18 November 2005
Tony Blair gave a speech on education in his constituency of Sedgefield.
Read the speech in full
Good Morning everyone. It is a great pleasure to welcome you here to my constituency of Sedgefield and to be able to talk to you a little about education and education policy, but also some of the important changes that have been happening in our region.
It is interesting to note that economic growth here exceeds that of London and the south east at the present time. The creative industries employ some 100,000 people and are growing faster than in any other region of the country. They now contribute 10% to the region’s economy. Overseas investment has been extensive. £200 million is being invested in the region in new and emerging technologies, such as life and health sciences, new and renewable energy, and nanotechnology. There are 40,000 more jobs in this region than there were in 1997. Unemployment, once the scourge of the area and the cause of famous civil protest, has been halved. And now there is almost no young person that is long term unemployed.
Newcastle, as we know, is a thriving and great European city - with a great football team. OK, we won’t go there. One of the earliest lessons I ever got on being a constituency MP was when I went to a primary school not far from here, and as those who aren’t from the region may know, there is quite strong competition in terms of football teams, and I got up in front of the class and the head teacher and I asked these 5 - 11 year olds which football team they supported, and the nearest thing I have ever seen in my constituency to a civil war broke out. The head teacher said: "Please, either don’t come here again, or when you do don’t talk about football."
Regeneration policy however, that has contributed so much to our region, is an object lesson in one of the realities of modern government. Different sectors have to work in partnership, and I know that this forum has heard a lot about this. Government has often provided the impetus and the initial capital for projects, and both for example may be linked to public projects, like the Commonwealth Games in Manchester, or the Olympics in London, or indeed the investment in public artists in Gateshead. But then the crucial thing is that the private sector takes up the challenge, and that is why we put so much effort into public-private partnership for neighbourhood renewal. Part of that has encouraged a situation where at long last the gap in education attainment between the 88 most deprived wards and the rest of England has been closing. Employment has increased more rapidly in those places than nationally. But it is also why, as I have said many times, we cannot hope to prosper as a nation if we do not educate all our citizens properly. This is not a rhetorical platitude any more, it is a statement about a profound change to the world we inhabit.
At the beginning of the 20th century the Tyne was building over 10% of the world’s ships, 100,000 people were employed in mining. As late as the 1980s, nearly one-third of all the jobs were still in coal mining, ship building, chemicals and manufacturing. A young man entering the world of work just after the Second World War could get by perfectly well without a good education. And it was just as well, because the educational provision for many of our people was very poor. But the factory doors opened to welcome the young man, as the school door closed behind him. School was not just no preparation for work, it was often irrelevant to it.
Yet as we know, today this is no longer true. Now the expanding sectors require graduates and highly trained people. Here in the north east the flourishing enterprises are in micro electronics, biotechnology, mechanical and precision engineering. We have seen rapid growth in the service sectors, in public administration, education and health. Anyone coming out of school today with no qualifications will find the world a great deal less hospitable than their fathers would have done. And there are still far too many people who do not have the qualifications that they need. Nationally, 44% of our children still don’t get 5 good GCSEs. In this area in the north east it is 48%. Nearly 1 in 10 pupils who get free school meals - therefore from the poorest families - leave school with no qualifications at all. Yet none of this country’s basic objectives - a prosperous economy, fair opportunity open to merit, and people making the most of their potential - can be realised whilst this remains the case.
That is, in a nutshell, why we are so passionate and so insistent about public service reform, it is because we are still not doing enough for our least well off citizens. The demands of justice that we provide opportunities for all, and the requirements of a prosperous modern economy are symbiotic. This has been the central insight that has governed this new Labour government’s economic policy, that far from social justice being a drag on economic good health, the two require each other.
And yes we have some real success to our credit. There are currently over 225,000 young people in apprenticeships, which is three times as many as 8 years ago. But as many of you know, there are warning signs. The manufacturing, construction, financial services and food and drink sectors all report vacancies due to skills shortages. That is why as well as investing in traditional and further education, we are establishing skills academies in those sectors, and this is an important move because it is a joint venture between government and business. Already we have an impressive line-up of companies ready to take part. Business plans will be ready by Easter 2006, and the academies will be operational by autumn 2008. We aim to have 12 in place, and in the longer term one for each major sector of the economy. And the future challenge, I have no doubt, is to make vocational education every bit as attractive and fulfilling as traditional academic education.
But the point about the different sectors of the education system is that they build on one another. The main reason for skills shortages is not enough quality vocational education. The main reason that not enough working class children get to university is not bias in university admissions, it is that not enough of them do A Levels and stay on at school to do so. The main reason that not enough A Levels are got by those children is that not nearly enough of them get good GCSEs.
So it all comes back to the basic and central importance of education. Education is the spark that can light a love of learning, and we know what learning means - horizons broadened, imaginations are fired, confidence and ambition take root. Success only comes through hard work, but how much easier it is to work hard if you can feel the strength of your own inner potential. That is what a good teacher and a thriving school does, they give a child that most precious asset in life - self-belief.
That is why I am so restless for change, not because I do not recognise the huge progress that we have made as a country in the last 8 years - I do - not because I want to pick another fight for the sake of it, I have enough of them already, but because whilst there remain schools, not some, hundreds of them, where fewer than half of the children get the results they need at 16, when for all the progress there are still 17,000 children that leave school every year without any qualifications, whilst that remains I cannot rest, I will not, until we do all in our power to root out and change that failure.
And in saying that, of course I do not mean to imply that progress since 1997 has not been substantial, because it has, and many of those here today have contributed to it. We now have the best ever GCSE and A Level results. 2005 saw the best ever primary school results. 80,000 more youngsters are now attaining the basic standard in English, and 90,000 more each year in maths. And since 1998 primary schools in the areas of the highest poverty have improved at double the rate of schools in the most affluent areas. In the north east, here, more 11 year olds now make the grade in maths and English. The number of those getting good GCSEs is up to 52% from 37% a few years back.
But there is a lesson for us in the achievements that we have to our credit, it is that they came out, not just of money, but also of reform and none of the reforms were easy. We began in 1997 by being tough on failing schools. In 1998 we introduced the literacy hour and the numeracy strategy. Then later we sought to make good the problems of some of the most deprived areas of the country by introducing the Excellence in Cities programmes. In 2001 we began the rapid expansion of specialist schools. Every one of these innovations was opposed at the time. It was said that the failing schools strategy penalised schools that were already struggling; it was said that the literacy and numeracy hours were too long for some and not long enough for others; it was said that specialist schools would encourage selection; it was said that the City Academy programme was an educational gimmick. But in each case the reform is working. The results in academies are improving at three times the national rate, despite having twice the number of children on free school meals. Almost all academies were over-subscribed on opening, and in each year afterwards. In 2005 non-selective specialist schools out-performed traditional comprehensives at GCSE, as they have done consistently. 1,300 failing schools have been turned around, and half a million pupils benefited.
So we have corrected the deepest failures of the system we inherited, we have reversed the long trend of under-investment, we have turned around the exodus out of the public service professions. The reason to do more is quite simply that it isn’t enough.
Comprehensive education was formed out of the injustice of rigid selection on grounds of ability through the 11-Plus, but with it came another injustice. Because there was insufficient focus on educational standards and on high attainment, there seeped into parts of the system a deadening uniformity. The goal was to make the system comprehensive, whereas in reality the goal should have been, through abandoning selection, to bring high quality education to all.
We now have a once in a generation opportunity to correct that. We can see what works - investment in school buildings and equipment, properly paid and motivated teachers and head teachers, strong discipline, a relentless focus on high achievement and excellence. Today in Britain’s school system, private and public, you can see such schools, they serve many diverse groups of pupils. But you know they have one thing in common, they have their own purpose and ethos, individual to each school. They aren’t run by anyone, local or central, they have an independent sense of mission, the parents and governors drive their own aspirations through the school. And there are many more such schools today than there were 8 years ago, there are just not enough. Yet the opportunities to develop them are all around us.
There are business foundations, charities and voluntary organisations with the energy, resources and commitment to partner schools in transformation. There are head teachers with the ambition to transform, there are higher quality teachers who want to play their part in assisting that transformation, and above all, there are parents who know that the dream that their children can do better than they did depends on high quality education.
The Schools White Paper is quite simply about releasing that energy inside and outside the school system. In every other walk of life in the 21st century there is flexibility, diversity, an opening up for new ideas and innovation, a breaking down of the barriers between public, private and voluntary sectors. For public services to flourish as universal services, they need that same dynamism.
The big change in the White Paper is that we want to build on the success of specialist schools and academies so as to enable any school to have the freedom to develop in the way it wishes, subject to fair funding and a fair admissions policy. Should schools choose to do so, they can become self-governing trusts and government, neither local nor national, should be able to stop them. Trust schools can then forge links with universities and business sponsors, they can be connected to other schools and educational trusts, they will share curriculum expertise, work together on developing effective teaching and learning practice. 2,400 specialist schools and 27 academies already have these kinds of links to their wider communities. We need to extend them to all schools and allow specialist schools to enter a further stage of development.
The purpose of the Schools White Paper is therefore to ensure that the choices, now exercised only by the fortunate and the well off, can be given to all parents. It is true, and it is often said, that some parents do not have high ambitions for their children. We acknowledge that, it is why we focused intensive resources on some of our poorest areas, it is partly the reason for the Sure Start programme that is, as I saw in Leeds yesterday, at least as much helping parents as helping children.
But actually it is a myth that middle class parents aspire and working class parents don’t. Instead such arch categorisation is hopelessly out of date in itself. Where any longer does the middle class of years ago, and the traditional working class, form their boundaries? Look just up the road here at the new housing estate to be built at Fishburn, where the old coke works once was, with three bedroom houses selling from £150,000. The world is changing, and quite right too, but the point is this, I want a school system in which middle class and lower income families’ children mix happily together, where there are sufficient numbers of good schools to make parental choice a reality, and where if schools aren’t good enough the power lies with people, parents and teachers to affect change.
Of course such a system must have rules to ensure fair funding and fair admissions, as they do now. All schools will have to have regard to the statutory code on admissions. The adjudicator will continue to enforce the code, exactly as happens now. Providers will be either from the existing state sector, as good schools grow or federate to meet local demand, or from the voluntary and charitable sectors. Schools will be free to expand if they wish to do so. Of course not all will, and we will not be compelling them to do so, but there are plenty that would like to react to strong local demand from parents by providing a few more places each year.
Then we want new providers to come into the school system, to take over existing schools where the previous management was failing, or not doing as well as it should. We need to make sure that they can start new schools in some cases. And the lesson from every walk of life is very clear, new supply brings with it innovation and enterprise.
The White Paper does not destroy the role of local government, it gives dynamic local authorities a great opportunity to re-invent themselves as champions of the needs of pupils and parents. In practice this means they can map local needs, ensure that popular schools can expand and poor schools are closed, and make sure there is proper competition to open new schools. But it does take away the power of government, central and local, to block change.
And there are great opportunities here also for government and for business. It was not long ago that government and business operated in largely separate spheres. Now, as I said a moment ago, the three sectors - public, private and voluntary - overlap to the extent that at times it is hard to see the join between them. There is a lot more business involvement in services than was once the monopoly domain of the public sector, and we want to encourage more, such as in the academies programme which is bringing business, expertise and new money into the education system. Some services, like the emerging childcare market, are mixed economies. Indeed virtually all the extra free nursery places created since 1997 are in the private and voluntary sectors.
Sometimes it is said that changes in public services are all to do with the problems of London and have no relevance in areas like ours. In fact in my experience that is a sentiment far more heard at the dinner parties in London than in the communities of constituencies like Sedgefield. Above all, this region today is one that knows its future livelihood depends on science, technology, quality education, in a word, on knowledge. That is our future. And we in this region are the least nostalgic for the past. When we defended communities against pit closures, we did so to defend jobs. But in all my time as a constituency MP, now over 20 years, I never heard, not once, someone who actually worked down the pit, even in the better post-war years, opine any sentiment other than a fixed determination that their sons should never have to do so.
Over these past 20 years I have seen this region change, and I have also learnt a lot from those changes. Some of the things that have most influenced my political thinking, both as a Member of Parliament, then on the opposition front bench, then as opposition leader, then as Prime Minister, have actually happened here in this region. And I remember one of the most important meetings I ever attended in my life, though at the time it didn’t seem like that, it was in the County Hall, the Durham County Council building, it will be very familiar to some of you, and in which I once worked incidentally - you may not know this - in a holiday job in the Vehicle Licensing Department I think it was. All I know was that it was me, at a young age, surrounded by a very large number of young women. It was a very tough work experience. But when I went back there as a Member of Parliament in the later years, the Council leader at the time at Durham County Council was someone called Mickey Terrence, who will be known to some of you here, but who had been a branch official in the 1926 General Strike, and he was an extraordinary man, Mickey Terrence, a wonderful man of principle and integrity and extraordinary canniness as well.
He was by then in his 70s and he could see the world around us changing. And the purpose of the meeting in Durham County Hall was for Mickey to get up and make a key speech, which he did in his own very simple and blunt way. Essentially what he said is, there is no point in worrying about the demise of the coal industry, it has happened to a large extent already and it is going to be completed, and no-one should be under any illusion that this process is going to stop. It isn’t. And therefore what we have got to do in the north east is to set out our stall differently, to decide we have got a different economic future and go out there and get it. And because it came from him, and because of his background and his length of service, those who might have attacked him for a betrayal of everything he was supposed to stand for, were taken aback. And it was an important meeting, because after that meeting I reflected that if he, with all his background and all his tradition had the courage to make changes, then really we should be prepared to embrace that change as well, we within the Labour Party, but also outside of it in the wider community.
And by and large over these past 20 years, since he made that speech, we have changed our region enormously. And I know we have still got major issues and problems, huge challenges to do with skills, and business, and transport, and all the issues with which we are well familiar, but on the other hand, think of the change we actually have brought about in this region, think of how different it is, and then think of where we could be if we had the imagination and vision to change further.
And that is the purpose of what we are trying to do in public service reform. I know here in this constituency that yes of course the problems are different from inner city London, yes of course people have a different way of life and a different culture, but sometimes the important thing is not to exaggerate the differences, but actually to analyse the similarities. Different though the position is here than in inner city London in so many ways, one thing remains the same - education and knowledge is the only route to prosperity. For a young kid in the inner city of London, or Manchester, or Newcastle, and a young child growing up in the old pit villages and mining communities of County Durham, education is the liberator, it is the gateway, it is the only thing that can transform their lives. And if it is true that in this region we have transformed our prospects by partnership between government, central and local, by partnership between public and private sector, by the efforts of civic society and voluntary groups, if we have been able to do that in transforming our economy, can’t we then import the same lessons into completing the transformation of our education system?
And that is what I want to do. I believe there is huge energy there, in and outside of our school system. I think there are people who want to make a contribution, because they know if you are in business that you need a proper educated workforce, and there is energy there that can be used to motivate and to build for the future. So that is what it is about. And when we change and make changes that are necessary to provide opportunities, because the world around us is changing so fast, we don’t betray the principles in which we believe, we fulfil them. All of you will know, from different walks of life, just how big that transformation in the world around us is. Anybody who travels even minimally in the world today can see it, whether in China, or India, or the other emerging economies of the world. This country will succeed or fail on the basis of how it changes itself and gears up to this new economy, based on knowledge.
Education therefore is now the centre of economic policy making for the future. What I am saying is, we know what works within our education system, we can learn the lessons of it. The key is now to apply those lessons, push them right throughout the education system, until the young children, whether they are growing up here in the constituency of Sedgefield, or in the inner city urban estates of London, or Liverpool, or Manchester, or Newcastle, wherever they are, they get the chance to make the most of their God given potential. It is the only vision, in my view, that will work in the 21st century.
Thank you.
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