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North of England Centennial Conference Warrington 8th January 2003-01-07 Speech
by Phil Willis MP CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY Delegates - what a milestone! 100 years of North of England Conferences and it seems like only yesterday when I addressed the first! 1903 seems to have been a memorable year. The Wright Brothers completed their first manned flight. The Women's Social and Political Union was formed giving rise to the 'suffragettes'. George Orwell the architect of 'New Labour' was born. Bury won the FA Cup, Middlesbrough the 1st Division and England regained the Ashes in Australia by three Tests to Two! Significant though these events were- perhaps the most important development in 1903 was the birth in Detroit of the Ford Motor Company. When its first Model A rolled off the production line in 1903 a new industrial age began - one of mass production - mass employment - and mass control by the centre. The Ford assembly line, soon to be copied by every major manufacturer in the world was one where workers knew their task. There was no room for flexibility, innovation. Standardisation was essential for ease of production, and central targets ruled workers' lives. As Ford expanded its production around the world 'league tables' detailing performance were published; inspection became ever more intrusive; audit determined whether production should move to another country or even another continent. A hundred years later the Fordian method of production is largely obsolete. The shift to a global economy has forced manufacturing to revolutionise again. Today the most profitable mass car manufacturer is Toyota. It has abandoned target setting, league tables and external inspection. Flexibility and innovation have become the key to success and creativity the essential mind set of its employees. Workers are empowered, not controlled; encouraged to multi-task, to work in teams. Cars are tailored to the needs of the individual rather than the 'any colour provided it's black' Fordian approach. But delegates - as the world of manufacturing moves on is it not perverse that our education system is becoming more and more Fordian? Is it not strange that at a time when the PM and his advisers talk passionately about harnessing human capital, our educators are held in the vice like grip of centralist control - where autonomy has to be earned and where innovation sanctioned from Sanctuary House? Children as young as four are placed on a production line. By the time their counterparts in Europe are beginning school at the age of seven, our children are being subjected to their first quality control test. A test not designed to improve their quality but to examine whether the education production line and its operatives are working effectively. On reaching the end of the conveyor belt they will have undergone a further 105 tests. Each test demanding a conformity that has led us to produce a one size fits all curriculum, examination, testing, and inspection and audit system. Each school and teacher compared in league tables, with those deemed to be under-performing threatened with closure or the sack. Yet these methods of education production are failing to achieve the Government's own targets. Five out of the eight performance targets set for completion in 2002 have not been met, including Key Stage 2 literacy and numeracy targets and NVQ Level 2 qualifications for 19 year-olds. The gap between high achieving and low achieving schools is increasing and more significantly the social divide reflected in educational achievement is widening. And delegates those targets won't be met because they fail to recognise that children are individuals not statistics and teachers are creative professionals not machine operatives. Why when the needs of individuals have been subjugated to the demands of statistics, when what is offered in our schools fails to excite, provide relevance or opportunity should we be surprised at the rising tide of truancy, exclusions, anti-social behaviour? And yes, even the regularity of drug related gun crime? In a school system where we fail to recognise that the key ingredient to success is self-belief and self worth, we should not be surprised when young people respond accordingly. If they cannot be valued at home, or at school, don't be surprised when carrying a gun, selling crack cocaine or causing mayhem becomes a route to finding a position of note in the community. It's not rappers Mr Blunkett that you should worry about it is the education service you helped mastermind. In 1902 the Chief Inspector to the Board of education wrote "Some schools exist in order to give so far as may be every child an equal chance of 'rising in the world'. Other schools exist to 'keep people in their place'. A century later that is the challenge that faces all of us. As a former head teacher who spent his life working with some of the most disadvantaged children in Leeds and Middlesbrough, I celebrate the fact that the current government has placed education at the head of its political agenda. I celebrate the fact that the recent comprehensive spending review has delivered very significant levels of resource to our schools and colleges and I celebrate the fact that with the 14-19 curriculum reforms we have a real chance to make a difference to the lives of the very children who need our help the most. Mike Tomlinson was right yesterday when he said we need 'radical curriculum thinking to tackle disenchantment'. But above all we need a government that has the courage to prioritise - the forgotten communities in our inner cities and remote rural area. The courage to abandon its Goss Plan approach to centralist planning - abandon its Fordian approach to delivery and devolve both power and decision making to our schools and LEA's. Above all it must make the education service the servant of the child and not the Prime Minister. But where do we start? Liberal Democrats demand two key changes in government thinking - the scrapping of central targets and the abolition of league tables. Centrally imposed targets may have an attraction for politicians anxious to demonstrate their personal success; they may have had their place in industry, but they are of little use in education where the raw materials and the prime beneficiaries must always be individuals. The evidence from a decade of extensive target-setting for the education service is that targets don't work; they are wasteful of resources, they distort the agenda away from key priorities, they emasculate those working in our schools and Lea's and they encourage statistical fraud. And when Conservatives attack target setting they should remember that they invented it when they set up NACETT (National Advisory Council on Education and Training Targets) in 1993. Every target, and we now have at least 75 per student, spawns its own bureaucracy. Each demands tests to demonstrate not that a child is learning, but whether the target has been met. This has caused an unprecedented level of testing, and the paranoia that was at the heart of last year's A Level fiasco. A paranoia that cost one of the few Secretaries of State who actually had a feel for young people and teachers her job. In the past five years we have seen the cost of testing rise by a staggering 65% from £138.8m to £228.3m - serviced by an army of intelligent adults who would be better employed in our schools and colleges. And the net effect is to see the curriculum narrowed and the professional judgement of teachers subjugated to the requirements of the tests. Yet despite Charles Clarke's claim that targets 'absolutely critical to everything we are about' there is scant proof they are responsible for raising standards Literacy and numeracy improvements in primary schools were greater between 1995 and 1997 than at any time since targets were introduced. And science, for which there are no targets, has improved at a greater rate than either literacy or numeracy since 1997. The much acclaimed PISA 2000 International comparison study which saw England's 15 year olds show staggering improvements in maths, science and reading were achieved before central target setting was introduced. The Liberal
Democrats are not opposed to target setting per se but we are adamant
that targets must be directly related to individual children and
they must be determined as locally as possible. Delegates - Ministers know perfectly well their target setting regime is in trouble. Worse still they know many of their policies making hitting the target more difficult! Recently leaked memos from Number 10 and DfES make revealing reading. They admit having no means of plotting how targets will be reached or when! Because No 10 has been told 'there is a complex relationship between their own policies and pupil standards'! And when No 10 asked the Department to come up with new 'state of the nation' indicators to plot success they were told we can not 'find any measures that would add value to the monitoring process'. This is the politics of the mad house! Ministers defend target setting in public whilst privately admitting they have no idea how targets will be met or when! They do not know whether their policies will make things better or worse. If Ministers do not act now I believe this system of performance management will collapse under the weight of its own absurdity - and one can only hope that league tables are sucked down with it. Because one of the hidden drivers behind the current testing and target regime is the publication of annual league tables. Every objective piece of research - the Audit Commission, Ofsted, Dr Robinson at Warwick University, Dr Hoyle at Surrey University, the Professional Associations, the recent research by Professor Harlen at Bristol - has concluded that League Tables are at best deeply misleading and at worst positively harmful League table positions are determined by examination results and this in turn directly influences what is taught and how it is taught. . The Galton/McBeath study into teaching in primary schools revealed that five hours are spent on Maths compared to half an hour for Music. And that English takes up the same amount of time as History, Geography, Design, ICT and Music combined. This isn't an education system, it's a production line focusing only on the areas that appear in the league tables. Evidence from the same study revealed that 65% of Key Stage 2 teachers only manage to speak to each child once during the week! The distortion doesn't stop there. The pressure to raise borderline candidates up to the required level to make a difference to league table positions means that from an early age we are in danger of creating an underclass of non-achievers. It is a brave head that will prioritise teaching staff and resources towards those with the greatest needs at the expense of those who might just cross the magical border. Fanciful? Well read carefully the latest Audit Commission Report into children with special education needs. In a hard hitting attack on schools that failed to commit resources to SEN it says "League Tables weaken schools' commitment to working with pupils with SEN - for fear they will drag down their position". What an indictment! At Secondary level the problem is even more acute. Key Stage 4 League Tables depend on students gaining 5+ good GCSE's. A school's ability to attract a new cohort is linked to its League Table position and so schools are forced to offer a curriculum not because it is right for the students, but because it helps the League Table position. Last year at this conference I called for the scrapping of age related exams as a way of breaking down the barriers in the 14-19 continuum. Many schools and commentators have since echoed those comments but whilst League Tables remain so will a curriculum which is inappropriate for so many of our young people. Northern Ireland and Wales have had the courage to scrap league tables - Scotland avoided them in the first place - now as Ted Wragg said recently "It would take an act of political courage to scrap the formal tests and league tables - but if the government really wanted to be tough, that's what it should do" Finally delegates, Liberal Democrats recognise, as you have at your Conference, the need to remodel the education service. Like you we eagerly await the conclusion of what promises to be an historic agreement between the professional associations, local authorities and the DfES over teacher workload reduction. It is fair to say that all who have taken part should be congratulated on what has so far been achieved. However I inject a note of caution. Remodelling is not simply about workload but about who creates and controls it. As the Audit Commission stated 'like other public sector workers, teachers' complaints about workload have at their heart the unproductive nature of the hours of work in keeping detailed records of activity for an untrusting machine'. This week's MORI survey for the GTC shows just how destructive that untrusting machine has become. Perhaps the most depressing aspect of the survey was the extent to which the findings were not new. We have all known for some years that retention of newly-qualified teachers is poor, that the profession is ageing and that workload and paperwork were driving teachers out of the profession. Our proposals to remove targets, external testing and league tables may not lesson the burden on teachers but they will return to them professional autonomy denied for a decade. They will help address one of the most disturbing aspects of this survey - the exodus from teaching of those with 6 to 10 years experience. It was always said if you survived the first five years you were a teacher for life - not any longer. These are the school leaders of tomorrow and they are leaving. Not surprising when they have missed out on training salaries, secondments, advantages of shortened pay spine yet subjected to a level of intimidation and abuse that in any other walk of life would not be tolerated. If the government does not act to re-energise and retain these key teachers the current teacher crisis will turn into a catastrophe. Yesterday - David Milliband's complacency was breathtaking. The DFES has known about this problem for six years. It has failed to meet its own training targets for secondary teachers every year since 1997.- partly because its own methodology for setting targets is based on 1996 data! The provision of appropriately qualified teachers goes to the very heart of the standards agenda and delegates know that it is schools in the most challenging circumstances that suffer the most. A recent NAHT survey in Inner London found that out of 5,000 posts in primary schools 7% were unfilled, 13% filled by overseas teachers and 10% filled by staff without Qualified Teacher Status. These children deserve better. So do children with special education needs. In the same survey one in three posts in special education were either unfilled or filled by unqualified staff. How does a government preaching inclusion respond to that charge? Increasing the number of classroom assistants, creating a new grade of Para-teacher, are welcome suggestions, but how do they help our most vulnerable children? If 'remodelling' means that children are to be taught for a minimum of half a day a week by unqualified staff - if it means masking the teacher shortages by the use of classroom assistants - and if it means a further de-professionalisation of teaching then the Liberal Democrats will oppose it Delegates it is a recipe for disaster to believe just anyone can stand in front of today's seven year olds - never mind fifteen year olds - and have control, let alone teach effectively. . It may be possible at Fetters, Highgate or King ham Hill but it is vastly different in Moss Side, Peckham or Islington. WE need more teachers and we have to be imaginative about how we recruit them. Why not allow graduates without a National Curriculum subject degree to train as secondary teachers?. Guarantee a full salary during training that included pension and other benefits and guarantee a minimum of one year's employment following completion of QTS. Every child has a right to be taught by a teacher appropriately trained and qualified for the age experience and aptitude of the young people in their charge'. Only by meeting that challenge can we create a truly world class education service, not just for the wealthy but for every child. This is the challenge for the next hundred years, delegates. I am sure that 2103 will bring its own problems but if we have created an education system which respects all young people, whatever their needs, background or aspirations. If we have moulded a workforce which has the freedom to innovate. If we have designed a curriculum which is flexible enough to meet the needs of all. And if we have
regained the Ashes then this will truly be a remarkable century. Comments on this speech can be sent to Phil Willis' researcher John Alker at ALKERJ@parliament.uk Go
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