Under review

I have blogged on the PM's post-18 education review for the Sutton Trust and Public Finance.

It was 16 months before the 1997 election and Conservative education secretary Gillian Shephard had a problem. It was a time of austerity. University intakes were growing rapidly. New ways had to be found to fund higher education that didn’t simply involve the taxpayer.

So she approached David Blunkett, her Labour shadow for whom I then worked to support her in setting up a review – with explicit backing from Don Foster for the Liberal Democrats – under the late Ron Dearing. The review would report after the general election and would be wide-ranging in its outlook. But it is remembered for one thing: it led to the introduction by the new Labour government of tuition fees paid by students (then opposed by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats).

In 1998, the decision was also taken to convert all maintenance grants to loans (some had already been converted), but to means-test fees. Those who faced new fees also got higher interest-free loans repaid after graduation for those earning over £10,000 a year.

Since the Dearing review, we have had other big changes to the system. In 2006, fees were increased to a maximum of £3000 – after a big argument in the Labour Party against variable fees that led to the plans almost being defeated – and income contingent loans were explicitly available for fees. By then, Scotland had already abandoned fees. Means-tested maintenance grants were reintroduced and the repayment threshold was raised to £15,000.

Peter Mandelson set up the Browne Review in 2009, which reported to the coalition government after the 2010 election. It led to a £9000 fee maximum and no more variability in reality than the 2006 reforms despite the government saying it expected many students to pay just £6000. Repayments now started at £21,000 – a hugely expensive concession to the Liberal Democrats that ensured that many loans would never be repaid – and a real rate of interest was introduced that would only start to bite when inflation picked up more recently. Tinkering since then has seen maintenance grants scrapped and – at a cost of £3 billion a year – the barely noticed raising of the threshold to £25,000.

That’s the background to the latest review announced by Theresa May on Monday. But the background also includes rising student numbers – touching the 50% of young adults entering higher education by age 30 target set by Tony Blair in 1999 – and some narrowing of the access gap between disadvantaged and better off students. Perhaps more importantly, the political backdrop includes a popular pledge by Jeremy Corbyn to scrap fees that undoubtedly helped win seats like Canterbury and Reading East for Labour at last year’s election. So rather than seeking cross-party consensus, this review is more about neutralising a perceived party disadvantage.

But the confused history of fees is reflected in the confused nature of the review. A bizarre flurry of weekend briefing – propped up by the Secretary of State in his first TV interview on Marr – suggested that a key outcome of the review might be universities charging more for courses in expensive STEM subjects and less in humanities. Given the importance of STEM subjects to the economy this could perversely discourage students from doing those subjects and cold harm social mobility by encouraging poorer students to take cheaper courses. One can only assume its intention was to distract attention from reports that fees would fall to £6,000 a year, which ministers feared would raise expectations that might not be realised.

And the review has not exactly had an auspicious start. It is good that it is looking at the too often overlooked FE sector and at the paucity of apprenticeship options – barely 10,000 young people a year start higher or degree apprenticeships compared with 330,000 freshers at university – but it will be vital that the review panel feels able to take a hard look at the whole funding system and the interaction between different levers.

Modelling by London Economics for the Sutton Trust in November showed that it would cost about £1 billion to restore maintenance grants. It was a mistake to remove them, even if students got higher loans, and this should be the first priority for the panel. Then if the committee wants to look at fees and variability, they should be varied according to family income not the cost of the course. A model that would reduce average fees to £3,500 a year could – with restored maintenance grants – reduce debts for the 40% poorest students from over £50,000 to £12,700 and increase the proportion of loans repaid from 55% to 65%. The total cost of this would be up to £3 billion – about the same as the threshold change announced last October. Less radical means testing could cost less. There is also a need to get better value from the £800 million a year that universities spend on access and outreach in England, building a reliable evidence base on what works. But the priority should be leveraging this existing money to achieve better outcomes for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, rather than to risk stalling progress with cuts.

And then the review should take a long hard look at what’s on offer for those who go don’t go to university. For all the words about apprenticeships, the brutal reality is that less than a third of those taking higher apprenticeships are aged under 25 (let along being 18 or 19). Most apprenticeships for young people are limited level 2 programmes with few career prospects and patchy progression to higher levels. If anything, the apprenticeships levy is reinforcing a bias towards adults doing higher apprenticeships as the levy lacks the levers to prevent it being used simply to upskill existing staff. Addressing that issue and the quality of technical and paraprofessional education in colleges is as important to social mobility as changing the funding of higher education.

This week’s review may have had a pretty inauspicious start. But as the panel deliberates over the next year they have the chance to make a real difference to social mobility – if they get their priorities right.

Social mobility after Milburn

I've blogged at the Sutton Trust on the aftermath of Alan Milburn's weekend resignation as Social Mobility tsar

Anyone who thought Alan Milburn would go quietly underestimated the doughty champion of social mobility who first gained the ‘tsar’ role through his political nemesis Gordon Brown. Milburn brought his characteristic energy to publicising the challenge under Brown, and was appointed to head the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission in 2012 by the coalition. Last weekend he showed the same energy and determination in the manner of his going.

But despite the fanfare of last week’s State of the Nation report – where the Commission again adapted a model developed by the Sutton Trust in our pioneering Mobility Map – the truth is that the Commission has faced a gradual emasculation since the 2015 election.

It first lost its child poverty role. Then the Scots bailed out. Commissioners who left weren’t replaced so that by last weekend, there were only four left to resign. And them, as Fraser Nelson noted at the Spectator, Milburn was effectively sidelined. His term came to an end in the summer and he wasn’t reappointed but three was no agreement on who should replace him. With characteristic chutzpah, Milburn delivered his final State of the Nation and persuaded his deputy, Gillian Shephard and the other remaining commissioners to resign with great fanfare through the Sunday papers.

Clearly Downing Street was caught off guard by the weekend’s events. But that didn’t stop some of its supporters getting their revenge across three pages of Monday’s Daily Mail ridiculing the need for social mobility and attacking the former tsar personally. However, whatever the process issues that preceded Milburn’s departure, it still raises critical questions about the future of social mobility policy under the current government.

As education secretary, Justine Greening is an undoubted true believer in the power of social mobility. Like an increasing number of her colleagues she comes from a modest comprehensive educated background and regularly reminds audiences of how the opportunities that are essential to social mobility helped her to succeed – as well as the inherent challenges in the process. We were also eagerly awaiting a social mobility plan from her department which will surely have been given extra scrutiny by No 10 after the weekend’s maelstrom.

Theresa May chose social mobility as her signature domestic issue in her first statement as Prime Minister outside no. 10 and she gave it policy flesh in her first speech on the issue. Unfortunately, the only policy for which the speech will be remembered was an attempt to extend grammar schools – a policy backed by very limited evidence that it could effect significant change. The speech also promised fewer restrictions on faith schools, threatened sanctions on private schools if they didn’t offer more help to state schools or poorer pupils, and sought to get more universities involved in the day to day running of schools.

This year’s general election – after which May no longer commanded a Commons majority – put paid to much of that agenda. Voluntary independent state school partnerships and a willingness by grammar schools more actively to recruit disadvantaged pupils may be a small but welcome legacy. But the conclusion many observers made after the weekend is that the all-consuming demands of Brexit have made it impossible to make serious progress on social mobility.

That is not entirely fair. Greening’s Opportunity Areas are a serious attempt to bring coordinated action to the areas identified by the Social Mobility Commission as having particularly poor social mobility, including places beyond the traditional inner city focus of such programmes. There have of course been many such place-based initiatives in the past – education action zones, Excellence in Cities, London Challenge (and other less successful challenge programmes) – and only the London Challenge delivered (or, some academics would say, coincided with) significant improvement.

The pupil premium remains an important support for schools working with disadvantaged pupils and the Education Endowment Foundation continues to test evidence on an endowment originally provided by Michael Gove. There have also been moves in the cabinet office to encourage firms to do more for social mobility.

However, what is missing – and Milburn highlighted this weekend – is a coherent approach across government. Theresa May rightly saw lack of opportunity as the cri de coeur of many who supported Brexit – and the mobility maps link closely to their votes. That insight needs to be reaffirmed even as the negotiations continue with Brussels.

The weekend events should there be seen an opportunity. It is a chance to revitalise the Social Mobility Commission and get it working effectively with those – like the Sutton Trust – already championing this cause through programmes and research. But it is also the chance to have a truly radical social mobility plan that takes on vested interests to prioritise policies that can make a real difference – it remains to be seen whether the much anticipated action plan from the DFE fits the bill.

Properly resourced nursery education for disadvantaged children (not an add on to a childcare strategy). The best teachers in schools where poorer pupils go. Fair admissions to all secondary schools. Effective use of the pupil premium, with proper support for disadvantaged pupils including high attainers and support for enrichment and activities that improve life skills. Fairer access to university with much better outreach and contextual admissions. A choice of good apprenticeships, especially at advanced and higher level for young people. And a fairer labour market, including the end to unpaid internships.

That’s the sort of radical but practical programme that could start to shift the dial on social mobility. But it requires real passion and commitment to the issue from the whole government and wider society to make it happen.

Lost in the grammars debate

I've blogged at the Sutton Trust website on the grammar schools debate

It was just three months before Tony Blair’s historic victory in 1997. Ben Chapman was fighting as the Labour candidate in the Wirral South by-election. And David Blunkett, the shadow education secretary, was visiting the Wirral County Grammar School. While he had a cup of tea with the headteacher, the late Eric Forth, then the schools minister, protested outside that Labour was no friend of grammars.

But, by then the opposition had decided to park the issue of grammar schools if it got into government. As Blunkett's special adviser, I helped devise the 1998 legislation that is now reported daily as the ‘ban’ on new grammar schools. I briefed its details to the media ahead of that Wirral visit. But ironically, while it did indeed stop new academic selection, the legislation also made it hard to close existing grammars without parental consent. And that was as much its primary purpose. Neither Blair nor Blunkett wanted to be distracted from their wider plans to improve education by a huge debate about the remaining 166 grammar schools. (A few have since merged so there are now 163).

Nearly twenty years later, the last few weeks have shown us why. Theresa May’s speech at Downing Street last week may have had four key points to it – including, interestingly, a plan to require private schools to justify their charitable status by engaging more fully in state school partnerships – but most of the acres of coverage and debate have focused on ‘plans’ for ‘new grammar schools’.

But there are real dangers in making this the big focus of education policy, let alone the cornerstone of the Government’s drive for social mobility.

The first – and most obvious – reason is that the evidence is pretty thin that grammar schools improve social mobility. In the Green Paper, the Government quotes from a lengthy 2008 Durham University report published by the Sutton Trust. That report looked at GCSE results in existing grammar schools and found that those from poorer backgrounds who are highly able do marginally better than similar pupils in comprehensives.

To quote in full from the report: “We find that pupils eligible for [free school meals] appear to suffer marginally less educational disadvantage if they attend grammar schools. The difference is equivalent to about one-eighth of a GCSE grade; although this is statistically significant, it is certainly not large. It also seems possible that FSM pupils in grammar schools may typically be quite different from FSM pupils as a whole in ways that are not well measured, so we should be cautious about interpreting this as a strong endorsement of grammar schools.”[i]

At the same time, our more recent reports from 2013 showed that less than 3% of grammar school pupils come from an FSM background, 13% come from outside the state school system, largely independent preparatory schools. Perhaps more significantly, given the focus of the Prime Minister’s speech on those on modest incomes, the Anna Vignoles and IFS research[ii] showed a direct correlation between income and likelihood of grammar entry in each IDACI quintile.

In any case, at a political level, given the strength of opposition on the Conservative benches, there is no guarantee the 1998 legislation can be overturned in the Commons, let alone the Lords, where an alliance of crossbenchers, Labour and LibDems, as well as sceptical Tories could defeat it. Where Tony Blair could turn to the Conservatives when he faced a much larger rebellion over his 2006 education reforms, in the Commons, May can only count on the DUP, a single UKIP MP and hope that the SNP see this as a solely English matter.

Even if the government passes all its legislative hurdles, the likelihood is that the ‘dash’ for grammars, as the Sunday Times had it at the weekend, will be confined to existing grammar school areas. In reality, the number of grammar school pupils has steadily increased from 129,000 to 163,000 since 1997, or from 4.0 to 5.2% of all pupils. Adding new school buildings in those areas, without pretending they are satellite schools, and a few within their catchments in outer London, will hardly match the rhetoric of recent days. There is not much evidence of demand elsewhere.

Interestingly, within the hastily produced ‘Green Paper’ this week, there was one idea[iii] that could allow a practical way forward for highly able pupils – organising support hubs for the highly able within multi-academy trusts, composed of comprehensive schools. MATs already pool resources for A-level classes, and such a model could offer a way to boost support for able students without selection at 11 and with all the flexibility that a MAT offers.

Either way, it is important that the Government doesn’t lose sight of the needs of the highly able in comprehensives. Becky Allen’s Missing Talent research for the Trust is widely quoted by ministers, and shows that between the ages of 11 and 16, a third of working class boys who are in the top tenth at Key Stage 2 are outside the top quarter by the time they get to do their GCSEs. As the selection debate grips Westminster and Whitehall, no legislation is required to ensure they get a fair deal, just action in the name of social mobility.

[i] See pages 218-219; [ii] See page 38; [iii] See page 27

Targetless Standards

The Home Secretary, Theresa May, made great virtue of her plans to scrap policing targets yesterday. No longer would the police have to answer 999 calls quickly, or bother themselves with such trivia as patrolling on the beat or their public reputation. Instead, they should just focus on bringing down the crime rate. Her colleague, Andrew Lansley had a similar outlook a few weeks ago as he consigned an already long limit on A&E waits of no more than four hours to history, and abandoned one of the most successful public sector reforms of Labour's years, the 18 week waiting time target. Instead consultants and trusts could pretty much decide for themselves whether to be bothered about patients suffering on trolleys or facing extra months in agony awaiting treatment.

Both moves will lead to a serious decline not only in the quality of the police or health services, but particularly in the rights of victims of crime and patients. A shared insight of the Thatcher/Major and Blair/Brown years was in the importance of customers of public services and their rights, and a recognition that producer or professional interests did not always know best. The most important change Labour introduced was in delivering minimum standards (in schools, expectations of minimum GCSE or test results delivered huge improvements in the most disadvantaged areas). Now the Coalition in a zealous attack on an admittedly excessively target-driven culture has thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

In one sense, this could be said to be understandable, at least in the police. By removing public expectations, the police can be 'freed' to concentrate on other matters. Yet in saying this, May seems profoundly to misunderstand the nature of the relationship between police and public. Most crime has fallen significantly in recent years (though some violent crimes are up) so the expectation that the police treat victims and the public better has not been at the expense of this core task. But it is also the case that the police are more than crime-fighters: their presence and that of community support officers makes people feel safer, particularly at night; their willingness to respond reassuringly to victims is as important in some crimes, like burglary, as the knowledge that the criminals will be caught. This has particularly been true in community policing. What these targets said is that the police recognise that they are funded by taxpayers, and are not a law unto themselves. Gene Hunt was being consigned to the past.

Andrew Lansley seems equally in thrall to professional interests. Despite polling clearly showing that waiting times are very important to patients, he is abandoning the maximum waits and allowing consultants to adopt a 'doctor knows best' attitude that was beginning to be challenged by the success of the targets. The point is not that most medical professionals don't believe they put patients interests first; it is that the default position of too many in the medical profession is to ignore what patients say they want. Without minimum standards, patients' concerns can too often be ignored. And the frustration and anger that follows will not be good for their health - or the NHS.

So, why is Labour not making more of such profoundly regressive steps? One reason is the preference of too many leadership contenders for attacking a record they should celebrate more - or at least offer a balanced assessment. Having failed to defend our record over the last few years, it is also harder to revive it now. But the bigger reason is the failure of the party to level with voters about where it would cut and what it would protect before the election (of course the other parties blatantly lied to voters but they are now in government and getting away with their dodgy reinvention of history). Had Labour followed Alistair Darling's advice, it would be in a stronger position to challenge those policies that will harm patients, parents or victims. But even those weaknesses should not prevent the party from trying harder: unless it does so now, history will have been rewritten by the coalition. And when the 8 hour trolley waits return, and the delayed 999 responses soar, the reasons will be lost in the mists of time.

Hopi Sen has a valuable follow-up to this post here.

The real reformers

Irwin Stelzer, the American commentator who is close to Rupert Murdoch, has a fascinating piece in this morning's Daily Telegraph. Stelzer has always been fairly matey with Gordon Brown, but has blown hot and cold of late, and retains his scepticism in this piece about his tax policy. However, his judgment that the welfare and health reforms being introduced by James Purnell and Alan Johnson are radical will send shivers down Conservative spines, not least because they stand in such marked contrast to David Cameron's approach of closing down serious discussion on both issues.

Stelzer also notes that Ed Balls has raised the rhetoric against 'excuses' in education, though it is actually through continuing with academies and forcing change on schools that gain below-par GCSEs that the children's secretary is making a real difference. Unlike Johnson and Purnell, Balls has in Michael Gove a rare Tory opponent, whose understanding of his brief and reforming instincts (even if one doesn't always agree with his solutions) stand in marked contrast to the vacuous Theresa May at welfare and the BMA lobbyist Andrew Lansley at health.

With the recession, it would be tempting for Gordon Brown to ignore the importance of reform in these areas. But if the recovery is to be successful, we need to improve access to health and patients' choices, we need to get long term unemployed people back to work and we need better school results. After some initial suggestions that he was backtracking on the agenda initiated by Tony Blair, there are many encouraging signs that the Prime Minister is keen to pursue a reform agenda. He must continue to find the time to devote to it in these difficult economic times.