Academies – a long journey to who knows where
I have a chequered history when it comes to Academies. When I first went into Number Ten I marginalised myself by allowing it to be known that I shared some of the concerns being expressed by the Treasury and the local government department about what was then a new policy. Picking an argument with Andrew Adonis was a fast track route to internal exile.
After the 2005 election I was in part responsible for trying to persuade Labour backbenchers to vote for the Schools Bill which established Trust schools. This time I had learnt my lesson and kept it to myself that I had some sympathy for rebel Labour MPs’ concerns, particular over school admissions.
When I arrived at the RSA, by this time more open minded about Academies, I inherited the Society’s bold (in the ‘Yes, Minister’ sense) decision to set up its own. Following through on the Trustees’ leap in the dark was a tough call but it all felt worth while when the school opened, and my faith is reconfirmed every time I visit Tipton as a governor and hear the great progress being made (and we don’t even occupy the new building until September).
Meanwhile my older son’s school was being given Academy status against the wishes of an alliance of leftists and trade unions, plus a group of middle class parents not wanting to lose the special privileges that their musically talented offspring had enjoyed in the failing predecessor school. For a while I was the chosen scapegoat with it even being rumoured that, in order to legitimatise the Academy take-over, I had used my influence in Government not only to get an unannounced OFSTED inspection of the old school but to rig its dismal report.
So I felt deeply ambivalent about yesterday’s Coalition announcement. What had reconciled me to the Academy policy was, first, the way it channelled new capital expenditure into deprived areas and second, that the extra element of diversity and innovation would be good for the system as a whole. The new policy is different in both aspects. The redistribution element has gone, indeed it must be most likely that it will be more privileged schools and sets of parents who take up the new freedoms and funding streams. Second, rather than putting grit in the oyster of the local schools system the policy is now to smash the oyster entirely.
It is up to those of us interested and involved in schools to make the best of the policy framework set by our Government. This was very much the mood of the very successful launch this week of Whole Education, an RSA sponsored alliance of organisations, interests and schools supporting a more holistic and collaborative approach to learning. But I do have doubts about whether the efforts of those committed to improvement and innovation will be helped or hindered by the new policy.
It is important, first, to recognise how much freedom ‘bog standard’ local authority schools already have. In most places successful schools are left to their own devices and have been gradually getting more freedoms from the centre in areas like the curriculum. Indeed the greatest area of extra regulation recently has been in relation to ‘safeguarding’ which is a child safety, not an education, policy. But local authorities can play a vital role in addressing problems in schools that are not succeeding or in danger of getting into trouble. Getting rid of a weak but stubborn headteacher is, for example, very difficult for a group of part time volunteer governors to accomplish and most rely heavily on the local authority to guide them through the process.
Michael Gove wants an open market in schooling, but markets only succeed if businesses are regularly allowed to fail. Children only have one education so we can’t be as relaxed about failure in schools as we might be about failure in the high street. There is absolutely no question that the combination of encouraging all manner of new entrants into school governance along with residualising the local authority role will lead to many more school failures (this is not scaremongering, it is the logical consequence of the policy). It will be interesting to see how the Coalition deals with this but my hunch is that any solution will see central government effectively taking over the oversight currently vested in councils.
The RSA is seeking to develop a stronger family of schools committed to the approach of our curriculum, Opening Minds. We are pragmatic as to whether this family might one day morph into some form of shared governance. It would be an irony if there indeed were lots of RSA Opening Minds schools, as Michael Gove has made no secret of his hostility to competency-based approaches. To be fair the new Education Secretary has always recognised the tension between his own quite prescriptive views about the curriculum and his commitment to school freedom. Intellectually such openness is commendable, in practice it may prove a harder position to sustain.
The end of the Child Trust Fund
One less publicised area of agreement between the Coalition partners was the plan to hammer home that they had inherited an economy on the verge of Greek style collapse and public finances managed by the political equivalent of Sarah Ferguson. I can’t blame them. Every incoming Government trashes their predecessor’s record and the effective absence of an official opposition makes this an open goal Salomon Kalou would find it hard to miss. By the time he or she is elected, the next Labour leader will find they are running a party deeply associated in the public mind with economic irresponsibility.
So, as a former Labour insider, I have zero credibility in bemoaning any of the Conservative Liberal cuts that are now being announced. But still I can’t help but be sorry to see the abolition of the Child Trust Fund, a policy I had a small part in helping to get implemented. The Conservatives had intended to means test the fund but the Liberal Democrats have long championed its abolition so this is another important victory for Mr Clegg.
As I say, none of us linked to the discredited ‘New Labour junta’ are in a position right now to criticise, but here are some minor points of which I hope ministers were at least made aware before they made their decision:
While changes in tax and benefits have meant income inequality has remained roughly the same over the last decade, asset inequality has grown enormously. Indeed an RSA audience was recently told by the social geographer Danny Dorling that the ratio between the wealthiest 20% and the most asset-poor 20% in London now stands at an unprecedented 2000:1. By giving every child, including the poorest, some savings and topping this up, the CTF was trying to make a small contribution to reducing asset inequality
While the CTF is being abolished the massively more expensive tax reliefs on middle class savings – private pensions and ISAs – are staying in place.
Although the CTF was fairly new as a policy – no 18 year old would have been able to access their account for another ten years – the policy had been gradually growing in public awareness. Most significantly there was evidence of low income families topping up the accounts, excited that for the first time their own children might get the kind of nest egg other teenagers take for granted.
Asset based welfare (the generic name for polices like the CTF) have often managed to get support across the political spectrum. Left of centre parties like the redistribution while right of centre ones like encouraging thrift and self reliance. Pragmatists on both sides were impressed by the evidence that having savings seems to do more for poorer people’s self esteem and sense of resilience than having an equivalent increase in income.
So it’s sad personally to see something of which I was very proud disappear. But much more importantly it also means that we will have to continue to reconcile ourselves to a large minority of the British people living without the realistic aspiration of ever having savings they can rely on in adversity or draw on to make a dream come true.
Local collaboration will be even more necessary in the tough times ahead
What does the Coalition programme mean for local government? Some of the most specific of the 28 points in the ‘communities and local government’ section focus on planning where the thrust is double devolution. Councils see the return of local planning powers, a measure which will presumably be used to block new housing developments where there is local opposition. But there will also be steps to give neighbourhoods an enhanced role in very local place shaping.
Beyond this there are three sets of issues. The first is a commitment to ‘a radical devolution of power’. Beyond planning, the main specific measures are a general power of competence, cutting local government inspection, scrapping ring fenced grants and the abolition of the Comprehensive Area Assessment. However, as local government has a minimal place in the NHS, crime, schools and ‘social action’ sections, and as there is no mention of Local Strategic Partnerships or any other co-ordinating body, it doesn’t appear this devolution of power will include a wider strategic function across local public services.
Indeed the opening up of schools to new providers, the strengthening of the right of local communities ‘to save local facilities and services threatened with closure’, the direct election of local police chiefs, the freeze on council tax for one (and possibly two) years and the enhancement of rights for residents to veto ‘excessive’ council tax increases, could all be seen as measures that will make it harder for councils to get their way. In this sense the agreement confirms the impression of all the party manifestos which is the absence of a coherent framework for local governance.
It is difficult to know what will be the outcome of the second theme; the reform of local governance. Councillors will no doubt be pleased to see the back of the Standards Board, have some fun with the right to vote on remuneration packages for chief officers but possibly be less enthusiastic about publishing every item of spending over £500. But how many will vote to return to the committee system, and will the 12 big cities take up the opportunity to have mayors, or fight for a ‘no’ in the ‘confirmatory’ referendum?
The third theme isn’t in the local government or public services sections but in paragraph three of the introduction by the two leaders: ‘We are…agreed that the most urgent task facing this coalition is to tackle our record debts’ and in the pledge to ‘significantly accelerate the reduction of the structural deficit….with the main burden…borne by reduced spending’. It is this issue which is certain to be the most important for councils.
In all the talk of the £6 billion savings package, which George Osborne will unveil next week, it is easy to forget this is just the tip of the iceberg. We will have to wait for the budget and the autumn spending review to see the full scale of mainstream budget reductions. But the likely pressure on local government budgets looks even greater in the context of other Coalition spending pledges, including major areas like the NHS, schools and overseas aid which are to be safeguarded from any reduction. With councils apparently having less scope to raise money locally and with communities having more power to slow down or block unpopular cuts, to say councils are between a rock and a hard place is an understatement.
Unless I have missed something, there is little to suggest the Coalition is interested in supporting – let alone incentivising - initiatives like Total Place (perhaps this is just too humdrum for these heady days). But local collaboration and budget pooling is surely vital to minimise the impact of the coming cuts on the most important aspects of local life and the most vulnerable local people. Maybe, in fact, the most important message of the Coalition programme for local public service leaders is actually page seven where we see the photogenic Dave and Nick sitting together committed to overcoming old rivalries for the good of the nation.
An oasis of politics in a sea of turmoil
I have been a more than usually useless blogger recently. I have been completely sidetracked by my lecture on 21st century enlightenment, which is quite literally causing me sleepless nights as I veer from euphoric mania to teeth grinding despair. The plan now is to update the wiki with a full first draft by the end of next Monday. Someone innocently asked me the other day why exactly I perform an annual lecture. Being entirely unable to answer I had to go and sit in a darkened room for several hours to recover.
In as much as I have been noticing the world around me a few thoughts have glided past my fevered brow….
Yesterday we had a fascinating presentation here at the RSA by Stan Greenberg, a pollster not just to Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, but to a wide variety of parties across the world, including ones on the right. He had conducted a comprehensive poll of voters in the days immediately after the election.
His presentation left me with three thoughts: given that public opinion currently favours left of centre over right of centre attitudes on key issues (tax increases rather than service cuts, protect the state don’t shrink it) and given that there doesn’t seem to be much awareness of, or enthusiasm for, the Tory ‘big society not big state’ agenda:
a) Does this mean that David Cameron, far from underperforming, did incredibly well to win despite the general mood?
b) What will happen to the LibDems? On the one hand, public preferences and the tendencies of its supporters suggest that being a coalition partner with a right of centre party will prove very damaging. On the other hand, Stan argued that the LibDems could ‘own’ the political reform part of the coalition agenda while the Conservatives own the fiscal discipline side. Stan also argued that across most of Europe the party that establishes itself as ‘new politics’ and attracts younger voters (mainly the LibDems here but often the Greens abroad) usually maintains its strength despite cyclical shifts.
c) Given that Labour would almost certainly now be leading a centre left coalition Government if it had had another leader (Stan explicitly confirmed this) will it prove hard for Labour members to be enthusiastic about anyone implicated either in supporting Gordon Brown or failing to take the opportunity to oust him (OK this does rule out the whole former cabinet but maybe it’s time to skip two generations!)?
Being an enthusiast for collaboration I am, along with most other people, fascinated to see how the coalition does and we will be sending out invitations in the next few days to hear new ministers lay out their plans in the areas most relevant to the Society’s work.
The end of an era
It is a new era. As regular readers will know, I have been told to keep political commentary to a minimum on this site but as it feels like a turning point for me too maybe I can be excused one more time.
Despite my own personal political affiliations it is difficult not to be excited by the idea of coalition government. After all this had been Tony Blair’s plan if he had faced a much smaller majority in 1997 – rather negotiate with Liberal Democrats than be in hoc to Labour’s left wing.
My instinct is that either things will go wrong very quickly for the coalition or they will, as the ruling Parties hope, last a full Parliament. This will depend on events, personalities and, as I argued on Monday, the relationship between leaders who want to stay in power and MPs and activists who may find the compromises of office very uncomfortable.
In terms of our political culture an important question will be how the LibDems and Tories handle their differences. If they are willing to be reasonably frank about them and invite the public to engage in the debate, we really could see a more open and elevating type of politics. If, however, the debates are suppressed only to emerge in hostile press briefings, then the standing of our representative democracy could fall further still. The Osborne Cable pairing will be particularly fascinating in this regard. In many ways, it reminds me of the ill starred welfare reform partnership of Harriet Harman and Frank Field between 1997 and 1998 – let’s hope it does a great deal better.
As for me this is the time to hang up my boots as a pundit and occasional political advisor (out of working hours I hasten to add). It will be interesting to observe the Labour leadership contest and David Miliband will hope history repeats itself (in leadership elections the person who starts favourite for Labour usually wins while Tory favourites usually lose). The one bit of advice I would give to all the contenders is politely to distance themselves from the New Labour old guard, whether that is big beasts like Campbell and Mandelson or small fry like yours truly.
As for the RSA I believe we are entering a really exciting period. Our non-aligned political position is not only in keeping with our traditions but just right for the times. At our Trustees meeting yesterday we had excellent presentations on our Peterborough and Connected Communities projects. The RSA doesn’t just talk about the Big Society – we are doing the thinking and innovation that aims to make community renewal and deeper civic engagement real.
So it’s kind of poignant to look back across the whole cycle, starting with my first canvassing session – for Douglas Jay (who had himself been MP for Battersea North for over 30 years) in the 1979 election, through the 18 years of opposition and then the 13 years of Labour government and back out again. But one of the lessons of all that time has been that real enduring social change is as likely to start from outside Government as from the plans of politicians. I don’t know how the coalition government will do but I am certain the RSA is going to make a big impact in the years ahead.
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