Milburn’s report means schools should look outwards

July 20, 2009 by · 3 Comments
Filed under: Politics, Public policy 

I’m picking up on a couple of recent themes today.  

The first is the peculiar phenomenon of an apparently doomed Government producing some very worthwhile policy material. Last week there was the Social Care Green Paper and the Low Carbon Transition Plan. This week we will see the conclusions of Alan Milburn’s review of how to improve social mobility in to the professions. Yet the weekend polls confirm that, politically, Labour is in dire straits.

To give Milburn his due he has been making social mobility his personal crusade ever since 2003 when he moved from being Secretary of State for Health. As he is standing down next year this report is his swan song, and, as the good media operator he is, he has been busy stoking up interest in the report.

One statistic in particular caught my eye from the pre-briefing. Parental attitudes to learning are, we are told, four times as important as financial status in influencing children’s educational outcomes.

This was a point I made a few days ago in the content of a post about the RSA’s forthcoming ‘Schools without Boundaries’ report. I pointed out that school pupils spend 80% of their waking hours outside school and that if, in this time, there is little or nothing to reinforce a disposition to learn, schools face a steep uphill task in their 20%.       

I haven’t had a reply yet to my open letter to Michael Gove, although there has been a fascinating exchange about it on my comment pages. But I have been reflecting that Michael and I agree about something even if we draw diametrically opposite conclusions. I agree with the Conservative Education spokesperson that schools are being expected to do too much with the time they have available to influence children. 

Schools working in communities that lack commitment and confidence about learning are like factory workers trying to make a great product when they only control a fifth of the conveyor belt. Not only do they have to do great work in their segment but they end up desperately trying to make up for the shoddy work that was done before, and trying to protect the product from what is likely to happen when the line moves on. Trying to get every young person to be a successful and rounded student, schools end up taking on ever more responsibilities and having to develop a whole range of strategies to engage pupils who are not emotionally receptive to learning.

But while I suspect Michael’s response to this is to emphasise the boundary between the responsibilities of schools – to transfer knowledge – and the community, ours is to bridge that boundary, encouraging schools to explore how they can foster a culture of learning in the wider community.

Milburn’s report underlines that without cultural change among those communities whose children tend to under perform, most schools will only be able to make a difference at the margins.

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Green policies, green papers and why it’s worth listening to a dying Government

July 14, 2009 by · 12 Comments
Filed under: Politics 

There are a number of reasons why it is hard for the Government to have its ideas taken seriously. It is unpopular, Gordon Brown is communicatively challenged, and its future policy plans are seen as irrelevant given it is unlikely to be in a position to enact them.

To take one example, this is an important week for the debate about climate change. After a mini blip, world temperatures are resuming their upward climb. Predicted weather extremes may have a major impact on crops and food prices. It got remarkably little attention, but there was important progress at the G8 summit, something for which the UK deserves some credit. Against all expectations just a few months ago, a substantial agreement at Copenhagen now seems possible. And later this week we will see the Government’s own plan outlining how it intends to meet the very ambitious long term target it has set for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. It remains to be seen whether the public will be interested or willing to give Brown any credit.

From green policy to green papers; today’s report on social care may also be greeted with a shrug. After all, Labour has been putting off this issue since 1999, it hasn’t got time to act on its various recommendations before the next election, and anyway, on the toughest issue – who pays and how – the paper offers options rather than a recommendation. But regardless of whether Labour will be able to implement its strategy, the package deserves serious debate.

As I understand it, the green paper is bold in two contrasting ways. On the one hand, it seeks to turn social care from being a service for the poor to one that is universal. It does this by guaranteeing that everyone needing care – regardless of their income – will be entitled to advice and guidance from the state. On the other hand, the green paper clearly implies that of its various payment options it favours the social insurance (or as it is inelegantly referred to ‘co-payment’) model. In this scheme people are opted in (another example of nudging here) to an insurance scheme whereby they commit a lump sum either at retirement or death to insure social care costs. In this way, risk is pooled and care is affordable to both the individual and the state.

I am told that there were some in Government who opposed the publication of such a radical plan fearing a public backlash against being asked to pay. But the green paper’s advocates have two things going for them: first, focus group research showing that if people believed that insurance would protect them from the risk of having their other assets gobbled up in care fees they were happy to pay; second, the new health secretary Andy Burnham – perhaps sensing this is may be one of his last opportunities to make a big policy impact – has been a strong champion of radicalism.

Politically, things still look grim for Labour. The economic recovery is fragile and slow. There is a constant stream of criticism about the Brown style of leadership. From what I hear of the canvass returns from Norwich North, England are more likely to win the next four Ashes tests than Labour coming close to winning the by-election. Yet, despite that, or maybe even because of that, the policy ideas of a Government that has little to lose from being bold are worth taking seriously.

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