CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY

DAVID MILIBAND MP

MINISTER OF STATE FOR SCHOOL STANDARDS

SPEECH TO ANNUAL MEETING OF AFVAS

LONDON 17 OCTOBER 2002

Thank you for the invitation to speak to you today. Foundation and Voluntary Aided schools have a proud record as an integral part of our education system:

- 25% of all state schools
- over 200 schools in the top 500 state schools in the country
- 365 Beacon Schools, over a third of the total
- nearly 100 of the 500 fastest improving schools

Up and down the country parents and pupils are grateful for your commitment to the education system, and your support for and leadership of the schools you sponsor. On a range of issues you are engaged with Government in detailed consultation. That consultation is vital to us, and we take it very seriously. I will briefly address some current issues, but today I want to discuss in broader terms how you can build on your record, and how we in Government can help you do so. This is my argument:

- Independent studies suggest we have one of the fastest-improving education systems in the industrialized world. That position is based above all on improvements in primary education over the last five or so years. Yet despite some spectacular good practice and overall steady improvement, big challenges remain in the secondary sector.

- In Blackpool two weeks ago, the Prime Minister set out a powerful vision of universal services tailored to individual need. In education it means focusing on the pedagogic challenge of teaching across the ability range. To move beyond catching up and address the challenge of forging ahead, we need to define an appropriate role for central Government in secondary improvement, supporting local innovation and endeavour.

- But if Government has an enabling role, our best schools need a leading role. To tackle underperformance, the best must lead the rest, whether in relation to the advance of transformational leadership, the spread of best practice, the modernization of the school workforce, or the development of partnerships with the wider community.

There is a unique opportunity and a great prize, and we want to work with you to achieve it. This is the heart of this Government's 'second phase' of educational reform, led by informed professionals and supported by central government.
Defining the Challenge

It is sometimes difficult, amidst the welter of media discussion of education, to remember how much good work is going on at ground level, and how much progress is being made. Our schooling system is expanding, reforming and improving.

The expansion and reform is patent. 20 000 more teachers than in 1997, 9 000 more in the last year. 70 000 more support staff, from learning mentors to personal assistants. Capital investment up from £600m pa in 1997 to £3bn today and £4.5 bn by 2005/6.
100 000 children participating in gifted and talented programmes, from scratch. The KS3 strategy developing more active learning in the lower secondary years. The EiC programme raising performance faster than the national average. The specialist school programme now delivering education to one million children.

What is significant is not just the inputs but the outputs, the rising standards of achievement, built on world class primary school performance: the lowest performing LEA area in terms of 11 year old achievement is now achieving at the standard of the middle performing area in 1998.

In secondary schools, there is also important progress:

- 915 schools helped out of special measures

- the number of schools with less than 25% of pupils getting five good GCSEs down by a third in four years

- GCSE performance rising steadily

- and I am not embarrassed to celebrate genuinely improved performance at A level, teachers working smarter, pupils working harder; I deeply regret the administrative problems that have plagued this year's examinations, and we are determined that Government learns the right lessons, on the basis of the independent advice of the Tomlinson review; but I do not subscribe to the English curse that 'more will mean worse', as if our pupils are genetically unable to benefit from improved provision as other countries forge ahead; we are in the business of maintaining standards of examinations, but raising standards of teaching and learning.

It is what is good in our system that makes the case for reform, because it shows what is possible. The current generation of school leaders have grown up with local management of resources. They recognise the fundamentals of school improvement. There is increasing focus on pedagogy and the role of pedagogic leadership, led by Advanced Skills Teachers. There is use, not enough but it does exist, of high quality assessment data to diagnose individual strengths and weaknesses.
But the problems in our system provide the moral and practical motivation to seek improvement. The challenges are significant:

- half of the cohort leaving school without five good GCSEs

- working class children half as likely to get five good GCSEs as the sons and daughters of professional parents, and a quarter as likely to go to university

- Ofsted reporting that around 30% of secondary classes and 20% of leadership not satisfactory.

- pupil turnover a real problem in inner cities, as are the stark consequences of poverty and social exclusion.

We want to meet these challenges. To do so, we need to create a genuine learning system. We need to raise expectations, embed new cultures and structures for school collaboration, and give every school the confidence to develop its own strengths.

This requires change in Government as well as at school level.

The Role of Government

In the four years after 1997, the Government put special priority on the need to modernize primary schooling. The need for change at secondary level is no less evident, but it calls for a different role for central government.

The improvement we are seeking in our secondary schools is already evident in our leading schools. It is a challenge as profound as the creation of comprehensive schools in the 1960s and 1970s - to achieve again a further step-change in standards. The values of comprehensive education - every child of equal worth - were right. But in place of schools isolated from support, we need schools driven by specialism and collaboration. In place of a culture based on Heads following orders, we need empowered leaders. In place of teachers working alone, we need them to be professionals leading a team. In place of tolerance of failure, we need every school to be on a ladder of improvement. In place of weak accountability, we need clarity and incentives for success. And in place of boom and bust in financing - usually bust - we need sustained and growing investment.

To achieve this mission, we need what the Prime Minister has called an 'enabling' vision of the role of central and local Government. This needs a coherent intellectual approach, across the public sector, whether in education, health or criminal justice, based on ambitious national standards for performance, serious delegation of responsibility to the front line, widespread flexibility in the deployment of staff, and the expansion of choice and diversity in provision.

Let me focus first on the role of central government.

The requirement for local leadership cannot, in our view, mean central Government withdrawing from its responsibilities, notably for raising funds; for managing the infrastructure, including the curriculum and qualifications system; for setting the right incentives at every level of the system for high performance; for helping schools in particular circumstances tackle the barriers to effective learning; for acting as a fly wheel for innovation, helping to sponsor, spread and embed the best practice; and also for providing the resource to tackle the most deepseated problems. Quality control has to start from the centre.

But the new phase of reform, dedicated to strengthening the ethos of public service, does mean a shift in culture and structure. It means cutting back on the number of policies and supporting clear strategies. It means reducing guidance from the centre and promoting ground level networks to support best practice. It means cutting back on specific, ring-fenced grants and promoting monetary flexibility for Head Teachers. It means cutting back on red tape, and next week we will be announcing substantial change to process and practice. It means moving from a mindset of informed prescription, where teachers follow central guidance, to one of informed professionalism, where they use centrally-generated information to promote personal professional development

This will place new demands on the front line, but they will be the demands of accountability for outcomes. For government it means moving from being a Department for the administration of schooling to the Department for the promotion of effective education. That applies to LEAs too. We have made clear a new role for LEAs, supporting school improvement where appropriate, taking care of the support functions like payroll, especially for primary schools, and transport, but with no question of the Town Hall being a new centre of command and control. The LEA inspection system, through Ofsted, is driving change in the culture of local intervention. Our starting point is the freedom of schools to flourish, to build new networks and partnerships; where they need help then they should get it; but it should be the front line that comes first.

However the new phase of reform is not only about a new relationship between the centre to the front line. It is also about new relationships at the front line.

Schools Leading from the Front

Over the last five years it has become accepted wisdom that schools run themselves. Institutional accountability is tough and sometimes painful. The public demand nothing less, and out children deserve nothing less. But what I want to outline now is not just how the best schools can lead their own improvement, but can in fact lead improvement across the schooling system.

The Department has set out four priorities that will guide our strategy for the future: supporting school leadership, promoting specialism and collaboration, reforming the school workforce, and developing transformational partnerships with the wider community. For each priority we want the best of you to lead the rest; we want to appeal to your sense of vocation; but we also want to pay you to do so. I will focus on the first three.

First, we all know that the quality of leadership is critical to any organization. For schools that means not just Heads, but also senior management teams. Get the leadership right, and anything is possible; leave problems at the top, and it is hard to achieve big improvement.

The demands on leaders are significant. According to Michael Fullan the prerequisites of success are clear moral purpose, understanding of how to achieve change, strong relationships of trust, a shared knowledge base and the ability to create coherence in the midst of instability.

The need to promote these qualities was what led to the creation of the National College for School Leadership, which aims to be a world-leading centre of professional development. But we also need to jump start improvement. That is why for 1400 schools the Government will be investing £125 000 a year in each of the next three years, either to support existing leadership that is outstanding, or to improve leadership that is lacking.

The best heads will be encouraged to follow the example of Wigan, where three Heads from successful schools are spending one day a week in a struggling school, Kingsdown High. The results have been impressive: the proportion of pupils getting five good GCSEs up from 7% to 27% in two years, and all pupils now getting four or more GCSE passes. The Heads have now agreed to outsource language teaching from Kingsdown to Standish School.

Second, we know that every successful institution has its own distinct ethos, mission and centre of excellence. That is true in the public, private and voluntary sectors. It even applies to Government departments. In Foundation schools this sense of mission often comes from the foundation, and is given constitutional status in the governance of the school. In faith schools it is often the religious base of the school. In Specialist Schools it often comes from the field of specialism, even though specialist status is dependant on plans to raise standards across the curriculum.

This diversity needs to be a source of strength in our system, not division. The hierarchy we are determined to overcome is between good and bad schools; that is the diversity which menaces our system, similar schools with similar intakes performing very differently.

We want to combine that commitment to every school having an area of specialism and excellence, with every school being able to be part of collaborative arrangements to support themselves, and support system-wide school improvement.

The possibilities are wide-ranging:

• federations, where successful schools effectively transfer their good practice to other, less successful neighbours, with a range of relationships from shared facilities to full scale joint governance
• partnerships on the Excellence in Cities model that through the pooling of resource have helped share good teaching practice
• Advanced Schools, about which we will publish details next week, that will establish new contracts with our best schools to help raise performance across the system
• Training Schools, which will have new contracts to support teacher training and professional development
• and as a result of the 2002 Education Act Schools Companies, which for the first time will allows schools to join together in a well-known and trusted form to sell their curricula and other services, keeping money within the education system but spreading innovation and good practice.

I recognize that the accountability framework needs to support this collaboration not neglect it. That is why we have tried to make it more intelligent, through value-added measures and reform of the Ofsted framework. We also need to make initiatives like the Schools Funding Forums and the School Admissions Forums work for local benefit.

But networks of collaboration - local, regional or national learning communities - are also about culture and not just incentives. They are vital to a new culture of learning in the schooling system. That is why I celebrate the growth of networks of schools - linked by organizations like yours, like the Specialist Schools network organized by the TC Trust, like the emerging networks of Academies. We want to see a schooling system growing from the bottom up rather than the top down, partnerships fuelled by vocation and interest and commitment, as well as contracts and funds, not central diktat.

Third, we know that in any system where the bulk of the budget goes on staff, it is people that are the key; and we also know that in modern organizations flexibility is at the core of effective delivery. That is why we place such store by the negotiations currently underway to agree contractual change that will reduce teachers' workload and at the same time drive the expansion in the number of support professionals working in schools. It is by letting go that teachers will get their workload down; team teaching in the future should mean teams of professionals under the leadership of the teacher helping develop the potential of every child in the class. Proposals will be published next week and in due course we will discuss with you how the 'earned autonomy' concept outlined in the Education Act can help in this area.

But our leading schools can lead that process and they can show their leadership now. 32 Pathfinder schools are using support staff, like sports coaches and language experts, to supervise whole classes under the leadership of a qualified teacher; they are changing timetables to allow time for planning, preparation and assessment; they are employing non QTS behaviour and guidance managers to take the load off pastoral heads of year. I congratulate John Dunford of the Secondary Heads Association on his initiative in encouraging members of his Association to use increased funds to do things differently. It is brave and it is right.

Devolution of Funds

I hope many of you will support this vision. But I imagine you will ask, perfectly properly, whether we are going to follow through the logic of the argument into funding. That is the acid test of warm words about 'enabling government'. I can tell you we are committed to raise the proportion of spend in your hands, rationalizing central provision and requirements.

You know about the rising delegation across the system, now standing at 87%. You know too that from April there will be new transparency, with a defined LEA block, comprising some 12% of education spend, and a schools block, with a reserve power to ensure than money intended for schools is passed to them.

What has not been recognized is the further substantial shift in the balance of spend. 13% of the total schools spend currently goes on DfES programmes- like the Standards Fund. All the growth in schools spending announced in the spending review will go direct to schools; local budgets will rise by an average of 6% per year. DfES programmes stay constant in cash terms, so the total spend by the Department falls to 11%. More money for you. And significantly, by 2005/6 fully half of the DfES central spend will be on the Schools Standard Grant, the Leadership Incentive Grant and other programmes that go straight to head teachers. More money, serious money, for you; fewer strings from us.

With these freedoms come new choices. What to spend. How to spend it. No doubt as individual ring-fenced programmes disappear we will be accused of cutting vital policies. Keeping every grant would have meant holding back our trust from you. Instead we are freeing up the system.

It is a deal: we build and trust your capacity; you respond to the needs of children; you compare your value-added performance; you benchmark yourselves systematically against the best in the world; you account for the results.

Conclusion

I am a great believer that far too often in this country we advertise our weaknesses. We should never hide them, but the way to tackle them is sometimes to build on our strengths. Our inheritance is a diverse schooling system. It recognizes some important truths about our world. We have to make it work.

Government needs to empower the frontline. It does not do so by vacating the field, and leaving schools and teachers to fend for themselves. It does by supporting professionals and modern professionalism, leading change but accountable for results.

Professionals are right to demand the tools to do their jobs. But with power comes the demand for accountability and transparency. If the last few weeks have taught us anything they have taught us that.

So the new model of school improvement puts professionals in the driving seat and Government in the engine room; professionals leading good practice, government supporting its development.

Of course there are always detailed issues that need to be got right. For example, there is a consultation at the moment on the administration of admissions. It is a genuine consultation, built on consultation last year in advance of the Education Bill. We are seeking to proceed on the basis of common sense and consensus, which is why the proposals have been drafted with a group comprising LEA, church and Foundation and Aided school representatives, why despite what I acknowledge is a tight timetable, we have organised meetings around the country, involving representatives of Foundation and Voluntary Aided schools, and why we are taking representations submitted up to a week after the October 11th deadline. Our interest is in getting the administration right.

I have, however, deliberately pitched this speech above the day-to-day policy and political fray. That is because I want you to understand the Government's strategy and not just its policies. I hope you will remember the overall picture I started with - an expanding, reforming and improving system gearing up to big challenges. To meet them Government is ready to act in new ways. I am sure you are too. I have set out how Government is going to change. I have also set out the challenge for you. We can only do it together.