Briefing on the Education Bill with Ruth Kelly MP
6 March 2006
The Prime Minister has hosted the second in a series of briefings on the Education White Paper and what the government can do to improve educational standards in the country.
Parts of this transcript may have been edited
Read the briefing in full:
Prime Minister:
Good Afternoon everyone. Thank you very much indeed for coming along to what is the second one of our briefings on education and the Education White Paper, the Bill, and what we can do to improve educational standards in the country. Today Ruth and I have invited along four people whose organisations are all in different ways involved in educational provision, and there are two points I really want to make by way of introduction. The first thing is to emphasise that it is not something new to have such organisations involved in education, indeed some of them have been involved for very long periods of time. However, what has been new over the past decade or so has been the greater opportunity for partnership.
On the basis of the experience that we have had with such partnerships, we are confident that extending the opportunities for that is going to be beneficial to schools and to children, and that is the first point to make. The second point to make is this, that very often, as you will hear, it is in the areas of greatest disadvantage and where the children have been without much prospect of a decent education that these organisations have made a difference. We have moved far beyond, I think and hope, the situation where people seriously believe that these types of organisations want to be involved for any other reason than putting something back into the community, raising the standards of education, and doing so for reasons both of their commitment to local communities and to giving opportunities to children, but also in terms of enlightened self-interest as well.
So I think there is every opportunity to build on what has already been achieved. I think you will hear from the people today about the types of opportunity they have already been engaged in and what they think they can do for the future, and I think, as I have said many times over the past few weeks, there is actually a really exciting possibility here, and that is what should motivate us. There is the possibility of raising standards in our schools for children who otherwise wouldn't get the chance of a decent education, and that is something that everybody here is committed to.
Charles Parker:
Good Afternoon. My name is Charles Parker. I am the 41st Clerk to the Mercers' Company. This was all started in 1391 by my predecessor, William Wilsden, and there has been a Clerk to the Mercers' Company ever since. We do things for the long term.
I have been asked to tell you a bit about what we do as far as our education business is concerned and to explain perhaps where that might fit into the present policy initiatives.
We are a perpetual, private, endowed charitable foundation. As I say, we have about 600 million of both corporate and charitable funds, and some of our investments are applied to secondary education. There are 10 schools in what we call our group, three of these were founded in Tudor England - that is the 1500s. We then paused for breath for some 360 years and founded St Paul's Girls' School. So by the beginning of the 20th century we were involved essentially with the independent education sector.
But in the 1990s all this changed and the pace has been frantic, and hotting up ever since. These last 15 years have provided another opportunity for enlightened private sponsorship of education. We seized that opportunity. This started with the founding of Thomas Telford School. You may have heard quite a lot about Thomas Telford School. It was designed and created by a group of people assembled by the Mercers' Company, led by my learned predecessor, who sought to import into the maintained system much of the business expertise of sponsors, and our association with St Paul's School and St Paul's Girls School. We still control through the charitable trust that exists at the root of Thomas Telford School the governing body.
All our schools strive for high and rising standards from their children. Nearly all our schools are run via a charitable trust. The Heads are all outstanding. A good Head means a good school, an indifferent Head really cannot produce a good school. Governors govern, they do not run the school, they make it possible for the Head to run the school.
We at the Mercers do everything we can to provide the professionals employed in our schools with the operating independence that they need to perform. We aim for best value in terms of our procurement. We have provided seedcorn capital for all our schools and in recent years, we control procurement ourselves wherever possible, that includes two academies: Walsall Academy which opened in 2003, and Sandwell Academy, just in the shadow of the West Bromwich Albion Stadium, which will open in 2006.
These schools are becoming mainstream, and that is good, and we at the Mercers who are trying to innovate in secondary education want to know if it is possible materially to improve schools without having to spend £25 million a pop. This has led us to explore federations, foundations, trust schools, and one is now in business between Thomas Telford School and Madeley Court, which has been part of a very successful federation for the last three years.
Each of our schools has its own governing body. We do not control these schools. However, we appoint some 74 governors and trustees in total. This is a big operation. They are all volunteers, they have to be trained, they have to be committed, they have to be able to focus on the schools that they are attached to, it is a major part of our effort.
We are also involved with charitable distribution. From our investment trust we distribute really quite a lot of money. Our giving, as far as education is concerned, is only about £3.5 million a year, but my goodness people do pay attention if you have got a bit of cash.
We have a certain amount of expertise such as an education committee made up of our own highly skilled practitioners. We have very few of our own employees, but we have consistent involvement and we offer constant support.
Our funding, whilst modest, is targeted closely at the needs of the school. We supply money when the head and the governors say that he or she needs it. We have a network of governors, they serve very often on more than one governing body and this gives them and us access to shared best practice and shared expertise. By way of example, the maintained schools we work with tend to be extremely well managed. On the other hand, the independent schools that we work with have an unusual ability to prepare children for both independent learning and higher education. We aim to share all this across the group. We move teachers between one school and another, we provide a programme of targeted seminars, training days, informal and formal support.
Now as far as trust schools are concerned, we know that once you are part of a large foundation - a large foundation - it becomes clear over time how valuable this is, and teachers and parents welcome the stability and the independence that follows. But teachers are a conservative lot, they do not like change, and some effort will be needed to persuade governors to make the move, and I certainly doubt that a trust school will be set up on its own, the benefit will come from teaming up with other schools with a common ethos.
Just a word about independence. Does this actually have any benefit? There have been observed changes which go further than league tables that make the headlines. We have no doubt that CTCs and academies are working and fulfilling a local need. Attendance, which is so often a problem, certainly in the urban schools that we know and have absorbed, is now very, very high. The number of applicants for places in our schools greatly exceeds the number that are available. These benefits should accrue to other trust schools.
Education is a long term business and it costs money, and I think that the greatest contribution that an organisation like the Mercers' Company can make is that we can do what we have always done with our outstanding schools in the independent and maintained sectors. The last 15 years has been a great opportunity for us. I hope it will continue.
Stephen Uden:
So having heard from an organisation that has been involved in education for 500 years, I must say that I am from Microsoft. When I went to school Microsoft hadn't even been founded, so we are a little short of 500 years. But actually it is equally our aim to be involved in education for the long term, and I won't be standing here in 500 years time, but hopefully one of my successors will be, was it the 41st or whatever Education Relation Manager.
Our passionate belief is that if you can get appropriate involvement of business and education, it materially makes a difference to both parties. People in business gain from going out and putting time back, spending time in their local communities, they learn about mentoring and about how to work with groups in ways that they couldn't do in the organisation. Certainly our volunteers find it incredibly motivating and a good part of their experience to do so. Also, from a pure business interest, we have a shortage of about 30,000 skilled people in the IT industry, and that is just in the Microsoft component of it. The national picture across all areas is much, much bigger than that. So we think there is an obligation for business, and a benefit of business, to be involved earlier on in the process to actually help guide and shape the kind of skills that we are going to, as employers, ultimately end up needing to benefit from.
So there are a lot of benefits in this, and this is about putting something back, but actually it is also for some very smart reasons that businesses should get involved in education and we would like to see more do so.
We have therefore been involved in quite a few of the initiatives over the years that are about trying to create better connections between the education system, not just in the schools sector, and businesses. For example we are a big supporter of foundation degrees, and again there is a role for the employer to work with the education provider to come up with something that really genuinely gets people into the world of work. While not every young person is going to be getting a job in Microsoft, or even necessarily in business, certainly the information industries and business is going to be where a lot of those people are going to end up.
We have been involved through foundation degrees, we also sponsor 100 specialist schools, particularly in areas, not necessarily just urban areas, but ones where it is difficult for them to get other business sponsorship. So it has been either very rural communities or also inner city areas. Not just technology, don't just think that we only do and think technology, this has been about trying to work with schools who want to partner with us to do two things really, one is to use technology to improve the learning experience. It will come as no surprise to you that we think there is tremendous potential here. There has been a lot of investment in doing so, but we think there is a big job to do in making sure the schools are getting the best value out of it.
And so we work with those 100 schools to help them develop their use of technology, bring them together to make them aware of the possibilities. The second thing that we do is about trying to bring in a perspective about the world of work. One of my regrets from my school days is that I had just no exposure at all to what it was going to be like when I finished school and was looking for a job, what the world of work actually looked like. And so we send volunteers into schools, we also as far as we can get as many schools to come and visit Microsoft and see what it is like and understand what they can do potentially. We are particularly interested in trying to get young women to consider the IT industry - and many don't - that is one way in which we can help solve the skills shortage.
So it is a partnership, it is not about controlling schools, we have got no interest in running or controlling schools, it is about trying to really form a partnership to work together to raise standards.
There are two key points really for why we think the trust schools model is something that really is very exciting, something that we wanted to be very involved in early on. One thing is that if you get involved in a particular school, then it is very hard to get the change to work out across the whole system. We think that if you can get a series of schools working together to raise standards, bringing in people, not just Microsoft but other institutions, bringing different skills to the party, we can create a group of schools that can work together to really do something very special for the people there. The second thing is that there is an opportunity to deepen the engagement between business and other third parties and schools. Taking the current specialist model, which has been very, very successful in engaging a huge number of businesses, and to take that model and deepen and extend it. I think there is tremendous opportunity therefore for us to work with schools to do that.
In order to kind of find out some of what the art of the possible is, we have been working with Monkseaton Community Language College up in Tyneside and the Open University and the specialist schools and academies trust to create a trust schools pathfinder there to really try and explore within the framework of the trust school model to come up with a model that we can use to get other businesses and other schools to engage in a way they haven't done previously.
So we think the trust schools model is an enormous opportunity. We are very, very excited about it. We will obviously have to wait and see what comes out of the pilot, out of the Pathfinder Project, but it is certainly our ambition to try and create something with a number of schools engaged together, learning from each other, working with us and working with other third parties, that will ultimately - and this is what we are all really in it for - to help the schools, and particularly help the young learners in the schools to do far better, attain the jobs they are looking for and be successful in modern society.
Andy Powell:
Good Afternoon. I am very pleased to be here. My name is Andy Powell and I am Chief Executive of Edge. Edge is an independent education foundation, with significant funds, and it is dedicated to promoting practical and vocational learning. We believe all students should benefit from balanced learning, both theory and practice.
By practical learning we mean learning by doing things for real, working with experts, and then reflecting on that, combining that theory in practice. So it includes work placements, setting up an enterprise, it might be working on projects with local employers or the community, apprenticeships or volunteering. Actually it is how most of us have done our best learning.
Edge has carried out extensive surveys of the general public, of employers, both small and large, of teachers and lecturers and of young people at various stages of their education. In every case more than 70%, and up to 90%, believe that there should be more practical learning for young people.
We are even newer I think than Microsoft. We launched a year ago. We are a campaigning organisation and we also run a small number of major projects to demonstrate what we mean. So for example at the moment we have got a number of NASA astronauts wandering around secondary schools to inspire young people with the practical application of science as part of a major schools competition. We are working with the all-party skills group at the moment to get across the importance and variety of skills needed in the UK, and in particular by transforming skills competitions and working with the government to ensure that the UK hosts the world skills competition in London in 2011, the year before the Olympics. And of course we are involved in city academies.
Why are we keen to support city academies and other schools? We want to give every young person more opportunity to get out and do things for real, because it is only then that you find out what you are good at, what motivates you, what you want to be in work and in life.
At the moment I would suggest there isn't any real choice, there is a well respected and clearly signposted good academic pathway, and then there are other things for those who are perhaps seen to be difficult or not clever enough. We have replaced social snobbery with academic snobbery, but in the real world there are many paths to success and many different types of intelligence.
To put that in the wider context and more starkly, I believe that our education system does have to change. Quite simply, if we don't we will not have enough people, not just with the knowledge but actually with the know-how, the creativity, the enterprise, the attitude to compete with people from China or India shall we say. It is an attitude thing. And that means I think we do have to open the system up, there is no choice, we have to allow more flexibility and autonomy in our schools and to provide more support and inspiration for those who run them. And that is why we are keen, together with other employers and so forth, to invest in the schools that need most support.
What would Edge-sponsored schools look like? They will be committed to driving up standards in academic and vocational attainment; they will specialise in enterprise in the broadest sense, ensuring every pupil has more opportunity to do things for real in their local community; they will be passionate about ensuring a route to continued learning and employment for every pupil, whichever route they take; there would not be any special selection criteria; and they would be totally integrated with the local community, including other schools and of course the local authority.
Finally, what can Edge bring to the party and what are our own plans? We bring a lot of contacts, knowledge and experience, actually the sort of things that I suspect many schools in affluent areas already have, we bring huge passion and commitment; and of course funds. Currently we are involved in seeking to sponsor a few city academies. We would like to extend our support to a wider network of schools, as both Charles and Paul have said, and we very much hope that the Education and Inspections Bill and trust schools will provide us with that opportunity.
Paul Lawrence:
Good Afternoon. I hope you haven't got writers cramp and I hope not to intensify it too much if that is the case. Paul Lawrence, KPMG, National Director, Education Advisory. A long title. The Advisory means that I am not guilty of any of the audit work, conflict of interest ... whatever, it is education advisory.
To continue the tradition that my learned colleague from Mercers began with, I haven't a clue what we were doing in 1391, I would guess we were probably auditing bales of wool somewhere. I am much more interested in what we are going to be doing in 2031 and in 2091 and moving forward, so we too share a long term commitment to education development in this country.
I will share with you some of the things that KPMG are involved in, but I would also like to take part of the allotted time to urge you to consider some of the opportunities that this Education Bill presents from a business perspective, because whilst not wanting to be in any sense critical, I do think you have missed a big opportunity to look at the pluses that this Bill has to offer. Periodically we have adjusted Bills, we have new Bills, whatever. This for me is a biggie with a huge opportunity as we move forward.
First of all KPMG and its current involvement. Yes we have support for an academy in Hackney, we are considering further academy investment. Some of my colleagues on my left have come relatively late to the game, and I think we have been forgiven for that, Charles, have we not, it is better to arrive than take 500 years to make one's mind up, but what is important is having arrived, it is about believing in making a difference, it is about believing in performance improvement. And our work with academies, with 300 - 400 of our employees going out every week into schools to do number work, to listen to reading, we have invested £2 million in a reading recovery scheme so that youngsters who are under-performing can have one to one catch-up opportunities, which are great, but it also raises the question that if we did things in a different way, might we have fewer people who need that catch-up opportunity? So we need to look strategically at what these opportunities are and how we can help.
Yes, we provide 100 - 200 governors, I think it is about 172 at the moment out of 560 partners that we have in the UK. BT, who were at the presentation this morning, provide 800 governors in terms of schools in the UK. It sounds a lot, but don't forget there are 23,500 schools, there is a big job to do here in raising standards for all.
So we are involved in many different ways, as are those who have spoken before me. But I think we should go a step further and say: What does this Bill offer us that is different? And I think it offers a whole organisation route forward, because at the moment yes we can assist with this, that, the other. If you think for example what has been achieved in Telford, or what has been achieved in Monkseaton, these are whole organisation approaches. Charles in effect said I want to clear away the debris so that the professionals can focus on the teaching and learning.
We actually undertook a piece of work for the DFES about financial management in schools, and one of the things we found was that the core business was often neglected because other activities had to be accommodated, and we feel by putting a pitch in through a foundation, a trust school where we with our business expertise about vision, about performance improvement, about making a difference, because no business that survives stands still, it constantly needs to improve, and develop, and grow. And schools are organic organisations, just as businesses are.
We make no attempt whatsoever to own the school or to mix the core activity role with some of the other roles. We are good at partnerships, and schools if they are to survive necessarily have to be involved widely in partnerships. 14 - 19 and the vocational curriculum, and the new vocational diplomas, are absolutely critical to move forward. A foundation can provide that vehicle in a trust school context. I don't believe that business should work on its own. I think business expertise is very important, but partnerships with for example FE colleges, particularly FE colleges that since the Foster report are increasing their competence and focus and key performance - big, big opportunity. A school senior management team, backed and underpinned by a foundation in a trust school context that has a business, has an FEI or an HEI to support it as well, has every chance to really add value in the total sense.
So the basic proposition is, don't focus on those aspects where there are concerns, which will be worked on, look instead at the bigger opportunity to drive forward.
Which schools will we focus on? Well if we are sensible we will focus on those schools of maximum deprivation so we can make the biggest difference soonest. And I think one message I would like you as ladies and gentlemen of the press to bear in mind, if we do that right then rather than creating a two tier system, we are moving as far away from that two tier system as you can imagine, by removing those areas of greatest deprivation.
We need to work solidly on pilots. It is great to have the rhetoric, it is great to have the vision, and it is relatively easy to stand up here and make these observations. But actually having first class pilot schools operating as trust schools to show what can be done with these various partnerships, we think is very important.
Motives - why do we do it? Very, very simple. The skills situation is frankly terrifying. 20 - 30 years from now, if we don't make a radical uplift as far as skills are concerned, do your own press cuttings over the past year and look at what the Prime Minister, look at what the Secretary of State, look at No 11, look at Digby Jones, all give the message that we need to skill up, we need to tool up in terms of a skills economy otherwise we will not survive.
We have skills academies, we have skills councils, we need to populate and make these organisations effective, and to make that happen we need to have the right messages right from primary stage in schools, and I think primaries are an important part.
So our motives are strategic in the sense of the workforce, they are also selfish in the sense of the motivation and retention aid it gives to our own staff. We do very, very simplistic things. Ask via reception to say one sentence from the people as they come back from their own sessions in the middle of the day on reading recovery or whatever - that was great, I can face the rest of the day, I can really see how those young people are coming along. There is a will and enthusiasm and I think that we need to harness that will and enthusiasm collectively.
Looking at the issue of local authorities, again I think to an extent the wrong side of the coin has been read at times. Local authorities have a massive, massive responsibility for effective commissioning and for ensuring the quality of what takes place is of the highest standard. The Bill is talking about powers, which means they can intervene on any individual learner level, if it is seen that that person is not receiving a suitable education, they can be involved with schools that are under-performing, and it is very clearly written on what they can do, and indeed on schools that are coasting.
And there is a long history of local authorities and businesses working closely together, ask the Chamberlains when they were rebuilding Birmingham, ask the local authorities today, there is that partnership. And the opportunity to work together, reinforced by what are the different motives of business and local authorities as far as the children in each of the 150-odd authorities are concerned, and the answer is there is no difference whatsoever. Local authorities and business want the best for each successive generation of learner. Maybe each business's motives are slightly different, but the actual indication of what we want is just the same.
So let's look at some of the positive aspects, let's enthuse about them, let's also encourage the department, as we implement pilots and pathfinders, to make sure that administratively we make it as easy as possible whilst retaining the checks and balances to make sure that appropriate organisations underpin these schools, and let's go for it, because this is a big, big opportunity. It is one of those once in a generation, or twice in a political generation opportunity, and this is one I think we should go for and celebrate.
Ruth Kelly:
I am only going to say a few words, but I think what we have seen here today illustrates the massive enthusiasm that there is out there in the community, not just symbolised here today, but actually there is so much going on right across every community in Britain among so many businesses and business foundations where the people involved want to make a really, really big difference to our schools system. And in fact it is happening now, but we could bring it together to make it much, much more effective at the schools level.
And what we are doing in the Schools Bill is building on everything that we have seen working already, sometimes going back hundreds and hundreds of years through business foundations, in other cases building on what has been happening relatively recently in our schools system through what is happening for example in Monkseaton School with the Open University and Microsoft, looking at the specialist schools programme, looking at what has worked in the academy sector, but bringing all of these things together in a brand new opportunity for every single maintained school in the country. And if we really want to raise standards it is the question of getting through to the most difficult schools, to the under-performing schools, and bringing in the additional skills, commitment, expertise and energy that undoubtedly there is out there.
I think what we heard today is tremendous actually, because it shows you that business is taking their obligations seriously. And I am a firm believer that businesses have a responsibility to get involved in the schools system, to make a difference to every single child, and to make sure that we as a government and a society can deliver on our obligations, which is to give every single child the chance of fulfilling their potential.
So as we go forward, if the speakers here today are correct, as I am sure they are, we will move not towards a two tier system, but firmly away from a two tier system and we will have the sort of education that every child in this country deserves.
Question and answer session
Question:
Charles Parker said that teachers are a conservative lot. The definition of conservatism varies of course, so that is the point, I am wondering what experience the business community has of dealing with trade unions and teaching unions, it is a highly unionised area - education - and this must be a concern of teaching unions, apart from other concerns. I doubt whether there are many trade union members at KPMG or Microsoft, I might be wrong, but I would be interested to know your views.
Prime Minister:
It is pretty good, that Morning Star has turned up at a press conference. I have not had that for ages. Well I think we will give you the Leninist interpretation of this one. But Charles, you guys have worked presumably with unions for some time, haven't you?
Charles Parker:
Of course you are right that teachers are represented by trade unions in many cases. I think you will find that increasingly, certainly the schools we work with, we have individual contracts of employment with our teachers and as a result we have a very, perhaps an unusual system where teachers are happy and unions are not recognised in our schools. Now I am only talking about, as you heard me say, very few schools, but the teachers that work with me and with us have all come from a unionised background and I think we understand the need to participate carefully and encouragingly with the teaching workforce, it is the critical element of the entire operation. And I think what you heard me say is that we seek to empower our Heads to run the school, our teachers to teach, and we provide as good a platform as we can from which they do it.
Stephen Uden:
Can I just add to Charles' comments. Certainly we work with the NUT and the other bodies in schools, and you can't make anything happen frankly without involving and engaging the workforce, they are absolutely critical to delivering any of this. But I have not come across any resistance, because we all care about the end result, which is about learners achieving and being successful, so there is no reason why we can't all work together to make it happen.
Paul Lawrence:
I worked for 20 years as a teacher and had some quite trying times. I actually found that whilst there is a high level of unionisation, there is also a high level focus on what it is about, and I think those school teachers, whether unionised or not, are extremely learner focused, and remain so, and we should recognise that fact, and how we interpret unionisation so they are members of unions, that is fine, we respect and work within those terms. I think also if you look at some of the conditions in if I might say in Charles' school, if you cover a period for an absent colleague you are paid, but in many situations that is not the case still. And rather than worry about a threat of unionisation, I think we should rise to the challenge of positive human relations in the organisation.
Ruth Kelly:
And of course the ultimate safeguard here is that these schools have to choose to adopt a trust, there is no compulsion here, we are talking about England's schools making decisions that are right for them and their children. And if a trust has a proposition which will raise standards for kids and will make a really big difference to the school system, then I think that is a proposition that ought to be put in front of the governing body.
The other point I would make actually is that the social partnership in education, which has been built between the Department of Education and the teaching unions is unprecedented in government, it is delivering really big and significant workforce reform which is tackling education in a whole new way. And for example we are delivering really difficult change, which some people thought would lead to chaos, such as the introduction of planning and preparation time, incredibly smoothly because of those relationships that have been built with the teaching unions. So I actually think that these are the sorts of changes that should be welcomed over the long term by the unions.
Question:
We have heard from all the organisations this morning that they are doing a lot already with schools, through academies, through specialist schools, through federations, so they can already reach all schools in the country. So the question to them really is why do you need trusts, what difference would that make from what you are able to do at the moment? And a question to yourself, if I might Prime Minister, we have also heard this morning from several of the speakers, as we did at last week's event, people saying that the way forward is several schools together going to trust. Couldn't you at a stroke get rid of all your political problems with your back benchers by changing the Bill and saying that trusts can only consist of two or more schools?
Prime Minister:
I think that is a very good point. The reason we have done this in the way that we have is that it has got to be open to schools to make that choice, but I have got no doubt at all that in many cases, it could even be the majority of cases, this will happen by schools deciding to come together in federations, but that is a choice they have got to make in the end. And I think that the whole purpose of the Bill is to enable this. And you see the reason why we are engaged in this now is that the Bill brings together certain things that are located in different parts of the education system, and that is why I always say about this change, it is evolutionary on the one hand, but it is a big change on the other. Look, it is already the case that schools work with external partners in business, and charities, and churches and so on. It is already the case in the voluntary aided schools - that is the church schools effectively - that they will choose the majority of governors.
It is already the case that the foundation schools have major freedoms under the legislation. Now the purpose of this is to take what is there within the system now, bring it in one place and say to the schools that as of right you can choose to do this. But the whole purpose is permissive and enabling, and if schools decide that they want to come together in federations, if that is the right way for them to do, or businesses decide actually we would like to pool our resources in federations, that is great because what will happen, and you can see this already with what Charles was saying about the Mercers, is that you will get a group of schools that for example the teaching staff may go across the different school boundaries because they may decide well perhaps to spend a couple of days here may be a good idea, and then come back, you will find obvious synergies of scale as a result of having more than one school, some of the problems then can be dealt with and organised on a collective basis. So the more this has gone on actually I would say the more that the balance has shifted towards schools being able to federate, but I don't think it is something we should be dogmatic about, it should be left to the schools themselves, and you know I think that is probably why there is such a keen interest from the business community anyway. But sorry, do any of you guys want to come in on that?
Paul Lawrence:
Just if you are a failing school or in serious weakness, it might be that you need time to sort yourselves out before you federate, so to actually legislate and say a minimum of two from the start would actually preclude that opportunity.
Prime Minister:
Yes, that is right, and there will be, I can think of schools in my own patch actually which might decide they will do it on their own. But on the other hand I think this will operate in a number of different levels. And the extraordinary thing, and this is why I keep saying to people, instead of looking at all the difficulties, look at the opportunities of this. Look, here you have major institutions, top institutions in the whole of the country, willing to give their energy, commitment, time to education. I mean why would we not want to make use of all that? And that is why I find it quite frustrating sometimes when people take a negative view of it, because the positives are so huge if we mobilise them properly.
Question:
Prime Minister, you don't actually have any real prospect of losing this legislation, do you?
Prime Minister:
Well it is very kind of you to say so. Well probably not, but it is not just about getting the Bill through, it is also about establishing a clear direction for educational policy that sets aside all dogma and doctrine, wherever it comes from, that gets in the way of giving the best chance to all our children for a decent education. And therefore what is important actually is to try and get a real sense out of parliament that this is not an, oh well all right we will agree to this Bill, or some people are saying it doesn't go far enough, other people are saying it goes far too far. What I would like to see is, following the Bill, a real sense of that mobilisation of energy and commitment in organisations like the ones here today, in the local authorities, as you heard last time, and in local communities.
So it is not just a question of winning the vote obviously, although it is very important for us to win the vote, and obviously from my perspective I would prefer to have as many Labour MPs as possible there supporting it, but it is actually also about sending a clear signal of commitment and energy throughout the school system. That is also the reason why we are holding these briefings for you guys just as much depends on what you publicise out of this, because you can go on endlessly about the parliamentary arithmetic, but to be absolutely blunt about it, that doesn't matter a damn to any parent out there, what they care about is whether their children are going to get the chance of a better education. And I think any reasonable person who hears these guys, in the same way the local authority people last week, you kind of think well why would we want to be against this, let's see how we can push it forward even faster.
Question:
How are you going to achieve the balance between making it worth businesses' while to get involved by giving them enough freedom and control, but also maintaining some sort of coherent standards across all trust schools?
Prime Minister:
I don't know whether Ruth wants to come in on this, but obviously it is precisely because we believe this involvement will raise standards that we want to see it happen.
Ruth Kelly:
But everyone has made it clear, this isn't about businesses running or controlling schools, the Head teachers do that. What business can bring to the table is a good strategic direction for the school where they get the best Head teacher, and they make sure the Head teacher has the freedom and flexibility to deliver the curriculum that the children need in that area and make the linkages with other schools and the local community that is needed to raise standards - first point. The second point, these are schools that are maintained schools, they work within a clear strategic framework, set by the local authority where the local authority champions the needs of parents and pupils and makes sure that appropriate standards are maintained.
And if a school is under-performing, the local authority will be able to come in and sort it out, and if it is failing the school will be under special measures and the local authority can sort it out in the way that it can at the moment. So it is very, very clearly within a framework in which yes schools have complete freedom when they are doing well, but within a framework that if a school is not doing well, early pre-emptive action can be taken. And it is sort of important to realise the two things are there - devolution to the front line, yes, but with a strategic framework in which we are very, very clear that this is about standards and raising standards. And we also think that bringing those additional skills and expertise to the table is going to make a huge difference to standards in some of our most under-performing schools.
Question:
We have seen these companies today who are already running schools. How many do you feel are waiting in the wings to come in when the Education Bill goes through? What sort of breakdown do you see in terms of companies, charitable trusts, faith groups, parents who will take advantage of the trust school situation, and are there any no-go areas, for instance would you allow a tobacco company for example to get involved with the school?
Prime Minister:
Well there are safeguards as to who can come in and run schools, and I don't think we have had any applications from tobacco companies. But I think there is a huge wave of people out there. We have had meetings this morning, I know we had a meeting here a short time ago, as you know. Once we really show people we are up for it, they will come in.
Ruth Kelly:
This morning at the department we had about 15 or more businesses come in and talk about the opportunities for getting involved in trust schools. It was completely enthusiastic, and people were coming to ask questions, and Paul was dragged along to that event as well, and the questions that were being asked were, I have got an idea as to what would be a good trust, we would like to get involved with this with our business, can you help make it happen for us? And some of the ideas that came up from the floor were actually frankly ones that we hadn't thought through before. And the sort of beauty of the proposal is that it allows initiative to flourish, and what we saw was a huge enthusiasm, (a) from business to get involved in helping raise educational standards, but also for different models to be tried out in the school system which could make a real difference.
For instance we had someone come forward with an idea for how the SME community - small and medium sized enterprises - could be brought together to help give enterprise education among a group of schools; we had somebody else that was interested in developing a network of schools with a particular ethos. All sorts of ideas were coming forward, and if you combine that enthusiasm with what we saw last week from local authorities where local authorities want to go out there and actually broker some of these arrangements because they see a local issue that could be dealt with through the trust model, be it 14 - 19 vocational education delivery, or be it some of the every child matters issues that primary schools in particular are facing now, delivering childcare and the various services to help children, there are huge potential opportunities for people. But what we don't want to do is sit down and prescribe the models that have to be delivered, partly as I said the beauty about these proposals is that they allow that creativity to be harnessed in our schools system where it can raise standards.
Prime Minister:
I think there is a very, very big potential in this, particularly in secondary schools, of which there are some 3,500. It is true that you have got 25,000 schools overall, but the secondary sector is actually 3,500 and I think you have got lots of businesses out there waiting to come into this.
Question:
Mr Parker himself said that he thought that you would have to make some kind of effort to involve governors of schools to invite a trust on board. I was wondering Mr Parker, and the Prime Minister, what you thought could happen there? I know another one of your other major potential sponsors - CFBT - has actually said that you will have to offer some kind of incentive to persuade schools to do this.
Prime Minister:
... but look I can only talk about schools that I know and visit. If they have got a major player, like these guys, who is going to come in and help their school, believe me they are not going to be sitting there saying oh we don't want that, thank you very much. I think on the contrary they will be saying how can we get it, how can we make it help? I visited a school not so long ago which was absolutely classic, it was a specialist school, connected with a major company, I won't say which major plc, in a small way. It was a specialist school, and they started off by telling me they weren't really very keen on this trust idea, and I said: "Well it is entirely voluntary, you do it or you don't do it, it is up to you." And strangely enough, once they had kind of realised it was voluntary, they started to ask more about it. By the end of it they were saying well you mean we could get the plc to come in in a far bigger way and help us sort out the next stages of how we want to take our specialism? And I said: "That is precisely what it is about." Now I don't think it is going to be difficult to get these schools involved, and the schools commissioner role is precisely to match this up, it is there to try to match up the potential partners with the schools.
And just one other thing, before I ask Charles to comment on it. Business and external partners bring many things to a school, but there is one thing that is less tangible but I think fundamental, and I have noticed this particularly with the city academy programme, what these people bring is an absolute refusal to tolerate failure, that is what they bring. A lot of these schools in the most appalling and difficult conditions, where the teachers have had to deal with things that you and I can't even begin to contemplate trying to teach in the classroom in those circumstances, when you get these people involved, all of whom have built successful organisations, their attitude is if there is a problem, that is a challenge to be overcome.
Their attitude is not what there is a problem so I had better shrug my shoulders and walk away, and that change in attitude is the thing I notice. The thing I notice most inspiring about the city academy programme is not loads of new buildings and all the rest of it which are absolutely excellent, it is the fact that the people who are coming in from the outside say well I am just not having that situation, I don't accept that we can't do better than this. And whatever is the issue, and it might be an issue to do with getting the right teaching expertise in, dealing with excluded pupils, dealing with problem parents, or it might be about how they want to teach in the school, whenever they are told no they can't do something, they go back and say well actually we don't accept that, we are going to do it and this is how we are going to do it. Now that energy, as everybody knows who has ever run an organisation, is the thing that makes it work and succeed, and that is what they bring.
Charles Parker:
I can only answer your question of course from the small world that I am in, but once this has become an Act, and once we know what it means, and therefore some marketing will be done by the department, then the three schools that I am concerned with, which are within about 15 miles of each other, they are serious schools that are well run and well known locally. I have no doubt but that their own network, their contacts of governors, friends, even parents of children at one school and not the other, will approach us. And we have an idea that there will be three schools who will be if you like hubs in the middle of their communities, and that other schools around about will close up to us, and they will want to be part of what we are doing, without needing to be rebuilt. That is it.
Question:
Just as Charles mentioned at the beginning, I just wonder whether you are content, Prime Minister, to let trusts decide, as the nurses have, whether to recognise unions in their schools?
Prime Minister:
Well it depends what system they are operating under, but I think I am right in saying that for those schools that are city academies there is a greater freedom and that has always been there, for other schools they are part of the general terms and conditions. But you know I think in the end, schools find a way to make this work. Look, none of the teachers that I have talked to in any of the city academies has been in a situation where they kind of feel that the school is being bad to them. On the contrary, what I find whenever I go and talk to teachers on the ground is what they most want to be part of is a successful school. And I think that the schools where there are trade unions representing the teachers, which will be the vast majority of schools, in fact those schools don't find a great problem dealing with it.
Question:
What criteria, if any, are there to be given to schools when they are taking the decision to go in partnership with a business? You talked about these companies undoubtedly being top companies, but not all companies are top companies, and some companies occasionally crash. So are you going to give schools any helpful advice about this?
Prime Minister:
Of course, and that is precisely what the Schools Commissioner does. Yes, there is a gateway that people have got to go through. And again, if there was no experience of doing this, I could kind of understand these concerns, but what I find in this situation is people take the most wild hypothesis of what might happen and then say oh you are going to allow this. We are not. The Schools Commissioner is there as a gateway, but I have to say in all of the people that have come to the meetings we have done, and as I say there are stacks of people waiting to come into this, I haven't noticed any desire, I haven't yet come across the so-called Big Mac academy concept, that is not what people want to do, and the safeguards are there in order to be able to prevent that. And what is more incidentally, if the school, it is the same now for a foundation, if the school for any reason gets into any difficulties the assets I think revert to the local authority, so the community does not lose its assets either, and I think some of these fears are frankly very far fetched.
Question:
Just following on from the question you were asked earlier, Prime Minister, about which schools are going to want to take up this opportunity, so far all you have offered us is basically a bit of a hunch you have and some anecdotal evidence that there are some schools who you think will be interested, when you have got on the other side of the argument people like John Dunford, someone who is not known for opposing things just for the sake of it, saying that actually he doesn't think any schools are going to be particularly keen to do this given that there are no substantial gains for them that he can see.
Prime Minister:
Well actually I had the occasion to speak to John Dunford the other day. I think what you will find is that he prefers federation as the way forward on this. But when you say I have got nothing but anecdotal experience, that is just not correct, there is a massive amount of experience, specialist schools, city academies, the CTC.
Question:
The specialist schools will get more money though, there is no more money in it for trust schools, is there?
Prime Minister:
Specialist schools will get money for their particular specialism, but all schools have got more money. And the reason why schools are choosing to be specialist schools and are actually raising the standards is because they think it is an advantage for them. And for the city academies, the external partners are putting money into the show, they are not getting money out of it, they are putting money into it. And I always say to people, because you are going to have this argument about city academies until the cows come home frankly, but what I say to people is go and visit one, and then go and talk to the parents there. I know there is a lot of scorn in certain quarters about parents and what they think and all the rest of it, I am not saying this is so in every case, but in my view if a whole lot of parents want to get into a school, the likelihood is because it is quite a good school.
My experience of parents is that they basically want to do the best for their kids. So there is a reason why city academies are on the whole I think now over-subscribed, and very often they were started from schools that were heavily under-subscribed. And therefore we have massive empirical evidence, both of the value of external partnership, and also of the fact that this type of model of freedom within a strategic partnership actually works.
Question:
I didn't quite understand why you said it is well established a clear direction for schools, where in fact what we will end up with is some schools will be in trust and some schools won't, and it is not entirely clear how many trusts there will be and how many schools will want to do it.
Prime Minister:
Look, there is no point in me sitting here and simply dogmatically telling you there is a certain number we will reach, or there is a certain number of schools that will become trust schools. What we can say is this, that all the evidence that we have through what has been tried in the system over the past decade or so indicates that there is a real desire out there for businesses, charitable foundations, the voluntary sector, the church sector to become involved in schooling. And what we can also say is that where they have done so, the results speak for themselves, they are not universally but by the overwhelming majority positive. Now my judgment about this is, based on the meetings that we are having, and Ruth had this morning and the one we had in Downing Street a few weeks ago, is that there is a tremendous energy out there waiting to be mobilised.
Time will tell obviously, but I suspect you will find that rather as one of the local authority people put to us from Lancashire the last time we were here, she said - and I think she is right - that she suspects it will be a bit like specialist schools, except I have got a feeling it may move rather faster than that. Now when we began specialist schools, first of all people said it was going to be a terrible two tier system and all sorts, and the world was going to end, and all the usual stuff. The second thing though that people said was that schools don't want it. Neither of those two things turned out to be correct. The specialist schools are basically all ability schools, they are doing well, the majority of secondary schools now have a specialism, and I think with the trusts you will find the same thing happen. But you know let us see what develops. What we can say is that that energy and commitment is out there, as you can see evidenced today. And my view is that when you get to a situation where you have got some schools with under 30% of the kids getting 5 good GCSEs, and they have been like that for a long time, it is time to do something new because that is not acceptable.
I wouldn't want my kids educated in that way, I don't see why anyone else's should be. So if we can get a better deal for those schools, and the kids in those schools, we should do everything we can to do it and let nothing stand in the way of it. And as I say, what actually I think when you hear from these people here today is, instead of raising a question mark over whether these guys should come in and help, we should be immensely grateful that they are prepared to do so, because they have got a certain track record of success that we could do with in some of our schools.
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