Centralised education system is failing pupils - Clegg

11.54.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Tue 17th Jun 2008

Nick Clegg made a major sppech on Education yesterday. The full text was as follows:

Thank you to both Microsoft and CentreForum for giving me this opportunity to talk today about personalising our public services.

I want to focus on our schools, and how we can personalise education for our children.

This the second of three speeches on education I'm making this month.

I'm putting my focus on education because it is through education that we can break down the barriers to social mobility and truly create an opportunity society in Britain today.

For me, liberalism is about many things but at its core is the message that individuals should be able to achieve their potential no matter what their background is.

Two weeks ago, speaking to the ippr, I talked about how we should restructure the way England's schools are funded.

Making the system fair to all schools, and all pupils across the country.

And later this week, I'll be talking to the Governors' Association in my home town of Sheffield, about how we can reform the curriculum to draw children in, and equip them for the 21st century.

But today - with the theme of this conference in mind - I want to talk about tailoring education to the needs of the individual student, so that everyone gets the help and opportunities they need.

Personalisation

There is a lot of talk about this personalisation agenda across our public services - and about the reform of education more widely.

And I know there are some people who feel suspicious when they hear words like personalisation.

On the one hand many teachers feel that a personalised education is exactly what they have been seeking to deliver for children for years if not all their working lives.

And on the other, many commentators will hear in Gordon Brown and Ed Balls' use of the word "personalisation" an empty substitute for Blairite reforms - designed to sound new but change little.

But I believe personalisation is genuinely important across our public services - as long as it is more than a soundbite or a smokescreen.

Increasingly, the people of Britain - call them citizens, consumers, voters, whatever you like - they're demanding a new relationship between themselves and the state.

They want public services which offer more flexibility and diversity - and fit with individual needs and circumstances - rather than being offered on the basis of a "take it or leave it" centrally prescribed format.

But the drive for personalisation is not just about meeting a consumerist demand for change.

It is also the way to deliver the fairness we all want in our society.

When services are monolithic and unbending, it is the weakest and most vulnerable in society - those who don't have the money or skills to negotiate a better deal - who suffer the most.

Liberalism offers a progressive solution.

Because by empowering every citizen, we create a society where everyone can access the services, and pursue the opportunities they need to progress, no matter their background.

Government record

The Government claims to be delivering on the "personalisation" agenda, but there is a huge gap between the rhetoric and the reality.

There are promises to give schools greater independence -

But these are contradicted by the constant tendency to micromanagement and initiativitis.

What we have is actually the antithesis of "personalisation".

First: England still has one of the most highly centralised and prescriptive education systems in the world.

Second: funding too often bears no relation to the needs of individual children.

Third: our curriculum is far too prescriptive, and still hopelessly inadequate for large numbers of children.

Fourth: testing is too often only about holding schools to account, instead of improving the education of individual pupils.

So there are strong incentives for schools to effectively write off youngsters who can't cross over the borderline to the grades which earn league table points.

Fifth: we are failing to use the enormous possibilities of new technology to deliver a more personalised education, and help improve the performance of both teachers and pupils.

And finally, we have a centrally driven programme of schools reform which is being powered and shaped by a single minister in Whitehall, who has the say on almost every new school and how it will operate.

This is education driven by central targets, not by individual needs, an approach which fails to bring out the best in our children.

It is these six issues I want to address today.

Showing how we can:

Dismantle the central control of our education system

Reform funding structures

Create an assessment system which meets all pupil needs

Change the curriculum

Use new technology

And make it easier for new schools to be established.

Curtailing Whitehall

Let's start at the top: with Whitehall.

Ministers often talk about independence and personalisation.

But I have no idea how they do it with a straight face.

We have one of the most centralised and prescriptive educational systems in the world - and almost everything they do under the banner of "independence" or "personalisation" makes it even more centralised and prescriptive.

It happens because there is huge political pressure to be seen to be doing something.

The temptation to roll out a new initiative to get some positive headlines in the newspapers can be overwhelming.

But more fundamentally, it happens because the Whitehall approach is founded on the belief that only one model of education should be applied across the maintained schools system.

And that the job of government is to work out which single system is the best - and enforce it.

So this one model is followed for a period of time, until it is found to be flawed.

Then every school is then instructed to change course to a different model.

And the cycle continues.

As a result there is no capacity to innovate and no chance to learn from testing different forms of education against each other.

I can understand the pressure to be seen to be doing something.

Particularly when a significant minority of schools have had unacceptably bad results, sometimes for years on end.

But we need a new balance between accountability and independence.

We need to take the politics out of the day-to-day, and term-to-term management of schools.

We need to strip Ministers of their power to meddle and micro-manage, and give them a new strategic role.

And we need government to stop being so afraid of diversity.

There is nothing wrong with different schools being different from one another.

In fact, when the system encompasses difference, schools can learn from others' success, and improve together, in a way that is impossible when uniformity is imposed from above.

This is a lesson the Conservatives need to learn as well.

They, like the government, talk enthusiastically about school independence.

But as soon as they fancy capturing a newspaper headline, they propose compelling schools to use only synthetic phonics, compelling schools to have a blazer as part of their school uniform, or compelling students to stand when a teacher comes into the room.

There is nothing wrong with any of these approaches for a school to take - but the decisions should be taken by teachers, head teachers and governors.

There is no other country in the world where a minister, or shadow minister, would ever seek to tell six million children when they can and cannot sit down.

The instinct to command and control is strong in Whitehall.

So we will only get change if we change the system.

That is why my party is now actively considering a radical proposal to take powers away from the central Department for Children, Schools and Families - and establish instead an Educational Standards Authority.

This would be accountable to Parliament, and not to Ministers.

It would be designed explicitly to distance politicians from short term management of schools.

The DCSF would be halved in size.

It would focus only on setting the broad strategic goals of the education system, and the legal frameworks.

And ministers would have to stop sending their regular diet of directives and diktats to schools.

In fact I'd ban them from doing it - with an Education Freedom Act.

An Educational Standards Authority would be a powerful body -

With independent oversight of exam standards -

With responsibility for schools inspection, incorporating the existing OFSTED -

And with responsibility for commissioning research on good educational practices and disseminating advice on best practice to schools.

This model would reduce the powers of central government micromanagement, and end the almost daily departmental e-mails dictating new obligations and changed regulations.

Funding

We also need a more personalised system for funding education.

I have advocated a new Pupil Premium, which would be an addition to baseline student funding, and which would follow the pupil to whichever school he or she attended.

This would underline the sovereignty of the parent and pupil in the education system of the future.

And this Pupil Premium would also reflect the higher costs of educating pupils with higher needs.

To help break the link between social disadvantage and educational performance.

It would allow more support for these students to help bring up their educational standards - and be a strong incentive for good schools to take on more challenging pupils.

This Pupil Premium idea is founded on research from the very best education systems in Europe. It is surely an idea whose time has come.

And building on similar principles, we must also create a more personalised and responsive system for funding children with Special Educational Needs.

At present, there is too much rationing of statements based on what authorities can afford, instead of what children need.

Understandably, parents resent the fact that in some parts of the country they cannot get their children the support which they need.

This can be exacerbated by the minority of highly expensive Statements, which can hit the budgets of smaller local authorities very hard indeed.

We believe there is a strong case for separating the statementing process from the funding process, so that young people really do get the personalised support which they need.

And we believe that for the small minority of highly expensive statements, there should be extra central government support - which would be of particular assistance to smaller authorities.

That way, every child can get the support they need without compromising the capacity of the council to take care of others.

Testing, Targets, Assessment and Support

Testing is the third area I want to address.

Few people would dispute that England's systems of school testing are as centralised and de-personalised as any in the developed world.

The regime of testing and targets is based more on the need to evaluate schools than on the personal needs of pupils.

It may be very interesting to discover at age 7 that a child has failed to reach the appropriate Key Stage level, but that doesn't much help the child, who's already behind in core skills.

We are currently developing our ideas in this area.

But my view is that we should replace the Key Stage 1 tests with a baseline assessment at age 5.

The focus of the assessment should be on identifying the child's strengths and weaknesses - and getting appropriate support to those youngsters who face serious reading, writing and other problems.

By scaling back some of the excessive national testing - at Key Stages 1 and 3 in particular - we will save millions of pounds.

And the money can be put directly into improving basic skills for those who presently fall behind from day one, and never catch up.

My intention is to use testing to target support - not merely to target criticism.

One to one tuition for 5, 6 and 7 year olds has been shown to have huge benefits.

But far too many children who need these skilled interventions receive no proper support.

Finally on testing, we also need to adapt the targets that we set for schools so that there is an incentive to improve the education of every single child.

And individual baseline assessments will help.

At present, our targets at the Key Stages and at GCSE level only give an incentive to focus on the borderline pupils - leaving those who are particularly low performing behind.

So over the course of this year, we will be developing detailed proposals on how this can be changed, so improvements count for every child.

The Curriculum

I want to apply the principles of personalisation in the curriculum, too.

England's curriculum should be less prescriptive, and more flexible where flexibility is needed.

Other countries manage with a national curriculum which can often be summarised in just a few pages.

While England has a curriculum which seeks to dictate to an extraordinary degree.

Take the Swedish curriculum - which comes in at just 21 pages.

And compare it to the English curriculum - which weighs in at a staggering 635 pages.

As if that wasn't enough, Ministers constantly find new subjects to add into the compulsory curriculum - cooking, culture - and so on, instead of letting pupils and schools decide.

Academies enjoy freedom from the national curriculum for non core subjects, and an opt-out for able and struggling pupils.

These flexibilities should be extended to all schools.

And the national curriculum should be radically slimmed down - giving more freedoms to schools, while offering a minimum requirement for every pupil to be taught and learn.

My party too, sometimes feels the urge to dictate that this or that ought to be taught.

But those urges must be resisted.

We will be disciplined and follow through on our principles of devolution and diversity, and seek to slim down instead of beefing up our national curriculum.

If we want to tailor education closely to the needs of the individual student, we also need to expand the amount of vocational qualifications on offer.

But I'm going to address this issue in detail in a speech later this week - so I'll leave it there for now.

New Technology

And move on to technology.

It is no coincidence that this conference on personalisation is sponsored by Microsoft.

Technology has an incredible capacity to transform the education of children in Britain today.

Sometimes I think the Liberal Democrats run the risk of coming across as technophobes because we so stridently oppose technology-based infringements on our civil liberties.

Like Identity Cards.

The Contactpoint children's database.

And the NHS IT project.

And compulsory fingerprinting in, now, thousands of schools - simply so kids can use libraries or canteens.

I repeat, today, my absolute opposition to these flagrant abuses of technological power.

No child should be fingerprinted at school. Smart card systems for a few hundred people to use libraries and canteens can easily operate without biometrics.

But I want to make it clear I am passionate about the capacity technology offers us.

The challenge is to use technology to enhance our lives - and our privacy - instead of to make us ciphers in a system beyond our comprehension.

There are new and great possibilities to use technology to engage with young people, and to drive up standards.

I am struck by how many young people who are otherwise weak in traditional school disciplines are actually extremely skilled and effective in the use of new technologies.

Young people who engage with the internet and other media on a 24 hour a day basis.

In time, this could revolutionise the way we teach and learn, and it could help to engage young people who are turned off by traditional teaching.

So I want to take advice from the producers of video games and other forms of mass media in figuring out how to engage with and motivate all young people.

Instead of the old style approach of one "computer room" for children to go into once a week, in time I want every child - in primary as well as secondary school - to have personal access to mobile IT.

Which can allow them to engage in learning and development throughout the day, both in and out of school.

There is also huge scope to use IT to personalise learning and through that personalisation to raise educational standards.

We can learn a lot from developments in Canada, where they're using technology to help personalise distance learning.

Sharing resources, lesson plans, expertise and information between networks of schools.

Improving teachers' ability to store and access teaching resources, and assess pupils' progress.

And developing e-assessment and e-homework.

But those advances don't just make a difference for children and teachers who are hundreds of miles apart.

They're being used in some innovative schools today - like Crossways Academy in south east London, where they used the opportunity of a new building to incorporate technology into every classroom - like electronic whiteboards and the internet.

In the old days, young people would be taught for a number of years; they would take an exam at the end; be given their overall result and that would be it.

But if we can harness technology, children will be able to learn and develop constantly, with assessment and - crucially - feedback that's personal, continuous at school, class and pupil level.

Parents could be able to log into the system to check on progress, engaging them more fully in their children's education.

And this could help to improve teaching -

By engaging children who are turned off by conventional learning and assessment -

And by making it easier to identify pupils who are being failed by their teachers.

Teachers should not be defensive about these new opportunities.

They should see them as an opportunity to identify areas of individual or class weakness, in order to improve results.

And even after the final exam, students should be able to access a detailed assessment of their marks, question by question, to allow for an understanding of where they did well, and how they need to improve.

Liberalising Schools

Finally, I want to turn to diversity amongst schools.

Every child is different.

So if every school is the same - it stands to reason they will not meet the needs of every student.

Schools should have their own identity.

We know the Government talks the language of choice and diversity - but the reality is very different.

The Specialist Schools initiative has been more about re-badging existing schools than a real experiment in diversity.

The Government still believes that it knows best, and its presumption is that individual schools should all be pursuing a nationally determined agenda.

You can be different from your neighbouring school but only if you adopt one of three or four nationally determined models for how to be different.

Even the Conservatives are wedded to this approach.

They also seem to believe that one set of policies should be applied across all schools - they just argue with the Government over which set of policies.

The Government's Academies programme gets it wrong when it allows freedoms for only a handful of maintained schools.

And the Conservative proposal to take money away from the rebuilding of existing maintained schools to supply more surplus capacity in new Academy Schools is unfair to existing maintained schools and may well be poor value for money.

More sensible in my view is to make it easier for new school providers to establish themselves as "Free Schools", under strategic local authority guidance, and adhering to the existing fair admissions arrangements.

This would allow alternatives to emerge, particularly where there is existing poor quality state provision, but it would not draw down on existing scarce capital resources.

And it would allow for a genuine blossoming of variety in the schools system.

Where new providers are selected for maintained schools, there needs to be real choice.

I welcome the fact that Liberal Democrat controlled Richmond Council has taken the initiative in choosing a Swedish Schools group - Kunskapsskolan - to run its new Academies in Richmond.

This group provides a genuinely personalised education, where each pupil has his or her own timetable - adapted to his or her needs.

This is real personalisation in action - but it has taken a new provider of education to bring this new approach to the UK.

If charitable and other groups want to establish new schools, with their own capital resources, then it would be wrong for a liberal to seek to impede that.

Ultimately, these measures are the right way to introduce real diversity into the schools system.

Then we can learn from what works, rather than pursuing a national strategy, drawn up in the dark and followed robotically in every school in the land.

Conclusion

This agenda of personalisation and reform is a truly exciting one.

I believe that it can and will only be pursued by a Party which truly values diversity and freedom, and which does not see the power of a centralised state as the answer to each problem.

This personalisation of education has the potential to revolutionise our ways of learning, raise standards for every child, and deliver the fairer society Britain needs.