 General Secretary’s Address to Annual Conference, March 2009
Leadership with a moral purpose
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The Association
The last academic year has seen the biggest growth in membership in the history of the association, now 14,600 compared with just 10,000 seven years ago. More and more people are recognising the quality of what ASCL offers to school and college leaders, as well as the leadership that the Association gives to the education service. The growing membership has enabled us again to increase our staff – and hence the breadth of our service to members.
Visits to the ASCL website are running at a record level, around 9,000 a week, and the weekly email newsletter, which tells you what’s important and what you can ignore, is read by over 10,000 members.
The demands on our services are growing even faster than our membership, with the range of responsibilities and accountability of school and college leaders increasing every year. That is very good news – a sign of our relevance, the quality of our support for members, the way we are the first port of call on so many issues. But there is an underlying concern – the increasing vulnerability of our members.
Our officers in the field report that 150 of our members lost their jobs in 2008, half of them because of the national challenge or the school becoming an academy. Many of these have stories that can’t be told because compromise agreements have been reached, but the picture of some local authorities acting on pressure from above and some academy sponsors acting like football club oligarchs is not a happy one. When the going gets tough – and it increasingly often does – our members deserve better treatment from their employers.
A new alignment
Last year I suggested that it was time for a re-think in the relationship between government and school and college leaders, that there was a new alignment to be forged with
Strong autonomous schools and colleges, empowered to collaborate, held to account intelligently and involving more strongly their main stakeholders, the students and their parents.
In other words, we go on raising standards across the system, involving young people and their parents more, and working together with other schools, and the government creates a framework in which autonomy, collaboration and accountability are held in a new, more productive balance. Bottom-up development with top-down empowerment is what we firmly believe is needed for a successful system.
So today I want to examine the extent to which, during the past year, the system has moved closer to this new alignment.
The gap between policy making and implementation
Let me look first at the gap between policy and implementation.
Steve Marshall, recently an inspiring head of education in Wales, now in Ontario but sadly seriously ill, put it like this, writing in 2008 in the Ontario principals’ magazine:
You often find in education systems that, when policy is determined, implementation is not always considered to the degree it could be and principals will say “If you had only asked us … It’s not that the idea is wrong, it’s just the way you’re going about it”.
And the government here does listen to ASCL. I have no complaint about the extent to which we are consulted on each reform. Far from it. But a big part of the problem is the sheer volume of legislation and regulation. On the screen behind me is the list of this year’s initiatives. Many of them have considerable merit. But we cannot implement them all at once.
The DCSF carried out 79 policy consultations in 2008 and this year we are set for even more.
This provides incontrovertible evidence that the power of the government over education, like the power of George III, “has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished.”
The moral purpose that drives us is our belief in the power of learning to transform the lives of young people. Although ministers and officials also want to do good, I sometimes think that the purpose that drives the government is its belief in the power of legislation. In fact, ‘drives’ may not be quite the right word, as the juggernaut of policies, laws and regulations, hurtles at ever increasing speed towards us, seemingly out of control.
Now, as you know, the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything is 42. But what is the Question? In the DCSF the answer is legislation and never mind the question.
Governments – and this is not the first one with this problem – suffer from HRD, Hyperactive Regulatory Disorder, a condition for which there is no known cure, but for which I suggest a practical remedy.
Aviva, the insurance company, that has recently changed its name rather more expensively than ASCL, gets its executives to crash a car and then go through the process of making a claim. Now I would suggest that nobody should be allowed to become an education minister without first being a teacher for a month (including break duty on a wet Friday) and being a head for a month (including reading and implementing all DCSF documents and meeting all administrative deadlines while not being tied to one’s desk during the school day).
The most common side effect of HRD is another law – the Law of Unintended Consequences. Just one example will have to suffice.
Heads received a letter last year from the Deputy Director of the Progression and Performance Division of the DCSF (You just couldn’t make it up!). The letter was entitled: Collection of reasons for Key Stage 3 test absence from schools with 5 per cent and above absence in any of the national test subjects over two consecutive years.
The letter was dated 1 April (I kid you not). So, just 96 days before the key stage 3 tests were abolished, a new statutory duty in The Education (School Performance Information) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2008 compelled some schools to provide the government with a list of reasons for each pupil’s absence from each KS3 test.
The letter was accompanied by a Q and A sheet, including such gems as “Isn’t the collection of reasons for KS3 test absence unnecessary, additional bureaucracy?” The answer, which starts “No”, is just too side-splitting to read in full.
Fortunately, in the end, ETS incompetence ensured that nobody cared whether the pupils had been there or not. And what might be described as the Betamax approach to educational policy making ensured that schools didn’t have to complete the absence returns. Like Betamax, the KS3 tests disappeared into obsolescence with a wave of the secretary of state’s wand on 14 October.
And did you notice what a good press Ed Balls got on 15 October? I have subsequently pointed out to him that, since he gets many more plaudits for abolishing things than for introducing them, could he please introduce less and abolish more.
Instead we have a deficit model of policy making, with school and college leaders not trusted and the government always assuming that schools are doing things badly. Recently we have had several new statutory duties and these will increase as a result of the 2009 Bill. And we have a 47-page toolkit on extremism, guidance on pupil voice, guidance on pupil well-being, guidance on personal tutors, and even – wait for it – guidance on guidance, or IAG as we have learnt to call it! Only guidance on fine wine appreciation is missing – at least that is one we can look forward to.
The rationale for all of this was given by Jim Knight to the House of Lords Merits Committee, which was studying the reasons for the large number of statutory instruments applied to schools and colleges.
So, why all the SIs, the committee asked. Jim said that, because schools are improving, the DCSF is slowly reducing the number of them. It just doesn’t feel like it from where I’m sitting.
It is, he said, a relatively open system, a relatively delegated system and it therefore needs some regulation if we are going to get anything done. Which seems to imply that schools will only act if they are told what to do by the government.
By and large, he continued, it is a very compliant system. We have things through our national strategies, through the local authorities, through the non-departmental public bodies: a delivery chain with which we work closely and that feeds information and intelligence back to us about how things are working.
So there you have it. Many millions spent on the educational equivalents of the paratroopers, MI6 and, in the case of national strategies, the provisional wing of the DCSF, forcing schools into “compliance” and feeding back “intelligence” about the extent to which we are doing his master’s wishes, jumping through his master’s hoops.
And all this, imposed on a school system that has become increasingly varied in recent years in the name of “diversity”. Does the government not see the irony? The truth is that diversity is a political pretence, a paper-thin cover for a system that has become over-centralised and over-bureaucratic.
In this Tesco management model of England Schools plc, heads are the branch managers, teachers the shelf fillers and bursars the account technicians – part of a “delivery chain” that is about as far from my vision of school leadership as it is possible to get – all summed up in that dreadful word “compliance”.
Compliance, I used to read in management books, is the lowest form of commitment, to be encouraged in those who have no job flexibility, no initiative and limited intelligence. Is this what ministers really want of their school leaders? I sincerely hope not. Yet that’s how it sometimes feels.
Fortunately, this isn’t what actually happens, except in a Whitehall view of our world, seen from one end of what they call the “delivery chain”.
Instead, in the real world, ASCL’s secondary school and college leaders retain the self-confidence to hang on to a high degree of flexibility and to have at their sides a waste paper basket labelled Initiatives ignored. This is the principal as gatekeeper, in the words of Michael Fullan. Leaders can, and do, have original thoughts and put them into action. That’s why we have such a rich tapestry of different activities taking place in our schools and colleges. That’s why, when you visit a town with several schools, people will tell you about the different characteristics of each. It’s got nothing to do with the government, a bit to do with specialist status, and everything to do with the initiative, commitment and drive of ASCL members.
It is a situation in which the government should trust school leaders more, hold them to account intelligently, have clearer priorities and take fewer, better planned initiatives that bring implementation into the heart of policy making (as I set out in the Times Educational Supplement on Friday).
ASCL members have successfully led improved results at 16 and 18, increased participation post-16, the introduction of the diploma, new courses at A level and GCSE, a new approach at key stage 3, more consultation of parents and students, and much more. We have led the way on community cohesion and well-being and shared with the social partnership the leadership of a successful programme of workforce reform.
ASCL members want a higher performing system as much, if not more than, anyone and are prepared to take responsibility and collective action to bring this about. With a high-trust model of school improvement, our impact will be deep and sustainable.
Curriculum and assessment
In the past year the government has heeded the ASCL message on some issues. On the Richter scale of government announcements, 14 October was at least Force 7 as the unloved key stage 3 tests and the unwanted single level tests were swept away. All credit to Ed Balls, who acknowledged to Parliament ASCL’s part in his decision:
Head teachers have repeatedly told me that a more flexible system of assessment throughout key stage 3 would allow schools to focus their efforts more effectively on personalised teaching and learning using the flexibility of the new secondary curriculum.
Exactly what I said at this conference last year. What is important now is that we respond to the challenge to integrate assessment for learning and assessment of learning with the more flexible key stage 3 curriculum and to demonstrate that we didn’t need key stage 3 tests to raise achievement for 14 year olds. This isn’t the end of assessment at KS3; it’s the end of bad assessment. So now it’s over to us to show how high quality, rigorous and yet appropriate assessment can inform parents and help students make progress. It’s time for assessment as it should be.
Equally, the government must resist the temptation to fill the gap they have created with a whole new set of prescriptive assessments.
To check the progress of the system, this association has long advocated the use of sample testing and, to Ed Balls’s credit, he announced that he will introduce an externally marked test, with a sample of pupils to measure national performance, so that the public can hold government to account.
In place of the key stage tests, ASCL wants the government to make real progress with the introduction of chartered assessors, so that the professional assessment skills of teachers are nationally accredited in a way that will give public credibility to the grades they decide. It’s good to see that the diploma is to be assessed on the chartered assessor model. Other external qualifications also need to make full use of the skills and experience of chartered assessors.
Diplomas
The diploma was a major issue at this conference last year. Those issues haven’t gone away and ASCL is still as strongly committed to the general diploma – embracing A levels, GCSEs, functional skills tests and an extended project – as we were then.
ASCL members have put a huge amount of work into establishing the diploma and the partnerships that go with them. The diploma is a bridge between the academic and the vocational, but that is not an easy message to sell to potential diploma candidates and their parents. Nor is it proving easy to sell to higher education and employers, among whom the fickle support of the CBI has been particularly disappointing.
As is now well understood, we want a General Diploma that ties together into a common structure an increasingly diverse range of qualifications. We support whole-heartedly the efforts being made to widen the curriculum and increase its flexibility to meet the needs of individuals. Indeed we have argued for it vigorously. But there needs to be public understanding of the qualification system as a whole. Though we welcome that diversity – one size does not fit all – we know that diversity creates complexity and complexity creates confusion. In such a situation, people will default to what they know: A-Levels and GCSEs.
ASCL’s suggested General Diploma – I have heard it called the ASCL Bacc! – seeks to tie existing well established strengths (such as A-levels and GCSEs) and fledgling newcomers (like the diploma, functional skills tests, work-related learning and the extended project) together into a coherent whole. We hope to create a system that routinely equips young people with a wide range of skills and experience, well beyond twentieth century paper-and-pencil tests, and create a context in which the laudable intentions of the new diploma can flourish.
The National Challenge
The National Challenge has adversely affected the atmosphere between school leaders and the government this year. It is a perfectly respectable political priority to give additional help to schools with low GCSE results. Indeed, putting £400 million extra into many of the most challenging schools in the country should surely be seen as a positive move.
But the launch of this initiative soon ruined that. 638 schools were branded as failing and threatened with closure on the sole grounds that their GCSE results were below 30 per cent. Headlines in the local press created uncertainty about the future of these schools and some parents sent their 11 year olds elsewhere, thus making the task of the school even more difficult.
The government had adopted the Gore Vidal maxim: It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail. So a school in Plymouth is labelled a failure by the National Challenge, but graded Outstanding soon afterwards by Ofsted; a school in Stockton-on-Tees gets a visit from the LA which wants to label it as ‘coasting’, followed shortly by a letter from the DCSF giving it high-performing specialist status. It’s a schizophrenic approach to policy making.
In my speech to last year’s annual conference I criticised the 30 per cent raw results threshold as the basis for this initiative and highlighted the 250 of these schools with CVA over 1000. Many more, I noted, had 1000 well within their confidence interval and could not, on the government’s most sophisticated school performance measure, be said to be failing.
But the government wasn’t listening and stumbled into an own goal of massive proportions.
The 30 per cent threshold is like saying that all companies with a profit below £30 million are failing.
It is about as sensible as if the government created an Alphabetical Challenge. “No school shall be in the second half of the alphabet. We must go from Z to A.” By 2011, Winchester must be re-named Barchester, Westminster Christminster and Wellington Boot.
Compare the National Challenge with Excellence in Cities or with the London Challenge on which it was partly modelled. Apart from an initial bad headline in the Evening Standard, which is to be relied on for such things, the London Challenge has a positive image, with ‘keys to success’ schools and an impeccable and proven model of school-to-school support, as described in Achieving more together.
The London Challenge is by schools, with schools and for schools, with a coherent overall strategic direction. It provides vision. It is clear about methodology. It supports leaders. It has captured hearts and minds. And it has enriched students’ lives.
By contrast, National Challenge schools have pressure and targets from DCSF staff, local authorities, National Strategies, the government office in the region and a National Challenge Adviser. Apart from the National Challenge Adviser, who is proving to be an important ally in helping the school leaders to raise achievement, the confusion of ‘support’ to which I have often referred previously, continues.
If the National Challenge is so important and urgent …
Why was the initiative announced in the middle of the 2008 GCSE exams, upsetting 16 year olds and demoralising staff?
Why were local authorities – many of them woefully under-skilled for the task – charged with producing improvement plans for these schools over the summer holiday, when heads were away and the National Challenge Advisers hadn’t even been appointed?
Why did it take until October or November to identify the National Challenge Advisers – the key people in supporting the school?
Why did it take until December or even February in some cases to get the extra funding into the schools?
Why did it take so long to identify the schools that could best support the National Challenge schools to raise achievement?
None of this damage can be undone. But let’s have no more of the rhetoric of failure, no more of the (allegedly) naval approach to leadership – ‘Flogging will continue till morale improves’.
Instead, ASCL calls for clear project planning for such major initiatives, a focus on improvement, timely school-to-school support, efficient co-ordination (as NCSL does with the National Leaders of Education programme), intelligent accountability, less of the blame culture and more of enabling leadership, and real empowerment for the heads and the National Challenge Advisers to make the changes they deem necessary. Instead of things being done to us, let school leaders and government ministers stand side by side and say ‘Together we’re improving our schools.’ That is real system leadership.
Intelligent accountability and data
30 per cent raw results is not intelligent accountability, nor is the proportion of 16 year olds with 5 A* to Cs (or equivalent). Nor is the use of CVA scores without confidence intervals.
This association has led the way in saying that school and college leaders accept accountability for the effectiveness and efficiency with which they spend public money. But we have a right to demand that that accountability is intelligent, sensitive and based on accurate information. And that it is imposed with a minimum of bureaucracy.
So often we take two steps forward and then at least one back. Take the SIP (School Improvement Partner) programme as an example. Introduced as part of the new relationship with schools in response to the ASCL message on intelligent accountability and a Cabinet Office report on the excessive bureaucracy for schools, SIPs have been a really positive development. But the positive elements of the SIP programme are being put at risk by the bureaucracy with which it is being run and the torrent of top-down instructions and targets. In this, as in the National Challenge, the National Strategies are the storm troopers of the DCSF, creating an increased burden on heads instead of a decrease, bureaucracy in place of streamlining, defeat grabbed from the jaws of victory.
Instead, ASCL believes that SIPs must be trusted to challenge and support the school leadership, as was originally intended, and the single conversation must not be second-guessed by other agencies. The SIP programme is the flagship for school leaders exercising system leadership and it must not be hi-jacked by the agents of central and local government. It is about shared improvement, not covert control.
The balanced scorecard
The DCSF papers on the 21st century school and the balanced scorecard, published in a frenetic policy week in December, both acknowledge that the school accountability system isn’t fit for purpose.
This association has long wanted to see something more intelligent than the league tables. And the balanced scorecard may well be the answer – but only if it is based on intelligent principles, as we have set out clearly for the government.
And only if it sits comfortably in the overall school accountability system. The 21st Century School paper states that the new report card will be ‘the single accountability tool for all parties’. Hang on a minute, Ed. The report card isn’t even the new kid on the block yet. It’s far too early to say that it’s going to the top of the accountability class, to be the future senior prefect of school performance. What about Ofsted, league tables, the school improvement partner, national strategies, the target-setting regime, the school profile and all the existing paraphernalia of accountability? How does the report card fit alongside all of those? And – crucial question – which of them will disappear if the report card is introduced? Remember my maxim from two years ago for government policies – one in, one out, as the only way to make the system manageable.
Instead, ASCL believes that, if the report card comes in, it must be one in, four out. The school profile, league tables, the national strategies and top-down target-setting must all be consigned to the dustbin of education history. Then the report card can be fitted hand-in-glove with a refined Ofsted system
Parent and student views will properly form part of the scorecard. But a word of warning. Information gathered and used for school self-evaluation or college self-review does not necessarily translate easily into information for accountability.
Let’s beware the alluring over-simplification that the scorecard may represent. Let the government work with us on the detail. Let’s get this one right.
Student voice
Nonetheless, there is a place for parent and student voice in accountability. Schools and colleges are already carrying out regular surveys of both. They are finding numerous ways of listening more to the student voice. The last thing we need is a statutory duty on pupil voice, which, as night follows day, will spawn another set of unnecessary regulations and guidance.
Health ministers want to make it easier for patients to rate their family doctor. The communities’ minister wants people to be able to vote on how criminals should be punished. Now government regulations will tell us how to consult students.
This extension of the hand of government into regulating student voice is Strictly Come Teaching, with every possibility of voting for the John Sergeant of the classroom, with or without the Cuban heels.
The unspoken driver of such TV programmes is the spectacle of public humiliation of the losers. The driver of this association’s support for student voice is the greater involvement of young people in their education and the information that comes to teachers and school leaders enabling them to do things better. That means that different schools will listen to the student voice in different ways.
So instead ASCL’s message to government is that: If we must have these regulations, make them as light as possible and trust the leaders of schools and colleges, who know their students and their communities best, to decide how to do this.
The parent agenda
Then there is the parent agenda. Regrettably, the government does not always use the language of partnership when talking about parents and schools. Children’s minister calls on parents to tell their local schools what is needed. New materials put parents in the driving seat. …
That is not what schools want – and it’s not what parents want either. Rather like the much trumpeted power for parents to start their own schools – which became law in 2006 – and has resulted in just one secondary being established.
Instead, ASCL wants the emphasis of both policy and implementation put on improving the engagement of parents in their children’s learning. That’s why we support online reporting (provided that the technology is in place in good time) and why secondary schools carry out regular surveys of parent opinion.
The challenge of the children’s agenda
So we have more power to students, more power to parents, more power to local authorities, but more constraints on school and college leaders. It’s hardly in the spirit of the new alignment I proposed last year.
We have the standards agenda, the parents’ agenda, the health agenda and, embracing all, the children’s agenda – the rationale of the DCSF. ASCL recognises the legitimacy of all these agendas, provided that policy supports good implementation. Schools recognise their responsibility for the wider development of the young people. Every Child Matters continues to be the right thing to do.
But this breadth means that, as well as answering in Parliament for what happens in every school in the land, the secretary of state may now have to answer for every serious problem faced by a child in England. The Department for Children, Schools and Families may well translate – without necessarily making any mistakes itself – as the place where Disasters Come So Frequently.
Child protection is a highly emotive issue, and especially now after Haringey it takes up a lot of time in local authorities. With the dreadful statistics of children being sexually abused and even murdered in their home, Children’s Services Departments (CSDs) are rightly desperately keen to avoid another Baby P situation on their patch.
The job of Director of Children’s Services has become the job from hell – responsible for everything that happens to children in their area, accountable to a huge range of bodies, spending a high proportion of the working week on corporate committees, and as vulnerable as school leaders to being sacked. The risk is that some DCSs take their eye off the educational ball and leave that to second and third tier officials.
So it is not surprising that some schools and colleges question whether LAs are actually capable any longer of fulfilling what central government expects of them, a job that will become even more demanding when the machinery of government changes come in and sixth form colleges join the local authority family in 2010.
This association believes that there has been a fault line in government education policy in the last 18 months – the additional responsibilities placed on local authorities to carry through initiatives, such as the national challenge, coasting schools, schools causing concern, children’s trusts, policing admissions ever more closely, managing the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme, and commissioning, funding and quality assurance of 16 to 19 education.
Then the government checks on them in ways that make school accountability look light-touch – over 200 visits in a single year to each LA from national strategies, the TDA, the government office in the region, the school food trust, the national assessment agency, and so on.
I have some sympathy for local authorities, squeezed by the demands of increased responsibility and monitoring. Some rise to the challenge impressively. But never have the limitations of some LAs been so brutally exposed. Never have we needed more a clear description of the role of the LA in the children’s services’ era. The government needs to be much clearer about the role they want LAs and children’s trusts to play, and more realistic about their ability to play it effectively.
Instead, let me try to provide an ASCL answer. School improvement is the job of schools. That’s where the expertise lies. The LA role in this field is to monitor and, if things are starting to go wrong, commission support from other schools.
The joining up of local services, so that they provide timely and effective support to front line institutions, is the job of LAs and children’s trusts. That, in my view, is where their focus should be, and not as the local enforcement arm of the DCSF, “delivering” dozens of school improvement initiatives. At ASCL we believe that delivery is the job of postmen and midwives, not LA officers, teachers and school leaders.
I welcome the extended remit for NCSL to train present and future DCSs, but the government and the college itself must ensure that NCSL maintains its central focus on school leadership development.
Leadership with a moral purpose: a contrast with the banking sector
Never has the job of school and college leadership been more important. The government wants us to raise standards, narrow the gaps between the achievements of rich and poor, extend the work of our schools and colleges into new areas, increase social mobility, work in partnership with other agencies, raise national skills levels, and so on. And we want these things too.
Meanwhile, the economy topples further into recession and the measures to deal with the financial situation become more extreme, already drawing us into territories unknown to economists even a year ago. In such dire fiscal times, education is more important than ever. The future of the country literally depends on how successful we are in developing the skills and talents of our young people.
We must hope that the credit crunch will bring change not only in the value of our shares, but in the values of our society; a change from the foolishness of toxic loans and the selfishness of huge bonuses to a stronger recognition of our shared professional commitment to the welfare and life opportunities of others that are at the heart of the value set of the people in this hall.
Young people who until recently headed straight from university to the city to make their fortune are questioning whether there is any moral purpose in that. These young people are turning in increasing numbers to Teach First and, for those losing their highly paid city jobs, to the graduate teacher programme. Teaching, not accountancy or the city, will soon become the top destination for talented young graduates. It is already in the top three.
These great young people are among the future leaders of schools and colleges, already absorbing the lessons of leadership and looking to us to create opportunities for them to lead. No longer is school leadership something that people expect to wait 15 or 20 years to grow into. We need to respond to this and create those opportunities.
In moving into this profession, these young people are demonstrating the depth and idealism and moral purpose of school leadership. What gets these young people, and us, out of bed in the morning is the desire to raise the achievements of young people, to increase their opportunities and ensure that they make the most of them, to increase the social mobility of those who started life with fewer chances than others, to help young people who have made mistakes to start afresh; in short, to put into practice every day of our professional lives, the moral purpose of school leadership. That’s what Tim Brighouse in his recent book describes as the passionate leadership with which school and college leaders go about their business.
In the inspiring words of Barack Obama’s acceptance speech, which could be applied to British schools as much as to the American people,
We have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. This is our time – to … open the doors of opportunity for our kids, … and where we are met with cynicism and doubt, and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of our people: Yes we can.
It is that kind of optimism and belief in the power and purpose of education that drives us.
Increasingly, we aren’t only improving our own institution; school and college leaders are engaged in improvement beyond their own walls – the wider leadership, or system leadership, that means that you are all, in many different ways, no longer only leaders of a single school or college, but co-leaders of education in your area.
There is solid evidence that schools working with other schools raise achievement in both the giving and receiving school. Because it’s not about one school doing all the giving and one receiving. Every school leader who visits another school learns something there.
It is good that the government is now promoting more collaboration and partnership, with the National Leaders of Education and National Support Schools, the reliance on school-to-school support to help schools in difficulty, and the acceptance of Alan Steer’s recommendations on behaviour partnerships.
Conclusion
In the way in which schools and colleges have listened more carefully to the voices of their stakeholders and increased partnership working, I believe that we have kept our side of the bargain in the new alignment that we seek. We have made ourselves more accountable to the users of our service.
In the proposals for a balanced scorecard, there are the green shoots of a more intelligent accountability system, with all the provisos I set out earlier. The government side of the new alignment – strong autonomous schools and colleges, empowered to collaborate – has, however, taken a half a step backwards this year. What is needed cannot be created by more and more legislation and regulation. So the balanced scorecard of the performance of the government itself – achievement, progress, wider performance – is a mixed picture (which offers a good example of why ASCL doesn’t want a single grade on the scorecard).
In short, there’s just too much policy, too quickly introduced. I like the example set by the Slow Food Movement. Let me make a plea for Slow Policy – wholemeal, organic, evidence-based, widely consulted, consensus policies that are introduced one at a time, properly evaluated and put on the compost heap when they go off.
We know the greatness of which our young people are capable, a truth that, just for a few short weeks, dawned on the British people during the Beijing Olympics. Our young Olympians – and plenty more like them – are talented, competitive and have a work ethic to match anyone in this room. They are winners and we’re proud of them. Forget Eddie the Eagle, it’s all about emulating Rebecca Adlington now. We are in the forefront of creating the opportunities that lead to those success stories.
On that theme, let me end with a word about the late, great Alan Barnes, HMA president in 1974 and one of the first SHA field officers, founding head exactly 50 years ago at the age of 32 of Ruffwood School in deprived Kirby. An inspiration to those who knew him in his Ruffwood days and to those who, like me, came to know him later. A one-man National College for School Leadership, 50 of his teachers subsequently became heads. A former Ruffwood pupil wrote in an obituary note in the Guardian:
Alan Barnes inspired thousands of us working-class children, letting us know that we could cross the social divide. … He never let us down. He was always there, fighting for his pupils, showing sceptics what … our worth was. And Ruffwood was innovative – my sisters remember the goat that chased them through the tennis courts, my brothers remember the go-karts. We all remember Ormside, the derelict railway station cum education centre, which gave some of us the only holiday we ever had as children. I remember feeling valued.
As we leave here today, let us all be inspired by Alan’s example and determine to give our young people the opportunities that they will still remember 50 years later.
Dr John Dunford is a NET Leading Thinker
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