Tag Archives: Ministerial Responsibility

The Future of Education – a talk from 2024

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In the summer of 2024, I was asked to lecture on the future of education. Two years on, it is interesting to see how even more relevant today the content of the talk is. Sadly, there are still no answers to many of the questions posed in my talk.

Thank you for inviting me to talk to you this evening. I arrived in Oxfordshire some 45 years ago, about the same time as the late Sir Tim Brighouse. This was only a couple of years after Prime Minister Sir Jim Callagham’s visit to Oxford, and his famous Ruskin College speech that started The Great Debate about education and schooling in England. A debate that has ultimately led us to where we are today.

Starting this talk with a look back at history reminds me that if this were a sermon, I would start with a text. Perhaps, ‘Acts Chapter 2 Verse 17’. I won’t read it out, as those that want to know what it says can look it up on their phones.

However, what I want to talk briefly about this evening is RATS -I have to say that thankfully you are spared the PowerPoint picture at this point.

However, RATS stands for:

Responsibility

Accountability

Technology

And

Schooling

RATs or ARTS is better, even if the order is wrong.

First Responsibility

Who is responsible for what in education

People still cheerfully talk of ‘Oxfordshire’s schools’ but in reality, as cabinet member, I deal with only a limited number of functions these days:

-Admissions to school, but not in-year admissions to academies

-Transport to school, but not for over 16s, as this is discretionary and there is no cash, despite raising the learning leaving age to 18, except for SEND pupils where we still support those where we can. So, a young person can receive free transport from Years 7-11 and then nothing.

-School building – we have built more new schools in the past decade than the previous 50 years. But as ever this area is highly regulated.

HR for maintained schools – this means small primary schools have to pay the Apprenticeship Levy – a tax by any other name.

School Improvement – although the £400,000 annual DfE grant ends this month and next year we are funding it from Council Tax.

-SEND – and we will spend £20 million more than the government provides us with funds in this area and end this financial year some £60 million overspent.

That overspend lead me nicely into considering Accountability

If there is confusion over responsibility, is there any clarity over accountability for our school system?

As I mentioned, Oxfordshire has overspent on SEND and by 2026 this may be as much as £140 million

Schools receive their budgets calculated on formulas where Oxfordshire as a local authority has no vote, and merely acts as the banker. Schools may end the year in surplus or in deficit

If you look at academy chains in Oxfordshire, several have schools with balances of £1 million and other have deficits nearing the same figure.

Who is accountable for these outcomes and how will they be dealt with?

If the RSD is prepared to accept academies in deficit that they add to each year, why should Oxfordshire as a local authority wipe out deficits on schools transferring to become an academy: perhaps we will explore issuing an IOU to be paid when there are no deficits in the academy sector.

Last year, council tax payer transferred £200,000 for a school becoming an academy to wipe out is deficit: that’s a lot of potholes we could have filled. At the end of this month, I expect deficits in maintained schools to top the £3 million mark: enough to mend most of our roads.

Let’s consider some other accountability issues:

Who is responsible for ensuring there are enough teachers for Oxfordshire schools? Is it schools; MATs and the dioceses; the LA or the government at Westminster?

Who is responsible for school improvement, so when ofsted comes knocking a school can be judged outstanding, as a primary school in the north of the county has been recently.

Who will deal with the digital divide?

This last question is one that that neatly brings me onto the third theme for this evening:

Technology

Since I came to Oxfordshire at the end of the 1970s there have been three waves of new technology

The microprocessor revolution of the late 1970s and early 1980s that brough BBC B, turtles, and eventually the Apple/PC dominance of our interface with IT. Indeed, my MSc thesis in 1980 was the first produced on a word processer for any course at Norham Gardens.

The second technology revolution started in the early 1990s, and became part of our lives in the first decade of this century when we all embraced the internet and started exchanging emails. 

This revolution had a second phase when the phones in our pockets suddenly became mini computers in their own right, and a whole new set of challenges opened up for education. This saw the surge in new social media platforms, and the current heads-down culture that pervades so much of society these days. I won’t ask how many have already googled my suggested text for this talk.

Although schools have made adaptations to accommodate these changes in technology over the past 5 decades, we still rely upon a teaching and learning strategy that has many elements that would be familiar when state education began more than 150 years ago.

In passing, I am sorry that the covid pandemic didn’t allow us to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the 1870 Education Act in a manner that I think would have been fitting.

The 2x4x8 model of learning may not be as rigid as it once was, but secondary school ‘timetablers’ are great fans of it as a strategy.

Anyway, so much for the first two waves of technological change: what of the third and developing wave, currently described by many as the AI revolution?

Does a knowledge rich curriculum meet the needs of a generation that started school last September and possibly won’t retire from employment until the last decade of this century. Those that started school 100 years ago, around the time of the birth of the BBC and radio, retired just as the internet was becoming a viable communication strategy: what will the class of 2024 experience in their lifetimes, and how will we prepare them for adult life?

This is not to decry the role of knowledge in schooling, and especially the building blocks of literacy and numeracy. Technology has almost made handwriting redundant, except as an art form. Can technology help us deal with the learning gap at Key Stage 1 between children on Free School Meals and those whose parents have a higher degree?

If so, to return to my themes of accountability and responsibility, where does the impetus for change lie? At school or Trust level; at local authority level or nationally?

We have seen initiatives such as the Oak Academy created nationally post-covid. We also saw how Oxfordshire as a local authority dealt with covid in acting as a conduit for information.

How will the system take change forward. Who has the vision.

Perhaps parents will dictate change for us as educators?

Home schooling has increased significantly: a passing phase or signs of a new order?

I saw this week suggestions that teachers will need to be paid more if they have to work a five-day week when four days becomes the norm. It is worth noting that teachers, as a group have seen no change in their holiday entitlement over the past 50 years while all other workers have benefitted from increased time off.

So let me conclude by asking whether one might one view a model where technology, and indeed any other approach to teaching and learning, is like a table top resting on the twin legs of responsibility and accountability.

Wobbly legs can mean an insecure platform for learning, and certainly for the development in an orderly manner of how technology can change the landscape of education.

I started with the term ARTS, so my final word must be about schools.

It is right that schools and their staff must be at the heart of the landscape, but the challenge that is currently keeping me awake at night is the relationship between a national funding formula created during a period of increasing school rolls, and the current situation of falling rolls faced by many primary schools.

How will hard decisions on whether all schools survive be taken, if pupil numbers continue to decline? For instance, who decides on whether we keep primary schools in local communities or face competition between schools for pupils to keep their own school open?

What part can technology play in solving this dilemma? I don’t know, but I do know the relationship between falling rolls and school funding is not one we can duck going forward.

But let me finish on a brighter note. This week, I met with three young entrepreneurs interested in working with schools on drone technology. Indeed, they have started a series of books that might be the 21st century version of Thomas the tank engine.

Let me introduce you to Ruby Rescue and the big fire – a tale from Drone City and possible future firefighting techniques.

I started my teaching career in Tottenham with the stewardship of 16 mm projectors; reel to reel tape recorders; an epidiascope, and little other technology but in a certain landscape for schooling.

I don’t want to dream of a past, but rather to challenge us all to set out a vision for the future landscape of education that can work for the good of all.

Thak you for listening.

Merry-go-round of Ministers has repercussions

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I am grateful to freelancer and former TES journalist, Adi Bloom, for this interesting fact

Between the start of July and the end of October last year [2022], there were four new education secretaries, as well as a succession of junior ministers. And, between them they held 133 events labelled “introductory meeting to discuss the organisation following the ministerial reshuffle”.

This paralysis no doubt was replicated across government. Adi has written a witty piece on her LinkedIn page about the current Secretary of State’s possible icebreaker meeting with the key trade union (professional association) general secretaries of the teacher groups that readers might with to search out. In passing, I wonder whether Secretaries of State ever hold such meeting with trade unions representing the non-teaching staff in schools that now outnumber teachers?

Anyway, the essential point is whether this rapid turnover of ministers may have contributed to the government’s challenges over public sector pay. Might a Cabinet with more experience of their department, running to more than a few days tenure, have anticipated the implications of public sector pay review bodies controlling pay rises each year and a rapid an unpredicted increase in inflation better than seems to have been the case.

Might ministers, such as the Secretary of State for Education, that had been in post for some time, and thus more secure in their portfolio, have both had better relations with civil servants in order to have been able to ask questions about pay policy and recruitment and retention of the teacher workforce and have struck up some sort of rapport with teachers’ leaders? Possible as a scenario, but unlikely I grant you, but impossible with such a rapid turnover of minsters?

Much must also depend upon the character of the individual as Secretary of State, and their willingness to create inter-personal relations with key players in the education landscape. The absence of the Secretary of State from the ASCL conference, plus a relative lack of appearances in the media raises the question as to whether the present incumbent of the top job at Sanctuary Buildings isn’t one for the limelight. Some that have held the office or Secretary of State have enjoyed the public nature of their role while others, were rarely seen in public, and their stewardship goes largely unremembered.

We have now entered that phase of the life of a parliament where it becomes more of a challenge to create policy, except in areas where ministers have direct control. Intermediaries can now drag their feet secure in the knowledge that a general election is likely to be no more than 18 months away, and that the present government isn’t likely to be returned with the same majority as a present, even if it is returned at all.

Equally, ministers can leave difficult decisions to their successor to deal with. It’s worth recalling that under the coalition’s fixed term Parliament Act there would have had to have been an election this year. Perhaps the current Prime Minister might use that as an excuse for an autumn election is next month’s local elections are really frightful?

Minister’s business experience useful?

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Will schools in financial difficulties receive the Flybe treatment from Kelly Tolhurst MP, the new Minister of State for Education? In her career the Minister has served as a PUS – or first rank of the ministerial ladder – across three departments, plus a couple of months over this summer in the Whip’s Office, where she had previously served in a junior role in 2018. Kelly Tolhurst, MP for Rochester and Strood in Kent is possibly best remembered for being the Minister sent out explain the refusal to bail out the airline Flybe when it ran into turbulent financial conditions at the start of the covid pandemic.

“Unfortunately, in a competitive market, companies do fail, and it is not the role of Government to prop them up.

Given the time of year, the nature of Flybe’s business and fleet, and the routes that it flies, sufficient alternative transport arrangements should be available, either with other airlines or by road and rail.”

Hansard 5th March 2020

Hopefully, the new minister will be more understanding about the financial position of schools as they wrestle with the present financial crisis. As her role at the in the Business Department involved responsibility for small businesses, the MP should be well aware of the challenges that schools will face. As a supporter of the free market, she may well want to see whether the Department is spending its cash wisely on issues such as teacher recruitment and SEND.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the constraints of a national Funding Formula that can be ignored when times are good may also need to be something to be considered, especially the differences between maintained schools and academies when it comes to shifting cash around.

As an MP for Rochester, Kelly Tohurst will know of the stark differences between the town’s schools, where some are comprehensives that are operating alongside selective schools, and will as a businesswomen understand both the costs of re-organising the system nationally to benefit the few rather than the many, and the links between the school system and the need for a modern skilled workforce, something some of her predecessors may have seemed less concerned about.

As in other areas with selective schools, private secondary schools are thin on the ground in the Rochester area of Medway Council and that should be a warning to any government thinking of expanding selective education. The cost to the state of parents switching from private education to state selective schooling should be enough to dissuade any government from taking our school system back to the nineteenth Century as means of creating a twenty first century growth economy.

The Secretary of State should be familiar with issues such as youth offending and the variations between different groups and their schooling. I would hope that this will be a serious consideration for the new residents of Sanctuary Buildings, perhaps more so than under recent inhabitants.

Finally, I would again make my please for Jacob’s Law, whereby children in care are guaranteed a school pace within 14 days of the State taking over parental responsibility. This needs the promised change in the administration of in-year admissions and would befit the education of these children often taken from their families with no say in the matter and dumped in a different part of the country.

Are Ministers responsible?

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Should the Secretary of State for Education resign over the exams fiasco? I guess your answer depends upon your view on the doctrine of ministerial responsibility.

Back when I was a mere lad studying at the LSE, the leading case on the subject was only about 12 years old. This was what has become known to historians as the Crichel Down affair. It resulted in the resignation in 1954 of the then Minister of Agriculture following a public inquiry that was critical of his Department over the handling of parcel of land acquired for wartime use, I think for an airfield.

Mr Dugdale resigned, telling Parliament that “I, as minister, must accept full responsibility for any mistakes and inefficiency of officials in my department, just as, when my officials bring off any successes on my behalf, I take full credit for them.”

Such resignations, although honourable, are rare, and most Ministers tend to try and tough it out after something has gone wrong that is until their continued occupation of ministerial office becomes such an embarrassment to the government that the Prime minister makes it known that they should quit. Many, of course, don’t survive the next reshuffle.

This is a Prime minister that can be ruthless when he wants to be, as we saw in the run up to last year’s general election. However, I guess there have been so many mistakes this year since the start of the pandemic that any loss of a single cabinet minister might trigger demands for other heads to roll. Perhaps as with the changes to PHE, Ofqual’s days are numbered, and, perhaps, it will be returned to the DfE, much as happened to teacher training a few years ago.

What happens with the GCSE results between now and the weekend, and the cost of any bailout of universities resulting from the fallout of the A level –U-turn may well seal the fate of Mr Williamson.

Following on from the Crichel Down affair, the then Home Secretary, Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, suggested that ministers should not be held responsible for actions that they did not know about or of which they disapproved. However, they still needed to tell parliament what has happened, so that the legislature can discussed with full knowledge of the facts. I expect the Education Select Committee to hold a hearing sooner rather than later. At present, all we have is trial by media.

Ought the Secretary of State have known about the consequences of a policy of preventing grade inflation when there were no examinations to mark? Is knowing in principle, but not asking about the consequences a defence? The court of public opinion seems to think not. If it became clear that a minister had been briefed of the consequences, resignation would seem inevitable.

More likely we will lurch towards the beginning of September with the hope that re-opening of schools would be another disaster. If it is, then surely changes will be necessary.

Since writing this post, the Head of the Qualifications Agency has departed, as has the Permanent Secretary at the DfE. This is the highest civil service post in the DfE. By early evening on the 28th August no Minister has resigned.