SPEECH BY DAVID MILIBAND AT THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF HEAD TEACHERS CONFERENCE, TORQUAY

6 JUNE 2002

I want to pay special tribute to David Hart, who is celebrating his Silver Jubilee as your General Secretary. He has seen a lot of change. Some of it he liked. He has seen a lot of Junior Ministers. Some of them he liked.

But his passion for education has always shone through. He said in his first speech to this conference: "If Heads are greeted by constructive criticism and are approached on a basis of mutual co-operation and goodwill they will react accordingly." That is the right basis for a relationship with Government, so take it from me David: we are all looking forward to the second half of your reign in the run-up to your Golden Jubilee in 2027.

David said last week that "it is still very tough for Heads and their deputies because they really bear the brunt of trying to deliver the standards agenda when it comes to accountability."

I agree. You are at the sharp end. Head-teachers lead the delivery of education every day of the school year. You are the single most important influence on the performance of your school. For all that Prime Ministers can exhort and Secretaries of State can legislate, it is you who lead and deliver day after day. That is why I can't think of a better audience to explain who I am, what I care about, and how I hope to contribute to the education system in this country.

It is a huge honour to serve in Government. And I feel very lucky. I have joined a Department on the up. We are led by an outstanding Secretary of State, fired with knowledge and passion for education.

For me this job is special, because it allows me to contribute to what I believe is the biggest task facing this country - developing the talent of all children so that they can contribute to our economy, our communities and our artistic and social life in the years ahead.
If we can get our state education system right, we can renew our economy, improve our quality of life, strengthen our communities. Get it wrong, fail to make the right investments, miss the opportunities, accept second best, and we will be fighting to get anything right in crime, or health or the economy.

I am here today because of state education. My primary school wholly failed to convince me that there was anything more important than football, but it did prove to me that there were other things to read about; my comprehensive school may not have got me close to mastering Physics A level, but it gave me a sense of enquiry and got me into university. So my philosophy is simple: my job is to help you ensure that all children get the opportunities they deserve.
You know and I know there are some children who are always likely to get on. They have the parental support, the luck of the draw, the natural talent, and schooling is for them a great adventure.

They deserve excellence. But what marks us out in this room is that we also want the best schooling, the great adventure, for all children, not just for the children bound to succeed but also for those who might not, the children who don't have the parental support, don't have the books and the background and the belief at home, but do have their own personality and talent and intelligence and potential.

I am a new member of the Government, but I know what motivates its leading members. I was Head of Policy for Tony Blair for seven years, in Opposition and in Government. There is one thing I know. Education is the number one priority because this generation of politicians know that in the end it will determine the long term future of the country - how much we earn, how we live, how we get on together. It's the knowledge that no child gets a second chance at childhood, and the insight that every child who leaves the education system with the knowledge and skills to play a full role in society is a credit to their country.

Reform Works

I want to talk today about how, together, with our different perspective, sometimes different positions, but shared goals, we can continue the school improvement you have started. We should celebrate genuine progress but it is far too early to declare victory. In all frankness there is still a steep hill to climb.

I know that 1997 was not 'Year Zero', when good ideas were suddenly delivered by an enlightened Government. We inherited the National Curriculum, testing, inspection - perhaps not perfect but essential to progress. But since 1997 there has been a dramatic shift in gear.

In primary schools, it is no exaggeration to say that you and your staff - all your staff - have got the education world's attention. You have defined what is possible by the determined and professional way you have put into practice the National Literacy and Numeracy strategies. Not only have standards risen dramatically, but the number of schools where less than half of children read and write well has been slashed by three quarters. In the process, our leading schools have transformed teaching and learning across the curriculum.

It is remarkable. For years mass underachievement in the basics seemed inevitable; now we are moving to all but eliminate it, raising the floor below which no one falls and enriching primary schooling with the arts, music, languages to bring out the best in children.

Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised. After all, the ideas of the new Government elected in 1997 were, in fact, built on your experience and your innovation. You told us that best practice in literacy and numeracy could deliver great results. You told us there was an IT revolution around the corner. You told us that education in the inner city posed special problems and needed a dedicated strategy. I'm glad we listened.

You also told us to end the utterly destructive real terms £120 per pupil cuts in funding that marked the 1992-97 period. There are still problems. I recognise that, but let's acknowledge progress. We are in the middle of the most sustained increase in education funding in our country's history, by this year amounting to an average increase since 1997 or £680 per pupil in real terms.

Back in 1997 I don't think you expected us to deliver, and we certainly didn't promise to achieve, an average 25% increase in teachers' pay, but we have. Recruitment and retention is still difficult in some subjects and some parts of the country. But there are another 20,400 teachers in the system, 9,400 more in the last year alone, and nearly 80,000 more adults to help in your schools, with a cut in the pupil:adult ratio from over 16 to nearly 13. The challenge now is to think about how to use that increased capacity to do things differently.

Some of the lessons from that partnership are simple. Not everything has gone right. But one thing is clear: reform can work.

The test results, however much we need value-added tables, and we do, however much we need broader measures of school effectiveness, and we do, show that England now has one of the top performing education systems in the industrialised world, and perhaps most important, has one of the fastest-improving education systems.

The message is clear. Reform built on best practice, reform properly funded, reform delivered in partnership, reform aiming for stretching targets, reform that harnesses the energy of pupils and parents as well as teachers can and does work.

The cycle of pessimism that says nothing works, assiduously peddled by those who doubt either the potential of the nation's children, or the skill in the nation's public education system, has been broken.

Over 150 years ago Lord Melbourne, then Prime Minister, said to Queen Victoria: "I don't know why they make all this fuss about education, Ma'am; none of the Pagets can read or write, and they get on well enough."

The argument never changes: it is summarised as 'more means worse'. They said it when Balfour brought in the 1902 Education Act. They said it is 1944. They said it when the school-leaving age was raised. And now they say who needs 50% of young people to go into higher education.

It is dressed up as concern for standards. But for a century wider participation has gone with higher standards. In fact, the defence of the status quo is rooted in snobbery and contempt. The battle is never won, but our case should be clear: there is talent in every child and education can release it.

Challenges Ahead

I said not everything had gone right. You will have your own list. What I want to say is that the test of any government is not whether it gets everything right; it never will. The issue is whether the direction of travel is right. I am convinced it is, and the issue now is not how to got here, but where we go next.

I've come here today to do some listening as well as talking. I do not have a list of promises. Instead there are challenges - for me, for you, for the Department. Today I want to highlight four challenges that we share: raising standards, supporting teachers, reforming the later years of secondary schooling, and engaging the whole community to tackle pupil behaviour and truancy.

Rise to these challenges, and we will continue the progress in primary schools, and address genuine concern about secondary schools, above all about standards and behaviour. The prize is huge - to break the habits of a lifetime, tackle poverty of ambition and make high expectations and high achievement the norm.

The challenge of raising standards applies whether you are leading a so-called coasting school or a school in the inner city facing immense problems. According to the OECD, variation in performance within schools is four times as great as variation in performance between schools. The result is that the UK has one of the biggest class divides in education in the industrialised world. The gap in attainment becomes evident as early as 22 months, and is wider at KS3 than KS1. By the age of 18 the son or daughter of someone on low income is nearly three times less likely to get to university than someone whose parents have a professional background, and half as likely to get five good GCSEs. We need to address provision in school, provision out of school, and provision in the home and in the community. The Secretary of State will be addressing these issues later this year.

The second challenge concerns an issue which, I am acutely aware, is of huge concern to you.

The shorthand is 'workload'. It is the challenge of managing and motivating our human resource, so that teachers spend their precious time on tasks that add the most value to children's education.

Teacher numbers are up, but so is the competition for staff, and too many teachers feel pulled in too many directions. Yet independent evidence suggests that 20% of teacher's tasks could be devolved to other staff. Heads too feel the need for more time to lead and manage their schools. We now have serious analysis and recommendations from the STRB upon which to base our discussions. Negotiation and discussion - not industrial conflict - have taken the process forward, and intensive work is now going on in collaboration with you and teacher representatives. In the Autumn we will be making formal proposals; together we need then to make substantive progress.

Defining the right role for teachers for the new century is an enormous task. It would be easy to look away, and focus on something simpler. But we need to set a long term direction of reform that recognises both the professionalisms of teachers and the new opportunities for effective delivery of teaching and learning.

• The STRB have argued against a legal cap on hours, but highlighted the need for time reserved for lesson preparation and other professional duties as well as for the demands of Headship. This is much more productive terrain, and chimes with what teachers have said to me about the genuine pressures on their time.

• The transfer of clerical and administrative tasks should contribute to the regard and status of the profession; to me extra staff in schools are an opportunity not a threat. Support staff and ICT can help with necessary administration. But this does not excuse us in the Department from scrutinizing ourselves, and national agencies, to minimize the red tape and bureaucracy that I know causes real concern.

• The Government is committed to lifelong learning not just for people without skills but for those with them. We want to ensure that the substantial time and money set aside for professional development is used to good effect.

• Effective leadership to raise standards must go hand in hand with the ability to implement your ideas for innovation. Ringfenced funding has its place to support major national priorities but my prejudice is that less not more ringfencing of funds is the way we can help. Devolution will mean more difficult decisions for you, both on how you decide priorities, and how you tackle the challenges of pay, performance, recruitment and retention. The upside is more freedom to reshape classroom practice and school ethos. One size does not fit all, and each Head needs to decide what is right for his or her school. I think that is a fair deal.

The Government and Local Authorities provide, and you spend, some £14 billion a year on staff salaries in schools. Estelle Morris has said that investing in teachers and teaching is the top departmental priority for the Spending Review. Together we are going to have to put the significant funds that will be made available to good effect. It shouldn't be an industrial relations problem; it is a unique opportunity to build our education system around the core professional tasks of teaching and learning.

The third challenge is to ensure that as you roll out the national strategy for raising standards at KS3, we develop choices for young people that inspire them to develop their own talents after 14. We must be one of the few countries in the Western world still to have a culture of 'school leaving' at 16, when in fact leaving at 16 means dropping out.

The responses to the 14-19 Green Paper have been considered and serious, and we want to contribute to the development of an effective route-map for future reform. We need a system that prizes progression and relevant qualifications for all young people. We cannot think of importing someone else's system, but do need to learn from the best of our own and overseas experience. It is worth having a national debate to get this right.

The fourth challenge is that what goes on in school is critically affected by what happens outside school hours, yet provision is too often patchy and makeshift, and the responsibilities of parents and the wider community unclear and weakly defined. When children arrive at school unready to learn, teachers cannot teach; when parents cannot control their children how can teachers be expected to do so; when parents are more concerned to attack teachers' judgement than punish children's behaviour then the education system cannot work properly.

Government has a responsibility to teachers but so do parents and the wider community. I have one simple message to you and anyone listening or watching: when it comes to parents, children or anyone else abusing teachers this Government is 100%, unequivocally on your side.

The central task for this Parliament is to rise to challenge, to start a process of improvement in secondary schools as profound as that kick-started in the last Parliament in primary schools.

My own experience in South Tyneside exemplifies the point. An area with the fourth highest unemployment in the country has above average achievement in primary schools. I visited a school on Friday in a deprived part of South Shields with over 30% of children receiving free school meals. It is a Beacon School with outstanding achievement.

Yet at secondary level in South Tyneside more than half of school leavers get less than five good GCSEs, the basic skills passport for life. The kids have shown they have the brains, the teachers have enormous commitment, yet the results are disappointing. Something is going wrong and we need to put it right. That is the case for reform - unanswerable and undeniable.

Investment for Reform

I have been lucky enough to play a part in modernising the Labour Party and developing its policies. I believe in reform and modernisation. But what does it mean?

Reform in education , innovation, is to me about the creation of structures and incentives and culture that support high expectations and high performance. Reform is done by you not to you. Reform is about supporting real professionalism; reform is about embedding shared values and shared goals; reform is about spreading specialist facilities for the benefit of all pupils in

area; reform is about finishing programmes not starting them, and piling in behind successful programmes so we get the full benefit of them; reform is above all about strengthening the capacity of teachers to teach and students to learn.

So more reform is not the same as more initiatives. My prejudice is to support fewer programmes with high impact, rather than a multitude of programmes that have low impact. The next phase of reform is not more of the same. It is about releasing innovation and creativity at local level. I will be doing my job best if I can help you do your jobs even better.

I know that can only happen when reform is allied to sustained investment. That is why I am proud to be part of a Government that now challenges the country to support a tax rise for investment in public services. Britain has been waiting all my adult life for a Government able to say that it can run the economy well, can be rigorous about public spending priorities, can be a competent manager of public services- and then have the courage to go and ask the public to back reforms with investment.

Public services are the most dynamic agent of progressive politics yet invited. Today, public spending is rising as a share of national income and I am proud that the vast bulk of the increase is going on productive investment, not the cost of unemployment and economic failure.
Those services only work when they have the funds to be effective; and in Britain they need more funds to be more effective. But I am absolutely clear that public support for investment is conditional on the money going into programmes that deliver. That is why investment alone is not enough. Reform along is certainly not enough. The two must go together.

So in this we are bound together. You want more investment; so do I. You want higher standards; so do I. But the public want reforms to ensure their money is well spent. Deliver them reform and they will deliver the funds. Offer them more of the same and they will turn away.

Their deal is clear: investment for reform. Investment for expanded provision. Investment for new ways of working. Investment for modernised curricula. Investment for new routes through education. Investment, in other works, for success.

Investment for reform. That must be our deal too.

Conclusion

This is an exciting time to be involved in education. It's a time for listening and leading. My message today is that investment and reform is starting to build a world class system, and with passion and commitment we will get the whole way there. I am new to the job, but keen to get on with it. Some of it will be hard grind, but no harder than what you do day in day out. We have a really great opportunity to make a lasting difference to the lives of many children. That is my inspiration.

Fifty eight years ago today was D-Day, the immortal struggle to liberate occupied Europe. My father was part of the liberating force; his family were waiting to be liberated.
Perhaps inevitably on a day like this, military metaphors are in the air, and none is better than Jonathan Sacks' insight: to defend a country you need an army; to advance a civilisation you need schools and teachers.

Schools are the armies of civilisation. Today I am delighted to salute your skills and your efforts, and pledge to work with you to deliver the investment for reform that our country needs and our children deserve.