Gove is right to tackle academy critics, but he needs to take his case to the parents

When I saw the letter from David Lammy and others, including the general secretary of the NUT, criticising DFE plans to convert Downhills Primary school, Lammy's old school, into an academy, I knew it would just be a matter of time before the whole incident formed the basis of a speech by the Education Secretary Michael Gove. It seemed like a gold-plated gift to Gove, delivered just in time for Christmas, and the Education Secretary has wasted no time opening it and showing it to all his friends.

In a speech today at Haberdashers' Askes Academy in South London, Gove highlights the protest using a splendid headline from the Hornsey Journal, ‘Campaigners: Hands off our failing school.’ Downhills has become a cause celebre from the critics of academies, who think it wrong that underperforming schools  should be forced to become academies.

In his letter to the Guardian, Lammy et al wrote:

...the secretary of state for education has become the playground bully, using draconian legal powers to force schools into academy status, removing democratically elected governing bodies, circumventing the important role of local education authorities and creating more opportunities for those in the private sector to take over England's schools.It is clear that the Haringey schools mentioned in your article and, we understand, many more around the country are being used to promote the government's academy agenda. Department for Education officials are instilling fear in schools and putting them under intense pressure to convert voluntarily rather than face the stigma of being forced to become academies run by external sponsors as so-called failing schools. This use by Michael Gove of legal powers, departmental staff and resources to pursue a political agenda has nothing to do with school improvement and must cease forthwith. Decisions about schools are best made by people from the communities they serve. This undemocratic programme is no more than political dogma and has nothing to do with localism or communities.
 
Gove uses today's speech to hit back, citing the work of Tony Blair and Andrew Adonis, who battled to convert failing secondaries, as well as the success of CTCs to justify his extension of the Academies programme. He tells us that there are now over 1500 academies, though only 335 are led by sponsors. And the truth is that, while it may be a legitimate criticism to question the DFE resources spent on persuading outstanding schools to take a £25k cheque to pursue the legal formalities needed to convert to academy status, rather than simply letting them get on with it, the drive to replace failing primary schools with sponsored academies is genuinely an extension of the Blair programme, and one that is needed.

There is a hard core of primary schools that have remained stubbornly below par for years, and they need to be given a new start, sponsored by a successful school, an established sponsor or as part of a trust arrangement. In his speech, Gove says there are more than 1,000 primaries - 1 in 18 - where fewer than 40 per cent of pupils reach Level 4 in reading, writing and mathematics. The status quo is not enough for them. Nor, frankly, is it good enough to expect 'other solutions' to be tried before moving to academy status if the problems are that entrenched.  

Whether Downhills is still among the worst is less clear. Results from 2011 show that Downhills is no longerbelow the Government's floor target for Level 4 English and Maths any more: it had some pretty miserable results in 2008 and 2009, participated in the 2010 boycott, but got just above the target at 61% last year - the floor is 60%. Progress in the latest Ofsted monitoring inspection, after a dismal report last January, suggests progress is now satisfactory, though it suggests a lot still to be done. It is a school that clearly needs a strong drive forward - but its pupils would benefit from some political agreement about its future rather than being the pawns in this ideological battle.

Yet Gove's arguments would be a lot stronger if he were able to distinguish in his own mind between the genuinely hard graft required to convert failing schools to academy status - and the scars on his back in this case are mere scratches compared to those endured by Adonis and DFES officials in the early 2000s - and the legal niceties needed to enable others to do so. I think it is great that good schools have been enabled to convert: I just feel that they could have been expected to do more as academies, given the financial incentive provided - many schools gained £300-£500k in the process. 

Gove admits in his speech that only 18 out of 1194 converters are sponsoring other academies (and two of those started doing so under Ed Balls), though around 400 participate in trusts and chains. By conflating the figures for sponsor-led and converter academies, he is undermining his own strong case for action in the failing primaries. And by failing to pursue his own expectation that outstanding converters would significantly help weaker schools, he has played a weak hand in exploiting any potential leverage from the conversions.

In such battles, the education secretary needs to turn on one of his better traits: his charm. Gove should not be making his case to the converted at the brilliant Haberdashers' Academy. He should meet with Lammy and be ready to argue his case to parents of children at schools like Downhills. Since the DFE is rather short of the sponsors it needs for all its target primaries, a process of engagement, where governors and parents get the chance to meet sponsors, many of whom will be other school heads, could go a long way to separate the ideologues from those they have swayed.

All that said, this is now a good time for Labour's Shadow Education Secretary, Stephen Twigg to take a strong stand on academies. On failing primaries, there should be no quibbles from the two Eds. Twigg should be ready to argue the case for primary academies to play a central role in reducing school failure, and to act as a persuader with recalcitrant Labour councils where there is an issue. This is not to say that he should back every imposition unquestioningly but that where it is clear that academy status is best he should work to prevent it becoming a party political football.

Michael Gove's speech today makes many of the right arguments. He now needs to find ways to make that case directly to the parents and teachers in the primary and secondary schools whose pupils still desperately need a new start, and to engage them in finding the right academy-based solutions. He deserves backing in making the case. But if he is to win this battle, he must also recognise that this has to be his top priority for schools reform in the coming years.

Gove goes back to basics

Michael Gove's speech at the National College conference today looks like being a welcome refocusing of academies policy where it really matters. By promising scores of new primary and secondary sponsor-led academies, he is focusing more effort on the schools in disadvantaged areas that need the help most. Liz Sidwell's work as Schools Commissioner is clearly starting to bear fruit and the many frustrated academy sponsors will be pleased that the core of the programme is finally to be re-energised.

Accompanying the academies announcement is a hugely ambitious - very brave, minister, as Sir Humphrey would have set - floor target of 50% of pupils in every secondary school or academy gaining five good GCSEs including English and Maths. I welcome the great importance that Gove gives to floor targets, though ambition is only half the battle.

And it is on delivery that there will be doubts. Of course, the 2015 target results will not be known before the next election, though Gove has set himself the challenging task of all secondary schools reaching 40% by 2013, another 407 schools (or perhaps 250 after this year's exams). Nobody is a greater fan of floor targets than I am, but one reason they succeeded was because they were challenging but realistic: if too many schools don't hit these targets, it will be seen as Gove's failure. The National Leaders of Education who will be charged with delivering these ambitions will have their work cut out for them. The primary goals seem more realistic: converting the worst 200 primaries to sponsored academies next year and putting another 500 on a three year warning to improve or be converted.

Gove's briefers sneer at the levels of progress achieved under Labour. Just remember that in 1997, after 18 years of Conservative government, 50% of secondary schools - 1600 schools - did not have 30% of their pupils gaining the GCSE goal. Today fewer than 100 are in that category. The reason we made such good progress with floor targets, first introduced in 2000, was because they were ambitious but staged. Last year, Gove declared 35% to be the new target now that virtually all schools had reached 30%. That would have been a reasonable 2012 goal. Now schools which had no date for their 35% target are told that in the 2013 GCSEs they must reach 40%. A school typically needs two years to work with a GCSE cohort to achieve such goals, and adjust their curriculum and teaching. Schools should have been warned of the 2013 target before they developed their 2011-13 GCSE programmes and options.

One reason Mossbourne, which Gove cites with some justice, has been so successful is that it was able to start with a completely new intake, and mould them with everything from the excellent Year 7 mini-school environment through the disciplined teaching and learning environment admirably created by Michael Wilshaw. The danger is the too rapid moving of the goalposts will create more frustration than ambition, though it is fair also to say that there are a growing number of schools that have shown the capacity for rapid progress.

But there's a related problem. There is clearly a capacity issue in the creation of academies. The sneering briefer was at it elsewhere in the Guardian, saying that 89 sponsor-led schools over two years - by 2012 - (let's remember) was more than Labour created between 2000 and 2008. Come off it. Between 2008 and 2010, Labour was responsible for the opening of nearly 200 secondary or all-through academies, and a lot of the hard graft enabling such progress was done by Andrew Adonis before then. And before 2008, sponsors had to provide money not just support. Labour created the environment for Gove to operate in. Yet between 2010 and 2012, just 89 new sponsor-led secondary academies are apparently promised while around 200 schools may be declared 'failing' on the new 40% target in 2013. The primary goals are rightly ambitious; I wonder if the secondary promise is enough to deal with the fallout from the new targets.

The truth is that Gove did take his eye off the ball for too long, diverting huge resources in the DFE to helping outstanding schools convert, an entirely reasonable process that could be achieved in most cases simply with the £25,000 grant provided to them. Legal firms charge around £15,000 to complete the process. Instead of maintaining the pace in deprived areas, the focus was on a numbers game rather than tackling the hard cases. Today's Financial Times story by Chris Cook, on which Gove came so badly unstuck on Today, suggests that the government got its financial sums wrong - this reflects the absurd refusal by officials to road test their figures in real situations, something that seriously endangers moves to any national funding formula. The promise that the outstanding academies would have to help weaker schools is not being treated seriously either, unless the schools themselves are keen for it to happen.

Thankfully, this speech suggests that the academies programme is starting to move back on track. Let's hope that Gove's departmental resources are put fully behind these ambitious goals too, rather than duplicating the efforts of well remunerated lawyers.

This piece was updated on 16 June to reflect additional reported details. It also appears at the Public Finance blog.

Avoiding poverty of ambition

True to form, the National Union of Teachers has hit out at government plans to help 638 schools to set their sights at 30% or above of their pupils gaining five good GCSEs including English and Maths. The NUT attacked a similar move in 2000 by David Blunkett to get all schools above 20% and then 25% in any subject (virtually all schools have met that goal). The government has rightly divided the schools into those likely to meet the goal soon, those with a good chance of doing so, and those where radical action is needed. This, to the NUT, is a process of vilification.

The NUT points out that some if the schools are rated 'good' by Ofsted. And they get good 'value-added scores'. But neither of these measures should be enough on their own. When Ofsted rates a school good or satisfactory, it means that it has the capacity to make good progress; it is unlikely that many of those needing radical action fall into this category. Indeed the government's sub-division of the 638 recognises that some have such capacity: the target is for 2011 not the 2007 figures available today.

The NUT are onto something about contextualised value added (CVA, the government's preferred value-added measure), but not the point they think. CVA is a hugely complex exercise in excuse-making which makes allowance for dozens of social factors. By avoiding any minimum standard of success, it has allowed schools to avoid addressing the need for greater ambition. It does not, for example, give any extra credit to schools for its grades in English and Maths, so it is not surprising there is less alignment than their should be.

The government and Ofsted should ensure greater alignment, and CVA should be changed to credit good English and Maths GCSEs properly. But no student is going to go to an employer with a couple of GCSEs demanding a job on the grounds that his or her school has a decent CVA score. Benchmarks like this - or floor targets - have been the unsung educational success story of this government. Ministers must stick to their guns.

Why the government has picked the right target

Sir Simon Jenkins tells us that the plan to improve 638 secondary schools where fewer than 30% of pupils get five decent GCSEs is 'another failed-schools initiative' which confirms that "state education has grown worse in the last decade." Deborah Orr believes that the "threatened closure of hundreds of failing secondary schools [is] confirming that standards are not, in fact, rising like angels."

In fact, the reason why this programme will work - at least for the majority of the schools on the list - is because standards have risen in so many schools over the last ten years using a similar approach. And they have done so by combining the rigour of individual targets for pupils with the pressure of floor targets for schools not unlike that confirmed yesterday. Why else were half of schools - 1610 - at the below 30% level ten years ago, but only a fifth in that position today?

Moreover, the programme relies heavily on academies - which are already working in our inner cities; they always welcome informed commentators for a visit - and the leadership elements that have improved inner London standards through the London Challenge. Within schools, there is a lot of evidence that both leadership and teaching standards are significantly than they were ten or fifteen years ago (and that owes much to inspection, testing and tables introduced by the Conservatives as well as Labour's more targeted approaches). The idea that it is unreasonable to expect an inner city school to reach a target such as this is negated by the many that already do so, including a majority of secondary modern schools.

But because the newspapers largely ignore what has worked well - and pundits too rarely visit inner city schools - this is rarely reported. Of course, there are aspects of the system where there is still more to do - and many schools that have benefited from significant revenue improvements do need the government's school building programme to progress beyond the inner cities rather more quickly.

So I have some sympathy with Alice Miles on this point. But I have rather less with her example of a local secondary school looking a bit tatty being an indictment of the Labour government. Perhaps the head forgot to mention to her that like every secondary school he now has a £113,000 a year devolved capital budget to spend largely as he and his governors choose, as well as a significantly higher devolution of revenue funds; the devolved capital budget was precisely £0 when the Tories were in power.

Labour is getting it right on key issues

Today's Sunday Telegraph poll may confirm the dismal findings of earlier recent polls. But within today's Sunday papers, there is also a very clear sign that the government is getting it right on three of the most important policy areas.

First, the government is right to want to have the precautionary maximum 42-day detention period. Jacqui Smith gave a characteristically fluent account of the measure this morning. But its best defence comes from Matthew D'Ancona in the Sunday Telegraph. And the measure is supported by a majority of the public.

Second, Alan Johnson delivers a cracking case for his plans for more extensive GP surgeries and polyclinics in the Observer. The idea that it is worse for patients to be able to get an X-Ray or ECG on site, or to get minor injuries dealt with locally rather than hanging about for four hours in A&E, is such common sense that once delivered, patients will wonder what the fuss was about.

And third, the Government's plan to push for a rapid turnaround of underperforming schools with the support of successful heads and a big extension of Academies is exactly what is neededd for such schools. To those who say 'the government should have done this sooner', ministers can point to the fact that where one in two schools used to get 30% or fewer five good GCSEs, the figure is now one in five. But one reason why this policy is superior is its use of floor targets, one of the most successful policies of the last ten years, accompanied by structural reform.

What these three policies also have in common is that they are opposed by the Conservatives. Aside from Lord Tebbit and Ann Widdecombe, the 42 days are publicly opposed by the party. Tory health policy is being shamefully written by the BMA. And on education, the Tories would scrap targets, even when they are so patently a lever for improvement - and for pushing the sort of structural reform with which, at least, they share Labour's ambition.

The more the government can show the sense of purpose evident today, the more likely it is that they can recover their poll position. If, in the process, the bareness of Cameron's policy cupboard is also exposed, that would be no bad thing.

Fighting failure

I have the cover feature in this week's Public Finance magazine about the government's plans to tackle low-attaining schools, and how a battle over failing schools that had begun in 1996 has been rejoined by the Conservatives. You can read the piece here.

The good and the bad

Why is it that whenever anybody makes the fairly obvious point that bad teachers should be removed from the classroom - if, after plenty of support, they simply can't hack it - we're told that this is "demoralising" for teachers? Since those who make this point, as Sir Cyril Taylor, chairman of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, does today, also go out of their way to praise the competence of the majority of their colleagues, it cannot be because they think their critics are anti-teachers per se. And surely it is rather more demoralising for the majority of good teachers and heads to have to cover for their incompetent colleagues until they are replaced?

Gordon's targets

I have a piece in today's Independent, arguing that Gordon Brown was right to set tough targets last week, but setting out some of the things he and Ed Balls need to do to meet them. You can read my article here.

Brown's education promise

Gordon Brown is set to make his first major education speech today. Advance reports suggest two main proposals. The first is to set a new 2013 target that would see schools not getting five good GCSEs including English and Maths having to close, though academies or alternative providers would replace them in many cases before that happened. This is an excellent policy based on solid evidence that it works. Contrary to what Nick Robinson asserted on Today (sound file from 3.20 minutes in) this morning, it doesn't represent a shift from structures to standards, rather it blends standards and structures with the same mix of floor targets and innovation that characterised a successful drive against school failure in Labour's last ten years. Since 1997, Labour has halved the number of schools deemed failing at any one time, and floor targets have seen the proportion of schools where fewer than 25% of pupils get five good GCSEs fell from 613 to 47 last year (and the figure is probably lower still this year). On this new measure, already trailed by Andrew Adonis some weeks ago, there were 1600 schools with fewer than 5 good GCSEs including English and Maths in 1997 - half of all state secondary schools. Today, there are around 700 - fewer than a quarter. The second measure, Brown's boost for apprenticeships, is also welcome, with £15,000 to employers to take on advanced apprentices at 18. But the government, in pushing Diplomas, should ensure that the system doesn't fail to support those who want to join pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship courses from the age of 14, where a work-based route is best for them. At present, education maintenance allowances have served to make these options less attractive. There must be a level playing field.

UPDATE: The full speech, which reads very well, is here.

1pm UPDATE: I was interviewed about the speech together with Gareth Jones, Principal of Geoffrey Chaucer Technology College on the Simon Mayo show on Five Live. The interview should be available to listen again here.

End of the Ridings

There was a sorry inevitability about today's announcement that the Ridings School in Calderdale -once dubbed the worst school in Britain - is finally to close. Despite the temporary improvements brought about by some good head teachers, the school has lacked the conditions necessary for improving a failing school: its greatest problem has been an inability to have a broader intake, partly the result of a selective system but also a reflection of a reputation from which the school has never truly recovered. Eleven years ago, the Ridings was a symbol used by the Conservatives to show they were tough on failing schools - I had to spend a lot of time on the phone to the local Labour council leader making sure they welcomed the intervention rather than attacking it. The politics of addressing school failure has changed a lot since then, though clearly the local NUT remain in a timewarp, imagining that the best solution would be to keep the school open, even as its pupil numbers dwindle and only 4% get five good GCSEs with English and Maths. Today those pupils will benefit if an Academy is established which has the chance to attract a broader intake than the Ridings ever could.

The results season

If August is the month when young people learn their GCSE and A-level results, October has become results season for the government. Yesterday saw the publication of Christine Gilbert's annual report as chief inspector (pdf). Today, the government has published the national levels of achievement at GCSE, while the Public Accounts Committee has issued its latest verdict on academies. To judge by some of the headlines, you might imagine the school system has got worse over recent years. But here are a few interesting things you might have missed.

“But academies are intended to raise educational achievement in deprived areas; lower results compared with secondary schools overall do reflect the circumstances and prior attainment of the pupils. If academies’ performance is adjusted for these factors, then on average it is substantially better than that of secondary schools overall" - Edward Leigh, Tory Chair of the Public Accounts Committee. Press release accompanying PAC report.

"Ofsted’s increased monitoring of schools about which we have concerns, including a number of schools we judged to be satisfactory, is paying off: we are finding that progress in around nine out of 10 of these schools is at least satisfactory. The Annual Report offers some encouragement. Inspections of academies are beginning to confirm a rising trend in effectiveness; there are examples of strong and effective leadership having a positive, and sometimes transformational, impact on pupils’ progress and achievement, often from a low base. Improvements in London schools, especially those in the most challenging circumstances, are outpacing those found nationally; clearly the investment provided by London Challenge is strongly associated with these improvements." - Christine Gilbert, Chief Inspector of Education; annual report p6

The percentage of pupils achieving 5+ A*-C in the 36 Academies has almost doubled since 2001 (the last year of checked data for predecessor schools) from 22.0% in 2001 to 42.2% in 2007. If we include English and mathematics the increase is 10.2 percentage points from 14.0% to 4.2%. Nationally the increase is 11.5 percentage points for 5+ A*-C and 7.4 points for 5+ A*-C including English and mathematics - DCSF Statistical press release SFR 34/2007

Also, Ofsted, which rightly toughened its inspection criteria a couple of years ago, has found 13% of primary and secondary schools to be outstanding, merely a 'slight' increase from 10% last year sniffed the Guardian. Actually, translated across all schools, it means the number of outstanding state secondary schools is up from 320 to 416, the number of outstanding primaries has risen from 1800 to 2340, while the number of inadequate schools has fallen by a quarter.

Defining failure

Today's newspapers have gleefully alighted on the definition of underperformance offered by Andrew Adonis yesterday, as he announced his plans for closer working between the private and state school sectors. Adonis now targets around 800 schools with fewer than 30% five A-C grades including English and Maths in 2006. He is right to do so. But he should also give these figures some context. How many such schools were there in 1997? There were nearly 1300 schools with fewer than 25% of pupils getting five good GCSEs including English and Maths in 1997, and their number had fallen to 500 in 2006. (Of those getting any GCSE, the number with five or fewer had fallen from 616 to 47). And half of secondaries in 1997 - or 1600 schools - were not meeting this new 30% target level. Equally, the number of non-selective schools with 70% or more five good GCSEs has increased from around 83 to 600 between 1997-2006, and the number of schools deemed failing by Ofsted is half its 1998 peak level. That doesn't make the challenge now any less, but it does show rather more progress than Labour's detractors (or its ministers sometimes) are ready to admit. Context matters.