Tag: Press Release

The press release issued by the Department for Education on 11 March 2011.

An independent review of the key skills that teachers need to improve students’ performance has been launched today.

Every new teacher must meet a series of standards to stay in the classroom – but the current standards aren’t rigorous, clear or effective enough.

In a recent survey, more than a third of teachers did not feel the current standards provided a good definition of teacher competence and 41 per cent believed that professional standards did not make any difference to the way they taught.

Instead of focussing on the essential skills of great teaching, the current standards are a vague list of woolly aspirations. For example, an experienced teacher must “contribute significantly, where appropriate, to implementing workplace policies and practice and to promoting collective responsibility for their implementation”.

The new approach will set out rigorous standards teachers should meet in order to:

• provide excellent teaching
• crackdown on bad behaviour
• improve pupils’ skills in the basics of English and maths
• provide better support to those pupils falling behind.

New standards will help raise the bar for performance and help identify those who need more support to improve. Under the current approach, teachers and headteachers say:

• it is hard to measure a teacher’s progress
• there is a lack of clarity about when a teacher is meeting the standards
• the standards do not fit easily with the procedures for tackling underperforming teachers.

The review will be led by Sally Coates, the outstanding Principal at Burlington Danes Academy in London. Other excellent headteachers, teachers and education experts will sit on the review.

They will recommend to Government a simple and clear set of key skills that teachers must meet. They will also review the GTCE Code of Conduct and consider how the standards fit with the new Ofsted inspection criteria.

The current bureaucratic standards are expected to be replaced from September 2012.

The current standards include:

• 33 standards a trainee teacher must meet in order to qualify for Qualified Teacher Status (QTS). Three are focused on how to “communicate effectively” and “have a commitment to collaboration and co-operative working”. Only two standards are explicitly about skills on how to teach effectively
• 120 pages of guidance to go with the QTS standards that trainee teachers are expected to follow
• a total of 102 standards teachers must meet across all levels. There are four core standards on ‘health and wellbeing’. Just two are on making sure they have a good ‘subject and curriculum knowledge’.

Education Secretary of State Michael Gove said:

We already have the best generation of teachers we’ve ever had working in our schools. But the progress being made by other nations to improve their education systems means that we need to redouble our efforts to transform our schools.

We are already expanding Teach First and focussing our reforms on attracting the best graduates into our schools. But we need to make sure that those already in the classroom are continuously improving.

Headteachers and teachers have told me in no uncertain terms that the current teachers’ standards are ineffective, meaningless and muddy, fluffy concepts. There is also no clear evidence that they help to improve standards.

That’s why we need clear standards that teachers can use to guide their development. I am delighted that one of the best headteachers in the country, Sally Coates, who has made it her mission to transform schools, has agreed to lead the Review.

Sally Coates, Chair of the Teachers’ Standards Review and Principal at Burlington Danes Academy in London, said:

Clear and focussed Teachers’ Standards that are relevant to classroom practice are key. They need to reflect the craft of teaching and be meaningful to teachers so that they can teach and develop to the best of their ability.

With more than a hundred different standards on top of the GTCE’s Code of Conduct, it has become bureaucratic and confusing for headteachers and teachers alike. That is why I welcome the opportunity to lead the review into Teachers’ Standards.

Ava Sturridge-Packer CBE, headteacher at St Mary’s Church of England Primary School in Birmingham, said:

As the educational landscape continues to change, it is timely for a review of the skills, dispositions and evaluations in teaching. They impact on the climate of teaching and learning in schools today.

Greg Wallace, Executive Principal of the London Fields and Woodberry Down Federation in Hackney, said:

The move towards defining clearer professional standards for teachers has been positive in many ways. Now is the time to go further, to seek to define unequivocally clear standards that ensure the best classroom practice becomes the norm.

There will always be huge scope for some exceptional teachers to develop new ideas. However, I think the new standards should give due weight to the importance of understanding how to teach reading, writing and maths. They should define a precise core of skills and knowledge to enable the best possible start for every child.

Patricia Sowter, Principal at Cuckoo Hall Academy in London, said:

I welcome a review of professional standards for teachers to achieve improved clarity, with a strong emphasis on excellent teaching and outcomes for children. Behaviour and conduct of teachers can be made explicit within the standards therefore eliminating the need for a separate GTCE code. I look forward to a review of the current Ofsted framework to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for schools.

Dr Dan Moynihan, Chief Executive of Harris Academies, said:

As things stand the existing Teachers Standards are poorly used. They are complicated and over burdensome and as a result too many schools make little reference to them beyond the 12 month induction period for new teachers. This is a lost opportunity.

We now have a chance to produce a more slimmed down, coherent and user friendly set of standards with recommendations on how these can be incorporated into the life of a school in a meaningful and practical way. It will help transform the quality of teaching and the lives of young people. It is long overdue.

Brian Lightman, General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said:

The production of one explicit and concise set of professional standards for the whole teaching profession has the potential to greatly assist school leaders to maintain a consistently high standard of teaching throughout the service.

There are currently too many sets of standards relating to the teaching profession. This proliferation makes the standards very bureaucratic and difficult to use. This review is therefore to be welcomed if it leads to the production of one set of standards which can be applied to the whole profession.

This review comes as part of the Coalition Government’s plans to raise the status of the teaching profession and improve standards in schools.

The White Paper, The Importance of Teaching, says that raising the quality of teachers is the most vital reform if the education system in England is to become truly world-class.

The Teachers’ Standards Review will submit an interim report to the Secretary of State in July 2011, setting out the recommendations for the standards required of teachers to acquire QTS and to pass induction (Core).

A final report is expected during the autumn term making recommendations for the entire suite of teachers’ standards, with the new revised standards planned to come into effect from September 2012.

The press release issued by the Department for Education on 10 March 2011.

The Secretary of State today announced that he will launch an open competition to appoint a new chief schools adjudicator to replace Dr Ian Craig.

Dr Craig’s contract is due to expire in April 2012 and he and the Secretary of State have agreed it makes sense for his successor to take over in October this year to give them time to get up to speed ahead of the new admissions process.

As a result Dr Craig’s contract will end this autumn and the process will begin to find his successor.

Dr Ian Craig said:

“I would like to place on record my thanks to the Secretary of State and his Ministerial team who have shown me considerable support since they took office.

I would also like to take this opportunity to express my thanks to my team of fellow adjudicators and the officials in the Office of Schools Adjudicator, who have worked so hard and so professionally to ensure that the admissions system is as fair as we can possible make it.

With a new admissions process coming into force in 2012, I feel the time is right for a new chief adjudicator to take on the role. It has been my privilege to have held this post and I look forward to a smooth transition to my successor.”

Education Secretary Michael Gove said:

“I would like to place on record my deep appreciation for the rigour and hard work, as well as the professionalism and diligence that Dr Craig has brought to this post. With the implementation of a new slimmer Code and Admissions Framework, subject to the passage of the Education Bill, we both agree the time is right to appoint a new adjudicator.

Following discussions with Dr Craig, I am today announcing that we will shortly launch an open competition to appoint a new Chief Adjudicator. Dr Craig’s current contract was due to end in March 2012, but we have mutually agreed that it will be more appropriate for his contract to finish, with effect from 1 November 2011, following the delivery of his annual report.”

The press release issued by the Department for Education on 8 March 2011.

Alison Wolf is professor of public sector management at King’s College London. She completed a review of vocational education for the Department for Education in March 2011.

She wrote the following article for ‘The Times’ on 8 March 2011.

Should we care how two-thirds of English young people are educated? It sounds like a stupid question. But look at what we offer teenage students, and it seems obvious that, in fact, our elite hasn’t been bothered.

In England, as in every other developed country in the world, ‘staying on’ at school is now so normal that it hardly counts as a decision. Well over 90% of 16-year-olds continue education or formal training after their GCSEs, well in advance of it being made compulsory a few years from now.

Of these, only the minority are doing pure A levels, the route taken by pretty well every journalist, politician or senior civil servant. The large majority are not.

I have just completed a review, for government, of our majority – more commonly known as ‘vocational’ – education. I have recommended major changes because we are wasting billions of pounds a year educating young people for unemployment not employment. This is economically demented, and also flies in the face of English citizens’, and taxpayers’, legitimate aspirations and desires.

Vocational education courses are, of course, highly varied. They include Rolls-Royce or Airbus apprenticeships, where competition for a place is fiercer than for Oxbridge. BTEC National Diplomas lead to university for growing numbers of 18-year-olds; long-established craft qualifications feed into good careers.

But many vocational qualifications have no obvious market value at all. We have known this for years, from repeated high-quality research studies. They lead nowhere, other than to more, equally pointless qualifications. Schools and colleges are been rewarded for ‘making the numbers’; paid when people pass and penalised if they do not. So they have had a strong incentive to enter students for qualifications because they are easy, rather than because they are good for students. Many have duly done so.

However, ‘payment by results’ is only part of the problem. Vocational education has been distorted by a particularly strange case of English exceptionalism, which has put us completely at odds with the rest of the developed world.

Does this matter? Yes. As we have just discovered again, economies are not stable and predictable. Changing one’s occupation is the rule, not the exception, and the labour market rewards general skills. Everywhere else, specialisation has been duly postponed and a general core education is taken by all students until around 16. When vocational specialisation does begin, other countries combine it with a lot of general education as well.

And then there’s England. Here, vocational qualifications for young people have been developed, by government, in the most narrow of ways, based on the very specific skills of today’s economy. The theory is that this gives ‘business’ what it wants.

Yet it is not what employers want at all. These new government-sponsored qualifications are the ones which, time and time again, show zero or negative returns in the labour market. In other words, in practice, employers treat them as worthless.

More and more English 14- and 15-year-olds are now taking large numbers of vocational options. But no pupil that age, in the modern world, should be on a narrow track. That doesn’t mean giving up practical and vocational subjects altogether; one can easily deliver broad clusters of academic subjects, such as the coalition government’s new English Bacc, in 70% or 80% of the week. But early specialisation is economically stupid as well as deeply unfair to those involved.

Our current system is one of which we should be ashamed. Take maths and English, the most fundamental skills of all: the entrance tickets to A levels, top apprenticeships, university, the labour market. They are important because they matter in pretty well everything and are rewarded right through life.

In England, over half our 16-year-olds still fail to get good English and maths GCSEs. What I hadn’t realised until I carried out this review is that, 2 years later, over half still don’t have them; and that our education system has been placing huge barriers in their way. If you are paid by results – as sixth-forms have been – and steered by governments towards easy literacy and numeracy tests – as sixth-forms have been – GCSEs do not look very attractive. And so they have duly disappeared from the sixth-form curriculum.

It is simply not true that we are a nation with low aspirations. The mothers of 97% of new-borns, from all social classes, hope their children will go to university one day; parents of every social class are desperate to find good schools for their children. Our major parties are all, quite rightly, signed up to opportunity for all. But English government has been delivering education which systematically denies opportunities to huge numbers of young citizens. This is dreadful for them. It is bad and shameful for us all.

The press release issued by the Department for Education on 3 March 2011.

• 300,000- 400,000 16- to 19-year-olds doing courses of little value
• Those who fail to get a ‘C’ in English and maths GCSE must continue to study those subjects

The independent Wolf Review into vocational education, commissioned by Education Secretary Michael Gove, is published today.

Professor Alison Wolf analyses how millions of children have been failed over the past twenty years and sets out a blueprint for a very different system in which almost all young people have the chance of further education or a good job.

• Many 14- to 16-year-olds are on courses which the league table systems encourage but which lead children into dead-ends. Many young people have not been told the truth about the consequences of their choice of qualification.
• A quarter to a third (300,000 – 400,000) of 16- to 19-year-olds are on courses which do not lead to higher education or good jobs.
• High-quality apprenticeships are too rare and an increasing proportion are being offered to older people not teenagers.
• There are many good quality courses and institutions but they exist “in spite of” the current funding and regulatory system. Attempts to fix the system over the past decade have failed. For example, the Diploma was intended to solve the long-term problem but did not (there has been less than one per cent take-up).
• 45 per cent of the cohort did not get a ‘C’ in GCSE English and maths at 16 and very few (four per cent) of those who fail then go on to achieve this from 16 to 19.
• There has been a growing crisis in the youth labour market for years.

Professor Wolf recommends a radical change of direction.

There are four main principles for reform:

• The system must stop ‘tracking’ 14 to 16 year olds into ‘dead-end’ courses.
• The system must be made honest so young people are not pushed into damaging decisions.
• The system must be dramatically simplified to remove perverse incentives.
• We should learn best practice from countries doing things better than us, such as Denmark, France and Germany.

The proposals include:

• Ensuring anyone who fails to achieve at least a ‘C’ in GCSE English or maths must continue to study those subjects post-16. This would apply to about half the annual cohort.
• Removing the perverse incentives, created by the funding system and performance tables, to enter students for low-quality qualifications. High quality vocational qualifications can and should be identified by the Government. Only those qualifications – both vocational and academic – that meet stringent quality criteria should form part of the performance management regime for schools. However, schools should also be free to offer whatever other qualifications they wish from regulated awarding bodies.
• Making performance measures reinforce the commitment to a common core of study at Key Stage 4, with vocational specialisation normally confined to 20 per cent of a pupil’s timetable; and should remove incentives for schools to pile up large numbers of qualifications for ‘accountability’ reasons.
• Making funding on a per-student basis post-16 as well as pre-16.
• Regulation moving away from qualification accreditation towards oversight of awarding bodies.
• Removal of the obligation for qualifications for 16 to 19 year olds to be part of the Qualifications and Credit Framework.
• Increasing Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for maths teachers.
• Allowing 14 to 16 year olds to be enrolled in colleges so they can benefit from high-quality vocational training available there.
• Employers being directly involved in quality assurance and assessment activities at local level, which is the most important guarantor of high quality vocational provision.
• Recognising that high quality apprenticeships offer great opportunities but there are problems with the system. The Department for Education and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills must work together to fix the funding and other problems.
• Subsidising employers if they offer 16 to 18 year old apprentices high-quality, off-the-job training, and an education with broad transferable elements.

Professor Wolf, launching her report today at Westminster Kingsway College in London, alongside Mr Gove, said:

The system is complex, expensive and counterproductive. We have had twenty years of micromanagement and mounting bureaucratic costs. The funding and accountability systems create perverse incentives to steer students into inferior courses. We have many vocational qualifications that are great and institutions which are providing an excellent education and are heavily oversubscribed. But we also have hundreds of thousands of young people taking qualifications that have little or no value.

We must change course to give everyone a fair chance of a good education and a good job. Getting at least a ‘C’ in English and maths GCSE is absolutely vital for a young person’s future education and employment so those subjects should be compulsory for 16 to 19 year olds who have not achieved this. A lesson from abroad is that 14 to 16 year-olds should spend 80 per cent of their time on a shared academic core of subjects.

Mr Gove said Prof Wolf’s report was “brilliant and ground-breaking”. He immediately accepted four recommendations:

• To allow qualified further education lecturers to teach in school classrooms on the same basis as qualified school teachers.
• To clarify the rules on allowing industry professionals to teach in schools.
• To allow any vocational qualification offered by a regulated awarding body to be taken by 14-to19-year-olds.
• To allow established high-quality vocational qualifications that have not been accredited to be offered in schools and colleges in September 2011.

Michael Gove said he would now consider how best to implement Professor Wolf’s remaining recommendations.

He said:

The system that we have inherited is very damaging. It is unfair for children and it is harming the economy. Millions of children have been misled into pursuing courses which offer little hope.

We will reform league tables, the funding system, and regulation to give children honest information and access to the right courses.

Implementing these reforms will be hard and take a few years but we cannot afford another decade of educational failure.

Andy Wilson, Principal of Westminster Kingsway College, in London, said:

Westminster Kingsway College welcomes the publication of Alison Wolf’s eagerly awaited report. We are pleased that in taking an early decision to review vocational education, the coalition Government has recognised its importance to both short term economic recovery and the future of the country’s young people. The careful and considered analysis Professor Wolf has provided further enhances the importance of the vocational curriculum and recognises the position of further education colleges at the heart of its delivery.

Westminster Kingsway has a 100 year history of providing high quality vocational education for young people across London and is proud to host today’s launch event. Of course, our provision has evolved to reflect changing labour market needs and Government policy but has also provided the continuity that both young people and employers rely on. We will continue to respond to the priorities identified in Professor Wolf’s report and to provide routes for increasing numbers of young people to succeed as they progress directly to sustainable careers or HE.

Andy Palmer, head of skills at BT, said:

We require strong literacy and numeracy but all too often it is these key skills – particularly the ability to deploy them in the workplace – that cause our young recruits so many problems and requires investment from us.

We continually hear about the need for parity of esteem between academic and vocational qualifications but this masks the fact that they are different products with different outputs. Our senior management roles are populated by former apprentices and graduates alike.

Ali Hadawi CBE, Principal of Central Bedfordshire College, said:

The changes wrought over recent years have seen a systematic de-skilling of the quality of provision with the emphasis on achievement of a qualification being primary and the dumbing-down of the content, quality and rigour.

Sally Lowe, 14-19 partnership manager at Education Leeds on behalf of the 11-19 (25) Learning & Support Partnership, said:

There needs to be a single funding mechanism for 14-19. The awarding bodies used to have far more of a ‘hands on’ approach to ensuring the quality of delivery of vocational qualifications in centres. This has been eroded over the past 10 years and means that delivery centres are less accountable.

Awarding organisations needs to review existing Quality Assurance and implement more rigour to centre approval.

Phil Dover, Principal of Lees Brook Community Sports College, in Derby, said:

Some schools have used the flexibility in the assessment process to enable students to gain qualifications and accreditation too easily. The procedure needs to be changed by making the external verification process more rigorous.

Pete Birkett, chief executive of Barnfield Federation in Luton, said:

I welcome this report. I’m pleased that Alison Wolf took the time to visit Barnfield to meet with me and our staff and students to understand the real issues. She is right that we need to have experts teaching vocational qualifications who really understand and enjoy their subjects.

Wendy Wright OBE, Principal of Macclesfield College, said:

I was delighted that my college was part of the Wolf Review. I welcome the focus Prof Wolf has brought to the importance of vocational education for this country. My students are fully equipped for the world of work or further study and I want all students to have the same opportunity.

Lynn Sedgmore, of the 157 Group, said:

The 157 Group really welcome such a focus on the importance and benefits of vocational education. We appreciate the rigour and comprehensive dialogue that has taken place and we look forward to working constructively to ensure the main recommendations are implemented.

The press release issued by the Department for Education on 28 February 2011.

Former members of the armed forces will become mentors to young people in schools across England following a £1.5 million grant to the charity SkillForce, Education Secretary Michael Gove announced today.

Through three pilot programmes, ex-service personnel will be fast-tracked into schools, using the skills and experience gained on the frontline to help young people achieve. SkillForce will be funded to set up the three programmes from September 2011:

• Military to Mentors: 100 ex-service personnel will be trained to work as mentors for young people in and out of schools across England. SkillForce will work alongside two other organisations, Endeavour and the Knowsley Skills Academy, on this programme
• Zero Exclusion Pilot: SkillForce will provide intensive support to 100 young people at risk of exclusion from school. This will take place in five regions across England (areas to be confirmed), over a 12 month period
• Expand SkillForce Core Programme: investing in the existing SkillForce programme that uses teams of instructors from military backgrounds to work with disadvantaged young people, helping them gain qualifications. Over a year, the charity will support 340 additional young people from parts of the country with high unemployment and deprivation. Part of this will include elements of the Zero Exclusion pilot

These schemes are part of the government’s broader drive to encourage armed forces leavers to use their talents to help raise standards in schools. The move is inspired by a similar, highly successful programme in the United States.

Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education, said:

There is a huge opportunity for those people who have served their country in uniform to serve their country in our schools. They have many of the virtues that parents across the country feel have disappeared from our schools and need to be restored: self-discipline, a sense of purpose and a belief in the importance of working as a team.

That is why I want to offer people leaving our armed forces an opportunity to enter the classroom, and I am delighted to support SkillForce in doing so. Ex-Service personnel will act as inspiring role models for the next generation. They will help to instil in young people, often from some of the most disadvantaged backgrounds, discipline, self-respect and a sense of purpose.

Peter Cross, Chief Executive of SkillForce, said:

SkillForce is delighted to be asked to expand its work with disadvantaged young people. Our programmes effect positive and permanent change in their lives as evidenced by 60 per cent on free school meals going into further education compared with 9 per cent nationally. The use of former military mentors enables them to serve their communities following a first career of service to their country.

Dr Liam Fox, Secretary of State for Defence said:

The men and women who have served in Britain’s armed forces have a great deal to offer their local communities. The SkillForce programme is a great example of Big Society in action and will allow former service personnel to make a real difference to young peoples’ lives. At the core of our armed forces are the values central to a successful society such as loyalty, self discipline and motivation. I am certain that the nation’s children will thrive under the mentorship of these courageous individuals.

Ross Emery, who served in the army for over ten years including Bosnia, Cyprus, Kuwait and Iraq, and now a mentor at SkillForce, said:

I applied for SkillForce because I enjoyed working with young people from my previous career. This was the right option, I have loved every minute and still continue to do so. I walk away with a sense of achievement and reward from the turnaround of my students and what they have accomplished and achieved through their own hard work and with my guidance. I aim to continue this for many years to come.

Alec, 17, who has been mentored through the SkillForce programme said:

I was always getting into trouble at school, skipping classes, and talking back to teachers. SkillForce showed me another way. They showed me how to look at things differently, and whatever I want to do, I can do. They showed me that if I worked hard, if I disciplined myself I could get out of my situation and become something. I gained qualifications and learned the communication skills that got me successfully through my engineering apprenticeship interview. SkillForce really changed my life.

The recent schools white paper, ‘The importance of teaching’, announced that armed forces leavers would be encouraged and sponsored to become teachers through a ‘Troops to Teachers’ programme. This is based on a similar programme in the United States. Overwhelming evidence has shown that across America, ex-troops are proving to be excellent teachers, and are making a particularly positive contribution in high-poverty schools.

The full ‘Troops to Teachers’ package in England will include a variety of different forms of support for Service leavers wishing to enter the classroom. The coalition government will introduce financial subsidies and a new fast-tracked undergraduate route into teaching for those who have the relevant experience and skills but may lack degree level qualifications.

The press release issued by the Department for Education on 28 February 2011.

Former members of the armed forces will become mentors to young people in schools across England following a £1.5 million grant to the charity SkillForce, Education Secretary Michael Gove announced today.

Through three pilot programmes, ex-service personnel will be fast-tracked into schools, using the skills and experience gained on the frontline to help young people achieve. SkillForce will be funded to set up the three programmes from September 2011:

• Military to Mentors: 100 ex-service personnel will be trained to work as mentors for young people in and out of schools across England. SkillForce will work alongside two other organisations – Endeavour and the Knowsley Skills Academy on this programme.
• Zero Exclusion Pilot: SkillForce will provide intensive support to 100 young people at risk of exclusion from school. This will take place in five regions across England (areas to be confirmed), over a 12 month period.
• Expand SkillForce Core Programme: investing in the existing SkillForce programme that uses teams of instructors from military backgrounds to work with disadvantaged young people, helping them gain qualifications. Over a year, the charity will support 340 additional young people from parts of the country with high unemployment and deprivation. Part of this will include elements of the Zero Exclusion pilot.

Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education, said:

There is a huge opportunity for those people who have served their country in uniform to serve their country in our schools. They have many of the virtues that parents across the country feel have disappeared from our schools and need to be restored: self-discipline, a sense of purpose and a belief in the importance of working as a team.

That is why I want to offer people leaving our Armed Forces an opportunity to enter the classroom, and I am delighted to support SkillForce in doing so. Ex-Service personnel will act as inspiring role models for the next generation. They will help to instil in young people, often from some of the most disadvantaged backgrounds, discipline, self-respect and a sense of purpose.

Peter Cross, Chief Executive of SkillForce, said:

SkillForce is delighted to be asked to expand its work with disadvantaged young people. Our programmes effect positive and permanent change in their lives as evidenced by 60 per cent on Free School Meals going into Further Education compared with nine per cent nationally. The use of former military mentors enables them to serve their communities following a first career of service to their country.

Dr Liam Fox, Secretary of State for Defence said:

The men and women who have served in Britain’s Armed Forces have a great deal to offer their local communities. The SkillForce programme is a great example of Big Society in action and will allow former Service personnel to make a real difference to young peoples’ lives. At the core of our Armed Forces are the values central to a successful society such as loyalty, self discipline and motivation. I am certain that the nation’s children will thrive under the mentorship of these courageous individuals.

The press release issued by the Department for Education on 25 February 2011.

Education Secretary Michael Gove today confirmed that children in England will continue to receive free books at key stages of their childhood to instill a love of stories and reading.

The free bookgifting scheme will be delivered by the successful Booktrust charity with Government investment valuing £13.5 million over two years – half the cost of the previous scheme.

The new bookgifting programme will remain a universal offer, but will be enhanced by new elements offering targeted support for disadvantaged children and families. The programme will give all children up to the age of 11 access to books from an early age and will help contribute towards their literacy and learning skills.

Education Secretary Michael Gove said:

A lifetime love of books, stories and rhymes starts in the earliest days of a child’s life, and intensifies throughout their childhood and beyond. This scheme will help all children to develop a love for books and will crucially provide extra support to address the needs of children who live with disadvantage.

I am extremely confident that Booktrust, with whom we’ve worked closely to secure an excellent funding package over the next two years, will use their wealth of experience and expertise to deliver a bookgifting scheme that makes a real difference to children and families, and is sustainable in the longer term.

Chief Executive of Booktrust Viv Bird said:

We are pleased that the Department for Education is to continue its strong partnership with Booktrust and publishers in funding the bookgifting programme. This announcement reflects our shared aspiration to inspire a love of reading, and to offer more choice and support to the most disadvantaged children and families.

Working closely with our partners Booktrust will ensure the continued delivery of a universal offer in a cost effective way and also create new offers targeted to those most in need. This will mean that as well as receiving free books for children to read for pleasure, schools with a high proportion of pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds will be invited to join the programme.

We are tremendously grateful for the support we have received from publishers, authors, local authorities, libraries, health officials, schools and children’s centres and look forward to consulting closely with all of our partners about the shape and details of the programme.

The schemes are:

• Bookstart Baby (0 to12 months) – universal offer
• Bookstart Corner (12 to 30 months) – targeted through Children’s Centres
• Bookstart Treasure Bag (3 to 4 years) – universal offer
• Booktime (4 to 5 years, Reception year) – universal and enhanced by a targeted Primary Programme for Reception age and Year 1 children
• Booked Up (11 to 12 years, Year 7) – universal and enhanced by a targeted Secondary Programme for children in years 7 and 8

There are also titles for children with additional special needs, as part of the Bookstart, Booktime and Booked Up arrangements.

Working closely with Booktrust, the new offer builds on the previous scheme with additional targeted provision for the most disadvantaged children and families. This will include working with a number of schools serving the most disadvantaged children to provide additional support from Booktrust which will focus on three main areas:

• maintaining the universal offer for all families with babies 0 to 12 months and at three years old encouraging all families to nurture their child’s love of books and reading – we know a good home-learning environment is shown to be important for children’s development and linked to unlocking social mobility
• a strong new offer for families with toddlers aged 12 to 30 months (Bookstart Corner) accessed only through Sure Start children’s centres to help us do more to ensure that the families in greatest need benefit.
• building on universal bookgifts for children in reception and Year 7, a new targeted offer will provide extra resources for particularly disadvantaged schools, to help raise standards of literacy among those pupils who are often at risk of under-attaining, supporting those who may be growing up without access to books to achieve their potential.

The press release issued by the Department for Education on 22 February 2011.

Sir

I am sorry that Fiona Millar constantly seeks to diminish the efforts of dedicated parents, teachers and charities who simply want to improve education for children in their area (Fiona Millar ‘Why free schools will cost our children and society dear’, Yorkshire Post 11 February 2011). Contrary to what she claims, free schools will not allow ‘covert selection’, cause a threat to community cohesion or receive preferential funding. They will follow the same legal admissions procedures as other schools, and will be monitored by Ofsted and the government.

They will simply be state-funded schools established where there is local demand from parents for a good and new type of school for their children.

The truth is that top-down solutions of the sort favoured by Fiona Millar have not worked, despite the best efforts of teachers and heads. By freeing up the system we are giving local groups of parents and teachers the opportunity to increase choice and raise standards. The fact that we have had such a strong response – over 250 proposals already shows that there is a great deal of enthusiasm for the idea of free schools. I am glad to be on the side of parents, charities and committed teachers who are trying to make things better and am sorry that the forces of conservatism represented by Fiona Millar want to snuff that diversity out.

Lord Hill

Schools Minister