we have an Education Secretary whose own upbringing ignited a burning passion to extend better opportunities to the most vulnerable children.

    That is why we’re extending free childcare for the most disadvantaged two year olds and focusing Sure Start on the most vulnerable families.

    And it’s why we’re spending an additional £2.5 billion on the pupil premium that will provide more resources directly to schools for the education of the poorest pupils.

    But the most important thing that we in government can do to close the attainment gap between rich and poor is ensure that there are well-trained, qualified teachers working in the state sector with the freedom and protection they need.

    Because it is those same teachers who make the biggest difference of all.

    That’s why our White Paper is called The Importance of Teaching.

    It is a great privilege for me to be the Minister of State for Schools. I believe it is one of the best jobs in Government because, as someone who went into politics to improve people’s lives, I’m convinced that, whatever their background, nothing is more important than a child’s education.

    Whatever our differences on particular policy areas, I know that we all agree on that.

    I’ve enjoyed working with Chris over the last 11 months.

    And I look forward to a fruitful and constructive dialogue with the NASUWT in the months and years to come.

    Thank you.

  • Nick Gibb – 2011 Speech to the Association of Teachers and Lecturers 2011 Conference

    Nick Gibb – 2011 Speech to the Association of Teachers and Lecturers 2011 Conference

    The speech made by Nick Gibb, the then Education Minister, in Liverpool on 20 April 2011.

    Thank you, Mary for that introduction.

    It’s a real pleasure to be here. I’ve waited many years to have the opportunity of speaking at the annual ATL conference. Having shadowed the schools minister post for 5 years in opposition, I don’t think I’ve ever been invited before but, as they say, good things come to those who wait.

    As part of my job I regularly meet Mary Bousted and other union leaders. When I saw Mary a few weeks ago I asked her what to expect at this conference.

    She was very honest.

    She said it would probably be challenging.

    She said the delegates would speak their minds.

    But she said that was because her members are dedicated professionals who take great pride in what they do.

    I see this whenever I visit schools. During my five years as the Shadow Minister for Schools, I visited over 200 schools and, as a Minister, I try to continue to visit as many schools as I can.

    One school I visited recently was Kingsford Community School in Newham. It’s a Confucius School, so it teaches Mandarin and I had the chance to sit in on a lesson with a Year 9 class. Given how difficult the language is to learn, I was astonished at how well the pupils could read and speak Mandarin. But after just a few minutes in that classroom, it was apparent why. It was the brilliant teacher who commanded the whole class’s attention superbly and instilled a deep love of the language in the pupils.

    This dedication was clear again earlier today in the hour I spent with a group of delegates.

    If I said that that we’d agreed on everything, there would probably be a few eyebrows raised – followed by several hundred requests for a list of the people in the room.

    Suffice to say, we didn’t agree on everything – but I do believe that we agree on more than we disagree and we all agree on the importance of education to the individual child and to the country as a whole.

    I think being Minister of State for Schools is one of the best jobs in Government, because, as someone who went into politics to improve people’s lives, I’m convinced that whatever their background nothing is more important than a child’s education. For children from the poorest backgrounds in particular, education is the only route out of poverty.

    One of the overarching objectives of this Government is to close the attainment gap between those from wealthier and poorer backgrounds, an ambition that I know is shared by the ATL.

    As the ATL survey released last week showed, nearly 80 per cent of teachers have students living in poverty. Four in 10 say that poverty has increased over the last three years. And 86 per cent say it is having a negative impact because their pupils are coming to school tired, hungry or lacking on confidence.

    As so, despite the hard work of teachers, it is still the case that the least likely to succeed are those children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds.

    Children from poorer homes start behind their wealthier contemporaries when they arrive at school. At age five, those children living in poverty are around eight months behind their peers.

    The achievement gap then becomes entrenched during primary school. At Key Stage 2, 25 per cent of children from poorer backgrounds fail to meet the expected level, compared to just three per cent from more affluent backgrounds.

    And it then stubbornly persists through secondary school. Only one in five young people from the poorest families achieve five GCSEs at grades A* to C including English and maths, compared with three-quarters from the richest families.

    The odds are even worse for children in care – just one in seven reach that basic benchmark.

    And of course, it is not just about qualifications. It’s the prospect of unemployment or a low-paid job, poor health, generational cycles of poverty and a greater likelihood of getting into trouble that really brings home the importance of a good education.

    The same mission drives us in government – and in Michael Gove, we have an Education Secretary whose own upbringing ignited a burning passion to extend better opportunities to the most vulnerable children.

    That is why we’re spending more in the vital early years and cutting the bureaucracy associated with the EYFS so children get a better start in life.

    It’s why we’re spending an additional £2.5 billion on the pupil premium that will mean the poorest pupils get the extra help and support they need.
    And we’d like to do more. But whichever political party came into office at the election it would have faced the challenge of tackling the economic consequences of a spiralling budget deficit.

    A deficit in which we were spending £156 billion more than we were receiving in income. And an accumulated debt that was costing £120 million in interest each and every day – enough to build 10 new primary schools, every single day. The Office for Budget Responsibility reports that without any further action to tackle the deficit, interest payments would rise to a staggering £67 billion a year by 2014-15 – that’s almost two years’ total spending on schools; twice what we spend on the salaries of every teacher in England, twice what we spend running every state school in the country – just to pay the interest on the debt.

    And that £156 billion budget deficit, had we not taken measures to address it, would have resulted in the same financial crises that have devastated Greece, Ireland and Portugal.

    And in the Department for Education we have had to make some very difficult decisions that we would not otherwise have wanted to make in order to help tackle that deficit.

    But I am pleased that we have managed to protect – at least in cash per pupil terms – spending on schools. I recognise that even this means difficult decisions for schools but in the context of cuts in spending in other Government departments I am proud of the settlement that Michael Gove negotiated with the Treasury.

    And I am pleased that we have been able to honour the third year of the teachers’ pay deal agreed before the election.

    I know the pay freeze we’ve had to impose beyond that isn’t popular but it’s a freeze that applies right across the public sector and it doesn’t include increments or pay rises due to promotion. Our priority is to be as fair as possible to all public sector workers and the freeze is helping to maintain the number of teaching posts.

    At the same time, we are also making the funding system for schools fairer and more transparent. It’s just not right that similar schools in different parts of the country receive, in some cases, vastly different amounts of money.

    But while we are doing the best we can with the finances we have available to us, by far our biggest asset is the people working in our schools.

    I’m sure that many teachers have been watching Jamie’s Dream School on Channel 4 with a combination of intrigue, horror and glee as celebrities have tried their hand at teaching a group of pretty difficult young people.

    There are some other valuable insights from watching a renowned historian like David Starkey, at least initially, struggle to convey his passion and expertise to his class.

    What the programme demonstrated so vividly is that good teachers not only need good subject knowledge, they also need to be able to communicate that passion, they need an understanding of how young people learn and they need to know their pupils.

    And the most important thing that the programme did was prove why teachers deserve so much thanks and respect for what they do, as well as why teaching should be revered alongside the most esteemed and highly skilled professions.

    But, despite this, it’s also true that teachers haven’t been afforded the trust and respect they deserve. And consequently, I believe more needs to be done to raise the professional status of teachers, something this Government is committed to helping to deliver.

    Over the past decade, there has been ream after ream of guidance issued to schools and law after law passed about education.

    But for every step forward, it has been a case of three steps backwards as yet more targets and responsibilities have been heaped upon teachers.

    There has been nothing short of a perpetual revolution inflicted on schools, which we have to bring to an end if teaching is to become the kind of prestigious profession we want it to be.

    That is why we are so determined to cut back on all unnecessary burdens and bureaucracy.

    We’re removing those onerous duties.

    We’ve scrapped the National Strategies.

    Our review of the National Curriculum has the express aim of reducing prescription about how to teach.

    Through the measures in our Education Bill, we’re refocusing Ofsted and we’re cutting back on back-office functions – including by getting rid of the GTC.

    And just as teachers have the responsibility for delivering high standards, so we too as ministers will no longer hide behind arms-length bodies like the QCDA. Instead, we’re taking responsibility by bringing essential functions back into the Department where we can be held properly accountable for the decisions made.

    Of course, there are areas where teachers need strong powers.

    Tackling bad behaviour is one of the toughest parts of a teacher’s job.
    I can also understand why teachers might feel that the system – and Government – hasn’t been on their side in the past.

    Our Education Bill will ensure that the pendulum, which has swung too far away from teachers in recent years, moves back in their favour by ensuring teachers have clear powers to discipline pupils and maintain order in the classroom.

    Just as importantly, it makes clear that we are backing head teachers and teachers – but that we expect all those in leadership positions to stay in touch with what is going in their classrooms and to back teachers too.

    And perhaps most importantly of all, ensuring teachers get proper protection from false and malicious allegations that are not only hugely damaging, but which can blight careers and lives.

    We also believe that professionals should have access to more and better continuous professional development.

    As Mary often says, teaching is a vocation and teachers need the highest possible skills. I can think of no one better qualified to lead a discussion with Ministers and with professional associations about the role and future of CPD, which is what Michael Gove and I have asked her to do next month.

    Teachers are the intellectual guardians of the nation and keeping their knowledge of their subjects up to date – whether it’s theoretical physics or English literature – is a vital part of being a good teacher.

    In the White Paper, we made a commitment to introduce a new Scholarship Fund. It hasn’t attracted much attention so far but our intention is that it will enable a number of teachers every year to study for post-graduate qualifications or other equally rigorous subject-based professional development that will benefit them and their careers.

    The ATL has long championed teachers improving their professional skills by observing other teachers. We agree that it is one of the best ways to improve teaching practice and to allow teachers to become better professionals.

    That is why we intend to reform teacher training so that, alongside thorough initial training, more time is spent in the classroom.

    It’s also why new centres of excellence in teaching practice – teaching schools – are being established. Modelled on teaching hospitals, they will allow new and experienced teachers to learn and develop their professional skills throughout their careers.

    But this doesn’t mean the end of university initial teacher training – as the country needs about 35,000 new teachers each year there will always be a major role for universities in preparing teachers for the profession.

    And in giving schools more autonomy some have claimed that we want to set schools free to go it alone. But by removing needless bureaucracy from schools and by encouraging school-led professional development, we believe schools can strengthen the bonds that exist between them and allow for more opportunities for teachers and schools to collaborate with each other.

    So, more freedom, more and better professional development, and more collaboration. All of these are essential to enabling teachers to improve their own effectiveness and, in turn, to improve the effectiveness of their schools.

    Because there is nothing more inspirational or memorable than being on the receiving end of great teaching.

    I remember one teacher from my own school days, Mr Rogers, or Brian as we called him – it was after all the mid-70s – who taught me A-level economics. He was himself only recently out of university and, despite his own left-of-centre politics, taught me economics so thoroughly that it gave me a genuine understanding of how economics works and turned me into a confirmed economic liberal.

    I owe him a huge debt of gratitude, but as I turned 50 recently, it’s horrifying to think that that young teacher must now be contemplating retirement.

    The issue of teacher pensions is one that is exercising the minds of teachers, teacher unions and the Government. As well as the huge pressures on public spending as a result of the Budget deficit, there are also long term pressures on all pension funds – both public sector and private – as a result of longer life expectancy and reduced financial returns on pension capital.

    We asked Lord Hutton to look at public sector pensions because of his experience as a Cabinet Minister in the last Labour Government and also because of his unparalleled commitment to public service values.

    In his report, Lord Hutton underlined the importance of continuing to provide high quality pension schemes to essential public service workers like teachers, whilst ensuring that current and future generations of public servants can also be rewarded for their hard work with a fair but affordable pension.

    We have already been clear that we don’t want to see a race to the bottom in pension provision – and that public service pensions should remain a gold standard.

    A good pension has long been an important part of the overall reward package that teachers expect.

    Our priority is to ensure that continues to be the case. Opt out rates from the Teachers Pension Scheme are extremely low and we want to keep them that way. But we won’t be able to achieve all of this if we ignore the realities of the cost pressures that all pension schemes are facing as life expectancy increases.

    The combination of more teacher pensioners and the increase in their life expectancy has meant that the cost of teachers’ pensions increases every year. In 2005/06, the cost of paying teachers’ pensions was around £5 billion. By 2015/16, the cost is forecast to rise to almost £10 billion.

    This is why long term reform of public service schemes is needed – and why teachers and other public service scheme members are being asked to pay a higher pension contribution from April 2012.

    From the start, the Government has made its commitment to protecting accrued rights absolutely clear. All the benefits that have been built up in a teacher’s pension will not be affected by any reforms recommended by Hutton. This means there is absolutely nothing to be gained by teachers seeking to retire earlier than they have planned.

    The Government has accepted Lord Hutton’s recommendations as the basis for discussions with all the trades unions. There have already been some constructive discussions between the TUC and the Government. The aim is to agree a package of principles for pensions reform by the end of June. I fully understand the strength of feeling here in this room – but I strongly urge the ATL to wait for the outcome of those discussions before deciding on whether to take further action.

    In preparing for this conference I looked back at the speech that Mary made last year.

    There was one phrase that really stuck in my mind. And it was this:

    “It’s the teachers, stupid.”

    I’m not sure who the “stupid” was directed at. I can only guess……

    But she was right.

    We have to attach the highest possible importance to teachers and the teaching profession.

    That’s why our White Paper is called The Importance of Teaching.

    Its aim is to help teachers to be better professionals by reducing bureaucracy, improving professional development and supporting teachers and head teachers to maintain high standards of behaviour.

    And the reason why is because that is the only way that we can close the attainment gap between those from poorer and wealthier backgrounds.

    Whatever our differences on particular policy areas, I know that we are united in that aim.

    I’ve enjoyed working with Mary and with Martin over the last 11 months – and I look forward to a fruitful and constructive dialogue with the ATL in the months and years ahead.

    Thank you.