Sam Freedman: Ed Balls finally gets something right

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

Finally, only sixteen months into the job, Schools’ Secretary Ed Balls gets something right. After the summer exam marking fiasco, the slow destruction of the integrity of the academies programme, the disastrous “National Challenge” and the row over admissions codes, it had to happen eventually.

It’s hard to imagine anyone will disagree with yesterday’s headline announcement that the pointless Key Stage 3 SATs for fourteen year olds are to be scrapped. When the Conservatives and the NUT are in agreement it’s safe to say there’s consensus. It should have happened long ago. Their only value over the past few years has been to keep the tally of the numbers of children let down by our current school system: this year 180,000 children failed to achieve minimum standards in either reading or writing in the tests. Perhaps that’s what convinced Balls to scrap them.

Possibly more significant in the long run, though, is the DCSF’s second announcement yesterday, on the way information about schools will be provided to parents in the future and follows a proposal made by Policy Exchange earlier this year. In a report in March (“Helping Schools Succeed”) we recommended that the ridiculously complex set of league tables through which schools are made nominally accountable to parents should be replaced by a simple grading or traffic light system – as used in New York and Alberta. We found that even education experts couldn’t explain to us how to correctly analyse the “value added” results in the league tables. Seven months later the DCSF have announced that they agree. Instead of league tables, schools will simply be graded A-F. As we recommended, the information used to derive these grades will include exam results but also ‘pupil well-being’. This will make it far easier for parents to make decisions about schools – an important pre-requisite, it should be noted, for Michael Gove’s plans to introduce the Swedish “free schools” model in England.

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.