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Dear Ruth
I hope to be seeing you soon in one of your meetings arranged by the Whips to convince doubters like me of the benefits to my constituents of your Education White Paper. Since I am an acute case I’d like to set out my problems about your curate’s egg.
These centre on three areas:-
- The White Paper begins, rightly, by setting out the great improvements we have achieved in Education. These have been won for many reasons but the main one is that we have valued Education and poured far more money into it. This produces enormous benefits in the shape of more teachers, computers, classroom assistants, better facilities, better schools and better results. That improvement is ongoing and the money will continue to flow.
Schools are already adjusting to the new financing arrangements. So why do we now need massive changes in structures? We ruled that out in 1997 in preference for an improvement in standards. If it ain't broke why fix it, beyond giving education the rest it craves from the constant flow of inspections, directives and changes.
- The chief problem, as the White Paper emphasises, is that underprivileged schools in underprivileged areas with underprivileged children have improved more slowly and not far enough. This is essentially a white working-class problem, therefore a Grimsby problem. They've been treated as an underclass for generations, educated only enough to be hewers of wood and drawers of water and generally neglected, but now that we've discovered we need them educated and skilled we're relying on middle-class nostrums to motivate them. They're our people. We are responsible for them. They've been left behind and the White Paper will compound this not cure it.
The most effective (I would say only) way to deal with this is positive discrimination in their favour. That means focussing more money, better pay, more teachers and assistants, and personalised teaching on them. We could also opt for a fairer distribution of underprivileged children (as measured by Social Security) and Special Educational Needs between schools, i.e. busing by class not race. You do take a step in that direction though shying away from the issue which I concede would be politically very difficult. In essence, therefore, your White Paper avoids both these strategies in favour of gimmicks such as invigoration by parent power, diversity and competition, all of it based on hope not experience, and middle-class hope at that. I'd lay down a simple rule. Whenever parental choice is the issue the children of the poorest, least educated and least articulate, lose out. Policy should be driven by the long-term needs of the whole community not the pushy middle-class.
None of the assertions made about academies, specialisation, the benefits of business or any other involvement is based on accurate, tested research. There is no research to tell us what parents (all parents) really want and nothing at all to tell us what the poorest and the underprivileged want and need and how we can motivate them. So the White Paper is like the architect's sketch drawings for a new building: a beautiful unreality with idealised people sketched in.
The view of the White Paper is that empowering pushy parents, essentially middle-class ones, will improve the lot of the underprivileged and inadequate. It won't and can't. It is our job to speak, not for the Blairs, but for the inadequate, the deprived, the poor, the under-educated and the underprivileged. We're not doing so. If we don't, who will? Under the guise of such principles as empowerment, diversity, competition, they stand to suffer most because these principles, while sounding good, in fact drain the under-privileged schools of money (which goes to Academies and expanding schools), good children (who'll gravitate or be sent by parents and the New Advisers to the schools with teaching ability and numbers). Empowerment of the pushy hurts the humble, the inarticulate, the indifferent and the poor. If any research had gone into the White Paper it should have been focussed on what they want, how far they're getting it, on how their aspirations can be raised, and what schools can do for them.
Any understanding of human or even professional nature tells us that whatever promises are made of "no selection", "serving all" and a "full spread of ability", the key to success for schools will be results. That means getting more of the better kids to drive the league tables. Surely you've researched this and its effects on draining the less successful schools? So let's hear it for the people. Our people.
- I have to ask myself what all this does for Grimsby? Precious little. Our primary sector is good and improving well. Our tertiary sector, Franklin Sixth Form College and the Grimsby Institute, is excellent. The problems come in our secondary sector – Havelock, Hereford (where my own children went), Western (which is now running down), Whitgift and Wintringham (designated as an Academy). All have had to struggle, partly because of low aspirations, a feature common to many one-industry towns where people once got high pay in Fishing without staying on at school. This has been exacerbated by the Drang nach Lincolnshire. Perhaps 200 children a day are carted across the border by bus and car to selective schools like Caistor Grammar, even Caistor Yarborough Secondary Modern, and others. This is parental choice in its most damaging form, draining ability, parental involvement, and middle-class pushiness out of the Grimsby system, though several kids do come back post-16 to get the benefits of Franklin College, whose educational provision is much better than the pathetic sixth forms across the border or in Cleethorpes.
Grimsby education has worked because the Heads have co-operated, with the single exception of Toll Bar (just in Cleethorpes) which went for Foundation Status and then, after undertaking to accept the guidance of the LEA, ignored it and opted for greater selection to put its own interests first. What is to stop every school doing this?
Perhaps I could look at some more detailed points of concern, first nationally, then locally:-
GENERAL PROBLEMS
- Do parents really want "choice" or a good local school where children can go with their peer group without travelling long distances? Choice means more travel and stops schools being "at the heart of their local communities". "Through schools" can hardly serve their neighbourhood if many of the neighbourhood's kids don't go there.
- Do parents really want power? Will they use it for selfish purposes, eg. to promote their kids and to exclude? Will they man school parent committees? In North East Lincolnshire some schools can't even get good parent governors. Calibre isn't high. There is no indication of a widespread desire for involvement. One Secondary in a leafy suburb (we do have them – nice ones, too) reports that parents take little interest and the annual parents meeting with Governors attracts 2-6 parents. One Primary tells me they have to coerce people into being Governors, and routinely strike off three at every meeting for non-attendance. Others have appointed asylum seekers. Another school sent out a thousand letters urging parents to become Governors and got two replies. One more got no appointees at all. Are people who have to be dragooned into the job going to provide a new dynamic to the system?
I doubt if our parents will man parent committees or play a dynamic role. A widespread lack of interest will give power to the prejudiced, the anal neurotic and the pushy. Our parents don't want to run schools. They are a changing group. Their involvement fluctuates. Schools want to work closely with parents but don't want to be ruled by them and the parents have no desire to do that. Unlike you, they trust the teachers.
- The White Paper's desire is to boost the poorer and less successful schools and help schools in underprivileged areas. Yet more choice will drain, with parents less likely to choose badly performing schools. No extra help or money is proposed for them and no new power to attract and hold teachers. There is the £120 million for one-to-one tuition and £335 for smaller group tuition but both are for only two years with no indication of how they are to be concentrated on the deprived.
- Should Local Education Authorities be weakened? The White Paper proposes a change from provider of schools to a puff pastry role as commissioner of school places and "parents' champion". LEAs are usually keen to improve education in their areas. They have an overview of its needs, are democratically accountable and able to draw the balance between the needs of individual schools and the good of the area. They have already been largely neutered and are now threatened with becoming an organisation without powers, purpose, or a clear role. Schools Organisation Committees are less of a loss. I find little indication of any great regret, but the issue of what exactly local authorities are to do now is a serious one. They have next to no power over Foundation, Trust or Academy Schools, no power over admission arrangements, no power to set up community schools or stop those who want Trusts. Will the job be worth doing? Why should Councillors take any interest or want to serve?
- The improvement in education so far is largely due to more money. There are no positive proposals for increasing this. More personalised tuition for literacy and English will bring in £250 and £335 (elsewhere cited as £350) million for two years. What is needed is a further increase in teacher numbers to provide personalised teaching. Can we really provide tailored education, working through smaller groups and one to one tuition without far more staff, more assistants, and much more money?
- Do Heads want to compete or co-operate? The National Association of Head Teachers says "We do not want freedom to work in isolation from other schools". That is also the view of Grimsby Heads. Yet the White Paper pushes them to competition and selection. The proposals to federate with weaker schools look unlikely. Why should the better schools handicap themselves in the race for results?
- The Government wants autonomy and independence not selection by ability. Yet every past step has been to more selection and this looks like another. Selection will be difficult to stop when schools compete because it's the key to success. Are Fair Banding, Fair Selection and the Admissions Code to be legally enforceable? Who will enforce them and how? Will expanding schools want to admit less able pupils through parental choice to depress their league rating? Local Choice Advisers must be a joke. We've a narrow range of specialisation in a small authority like NEL. One specialisation is Technology, while others aspire to Engineering, Sport or Health. Not much choice there. If the Advisers give the parents any advice other than "send your kid to the best available school" they must be failing in their duty. Are they to lie? As for the National Commissioner, this looks like a marriage bureau to bring schools and partners together and promote your latest gimmick, Trusts.
- Will Academies take their fair share of Special Educational Needs and poorer kids? I don't see that any real case has been made for them and the government's big programme of promoting them by the hundred is, like so much else, based on faith not evidence. On that basis NEL is now to have three i.e. two Oasis schools and one from Mammon a.k.a. Carphone Warehouse (so it could be called G3). Nationally it's clear that Academy share of Free Dinner Kids has already fallen. Pace Jacqui Smith's misleading letter to the Guardian, 8.3% of pupils were Free Dinners before but only 6.5% of the increased intake since, bringing the actual percentage in the new total down.
I don't doubt Steve Chalke's commitment to the underprivileged but the need to attract better kids to produce better results may be irresistible if he's to succeed. Indeed government's support for academies is based on a logical contradiction. If they concentrate on serving the deprived the improvement in results will be slow. If they opt for success then more middle class parents must be drawn in. The two designated in Grimsby are improving fast already, and both are far from failing even before they get academy status thrust upon them.
When will we get our Better Schools Better Tomorrow rebuilding money? The more academies we get the less we need but there's still no sign of it. I can't help thinking that if we'd got the rebuilding money when we should, there would be no case for Academies. Is it deliberately being held back?
WHAT'S IN IT FOR GRIMSBY?
Trust schools are a hope and a gimmick, not a thought-out and researched policy. Like Tory Grant Maintained schools and Foundation Schools they will be out of the control of the LEA, though unlike GMS schools they'll get no extra finance. They'll be easier to set up by majority decisions of the governing body without a ballot of parents, and new schools will be in this category. Trusts are Academies on the cheap. They're supposed to bring in outside organisations: companies, housing associations, charities, religious groups and universities, though hopefully Lap-Dancing Clubs and Massage Parlours won't be interested. The White Paper gives no indication that government has researched or demonstrated any pent up demand by business to invest in schools, though it would be more wholesome than buying peerages and honours, and much cheaper. You could, of course, tie the two together. Perhaps we already have.
It's difficult to see that anyone of value will come forward here. Nor is it clear what they have to offer to get power on the cheap. Trusts will appoint the majority of the governing body, but in return they don't have to put up £2 million or, indeed, any dosh at all, merely provide "management time", advice, policy, "leadership" – surely headteachers provide this already? Bigger ones will link member schools across the country, effectively replacing LEA local control with some wider entity, such as "Virgin schools" or "Ronald McDonald schools".
You don't mention football clubs, though probably only the Premier League would have the money. I doubt whether there will be much interest in Trusts in Grimsby and certainly none from Grimsby Town which is near bust. Business was remarkably reluctant to be involved in our Education Action Area or in Wintringham's efforts for special status. Firms like Microsoft may prefer more prestigious locations. Looking at Dixon's travails tells us that commercial firms fluctuate in wealth and commitment. Universities are notoriously short of cash. Our big local firms are multinationals, locals having been taken over. So Trusts are a leap in the dark which could be summat or, more probably, nowt. One thing, however, is clear. The proposals to allow parents to set up their own schools are really for the Fairies.
Sixth Forms. The White Paper breathes assumptions about the value of sixth forms as a necessary part of all schools. This doesn't help us. We have an excellent Sixth Form College and an Institute which provides sixth form courses. Grimsby schools don't have sixth forms, though Cleethorpes do because they were never re-organised. Don't let your views be coloured by your less adequate sixth form college in Bolton. Ours is excellent, as is Elliot Morley's in Scunthorpe. You said at Huddersfield's New College (and I hope that impressed you) that "parents want sixth forms". Some do. The pushy parents who attend the kind of briefing meetings you want us to organise may well do so, too, but this is an example of the inadequacies of parent power. When Grimsby re-organised to a sixth form college parents were probably against it. Ask them now and you'll get a different view because Franklin has been very successful. It offers a much wider range of courses and subjects than a sixth form in a school can. Its atmosphere is much more stimulating for the kids, offering a more adult, university-like life. By contrast, some of those sixth forms which remain in Cleethorpes are failing because they are too small and their range of courses is inadequate.
Yet here we have a White Paper assuming that schools will want sixth forms, coupled with the very real threat of Academies at Wintringham and A.N. Other school setting up their own in competition. Your Department speaks with a forked tongue here, telling Elliot Morley that sixth forms are not essential for academies but telling North East Lincolnshire Council that they are. They are certainly incorporated in the plans. I'm in correspondence with Andrew on this, but my views on sixth form colleges have been hardened by the experience of my daughter, Hannah, who was fed up of being treated like a child in Hereford's sixth form so she enrolled at the Institute (then Grimsby College) for her sixth form work, loved it because she was treated as an adult, and went on to university (unfortunately to study politics and make me miserable).
The Lincolnshire Brain Drain. Nothing proposed will check the loss we incur because of pushy parent power taking brighter kids across the border into selective education. Indeed, if Caistor Grammar and Yarborough can expand it might boost it. DfES officials claim the Academies will provide an alternative magnet which conflicts with their proclaimed purpose of doing more for the under-privileged. I'm not sure whether the 6 mile limit on free transport for poorer children would get them from NEL's boundaries out to Caistor. Perhaps you can tell me because that would add a bright working-class drain to the middle-class one already going on.
At the end of the school day, therefore, my basic question has to be what is there here for Havelock, Hereford, Western and Whitgift, except a drain of talent and ability? Specialised Status hasn't availed much except to bring in more money. Whatever it does for London (and I don't see much in it for my grandchildren in Dulwich either) it does nowt for Grimsby.
Long as this diatribe is I must make two final points. You may not have seen the "Campaigning Tool Kit" prepared by the PLP Political Services Unit to help us "campaign" for the White Paper. You should. You may want to get it withdrawn as an insult to the intelligence, not so much of the PLP, as of parents and teachers.
It begins with the simple-minded assertion that the reforms are about five principles which no-one could possibly object to, though motherhood and apple pie are not included, possibly because we are dealing with girls under 19 and an obese generation. There is no indication of wider purposes or of the complexities and problems. It ends with delighted parents endorsing the reforms and provides quotes through which they can express their enthusiasm while the MP scurries back to London to tell you "Slagton Loves You".
I will not be using this. I have, however, consulted all the Heads and will be holding a public meeting for teachers and governors to give their views and reactions. I hope these views, when relayed back to you, will influence the shaping of the Bill. That process must not be a simple endorsement of the White Paper as fait accompli but should result from a genuine consultation of how its sensible proposals can be implemented and the daft ones quietly dropped or neutered. Legislation at speed is always disastrous. Why rush?
The next issue isn't discussed "in front of the servants" like myself. Yet I can only assume there is a political motive behind this otherwise unnecessary White Paper. It can't be Tony's legacy. So I assume that it is to deny ground to the Tories and mollify middle-class opinion, particularly in London, where dissatisfaction with local schools for whatever reason of race, class, yobbery or simple inadequacy is driving middle-class parents into the private sector or to state schools which are, in fact, selective, as chosen by the Blairs. If it is this it won't work. The Tory strategy is already clear from their Election Manifesto (which is far closer to the principles, even phrasing, of the White Paper than our own). They will opt for a Cameron not a Davies strategy and support you against Labour critics. This will heighten the scale of the rebellion. Then they will outbid us by offering even more discipline, competition and parent power but adding in financial support to go private. You'll have opened the door to all this lunacy by moving the debate onto their ground.
The middle-class you're trying to win over aren't the old class-ridden snobs. There's a new, concerned, middle-class who can't really afford private education and really want a good local school that works for their kids and the local community. If they don't get this they may be forced to go private, not for the old class reasons, but because the State is failing them. The result will be that they'll end up embittered against the State system and resentful at its cost. We'll be converting them to Tories.
Please read this letter. You will be tested on it when we meet. It concentrates on the points I'm worried about. Everything else is left unscathed. OK in Grimsby but unless you can assuage my very real doubts on the basics it will be difficult to support the resulting Bill, particularly if it emerges quickly and without considerable discussion within the Party. If it emerges fully armed from the White Paper and is permeated by market philosophy rather than by anything recognisable as sensible educational theory, I can't travel that road. Which is something I'd regret.
Government seems to think that all will be well and that it can persuade us to see the light. Not so. It needs to consult and involve us. The whole approach is far too rushed. The White Paper, with its spelling mistakes, unresearched, unproven thinking and sloganeering gives every indication that it is written on a basis of untested prejudices by public relations people in a hurry. Just look at the pathetic section 4 on Personalised Learning with its lack of any ideas on how white, working-class kids can fulfil their potential.
This all speaks speed rather than thought or any serious grounding and any philosophy of education. To translate this mish mash into equally messy legislation would be disastrous, particularly if we are trying to create something as epoch-making and long lasting as the 1944 Act.
All best wishes
Yours sincerely
AUSTIN MITCHELL |
