Conor's Commentary

Vocational vacuum: we need more than sneers and Aunt Sallies

2012-02-01T15:54:00.000Z

I have no idea how many young people inflated their GCSE league table scores by doing horse care or fish husbandry qualifications. But I do know that the combined impact of removing the 'thousands' of courses no longer recognised for their GCSE equivalence by Michael Gove yesterday will be pretty minimal. There are two reasons why. First, most of the improvements since 1997 - an increase in numbers gaining 5 good GCSEs or equivalents, including English and Maths, from 35 to 58 per cent, were the result of a big improvement in the numbers gaining Maths and English GCSEs, and not the result of gaming or of vocational qualifications. A quick look at the DFE's own data confirms this to be the case. And second, those that used vocational qualifications, often to encourage improvements in English and Maths by gaining confidence in a more practical course first, tended to use BTECs and OCRs, which will remain valid in a significant and welcome retreat by the Government, although less valuable in the league tables.

But these facts were a little beyond the slightly hysterical reports on the BBC News and the breathless sneering of John Humphrys yesterday morning. In the process, they left unanswered the question that has been ducked constantly by this Government over what vocational qualifications should be available to 14-16 year-olds and how they should be delivered. Alison Wolf doesn't really think that practical courses have much place before 16, and she would limit their role to 20% of the curriculum, whilst arguing simultaneously that more students should be taught full-time in further education colleges from the age of 14. Lord Baker was on the radio this morning waxing lyrically about his university technical colleges, declaring that 40% of their course content would be practical. UTCs take students from ages 14 to 19. His disdain for Wolf's position on this issue is no secret in Whitehall; the feeling is said to be mutual.

At the same time, beyond the grudging acceptance of BTECs and OCRs implicit in yesterday's supposed cull, the Government has little sense of what should be available to young people turned off by academic subjects at an earlier stage. The English Baccalaureate subjects have plenty to commend them for perhaps a majority of students, but achieving English and Maths with more practical courses may be a better goal for others. Labour's Diplomas generally became too complex and never took off, though some like ICT and engineering had industry credibility. Perhaps we now need, in addition to the BTECs, a new range of junior apprenticeships, with real progression built in, and clearly linked to proper career paths. But start them at 14 - with English and Maths - and not at 16. That's where Wolf's FE college proposals could play a big role.

But for now, the Government has really nothing useful or constructive to say about vocational education. Alison Wolf claimed that young people were being betrayed by qualifications of little value in later life. Perhaps they were. But they are certainly going to be betrayed a lot more if the Government can't get its act together to recognise the need for good practical alternatives for those who may sway the ranks of the truants and excluded if their needs are not met within the education system in good time.

Can you have too much data?

2012-01-26T07:46:00.000Z

Nobody is a greater believer in the power of data than I am. During the Labour government, the real power of the tests and tables introduced by the Tories was unleashed, with success in raising minimum standards in schools and maximum NHS waiting times. The coalition have recognised the value, at least, of the former. But we also made the mistake of trying to have too many targets. Specifically, the Treasury started to impose its endless whims on departments, leading to some real problems, as with crude exclusion targets; some that seemed doomed to fail, like the bid to cut truancy; and many that were an irritant for departments and an unwelcome addition to their box-ticking for frontline professionals, but had little impact on service users.

With today's league tables, there is every chance the coalition are embarking on the erroneous course. I'm all in favour of the data.gov.uk initiative, but having tried to open some of the extraordinary zip files buried within it, I do wonder quite how accessible it all is. On a smaller scale, today's tables present the same problem: we now know how well schools progress; how well they do at the top end, at the bottom end, and for average pupils; we now how well they do in Gove's favourite subjects, as well as in the subjects already reported separately of English, Maths and Science; we know the progress a school has made; and its level of improvement. All of this is valid and potentially useful. But we are told that this barrage of statistics will see schools avoiding 'gaming' which is apparently all that an improvement from 35 to 58 per cent in the proportion of students gaining five good GCSEs (or equivalents) including English and Maths since 1997 amounted to. Yet the DFE's own statistics show that even excluding BTECs that are worth four GCSEs, the total is 53 per cent this year for GCSEs or 52 per cent for academic GCSEs. Hardly all the result of gaming. Indeed sponsored academies and the London Challenge - two Labour programmes regularly praised by Gove - played a pretty large role.

But the Government is becoming a bit confused here. In fact, as Michael Gove's adoption of them recognises, schools responded to floor targets, particularly thosr for the five good GCSEs, precisely because they were deemed the most important in lifting them from poor to average. I hear from heads that the schools most likely to adopt the EBacc are those that are satisfactory and see this as a route to good. Again, these two measures are acting as floor targets. The danger of trying to judge schools on a much wider range of criteria through league tables - as opposed to Ofsted judgements which should do so - is that the parent has more information than they can absorb, and they are unable to process it. Five good GCSEs may have been a flawed measure, just as the KS4 English and Maths tests may not be perfect, but it is a simple and meaningful way of judging a school. When CVA was introduced, some schools saw it as an alternative to good GCSEs, yet few employers will look kindly on a clutch of Ds and Es - it may have shown progress but it was often not enough for those students, who needed real qualifications. I only hope that the perverse effect of the government's information overload is not a slowing of the pace of improvement.

Vince Cable's department gets its university sums wrong again

2012-01-25T17:20:00.001Z

There is but one conclusion to draw from today's rather belated HEFCE grant letter (these things are usually issued before Christmas) - that BIS, Vince Cable's business and skills department, has got its sums even more badly wrong than we realised over its student support package. There was a good reason why Labour had a lower starting threshold for student loans than the £21,000 adopted by the coalition in a hopeless bid to rescue Nick Clegg from ignominy for his broken promise: it was based on how quickly people could pay back when they were in work. There is a big difference between starting at £15,000 and at £21,000 in the speed of repayments.

By lifting the starting threshold so much, even with added interest repayments, the coalition has made it impossible to grow student numbers significantly. At the same time, the continued linking of loans to fees, rather than maintenance, with no effective agreements with other EU countries over collecting unpaid loans, has left another black hole in future BIS finances. No wonder they have announced an effective cutback of 15,000 places in today's remit letter to Hefce, the funding council. Or, rather, they haven't. This is what the letter which is signed by Vince Cable and David Willetts actually says:

In this context we want to work with the Council as follows. First, we need the Council to bring its sector-wide entrant controls into closer alignment with the Government's financial planning. HEFCE has historically set student number control limits across the sector slightly above the recruitment level assumed in the Government's expenditure plans. This recognises that the control is a maximum and some level of under recruitment, at the sector level, was to be expected. The aim of over allocating in this way was to achieve the Government's planned student numbers. The recent trend for strong recruitment across the sector now makes this approach unnecessary. Furthermore, it exposes Government to higher than budgeted costs which cannot be absorbed at a time of financial constraint. As a result, we are now asking the Council to reduce its entrant control maximum by 5,000 places in 2012/13. This brings it in line with our original spending plans and reduces the risk of over recruitment. It does not represent a reduction in the total number of students the Government expects to fund.

I've read a lot of officialese in my time, but this one takes the biscuit. As the National Union of Students notes in its response, the cuts come "from not repeating a planned stimulus of 10,000 places designed to combat the effects of recession, and also a change to controls on universities that over-recruit which will see 5,000 less places available."

At the same time, universities face bigger fines for over-recruitment than before, and there is no news yet on whether competition will be extended both at the upper level, by moving from free recruitment of those with AAB in their A-levels to ABB, and at the lower priced end, by extending the number of low cost places that can be bid for (or even lifting a cap for qualified students paying less than £6000 a year).

The Government was right to grasp the nettle of tuition fees, but it was wrong not to do its sums over its repayment terms for graduates. With a planned higher education white paper already ditched in the confusion, the coalition's higher education policy has lost its way.

Can Gove change the culture on capability?

2012-01-13T11:38:00.001Z

I had a weary sense of deja vu listening to Michael Gove on the radio this morning, talking about his plans to toughen up capability procedures. For the Today listeners, Gove highlighted his plans to 'allow' schools to remove poor teachers within a term rather than a year. Since they have been able to do so since 1998, when a fast-track process was introduced, which was later widening in its scope, this was not quite news. The real problem is partly that the procedures, thanks to the teaching unions, were more complex than they should have been - and Gove is easing this - and partly the same culture in schools that has made performance pay seem more like incremental progression in too many cases.

Gove's changes include:

giving schools more freedom over managing their teachers through simpler, less prescriptive appraisal regulations;
removing the three-hour limit on observing a teacher in the classroom (the so-called "three-hour observation rule”) so that schools have the flexibility to decide what is appropriate;
a requirement to assess teachers every year against the new, simpler and sharper Teachers’ Standards – the key skills that teachers need;
allowing poorly performing teachers to be removed in about a term – the process can currently take a year or more;
an optional new model policy for schools that deals with both performance and capability issues; and
scrapping more than 50 pages of unnecessary guidance

All this is perfectly sensible. However, unless there is a major cultural shift in schools, particularly primaries, they will be relatively meaningless. Heads often fear that unless they promote virtually all those eligible for progression they will cause discord in the staffroom. Equally, there is a sense among teachers that unless they get pay progression for excellence reasonably automatically, it is a sign of failure rather than a spur to do better. A growing minority of schools - particularly academies - have the confidence to challenge this consensus. But it remains too strong in too many schools, and it is the reason why the apparently radical reforms to performance pay - hugely contentious at the time - have been far too ineffectual. There is also a strong case for an annual reward scheme for schools showing the biggest improvements.

The truth is that it is this culture, as much as the complexity of the guidance, that explains why it can typically take a year to remove an incompetent teacher. Teachers are often given far more informal chances to improve than they would get in most other working environments before any formal process starts: of course they need the chance to improve, but it can become quickly apparent whether they are willing to do so. So, these Gove changes are perfectly reasonable, and build sensibly on changes introduced in the late 90s, but they will only effect the radical difference that their prominence in today's news bulletins promised if the freedom to manage teacher performance more flexibly translates into a new mindset in schools themselves.

I am quoted on this issue at the Financial Times and this post also appears at Public Finance.

Higher education predictions

2012-01-10T16:59:00.000Z

I have contributed the following thoughts to the Guardian's website on higher education in 2012:

2012 will be the year when the government's HE changes are properly tested. I think ministers will struggle to resolve the central tension in the government's approach to higher education: how to develop a market while paying the up front costs of higher loans. The redistribution of 20,000 places for those charging lower fees seems unlikely to do it, and FE colleges are finding it harder to gain university accreditation for their degree courses. Legislation due in the spring could see measures to try to force more of a market and a wider range of lower cost degree courses. The Open University will find itself accrediting many more courses than it does now.

If student numbers for 2012 are significantly down on 2011 figures {the final application figures are published later this month], there will be growing Lib Dem and Labour pressure for stronger access regulation that will be resisted by universities. At the same time, the reality of the fees will see renewed pressure to increase contact time with students. Parents and students will demand more teaching and tutorial time to justify the fees they are paying, and this will become a big issue in the autumn.

The UK will struggle in the international market, as Australian, other European and South East Asian competitor universities successfully highlight the 'hostility' of the UK government towards overseas students, and offer attractive packages including English booster courses, simpler visa facilities and postgraduate work experience. Ministers will be forced to rethink this aspect of their migration policy as they see the economic impact.

The most read posts of 2011

2012-01-04T16:42:00.000Z

The temptations of Twitter meant that I blogged rather less in 2011 than in the previous years. Nevertheless, I am grateful to the 9,400 unique visitors who made some 16,500 visits to the blog during the year, according to Google Analytics. For the record, here are the most visited posts (excluding those visiting the home page).

1. Eating out in Keynsham: just to show life isn't all politics and education!
2. Errors with EBacc haste: why Gove may be too academically focused.
3. Why Michael D is more likely than Martin McG to become Irish President: and why this Blog is a better bet than the Guardian in picking Irish winners.
4. Gove goes back to basics: The education secretary rediscovers the purpose of academies
5. Here's the proof: Labour DID improve social mobility: some cracking FT analysis
6. Clegg's real threat to coalition school plans: the Lib Dem leader in love with local authorities
7. Reforming the curriculum: will the changes work for every child?
8. Hidden by the hacking: end-of-term education manoeuvres: Gove does some summer U-turns
9. Danger of dumbing down GCSE statistics: Tory MPs talking down school improvements
10. Slow progress on free schools: A cautious start to a flagship programme

For the record, by far the biggest sources of visitors in 2011, aside from Google searches, was Twitter. But after those, I should thank Hopi Sen, whose excellent blog is back, Stumbling and Mumbling, Scenes from the Battleground, Matthew Taylor, Public Finance, Left Foot Forward, Slugger O'Toole for Total Politics, The Guardian and the Spectator for adding to my traffic during the year.

Gove is right to tackle academy critics, but he needs to take his case to the parents

2012-01-04T15:36:00.000Z

When I saw the letter from David Lammy and others, including the general secretary of the NUT, criticising DFE plans to convert Downhills Primary school, Lammy's old school, into an academy, I knew it would just be a matter of time before the whole incident formed the basis of a speech by the Education Secretary Michael Gove. It seemed like a gold-plated gift to Gove, delivered just in time for Christmas, and the Education Secretary has wasted no time opening it and showing it to all his friends.

In a speech today at Haberdashers' Askes Academy in South London, Gove highlights the protest using a splendid headline from the Hornsey Journal, ‘Campaigners: Hands off our failing school.’ Downhills has become a cause celebre from the critics of academies, who think it wrong that underperforming schools should be forced to become academies.

In his letter to the Guardian, Lammy et al wrote:

...the secretary of state for education has become the playground bully, using draconian legal powers to force schools into academy status, removing democratically elected governing bodies, circumventing the important role of local education authorities and creating more opportunities for those in the private sector to take over England's schools.It is clear that the Haringey schools mentioned in your article and, we understand, many more around the country are being used to promote the government's academy agenda. Department for Education officials are instilling fear in schools and putting them under intense pressure to convert voluntarily rather than face the stigma of being forced to become academies run by external sponsors as so-called failing schools. This use by Michael Gove of legal powers, departmental staff and resources to pursue a political agenda has nothing to do with school improvement and must cease forthwith. Decisions about schools are best made by people from the communities they serve. This undemocratic programme is no more than political dogma and has nothing to do with localism or communities.

Gove uses today's speech to hit back, citing the work of Tony Blair and Andrew Adonis, who battled to convert failing secondaries, as well as the success of CTCs to justify his extension of the Academies programme. He tells us that there are now over 1500 academies, though only 335 are led by sponsors. And the truth is that, while it may be a legitimate criticism to question the DFE resources spent on persuading outstanding schools to take a £25k cheque to pursue the legal formalities needed to convert to academy status, rather than simply letting them get on with it, the drive to replace failing primary schools with sponsored academies is genuinely an extension of the Blair programme, and one that is needed.

There is a hard core of primary schools that have remained stubbornly below par for years, and they need to be given a new start, sponsored by a successful school, an established sponsor or as part of a trust arrangement. In his speech, Gove says there are more than 1,000 primaries - 1 in 18 - where fewer than 40 per cent of pupils reach Level 4 in reading, writing and mathematics. The status quo is not enough for them. Nor, frankly, is it good enough to expect 'other solutions' to be tried before moving to academy status if the problems are that entrenched.

Whether Downhills is still among the worst is less clear. Results from 2011 show that Downhills is no longerbelow the Government's floor target for Level 4 English and Maths any more: it had some pretty miserable results in 2008 and 2009, participated in the 2010 boycott, but got just above the target at 61% last year - the floor is 60%. Progress in the latest Ofsted monitoring inspection, after a dismal report last January, suggests progress is now satisfactory, though it suggests a lot still to be done. It is a school that clearly needs a strong drive forward - but its pupils would benefit from some political agreement about its future rather than being the pawns in this ideological battle.

Yet Gove's arguments would be a lot stronger if he were able to distinguish in his own mind between the genuinely hard graft required to convert failing schools to academy status - and the scars on his back in this case are mere scratches compared to those endured by Adonis and DFES officials in the early 2000s - and the legal niceties needed to enable others to do so. I think it is great that good schools have been enabled to convert: I just feel that they could have been expected to do more as academies, given the financial incentive provided - many schools gained £300-£500k in the process.

Gove admits in his speech that only 18 out of 1194 converters are sponsoring other academies (and two of those started doing so under Ed Balls), though around 400 participate in trusts and chains. By conflating the figures for sponsor-led and converter academies, he is undermining his own strong case for action in the failing primaries. And by failing to pursue his own expectation that outstanding converters would significantly help weaker schools, he has played a weak hand in exploiting any potential leverage from the conversions.

In such battles, the education secretary needs to turn on one of his better traits: his charm. Gove should not be making his case to the converted at the brilliant Haberdashers' Academy. He should meet with Lammy and be ready to argue his case to parents of children at schools like Downhills. Since the DFE is rather short of the sponsors it needs for all its target primaries, a process of engagement, where governors and parents get the chance to meet sponsors, many of whom will be other school heads, could go a long way to separate the ideologues from those they have swayed.

All that said, this is now a good time for Labour's Shadow Education Secretary, Stephen Twigg to take a strong stand on academies. On failing primaries, there should be no quibbles from the two Eds. Twigg should be ready to argue the case for primary academies to play a central role in reducing school failure, and to act as a persuader with recalcitrant Labour councils where there is an issue. This is not to say that he should back every imposition unquestioningly but that where it is clear that academy status is best he should work to prevent it becoming a party political football.

Michael Gove's speech today makes many of the right arguments. He now needs to find ways to make that case directly to the parents and teachers in the primary and secondary schools whose pupils still desperately need a new start, and to engage them in finding the right academy-based solutions. He deserves backing in making the case. But if he is to win this battle, he must also recognise that this has to be his top priority for schools reform in the coming years.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

2011-12-22T12:06:00.000Z


Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all my blog readers.

Reforming the curriculum

2011-12-21T14:34:00.000Z

The Government has started to realise how much harder it is to deliver change than it is to advance rhetoric. Any changes to the National Curriculum have been postponed until 2014 as ministers try to work out how their plans relate to each other. There has, it is true, been some good early work by the curriculum review team, albeit in the parameters set for them. However, there is still a real danger that in the Government's zeal to widen the academic requirements for the majority, the needs of the minority will be neglected.

The curriculum review are recommending that history, geography, the 'arts' and modern languages should all be compulsory until the age of 16, and that GCSEs should be taken over three rather than two years to allow time for the further study. The latter idea reflects existing practice, and is a good one, even if it belies the rhetoric criticising those who entered students for early GCSEs that seemed to come from government a few months ago. At the same time as requiring study in these additional subjects, schools will be expected to teach citizenship, technology and ICT, though it will be for them to decide how to do so. In line with the Wolf Review, but counter to the direction of travel of Lord Baker's University Technical Colleges, there is no room for serious vocational learning before 16.

All of this is certainly in line with the direction of travel signalled by the English Baccalaureate, and its weighting for particular GCSE subjects. And while the majority - perhaps four in five students - should certainly be able to take this range of academic subjects through to GCSE standard, there is a serious question mark over its appropriateness for the minority who will undoubtedly be turned off this mix. There needs to be a serious option of college-based vocational and pre-apprenticeship courses, with English and Maths, for the remainder. This means that it should not be compulsory for all to take the extended national curriculum through to 16.

This group may be 1 in 5 nationally, but they will number as many as half the cohort in some schools and academies. The latter, in theory, should be able to ignore these strictures. But the Department has its levers - including the EBac - to cajole them in a different direction. Meanwhile, what of the compulsory subjects without programmes of study? This is fine, so long as there are some clear expectations of what young people should know about civics and citizenship, as the research for the review team shows to be the norm in most countries, and which concepts are crucial in ICT. But the real problem is the exclusion of technology as a subject on a par with history and geography on the GCSE curriculum: the call for computer science, for example, is being sidelined. And citizenship is to be sidelined competely as an add-on to PSHE, as was the case before it became a compulsory subject. Democracy is to be an afterthought.

Today sees Ofqual reporting on the growing errors and ineptitude of some exam boards. There will be those who might ask whether it would make more sense to have a single board for England (with separate boards in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) to deal with the GCSE and A-level syllabuses. That way, there could be some clear expectations and no room for gaming. When I suggested this before, I was accused of undermining the innovation delivered by competition. I do wonder whether we have not seen rather too much such innovation from examiners in recent weeks.

Primary schools: the right target?

2011-12-15T11:36:00.000Z

Today's primary school league tables reveal that there are 1310 schools - about 1 in 12 of those reporting results - that are below the Government's floor target of 60% of pupils getting a level 4 in English and Maths. The government is right to focus on attainment at the end of primary school, as those not reaching this standard are unlikely to get good GCSE results later on. They are also right to include a progress measure within their target to address those schools that are coasting.

Floor targets were introduced by the Labour government and have been a significant success story, particularly in secondary schools, where they have helped raise the game of many. After the substantial improvements in primary school results between 1995 and 2000, the result both of stronger accountability measures and the emphasis provided by Labour's literacy and numeracy strategies, there were substantial improvements in test scores in both English and Maths. And while progress slowed for several years in the early 2000s before the Rose report renewed an emphasis on phonics, today's results show 82 per cent reaching Level 4 in English and 80 per cent in Maths (and 74 per cent in both). In 1995, the figures [pdf: Table 1] were 49 per cent and 45 per cent respectively. Whatever today's failings - and there are still a quarter of pupils who are not making the grade in one or both subjects - it is no mean achievement of thousands of schools and their teachers.

The problem is greatest for the poorest students in the weakest schools. Analysis for the new Educational Endowment Foundation based on last year's data has shown that only 40% of pupils on free school meals in below target schools gain a level 4 in English and Maths compared with 57% of FSM pupils in other schools and 81% of those not receiving FSM in non-target schools. Those are huge gaps, and a lot of work will be needed to close them.

The Government has rightly extended the academies programme to the primary sector, and is requiring the worst primaries to become academies. It is right to want them to link with strong sponsors. But it needs to strike a balance here: there are to be 1000 National Leaders of Education by 2015, and many of those can provide the challenge and help needed to improve schools, especially those that are improving and are close to the target. Mergers and federations provide opportunities that schools may embrace for financial as well as educational reasons. With a still limited capacity among sponsors, their efforts need to be well focused on the persistent low attainers and to be properly targeted.

But ministers have also missed a trick with their pupil premium. It was announced this week that the premium paid for FSM pupils will rise from £488 to £600 per pupil in 2012-13, with eligibility extended to those who may previously have been in receipt of free school meals. The slow rate of increase suggests it is unlikely the premium will reach Nick Clegg's promised level of £2,500 a year by 2015, but more importantly there are far too few levers with the premium, as there is no element of reward or sanction linked to the performance of FSM pupils. Ministers are very keen on the power of accountability, but ignore its lagging effect. More improvements could be secured if schools could see that the premium was genuinely linked to progress.

The basics matter enormously, and the biggest gainers from an emphasis on improving them will be the poorest pupils in these target schools. But the Government must make better use of its limited levers and restricted remaining resources if it is to be successful.

Does Dr Lansley really know best, with his blitz of 60 NHS targets that exclude waiting times?

2011-12-07T16:27:00.003Z

Today, the Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, has launched his 60 targets for the National Health Service. This from a Secretary of State who, in opposition, said that he would be getting rid of NHS targets. But, then, this was the same politician who misled voters (and, possibly, the Prime Minister) about his true intentions for the health service. Apparently his structural overhaul plans were hidden in an obscure speech somewhere that sadly didn't make it to the Tory manifesto writing meeting or the script for Conservative candidates.

To be fair, it is hard to find a lot to disagree with in the good intentions behind targets that range from reducing mortality rates for people with several different conditions enhancing the quality of life for carers. Few would argue that the NHS should not be doing all those things. But it is the presumptiveness behind the whole exercise that is more worrying.

Mr Lansley tells us in the same breath that all these measures matter to patients, whereas they care not whether they wait four or twelve hours in A&E on a trolley, or whether they are seen and treated in 18 weeks rather than 18 months by a consultant. On both these measures, of course, he is busily undoing a huge success of the Labour government in reducing patient waiting times drastically, whilst at the same time, incidentally, significantly improving patient outcomes and the quality of many hospitals and GP surgeries.

But, no, the word 'waiting' appears nowhere in the 56 pages of targets unleashed on the NHS today. 'Doctor'
Lansley thinks we mere mortals shouldn't worry our pretty little heads about how long it takes to get seen by a doctor, just as long as they are meeting wider outcome targets. Instead of objective measurable data on waiting times, we are instead expected to rely on the NHS version of those ghastly happiness surveys that have been foisted on us by No 10. Ministers will say that the 18 week guarantee is enshrined in the NHS constitution: if this is to be more than a paper promise, it should at least form one of the 60 targets that the NHS will apparently be judged on. As the Kings Fund has said:

With the spending squeeze beginning to bite, the number of hospital inpatients waiting more than 18 weeks for treatment is already at its highest level for more than three years and waiting times for A&E and diagnostic services have also risen. As the government has said that it is opposed to targets, it now needs to be clear about how this pledge will be measured and enforced.

The Government has already weakened the A&E target so that hospitals are expected to allow waits of no longer than four hours in 95% of cases rather than 98% under Labour. Yet, even in the summer months, this less rigorous target was breached by 29 hospitals, according to the Kings Fund, while longer diagnostic to treatment waits are creeping up.

The trend since June 2010 for the proportion waiting more than 6 weeks for diagnostics has been upward and the percentage waiting more than 6 weeks has risen from 1.13 per cent in August 2010 to 2.0 per cent in August 2011 – equivalent to a rise in the number of patients from 5,800 in August 2010 to more than 11,400 in August 2011.

The Kings Fund points out that, in 2007, a third of patients had waited more than six weeks, a measure of Labour's success in cutting waits since then. How many more hospitals will ignore maximum waiting times, now that the health secretary has said he doesn't think it matters to patients how long they wait? Meanwhile, we are told in today's document that are no indicators available yet for 'ensuring that people have a positive experience of care' and that these are being 'developed'. In other words, instead of using existing waiting times data as a benchmark (even the laxer A&E data), new figures will be dreamt up and approved by the omniscient Lansley to confirm that things are getting better.

But there is a bigger problem 'focusing' on so much data, and it is echoed to a lesser extent at education. Without a clear focus on a small number of straightforward national targets, one might as well have no targets. In Labour's early years, the Treasury bombarded departments with new targets that were intended to show that the extra money on offer would be well spent. It was only when these were heavily stripped back that they had any impact. Michael Gove has recognised at education, floor targets related to national tests at 11 and GCSEs helped lift standards significantly in weaker schools, just as maximum waiting times in the NHS helped measure systemic change there. Of course, there is always some gaming with any targets, but the reality is that in both cases, most of the improvements have been real and substantial. It is hard to see the same energy being devoted to all of Lansley's 60 targets announced today, not least at a time of real terms cuts in most areas. In the end, we may not be able to see the wood from the trees.

But we don't need to worry, do we? After all, Dr Lansley knows best. Doesn't he?

The Chancellor giveth what the Chancellor hath taketh away

2011-11-29T16:11:00.000Z

Surely the most brazen aspect of today's rather disjointed display by the Chancellor was his announcement on school capital funding (trailed like much else in the weekend press). To recap, shortly after coming to office, Michael Gove earned his spurs with the Treasury by abruptly cancelling over 700 school building projects, loudly proclaiming his ability to achieve 'better value for money', and denouncing Labour's Building Schools for the Future programme as a 'costly failure'. He later lost a court case over a failure to consult properly.

Since then, some capital allocations were made to ensure the sponsored academies programme (the difficult bit that involves rather more than a £15-25k legal bill) was able to continue and to provide some funds to the free schools programme. There has also been some cash to help local authorities to deal with an unexpected surge in demand for school places, in part caused by a decline in private school take-up among the middle classes. Today, George Osborne gave back another £1.2 bn to be split evenly between free schools and school places.

But, the government hasn't just cancelled most new building in schools, at significant cost not just to the fabric of schools, but also to the construction sector. It has also decimated schools' ability to keep their buildings in good repair, by virtually eliminating their annual school capital grant that David Blunkett introduced, known as formula capital. There is, of course, a strong economic argument for pegging teachers' pay and reining in current spending in schools, as much as everywhere else: and with the IFS forecasting that 55% of primaries and 70% of secondaries will be losers, despite the pupil premium, that is happening.

However, there is far less justification, as Osborne now seems to allow, for the huge curb on schools capital investment. Moreover, the focus on free schools capital is particularly odd, since a much-touted attraction of free schools was, apparently, their ability to provide a presumably superior education at the same cost as the school down the road. Now, it seems that they will cost an average - and many of these will be primaries - of £6m each.

I've no problem with free schools having such capital funding, where they are meeting demonstrable need, or are genuinely helping tackle poverty. And I welcome the new specialist maths colleges (even if this is from a Government that axed support for specialist school networks). But, let's be clear: a lot of this money is at the expense of rebuilding other schools in deprived areas. And the list of free schools to date suggests that the genuine parent-promoted or teacher-led schools are being supplemented to boost the numbers by a combination of minor independent and faith schools joining the state system, Middle School/two-tier refuseniks and local authority schools under another guise. The idea that those latter groups deserve preferential capital treatment over other schools and academies is less than convincing.

It is eight months since the DFE published the not hugely inspiring James review of schools capital. When I tried to open it from the DFE website, I was informed that the 'file is damaged and could not be repaired'. Fittingly, since there is still no coherent programme for infrastructural investment (and that includes technology) yet. Instead of another Gordon Brown-style rabbit-out-of-hat exercise, the Chancellor should have given schools a clear idea of the coalition's investment plans for the duration of the parliament. Had he done so, he might have raised at least half a cheer from those upon whom he has just imposed 15-20% real terms pay cuts (including extra pension contributions) - and from the construction sector as well.

Cameron is right about coasting schools, but wrong that Labour 'hid' this data

2011-11-14T14:52:00.000Z

Why does David Cameron ruin a perfectly good argument with some petty partisan point-scoring? Today's article by the PM in the Daily Telegraph argues that some schools in leafy suburbs and shires perform less well than they should do, and are a bit complacent about it. All of which is true. It is also the case that the coalition are publishing more data than before, but it is nonsense to suggest that this data was deliberately 'kept under wraps' by the Labour government.

In fact, Labour greatly increased the amount of data that was published about schools, including in the league tables. It introduced measures of school improvement, as well as raw data. It also made available plenty of information to the Fischer Family Trust and other organisations that provide most schools with targets - those that strive for the top quartile in FFT are the ones that are not failing their students. With freedom of information, there was plenty of other information available too.

But there is a balance to be struck here. There is a good reason to have some limit to the number of elements in the league tables if they are to be readily understood. People should be encouraged ro read them alongside Ofsted reports. Newspapers and other media rarely publish all the data as it is. The issue for Government is to decide where the focus should be if such publication is to drive improvement. Michael Gove has already accepted the measure introduced by Labour of five good GCSEs including English and Maths as desirable for at least half of students in all schools, and as a goal for 80% of all students. This was a new measure introduced by Labour in 2005 as a way of ensuring that all pupils were entered in the basics. Together with floor targets, it has driven substantial improvement, including in London.

Cameron is right that there may be a temptation to focus on D-C borderline students. But this is not a bad thing in itself: schools certainly should ensure that students heading for a D are helped to achieve a C, as this will be worth much more to them in later life, But, of course, they should equally ensure that B/A borderline students work for an A. Any good school will do this, in part because of the revolution in data and individual targeting introduced by Labour. And Ofsted should pick up on it if it isn't happening.

But there is a separate issue about the effect of some of the new measures being introduced by the Conservatives, and it is not obvious that they have got these right. The English Baccalaureate could have a beneficial impact if it sees more academically minded students taking a foreign language, and an earlier push by Labour has already seen a big uplift in triple science, which is continuing. But while students should learn history (my own degree subject) and geography, it is by no means obvious that they will be of greater benefit to every student than engineering, technology or computer science. The only difference is that the former appear in the new league table measure at the expense of the latter. League tables can create perverse incentives no matter the intentions.

Equally, it is important that the PM's drive doesn't prevent us from seeing the wood for the trees. There is a very good reason to focus on the five good GCSE measure for weaker schools, and it has been the backbone of many academy improvements and those in London. But introduce too many measures, without any sense of their respective importance, and it becomes a lot harder for parents to compare schools. This happened with Labour's Contextual Value Added measure that the coalition is replacing with a less complex measure of value added. So, it is good that the new league tables will show us how well schools are working for pupils at different attainment levels. But let's make sure that in the process we don't substitute a fog of statistics for true focus.

Theresa May and the responsibility of ministers

2011-11-08T11:33:00.001Z

Has Theresa May successfully rewritten the concept of ministerial responsibility? By constantly repeating in the Commons yesterday that she "did not give [her] consent or authorisation to any of these actions" when referring to the UK Border Agency relaxation of immigration controls during the summer, she has significantly redefined the concept of ministerial responsibility. And much as I would like to see a few more Tory scalps - especially in an area where the party shamelessly added to public hysteria, including through the theft of confidential papers from a previous Home Secretary's office - it would be a good thing for politics if it worked. However, that doesn't mean ministers are blameless in this case.

The truth is that ministers do not - and cannot - know everything that is being done in their name by officials and agencies. They rely on their private office and senior officials, as well as on special advisers, to keep an eye on things. But a good minister should ask questions, and track what's happening on key policy implementation: and it is here that May and Damian Green, her immigration minister, do seem guilty of serious shortcomings. Equally, it should be said, this is another example of the limitations of no 10: did they not ask for such updates either?

However, the idea that the minister should always carry the can for an official cock-up is not good for politics. Estelle Morris felt obliged to resign when the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority and the exam boards screwed up over A-level test papers and marking, which are much further removed from ministerial responsibility than the immigration policy at Heathrow Airport. Beverley Hughes quit when a previous agency screwed up badly over immigration, and she unwittingly misled the House of Commons in the ensuing furore. In neither case was the minister directly responsible for a failure of implementation, but convention dictated that they should resign. If it turns out May or Green or their private offices were told more than she is letting on, they would similarly be expected to go.

But there have been too many ministerial resignations, too many good people lost in the process and too few occasions where an official directly responsible for a policy has had to take the consequences where they got it wrong. In this case, I have some sympathy with those who argue that a more proportionate response to full passport checks is good for tourism, so long as everyone knows they may be checked. But that isn't what the Tories have been saying, so May has been wrong-footed by her officials. In this case, she may be right to blame them. But if I were her, I would take an urgent look at the mechanisms her office uses to check on policy operation on a regular basis. The best ministers seek and get regular updates. The failure of her immigration minister or her private office to do that basic part of his job suggests that they may not be fit for purpose either.

Philip Gould 1950-2011

2011-11-07T15:49:00.001Z

Philip Gould was one of those people who always seemed to have a zest for new ideas, and an infectious enthusiasm for what he had learnt from his focus groups or his wider reading. I always found this in education, where he was a strong backer of David Blunkett's approach, helped by the popularity of those policies. Philip was undoubtedly as important to Labour's 1997 victory and to Tony Blair's subsequent two election wins as anyone. In his last year, he showed the most extraordinary courage as he came to terms with the consequences of his cancer. And in revising his indispensable guide to campaigning, An Unfinished Revolution, he has left a lasting legacy. May he rest in peace.

A sensible retreat on staff admissions, but is it wise to allow anyone to appeal to the Adjudicator?

2011-11-02T12:29:00.000Z

The Department for Education has published its final versions of the new Admissions Codes today. There are just a few significant changes (pdf). In the first version, schools could give staff preference for admissions without restriction. This has been amended to say that it can only be used either to fill a specific skill shortage or for staff who have been employed by the school for more than two years, which seems a more sensible arrangement, though they should also ask the Schools Adjudicator to monitor the impact to ensure it is used fairly. A second change would see primary admissions better co-ordinated, which is also sensible.

There is still one aspect of the new codes that could cause real problems, but the debates on the Education Bill have made the problem even worse. When Labour established the Office of Schools Adjudicator, the right to refer admissions issues was restricted to local authorities and schools that were admissions authorities. The coalition has extended the Adjudicator's remit to academies and free schools, which is sensible. But allowing 'anyone' to refer an issue would confuse the role of admissions appeals panels with that of the Adjudicator, and cause significant extra work for schools, especially academies. While appeal panels should refer to the Adjudicator where appeals reveal a clear issue, the Adjudicator is in danger of becoming a Supreme Court to their High Court for disappointed parents. Equally, the Adjudicator will be the new target for opponents of free schools and academies.In its wording today, the DFE has recognised the potential for chaos that the new system could cause, so it "will also ask the Schools Adjudicator to deal with vexatious and repeat objections swiftly." Good luck on that one.

Has the Irish presidential poll damaged Sinn Fein?

2011-10-31T16:36:00.000Z

Had it not been for the beyond abysmal performance of Fine Gael's dreadful candidate for Ireland's Presidency, Gay Mitchell, who managed to amass a mere 6.4% of the votes in Thursday's election, and who couldn't be bothered to show up for the final declaration, there would be a lot more attention on the relatively poor performance of Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness, and on the arrogant assumptions that lay behind his candidacy.

Before doing so, it is worth acknowleding that McGuinness's intervention in last Monday's TV debate certainly secured the presidency for Michael D Higgins, although I still think Gallagher's vote was pretty flaky even before it, as a cursory look at the raw polling data showed.

However, McGuinness was supposed to garner at least 20 per cent of first preferences and place Sinn Fein's vote at least on a par with the Labour Party. And while it is true that his 13.7% is up on Sinn Fein's 9.9% in the general election, such a marginal improvement hardly justifies endangering the entire Northern Ireland government and opening up the can of worms that is the IRA's not too distant past. Sinn Fein expected Irish voters to be grateful to them for standing McGuinness, and then were astonished at the extent of their ingratitude. The renewed focus on the IRA's unsavoury past may also have lasting consequences for Sinn Fein's vote in the Republic: if their leading celebrity candidate cannot advance further than this in such a volatile campaign, what hope is there for the less elevated retired gun-runners and gullible groupies that the party puts up in more prosaic circumstances?

McGuinness made an important contribution to the final result through his interventions in the final debate, but even he must be wondering whether the damage that the whole campaign has done to his and Sinn Fein's reputation was quite the masterstroke that Sinn Fein thought it to be six weeks ago.

Why Michael D Higgins is set to win the Irish Presidency

2011-10-28T13:23:00.000+01:00

It can take an age for final results to come through in an Irish STV election, but the country is blessed with some very skilled tallymen. And their tallies point to a clear victory for Michael D Higgins, the President of the Irish Labour Party, as the country's next president. To readers of some of the British media, particularly the Guardian which was practically wetting itself at the prospect (never a realistic one beyond the fantasies of the paper's resident Sinn Fein fan club) of Martin McGuinness finding himself in Áras an Uachtaráin after today, the new president is a virtual unknown. Readers were instead told more recently that if McGuinness didn't cut it, David Norris, an academic and gay rights campaigner scrabbling for fourth place in the same tallies behind McGuinness, would do it.

To be fair, there have been several 'front-runners' in the campaign. And Norris was there once (though long before the Guardian piece), before he mishandled the release of letters he had written in defence of a friend convicted for underage sex. So, more significantly, was the Irish Dragon's Den entrepreneur Sean Gallagher, who led the weekend polls until McGuinness threw doubt on his integrity by highlighting some of his less savoury links with Fianna Fail. But all through this, Michael D was always likely to win through, as this blog has consistently argued. And that is because, as today's RTE/Red C exit polls confirm, people are more interested in electing someone to the Park who will represent Ireland with dignity abroad and who is of unimpeachable integrity. And Michael D not only scored on both counts, his "A President Who Will Do Us Proud" slogan exactly captured the mood of the electorate. Even if he hadn't topped the poll, he was always the most transfer-friendly.

Michael D is a long-time politician of the left, a poet and academic, and the finest culture minister that Ireland ever had. Each of the other candidates had different flaws exposed during the campaign; and each time Michael D was there rising above the fray. The only criticism made of him was his age, and that may have backfired as a younger but testier Sean Gallagher came unstuck. He fought a long game, fought it steadily with a brilliant Labour back up team. And he was there when the last of his rivals fell at the final hurdle. Since 1990, under both Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese, Ireland has benefited from two fine Presidents. Both in their different ways transformed what had been a tired sinecure for failed or retired politicians into a significant symbol of the new Ireland. That tradition will undoubtedly be upheld by Michael D.

Mike Leigh's Grief

2011-10-28T11:48:00.000+01:00

The stultifying world of late 50s suburban middle class respectability mixed with the memories of wartime loss is the setting for Mike Leigh's remarkable new play, Grief, which has its first out-of-London run at Bath this week. Lesley Manville plays Dorothy, a war widow trying to bring up a 15 year-old girl Victoria (played by Lark Rise star Ruby Bentall) in a household shared with her soon-to-retire brother Edwin (a fine buttoned up turn by Sam Kelly).

The two-hour play, which runs with no interval, follows a series of events from autumn 1957 to summer 1958, as Victoria is supposed to be preparing for her O levels and Edwin faces retirement. Special days like Christmas, New Year and birthdays are intertwined with occasional visits from their friends. Each vignette takes place in the living room, where the only real communication between Dorothy and Edwin is through old songs beautifully rendered by Manville and Kelly, and where the chasm between mother and daughter grows ever wider. There are a remarkable number of scene changes, each adding to our understanding of the characters, and all leading to a terrible denouement. We were treated to an after-show discussion with Leigh and his cast last night, and the most fascinating revelation from Manville was that the set behind the stage contained furnished bedrooms to give the upstairs events that we only ever hear a firmer grip on reality. With a fine cast, this is an excellent new play.

70% of secondaries face cuts to fund the pupil premium: but will it work?

2011-10-26T10:59:00.000+01:00

The Institute for Fiscal Studies report on Trends in education and schools spending (pdf) cuts through the coalition's dissembling about what is being spent in education. Its findings - that most schools will experience real terms spending cuts from 2011-12 - will come as no surprise to headteachers and governors, but gives the lie to the idea that education expenditure has been 'protected' under the coalition.

Of course, after real terms growth of 5.1% a year from 1999-2009, it would be unsurprising were education spending to be frozen at a time of economic austerity. But the IFS says that it will be cut by 3.5% per year between 2011-2014, the largest cut in education spending since the 1950s. Indeed education as a share of national income will fall to 4.6% by 2014-15, its level in 1999. Of course, the coalition has been careful (most of the time) to distinguish between education and schools spending. And the IFS concedes that schools spending will only fall by 1.2% in total whereas government spending on higher education will fall by 40% as fees replace HEFCE funding, and spending on early years and youth services will fall by 20%, even though early years education has the greatest impact on a child's development. The decision to scrap EMA and reduce sixth form spending to that of colleges means that 16-19 funding - particularly in schools - will fall by 20% in real terms. Education is clearly no longer regarded as an investment in the future, and its contribution to economic growth is being actively discounted.

But it is worth reflecting further on the impact on schools spending, because it is here that that coalition has been unequivocal in its commitment to maintain expenditure. There is a cash freeze on per pupil spending, which, with inflation at 5%, equates to a cut of 5% in real terms, although this is somewhat mitigated by a freeze in teachers' pay. But the commitment to 'maintain' schools spending is only achieved through the pupil premium, which is being funded by the raid on early years (including Sure Start), 16-19 and youth services. It is clearly not being funded from outside the education budget, as the coalition claimed would happen. The pupil premium is universally regards as a good thing but the IFS drily reflects that "this will add somewhat to the already considerable additional money provided for the poorest pupils by the current school funding system." Having dropped plans for a proper National Funding Formula, the pupil premium could simply add an extra layer of funding for the very poorest schools, but will leave significant regional and local funding disparities untouched.

So, the one area of growth is the pupil premium. And it is here that the coalition is on shakiest ground. Although the premium is presented as a great Liberal Democrat advance, it was actually in the Conservative manifesto too, but what both parties lacked was a clear idea of how the premium would advance the goal of improved attainment for the poorest pupils. Some changes have been made to admissions rules to allow schools to recruit more pupils entitled to free school meals, and to show in the league tables how effective they are at narrowing attainment disparaties. But the premium suffers from a potentially fatal flaw: there are no plans to reward success or penalise failure. In other words, there is no real incentive or leverage behind it.

This makes the IFS analysis all the more important in this aspect of coalition policy. They point out that extra funding in the current system attached to deprived pupils amounts to £2000 in primary schools and £3000 in secondary schools, funding almost double that attached to non-deprived pupils, on average. Without leverage or incentives linked to the premium, it is unclear how a premium currently worth £488 per pupil, rising to £1600 by 2014-15 will provide the right incentives. The absence of a national funding formula means that it will be some time before the existing deprivation funding is consolidated within the pupil premium, thereby allowing a more substantial identified sum for each child. Even then, the first year of the premium, where take-up was less than expected, has shown the flaws in using the FSM measure, which has a considerable stigma attached to it in some communities. If the pupil premium is to achieve what is intended for it, ministers should allow it partially to reflect success in narrowing attainment gaps, and they should look at an alternative measure for its distribution.

But what it will mean, according to the IFS analysis, is that around three-quarters of primary schools and 90% of secondary schools will see real terms cuts over the next four years, though with lower salary inflation, the figure falls to 55% of primaries and 70% of secondaries assuming the same inputs. Only those with substantial numbers of poorer pupils - especially primary schools - will see any increase. In other words, the pupil premium is partly funded by cuts in the majority of schools. This could certainly be presented as redistributive. But inputs are not enough: if the premium is to succeed, it must clearly show substantial improvements among the pupils to whom it is attached. After all, there are a lot of losers helping to fund those inputs. And the least they can ask for is that their sacrifice produces results.

Michael D can still win, but needs plenty of STV transfers

2011-10-24T08:53:00.000+01:00

Three weekend opinion polls have now given solid leads to the 'independent' business candidate Sean Gallagher in the Irish presidential election. Gallagher has clearly been unaffected by revelations about his Fianna Fail background or his patchy business record as a Dragons Den presenter. His tactic of contrasting his relative youth with the age of 70-year old Labour veteran Michael D Higgins seems to have paid off and Higgins clearly faces an uphill battle winning this week's poll. Gallagher is running at around 39-40% to Higgins 25-26%. All the polls confirmed that Sinn Fein/Guardian candidate Martin McGuinness is a distant third, with Paddy Power shifting his odds to 50/1 as a result.

But a closer look at the data behind the Red C poll suggests that it will be a lot closer between Higgins and Gallagher than the 14-point gap would suggest. For a start, if one includes only those who will definitely vote (a particularly important indicator if turnout is low), the gap falls to eight points. And then, so long as McGuinness stays in third position (as his transfers will mainly go to Gallagher), Higgins should benefit from most transfers from the other candidates, in the STV election. So there is a lot to play for in these closing days. But Ireland has a pretty clear choice: a vote for the politics that sent it into the abyss, in the form of ex-Fianna Fail member Gallagher, or a vote for a broader more outward-looking culturally astute Ireland as represented by the best culture minister Ireland has had in Higgins. It may not be as defining an election as the 1990 election that saw Mary Robinson win, but it is a pretty defining choice all the same.

Why shouldn't parents rate schools?

2011-10-20T14:47:00.001+01:00

What does Christine Blower, the general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, do when she wants to book a hotel? Presumably given her comments today on Ofsted's new Parent View website, Ms Blower completely ignores Trip Advisor and the ratings on other booking websites posted by those who have stayed there. Her reason: they are too 'subjective'.

Ofsted's site will give parents the chance to rate their children's schools on issues such as standards of teaching and behaviour, but also on happiness and the levels of communication with parents. Now, I may be mistaken here, but isn't such a rounded view precisely what the NUT has been demanding for ages? Indeed, one might have more sympathy with their objections to the site if they were staunch advocates of objective measurement of schools. But they have opposed testing and league tables since their inception, and I can't remember them ever being enthusiastic fans of independent inspections either.

The new Parent View site may take a little time to gain the level of parental input to make its judgements valuable. There may be the occasional problem if a school faces a determined campaign against it. But, as outstanding schools are no longer to be inspected, the site could alert inspectors to potential problems: if they investigate and find otherwise, it is better than not knowing of a problem until it is too late for many pupils. And in a world where people do want to see the views of other service users, the site also has the potential to offer an additional valuable perspective for parents interested in the quality of local schools.

Labour's academy revolution bears more fruit

2011-10-20T11:51:00.002+01:00

With schools ministers still behaving like they are in opposition, it is worth highlighting some of the remarkable exam results that have been released today. The GCSEs sat in 2011 were taken by students who started their exam courses two years ago, and their achievements reflect the significant reforms introduced by Labour in office, including sponsored academies and programmes like the London Challenge, as well as the floor targets that have been embraced and extended by Michael Gove.

A remarkable 58.3 per cent of pupils now gain five good GCSEs, including English and Maths. This compares with 35% in 1997. In London, which was well behind in 1997, 61% of pupils now reach this standard. What is particularly worth noting is that these results are not just about doing 'soft subjects'. The DFE's statistical release shows that the proportion of pupils gaining English and Maths GCSEs at grade C and above was 61 per cent. There has been a small increase in the numbers achieving the 'English Baccalaureate', though the numbers taking language GCSEs fell again.

Ministers have rightly highlighted the success of academies - with an average improvement around twice as fast as that of other schools. The provisional GCSE results for 2011 show that in academies the percentage of pupils achieving 5 or more GCSEs including English and maths rose from 40.6 per cent to 45.9 per cent, an increase of 5.3 percentage points whilst in all maintained schools the percentage of pupils achieving 5 or more GCSEs including English and maths rose from 55.2 per cent to 57.8 per cent, an increase of 2.6 percentage points. Their success has helped drive up the overall average significantly. Stephen Twigg has wisely started to jettison Labour's post-government ambivalence to academies: he needs to ensure that today's results are seen as firm evidence of the success of our policies in government.

The balance of risk and regulation

2011-10-19T12:10:00.000+01:00

Matthew Taylor has already raised some pertinent questions about the power of regulators, after a seminar that he expertly chaired at the RSA yesterday. There is a particularly interesting debate underway in government, reflecting some of the schizophrenia that surrounds the whole issue of regulation and accountability.

Over the past 20 years, there has been a transformation in attitudes to data within the public sector, particularly in schools. It isn't just about high profile league tables, though their presence has undoubtedly spurred some improvement. As important has been the ability of schools to compare their performance with others with similar characteristics, and to benchmark themselves against the best in their field with the help of organisations like the Fischer Family Trust. Familiarity with data, a rarity 15 years ago, is now universal among school leaders. For the coalition, this data is at the heart of their accountability agenda, and in an education system where many of the levers have been withdrawn and market forces are largely absent as a result of the admissions system, an ever-increasing supply of data is the seen as the biggest driver of improvement.

The corrolary of this is that regulators like Ofsted, the schools inspectorate, are expected to do more with less. Michael Gove, the education secretary, is facing growing opposition in the House of Lords to the idea that schools designated outstanding, even if that designation is several years old, should not be re-inspected unless there is a significant change in the data or substantial parental complaint. Gove has decided that such schools are low risk compared with the failing and barely satisfactory schools where he wants Ofsted to focus its resources.

There is nothing new in the idea that such interventions should be in proportion to their success. Michael Barber's phrase informed an approach to inspection that did focus resources on the weakest schools and saw inspections of the most successful reduced to short visits as little as every six years. But there is a big difference between short six-yearly visits and none at all. For a start, the expectation of a future Ofsted visit is as important as the visit itself in spurring improvement, and this is as true in successful schools as any other. Then, the evidence suggests that a significant minority of outstanding schools are less successful on re-inspection. Inspectors themselves need to know how good schools can be if they are to set their sights high enough for those that don't make the grade. And, as Gove himself acknowledged, even many outstanding schools may not reach that grade in their teaching and learning, and need to be encouraged to do so.

At the heart of all this is a debate about the balance between risk and regulation. Inspectorates are there to reveal what is wrong, but also in doing so to encourage public services to do better. Ofsted has had remarkable success in this since its inception, and has arguably been as important to the improvements of the last twenty years as league tables and other published data. Gove has set himself ambitions for England to become a world-beater in education over the next five years. In doing so, he is accepting that schools have improved, but is insisting they need to do much better. Is there a danger that he has made his goal harder by reducing pressure on those schools that need to be at the vanguard of such global ambitions? Where should that balance lie?

Two candidates now vie for Irish president (memo to Guardian: neither is called Martin McGuinness)

2011-10-17T09:51:00.003+01:00

As the Irish Presidential election enters its final ten days, there are just two candidates left standing. Michael D Higgins, the Labour veteran and former culture minister (left), is in what seems like a fairly straight fight with the former Fianna Fail member turned Independent business candidate Sean Gallagher. Two polls appeared yesterday, with each candidate leading one of them. In the Sunday Business Post, Gallagher led Higgins 39-27 while in the Sunday Independent, conducted a little later, Higgins led Gallagher 36-29. Both polls placed Martin McGuinness on around 13%. Yet, to a reader of the British media, especially the Guardian until today, all this would be a great surprise. Surely, they might innocently wonder, this is the race where Martin McGuinness is set to take the prize?

What has happened to McGuinness during the course of the campaign is fascinating. He started the campaign dubbing his opponents 'West Brits', an offensive term of abuse used by Sinn Fein in the past to suggest its opponents were not true Irish people. McGuinness has been forced to confront his paramilitary past in ways that he cannot wholly have expected. The son of an Irish army private murdered by the IRA confronted him, and he was unable to give a satisfactory answer. RTE's Miriam O'Callaghan dared to challenge that past on a TV debate last week, questioning how he squared murder with his religious beliefs, and despite bitter complaints from Sinn Fein, who like to praise their own role in the peace process without acknowledging their role in what went before, 62% of Irish people backed the feisty broadcaster over the petulant candidate.

It is true that Sinn Fein has probably gained a bit of extra support on the 10% it won in the general election earlier this year as a result of the campaign. But by being forced to confront its past in ways that had been largely ignored since the power sharing agreement in Northern Ireland, it has also limited its potential for expansion. And the foolhardy decision to allow McGuinness to leave his day job as deputy first minister will have done few favours to the strength of Northern Ireland governance. Sinn Fein deserve credit for accepting power sharing with the DUP but that neither wipes out their past murderous campaign nor does it give them a god-given right to the Irish presidency.

Even though Gallagher has momentum, Michael D still probably has the better chance of winning. The election is being fought under the single transferable vote system, and he should be he most transfer-friendly of the candidates. Gallagher has been running as an Independent and enjoys fame from Ireland's Dragons Den, but his past membership of a still deeply unpopular Fianna Fail is becoming an issue as his surge brings scrutiny. But after weeks of soap opera - with a saga involving Dana's brother and a family feud providing the latest instalment - there is now a straight fight between left and right in the campaign. I trust the Guardian can now get its reporters to cover the reality of politics in the Republic rather than the wishful thinking of some of its contributors.

Fox fiasco, NHS bill chaos. Move Maude.

2011-10-13T08:53:00.000+01:00

David Cameron's two big crises of the moment, the Liam Fox/Walter Mitty saga and the slow death of Andrew Lansley's pointless NHS legislation owe a lot to another member of his cabinet and a silly self-destructive piece of gesturist posturing. Francis Maude's obesessive opposition to political advisers in government has led Fox to use unorthodox methods to maintain the advice of his Alanticist soulmate Adam Werritty, while Lansley's ludicrous bill would never have seen the light of day had Cameron enjoyed half-decent political back-up in No 10 while it was being dreamt up.

I hold no brief for the increasingly bizarre Werritty or his politics, and some of the meetings that he set up would not have been appropriate for any political adviser. But a Secretary of State is entitled to have political advice that reflects his political position as a counterweight to the bureaucratic certainties that he will receive from his civil servants. The civil service is fine at offering what it sees as the tenable options on any issue, but it can benefit from radical challenge from political advisers as well as ministers. And the idea that ministers should not have sufficient political back-up to fulfil a democratic mandate is pretty undemocratic. I have no idea whether there is more to Werritty than a go-for for Fox: but if that is all that he is, he should have been able to work for Fox in an official capacity, albeit with fewer luxury hotel visits and first class flights. Had he done so, his role would have been properly defined.

Which brings me to Lansley's bill that is finally getting the scrutiny it deserves thanks to a re-energised David Owen and a canny offer from Andy Burnham, who has made a flying start back at Health by offering to back GP commissioning if the bill is dropped. As Camilla Cavendish points out in an excellent piece (£) in the Times this morning, the bill makes no difference to patients, it will be blamed for the next NHS crisis [which I believe will follow Lansley's equally ludicrous abandonment of targets] and it doesn't actually require primary legislation. Indeed it may even set back the private and voluntary provision already introduced as a result of Alan Milburn's reforms. But all of this was entirely predictable, and would have been seen by a half-competent, politically aware NHS adviser in No 10. Cameron lacked such a figure because the No 10 policy unit was virtually non-existent thanks to the strictures of Maude. Even today, it is filled with civil servants rather than politically astute figures, for the same reason.

Of course, Francis Maude thought he was being terribly clever when he announced a reduction in the number of Whitehall political advisers. And, funnily enough, the civil servants in the Cabinet Office cheered him on, as did the newspapers. It allowed a nice dig at Labour too. All of which would have been exchanged for a day's bad headlines had the coalition increased their number. Some ministers have created policy adviser posts for political appointees (who are subject to the strictures of civil servants on political activity) to get round the rules. But they shouldn't have to. The Prime Minister should have a strong cadre of able well-informed political advisers, and individual cabinet ministers should be able to assemble small teams of people they can trust politically to act in the interests of their democratic mandate.

So, if and when Liam Fox goes, and once Cameron finally gets rid of the disaster that is Andrew Lansley [and it gives me no pleasure to note that this blog told you so long before the election], he should also move Maude. And do a U-turn on political advice.

Twigg must regain Labour's education inititiative

2011-10-07T12:30:00.000+01:00

It is good news that Stephen Twigg, an unashamed fan of academies, has been appointed by Ed Miliband as his new shadow education secretary. Andy Burnham never really regained the initiative having started badly, although his focus on vocational education was one of a number of ways he recognised the coalition's weaknesses. But by allowing academies to be stolen by the Tories as their great initiative, he left his successor with a lot of ground to make up. Twigg must now be bold and ensure that Labour education policy has real credibility with parents, heads and teachers. He needs to be ready to outflank education secretary Michael Gove in areas such as rewards for schools that successfully overcome poverty - with a pupil premium that has real teeth - and to give a real sense of mission to academies and free schools. Whilst not disputing the need for rigorous academic qualifications, he should champion a technical baccalaureate as an alternative to the EBacc for some, but equally make clear where the Tories are simply following Labour successes on issues like floor targets and academies. Above all, he must regain the mantle of standards and diversity for Labour, making clear that a future Labour government would be on the side of today's parents and pupils, and not those seeking to turn the Labour policy clock back twenty years. It's good also to see Liz Kendall and Rachel Reeves getting much deserved promotions.

Here's the proof: Labour DID improve social mobility

2011-10-01T16:35:00.001+01:00

One of the more persistent myths perpetrated by the government and its media friends is that, for all its good intentions in education, the Labour government achieved little beyond building some shiny new schools and paying teachers better. Anyone who has visited schools before and after the Labour years knows this to be palpable nonsense. And there has been lots of data to show it to be so: from the primary school improvements, particularly from 1996-2001 and the huge reductions in schools below floor targets at GCSE.

But evidence of the benefits to poorer children on a national scale has been more elusive: the achievements of academies, the turnaround of London schools, the outsourcing of local authority education functions or the vast improvements in literacy and numeracy in boroughs like Tower Hamlets are all treated as beside the point, or the result of dodgy vocational qualifications (even though the results excluding these qualifications have shown substantial improvements and were published in the education statistics).

So, we should be grateful to the Financial Times, and its education editor Chris Cook, for a rarity in journalism today: an analysis informed by the facts. Cook and the FT have looke solely at the sort of subjects that Michael Gove thinks children should learn - sciences, modern languages, maths, English, history and geography - and concluded that

Between 2006 and 2010, after stripping out the effects of grade inflation, the bottom of the distribution shifted upwards: the gap closed by one sixth of a grade in every one of these GCSE subjects.

This is a remarkably important finding, as such gaps may narrow quickly in individual schools, but can take a lot to shift systemically. Less surprisingly, perhaps, the FT finds that

If vocational subjects are included, the fall is more pronounced. On that measure, the expected gap between two children from neighbourhoods ten deprivation percentiles apart closed from 2.8 to only 1.8 percentiles.

Equally fascinating is the extent to which Islington has narrowed the gap far faster than neighbouring Camden, a change the FT attributes to the borough's outsourced Cambridge Education, but which surely owes much too to the impact of London Challenge and the new academies in the area.

But despite the rhetoric, the truth is that coalition ministers know that Labour's key policies were working. That's why they have expanded sponsor-led academies and taken key aspects of the London Challenge - especially the National Leaders of Education - and increased them. Still, it is good to have the evidence.

Ed's confident performance: but will his rhetoric make good policy?

2011-09-27T16:17:00.000+01:00

One thing can be said about Ed Miliband's speech at the Labour conference this afternoon. He has shown thar he is capable of delivering a speech confidently, even if the power companies cut live TV coverage for a few minutes, and that included a decent self-deprecating joke or two. He gave some strong messages on fiscal responsibility, echoing Ed Balls, towards the start of his speech, where were necessary and will need repetition.There was also the making of a strong populist argument in the speech This is that he is on the side of the ordinary hard-working person or the more productive businessperson. He will cut through the elites that have let people so badly down over the last few years, not least the bankers.

In one sense, this theme has the potential to resonate in these tough times. The 'producers or predators' line comes across well in the bulletins. People do feel let down by the powers that be, and it makes sense to put himself against the vested interests at the moment. There is a strong theme too in focusing on those who work on moderate incomes and this a theme that the coalition too often fails to recognise: talk of narrowing gaps often focuses just on the very poorest, yet it is important that those on relatively low and modest working incomes don't feel that work doesn't pay. Narrowing gaps must be about more than those who are helped off welfare: in government, Labour delivered more for the deciles just above the lowest group in areas like education, and those are the people who will decide most whether the party is in government again. Talking to them is good politics.

The danger is that without the detail, the ambitions fail to connect with delivery. Certainly, he makes a strong case for social mobility: but more will be needed than cut-price fees where the loan repayment levels remain the same. Equally, the talk of differential business tax rates need more clarity - frontbenchers challenged to defend it on TV can tell him that - as does the proposal to give hard workers preference with social housing.However, after this speech, Ed Miliband has moved out of the shadows of the last Labour government, but he will need to guard against the instincts of some in the party whose interest is more in a quiet life of Tory-bashing than the inconvenience of winning three elections. Today allowed Ed Miliband to set out his vision: now he must put flesh on the bones, all the while ensuring that his argument maintains the hard edge that could provide the makings of a winning manifesto.

Ed's challenge: to re-engage with the South

2011-09-26T15:55:00.000+01:00

Ed Miliband put in a surprisingly confident performance on the Andrew Marr show yesterday. And Ed Balls has said some of the right things in his Shadow Chancellor's speech to the Liverpool conference today. But, it is hard to feel yet that Dave and Sam should be pre-booking the removals van for 2015. By tomorrow afternoon, Ed Miliband should at least ensure that they think they may have to do so. And starting from where Labour is now, it's a pretty tall order.

The mediocre local election results have been followed by modest poll leads since May. At least they are poll leads for Labour, but the image of its key figures is dismal, and people judge a future government on its key personnel as much as on its policies. There are precious few of those too: of course, there is some wisdom in holding fire on policy detail so early in the parliament. The planned cut in the fees cap to £6000 did, at least, generate some headlines, though it may become a millstone around the leadership's neck come the manifesto - inflation may well have lifted it to nearer £7000 by 2015, for a start. The bigger problem is that we have had too little indication yet of Labour's direction of travel under Miliband beyond a wish to ease life for the ill-defined 'squeezed middle'.

Often in politics you have to apologise for something that you didn't do, or believe you didn't do, but which the electorate believes you did, if you are to win their trust to move to the next stage. Ed Miliband has been happy to do this on policies with which he disagreed. But the most important issue relates to Labour and the economy. The party makes a good case that the essentials were in good shape until the economic crisis, but voters still believe that it didn't do enough in the good times to prepare for a rainy day. That is the charge to which Labour must respond effectively. Ed Balls is right that the Government needs to boost growth, though his targeted proposed cut in VAT for home improvements seems more considered than his proposed reversing the latest coalition VAT rise. But his more important message was that Labour would have tough fiscal rules governed by the coalition's Office for Budget Responsibility, and would not reverse coalition cuts. That is a good step in the right direction, but it is unlikely to be enough to cut through the unforgiving attitude of ex-Labour voters who distrust the party on the economy.

Ed Miliband needs to go the extra step on the economy tomorrow. But he also needs to give a sense of what Labour's priorities will be in 2015. The problem with too much of what is being said and done at the moment is that it is backward-looking and retrospective: either trying to refight the issues of Labour in government, or even to respond to internal lobbyists who regretted the unfortunate interlude when the party held power. And best not to mention the anti-immigrant protectionism of Blue Labour. Miliband's front bench has plenty of able people on it of whom we have seen far too little, and the recent Progress Purple Book at least offered some good ideas. But Miliband has also failed to set a clear stamp on the direction of policy and his endless policy reviews need a better steer than they have been given to date if they are not to prove a big embarrassment.

In one sense, tomorrow's speech is a big opportunity. It is a chance to tell ordinary voters that there is a lot more to Ed Miliband than his odd relationship with his brother. Few voters have yet got beyond that in their understanding of him. But it is also a big danger, that it becomes a missed opportunity to define Labour in terms that will regain support among the 'squeezed middle classes' of Southern England and the Midlands: the people of the London and Birmingham suburbs, the coastal towns from Kent to Cornwall, the new towns like Reading, Swindon and Slough across to the West and in Bristol and its environs. If Ed doesn't speak to them tomorrow, his party is simply speaking to itself.

Clegg's summer school pupil premium raid another reduction in school freedoms

2011-09-21T09:34:00.003+01:00

When I heard news that Nick Clegg has borrowed David Blunkett's 1997 summer school idea to give himself something to say in his conference speech, I wondered where the money was coming from. After all, the coalition has been busy axing Labour agencies and initiatives to disguise its cuts to the general school budget and to pay for the much-vaunted pupil premium. And a principle of the premium has been that it is up to heads, not central or national government, to decide how to spend it.

Now don't get me wrong. Summer schools are not a bad idea, though their impact in the late nineties was not as strong over time as we hoped. I have also long seen a role for earmarked spending when you want to focus on a particular programme or goal. Blunkett used the Standards Fund both to direct a degree of spending on key programmes and to lever in additional resources. A big weakness in the pupil premium has been its lack of leverage or conditionality. But this has not -until now - been the view of the coalition.

So, the summer schools will take £50m from the £1.25 bn pupil premium pot for next year. They will do it by penalising schools that don't set up summer schools, which is the same as earmarking the funds. That may not be a huge amount - £50 from each pupil on free school meals, perhaps - but a principle has been broken. As ministers want something else new to announce, the pupil premium pot can again be raided in the same way, especially as its value increases year-on-year (all paid for by cuts in other school funding). At the same time, the funding consultation - lauded by Clegg in his recent education speech where he hailed resurgent local authorities - proposes to continue to allow local authorities a significant say over the distribution of school resources, moving away from a national funding formula.

With an increasing straitjacket also being imposed on the curriculum through measures like the English Baccalaureate, is it any wonder that a growing number of school and academy leaders are wondering whether all the coalition rhetoric about greater freedom for schools is increasingly feeling like so much hot air?

This post also appears at Public Finance and has been highlighted by Polly Curtis on her Guardian Reality Check blog.

Why Michael D is more likely than Martin McG to become Irish president

2011-09-18T11:14:00.001+01:00

When the deputy first minister of Northern Ireland, Martin McGuinness, announced yesterday that he would take a few weeks off helping to run the North to run for the Irish Presidency, the media became rather excited. But it is unlikely that the Sinn Fein politician and former IRA commander will reach Aras an Uachtarain, the seat of the Irish president. Indeed, the real contest in Ireland is between two equally fascinating figures, whose prominence tells us more about the Republic today than Sinn Fein's canny bid to shore up its support south of the border.
For weeks, the Irish presidential contest has been taking the form of a national soap opera. First, there was the withdrawal of Senator David Norris, the Joycean scholar and gay rights campaigner, who was leading the race. He left after it emerged that he had defended a former partner in Israel who had been convicted of sex with a 15 year-old boy. What really killed his campaign was less the allegation than the resignation of campaign team members who felt betrayed as they hadn't been told about the story in advance. Norris is back in the running after popular feeling called for his return: hence an appearance on the Late Late Show, Ireland's long-running chat show, om Friday night. One Sunday paper has a straw poll this morning suggesting his lead has been regained.

While Norris was out of the running, the top spot was occupied by no less remarkable a figure, the Labour candidate, Michael D Higgins (pictured), a former culture minister, a poet and a prominent left-winger in the party, who in many ways projects as professorial a persona as Norris. Higgins was the minister who made Ireland safe and attractive for international film crews. Today's Sunday Independent poll, the scientific part conducted before the weekend announcements and Norris's reappearance, still has him as the clear frontrunner.

All this has left the two other main parties, Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, in the part of also-rans. Fine Gael, at least, has a candidate in Gay Mitchell, a popular Dublin Dail deputy, but he has been running a distant second to Higgins until this weekend. Fianna Fail, the once-mighty party of DeValera, was humiliated in the general election earlier this year, and now has just 10pc of the vote. The party leader, Michael Martin, already facing humiliation in a by-election for what was the party's only Dublin seat, has wanted to sit the presidential poll out but has been defied by some in his surviving rump of a parliamentary party. Now there are suggestions that Fianna Fail parliamentarians should nominate Norris - he needs such nominations to stand - which would at least give the fairly traditionalist party a wholly different outlook. The social entrepreneur and head of the Irish special olympics, Mary Davis, an independent who has gained enough support to run, is the only woman definitely running this time.

In the past weeks, there have also been walk-on parts from Gay Byrne, the hugely self-regarding father of Irish television, who decided against running after a gratifyingly self-indulgent few days of speculation, and the right-wing Christian activist and Eurovision star, Dana Rosemary Scallon. There was a time when the Irish presidency was a retirement number for politicians, including DeValera, but more typically supremely boring figures like the late Patrick Hillery or Cearbhall O'Dalaigh. Mary Robinson's election in 1990 on a liberal feminist ticket changed all that, and her successor Mary McAleese helped solidify the sense of an office that was of national importance, albeit without much real power. McAleese's welcome for the Queen this year illustrated the proud dignity that she and Robinson brought to the office.

It is into this that Sinn Fein has sought to thrust Martin McGuinness, a man whose party officially boycotted the royal visit (aside from a brave mayor in Cashel), though he now generously tells us he would meet anyone if he were President. Few expect McGuinness to win, although the contest is, as we have seen, hugely volatile. But what it could achieve is a record Sinn Fein vote in the Republic, building on the 9.9% of the vote won in February. So, of course, Sinn Fein could take 15% with a McGuinness candidacy in a contest that is far more about personalities than it is about politics. However, support seems unlikely to go beyond that. Voters in the Republic are not always convinced of the credentials of their Northern brothers and sisters: when Fine Gael ran Austin Currie, a respected SDLP civil rights campaigner, in 1990, he was humiliated. And while Sinn Fein voters happily support IRA figures with strong Northern constituencies, especially in border areas, much of the party's support in cities like Dublin has owed more to their candidates' pavement politics than their Provo paramilitary past. The latter is also a turn-off to many middle ground voters, who may be happy to see McGuinness playing a prominent role in Stormont as the price for an end to the Troubles, but have no wish to see him having equal prominence in the south.

So, Sinn Fein may successfully shore up its vote and get a bit of extra publicity. But, at what price? To McGuinesss's credit, he has established an excellent working relationship with Peter Robinson, the DUP first minister at Stormont. While a caretaker Sinn Fein minister can act as locum as McGuinness canvasses in the South, the ripples from any controversies in that campaign can only destabilise their working partnership, and that is not good for the Northern power-sharing executive. It is inconceivable that there will not be considerable attention paid to McGuinness's IRA role and to any deaths associated with his time in its leadership. With sectarian tensions rising again over the summer, the last thing Northern Ireland needs is another opportunity to rake over the past in this way.

In the end, Higgins or Norris looks likely to become president. And their ability to do so will tell us as much about Ireland today as the decision of McGuinness to run for the Aras.

This post has been highlighted by Slugger O'Toole and Alex Massie on his Spectator blog.

Three Days in May

2011-09-14T11:11:00.000+01:00

To see a very fine performance by Warren Clarke as Churchill in Ben Brown's play Three Days in May, at the Theatre Royal Bath, last night. Clarke well captured the mix of wiles and passion that saw Churchill get his way at a crucial stage in World War II. The days in question, 26-28 May 1940, were on the eve of Dunkirk, as Belgium had surrendered and France was close to doing so. Churchill had four others in his war cabinet: for the Tories, remarkably, both Neville Chamberlain, still party leader, and the foreign secretary Lord Halifax, both noted appeasers, with Clem Attlee and Arthur Greenwood for Labour. The real drama is between Churchill and Halifax - ably portrayed by Jeremy Clyde - over the latter's support for a French attempt to use Mussolini as a mediator to sue for peace with Hitler. In the end, a lot of the drama hinges on how Chamberlain reacts to the competing arguments, scarred as he is by Munich. This is a splendid production by Alan Strachan, and a fascinating reminder of the debates that still took place in the Tory party nine months after the outbreak of the Second World War.

A pointless cull of MPs

2011-09-13T14:06:00.000+01:00

What, exactly, is the point of the coalition's cull of MPs? It is said that it will bring more equity to representation, as it takes a few thousand fewer people to elect a Labour MP than a Conservative MP. Ofr course, that takes no account of lower levels of registration in the inner city constituencies where the differences are greatest. But let's leave that be for a moment. Achieving greater equity - something that is already the job of the Boundary Commission - doesn't require a reduction in the number of MPs by 50 at the same time. This is apparently happening to save £12 million. And at what price? Constituencies that bear some relationship to geography and council boundaries are to be shredded in favour of ludicrous agglomorations of wards pushed together to achieve the optimum size dictated by the coalition. In my home constituency of North East Somerset, we would now become Keynsham and Kingswood. The only small mercy is that Jacob Rees-Mogg would no longer be my MP. But that doesn't mean it makes sense. I used to chair Mitcham and Morden CLP in London: it is to be replaced by a new Mitcham constituency that will include a Lambeth ward for no good reason other than mathematical necessity.

But it is not really Cameron's fault that this whole farce came to pass. It is that of the Liberal Democrats, who were too naive to tie the cull of MPs to the passing of the Alternative Vote in a referendum. This left Cameron free to dump on Clegg from a huge height on AV while continuing with his constituency cull. The irony of the whole exercise is that it looks like it will not deliver the gains in seat advantage that the Tories hoped to achieve through their gerrymeander. Instead it may create as many aggrieved seatless Tory MPs as Labour ones. So, there are few winners - and any 'savings' are bound initially to be eaten up along with the cost of the time-wasting involved in a lengthy appeals process and subsequent internal party battles between MPs whose constituencies have been significantly changed.

Whoever thought this would win back public confidence in politics and politicians? Give them a seat on the Lib Dem committee for approving £2m donations from passing fraudsters.

The Syndicate

2011-09-07T13:49:00.000+01:00

To see a great performance by Ian McKellan at the Theatre Royal Bath, where he is playing Don Antonio in the Chichester production of The Syndicate. Eduardo de Filipo's play is set in and around Naples in 1960, where the Don is in his twilight years and playing a cross between Solomon and Robin Hood to the locals and their problems. With a strong cast of twenty, including Michael Pennington as the loyal Doctor Fabio and Cherie Lunghi as the godfather's wife Donna Armida, the whole production has a lot going for it, helped by a splendid set. But, despite the great performances - and some nice comic touches as the Don hoodwinks the local loan shark - the whole play feels like a lot less than the sum of its players. A stronger first part is followed by a gradually weakening storyline and a mightily clumsy final act that leaves one simply puzzled, and asking what it was all about? The capacity audience at Bath lapped up the strong performances but were left none the wiser about its import.

How novel are the Free Schools?

2011-09-07T10:21:00.000+01:00

This month's opening of 24 free schools has had the media in a permanent state of excitement. And, on the face of it, the DFE has pulled off an impressive feat in seeing so many of the Conservatives' flagships opening so soon after the general election. After all, earlier this year, it seemed like just eight would be ready. However, a closer analysis of the new schools suggests all is not quite what it seems.

17 of the 24 are small primary schools, so comparisons with the early (secondary) academies that replaced failing schools are unworthy and facile, not least as the groundwork for the free schools had already been laid, as we shall see.

In many cases, new primaries would have been needed to respond to demographic changes. And it is good that these will be academies, but they would have been needed anyway.

Of those 24, there are ten that could be described as faith-based. David Blunkett opened the door to new faith schools when - in the face of Tory opposition when they were last in power - he approved the first Muslim schools in 1998, eight months after the general election. Plenty of new faith schools followed. Some became voluntary-aided schools, others foundation schools or academies (which is all in governance terms that 'free schools' are) and it is quite likely that the faith-based schools opening this week could have followed this route.

Then, there are four independent school conversions. Here, there is a direct read across to a policy started by Labour, where schools like Belvedere in Liverpool and Colston Girls in Bristol - more significant independent secondary schools than those opening this week - joined the state sector as academies.

Add to that another group of five schools sponsored by academies, mainly new primaries. Some even use the name 'academy'. To be fair to Gove, he has opened the academies programme to primary schools where Labour had confined primary age academies to the 'all through' route. But this group is simply an extension of existing brands like Ark and E-Act, as well as an imaginative response to demand by the Cuckoo Hall academy in Edmonton, the first of Gove's primary academies. These are simply additional sponsor-led academies.

Perhaps five - including Toby Young's West London Free School - so far are what might be called parent or teacher-promoted free schools (one is preventing a council closure plan). Here, again, Gove has stripped back the bureaucracy that made it difficult for parent promoters in the past, though several did open under Labour and the rules were changed in their favour from 2006.

These schools are all new academies, as their legislative basis makes clear. What they are not is free schools on the Swedish model, where profit-making companies respond to parental demand, and where there was no tradition of the sort of diversity offered by academies, foundation ands voluntary-aided schools.

But it is in the expansion of sponsor-led academies, both primary and secondary, that the potential for a genuine improvement in standards most lies. DFE says that 45 more opened this week, in disadvantaged areas or replacing failing schools, and a further 49 will open in the New Year. The results from the big academy sponsors this year for academies opened under Labour were remarkable, but have not been properly publicised - many had improvements in excess of ten percentage points this year. This is where the gritty school reforms will continue.

Free schools certainly have a place in the fabric of our education system. They can provide parents with greater options, and it would be wrong simply to confine them to poorer areas. But they should also be linked to improvement in disadvantaged areas. It is right to have ways to enable new faith schools to respond to demand and good independent schools to drop fees and selection. However, the Government should be judged on how it lifts standards across the board, including in once failing schools that have become academies, rather than the number of schools it opens under a new brand name.

Don't neuter TripAdvisor

2011-09-06T15:17:00.000+01:00

TripAdvisor, the website where reviews can be posted about hotels and restaurants, has come in for a lot of flak of late. It is to be investigated by the Advertising Standards Authority in the UK for its apparent propensity to publish fake and unchecked reviews. While the site, which is now a giant money-spinner, may need to tighten its procedures, it would be a big mistake to make it too difficult for ordinary travellers to add their reviews to the website.

I write as one who has been awarded a gold star, no less, for having contributed in excess of 100 reviews to the website over the last few years. I also write as one who has enjoyed excellent hotels and restaurants in places as varied as Istanbul, Dresden and Alnwick as a result of recommendations on the site. Of course, I've come across fishy reviews along the way: the number of glowing reviews for a pleasant, but hardly outstanding, Italian island hotel suggested a degree of conspiracy. Its location still persuaded me to go, and I didn't regret it, though my review was more measured. And it isn't just the obviously fraudulent reviews that irritate: it is just as annoying to wade through the overblown complaints about a trivial reception incident in an otherwise excellent hotel or the numerous moans that Spanish hotels don't do a proper English breakfast.

Yet, for all its flaws, TripAdvisor has greatly enhanced our lives. It can also be a useful corrective to the clever photography and absurd descriptions that too many hotels use to hide their true location or nature - a rather more pervasive example of fakery than dodgy TripAdvisor reviews, in my experience.

In the past, I might have relied on a small number of guide book recommendations, and some of them have been pretty wide of the mark while others have been excellent, or on the brochure choices of travel agents. By offering near complete lists of hotels in cities, and at least an indication of the top 20, one has a great starting point to research further online.

Rarely have I been disappointed in the resulting choices, and most of my later reviews have reflected the original 4* or 5* rankings given by TripAdvisor reviewers. On those rare occasions where a hotel or restaurant has defied its online reputation, TripAdvisor has given me somewhere to let others share my disappointment.

I hope it will continue to provide that forum.

Clegg's real threat to coalition school plans

2011-09-05T14:43:00.000+01:00

The Deputy Prime Minister's spinners were out on manouevres this weekend, briefing a lot of nonsense about how our hero had defeated the nasty Tory profit-monger Michael Gove over his plans to allow greedy capitalists to make a few bob out of free schools. Since no such plan is on the agenda in Government (much to the annoyance of some providers and think tanks) and was even ruled out in the Tory manifesto, this particular Aunt Sally seemed to have been introduced merely to impress the more gullible types at the forthcoming Liberal Democrat conference, as well as the Sunday lobby with its particular fondness for the genre.

Unsurprisingly, there is little in Nick Clegg's actual speech today to justify any of that hype. But there is a lot that is potentially rather more alarming for free schools and academies, and is a real threat to their independent development. This threat comes from a clear desire by the DPM to restore the role of local authorities in several crucial respects. Here is what he says:

I think some confusion has been allowed to grow around our long term vision for schools: There’s an increasing belief that we are trying to sideline local authorities altogether because Academies so far have only had a direct relationship with the Secretary of State and the department in Whitehall. So let me straighten this out once and for all. This government wants all schools, over time, to have the opportunity to be autonomous with Academy freedoms. Both Liberal Democrats and Conservatives promised that in our manifestos. But we do not want that to lead to mass centralisation of the schools system. Far from it: as Academies become more commonplace, and eventually the norm, we will make sure people do not lose their voice over what local schools provide. So we will need to develop a new role and relationship between schools, central and local government.

Councils have an essential job. We will ensure they have a stronger role in making sure there are school places in the area for every child, not just those who know how to play the system. We have strengthened their role in admissions. They will oversee our new, fairer, admissions code. A code which makes it easier for the poorest to get the best places and easier for any citizen to complain if the rules are broken. We will strengthen their role supporting children with special needs. Sarah Teather is bringing forward a radical set of reforms which will ensure local councils can help knock heads together to get a better deal for disabled and disadvantaged children. And we will give them a critical role ensuring there is fairer funding Local authorities will help ensure the schools forums which currently divide up the cake locally are more transparent and they will help guarantee that academies, and other schools, are funded on exactly the same basis.

But we can – and we will – go further. Where there are no schools the local authority "owns" any more - there should be no barrier to the local authority working in a new relationship with academies, in partnership with central government.
The local authority could have a key role in deciding who new providers are and holding existing providers more sharply to account. Local authorities, closer by their very nature to their community than the Secretary of State, could be more determined than distant Whitehall to drive up attainment in their own patch – for example by setting higher standards for all schools in their area. That is why I am inviting those local authorities which wish to move to the new phase to grasp this opportunity and be involved in piloting this new role, starting from next year.

For most of the schools converting to academy status, a desire to have greater independence from the local authority is a big selling point. So too for some of those involved with free schools: read what Patricia Sowter, who is sponsoring Woodpecker Hall Academy, told me in my article in this month's Public Finance.

Already, that independence is being eroded, the result one suspects as much of pressure from a resurgent Conservative-led Local Government Association as of the DPM's arm-twisting at the cabinet table. The Government has retreated on plans to move to a national funding formula, as the DPM notes approvingly in his speech, and is giving the job to local authorities to decide (with a few extra restrictions) on the funding of academies and free schools in their area, even if the money is paid by a national agency. It remains to be seen, too, whether large authorities like Birmingham and Kent, where their Conservative politicians oppose coalition academy policies, not to mention the councillors across the country of all parties who are hostile, will see this new phase in quite the same spirit that the DPM envisages.

Yesterday, I thought that Clegg's spin about profit-makers was all about currying favour with his activists. Today I wonder whether it was as much about deflecting the media from his rather more worrying pledge to revitalise the role of local authorities in education. That is a battle that he and his Tory councillor allies appear already to have won.

Where next for academies and free schools policy

2011-08-30T14:03:00.000+01:00

I have written a feature analysis piece for the September edition of Public Finance on the development of academies and free schools in the future. You can read the article here.

Early GCSEs are no scam

2011-08-26T09:19:00.000+01:00

Today's Telegraph and Mail have found a new target in their relentless battle against the achievements of our schools and young people: the early GCSE. They tell us (with some encouragement from the exam boards, it would seem) that the main reason schools enter their students for exams early is to 'play' the league tables. This is not the case. The practice was actively encouraged for bright students, so that some they might be stretched, just as a growing number of schools have students taking AS levels a year early too. One of the most inspiring classes I ever visited was a 15-strong AS Maths class of 15 year-olds in North Liverpool Academy, a place I should imagine is entirely alien to those who try to concoct new ways to do down students each year. These were young people from some of the most disadvantaged communities in the country. Schools were actively encouraged to do this as part of Labour's 'gifted and talented' drive. Another reason why schools do some GCSEs early is to encourage young people to do a wider range of exams, and to show them that they can achieve. Others do use it is a practice run. Yes, some schools will bank the GCSEs early, but their motive is not just about the tables, it is as much about widening the achievement of their students and stretching them. But that is perhaps too noble an explanation for the shrill voices of the Tory press.

The danger of dumbing down GCSE statistics

2011-08-22T12:31:00.001+01:00

Damian Hinds, a Conservative MP, tells us this morning that a set of figures he has compiled from Parliamentary Questions 'show categorically how, over 13 years, the last Labour Government undermined the lifechances of a generation by steering them away from the subjects that employers value most.' Having been a part of that Government's education policy for six of those 13 years, I must have missed the deliberate steering.

It is true that - in line with the approach generally advocated by the Conservative front bench towards the National Curriculum - Estelle Morris removed compulsion in modern foreign languages for 14-16 year-olds, in order to focus more on 7-11 year-olds and to allow a disaffected minority to pursue vocational options. But then it is equally true that a concerted drive from 2006 by Labour ministers to encourage take-up in STEM subjects has halted a decline that began under the Conservatives in subjects like Physics and has led to big improvements in take-up of science and Maths subjects at A-level and GCSE for five years. It is also the case that when it became clear that there was some 'gaming' going on as a result of GCSE equivalences - equivalences that had been recommended by independent advisers for courses that at the time had little take-up - the Labour government shifted the main GCSE measure from 'any GCSEs and equivalents' to one that includes English and Maths.

That remains the main measure by which the Government judges schools; and under it, the number of schools with fewer than 30pc of pupils gaining five good GCSEs including English and Maths fell from 1600 to fewer than 100 last year. Michael Gove has raised the benchmark in response. And the proportion of pupils gaining five good GCSEs (or equivalents) including GCSE English and Maths rose from a 35% in 1997 to 54% in 2010. Indeed even if one focuses just on GCSEs and excludes all equivalent qualifications, the proportion is 49.5%, still a substantial and real improvement.

So, it is simply nonsense to suggest that Labour was engaged in some elaborate dumbing down exercise. Indeed the Labour government maintained and strengthened the Standards over Time work started by the previous Conservative government. Labour's main interest was in seeing far more schools and pupils reaching a benchmark that is accepted by Damian Hinds' colleagues as valid; in that it succeeded so well that the floor targets have been kept by the coalition.

But it is also the case that academic qualifications will not be the answer for everyone: we need more technical and applied options of real value, something Labour tried to achieve with the Diplomas, and succeeded in some like Engineering (according to Tory adviser Sir James Dyson) and IT. And the current Government really does need to decide where it stands on pre-16 vocational qualifications: Alison Wolf thinks they're generally a mistake if they take up more than 20% of curriculum time; Ken Baker wants more technical education from 14 with his excellent university technical colleges initiative. The truth is that the academic core of the EBacc will not be right for every student, which is why Labour focused on English and Maths, and saw substantial improvements in both, especially in the poorest schools. Rather than trading silly insults, perhaps Mr Hinds, whose Conservative-led education select committee recently damned the EBacc, could assist in resolving the split in his own ranks that really does matter to young people's futures.

Vote in the Total Politics Blog awards

2011-08-10T08:22:00.000+01:00

The annual Total Politics awards are now open for voting. If you have enjoyed Conor's Commentary over the last year, please vote for this blog and blogger. In any case, do vote for your favourite blogs so there is a good turnout. You can vote here.

Carol's GCSE maths split could add up to a solution

2011-08-08T08:32:00.000+01:00

Carol Vorderman has come up with one very good idea about what to do on Maths, but some of her other prescriptions need more careful thought. Her report for the Conservative Party has attracted standard diplomatic language from Education Secretary Michael Gove, suggesting no great enthusiasm for her findings, but one of her ideas really should be taken forward. Vorderman is absolutely right to argue that GCSE Maths should be split between a functional exam and an exam focused on algebra and trigonometry. It is vital that everyone understands how to calculate, use fractions and percentages; not everyone will master calculus.But it is also important that any functional test is developed with business, if it is genuinely to achieve its aims. Otherwise it could act as a hindrance to achieving wider qualifications - as the Diploma has shown.

However, if a young person gets a good GCSE in functional maths, it is less obvious that they need to continue studying to the same standard to18, as Vorderman recommends: of course maths should be integrated into other courses as appropiate, and those who don't get a C grade at 16 should at least continue to aim for this grade in functional maths. Unless we move towards an International Baccalaureate style exam at 18, it is harder to see how compulsory maths could fit in with our current A levels.

Vorderman's attack on national testing in primary school seems more perverse: teaching to the test has always occurred, and happens at GCSE and A level. The issue is what they are being taught and whether being tested helps youngsters to retain what they have learned. If testing currently doesn't do that enough, improve the tests but don't abandon something that helped improve maths teaching in primary schools (along with Labour's numeracy strategy, which Vorderman launched) considerably. There may need to be a renewal of the energy that the numeracy strategy brought, but it would be wrong to replace testing with assessment at 11; doing so would be a huge setback for primary maths.

Enda Kenny's anti-Vatican stance represents ordinary Irish Catholics

2011-07-26T12:25:00.003+01:00

Much of the commentary on last week's Dáil speech by Taoiseach Enda Kenny, where he strongly criticised the Vatican for its failures over the child abuse scandals, has sought to present his intervention as being anti-Catholic. But that would be a profound misreading of its significance. Yesterday's decision by the Vatican to withdraw its Papal Nuncio from Ireland would have provoked a crisis had it occurred even 20 years ago: today it may raise a few eyebrows, but at Rome not Kenny.

That is because he spoke up not just for the victims of child abuse, he also gave voice to the millions of bewildered Irish people, many of whom remain massgoers, who feel utterly appalled by the actions of the institutional Church, both its Bishops and the Vatican. Kenny, himself a practising Catholic, gave a speech that was much more powerful because he understands exactly how ordinary people in his Mayo constituency feel about the Church's attempts to cover up incidents of clerical child abuse even, as in Cloyne, after supposedly tough new procedures had been put in place to prevent a repeat of what had been covered up for decades. Kenny's critique of the Vatican was unprecedented:

The revelations in the Cloyne report have brought the Government, Irish Catholics and the Vatican to an unprecedented juncture. It is fair to say that after the Ryan and Murphy reports, Ireland is, perhaps, unshockable when it comes to the abuse of children. However, the Cloyne report has proved to be of a different order because for the first time in this country a report on child sexual abuse exposes an attempt by the Holy See to frustrate an inquiry in a sovereign, democratic republic as little as three years ago, not three decades ago. In doing so the report excavates the dysfunction, disconnection and elitism that dominates the culture of the Vatican to this day. The rape and torture of children were down-played or managed to uphold the primacy of the institution, its power, standing and reputation. Far from listening to evidence of humiliation and betrayal with St. Benedict’s “ear of the heart”, the Vatican’s reaction was to parse and analyse it with the gimlet eye of a Canon lawyer. This calculated, withering position is the polar opposite of the radicalism, humility and compassion on which the Roman Church was founded. Such radicalism, humility and compassion comprise the essence of its foundation and purpose. This behaviour is a case of Roma locuta est: causa finita est, except in this instance nothing could be further from the truth.

The Cloyne report’s revelations are heart-breaking. It describes how many victims continued to live in the small towns and parishes in which they were reared and abused. Their abuser was often still in the area and still held in high regard by their families and community. The abusers continued to officiate at family weddings and funerals. In one case, the abuser even officiated at a victim’s wedding. There is little that I or anyone else in the House can say to comfort that victim or others, however much we wish to. However, we can and do recognise the bravery and courage of all the victims who told their stories to the commission. While it will take a long time for Cloyne to recover from the horrors uncovered, it could take the victims and their families a lifetime to pick up the pieces of their shattered existence, if ever they do.....

The people, including many faithful Catholics like me, have been shocked and dismayed by the repeated failings of church authorities to face up to what is required. They deserve and require confirmation from the Vatican that it does accept, endorse and require compliance by all church authorities here with the obligations to report all cases of suspected abuse, whether current or historical, to the State’s authorities in line with the Children First national guidance which will have the force of law. Clericalism has rendered some of Ireland’s brightest and most privileged and powerful men either unwilling or unable to address the horrors cited in the Ryan and Murphy reports. This Roman clericalism must be devastating for good priests, some of them old, others struggling to keep their humanity, even their sanity, as they work hard to be the keepers of the church’s light and goodness within their parishes, communities and the condition of the human heart.

Thankfully for them and us, this is not Rome. Nor is it industrial school or Magdalene Ireland, where the swish of a soutane, smothered conscience and humanity and the swing of a thurible ruled the Irish Catholic world. This is the Republic of Ireland in 2011. It is a republic of laws, rights and responsibilities and proper civic order where the delinquency and arrogance of a particular version of a particular kind of morality will no longer be tolerated or ignored.
As a practising Catholic, I do not say any of this easily. Growing up, many of us in here learned that we were part of a pilgrim church. Today, that church needs to be a penitent church, a church truly and deeply penitent for the horrors it perpetrated, hid and denied - in the name of God, but for the good of the institution.

Through our legislation, through our Government’s action to put children first, those who have been abused can take some small comfort in knowing that they belong to a nation - to a democracy - where humanity, power, rights and responsibilities are enshrined and enacted always for their good; where the law - their law, as citizens of this country - will always supersede canon law that has neither legitimacy nor place in the affairs of this country.

This report tells us a tale of a frankly brazen disregard for protecting children. If we do not respond swiftly and appropriately as a State, we will have to prepare ourselves for more reports like this. I agree with Archbishop Martin that the church needs to publish any other and all other reports like this as soon as possible. I note the commission is very positive about the work of the National Board for Safeguarding Children, established by the church to oversee the operation by dioceses and religious orders. The commission notes that all church authorities were required to sign a contract with the national board agreeing to implement the relevant standards and that those refusing to sign would be named in the board’s annual report......The then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said: “Standards of conduct appropriate to civil society or the workings of a democracy cannot be purely and simply applied to the Church”. As the Holy See prepares its considered response to the Cloyne Report, I want to make it clear, as Taoiseach, that when it comes to the protection of the children of this State, the standards of conduct which the Church deems appropriate to itself cannot and will not be applied to the workings of democracy and civil society in this republic - not purely, or simply or otherwise, because children have to be and will be put first

Bishop Magee, the former Papal secretary who became Bishop of Cloyne, was perhaps even more a creature of the Vatican than many of his colleagues, but with the sole exception of the current Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, there is little sign even yet that the hierarchy understands quite how much pain it has caused not just to those who were physically abused but to the many more people who trusted its priests and hierarchy to stand for the conservative values their predecessors preached relentlessly in the early decades of the Free State and the Republic.

Ireland has freed itself in many ways from the vice-like grip that the Church had on the body politic: voters have accepted divorce and contraception, though not abortion. The censorship that saw great writers and movies banned has long been relaxed. The bookies' and pollsters' favourite for the Irish Presidency is the gay Joycean scholar, Sen David Norris. The moral attitudes of Irish young people differ little from their European counterparts. Yet, until Kenny's speech last week, no senior Irish politician had captured the feelings of those who were brought up as Catholics, and may still practice, but felt a huge sense of betrayal in that upbringing.

Kenny's speech will surely rank as being just as important in Irish history as DeValera's 1943 St Patrick's Day address during the Second World War (referred to in Ireland as 'the Emergency'), where he talked of "a people who, satisfied with frugal comfort, devoted their leisure to the things of the spirit – a land whose countryside would be bright with cosy homesteads, whose fields and villages would be joyous with the sounds of industry, with the romping of sturdy children, the contest of athletic youths and the laughter of happy maidens". While that speech signalled another two decades of isolationist introversion, Kenny's speech suggest a determination to grasp the country's failings, social and economic, which had been lacking in the hapless later Fianna Fail years, especially after the collapse of the Celtic Tiger.

The irony is that eighteen months ago, Kenny was being written off by the pundits as a no-hoper. I joined an RTE discussion that sought to draw comparisons with the fate of Gordon Brown. Yet in that time it is Fianna Fail that has sunk to its lowest ever representation and the Taoiseach has ratings that any European leader would dearly love: a 53% approval rating at the weekend. Kenny's newfound popularity has given the Dublin coalition an unprecedented opportunity to reshape Ireland for the better: it is one that he and his Labour coalition partners must grasp with every power at their disposal.

Hidden by the hacking: end-of-term education manoeuvres

2011-07-20T12:31:00.002+01:00

With the eyes of the world turned elsewhere, the education department has been performing a few subtle U-turns that could save it further embarrassment later on.

First, they effectively ditched the whole idea of a National Funding Formula yesterday, as they bowed to the local government lobby and launched a consultation to continue using local factors, effectively a simplification of the existing formula. While many headteachers favour a formula that reduces the extraordinary anomalies that exist between schools in similar circumstances, but across council boundaries, it was always going to be a tall order to introduce the change at a time of funding cuts. There would, of course, have been many howls of outrage if the cuts had been even more severe. But now, even academies and free schools will have their funding tied to local formulas, albeit with the more generous funding that comes from not taking local authority services. Sensibly, they propose to strengthen school forums, but this will need to be more than cosmetic and to avoid gaming, it should have to gain support from a majority of secondary and a majority of primary schools for anything beyond the basic formula. The shift was obscured by a more contentious statement on Building Schools for the Future, where Michael Gove said he would do what he intended all along.

Second, while ministers have clung to the English Baccalaureate in its current form in the league tables, they have announced that the existing vocational equivalences for GCSEs will continue for two years. Had they dropped them quickly, there would have been huge problems for schools adjusting, akin to the outrage caused when the EBacc was introduced retrospectively. However, they have missed a chance to add a Technical Baccalaureate to the mix, something that Kenneth Baker and Andrew Adonis have joined many heads in arguing for. The two year vocational hiatus should allow time to think again on this: but students starting their GCSE options in September need to know what their qualifications will be worth, as do their schools.

Anti-immigrant protectionism is not the answer

2011-07-18T14:58:00.001+01:00

Until now, it probably didn't matter a whole lot what Maurice Glasman had to say about anything. I quite happily allowed the chatter about Blue Labour to pass me by. Indeed, I probably thought there was something in the attempts to revive things like credit unions at a time of banking crises. His community projects offered a useful counterpoint to David Cameron's Big Society. But Ed Miliband was not in any position to challenge Cameron, and few cared what his 'gurus' had to say about policy. Not any more. Miliband's deft handling of the ever-widening hacking scandal has given him a new prominence, and the utterances of this guru start to matter.

As someone who has played my part in taming, if not slaying, a few sacred cows, I suppose I shouldn't really object if this 'guru' wants to start a bovine bloodbath. But when what he proposes is a troubling combination of protectionism and a view of immigration that would be seen as daringly brave in the Monday Club, it is surely time to question Miliband's wisdom in listening too closely to his views.

To be fair, there is always a bit of Maurice Glasman that is worth listening to: his wish to revive crafts and community has much merit. But it is his corollary of those ideas that can be worrying.

In an interview published in today's Daily Telegraph, apparently conducted for the Fabian Review, Glasman has plenty to say about previous Labour leaders, regarding Tony Blair, who won three general elections, as having a 'slightly demented' view of modernisation. He is, of course, entitled to his opinion. So I trust he will forgive me if I raise an eyebrow at his view of the role of migration in a modern economy, though I will leave any psychiatric analysis to professionals. Here's how Mary Riddell reported him:

[He would] renegotiate the rules on European workers and freeze inward migration for EU and non-EU citizens, except where employers or universities make a case for a specific, skilled individual. "We've got to reinterrogate our relationship with the EU on the movement of labour. The EU has gone from being a sort of pig farm subsidised bloc... to the free movement of labour and capital. It's legalistic, it's administrative, and it's no good. So I think we've got to renegotiate with the EU. His call is to restrict immigration to necessary entrants such as highly skilled leaders, especially in vocational skills. "We might, for example, bring in German masters, as we did in the 15th and 16th centuries to renew guilds."
But exemptions should be made on a case-by-case basis? "Yes. We should absolutely do that... Britain is not an outpost of the UN. We have to put the people in this country first." Even if that means stopping immigration completely for a period? "Yes. I would add that we should be more generous and friendly in receiving those [few] who are needed. To be more generous, we have to draw the line."

Let's just get this straight. We need to stop migration, regardless of the contribution migrants make to the economy. That means losing billions from university students who pay to study in the UK. It means forcing industry to employ only British workers, unless they are German meisters, though quite why they might wish to come here now with their own economy doing so well is not clear. It means that the economy should be allowed to take a nose-dive while we test the theory that those who are currently out of work are ready to take on the jobs that are currently filled by EU migrant labour, in turn surely increasing unemployment in the short term and making it impossible for British workers to work overseas. It means reducing our opportunities to export into international markets. Businesses facing real difficulties can go whistle if they need to recruit abroad to survive.

And, of course, it means leaving the European Union and defying our international asylum obligations to retreat into bucolic splendid isolation. Of course, the whole thing is not just isolationist, it is economically suspect, simply ignoring the realities of globalisation in favour of workerist nostalgia that would even have stretched crudulity in the 1950s Soviet Union. There was a reason that New Labour was an electoral success: it was in tune with the realities both of people's lives and of the world they lived in. David Cameron had to make similar adjustments with his party. The last thing Ed Miliband - and Labour - needs is an attempt to turn the party into an isolationist, anti-immigrant, protectionist force: that is hopefully not where the centre ground of British politics really lies.

More reasonable force in the classroom

2011-07-11T11:12:00.000+01:00

I'm delighted to see that the coalition is ending decades of wet liberal discipline policies in schools by giving teachers the right to use reasonable force in the classroom, something they have ~~not~~ been legally allowed to do since that scourge of disciplinarians David Blunkett published a piece of guidance entitled circular 10/98 (with those same rights to be enshrined in a 'right to discipline' in the 2006 Education and Inspections Act). Circular 10/98 said that teachers could use reasonable force where pupils were

committing a criminal offence (including behaving in a way that would be an offence if the pupil were not under the age of criminal responsibility)
injuring themselves or others;
causing damage to property (including the pupil's own property);
engaging in any behaviour prejudicial to maintaining good order and discipline at the school or among any of its pupils, whether that behaviour occurs in a classroom during a teaching session or elsewhere.

It received the backing of teaching unions (aside from NASUWT, which warned teachers off it as it is worried about litigation ) at the time. Of course, there may be a little more rhetorical flourish in the new regulations. But it is absurd to suggest that previous governments have not sought to address this issue. The reality is that it is fear of parental litigation not too much state regulation that is holding back teachers who don't use their existing powers. Perhaps, the parallel changes to the rules on allegations against teachers will change that. But in today's litigious climate, I wouldn't count on it.

After the World has ended

2011-07-08T11:28:00.003+01:00

I feel sorry for many of the journalists who have lost their jobs as a result of the demise of the News of the World. Like many, I know people like David Wooding, the associate and political editor, to be good journalists who do their jobs professionally. I also still enjoy reading newspapers and recognise that there is a lot to be said for the variety that is available in both Britain and Ireland, and that such competition is in many ways healthy. But I refuse to mourn the potential demise of two unpleasant aspects of a British newspaper culture that have been more damaging to our society than MPs' claiming for duck islands on their expenses.

The first is the notion that anybody who is successful deserves to be brought down, by whatever means possible. Of course, there are those who are breaking the law or being grossly hypocritical, and they deserve to have their hypocrisy or illegality revealed. But the extent of the hacking that appears to have occurred, and the standard fare not just of the News of the World but of the tabloid press generally, works on the assumption that virtually everybody in political or public life is a wrongdoer who deserves to be exposed by whatever means possible. That is the culture that led to a toleration of hacking and apparently of contaminating computers with Trojans, using private investigators to obtain illegally private information or accepting that lying is all part of a greater good. It is not just a problem with the Murdoch press, and if we see it as confined to the News of the World, we will miss a chance to develop a much clearer sense of where the public interest differs from the potential prurient interest of the public.

The second is a degree of prurient morality that holds people in public life up to standards that few people manage in their private lives, and which are certainly not maintained by those who produce the newspapers. This morality holds that the fragility of many private lives must be held up to public ridicule regardless of the circumstances. That was as much the stock and trade of the News of the World as it is of the other tabloids (often, it is true, followed up by the broadsheets with a pretence of po-faced distaste or of inquiry into the activities of the tabloids.)

The inquiries that David Cameron has announced this morning need to do more than get to the bottom of the hacking scandal, or even of other illegal methods used to acquire private information about individuals who just happen to find themselves - even by tragedy - in the public eye. It needs, as Ed Miliband has said, to see a robust replacement to the Press Complaints Commission, one that is legally required to uphold both the freedom of the press and the responsibilities that it has too. It also needs to gain a new consensus both on those responsibilities and the parameters of the public interest. There needs too to be an understanding of where these roles lie in an increasingly electronic media.

Those who argue along these lines have, in the past, been accused of wanting to muzzle a free press. But the way that newspapers have evolved in the last two decades, where even the broadsheets make it difficult to separate fact from comment, has done more to undermine the strengths of a free press than any such regulation. The challenge for the press now is to recognise that this is far more than a challenge for News International: they need to help lead the new rapprochement or they will find that it is imposed on them; and, to do that, they need candidly to admit that, in backing the toothless charade that is the Press Complaints Commission, they have so far failed to grasp this nettle.

This post also appears at Public Finance.

Time for a genuine cross-party consensus on care

2011-07-04T12:40:00.000+01:00

Andrew Dilnot has produced an excellent report today on the future of social care for older people, addressing head on the fears of many about the costs of care in their old age. His proposals, that the level above which assets are taken into account should rise to £100k is more realistic than the current £23k, while his proposals for a cap on care costs and on living expenses in care are both reasonable. Ed Miliband offered yesterday to develop a cross party consensus on this issue, a generous offer given the pathetic pre-election attitude of the health secretary Andrew Lansley to imaginative suggestions from Andy Burnham while he held the same post, dubbing it all a 'death tax' in a piece of sub-Palinesque (Sarah not Michael) rhetoric ill-suited to such a sensitive subject.

Now there is again the chance to develop a proper consensus on this issue. David Cameron needs such a consensus as it will involve significant costs, and some difficult decisions about how to pay for it. He has been open to using individual Labour politicians on some issues: it is as important to be open to genuine cross-party working where it is so patently in the wider interest. For Ed Miliband, there is a lot to be gained from being consensual on such an issue. It was politically shrewd to speak to the Sunday Telegraph on the issue yesterday.

But this is, above all, about reaching a solution that is right for a growing elderly population, providing reassurance to those not yet in need of care, but also ensuring quality if they do need to enter care. And a lot more work is also needed to provide a proper quality mark for care homes and to create higher minimum standards, as that is as much a concern for many as cost. It is absurd that the Government is scrapping rather than widening the star rating system: families need a single easy to understand system that is clear on both facilities and standards, and it needs to be regulated and enforced by the government regulator. There should also be an equivalent of TripAdvisor where families can add their views and comments, as Janice Turner suggested in Saturday's Times.(£)

Social care is an issue that will not go away. It is something where politicians can genuinely make a difference - and show themselves in a better light in the process.

Private or public: a challenge to the independent sector

2011-06-29T18:21:00.000+01:00

This blog has welcomed Education Secretary Michael Gove's recent revival of the sponsor academies programme. But a big challenge this presents is finding sufficient sponsors. One sector that has not yet been tapped to its full potential is the network of trusts that run our 'public schools'. In a remarkable lecture to the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust last night, Andrew Adonis laid down the gauntlet to the private sector with an unanswerable argument based on these trusts' own missions.

As Gove has also spoken recently about his wish to see more private school academy sponsors, the challenge now is how to realise this vision. But as it is a hugely important contribution to the debate, I thought it worth reprinting Andrew's lecture on this blog.

There is no point being in public life unless you seek, as honestly as you can, to address the big problems facing the country and make a stand for policies you genuinely believe will make society better, free from outdated dogma. This is the lesson I learned from my two political mentors, Roy Jenkins and Tony Blair, with both of whom I worked closely and admired greatly, not only for their political skills but for their enduring values and their courage as progressive reformers and leaders. Tony Blair’s motto was “the best policy is the best politics,” and I can’t think of a better one.

So forgive me if I am not all motherhood-and-apple-pie this evening. I want, if I may, to tackle two of the biggest challenges which face us in education today.

The first challenge is not simply to reduce the number of underperforming comprehensives – where we have made reasonable progress in the last decade – but to eradicate them entirely, replacing them with successful all-ability academies.

The second challenge is to forge a new settlement between state and private education in England. I put these two challenges together because they go together. It is my view, after 20 years of engagement with schools of all types, that England will never have a truly world class education system until state and private schools are part of a common national endeavour to develop the talents of all young people to the full and build a “one nation” society instead of the “them and us” of the past.

My experience as a reformer has also taught me that almost all the best solutions to big challenges are simple. Complexity comes in trying to avoid or qualify the simple solution because it is unpalatable. You of course need to be simple and right, not simple and wrong; and a good deal of research and experience – and where appropriate, piloting of policy – needs to go into getting to the right simple solution. Simple doesn’t mean simplistic. Nor does simple mean easy. It means getting to the heart of the problem, and making the fundamental change which makes a fundamental difference.

So just as the challenge is simple – how to unite state and private schools in a common endeavour – I believe the solution is also simple. Every successful private school, and private school foundation, should sponsor an academy or academies, in place of existing underperforming comprehensives. They should do this alongside their existing fee-paying school or schools, turning themselves into federations of private and state schools, following the lead of a growing number of private schools and their foundations which have done precisely this and would not think of going back, including Dulwich, Wellington, the Haberdashers, the Mercers, the Girls Day School Trust, the City of London Corporation and the King Edward VI Foundation in Birmingham.

And by sponsoring academies I don’t just mean advice and assistance, the loan of playing fields and the odd teacher, etc. I mean the private school or foundation taking complete responsibility for the governance and leadership of an academy or academies, and staking their reputation on their success as they currently do on the success of their fee-paying schools.

For the private sector, I set this totally apart from the opening up of more places in existing private schools to those who can’t pay the fees. This is a good thing for private schools to do to make themselves less socially exclusive, but it does nothing to create more good schools, let alone to breach the educational Berlin Wall between private and state education.

To leaders in the state sector, I put this forward as a complementary – not an alternative – policy to the brilliant job that so many successful state school leaders and organisations are doing in establishing academies. We need many more good academy sponsors from all successful parts of the education system – state schools, private schools, universities, and educational foundations – and we need them to learn from each other and collaborate.

I want to develop the argument for this new state-private settlement in some depth, because the forces against progress are deeply entrenched in both the state and the private sectors of education, mirroring prejudices on the Left and Right of politics which go back decades if not generations.

Over the entire second half of the 20th century, these prejudices made it exceptionally hard to do more than fiddle around at the margins of state-private partnership. This, in turn, bred a deep fatalism which is with us still. Everyone knows that the status quo is terrible – rigid separation between most of the nation’s most privileged and powerful schools and the rest. Yet no-one has a credible plan or will to do much about it except say how bad it is, why it’s someone else’s fault, and why it will never change because, well, this is England, it’s deep and cultural, and it all began with Henry VIII. It’s the same fatalism which greeted gridlock in central London before the congestion charge, hospital waiting lists before patients’ rights, and rain stopping play at Wimbledon before the roof.

The call now is for activists not fatalists. The future doesn’t have to be like the past. There is no reason whatever why the Berlin Wall between the state and private sectors of English education cannot be brought down fairly quickly, if every private school and private school foundation sponsors an academy or academies, running independent schools in the state-funded as well as the fee-paying sectors, immersed in promoting excellent education for the least well-off as well as the best-off in society, and progressively combining the best of both.

To develop the argument, let me say more at the outset about underperforming comprehensives on the one hand, and private education on the other, before addressing the fundamental relationship between the two.

On underperforming schools, we still have far too many of them. Where they are not improving rapidly, every year, they should be replaced by academies. My ambition from the moment that academies started to prove themselves successful was to replace the entire bottom half of the comprehensive system with academies, unless the schools were improving rapidly. I didn’t put it quite like this at the time, not wanting to be burned in effigy by my admirers in the Anti-Academies Alliance even more frequently outside Sanctuary Buildings, but I don’t think my direction of travel was much of a secret.

By academies, I of course mean “sponsored academies.” The whole purpose of academies, in respect of underperforming schools, is completely to replace existing governance and local authority control with new independent sponsors, untainted by past failure, who demonstrates the capacity and ambition to create excellent all-ability schools. For this, a large number of outstanding sponsors are needed, able to manage perhaps a thousand more secondary academies.

Let me say therefore that I entirely support the Government’s decision to raise the floor of minimum performance – the proportion of pupils in a school gaining five or more good GCSESs including English and maths – from 35% to 40% per cent next year, and then to 50% in 2015. Michael Gove was absolutely right to say, a fortnight ago, that “there is no reason, if we work together, that by the end of this parliament every young person in the country can’t be educated in a school where at least half the students reach this basic academic standard.”

I also welcome Liz Sidwell’s appointment as Schools Commissioner to help bring this about. From her years leading the Haberdashers’ academy federation, no-one knows better than Liz how to bring sponsored academies into being, and how to harness their potential to drive the fundamental reinvention of secondary education in areas where comprehensives have basically failed in the past. She also knows a thing or two from the Haberdashers about state/private partnership in academies.

This is a moral cause. But it is also an economic imperative. As Michael Gove also pointed out, 80 per cent of students in Singapore already get above a similar threshold of five O levels including English and maths (they still sit Cambridge board O levels in Singapore). It was visits to schools in Singapore, Finland, Taiwan and Hong Kong in 2007, where I saw not only near uniformly high standards but also a relentless drive to raise them still further, that transformed my thinking on the scale of the task we face in England. I gave a lecture shortly afterwards suggesting that we needed by 2020 to become an “80 per cent” education system – by which I meant at least 80 per cent of 16 year-olds reaching a basic baccalaureate standard. At the moment we are at just over 50 per cent. But we can’t really wait until 2020 to be as good as Singapore and Finland today, so it is not incremental change but step change that is needed.

I say this in full recognition of the great progress that has been made in recent years by headteachers and teachers nationwide, all the more impressive when one considers the state of the education system only a generation ago.

Fifteen years ago, a staggering half – half – of all comprehensives weren’t even getting a third of their pupils above the five good GCSE level including English and maths. This wasn’t entirely surprising when two-thirds of 11 year-olds, in the first national SATs tests in 1995, were found not to be reaching an adequate standard in the three Rs.

I still shudder to think of my visit to a comprehensive in Sunderland a few years ago where the previous summer only fifteen 16-year-olds had got to the five good GCSE level including English and maths, and a local authority official said to me: “Lord Adonis, you need to understand that they used to leave here, go down the hill, and turn left to go into the shipyards, or turn right to go down the mines, but now there aren’t any jobs so they might as well walk straight into the sea.” That school is now closed and replaced by an academy sponsored by the University of Sunderland and a local hi-tech company.

It was on visits like this that I also came to understand why things were so bad, because of the secondary-modern antecedents of so many comprehensives, including that one. When people talked of the comprehensive revolution, this was in fact a misnomer. Across most of the country there was no comprehensive revolution, just a continuation of the secondary moderns. In the early 1960s there were 3,700 secondary moderns and only 1,200 grammar schools. One way and another more than a quarter of the grammar schools stood apart from the comprehensive reform, including most of the most prestigious and successful grammar schools which went private rather than be abolished. So across most of the country, comprehensives were simply the former secondary moderns with a new sign outside, and a few prefab buildings or portacabins to accommodate the raising of the school leaving age to 16 in 1972.

As for what this meant, the single most depressing but revealing book I read when trying to get to grips with the nature of our educational crisis was a 1967 study of the secondary modern school by David Hargreaves, who most of you know for his inspiring writing and his stint as head of the national qualifications and curriculum agency a decade ago. It was the fruit of a year which David, then a young researcher, spent at a secondary modern in Salford Docks. He described the secondary modern as pretty standard for a working class community in the mid-Sixties. In one key respect – the school had new buildings – it was better than standard. Yet the description of the school is unremittingly grim. Most of the boys at the school took no external exams at all and gained no qualifications whatsoever. Only a minority even in the top stream of the school were even entered for a local school leaving certificate, for which cheating was widespread among staff and pupils. The new national CSE exam was coming in - a much inferior form of O-level - but there was no encouragement from the headteacher or most of the teachers for even the brightest pupils to stay at school beyond the minimum leaving age of 15 to take it. As for O-levels, Hargreaves wrote:

Only one member of staff felt strongly that even the best boys, in the top stream, were of sufficient ability to take O-level; most of the other teachers of the higher streams took the view that ... to enter them for O-level would be to mislead the pupils with hopes of academic success beyond their powers. There is also little doubt that some of these teachers were reluctant to teach to O-level since they had never done so and were uneasy about their competence to do so.

As for the wider ethos of the school: Lessons and exams were treated with contempt by most of the boys. ... For many of the teachers and most of the pupils life at the school was a necessary evil. Life was directed towards a reduction of potential conflict by a minimal imposition of demands one upon the other. If the upper streams passed their [school leaving] exam and the lower streams did not riot, the school was for most teachers succeeding.By this yardstick, even the worst comprehensives in the 1990s were an improvement.

Understanding the past made me all the more alive to the immensity of the challenge to overcome it, a challenge of community transformation as much as educational reform. But it also made – and makes – me all the more radical in seeking solutions which measure up to the immensity of the challenge. Hence academies.

So we are making progress, but there is so much further to go. For example, half of the city of Birmingham’s 75 secondary schools – half – are still not achieving five good GCSEs including English and maths for half their pupils. Birmingham boasts some of the best private and state schools in the country, yet it still has a long tail of seriously underperforming schools. It should be no surprise that Birmingham’s unemployment is twice the national average; that its workforce skill levels are among the lowest in the country; and that it still only has seven sponsored academies open or in the pipeline. And I could tell a similar story about many other parts of the country.

Now let me turn to the private sector. The debate about private education in England encompasses two different private sectors. There is the private profit-making sector. And there is the private charitable sector. There is a growing debate as to whether we should follow Sweden and parts of the United States, among others, and allow private profit-making companies to run state-funded schools. I am opposed to this. When Minister, I said to the private profit-making companies wanting to set up in England that they should sponsor academies philanthropically, and if they could demonstrate great success, then they might be able to make a case. None has yet done so.

It is true that in the much-cited case of Sweden, commercial operators have been a major force behind free schools. But I would make two comments about this. First, the experience has been problematic. Sweden has faced a number of recent scandals around profit-taking from commercially-run state funded schools. The Swedish education minister recently announced an enquiry into how free schools which fail to meet accepted standards can be prevented from taking out profits.

Secondly, the position in England is fundamentally different. When Sweden embarked on free schools, it had a weak private charitable school sector. England, by contrast, has one of the largest, and possibly the very strongest private charitable school sector in the world. Both of our major churches are large-scale school sponsors, in the private and the state sectors; and the great majority of our private schools – and all of the historic private school foundations which dominate the private school elite – are historic charities. The private sector which can make a big difference to English state education isn’t the private commercial sector but the private charitable sector. We need to focus on the whale not the minnow.

Let’s look first at the statistics. Dwell not on the seven per cent of school age pupils who go to private schools, which is the most misleading of the stats. More revealing is the 18 per cent of full-time students over the age of 16 who are at private schools. The one in three of A grades in A-level physics, chemistry and history which go to private school students, earning them a similar proportion of places in most Russell Group universities and half of all places at Oxford and Cambridge.

Stop there for a moment: that’s 8,000 ex-private school students at Oxbridge, compared to a mere 130 students at Oxbridge who, at school, were eligible for free school meals. So 130 Oxbridge students are drawn from the poorest 13% of secondary school pupils, while 8,000 – sixty times as many – are drawn from the most privileged seven per cent. No surprise then, those Sutton Trust reports which tell us that three in four judges, two in three top barristers, and half of leading company chief executives, solicitors, journalists and politicians were educated at private schools. Sport, drama, TV, and both pop and classical music are also largely dominated by the private schools.

England in 2011 is governed by a Prime Minister educated at Eton, a Deputy Prime Minister from Westminster, a Chancellor from St Paul’s. Charterhouse, Rugby, Radley, Wellington and Cheltenham Ladies College are all in the Cabinet too, along with a second from Westminster; almost all of them children of very wealthy parents. We do indeed have a coalition government – a coalition between Eton and Westminster. It is only a slightly broader coalition which funds, manages and entertains the country too.

Seen in this way – the dominance of a privately educated elite over the social, economic and political life of this country – you realise why it is so important, if we are ever to be one nation, to have the people who run the private schools, and who teach in and attend these schools, engaged institutionally with intimately with state education too.

Let me also say a word about the teaching profession. Back in the 1970s, the pupil:teacher ratio in private schools wasn’t much different than in state schools. Now, on the back of fees which have doubled in real terms in a little over twenty years, the private school ratio is about half that in state schools. 14 per cent of the nation’s teachers are in private schools, and a far higher proportion of teachers with better and higher degrees. Moreover, a recent report by the Centre for the Economics of Education notes that by far the single largest source of new teachers in private schools is experienced teachers in state schools, whereas traffic the other way is minimal. To put this in perspective, the excellent Teach First scheme, which as a Minister I did everything in my power to promote (including signing very large cheques) because of its significance in strengthening the link between the top universities and the state teaching profession, will this year recruit 800 graduates into state schools. A great achievement. Yet according to Centre for the Economics of Education data for 2006, there was a net recruitment – after transfers the other way – of 1,400 experienced teachers from state schools into private schools in that year alone.

How did it all come to be like this? Like the secondary modern antecedents of the comprehensives, the Victorian antecedents of today’s private schools are highly illuminating. Historians of education talk a lot about Gladstone’s 1870 Education Act, which essentially started state education. But equally significant were Gladstone’s 1869 and 1873 Endowed Schools Acts, which essentially turned the great public schools – and many of the newer grammar schools – previously run in a rackety way by Crown, church or local appointees, into a Victorian equivalent of academies, with new independent governing foundations to control their assets, management and leadership. This Victorian academy status greatly strengthened the private schools as institutions, but their fees, and the conservative use of their charitable assets by their new governing bodies, kept most of them largely closed to all but the upper and upper middle classes, and they remained so as the state secondary system developed in the decades after the 1902 Balfour Education Act.

There was a moment, at the end of the Second World War, when history might have taken a different turn. An official report, published in 1944 on the day Eisenhower reviewed his bridgehead in Normandy, said the social division between private and state schools “made far more difficult the task of those who looked towards a breaking down of those hard-drawn class distinctions within society.” Churchill himself, visiting his alma mater of Harrow, talked to the boys of “broadening the intake and the public schools becoming more and more based on aspiring youth in every class of the nation.”

But it didn’t happen. Sixty-six years after the war, the only significant changes to the private school system are that it is larger, richer, and its average educational attainment has risen to among the highest in the world.

This is because during the whole period since the war, Labour and Tory governments alike have adopted a simple one word policy in respect of private schools: isolationism.

On the Labour side, ideological antipathy to fee-paying education, and later also to selective education, bred hostility. But the social and legal position of the private schools, plus – ironically – the personal educational preferences of Labour leaders from Attlee to Wilson, kept at bay any attack beyond the rhetorical, except for the withdrawal of state funding schemes for small numbers of pupils to attend private schools, which the 1974 Labour government did in respect of the direct-grant scheme introduced by Butler in 1944, and the 1997 Labour government did in respect of the Assisted Places Scheme introduced by Margaret Thatcher in 1980.

I particularly treasure Roy Jenkins’s exchange with Harold Wilson when turning down Wilson’s offer to become Education Secretary in 1965. In his memoirs Roy doesn’t say why he turned the job down: he told me it was because he regarded Education as a second order department and he had no idea of a constructive education policy to pursue, itself a telling commentary on the state and status of education at the time. But here is his exchange with Wilson, as recorded in his memoirs. “Looking for an excuse [to decline the job], I said that all three of our children were at fee-paying schools and that this surely was an obstacle to being Minister of Education in a Labour government. Wilson brushed this aside as being of no importance. “So were mine,” he said.”

Under Tony Blair – Durham Cathedral School, Fettes, St John’s College Oxford – any undermining of the private schools was equally out of the question. Instead there was friendly waffle about mutual respect; and some committees and minor partnership projects which did not a lot. That is, until academies, of which more hereafter.

On the Tory side, there was an equal and opposite isolationism. Partly this was a matter of letting sleeping dogs lie. Most Tory ministers and MPs went to private schools and sent their children to them. So long as Labour kept the dogs off, they had no desire to court controversy by proposing any expanded role for the private sector. On the Tory left, epitomised by the Etonian Sir Edward Boyle, education minister under Macmillan and Douglas-Home, two more Etonians, there was also a dose of patrician guilt and support for comprehensivisation, provided it didn’t affect the private schools.

However, for the Tory mainstream, the major concern was about dilution. The dominant view was “more means worse”: the view that there were only a small, and pretty fixed, number of “good” schools, mostly existing private schools and the remaining grammar schools, and they needed to be preserved in aspic. This secured, the only safe and politically viable Tory reform in respect of private schools was to open up a tiny number of places in private day schools to children with poorer parents. Hence the assisted places scheme which with much fanfare paid private school fees for 30,000 children out of a private school sector of 500,000 children and a state school sector of more than 8 million. Not so much an education policy as escapology.

So much for the politicians. The leaders of state and private schools were – and many of them remain – similarly isolationist. It was an article of faith among the leaders of the comprehensive movement that private schools were not only socially divisive but also, in respect of educational practice, largely irrelevant. This remains a pronounced view, even among some of my friends who run academies. They say, to paraphrase: “what can that lot who just spoon feed the children of the rich ever know about education in Hackney and Knowsley.” As for the heads of the private schools, many of them have been only too eager to agree, when the suggestion is made that they might manage state-funded academies. Pressed further, they often say it’s not about ordinary children versus privileged children but about non-selective schools versus selective schools, a view put to me recently by the chair of governors of one of our great public boarding schools, which I found richly ironic, given that until recently his school was basically an all-ability comprehensive for the rich and titled.

This mutual isolationism didn’t matter much until now, because there was no opportunity for systematic and deep engagement between the two sectors. Now it matters a lot, because before us, if we seize it, is a simple, radical and workable agenda to end the isolationism of the past. It is for every successful private school and private school foundation to sponsor an academy or academies, and transform themselves into state-private school federations.

The arguments of principle are manifold and manifest. We will never build a one nation society unless we eradicate failing schools and systematically leverage our most powerful social leaders and our best educational institutions in the service of the wider community. That means many more good schools, replacing underperforming comprehensives community by community. Academies – independent state schools – are now proven as the successful institutional means of harnessing our most powerful social leaders and best educational institutions in the management of new schools. So we need many more such academies.

Successful private schools ought to be prominent among the sponsors for the next wave of academies. Everything about academies is in the DNA of the successful private school: independence, excellence, innovation, social mission. And the benefit is not only to the wider community, it is also to the private schools themselves, whose mission is enlarged, whose relative isolation is ended, and whose social engagement, beyond the families of the better-off, is transformed.

Let me deal with some of the concerns. To those on the Left, and in the state and academy sectors, who see private schools as an irrelevance, I hope I have said enough about their huge footprint in almost every national elite to show why the isolationism of the past cannot continue if opportunity is to be for the many not the few.

To those in the private schools, and their governing bodies, who are reluctant to embrace academies, I appeal both to their professionalism and to their moral and charitable missions. It was excusable to stand apart from state-funded education when the state and its leaders did not want you engaged in the first place. But that is the isolationist politics of the past. The politics of the present and the future is that the nation seeks your engagement in setting up new independent state-funded academies in a way which does not compromise your independence, and which renews for the 21st century your essential moral and charitable purposes.

Let me say a few more words about these charitable purposes. William of Wykeham established Winchester for the education mainly of poor scholars, and only a minority of “noble commoners”. Henry VI set up Eton for poor scholars. Charterhouse was established by Sir Thomas Sutton, the wealthiest commoner in England, for – yes, more poor scholars. Elizabeth I endowed Westminster School for the same purpose; to this day it is an integral part of Westminster Abbey, its governing body chaired by the Dean of Westminster appointed by The Queen. John Lyon set up Harrow in 1572 as a free grammar school for the education of boys of the parish of Harrow, and the parish objected strongly when the Endowed Schools Act removed this obligation. I could go on and on, but you get the gist. The governors of these great educational charities should look honestly to their charitable purposes. If they do, I believe it is hard for them to conclude that a few more bursaries here and there are enough, when they could be running new schools serving the very missions for which their assets were intended in the first place.

As for the idea that these great schools are not capable of making a success of academies with more challenging pupil intakes, this is a comic proposition. The Governing Body of Eton is chaired by my distinguished colleague in the

Lords, and former Minister, William Waldegrave. Its members include three professors, three knights, five PhDs, and the former Private Secretary to the Prince of Wales. The Dean of Westminster, who chairs Westminster School’s Governing Body, is my good friend John Hall, the former chief education officer of the Church of England, who was the driving force behind the C of E’s decision to set up more than 30 academies. His fellow governors include the Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, two professors, two canons, two knights, one baron and one dame.

Every public school governing body in the country is a catalogue of the very great and the very good, including eminent business and educational leaders. The idea that these organisations, if they have the will to do so, cannot command the resources and the expertise needed to run a successful school or schools in less advantaged areas – well, if that were true, then England would indeed be Greece, about to default on its whole society not just its government borrowing.

But there is no need to argue only by assertion. Just look at those who are taking a lead, and see the movement for change which is gathering pace. Dulwich is successfully sponsoring an academy in Sheppey. Wellington is successfully sponsoring an academy in Wiltshire. The King Edward VI Foundation is successfully sponsoring an academy in Birmingham, alongside its two private schools and five state grammar schools. All of these academies replace failing comprehensives. The Girls Day School Trust has converted two of its outstanding private schools, in Liverpool and Birkenhead, into state academies.

Three of the most impressive academy chains – built up by the Mercers Company, the Haberdashers Company, and the City of London Corporation – have grown out of the management of historic private schools, leveraging this educational expertise and experience to establish chains of academies alongside.

The City Corporation, historic sponsors of the City of London Schools for Boys and Girls, and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, now sponsors three academies in its neighbouring boroughs on Islington, Southwark and Hackney. David Levin, the headmaster of the City of London School for Boys, and this year’s Chairman of the Headmasters’ Conference, in a highly constructive speech last week in Guildhall, suggested that fellow HMC schools might start sponsoring primary-level academies. I welcome this, but why stop at primary academies? HMC schools are secondary schools; it is secondary education they know best and where they can make most difference. Never go for the smaller reform option simply because it is smaller, is another of my maxims.

The Mercers, historic managers of St Paul’s Girls and St Paul’s Boys Schools, now sponsor an academy nearby in West London, and a chain of academies growing out of the Mercers’ outstandingly successful Thomas Telford School – one of the original City Technology Colleges – in Telford.

The Haberdashers, with their historic private schools in Elstree and Monmouth, now have two clusters of successful academies, one in Lewisham and the other in Telford. A fortnight ago I spoke at the Haberdashers’ Annual Education Dinner in their magnificent new livery company hall next to Barts, alongside the Earl of Wessex, a Haberdasher. The heads and many of the governors and staff of the Haberdashers academies and the private schools were there, discussing their work together and their plans for the future. Each year all new pupils from all the schools visit Haberdashers Hall. For an eleven year old, it must be a truly awe-inspiring experience.

A month ago I was at Wellington Academy in Wiltshire, speaking alongside Anthony Seldon, the Master of Wellington College, at a joint conference of the staff of both Wellington College and Wellington Academy. The academy has a boarding house, a Combined Cadet Force, an emphasis on service, academic excellence and holistic development, all traits of Wellington College.

Anthony told the story of how Wellington came to take on the academy project. Wellington College was founded in the 1850s as the memorial for the Duke of Wellington, to provide free education for military orphans in the wake of the Crimean War. The school is proud of its traditions and to this day offers fee support for children who have lost parents in the service of their country. But they are now only a small proportion of the intake.

The governors of the college decided to sponsor an academy to strengthen this original social mission. They deliberately took over a failing school in Tidworth, close to the Tidworth military garrison on Salisbury Plain, to reflect the college’s traditions and expertise. The academy takes up to half its pupils from military families. High levels of mobility are an obvious fact of life for children in military families, so the boarding option is particularly important.

With vision and leadership, there could be hundreds more academies sponsored by private school foundations, changing the face of education in this country for the better. Now is the time to act.

While I was helping to pioneer academies, two pieces of historic wisdom often came to mind. The first was Machiavelli. “It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new system,” he famously wrote.“For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders in those who should gain by the new ones.” He must have been writing about the reform of English education, I used to think. Fortunately, the success of academies is now pretty clear. The new system is there. It just needs to be scaled up.

However, equally compelling to me, as a reformer, are Churchill’s words on the opening of the new chamber of the House of Commons in 1950, replacing the one bombed by Hitler. “We mould our institutions and they mould us,” he said.

Institutions shape societies, and educational institutions do so perhaps more than any others outside the family. Last Friday I visited the Petchey Academy, one of the five new academies in Hackney. Its sponsor, Jack Petchey, is one of the greatest East End businessmen and philanthropists of recent decades and his academy – hoping to get above the 80 per cent GCSE level in its first GCSE results this year – is inspirational is so many ways. The academy isn’t just about exam results, it is about education for character, for community and for citizenship. They do it brilliantly in one of the most deprived inner-city communities in the country.

They were particularly keen I should see their debating teams from Years 10 and 11 debate before the whole of their two year groups. The debaters were articulate and well-prepared, just like in all those private school debating societies.

But the motion they were debating was as follows: “This House would abolish the private schools.” It was carried two to one. All the old arguments were there. Unfairness. Privilege. Elitism. Afterwards I asked the girl who had led the charge whether she had ever visited a private school. “Of course not,” she said. “Why would they want to have anything to do with anyone from around here?” Why indeed. It is time to bury the past and build a better future.

Getting pensions in perspective

2011-06-27T13:02:00.000+01:00

The education secretary Michael Gove has played his designated role when faced with teacher strikes: he has urged teachers to turn up for work to show their professional commitment on Thursday, as two of the three big unions, the NUT and ATL, strike over pensions, and suggested that schools should defiantly remain open staffed by militant mums. Meanwhile the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, has joined the chorus of criticism over the strikes, recognising that any sign of union support could terminally hurt his already weak leadership ratings.

Of course, the strike is a fairly blunt instrument, and has been more used in conference motions than actual pickets by the teaching unions over the years. The NUT rarely manages fewer than half a dozen such threats at its annual Easter shindig. But this time the anger among teachers, as with other public sector workers, seems a lot stronger than usual. The relatively moderate ATL is striking, and even the moderate leadership of the National Association of Head Teachers is tempted to join in, though the second biggest union the NASUWT has so far resisted doing so.

The issue is pensions. The typical teacher will have to pay an extra 3.4% a year of their incomes into pensions by 2014, up from 6.4% to as much as 9.8%. At the same time, the retirement age is rising, the value of pensions will fall with a link to the Consumer Prices Index rather than the Retail Prices Index. And, most contentiously for headteachers and school leaders, the value of the pension will be based on average rather than final salary. All of this comes amidst a pay freeze that happens to coincide with significant inflation. As the NUT's attempt to justify its action shows, it makes a powerful combination in teachers' pockets. The change could knock £16,000 a year off the pension of a secondary head and cost an average teacher an extra £1000 a year in pension deductions.

Teachers feel that the salary gains made in the Labour years are already being eroded, and that without strike action, their pensions case will not be heard. This government is certainly more sensitive to the unions than the Thatcher government, and Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude has been presenting himself as the Government's union point man.

It does seem premature to be having strike action, as some unions have recognised. However, talk of banning strikes in the weekend press seems at odds with Maude's efforts too, and can only increase the tensions on both sides. And the case on pensions may enjoy more public sympathy than ministers expect. Lord Hutton, the former Labour minister whose excellent report on pensions heralded many of these changes, has warned of the dangers of moving too quickly.

The problem is that the Government's hurried approach to reform seems particularly inappropriate with pensions. Not all public sector schemes are the same: the teachers' scheme is fully funded whereas the local government scheme could collapse if members withdrew over high contributions. Polling has suggested that teachers don't mind paying a bit more so long as they retain their pension scheme: the problem is less the extra contributions than all the other changes combined. And for heads, the loss of a final salary scheme is a particularly bitter blow. Ministers may not want to signal any retreat before Thursday, but they should be open to looking again at the combined impact of their proposals, and alternative mixes to reach their required savings.

Passing the test

2011-06-23T08:40:00.000+01:00

Lord Bew's review of Key Stage 2 testing seems to have some sensible proposals today. Capturing a school's achievement over three years was used for Labour's school achievement awards, and is probably a fairer way to measure a primary school's performance: indeed it could allow all primary schools to have their results published, including smaller village schools. Schools can suffer with a poor intake one year, and the smaller the cohort, the greater the danger.

His suggestion that composition tests should be marked by teachers is clearly intended to appease the anti-tests lobby. And if any aspect of the tests were to be passed to teachers to mark, this should be it. With other elements of English still externally tested, including reading, speaking, listening, grammar, punctuation and vocabulary, internal assessment of creative writing is not unreasonable. However, there should be strong external moderation if the results are to count in a school's league table score.

What Lord Bew seems not to have done, for which we should be grateful, is to suggest the abandonment of testing at the end of primary school. This is his most important finding: testing has opened the secret garden where parents were kept in the dark about how schools are doing, it is significantly improved standards in the 3Rs and it has helped to guard against low expectations, with improvements greatest in many inner city areas like Tower Hamlets. He also seems to have dropped an idea floated by Michael Gove before the election that testing take place at the start of secondary school, rather than the end of primary. While many secondary schools do re-test pupils at the start of Year 7, it would have been unfair to judge primary schools on the basis of such tests, particularly as secondary schools have an incentive in value added measures to lower the starting point of their intakes.

The teaching unions may not change their opposition to primary school testing. But Lord Bew - whose expertise has previously been as one of the most incisive historians in Northern Ireland - has produced judicious proposals that the Government ought to accept. Testing is rightly here to stay.

Cameron must do details

2011-06-22T17:38:00.000+01:00

It is not easy being Prime Minister, having to keep on top of lots of pesky details across Whitehall. It can also be a major cause of inertia if you strike the wrong balance between strategy and substance: look at Gordon Brown's first year as PM as a lesson in how not to do it. But you can also go to the opposite extreme, and that has been the characteristic of David Cameron's first year in office. He paid little heed to the plans that his old boss Andrew Lansley was concocting at Health, even though they ran directly contrary to his promises to voters, and more importantly they had too many half-baked elements, such as compulsory commissioning for GPs and the effective scrapping of waiting time targets. He was far too busy to notice that Kenneth Clarke at Justice was turning the idea of the Tory party as the voice of law and order on its head, with promises to release rapists and paedophiles quickly so long as they fessed up. And his inattention has led to several other lesser difficulties too, from the scrapping of sports partnerships at the DFE to the sell off of forests at Defra. And two weeks running, this disinterest has tripped him up at Prime Minister's Questions, to the benefit of Ed Miliband.

To be fair to Cameron, a big reason why he missed a lot of this lay in his foolish acquiescence to the idea that the Blair government's biggest problem was a surfeit of special advisers, so he left his own policy unit in Downing Street woefully understaffed. That, at least, has been remedied and I suspect a count of SpAds and political policy appointments across Whitehall would rival anything from the previous decade. But there are also suggestions that the Prime Minister has the idea that he should float above the minutiae of Whitehall. And to an extent, he should. Tony Blair was very good at seeing the wood from the trees, and getting to the essence of a problem quickly. But that doesn't mean not being informed about potential pitfalls in his Government's policy: Blair used his PMQs preparation assiduously to update himself on such issues and spent plenty of time on detail when a policy was likely to be controversial.

There are signs that the some in Government are realising that details should be addressed before they create a crisis: the decision to widen the grounds for legal aid in future divorce cases to include emotional abuse (Clarke had originally intended to confine it to physical domestic violence) has avoided a certain defeat on the question in the House of Lords and an indefensible aspect of the proposals. Cameron has to show a similar attention to detail across all departments, using his policy unit as an early warning system. Otherwise, he will not just acquire a reputation for U-turns and indecisiveness, he could be seen as not on top of the job. And that's not something that people want in their prime ministers.

Gove goes back to basics

2011-06-16T08:48:00.003+01:00

Michael Gove's speech at the National College conference today looks like being a welcome refocusing of academies policy where it really matters. By promising scores of new primary and secondary sponsor-led academies, he is focusing more effort on the schools in disadvantaged areas that need the help most. Liz Sidwell's work as Schools Commissioner is clearly starting to bear fruit and the many frustrated academy sponsors will be pleased that the core of the programme is finally to be re-energised.

Accompanying the academies announcement is a hugely ambitious - very brave, minister, as Sir Humphrey would have set - floor target of 50% of pupils in every secondary school or academy gaining five good GCSEs including English and Maths. I welcome the great importance that Gove gives to floor targets, though ambition is only half the battle.

And it is on delivery that there will be doubts. Of course, the 2015 target results will not be known before the next election, though Gove has set himself the challenging task of all secondary schools reaching 40% by 2013, another 407 schools (or perhaps 250 after this year's exams). Nobody is a greater fan of floor targets than I am, but one reason they succeeded was because they were challenging but realistic: if too many schools don't hit these targets, it will be seen as Gove's failure. The National Leaders of Education who will be charged with delivering these ambitions will have their work cut out for them. The primary goals seem more realistic: converting the worst 200 primaries to sponsored academies next year and putting another 500 on a three year warning to improve or be converted.

Gove's briefers sneer at the levels of progress achieved under Labour. Just remember that in 1997, after 18 years of Conservative government, 50% of secondary schools - 1600 schools - did not have 30% of their pupils gaining the GCSE goal. Today fewer than 100 are in that category. The reason we made such good progress with floor targets, first introduced in 2000, was because they were ambitious but staged. Last year, Gove declared 35% to be the new target now that virtually all schools had reached 30%. That would have been a reasonable 2012 goal. Now schools which had no date for their 35% target are told that in the 2013 GCSEs they must reach 40%. A school typically needs two years to work with a GCSE cohort to achieve such goals, and adjust their curriculum and teaching. Schools should have been warned of the 2013 target before they developed their 2011-13 GCSE programmes and options.

One reason Mossbourne, which Gove cites with some justice, has been so successful is that it was able to start with a completely new intake, and mould them with everything from the excellent Year 7 mini-school environment through the disciplined teaching and learning environment admirably created by Michael Wilshaw. The danger is the too rapid moving of the goalposts will create more frustration than ambition, though it is fair also to say that there are a growing number of schools that have shown the capacity for rapid progress.

But there's a related problem. There is clearly a capacity issue in the creation of academies. The sneering briefer was at it elsewhere in the Guardian, saying that 89 sponsor-led schools over two years - by 2012 - (let's remember) was more than Labour created between 2000 and 2008. Come off it. Between 2008 and 2010, Labour was responsible for the opening of nearly 200 secondary or all-through academies, and a lot of the hard graft enabling such progress was done by Andrew Adonis before then. And before 2008, sponsors had to provide money not just support. Labour created the environment for Gove to operate in. Yet between 2010 and 2012, just 89 new sponsor-led secondary academies are apparently promised while around 200 schools may be declared 'failing' on the new 40% target in 2013. The primary goals are rightly ambitious; I wonder if the secondary promise is enough to deal with the fallout from the new targets.

The truth is that Gove did take his eye off the ball for too long, diverting huge resources in the DFE to helping outstanding schools convert, an entirely reasonable process that could be achieved in most cases simply with the £25,000 grant provided to them. Legal firms charge around £15,000 to complete the process. Instead of maintaining the pace in deprived areas, the focus was on a numbers game rather than tackling the hard cases. Today's Financial Times story by Chris Cook, on which Gove came so badly unstuck on Today, suggests that the government got its financial sums wrong - this reflects the absurd refusal by officials to road test their figures in real situations, something that seriously endangers moves to any national funding formula. The promise that the outstanding academies would have to help weaker schools is not being treated seriously either, unless the schools themselves are keen for it to happen.

Thankfully, this speech suggests that the academies programme is starting to move back on track. Let's hope that Gove's departmental resources are put fully behind these ambitious goals too, rather than duplicating the efforts of well remunerated lawyers.

This piece was updated on 16 June to reflect additional reported details. It also appears at the Public Finance blog.

Eating out in Keynsham

2011-06-16T07:00:00.004+01:00

Living in a small town after a couple of decades in London brings with it a very different pace of life. But what we have also noticed over the last few years has been a remarkable improvement in the quality of eating out opportunities near to our Keynsham home. Since a Google search currently suggests our town to be a culinary desert, and some of its eateries are ignored by the local Venue guide to Bristol and Bath, it may be helpful for visitors to have some recommendations.

* The Old Manor House is the best restaurant in town, on the Bristol Road. Located in an atmospheric 17th century old abbot's house, its cosy bar, excellent brasserie and friendly staff offer as good an evening out as anywhere in Bristol or Bath. The food is consistently of a high standard, with a changing but imaginative menu. With a bottle of wine and three courses plus coffee, expect to pay £35-£40 a head. Sunday lunches are splendid, too. It has monthly mid-week jazz dinners and guestrooms. Booking essential.

The newest arrival in town is Farrell's, which describes itself as the Irish Italian. Aside from some splashes of Cashel Blue cheese across the menu, and Guinness on tap, the food is largely Italian and the music Irish, a happy mix. The open kitchen and modern decor breathe confidence. The food is excellent, with good pizzas and pastas, and beautifully cooked steaks. It is ambitious opening such a big new restaurant on a High Street that has suffered too many closures, but it has been very busy in its first weeks and deservedly so. Expect to pay about £20-25 a head for three courses with wine, a bit more for steaks. Tel 0117 986 6330 - booking advisable.

* The Ship Inn, on Temple Street, has new management and a great new chef. It is a much nicer place to eat since the smoking ban, and is probably Keynsham's cosiest pub. Great two course Sunday lunches for £10; an excellent evening menu with good value wines; and excellent sandwiches and paninis. Expect to pay £15-£20 for three courses and wine, a little less with £12 specials on Tuesday and Wednesday. Tel: 0117 986 9841 - weekend booking a good idea.

* The Wine Bar on the High Street has now taken over the premises of what was Bar One Nine (and some time before The London Inn). It has a modest though interesting selection of good wines and fizz available both by the glass and the bottle, and has a reasonably priced lunch and dinner menu, with steak, Pieminster pies and speciality sausages among the mains. The owner-chef is seeking a home-cooking ambience, and the bar has been given a more intimate makeover which works better than the starker decor of Bar One Nine. There is free wi-fi. Lighting is a bit dim during the day, however. Expect to pay about £20-£25 for three courses and wine. Tel: 0117 914 3153.

* The Brassmill, on Avon Mill Lane, though linked to the Village Inns chain, has the feel of a good country pub. Despite its size it is cosy and homely inside. Located in the old Keynsham brassmills (which were an important industry until the 1920s), it has a good and changing menu, an excellent range of great value wines by the glass and no booking. Since it has plenty of space, you can usually get a table at weekends. It is child-friendly though is no longer the ghastly 'family pub' that once occupied the site. Expect to pay £20-£25 for three course dinner with wine. Tel 0117 986 7280.

* The Lock Keeper (left) on the Bitton Road has always been good for lunch, and has expanded into providing atmospheric dinners, with fish specialities. Located by the canal, it is a particularly good place to sit out on a summer's day. Expect to pay £20-£30 for three course dinner with wine. 0117 986 2383

* The Cinnamon restaurant on the high street is a first-rate local Indian restaurant, with great specials and friendly staff. It is hugely popular locally, particularly at weekends, when booking is essential. Expect to pay £20 a head including beer, a little more with wine.

(Prices are what we expect to pay per person for three courses, sharing a bottle of wine, and with mineral water. This is an updated posting.)

The muddle of NHS reform

2011-06-14T10:26:00.001+01:00

The Government will today make some necessary changes to the disaster that is Andrew Lansley's recipe for NHS reform. But they will also neuter any opportunities for greater efficiencies and fail to do anything to address the forthcoming crisis in waiting times, the result of Lansley's naïve and dismissive distrust of Labour's successful floor targets.

The whole thing, as a result, is a complete mess. It is doubtful that primary legislation is really needed to make the changes now planned. It is sensible, as this blog has argued for months, to make GP commissioning voluntary. But it is absurd to turn Monitor from a guardian of fair competition into a cuddly promoter of both competition and collaboration. It can't be both - and do its job. As amended, the accountability mechanisms are in severe danger of embedding huge conflicts of interest.

But, as today's Populus poll for the Times shows, the public's big concerns are not addressed. Waiting time targets - like floor standards in schools - are an essential guarantor of minimum patient requirements. Ben Goldacre in Saturday's Guardian showed how excessive A and E waits cost lives: for many, that experience is a key part of how they will judge the NHS too. Moving from 18 month to 18 week maximum waits for treatment was one of Labour's great successes. These absolute figures are getting worse (regardless of median waits) and will continue to worsen unless languid Lansley indicates that he cares about them. Together with the quality of care people receive in hospital, these are the issues people care about most and unless ministers get them right, their reforms, such as they are, will be judged a failure.

That is not to say that structural issues don't matter. GP commissioning, with willing participants, and private or voluntary providers can improve efficiency; but so can a strong NICE and a willingness to move from general to specialist hospitals, both cynically opposed by Lansley in opposition. By failing to grasp such nettles, and focusing on surprise but ill-thought through reforms, the health secretary has set back NHS reform by at least a decade. And by being asleep on the job as he was doing so, David Cameron and Nick Clegg must take the blame too.

Paying the university bills

2011-06-07T12:02:00.000+01:00

Today's report from the Public Accounts Committee simply confirms a picture that had become increasingly apparent in the calculations surrounding the Government's new higher education fees and loans regime. They got their sums wrong. And, as I have argued before, they need to do a number of things to extricate themselves from their arithmetical error.

First, they should revisit the balance between teaching grants and fee income. If it is the case that it is costing as much to subsidise loans for fees on some courses as if a higher teaching grant were paid, there should be a rebalancing as part of a deal with universities on fees for lower cost courses. It is an odd sense of priorities that the state subsidises students' drinking budgets away from home but declines to pay a penny towards the costs of teaching them.

Second, they should look again at how the UK is being sold to overseas students. Their clampdown on bogus visas is being confused abroad with a clampdown on legitimate students. UK universities and colleges need the income from overseas students to keep fees lower for domestic students. No 10 should take ownership of the visa policy and not allow it to be dictated by zealots in the Home Office who do not have Britain's best economic interests at the forefront of their priorities.

Third, they should ensure that competition is genuinely allowed to thrive in higher education. Not of the £18,000 a year Oxbridge-by-Thames celebrity gimmick kind, but strong FE degree courses and good value for money private degree colleges fully accredited. The forthcoming White Paper needs to ensure a genuinely level playing field and stop universities intimidating FE colleges from charging less for degrees. There should be real encouragement for two year courses (minus the endless holidays) and packages that enable students to study close to home.

And finally, instead of the Government subsidising loans above £6000 fees automatically, universities that wish to charge more should have to provide the loans themselves and pool the risk. Such a scheme would force universities to think more carefully about the balance of fees and loans, something they have no need to consider at the moment.

The Government has blundered its way through its higher education reforms to date (a common coalition affliction) but it has the chance to recover if it looks again at the balance of risks and income. Failure to do so could cause a major crisis in higher education funding when the new regime starts in earnest.

Gove's schools 'revolution' needs to be more than a rhetorical numbers game

2011-06-02T13:42:00.000+01:00

Last week the Government unveiled its new Admissions Code with further fanfare about its supposedly revolutionary potential. There are a few useful changes, and the odd perverse one. It makes sense to combine a permissive attitude to the expansion of good schools with the opportunity for academies and free schools to prioritise pupils on free school meals (though why voluntary-aided church schools are excluded is not explained). The Schools Adjudicator may not be able to investigate concerns off his own bat, but will now cover Academies and must respond to complaints from anybody, not just other admissions authorities. Oddly, area-wide lotteries are banned, though banding stays and schools may run their own independently-supervised lotteries; again, a change lacking logic but seemingly based on one study of the Brighton experience, which was in reality as much about addressing middle class grievances as reducing social segregation. Parents have a bit longer to appeal against admissions offers and teaching staff can be prioritised in school admissions policies even where there are no shortages.

What is remarkable about the code, besides the admirable sub-editing job performed on its overlong predecessors, is how much it retains of that which Labour introduced. In reality, most school admissions will continue to place priority on distance and siblings, while new selection is still outlawed, and the coalition must hope that enough free schools are established and that the improvements of the last decade continue apace so that dissatisfaction in urban areas with admissions is reduced. But of more importance to their stated priorities is the extent to which the new Code linked with the pupil premium, school structural reforms and changes to accountability combine to improve social mobility.

And, on that, the jury is still out. The rhetoric has certainly been bracing, and the Government's media cheerleaders have become over-excited at the pace of academy conversions. But there are a number of important issues that need to be addressed if the rhetoric is to affect reality on the ground.

First, the pupil premium is too low this year at £430 per pupil to make much difference, especially as schools are coming to terms with other budget cuts. The premium should reach £1600 by 2014-15 and may then have a bigger impact, but a lot will depend on how schools are held accountable for its results. The league tables may include measures of achievement and progress for poorer pupils, but it will be the value attached to such measures in the Ofsted inspection framework that matter most: the new league table measures will not greatly affect parental choices in themselves.

Second, the structural reforms are certainly a victory for advocates of greater independence and diversity - I would certainly count myself as one. But with a few admirable exceptions, most of the 40 planned free schools will do little for the poorest students, however much they satisfy middle class or religious parental aspirations. And most converter academies are converting so for financial reasons. There is little sign that the DFE is using Michael Gove's initial commitment to ensuring strong system leadership from the new academies, within funding agreements for example. Meanwhile, the Government has diverted time and effort to the legal process of academy conversion from the far tougher job of turning around failing schools, even though the £25,000 grant available to converters should cover their legal costs. It insults the intelligence to pretend that the hard grind needed to turn around or replace failing schools is comparable to the fairly simple, financially persuasive and legal process required for successful schools, and without the same drive that Andrew Adonis brought to sponsor-led reform, there will not be the gains that were made by Tony Blair's Academies. Liz Sidwell is making a good start as Schools Commissioner, but the DFE effort as a whole needs to focus on the hard rather than the easy wins. Inputs are not the same as outcomes.

And finally, the changes to the Admissions Code are, understandably, permissive. But the pupil premium offers a chance to use some leverage. Prioritising poorer pupils in successful schools could be one of a menu of possibilities linked to a higher premium in the future. As could becoming a National Leader of Education, or successful curriculum innovation. But without some conditionality, the pupil premium is in danger of being a damp squib. Unless it does so, the Treasury will start to question the value for money in continuing to raise the level of the premium at a time of austerity.

The coalition has made a lot of noise about social mobility. It has ostensibly put some money where its mouth is, with the pupil premium. But it has not - as yet - joined the dots of its various policies to ensure that it makes the impact it says it wants to see in the results achieved by the poorest pupils. It must start to do so.

How Labour should respond to Gove

2011-05-26T15:44:00.000+01:00

I've written a feature for the June issue of Progress magazine on how Ed Miliband should respond to the coalition's key school policies.

The education secretary, Michael Gove, sees himself as Blairite school reformer. By expanding academies, maintaining minimum exam standards for schools and strongly embracing school standards, he is certainly echoing many of the themes that characterised New Labour's approach to ‘education, education, education'.

But he has also downplayed Tony Blair's linking of investment to reform. And while this may be harder with fiscal restraint, the coalition can be challenged on its stated objectives. It is here - rather than in attacking its main policy planks - that Labour should focus its opposition.

Gove's education reforms have three main elements: structural reform with more academies, including new ‘free schools'; a drive on academic school standards; and a pupil premium - extra cash for pupils in receipt of free school meals - to fight poverty. Only the last was a key Liberal Democrat policy, but all were central to the Tories' manifesto. Gove is essentially implementing a programme developed for him in opposition by the Policy Exchange and Reform thinktanks.

Blair aimed for 400 academies by early this decade. But these were primarily replacing failing secondary schools or providing new opportunities in disadvantaged areas. Gove has allowed primary and special schools to become academies, and any school can apply for academy status, with those rated ‘outstanding' or ‘good with outstanding features' by Ofsted able to do so almost automatically without a sponsor. This, rather than an expansion of sponsor-led academies in deprived areas, supported by universities and educational charities like Ark and Harris, is what has led to an expansion from Labour's planned total of 272 academies in September 2010 to 629 in April 2011.

At the same time, Gove is promoting ‘free schools'- parent-promoted, faith-led or sponsor-led new academies - but has been hampered by the groundwork and funding. At most, a dozen seem set to open this year. So far the initiative has produced few radical new ideas: most planned schools could have opened under Labour and some are simply resisting local authority reorganisations.

Labour needs a careful, subtle response to those policies, perhaps employing a three-pronged approach. First, it should query the balance of government resources being used between sponsor-led academies in deprived areas and helping good schools convert. The really hard work lies in getting weaker schools to become academies with good sponsors. Only with the recent appointment of former academy leader Liz Sidwell as schools commissioner has Gove turned his mind to this tougher task.

Second, Gove has said that when outstanding schools become academies they should be required to work with a weaker school. Labour should press for strong partnerships, like those being promoted by the headteachers' and principals' organisation, the National Leaders of Education, but they should be a clear part of academy funding agreements.

And third, Labour should use the free school model, refocusing it on transforming curriculum choices for all and providing better schools in deprived areas. At present, as with academies, it has become too much of a numbers game.

Gove's approach to standards and the curriculum has been strongly academic. His promotion of a league table measure that he calls the ‘English Baccalaureate'- awarded to pupils gaining good GCSEs in English, maths, science, languages and history or geography - has shown that only 15 per cent of pupils nationally reach this standard. However, the proportion gaining good grades in English and maths has risen from a third in 1997 to 55 per cent thanks to Labour reforms. But rather than criticise efforts to toughen standards which parents support, Labour should champion a tough ‘technical Baccalaureate' as an alternative that rewards practical and vocational success alongside English, maths and science. Gove is surely right to acknowledge the need to improve standards faster to meet international competition; Labour should help develop consensus on what this means in practice, challenging the narrowness of the education secretary's measures but not his ambition for higher standards.

Finally to funding, where the coalition is weakest. Its much-trumpeted pupil premium is worth only £430 per pupil on free school meals this year, barely replacing other cuts in schools with large numbers of poorer pupils. Despite promises of no cuts for schools, shadow education secretary Andy Burnham has shown average per pupil cuts of 3.9 per cent over the next three or four years alone, with another National Association of Head Teachers survey showing as many losers as winners. Labour cannot easily promise to restore such revenue cuts, but it can reasonably question the government's approach to the pupil premium and schools capital.

Labour has failed to quantify the extra help it provided to pupils in poorer areas, and its impact -the reduction in schools with fewer than 30 per cent of pupils gaining five good GCSEs in English and maths from 1600 in 1997 to fewer than 100 today. The party should embrace the concept of the pupil premium but set higher expectations for its use. Schools should receive a higher premium where they successfully improve overall results and narrow gaps in achievement. Those that fail to do this should see their premium reduced.

With capital, nobody could oppose efficiency efforts, but Labour should criticise the demise of formula capital, as proposed by the recent James review. By providing a typical secondary school with £150,000 a year to spend on maintenance and smaller development projects, school independence and responsibility are enhanced. This year's cuts to on average £25,000 a year greatly reduce those freedoms. Labour should champion independence here while holding the coalition to account on its wider plans for school spending.

Burnham has successfully tackled key Gove failings, including the scrapping of the education maintenance allowance, where there has been a partial U-turn. But his tougher task will be building on New Labour's education reforms to show clever, strategic and forensic opposition to an education secretary whose stated ambitions may be Blairite, even if his execution is otherwise.

Separating the truants from the cheap holiday seekers

2011-05-26T15:05:00.000+01:00

The schools minister Nick Gibb greeted the latest truancy figures by blaming Labour for failing to get to grips with the problem. And it is true that despite giving schools and local authorities much tougher powers to tackle what is called 'unauthorised absence' the absentee numbers seem relentlessly to be on the rise.

But this is too simplistic a picture. One measure that had a remarkable effect was targeted action on schools with the highest levels of truancy, where such concentrated effort reduced the numbers of days lost to absence in the schools concerned, though it didn't dent the overall figures. This week's statistics (pdf) show that these measures, introduced by Tony Blair in 2006, saw the number of persistent truants (those missing 14 or more days a year) have fallen from 336,935 in 2006 to 260,740 in 2010 with the harder core (those missing 32 or more days a year) falling from 48,080 to 26,750. That is the single most impactful measure on truancy in decades.

But that success story has been obscured by an important change that was made during Labour's time in office to the focus of the data. Instead of simply focusing on unauthorised absence schools were urged to clamp down on term-time holidays, and to reduce overall absence figures, including authorised absence. The result was to drive many cheap term-time holidaymakers into the truants' corner. Indeed a look at the actual statistics (pdf) here confirms this, as the increase is unauthorised absence broadly mirrors the fall in authorised absence. A fifth of all unauthorised absence is due to family holidays. And there has been a fall in secondary school absence with a rise in primaries. I personally was against this change, because I believed the focus should be on persistent truants. But it has driven the data since.

However, the coalition does not appear to be continuing the work on tackling persistent truancy that had this big impact, as it is sceptical of such targeted work. Instead it imagines that the measures in its Education Bill combined with Ofsted inspections will do the trick. Among heads, only the permission for same day detentions is given a thumbs up - the rest is seen as window dressing (as, to be fair, were many similar Labour measures). But there is nothing here that will make the slightest difference either to the number of hard core truants or to the holiday plans of families in search of off peak bargains.

Next time, the coalition will have to start taking the blame if absentee data don't fall significantly. And when the time comes, we need to take a close look at the persistent absentee data. Those are the ones that are likely to become tomorrow's NEETS.

Garret FitzGerald 1926-2011

2011-05-19T17:07:00.001+01:00

Garret FitzGerald, who died today, was Ireland's first post-nationalist Taoiseach, and in that role he laid the groundwork that has culminated in this week's extraordinary visit of the Queen to the Republic. He was not, truth be told, a hugely successful Taoiseach in policy terms, but his contribution to Irish life far outweighed any of his achievements as head of government. He set a tone of integrity that stood in marked contrast to the corruption of Charles Haughey, his main Fianna Fail opponent. His leadership of Fine Gael and the coalition government marked a sea-change in Irish life, as an intellectual who, while getting elected through the clientilist system, managed to transcend such narrowness to embody what President McAleese called the characteristics of the Renaissance man. An economist, his politics were those of the European social democrat - albeit sometimes at odds with a Fine Gael party led by the ultra-conservative Liam Cosgrave during the 1970s - rather than the scion of a party born of obscure Civil War arguments.

It is a tribute to this intellectual giant that he continued to contribute wise economic and politics analysis to the Irish Times every week until shortly before his recent illness. But the respect he earned was genuine and widespread. In truth, his Anglo-Irish Agreement lacked the subtley to transcend the sectarian divide, but he had understood the need to move forward politically, which would lead in time to the Good Friday Agreement. His social agenda, too, proved premature, and it took time - and the election of Mary Robinson in 1990 and the 1992 coalition with a strong Labour presence - for the advances he supported in areas like divorce to be realised. But as his highly readable autobiography demonstrated, it was not for want of trying. Ireland today is a very different place socially and culturally than it was when Garret FitzGerald entered politics. And that it is owes no small debt to his sense of what it could be.

Lessons for Life

2011-05-13T19:20:00.000+01:00

There was a great turnout in the Commons last night for the launch of Lessons for Life, a collection of 50 interviews with education, business and government leaders that I conducted for HTI, the education leadership charity, to celebrate their 25th anniversary. Estelle Morris hosted the event.

Among those giving their views on education - and remembering their own schooldays - are Sir Alex Ferguson, Michael Gove, David Blunkett, Sir Martin Sorrell, Sir Michael Barber, Lord Baker, Digby Jones, David Puttnam and Yo Sushi! founder Simon Woodroffe. Education leaders interviewed include Sir Michael Wilshaw, Dame Sue John, chief inspector Christine Gilbert, Dame Ruth Silver and Sir William Atkinson, who spoke at last night's launch.

Sir William, who has transformed the Phoenix High School in West London, tells me in the book of his own remarkable story after he arrived in 1957 in the UK with his mother and older brother:

"The teacher, because my mother spoke with a very broad Jamaican accent, took into his head that my brother was aged 7 and had not been to school, whereas I was aged 9 and had been to school for two years. Therefore, it was unfortunate that I couldn’t read and write and he was a mini-Renaissance man,” recalls the headteacher whose leadership was the inspiration for the Lenny Henry character in the BBC series, Hope and Glory.

“So, I spent two years in a remedial class, which initially had a profound effect on me, with other children who were not having a good time at school, learning that I was not terribly bright and not terribly good at school. As result, I managed to fail my 11-plus at 9 when they thought I was 11. It was only then that they discovered my age. By that time, I’d internalised a number of very negative things about myself as a learner. So two years later when I took the 11 plus, I failed again. Most people only fail it once!”

But that early setback didn’t deter William. And he owes a lot to sixth form head at Battersea County school, Ray Sanders, who helped him gain the O levels he needed – after an unsuccessful first attempt. “Ray decided that I had potential that I didn’t think I had,” he says. “He got me to realise that I was capable of doing far better than I thought I could. He was also the person who made me want to become a teacher; not only Ray, but also the young teachers working in that comprehensive school. For me, they appeared to be good role models; these were people who really wanted to make a difference before it was fashionable.”

"Lessons for Life" is being sold in aid of the Inspire programme which promotes mentoring for disadvantaged young people. Copies are available from HTI at £25 each.

Back to the university drawing board

2011-05-10T12:14:00.000+01:00

I know the Government is getting desperately confused in its higher education policy, but the answer is not to introduce a two-tier fees system for home students. Instead, the Government needs to examine the problems it has created for itself in its higher education policy. The most important mistake was in getting the pricing wrong, assuming that universities would not charge £9000 while it was cutting their teaching budgets. This was a false economy, as the Government has to pick up the tab for the extra loans, which although attracting some interest are now only repayable when earners exceed £21k in income. It looks like there was no proper modelling done which included the likely impact of abolishing all state funding.

Perhaps now is the time to look again at the inter-relationship between several aspects of the new system: the size of the maximum fee and the availability of loans, the loan repayment terms, the extent to which government and universities underwrite those loans and the level of HEFCE grant for non-science subjects. A better balance could certainly be more manageable - and fairer- than allowing rich kids to indulge in a spot of arbitrary queue jumping. Vince Cable - if he can refocus on his department for a moment - and David Willetts need to go back to the drawing board.

The morning after

2011-05-09T13:30:00.000+01:00

Were it not for Scotland, Ed Miliband could claim to have had a good night. As it is, the extraordinary SNP surge will overshadow some genuinely impressive achievements: potentially gaining a majority in Cardiff (providing a lesson in the benefits of coalition for the larger party), routing the Lib Dems in cities like Sheffield, Manchester, Birmingham, Hull and Stoke, winning back Gravesham and good results in places like Telford and Luton. Yet Labour also lost ground in key seats like Gloucester and Dartford. Of course, results have still to come in many areas. But the fact that one cannot say it was an overwhelmingly good night for Labour is a measure of the uphill struggle that Miliband still faces.

For he is the leader of the party in the whole of Britain, not just England; and he can't accept credit for Cardiff without also accepting the embarrassment of Edinburgh. He needs now to work to ensure that there is a root and branch reorganisation of the Scottish Labour Party, with the persuasion of a heavy hitter to position him or herself to do an Alex Salmond on the whole Scottish Labour party. After all, Salmond had the confidence to stick his name on every Scottish ballot paper.

In England, this is a better result than it might seem, because Labour has once again become the largest party in votes cast. This is important with the Tory gerrymeander still set to be introduced despite the failure of AV. It is a mark of the ineffectiveness of Nick Clegg that he didn't insist that the two measures were dependent on each other, thus forcing Cameron and crew to restrain themselves over their No enthusiasm. The Liberal Democrats are facing potential revolts over key coalition policies which will strain the partnership, and should certainly scupper Andrew Lansley's barmy NHS plans (if not restoring those waiting time targets that had been a huge success for patients) and may force speedier Lords reform and turn the pupil premium in schools into a meaningful incentive to attract poorer students. And while the Tories will be pleased not to have seen their vote drop significantly, they may find that this is the last time they can feel so smug: as Lib Dem councillors disappear, voter anger will find a new home.

For Labour, it is vital that the party does more than sort out Scotland. The extra councillors should help consolidate the party organisation. But Miliband needs to show some policy mettle too, and not wait until his various reviews have pronounced. Voters don't know what he stands for, and he needs to pick some strong symbolic policies on which to take a stand: that might mean outpacing the Tories where their policies are potentially popular, like on academies and free schools, and providing radical alternatives where they are getting it wrong, including on crime and prisons. He should not let the Lib Dems take the initiative on constitutional reform, but he needs a clear and credible economic and social policy that appeals to working class and Middle England voters alike. Of course, he should not unveil all - or even most - of his policies now, but he does need to show where he stands. Otherwise it will be difficult to turn last night's genuine gains into an election winning strategy for 2015 - or before.

An updated version of this posting appears on the Public Finance blog.