ConservativeHome's ToryDiary

Boris and Ray Lewis to introduce "respect schooling" as part of the war on knife crime

Following another tragic stabbing in London (the twelfth teenage murder there this year) that came hours after Boris was crowned Mayor, he has written for the Evening Standard about his plans for Saturday courses for troubled youths that would involve "competition, discipline and punishment".

Newly-appointed Deputy Mayor for Youth & Opportunity Ray Lewis will be taking a lead on the Respect Schools plan, having been doing very similar work for years at the Eastside Young Leaders Academy. The article doesn't appear to be online at the time of writing but here is the key passage:

"Ray's approach has been to take young black males who have been excluded from school, and imbue them with magnificently untrendy boot-camp style discipline. He has been extraordinarily successful. He helps many of his students to perform a hand-brake turn in their lives. They win scholarships, they go on to university. Now he is going to join me in seeing if we can replicate his approach across London.

Of course it would be foolish to imagine that we can have a transforming effect overnight, but I am full of hope. Imagine what we could achieve with 100 Saturday schools like the East Side Young Leaders. Imagine if there were dozens of boxing clubs, rather than the handful surviving today."

Ray's work has long been championed by the Conservatives, we profiled him over two years ago as a potential A-list candidate for the Party. His is an inspired appointment.

> Melanie Phillips and Iain Dale are among the commentators to welcome Ray Lewis' appointment.

Labour's failed the working class on university admissions

John Hayes gave a lengthy speech about access to Higher Education this lunchtime. Speaking at Birkbeck College to about eighty academics he argued that part-time courses, community based Further Education Colleges and modular and distance learning should be utilised in opening up HE to disenfranchised groups.

His main theme was that the "expansion in university education in the last thirty years has delivered opportunity for some but not opportunity for all". The Government has spent £2bn a year on widening participation programmes, but the participation rate of working class students has increased by just 1% since 1995. Young people from the poorest income groups increased their graduation rate by just 3% between 1981 and the late 1990s, compared with a rise of 26% for those from the richest 20% of families.

Hayes was very critical of the Government's underlying belief that there is institutional bias in the university admissions system, calling it "unsubstantiated, unjustifiable and unacceptable".

The NUT won't be a Conservative government's only 'enemy within'

Until recently George Bridges was one of David Cameron's principal advisers.  On the eve of the NUT strike and shortly after their recent conference when, yet again, they adopted extremist positions, George Bridges has described Britain's leading teachers' union as "the enemy within":

"Politics, not education, drives many in the NUT. Just like Arthur Scargill, some of its activists appear to care more about class war than class discipline.  How they loved this year's conference - "one of the most Left-wing ever", gloated Socialist Worker.  The high point: a debate on whether to ban military recruitment in schools. The resolution called for "peace to be embedded in the curriculum", and a summit of teachers "including the Stop the War Coalition" to advise on military recruitment.  If we are to raise standards in education, we have to break the NUT's grip on schools.  The union is already mobilising to fight the Government's academies programme, because it is "an attempt to restructure state education along 'market' principles"."

George Bridges sets out a four point plan for overcoming the NUT - including making the important distinction that any conflict is with NUT extremists - not teachers in general.  The public sector unions have grown fat under Labour.  George is right to identify them as a serious opponent of the reforms that are necessary for improving education although David Cameron would be wise to avoid anything like the language used in this article.  David Cameron will, however, need a strategy for tackling the likely enemies of a Tory government.  The NUT won't be the only foe.  Labour may well be weak in the early months/ years of a Conservative government but leading the opposition will be the quangoes stuffed, over ten years, with Labour appointees and the Welsh and Scottish political classes.

Read George Bridge's full article.

Tories increase headteachers' powers to deal with epidemic of violence and disruption in schools

In a powerful contribution to Platform, early last month, Graeme Archer brought alive the problem of school breakdown.

It is a MASSIVE problem.  140,000 pupils were suspended from secondary schools in 2005/06 for violence or persistent disruption.  The rate of suspension is twelve times higher in the most deprived areas than in the least.  Surveys of teachers suggest that a third have been physically attacked and one-in-five threatened with a weapon.  Early retirement amongst teachers has tripled.  As Justice Coleridge said on Saturday: family breakdown is the leading cause of these and other social problems.

The Tories already have a growing policy platform to renew the family (although it needs to be much bolder) and today, David Cameron and Michael Gove announce their school discipline strategy for Giving Power Back To Teachers.  Measures include:

• Parents will lose the right to appeal to a tribunal and overturn a headteacher's decision to exclude a disruptive pupil;
• Abolition of Labour's new idea that schools must take in one excluded child for every child they exclude;
• Ending the financial penalty that means a school loses a whole year's funding for an excluded child even if many months of costs have been incurred.
• Bonuses for teachers who take effective action against disruptive pupils.

Other measures are set out in the full document - a PDF of which you can read here.  

A Telegraph leader - unfairly - describes the Tory ideas as "a painfully cautious step in the right direction".  The Telegraph is much more impressed with Gordon Brown's ideas on army cadet forces:

"Much more encouraging is that Gordon Brown appears to favour cadet forces, and is keen to increase their number in comprehensive schools. The objection that delinquent pupils will flock to use the guns is nonsense: they will be put off by the uniforms and the discipline. And the primary function of a cadet force is not to train children for military service, but to inculcate initiative and responsibility.  Young people who have been answerable, not just for the performance and safety, but for the behaviour of others, make better citizens and better parents. If the Prime Minister understands this, in defiance of his own party's pacifist dogma, we applaud him for it - and we wish him luck."

We'd urge The Telegraph to be more cautious.  The Brown-Blair years have often been characterised by good ideas - and this is another - but they've been more associated with inept implementation.  Britain no longer wants a government good at announcements but it craves one that will get things done.

Cameron condemns Ed Balls' "crazy" attack on faith schools

Just interviewed by Adam Boulton for his Sunday Live programme, Tory leader David Cameron attacked Ed Balls' confrontation with faith schools as "crazy".  Some of the best schools in the country were faith schools, he said, and under the Conservatives they could expand if parents wished.

Mr Cameron also told Sky viewers that he supported tighter classification of cannabis.  He admitted that he was wrong to support the relaxation of classification when he was a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee.  The potency of cannabis as used today and its mental health side-effects had, he said, persuaded him to support a tougher approach.

Mr Cameron said he did not agree with Boris Johnson on an amnesty for illegal immigrants.  The danger, he said, was that one anmesty only encouraged more immigration and further amnesties.

He declined to pick a candidate for the US Presidential race but heaped praise on John McCain as an inspiring man who was on the right side of the free trade debate.

The Conservative leader said that he was encouraged by the latest opinion poll putting the Conservatives 11% ahead of Labour but that there was "not an ounce of complacency" within the Tory team about the outcome of the next General Election.  Voters were weary of a great new dawn after jumping into Blair's arms in 1997.  The Conservatives need to show that they had the right response to Britain's two great challenges: economic uncertainty and social breakdown.

PS Why on earth did Sky bother to ask the public for questions to put to Mr Cameron?  55 questions were left on the Boulton & Co blog but only one of those questions was asked by our reckoning.

Fox condemns NUT for considering banning armed forces going into schools

A motion before the National Union of Teachers' Conference seeks to ban the military from going into schools.  The teachers backing the motion accuse the armed forces of trying to "lure" youngsters from deprived areas into the military.  The armed forces say that the visits simply aim to raise awareness of the military in society.  Liam Fox, Shadow Defence Secretary, has condemned the move:

“If this goes through it will be a kick in the teeth for our boys on the front line.  They should concentrate on improving the standard of education for British children instead of undermining British forces at a time when they are so overstretched.”

Commitment to rescue failing schools from local authority control underlines new centrality of education in Tory strategy

The main story in this morning's Telegraph (also covered in The Times) is a Tory plan to use the first Queen's Speech of a Conservative Government to remove up to 640 failing secondary schools from local authority control and transfer them to city academies, charitable trusts, and parent co-operatives.  Iain Duncan Smith proposed such Pioneer Schools last July.

Michael Gove MP told The Telegraph:

"In areas where the same party has been in power for too long, and where standards remain poor, we will have the most failing schools transferred to academy sponsors and others who have a proven record of improving education for the poorest. We will bring forward legislation to do so in the first Queen's Speech."

Michael Gove has rapidly become the shadow cabinet's leading hare since he took over the brief last summer.  The Tory leadership has largely decided that education rather than the environment will be the main 'change theme' for the party - a big change from the first eighteen months of Project Cameron.

Other Tory measures include a new national reading test for six and seven year-olds, Year Six resits, a general return to traditional teaching methods, an option for 'National Citizen Service' for all sixteen year-olds, grammar streams in every school, protection of special needs schools, synthetic phonics and new freedoms for headteachers to exclude disruptive pupils.

11.45am: Link to speech on Michael Gove's website

George Osborne chooses £11,000pa private school for his two children

Tonight's London Evening Standard (no link) is reporting that the Shadow Chancellor is planning to send his two children to an £11,000 prep school; Norland Place.  [Hat-tip: Sky News blog.]

This will be controversial and contrasts with Mr Cameron's hope to send his children to state schools.

But if it is politically difficult few Conservatives will quarrel with Mr Osborne putting his children's future before any short-term electoral considerations.  If someone has wealth - and Mr Osborne is heir to a considerable fortune (the Osborne & Little wallpaper company) - it is much better to spend that money on your children than on personal luxuries.

PS Ben Brogan adds an interesting PS to this blog post of his.  Apparently the prep school story was a Telegraph exclusive.  The Telegraph contacted Mr Osborne's office for a quote only to see the story appear a few hours later in the Standard - and in a relatively favourable way.  If true Mr Osborne may have succeeded in partially spiking The Telegraph's story but he is playing a risky game.  The Tory-Telegraph relationship is going through another rocky patch and such tactics won't help. 

7am, 2nd February: A spokesperson for George Osborne issued the following statement to The Telegraph: "George has always said that, like any parents, he and his wife would choose what they thought was the right school for their children. That's what they've done, and George has never tried to lecture other parents on what they should do. Norland Place is near their home, and indeed was the school that George himself went to, and was very happy at."

1pm: Simon Chapman relates this issue to supply-side schools reform.

David Cameron declines to condemn 'faith school fakes' in wide-ranging Times interview

In an interview today David Cameron makes a direct attack on the Prime Minister as that "strange man in Downing Street".  The Times chooses to splash his remarks about non-believers going to church in order to get their children into church schools.  The Tory leader refuses to condemn parents that the newspaper describes as 'faith school fakes':

“I think it’s good for parents who want the best for their kids. I don’t blame anyone who tries to get their children into a good school. Most people are doing so because it has an ethos and culture. I believe in active citizens.”

Melanie Phillips is unimpressed:

"For a politician who aspires to lead his country to endorse lying and cheating is to give the public the message that he himself is not to be trusted. The implication that ‘active citizenship’ means securing advantage by not telling the truth is deplorable. It is possible to acknowledge the fact that so many parents are driven to play the system in this way by the appalling standards in our schools, and to decry the pressures that drive them to do this, without endorsing systematic deception. If Cameron has indeed crossed that line, this will be held against him by a public which already suspects that he is not a man of principle, and taken as proof that their instincts are correct."

Some other highlights from David Cameron's interview with The Times:

The top Conservative team is excelling: "You still see the contrast between our two teams: William Hague, David Davis, George Osborne all are doing well and being seen to be doing well. One can imagine them doing the jobs that they are shadowing far better than the minister they are shadowing.”

Brown sees everything in political terms: “I am afraid that he sees [42 days' detention without trial] as a totally political weapon: let us try and make the Tories look soft on terror. That is my problem with our Prime Minister: he looks at every single issue from the point of view of what is the right dividing line that divides me from my opponent, not what is right for the country, and I think that is what he is doing here.”

Away from the Labour meltdown, Gove and Herbert are building the case for a Conservative government

The Labour meltdown means that I have been neglecting to adequately cover significant Tory announcements.  There was last week's education announcements from Michael Gove and I recommend this webcameron video for a summary of those (there are also these Platform essays from Reform and Policy Exchange).  There was also Monday's announcement on prison reform by Shadow Secretary of State for Justice Nick Herbert.

There's a new campaign page at conservatives.com that summarises Mr Herbert's approach to prisons.  Here are the bullet points:

• Conservatives would scrap the disastrous early release scheme, and build emergency prison places.
• Double the sentencing powers of magistrates to 12 months and repeal any new restrictions on their ability to hand down suspended sentences.
• Introduce honesty in sentencing so that convicted criminals serve a minimum sentence handed down to them by the judge.
• Ensure sufficient prison capacity to hold all those sentenced by the courts – and reform prison regimes to break the cycle of re-offending.

Tories "happy" for fight with education establishment in order to implement national reading test for six and seven year-olds

The Conservatives are to replace the Key Stage One test with a new simple test that will establish whether six and seven year-olds have mastered the skill of "decoding" how words are constructed.  Ofsted, the schools inspectorate, will be empowered to police the teaching of reading by phonics.  There will also be new powers for headteachers to exclude unruly children.

A Tory source told The Observer: "'We want every child who can to be reading by the age of six. You are talking over 90 per cent of children. Obviously this will not be possible for children with acute special needs. We would scrap the key stage one test which is quite controversial. It is complex. We want to concentrate on the absolute foundation stone, which is an ability to read."

The plans have been attacked by Chris Davis of the National Primary Headteachers' Association: "The target is too early. One of the worst things you can do with a very young child is give them the impression that they can't do something. That can put them off for a very long time, if not for ever."  Mr Davis points to Scandinavian experience where children start to learn later but - allegtedly - soon overtake the reading ability of British children.

The above quotation is taken from an article that Michael Gove has written for The Sunday Times.

6pm: Fraser Nelson worries about this initiative: "The plan for pioneer / direct grant / Swedish/ voucher / whateveryouwanttocallthem schools empowers and trusts teachers. Today's initiative seeks to do their job for them. Cameron has no expertise whatsoever in primary education, why should he be prescribing synthetic phonics or anything else to these teachers?"

You couldn't make it up

Today's Sunday Times:

"The Foreign Office has cleared dozens of Iranians to enter British universities to study advanced nuclear physics and other subjects with the potential to be applied to weapons of mass destruction.  In the past nine months about 60 Iranians have been admitted to study postgraduate courses deemed “proliferation-sensitive” by the security services. The disciplines range from nuclear physics to some areas of electrical and chemical engineering and microbiology."

Conservative Universities spokesman David Willetts, who uncovered this fact, commented:

“Given that we need to have tougher sanctions against Iran, it does seem extraordinary that the government is not yet stopping Iranians coming here to study nuclear physics. There is legitimate concern about what some students have been studying.”

Live PMQs blog: Cameron challenges Brown on plan to confiscate the surpluses of well-run schools

Editor's verdict: Another win for David Cameron.  Third in a row.  Good choice of topics: The attempt to penalise well-run schools and the Scottish elections fiasco.  Cameron is also successfully weaving in the same themes into every PMQs: Brown is a centraliser who is less than candid with the British people.  Brown is doing a little better, however - often standing at the despatch box without his guidance book.  Good question from Graham Brady.  If the frontbench won't touch the Barnett formula you can expect bankbenchers to do so - authorised or not."

Not verbatim:

[Speaker rebukes Ian Austin again - Brown's PPS.  Cameron says: That's another one of Brown's cronies who won't behave properly].

12.14am: David Cameron stands up for his second round of questions and invites the PM to apologise for the Scottish elections fiasco.  He says that Douglas Alexander has been criticised for playing politics.  Gordon Brown responds by saying that David Cameron is "misleading" people about the report.  All parties were implicated, he suggests.  Look at p17, responds David Cameron.  The report directly criticises ministerial conduct.  Brown promised a new kind of politics.  He promised candour.  That was in his leadership election.  It feels like a hundred years ago.

12.12am: Graham Brady pops up again for the second time in two weeks and asks: Why should my constituents pay more tax so that his constituents don't have to pay prescription charges?  Brown challenges the Tory frontbench to say whether it supports the Barnett formula or not.

12.09am: Vince Cable asks Brown about doubts over the Government's renewables target.  'Isn't Brown less green than Blair?', he asks.  Brown jokes that he is pleased to see Mr Cable still in position given the turnover in LibDem leaders.  Brown promises to consult on the achievability of the target.  Cable responds by saying that Brown will soon be as green as George Bush.

12.05am: David Cameron says that he should trust the surpluses to headteachers and not interfere.  The PM says the real issue is the Tory plan not to match Labour spending and leave a £6bn hole in the public finances.  Cameron says: Scrap the consultation and let headteachers keep their surpluses.  When will the PM give up his mania for state control?

12.02am: David Cameron asks the Prime Minister why he plans to confiscate 5% of the surpluses of good schools.  Gordon Brown replies that the Government is consulting on how best to use the considerable (£1.7bn) surpluses that exist.

Watch it live via Sky.

Michael Gove backs return to traditional teaching methods

Interview in today's Telegraph:

• His team have compiled a list of the top 100 comprehensive schools
• Most of them insist on streaming their pupils across the board, including the wearing of blazers and ties are in.
• They have long lunch breaks during which pupils are kept on the premises and encouraged to take part in chess clubs and debating societies.
• Children should sit in traditional rows rather than freeform classrooms.
• Discipline is crucial, head teachers should be able to exclude disruptive pupils without being second guessed
• Traditional teaching methods include children reciting times tables, learning to conjugate verbs and memorising the dates of the kings and queens.
• "The 1960s aren't the root of all evil but certain teaching methods are actually reactionary, they've won favour with people in the educational establishment but they don't serve children well."
• It is often the poorest children who suffer most from trendy teaching, such as the abandonment of synthetic phonics for being too authoritarian.
• Government plans to keep schools open before and after classes should be supported.
• There is a strong case for getting rid of AS levels, and the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority should be broken up.
• Tories' education plans are far more radical than Mr Brown's, they would introduce a genuine free market into education, with businesses, charities and faith groups paid to run state schools, and parents given real choice.

Related link: Daniel Kawczynski MP has written for the Platform today about regional differences in funding for schools

A Conservative government would offer 'National (Citizen) Service' to all sixteen year-olds

'Bring back national service!' is one of the favourite calls of traditionalists and the Tory leader is today returning to an idea that he first floated when he was running for the Conservative leadership (see here).  Mr Cameron will travel to Bolton today where he will launch a Green Paper calling for a 'National Citizen Service'.  Olympic medalist and boxer Amir Khan (pictured) will be at the launch.  The scheme has been scaled back somewhat since the leadership contest.  It will be weeks rather than months in length and the idea of compulsory service has also been dropped.  It will have the following key characteristics (according to today's Mail):

• It will be a six week commitment - running during the summer months.
• 650,000 sixteen year-olds will be encouraged to undertake aid work, visit the elderly or undertake military training.
• There will be a cash award for graduates of the Service - 50% of the award will go to the individual volunteer and half to a charity of the individual's choice.
• Employers would be encouraged to take note of an applicant's involvement in the Service in the same way they currently take note of Prince's Trust and Duke of Edinburgh involvement.
• At the end of the course the volunteer will have to make a pledge of allegiance to Britain and explain what they have learnt. 

In the past Mr Cameron has said that he hopes the scheme could be seen as a nationally recognised 'transition to adulthood' or 'rite of passage': "In our society, the closest thing to a rite of passage is probably going out and getting completely hammered on your eighteenth birthday.  I think programmes like this could provide a positive alternative... It could become a recognised 'stamp' of adulthood in Britain."

The cost of funding the Service has not yet been calculated.  A new policy group under Michael Gove's chairmanship will do that work.  The Conservative leader sees National Citizen Service as an essential part of his long-term aim to repair 'Britain's broken society'.  He issued this statement:

"It will mix people from different countries.  North and south, black and white, rich and poor. They will be putting something back into the community.  It will be a way of learning respect for our country and each other just like national service was.  This could really change our country for the better. I feel very passionate about this. It should be a part of every child's experience.  You should go from primary school to secondary school, and then at 16 your citizen service. We cannot afford not to do this."

The Sun welcomes the idea - calling it "imaginative and optimistic".

"Restoring Pride in Our Public Services"

The Conservative Public Services Improvement Group led by Stephen Dorrell MP and Baroness Pauline Perry published its report this morning at the Policy Exchange's Ideas Forum.  There are more than 150 proposals on education, social housing and health.  These are the main ones:

On education

• Establish a Chief Education and Skills officer and a Royal College of Teaching, along the lines of their counterparts in the NHS.
• Reduce the volume of guidelines for schools.
• Abolish "AS" levels
• More disciplinary measures, clearer exclusion powers, anonymity for teachers subject to allegations.
• An "advantage premium": additional per-capita funding for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds.
• Encouragement for more academic charities to run city academies.
• Provision of buses to transport children from over-subscribed to under-subscribed schools.

On social housing

• Provision of 10% equity for social housing tenants after five years good behaviour.
• Review of social housing waiting list policy
• "Commitment to mixed communities", i.e., seeking varied incomes, tenures, demographics and ethnicities, subject to local circumstances, as a way to avoid concentrations of deprivation.
• Creation of a national affordable housing fund.
• Measures to make the Right to Buy "more affordable" by altering discounts.

On health

• "Less political interference in the day to day management of the NHS"
• "Greater freedom for individual healthcare professionals, in return for
  clear accountability for outcomes"
• "A service which puts patients before bureaucrats"
• "Greater emphasis on public health objectives", improved powers for the Chief Medical Officer and "separate public health budgets"

Read and debate the report at Stand Up Speak Up.

Thomas Cahill

Tories would force underperforming primary school pupils to retake final year

In tomorrow's Sunday Telegraph (not yet online) David Cameron will say that underperforming Year 6 children could be forced to resit their final primary school year if they do not meet performance thresholds at the end of their year or during special summer classes that the Tories also intend to introduce.

Last December ConservativeHome readers had approved a policy idea from Richard Robinson that there should be a remedial year for eleven year-olds who weren't ready for secondary school.  Tomorrow's Cameron proposal may stem from the Dorrell-Perry policy group report on the public services - due, ConservativeHome understands, to be published this Tuesday.  The report's launch was rescheduled so that the party could spend another week responding to public anxieties about crime and social breakdown.

The Press Association is also reporting that the Conservative leader will advocate an "advantage premium" for schools that take children from disadvantaged backgrounds.  The financial reward might be as much as £6,000 per child.  The social justice policy group has already recommended that headteachers of primary schools in disadvantaged communities could be paid more.  58% of Tory members approved of that proposal and 24% disagreed.

Stephen Dorrell urges trust in renewed public service professionalism

This Thursday will see the fifth Conservative Party policy group report.  [11.45am: Sensibly, the report has been rescheduled to the following week]. Stephen Dorrell and Baroness Perry will present their proposals for modernising Britain's public services.  As with the competitiveness and social justice reports we can expect to see individual ideas trailed in the press on a day-by-day basis.  The report will have to compete with a news agenda that is heavily focused on the consequences flowing from the shooting of Rhys Jones.  As Matt d'Ancona writes in today's Sunday Telegraph - and as ConservativeHome urged on Thursday - Mr Cameron's social responsibility agenda may have found its moment.

But back to public services for now and an important op-ed by Stephen Dorrell in The Sunday Times.  Mr Dorrell, Health Secretary under John Major, attempts to pre-empt claims that his plans to entrust professionals amount to 'producer capture':

"The case for strong and independent professions is not the case for a return to the status quo ante. It is the case for challenging the professions to accept their responsibilities – to acknowledge that they, and they alone, are able to ensure the reality of public service excellence matches the rhetoric."

Mr Dorrell argues that measures to counter the poor professional standards of the past - measures including waiting time targets in the NHS and literacy and numeracy hours in schools - brought short-term benefits but their "inevitable long-term consequence [is] that discretion is drained from professional structures and centralised in the hands of interventionist ministers."

He says that Britain can choose to continue to impose "an increasingly arcane set of bureaucratic measures and targets, or it must seek ways of reengaging with the aspirations and idealism that originally motivated the vast majority of professional people to devote their lives to their profession."

Mr Dorrell argues that this is no choice at all.  Whilst accepting that patients and pupils must be free to move from one hospital and school to another he sets out principles for renewing public service professionalism: 

1. "The professions must be engaged in the management of the services. When professional people experience management as an activity “done to them” rather an activity in which the profession itself is engaged, it becomes too easy to reject management objectives as service distortions.
2. Public services need to develop more reliable and publicly available outcome data – including data related to the performance of individual professionals – to allow all interested parties to see the evidence about performance.
3. The professions need to be engaged in the preparation of the outcome data in order to reduce opportunities to discuss the preparation of the statistics instead of the facts they reveal.
4. The leaderships of the professions need to develop the stature to act, locally and nationally, as both effective advocates for the professions and effective monitors of standards."

The advance publicity for the Dorrell-Perry report also begins today with a story in The Observer.  In an idea very similar to that proposed by Iain Duncan Smith, the public services policy group will say that parents should have the power to set up new schools to rival those of local education authorities:

"In areas where schools are performing badly, the councils should have no power to stop such a move, a Tory policy review will recommend this week. Co-chaired by former cabinet minister Stephen Dorrell, it will argue that forcing local authorities to fund the schools would boost exam performance."

David Cameron says good discipline is the key to successful schools

In a speech on education to Policy Exchange this morning David Cameron started by talking of the family. He spoke of the importance of his own family, his belief that the family the bedrock of society and said: 

For most families, school is or should be a further extension of its own role and authority – a place for professional attention in addition to the informal instruction of home. For a minority of children, however, school supplies what the family fails to give – it conveys the life lessons that have not been learned at home. And that is why it’s so important that schools are properly independent institutions, properly part of the community that they are in.

He identified the three key Labour failures saying "in education, the whole country is still suffering from a series of orthodoxies which are a sort of hangover from the 1960s"

• That all children are identical, therefore they should be put in the same class at the same school.
• That education is a process of solitary discovery, not of learning from a teacher.
• That schools should be unaccountable outposts of the central state.

The focus of David Cameron's speech was improving behaviour in mainstream schools. He said Conservatives would:

• Make home-school contracts enforceable
• Give teachers anonymity when allegations of abuse are made
• Make a headteacher's decision to exclude final by remove the right of excluded pupils to appeal to the local authority
• Better support for those pupils who are excluded by stopping the closure of special schools; intervening earlier with children with emotional and behavioural difficulties and building a new relationship between state schools and those voluntary bodies and social enterprises which have expertise in helping children who get excluded.

You can read the full speech here .

Improving Special Needs Education

This morning the Conservative Policy Commission on Special Needs in Education published its recommendations to restore special school places and to involve parents more in their children’s education.

David Cameron set up the Policy Commission in 2005. It is chaired by Sir Bob Balchin. The report makes makes two key recommendations:

1. Special schools should be offered the opportunity to change to 'Special Academy Status', which would give them freedom to respond to the challenges presented by the loss of 9,000 special school places since 1997.

2. The assessment process should become independent, Statements should be replaced by ‘Special Needs Profiles’ produced by independent ‘Profile Assessors’. This would ensure that the categorisation given to children is not simply based on what their local authority can currently provide.

The report has been welcomed by Shadow Education Secretary Michael Gove who said:

“The children most in need deserve a better deal. In the last ten years the failed ideology of ‘inclusion’ and the drop in special school places have left the most vulnerable more exposed. This report charts a way forward which puts parents back in the driving seat and I welcome it.”

The report will now be considered by the Shadow Cabinet.

You can download a copy of the report here.

'Parent power' is crucial to ending educational failure

Yesterday we had the Social Justice Policy Group's proposals on debt.  Tomorrow the focus will shift to drug and alcohol addiction before culminating at the start of next week with policy ideas for the voluntary sector and for the family.

At the heart of the SJPG's educational recommendations is the idea that "parents are primarily responsible for ensuring their children work hard, behave well and attend school."  A YouGov poll for the SJPG finds that 79% of Britons are in agreement with that contention.

With this idea at its core the SJPG recommends:

• A new wave of 'Pioneer Schools' set up and run by parents and charities but funded by the taxpayer at £5,500 per pupil, per year.  The idea is inspired by the US charter schools movement - a model of supply-side revolution that the party leadership has already indicated it is interested in embracing.  Pioneer schools would be free of local authority control and enjoy charitable status. They would have freedom to set their own pay rates and should, the report says, be helped in this freedom by receiving premium rate funding from a special fund earmarked for attracting quality teachers to disadvantaged communities.  There would be minimum bureaucracy associated with 'Pioneer Schools' - in contrast, the report argues, with the Government's City Academies process.
• A system of compulsory home-school charters would underline parental responsibilities and there would be Be A Credit To Your Child courses to help parents understand how they can help their child succeed at school.
• New tax breaks to encourage businesses to invest in schools.

David Cameron on social mobility (but not on Europe)

David Cameron was interviewed on the Today programme at just after 7.30am this morning as part of a series of features that John Humphrys is presenting on declining social mobility.  Peter Lampl of the Sutton Trust (who wrote for yesterday's Sunday Times) told the programme that Britain had both inequality of opportunity and widening inequality of outcome.  He highlighted research that suggests that the expansion of educational opportunity has disproportionately benefited the already better-off.  Last week David Cameron put David Davis in charge of an inquiry into social mobility (a subject the Shadow Home Secretary addressed at the start of the year).

David Cameron said that there were three main drivers of social mobility:

• Strong and stable family life;
• Good parenting and other care in the first three years of life; and
• Educational opportunity.

The Conservative leader said one of the three difficult but vital changes he had made to the party in the last eighteen months was ensuring that education policy focused on the many and not the few.  The other two vital changes were putting economic stability before promises of up-front tax cuts and stopping opt outs from the NHS (the scrapping of the Patient Passports policy).  Conservatives wanted, David Cameron said, to ensure high quality healthcare for everyone and the public now trusted the Tories more than Labour on the NHS.

He said that he would be willing to work with Gordon Brown on addressing social immobility in the same way that he had had regular talks with Tony Blair and had supported aspects of Labour's education reforms.  Promising to be relentlessly positive, he said that he was confident that voters would see Conservatives as representing the real change at the next General Election.  Gordon Brown was associated with all of the waste and failure of the last decade and could not present himself as the changemaker.

Editor's comment: "David Cameron was persuasive in his answers to questions about social mobility but he missed an opportunity to raise the issue of Europe in the second half of the interview.  As Bertie Ahern made clear yesterday - in saying that the Irish would have a referendum - 90% of the Constitution rejected by the Dutch and French, and upon which we were promised a referendum by Brown'n'Blair - is in the new draft Treaty.  William Hague is doing a good job in highlighting this and other facts but it will take interventions from David Cameron (as recommended on Saturday) to move calls for a referendum up the news agenda.  These calls - not just in the Commons but on multiple media platforms - should blight Brown's wish for a honeymoon."

Telegraph spins report to reignite grammar school argument

If you picked up a copy of the Telegraph today, formerly known as the Torygraph, you'd have seen a story on the inside page entitled "Study shows grammars benefit poor pupils":

"The row over academic selection was reignited last night after a study concluded that more grammar schools would boost the results of working class pupils and raise education standards nationwide. Researchers said that expanding the number of selective places was just as likely to benefit children from poor homes."

However, the report is entirely about how it may be better for poor children to do more core academic subjects instead of vocational skills within schools - and nothing to do with school selection. The authors were even savvy enough to leave a clear disclaimer on this:

"Clearly this research cannot be interpreted as evaluating the overall effects of a comprehensive or selective ('tracked') system of education" 

The report, published in the journal of the LSE's Centre for Economic Performance could have just as easily been interpreted as supportive of the comprehensive system. It effectively criticises academic selection (tracking) at one point when it says:

"we show that the net effect of the de-tracking reform was to increase [improve] examination results at the end of compulsory schooling"

And on page 26, in one of the few mentions of selection, it supports the Willetts view of social selection:

"Part of the large differential in educational outcomes between these socio-economic groups is directly attributed to the lower probability of children from poor family backgrounds entering into grammar schools."

Moving Simon Heffer away from the comment pages doesn't appear to have lessened the hostility to Cameron's Conservatives on the part of the Telegraph's editorial team, they clearly leant on Education Correspondent Graeme Paton to spin this report so misleadingly.

Deputy Editor

11am update: Left-wing co-author Sandra McNally has come to the rescue of David Willetts by clarifying that the report was indeed not relevant to the grammars debate:

"This paper is only directed at one narrow question about Northern Irish education.  The paper does not address or provide evidence on whether selective or comprehensive education systems do better and provides no support for reintroducing grammar schools across the UK.  The paper does, however, provide evidence that the grammar school system entrenches social disadvantage."

Educational economist Gervas Huxley has gone through the report and found this to be true:

"The fundamental message of this research is that less able children benefit from an academic as opposed to a vocational education system. It says almost nothing about streaming, setting, selection, grammar schools, the 11+ or anything else."

Pressed for a quote last night Graham Brady said that "the figures speak for themselves", unfortunately for him they don't say what he was led to believe!

5pm update: "In an interview with the House Magazine former frontbencher Ann Winterton said that the policy announced by shadow education secretary David Willetts was deeply unpopular with ordinary members of the party." - ePolitix

Boris Johnson condemns academic boycott of Israel's universities

Boris Johnson MP, Tory spokesman on higher education, has attacked the University and College’s Union boycott of Israel as "disgusting and one-sided.”  Writing on his blog, he describes the Israel-Palestinian situation as "nightmarishly difficult" with "faults on both sides" and questions why the UCU haven't led boycotts of other regimes:

“Where is the UCU denunciation of the Palestinians who have been detaining a BBC journalist for more than a month? I do not notice UCU voting to sever contacts with Iran, where students have recently been hanged for opposition to the regime. Come to that, I don't see any condemnation of the leftist tyrant Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who has just taken a hostile TV station off the air. What kind of point is UCU trying to make?”

Lord Coe, visiting Israel, has also condemned the boycott.

Watch Benjamin Netanyahu condemn the boycott:

Brady: Tories are picking a fight with ordinary working families

Graham Brady MP has written another article on grammar schools - this time for Britain's best-selling newspaper - the former perch of Andy Coulson, the News of the World.  Here are two key sections from Mr Brady's article:

"Last week I was told if I wanted to keep my job I had better shut up about education.  But I decided it was more important to tell the truth about something I passionately believe in.  The Chief Whip was instructed by David Cameron to bring me into line. He was blunt, to put it mildly.  This was followed by heavy-handed briefings against me in the next morning's paper from the leader's office."

"This is not just an internal Tory row. By undermining grammar schools, Shadow Education Secretary David Willetts has set off a row with millions of ordinary working families. People are frustrated by a political establishment that talks about choice but won't let them choose a grammar school.  Now, in the face of gathering dissent over Mr Cameron's original plan to build no more grammars, Central Office has changed its stance again.  The message now is that, because selection works, areas with grammar schools already can have MORE—but if you haven't got one then tough!  This shows how badly thought-out the policy was in the first place."

Greg Clark MP is the latest frontbencher to wade into the row.  The Kent MP adopts the Dominic Grieve line by saying that he supports more grammar schools if his county of Kent, which retained the grammar school system, needs them for demographic reasons.  Greg has contacted me to say that he agreed the statement used by The Sunday Telegraph with David Willetts ten days ago.  It was first issued to his local newspaper: "In Kent, where we have grammar schools, I think we should keep the system we have.  That means if the need arises for new schools in Kent, say because of population growth, I would certainly argue that new grammar schools should continue to be part of a mix of new schools, as they are part of the mix of existing schools."

David Cameron will be jetting back from his holiday in Crete today.  It will be interesting to see if he can find a strategy to soothe a row that is about to enter its third week.  He will be reassured by today's ICM survey, however, which suggests a 37% to 32% Tory lead.