Category: Speeches

  • Michael Gove – 2011 Speech to the National College for School Leadership

    Michael Gove – 2011 Speech to the National College for School Leadership

    The speech made by Michael Gove, the then Secretary of State for Education, in Birmingham on 16 June 2011.

    Thank you Tony for that kind introduction.

    The last time we met was in New York when we were discussing school reform and, in particular, teacher performance.

    I remember arguing that teachers had nothing to fear from lesson observation – not only was learning from other professionals the best way to improve, confident performers should relish the opportunity to show what they can do.

    After all, I argued, other inspirational professionals are used to being watched while they work – great footballers, I said, like Wayne Rooney and Ryan Giggs, don’t object to people paying them attention when they do their thing….

    Perhaps, in hindsight, I could have chosen a happier parallel – but Tony you are one professional who always performs with effortless grace – thank you.

    And thinking of outstanding performances which are a joy to watch, Steve, can I thank you for a brilliant and inspiring speech…

    You incarnate the virtues of great leadership.

    Clarity of vision.

    Generosity of spirit.

    Energy in action.

    And, above all, clear moral purpose.

    Together with Vanni, Toby and the rest of the leadership team at the National College you have responded to every challenge we’ve given you with the enthusiasm, optimism and ambition of great public servants.

    I am in your debt.

    I mentioned that you bring a clear sense of moral purpose to everything you do, Steve.

    Throughout your career you have aspired to give children and young people new opportunities, richer futures, a sense of limitless possibility.

    And it’s about moral purpose that I want to speak today.

    Knowledge is power

    The moral purpose that animates the work we all do. Ministers, officials, school leaders, teachers.

    What unites us is a belief that lives can be transformed by what goes on in schools. The precious moments spent in the classroom, the interactions between professionals and students, the process of teaching and learning – can shape futures like nothing else.

    Just last week I was talking to one young man at the secondary school nearest to my home, Burlington Danes in London’s White City Estate. A teenager who had been persistently in trouble, going in the wrong direction and who saw in the environment around him no incentive to work hard, no penalty for indiscipline, no encouragement to learn. Until that school was taken in a new direction by a new leader, the amazing Sally Coates.

    She made sure every moment every child spent in her school was worthwhile – focussed on learning – with a clear expectation that every child could surpass their family’s expectations. That young man is now on course to study engineering at Cambridge and his life has been transformed immeasurably for the better.

    And what Sally has done in Burlington Danes, so many of you are doing across the country. Changing schools for the better, spreading opportunity more widely.

    I am uniquely fortunate to be Secretary of State at a time when we have the best generation of teachers ever in our schools and the best generation of heads leading them.

    People like Dana Ross-Wawrzynski at Altrincham Grammar Schools for Girls, who not only runs one of the most impressive schools in the country, but is also creating a trust in East Manchester that is already rapidly boosting the performance of a number of other local schools.

    Or Ray Ruszczynski at Chellaston Academy, a superb National Leader of Education, working in a collaborative group with Landau Forte Academy and West Park School, as well as providing a wide range of support to Sinfin School.

    Or Dame Sue John who has turned Lampton Academy into an inspiring example of how a school can succeed in a tough area, while also spearheading the London Challenge initiative which has so helped improve education in our capital.

    Heroes and heroines whose vocation is teaching – the noblest calling I know.

    All of us in this hall share something, I suspect. All of us, I am sure, were inspired by a teacher or teachers who kindled a love of knowledge, a restless curiosity, and a passion for our subject when we were young.

    And all of us, I believe, want to excite the next generation – as we were excited – by the adventure of learning.

    Introducing the next generation to the best that has been thought and written is a moral enterprise of which we can all be proud. Giving every child an equal share in the inheritance of achievement which great minds have passed on to us is a great progressive cause. Shakespeare’s dramas, Milton’s verse, Newton’s breakthroughs, Curie’s discoveries, Leibniz’s genius, Turing’s innovation, Beethoven’s music, Turner’s painting, Macmillan’s choreography, Zuckerberg’s brilliance – all the rich achievements of human ingenuity belong to every child – and it should be our enduring mission to spread that inheritance as widely as possible.

    Because it is only through learning – the acquisition of intellectual capital – that individuals have the power to shape their own lives. In a world which globalisation is flattening, in which unskilled jobs are disappearing from our shores, in which education determines income and good qualifications are the best form of unemployment insurance, we have to ensure every child has a stock of intellectual capital which enables them to flourish.

    Making opportunity more equal

    But there is one area where the sense of moral purpose which guides us as leaders in education must impel us to do more.

    As a nation, we still do not do enough to extend the liberating power of a great education to the poorest.

    As Barack Obama has persuasively argued, education reform is the civil rights battle of our time.

    In Britain, as in the USA, access to a quality education has never mattered more but access to a quality education is rationed for the poor, the vulnerable and those from minority communities.

    Each year there are 600,000 students passing through our state schools. 80,000 of them – the poorest – are those eligible for free school meals.

    Of those 80,000, in the last year for which we have figures, just 40 made it to Oxford or Cambridge. Fewer from the whole of the population on benefits than made it from Eton. Or Westminster. Or St Paul’s School for Girls.

    We know that we are not playing fair by all when, in the last year for which we have figures, just one child from all the state schools in the whole London Borough of Greenwich makes it to Oxford.

    My moral purpose in Government is to break the lock which prevents children from our poorest families making it into our best universities and walking into the best jobs.

    That is why this Government is spending two and a half billion pounds on a pupil premium to ensure that every child eligible for free school meals has two thousand pounds more spent on their education every year.

    That is why this Government is investing in more hours of free nursery education for all three and four year olds and 15 hours of free nursery education for all disadvantaged two-year-olds.

    And that is why this Government is investing in an Education Endowment Fund which will, like Barack Obama’s Race to the Top Fund, provide additional money for those teachers who develop innovative approaches to tackling disadvantage.

    Because the scandal which haunts my conscience is the plight of those students from the poorest backgrounds, in the poorest neighbourhoods, in our poorest-performing schools who need us to act if their right to a decent future is to be guaranteed.

    We still have one of the most segregated schools systems in the world, with the gap between the best and the worst wider than in almost any other developed nation.

    In the highest-performing education nations, such as Singapore, around 80% of students taking O-levels get at least an equivalent of a C pass in their maths and English.

    And we should remember that Singapore has only been independent for around fifty years, it has no natural resources, is surrounded by more powerful nations, is a multi-ethnic society and its students sit exams in English – even though their first language will be Malay, Tamil or Chinese.

    Here just over half of students get a C pass in GCSE maths and English. And the half which fail are drawn overwhelmingly from poorer backgrounds and are educated in poorer-performing schools.

    So, at the heart of our comprehensive reform programme for education is a determination to learn from, and emulate, those countries which are both high performers and succeed in generating a much higher level of equity across the school system.

    Thanks to the pioneering work of thinkers such as Michael Fullan, Michael Barber and Fenton Whelan, and the data gathered by the OECD through its regular surveys of educational performance, we can identify the common features of high-performing systems.

    The best people need to be recruited into the classroom.

    They then need to be liberated in schools set free from bureaucratic control.

    Given structures which encourage collaboration and the sharing of the benefits innovation brings.

    Held to account in an intelligent fashion so we can all identify the best practice we can draw on.

    And led in a way which encourages us all to hold fast to the moral purpose of making opportunity more equal.

    I want to say a little about each.

    We’re getting more superb teachers

    We’ve moved quickly to get more high-performing graduates into teaching by funding the doubling of Teach First over the course of this parliament and expanding the fantastic Future Leaders and Teaching Leaders programmes which, with the support of the National College, provide superb professional development for the future leaders of some of our toughest schools.

    Shortly we’ll be publishing our strategy for Initial Teacher Training. This will further emphasise our commitment to boosting the status of the profession by toughening up the recruitment process and ensuring that all new teachers have a real depth of knowledge in their subject.

    We’ll be making sure this covers the whole spectrum by, for example, providing additional funding for more placements in special schools, so as to give more teachers specialist knowledge in teaching children with special needs.

    We will also explore how excellent schools can be more involved in both initial training and the provision of professional development. Contrary to what some have said this is not about excluding higher education from teacher training. There are many excellent centres of ITT and losing their experience is not on my agenda.

    But I am keen that we make better use of headteachers’ and teachers’ experience. That’s why I, like Steve, am so excited about the development of Teaching Schools.

    I believe Teaching Schools have the potential to generate higher standards than ever before. Over 1,000 expressions of interest and 300 applications is a very positive sign of your enthusiasm. The first 100 Teaching Schools will be designated next month but the partnerships being developed between schools and with higher education are already having a powerful and positive impact on the system.

    We’re empowering school leaders to innovate

    Putting our best schools in charge of professional development is, though, just one way in which we’re handing you control of the education system.

    We’ve reduced central Government prescription for all schools to make your lives easier and give you the space to focus on what really matters.

    The hundreds of pages of forms you had to fill in to complete the FMSIS process. Gone.

    The vast Ofsted self-evaluation form that took weeks to fill in. Gone.

    Performance Management guidance has been cut by three quarters and capability procedures simplified so you can deal with inadequate staff quickly and effectively.

    Behaviour and bullying guidance has been cut from 600 pages to 50 so as to give you complete clarity over your powers and duties.

    Over the next few months we will be publishing shortened guidance in a whole host of other areas. In total, departmental guidance will be more than halved.

    And, I hope you’ve noticed we’ve stopped the endless stream of emails that use to emanate from the Department.

    Beyond these changes we’ve implemented for the benefit of all schools, we’ve also given every school the opportunity to take complete control of its budget, curriculum and staffing by applying for academy status.

    When I spoke to you last year there were 203 academies. Now there are 704 and a further 814 schools have applied. By the end of the year more than a third of secondaries will be academies. This is a much faster rate of conversion than I, or I think anyone else, had anticipated and testament, I believe, to school leaders’ desire for genuine autonomy.

    Many of you who have converted in the past year have already used your freedoms to great effect. For example:

    Premier Academy in Milton Keynes has extended payscales – so that good teachers can choose to remain in the classroom rather than move into management to increase their salaries.

    And, like other schools such as Wakefield City Academy, they have used resources previously held by their Local Authority to employ a dedicated pastoral support worker on-site to ensure that children with social and educational needs get complete continuity of care.

    Others are following some of the larger sponsor groups like ARK and Haberdashers in extending their school day and the academic year.

    Yet others like the Kunskapsskolan schools in Richmond are developing exciting new curriculum models.

    And many converter academies have found they are able to buy services for a significantly lower cost than those provided by their local authority.

    For instance Broadclyst Academy Primary School has cut the costs of their payroll system in half and has ploughed the money back into teaching. Watford Grammar School for Girls and Hartismere Academy have found procuring small improvements to be significantly cheaper and quicker.

    This is creating a new relationship between schools and Local Authorities. As we know, in some areas LAs have been genuine drivers of innovation and improvement: they have seen their role as champions of excellence; identifying struggling heads and governors; brokering peer-to-peer support; and forging partnerships with local universities or major employers to drive up standards.

    But in other areas this has not been the case. And this is now beginning to change, as LAs react to schools’ new powers by improving the quality of their offer to ensure academies buy back services and engage with local initiatives. As one academy head explained recently to the Guardian:

    Under the old regime, nothing had ever been done about some things that weren’t good enough, whereas now, there’s an awful lot of activity at our Local Authority to make sure services are good enough so that we will buy them in.

    And some healthy competition isn’t just improving Local Authorities. A study just published by academics at the London School of Economics, looking at academies opened by the last government, shows not only that they have improved significantly faster than other schools, but also that other schools in their locality have seen results improve.

    We’re embedding a culture of collaboration

    But competition isn’t the main driver of improvement in the system. What we’re seeing, as Steve put it, is collaboration driving improvement but with a competitive edge. Indeed I would go as far to argue that genuine collaboration is harder without that competitive edge to inspire the need to improve.

    So I’m hugely encouraged by the renewed focus on partnership between schools I’m seeing at the moment. I’ve already mentioned how impressed I am with some of the alliances put together by aspirant Teaching Schools. But that’s just one area of activity.

    For instance, all of the new converter academies have, between them, agreed to support over 700 other schools and we’ve begun the doubling of the National and Local Leader of Education programmes to support fellow heads.

    I am particularly pleased to see that a number of these softer collaborative relationships are evolving into hard federations.

    I have always thought that many of the best academy chains are those that have grown out of a single outstanding school with a visionary leadership team. Just look at what Dan Moynihan has done at Harris; or Sir Kevin Satchwell at Thomas Telford; or Sir Peter Simpson at Brooke Weston; or our new Schools’ Commissioner Elizabeth Sidwell at Haberdashers.

    What these leaders share is that were given a rare opportunity as headteachers of CTCs to use their longstanding autonomy to develop a powerful educational model that could then be readily applied to new schools when the last Government launched their academy programme.

    Now, with our offer of academy freedoms to all outstanding schools and leaders we have created the opportunity on a much larger scale for great leaders to expand their vision across a group of schools.

    The process of allowing outstanding schools to convert has created a new generation of academy sponsors dedicated to turning round under-performing schools.

    For example, Morley High School, led by NLE John Townsley, converted in January and will start sponsoring Farnley Park School in Leeds next year. And Sandy Hill Academy in Cornwall – one of the very first converters – is now in the process of taking on Trevebyn Primary.

    I hope many more of you will take advantage of this opportunity over the coming years.

    A proper national framework of accountability

    Of course in this new educational landscape – where far more schools have significant autonomy and improvement is driven not by Government but by great schools working with others – proper accountability becomes even more important than ever.

    That’s why we’re currently overhauling the Ofsted framework to focus on the four core responsibilities of schools – teaching and learning; leadership; attainment; behaviour and safety – as opposed to the twenty-seven different categories in the existing framework.

    I am particularly keen that under the new framework Ofsted inspectors are able engage properly with schools, as opposed to focusing too strongly on data alone. I want them to be able to view more lessons; talk to more teachers and hear what students and parents have to say. And I want inspectors to engage not just during inspections but subsequently so that schools feel they have some guidance as well as a judgement.

    We also need to change the way we use data in our pursuit of accountability. As Professor Alison Wolf’s review on vocational education has made clear, the introduction of large numbers of vocational equivalents to the GCSE performance tables in 2004 has led to widespread gaming of qualifications. The 4,000 per cent rise in the number of such qualifications taken in just six years is testament to this.

    She has proposed measures to combat this issue which we are now implementing – including much tighter criteria for courses that wish to be considered equivalent to GCSE. But this particular problem is symptomatic of a wider issue. As long as most data is hidden from the public and the profession governments can manipulate what they do choose to release so as to mislead.

    That is why we’ve already begun a major transparency revolution. We’ve started the process of publishing all the information the Department collects – including an additional 14 million lines of exam data this year. In future this will include more data on how schools are improving the results of the disadvantaged – both those in receipt of the pupil premium and those with low prior attainment.

    I don’t expect, of course, that many parents will personally search through all this new material, but we are already seeing third parties finding new ways to present this data. Moreover educational researchers will have an unprecedented opportunity to investigate what’s really going on in the system.

    It also means that any new performance measures Government does seek to highlight – such as the English Baccalaureate – will only have an impact insofar as they resonate with parents. Initial surveys suggest this measure does have real resonance. Which is unsurprising as it simply seeks to replicate the sort of academic core that is expected in almost every developed country in the world: for children on both academic and vocational routes post-16.

    A moral commitment to helping those most in need

    Crucial to a proper framework of accountability is a set of clear expectations for schools. As the OECD say: “PISA results suggest that the countries that improved the most, or that are among the top performers, are those that establish clear, ambitious policy goals.”

    In last year’s White Paper we took a tougher line on underperformance than ever before by raising the floor standard for secondary schools to 35 per cent of pupils achieving five GCSEs at A*-C including English and maths. We wanted these standards to be as fair as possible, so schools which show pupils making superb progress from a low basis are exempted.

    But that still left 216 secondary schools below this floor. We have taken action, in partnership with many of you in this room, to ensure their performance is turned round.

    In the next school year at least 88 schools, and counting, will be placed in the hands of new academy sponsors with a mission to end a culture of poor performance. That is more under-performing schools converted to academies than the last Government ever managed in a single year and more than they managed in their first eight years combined.

    So I’m hugely encouraged by our progress. But I don’t believe, and I hope you don’t either, that 35 per cent of kids getting five decent GCSEs should be the limit of our ambition.

    To compete with the best in the world, we have to raise our expectations not just once but continuously. In Poland, Australia, Canada and New Zealand more and more students are graduating from school and going on to university. In Singapore more than 80 per cent of young people taking O-levels now achieve 5 passes – the equivalent of C grades in GCSE. In South Korea an incredible 97 per cent of students graduate from high school.

    So if we are to aspire to a world-class education system then we need to raise our sights beyond 35 per cent. And in doing so we cannot allow ourselves to have lower expectations for more disadvantaged parts of country. Of course I accept that schools in such communities face harder challenges but I also know that these challenges can be met. Deprivation need not be destiny.

    Look at Perry Beeches in Birmingham. 25 per cent of children are on Free School Meals and 41 per cent have special needs. Yet in three years they have moved from 21 per cent five A*-C GCSEs including English and Maths to 74 per cent.

    Or Paddington Academy – which jumped from 34 per cent to 63 per cent five A*-C with English and maths in just one year. At Paddington 51 per cent of children are on Free School Meals and 65 per cent are identified has having some kind of special need.

    Or Woodside High School in Haringey, a school Steve spoke eloquently about in his speech, where almost no children at all achieved 5 A* to C with English and maths 5 years ago and where over 50% will hit that benchmark this year. Again this is a school where 55% of children are on free school meals and 38% have identified special needs.

    Now that we know this level of achievement is possible in schools like these, and in many others similar to them, we must surely make it our expectation for all schools. To do any less, I believe, would be a betrayal of our young people.

    So next year the floor will rise to 40 per cent and my aspiration is that by 2015 we will be able to raise it to 50 per cent. There is no reason – if we work together – that by the end of this parliament every young person in the country can’t be educated in a school where at least half of students reach this basic academic standard.

    I realise that in stating this aspiration some will criticise too strong a focus on testing. Let me be clear: I do not think the only responsibility a school has is to help students pass exams. An outstanding school will look after the pastoral needs of its pupils; will provide a wide range of extra-curricular activities, and play a role as a broader part of its community. But it must also endow each child with the basic entitlement of intellectual capital any citizen needs to make their way in the world. A GCSE floor standard is about providing a basic minimum expectation to young people that their school will equip them for further education and employment.

    Primary

    And we must also have a similar level of expectation for primary schools. The last Government’s academies programme was never extended to primaries, even though it was Andrew Adonis’s clear ambition.

    And after an initial focus on primary schools in its first five years, the last Government lost momentum. So in the White Paper I also introduced a meaningful floor standard for primaries for the first time: that 60 per cent of pupils should achieve Level 4 in English and maths at Key Stage 2 or make an average level of progress.

    Of course primary test scores are more volatile than those in secondaries due to the smaller size of schools, so one has to treat data with additional care. However, analysis of this new floor standard reveals that there are more than 200 schools that have been under the floor for five years or more. Indeed more than half of these have been under the floor for at least ten years.

    A further 500 or so schools have been under the floor for three of the past four years.

    These schools have let down repeated cohorts of children. Again I appreciate that it is harder to reach this standard in some parts of the country than others. But again we know that it is possible:

    Look at Berrymede Junior School in Acton where 58 per cent of children are on Free School Meals and 31 per cent have a special need. Here over 80 per cent of pupils have achieved Level 4 in English and maths in each of the last three years.

    Or Woodberry Down in Hackney with 51 per cent on Free School Meals and 34 per cent with special needs where 80 per cent reached Level 4 in English and maths last year.

    Or Cuckoo Hall Academy in Edmonton with 37 per cent on Free School Meals and 34 per cent with special needs where an incredible 95 per cent of pupils achieved the Level 4 benchmark last year.

    Or dozens of others in similar circumstances. Given that we know it can be done and it is done, we surely must make it our minimum expectation for all primary schools that they will not consistently fall below a 60 per cent floor.

    So, as an urgent priority, we will start work on turning around the 200 schools that have most consistently underperformed by finding new academy sponsors for them so that most can reopen from September 2012. We want to work closely with the schools involved and their local authorities to make this happen.

    The Education Bill currently working its way through Parliament will give the Department the power to intervene to turn around underperforming schools where authorities are recalcitrant or try to stand in the way of improvement. But wherever possible we want to find solutions that everyone can agree on – as we have done with the vast majority of the secondary schools that will become academies next year.

    Beyond this we want to support Local Authorities in turning round the 500 schools who have fallen below the floor in at least three of the past four years. Several months ago I asked Local Authorities to draw up plans showing how they intended to improve their weaker schools. These have now been submitted and some of them are very impressive showing clear leadership and engagement with the problems of long-term underperformance.

    In his speech Steve mentioned Wigan’s plans to commission groups of schools to run improvement activity across the authority and he underlined how schools across Manchester are working together to embed the success of the Greater Manchester Challenge. In Devon and Suffolk the Local Authorities have worked to help schools become academies while maintaining a strong network between the schools.

    But there will be other local authorities that need some support – financial and logistic – from the centre. So, over the coming months, we will identify areas – either whole authorities or parts of larger authorities – that have a significant number of underperforming schools. We will help these communities dramatically transform primary education in their area.

    Conclusion

    And there is an urgent need for us all to act.

    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.

    Our school system needs to have innovation embedded in its way of working. That is what our reforms provide – the opportunity for our school system to adapt rapidly to technological change such as the amazing revolution of iTunesU, whereby Harvard and Oxbridge publish their most valuable content free, extending the scope of knowledge available to all children.

    Only by learning from other nations, and by giving school leaders the freedom to shape their own futures, liberated from outdated bureaucratic structures, can we ensure we benefit from the other, increasingly rapid changes technological innovation will bring.

    And while globalisation brings many benefits to our citizens, it also bears particularly heavily on the poor and the young.

    Across the Western world countries are struggling with youth unemployment at the moment.

    And for all those of us who feel that the moral purpose of our work is to find a fulfilling outlet for the talents of our young people, there is a special tragedy in seeing young lives unfulfilled.

    There are things Government can do to ameliorate this in the short term. And we are acting, not least through my colleague Iain Duncan Smith’s work programme.

    But if we are to grasp this issue properly then we must deal with the root causes of the problem.

    And that is our shared responsibility.

    For those root causes can be found in the first years of a child’s life.

    We know that a child who struggles at Key Stage One will struggle to do well in their Key Stage Two tests. And we know those children with the greatest difficulties are drawn overwhelmingly from our poorest neighbourhoods.

    And we know that those same children who don’t have Level 4 English and maths when they leave primary school are much less likely to achieve five good GCSEs than their more fortunate peers.

    And we know that the same young person who doesn’t get the equivalent of five good GCSEs is much more likely to be NEET at 16 or 17 and much less likely to be in secure employment thereafter.

    We are fortunate to be in the most fulfilling employment anyone can have. To be engaged in the education of the next generation is to be given a chance to liberate thousands from the narrow horizons which have limited mankind’s vision for centuries.

    But if we are to make good that promise then we need to recognise that we will all have to work harder than ever before – work to attract even better people into teaching, work to innovate more determinedly, work to identify talent more zealously, work to collaborate more intensively, work to raise aspirations, standards, hopes…

    But in this work lies the promise of a reward greater than is given to any other profession – the knowledge that we have guaranteed the life of the next generation will be better than our own.

  • David Wolfson (Baron Wolfson of Tredegar) – 2022 Tribute to HM Queen Elizabeth II

    David Wolfson (Baron Wolfson of Tredegar) – 2022 Tribute to HM Queen Elizabeth II

    The tribute made by David Wolfson, Baron Wolfson of Tredegar, in the House of Lords on 9 September 2022.

    My Lords, I begin, in accordance with the custom of my religious tradition, with an acknowledgement that, as mortal humans, we submit to God’s decree and from his judgment, whether that be for life or for death, there is no appeal: “Baruch dayan ha’emet”—“Blessed be the Judge of truth.”

    As I say that blessing, I am taken to the last time I met Her Majesty. I recited a different and special blessing, the blessing our rabbis prescribed to be said when meeting royalty: “Baruch shenatan michvodo lebasar vadam”—“Blessed is He who has shared His glory with mortals of flesh and blood”. The idea in that blessing is not the divine right of kings; it is not the absolutist notion that, because monarchs derive their power from God, they cannot be held accountable for their actions. The blessing embodies a totally different idea, but it is a powerful one. It is the idea, as the Talmud puts it, that “royalty on earth is to reflect royalty in heaven”; that to be royal requires the highest standards and impeccable behaviour. It is an idea, I suggest, that Her late Majesty exemplified throughout her long reign.

    Noble Lords might be familiar with the Hebrew word “mitzvah”. “Well done for doing this or that,” you might hear somebody say, and they will add, “You’ve done a mitzvah”—you have done a good deed. But a mitzvah is not a good deed which you do because you are in the mood or because the urge takes you; it is not something you do only and if you feel like it. The Hebrew root of the word mitzvah, its basic etymology, is the word “tzav”, which means “commandment”, “order” or “duty”. You do a mitzvah not just because it is a good deed and not just because you feel like doing it; you do a mitzvah because it is your duty. Her late Majesty spent her whole life doing the right thing and not just because she felt like it or because the mood took her. She spent her 96 years doing the right thing, day in, day out, out of a sense of duty. It was a life, if I may respectfully say, of mitzvah, of acting out of a profound sense of personal duty and under the solemn oath to God which she took at her Coronation.

    In Hebrew, every letter also has a numerical value and you can add up the values of individual letters to get the value of a word. In one of those coincidences which perhaps are not, the numerical value of the Hebrew word tzav, the root of the word mitzvah, is 96: 96 years of tzav, of duty, and also of mitzvah, of doing the right thing because that is your duty.

    Tomorrow is Shabbat and, as we have heard from my noble friend Lord Polak, in synagogues up and down the country we will say the prayer for the Royal Family, as we do each and every week. We recite that prayer immediately after the reading of the Torah, the five books of the Pentateuch, from Genesis to Deuteronomy, which we read in weekly instalments throughout the year. We are well into Deuteronomy at the moment, so the current annual cycle is nearly complete, but on the day we finish Deuteronomy, we do something odd but important. We return to the Holy Ark the scroll with which we completed Deuteronomy but we immediately take out a new scroll and start reading again from the first chapter of Genesis. So, on that day, the death of Moses, the faithful leader who had guided the people over so many decades, is immediately followed, a matter of moments later, by a new start—indeed, a new creation—in the first chapter of Genesis.

    So tomorrow, for the first time in my life, we will not pray in synagogue for Prince Charles but for King Charles. I started yesterday as a Queen’s Counsel and I finished it as a King’s Counsel. We have closed one book, a long and good book which we have had with us for so many years, and we are about to open another. As we all pray that God save our King, I will also pray that he too may enjoy a reign of mitzvah, of doing the right thing, for that, now, is his duty. Baruch dayan ha’emet, yehi zichra baruch. “Blessed be the judge of truth”, and may her late Majesty’s cherished memory be a blessing for all of us.

  • Malcolm Bruce (Baron Bruce of Bennachie) – 2022 Tribute to HM Queen Elizabeth II

    Malcolm Bruce (Baron Bruce of Bennachie) – 2022 Tribute to HM Queen Elizabeth II

    The tribute made by Malcolm Bruce, Baron Bruce of Bennachie, in the House of Lords on 9 September 2022.

    My Lords, I had the honour to represent a beautiful part of Aberdeenshire for over four decades and our communities have greatly appreciated, throughout that time, the regular presence of the Queen and other members of the Royal Family in, around and among us for so many years. In fact, it was no surprise to me when I travelled down on Monday to find that the Duchess of Rothesay, as she then was, was on the same plane—of course, she had to return only two days later in sadness, but as Queen Consort—but that was not unusual on that flight.

    I remember the Queen’s accession when I was a boy of seven, and in 1953—like so many others—I watched the Coronation of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth on a friend’s newly acquired, tiny, black and white TV set, although two weeks later I went to the cinema and saw it in full glorious Technicolor. Thirty years later, I became an MP and my encounters with the Queen and other members of the family, as is the case for many of us, became more frequent. I remember a number of royal visits and openings, but I also remember being a part of the receiving party when the royal yacht brought the Queen to Aberdeen—probably the last time the royal yacht came north to Aberdeen. Unfortunately, because of the fog, the yacht was not able to dock in the port and the royal party had to come ashore in a barge or launch. When I was in conversation greeting and remarking to the Queen that it was a pity the fog had prevented “Britannia” from docking, Princess Anne made the Queen laugh when she said, “Not at all: fog means flat calm.”

    Subsequently and on many other occasions, my wife and I were privileged to be invited to the garden party, including the only garden party, I think, that has taken place at Balmoral to mark the Queen’s Golden Jubilee. It was exclusively limited to the invitees being from the county of Aberdeenshire—again, an indication of the connection between the community. The sun, I have to say, shone all day on Balmoral despite the heavy downpours and flash flooding that occurred in nearly all the surrounding communities, which clearly proves that the sun does shine on the righteous—I mean the Queen, not me.

    I recall an incident when I was on the International Development Committee, which I had the privilege of chairing, and we were visiting an African and Commonwealth country—which I will not identify—when one of the Ministers leant across the table and said, “We are all loyal subjects here, you know.” A little bit quaint, but it perhaps encapsulates just how, during her long reign, the Queen personified a positive identity of what Britain and the Commonwealth meant to the world. It rises far above the quality or the character of any Government of the day; that is a huge asset to have. I think it is why yesterday’s news was greeted with tributes and genuine outpourings of affection from literally all over the world. Indeed, when anybody talks about the Queen anywhere in the world, there is only one Queen that they meant—we know that.

    I knelt before the Queen to swear an oath as a privy counsellor—as the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, did and many others—and later to receive a knighthood when the Queen discussed my support for sign language and communication support for deaf people, which she told me was very important and she valued it. It just indicates that, whatever the topic was, she had a view and she had knowledge.

    At the last diplomatic reception that took place at Buckingham Palace, I wore full Highland dress because I had it and, therefore, did not have to rent the other outfit. But the Queen stopped and admired it and commented, “It is lovely to see the kilt here,” meaning in Buckingham Palace, rather than elsewhere. The Queen’s Balmoral home is just a few miles from our more modest home, and the presence of the Royals is noted all the time, throughout the year; many local businesses are, by royal appointment, suppliers to the Queen and, now, to our new King. The privacy of the Royal Family is respected by the community, but their informal engagement with the local community is also valued. There are many stories of people seeing members of the Royal Family shopping in Ballater or being given a lift when caught in the rain when hiking around Lochnagar or Loch Muick to find it was Prince Charles, or the Queen, or the Duke of Edinburgh who had picked them up.

    It is, therefore, perhaps fitting that the family gathered at Balmoral to say farewell to the Queen before the formalities of state mourning began. They have the sympathy and the support of their local community, as well as the nation and the world. Of course, our sympathies are with them all. Our gratitude is to her. But now, for the first time in most people’s memory, we say “God save the King!”

  • 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.

  • Judith Blake – 2022 Tribute to HM Queen Elizabeth II (Baroness Blake of Leeds)

    Judith Blake – 2022 Tribute to HM Queen Elizabeth II (Baroness Blake of Leeds)

    The tribute made by Judith Blake, Baroness Blake of Leeds, in the House of Lords on 9 September 2022.

    I thank the Lord Speaker for the opportunity to pay tribute to Her Majesty the Queen today. Like my noble friend Lady Taylor, I am very conscious of the powerful, heartfelt and sincere speeches that have led the debate. I am sure that we are all very grateful for that. I know that all our thoughts are with the members of the Royal Family at this time of deep sadness and loss. I join everyone in sending my condolences to them.

    Over my lifetime, the Queen visited my home city of Leeds on many occasions. My memories go back, as so many have said do theirs, to lining a route as a schoolgirl to watch the royal car pass. I have to say that I will never forget the trauma of my sister losing her flag at the key moment as the car was just about to pass. In fact, I think she is still traumatised more than 60 years later. Even at that very young age, I recognised the enormous significance of Her Majesty’s visit and her interest in our part of the United Kingdom.

    It was my great privilege, 10 years ago this summer, as deputy leader of Leeds City Council to invite the Queen and Prince Philip to launch the Child Friendly Leeds initiative—a central pillar in the city’s improvement journey in children’s services. The Queen, at the same time, reopened the newly refurbished City Varieties—I am sure your Lordships all know the venue of “The Good Old Days” fame. We had a brilliant cast of young people performing fearlessly for her on stage.

    My personal duties included escorting the Queen and Prince Philip from the building in a newly installed glass lift on the outside of the building: what could possibly go wrong? I have to say, I did feel some trepidation at the task, but both the Queen and Prince Philip put me at me ease instantly, and Prince Philip was particularly fascinated by the mechanics of the new lift. Sadly, I was unable to enlighten him on the finer workings of the mechanisms.

    We walked down to Briggate—the main pedestrianised shopping street in Leeds—and I will never forget the roar of delight that hit us as we turned the corner to find both sides of the street thronged with hundreds and hundreds of children from every primary school in Leeds. It was simply breathtaking. I saw, first-hand, how they both interacted with the children and particularly how Prince Philip was assiduous in supporting the Queen so that every child felt included. It was a real pleasure to see them working so naturally and engagingly, talking to so many children and young people; I have never seen so many floral tributes, cuddly toys—you name it—all of the gifts that the children wanted to give to the royal couple. Those children and young people will never forget that day, and I know how much it has inspired them over the years.

    We will always remember the Queen’s extraordinary sense of duty and her commitment to people and communities the length and breadth of the country. Her depth of knowledge concerning organisations and backgrounds to events that she attended was simply astounding, revealing her intense interest in the people she was meeting. I think it was this attention to detail that helps explain why she is so well respected and loved by so many people across the country.

    I am grateful for the opportunity to say an enormous thank you for the Queen’s life, her service, her sense of duty and her extraordinary contribution to public life across the world over the 70 years of her reign.

  • Indarjit Singh – 2022 Tribute to HM Queen Elizabeth II (Lord Singh of Wimbledon)

    Indarjit Singh – 2022 Tribute to HM Queen Elizabeth II (Lord Singh of Wimbledon)

    The tribute made by Indarjit Singh, Lord Singh of Wimbledon, in the House of Lords on 9 September 2022.

    My Lords, on behalf of myself and the wider Sikh community, I too want to pass on our sense of loss and sorrow on the death of Her Majesty the Queen. Her passing marks a moment of great sorrow and reflection for us all. As has been said, her life was one of selfless and unparalleled service to her subjects, conducted with both dignity and humility throughout her 70-year reign.

    I have had the good fortune of meeting the Queen on several occasions and being invited to lunch at Buckingham Palace and admiring her wit, wisdom and depth of knowledge. I recall the privilege of accompanying Her Majesty during her first visit to a gurdwara in Leicester in 2002. I remember standing on the steps as the car drew up and the Queen got out a little nervously. Then she saw me and said with a broad grin, “I know him.” It is measure of the high esteem in which she was held by the Sikh community that, in that small gurdwara, after the visit we needed a large truck to take away the many bouquets and posies of flowers.

    It was during her Golden Jubilee celebrations that the Queen made it clear that she was the sovereign for all her people and that our different religions show that God’s love extends in equal measure to the whole of humanity—a resonant echo of Sikh teachings that show the important commonalities between our different faiths. I have been taking part in the annual Commonwealth Day service for many years. One year, it was suggested that the service move away from Westminster Abbey, which allows contributions of different faiths, to another church which did not. The Queen very promptly said, “If you do that, I won’t come.”

    Her Majesty’s commitment to the service of others, contribution to society and humility in all she did are qualities that Sikhs aspire to embody in their lives. Sikhs will always remember her with love and affection.

  • 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.