Evidence of intent

My latest Sutton Trust blog on the evidence behind the parties’ election proposals for education

While much of the policy noise of the election campaign has focused on social care and the winter heating allowance, there is quite a lot of educational policy in the parties’ statements of intent. Polling over the weekend showed it particularly important with parents and young voters.

Despite the narrowing of the polls as Thursday’s ballot approaches, the likelihood is still that a Conservative government will be re-elected. So, it is worth examining what they say – and do not say – in some detail. A lot of the attention has focused on two policies – grammar schools and free school meals – but there were also other important proposals there too.

Free school meals have become a surprising issue. Just as Theresa May has been keen to show she’s been making tough choices with pensioners’ spending, she is also planning to remove the relatively recent universal nature of free school meals for infants and return to linking them to poverty. Instead, less costly breakfasts will be provided to all.

When free school meals were made universal, much was made of the impact on educational standards. At the time, I looked at the detailed NatCen evaluation and argued that universal school meals may make some impact on attainment, but seem likely to do a lot more for diet and socialisation in school. Delivering 1-2 months’ progress, it had less impact than other less costly options.

The EEF’s evaluation of Magic Breakfast suggested a two month gain over a year. The results suggest that for pupils in relatively disadvantaged schools it is attending the breakfast club, not just eating breakfast, which leads to academic improvements. This could be due to the nutritional benefits of the breakfast itself, or the social or educational benefits of the breakfast club environment.

So, shifting to breakfasts on the face of it looks like a less costly way of delivering results – even allowing for the forensic work on costs by Becky Allen and Datalab. However, neither study focused as much on the nutritional benefits which is what has exercised Jamie Oliver and other celebrity chefs most. There’s also the very real issue of cost for those parents whose incomes are just above the FSM eligibility threshold and who will lose most in this change. By contrast Labour and the Liberal Democrats want to extend free meals throughout primary school, though this feels like a costly commitment when school budgets face so many other pressures.

Labour has made its most expensive and eye-catching promise in higher education, promising to axe tuition fees and restore maintenance grants. In doing so, it has cited the £44,000 average debt figure first calculated for the Sutton Trust by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Sutton Trust research has also shown student debts in England are the highest in the English-speaking world.

However, it is questionable that the answer is ending all tuition fees. University students are far more likely to come from better off backgrounds – so there is a massive deadweight costs if this is intended to improve access – and the evidence suggests that participation among poorer students has continued to rise since tuition fees increased. Nevertheless, there are still substantial gaps – the latest UCAS research using a multiple equality measure across demographic quintiles suggests that 13.6% of young people from backgrounds with the lowest rate of entry to enter higher education went to university in 2016, compared with 52.1% from the highest entry or richest areas, almost a four-fold gap, and this gap rises to ten times in the top universities. There has also been a substantial reduction in part-time students, which seems to have accelerated since the £9000 fees were introduced, despite the introduction of loans for part-timers.

A more cost-effective and targeted approach would have restored maintenance grants for poorer students – which the Liberal Democrats also propose – but also means-tested tuition fees so poorer students borrowed less, though proponents of fees would point out that repayments are equitable given that they are linked to earnings. The problem has been that size of borrowing, and the high interest rates now charged, means that barely a quarter of graduates are likely to repay their loans in full.

In other policies, the Conservatives have maintained their commitment to lifting the ban preventing new grammar schools, justifying the policy by referring to its new calculation of ‘ordinary working families’ – roughly the middle third of families based on income – though all the evidence, including that published by the Sutton Trust, shows that poorer students and those just above FSM eligibility are much less likely to get admitted. The manifesto does not detail what measures are proposed to address this gap or the income-related gradient in who gets in.

As importantly, perhaps, the party has also proposed a review of school admissions more generally, though pointedly ruling out ‘mandatory’ lotteries. That doesn’t mean there could not be more encouragement of both random allocation and banding, both of which could provide a proportion of places in popular urban schools, and are the only realistic way to end the ‘selection by postcode’ criticised by Theresa May early in her premiership. The plan for more accountability at Key Stage 3 could fill a gap that has been there since those tests were scrapped in the late noughties.

Labour, meanwhile, has pledged to outlaw unpaid internships, something that is gaining traction as an issue across the political spectrum. Since our 2014 research estimating that an unpaid intern in London would need to £926 a month to make ends meet, there has been a growing clamour for change matched by a growing number of companies changing practice. It requires proper enforcement of minimum wage legislation matched by open and fair recruitment practices.

In Scotland, the Global Gaps report that we published in February has been much quoted over concerns about the income-related attainment and university access gaps in Scottish schools. The SNP manifesto was less focused on education issues that are a matter for Holyrood but there they have been strengthening their work on attainment gaps and accountability amidst opposition criticism of a dip in standards over recent years.

But for all the education policy promises, the biggest challenge facing a new government will be in school budgets and teacher recruitment. The Conservatives, mindful of a backbench revolt, have promised that no school will lose in cash terms from its new funding formula. Labour and the Liberal Democrats are promising to restore budget cuts in real terms too. But whoever gets elected on June 8, the likelihood is that schools will still face challenges getting the teachers they need in a world of rising pupil numbers.

The education of politicians

In my latest Sutton Trust blog, I look at why the educational background of candidates matters.

This was the week when education became an election issue. David Cameron and Nicky Morgan unveiled their plans for turning mediocre schools into academies, reviving school numeracy and school spending. Ed Miliband and Liam Byrne edged towards explaining how Labour would deliver a promise to cut tuition fees to £6000 without upsetting the universities.

In this week when the politics of education was in full flow, it seems appropriate to look more closely at the education of politicians, and specifically at those candidates whom their parties think have a fair chance of being elected on May 7^th.

Today’s Sutton Trust research brief Parliamentary Privilege looks at the school and university education of 260 candidates who were already selected by mid-December 2014 either to replace sitting MPs from their own parties or in seats that their party is targeting. This means that we have a bigger range of candidates for the parties than current polling would suggest any is likely to win, but it also gives us statistically significant samples for Labour, the Conservatives and UKIP which restricting their number to seats expected by the pundits to switch would not allow.

And the picture it gives is not encouraging. For all the talk of changes to Parliament after May, the educational picture is likely to remain pretty much unchanged.

There may be a slight reduction in the proportion of privately educated MPs, but it will probably remain around a third. Slightly fewer of the Conservative candidates we looked at are privately educated than are the current MPs, but the total remains around half; nearly a fifth of Labour’s candidates are privately educated compared to a tenth in the current House; and a third of the UKIP candidates we looked at also went to an independent school.

You would expect a higher proportion of our politicians to be university educated than the population as a whole. Among the candidates, 55% went to a Russell Group university, five times the national average. More interestingly, 19% went to Oxbridge compared to less than 1% of UK adults.

Of course, the challenge for us all is to open up more places at our best universities for able young people from low and middle income backgrounds, to ensure that our elites – not just politics, but the law, medicine, the city and media – are more representative. As James Turner described last week, that’s what Sutton Trust summer schools and other access programmes are doing.

But the concern many have had is that so many of today’s politicians have come from a route that goes from PPE at Oxford through a political job (perhaps as a researcher or special adviser) into becoming an MP. 40% of our sample of candidates had what might be seen as a career in politics before wanting to become a politician.

That’s not good for democracy. But then we have made it that much less attractive for people in non-political careers to enter politics than before. Expenses and funding scandals, constant ridicule and widespread disdain may have been brought by some politicians on the political class, but it still makes it unattractive to many to give up a secure and relatively quiet job for the life of modern MP.

The Russell Brands of this world may say it doesn’t matter: politics doesn’t change things. But the truth is that it does. Even this week’s education debates could lead to improved local schools or more affordable university degrees. Such changes affect individual lives.

I have personally argued often elsewhere that we need to see practical changes that could eliminate a lot of the stench from today’s politics: more state funding than exists currently, flat allowances for MPs depending on where they live, a less unwieldy second chamber, fairer voting systems.  Politicians have only themselves to blame for not grasping those nettles.

But constitutional change is not enough. We need to change attitudes among young people and improve opportunities to engage them in the political process and debate. Better citizenship and more debating in schools could help.

Moreover, fundamental change will mean ensuring that the path to politics is widened by fairer access to those universities that so often lead into political careers, paid internships opened up beyond the friends of MPs and a more active engagement with all the parties in widening their candidate base so that they engage people of all social classes as actively as they have sought to ensure more female and BME candidates in recent decades.

Politics itself should be a part of the election debate. Hopefully, our research brief today can help put it there.

Clegg should demand real investment for renewing those vows

With Francois Hollande elected in France and Labour's modest triumph in the council polls, it is hardly surprising that David Cameron and Nick Clegg feel the need to renew the vows they exchanged in the shotgun wedding of 2010. But whether they should stick to the letter of the pre-nup that they signed on that fateful day is another matter. The economy desperately needs investment, and the government badly needs a sense of purpose. There are few signs that either are planned. And that reflects a failure of imagination by Nick Clegg and his improbably sidekick Danny Alexander.

The Budget was not just a disaster for the Tories, countering George Osborne's smugness with its extraordinary collection of crowd-displeasers. It was also a failure for Nick Clegg, because he failed to persuade his coalition partners that cutting the 50p tax rate at a time when the country (and Europe) has entered into a populist anti-rich rage might not be the best idea, just at the moment.

But then despite the hype there is little sign that the Liberal Democrats have gained much beyond becoming a punching bag for liberal initiatives already favoured by Cameroon reforms, such as gay marriage or even Lords reform. The Lib Dems have failed utterly to promote the sort of infrastructural investment that might move the economy from Osborne's recession into lasting growth. School building has been slashed. House building is a combination of anti-Labour spin and coalition inaction. The high speed rail will take years to materialise and Heathrow is chaotic not just because of Teresa May's passport panic, but because there is nowhere for the planes to land half the time. High speed broadband seems a distant dream, especially with BT involved.

We have seen that infrastructure can be delivered on budget and on time with the Olympic stadium. And I have no quibble with efforts to get better value for money than Labour in public building projects. But there is simply not enough action on providing the major infrastructural investment that could give the economy the kickstart it needs, boosting demand and jobs, and ensuring more people pay taxes rather than draw benefits. Rather than fighting plans for an extra £10bn cut in welfare budgets, Clegg should be seeking to cut the budget by getting people into real jobs. At present, all that's on offer is the dubious rebadging exercise known as the Youth Contract.

Within months, Europe including Germany will recognise - in part because of what's happening in France and Greece - that it needs a better balance between austerity and growth, and that investment projects are needed for the latter. The US under Barack Obama has recognised that, as has the IMF and OECD in its advice to member nations. This is not about cutting day-to-day spending, which will have to continue, though Osborne always underestimated its knock-on impact on private sector services, but about medium to long-term investments that will have a return.

So, rather than whining about Lords Reform, Clegg and his colleagues should force the investment issue with a real determination: new rail, schools, housing, airports. If he focused on that rather than the dubious achievements that he cites for his role in Government to date, the voters might even notice. By the same token, Labour should switch its arguments from the speed of the spending cuts to a ceaseless demand for more capital investment, with a strong critque of the government's enduring incompetence and inability to deliver. It too might find that a successful formula to consolidate and advance on Thursday's success.

Why Labour should celebrate academies achievements

I have contributed this piece to the Labour Teachers website:

Academies are a Labour success story. They are raising standards, typically in urban schools with high deprivation and a history of failure. They are giving disadvantaged pupils a better education than before and sending more of them to university. And they are doing so as comprehensives, often providing some of the best community facilities in their area.

The coalition has extended the academies programme, and in doing so it has conflated two types of academy. Labour’s programme was focused on the poorest areas, on secondary and all-age schools, with sponsors from business, education charities, universities and college to help develop a strong ethos of success in areas where children had for too long been written off. There are now 337 sponsor-led academies, most of them put in motion by a Labour government.

The pace of improvement in these academies is remarkable. Each year their GCSE results – five grade Cs or above including GCSE English and Maths – have been improving at twice the national average rate of improvement. In 2011, for example, Harris’s Merton Academy improved from 49 to 75 per cent; United Learning Trust’s Lambeth Academy increased by 22 points to 58 per cent; and Ormiston’s Victory Academy in Norfolk increased from 38 to 65 per cent.

Across the country, schools where less than one in four pupils once gained the basic standard level of qualifications have doubled their results. At Mossbourne in Hackney, where the Labour council actively encourages academies, 82% of pupils on the site of what was once one of the worst schools in the country now reach the GCSE standard, and seven have been accepted at Cambridge this year.

Only those who haven’t visited academies in the toughest parts of the country – from Mossbourne to North Liverpool – and seen the hope, achievement and dynamism transforming so many young lives could condemn their existence.

So, we should not criticise the coalition for extending this sponsor-led programme – Tony Blair hoped for 400 secondary sponsored academies – or for bringing the poorest performing primary schools under its aegis. Where schools are not improving as traditional local authority schools, new leadership and a new approach is needed.

What of the criticisms? They are selective, we are told. Yet, their funding agreement requires them to be non-selective. Most have high numbers of FSM pupils, and many use banding to achieve fairer intakes than many comprehensives with middle class catchments. They will lead to privatisation, we are then told. Again, they are required to be charities by law, so this is also simply untrue. Not accountable? Have you read the academy funding agreements? They are accountable to the elected national rather than local government, though here there is an interesting debate to be had around the notion of local school commissioners.

They do have more freedoms to develop the right curriculum for their students, and over pay, school buildings and issues like the school timetable than other schools. Yet it is the freedom that comes with being an academy that is more liberating than the precise freedoms. Community schools can use existing pay agreements flexibly; few do. There is nothing legally to stop a maintained school running a longer day, though most feel bound to local authority norms. Yet both are deployed by academies to provide better teachers and more learning for pupils who need them more than most.

Of course, we can argue about the priority being given by the coalition to converting successful schools to academies. Yet, Ed Balls gave academy status to two highly successful secondaries that wanted to help improve weaker schools. Where Labour should focus its criticism here is on the extent to which converter academies are being expected to work with weaker schools – a commitment made by Michael Gove, but still taken up in too few cases.

Free schools may be new in name, but legally they are simply academies too. Many would have been set up under existing legislation – and were by Labour – but we should try to see a programme develop that is genuinely responsive to parents and disadvantaged communities, as the more interesting free schools are, rather than damning the whole idea.

There is a danger that by opposing academies and free schools, we lose sight not only of the benefits of a programme started by Labour in government, but that we fail to focus on the bigger issues of teaching, curriculum and standards, where there is a real debate to be had and where Stephen Twigg is starting to develop a promising agenda.

That failure would be game, set and match to the Tories.

Twigg must regain Labour's education inititiative

It is good news that Stephen Twigg, an unashamed fan of academies, has been appointed by Ed Miliband as his new shadow education secretary. Andy Burnham never really regained the initiative having started badly, although his focus on vocational education was one of a number of ways he recognised the coalition's weaknesses. But by allowing academies to be stolen by the Tories as their great initiative, he left his successor with a lot of ground to make up. Twigg must now be bold and ensure that Labour education policy has real credibility with parents, heads and teachers. He needs to be ready to outflank education secretary Michael Gove in areas such as rewards for schools that successfully overcome poverty - with a pupil premium that has real teeth - and to give a real sense of mission to academies and free schools. Whilst not disputing the need for rigorous academic qualifications, he should champion a technical baccalaureate as an alternative to the EBacc for some, but equally make clear where the Tories are simply following Labour successes on issues like floor targets and academies. Above all, he must regain the mantle of standards and diversity for Labour, making clear that a future Labour government would be on the side of today's parents and pupils, and not those seeking to turn the Labour policy clock back twenty years. It's good also to see Liz Kendall and Rachel Reeves getting much deserved promotions.

Ed's confident performance: but will his rhetoric make good policy?

One thing can be said about Ed Miliband's speech at the Labour conference this afternoon. He has shown thar he is capable of delivering a speech confidently, even if the power companies cut live TV coverage for a few minutes, and that included a decent self-deprecating joke or two. He gave some strong messages on fiscal responsibility, echoing Ed Balls, towards the start of his speech, where were necessary and will need repetition.There was also the making of a strong populist argument in the speech  This is that he is on the side of the ordinary hard-working person or the more productive businessperson. He will cut through the elites that have let people so badly down over the last few years, not least the bankers.

In one sense, this theme has the potential to resonate in these tough times. The 'producers or predators' line comes across well in the bulletins. People do feel let down by the powers that be, and it makes sense to put himself against the vested interests at the moment. There is a strong theme too in focusing on those who work on moderate incomes and this a theme that the coalition too often fails to recognise: talk of narrowing gaps often focuses just on the very poorest, yet it is important that those on relatively low and modest working incomes don't feel that work doesn't pay. Narrowing gaps must be about more than those who are helped off welfare: in government, Labour delivered more for the deciles just above the lowest group in areas like education, and those are the people who will decide most whether the party is in government again. Talking to them is good politics.

The danger is that without the detail, the ambitions fail to connect with delivery. Certainly, he makes a strong case for social mobility: but more will be needed than cut-price fees where the loan repayment levels remain the same. Equally, the talk of differential business tax rates need more clarity - frontbenchers challenged to defend it on TV can tell him that - as does the proposal to give hard workers preference with social housing.However, after this speech, Ed Miliband has moved out of the shadows of the last Labour government, but he will need to guard against the instincts of some in the party whose interest is more in a quiet life of Tory-bashing than the inconvenience of winning three elections. Today allowed Ed Miliband to set out his vision: now he must put flesh on the bones, all the while ensuring that his argument maintains the hard edge that could provide the makings of a winning manifesto.

Ed's challenge: to re-engage with the South

Ed Miliband put in a surprisingly confident performance on the Andrew Marr show yesterday. And Ed Balls has said some of the right things in his Shadow Chancellor's speech to the Liverpool conference today. But, it is hard to feel yet that Dave and Sam should be pre-booking the removals van for 2015. By tomorrow afternoon, Ed Miliband should at least ensure that they think they may have to do so. And starting from where Labour is now, it's a pretty tall order.

The mediocre local election results have been followed by modest poll leads since May. At least they are poll leads for Labour, but the image of its key figures is dismal, and people judge a future government on its key personnel as much as on its policies. There are precious few of those too: of course, there is some wisdom in holding fire on policy detail so early in the parliament. The planned cut in the fees cap to £6000 did, at least, generate some headlines, though it may become a millstone around the leadership's neck come the manifesto - inflation may well have lifted it to nearer £7000 by 2015, for a start. The bigger problem is that we have had too little indication yet of Labour's direction of travel under Miliband beyond a wish to ease life for the ill-defined 'squeezed middle'.

Often in politics you have to apologise for something that you didn't do, or believe you didn't do, but which the electorate believes you did, if you are to win their trust to move to the next stage. Ed Miliband has been happy to do this on policies with which he disagreed. But the most important issue relates to Labour and the economy. The party makes a good case that the essentials were in good shape until the economic crisis, but voters still believe that it didn't do enough in the good times to prepare for a rainy day. That is the charge to which Labour must respond effectively. Ed Balls is right that the Government needs to boost growth, though his targeted proposed cut in VAT for home improvements seems more considered than his proposed reversing the latest coalition VAT rise. But his more important message was that Labour would have tough fiscal rules governed by the coalition's Office for Budget Responsibility, and would not reverse coalition cuts. That is a good step in the right direction, but it is unlikely to be enough to cut through the unforgiving attitude of ex-Labour voters who distrust the party on the economy.

Ed Miliband needs to go the extra step on the economy tomorrow. But he also needs to give a sense of what Labour's priorities will be in 2015. The problem with too much of what is being said and done at the moment is that it is backward-looking and retrospective: either trying to refight the issues of Labour in government, or even to respond to internal lobbyists who regretted the unfortunate interlude when the party held power. And best not to mention the anti-immigrant protectionism of Blue Labour. Miliband's front bench has plenty of able people on it of whom we have seen far too little, and the recent Progress Purple Book at least offered some good ideas. But Miliband has also failed to set a clear stamp on the direction of policy and his endless policy reviews need a better steer than they have been given to date if they are not to prove a big embarrassment.

In one sense, tomorrow's speech is a big opportunity. It is a chance to tell ordinary voters that there is a lot more to Ed Miliband than his odd relationship with his brother. Few voters have yet got beyond that in their understanding of him. But it is also a big danger, that it becomes a missed opportunity to define Labour in terms that will regain support among the 'squeezed middle classes' of Southern England and the Midlands: the people of the London and Birmingham suburbs, the coastal towns from Kent to Cornwall, the new towns like Reading, Swindon and Slough across to the West and in Bristol and its environs. If Ed doesn't speak to them tomorrow, his party is simply speaking to itself.

The danger of dumbing down GCSE statistics

Damian Hinds, a Conservative MP, tells us this morning that a set of figures he has compiled from Parliamentary Questions 'show categorically how, over 13 years, the last Labour Government undermined the lifechances of a generation by steering them away from the subjects that employers value most.' Having been a part of that Government's education policy for six of those 13 years, I must have missed the deliberate steering.

It is true that - in line with the approach generally advocated by the Conservative front bench towards the National Curriculum - Estelle Morris removed compulsion in modern foreign languages for 14-16 year-olds, in order to focus more on 7-11 year-olds and to allow a disaffected minority to pursue vocational options. But then it is equally true that a concerted drive from 2006 by Labour ministers to encourage take-up in STEM subjects has halted a decline that began under the Conservatives in subjects like Physics and has led to big improvements in take-up of science and Maths subjects at A-level and GCSE for five years. It is also the case that when it became clear that there was some 'gaming' going on as a result of GCSE equivalences - equivalences that had been recommended by independent advisers for courses that at the time had little take-up - the Labour government shifted the main GCSE measure from 'any GCSEs and equivalents' to one that includes English and Maths.

That remains the main measure by which the Government judges schools; and under it, the number of schools with fewer than 30pc of pupils gaining five good GCSEs including English and Maths fell from 1600 to fewer than 100 last year. Michael Gove has raised the benchmark in response. And the proportion of pupils gaining five good GCSEs (or equivalents) including GCSE English and Maths rose from a 35% in 1997 to 54% in 2010. Indeed even if one focuses just on GCSEs and excludes all equivalent qualifications, the proportion is 49.5%, still a substantial and real improvement.

So, it is simply nonsense to suggest that Labour was engaged in some elaborate dumbing down exercise. Indeed the Labour government maintained and strengthened the Standards over Time work started by the previous Conservative government. Labour's main interest was in seeing far more schools and pupils reaching a benchmark that is accepted by Damian Hinds' colleagues as valid; in that it succeeded so well that the floor targets have been kept by the coalition.

But it is also the case that academic qualifications will not be the answer for everyone: we need more technical and applied options of real value, something Labour tried to achieve with the Diplomas, and succeeded in some like Engineering (according to Tory adviser Sir James Dyson) and IT. And the current Government really does need to decide where it stands on pre-16 vocational qualifications: Alison Wolf thinks they're generally a mistake if they take up more than 20% of curriculum time; Ken Baker wants more technical education from 14 with his excellent university technical colleges initiative. The truth is that the academic core of the EBacc will not be right for every student, which is why Labour focused on English and Maths, and saw substantial improvements in both, especially in the poorest schools. Rather than trading silly insults, perhaps  Mr Hinds, whose Conservative-led education select committee recently damned the EBacc, could assist in resolving the split in his own ranks that really does matter to young people's futures.

Expertise in the Upper House

The new list of peers published today could, in one sense, be seen as a cynical exercise in patronage. And it is true that it is being used by the coalition to lessen the chances of defeat in the Upper House. But it also includes some remarkable talent among the nominees who have much to contribute beyond their partisan allegiances.

The quality of debate can only be enhanced by the presence of luminaries like Labour's Joan Bakewell, Jonathan Kestenbaum (of Nesta), Prof Ruth Lister and Prof Maurice Glasman, and the curry king Sir Gulam Noon (regardless of his donations). For the Conservatives, businessmen like Sir Michael Bishop, the British Midland founder, Downtown Abbey creator Julian Fellowes, Michael Grade, Sir Bernard Ribeiro, the surgeon, and Fiona Shackleton, the family lawyer add genuine expertise to their benches. And the Lib Dems will benefit from having Sal Brinton, Jonathan Marks QC and Claire Tyler of Relate on their side.

That's not to say that there are not also plenty of semi-retired political hacks (though Oona King, Stewart Wood and Eluned Morgan are hardly typical political appointees), with donors and time-servers rewarded particularly on the coalition benches (the Lib Dems seem to have had trouble filling their quota). But it is a reminder of what could be lost - even more so with crossbenchers - if we opt for a wholly elected House to replace the current chamber. At a time when dumbing down and generalism is all the rage, we need specialists and experts to scrutinise our legislation more than ever. All parties deserve credit for recognising this in at least some of their nominations.

The right economic approach for Labour

There's plenty of gloating about a leaked internal document from Labour (£) where insiders recognise that the party lacks economic definition yet and needs a clearer approach to tackling the coalition cuts. Such gloating is premature. If anything it suggests a degree of real understanding about the potential weakness of the party at a time when it has just overtaken the Conservatives on today's Populus poll but growth figures are better than predicted by a gloomy city (albeit down on Labour's last quarter). And that is a good thing. Labour needs to box clever not only the economy - where it has failed to allow a narrative to emerge that blames the party for the size of the deficit and ignores the penury into which millions of savers would have fallen had Labour allowed the banks to collapse as George Osborne advised - but also on health and education. A first step in doing so is recognising one's weaknesses. A second step, which some frontbenchers including Alan Johnson and Douglas Alexander on welfare have already recognised, is to fight the coalition strategically and not wholesale. The third one is having the right policies for the next election. So, embarrassing though this leak may be, it is a sign that the party is not retreating into an opposition comfort zone. That approach needs to be followed through across the front bench - without the leaks, perhaps.

A good start in the shadow cabinet

Ed Miliband has chosen wisely in making Alan Johnson (left) his Shadow Chancellor, rather than Ed Balls or even Yvette Cooper, whatever her undoubted talents. She is an interesting choice as shadow foreign secretary, and her big success in the PLP vote deserved such a reward. Johnson has a sounder understanding of how to take on George Osborne and the coalition, and his humour should do wonders to prick Osborne's pompous sense of his own self-importance. Ed Balls has the chance to provide the Tories with the opposition they deserve on crime and justice policy, provided he is ready to reflect the views of ordinary Labour voters, and overcomes his own instinctive opposition to the sort of measures that have helped reduce antisocial behaviour and crime while Labour was in government. With Ed Miliband's loyal lieutenant Sadiq Khan shadowing Ken Clarke at Justice, this may be more difficult.

Andy Burnham's Blairite instincts should return some sanity to the party's schools policy, and he needs quickly to reclaim academies as a Labour success story, while ensuring that he develops a distinctive but constructive critique of the Tories' version. At health, John Healey needs to regain the initiative in challenging the destructive reorganisation of the NHS and reminding voters at every turn how the Tories ditched A&E and waiting time targets, as the consequences of Andrew Lansley's madness come home to roost. Jim Murphy is a good pick at defence, and Caroline Flint needs to find the right riposte to Eric Pickles at communities. By picking John Denham to shadow Vince Cable, Ed Miliband is ensuring that his mistaken graduate tax plans are advanced. Douglas Alexander is a good pick on work and pensions, and should be able to provide the constructive positioning needed on the issue. Interesting that he also wisely ignored the PLP, by giving Shaun Woodward Northern Ireland and Peter Hain Wales, pushing his shadow cabinet up to a hefty 27 places. Liam Byrne is a bit wasted shadowing the cabinet office unless he is explicitly taking on Nick Clegg (which Harriet Harman will do as deputy leader).

But there are big promotions - and a real test - for Mary Creagh shadowing DEFRA and Meg Hillier taking on Chris Huhne at environment. With Harriet Harman also shadowing International Development, Patricia Scotland as shadow Attorney General, Rosie Winterton as chief whip, Angela Eagle as shadow chief secretary, sister Maria at Transport, Ann McKechin covering Scotland and Tessa Jowell keeping her cherished Olympics role, Ed Miliband now has a record 12 women in his shadow cabinet, a vindication for Harman's efforts to achieve greater equality. The new shadow cabinet has many new faces. Now their challenge is to get the response to the Spending Review right. With AJ, there is a better chance that they will do so.

A clever first speech, now for the hard part

Ed Miliband's first speech as party leader was clever and well-constructed, though it suffered from an as yet limited sense of what it all means in practice. Nevertheless, he met the tests set for him by the tabloids. He couldn't have been clearer about his support for fiscal responsibility and reducing the deficit, but he wrapped it in a great phrase about true patriotism being about reducing the debt burden for our kids, as well as about building an economy and a society fit for our kids to live in. He was clear what he supported from Labour's legacy, as well as starting to set a clearer sense of where he wants to go - graduate tax, tax breaks for a living wage, work-life balance, sensible welfare reform, civil liberties - but was sharp in reminding the unions of the 'book of historic failures' and that he would not support 'irresponsible strikes'.

His is a style where he lays the hard choices out clearly, but softens them to please his audience: backing being tough on crime, pro-business, changing clause 4 but finishing with all-women shortlists. He is also unclear where he stands on some of Labour's most important reforms: his tale of tackling a failing school should have been followed by support for Labour's successful academies. Instead it was used to talk up government. It was also fascinating how muted a response he received from the conference floor for his criticism of the Iraq war. (Note, by contrast, the stronger applause he got for his support for Palestine).

Where he is on strongest ground is on democratic reform - with a clear pledge to support the Alternative Vote and reform the Lords - and on the need for intelligent cross-party thinking (a promise to go soft on Ken Clarke and Theresa May must rule out Ed Balls for Shadow Home Secretary, then). But his speech lacked a clear sense of where Ed Miliband will take the party, though given how little time he had to prepare this speech, this is excusable this year. This was a well crafted first speech, confidently delivered, not least in his repudiation of the "Red Ed" label and his shaping of Labour as a party of optimism. He has passed this first test: the big challenge comes in translating all this into practice in a way that genuinely wins back many of the five million New Labour voters lost since 1997.

This post has been picked up by Left Foot Forward and Iain Dale.

Wise words for Ed

Alan Johnson has some good advice for Ed Miliband in the Independent on Sunday, including on his unwise obsession with a graduate tax:

Think "out of the box" (as I believe they say in management-speak). The very existence of the coalition has demonstrated that the public is willing to accept new and innovative thinking about how we manage government in the UK. During your campaign, all candidates spoke regularly of not returning to the old ways. Now show you mean it. Breathe new life into our education policy; define localism and community activism in a way that is not a metaphor for filling gaps in public services; understand that the public does not want to see a reverse in the progress we made in tackling crime. Oh, and for goodness' sake, don't pursue a graduate tax. We should be proud of our brave and correct decision to introduce tuition fees. Students don't pay them, graduates do, when they're earning more than £15,000 a year, at very low rates, stopped from their pay just like a graduate tax, but with the money going where it belongs: to universities rather than the Treasury.

Consorting with the enemy?

Alan Milburn has attracted his share of flak for agreeing to act as a social mobility adviser to the coalition. John Prescott has tweeted:

So after Field & Hutton, Milburn becomes the 3rd collaborator. They collaborated to get Brown OUT. Now collaborating to keep Cameron IN

There's a lively debate running on the Labour Uncut website too. And there were plenty of groans when John Hutton agreed to chair the pensions review and Frank Field a welfare review.

But the naysayers are wrong to complain. There is plenty of things to criticise the coalition about - Friday's utterly absurd abolition of the Audit Commission is just the latest example - but this is not one of them. Of course, there's a political calculation involved, just as there was when Labour gave roles to Tories like Chris Patten.

But this is not the same as luring Labour MPs into the Tory party as happened when Labour welcomed Tory MPs like Shaun Woodward, Peter Temple-Morris and Alan Howarth into the party. Why is there such a tribal outcry about people who keep their politics whilst doing a job that they see as in the national interest, drawing on their own past experience? Nobody argues that the Republican Robert Gates should not work for President Obama and few would disagree that the socialist Bernard Kouchner is an able French foreign minister, appointed by President Sarkozy (although his socialist colleagues have displayed their tribalist tendencies by expelling him from the party).

And by appointing them, there's also a recognition by the government that these are talented people with a contribution to make on issues of national importance, and a greater contribution than anyone in the two governing parties. That's something that has Tories like Stephen Glover and Iain Dale seething. With the coalition so schizophrenic in its assessment of the Labour years, that is a good thing.

And it is something that Labour should be happy to celebrate in opposition as a valuable counter to the all-too-successful demonisation of our very real achievements in government. If we did so, we might start to win back more independent-minded lost voters more quickly.

The future for free schools

The coalition's plans for free schools are given a bit more detail today. As I reported in my recent Public Finance article, there is a greater emphasis on the potential for teacher-led than parent-led schools. Otherwise, we are told that a group of 50 or so parents could club together to demand a new primary school; a larger number will be needed for a secondary (the latter are more likely to be developed by existing academy providers and secondary schools). They will be governed in a way similar to academies, and subject to Ofsted inspections, tests and tables. And the talk now is of taking over shops rather than shiny new buildings. So far, so predictable - and there was a sensible recognition this morning that some will fail, as has happened to over 600 of the 5000+ charter schools in the US .

I have no doubt that there will a number of high profile free school developments, including Toby Young's much publicised plans and those supported by some of the Teach First graduates. A more difficult group will be those parents who set up a free school simply to stymie local authority rationalisations: at a time of spending cuts, there will be some high profile battles with angry councillors. Equally, there will be plenty of difficult judgment calls when the bids from Muslim schools emerge, though it is likely that the efforts of scientologists and other cults will be stopped unless they successfully disguise their true backers.

Labour should not oppose the development of free schools, provided they are non-selective. After all, they build on an architecture developed in its education bills. The main change proposed by Michael Gove is a freeing up of planning restrictions that councils had used - with no attempt by Ed Balls to stop them doing so - to block the parental rights to demand a new school set out in the 2006 Education and Inspections Act. Instead of adopting a kneejerk defence of existing planning rules or local authorities, the next leader of the Labour party should look creatively at the model to develop imaginative new groups of free schools including in disadvantaged areas, some of which might challenge the rigid curriculum orthodoxy schizophrenically embraced by the Conservative front bench. Indeed, such imaginative thinking would be far more likely to help us win back Southern voters than talk of abolishing the charitable status of independent schools.

However, the programme's supporters are being a touch naive in their expectations about how rapidly this programme will develop. The £50 million diversity pot announced today will help some, but it will take a lot more effort than they think to develop a programme of Swedish-style or US charter school proportions. The main reason is that both systems lacked diversity before those developments. Indeed, Swedish free schools are still required to teach the national curriculum. By contrast, a huge diversity and significant autonomy has developed in our system under both Labour and Conservative governments. Not only will there be in excess of 300 academies from this autumn, there are thousands of religious schools (that don't get public funding in the US) and over 1200 foundation schools that have many of the freedoms enjoyed by academies already. Moreover, the degree of autonomy over staff and budgets enjoyed by community - local authority - school heads is far greater than in most other developed countries. Of course, there are challenges in moving our system towards the achievement levels of countries or territories with much higher degrees of ethnic homogeneity like Finland or Singapore, and Gove is right to be ambitious about improving standards, though he is wrong to underestimate how much progress has been made in recent years. But a far greater contribution to that further improvement is likely to emerge from plans for the expansion of mainstream academies, better teacher quality and strong accountability.

Regaining the middle ground for Labour

It is good to see Darren Murphy returning to the blogosphere with a pretty accurate assessment of how Labour lost the middle ground in its last three years of government and what it must do to regain it. As Darren puts it:

Even if Gordon had been the best communicator and the greatest debater in 2010, Labour would still have lost. We didn’t lose in the four weeks of the campaign but in the three years where we abandoned the middle ground, all but repudiated our record and resorted to a self-defeating ‘core vote strategy’..... Labour can only win by becoming a national party again, regaining support in the Midlands and the South of England, challenging ourselves to address and adopt difficult but necessary policy positions outside our comfort zone, with appeal beyond our core vote. We can not win if we simply become a party that complains about cuts or campaigns on single issues.

We can not win if we just keep telling ourselves that we are morally right and the public got it wrong. We have to shake ourselves out of the mistaken belief that this coalition will simply collapse and the public will then return to us because we are the ‘progressives’. We can not win if we continue to appear to be enthusiastic for equality but antagonistic to aspiration; angry about unemployment but unenthusiastic about enterprise; if we act like cheerleaders for public spending but remain silent on value for public money; or if we appear to understand everything about the need for constitutional change but have no idea why anyone would want a conservatory.

Equality and aspiration; social justice and entrepreneurialism; the public service ethos and public service reform; a living wage and middle income Britain. We do not have to choose between any of these. In fact, we have to choose to embrace all of them and more. We have to be led with a radical edge and led to the middle ground.

..... To win we need a leader who really does challenge the party to change. Not in a series of deliberate confrontations for their own sake but with a determination to make the changes we need to keep in touch with and lead public opinion. We need someone with the leadership skills and popular appeal capable of reassembling the winning coalition which delivered victories in 1997, 2001 and 2005.

Myths about a progressive coalition

I understand why David Blunkett and John Reid believe that it is not in Labour's interests to enter a 'progressive coalition' with the Liberal Democrats and others. And it may be that such an arrangement does not emerge.

However, there are several myths about such a government which should be scotched from the start.

* It would not last as its majority would be precarious. In fact, there is no more reason why it would not last than there would be for a government with a small majority. With an understanding with other parties, there would need to be discussions before key votes. But that happens with contentious legislation and unruly backbenchers, as with the 2005 schools legislation. Given that there are 336 MPs who are not Tories, this need not be the case. With political reform and other issues, there would be every reason for minor parties to support the government. In fact, a Con-Lib Dem coalition would also be at risk to the vagaries of its backbenchers.

* The Tories won the election. No they didn't. If they had done so under their cherished First Past the Post system, David Cameron would be in No 10 now.

* The Liberal Democrats are being duplicitous for talking to Labour. This is pompous rot from the Tory press. In any coalition discussions, parties always talk to all potential partners. The voters gave us a hung parliament. They left the Lib Dems with the balance of power, not the Tories with an overall majority. The Lib Dems are sensibly keeping their options open.

* A Lab-Lib Dem coalition would be less legitimate than a Tory minority government. Really? One has 52% of the votes, the other 36%.

* The SNP would have to be part of any deal. No they wouldn't. With 13 Northern Irish MPs, there would be a total of 328 MPs with a 323 winning post. In addition, Plaid Cymru have three seats and the Greens one.

* The markets are reacting terribly to all this. Yesterday we were promised a stock market crash, and there was a huge surge because of Europe. Today, there was the inevitable correction but Sterling has risen against the Euro.

* It is a betrayal of the manifesto not to have a referendum on AV. Since the referendum was intended as a half-way house towards AV and it is also a half-way house towards STV, it is hard to sustain this argument unless you are a died-in-the-wool FPTPer. But it would be sensible to put both AV and a more proportional alternative to a referendum.

The opportunity of the new politics

The Tories' obsession with party interest looked like it trumped their supposed concern for the national interest. Their unwillingness to cede any ground on electoral reform until tonight's grudging concession on the Alternative Vote suggested that their shrill concerns about the economy amount to nought. Instead they assumed that the Liberal Democrats would be bullied into doing a deal on their terms, where Cameron failed to win over sufficient voters through such an approach. Now they know otherwise, and their offer may be too little too late.

Gordon Brown's brave decision to stand down as leader is right both for the Labour Party and the country. It offers a chance of an alternative government. As I said here on Friday, the 320 votes that it would generally command (including 5 Northern Ireland MPs) means that it would only require the support of one of the DUP, SNP or PC to have a Commons majority given the absence of Sinn Fein and the neutrality of the Speaker.

It is important, however, that any new Government has a clear but minimalist agenda, which reflects the best of both parties' policies. It should certainly prioritise economic stability, with a clear timetable for the savings needed, and political reform, with the Additional Member System for Westminster elections a sensible compromise for a referendum. Labour's NHS guarantees should not be traded, and there must be a rigorous approach to welfare reform. On education, the pupil premium in education is a good idea, but it must be funded, and there should be renewed enthusiasm for academies. However, higher tuition fees for universities will be necessary, despite the Lib Dems misleading pitch to student voters. Where possible, investment in new schools and high-speed railways should continue. Equally, given Labour's losses in the South last week, it is vital that nothing is done to increase income taxes further: there are alternatives like VAT which hit luxuries but not food or children's clothing. A new government may wish to drop ID cards (though as a non-driver, I'd quite like one) but must be wary of losing traditional Labour support on crime or immigration.

A new outward-looking and forward-looking party leader like David Miliband has the chance to revive Labour's fortunes. It is vital that Labour does not choose a leader who has all Brown's faults but none of his virtues. And Gordon had his strengths, particularly on the economy; moreover our results last week were not as bad as many feared, particularly in local government. But equally there is no doubt that his leadership cost us a lot of seats in the South and South West. A new leader with a less statist approach to public services and a more open approach to the public has the chance to reconnect with those voters.

Today's changes offer an opportunity for genuine new politics, even though the odds may still be on a Tory-Lib Dem arrangement. Whether the opportunity succeeds will depend as much on whether the Tories offer a real vote on PR as it will on the ability of Labour to agree the right deal and retain the support of smaller parties through very tough decisions.

Reflections on an odd election

I got some things right when I put on a few pre-election bets with Paddy Power. So I shall collect on Labour winning 251-300 seats at 5/2 and on Labour in Tooting at 11/8 and Harrow West at 4/7 as well as the Greens in Brighton and Lib Dems in Somerton and Frome. But my optimism in some other Labour seats and my expectations of 70-plus Lib Dem seats proved misplaced. Yet the results of the election - still coming in- are fascinating for their variety. I think there are some early lessons.

The biggest one is for David Cameron. His failure to win what should have been a relatively easy victory is not just about strong local opponents: it is as much about the incoherence of a strategy that started presenting itself as Blairism-ultra and morphed into neo-Thatcherist talk about austerity. At the same time, his lieutenants presented potentially attractive policies like 'free schools' without proper costing and vague notions about delivery. If he was confused, the voters were more so. Had he really been studying the Blair election-winning blueprint properly, he would have recognised that coherence, fiscal discipline and consistency were its hallmarks from 1994 to 1997. And there are five other observations after last night.

1. Clearly, the returning officers in some areas need to get their act together. If someone has arrived at the polling station in good time, they should be allowed to vote, even if it means locking them into the station until polling is finished. Denying people a vote in such circumstances is outrageous.

2. Labour needs to study certain seats where its vote held up, including not just the obvious places like Birmingham Edgbaston, Westminster North or Islington South, but also places like Mitcham and Morden, where Siobhain McDonagh has turned a seat only won from the Tories in 1997 into a rock-solid Labour seat. The swing to the Tories there was a mere 0.4%. This suggests that a stronger campaign elsewhere could have stemmed more losses.

3. The Liberal Democrats would probably have held more of their seats and gained others had Nick Clegg not been so sanctimonious about tactical voting. In places like Wells and Somerton and Frome it was tactical voting that won it for the Lib Dems. Equally, had they not pretended they could win in some other Lab-Con marginal seats the Tories would have been in a worse position. Clegg would be in a stronger bargaining position in such circumstances.

4. It was a bad night for independents. I must confess this was a bit of a surprise. I have no time for Esther Rantzen but I expected her to do rather better than she did. Perhaps what she lacked and Martin Bell did not (though you wouldn't know it) is that Bell won with the help of some very efficient party organisers loaned to him for the occasion.

5. Northern Ireland rejected David Cameron. Sylvia Hermon won handsomely. Sir Reg Empey failed to win in his own constituency. Peter Robinson aside, the DUP held their seats, and many are angry about Cameron's batty decision to big up the official Unionists. The SDLP and Hermon vote with Labour. And the Alliance Party which took Robinson's seat are Lib-Dem allies. It is also worth remembering that Sinn Fein's potty refusal to take their four seats means that the winning post is actually 324. If Clegg can't do a deal on electoral reform with Cameron, Labour could govern with Lib Dem and NI party support.

What happens now remains to be seen. I've always thought Clegg would prefer to do a deal with the Tories before he dealt with Labour, even though the outgoing Prime Minister has the right to try to form a government first when the opposition has failed to win an overall majority. Cameron can only get it if he offers a referendum on electoral reform - I suspect he might do so, while allowing his MPs to campaign against as with Wilson's EEC referendum in the seventies. But the arithmetic still presents an alternative that could have a working majority.

Cartoon manifesto

This is a great sales pitch, and there is plenty of meat in the new Labour manifesto itself.