Bedroom Tax Debate: Emily Thornberry MP highlights a glaring inconsistency

First published by Left Foot Forward on 12 November 2013 

The misery and injustice of the bedroom tax has been well documented, as has the fact that there simply aren’t enough smaller properties to accommodate those deemed to have a ‘spare bedroom’.

But what hasn’t received adequate coverage so far is that pensioners are exempt from this policy while disabled people – who make up two thirds of those affected by the bedroom tax – are not.

This is a strange exemption given that one of the stated aims of the bedroom tax is to free up larger ‘under-occupied’ properties in order to reduce overcrowding. As Labour MP Emily Thornberry pointed out in today’s Opposition Day Debate, older people often inhabit houses with unoccupied bedrooms.

She put the following question to the pensions minister Steve Webb, who is filling in for Iain Duncan Smith:

‘The honourable gentleman began his contribution this afternoon by talking about overcrowding…part of the problem is ‘empty nesters’, elderly people whose families have grown up. If the principle behind this bedroom tax is…to move people on to smaller units, why does it not apply to pensioners?’

Far from saying that the bedroom tax should be extended to pensioners, Thornberry was exposing a further injustice in this wretched policy.

What reason can the government possibly give for excluding older people which does not also apply to disabled people? That older people are more likely to vote Conservative, perhaps?

Clegg's praise for the Labour programme scrapped by Gove points to an alternative

The Deputy PM's recognition of the success of London Challenge reveals - perhaps unintentionally
 - the tension between collaborative methods of school improvement and Gove’s market-based
 reforms.

First published on The Staggers on 28 October 2013

In his education speech last week at Morpeth School, a secondary in Tower Hamlets rated "outstanding" by Ofsted, Nick Clegg noted that "if you’re a poor child going to school in some parts of Britain, you’re less likely to do well than poor children here in Tower Hamlets." He rightly attributed this success to London Challenge, a collaborative programme involving hundreds of schools in the capital. What he didn’t say, however, was that this programme was axed by Michael Gove, along with its successful spin-offs in Manchester and the Black Country.

The London Challenge is one of the unsung triumphs of the last Labour government. When it was launched in 2003, London had the lowest proportion of students attaining five A*-C grades at GSCE out of the nine English regions. By 2010, after seven years of the capital’s best state secondaries carefully mentoring weaker schools and coaching their teachers, it had the highest. This is particularly impressive when you consider the high levels of deprivation in the capital.

Ofsted first reported on the programme in 2006 when it found that London schools "had improved dramatically and that there was much to celebrate." A second report was published in 2010, by which time the programme had been extended to primary schools. Ofsted reported that "London Challenge has continued to improve outcomes for pupils in London’s primary and secondary schools at a faster rate than nationally."

In 2011, a report by London Metropolitan University, which looked at results in Manchester and the Black Country as well as in London, also attributed the greater improvement in these areas to the City Challenge programme. This report emphasised the strong evidence-base which informed this method of school improvement: "City Challenge built on a substantial body of research about school improvement which emphasised the importance of effective leadership, networking and collaboration." The most effective strategies to improve teaching and leadership, said the researchers, took place in schools. Perhaps unsurprisingly, observing excellent teaching and receiving expert coaching within your own classroom or from another head teacher are much more effective than professional development courses.

How frustrating, then, that Clegg, even after praising London Challenge, spoke as if the need for collaboration between schools were a new discovery. Mentioning areas with underperforming schools such as West Berkshire and Shropshire and seaside towns like Blackpool or Hastings, he said: "But there are also weak schools and schools which have simply stalled…The good teachers in these schools, they want to learn from their better performing neighbours. But they don’t have a clear idea about how to start that conversation. They want to improve…But they don’t have the right leadership and skills on site to boost their performance.They can’t progress. Their schools are stalled and could do much better".

These are exactly the issues which the London and City Challenge programmes addressed. But how can Clegg reconcile his desire for increased collaboration with the coalition’s market-based reforms? The most obvious obstacle to collaboration is the current emphasis on competition to raise standards. Over and over we’ve heard that free schools will force neighbouring schools to compete, 'driving up standards.' The government is even deliberately introducing free schools in areas of oversupply so as to enhance competition. If schools are incentivised to try to attract pupils away from neighbouring schools, why on earth would they want to help those schools improve?

Clegg unwittingly highlighted the weakness of competition as a driver of improvement when he said that there are teachers who want to improve but who are held back by lack of 'leadership and skills onsite'. Competition as a method to raise standards assumes that underperforming teachers and leaders are complacent – that they know that they could improve but aren’t doing anything about it - and that the threat of a competing school is necessary to make them up their game.

But as Clegg recognises, there are lots of teachers and head teachers who already want to improve but don’t know how. Competition won’t give them the skills to improve but it will prevent many of them from accessing the most effective method of improvement. London Challenge saw the vast majority of teachers improve because the programme addressed a range of causes for underperformance. As well as helping teachers and leaders by showing them where they were going wrong and giving them new skills and confidence, it also inspired improvement in teachers who had previously been unmotivated or demoralised.

The report on City Challenge held that "perhaps the most effective aspect of City Challenge was that it recognised that people, and schools, tend to thrive when they feel trusted, supported and encouraged. The ethos of the programme, in which successes were celebrated and it was recognised that if teachers are to inspire pupils they themselves need to be motivated and inspired, was a key factor in its success."

Clegg should be pressed on this point. Would he like to bring back a national programme along the lines of the London Challenge which would, as he put it, allow schools to "learn from their better performing neighbours"? And if so, what are his views on competition between schools?

Michael Gove and David Laws prioritise more academies over child protection

First published by Left Foot Forward on 7 November 2013

The Department for Education has become terribly leaky recently; and it isn’t difficult to see why.

The latest internal document, obtained by the Guardian, shows that Michael Gove and schools minister David Laws are pushing through aspects of the academy programme which are not value for money while downgrading oversight of boarding schools and home education – despite warnings that this will increase child protection risks.

In a document identifying ways in which the DfE could cut £290m from its administrative budget by 2015/2016, civil servants advised ministers that forcing underperforming schools to become sponsored academies in the face of local opposition was ‘very expensive’, and that success in securing academies in this way comes at a ‘disproportionate cost.’ 

But, as the Guardian reported, ministerial comments on the document show that this cut was opposed by Gove and Laws. One such comment says, ‘No – totally wrong. Really important area.’

Michael Gove repeatedly asserts that underperforming schools which become academies under the aegis of an approved academy sponsor improve more rapidly as a result. There is no evidence for this. Analysis by Henry Stewart of the Local Schools Network shows that underperforming schools which stay with local authorities have done as well as those which became academies.

Rather presciently, Stewart suggested earlier this year that instead of forcing schools to become academies, more attention should be paid to what successful maintained and academy schools actually do to improve standards, saving ‘the cost and time of academy conversion’.

But no, Michael Gove prefers to ignore the evidence (remember his call in 2010 for more evidence-based policy in education?) and force through structural changes to schools against the wishes of parents (apparently parental choice is only a good thing when Gove approves of that choice).

Worse, at a time of austerity, he ignores advice that these reforms are not value for money and prefers to cut elsewhere, even if that means putting children’s safety at risk.

And this from the man who accuses his opponents of putting ideology before the interests of children.

Are free schools really more popular in Labour areas?

First published on Left Foot Forward on 14 October 2013  

Recently The Telegraph reported that more free schools have been set up in areas controlled by Labour than any other political party.

This, the paper argued, demonstrates “the popularity of the schools in the party’s heartlands” and will “pile pressure on Labour to reverse its opposition to the reforms”.

This might be the logical conclusion to draw if all types of school could be set up with comparable ease.

But they can’t.

Local authorities are legally responsible for ensuring that every child has a permanent school place but, since the introduction of the Education Act 2011, they are unable to open a new local authority maintained school if there is any group, business or established academy chain that would like to run the new school ‘as an Academy’ – in other words, as afree school.

What’s more, the Education Act 2011 obliges local authorities to actively ‘seek proposals’ for the establishment of any new school ‘as an Academy.’

In short, the law ensures that, wherever possible, new schools are established as free schools. Local authorities can only set up their own maintained schools if there is no approved bid to run the school as a free school and with the consent of the secretary of state.

As has been widely reported, many areas of the country are facing a chronic shortage of school places. Most of these shortages are in urban areas, where Labour support is strongest. When Labour councils act to meet their statutory duty by building more schools, many of those schools will therefore be free schools almost by default – hardly proof of their popularity.

Supporters of free schools may point to the fact that a free school provider must show that there is parental demand for the new school before it receives approval from Michael Gove. This is not too difficult in areas where there is severe pressure on places: support doesn’t necessarily mean that free schools are favoured – it could just be that parents are desperate for any type of school.

This raises a wider point when it comes to Labour’s education policy: would Tristram Hunt continue to rig the system in favour of free schools, or would he untie local authorities’ hands so that they can respond more effectively to the school places crisis?