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JOHN HUMPHRYS: Back to you Mr Blunkett.
Come to those, some of those points in a moment, if I may, but lots of
initiatives we have seen at primary school level. Now, I gather you're
intending to return to grammar teaching, so you're getting cross about
things like split infinitives and all that. Is that right? Are you going
to start taking grammar seriously again, it seems to have gone out of fashion
recently.
DAVID BLUNKETT: Yes, we know that the reading skills
at all levels have improved enormously and I'm very grateful to teachers
for that. We know that writing skills have a very long way to go and I
think that the Office of Standards will have more to say about that this
week as well. We took an initiative in September with a wholly new grammar
guide and this is placing emphasis on punctuation, on spelling, on getting
right the things that make it possible for people to express themselves
clearly, to be understood better and to understand our language better
and if we can bring that about, as we are doing in terms of imaginative
programmes for poetry writing, or essay contests or as we're doing on Wednesday,
celebrating theatre scripts with people who... youngsters who have actually
competed with each other for prizes this coming week, we can make it fun
and not just a drudge.
HUMPHRYS: So you do want to go
back to good old-fashioned grammar lessons, do you?
BLUNKETT: We believe unless you
get the grounding, you can't express yourself properly. Obviously, this
is the foundation of a process, providing the tools, if you like, for developing
education in its broadest sense, the creativity, the imagination, the reasoning
skills that young people need, but without the foundations, they're struggling.
And the honest truth is, it doesn't matter what people say about our initiatives,
you have to judge whether they are working, if they're not, I'll abandon
them, but the literacy and numeracy programmes are working across the country.
There has been a transformation that you may not have fully appreciated
if you only watched your film in terms of what's happened to youngsters.
Now that start in life transforms what they're able to do later.
So I make no apologies
for having placed that emphasis and those resources behind that emphasis,
in getting it right. What I would say is that we have learnt some lessons,
we're very, very aware of the need to reduce pressure and bureaucracy.
We've pledged to reduce by a third the number of documents going out and
of course people have said to me well, all that will happen is the documents
will get longer. So we said, okay, we'll reduce the amount of paperwork
by fifty per cent and we'll set up a panel of teachers and head teachers
to monitor it, they're doing that now and in a month or two's time, we'll
see what the proof of the pudding is.
HUMPHRYS: Right, so you accept
there is an initiative overload, as one of the...
BLUNKETT: I accept that we brought
in many initiatives that were long overdue. My predecessor...
HUMPHRYS: ...but I asked you if
there is initiative overload?
BLUNKETT: Well I don't think the
overload in itself is the problem if it's yielding results. I think there's
overload if people feel that they're bombarded with bits of paper that
are irrelevant and we want other agencies, including local government,
to play their part in not replicating what we're sending out, so we don't
end up with several versions of the same thing being re-written and sent
to teachers. We also want to reduce the amount of data that teachers are
asked to collect. We want, and I made this clear at the same conference
as the Prime Minister on Thursday, to stop this so-called bidding process,
so that everybody has to go through a process of bidding for everything
and the major standards fund, this is over two-billion pounds has actually
made the difference in backing teachers on literacy and numeracy and providing
them with the training courses, the materials, the back up, which is going
on at the moment in both primary and secondary. That fund is being slimmed
down so that schools get it directly and are responsible for spending it,
rather than having little bits to bid for here and there. So I'm very
mindful we've got to get this right but the end product is a much better
educated set of young people and a better educated workforce.
HUMPHRYS: You think obviously that
these beacon schools, most of them are primary schools, they're terribly
important. You want to expand their roles, those schools that sort of
do things right and then spread out the message to others, go and help
other schools.
BLUNKETT: Yes, we've got a target
of three-hundred beacon schools, specifically for writing, with a total
of a thousand beacon schools across the country, thirty-eight more I shall
be announcing this coming week. They have extra money, averaging about
thirty-five thousand, specifically to spread best practice to other schools.
Many of our initiatives, including the Excellence in Cities programme
that provides learning support units so that kids are taken out of the
classroom but not on to the street when they're causing disruption, the
gifted and talented programmes. These programmes are additional, but they're
intended to allow schools to share, so the idea that there will be a few
favoured schools and the rest will go to the wall is precisely the problem
we inherited, not the one that we are putting in place, quite the opposite.
HUMPHRYS: But, I mean, there are
favoured schools, clearly, whether you call them specialist schools, or
whatever you call them, they do get extra money, and the danger is, I mean,
you used to be against extra funding grant maintained schools and that
sort of thing, and the danger is, as Mr Dunford said in that film, from
the Secondary Heads Association, that you end up with a two-tier system
and that's what he believes is developing and other people are saying the
same.
BLUNKETT: Well, he is saying it,
he says it regularly, I hear him all the time saying it, but...
HUMPHRYS: ...well, you know, he
knows what he's talking about he's in the business....
BLUNKETT; ...well what I want to
hear from John Dunford and what I want to hear from Nigel De Gruchy and
all the other union leaders that you paraded, is not whinging, I want the
answers.
HUMPHRYS: ...but they're stating
a fact...
BLUNKETT: ...I want to know what
they would do if they were in my job...
HUMPHRYS: ...spread the money more
evenly, is what they're saying. They're saying that some schools get more,
it's a fact, it's not a question of an assertion, it is a fact that many
schools, some schools, get much more money than others. I've got some of
the figures in front of me, thousand pounds plus, a hundred and twenty,
ten-thousand pounds, plus a hundred and... - I'll get it right in a minute
- a hundred thousand pounds, plus a hundred and twenty-three pounds per
pupil, I mean that is serious money for special schools...
BLUNKETT: ... yes they do, and
a third of it is specifically for them to share their gains, whether it's
technology or art or sport or music or language that they actually share
it with neighbouring schools. This is a programme about bringing schools
together, so is Excellence in Cities, so are the action zones that we established
very quickly when we got up. You see that Marylebone school that was referred
to several times, benefits from being in Excellence in Cities and therefore
gets extra money, but also benefits from being in inner London, so five-hundred-and-forty
pounds per pupil has gone, extra, has gone into that school, not because
it's a specialist school alone, but because it happens to be in one of
the best funded boroughs in the country in one of the Excellence in Cities
areas, designed specifically to back those areas with greatest depravation...
HUMPHRYS: ...but this is the whole
point...
BLUNKETT: ...John Dunford's arguing
about putting money into Excellence in Cities, I need to hear from him,
because I've got to put more money into those schools with the biggest
challenge, facing the biggest difficulty.
HUMPHRYS: Well, yeah, but I mean,
what people are saying is fine to reinforce success, but if you 'name and
shame' the other schools, you are then reinforcing their failure and it
is an obvious fact that the more money a school gets, the better chance
it has, of course it depends on the head teacher and the teachers, but
the better chance it has of being a good school.
BLUNKETT: Well I haven't named
and shamed any schools, there were eighteen and the Socialist Workers Party
dubbed it "naming and shaming", I'm sorry to hear those who are doing extremely
well out of the system repeating it. We named eighteen schools that had
been on special measures for so long that parents were literally voting
with their feet, drifting away from the school. What we said afterwards
was, now we've got these programmes in place you have two years to get
off special measures, we've got six hundred schools off special measures
over the last two years. A hundred have been closed, we are tackling failure,
if you don't do it within two years, if you don't get off special measures
within two years, we will look at either closing or giving you a fresh
start.
HUMPHRYS: But that's putting them
on death row isn't it, that's effectively saying to their teachers, look
you might as well clear off now, and that's what a lot of them do, so you
reinforce the favour of the school.
BLUNKETT: Well in the past, the
school just died, it literally died as parents moved their sons and daughters
away...
HUMPHRYS: ...same effect, you kill
it off...
BLUNKETT: ...and the other children
struggled. Well I've got one very simple question for everybody listening,
if your child and it happened to mine, my oldest son when we first sent
him to comprehensive school, if your child goes to a school where only
fifteen per cent or less of the pupils get five good GCSEs, do you want
us to do something drastic about it and I'll ask you another question,
would you send your child knowingly to a school where eighty-five per cent
plus of the pupils didn't gain five or more decent GCSEs?. I did, and
I did something about it in working with the school but I honestly don't
expect other parents to answer yes unless they know that with extra cash,
extra backing, determined effort by teachers, by good heads and by us centrally,
we are going to transform that school. In other words, we can sit on our
hands and do nothing or we can give every child, wherever they are, a decent
start in life.
HUMPHRYS: Well that's of course
what everybody would say, let's do the latter, but you...
BLUNKETT: It's not what everybody
has been doing, that's the problem.
HUMPHRYS: What they are saying
is that not only are you treating these specialist schools financially
better than others and that has a knock-on effect on those who don't get
that help, but you are also allowing and this is something you said you
would never do, you are also allowing a degree of selection. I mean specialist
schools are allowed effectively to select by aptitude. Alright I know the
word is aptitude, as opposed to exams or whatever it is but it comes down
to the same thing doesn't it.?
BLUNKETT: Well I think an aptitude
for art or sport is entirely different to an Eleven-plus based on whether
you are good at maths and English at the age of eleven. So....
HUMPHRYS: ...well it depends on
how it is interpreted doesn't it.
BLUNKETT: Well we have to have
a degree of reality here, a very, very tiny fraction of those specialist
schools we have and we have extended them from over a hundred and eighty
- a hundred and eighty-one I think when we came in to around six hundred
now, we've got a target of a quarter of all schools reaching status if
they want it. We ..a very tiny faction of them have used the aptitude test
for things where a youngster has a particular talent and wants to develop
it. Now we have got an adjudicator system so if people don't like it they
can call the adjudicator in and they can made a judgement which is why
a very large number of those schools, there weren't that many of them,
but those schools that were partially selecting have had their partial
selection numbers reduced. So I don't want to go back to the old sterile
arguments that we inherited from the eighties and early nineties. I want
to concentrate on specialism and strengthens leading to sharing of best
practice, leading to raising standards for all children which is why we
are spreading the literacy and numeracy programmes into the early part
of secondary education.
HUMPHRYS: But you see raising standards
for all children is made more difficult for teachers, head teachers in
particular in difficult schools if they cannot exclude children who they
think are making it impossible for them to teach all the other children,
so the vast majority of the children who are prepared to knuckle down and
get on with it are being penalised because it is so difficult for them
to exclude those pupils who ought, in their view, to be excluded.
BLUNKETT: Yeah, we've got a three
stage programme here. Firstly, a thousand learning support units so you
can get them out of the classroom, it is absolutely crucial to do so for
other children...
HUMPHRYS: ..great difficulty...
BLUNKETT: ....well they are taking
shape now. We've got over three hundred of them in place already. Secondly,
if that doesn't work, that we have proper referral units outside the school
with a full educational programme, not two hours average a week which is
what we inherited but to get those children back in, we then propose to
provide a dowry so that they carry extra cash with them into the schools
that are prepared to take them. One of the difficulties is the schools
that have places available that are under-subscribed in the jargon are
most likely to end up with children who have been causing difficulties,
not the well-subscribed, not the succeeding schools, but the ones who are
struggling most and I have got to try and protect them as well if we are
going to raise standards for other children.
HUMPHRYS: And the way Nigel De
Gruchy says you are doing it is by putting pressure, I know you don't greatly
approve of Nigel De Gruchy, you have a lot to say about him, but nonetheless
he talks to a great many teachers and head-teachers and he says you are
putting pressure on the schools to keep these children whom the head-teachers
want to exclude.
BLUNKETT: Well we believe that
we got the pressure wrong and I am very happy and always will be to admit
when I've got something wrong. We got the pressure to the point where head-teachers
believed that they couldn't exclude a child who was causing disruption.
We've made sure that that's now clear, they know where they stand, we still
want to reduce that massive increase in exclusion and permanent truancy
that bedevils our streets, our prisons, our drug population for the years
to come. In other words this is an issue, as with unemployment, that affects
all of us. It's not just for those who are immediately affected, it has
a knock on effect in all our lives, that's why out of the classroom but
not onto the street.
HUMPHRYS: Now teacher shortages,
you've acknowledged this to be a problem, of course everybody accepts that
there is a real difficulty, we talked about, you heard in that film from
Terry Dignan about four day weeks and all the rest of it. There is a really
serious problem here isn't there and at the moment it's hard to see how
it's being dealt with.
BLUNKETT: Yes, there is a serious
problem and had we not acted at the end of March I think we'd have been
very close to melt down. We've agreed to put a total of a hundred-and-eighty
million pounds into new programmes, and thank God they're beginning to
show some fruit. We're not out of the woods yet, but this week we saw
an increase of eight per cent in the recruitment for teacher training.
That eight per cent is differential, so we've still got a problem in shortage
areas like maths and physics.
HUMPRYS: You're way short of you
own target are you there, I mean two thousand odd at the moment.?
BLUNKETT: Absolutely, we'd two
thousand extra teachers up on last year. We've employed almost another
seven thousand teachers over the last two years, so we're actually recruiting
a lot more into the profession, but we need a lot more, because of course
as we expand, as we put extra teachers in to reduce class size, four- hundred-and-fifty
thousand infants in smaller classes since the election, and we want to
do the same at junior level as well. We've managed just to nudge that
down a little bit. As we put more teachers in we're going to have to recruit
more. Now one of the things that is working is the Graduate Teacher Programme
and I'm very pleased that people are coming in large numbers to be trained
in school with a teaching salary that allows them perhaps if they've had
another job to switch over, so mature students coming in as well as the
extra cash that we're giving to all post-graduate trainees - we're giving
them six thousand a year plus a four thousand bonus for shortage subjects
once they take up teaching. Now that is an attractive proposition taken
together with the two thousand pound uplift in salary and the new extra
salaries that they can access in the classroom, not going into management
which is part of our teacher self performance-related promotion reform.
HUMPHRYS: So is that it. No more
money, because a lot of people say, we heard Professor Smithers saying
it there, they want teachers, want and need a lot more money if you're
going to be able to get them into the profession and keep them there.
BLUNKETT: Well, retaining them
will be helped by the new performance-related promotion scales. There's
no question about that. If you can get up to forty-thousand pounds as
an advance skills teacher and stay in the classroom, at least that's a
great deal more attractive than being held down at twenty-four thousand.
But yes, there is an issue and the review body, because we have a review
body for pay and conditions, will be reporting in the early new year.
I believe that we have to balance these thing. We can never actually compete
with consultancies paying absurd in my view, salaries for new graduates
who've got no experience, so we do rely on people wanting to come into
teaching as a profession, because they love the idea of making a difference
to the lives of children into the next generation, but we still need to
reward them well over and above what we're doing, over and above the holiday
entitlement, over and above that pleasure of seeing what they can do in
the lives of young people.
HUMPHRYS: David Blunkett, thanks
very much indeed.
BLUNKETT: Thanks John.
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