ELECTION 2010

Taking your questions to Parliament

school leaders, there was no track record of collabora- tion across the schools system, the teaching profession was demoralised, and there had been decades of under- funding and under-investment. We needed the centralism of School Improvement

Partners and National Strategies to turn things around. We now have 200 National Leaders in Education. We’ve gone from one in two schools below our basic benchmark of at least 30 per cent of pupils achieving five good GCSEs including English and maths in 1997 to one in 13 today. We’ve more than doubled per-pupil funding and we’ve worked to get all schools working together on sport and in behaviour and attendance partnerships, as well as in trusts and federations.”

David Laws: “There has been far too much meddling in the day-to-day running of schools by politicians. Recent years have seen endless initiatives and changes. Schools need greater freedom and good ideas need time to bed down. We would pass an Education Freedom Act, banning politicians from meddling in schools and limiting central government to setting out the strategic goals and requirements of the system. We would also extend the freedom to innovate to all schools so that it is easier for teachers to work creatively to get the best from all their pupils.”

Would you agree that education is of such vital importance that politically driven agendas should be kept out of it? (Ian McNeilly, former teacher and director at the National Association for the Teaching of English)

Ed Balls: “I believe in doing what works, not sticking to a dogmatic ideological agenda. On school improvement, for example, we want to provide extra support, make more use of our great school leaders, and give schools greater freedoms matched by tougher accountability. The Conservatives, on the other hand, want a free market experiment that will undermine school leaders by taking money out of existing schools so that parents can set up new schools down the road and by creating thousands of extra surplus places. This will leave some schools to slowly wither and decline, condemning the children there to a second-class education. The evidence from when this was tried in Sweden is that it didn’t work – standards fell and inequality rose.”

David Laws: “Yes. While there will always need to be some political accountability for money spent and the strategic goals of the system, there is far too much damaging political interference. Our plans to spend an additional £2.5 billion on schools, coupled with real freedom for teachers will make a real difference. We will not tell schools how to spend this money. We would create an independent Education Standards Authority, which would become a true guardian of standards, with the power to stand up to ministers. It would report to Parliament and not a government minister, so it could not be used for political purposes.”

Michael Gove: “I first and foremost take an evidence- based pragmatic approach to education. The McKinsey report and the work by Fenton Whelan has motivated our focus on teaching. Both of these demonstrated that a good teacher can raise attainment for all pupils,

SecEd • April 15 2010

particularly those from the poorest backgrounds. That is why we are learning from the best school systems like Singapore and Finland and raising the bar of entry into the profession. It was also behind our moves to incentivise more bright science graduates into teaching by paying off their student loans. I have also been consistently inspired by the

Knowledge is Power Programme in America, which has shown an enormous impact on the performance of low-income children. That is why I’m aiming to give schools the freedoms over the curriculum, over staffing, over the length of the school day and over paying good teachers more. My commitment to autonomous schools in the model of US Charter Schools and Swedish free schools has been driven by evidence. Research by the University of Birmingham confirms that choice and autonomy have had similarly positive impacts in England where they have been tried.”

Whither Diplomas? (Simon Viccars, headteacher, Leon School and Sports College, Milton Keynes)

David Laws: “The complex and costly Diplomas are set to be a massive flop, with take-up being far lower than was originally predicted. They need to be replaced with a single General Diploma, using proven existing qualifications as building blocks. This would be far better understood by pupils, teachers, parents and employers.”

Michael Gove: “We would wish to see changes made to the content of the current vocational Diplomas in order to ensure that it is a well-respected, credible qualification. We would also end the regulations which force every school and college to offer each type of Diploma qualification to every pupil. This will mean schools and colleges can decide which qualifications are appropriate for their pupils, and will significantly reduce the logistical difficulties. Finally, as it is our intention to preserve and enhance A levels, we would end the introduction of the three academic Diplomas.”

Ed Balls: “At the Association of School and College Leaders’ annual conference, I met with a group of school leaders who told me that Diplomas have been engaging pupils in a new way and that the pupils were excited by the mixture of academic and vocational learning that means they start by learning the theory but then go on to also learn about how to apply it in practice. Those are the same things I’m hearing whenever I visit schools and it’s exactly why we introduced Diplomas. The school leaders also told me that there are still some issues that we need to get right, in particular around Functional Skills. I said then that I would work with them to do so because I am determined to do whatever it takes to break down the old two-tier divide between excellent academic qualifications for some and second- rate vocational learning for the rest.”

Will you listen to and trust the views of the profession, rather than pandering to the Daily Mail-reader kind of mentality, and get rid of league tables and SATs? What will it take to get you to listen to the profession? (Dr Bernard Trafford, headteacher, the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle-upon-Tyne)

Michael Gove: “I understand teachers’ concerns on

SATs – I believe the exams are not currently doing their job and need reform. I continue to believe, however, that we need national tests at 11. The best thing these tests have done is to highlight the excellent performance of great schools in poor areas who we can all then learn from. Without SATs the brilliant performance of these schools would have gone unnoticed. As for league tables, the current system certainly

needs reform. People expect to be able to make choices about the services they use, based on robust information about the quality on offer. We would therefore reform school league tables so that schools can demonstrate they are stretching the most able and raising the attainment of the less able.”

Ed Balls: “On testing, I listened to what heads told me about key stage 3 SATs and how they believed more flexibility in the curriculum would help them to teach pupils when I made the decision to scrap them. Key stage 2 SATs are different because they are the only externally validated measure of performance for children in primary schools. I’ve always said that the current system is not set in stone.

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teachers to stretch pupils of all abilities rather than having to focus on those at the C/D borderline. And we would compare schools with similar levels of challenge so we have intelligent accountability and not the crude measures which currently exist. SATs are also in need of reform. We pushed for

the key stage 3 tests to be scrapped and we want the primary school tests to be reformed so that they are more reliant on internal teacher assessment with external checking. The current system is not only incredibly expensive, but there are serious concerns about the reliability of marking and the way in which they encourage ‘teaching to the test’.”

When are you intending to address the “fair funding” issue? Mine is one of the lowest funded authorities in the country on a per-pupil basis. (Peggy Farrington, headteacher, Hanham High School, South Gloucestershire)

Ed Balls: “At a national level, the record investment that we’ve made in education since 1997 has been one of the reasons for the huge progress that we’ve made.

The real issue here is having a smarter and fairer accountability system. The new School Report Card will ensure that we properly recognise all of the great things that schools do

Ed Balls

If you look at key stage 2 science, we saw that

teacher assessment was a better measure than a test so we also scrapped that. I’ve said that I’ll look to further strengthen teacher assessment during key stage 2. But the real issue here is having a smarter and fairer

accountability system. The new School Report Card will ensure that we properly recognise all of the great things that schools do. I hope it will shift the focus away from the very narrow view of performance based on the attainment of the average pupil by looking at a broader picture including what schools are doing on the progress of every child, how they narrow the gap, and discipline too.”

David Laws: “The existing league tables and testing regime is seriously flawed and is in need of reform. It is right that parents can get an indication of how their school and child is performing in relation to others, but there are currently all sorts of perverse incentives making the tables unreliable. They often say more about a school’s catchment area than its performance. We would reform the league tables so they take into account the performance of all their pupils, encouraging

There is, of course, variation from area to area and also between schools in the same area too and I believe it is right that local authorities invest resources where they are most needed. It is also the case that South Gloucestershire has a

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lower than average level of deprivation but per-pupil funding in South Gloucestershire has increased by over 40 per cent from £2,890 per pupil in 1997/98 to £4,080 in 2005/06. We’ve been reviewing the Dedicated Schools Grant

to ensure that the funding system is fair, transparent and responsive to the needs of pupils. One of the things that we heard was that some local authorities do not always pass on all of the deprivation funding they receive to schools on the basis of deprivation. I’ve been clear that I will expect them to do so and I also recently set out our intention to require local authorities to do so through a locally agreed Pupil Premium that will take account of local needs and circumstances.”

David Laws: “Unfair school funding is a real problem.

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