How Labour should respond to Gove

I've written a feature for the June issue of Progress magazine on how Ed Miliband should respond to the coalition's key school policies.

The education secretary, Michael Gove, sees himself as Blairite school reformer. By expanding academies, maintaining minimum exam standards for schools and strongly embracing school standards, he is certainly echoing many of the themes that characterised New Labour's approach to ‘education, education, education'.

But he has also downplayed Tony Blair's linking of investment to reform. And while this may be harder with fiscal restraint, the coalition can be challenged on its stated objectives. It is here - rather than in attacking its main policy planks - that Labour should focus its opposition.

Gove's education reforms have three main elements: structural reform with more academies, including new ‘free schools'; a drive on academic school standards; and a pupil premium - extra cash for pupils in receipt of free school meals - to fight poverty. Only the last was a key Liberal Democrat policy, but all were central to the Tories' manifesto. Gove is essentially implementing a programme developed for him in opposition by the Policy Exchange and Reform thinktanks.

Blair aimed for 400 academies by early this decade. But these were primarily replacing failing secondary schools or providing new opportunities in disadvantaged areas. Gove has allowed primary and special schools to become academies, and any school can apply for academy status, with those rated ‘outstanding' or ‘good with outstanding features' by Ofsted able to do so almost automatically without a sponsor. This, rather than an expansion of sponsor-led academies in deprived areas, supported by universities and educational charities like Ark and Harris, is what has led to an expansion from Labour's planned total of 272 academies in September 2010 to 629 in April 2011.

At the same time, Gove is promoting ‘free schools'- parent-promoted, faith-led or sponsor-led new academies - but has been hampered by the groundwork and funding. At most, a dozen seem set to open this year. So far the initiative has produced few radical new ideas: most planned schools could have opened under Labour and some are simply resisting local authority reorganisations.

Labour needs a careful, subtle response to those policies, perhaps employing a three-pronged approach. First, it should query the balance of government resources being used between sponsor-led academies in deprived areas and helping good schools convert. The really hard work lies in getting weaker schools to become academies with good sponsors. Only with the recent appointment of former academy leader Liz Sidwell as schools commissioner has Gove turned his mind to this tougher task.

Second, Gove has said that when outstanding schools become academies they should be required to work with a weaker school. Labour should press for strong partnerships, like those being promoted by the headteachers' and principals' organisation, the National Leaders of Education, but they should be a clear part of academy funding agreements.

And third, Labour should use the free school model, refocusing it on transforming curriculum choices for all and providing better schools in deprived areas. At present, as with academies, it has become too much of a numbers game.

Gove's approach to standards and the curriculum has been strongly academic. His promotion of a league table measure that he calls the ‘English Baccalaureate'- awarded to pupils gaining good GCSEs in English, maths, science, languages and history or geography - has shown that only 15 per cent of pupils nationally reach this standard. However, the proportion gaining good grades in English and maths has risen from a third in 1997 to 55 per cent thanks to Labour reforms. But rather than criticise efforts to toughen standards which parents support, Labour should champion a tough ‘technical Baccalaureate' as an alternative that rewards practical and vocational success alongside English, maths and science. Gove is surely right to acknowledge the need to improve standards faster to meet international competition; Labour should help develop consensus on what this means in practice, challenging the narrowness of the education secretary's measures but not his ambition for higher standards.

Finally to funding, where the coalition is weakest. Its much-trumpeted pupil premium is worth only £430 per pupil on free school meals this year, barely replacing other cuts in schools with large numbers of poorer pupils. Despite promises of no cuts for schools, shadow education secretary Andy Burnham has shown average per pupil cuts of 3.9 per cent over the next three or four years alone, with another National Association of Head Teachers survey showing as many losers as winners. Labour cannot easily promise to restore such revenue cuts, but it can reasonably question the government's approach to the pupil premium and schools capital.

Labour has failed to quantify the extra help it provided to pupils in poorer areas, and its impact -the reduction in schools with fewer than 30 per cent of pupils gaining five good GCSEs in English and maths from 1600 in 1997 to fewer than 100 today. The party should embrace the concept of the pupil premium but set higher expectations for its use. Schools should receive a higher premium where they successfully improve overall results and narrow gaps in achievement. Those that fail to do this should see their premium reduced.

With capital, nobody could oppose efficiency efforts, but Labour should criticise the demise of formula capital, as proposed by the recent James review. By providing a typical secondary school with £150,000 a year to spend on maintenance and smaller development projects, school independence and responsibility are enhanced. This year's cuts to on average £25,000 a year greatly reduce those freedoms. Labour should champion independence here while holding the coalition to account on its wider plans for school spending.

Burnham has successfully tackled key Gove failings, including the scrapping of the education maintenance allowance, where there has been a partial U-turn. But his tougher task will be building on New Labour's education reforms to show clever, strategic and forensic opposition to an education secretary whose stated ambitions may be Blairite, even if his execution is otherwise.

Will class war win Labour a fourth term?

John Rentoul, who continues to illuminate his blog with examples of questions where the answer is 'No', has already gone a long way to deal with the notion that 'class war' will be answer to Labour's problems. Tom Harris does so well today too.

Naturally, those I speak to in No 10 deny that any strategy so crude is under way. And I wasn't alone in celebrating Gordon Brown's recent return to form at PMQs, when he had a few decent jokes about Eton and Cameron's crew. He and Osborne deserve to have their pomposity pricked a bit, and we need more such humour. But as someone who has been a part of Labour politics since the early eighties, I also know that it would be absurd and self-defeating to craft an election campaign around the theme.

That's not to say that there aren't individual actions that can be vote-winners. The PBR attack on bankers' bonuses is believed by Downing Street insiders to explain last week's remarkable council by-election victories. But it is to recognise that Labour will not win by developing absurd dividing lines which place Labour on the wrong side of aspiration. Becoming a party of aspiration was - and remains - the essential insight behind New Labour's continued electoral successes. And it would be absurd to throw it away on the illusion that a greater number of so-called core voters might be persuaded to turn out in May (the idea that there will be a March poll seems fanciful) if they heard the call to the barricades.

Instead, Labour needs to have a much sharper message about what it can do and what it can't do, as well as what it has done. It is understandable that ministers didn't want to reveal the entire departmental budgets ahead of a post-election spending review. And given the uncertainty of the result, it is quite sensible too. Look at what happened when 'priorities' were revealed in defence this week. However, it was a tactical mistake to try to obscure the overall size of likely cuts in the years ahead in last week's PBR statement when it was patently obvious that the IFS would have its own figures within 24 hours. And the government should have been clearer that decisions to raise national insurance or top rate income tax are a temporary and regrettable measure, not a cause for celebration.

At the same time, Labour must do more to highlight its approach to the public services - and its successes which get routinely rubbished by partisan pundits. Despite some criticisms by my friends at Progress, Andy Burnham's health statement last week was a decent attempt to explain a clear approach to NHS reform, even if it was a bit neutered by attempts to please some of the unions. Tessa Jowell has interesting ideas on mutualism. Andrew Adonis is doing remarkable things at transport, showing what Labour should have done ten years ago. Peter Mandelson has grappled the question of university fees and produced a decent plan on skills (just a shame there's no money with it). But elsewhere, the government's approach suffers from a confused message and a perverse willingness to cede ground to the Conservatives on Labour innovations, particularly on schools and academies.

Despite a lot of talk about failures to narrow the gap under Labour, the truth is that chances have been considerably improved for the working classes as opposed to the 'underclass' - those who voted for Labour in 1997, 2001 and 2005 - with the greatest improvements in health and education for those groups. [See here for example, go to the Excel table 4.1.1]. They might resent the bankers, but they're not interested in class war or dodgy dividing lines (something Cameron could suffer for as much as Labour). But crude attempts to compare the top and bottom 10% social groups don't bring out their improvements. And those voters do want some straight talk from the Labour government that many of them elected, which means an honest appraisal of the last 12 years and an honest assessment of what could be done with a fourth term. And they need to hear it from all the Government.

It may not have quite the same ring to it, but a message to ministers to give it to the voters straight could help bring back many of those who now say they will vote for other parties. It is rather more likely to do so than recreating the Tooting Liberation Front.

How the BMA wants to prevent prevention

Andy Burnham, the health secretary, has provided further evidence of life in the Labour government today with a sharp reformist speech on the NHS. His headline plan to allow patients to register with whichever GP they wish is a good one, not least for commuters who otherwise have to give up half a day to see a doctor.

The BMA's spokesman Dr Laurence Buckman generously is not opposing the idea outright - after all their lead parliamentary spokesman claims the idea as his own - but has helpfully presented lots of difficulties, as the BBC reported.

"What will happen to their practice if they're destabilised, because some of the younger, healthier patients have gone elsewhere?" [he said] The union says that a mix of patients, some of them not visiting their doctor often, helps general practice to be cost-effective. It warns that if younger people register near their workplaces, some practices could be left with patient lists mainly composed of those with long-term conditions and complex illness.

In other words, we are being paid to have lots of people on our books who can never see us because it is too inconvenient for them to do so. We must stop them from seeing doctors near where they work even if it prevents them getting more serious illnesses, so that we can continue doing things the way we always have done, with our generous new contract.

Andy Burnham must make sure this plan is in place ahead of the next election - in the interests of the health of all those people who work and pay taxes to cover GPs' salaries

BBC and Sky have every right not to broadcast the DEC appeal

The Disasters Emergency Committee is an invaluable organisation that helps co-ordinate the fundraising efforts of leading charities during natural disasters and famines. Its efforts in Darfur or after the Asian tsunami ensured more aid got to where it was most needed. There is also clearly a humanitarian need for aid and rebuilding in Gaza after the recent conflict. And the DEC is right to want to help co-ordinate such efforts. Indeed, I would encourage people to donate to their appeal using the embedded link here.

But it is wholly wrong to seek to bully broadcasters like the BBC and Sky, with large international audiences, into running the Committee's advertisements where to do so could damage the perceived impartiality of their news operations. Gaza is patently not a situation about which there is a clear consensus. Indeed, as Andrew Roberts pointed out this morning, some of the DEC charities have taken very clear sides in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. I would argue that it is their right to do so, within the bounds of charity law, but it is most certainly not the role of news organisations.

So, I think Douglas Alexander and his Tory counterpart Andrew Mitchell were wrong to join the likes of George Galloway and Tony Benn in denouncing the BBC. And Andy Burnham, the culture secretary, was absolutely right not to intervene. Of course, the BBC has a bigger problem when it comes to impartiality in the Middle East, as its reports from the region sometimes show (exemplified in a piece by Tim Llewellyn yesterday, as noted by Danny Finkelstein).

But on this occasion it has taken a difficult but principled decision. And it has no reason to apologise for making it.

Why schools can deliver the cultural commitment

One of the great myths about Labour's education policy is that it has been anti-culture and downplayed the arts. The decision to focus on the 3Rs in primary school has produced its share of tirades from authors who claim that to teach children to read, spell and write accurately can only be done at the expense of their enjoying their books (the illogicality of the argument is never questioned). But while this emphasis on the 3Rs was important, it was never at the expense of artistic and cultural activities. For example, Jacqui Smith, as junior schools minister one year after the introduction of the literacy hour, launched a special scheme to fund instrumental tuition, which continues as the Music Standards Fund. When targeted money was given to schools in 1998, their libraries were given injections of cash to fund new books. Museums and galleries have been expected to devote more effort to education, and in London, a forerunner of today's pledge by Andy Burnham that children should have the opportunity to enjoy five hours of culture a week, operated for several years through the London Challenge, with a clear list of activities that each child could expect to enjoy.

Given the growth of after-school clubs and other extended facilities, today's promise is far less ambitious than it sounds, and those teaching union leaders who use the announcement to whinge about SATs should stop talking rot. The real issue is not whether this can be delivered, but how it can be delivered in a meaningful way. It is right to allow local decisions, and the idea of an entitlement is a good one. The Times leader argues that the 'right' to five hours is too prescriptive, but then says it is too 'vague' about what should be involved. The writer has a better point with their concern about vagueness than in worries about prescription. A five hour entitlement in and out of school during term time is a reasonable expectation, including after-class activities. But the entitlement should be more precise: every child should expect to experience a live play or visit an art gallery during their secondary years, as well as the chance to take part in a live production and try their hand at a bit of painting or digital art. As the pilots develop, perhaps this could become clearer. However, none of this should detract from what is a good idea and a welcome announcement from the new culture secretary.