Bournemouth 2008: David Laws' speech

10.49.43am GMT Wed 17th Sep 2008

Let me start with a question. Here is the scenario: you have just been appointed Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families … …

. . Congratulations! This education job is surely the job every Liberal Democrat dreams of. And you are also, in this scenario, best mates with Gordon Brown. OK not something that every Liberal Democrat would dream of. Nor, apparently David Miliband. ........ Or, Mr. Charles Clarke. But you have been given a unique opportunity to change the lives of millions of children for the better.

So what would you do? Press Gordon Brown to secure a massive increase in investment for our poorest children? Well, Ed Balls didn't do that. Start setting schools free from the tangle of Whitehall bureaucracy? Well Ed Balls didn't do that either .... Instead, our Secretary of State has reverted to what he really is, a back room wheeler and dealer. Absorbed by Gordon Brown's future, instead of that of the children he is meant to serve. Meanwhile, this Government's education strategy has become so authoritarian that it is beyond parody. The Whitehall screwdriver reaches down ever further into every school in the land. A 10 Year Plan. A Talent Taskforce. Compulsory Cooking and Mandatory Culture. And now even a National Play Strategy! Since 1997, we have been force-fed 14 Education Bills, 370 consultation papers and over 1,600 new parliamentary regulations. That is one new education measure every two days!

Well, as liberals, we have a message for Mr. Brown and Mr. Balls: A message that the great Conrad Russell so often delivered: Centralised power is not rendered beneficial by the good intentions of those who wield it. Our task, as Liberal Democrats, is to deliver a blistering defence of real freedom in education. And to marry this with our most ambitious proposals ever to end the educational apartheid between rich and poor. The part of my job I relish most is visiting schools.

But in our schools, I also encounter the saddest and most shameful aspect of our society. The children who have been left behind, and who will never catch up. The children whose families are either too poor or chaotic to offer them support they need. The children for whom school is the one safe port in a sea of troubles. When you come across a child of, say, 7 or 8 with all their optimism, energy and enthusiasm, you want to have a sense of all the great potential that lies ahead  - success at school, a family, a great job, a life of opportunities. But, from birth, these children's life story is already being defined - in terms of low achievement, limited job prospects, and the spectre of crime and drugs. In no other rich country is it harder for poor children to succeed. Of every 10 poor boys, 8 will leave school without decent qualifications. Indeed, poor children in our country are only half as likely to succeed as the children who speak English only as a second language. A society that can look at a child at age 7, and know he or she is condemned to failure, is neither liberal nor free nor fair.

It should be the central mission of the Liberal Democrats to end this great injustice. We have long campaigned as a Party, for more funding for education. That's why we fought for the 1p extra on tax for schools, while many opposed it, and until it was delivered. And at last year's Conference, you took the next big step. You voted for a Pupil Premium of £1.5bn to help the poorest pupils. I may not normally be known for my support for extra public spending, but I was delighted that in his leadership election Nick Clegg increased that commitment to £2.5bn. That would be enough to bring the funding for 1 million of the poorest pupils up to the average level in private schools. The Pupil Premium would make a real difference in tackling disadvantage.

Just think what it could mean: Private school funding levels would allow the most disadvantaged schools to deliver for their pupils what private schools take for granted: longer teaching hours, Saturday opening, small class sizes, and resources to attract the best staff. And we are already looking at whether we can identify further savings within the department's spending, which would allow us, in time, to increase the Pupil Premium up to £5bn, so other disadvantaged pupils can benefit too. By the way, conference I would like to congratulate you. ....... Because since last year, you have won a new convert to this policy. .....The Conservative Party ........ They are considering introducing a Pupil Premium, as part of a new "commitment" to reducing poverty.

But the Conservative Party only believes in tackling poverty up to the point at which it has to blow off the dust and open up its wallet. Because when it comes to spending priorities, the only solid commitment that they have so far made is to spend one billion pounds cutting inheritance tax for estates of up to two million pounds. After all David Cameron's talk of tackling "Breakdown Britain", we discover that the truth about the Conservative Party is that reductions in inheritance tax for the very rich will take priority over the most important inheritance of all - our children. What a contemptible set of priorities that would be for Britain. Nor does the Conservative Party offer a real prospect of escaping from the centralized education which has suffocated schools for 20 years. After all, the nationalization of English education was completed by Kenneth Baker, in 1988. It is now not enough for teachers to achieve the desired outcomes - these must be delivered in the prescribed way - an exercise in central control not seriously contemplated in Europe since the fall of the Soviet bloc. And all this bureaucracy and targeting is now to be extended into every pre-school and every nursery, as Annette Brooke has so effectively highlighted. Ed Balls runs our education system as if it was still one of the great nationalized industries of the last century.

But from the poshest Public Schools to the toughest Maintained Schools, there is a new consensus that standardization and centralisation just don't work. That what is needed is more independence, more real freedom for schools. An Education Freedom Act. An Act to give power back to Schools. Back to Local Government. And back to Parents. The huge Whitehall department should be cut back - dramatically. No school should be directly accountable to Ministers. And no school should ever again have to write a grovelling letter to the Secretary of State, seeking his permission to be creative!

Academies presently have these freedoms to innovate. In the future, ALL schools should have them. The 635 pages of the nationalized curriculum should go in the shredder.  Let's replace it with something closer to the 21 pages that seem to do the job in places like Sweden. On cash. Let's us devolve to the maximum. Down from Whitehall to Town Hall. Down further to schools. There should be no question of a return to the "secret garden" of the 1970s.  But the existing system will no longer wash. There are now too many tests, and too much teaching to the test. Consider the shambles of this year's Key Stage Tests. All that work, in all those schools. Yet some of the tests have yet to be marked and returned. 4 months later! What an insult to all those who worked so hard. You can't justify high stakes testing if you've got low quality marking.

The Government, of course, is in denial. You remember how, while the Titanic sank, the band played on? If Ed Balls were on the Titanic, he would be the conductor of that band! So let's give 'the conductor' some advice - The Key Stage 3 Tests do not need a new contractor. They do not need a fresh makeover.  They need to be scrapped - here and now. With greater freedom for schools, inspection is vital. But OFSTED should be a Government watch dog, not a Government lap dog. Not just ticking off Government targets. But, giving a real evaluation of the school's all round performance, and constructive advice on improvement. We should sweep away the quangos and establish an independent Educational Standards Authority, to hold all schools and local authorities to account.  We need an education system which delivers not just freedom for schools, but real choice for parents. And real opportunity for every child.

That means a high quality school for every single community. We know what makes great schools. Not just money, but: A strong Head Teacher. Excellent staff. Good discipline. High aspirations. Let me tell you about one of the best schools I've ever visited. The Phoenix High School, in West London. It's a Local Authority Comprehensive School. But there is nothing bog standard about it. In 1994, it was one of the worst schools in England.  Most pupils are on Free School Meals. Turnover is one third of pupils every year! If there is a school in a neighbourhood where children would be too hard to teach, this is it. But a brilliant Head Teacher, Sir William Atkinson, and his superb staff have turned this around. And now, results are above the national average.

Sadly, not all schools are like Phoenix High School. Some have languished for decades, betraying generations of pupils.  Others just coast along.  For those worried about reform, I start by saying: just look at the school system we have got. The rich can choose the private schools. Others, usually the more affluent, choose grammar schools. Others exercise choice by buying a house in the best catchment area, or by suddenly discovering strong religious convictions. Only the poor have little or no choice. If you were starting from scratch, it would hardly be possible to design a system that more effectively embeds inequality.

And the result? In our richest communities, almost no school fails the Government target for GCSE passes. But in our poorest communities, most schools - MOST schools - find that over 7 in 10 children leave without the basic minimum set of exam results. That is the education system that the Tories and this Government have presided over. Both should be deeply ashamed. But, from top comprehensive schools to the best new Academies, schools are now showing that you can break the link between social class and educational performance.

Look at Mossbourne Academy in Hackney. Exactly like the Phoenix, it replaced a notorious school - Hackney Downs, dubbed the "worst school in the country" in the 1990s. It has now recorded the highest value added scores in the country at age 14. The best schools in the toughest neighbourhoods are no longer accepting mediocrity as their fate. Nor should we. The Government has, of course, done its best to give educational reform a bad name. There is much to put right. 400 Academies cannot be run from one ministerial office. Freedoms granted to Academies can no longer be denied to all other schools. And local Authorities should no longer be bribed and bullied.

Instead, strategic oversight of all state funded schools should be returned to Local Government. In turn, Local Authorities must embrace their new roles as purchasers of education, not just providers. A blind eye can no longer be turned to failure or mediocrity, as it so often has been in Labour's rotten boroughs. Let us be imaginative, and liberal, in the way we address educational failure. This Party has never believed that the state has a monopoly of wisdom.

Last year, we voted the brilliant John Stuart Mill, as our greatest ever Liberal. Mill was a passionate advocate of a free education, but he was also a passionate opponent of all monopolies. In his classic work "On Liberty" he argued that improvement and progress could only be guaranteed by experimentation and diversity - not by central diktat. And I agree with Mill. If federations, twinning with successful schools, and other interventions work - great. If universities, co-operatives, parents, independent schools and educational charities can help to turn around failing schools, or establish better alternatives, they too deserve our support and encouragement. It is no longer good enough for schools with the best results to serve only the most affluent. We must send out the message to the majority of our citizens who rely on public services, that the era of big-government, top-down, "take it or leave it" monopoly supply is over.

Today, I have talked about my vision for education. Opportunity for every child. Freedom for every school. Real choice for every parent. Next Spring, we will debate these crucial issues together. The year ahead is of crucial importance. Our Government has lost the confidence of the electorate, the confidence of the House of Commons, and confidence in itself. It is rotting from the head down. But there is a real risk. That the country will sleepwalk back into a period of Conservative Government, not out of enthusiasm, but on the rebound.

The Tories say that they would end "Breakdown Britain". But we haven't forgotten who broke Britain down in the first place. Be in no doubt. Under the Tories, Progressive policies would be killed off. Not, perhaps, by the quick fall of the axe. But by a long, slow, process of strangulation. Our job is to offer the country an alternative that is both progressive, and radical. Not the "radicalism" which just betrays a profound conservatism of thought. Not back to a better yesterday. Nor forward to a paler shade of blue.

What Nick Clegg and Vince Cable are crafting is a radicalism that fuses freedom with fairness. The consultants have even found a name for it. Not a bad one either: Liberalism. Our country deserves a better choice than Cameron or Brown. The hope for repairing our society now rests to a large extent on the effectiveness, the imagination, the devotion to principle, the courage and the success of this Party. Our ambition is to help raise every child from what they are to what they might become. It has long been the great liberal cause. As Liberal Democrats, we must rise to this challenge.