David Cameron’s Educational Revolution – Sajid Javid

Sajid Javid is the Conservative MP for Bromsgrove and was elected to the House of Commons at the 2010 general election. The son of bus driver, Sajid Javid was born and raised in Lancashire. He studied Economics and Politics at university and, at the age of 25, became a Vice President of Chase Manhattan Bank in New York, the youngest in its history. Javid is currently Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning in the United Kingdom. On 26 May 2011, during a visit to Australia, Sajid Javid addressed The Sydney Institute on the new UK government’s initiatives for education.

DAVID CAMERON’S EDUCATION REVOLUTION

SAJID JAVID

I was an investment banker for 20 years. With the dip in popularity of investment bankers after 2007, I thought I needed a change in career. As I saw it, there was no career more hated by the British public than that of an investment banker. That of course was before I became a Member of Parliament.

This month marks one year since the formation of the current coalition government in Britain. The partnership is between the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats and was brought together by two parties deciding to work jointly to face the big problems in the UK. The Coalition’s reform program is driven by two key principals shared by both parties. One is shifting power from the centre of government to local authorities such as schools, community groups, families and individuals. The other is to focus on the country’s financial problems, particularly the state of public finances, and to reduce the massive budget deficit – some 11 per cent of GDP – inherited from Labour in May 2010. Trying to deal with the budget deficit in fact underpins most of the reforms that are taking place in the UK.

As we pursue reform, there are three major areas of the public sector we are focusing on. One is welfare, another is healthcare and the last is education. These are in no particular order; they are equally important and equally prioritised. Today, I’ll focus on education, but I’m happy to talk about any of the others in questions.

Just as the UK cannot afford to keep the public spending levels of the past, it cannot afford to stand behind as huge numbers of talented people fail to achieve their potential. Britain is not alone in seeking to both modernise our economy but also to transform our education system. These changes are accelerating across the globe. East-Asia is a good example. I lived in Singapore for three years and saw much of this for myself. Millions of people are being educated every year to a much higher standard than ever before in their history. Jobs, investment, innovation and growth, migrate to the countries with the best trained workers, the best-educated citizens, the most efficient government and the most responsive services.

If Britain is to ensure a more prosperous future for all its citizens, it has to keep up with the most innovative nations in the world and it must certainly accelerate its own pace of reform. The starting point, when speaking about Britain’s education system, is to acknowledge one important and undeniable fact. This is that the UK is performing badly. Ill-discipline is rife. Statistics from the Department of Education in Britain show that on average in 2009, over 500 pupils from primary, secondary and special needs schools across England were excluded for abusing or assaulting an adult. Without adequate discipline, teaching and learning is made immeasurably more difficult. And this problem has been compounded by grade inflation, sub-standard teaching and a dearth of parental involvement and encouragement, amongst other factors.

Unsurprisingly, this has had a very detrimental impact on the performance of UK school children. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development has a program called the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) based on taking independent tests of 450,000 fifteen-year-olds from across the globe, in some 65 countries. The aim is to try to rank them against each other, to try and measure performance. Since the year 2000, the UK has fallen behind other countries in these international league tables of performance, dropping from seventh in the world in 2000 for reading, to twenty-fifth, from eighth in the world for mathematics, to twenty-seventh and from fourth in the world for science to sixteenth.

For those who are interested, as a comparison, in the same report Australia is higher than the UK in each of these subject categories, ninth for reading, fifteenth for mathematics and tenth for science. Indeed, the UK has been overtaken by countries such as Poland, Iceland and Norway. This decline is not for lack of funding. According to the same OECD study, the UK spends £54,000 per student, while Germany and Hungary achieve a far better performance for £40,000 and £28,000 respectively.

This lack of improvement in UK schools is further evidenced by looking at admissions to two of the country’s top universities, Oxford and Cambridge. The poorest children in the UK school system are those that are eligible for free school meals. That’s how we tend to define them. The number currently is about 80,000 children in each school year. When we track these children’s progress, we can see how far the UK has fallen behind. By 16 years of age, pupils on free school meals are three times less likely to achieve five good GCSEs – the exam you typically take at the age of 16 in different subjects – than students who are not entitled to free school meals.

By the time that this category of children reach university age, in 2010 for example, just 45 children out of a total cohort of 80,000 poorest UK students made it to Oxford or Cambridge. Forty-five out of 80,000. By contrast, the independent Westminster School had 47 students going up to Oxford or Cambridge. I take this information for proof of what it is. Far too many people are currently being failed by Britain’s education system. It is for this simple, but powerful, reason that far-reaching and deep education reforms are being undertaken in the UK.

In the short time we have, I want to focus on the importance of localism in our reforms and then move on to talk about early-years education, secondary education, further education and higher education.

The best way to raise attainment levels for children, to turn around under-performing scores and close the achievement gap between rich and poor is to drive responsibility and decision making to the lowest level possible. This progress depends on making services more responsible to individual citizens, comparing the approaches and results of different providers and using transparency to obtain greater value for money. Local authorities will be given greater freedoms in discharging their responsibilities. Local authorities and local schools have been impeded at every turn by countless targets, inspections, and regulations. All of these centrally driven interventions have cost government a lot, which is why the coalition is stripping them away.

We’ve begun to remove the bureaucratic burdens that have been applied by central government to local government, clearing space for local authorities to be more daring and imaginative in how they deploy resources and provide services. Local authorities have been liberated from statutory requirements on them to set and police a whole range of externally imposed performance targets on their schools and their nurseries.

In order to be truly effective, reform must first target the formative years, the earliest years of our children’s development and then build upon these improvements throughout their time in education. Early years support for all families is important but reform must benefit the most disadvantaged families first. Cycles of deprivation can be ended by reaching children from as young as two, thereby giving them the best chance to learn and develop. As such, there are plans to put into legislation by 2013 the commitment for the most disadvantaged 2 year-olds, to receive 15 hours of free education per week. I am a trustee of a charity called the London Early Years Foundation, which is the largest child-care charity in London, running some 21 not-for-profit community nurseries. Through that I have seen for myself the importance and the difference of early intervention.

Let me now turn to secondary school education where most children spend their longest continuous periods of education in the UK. I want to focus on three significant initiatives the government is taking here, the first of which concerns the National Curriculum.

Initially envisaged as a guide to study in key subjects, the National Curriculum now covers more subjects, prescribes more outcomes and consumes more time than ever before. The National Curriculum will be slimmed down to make sure it properly reflects the body of essential knowledge that all children should learn, but one that does not absorb the overwhelming majority of teaching time in schools.

Individual schools should have greater freedom to construct their own programs of study outside the National Curriculum and to develop their own approaches to learning and study. The government wants to promote a core range of academic subjects to ensure that schools are providing an education that meets the needs of pupils.

As well as reviewing the National Curriculum this has also led to the introduction of the English Baccalaureate. The English Baccalaureate is a new award, one given to any student who secures good GCSE passes in English, Mathematics, the sciences, a foreign language and a humanity which must be history or geography. Students who gain GCSEs at grade A, B or C in these core subjects will received an English Baccalaureate award to record their achievement. Today just 16 per cent of pupils in England would be awarded the English Baccalaureate. In 2010, over 500,000 pupils failed to achieve five good GCSEs in traditional subjects at GCSE level. And in more than half of state secondary schools, that’s some 1,600 schools, fewer than 10 per cent of pupils achieved this. In some 270 secondary schools there were no pupils who achieved the English Baccalaureate standard at all. This is simply not good enough.

Part of the explanation is to be found in the reduction in the number of children studying academic subjects under the previous government. Since 2000, the number of pupils doing a modern language, for example, has dropped by over a third. Conversely, around 15,000 non-academic qualifications such as dance, drama, media studies were taken in 2004. A number that rose to 575,000 by 2010. This represents an increase of over 3800 per cent in the number of non-academic qualifications taken by 16 year olds in England in just six years. The English Baccalaureate will enable students to received a more rounded education, improve their skills base in core subjects and provide an opportunity to study a broader range of subjects. These five subjects represented by the English Baccalaureate – including mathematics, science, a foreign language and a humanity – form the foundation of a sound education and will pave the way for more advanced student achievements.

The second initiative is the Academies Program. Where reforming the national curriculum will change what is taught, this initiative will change how schools are run. Academies in the UK are self-governing schools directly funded by central government but independent of local government control. The great attraction of Academies is autonomy. Academy status gives individual head teachers almost complete freedom over budgets, the curriculum, hiring staff, term times and the length of the school day.

This is a direct manifestation of our belief that teachers and not politicians know how best to run their schools. We trust them to make the decisions in the best interests of their students. Academies are central to the government’s approach to improving school standards. Most parents in Britain love Academies and the idea of Academies. After some initial resistance, I think it’s fair to say that teachers are embracing them too. I wanted to read to you from Gerard Kelly. He is the editor of The Times Education Supplement in the UK and he says:

Most teachers do not look at an Academy and find the devil’s work. They see a school remarkably similar to any other. So the Academy war is over. Some die-hards will continue to well and fume like those Confederate supporters who refused to accept that the South had lost. Everyone else can move on and debate the important stuff. Like how to teach, what to teach and the quality of who is teaching.

Indeed Academies are securing improvements in GCSE level at twice the speed of other schools. This explains why the number of Academies in England has more than tripled from 203 in May 2010 to 629 last month. Given the strength of Academies in improving performance, this status has particular significance for under-performing schools that lack the capacity to improve themselves. And where there is reluctance to take action or refusal to consider all options, the Secretary of State for Education has now been given new powers to intervene directly into failing schools by establishing an Academy order to bring about change in poorly performing schools.

Our third initiative we have called Free Schools. The Academies program initiated by the previous government and expanded by this government is being accompanied by a new and radical Free Schools initiative. Free Schools have much in common with Academies. They are all state-funded but independently governed schools. The difference is that Free Schools are being set up by teachers, charities, parents groups and existing Academy sponsors. To make opportunity more equal in British society, including access to quality education in schools regardless of background, the government is committed to allowing groups to establish schools in areas where current demand exceeds supply and where parents are denied a proper choice.

The energy and commitment required to set up such a new school should not be underestimated. But this is a testament to the dedication and entrepreneurial spirit of those involved. These pioneers recognise the opportunities on offer and see the potential for free schools to help students who have been let down by the current system. That the government has already received well over 300 applications to set up Free Schools clearly demonstrates that there is a desire and need for them.

These three initiatives, reforming the National Curriculum, expanding the Academies Program and establishing Free Schools all revolve around one central belief in giving schools greater autonomy and thereby greater control over their destiny. In Canada, specifically in Alberta, schools have also been liberated. Here, head teachers have been given the autonomy to control their own budgets, set their own ethos and shape their own environments. The result is that Alberta now has the best performing state schools in all English-speaking regions in Canada. Even in Singapore, not often cited for its decentralising tendencies, dramatic leaps in attainment have been secured by schools where principals are exercising progressively greater degrees of operation autonomy. All of these steps in Britain will give school leaders more freedom to concentrate in their core responsibilities, which are teaching and learning.

I now want to turn to further education before speaking about higher education. In the UK practical prowess has long been regarded by the educational establishment as a distant second to academic ability. The degree brand retains an aura of intellectual and social exclusivity but the same can be said of few practical qualifications. This mistake was unforgivable in the past and even more so today, given increasing global competition. Therefore a core component of the British government’s growth strategy is apprenticeships. I am proud to be involved in this area as the parliamentary Private Secretary to John Hayes, the Minister of State for further educational skills.

The UK has to produce more goods consumed nationally and abroad. The nation’s skill base has to be upgraded in order to achieve this, so the government is committed to raising the status of apprenticeships and promoting them as a first class way for a young person to start a career. Indeed, apprenticeships have been around as a form of training for at least twice as long as universities, yet they do not confer a specific title on those who are undertaking them.

If you study for a degree in Britain, you finish your degree and get to wear a funky looking gown; you get your picture taken. Your family will rejoice, and join you at your graduation. But if you finish an apprenticeship – in Britain we have level 3, level 4 apprenticeships, which are equivalent to a degree – you finish your training an apprenticeship without any title like a graduate. That’s something we need to change in Britain. We need to take an approach more similar to what happens in Germany or Switzerland. Firms that invest in training also deserve recognition and will be able to use the achievements gained by their staff as marketing tools.

At times like these, when many graduate recruiters are cutting back, a practical skill may often be more marketable than purely intellectual abilities. We have announced funding for an extra 75,000 apprenticeships in Britain and this year’s budget made a further allocation of £180 million to fund 50,000 more. During the next four years, there will be more apprenticeships than ever in the UK, some 400,000 in total. The UK is undergoing a skill revolution which I believe will benefit all Britons.

Finally, I want to turn to higher education. You would all be aware of the main change the government has introduced and the peaceful demonstrations that greeted that change. Tuition fees are necessary for no other reason than the massive number of pressures on British universities. In 1980, the total number of university students in the UK was 827,000. By 2009, this figure had more than tripled, reaching 2.5 million.

While broadening access to higher education is undoubtedly positive, I believe that too many young people today feel compelled to go to university and, consequently, end up studying degrees of questionable value. In one of the surgeries in my constituency, I recently had a mother who had come to see me about her son who’d graduated. He was 23, and had graduated two years before. His mother complained that he couldn’t find a job and what was the government going to do about it. So I asked her what he had studied and she said he had done a joint honours degree in agriculture and pop music. I was going to tell her there was a band in Britain called The Wurzels, and he might be well qualified to join them.

I understand the concern over higher tuition fees, but there’s no escaping the fact that if the UK wants to maintain its world class universities, the funding available to them must be increased. This much at least is agreed on by most politicians in the UK. This can be achieved through increasing tuition fees or by raising taxes. I believe the fairest way to do this is to increase the amount paid by those who actually go to university and therefore benefit the most.

It simply would not be fair to raise the general tax level and make all those taxpayers who don’t go to university, pay more than they already do towards the cost of running universities. It’s important to note that no one will be barred from higher education on financial grounds. There will be no upfront tuition fees for students who will only begin repaying their loans once they have graduated and can afford to do so. We did consider an Australian-style graduate tax, but ruled that out because it didn’t sufficiently link consumers and producers. Our changes will mean that our universities continue to provide world class education and help to insure that a university degree remains a worthwhile investment.

All of these reforms work toward the same goals. Equipping young people with the right tools to shape their own future and ensuring that opportunities are available for all those who work for them. The progress and prosperity over the past few centuries was no accident or co-incidence. It was a direct result of ensuring that British people were amongst the best educated in the world. The only way to make sure that this continues is to recognise where the British education system is broken and not to shy away from making tough but necessary changes. If we can do that history proves what will follow.