The Country Girl

To see the new production of Clifford Odets' The Country Girl at the Theatre Royal Bath, ahead of a West End run at the Apollo Theatre. Martin Shaw is compelling as Frank Elgin, the faded actor whose alcoholism and self-delusion destroyed a promising career, with Jenny Seagrove his icily supportive and long-suffering wife, Georgie. When Bernie Dodd (Mark Letheren) is determined to revive Frank's career in a new play in Boston, he has to battle not only with the actor's loss of confidence but with his own misapprehensions about the nature of his relationship with Georgie. This often bleak tale had Bing Crosby, William Holden and Grace Kelly in the 1954 film version - it is finely acted by all the current cast, and benefits from an imaginative set. Rufus Norris's direction provides a worthy revival that should be a success on the London stage.

How not to be a Lib Dem minister

Sarah Teather, the Liberal Democrat minister at the Department for Education, has been coming under fire at her party's conference from delegates who object to coalition support for academies and free schools. She has just been defeated on the conference floor over the policy. Yet, in defending herself, Teather makes an extraordinary confession about her own lack of influence in her department:

"We got significant changes by working with our people in the House of Lords, negotiating behind the scenes, significant changes to improve accountability."

What she is admitting is that rather than managing to influence the original Academies Bill - and anticipate backbench criticism - Teather had to bow to the demands of her party members in the House of Lords. That is a sign not of influence, but of weakness. What she is saying is that, as a coalition minister, she has little power over the content of legislation, but her backbench Lords colleagues can do her job for her. No wonder her audience were unimpressed.

A test of Tory wills over academies in Bath

A fascinating insight into the tensions inherent in the coalition government is playing itself out in Bath. Oldfield School, a successful girls' foundation school, had declared its plans to apply for outstanding academy status even before the ink was dry on the coalition agreement. Its head Kim Sparling had tried to become the poster girl for Michael Gove's new academies.

But there was a rather big snag in her ambitions: Conservative-run Bath and North East Somerset Council had plans to turn Oldfield into a co-educational school, closing a less successful boys' school in the process. The Tory council, with the support of Liberal Democrat Bath MP Don Foster, made vigorous representations to Gove. The result was that Oldfield did not appear on the list of 32 new academies announced earlier this month, to the fury of Sparling, who has been firing legal letters into the DFE. The school itself has even been advertising as an academy in the local press, even though it is not (yet) one. And now the council has told Oldfield that if it doesn't agree to go co-ed by 5pm today, it will close the school and reopen a coed school on the same site.

This all seems a mite curious. After all, the whole point of Gove's Academies Bill was that outstanding schools would be automatically designated as academies, wasn't it? In fact, what has happened in Bath suggests that far from sidelining local authorities, the coalition has become even more sensitive to their objections. And a host of amendments forced onto the Academies Bill by the Liberal Democrats in July greatly strengthened the power of local authorities to slow down planned academies. The Local Government Association is said to have unprecedented access to ministers, and a coalition of local interests can clearly outweigh a determined head teacher.

In truth, there is also a degree of pragmatic good sense in all of this: at a time of cuts, a degree of strategic planning is necessary to avoid deadweight costs. There is a logic to the council's plans for the authority as a whole, though the whole affair has stopped their wider plans for reorganisation too. And it remains likely that many more good schools will opt for academy status without much objection - but at their own pace.

But what are the cheerleaders for a radical overhaul of the school system to make of it all? This one can't really be blamed on the teaching unions, can it?

UPDATE: Bath's council has won the battle of wills: Oldfield School will admit boys with extra capital funding to provide suitable extra facilities. In return, the council has removed its objection to the school becoming an academy. All of which shows who really has the upper hand in the practical application of the coalition's freedom for outstanding schools.

The economics of Nimbyism

The October Spending Review is likely not only to have a severe impact directly on public sector jobs, but also indirectly on the private sector through reduced spending power and a loss of public contracts. That is a given in George Osborne's plans. But there is also an assumption that the private sector will still be able to step in to fill the gap created, generating sufficient growth to outweigh the negative impact of the cuts.

That theory might be fine if it were not for three deeply damaging protectionist policies that are achieving exactly the opposite effect, and which are set further to stunt prospects for growth. In a welcome breath of fresh air, Vince Cable has told the Financial Times this morning that the ludicrous cap in non-EU skilled migrants is having a real impact on key economic sectors, echoing views expressed by the London Mayor Boris Johnson. Meanwhile, Damian Green's zealously populist embrace of Home Office antipathy to overseas students - who contribute £5 billion a year to the UK economy - not to mention the ties that are created with many graduate entrepreneurs afterwards - is likely to see them turn to other countries with less short-sighted attitudes instead.

But there is a third element that is exemplified vigorously in today's Bristol Evening Post: the coalition's support for Nimbyism over the national interest, whether in the expansion of Heathrow Airport or in major economic developments. What the Post accurately describes as a 'rutted former tip' has been given the status of a 'town green' because 22 local residents successfully appealed in a planning inquiry against a £150 million investment in a world-class football stadium at Ashton Vale that could have provided 6,000 jobs and £150m if the World Cup comes to Britain. Yet far from reducing the impact of such Nimbyism, the coalition in a misguided piece of localism has handed far more power back to small groups of residents and abolished the independent Infrastructure Planning Commission, to the dismay of industry.

Combined with an appetite for cuts that has already choked infrastructural investment in schools and transport, it all amounts to a recipe for economic stagnation. Let's hear more from those in the coalition who recognise this reckless folly for what it is.

The Rivals

To see a splendid production of Sheridan's The Rivals, his Bath-based tale of rivalry and comic misunderstanding, at the refurbished Theatre Royal last night. Penelope Keith was simply splendid as the wary aunt, Mrs Malaprop, enhanced by the sheer pleasure of absorbing so many of her malopropisms. She was ably supported by Peter Bowles as the Sir Anthony Absolute, played with timely moderation, and a fine cast, notably Gerard Murphy as the blustering stage Irishman Sir Lucius O'Trigger, Robyn Addison as the languid Lydia and Tony Gardiner as Faulkland. But this was very much an ensemble performance, under Sir Peter Hall's incomparable direction, that served to remind the capacity audience at Bath of the wonderful wit of this 1775 play (with its operatic echoes). Sheridan was just 23 when he wrote it, though his first effort extended to four hours, mercifully halved for later audiences. The reunion of Keith and Bowles is an added pleasure in this excellent start to a new Bath season.

Still the bookies' favourite

Ed Miliband may feel that he is winning the Labour leadership race, hyped by the BBC today, and boosted by last Sunday's YouGov calculations. It is interesting that the bookies don't agree, and are not placing both brothers at evens. Here are the latest odds:

Paddy Power, Coral and William Hill: David Miliband 2/5, Ed Miliband 7/4

Ladbrokes: David Miliband 4/11, Ed Miliband 15/8

Schools must be able to recruit poorer pupils

I've written this piece for the Public Finance blog:

The education secretary, Michael Gove, is reported to be considering a change to the Schools Admissions Code that would allow successful schools actively to recruit pupils entitled to free school meals from outside their catchment area. The change has been greeted with predictable shrieks of ‘social engineering’ from the right-wing media and claims by the Margaret Morrissey, who runs an organisation called ‘Parents Outloud’ that it would ‘shunt’ parents to ‘the bottom of the list.’

But Gove is absolutely right to look for ways to ensure that new academies and free schools – which are more likely than Labour’ academies to be in better off areas – are not simply ghettoised by the middle classes. Poorer parents are too often already ‘shunted’ to the bottom of the list by virtue of where they live. The fact is that the use of catchment areas as the main admissions criterion by urban schools ensures that many of the best schools exclude poorer pupils not because they go out of their way to do so, but because they simply cannot afford to live near enough to the school to get in.

With the 2006 Education and Inspections Act, the new School Admissions Code made it easier for schools to combat this by introducing either ability bands or random allocation (lotteries). A growing number of academies use this criteria – often within a wider catchment area than the neighbourhood around the school – to ensure a balanced intake. In fact, middle class families can benefit from this too, as the Brighton experiment showed (in that case, catchments were drawn largely for their benefit), since it at least gives them a chance of getting their child into a school otherwise closed to them. Those who can lose are those who have moved into an artificial catchment area to get into a particular school, though it makes sense for schools to provide a proportion of places for those living very near a school as well as a proportion that is open to wider competition.

Gove’s proposal would give schools another way of widening their intake, by allowing them actively to recruit poorer pupils, presumably by setting aside a number of places for those entitled to free school meals (FSM). There is a critique of FSM as the measure, in that it misses a lot of youngsters from families of modest means, but the principle is a good one. And if the new pupil premium - provided it is additional and significant – is to work, good schools must have more than an incentive to recruit poorer pupils, they need the means to do so as well.

That said, there are two other aspects of the 2006 reforms that need a shot in the arm, if this scheme is to work. The first is the entitlement to free transport to any one of three local schools (rather than that nominated by the local authority, as before). This needs to be better publicised, and must not be a victim of the Chancellor’s cuts. The second is the choice adviser. As I wrote last year, the idea of people actively helping poorer families to make choices has had a patchy record. But it could be revitalised as a Big Society idea, with successful people from poorer communities providing the advice at crucial times during the year, and active rather than passive efforts to promote good choices.

Of course, Ed Balls is right to point out that Labour’s academies, by being placed within poorer communities, are making a huge difference to many poorer families. But that doesn’t mean his successor is wrong to find ways to redress the imbalanced intakes of some of our more successful schools at the same time.

Gradually moving away from a graduate tax

David Willetts, the universities minister, gave a characteristically thoughtful tour d'horizon of the challenges facing higher education, when he addressed the Universities UK conference yesterday. But important though a reshaping of the 1992 Further and Higher Education Act will be to many colleges and universities, it was his further refinement of the coalition's ludicrous contortions on the repayment of fees that has inevitably attracted the media's attention.

Willetts clearly thinks his boss Vince Cable was mad to start floating the idea of a graduate tax; since then, he has loyally been trying to find ways to shift the position back towards the graduate contribution that David Blunkett introduced alongside fees in 1998 and which was refined with the 2005 changes to fees. Yesterday was his latest attempt. He told journalists at the UUK conference that he ruled out a full-blown graduate tax but was looking at making the current system more progressive.

What he and his boss signally fail to do is to explain the basic fairness of the current system, particularly compared to other countries. Students not only get their fees paid while at university, but - unlike many other countries - they get a generous loan (with a grant for some) to cover living costs while they enjoy a rite of passage experience subsidised by the taxpayer to the tune of 23p in the £. (In many other countries, most students go to their home universities.) Once they have started to earn at least £15,000 a year, English graduates are asked to pay back their loan at a rate of 9% on all income over the threshold. Those who earn more pay the loan back more quickly, though some high earning professions also involve longer studies and larger debts. The interest charged on the loan is rather less than that on most commercial loans, and certainly a lot less than is charged by banks for overdrafts or credit card companies. It would be ridiculous for the government to move radically away from this repayment system.

However, if the loan system is to keep pace with any rise in tuition fees, it will cost significantly more to the Exchequer initially, unless costs are cut in other ways. One would be to increase the rate of interest charged on the loan, but this would actually see lower earning graduates repaying more, since higher earners would pay the loan back more quickly, though it might also discourage those better off students who take out loans just because they are there. Another option, apparently being considered by Willetts and expounded by Neil O'Brien of Policy Exchange in today's Telegraph would see graduates who earn more paying back a higher proportion of their extra earnings by continuing 'repayments' until after the loan was paid off. If such a progressive contribution is to be introduced, this seems a perfectly sensible way to do it. But it should be combined with a greater encouragement for students to go to home universities or colleges where the course they want is available there - the British taxpayer-subsidised rite of passage is not a universal experience - while universities should do much more to link undergraduates to paid and useful work experience both during term and in the holidays.

I don't imagine any of these deliberations will do much to improve Vince Cable's demeanour. He and his colleagues are already struggling to explain to their student voters in university cities that the Lib Dems sold them a rather scraggy pup.

Technically, these schools were launched by Labour

Today's Daily Mail breathlessly announces on its second page today, "Gove brings back technical schools" as it describes the Secretary of State's detailing of plans for a dozen University Technical Colleges to provide students with a specialist vocational education. Throughout the piece, the implication is that this is yet another reversal of dreadful Labour education policy.

Funny, then, that Lord Mandelson announced the same plans in his skills strategy last November:

We will work with the Department for Children, Schools and Families to support the development of University Technical Colleges. These will offer new opportunities for 14-19 year olds to undertake vocational and applied study. Alongside the introduction of 14-19 Diplomas, University Technical Colleges will greatly strengthen the flow of young people coming into the labour market with the skills and capabilities employers want, particularly for technician careers. We will ensure good progression from University Technical Colleges to other routes of study including advanced apprenticeships and foundation degrees.

Or, as Lord Baker, the former Conservative education secretary who came up with the idea in the first place with the late Ron Dearing, recalled events in the TES earlier this year:

Ron and I decided to promote the idea of a new technical school, but with two important differences. First, recruitment should be from the age of 14 and continue until the age of 19. Second, each should be sponsored by a university or FE college to secure their proper status. We took our idea for university technical colleges (UTCs) to Andrew Adonis, then a minister in the Department for Children, Schools and Families, and he warmly welcomed it, suggesting that they should be established under the existing academies programme. This was the "go-ahead".

The truth is that this was a genuinely bipartisan initiative, which enjoyed the support of both Labour and the Conservatives. To encourage partisan newspapers to pretend otherwise is unworthy of those doing the briefing.

Back to school

I've written the cover feature for this week's Public Finance, analysing how Michael Gove's education policies look at the start of the new school year. You can read the article here. Here's a sampler:

As a new school term begins, Education Secretary Michael Gove hopes to breathe fresh life into his troubled education plans. The pace of reform has been slow and headlines have focused on Gove’s botched review of Labour’s school building programme. Only 23% of people think the coalition is doing a good job on school reform, according to last month’s polls, with 42% saying it is doing a bad job.Gove is hoping to regain the initiative – and his reputation as one of Prime Minister David Cameron’s star performers – with plans for a pupil premium, an overhaul of the curriculum and a review of capital investment in schools. But the success of these measures will depend on how his department fares in October’s Comprehensive Spending Review........Gove entered government with a ­reputation for radicalism and sure-footedness and many Cameron supporters saw his reforms as central to their project in power. That reputation has been seriously dented in the coalition’s first four months in office, and the extent to which he can recover will depend on his ability to advance his radical agenda while minimising the frontline impact of Treasury cuts this autumn. How he negotiates that difficult balancing act will determine not only whether his reputation for radicalism survives the pressures of government – but the futures of millions of schoolchildren and their teachers as they return from their summer holidays.

Top 100 Labour blogs

Congratulations to Labour List, Tom Harris MP and Hopi Sen for staying in the Top 3 Labour blogs in the Total Politics poll, albeit in a different order. And thank you to those of you who voted to place this blog at no 31 in the Top 100, slightly down from last year's position at No. 26.

A delayed revolution?

Michael Gove has been at pains to stress the radicalism of his school reforms, as critics charge that it all amounts to a bit of a damp squib. While his critics are wrong to argue against the expansion of academies and the growth of free schools, Gove is guilty of taking his eye off the ball - and misunderstanding the nature of academy improvement under Labour.

By focusing on the 32 'new academies', Gove largely ignored the 64 academies that had been planned by Labour. Yet it is the latter group that can do most to raise standards - building on a further 7% point rise this year in open academies - and by expending so much political capital on encouraging outstanding schools to take on academy powers, the Education Secretary is in danger of sidelining their crucial role in reform.

During the passage of the Academies Bill, Gove said that the new academies would be expected to work with other weaker schools to help them to improve. Yet this aspect of their role has been all but forgotten. Without even having a sponsor, they are closer to foundation schools than existing academies. Their moral purpose needs to be restated clearly.

But the success of the existing academies has not just been about sponsorship, strong leadership and a new ethos. Ministers underestimate the importance of new buildings and facilities at their peril. If the academies drive in disadvantaged areas is not to falter, there must be a clear sense of the capital that is available in schools that require more than basic refurbishment.

Finally, today's free schools list must be a big disappointment to ministers. Five of the new schools are religious schools - Labour significantly expanded their number, embracing other faiths too. Few of the other eleven could not have opened under existing legislation, at least with a sympathetic minister in charge. With money limited, it will be particularly hard to develop the free school model but it will need considerably more innovation than this group suggests for the policy to live up to its radical billing.

Interestingly, Gove floated a promising idea for a GCSE-Bac yesterday, where students would gain credits for gaining a broad mix of GCSEs. This would be a positive alternative to simply denying any credit for vocational qualifications, as ministers had previously proposed. And with the right support, it could also give a boost to the International Baccalaureate in state schools. It will be interesting to see the details as they emerge.

We need a leader who shows Labour is back in business

It may come as no surprise that I am backing David Miliband when I cast my vote in Labour's leadership election. I have known and worked with him at various times over the last fifteen years, and while not always agreeing with him, have no doubt that he is the only one of the five candidates with the range of qualities needed not only to lead the Labour Party but to be Prime Minister. His speeches including that at the King Solomon Academy recently reflect an understanding of why we lost and how we should respond to the coalition that is frankly absent from any of his rivals.

Ed Miliband has been the surprise of this campaign, at least to me: his bizarre decision to tack leftwards reflects a lack of seriousness about the role that he seeks and a misunderstanding of how to reconnect with the voters we lost in droves in the 2010 election in constituencies like mine and across the South and South West. I have no doubt that he is often the better speaker at engaging seminar audiences than his brother, but that is not in itself a qualification for the top job. He may have attracted union endorsements and the support of the New Statesman in the process, but he has also made it far harder to win back lost voters.

Yet this has been a campaign that - fratricidal elements aside - has largely failed to ignite the attention of the public. On the one hand, that may be to the good: our support has held up well in the polls and council by-elections. But once the result is declared it is vital that the energy displayed by Tony Blair after 1994 is on display from our new leader. There must be boldness, renewal and new policy. Rather than re-running the 2005 election on Iraq, we need to prepare for an election in 2015 (or before) with a cunning and a maturity that gives people the confdidence to vote Labour again. On the evidence of recent months, David Miliband is readier to strike that balance than his opponents. But if - and, hopefully, when - he wins, he needs to redouble his efforts to show that Labour is once again back in business.

Blair's education revolution bears fruit

Not having read Tony Blair's book yet, I shall leave it to others to litter their blogs with extracts and index-referencing. But it is notable that his memoirs appear on a day when the government has published remarkable data confirming the success of academies.

This is not about Michael Gove's decision to focus his attention on persuading outstanding schools to join the movement, or the development of free schools, on which initial overambition has been replaced by cautious realism. Rather it is about the relatively unsung success of Blair's academies which were embraced (albeit with some pointless interference with their independence) by his successor despite earlier misgivings.

Today sees a lot of attention on the limited number of 'new' academies - there are 32 outstanding schools that heroically managed to convert in time for a new term, with 110 more on the way - but it is also the start of term for 64 academies that had been initiated by the Labour government. They are largely in disadvantaged areas, replacing failing schools and offering new hope and leadership for thousands of youngsters.

Early indications suggest that academies taking GCSEs in both 2009 and 2010 have seen their GCSE results rise by a fifth - from 35% to 42% of pupils gaining five good GCSEs including English and Maths - in a single year. This is three times the national average improvement rate (after several years of similar such improvements). Results in schools run by Harris and Ark have exceeded an 11% rise, and the remarkable Mossbourne Academy has stayed above the 80% mark despite a slight dip. When one considers that half of all secondary schools in England couldn't get 30% of their pupils to achieve the five good GCSE standard in 1997, and many inner city schools found 20% a challenge, this is a remarkable result. [Fewer than 200/3200 schools are likely to be below 30% this year]

The challenge for the coalition is three-fold. First, having devoted so much energy to encouraging outstanding schools to become academies, they must refocus their energies on failing schools and turning them around; there are fewer than before, but the challenge remains. Second, they must ensure that their pupil premium does not take money away from academies in disadvantaged areas, which it could well do if the Treasury has its way, and consider linking part of the premium to improvement. And third, they should be much more imaginative in encouraging the development of new academy trusts, particularly for primary schools but also to link outstanding academies with schools that need extra support. There has been a lot of rhetoric about social mobility: we have yet to see the real detail.

Academies are a success story for disadvantaged pupils - but they will only continue to be so if the detail of the policy focus is as relentless as it was when Tony Blair was Prime Minister.

The no-win generation

I've written this for the Public Finance blog:

Today’s GCSE celebrations – as with those on A-levels last week – will be muted somewhat by the lack of opportunities facing young people after they digest their results. Undergraduate places for UK students may have been up by 10,000 this year, but they still left many youngsters with no prospect of a university place. The youth employment market is unpromising, with many graduates struggling to find places with their degrees, and many apprenticeships and college places are hard-fought.

The lack of opportunity is an economic tragedy – and it is vital that it is addressed by the Chancellor in the Spending Review, when we should finally learn what will replace the axed Future Jobs Fund, a successful programme that had begun to help young people back to work. It is also crucial that universities have a sustainable funding system when the Browne review reports. But there is no reason to compound the difficulties facing young people with the annual sour scepticism about their achievements.

This year’s biggest raspberry must go to Civitas who chose today to launch a full-scale assault on many vocational qualifications. They may be over-valued in the league tables, but plenty of heads will testify that in disadvantaged areas they have a vital role raising the aspirations of young people so that they then study more academic GCSEs including English and Maths. But others are not immune. We are told that the ‘record pass rate’ is a sign of further dumbing down by the same people who criticise the previous government for not seeing sufficient GCSE improvement for its record investment in education.

When schools minister Nick Gibb produces his curriculum review in the autumn, it is important he doesn’t listen too much to the naysayers. He must ensure there is a strong vocational range of options not just to introduce young people to hands-on work but also to motivate them to gain further qualifications. He should allow more choice so that those who don’t want to overspecialise too soon can do the respected International Baccalaureate rather than A levels if they wish, and allow Diplomas to develop in applied subjects. And he should ensure that the curriculum allows young people to develop both the breadth of knowledge and the range of skills that will stand them in good stead at work, university or in later life.

But, for today, could we just confine ourselves to congratulating the young people who gained GCSEs and giving them the practical help and advice they need to take the next steps towards further qualifications or work?

Who's to blame for A-level science success?

The Telegraph website reports two interesting subject stories from today's A-level results. The first is a further dip in French and German entries (somewhat offset by an economically rational decision to opt for Spanish instead) which the Telegraph blames on Labour's decision to scrap compulsory post-14 languages. There is then a report on the (further) surge in advanced Maths and Physics entrants which is largely due to a very successful Labour government initiative to improve take up in the so-called STEM subjects, driven through universities and specialist science colleges. This drive has also increased science and maths entries at GCSE and to universities. Funnily, the Telegraph has forgotten to mention the Labour government's role in this story, claiming this is entirely a result of the recession even though a 20 year-decline in physics actually started to reverse before the recession.

100 days

Sky has marked 100 days of the coalition with a very silly self-selecting poll, admirably debunked by Anthony Wells. Chris Leslie has produced a list of 100 'regressive' things that the coalition has done. There are plenty of media cheerleaders singing their praises in contrast. But what would a balanced picture look like?

First, the fact that the coalition has emerged is itself an important event in British politics, and one not to be sniffed at. That there would be both Conservative and Liberal Democrat ministers in office would have seemed unlikely to many twelve months ago. While we're in a generous mood, we should praise some genuinely positive things that the coalition has done: Cameron's response to the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, the broad protection of the overall DFID budget and much of what is in the Academies Act - which largely updates Labour legislation - is to the good, even it is rather stymied by a lack of resources and a failure more explicitly to expect collaboration between good and weak schools. An AV referendum is long overdue (though it should be decoupled from partisan boundary changes). And David Cameron has proved better in the role of PM than might have expected (though Nick Clegg is ten times worse than even I could have imagined).

One can't argue about the need to cut the deficit, but one can certainly argue about the speed with which it is being done and some of the perverse decisions that have followed with nary a whimper from the Lib Dems. In no particular order, I think these are the ten worst things the coalition has done so far:

scrapping Building Schools for the Future projects that were already underway;
abolishing the Audit Commission;
scrapping the Child Trust Fund;
scrapping the Future Jobs Fund;
forcing reluctant GPs to take control of patient budgets;
scrapping NHS waiting time maximums - 18 weeks for treatment; 4 hours at A&E;
abolishing the Film Council;
slowing the nuclear power programme by putting Chris Huhne in charge;
scrapping life-saving speed cameras to appease petrolheads;
Cameron playing to the gallery in India (over Pakistan) and Turkey (over Israel)

I realise that not everyone will agree with this list (and I have left off several aspects of their crime and justice agenda that they will certainly come to regret). On the other hand, I don't think everything on Chris Leslie's list could have been preserved under the cuts planned by Alastair Darling, for example - so I choose these ten because they generally run counter to the declared objectives of the coalition.

Moreover, they illustrate the gung-ho nature of the cuts and a preference for prejudice over evidence in too many coalition decisions: in the process they reduce accountability; endanger children; damage the environment; limit the opportunities for young people to take responsibility for their lives; or reduce our international standing. With GP commissioning, it would have been better to develop it with those who wanted the extra responsibility first (pace academies).

That said, Labour needs to be much more forensic in its approach to the coalition. It needs to support some cuts, while opposing others, and not be ashamed of the best aspects of its own record. The coalition still has a degree of public support after 100 days, even if Labour is just four points ahead; the extent to which Labour can erode that support in the next year will be a measure of the canniness of our next leader.

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.

Efficiency and independence

The news that Sir Philip Green has been appointed as the PM's efficiency tsar may have annoyed Vince Cable. But it could cause as much angst to Michael Gove and Andrew Lansley. For, Sir Philip has one big idea for efficiency, as he indicated on Today this morning: centralised procurement. This means that local management of schools, independent academies, foundation trusts and GP commissioning are all obstacles to what he would see as the way forward. He simply doesn't understand the point of such diversity in public services.

Of course, in schools, they used to have such central procurement before LMS. It was done by local authorities. It meant that if a headteacher needed to repair a broken window, they couldn't use the local glazier but had to turn to the council's approved provider. Some schools tied to PFI deals are already limited in this way. Of course, there are savings in stationery or computers to be made from procurement: most schools are part of large procurement consortia anyway for such purposes anyway. The difference is that they choose: those that aren't should be encouraged to join them. And I don't doubt a lot could be saved in central government through consolidation of functions and joint procurement, but ministers need to be careful that they don't allow Sir Philip's uber-centralising philosophy to strangle school and hospital independence in the red tape that comes with ostensibly more efficient centralised procurement.

This post also appears at Public Finance.

The right sort of cuts

David Blackburn at Coffee House highlights moves by No 10 to stop any repeat of the milk snatcher fiasco at the weekend. Apparently, ministers need to be careful to avoid any cuts that might upset the media, rather than worrying whether their cuts will damage vital and successful programmes, many of which have already faced the axe. Who said the age of spin was dead?

The dangers of a paltry pupil premium

I've written this piece for the Public Finance blog on the problems that could arise if the Government gets it wrong on the pupil premium and school funding:

Today’s reports about Departmental warfare with the Treasury over the cuts are hardly a great surprise. But what will disappoint many in schools is the suggestion in The Guardian that the pupil premium, the Lib Dems’ flagship schools policy, may be less than £1000 a year – compared with the £2500 promised in the Lib Dem manifesto – and that the Treasury is expecting the Department for Education to stump up much of the cash itself.

This should not be a great surprise at all. While ministers have set great store by David Cameron’s declaration at PMQs, early in the coalition’s tenure, that the money would come from outside the education budget, the department’s consultation on the Pupil Premium suggested that a number of existing pots currently going direct to schools were for the chop. The Treasury was never likely to allow a substantial premium without DFE paying a large part of the cost.

The July consultation document suggested that the government would ‘mainstream relevant grants’ into the dedicated schools grant, leaving local authorities to decide on its ultimate distribution. This would likely include at least the School Development Grant, School Standards Grant and School Standards Grant (Personalisation). For many schools, the value of these grants is already significantly more than the value of a likely pupil premium. At the same time, the consultation is clear that the Government wants to ensure that the real beneficiaries of the premium are outside inner city areas, where funding may be kept down over time as the government moves towards a national funding formula.

A pupil premium is a good idea, as is a national funding formula. But trying to introduce the latter and move towards the former in these cost-cutting times is a recipe for political disaster: the vociferous losers will shout louder than the relieved winners. And the row over BSF funding may pale by comparison.

Will the coalition really adopt a graduate tax?

Today's Times (£) claims that the coalition has now come down in favour of a graduate tax, following David Willetts' interview with James Landale on Marr yesterday. When I saw the Times headline this morning, I assumed I must have seen a different interview. But, no, the Times uses the following quote to justify its position:

“We do have a preference for a way of going forward that involves graduates after they have got into work,” he said. “Graduates on average earn at least £100,000 more during their lives than non-graduates. We think [they] should make a higher contribution to the benefits of the university education they have received.”

I also heard Willetts telling Landale that the Browne review was 'looking at' a graduate tax along with everything else. But Willetts was very careful, whilst soothing his boss Vince Cable's injured ego, to avoid saying anything that could be seen as an endorsement of the graduate tax.

What he was describing in his quote could just as easily mean extending the payments required under the existing system. The difference between doing that and what Cable wants is that the latter would involve graduates paying a fixed proportion of their income for life, while the former could be paid off quickly if one's earnings grew. It may be that David Cameron and George Osborne are committed to raising income tax from all graduates. But I doubt it. Which makes it rather odd to see the Times getting so excitable about some (perhaps too) clever wordplay by David Willetts yesterday.

The Good Soldier

Bath Theatre Royal's summer offering at the Ustinov - while the Main House is closed for a revamp - is Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier, based on a novel written just before the outbreak of the First World War. The story revolves around an American prude John Dowell and his flirtatious wife, Florence, and their friends Edward and Leonora Ashburnham, a British couple whom they met at a German spa resort.

The cast is excellent in a fine adaptation by Julian Mitchell that makes great use of the limited space in the Ustinov, with many of the actors playing several roles. Edward is a seemingly good soldier - outwardly - whose mix of extavagant unaffordable charity and serial philandering provides his long-suffering, but calculatingly cold wife Leonora - played superbly by Flora Montgomery -with a full-time job rescuing the family finances and saving her caddish husband from himself and his romantic urges.

The relationship with the Americans provides a backdrop for a longer series of flashbacks and revelations that are delivered with extraordinary energy and pace by the cast. But for all their exuberant enthusiasm - and a very fine adaptation - the story itself is ultimately unredemptive. Fine novel it may have been - and championed by Graham Greene - but one is left wondering after a dizzying two hours what it was all about, really.

Boycotts, testing, targets and cuts

The publication of today's national primary school test results - the last taken under the Labour government - show both the limitations of the NUT/NAHT test boycott and the importance of externally validated national testing. The improvements since 1995 when the tests began have been remarkable, and this year's Maths results are the best ever. When we took the decision to make Key Stage 4 the expected rather than the average standard (ahead of the 1997 election) we faced a lot of criticism then from those same unions that felt a boycott somehow benefited students this year: they said we were being too ambitious. But using targets, particularly floor targets, combined with the literacy and numeracy hours in the late 90s allowed a big change in results. The fact that this is now a standard that can be achieved by 4 in 5 eleven year-olds vindicates that ambition. Over 100,000 more pupils each year make the grade. The schools minister Nick Gibb is right to argue that even more should reach this standard.

But he and his colleagues must be careful in what they are cutting. If Gibb wishes to strengthen the quality of teaching in primary English and Maths, he needs to find ways to incentivise schools to do so. Simply providing a cash premium on its own for poorer pupils without such incentivisation will make little difference, especially if it removes money from programmes directed at the 3Rs and improved in-service professional development. The majority of pupils and teachers defied the unions, enabling today's results to be published. But it is important that the coalition balances its welcome commitments to strong accountability and a pupil premium with the sort of floor targets and agreed ambitions that have also played such an important part in the improvements of recent years.

Why do luxury hotels behave like Ryanair?

We're just back from a great holiday in Italy, taking in the opera in Milan and Verona, great historic sights in both cities, the beautiful peace and quiet of Sant' Angelo on Ischia, and the chaotic energy of Naples. We had great food and wine, and are well refreshed. But as we stayed in five different hotels across Italy, a curious point struck me about the different attitude of different hotels: the posher hotels act most like Ryanair in their treatment of their guests.

To illustrate, we stayed in hotels in Milan and Verona, both attractive small-ish hotels where there was inclusive breakfast, free wifi and free soft drinks from the mini-bar. Or, rather, we were assumed to have paid for all these in our room tariff in the same way that British Airways didn't charge extra for our luggage and a sandwich when we returned from Naples yesterday. But when we stayed the last couple of nights at a more upmarket Naples hotel - which was very nice - the charges came thick and fast. Three Euros for thirty minutes using your own computer to access the Internet. Six Euros for a small bottle of coke or four for a small mineral water from the minibar. Thirty Euros each for breakfast if we wanted it. I know from experience that this is the norm: 3* and some 4* hotels are far more likely than 5* hotels to provide wifi and mineral water as standard.

At the very least, wifi should be free in any room and not treated as a cash cow. And mineral water should be offered where the tap water is undrinkable. After all, hotels don't charge people extra for the toiletries or TV which are included in a room price. And hotels that charge for wifi should be required explicitly to publish their charges in the same way that Ryanair (however reluctantly) has to publish its ludicrous baggage charges. There are an increasing number of great hotels that offer free wifi, while others can charge as much as £20 a day. It is time that hotels were required to spell out their extras as explicitly as any budget airline: the irony is that it is the most upmarket ones that will complain loudest when they are.

Vacanze Estive

This blog will be taking a rest for the next few weeks, as we head to Italy for the summer holidays.

Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition

The story of the prohibition of alcohol in the United States from 1920 to 1933 is an extraordinary piece of social and political history, and nobody tells it better than Daniel Okrent in a fantastic new book, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, just published in the US and available in the UK via Amazon.

The prohibition lobby was closely linked in its early days both to the evangelical Christian right and the Ku Klux Klan and to women's suffragists, supporters of income tax and trade unionists, though by the time that the Catholic Al Smith became Democrat Presidential candidate in 1928 the former wing was much stronger. Their opponents in the drinks trade boxed themselves into a reactionary mode by rejecting these liberal causes, particularly women's suffrage, ensuring that women supported the alcohol ban by as much as 9-1.

But the impact of prohibition was profound on the US: not just the rise of organised crime through the Chicago bootleggers, but through changes to the fabric of American life in many ways from the growth of night clubs where women could drink through to the election of FDR and his ability to effect the New Deal. The cast of characters associated with the propagation of prohibition and its undermining was legion, and the second camp included most immigrant communities whose Democratic support was cemented at this stage, respectable Scottish distillers in cahoots with Canadian exporters and high society industrialists whose opposition led to repeal through to supporters of prohibition whose shameless blackmail of often 'wet' politicians has rarely been seen before or since.

Meanwhile, the number of legal and illegal ways of bypassing the law grew including: booze cruises outside an expanded 12 mile coastal limit, the growth of Havana, a new prosperity for the Bahamas, Cunard liners, legal farmhouse cider, communion and Jewish sacramental wine (creating a lucrative Californian vineyard replete with guesthouses for visiting priests and rabbis), alcohol for 'medicinal purposes', tonics for women (some created by leading drys), imports from Canada and various bootlegged and mixed versions of industrial alcohol. True, alcohol consumption fell, but the law was so widely flouted and created so much new crime that its repeal was inevitable.

Okrent tells this amazing story from the birth of the prohibitionists in radical politics through the growth of the Anti-Saloon league and its split opposition in distillers and brewers who couldn't agree among themselves on tactics through the movement of upper class women that finally led to repeal. It is one of the most readable and jaw-droppingly entertaining histories I've read in ages.

A graduate tax would be a mistake

Vince Cable, the business and universities secretary, is a man with a problem. Despite Nick Clegg's best efforts, his party fought the election on a ludicrous higher education policy of scrapping fees. As domestic students paying a proportion of their fees for twelve years, reducing the burden on low-income earners who never went to university, the Liberal Democrats clung to their plan to scrap those tuition fees contributions. Purely to pull the wool over the eyes of students in a handfull of university seats. Now, faced with being in charge of higher education policy, Cable has to perform contortions to try to get himself off the hook. Hence his graduate tax idea.

Lord Browne's review has several options. One is to do nothing. A second is to increase the fee contribution from a maximum of £3,290 to £5,000 or more likely £7,000 a year. A third would simply involve allowing universities to charge what they liked, as they do already for overseas students. A fourth would raise the interest rate on the loans, while retaining the current repayment system, or expect universities to establish their own loans. In any case, universities need to be able to charge higher fees sooner rather than later, though it may be politically unrealistic to do so without a cap.

But under the current system, students get a very good deal. Poorer students receive grants as well as loans. All students can borrow the money they need for tuition and maintenance and repay it through the taxation system at a modest interest rate as and when they can afford to do so. What they are not required to do is to pay back more than they borrow. And they can be rid of their loan more quickly if they wish to do so and can afford it. In some cases - as with science teachers - employers could opt to repay the loan as an incentive.

Vince Cable thinks all this is terribly unfair. The fact that fees have not deterred students from poorer backgrounds, as the Liberal Democrats constantly claimed during the introduction of both phases of tuition fees, matters not a jot. What the Liberal Democrats are looking for is a backdoor way of raising taxes further on high earners. They want, in Alex Barker's words, a student loan that you never pay off.

But the graduate tax has two other not inconsiderable flaws. The first might trouble Cable's Treasury colleague, Danny Alexander: it raises no money for a long time, as it can only be levied on future graduates. In the meantime, the state would have to pick up the tab at a time of 25% cuts in Vince's budget. Universities could whistle for any money. And it could also encourage a brain drain, as good high earning graduates who wanted to flee their 'debt to society' could work abroad and pay back not a penny.

Rather than performing contortions over the issue, Cable would be better allowing his formidable universities secretary, David Willetts, who had the intellectual good sense to rescue the Tories from an equally daft opposition to fees, to work with Lord Browne's team on getting an answer that keeps UK higher education competitive and achieves the right balance between government and student payments. The future funding of higher education should not be held to ransom in order to rescue the Liberal Democrats from their own intellectual incoherence.

This post also appears on the Public Finance blog.

Paid more than the PM?

An ugly alliance between some trade unions and anti-public sector populists in the coalition is taking hold. The latest victim is a London headteacher, whom the Daily Mail (editor's salary: £1.1m a year) this morning claims is being paid £276,000 a year. In fact, he is being paid £82,000 a year as an inner London head, and received around £50,000 a year for helping improve other inner city schools through the very successful London Challenge. The rest would seem to be out of hours work, arrears and pension contributions. In other words, he is being paid for more than being head of his primary school, and even then his salary for the two jobs is closer to £140,000 a year. We are invited to compare this 'outstanding' head's pay (inflated by the GMB and their pals in the Mail to £276k) with the saintly David Cameron, who toils away cutting the public sector for a mere £142,000 a year.

But is it true that Cameron earns just £142k? Well, not exactly. First, the millionaire PM has the ultimate two grace and favour homes at his disposal - the 11 Downing Street flat and Chequers - the annual rental value of which would surely bump up the value of his salary quite a bit. Then, he gets his travel sorted with a chauffeur-driven car. And he has a pretty hefty pension to boot, all of which would surely bump the real value of his salary towards the £300,000 mark. I don't say he shouldn't get such a deal - of course he should as Prime Minister. I just wish he and his acolytes would stop being so sanctimonious about the pay of other public sector leaders who don't enjoy his perks.

Ministers can't ignore the boring details

The many twists and turns in the school buildings fiasco (many of which have been ably exposed by Ed Balls) seem to point to a major flaw at the heart of the coalition's approach to government: a failure to bother themselves sufficiently with the details and a wish covertly to continue in opposition rather than accepting the trials and tribulations of government.

The wholly unfair Sunday briefings against Tim Byles, an able leader of Partnership for Schools who pushed the capital programme back into shape, suggests an ugly tendency among some in government towards smears and childish oppositionism. But the fact is that whatever capital programme emerges to replace Building Schools for the Future will need someone to run it and keep the costs in check, and that expertise does not exist within the Department for Education, nor is it easy to find outside it. Michael Gove has deservedly been praised for his willingness publicly to accept responsibility for last week's fiasco; one must hope that he can equally publicly disown the trashing of Byles and PFS, and put a stop to similar such briefings.

The lesson that he - and his fellow ministers - should draw from last week's affair is that they need to look in much greater detail at the implications of decisions, and recognise that the simple slogans of opposition do not always easily translate into the effective policy of government. That is not to say that the ministers should accept everything they are told by the civil servants, especially where their advice could scupper the coalition's radical reforms; rather it is to recognise that without proper checks, without a recognition of the delivery mechanisms and agencies needed to effect policy, and without a clear message, the government will come seriously unstuck.

Civitas has rightly drawn attention to the likely three year setback that will result from a rapid rush to GP commissioning, a view largely echoed by the excellent Chris Ham from the Kings Fund on Today this morning. And the idea that the independent Food Standards Agency should simply be absorbed into the DoH beggars belief. Here are two accidents waiting to happen. And they won't be the only ones unless ministers recognise that they need to take charge and get behind the important details, rather than operating like a permanent opposition.

It may be boring, it is certainly time-consuming, but without greater focus on details the coalition will not last nearly as long as many people think.

Getting the lists wrong was not Gove's biggest error

There is plenty of justifiable outrage at the cack-handed way in which the lists of spared and scrapped school building projects were issued this week. For those schools that thought their plans would be realised, the agony of being told that this was merely an administrative error must have been unbearable, and Michael Gove is right to don sackcloth and apologise in person.

But it would be wrong to view listgate as the most important mistake in this sorry business. That lay in cancelling 719 existing Building Schools for the Future projects in the first place, many of them well advanced - meaning that whatever admin costs were regarded as profligate will already have been accrued. BSF may have become too bureaucratic, but behind it lay a desire to achieve rather more than new buildings for a £55 billion investment. A transformation was being sought across whole towns, cities and shires, not just in individual schools. There were expectations that new schools would have the latest technology, that classrooms would be adaptable to modern needs, that the schools would approach carbon neutrality and that by improving the learning environment, they could contribute to higher standards. Many BSF plans were explicitly linked to the establishment of academies.

Of course, a new government might be expected to seek better value for money from the whole process. It may even have new priorities for what they should contain (though it should eschew building new schools on a Victorian model) and it may see potential value for money improvements in more standardised plans. All this could be achieved through a halt to future building plans, without throwing existing plans out, particularly those that were well advanced.

Maybe, Gove is seeking to win Brownie points from the Treasury. Maybe he thinks he can't fund free schools without cancelling existing plans. Either way he must surely have realised how much political damage this would do to the coalition. Tory MPs are as angry as Labour ones, with one planning a march on No 10. And given that many plans are funded through the Private Finance Initiative, was it really necessary? Unlike his cabinet colleague at health (latest wheeze: having trashed Jamie's school dinners, let's get McDonald's to run our health campaigns) Gove has had a clear rationale to his reforms, whether one accepted it or not. By creating so many enemies so early, he has made it that much harder to achieve his radical ambitions.

Meanwhile, is it worth asking where the Lib Dems were in all this process? Probably not, as their DFE minister, Sarah Teather's apparent ignorance of what has happened in education over the last ten years is matched only by her obvious inability to influence a single decision of any real importance in her department.

Coalition plans to abandon playing field protection

Amidst the understandable outrage among schools losing their BSF expectations, there has been little attention paid to the terms of reference of the review of capital funding that has been introduced alongside the cancellation of 700 planned new schools. Buried in the terms of reference is the following:

Reducing the burden on schools

· To review and reform the requirements on schools including the building/School Premises Regulations, design requirements and playing field regulations.

In other words, the coalition is considering removing the requirement introduced by Labour that playing fields can only be sold where they provide new sports facilities, like a new sports hall. Currently, a school wishing to dispose of a playing field is considered against three main criteria:

• that playing field provision and curriculum requirements at the school making the disposal, and at other local schools, are met
• that community use of a school's playing fields is taken into account
• that any sale proceeds are re-invested:
  firstly, to provide new or improved outdoor sports facilities;
  secondly, to provide new or improved indoor sports facilities; or
  thirdly, to be used to help raise standards by providing educational facilities.

While not eliminating sales, the requirement had greatly reduced their number by creating a presumption against such sales, and each sale has required explicit DFE approval. Now it would appear that despite plenty of bluster in opposition, the Coalition wants to relax these requirements.

That ought to boost England's sporting chances in the future.

Hopi Sen, like my anonymous commentator below (please don't be so shy), has been reading too many conspiracy theories. Hasn't he?

Short-sighted building cuts

Modern school buildings - over 1100 new schools were built since 1997 - remain one of Labour's great educational legacies. And while there may well be savings to be made in the Building for the Future (BSF) programme through more standardised plans, it is deeply worrying to see the coalition treating the abandonment of school building plans almost as a badge of pride.

While there may be a good case for some cuts in revenue spending, the cuts in buildings investment cannot but hinder the recovery, damaging the construction sector. This is an investment in the future which should not be treated as an optional extra. George Osborne effectively acknowledged in his Budget speech that previous Tory governments mistakenly cut capital investment during previous recessions. It remains to be seen how the capital programme emerges after this review of BSF: but a return to the days of crumbling schools in the 90s would not only be bad for education, it would be bad for the economy and future growth.

No wonder business confidence is ebbing from the economy.

This post also appears on the Public Finance blog.

Getting 16-19 education right

Education Secretary Michael Gove has been setting out his plans for A level reform. He wants to reduce modules, scrap AS levels and get universities to play a greater part in syllabus design. There is certainly a strong case for further reducing modularity so that a greater proportion of the marks goes on synoptic assessments, and cutting the endless repeats that have been allowed of modules. Having universities more involved in developing syllabuses could also hekp raise standards. However, there is a danger in trying simply to recreate A levels as they were. Both the Conservatives and Labour accepted the case for AS levels in the 1997 election - the idea had been accepted in 1996 by Conservative ministers after a review led by the late Ron Dearing.

Whether it is wise or necessary to scrap AS levels now is doubtful: they can be useful in offering greater breadth in sixth form studies before the specialisation in Year 13. Removing other modules doesn't require their abandonment. Moreover, A-levels represent only one part of the picture when it comes to 16-19 education. The coalition has been sniffy about Diplomas; it should reinvigorate them so that there are strong work-related course options available to young people, while strongly promoting those that have industry backing. If needs be, a stronger work experience element could be added. Equally, while keen on apprenticeships, they need greater clarity over who will deliver them at a time of substantial youth unemployment - colleges may be strongly placed to take more of the risk, particularly in partnership with small firms.

As well as strengthening A levels, ministers should make it easier for schools to offer the International Baccalaureate, a rigorous qualification that doesn't require the narrow specialisation of A-leveks from academically able students. And while it may be right to increase the synoptic element of A levels, they should retain the idea of a long essay or project as part of an A level student's portfolio: that is where real 'deep thought' is likely to shine through. It is important that there is a rounded approach to 16-19 education that addresses the needs of all young people.

Whatever Works

To see Woody Allen's Whatever Works, a film that brings Allen back to New York and to the comic style of his earlier creations. The great Larry David largely reprises his Curb Your Enthusiasm grumpiness as Boris Yellnikoff who finds himself falling for the Southern charms of a Mississippi runaway, Melodie St. Ann Celestine played with naive brilliance by Evan Rachel Wood. As Melodie's parents - great performances by Ed Begley Jr and Patricia Clarkson - track her down, a classic Allen plot unfolds as they discover the freedoms of New York. It is cliched to describe Allen's movies as a 'return to form' - he has had several good movies this century - but it certainly shows that he still knows how to get the most from a great ensemble of actors.