The meeting will be at 6.00pm in Committee Room 20 at the Palace of Westminster, and will last about an hour and a half.

Just a reminder that entry is via the main Visitors’ Entrance, and that it is possible that there will be a queue waiting to go through security, so you should arrive in sufficient time.

We apologise for the very short notice of this announcement because of internet troubles in the last ten days.   We had already contacted members and friends by e-mail about this meeting.

A group of parents in Brandon, Suffolk, is in the process of setting up a free school, and has asked a Swedish company to manage it on their behalf.  If it gets final approval from the Secretary of State, it will open in September 2012.

The company concerned is Internationella Engelska Skolan, or IES, which run twenty schools in Sweden, and is led by Barbara Bergstrom.  The company describes its education philosophy as “tough love”.   Ms Bergstrom says that Mr Gove told her that if the project at Brandon succeeds, he would like to see the company taking on more schools.   He also said that the company should let him know if it experiences barriers against what it is trying to do.

Under present legislation free schools are state funded charitable trusts and legally stopped from making a profit, but there is nothing in the law to prevent a trust paying a company to run the school under a management contract.

Ms Bergstrom described Mr Gove’s attitude as positive towards the idea of her company managing other schools.   She told him the bureaucratic process is ridiculous and needs to be changed.   She can’t understand why “profit” is regarded as an ugly word in Britain, saying that she started her company twenty years ago and without a reasonable amount of profit she would not have been able to expand.

Mr Gove is in favour of a change in the law to allow schools to be run as commercial enterprises, bringing capital and expertise into the state sector, but Liberal Democrats in the coalition have opposed any change.

Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers,  said last week: “What we are seeing now is schools being run for profit. The  secretary of state said definitely this would not happen. This is going  beyond acceptable boundaries for private firms, like providing books. When  you get a private company running schools, all the dangers of privatisation  of the system become apparent.”

This comment shows how right Ms Bergstrom is.   What is so dangerous?

Happy Christmas from the Conservative Education Society.

Have a good break and a peaceful New Year.

As usual, there was an impressive list of speakers.   Kevin Brennan MP, the Shadow Schools Minister;  James Westhead of Teach First;  and John Brennan, Director of the Centre for Higher Education Research and Information;  spoke for the motion.   Graham Stuart MP, Chairman of the Education Select Committee;  Barnaby Lenon, former Headmaster of Harrow;  and Toby Young, author, journalist and founder of the West London Free School; opposed the motion.

Toby Young’s speech set out the reasons he believes any move to abolish independent schools would fail, and his strong belief in improving the maintained sector through free schools.  Here’s his speech as reported today in his newspaper column.

His down to earth words helped ensure the motion was defeated by a margin of approximately two to one.

He looks at the so-called “riots” which spread to a number of places in the country a few weeks ago, and concludes that the problem is not the state of today’s society, but that we have a small minority of young people unwilling or unable to join it.  “Education is the passport to thrive in modern society”, he says, and goes into some detail about the system as it is today:  its successes and its shortcomings.   On  early years’ education he says:

“Right from the start, in the Foundation Stage profile assessments children have in their reception year, a significant minority do not achieve the expected minimum in each assessment scale.    Still, they march on to the next year.   And the proportion of those failing only swells as children get older.

“It is high-quality pre-school education in the early years of a child’s life which will best prepare all children for success at school from the start. The evidence is conclusive on the effectiveness of formal childcare in improving cognitive development.”

The Social Market Foundation has an idea for childcare loans, which could help build a high-quality, universal pre-school education service.    It is bringing out two reports this autumn looking at childcare affordability and an innovative new funding model for pre-school education.

Read Ryan’s whole article here.

Chairman, Robert Pettigrew, was re-elected, and there are three new officers, Phil King, Richard Tyson, and Vernon de Maynard.  This is the full list:-

Chairman:                                          Robert Pettigrew

Vice Chairmen:                                 James McMurray  and  Phil King

Hon Treasurer:                                 Chris Everest

Hon Secretary:                                 Richard Tyson

Newsletter & Website Editor:           Tricia Gurnett

Policy & Research Co-ordinator:     Vernon de Maynard

Our President is The Lord Lingfield, Kt, DL, and the Deputy President is Harry Greenway.  The four Vice Presidents, all previous Chairmen, are Peter Halls-Dickerson, Peter Lewis, Andrew Povey and Tricia Gurnett.

The officers are now working on a new programme for the autumn and winter.

NEXT EVENT:

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

to be held on Wednesday 13th July 2011, at 6.00pm

In Lords Committee Room 3, House of Lords, London SW1 0PW (via main visitors’ entrance to Palace of Westminster)

    After the AGM, our President, The Lord Lingfield Kt DL, will give his annual keynote speech.

Lord Lingfield is perhaps better known as Sir Robert Balchin, and has a distinguished career in education policy and practice.  He was Chairman of the Grant Maintained Schools Trust, chaired a number of party policy groups whilst we were in opposition, and was asked by the Prime Minister to accept a peerage and thereby add to the education team in the House of Lords.

Robert Pettigrew, Chairman of the Conservative Education Society, welcomed John Hayes; and Andrew Sich, Head of Corporate Affairs of City & Guilds; Tom Wilson, Director, unionlearn;  and Sir Robert Balchin, President of the Conservative Education Society.  He introduced John Hayes, who was speaking on the subject of “Cinderella Shall Go to the Ball: The importance of adult education and lifelong learning to economic growth and a learning society”.

John Hayes MP said that social mobility declined under the period of the last administration, and the new Government’s vision is that there should be a reality of prospering on the back of individual efforts. Adult learning is the engine of learning.

The draft skills strategy has been out for consultation during the summer, at the heart of which is to determine who will be responsible for paying for what. There is a need to re-evaluate how best to lever investment from industry (a necessary supply-side reform, perhaps through the tax system) to ensure that learners are targeted.  Some types of businesses may need the Government to do less, rather than more. The prospect of individual contributions should not be dismissed – the principle of co-investment is well established in the higher education sector. The Government needs to resolve where best it can distribute resources effectively: and this may start with informal, unaccredited learning leading to wider participation.

As a society, we need to recognise that vocational and practical education has a valid place (as was appreciated by previous generations). The barriers between FE and HE need to be adjusted so that patterns of study fit the lives of people: flexibility needs to be increased.

What will emerge from the review and the Comprehensive Spending Review remains to be announced: the Ministerial team is determined to be pro-active in advance of the Comprehensive Spending Review – and to think more laterally and act more creatively. The sector needs to be more demand-driven, with skills-based courses developing as a consequence of demand and serving the needs of the economy as it adapts and changes: power within the system needs to be located at the sharp-end – the previous system was unresponsive and unsympathetic and enveloped in a multitude of bureaucracy.

The focus of reforms is about the choices of learners, the activities of teachers, and the needs of employers.

Andrew Sich of City & Guilds then spoke and said there was much in the Minister’s contribution with which there was concurrence. Individual learning accounts were a good idea not given the time to mature: although there was evidence of fraud, the concept was successful in getting individuals to recognise the principle of lifelong learning and investing in themselves. It is unlikely that any future return to this concept will be as generous as the original idea, but City & Guilds would support a similar initiative.

The Government needs to be more radical and to give incentives to individuals to place themselves in the ‘driving seat’ of their own learning. The notion of loans in further education warrant examination, not least as an issue of equity – loans are available for full-time students of higher education. The acquisition of career development loans is subject to negotiation and commercial rates of interest. The sense of equity between participants in further and higher education courses needs to be reflected in Government policy.

Employers need to be encouraged to contribute more to skills training: a means needs to be found to encourage greater responsibility amongst employers: the Government could include a skills training requirement for all procurement tenders, or, at the very least, to require bidders to demonstrate their commitment to invest in training. This could then be extended across the entire supply chain. Alternatively, it would be possible to tie a reduction in national insurance contributions to investment in training. Companies could be encouraged to publish their skills training budgets as part of their Annual Reports.

The principle of a licence to practice, along the lines of those established on health & safety grounds, could be expanded. It is already a well-established concept amongst professional bodies, and there is scope to extend more widely.

Tom Wilson of unionlearn said: The concept of the current adult education system is wrong: it is about learning at work or not at work, and not just in a formal setting. The focus needs to be on how to make adult learning at work more effective, and how it can contribute positively to the economy. The Leitch agenda barely mentioned adult education.

To become a learning society, it is important to overcome the philistinism that learning at work is bad economics. Unionlearn has 26,000 union representatives training 250,000 people last year, across the complete spectrum, and seeks to engage employers to be the best: to get the most out of their training budgets. Adult education should be seen holistically: the training of the workforce has significant economic potential. Employers need soft skills from graduates as well as others.

The training agenda needs to be opened up to learners in the market: participants need to be well-informed for the system to function effectively. The trade unions are well placed to ensure that this is made available to those on the periphery of adult learning.

The principle that employers should, at least, be encouraged to publish their efforts in training staff in Annual Reports should be established – this, it needs to be recognised,  has benefits for customers, wider stakeholders &c, and many companies are already doing so.

The equalities agenda should not be ignored: there is a distinction between girls doing level 2 courses being less well paid than boys studying level 3 courses.

QUESTIONS AND DISCUSSION 

(Association of Learning Providers): Skills training to be included as an integral part of the welfare black box offer? (John Hayes, M.P.): this has the potential to be a notional commitment, or a conduit to mainstream training (which is more difficult to construct), but very keen to ensure a needs-based relationship with mainstream providers. Engagement is taking place with Lord (David) Freud, but these are not concluded and form part of the Comprehensive Spending Review considerations.

(Edge): shifting ‘train-to-gain’ and expanding apprenticeships – how to encourage employers to take more apprentices? (John Hayes, M.P.): £150m has been transferred to apprenticeships, and there is a freedom for F.E. colleges to adapt and meet the requirements: training providers and colleges need to be strong and well-entrenched in their local communities, able to adapt to specific requirements. (Andrew Sich): There is a danger of the current system getting out of balance, particularly in the context of the challenges facing SMEs in taking on apprenticeships: the Government needs to appreciate that group training associations are not the complete answer to this issue. People aged over twenty-five are not entitled to a fully-funded apprenticeship, and consideration needs to be given to relaxing the rules over the age to reflect changes in lifestyles. (John Hayes, M.P.): There is no shortage of demand for apprenticeships, but there is a scarcity of places for higher education institutions (not necessarily a bad thing); businesses need to take up the challenge of apprenticeships. Group Training Associations (GTAs) are a coherent option to enable the uptake of apprenticeships, particularly amongst SMEs. The concept of licence to practice is well received, but it can be industry-led. (Tom Wilson): the previous Government had tried to bribe employers to participate in apprenticeships, but had failed: how to ensure that existing incentives can be made to work is a challenge.

(CIPD): skills training needs to be related to the requirements of the economy: but no real focus on the skills required for management and leadership: (John Hayes, M.P.): we need to know how to direct skills to get the best out of employees: implementing strategies requires application of leadership and management skills. There is merit in the development of Guilds – with a recognised training pathway through apprenticeship to technician and fellow, masters and this matches the aesthetic of academia and the professions. The work of finance is another good example where progression exists. The link between investment in skills and productivity has been established

Where economically should the sector be positioned, given the Government’s role as dominant force in investment: (John Hayes, M.P.): the Government is keen to have a growth and innovation fund to lever other investment into the sector: good advice and guidance needs to be available. Social networks reinforce the advantages of the middle class and the disadvantaged are further precluded. The last Government believed that the University admissions system was beset by an inherent bias against the dis-advantaged: the problem lay rather more starkly in the number of applications, with many higher education institutions seeking to be pro-active in their admissions policies.

The skills gap is still growing, apprenticeships are important in inner city communities, yet further education governance is incredibly complex; what can be done to support SMEs in participating and taking on apprentices? (John Hayes, M.P.): the Government is determined to provide the further education sector with the support necessary to enable it to catch-up in the course of the next five years: and a difference will be tangible over this period. Apprenticeships will be expanded, and greater freedoms will be conferred on further education institutions.

Yes, his announcement today that he wants to make it easier for headteachers to dismiss bad teachers has won approval from the General Secretaries of both the National Association of Head Teachers and the Association of School and College Leaders.

The Education Secretary is to consult on new regulations on school teacher performance management.  He wants to get rid of complex “guidance” and ”capability procedures” and to reduce the time it takes to remove a poor teacher from over a year to about a term.

Michael Gove said, “We must deal with this problem in order to protect the interests of children who suffer when struggling teachers are neither helped nor removed. Schools must be given the responsibility to deal with this fairly and quickly.”