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JOHN HUMPHRYS: Tomorrow the government
will publish its plans for the future of secondary education in England
and Wales. But as ever we know what's going to be said because the Education
Secretary David Blunkett has already told us. One of the immediate problems
is how to recruit more secondary school teachers, but the overriding issue
is how to raise the standards in secondary schools generally. The Tories
say they know a better way than the government's. Theresa May is the Shadow
Education Secretary.
The problem for you I
suppose, Theresa May, is that the voters seem already to have decided because
you have actually lost ground on your education policies since you were
in opposition.
THERESA MAY MP: Well I don't think the voters have
decided and that's certainly not the message that I get as I go around
and talk to parents and governors and teachers in our schools. I mean if
we look back at the May 1997 Election the government..the Labour Party
came into government promising that education would be a top priority.
I don't think many parents thought that four years down the road of a Labour
government they were going to see schools having been on a four day week,
threatened with a four day week. Children being taught by unqualified staff,
children being taught by a never ending stream of supply staff and the
Chief Inspector of Schools warning that standards would be damaged.
HUMPHRYS: And yet people rate them
more highly when they're asked by the opinion pollsters. They were nineteen
per cent ahead they're now twenty-eight per cent ahead on education specifically,
inspite of all that.
MAY: Well on opinion polls
generally John, I don't tend to pay attention to one opinion poll or another,
they go up and down.
HUMPHRYS: I think you'd probably
slit your wrists if you believed them all.
MAY: Well I prefer to look
at what happens in the ballot box and of course opinion polls generally
have been putting us down as a party but in the ballot box recently we've
been doing rather well. So I prefer to actually listen to what people are
saying and hear what teachers and parents and others are saying about how
disillusioned they feel with what the Labour government has failed to deliver
for them in schools.
HUMPHRYS: Well let's look at the
policies. Teacher shortages; you've attacked them consistently over teacher
shortages. In fact, they fell under you, the number of teachers fell under
you, they are beginning to rise again now under the Tories, they are dealing.....under
the Labour government. They are actually dealing with it aren't they.
We heard what - you shake your head but we heard what the Education Secretary
David Blunkett said this morning. They are planning to pay off teacher
loans, student loans, that's going to help isn't it. And that's the trouble
with it, they are nicking your clothes.
MAY: Paying to train teachers
tomorrow is not going to solve the problem of shortages in our schools
today and the one problem that the government is completely failing to
address is that this isn't an issue just about recruiting more people into
teacher training for some stage in the future to come into our schools.
Schools today are in crisis. I was visiting some schools on Friday, one
Head said to me 'our education system is on the brink of disaster, We
can't get the teachers we need.' Heads say they can't get the calibre
of teachers. Heads are moving heaven and earth to cover up for their teacher
vacancies. I saw a letter yesterday from a Head to parents of a school
in Bexley Heath, saying that they are very sorry about all the things they
are having to do to cover up the vacancies and maybe they'll have to go
to a four day week. This is damaging children's education today.
HUMPHRYS: Yes but that's precisely
what the government is doing, is dealing with that by persuading more youngsters
to become teachers. That's what David Blunkett was all about this morning..tomorrow.
MAY: No, it isn't. The
problem that the government is failing to address and one of the reasons
why we've got these real shortages in our schools today is that teachers
are leaving the profession in droves and one of the reasons that they leaving
the profession, the over-whelming reason they give when they're asked why
they are leaving is that they are fed up with the work load, the bureaucracy,
the red tape and paperwork imposed by this government. Until we have a
government that gets to grips with making teaching genuinely an attractive
profession again, so that teachers can get on with the job of teaching
children and raising standards, then sadly we will see teachers continuing
to leave and we will see the problems that we have today and standards
will be effected.
HUMPHRYS: The overriding reason
that they leaving is pay, they reckon they don't get paid enough. You wouldn't
be able to pay them more.
MAY: Well the survey shows
actually that pay is not the overriding issue. The overriding issue is
bureaucracy and workload, that is what is making teachers leave because
they feel they can't actually get on with the job they are there to do
which is teaching children and raising standards and inspiring children
to achieve at their highest potential. Until we do something about that,
until we get rid of that bureaucracy, until we set the schools free, let
the teachers get on with teaching again, then I think we will see teachers
continuing to leave the profession and children's education will suffer.
HUMPHRYS: This expression 'setting
the schools free' it's a bit of a nonsense in a way isn't it because you
talk about abolishing or getting rid of most of the things that the LEAs,
the Local Education Authorities do. That would load a lot more bureaucracy
onto the individual schools which (a) they don't want and (b) they're not
capable of handling.
MAY: Well what would happen
under our Free Schools first of all is that we would get rid of a lot of
the unnecessary paperwork that is loaded on schools and teachers today.
Paperwork that has nothing to do with raising standards in classrooms and
has nothing to do with improving the quality of teaching of our children.
So we would remove an enormous load of bureaucracy from the teachers. We
would get - and by getting rid of that bureaucracy we would be able to
get more money down into the schools and give the schools the freedom to
decide how to spend that money in the interests of children in their classrooms.
HUMPHRYS: You talk about five hundred
and forty pounds per pupil but again that's a meaningless figure isn't
it. I mean it sounds as if it's something you've sucked out of the air
because it assumes that all of those things that are being done at the
moment will not have to be done in the future, they will, they'll just
have to be done by different people.
MAY: Well it's not assuming
that things won't be done. What we've done quite simply is said how much
money today is being spent by local authorities that we can think would
be spent better if it was down at the school level and how much...
HUMPHRYS: It'll still be spent.
MAY: Well and how much
money is being spent by government that would be better down at the school
level where heads and teachers and governors are making decisions for their
own school. And one of the problems today with the way money reaches schools
and schools have something like thirty-seven different streams of funding
to cope with. One of the problems is that that brings an enormous workload
of admin and bureaucracy and Heads often find that these different funding
streams are constrained so that they are given so many thousand pounds
and they are told what they can spend it on. And Heads will say, well I
don't want to spend it painting the staff room for example, I'd rather
spend it on books.
HUMPHRYS: Well in that case, why
do we have people like John Dunford who runs the Secondary Heads Association,
saying and I quote "schools don't want to take responsibility for a whole
range of things, school buildings, transport" They don't want it and the
smaller schools, the primary schools simply can't do it. They don't have
the resources, they don't have the ability, they don't have the training
to do it.
MAY: We've been here before
in a sense with our Grant Maintained Schools and what we saw from Grant
Maintained Schools is that having the money, having that freedom actually
enabled the people in the schools to come alive, to take control of their
destiny of the schools. In many Grant Maintained Schools, suddenly parents
got more involved than they had been previously. And what we saw was a
real ability with that freedom and the money to get on with the job of
raising standards, to offer extra courses, to have more teachers, more
equipment, whatever the school decided. Now in our proposals for Free Schools
we would get the budget direct to the schools, all of their budget, on
the basis of a national formula so that we could even out some of the discrepancies
and differentials that currently occur across the country in funding per
pupil and give the school the freedom on that budget. But, they would be
able to buy in services from elsewhere and we already see..I visited late
last..at the end this last week, I visited a primary school in Gloucestershire
and I met a group of Head teachers who have clustered together and one
of the things they tell me they're doing is buying training for their staff
and they're buying training for their staff more cheaply than the Local
Education Authority is providing it.
HUMPHRYS: Adding to their workload
though isn't it. And as the Audit Commission says, I quote again, small
school heads have limited time to increase their financial expertise.
If they have limited time for the training, there's no point in offering
them the training, is there?
MAY: No, there is every
point in offering them the training...
HUMPHRYS: Let's see......
MAY: Let's just look at
what, because I'm not saying to you that I think that the schools should
buy that training. What I'm saying is there was a group of Heads who themselves
had got together and said, we can do this better. Heads of small primary
schools who were actively saying, we're exercising freedom, we want to
be able to do that to decide what is right for our teachers, and because
it's right for our teachers, right for the children in our schools.
HUMPHRYS: ...well I much prefer...
MAY: ...and rather than
taking that opportunity away from schools like that, I want to increase
those opportunities to schools, so that all schools are able to make judgements
about what works for them, not what the local authority or government thinks
should work for them.
HUMPHRYS: I'd much prefer to see
the head teacher of the little local primary school worrying about what
the kids are learning, rather than having to sort out the bus timetables
or whatever it happens to be. That's not what they're meant to be doing.
MAY: But it would be up
to the Head Teacher to decide how they spend their money...
HUMPHRYS: ...right, so if all of
them said, if lots and lots and lots of them said, we don't actually like
this idea very much, we go back to the old system, so we'd have two tiers
of bureaucracy would we? We'd have one lot of schools being run by your
old hated bureaucrats, and we'd have the other lot doing it for themselves.
MAY: Schools will be free...
HUMPHRYS: ...it's a bit like a
pensions policy, choose which one you want.
MAY: No, schools, well
schools, choice is fundamental for schools, that's what I think is wrong...
HUMPRHYS: ...but it is adds to
bureaucracy, as David Miller's admitted on pensions yesterday.
MAY: What is, what is wrong
with the current system is that the schools are being overloaded with paperwork
that bears no relation to improving standards in the school. They're being
overloaded with decisions that are being taken by central government as
to how money should be spent, or by local education authorities that hold
money back, spend it on bureaucracy when it should be being spent on education
of children.
HUMPHRYS: ...has to be done anyway,
I mean somebody has to do these boring...
MAY: ...but a lot of it
doesn't have to be done John, that's the problem today...
HUMPHRYS: ...a huge amount does...
MAY: ...that's the problem
today. That's the problem today. There is, are circulars, a teacher coming
into teaching in January two-thousand, within six months would have received
one-hundred-and-forty circulars from the Department for Education and Employment.
Now a lot of that bureaucracy is bureaucracy that isn't necessary. But
when I talk to heads about the change that can wrought in their schools,
when they have the freedom to make decisions for themselves, and sometimes
it is freedom, not just about education in the classroom, but about things
like school meals, and the provision of better catering and better food
for the pupils. Heads who want to say, I want to lead my school, I have
a vision for my school. I may not as a head want to spend all my time
on admin, but I will either use part of the budget to employ somebody else
to do that, or cluster together as the primary schools I suggested to do
that...
HUMPHRYS: ...just in thirty seconds...
MAY: ...but the school
will choose...
HUMPHRYS: ...but just in twenty
seconds now. We'd still have the LEA's, Local Education Authorities doing
a great deal if the schools didn't want to do it themselves.
MAY: Schools will be free
to choose. We'd be setting schools free and fundamentally, we'd be letting
teachers get on with the job of teaching children, rather than spending
too much of their time on unnecessary paperwork.
HUMPHRYS: Theresa May, thank you
very much indeed.
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