As Schools Minister, David Laws introduced the Pupil Premium, extra money for disadvantaged kids in school to help close the attainment gap.
He has written for the Independent to say that the Government needs to do more to ensure that people have a route out of poverty:
The Government also needs a new drive to raise educational standards, and to keep the focus on improving attainment for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds – those who are much more likely to end up in poverty and on benefits. We are not going to address poverty and create opportunity while 60 per cent of young people from poor households fail even to achieve the old and unambitious target to secure five GCSEs at C grade or higher, including English and Maths. This figure is a national disgrace.
The last Government had a strong record on education – with the introduction of the Pupil Premium, swift action to tackle failing schools, and the clean- up of English’s discredited qualifications system. But there is nothing at all to be complacent about. If the country’s main anti-poverty and pro-opportunity strategy is now to rely on education and work, then we have got to do an awful lot more and more intelligently
And there are now significant risks of educational improvement stalling. The Government’s new 30 hour childcare offer deliberately excludes some of our most disadvantaged children, who need relatively more help, of higher quality, and not less. Under the Government’s plan, the poorest children will only receive half of the early years entitlement of the rich. What sense does this make, if boosting opportunity for all is the aim?
And there are other issues. While some academies are doing quite brilliantly, as many as a third are not doing well enough, and we have a shortage of new, quality, sponsors.
We now need a new drive to raise the country’s educational ambitions, improve the quality of early years education, attract and retain good teachers and develop the next generation of leaders, ensure that academies policy is driven by a focus on quality and not just numbers, and do more to spread outstanding practice from 4,000 schools to all 24,000.
You can read his article here.
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8 Comments
Here we go again. The country’s ‘educational ambitions’ need raising. That’s according to public school educated ex minister, David Laws and I feel pretty insulted. I spent the best part of 30 years until 1999 working in state schools and I get really cheesed off being told by people whose parents paid for their education that what I and thousands of my teacher colleagues were doing was not up to scratch!
It wasn’t those of us at the chalk faced who messed up. It was first of all the educational establishment and then the politicians, who should be in the dock. You reap what you sow, as they say.
I’ve made my views clear in previous threads. We need to scrap the academies programme and return all state schools to democratic accountability through Local Education Authorities. As far as ‘super heads’ are concerned, just take a look at the case currently being dealt with in the Crown Court in Lincoln. It’s a salutary lesson to all those wedded to the cult of personality. Finally we need to be weened off the idea that the only route to fulfilment and happiness is through academic success. Let’s start by dusting off the 2004 Tomlinson Report.
Three cheers for John Marriott !!!!!
As a former Head of three schools, I couldn’t agree more on everything you say, John. The Academies programme has given access to all sorts of odd organisations, reduced democratic accountability and destroyed inter-school co-operation which provided such mutual support in the days when I was a Head. What on earth carpet store owners have to do with education escapes me.
A legitimate question now to Mr Laws would be how he equates his ‘support’ for education with his Orange book notion of reducing public spending to 35% of GDP. Which other areas are you going to cut Mr Laws ?
I have slogged and worked for this party since the early sixties as a foot soldier, as a Councillor on four local authorities (including Cabinet member for Social work), and as a parliamentary candidate in North Yorkshire. The parlous state to which I now see the party reduced to makes me extremely angry…. Much of that parlous state was the result of the activities of Mr Laws and his Orange Book tendency chums. They have effectively destroyed the role and functions of local government….. and betrayed one of the party’s natural bases of support.
I would urge Tim Farron to do some private polling of local government employees (what’s left of them) in Cumbria and North Yorkshire to find out why they left the party. When I stood in Richmond I polled 28% – this time in May it was 6%. – There is also plenty of food for thought in the Yeovil constituency.
I can see the media, politicians and others queueing up next summer when the Key Stage 2 SATS results are published.
This evening I had an ‘interesting’ time being brought up to speed on just how far the line has moved (and is still moving) and hence the huge step in learning Year 6 pupils are going to have to make this year – or rather in the next 6~7 months. Reading between the lines, I can see schools are deeply concerned about both the teaching to the new (raised) level and pupils ability to undertake the work, so there is a degree of expectation setting going on, namely don’t be surprised if marks are down.
Naturally, come next summer the media et al won’t be interested in why the results are poor, just that they are poor and hence this means this government is at fault…
I empathise greatly with John and David’s comments. Having been a teacher all my life and an educational consultant on A Level English for the last twenty years, I have been appalled by many of the changes that have been made in recent years. While conceding that the Lib Dems contributed usefully on education in the last parliament, I think we need to remember that our most highly profiled initiatives (pupil premium, free school meals) while very worthy, were not educational reforms per se.
I have been fighting a battle in my area of Chester about the dreaded academisation, which is about money and prestige, not about raising educational standards. Delivering courses around the country, I have found almost exclusively unhappiness about ‘academies’ and frequent comments on the fact that it has all been based on bribery. Headteachers have more than hinted that their staff either toe the line or risk their jobs. This is outrageously illiberal.
It’s perhaps worth noting that, as far as I’m aware, the only ‘academy’ that was simply a school prior to Blair’s introduction of them to feed his already enlarged ago, was Whackford Sqeers’ Academy in ‘Nicholas Nickleby’, a most wonderful fictional example of the fakery which characterises our modern educational system (a good example from Longbridge Birmingham is the sign hanging outside a school which, like many others, clearly has no innate confidence in its own worth: ‘Achieving Excellence’, ‘Belonging Together’, ‘Challenging Mindsets’). I would love to ask the Headteacher how many of the pupils have challenged her mindset?!
How wonderfully ironic that all schools are to become ‘academies’. It almost tempts me to say that if they’re all academies, wouldn’t it be a good idea to call them all ‘schools’?
I have been a Liberal since the early sixties and will never be anything else, but I increasingly feel that our current party’s educational policy is seriously inadequate and, as I said to David Laws at the Scarborough Conference some years ago, what’s most lacking is anyone whose policy is based on the experience of the current practitioners.
“The Government’s new 30 hour childcare offer deliberately excludes some of our most disadvantaged children, who need relatively more help, of higher quality, and not less.”
A potential clarification (as I’ve not read the full details) concerning the entitlement to 30 hours instead of the universal entitlement of 15 hours.
” the definition of “working” has been determined to include: working parents with children aged three and four; where parents are working part time or full time, the only requirement is that each parent is working the equivalent of eight hours per week, which is the same threshold as the tax-free childcare scheme; the entitlement can be accessed by parents who are employed or self-employed; and lone parents who are working to support their families.”
[Source: http://www.theyworkforyou.com/lords/?id=2015-06-16a.1081.2&p=25222 ]
I can see arguments for both sides on this, but fundamentally it seems the 30 hours is linked to the parent(s) working/not-working rather than the child’s needs – which was the fundamental underpinning the universal 15 hour entitlement. I suspect that the government see’s the additional 15 hours as a work incentive.
But fundamentally I agree we need to get quality early years education to be the norm for all children regardless of home circumstances, as this creates the pupils who will help feed improvements further up the system.
Jean Evans ” what’s most lacking is anyone whose policy is based on the experience of the current practitioners.”
This certainly rings true.
Admittedly as a parent not a teacher, I am pleasantly surprised by how many current and former teachers have “outed” themselves in this short thread. I always had the biased and stereotypical impression that the Lib Dems were the party for teachers and for education. Consequently I was surprised and disappointed when I started visiting this site over the last 5 years and found that Julian Critchley and Helen Tedcastle appeared to be the only openly practising teachers contributing to discussions (though they did so brilliantly and usually against the party line).
It certainly felt like the party’s education policy was driven by a combination of worthy social and (perhaps less worthy) free-market priorities rather than educational ones. Indeed, although I disagreed with his policies, Michael Gove did seem to be more motivated than the Lib Dems by wanting to improve children’s education.
Free school meals at primary level and the pupil premium, as Jean Evans has been rightly said, whilst admirable in a socio economic sense, are not really what education is about. The demise of vocational education is. The Tomlinson Report advocated giving vocational qualifications parity with academic. The Blair government largely ignored it, probably because it might have offended the ‘conservative’ Middle class clientele it was still trying to cultivate.
If you only measure ‘standards’ by the percentage of GCSE A*to C grades a school achieves, whether its students wear smart blazers etc., whether it has a ‘SuperHead’ or whether over 50% of students take a degree, some of which are, from a career point of view, of dubious value) then you are missing the point and are indeed failing a large number of students today just as the 11plus did for the majority all those years ago.
So, Mr Laws, stop moaning about what might have been and concentrate on what could be. Why not start by revisiting Tomlinson?
David Raw 11th Nov ’15 – 8:08pm
Well said David.
I was shocked to see the work of the relaunched independent CentreForum is now endorsed by such well known liberals as David Cameron, Michael Gove, Nicky Morgan and Lord Adonis. A far cry from Richard Wainwright’s Centre for Reform.