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THE BENEFITS OF DIVERSITY:
LESSONS FOR EDUCATION FROM ACROSS THE BORDER

DAVID MILIBAND MP, MINISTER FOR SCHOOLS STANDARDS

19 SEPTEMBER 2002
GLASGOW UNIVERSITY

1. The benefits of diversity

It is a genuine pleasure to have spent the last couple of days in Scotland, and to be able to talk to you today. When you arrive in office as a new Minister, there is a long list of places to visit: Finland, which comes top of the OECD league tables; Singapore, which has made enormous strides in the use of ICT; or the US, where you can find every problem, and a range of ingenious local solutions.

But I am delighted that my first visit outside England is a much shorter trip. As Voltaire said, "We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilisation". On England's doorstep is a community that has a lot to teach us:

a longstanding commitment to education as a source of personal empowerment and social justice;
a culture which insists that learning feeds the mind
a high participation rate for higher education - 43 per cent - with no hang-ups that 'more means worse', a fundamental and disabling piece of English reactionary nonsense
and new schemes like the Glasgow PFI which seek better delivery through partnership.

US academic David Osborne's 'book 'Laboratories of Democracy' explained the benefits of policy competition and policy cooperation between US states. As he puts it:

"Big changes start out slowly, tentatively. Gradually, people spread the word. They share the best methods; they warn one another of mistakes to avoid; they exploit in one setting what worked in another. As the supply of change grows, it fuels demand for even more change."

Devolution in the UK does not quite give us contrasts between fifty different models, but it does give us four. We speak the same language. We share aspects of culture. We have shared memories and shared reference points. There are huge potential gains from diversity: the man in Whitehall does not know best, and the sooner men and women across the UK develop their own solutions to common problems, the better. Even better if we learn from each other's successes and failures.

I can only see one snag. Coming here today, I had an awful thought about title of this speech. Perhaps, you're thinking, I've come across the border to tell you how to run schools in Scotland as well as we do in England.

You can relax. I am here to see if I can steal some ideas from you. It's up to you whether you want to learn from us.

The argument I want to make is as follows:

that across the UK we share some common challenges, notwithstanding our different education systems and records; most notably, we both have to do much, much better to tackle the class divide that marks educational performance
that in England we have made progress in the last five years in making good some historic deficits in our system, and notably have helped the poorest performers improve fastest
but that now we must move further forward, pioneering some new approaches to the promotion of effective teaching and learning, based on the themes of empowerment and accountability

This, I must argue, constitutes a second phase of English education reform since 1997. Ours is a diverse system: 24,000 schools, 450,000 teachers, 250,000 non-teaching staff. The citizen - parents, children - is increasingly demanding about the standards of education to which they are entitled. Our challenge in government is not to suppress that diversity; that is impossible and undesirable. It is to promote the unity of high aspirations and achievement, driven by the twin forces of local professional development on the one hand, and rigorous focus from central government focus on the enabling conditions that will allow schools to tackle the barriers to learning on the other.

2. Challenges for UK education

That is the aim. Meeting a week or so after September 11th, no one needs reminding that global forces are a daily part of our lives. They affect education as much as any aspect of national life. Both of us, in England and Scotland, face the challenges of economic and social change; all our students are preparing for entry into a knowledge economy and an information society, which present a real challenge to those within it, let alone those on the periphery.

What do we know?

that 4 out of 5 jobs created between now and 2010 will demand skill levels above our A level, your Highers; only a third of Britons currently have these skills, compared to three-quarters of Germans
that our productivity levels are going to have to rise between 15 and 30% if they are to match our competitors
and that in China not only are wages a fraction of ours, but the number of people enrolling at colleges and universities has quadrupled since 1990
and that the 7m adults in England who have trouble with basic skills, below those we expect of 11 year olds, and the similar proportion in Scotland, will constitute an unskilled drag anchor on the economy that we can ill-afford to add to.

But we also know that education remains the great social liberator; the basic insight that has brought many of us to commit ourselves to education, the belief that every citizen is born with the brains not just to make a constructive contribution to our economy but to make a unique contribution to our community, remains as true today as it has ever been, and that as HG Wells put it history is a race between education and catastrophe; so we aspire to build a community of thoughtful, creative individuals we must dedicate ourselves to higher standards of education.

So the need is great - greater than ever. And we know how much potential remains to be fulfilled.

We aspire to a system that is egalitarian in outlook. But we are both a long way from egalitarian outcomes - not everyone getting the same grades, but everyone having the same chance of making the most of their potential.

When about 65% of young people in England from the top socio-economic groups obtain 5 or more grades A*-C at GCSE, compared to only 42% from low socio-economic groups, and in Scotland 79% of people from high social class groups gain 5 or more Standard grades 1-3, compared to 52% of people from the lowest social class groups, we know the scale of the task if we are to fulfil the potential of all the people.

When a child born in the UK in social class 7 is 32 times less likely to make it to social class 1 than someone born at the top, we know we still have a very long way to go.

Let me explain how we are going about the task of responding to these challenges.

3. English record and plans

Five years ago, it was no exaggeration to talk of an education system in meltdown.

one third of 5-7 year olds - 485,000 of them - were in classes of over 30
4 out of 10 of 11-year-olds unable to read, write or do maths well
school spending cut by £120 per pupil per year in real terms, so England ranked behind countries like Japan, US, Italy, France, Germany
nearly 1 in 10 students leaving school with no qualifications at all
the number of schools judged failing up to 515 and rising
the capital budget for 24 000 schools had fallen to £600m a year.

Our system was tattered and torn. The shift to comprehensive schooling - contested. The transition from school to work - a mess. The role of teachers - undermined. The emphasis on market solutions - corrosive. The Great Debate launched in 1976 - divisive.

The system was shrinking and fragmenting - institutionally, intellectually, in terms of human capital and social commitment. The battles of the 1980s did yield a new and shared framework of education policy:

a National Curriculum specifying an entitlement for children
a national schools inspectorate to provide qualitative assessment of school performance
delegation of funds through Local Management to put power in the hands of heads
clear targets, much developed since 1997, that provide not ceiling on performance but a goal to aim for
and parents' entitlement to information on school performance.

Our challenge then was to breathe life into the system, align its values to those of the best professional practice:

every primary teacher retrained to deliver a common core in primary schools
over 497,000 new childcare places and 91 early excellence centres created for more than 906,000 children
915 schools helped out of special measures
20,400 more teachers hired, the pay of experienced teachers up by almost a third, salaries for newly qualified teachers up by half
investment in school buildings and ICT tripled

Our strategy was straightforward. We set out to tackle the outstanding weaknesses of system - and close the attainment gap - from the bottom up.

Since 1998 there has been a 10 percentage point jump in the number of 11 year olds achieving the expected standard for their age in English tests. In maths there has been a 12 point improvement.

A levels are at their highest pass levels ever - 20,000 more students than passed a decade ago, an average increase of almost 1.5 per cent over each of the last ten years

The number of schools below the floor target of a quarter of pupils passing GCSEs down by a third in four years - from over 600 to well under 400

It is a tribute to teachers, pupils and LEAs that standards have risen fastest in areas of greatest disadvantage. The lowest performing LEA in terms of 11 year olds reaching level 4 is now equivalent to the middle performing LEA in 1998. Dramatic improvement from the bottom in closing the performance gap.

But we are under no illusion that we have fully broken the mould. We are one of the fastest improving education systems in the industrialised world, in part because we are catching up; our challenge now is to forge ahead; for the next three years we have sustained levels of unprecedented growth in investment; the requirement is to fashion a policy agenda to achieve a historic step-change in secondary school achievement.

And for that we know we need new tools - new tools for a new phase of reform, when local innovation not central prescription will be the defining characteristic, and the role of the centre will be progressively remodelled to quality control the system, sponsor key programmes, and of course pay the bills, but not run the system.

Here is a contrast: ours is a shift to informed professionalism, professionalism informed by best practice, by peer review and support, by strong local leadership. The best leading the rest.

Our strategy is based on four points of what we call the 'diamond of reform'. At the centre is the personal experience of the learner.

The Diamond of Reform

Our starting point is that school leadership is the single most important contributor to school performance. The 2001 HMCI report said that leadership in over one in five secondary schools was lacking; and the challenge for Heads and senior teams is not just to be good, but to be exceptional.

Our determination is to ensure that every secondary Head in England is able to do more than run a stable school. To transform it requires leadership which:

can frame a clear vision that engages the school community
can motivate and inspire
pursues change in a consistent and disciplined way
understands and leads the professional business of teaching.

The National College for School Leadership will lead our drive for change. 'Leading from the Middle' means we need to include middle managers, departments heads and year heads in the drive for change. It is already delivering programmes for head teacher development, and opens its doors at the University of Nottingham next month.

A new Leadership Incentive Grant worth £125,000 per year per school will be available to improve leadership in 1,400 of our most challenging schools. Working with the NCSL, schools will be helped and challenged to improve performance.

Second, the structure of schooling. The comprehensive reforms, more successful North of the Border, focussed on who came in the school gate; our challenge is to think about how the structure of schooling relates to pedagogy in the classroom. Two themes are for us key.

We know from all research in public and private sectors that organisations with strong core mission, binding all staff and stakeholders together, are more likely to succeed. So we want every school to be special, with its own mission, its own ethos, its own centre of excellence. The rationale is simple: the search for a unique identity is the most potent contributor to the critical self evaluation that is vital to continuous improvement in any organisation.

So our Specialist Schools programme, which will include two thirds of secondary schools by 2006, is designed to raise standards across the curriculum, not just in areas of specialism. The programme offers a one off payment of £100,000 and recurrent help of about £120,000 for a 1,000 pupil school in return for meeting the challenge of developing a credible plan for schools transformation.

The schools admit across the ability range, not selectively, and the evidence is encouraging. From 1997 to 2001, GCSE/GNVQ scores of schools designated specialist on or before 1996 have risen faster year-on-year than the average of mainstream, maintained schools not in the programme.

But with institutional drive and accountability goes collaboration - collaboration to raise standards of professional development, collaboration to share facilities, collaboration to achieve economies of scale. LEAs have a vital role in school improvement, but it needs to be supplemented by local professional collaboration.

The new phase of educational reform on which we are embarking will be driven by local learning communities, empowered by central government, held accountable by government, but driven by the needs of their local pupils and the energy and ideas of the staff.

Up to 300 'advanced schools' lead the way in spreading good practice.
Federations will pioneer the idea of good schools leading the less successful to improvement.
'Excellence in Cities' brings together schools in challenging urban circumstances to provide the best for local children, for example through our programmes for Gifted and Talented youngsters which in the course of last year involved over 100,000 children.

The third plank of our reform programme is focussed on the school workforce of the future. Our concern is to put teaching at the cutting edge of public sector professionalism, not just a matter of pay. We want to see teachers with the time, support and leadership to help them do their jobs better. Time for teachers to teach depends on more reform, not less, because only reform of staffing can put the classroom assistants into schools to relive teachers of the bureaucratic tasks that clog up their day - or weekends.

My vision is that teachers in the future will be supported by adults, drawn from the local community, trained to high standard, and giving specialist support in managing children with behaviour problems or helping children with special needs, be they struggling or gifted. Team teaching should mean just that - teams of professionals with varied skills, not just a group of teachers.

It means difficult decisions about the trade-off between increases in basic pay and investment in classroom support. But it is the right thing to do.

Finally, we know that this demanding agenda for schools needs to be supported from outside the classroom - notably by parents, but also by civil society, from universities to businesses.

Pupil behaviour cannot be solved by schools alone - none of these problems can. They need the support of parents. Similarly, we know that for many children who don't have the natural luck in life out of school support depends on provision in civil society, and especially through inspiration from role models. That is why I am so keen to see the scheme developed by the University of Teeside where university undergraduates are expected to mentor children at school.

Schools can help change society, but society must help schools change the lives of children.

Conclusions

These four points of the 'diamond of reform' constitute the core of what we conceive of as a second phase of education reform. From 1997 we had to establish national standards - the Government's first principle of public sector reform. But now we have to live up to further principles:

devolving responsibility to the frontline within the context of high standards of accountability, so more money, much more, will be devolved to front line of provision
breaking down the staff demarcations that frustrate the drive to improve provision, and replace it with the flexibility necessary in any modern profession
and promoting choice by students to engage them in the learning process, and develop the commitment of their families to the extension of their opportunities.

All this demands a new and difficult balance of radicalism and reform. Thirty years ago, young politicians would debate the best means to nationalise the means of production. Today, they debate how to increase life chances through education. That is a measure of our opportunity.

We have come a long way. I've come to learn from you about how we can go further. Maybe, as a bonus, you can learn also from us?