Tag: Speeches

Below is the text of the speech made by Michael Gove, the then Secretary of State for Education, on 10 July 2014.

It’s an enormous pleasure to join the Education Foundation in welcoming everyone today to the first ever global Education Reform Summit held here in London.

Everyone here has a story to tell about the changes that idealistic teachers are making to improve the lives of the next generation.

Everyone here will also have experiences to share about the specific challenges they face in helping children to succeed.

And all of us will be able to learn from each other – about those successes and challenges – in order to ensure that we can all make a difference for good to the lives of young people.

A shared moral purpose

Because everyone here is united by more than just a professional commitment to improving education. We all share a moral purpose – liberating individuals from ignorance, democratising access to knowledge, making opportunity more equal, giving every child an equal chance to succeed.

And nowhere has the case for reform to drive that moral mission been clearer than in England.

As part of our long-term economic plan to secure a better future for Britain, we want to deliver the best schools and skills for our young people. We want young people and their parents to have the peace of mind that they’ll gain the skills they need to get a good job, no matter where they live or how well off they are.

When this government was formed in 2010 we inherited one of the most segregated and stratified education systems in the developed world.

More than a fifth of children left primary school without reaching a basic level of literacy and numeracy; two-fifths finished full-time education without even the bare minimum qualifications that most employers and universities demand.

And what made this scandal more shameful was the inequality it entrenched. The poorest students overwhelmingly attended the weakest schools. And as children made their way through the education system in England, the gap between rich and poor widened.

Closing that gap is a personal crusade for me.

But it’s also an economic imperative for every developed nation.

Because the twin forces of economic globalisation and technological advance are transforming the world we live in.

Our jobs, our lives, our economies and our societies are going through dramatic and irreversible change.

For the next generation to flourish, education systems must equip every child with the knowledge and skills, the qualifications and confidence they need to succeed.

Children who leave school with no skills or low skills will find their employment opportunities limited and their horizons narrowed.

If we are to defeat the evil of youth unemployment and give the next generation economic security then many more children need to be educated to a far higher level than we now accept.

We need not just to close the gap, but to raise the bar.

Based on rigorous evidence

And while globalisation and technology make reform imperative, they also allow it to be more collaborative.

We have to achieve both much greater equity and much higher standards than our predecessors – but we also have access to much richer data and much deeper knowledge about what works.

We now have the networks and mechanisms to assess policies more rigorously than ever before, compare innovations and learn from each other.

In the past, great teachers – and indeed education ministers – have operated in isolation from any systematic and rigorous analysis of which of their interventions worked. Views on pedagogy or funding had to be taken on trust.

But in the last decade there has been a much more rigorous and scientific approach to learning. Instead of a faddish adherence to quack theories about multiple intelligences or kinaesthetic learners, we have had the solidly grounded research into how children actually learn of leading academics such as E.D. Hirsch or Daniel T. Willingham.

And when it comes to analysing which interventions, approaches and techniques help children to learn more quickly, more deeply and more sustainably we have also had access to a better bank of data than ever before,

The OECD’s PISA study, alongside the data from PIRLS, TIMSS and other studies, have transformed our understanding of what works.

And that data and the data of what happens in individual classrooms with individual practitioners has been analysed by reformers from John Hattie to Sir Michael Barber, so the lessons of what works can be shared more effectively than ever before.

One of the most encouraging trends in English education – which helps the cause of reform worldwide – is the way in which those leading the debate and driving evidence-based change in our schools are teachers.

We commissioned Dr Ben Goldacre – the author of ‘Bad Science’, a brilliant debunking of pseudo-scientific myths and fallacies – to help improve the use of evidence in English education.

And the biggest enthusiasts for his work have been teachers.

Teachers such as Andrew Old, Daisy Christodoulou, Robert Peal, Joe Kirby, Kris Boulton and Tom Bennett have used social media and professional networks to drive this move towards a more rigorous and evidence-based approach to helping children learn.

We in the UK government want to do everything to support this move. We believe the evidence base we build here can help children worldwide. We set up a new charity, the Education Endowment Foundation, to trial and evaluate the most effective techniques to narrow the gap in attainment between children from rich and poor backgrounds.

We have also set up a network of teaching schools to act as generators of evidence and excellent practice in education in the same way as teaching hospitals generate medical innovation.

These are schools rated outstanding by independent inspectors – and they are pioneering breakthroughs in learning and building evidence from which all professionals can benefit.

As are similar organisations across the globe, from the What Works Clearinghouse, Uncommon Schools and the Knowledge is Power Programme.

Improvements so far

We have built our reform programme in this country on the evidence we have gathered so far of what works in those countries where the gap has been narrowed and the bar has been raised.

We have studied what works in the highest performing and most improved education systems – from Poland and the Netherlands to Singapore and Shanghai – and we have sought to implement the essence of those policies here.

That has meant:

• setting the highest standards nationally
• ensuring every child can follow a stretching academic curriculum to the age of 16
• giving principals more autonomy to hire and fire, set curricular policy and shape the school day
• sharpening accountability through more rigorous, externally set tests and more intelligent inspection
• devoting extra money to helping the poorest students
• celebrating success wherever it’s found

We’ve done all we can to ensure the authority, respect and prestige of teachers is enhanced in and beyond the classroom. We’ve scrapped absurd ‘no touch’ policies which prevented teachers from keeping control in the classroom as well as keeping children safe; and given teachers back powers to manage pupil behaviour.

By following the evidence – by adhering to the principle that what’s right is what works – there has been a renaissance in English state education.

The benefits of our long-term plan are already starting to show:

• more great schools
• more great teachers
• more pupils studying the subjects they need to get a good job
• record numbers of apprenticeships

Since 2010, the number of children in failing secondary schools has fallen by almost a quarter of a million.

Eight hundred thousand more pupils are now being taught in schools ranked good or outstanding by independent inspectors compared to 2010 – and around 50 of those schools didn’t even exist 4 years ago.

In the same period, around 600 of the worst-performing primary schools have been taken over by expert sponsors or headteachers – the majority of which are already leading other schools with a proven track record of success.

This has been an explicit continuation of a policy set in train by 2 of my predecessors, Andrew Adonis and Tony Blair: the academies programme.

Progress on this policy stalled under Gordon Brown but has been massively accelerated under this government.

It is giving the very best heads control over many more schools, and thousands of children a better start in life.

Underperforming schools taken into the academies programme and placed under the leadership of great heads are improving more rapidly than those schools which remain in the hands of local politicians.

A stunning example of what’s happened under this programme is the progress made by a school in London which used to be called Downhills Primary and which has been reborn as Harris Primary Academy Philip Lane.

When Downhills was under the control of local politicians, it failed its pupils year after year. For almost a decade it drifted in and out of the very lowest category of performance: ‘special measures’.

Pupils failed to meet minimum standards in maths and English for 5 years in succession – provoking repeated demands for significant improvement.

When it was proposed that Downhills should become an academy and benefit from the leadership of great headteachers who had brought success elsewhere, local politicians and trade unions fought reform every step of the way.

But 2 years later the evidence is clear. As Ofsted’s first inspection of the new Harris Academy Philip Lane reported:

Pupils’ progress has improved rapidly since the academy opened in 2012 […]. Leadership and management, including governance, are outstanding. Leaders have brought about considerable improvements in teaching, behaviour and achievement because of very high expectations [and] worked very closely with parents, who are supportive of the academy.

This transformation is a credit to the hard work and dedication of the school’s teachers and leaders – and of the Harris Federation’s expert, experienced team.

Harris Primary Academy Philip Lane is now giving hundreds of pupils and parents a better, brighter chance in life. Like all the Harris academies – and particularly through the 2 Harris teaching schools – spreading their best practice and outstanding teaching techniques to many more schools than ever before.

And it’s not alone. All over the country, failing schools are being taken over and transformed – and brand new schools are being set up, bringing new choice and high standards.

And this renaissance is being driven by teachers

Look at the Greenwood Dale trust, led by the recently and deservedly knighted Sir Barry Day.

As a teacher, Barry worked in some of the most deprived schools in the country, helping children from the poorest backgrounds. As head of Greenwood Dale School, a secondary in an extremely deprived area of Nottingham, he transformed a failing school into one of the most successful schools in the country – and one of the first to become an academy sponsor in its own right.

Today – overseeing 22 academies and 2 free schools – he’s using that proven track record to reach exponentially more children than ever before.

Right across the East Midlands, working in the most disadvantaged communities, Greenwood Dale Trust academies are achieving fantastic results. Last year, on average, the proportion of pupils achieving 5 or more good GCSEs including English and maths rose more than twice as fast in Greenwood Dale Trust academies as in local authority schools across the country.

And there are many, many more examples. Look at Reach Academy in Feltham, a new, innovative, all-through free school founded by dedicated teachers.

Look at the London Academy of Excellence, a fantastic new sixth-form free school, drawing its students from some of the most deprived areas of London and aiming to send them to the top universities in the world.

Look at Sir Michael Wilkins’ schools – including a teaching school – in the Outwood Grange Trust. More others than I can mention – teachers leading change in a self-improving system.

Further to go

But that doesn’t mean ‘job done’. There’s still much further to go.

In 10 years’ time, children who started school back in September 2010 will be finishing compulsory education at the age of 18 – the first cohort since our reforms began.

So today I’d like to set out what the self-improving system should achieve by that time.

What a world-class education, and education system, will look like – not just today and tomorrow, but next year, and in 2024 and beyond.

More and more schools run – and more and more decisions made – by teachers, not politicians.

Higher standards and higher expectations from every school and every pupil at every stage and every age.

More children from all backgrounds taking core academic subjects at GCSE – the best possible preparation for apprenticeships, places at top universities, and good jobs.

A drastic reduction in levels of illiteracy and innumeracy in our country and in our schools.

A marked and sustained rise in school quality, driven by every school being part of a supportive, collaborative chain or network – because when you give schools more autonomy, they collaborate more, not less.

Calm, orderly classrooms, and stretching, challenging curricula. Exams that command respect among universities and employers alike.

Basically, it means this.

Every child in the country, no matter where they live, what their background, or whatever type of school they attend, gets the sort of education which introduces them to the best that has been thought and said.

The sort of education which equips them to do whatever they want in life – and leaves no opportunity out of reach.

Conclusion

That is the mission which drives me and unites all of us.

This is the goal we are all striving to achieve.

Of course, any change to the status quo is difficult. Of course, people can be more frightened of what might be lost than inspired by what might be gained.

But for years, for decades, our status quo has simply not been good enough. We can’t and we mustn’t keep going backwards – and failing the poorest above all.

So to those striking today – to those walking out of classrooms to take to the streets – I urge them to reconsider.

The unions, in the past, have claimed to ‘stand up for education’. Today they’re standing up for their own pay and pensions.

I urge them to join all of us in this hall, all of us who are really standing up for education – putting education first and foremost – and the education of our most deprived children most of all.

So thank you again for coming here today.

For your commitment to the future of education – and the futures of every individual child in your care, today, tomorrow and in the years to come.

Thank you, above all, to the Education Foundation for all their hard work to create this event today.

May it be a celebratory, ambitious, inspiring day for all of us – and a turning point in the global movement of education reform.

Thank you.

Below is the text of the speech made by Michael Gove, the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, to the Prisoners Learners Alliance on 17 July 2015.

Last Friday a journalist was anxiously trying to confirm a story with the Ministry of Justice. The reporter, a dogged fellow, wanted absolute confirmation from my own lips.

I’m sorry, my departmental colleagues replied, the minister can’t speak, he’s in prison.

Well, the journalist pleaded, I hope he gets out before my deadline for filing.

Fortunately, I was out in time, but the multiple ironies of the situation were not lost on me.

Not least that it was a distinguished alumnus of the tabloid press who was pleading most passionately for early release from prison.

For anyone given ministerial responsibility for prisons, it doesn’t take long to appreciate there are many ironies, paradoxes and curiosities, in our approach towards incarceration.

Or so it seems to me. I have only been in this post for two months, and I am still learning. So any judgements I make are inevitably tentative and provisional.

I want to make sure that any firm policy proposals for reform I make are rooted in solid evidence, respectful of academic research and only developed after rigorous testing and study. But there are some observations I have made which I want to share today because they will form a guide to the kind of questions I am asking and the shape of policy I want to develop.

The good that we find in prisons

The first remarkable thing I’ve found about our approach towards incarceration in England and Wales is how many good people there are in prison.

We are fortunate that we have so many good prison Governors and Directors who work extraordinary hours under great pressure to keep offenders securely and safely in custody while also preparing them for a new life outside.

We are also lucky that we have so many dedicated prison officers who work in difficult and dangerous conditions, in an environment which by its nature is always potentially violent, and who nevertheless strive to help offenders lead better, safer and more fulfilling lives.

The death earlier this month of the dedicated custody officer Lorraine Barwell was a tragic and poignant reminder of how much we owe those who undertake the necessary but difficult work of managing offenders, work on which our entire justice system depends.

I want to underline today – as I tried to when I appeared before the House of Commons Justice Committee on Wednesday – my admiration and gratitude for those who serve in our courts and prisons.

Indeed, in the prisons I have visited so far I have been struck, again and again, by the seriousness with which Governors take their responsibility for the souls in their care, and the combination of strict professionalism and humanity which marks the work of most prison officers. Few of us get to observe this work, fewer still would volunteer to do it, but all of us benefit from the dedicated service of those who work in our prisons, public and private.

I should say at this stage that the quality of our Governors and the professionalism of so many staff is not an accident, but a consequence of the leadership shown by Michael Spurr, the quite outstanding public servant who runs the National Offender Management Service. There are few people in public service as dedicated, knowledgeable, hard-working, principled and decent as Michael, and few people who would blush so much to hear it said.

And alongside those who are Governors and officers there are psychologists and chaplains, teachers and careers advisers, trained chefs and FE lecturers, volunteers from the arts and workers from charitable organisations who devote long hours, often for very little material reward, to help rehabilitate offenders.

All of us owe them a debt, because their work is, by definition, hidden from public view, often hard and frustrating and challenging to the spirit.

That so many people, from so many different professions, contribute to the work of rehabilitation in our prisons for so little reward or recognition is both humbling and inspiring.

And while individuals of every background contribute in so many ways it is striking how many of those who do work in our prisons are people of faith, from a huge variety of backgrounds.

The exhortation in St Matthew’s Gospel to help the hungry, the sick and the imprisoned is taken seriously, and lived out, by thousands of our fellow citizens every week. We should celebrate their example, and the faith which sustains them.

But while there are so many good people in our prisons, we are still, as a society, failing to make prisons work as they should.

And the failures which we lament

Prisons do work in isolating dangerous offenders from the rest of society, contributing to safer homes and streets. Prisons also work by punishing those who defy the law and prey on the weak, by depriving them of their liberty. Civilization depends on clear sanctions being imposed by the state on those who challenge the rules which guarantee liberty for the law-abiding.

But our prisons are not working in other – crucial – ways. Prisons are not playing their part in rehabilitating offenders as they should.

While individuals are in custody the state is responsible for every aspect of their welfare. We can determine who prisoners see, how they eat, wash and sleep. We can decide how they spend their day, what influences they are exposed to, what expectations we will hold them to, what they can watch, read and hear, what behaviour is rewarded and what actions punished, who we expect them to admire and what we hope they will aspire to.

And yet, despite this, 45% of adult prisoners re-offend within one year of release. For those prisoners serving shorter sentences – those of less than twelve months – the figure rises to 58%. And, saddest of all, more than two-thirds of offenders under the age of 18 re-offend within twelve months of release.

The human cost of this propensity to re-offend is, of course, borne by those who are the most frequent victims of crime – the poorest in our society. It is those without high hedges and sophisticated alarms, those who live in communities blighted by drug dealing and gang culture, those who have little and aspire to only a little more, who are the principal victims of our collective failure to redeem and rehabilitate offenders.

No government serious about building one nation, no minister concerned with greater social justice, can be anything other than horrified by our persistent failure to reduce re-offending.

As I have already acknowledged, there are many good people working in our prisons today but they are working in conditions which make their commitment to rehabilitation more and more difficult to achieve.

Our current prison estate is out-of-date, overcrowded and in far too many cases, insanitary and inadequate.

The most conspicuous, most recent, example of the problem we face was outlined in the Chief Inspector of Prison’s report into Pentonville. A Victorian institution opened in 1842 which is supposed to hold 900 offenders now houses 1300. The Chief Inspector’s team found blood-stained walls, piles of rubbish and food waste, increasing levels of violence, an absence of purposeful activity and widespread drug-taking. Not only are measures to reduce drug-taking among prisoners admitted with an addiction unsuccessful overall, nearly one in ten previously clean prisoners reported that they acquired a drug habit while in Pentonville.

Of course, Pentonville is the most dramatic example of failure within the prison estate, but its problems, while more acute than anywhere else, are very far from unique. Overall, across the prison estate, the number of prisoners in overcrowded cells is increasing.

Violence towards prisoners and prison staff is increasing and incidences of self-harm and suicide are also increasing. In the last year serious assaults in prison have risen by a third. In 2014/15 there were 239 deaths in custody; around a third were self-inflicted.

There are a number of factors driving these trends.

As crime overall has fallen, convictions for serious crime have not, so a higher proportion of offenders in our jails are guilty of significant offences. And among younger offenders, many are involved in gangs, and especially difficult to manage because they are committed to a culture of violence and revenge whether on the streets or in custody.

In addition, there has been a worrying increase in the availability of psycho-active substances, chemically-manufactured cannabinoids and other synthetic intoxicants, which are sometimes, misleadingly known as “legal highs”. As my colleague the Prisons Minister Andrew Selous has pointed out, they should, more accurately, be known as “lethal highs” because they can induce paranoia and psychotic episodes which lead to violent acts of self-harm and dreadful assaults on others.

Dealing with these problems in our jails has to be the first priority of those of us charged with prison policy. Unless offenders are kept safe and secure, in decent surroundings, free from violence, disorder and drugs, then we cannot begin to prepare them for a better, more moral, life.

My predecessors in this role, Ken Clarke and Chris Grayling, and Andrew’s predecessors as Prisons Minister, Crispin Blunt and Jeremy Wright knew this. And they also knew the work of change would not be easy.

Thanks to their efforts steps are being taken to improve safety and security in our jails.

New operational and legislative responses are being introduced to strengthen the efforts to keep illegal drugs out of prison and to tackle the threat posed by new psychoactive substances.

We are trialling a new body scanner to prevent contraband from entering prison, strengthening our response to the threats posed by illicit mobile phones and taking measures to deal more effectively with those offenders who have links to organised crime networks outside prison.

And as well as enhanced security measures there is an increased emphasis on educating prisoners, their visitors and prison staff on the dangers posed by these substances.

But, as Ken and Chris knew, more needs to be done.

That’s why I think we have to consider closing down the ageing and ineffective Victorian prisons in our major cities, reducing the crowding and ending the inefficiencies which blight the lives of everyone in them and building new prisons which embody higher standards in every way they operate. The money which could be raised from selling off inner city sites for development would be significant.

It could be re-invested in a modern prison estate where prisoners do not have to share overcrowded accommodation but also where the dark corners that facilitate bullying, drug-taking and violence could increasingly be designed out.

By getting the law right, getting operational practice right and getting the right, new, buildings we can significantly improve the security and safety of our prisons.

But the most important transformation I think we need to make is not in the structure of the estate, it’s in the soul of its inmates.

Who do we imprison?

People go to prison because they have made bad choices. They have hurt others, wrecked their homes, deprived them of the things they cherish, violated innocence, broken lives and destroyed families. They have to be punished because no society can protect the weak and uphold virtue unless there is a clear bright line between civilised behaviour and criminality.

But there is something curious about those who find themselves making bad choices, crossing that line, and ending up in prison.

They are – overwhelmingly – drawn from the ranks of those who have grown up in circumstances of the greatest deprivation of all – moral deprivation – without the resources to reinforce virtue. And recognising that is critical to making prisons work.

The temptation to do the wrong but convenient thing and the willingness to follow the right, but hard course, the propensity to lie and the determination to be honest, the tendency to cut moral corners and the inclination to serve rather than seize must be mixed in all of us. And it must be equally spread across tribes and classes, faiths and families. None has a monopoly on virtue.

And yet the population in our prisons is drawn – overwhelmingly – from a particular set of backgrounds.

Prisoners come – disproportionately – from backgrounds where they were deprived of proper parenting, where the home they first grew up in was violent, where they spent time in care, where they experienced disrupted and difficult schooling, where they failed to get the qualifications necessary to succeed in life and where they got drawn into drug-taking.

Three quarters of young offenders had an absent father, one third had an absent mother, two-fifths have been on the child protection register because they were at risk of abuse and neglect.

• 41% of prisoners observed domestic violence as a child
• 24% of prisoners were taken into care as children. That compares with just 2% of the general population
• 42% of those leaving prison had been expelled from school when children compared to 2% of general population
• 47% have no school qualifications at all – not one single GCSE – this compares to 15% of the working age general population
• Between 20 and 30% of prisoners have learning difficulties or disabilities and 64% have used Class A drugs

Now, it must be said, that there are many young people who grow up in difficult circumstances, who experience poor parenting and who spend time in care who nevertheless lead successful and morally exemplary lives.

But they deserve special praise because growing up in a home where love is absent or fleeting, violence is the norm and stability a dream is a poor preparation for adult life, for any life.

Children who grow up in homes where there is no structure and stability, where parents are under pressure, mentally ill, in the grip of substance abuse or neglectful and abusive in other ways are less likely to succeed at school.

Children who lack support when they’re learning, in particular boys who find difficulty in learning to read often mask their failure with shows of bravado and short-tempered aggression or just opt out of school life altogether. Boys start playing truant, become excluded and then find role models not in professional adults who achieve success through hard work but in gang leaders who operate without constraints in a world of violent, drug-fuelled, hedonism.

It should not surprise us that young people who grow up in circumstances where the moral reinforcement the rest of us enjoy is absent are more likely to make bad choices.

Why there must be punishment

Now that should not lead us to weaken our attachment to the codes, rules and laws which keep our nation civilized, nor should we shy away from the punishment necessary to uphold those rules and protect the weak. The people who would, in any case, be hurt most by relaxing our laws against drugs, violence, abuse and cruelty would be those who have grown up in homes plagued by those evils, all too many of whom have themselves in turn been brutalised and coarsened into criminality. We must not, therefore, in the American phrase “define deviancy down”. We must not imagine that softening the laws on drugs, or shying away from exemplary penalties for violent conduct, will make life easier and safer for children growing up in disordered, abusive and neglectful surroundings.

We can, of course, intervene earlier in the lives of these children. And the work led by my colleagues Nicky Morgan and Edward Timpson to improve child protection, support children in care better, speed up adoption and strengthen social work will all make a difference.

As will the changes to school behaviour policy pioneered by Charlie Taylor and Nick Gibb and now being built on by Nick and Tom Bennett. Tighter rules on truancy, more sanctions for bad behaviour and improved services for children at risk of exclusion will all help. As indeed will welfare changes which support more people into work and provide the right incentives for the right choices.

But even as these reforms are implemented at pace, and even as we strive for greater social justice we must also remember the imperatives of criminal justice.

When individuals transgress then punishment should be swift and certain. The courts should ensure victims do not have to wait long months before criminals face trial and the sentences passed down should be applied proportionally and reflect the moral sentiments of the public in a democracy.

Why there must be a new approach to prison

Then, however, after an offender is caught, convicted and sentenced, when they are placed in custody they are placed in our care.

Prison is a place where people are sent as a punishment, not for further punishments. And if we ensure that prisons are calm, orderly, purposeful places where offenders can learn the self-discipline, the skills and the habits which will prepare them for outside life then we can all benefit.

Human beings whose lives have been reckoned so far in costs – to society, to the criminal justice system, to victims and to themselves – can become assets – citizens who can contribute and demonstrate the human capacity for redemption.

And offenders whose irresponsibility has caused pain and grief can learn the importance of taking responsibility for their lives, becoming moral actors and better citizens.

As Winston Churchill argued, there should be “a constant heart-searching by all charged with the duty of punishment, a desire and eagerness to rehabilitate in the world of industry all those who have paid their dues in the hard coinage of punishment, tireless efforts towards the discovery of curative and regenerating processes and an unfaltering faith that there is a treasure, if you can only find it, in the heart of every man.”

Which is why in the reform programme our prisons need we must put a far greater emphasis on inculcating the virtues which are, in Churchill’s words, “curative and regenerating”, and which rehabilitate prisoners, as he argued for, “in the world of industry”.

Liberating prisoners through learning

That means an end to the idleness and futility of so many prisoners’ days. A fifth of prisoners are scarcely out of their cells for more than a couple of hours each day. As the Chief Inspector of Prisons argued so powerfully this week:

Our judgement that purposeful activity outcomes were only good or reasonably good in 25% of the adult male prisons we inspected is of profound concern. It is hard to imagine anything less likely to rehabilitate prisoners than days spent lying on their bunks in squalid cells watching daytime TV.

Ofsted inspection of prison education confirms that one in five prisons are inadequate for their standard of education and another two-fifths require improvement. Fewer than half are good, scarcely any outstanding. In prisons there is a – literally – captive population whose inability to read properly or master basic mathematics makes them prime candidates for re-offending. Ensuring those offenders become literate and numerate makes them employable and thus contributors to society, not a problem for our communities. Getting poorly-educated adults to a basic level of literacy and numeracy is straightforward, if tried and tested teaching models are followed, as the armed forces have demonstrated. So the failure to teach our prisoners a proper lesson is indefensible.

I fear the reason for that is, as things stand, we do not have the right incentives for prisoners to learn or for prison staff to prioritise education. And that’s got to change.

I am attracted to the idea of earned release for those offenders who make a commitment to serious educational activity, who show by their changed attitude that they wish to contribute to society and who work hard to acquire proper qualifications which are externally validated and respected by employers.

I think more could be done to attach privileges in prison to attendance and achievement in education. But I believe the tools to drive that change need to be in the hands of Governors.

At the moment I fear that one of the biggest brakes on progress in our prisons is the lack of operational autonomy and genuine independence enjoyed by Governors. Whether in state or private prisons, there are very tight, centrally-set, criteria on how every aspect of prison life should be managed. Yet we know from other public services – from the success of foundation hospitals and academy schools – that operational freedom for good professionals drives innovation and improvement. So we should explore how to give Governors greater freedom – and one of the areas ripest for innovation must be prison education.

At the moment, Governors don’t determine who provides education in their prisons, they have little control over quality and few effective measures which allow them to hold education providers to account. If we gave Governors more control over educational provision they could be much more imaginative, and demanding, in what they expect of both teachers and prisoners.

A more rigorous monitoring of offenders’ level of educational achievements on entry, and on release, would mean Governors could be held more accountable for outcomes and the best could be rewarded for their success.

Giving Governors more autonomy overall would enable us to establish, and capture, good practice in a variety of areas and spread it more easily.

Allowing Governors greater space for research into, and discussion of, practical penal policy reform would reinforce a culture of innovation and excellence which would benefit us all.

As would welcoming more providers into the care and education of offenders. Just as visionary organisations like Harris and ARK have widened the range of organisations running great state schools in this country, and thanks to my predecessor Chris Grayling new organisations are helping to improve probation, so new providers have a role to play in helping us manage young offenders, improve educational outcomes in prison and indeed possibly manage some of the new prison provision we need to build.

These are technical – and complex – policy questions. As I ask them I do so in a spirit of genuine inquiry – I am open to good ideas – from wherever they come – which will help us improve our prisons.

But while I am open to all ideas, and keen to engage with the widest range of voices, there is a drive to change things, an urgent need to improve how we care for offenders, which will shape my response. We must be more demanding of our prisons, and more demanding of offenders, making those who run our prisons both more autonomous and more accountable while also giving prisoners new opportunities by expecting them to engage seriously and purposefully in education and work.

Our streets will not be safer, our children will not be properly protected and our future will not be more secure unless we change the way we treat offenders and offenders then change their lives for the better. There is a treasure, if only you can find it, in the heart of every man, said Churchill. It is in that spirit we will work.

Below is the text of the speech made by Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Education, at the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking, Surrey on 3rd March 2014.

Thank you very much for that kind introduction.

It’s a huge pleasure to be here at McLaren today – during what must be a brief and exceedingly busy period before the grands prix roar into action.

As this incredible setting shows – more like a Bond villain’s lair than anywhere I’ve ever spoken before – McLaren are world leaders in technological innovation; constantly and quite literally reinventing the wheel, to make it ever faster, ever more aerodynamic, ever more efficient.

This restless pursuit of excellence builds on an impressive sporting heritage.

Since their first race in 1966, McLaren have won more grands prix than any other Formula 1 marque – with champions like Ayrton Senna, James Hunt, Niki Lauda and, of course, Lewis Hamilton.

But just as important as a glorious past is a bright future.

Which is why McLaren are taking part in helping to train the next generation of engineers, scientists and inventors.

Through apprenticeships, trainees, internships, work experience and as STEM ambassadors, McLaren are every bit as much a world-beating educational institution as Oxford University or Imperial College – introducing young people to the dazzling potential of science and technology, and training them to play their part.

The future is coming faster than we think

It’s fitting that I’m here where educational and technical innovation meet, because I want to talk today about the future relationship between education and the world of work.

I want to do so because the world of work is changing at high speed – and we are about to see that change accelerate at dramatic pace.

If young people are to be prepared for that radically changing world of work, we need a plan to change our education system – and to secure their future.

In particular, we need to end the artificial and damaging division between the academic and the practical – the apartheid at the heart of our education system.

We need to ensure that more students enjoy access to the academic excellence which will make a practical difference to their job prospects in a fast-changing world.

And we need to ensure that practical, technical and vocational education is integrated with academic learning to make both more compelling for all students in our schools, and more valuable in the new labour market.

It’s important to stress, of course, that education is about more, much more, than preparation for employment.

It’s an initiation of every new generation into the best that’s been thought and written. It’s an exploration of all the riches of human creativity. And a preparation for the moral responsibilities of adult life.

But education is also – critically – the means by which we can give each individual the chance to shape their own future; their future employment as well as their cultural, social and moral lives.

The right education – the acquisition of the right skills – can enable any individual to take control of their economic destiny rather than being left at the mercy of economic forces beyond their control.

And getting every child’s education right is central to our long-term economic plan for the country.

We cannot afford to leave any intellect untapped, any pair of hands idle, because the security we want for all can only be achieved by a first-class education for all.

Because of the economic forces which are reshaping our world now, getting education right has never mattered more.

Globalisation – the opening up of markets which followed the collapse of communism – has meant that those with the right skills have a wider choice of jobs and career paths, and goods and services, than ever before.

But it has also meant that those with the wrong skills – or no skills – have found their opportunities narrowing, as employment opportunities migrate to nations with lower labour costs, or technology renders more and more traditional jobs redundant.

What economists call the economic return to skills – basically the extra amount you earn for being well educated – is remorselessly high. And for those with good maths skills the premium on their earnings is even higher.

But while globalisation has had a powerful effect on our economic destinies, other changes – only now beginning to be felt – will be even more dramatic.

Technology is poised to change the world of work in a manner as dramatic as the shift from a predominantly agricultural to a predominantly industrial society which advanced nations underwent in the 19th century.

The second machine age – the robolution

We are embarking on a second industrial revolution – a new machine age.

Developments in a variety of fields – especially artificial intelligence – are changing how workplaces operate. Machines which once accelerated production because processes could be automated are now increasingly capable of operating autonomously. Cars which were once assembled by robotic technology are now being driven by robotic technology. I know – I’ve been in one. And Google’s driverless car is a far safer presence on the road than any vehicle which has me behind the wheel.

These breakthroughs – in artificial intelligence, robotics, and related fields – are changing every workplace we know.

It’s no longer simply routine manual labour which is capable of being performed better by machines than by men.

From train driving to surgery, auditing to merchandising, technology is reshaping the whole world of work. It is striking that the major tech companies who have done so much to shape our modern lives – like Google – are moving so speedily and heavily into this area.

Google’s driverless car is not a careless thought experiment on the part of a company which has hitherto been predominately virtual and digital rather than physical and mechanical.

It is a leading indicator of where tech is taking us next. Google has been investing very heavily recently in artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics – with its acquisition of the robot firm Boston Dynamics, the smart thermostat make Nest Labs and the British AI company DeepMind.

And in case anyone thinks Google’s moves are just California dreaming, consider what’s happening in east Asia.

Fujitsu, the world’s third largest maker of IT products, is re-shoring its PC and mobile phone manufacturing from Thailand and the Philippines back to Japan because multifunction robots can solder and assemble parts more cheaply and efficiently than workers in developing nations.

Canon, the world’s leading supplier of digital cameras, has said it is “fully robotising” its digital camera and lens factories.

Similar advances in technology have meant that Hewlett-Packard and the Chinese computer firm Lenovo are increasing their production in Japan to take advantage of the greater efficiency and lower costs of fully automated – robotised – production.

Of course we’ve had robots on production lines for decades now. But it’s often the case that the real power of a new technology is only felt when its potential is liberated by other innovations.

Computers had been around for decades before the world wide web generated the changes which mean each of us now conducts so much of our lives via smartphone, tablet and laptop.

Similarly, breakthroughs in IT are proving to be a decisive, disruptive innovation changing how we deploy robots. The manufacturing process is now altered not by retooling production lines but by reprogramming machines with improved software – and in particular, by giving them the power to perform a complex series of actions.

When we place these changes in the context of other rapidly accelerating innovations – in speech recognition, vision sensors and wireless networking – it’s clear we are reaching an inflection point, when actions hitherto thought impossible to perform by machines become actions which it’s increasingly obsolete to leave to humans.

In the first industrial revolution, machines multiplied a thousandfold the physical power mankind could deploy.

In this second revolution, machines are poised to multiply by a similar factor our mental creativity.

Making all these opportunities more equal

These changes promise to make goods and services more abundant – and to allow human ingenuity an unimaginably broader canvas to work on.

But there are also dangers.

For those of us committed to social justice, to respecting the innate dignity of every human being, to giving every individual the chance to flourish economically, socially and emotionally, these changes constitute a profound challenge.

How can we avoid growing unemployment as technology displaces labour from jobs which now disappear? How can we ensure that, for example, those who currently, or might in the future, drive our tube trains or generate purchase orders and invoices, find jobs? How can we ensure young people have the ability to adapt to technological changes – to take advantage of them – to lead richer lives with more opportunities?

How can we prepare young people for jobs that don’t yet exist in industries that haven’t yet been invented in a world changing faster than any of us can predict?

And how can we ensure that these changes – whose ramifications will affect the whole shape of our economy and our society – can be harnessed to make our economy overall stronger and our society fairer?

The answer is by ensuring we implement all the elements of our long-term economic plan – and, critically, by pressing ahead with our reforms to improve schools.

Other jurisdictions are following the path we’ve set.

They are giving heads greater control of their schools.

They are enhancing the prestige of teaching by raising the bar on quality.

And they are ensuring curricula and exams are more rigorous – with a proper emphasis on the centrality of academic knowledge in the education available to all.

Giving all children access to high-quality teaching in maths, English, physics, chemistry, biology, languages and the humanities to the age of 16 provides every child with the opportunity to flourish whichever path they subsequently choose.

And more than giving children choices, that academic core also trains our minds to be critical and creative.

The work of cognitive scientists, most helpfully analysed by the University of Virginia’s Daniel T Willingham and buttressed by the research of educationists like ED Hirsch, has shown that the best way to develop critical thinking skills is to ensure all children have a firm grounding in a traditional knowledge-based curriculum.

As Willingham has pointed out,

Surprising though it may seem, you can’t just Google everything. You actually need to have knowledge in your head to think well. So a knowledge-based curriculum is the best way to get young people ‘ready for the world of work’.

Elsewhere, he said:

Knowledge does much more than just help students hone their thinking skills: it actually makes learning easier. Knowledge is not only cumulative, it grows exponentially. Those with a rich base of factual knowledge find it easier to learn more – the rich get richer. In addition, factual knowledge enhances cognitive processes like problem solving and reasoning. The richer the knowledge base, the more smoothly and effectively these cognitive processes – the very ones that teachers target – operate. So, the more knowledge students accumulate, the smarter they become.

And it’s demonstrably the case that the higher order thinking skills we need – even and especially, in the sphere of technology – can be and are successfully cultivated through traditional intellectual disciplines.

Mark Zuckerberg arrived at Harvard – and laid the groundwork for his future success – after close study of classical Greek, Latin and Hebrew at school. Sergey Brin of Google and Sal Khan of the Khan academy were gifted university mathematicians. Martha Lane Fox – the government’s digital champion – read ancient and modern history at university and Dido Harding, the chief executive of TalkTalk, who has been responsible for huge steps forward in e-safety, studied politics, philosophy and economics at university.

It is striking that the jurisdictions which have seen huge improvements in their schools in recent years – such as Poland – have been those which ensure all children have access to a stretching academic curriculum until at least the age of 17. No matter what path students choose – whether academic or vocational – they all share a core academic foundation on which to build.

And that desire to overcome false divisions, unhelpful stereotypes and the premature setting of young people into tracks from which they cannot later deviate lies behind our approach to education.

And just as last month I set out how we can tear down the Berlin Wall between state and independent schools, so today I am setting out how we can end the apartheid between academic and practical learning.

It’s critically important that we recognise the value of traditional academic disciplines – and should not allow them to be abandoned, neglected, or thought of as suitable only for a minority of students.

But we must also ensure that we are alive to the ways in which technology and other innovations are now in a position to help us to overcome the unnecessary and harmful divide between the academic and the technical – between thinking and doing – which has held us back as a nation.

Bringing together thinking and making

For centuries since the Renaissance, dominant education models have had a strict separation between, first, what is regarded as learning and, second, training people to make things.

This separation has helped to generate – and perpetuate – class divisions. It has, in societies like our own, encouraged people to think in terms of intellectual castes – thinkers or makers, artists or designers – those happiest in the realm of the conceptual and those who prefer the hard and practical.

Now, thanks to technological developments and groundbreaking innovators, this is changing.

We can now reunite making things with the training of the intellect.

Take computer science, for instance. There’s no doubt that it’s a demanding intellectual discipline: computer sciences courses at Cambridge or Stanford are every bit as rigorous – if not more so – than degrees from our best universities in pure mathematics or classical languages.

But one of the great virtues of computer science is that it enables students to create things of both utility and beauty even as they push forward the boundaries of intellectual exploration. The apps on our smartphones are the application of conceptual scientific thinking in the most immediately practical way conceivable.

Sadly, however, we’ve been failing to provide our children with the opportunities to think and make anew in this way. For years now we’ve introduced students to computers at school through an undemanding – indeed, frankly dull – ICT curriculum.

It taught students how to fill in spreadsheets and prepare slideshows, how to use applications which were already becoming obsolete – rather than enabling them to see how they could create new applications, by offering them the chance to code, to let their imaginations roam, to build their own future.

From this September, however, we will be teaching every child in the country how to code and programme, how to master algorithms and design their own apps, through our new computing curriculum.

It’s been drawn up by industry experts alongside teachers and academics. And it’s unique among major economies. As Eric Schmidt of Google has said, this has made England a world leader – other countries are now considering how to follow our lead, including those ahead of us in the PISA tables.

It’s not just in computing, though, that students are being given new opportunities to think and make in the most innovative way possible.

In the existing design and technology curriculum students have had the opportunity to work with traditional products – wood and metal in resistant materials, wool and silk in textiles – to learn traditional methods of production. There is – and always will be – a demand for skilled artisanship of this kind. Indeed there has been a welcome resurgence of demand for the work of individual makers.

But now technology is radically redefining what it is to be a maker.

In the last few years there has been a huge improvement in the technology for – and a huge reduction in the price of – 3-dimensional fabricators, sometimes known as ‘3D printers’.

Machines that used to cost hundreds of thousands of pounds have shrunk in price dramatically. There are now 3D printers costing only a thousand pounds or less that are available to home hobbyists, small businesses, and – critically – schools.

The democratisation of access to this technology is already changing what we understand by design, by manufacturing and by artisanship. For example, Chris Anderson – the former editor of Wired – now uses 3D printers to build parts for his pioneering drone company.

These technologies are also dramatically changing education. Building on this opening up of access to manufacturing for all, MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms runs a course called ‘How to make (almost) anything’ – which has rapidly become hugely popular.

Two years ago in England, we began a pilot scheme to introduce 3D printers to English schools. It was only small but it gave pioneers a chance to learn. We are now working with teaching schools to develop training and best practice in how 3D printers can be used in teaching a range of subjects in schools.

And we have also overhauled our design and technology curriculum with the help of tech innovators like James Dyson to include the principles of 3D printing – and to place greater emphasis on the links with maths, science and computing.

I have already seen in some of our best schools how an attachment to traditional intellectual disciplines and modern technological innovation sit side by side. In Holland Park school – for example – the same students who study A level texts like King Lear at the age of 14 are also using 3D printers to design individual products which could take their place tomorrow on Ikea’s shelves.

But these technological advances hold out the promise of even greater scope for creativity and intellectual adventure in our schools and colleges in the future. If they can integrate the new science curriculum, the new maths curriculum with its emphasis on mathematical modelling, the new computer science curriculum, and 3D printers, we can give pupils the chance to do science themselves and to see the connections between physical principles, mathematical models, computer programs, and the art and design of engineering physical objects.

This will help in 2 directions – on one hand, it provides a new route for pupils to learn about old principles in physics, chemistry, and biology; and on the other, it provides a new route for pupils to learn about the connections between mathematical models and physical reality, with computers as an intermediary.

And it also provides a fantastically exciting way of reuniting learning and making things. As Neil Gershenfeld, the computer pioneer and head of the Center for Bits and Atoms, says, it ends the distinction that schools have lived with since the Renaissance.

Gershenfeld has seen how his own children have taken enthusiastically to the new opportunities technological innovation has brought. As he said, “I’ve even been taking my twins, now 6, in to use MIT’s workshops; they talk about going to MIT to make things they think of rather than going to a toy store to buy what someone else has designed.”

I think that the innovations Gershenfeld has talked about and helped advance will both enhance traditional aims in schools and colleges and also enthuse and inspire many children who have not been interested in traditional science lessons.

Because of the various changes we have made – which I think will be supported by the other political parties – we have a chance to lead in this fascinating new educational field.

Instead of thinking some students do GCSE triple science, others do hands-on courses; instead of thinking some students might aspire to intellectual exploration at university, others should prepare to be hewers of wood and drawers of water; instead of thinking some students are rational, mathematical and coolly cerebral; others are artistic, intuitive, design-oriented and creative – with this combination of changes, we can give every child the chance to make connections, develop both intellectually and practically, think and make.

I am convinced that Gershenfeld is right and the changes we are seeing will not only help the traditional aims of science education but will enormously expand what pupils know and do when they leave school. It will also help squash the idea that has been particularly damaging in England that messy practical subjects are a lower form of learning. It will end the apartheid in our education system that has held so many back.

Elevating the practical to the level of the intellectual

It was because I wanted to take head-on the idea that practical learning could never be as rigorous as academic that I and my colleague John Hayes commissioned Professor Alison Wolf – Britain’s leading expert on practical education – to review how those subjects were taught, funded and assessed.

We commissioned Alison right at the start of our time in government – long before we embarked on changes to the rest of the curriculum.

Alison’s report – published 3 years ago, to the day – made the case, compellingly, for proper equivalence between the practical and technical and the academic.

That is why we changed the funding of education for students between the ages of 16 and 18 to make it equal for all, whatever qualifications and courses they took – overturning a status quo which favoured the purely academic.

We also changed the demands we make of students after the age of 16, so all students – whether they are studying more practical or more academic courses – are increasingly expected to pursue maths beyond GCSE.

And any students who fail to get maths and English GCSE by the time they’re 16 must, whatever path they’re taking, pursue both subjects until they secure those qualifications. Without those basic intellectual accomplishments, the world of work is increasingly out of reach for students.

Alison also recommended changes to practical and technical qualifications – to make them as rigorous and demanding as academic qualifications.

Under previous governments, many so-called vocational qualifications were simply watered down or diluted academic courses with less rigorous content and lax forms of assessment.

As a result they conferred almost no benefit on students. They were badges that marked their bearers as undereducated. The reason these qualifications did not enjoy parity of esteem with academic qualifications was nothing to do with the subjects themselves and everything to do with the course design – there was no parity of difficulty, challenge, accomplishment or worth. Alison estimates that hundreds of thousands of students acquired these qualifications which actually had – in some cases – a negative impact on their employability.

Now every qualification which counts in our schools and colleges – academic or technical – must have a rigorous marking structure, external assessment, robust content and real stretch, or must be redeveloped to meet that standard. As a result there is – at last – the prospect of a genuine equality of worth and parity of esteem between all qualifications.

The CBI asked a few years ago when vocational qualifications would be as rigorous and respected as A levels. Thanks to Matthew Hancock’s development of Alison’s work, and the introduction of tech levels and a technical baccalaureate from September, that day is now coming.

We’re ending the apartheid between the academic and vocational – and giving every single young person in the country the best possible start to their future, whatever that future may be.

Alison’s and Matt’s work has helped us move our educational system towards the goal I’ve been aiming for – making opportunity more equal for all children. And all our curriculum and structural changes are designed to help every student succeed with the right mix and melding of courses and study for them.

But even as we bring students, courses and qualifications closer together as part of our long-term plan to secure our children’s future there is another element we need dramatically to improve on.

If our education system is to equip our children for the changing world of work, business must embrace change and work harder to get closer to education.

Bringing together the worlds of learning and working

Business – quite rightly – points out that it needs workers who possess not just impressive academic qualifications but attractive personal qualities. Employees need to be self disciplined, capable of subordinating their own instincts and interests to the needs of the team, responsive and respectful towards others, resourceful under pressure, tenacious and self motivating. Increasingly, they also need to be creative in the face of adversity, quick thinking when presented with unexpected challenges.

The first step to ensuring students have those character virtues is enforcing effective discipline and behaviour policies in all our schools.

We have given teachers new powers to ensure good behaviour – and we have enhanced the training new teachers receive to ensure they can manage behaviour better.

And we are also supporting schools in the cultivation of those virtues – character strengths – which employers value through co-curricular activities such as team sports, cadet forces, debating, dance, music and drama.

That’s why we’re investing over £150 million a year in sport in primary schools, to instil a sporting habit for life. It’s why we’re expanding the number of cadet forces in state schools and why we have national plans for music and culture education to support the work of individual schools.

But if these investments are to pay their full dividend – for young people, and for society more broadly – then business needs to play a bigger part in a joint venture.

We need business people with experience of company boardrooms on the governing boards of our schools. Headteachers and the professionals they lead thrive best in an atmosphere of thoughtful support and rigorous challenge. The skills required to provide that support and challenge exist in abundance in the business world. But too few business people volunteer to serve on school governing bodies.

We have made it easier to do so. Setting out changes to governance which mean meetings can be more focused, training for governors more tailored, unnecessary bureaucratic box-ticking has gone. The whole process has become more businesslike. Now business must meet the challenge.

We also need business to provide more opportunities for students to learn about the world of work directly from those who can speak with enthusiasm and passion about their companies and careers.

For young people reflecting on which career path to follow no information is as valuable, no inspiration so powerful as the testimony of those at the front line of business. That is why the new careers guidance produced by my colleague Matt Hancock is all about cutting out the middle man and getting inspirational speakers in front of students to spark their ambitions. Students can’t aspire to lives they’ve never known. So we need business people to visit schools, engage and inspire.

Initiatives like Robert Peston’s Speakers for Schools and Miriam González Durántez’s Inspiring the Future: Inspiring Women are superb models. But every business should be engaging with its local schools and colleges – offering speakers and competing to inspire the next generation.

And that inspiration should feed through directly to the offer of work experience.

I know that some companies have been reluctant to offer, or maintain, work experience because of the bureaucracy, risks and costs associated with it.

Offer a young person your time, interest and access to your workplace and you can then find yourself worrying about arcane, confusing and unnecessary regulatory burdens.

We’ve already started to sort out this nonsense. Last year the Health and Safety Executive stripped away unnecessary health and safety rules, the Home Office removed the need for criminal checks on employers offering under-18s work experience, the insurance industry – at the government’s request – confirmed that young people on work experience will be covered by employers’ liability insurance, and the Department for Education introduced new funding rules that encourage schools and colleges to arrange post-16 work experience. We’ve changed the law so that for most businesses, so long as you behave reasonably, you have discharged all your duties under health and safety legislation.

Soon, there will be no excuse for any company to decline to offer young people proper work experience.

Indeed, there is no excuse for not going further.

Thanks to the changes we’re making to the apprenticeship programme, there is no reason why every company in the country should not be offering apprenticeships.

Until now some of our most impressive companies have stood aloof from the apprenticeship programme. They’ve felt that it was too bureaucratic and costly to offer apprenticeships. And they argued that the apprenticeship frameworks – setting out the skills and competencies we expected apprentices to acquire in each industry – were too inflexible, and didn’t deliver the high-quality skills they needed.

So we set ourselves the challenge of simplifying the apprenticeship programme and making it more responsive to employers’ needs, so no employer could have any reason for standing aloof.

And we asked the hugely successful entrepreneur Doug Richard to help us strip the programme down to essentials.

He’s done a brilliant job.

Following his recommendations we’re introducing reforms to put employers in the driving seat – giving them control of more than £1.4 billion invested in apprenticeships by the government so that employers can demand higher quality from whatever training provider they choose, rather than giving it to providers who force employers to take whatever training they happen to want to offer. We’re getting rid of those study requirements which were inserted by self-serving lobby groups, bureaucrats and trade unions and which have nothing to do with preparing young people for the modern workplace.

Critically, we’re getting businesses to design the quality standards which mark out an apprentice in any field as properly qualified. They are leaders in their field and will ensure that the apprenticeship programme at last serves modern business needs rather than politicians’ vanity.

And building on Alison’s work we will also require apprentices to achieve GCSE passes in maths and English alongside their workplace learning. The apprenticeship standards themselves will only be met if students demonstrate both a theoretical and practical grasp of their area. This synoptic form of assessment will ensure that apprentices have both deep knowledge and an assured level of skill in their chosen career.

These reforms address every single one of the concerns raised by business about weaknesses in the apprenticeship programme we inherited. There is now therefore no excuse for business not to engage – and many who held back before, are now, thankfully, starting to get much more closely involved.

That is why I hope we will see every business as enthusiastic about playing its part in providing high-quality education and training as the employers in our trailblazers.

I’d like to see every business include details of its apprenticeship scheme – indeed details of its work experience programme, its speakers for schools programme and its level of commitment to providing school governors – in its annual report, on its website front page and every time its CEO speaks.

It’s also why, whenever business leaders report their results, I hope they’ll take the trouble to report apprenticeship growth – and be quizzed about their commitment to education and training by business journalists and shareholders.

A long-term plan for all our children

The proposals I’ve talked about today:

– changes to take advantage of technological breakthroughs

– changes inspired by what’s happening in the nations with the highest-performing educational institutions

– changes to make the curriculum more modern

– changes to make qualifications more rigorous

– changes to make funding fairer

– changes to ensure bureaucracy and regulation are reduced

– and changes to bring the world of work and education – making and learning – closer together

– are all elements in the comprehensive long-term plan we have to make our education system world class and our economy world-beating.

That plan has been designed to take account of the rapid change being forced on us by economic, social and, above all, technological changes, affecting every nation on earth.

That plan gives schools greater autonomy and flexibility to adapt to change and respond to innovation – through the academy and free schools programme.

It also gives schools more power, money and freedom to recruit the very best teachers in all the disciplines the modern workplace requires – with performance-related pay, improved teacher training and bursaries for the best graduates entering the profession.

But it holds schools to account more rigorously than ever for making sure every child succeeds – with tougher exams and performance tables that recognise the achievements of every child.

But if all our children are to benefit from these changes we need continuity in the direction of education policy, determination to meet the future unflinchingly, consistency in our pursuit of excellence.

That is what David Cameron and George Osborne’s leadership provides, and that is why it is vital the reform programme they have begun – the long-term plan they are implementing – is carried through to completion.

Below is the text of the speech made by Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, to the Mayor of London’s Education conference on 22nd November 2013.

Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of John F Kennedy’s assassination – and the death of a president who promised so much for the people of America.

It also – of course – marks the fiftieth anniversary of Lyndon B Johnson’s assumption of presidential office. LBJ’s initials do not inspire the affection in our memories that JFK’s do. But whatever else he did – and did not – do President Johnson achieved something both wonderful and powerful in office – he passed the civil rights legislation which at last allowed African-Americans the opportunity to take their place alongside white Americans as equal citizens of their republic.

When we look at America’s story the crimes of slavery, the horrors of Jim Crow, the ugliness of segregation are all – mercifully – in the past.

But even now – 50 years after Kennedy died, 50 years after Martin Luther King’s I have a dream speech, 150 years after Lincoln declared in the Gettysburg address that all men are created equal, there is still terrible inequality in America.

Black children face a tougher fight than others to get up and get on – they are less likely to succeed, more likely to fall on hard times.

As President Obama has pointed out – the struggle for civil rights goes on. And the arena in which that fight is fiercest is education. Because black children are less likely to graduate from high school, less likely to go to college and less likely to graduate from college than their peers, their futures are blighted and their horizons are narrower. That is why Barack Obama has said that school reform is the civil rights struggle of our time.

That is why he has championed reforms which create more charter schools, like our academies here, which demand minimum standards for every child, like our national curriculum tests here and which reward great teachers more generously, as our pay and conditions reforms do here.

He has been joined in that fight by African-American political leaders like Cory Booker – the newly-elected senator from New Jersey who was mayor of Newark – and Deval Patrick the highly successful 2-term governor of Massachusetts. Other Democrat leaders in cities with large African-American populations – like Rahm Emanuel – have prosecuted the struggle with rare political courage. And Republican leaders who take their heritage as Lincoln’s heirs seriously are in the fight too – which is why Jeb Bush secured so much support across all ethnic communities in Florida and why Governor Chris Christie won by a landslide in New Jersey.

I’m lucky enough to have met many of these politicians – and I admire their commitment to social justice.

The challenge for Britain

Just as I admire the commitment of politicians – across party lines – in our country who are dedicated to advancing opportunity through education. Whether it’s David Laws or Andrew Adonis, Tony Blair or Boris Johnson.

Because we need to fight more energetically for social justice in this country just as they’re doing in America.

We too have anniversaries that should spur us to new action.

Sixty-five years ago, the Empire Windrush landed at Tilbury, Queen Elizabeth I’s old stomping ground – carrying to these shores the first West Indian immigrants, hoping to start a new life.

Sixty-five years on – we have to ask – have we fulfilled our promise to those new Britons?

Twenty years ago, Stephen Lawrence was brutally murdered on a London street by a gang of racist thugs – one of the darkest episodes in the history of race relations in this country.

Twenty years on – we have to ask – have we created a truly colour-blind society in which every single child in this country, no matter what their background, no matter what their ethnicity, is given an equal opportunity to succeed?

I don’t believe we have – yet.

But I do believe we are getting there – making progress – and making progress because this government is committed heart and soul to the civil rights battle of our time – the fight to give every child a great school.

For too long, there have been shocking, stubborn gaps in attainment between children from black and minority ethnic backgrounds and their peers.

These things are never simple, either to observe, or to fix.

But even as we can identify many different factors at work, one huge reality remains. The gaps in achievement between BME children and their peers have been far too large for far too long.

At key stage 1, black children show the lowest proportion of pupils achieving the expected level in reading, writing, maths and science.

At key stage 2, a smaller proportion of black pupils than of any other ethnicity achieve the level we expect to see in English and maths – a full 3 percentage points below the national average. In fact, there is a staggering gap of 14 percentage points between black pupils and the top-performing ethnic groups in terms of how many children achieve a level 4 or above in maths.

At age 16, almost 3 in 5 pupils in the country as a whole achieved 5 or more A* to C grade GCSEs or equivalent including English and mathematics last year. But only around half of all black pupils managed to do so.

At age 18, fewer black pupils than the national average achieve 2 or more A levels or equivalent qualifications.

And although 8% of all pupils studying at this level in 2009 to 2010 went on to a Russell Group university, the equivalent figure for black pupils was only 5%.

Of course, the challenges faced by BME children are all the greater when they come from materially deprived backgrounds.

We already know that children from disadvantaged backgrounds fall further behind as they move through school.

But the problem is particularly acute for black Caribbean boys. Boys from a black Caribbean background who are eligible for free school meals have been among those suffering from the worst academic performance.

Of course, there is no single change we can make that will instantly transform the education of disadvantaged or minority ethnic children.

That is why this government is determined to radically reform the whole school system.

We are determined do everything we can to make sure that every child, from every background, is given an equal opportunity to succeed.

Over the last 3 years, this has been our top priority.

By giving schools independence and autonomy so that heads and teachers are free to support and challenge all pupils, including ethnic minority pupils, to achieve their full potential.

By embedding higher standards, and higher aspirations, in a new national curriculum and new accountability measures.

By raising the quality of teaching and raising the bar for new entrants to the teaching profession.

And by finally rejecting the soft bigotry of low expectations which has governed education for too long – by refusing to accept that children from poorer homes can’t be expected to do just as well, to achieve just as highly, as their wealthier peers.

School reform extending opportunities

One of the first education reforms we put in place was the Academies Act – which gave many more schools the chance to enjoy greater freedoms.

When this government came to power, there were just 203 academies. They’re schools with all the freedoms of independent schools – but in the state sector – free to all. They’re free to innovate in every area, to recruit and reward the best staff, and to tailor their curriculum, school day and year to suit pupils and parents.

In the last 3 years on, the number of open academies has grown from 203 to 3,444 – with many, many more in the pipeline.

These new schools are already teaching more than 2 million pupils.

And a crucial – and often-overlooked – fact is that academies are specifically benefitting those BME pupils who most need new educational opportunities.

Many academies have far higher levels of BME pupils than the rest of the state sector, both at primary and secondary.

Almost 40% of pupils in primary sponsored academies come from minority ethnic backgrounds, compared to just 28.5% in all state-funded primaries; and 30.0% of pupils in secondary sponsored academies from minority ethnic backgrounds (compared to 24.2% in all state-funded secondary).

In some schools, the numbers are even higher.

Like Harris Girls’ Academy in East Dulwich – a school in a disadvantaged area where the proportion of students known to be eligible for free school meals is more than twice the national average; almost half of students speak English as an additional language; and around 85% are classified as coming from minority-ethnic groups, mostly black Caribbean or black African.

Yet at its last Ofsted inspection, the academy scored outstanding in all categories – and the value added scores show that students make more progress at Harris Girls’ Academy East Dulwich than at 99% of other state schools in England.

In fact, across all 27 Harris academies – set up by Lord Harris of Peckham, a Streatham boy who is determined to transform London education for the better – 44% of last year’s GCSE cohort came from black or minority ethnic backgrounds (double the figures in 2012 across the country as a whole – just 22%) and 31% just from black backgrounds (almost 10 percentage points higher than the equivalent figure for London in 2012 and fully 6 times as many as across the country as a whole in that year – where the proportion is just 5%).

ARK academies – another of this country’s leading chains – have similarly high BME levels.

In recent years the results of sponsored academies like these have gone up faster than other state-funded schools.

Their performance has continued to improve this year, in fact the longer they are open the better on average that they do.

And BME pupils in sponsored academies outperform pupils from similar backgrounds in comparable local authority maintained schools.

Last year, for example, the proportion of mixed race pupils achieving 5 or more good GCSEs or equivalent (including English and mathematics) rose by just 1.3 percentage points nationally; but by 5.7 percentage points in sponsored academies.

Earlier I mentioned Harris Girls’ Academy in East Dulwich, where around 85% of pupils are classified as coming from minority-ethnic groups. But this year, figures provided by the school show that 67% of all pupils got 5 good GCSEs including English and maths, 7 percentage points above the national average of 60%.

And across all ARK academies, the school’s own figures show that 58% of black children achieved at least 5 GCSEs at A* to C including English and maths – above the national average for all black children.

So the numbers are clear. Sponsored academies have higher proportions of black children than other state schools – and black pupils’ results are improving faster in those academies than in comparable LA maintained schools.

That’s why the academies programme is a major step forward for racial equality in this country.

It’s bringing high standards and high expectations – the sort of education traditionally available only to the privileged – to those children who have historically been left behind.

And in free schools…

Our free schools programme is another powerful route to greater opportunity for more disadvantaged children.

Free schools are entirely new schools, set up by dedicated and passionate teachers, parents, local communities and charitable organisations in communities often poorly served for generations.

In the last 3 years, 174 free schools have opened and over 100 more are in the pipeline.

What’s more, almost half (44%) of all those free schools open so far are located in the 30% most deprived communities in this country.

These new schools are bringing choice to parents who can’t afford to pay a premium for a house in a prized catchment area.

And they are offering higher standards – free schools are outperforming the rest of the maintained sector. Three-quarters of the first cohort (those open in September 2011) were rated good or outstanding by Ofsted under its tougher new inspection framework. Just 64% of maintained schools inspected under the same inspection regime achieved that.

And free schools achieved that level of success starting from scratch – indeed over the same period only 50% of new local authority schools were rated good or outstanding.

But most important of all, just like academies, free schools are catering disproportionately to BME pupils, with higher proportions of BME pupils than the national average – and, often, higher than the average for their local area.

Overall, 40% of pupils in all mainstream free schools for which we have figures come from minority ethnic backgrounds – compared to a national average in mainstream state schools of 26%.

And the proportion of BME pupils is often disproportionately high in free schools, even compared to other neighbouring schools.

In Krishna-Avanti Primary School in Leicester, the proportion of minority ethnic pupils is more than 33 percentage points higher than in the local authority as a whole; in Rainbow Primary School in Bradford, the proportion of minority ethnic pupils is more than forty-one percentage points higher than in the local authority as a whole.

And there are examples here in London too.

At the Greenwich Free School, where all children study politics, philosophy and economics and ICT has been replaced with computer programming, 53% of children are from minority ethnic backgrounds.

At Peter Hyman’s School 21 in Newham, where science classes start in Reception and extra curriculum time is devoted to ensuring all pupils leave with exceptional English language skills, 71% of children are from minority ethnic backgrounds.

Nine in 10 pupils at the Aldborough E-ACT Free School in Redbridge and the Woodpecker Hall Primary Academy in Enfield are from a minority ethnic background – higher than in both respective local authorities.

Using a rigorous curriculum

What all these successful schools demonstrate is the importance of high expectations – specifically the vital importance of a rigorous and demanding academic curriculum for every child.

Children of every ethnicity and every socio-economic group – not just those in the most expensive schools, or in the most wealthy communities – have an absolute right to be introduced to the best that has been thought and written.

Every child should be able to enjoy the type of knowledge-rich, subject-specific curriculum which gives them the best possible preparation for university, apprenticeships, employment, and adult life.

That means physics, chemistry and biology not play-based learning, project-work and an anti-knowledge ideology.

Every child should have the chance to read great literature – from Charles Dickens to Derek Walcott – appreciate great music – from Ludwig van Beethoven to Jelly Roll Morton – and enjoy great art – from Poussin to Basquiat.

Because these great creative figures help us understand the human condition – they appeal to the emotions and the sensibilities we all share as one human race – and they are the legacy our civilisation has bequeathed to us all.

And every child should have the chance to acquire the proper rigorous qualifications that our best employers and academics value.

Far from such an insistence being oppressive and reactionary it is liberating and progressive.

But don’t just take it from me – listen to Diane Abbott, the Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington and one of this country’s most active and most respected BME campaigners, has said:

An emphasis on rigorous education and on obtaining core academic subjects is not, as is sometimes argued, contrary to the interests of working class children, and of black and minority ethnic children.

On the contrary, precisely if someone is the first in their family to stay on past school-leaving age, precisely if someone’s family doesn’t have social capital, and precisely if someone does not have parents who can put in a word for them in a difficult job market, they need the assurance of rigorous qualifications and, if at all possible, core academic qualifications.

I couldn’t have put it better myself – giving every child the chance to enjoy a traditional academic education is the most powerful lever for greater social mobility and racial equality we have.

And monitored by tighter accountability

We want to make sure that as many pupils as possible benefit from new opportunities.

Which is why in our reform of the way we hold schools accountable for results, we’re focusing particularly on the attainment of pupils who’ve been overlooked for too long.

Schools will be expected to close the gap in attainment between children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds and their peers.

We’ve introduced a new secondary accountability system which will no longer concentrate just on the proportion getting 5 GCSEs at A* to C – a flawed approach which perversely incentivised schools and teachers to narrow their focus to just a few subjects and just a few pupils on the C/D borderline.

From 2016, every school will be judged on the progress students make in a combination of 8 subjects (3 from the EBacc, maths and English and 3 other). This will mean that schools in poor areas, which achieve great results for their pupils, get particular credit. It will recognise achievement across all grades, not just between a C and a D – incentivising schools to focus on high-flyers and low-attainers alike. And it will encourage schools to offer (and pupils to study) a broad, balanced range of subjects, including the academic core which is the best possible preparation for employment and further study.

That academic core is the subjects contained in the English Baccalaureate, or EBacc – our new measure looking at how many young people study at least 5 of the essential academic subjects: English and maths, the sciences, foreign languages, history and geography.

Figures from 2012 show that black children were less likely to achieve or enter for the EBacc.

In the country as a whole, 23% of children were entered for the EBacc – but just 18% of black pupils. Sixteen per cent of young people in the country achieved it; just 11% of black children.

But across the whole system, the EBacc has seen the number of children studying those subjects starting to rise.

These increases will help drive up the number of black pupils studying these subjects, in turn – meaning that more BME children leave school with the subjects most prized by employers and universities.

And in London – under the leadership of the mayor – those schools which have the very best record in raising standards for disadvantaged and BME children have been recognised and charged with supporting others to improve. The Mayor’s Gold Club of outstanding schools is a rare – and welcome – example of principled leaders in local government not just accepting the higher standards we have been setting in Whitehall but raising the bar even higher. The beneficiaries of this ambition are the poorest and most disadvantaged children of London – especially those from BME backgrounds.

Driving forward racial equality

Since this government came to power we have seen the achievements of black and minority ethnic children improve.

At primary school, the proportion of black children achieving level 4 in maths has risen from 75% in 2010 to 80% in 2012 – narrowing the gap with all children.

And at secondary, the proportion of black children achieving 5 A* to C including English and maths has risen from 49% in 2010 to 55% in 2012 – narrowing the gap with all children from 6 percentage points down to 4.

We have seen more schools than ever before – with more freedoms than ever before – transform the lives of more BME children than ever before – by giving them the sort of opportunities which were once restricted to a privileged few.

But there is more – much more – still to do.

That is why it is so welcome that the Mayor of London is not just driving up standards for BME children through the Gold Club – but also helping us to establish new free schools in areas of deprivation and disadvantage.

That is why it is so welcome that more great educators from within the BME community – Lindsay Johns who works with Leaders of Tomorrow – Dr Tony Sewell of Generating Genius, Devon Hanson of Walworth Academy, and Katharine Birbalsingh who is setting up the new Michaela Community School in Brent – have been given the opportunity to help more young people thanks to our reforms.

And that is why we must not allow the pace of our reform programme to slacken.

Why we must not succumb to what Martin Luther King called the tranquilising drug of gradualism.

Because we have it in our power – in this generation – to fulfil the dream of equality which has inspired so many of the great heroes whose memories we cherish this week.

Below is the text of the speech made by the Education Secretary, Michael Gove, on 27th August 2013.

Earlier this month, in the very quietest days of summer, if you listened very carefully you could hear a very distinctive sound – the gentle but unmistakable thump of the cat being let out of the bag.

It happened on August the eleventh in an article written by the former trade union staffer and Labour party worker Dan Hodges. Dan had been asking around to see what was foremost on Labour minds. What were the party’s priorities.

Was it the economy, given the case for Labour’s policy of more borrowing and more debt has been utterly demolished as recovery takes hold? Nope.

Was it welfare reform, given how hard Labour need to think again having opposed every single one of our changes to fix the tax and benefit system so that it rewards hard work? No sirree.

Education, maybe, given how tortured the party’s position is on free schools, how incoherent it is on exams and the curriculum, how confused on vocational education and how hopeless on helping poorer students? No, ‘fraid not.

Was it health then, or immigration, or crime, or childcare, or Europe or defence or the future of the Union? No, not exactly.

Labour’s principal preoccupation, according to a source within Team Miliband was – in two words – “the unions”.

And I think I know why.

Because Ed Miliband – in his weakness and lack of leadership – has set in train a process which will give the unions more power over his party, more power over its people, more power over its policies, more power to shape its propaganda, more power to shift its campaigning – more power to hurt hard-working people.

And Ed Miliband also knows that the only way to even begin to mitigate that growth in union muscle is to tax hard-working people more to pay for his speechwriters, his spin doctors, his conferences, his party political broadcasts, his party political literature, his regional organisers, his constituency organisers, his national policy fora, his regional policy roadshows, his plane fares and his train tickets, his entourage and all its expenses.

I’m speaking out today because I believe there is an honoured place for trade unions, a vital place for a healthy opposition and a growing appetite for political reform.

But at the moment unions are in the wrong place, the Labour party is in the wrong place and we’re being offered the wrong sort of reform.

I speak as someone who was a union member, who took industrial action on principle and who was sacked for going on strike.

The principles behind our strike were honourable – the aim was to secure appropriate union recognition in the workplace.

But the decision to go on strike was a mistake and better men and women than me lost their livelihoods and sacrificed the careers they loved. The decision to push for strike action was a decision of our union’s national leadership – which saw us as footsoldiers in its bigger battle. And – as footsoldiers often do – we paid the price.

Well led, unions can provide employees with effective representation, advice on workplace issues, legal protection and other services.

Poorly-led, union leaders use their members to fight ideological battles – often driven by the unrepresentative passions and ideologies of those who clamber onto the union’s executive.

As I know all too well in the field of education, teachers unions vary from the well-led and professional – like the NAHT and ATL – to others which almost automatically oppose every reform which will raise standards and help children.

At the moment the two biggest teachers’ unions are engaged in industrial action – working to rule, regional strikes and a proposed national one-day strike which makes life more difficult for hard-working parents, force them to pay more for childcare, disrupt children’s earning and make the job of every head more difficult.

They impose these costs on others because they object to changes which will lead to good teachers being paid more and all teachers being given the help they need to improve, with the worst teachers being moved on. They are putting the interests of some of their members above the needs of all children.

And just as some of the unions in education have swung hard to the left, so the big union beasts – Unison, the GMB and Unite have also embraced hard left proposals. Policies like unlimited welfare handouts to people who can work but refuse to work and billions and billions of more debt-funded spending.

But of course the overwhelming majority of union members don’t endorse this agenda – indeed barely half of them even vote Labour.

When unions use their muscle to advance an agenda which is so out of touch with their members’ interests, and with mainstream Britain, they are in the wrong place.

And Labour are in the wrong place when they allow that union agenda to drive their activities.

Tony Blair once argued that the Labour Party should not be the political arm of the trade union movement but the political movement of the British nation as a whole. That’s what One Nation politics means.

But, sadly, Labour are now sinking back into their pre-Blair position of living in the unions’ shadow.

The reason why the trade unions have become an issue again in British politics is because Ed Miliband owes his position as Labour leader to them.

Every previous Labour leader could be confident that their legitimacy in post was underpinned by the confidence of a majority of their colleagues and – subsequently – the votes of a majority of members. Ed Miliband does not have that legitimacy, confidence, or support. That is key to his weakness. He was put in place by organisations with an agenda because they believed he would be the most pliant personality available.

And the reason why the trades unions have now become a toxic issue for Ed Miliband is his failure to appreciate that – with him in place – radical left-wing union leaders now believe the Labour party can be theirs again – and they are taking it back – seat by seat, policy by policy, before his impotent gaze.

The attempt by left-wing union bosses to take control of the Labour party has been open – blatant – indeed long before the focus fell on Falkirk.

In December 2011, Labour’s biggest donor under Ed Miliband, the trade union Unite – led by Len McCluskey – published their Political Strategy.

Their aim was clear – “Our union needs a comprehensive strategy to advance our political work, reclaiming the Labour Party as an instrument of social progress”.

And by social progress the union was explicit – they wanted a shift to the Left – in other words, policies that are in their vested interests, and not in the interests of this country’s hardworking people. Policies on their shopping list included an end to spending cuts, an end to welfare reform and more legal freedoms to disrupt people’s lives with strikes.

Unite is also open that it has adopted the classic tactics of entryist organisations throughout the ages. It would get its people to enter moribund local party organisations – take them over – and then select candidates who were either members of their organisation or fellow travellers. Through the accumulation of muscle on the ground, power would be won at the top.

As Unite’s document said their political strategy had three main prongs. First, to grow Unite membership in local Labour parties. Second, to develop union friendly candidates for office. Third, to ensure Unite was fully represented on Labour’s main policy making bodies.

Unite recognised that it would take money – from their political fund of course – to secure these additional Labour party memberships, fix those Labour party candidate selections and shift the balance at the top in their favour.

In the document “Winning Labour for working people –Strategy and membership.” Unite were clear – “This requires a detailed and concrete strategy, with strong leadership, properly resourced”.

At the heart of the strategy – as events in Falkirk so dramatically revealed – was the use of those union resources to ensure that every safe – or winnable – Labour seat which came up was won by Unite or its people.

Unite pledged itself to “Working with other affiliated unions to secure the adoption of trade union (or union-friendly) candidates in winnable constituencies in particular”.

And Unite wasn’t going to leave anything to chance. It would – like left wing entryist organisations – create its own cadre – or vanguard – of loyal activists. So they promised that “Unite will launch a Future Candidates Programme (FCP). We will promote a new generation of Unite activists towards public office… We intend to produce some potential MP candidates for selection by 2013 at the latest”.

Just under a year ago, Unite’s Executive Council were updated on plans to take over certain constituencies.

In the report of the executive council September 2012 meeting, it was minuted that “regions have been asked develop intensive pilot campaigns to pursue the political strategy with the aim of increasing membership of the Labour Party.”

In case members were in any doubt what increasing Unite membership of the Labour party was for, a further update in December last year reminded them of the success in “the exemplary Falkirk” selection battle. Falkirk was “a seat where a candidate selection, to replace the disgraced Eric Joyce, is reasonably imminent, and where Unite, following regional and local consultation, is very likely to back Unite member and activist, Karie Murphy… we have recruited well over 100 Unite members to the party in a constituency with less than 200 members.”

We know that Labour subsequently investigated what was happening in Falkirk and suspended the process – but the internal report into just what was happening still remains unpublished – and Falkirk, being an “exemplary” demonstration of Unite’s political strategy, is very far from the only constituency where the union have been deploying their entryist tactics.

The Lib-Dem Labour marginal, currently represented by the formidable Gordon Birtwistle, was one target. “In the North West,” Unite reported, “initial work was around schools for activists, from specific constituencies with a membership ask. In Burnley this resulted in a number of new members and doubling of the delegates.”

In Southampton Itchen, where John Denham is standing down, and the Conservatives Royston Smith is bidding to win, Unite have also been active. The union recorded that they had set up a “Southampton local activist political school building on the successful and considerable Unite involvement in local elections a whole new level of election involvement including a number of new members”.

In Ilford North, where the impressive Lee Scott is defending a marginal seat, Unite have also been showing how enterprising they can be, as the Guardian reported: “flyers sent out by Unite invite its membership to attend a meeting in Ilford east London with McCluskey that offers to pay the member’s first year of party membership”.

In June of this year, Unite’s then Political Director Steve Hart summed up their progress in an internal political report.

He confirmed that Unite’s muscle was helping win selections and their political fund would be being deployed to support their people, “We will very much continue with targeted membership growth plans using phone banking and activists alongside constituency initiatives with local candidates, especially where a strong Unite candidate has won through selection” he wrote.

The degree of energy, he wrote which was being devoted to candidate selection was intense, “As some will have noticed, the work of the Political Department and the Union regionally in candidate selections is a little bit like a swan – all that can be seen is indication of support here or there, while below the water activity is furious!”

So furious indeed that Unite had ‘been supporting’ 40 other selections in addition to Falkirk. In Hart’s report he lists “candidates we have been supporting in different ways. I am pleased to report that the first on the list, Vicky Foxcroft, was successfully selected, winning over 50% in the first round of balloting in the ‘safe seat’ of Lewisham Deptford”.

President Lyndon B Johnson argued that the most important skill in politics was not rhetoric or logic – but arithmetic. Being able to count. On votes.

The greatest manipulator of power in the history of the US recognised that arguments were worthless without the votes in the legislature to get your programme through.

And Len McCluskey is clearly a keen student of LBJ’s – because his organisation is trying to secure the numbers on the ground – of Labour party members – to secure the numbers in the legislature which will deliver his agenda.

And it is instructive in all the controversy and debate surrounding what has happened in Falkirk that nothing – precisely nothing – has been done by the Labour leadership to prevent the largest systematic attempt at political entryism in our history since the existence of the Militant Tendency.

Ed Miliband has failed to act – and has no plans to act – to change how Labour MPs are selected.

Ed Miliband has failed to act – and has no plans to act – to look at any of the other 40 cases from Burnley to Ilford, Southampton to Lewisham, where Unite openly boast of their entryist success.

Ed Miliband has failed to act – and has no plans to act – to prevent Unite and its allies buying up Labour memberships to stuff the ballots in selection procedures.

Ed Miliband has failed to act – and has no plans to act – to prevent Unite and its allies using the political levies which members automatically opt into to fund this process of entryism.

Indeed the contrast with Neil Kinnock – who originally faced down the Militant Tendency over entryism is striking – and not at all flattering to Ed Miliband. While Kinnock moved bravely and remorselessly to eradicate Militant’s influence and Militant-sponsored MPs from Labour Miliband has done nothing to stop the takeover of his own party.

Perhaps we should not be surprised at Len McCluskey’s approach – because as well as clearly being a student of LBJ’s tactics, he is also intimately acquainted with Militant’s style of politics.

He was a member of the Labour Party in Liverpool during the 1980s when Militant took over the local Labour Party and Labour council. While Labour moderates such as Frank Field had to fight off repeated deselection attempts from the hard-left group, McCluskey was their ally. The two principal Militant activists in the city were Derek Hatton and Tony Mulhearn. Both were expelled by the Labour party in 1986. But Mr McCluskey has acknowledged both men were “close friends”, and he has subsequently stated that “on the chief issues (Militant Tendency) were right”.

It is certainly the case that the chief issues which preoccupy Len McCluskey and Unite today are well to the left of what anyone might term mainstream. And run directly contrary to the interests of the hard-working people who are crucial to our economic recovery.

Indeed, Unite are explicit that they want to disrupt economic growth, proudly boasting that they have, “set aside twenty-five million pounds to jump-start a dispute fund” in other words money to create strikes, which they say is ” another clear sign that this union means business … And we have deployed our nationwide team of organisers to support our members in struggle through a new leverage strategy, hitting bad employers all the way up and down their supply chain and their customer chain… the CBI is already warning fellow employers’ organisations across Europe about Unite’s leverage strategy”.

But it’s not enough simply to hit what Unite terms poor employers – all employers – indeed all citizens – need to feel the effects of union muscle. In a paper put forward to the TUC, Unite urged other unions to join them in staging a 24 hour general strike. In the document, Unite argues that ‘such action is desirable’ and that it would be an ‘explicitly political’ attack against the Government.

In his desire to promote militancy, McCluskey even threatened to disrupt the Olympics which Tony Blair brought to London. He wanted to use this occasion – when the eyes of the world were on this country – to promote public disorder. ‘The unions, and the general community, have got every right to be out protesting’ he said. ‘If the Olympics provide us with an opportunity, then that’s exactly one that we should be looking at… When you say what can we do, and the likes of the Olympics, I’m calling upon the general public to engage in civil disobedience’.

And the aim of all this activity is a decisive move of the political spectrum – and the Labour party – to the left.

Len McCluskey has told Ed Miliband that he must not try to move to the centre ground on the economy – indeed he must promise more taxing, spending and borrowing, as he warned his candidate, “He knows within this next 12 months he has got to start out with policy that gives hope to people and something different from the austerity programme that the government is pursuing.”

Specifically, McCluskey has opposed the changes to the welfare system the Coalition Government has made and wants to reverse the progress we’ve made towards making work pay. He wants to restore the spare room subsidy and end any cap on welfare.  He has argued that all ‘the government’s so-called welfare reforms are designed to marginalise the disadvantaged and vulnerable in our society’.

And Unite oppose all the Government’s education reforms. When we devoted additional cash to repairing the problems we had inherited they dismissed it as “small beer given the scale of the problems before us” and objected to the fact that “much of that money is earmarked to deliver the highly political free schools programme.”

In every area of public policy Unite – and their allies in Unison and the GMB – want to see a decisive move left, a move away from the interests of hardworking people. They have opposed making public sector pensions sustainable and more in line with those in the private sector. They have opposed measures to stop vexatious employment tribunal claims that affect small businesses. And they even want a return to the unsustainable tax rates of the 1970s.

And they believe they are getting what they want from Labour.

Across the field of policy – wherever Labour has a policy – you can see the imprint of union manufacture on the product.

In my own area of education Labour have opposed (even though Andrew Adonis has argued for) the move to create more academies with freedom over staff pay terms and conditions, the move to create more free schools with freedom over staff pay and conditions, the move to shift teacher training to the classroom, which is proven to be more effective but which makes union recruitment more difficult and the move to allow schools freedom to recruit expert professionals to teach who are not union members.

In every case the interests of unions trump the needs of our children.

Labour’s health spokesman – Andy Burnham – has also dismissed the education reforms parents support but unions oppose – declaring he “wasn’t cheerleading for academies” and his position on NHS reform has been driven by the need to appease the unions. Under Alan Milburn, John Reid and other genuine Blairite reformers pluralism was welcomed within the NHS. The more different providers could help reduce waiting lists, relieve pain and cure disease, the better. But now Labour want no change from the monolithic delivery of services in the way which suits unions such as Unison and Unite.

In every case the interests of unions trump the needs of those who are suffering.

And in the economic realm Labour have opposed changes to the Royal Mail which will improve the service to the public, have opposed flexibility in the employment market which helps keep people in work, and have opposed the reductions in public expenditure in the (union-dominated) public sector to allow growth in the (wealth-creating) private sector.

In every case the Labour spokesman concerned – from Andy Burnham to Chuka Umunna to Ed Balls – will have been thinking as they shaped their policies about the critical role unions will play in any future leadership election – a role Ed Miliband has failed to act  – and has no plans to act – to change.

More than that, Labour’s operation in Parliament is funded, and directed, by union interests, as Unite boasted in their June 2013 Political Report, where they declared, “The union provided significant contributions to MPs and the Shadow teams” specifically to put forward union amendments such as those which were – in their words – designed to “block the worst aspects of both the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill and the Growth and Infrastructure Bill.”

That involved ordering Labour MPs to vote against giving employees the chance to own a share in the company they work for.

All of these positions make life harder for hard-working people. They reduce educational opportunity, increase the burden of the public sector on taxpayers, make it more difficult to get, and keep a job and drive up the cost of the goods and services we all need.

The trade union influence over Labour’s operation in Parliament can only grow as Unite and their allies continue their long march through the constituencies, racking up the numbers in the Parliamentary Labour Party to deliver on their policies.

Of course, the focus which the newspapers brought to the Falkirk scandal has forced some action from Ed Miliband. Some commentators have hailed his action to change the way unions operate within Labour as brave. Others have condemned it as foolhardy. I will leave value judgements to others. And look at the mechanics of what’s proposed.

Most trade unions have what they call political funds – levies on their members to support campaigning activity. It’s that money which is paying for Unite’s efforts to take over Labour parties constituency by constituency.

Union members are automatically enrolled into paying the political fund. In order to opt-out, members have to jump through various hoops.

In a poll conducted by my good friend Lord Ashcroft:

One third of members said they didn’t know whether they contributed to Unite’s political fund. Most Unite members (57%) preferred an opt-in system for the political fund; only 31% supported the current opt-out system.

The only political party the fund’s cash is ever used to support is Labour. Even though there is evidence that only a bare majority of trade unionists – and indeed Unite members – actually vote Labour. Indeed Unite’s own Political Strategy admits that, “According to opinion poll data today, we would expect that our members would be now indicating 45-50% support for Labour.”

Ed Miliband could have chosen to reduce union muscle – and indeed democratise British politics – by reforming the operation of the political fund at source. He could have insisted that every union member be asked to opt in to paying the political levy. He chose not to.

Perhaps because, as Lord Ashcroft’s polling shows only 30% of Unite members said they would contribute to the political fund under an opt-in system; 53% said they would not.

Ed Miliband could have argued that political funds be distributed to more than one party – in accordance with trade union members’ actual views. Or he could have argued that political funds could go to the politicians union members most admire. He chose no to, and again Lord Ashcroft’s polling of Unite members is revealing.

According to Lord Ashcroft’s work, 49% of Unite members said they would vote Labour in an election tomorrow, 23% Conservative, 7% Liberal Democrat and 12% UKIP. At the 2010 election 40% voted Labour, 28% Conservative and 20% Lib Dem. Asked which politician was best fitted to lead the country, 40% said David Cameron would make the best Prime Minister, just behind Ed Miliband (46%).

And of course Ed Miliband could have imposed a limit on how much trade unions can spend on political campaigning of any kind. He chose not to. Perhaps because he knows that the total amount in Union’s political funds is £13.9 million.

Instead he proposed one – very precise – change.

In the past trade unions have used their political funds to automatically enlist their members onto Labour’s rolls – to the tune of around £3 per member. This is known as the affiliation fee.

Ed Miliband has said he only wants those affiliation fees in the future if union members individually agree.

That does – absolutely – run the risk of Ed Miliband having less money from trade unions which he controls.

But it does not – at all – reduce the amount trade unions have to spend on their political activities – or indeed in support of individual Labour candidates, campaigns and parliamentary teams.

Each individual trade union will still raise just as much – perhaps even more – for its political fund. But now each trade union’s General Secretary and executive will have greater flexibility over how that cash is allocated. They can be – and are – in a position now to choose to give more of that money to the Labour candidates, MPs, activists and campaigns which they believe are appropriately ideologically aligned. They can decide which pipers to pay and can call the tunes they wish.

Unite has pledged specific – additional – financial support for Unite-aligned candidates in the run-up to the General Election. That would involve having phone banks manned for those candidates and, in the words of then Political Director Steve Hart: “committing up to £10,000 to a large number of these marginals based on draw-down of money for concrete proposals. Our overall expenditure on all the above will be significant but it is a very proper use of our Political Fund”.

Following Ed Miliband’s proposals to reduce his control over the unions’ political funds, Len McCluskey expressed his delight. ‘I want to spend more money on political campaigning, and Labour candidate selections’ he stated.

While the unions may not like payment by results or performance-related pay in the public services, they clearly approve of it as a political campaigning tool. And the message to any – existing or aspiring – Labour candidate is clear. If you align yourself with Unite there is extra money – and muscle – available to help you get selected – and then help you get elected. Perform in the right way – as decreed by the Unite exec – and your path to Parliament will be smoothed and future financial support will be guaranteed.

So by changing how the political funds operate – and reducing his slice of them – Ed Miliband is increasing the hold Len McCluskey and his allies have over candidate selection, increasing their control over the composition of the Labour party and increasing the incentive for all Labour candidates and MPs to follow the money – and fall in with Unite.

It’s not just candidate selection where the unions are liberated to shift politics in their direction.

As we have seen, Labour’s frontbench team in Parliament have relied on union money, and union ideas, to develop their policies. With the automatic funding that Ed Miliband used to be able to distribute diminishing, those frontbench teams will have to look increasingly outside for resources. And Len McCluskey and his team are only too happy to oblige – if those policies fit his agenda.

You don’t have to take my word for it. As Len McCluskey himself has explicitly said: “We will look to resource our political strategy in different ways…(through) better, enhanced policy input”.

So Ed Miliband’s proposed changes will encourage the drift of Labour policy further away from what’s in the interests of hardworking people – as Labour politicians compete for Unite’s favour and resources. We have already seen it happen over this summer – as Andy Burnham moves leftwards on health and Chuka Umunna and Chris Bryant have moved left on employment flexibility.

After Len McCluskey made it clear he wanted rid of the spare room subsidy, Labour briefed the New Statesman earlier this month that they would oblige. After Len McCluskey said he was ‘furious’ with Labour’s ‘crazy’ decision to back a public sector pay freeze, the Labour leader meekly told his party conference that he was ‘was not talking about the next parliament’.

And just last week – in direct response to a trade union demand for rent controls the Labour housing spokesman announced he would back intervention in the housing market.

On top of that, Ed Miliband’s failure to reform the unions’ political levy at source means trade unions can still spend massive sums in the run up to – and during  – the election to support a Labour party that backs their vested interests and to campaign against Conservative policies which have brought back prosperity.

There is no limit on what the unions can spend on their campaigns – which can be deployed as we have seen to favour Labour candidates and undermine coalition candidates.

Indeed Unite have – again – been open about their ambitions. “Our provisional plan,” they outlined in their Political Strategy, “which will be developed for launch very early in 2014 is as follows. In each of 100 seats – the key seat 80 plus 20 defensive marginals  Unite will build a structure based on 1 Constituency Captain, and field organisers. The Constituency 10 will have responsibility for organising 10 contacts with each Unite member in the seat in the 20 months up to the General Election – contacts in a variety of ways including face to face conduct. They will be provided with training, and detailed plans and statistics for the CLP – including workplace information, any voting data we have, Mosaic and other information to ensure informed campaigning. Efforts will be made to develop an esprit de corps amongst the 10, including clothing etc and a degree of competition as seen with our US colleagues. We will use Nationbuilder technology to facilitate the work.”

It would be amusing if it weren’t so chilling that Unite plan to encourage enhanced performance for their left-wing candidates at the election through competition. I suppose that is what you might call traditional values in a modern setting.

And of course Unite – and their allies – can spend millions on phone banks, canvassing, leafleting and adverts to push their message. A message which is unlikely to be “Same old Labour would make you worse off”.

At the last General Election, the five Labour-affiliated trade unions registered as third party participants spent over £700,000 – to fund campaigns against things like “Tory cuts”, including one memorable Unison poster of an axe with a blue blade, entitled “Look what’s in the Tories’ first budget”. Nothing in what Ed Miliband proposes will change that – indeed it will give the unions greater freedom, not least to concentrate their resources in support of candidates and causes opposed to the interests of hardworking people.

But while Unite and other unions will have more money available to push their agenda, Ed Miliband will have less of their money to pursue his.

So what will he do?

That brings me to my third question – the question of political reform.

I am strongly in favour of reform of our political institutions. The cost of politics is too high. Parliament needs to take back power from unaccountable bodies who exercise it without a mandate – not least the European Union. Our democracy needs to be more direct, public figures who exercise statutory responsibilities, not just politicians, need to be more openly accountable and taxpayers need even better information on how their money is spent.

But the political reform Ed Miliband is offering – the only one so far as I can see – takes us in the opposite direction. It will centralise power, raise the cost of politics, make the exercise of political authority more opaque, parties less accountable and, worst of all, citizens poorer.

Ed Miliband’s principal proposed political reform is taxing the public more to pay for politics

In recent years it has been a Labour aim to increase what they call state funding of political parties – but which is more properly described as the compulsory confiscation of taxpayers money to pay for politicians.

Plans were drawn up by the last Labour Government to increase state funding and it is those plans which the Miliband team are seeking to implement now.

Some Liberal Democrats have even made the case with my old friend Matthew Oakeshott saying we need taxpayer funding to get the “dirty money” out of politics.

Well, I personally think there are few dirtier monetary transactions than politicians getting together to agree that they will pick the pockets of people poorer than themselves to fund activities which should be supported voluntarily – not compulsorily.

If political parties want more money then they can either recruit more members or convince their own supporters to dig deeper. But for the advocates of more state funding on the left, there’s an intrinsic problem in philanthropists giving their money to support their beliefs. It’s alright if philanthropists give to arts, development or other causes. That’s public spirited. But if those same philanthropists decide to support their political ideals – it’s called the taint of big money.

There is a debate – of course – about whether there should be a limit on donations to political parties – governed by a desire to make political parties work hard to secure as wide a base of funding as possible. That is a sensible position but I shan’t get into the detail today of how any caps might or might not work.

But what does seem to me be crystal clear is that while it’s a good thing to have more people contributing to the political process – whether financially or otherwise – that should be on voluntary basis. No matter how much any individual might choose to spend from his or her own resources on supporting their ideals surely it cannot be immoral to spend your own money on supporting democracy? But what does raise real questions of morality – and principle – is forcing people to contribute out of their earned income to support political activity they may neither endorse nor welcome.

And yet that is the position which Labour are now embracing – call it what you will a spin tax, a “Militax”, a going to the poll tax – it’s all the same thing – more taxes to pay for more politicians spending more of your money.

I think hard-working people in this country already pay enough tax – and the purpose of tax is to pay for doctors, soldiers and teachers – not politicians. But if Ed Miliband gets his way you will soon be forced to pay for him.

It’s not too late for Ed Miliband and his team to get out of the problem they have created – and which Len McCluskey is so eagerly set to exploit.

They can take five steps right now.

First, they can investigate all 41 of the candidate selections Unite set out to manipulate – not just the one in Falkirk. They can examine where the growth in membership has come from, the money unions have been using to rig selections and the sharp practice potentially employed. Candidate selection in those seats could be suspended until a clean bill of health is issued.

It’s critical of course that such an investigation is independent and seen to be independent. It need not be judge-led. But it cannot be led – as Ed Miliband’s review of party funding is being led – by a former Unite apparatchik like Ray Collins. I would suggest someone like Alex Carlile QC or a cross-bench peer like Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank.

Second, Ed Miliband can also work with the Coalition to use legislation going through parliament now to reform the unions’ political levy system. We will help him make the political levy an opt-in exercise – at a stroke delivering the new politics he has argued for.

We would – of course – also support other changes he might want to advance to democratise how any political fund is spent.

Third, Ed Miliband should move to modernise his whole candidate selection – and leadership election – process to make it genuinely one member one vote, like the coalition parties. He could then submit himself for re-election to the membership which did not vote fro him in 2010. If he did, it would be a real show of confidence in his membership which would give his leadership greater authority.

Fourth, Labour can also police the funding of candidates to ensure there is no pressure from unions to support certain policy positions in order to secure extra campaign funding. It can restrict union funding of frontbench teams, declare in whose interests amendments are being laid or explicitly disavow introducing legislative changes at the demand of trade unions.

Ultimately, of course, Ed Miliband needs to go further to convince the electorate that he is ready to stand up to the people who bought him his leadership. He needs to make clear not just that the tactics of McCluskey and his allies are wrong but their policy agenda is precisely the sort of hard-left Militant inspired nonsense up with which he will not put.

And if anyone thinks I am asking too much I ask simply this – what would Blair do? Indeed, what would even Kinnock have done?

The sad truth is that – charming, intelligent, eloquent, thoughtful, generous and chivalrous as Ed Miliband may be – in this critical test of leadership he has been uncertain, irresolute, weak. To the question – who governs Labour – his answer would appear to be – increasingly – the unions.

And if Ed Miliband is too weak to stand up to the union bosses who pick his candidates, buy his policies and anointed him leader, then he simply will be too weak to stand up for hardworking people.

Our country cannot afford – as we had in the Seventies – the same old Labour party with a weak leader buffeted by union pressure to adopt policies only they want and asking hardworking people to pay the bills.

That is why when it comes to Labour and the unions, reform has to be fundamental, rooted in core democratic principles and in the public interest. There is no alternative.