Sam Freedman: Conservative education policy is going in the right direction

Sam Freedman is Head of Policy Exchange’s Education Unit.

One of the benefits of the Conservatives releasing “Green Papers” is that it allows time for discussion. The education paper provides a good opportunity for those on the centre-right to come to some conclusions as to what a school choice revolution really means. As Andrew Haldenby and Laura Kounine of Reform note, the argument on the Paper so far has been “between those commentators who conclude that the proposals would indeed deliver a revolution in schooling – and those who are concerned that the methods of reform might defeat its admirable intentions.” 

They go on to agree with Anne McElvoy that “The Gove/Cameron charter is frankly extraordinary in its apparent desire to have even more decisions taken by the Secretary of State than the most ardent centralisers of New Labour.”

This is unfair. While much of the press coverage seemed to focus on things the Conservative party would “make” schools do, the Green Paper actually suggests no compulsory measures beyond a new reading test. But there are a number of practices – phonics, uniform etc. – that are recommended as drivers of school improvement.  Reform seem to be arguing that professional autonomy in education can only exist when the Government abdicates itself of any responsibility for schools. Yet this is to confuse autonomy with a lack of accountability.

At Policy Exchange we are currently working on a project looking at some of the most improved education systems from around the world including Sweden and Ontario (where the phrase ‘Raising the Bar, Closing the Gap’ comes from). The message is clear. Yes schools must have autonomy; professionals must have the freedoms to do their jobs and parents must have choices. But Government should also offer clear guidelines (not rules) for achieving success and then provide strong measures of accountability to make sure that success is achieved. Without this, schools can feel isolated and parents are left to make decisions without information.

This is what the Green Paper offers. On synthetic phonics, the position is not that all schools should be forced to teach it, but that all schools should be assessed against the benchmark of successful schools that are using phonics. Your version works too? Then that’s fine. (I’m not sure Ofsted are the best people to assess this – at least in their current form – but there are no viable alternatives at the moment).

Likewise on discipline. The Conservatives note, correctly, that in most successful schools pupils wear uniforms and teachers can immediately enforce punishments. If a school manages to be successful without doing these things then, again, that’s fine. But surely it is not unreasonable for central government to assess best practice and use it as a benchmark for failing schools? Trusting professionals is all very well, but why should we expect them to constantly re-invent the wheel?

Reform also complain that the proposed supply-side reforms would see power taken away from local authorities, only to be placed in the hands of central government. I can see two problems with this argument.

First, the powers are not equivalent. Local authorities actually run most state schools:  they are responsible for the school's admissions, own the school's estate and employ the school's staff. Moreover they top-slice 10-20% of each school’s budget to pay for their own administration and for services they believe their schools require. A funding agreement with the DCSF is just a contract whereby the school will agree to meet minimum standards in return for state money. As any academy head will tell you, the latter is much preferable to the former.

Second, I’m not sure what Reform is proposing in place of central funding agreements. I cannot imagine they are supporting the current system of local authority control, so what’s the alternative? The liberal fantasy of a purely independent system where the state’s only involvement is to give parents a voucher may be tempting, but it isn’t realistic. Where market failures have happened in previously public sector industries it has been due to severe information asymmetry. Government has to measure outcomes otherwise parents will have little idea of where to spend their voucher.

None of this is to say that the Green Paper shouldn’t become a more radical White Paper. I would allow all schools to have the freedoms of academies, not just more new schools. And I would look to completely overhaul the accountability framework so as to include relevant information beyond exam results. But this is the beginning of the discussion not the end and the direction of travel must be applauded.

Comments

[Dave Bartlett]

"A funding agreement with the DCSF is just a contract whereby the school will agree to meet minimum standards in return for state money."

Why does this contract have to be with central government, rather than the local council?

[Tony Makara]

I'd like to see very special attention paid to the vital last academic year. Would it not be a positive move to let those in the last year of school education spend a large part of that year being educated at the local college? This would introduce those adolescents to college life and would help their maturity to develop by taking them out of the school environment. The last year in education is as vital as the first.

[Dave Bartlett]

The current proposals raising the bar, closing the gap [PDF] suggests funding new schools by a direct grant from the Department for Schools Education and Familes, (Dedicated schools grant, section 2.1.2 of the green paper.)

This provides a very clear lever for central government control of individual schools.

The Neighbourhood Education [PDF] proposals from Direct Democracy suggest that new schools should be funded by establishing a parental right to 'opt-out' of existing LEA schools and claim funding from the local council:
"Each child would be entitled to the average spent per pupil in the appropriate sector [primary/secondary etc]"

Given the temptation for central government to meddle with schools, surely the model that makes schools financially independent of central government must be preferable?

[David Belchamber]

Would Sam Freedman like to comment on the pros and cons of grant maintained schools?

In my opinion they worked extremely well, because they operated autonomously like independent schools. The fact that Blair scrapped them (and the assisted places scheme) immediately he took over, suggests that GM schools must have been on the right lines - but they were a tory idea. Now we have academies that appear to bear similarities to GM schools.

Would Sam Freedman also like to comment on whether independent schools should be invited to help in any way? After all, some of them are rated as among the best schools in the world, which I do not think any state school is at the moment.

[Brian W]

Is there merit in revisiting the Grant Maintained Schools as well as assisted places? As David Belchamber reminds us, they worked well, perhaps the model needs updating ten years on.

[Jonathan]

My God you've gone out on a limb.

The liberal fantasy of a purely independent system where the state’s only involvement is to give parents a voucher may be tempting, but it isn’t realistic.

Vouchers are so obviously the answer to the problems of education that it never ceases to amaze me with what ease and lack of thought they are dismissed as lacking realism by the entire conspiracy of modern educationalists.

Justify that remark!

[Andrew Haldenby]

Dear Sam

It’s great to have the chance to debate. Perhaps we can raise the specifics and then something more basic:

• Of course the direction of travel is right – see the end of our article – but so was Tony Blair’s. It’s necessary but not sufficient.


• It is not just a new reading test that the Conservative Party would enforce, but also setting in all academic subjects.


• If pupils face a compulsory test in “decoding”, of course that forces schools to teach phonics. And isn’t that the whole point of the policy? David Cameron himself said: “On literacy, we need concrete action to enforce the use of synthetic phonics.” (9 September 2005, speech on public service reform).


• Is central government administration necessarily better than local government? As Per Unckel, the Swedish Minister who led their school reforms, explained at a Reform conference in 2004, his first step was to make education entirely a matter for local government. Also see Dave Bartlett’s comment: "Given the temptation for central government to meddle with schools, surely the model that makes schools financially independent of central government must be preferable?"


• On our “solution” – to repeat from our article yesterday: “Grant maintained schools were barely administered at all; their funding came from an arms-length agency and encouragement for them from a separate charity. Reform's Commission on the reform of public services proposed that capital funding should simply be distributed as part of per pupil funding to give maximum freedom.”

More basically: it’s not as if the UK government hasn’t tried setting “guidelines” and taking “accountability” to the centre – that is the whole point of the Conservative reforms post-1988. The lesson of that experience is that good schools have continued to teach despite, not because of, the guidance. It is a perfect case study, from the UK, of what not to do: should policy makers just ignore it?

Best wishes

Andrew Haldenby & Laura Kounine

[Ian Parker]

There is nothing inherently wrong with governments setting general targets for schools in appropriate areas. After all, those targets should surely match our natural aspirations in terms of basic educational attainment. What is wrong, however, and I don’t see this being addressed by anything written here, is when the government seeks to determine the selection and other operating policies of schools.

The independent sector substantially outperforms the state sector simply because they can be selective and do not have to tolerate disruptive elements. The latest complaints about the top universities taking a large percentage from the independent sector (labelled ‘educational apartheid’, apparently), simply reflects the obvious fact that very few state schools can offer comparable standards, hence their children are naturally disadvantaged. When I attended a state grammar school, there was little distinction academically between the top grammar schools and most independent schools. Nobody could claim that is the case today. State schools can deliver decent education. They cannot, however, achieve that with government meddling and the imposition of social engineering.

[right wing tory sympathiser]

Haldenby is wrong again.

a) The Green Paper does not say compulsory setting - it says that OFSTED will report on setting to give parents information.
b) The point of the reading test is not to enforce phonics - schools can teach some other way if they wish and IF IT WORKS, but if it does not work then their choice will be public information. Further, the test replaces the rest of the testing apparatus at that age - which Haldenby does not mention - is he really saying a half hour test after 2 years is some sort of crippling imposition? Good teachers do decoding tests EVERY WEEK.
c) He continues to ignore the fact that the Green Paper states explicitly that Academies will be free to teach outside the National curriculum - they will have as much freedom as private schools now.
d) He does not realise that the complete failure of groups like Reform to have the slightest effect on public attitudes towards school choice for year after year constrains what it is posible for the Tories to do step by step. If the Tories now get to the situation in which something like the Swedish system operates, either because they do it or they force Labour to do it, then they will have done more to advance the chances of a really radical school transformation than anything on the Right for over 40 years.
e) His repeated misrepresentations about the freedoms of Academies as proposed in the Green Paper is only confusing the media and Tory donors. If he wants to make a free market case, he should make it properly.

[Ash Faulkner]

Jonathan (13:35), I think the key phrase is 'the state’s only involvement'. I'm no opponent of vouchers; I wrote a Platform article giving a philosophical case for a system that raises standards rather than seeks equal opportunity, but even I accept you can't have laissez faire education. We would not allow Islamist or white supremacist schools, for example.

In most countries using vouchers, one of the legal requirements is that the school promotes democratic values. To that I'd add a core curriculum of English, Maths and Science, and a fourth Citizenship, which would include basic history, politics (especially the constitution) and so on. The methods of that delivery, the selection of staff, and the details of those subjects and others would of course be down to the school (and the parents who choose it).

[Jonathan]

@Ash
Quite agree with everything you've written but not sure if Sam Freeman feels like that as he hasn't replied to my challenge.
His sentence can only be read as a dismissal of vouchers as unrealistic, which he offers no evidence or argument to justify and which in my opinion is not only wrong but dangerously disregarding the one reform that might genuinely shake up our appaling state education system.

[Dave Bartlett]

@Jonathan

I don't see that vouchers are 'the ONE reform that might genuinely shake up our appalling state education system.'

In his conference speech Mr Cameron described a new standards regime that sounds like an excellent force for good.

"To be absolutely clear that in reforming the exam bodies it is fine to make the QCA independent. It is fine to make the QCA independent but that won't help unless the exam bodies are really put under the one group of people that want to make our exam system rigorous and tough and believable for the long term and that's the customers. That means business, it means the universities, it means the colleges, they want our exam system to be robust for the long term and so do I."

Jamie Whyte has previous described this as 'a banker's solution to grade inflation'

[Jonathan]

@Dave Bartlett
Unifying the examination boards and syllabuses will help if they keep past papers and specimin graded answers so that we can check for grade inflation but all that would do is cruelly expose the differnece between an A grade of the 1st centile and an A grade of the 20th centile.

Allowing poor people to seek out an education that would enable their bright offspring to achieve at the 1st centile requires giving them the money to seek our a good school and that means vouchers.

Vouchers are the answer. Why are they so easily dismissed. Mr Freedman seems to have stepped away from his platform with sudden evasiveness.

[Dave Bartlett]

@Jonathan

The point of the exam changes is to put market forces at work by making the universities/employers the customers of the exam boards, not the schools.

Currently the schools are the customers, and they want good grades, rather than accurate grades.

[Jonathan]

Yes and some internal validity and stability in exam setting and marking will certainly expose the cruel hoax of "educational improvement" of the last 10 yrs.

But it won't help the poor parents of a bright child to get their child into a good school. It will just expose further how poor the poor school is. Given that all schools will have worse results it doesn't necessarily raise standards it just exposes the true state of education standards.

Only vouchers make a reality of parent choice.