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We would be daft to deny Nicky Morgan’s assertions that “education has the power to transform lives” and her desire to secure higher standards with a view to securing our children’s future. In her Foreword to the White Paper, she is correct to write that one in three children leaving primary school in 2010 did not attain the norm in both, English and mathematics, albeit she alleges that they did not know how to “read, write and add up properly” – which is not true. She also mentioned that we have been falling behind in the international league tables, which is all too true.
The vision of the Department of Education, which she leads, is commendatory. It focuses on our young people and aims to
(i) secure their safety and promote the country’s youth’s well-being;
(ii) ensure that there is educational excellence everywhere;
(iii) prepare young people for adult life.
It would be foolhardy to deny the principles underpinning the White Paper, which are that
(i) children and young people come first;
(ii) all those involved in education must have high expectations for all our children;
(iii) the government must promote a central policy focusing on outcomes, not on methods;
(iv) the government creates “supported autonomy”; and
(v) ministers and civil servants are responsive to need and autonomy.
Autonomy is not licence; rather, it is the sibling of accountability. For too long, schools have been subjected to and hamstrung by fetters and diktat of both, central and local government. Schools must be given space to breathe. Just as parents need to give their children wings to fly, government has to give schools the freedom to scale the heights. The White Paper quotes Joel Klein, American lawyer and former Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, which serves more than 1.1 million pupils in 1,600 schools: “You can mandate adequacy but you cannot mandate greatness; it has to be unleashed.”
The White Paper exhorts us to have high expectations for our children and build capacity and capability to grow their young people and future generations.
It goes on to set out seven levers for achieving these goals.
(i) A sufficient supply of great teachers everywhere.
(ii) Great leaders in our schools.
(iii) A school-led system where every school is an academy with local authorities having a different role to play from the one that they current do. In particular, LAs will
- ensure every child has a school place;
- ensure the needs of vulnerable pupils are met; and
- act as champions for all parents and families.
(iv) The prevention of underperformance and available help for schools to go from good to great; school-led improvement, with scaffolding and support where it’s needed.
(v) High expectations of those working in and benefiting from our education system and a world-leading curriculum for all.
(vi) An education system that is fair and ambitious for every child and is accountable to its users.
(vii) The availability of the right resources in the right hands and the allocation of finance where it can do the most good.
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