Interview with David Blunkett




       
       
       
 
 
 
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                                 ON THE RECORD 
                            DAVID BLUNKETT INTERVIEW 
 
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION BBC-1                                 DATE:  14.4.96
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JOHN HUMPHRYS:                         David Blunkett we'll come to selection 
in a few minutes if I may.  But let's look first at some of the things that 
you've said you would do to raise standards. Now you've spent a large part of 
the Easter holidays telling teachers what you'd do to get rid of nasty pupils, 
bad pupils and all that. You haven't said so much about bad teachers.  Do you 
agree that there is a serious problem with bad teachers? 
 
DAVID BLUNKETT MP:                     Well I think over the last eighteen 
months I've faced what everybody knows to be the reality.  That albeit a small 
number, there are people in the Education Service who themselves know that they 
shouldn't be there and whose colleagues know they shouldn't be there and I 
spelt that out on Thursday at the Schoolmasters and Women Teachers Conference 
when I laid out a ten point compact or accord.  Many of those issues were about 
lifting professionalism, about getting experience from industry and commerce 
and giving teachers experience in industry and commerce.  Lower class sizes, 
General Teaching Council.  One of those was addressing that very issue and 
saying we need to help people out of a situation that they're unhappy with and 
clearly we as parents would be grossly unhappy with in terms of a job. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Chris Woodhead, the Director of 
OFSTED says fifteen thousand teachers ought to be got rid of.  Do you 
agree with that? 
 
BLUNKETT:                              Well we don't know the exact numerical 
size of the problem.  We simply want to be clear that no-one, no parent, no 
teacher in my view and I'm both a parent and a former teacher, would want 
someone in the classroom who is not capable of doing the job and it's as simple 
as that.  I find it extraordinary that anyone should find it exceptional for me 
to be saying that.  
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Well indeed but the question is not so 
much that you acknowledge that there is a problem, it's a question of how you 
would deal with it. Would you get rid of those teachers.  I mean we know what 
the Conservative Government would do.  It's told us that it is going to have 
a scale system of one to seven, if a teacher scores seven points he or she is 
out.  Now what are you going to do? 
 
BLUNKETT:                              Yes well I think the one to seven is 
bizarre but I think actually being able to ascertain whether a teacher is doing 
the job is: (a) part of the leadership and management skills of good heads and 
we want to give all heads and deputies qualifications, they must have 
qualifications before they take on the job in leadership, in management.  
Secondly, the inspection system should identify where there's a problem but it 
should be on a fair and reasonable basis.  You can't have a situation where on 
one inspection somebody's graded one to seven, you must work with the head and 
the management in the school to do something about it and when you have 
identified it, get on with the job and ensure that that person's helped into a 
job that they can do.  
 
HUMPHRYS:                              But effectively you're saying you'd 
leave it to the headteacher at the end of it all and that's what's happened and 
that's why we...some people would say we've now got fifteen thousand bad 
teachers.  
 
BLUNKETT:                              I didn't say I'd leave it to the 
headteacher, I said it was a combination between both the inspectorate's
activities, the head identifying the problem, the knowledge that will come with 
our change in the inspectorate system so that there will be advice and support 
between inspections. There's no point in having four years or six yearly 
inspections and then leaving a school to it.  We need advice and inspection on 
an on-going basis, particularly where there's a problem. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              I can't see how that is different and 
many people many fail to see how that is different or tougher than the position 
that existed before this new suggestion, this new OFSTED suggestion. 
 
BLUNKETT:                              Well there's not doing it. I mean the 
problem we've got after seventeen years of the Conservative Government is that 
they've suddenly started to adopt policies every time I announce them.  So 
whether it was headteacher training, whether it was advance skill teachers, 
whether it was base line assessment, you name it, they've adopted it. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Not in this case.  I mean this is 
something that came from..came from..with OFSTED's approval, with Chris 
Woodhead's approval. 
 
BLUNKETT:                              After I'd announced that we were going 
to get tough on failing schools and failing standards. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              But you're now saying you would not do 
this.  I mean this is something people can understand... 
 
BLUNKETT:                              I didn't..I said I didn't think that the 
one to seven ticking a box was necessarily the best way of achieving it. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Alright but you'd do something similar, 
you will have a scale of some sort and if teachers fail to hit the right 
target, whatever that target may be, you will get rid of them. 
 
BLUNKETT:                              Yes, whether it's through appraisal, 
on-going appraisal, whether it's support and advice, on-going at local level 
rather than the four-yearly inspections, whether it's ensuring that heads are 
held responsible for the job that they must do in managing and leading the 
service and for Local Education Authorities.  Because we made it clear that 
there must be development plans and targets within schools, there must be 
development plans for the authority, the authority must become the voice of 
the parents speaking out against imcompetence and lack of expectations and in 
favour of high standards and new priorities. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Are you saying you'd be just as tough 
but the method would be different.  
 
BLUNKETT:                              I spent the last eighteen months making 
it absolutely clear that we want to work with the best in the profession and we 
want to root out what is not succeeding and I said to the Teachers Conference 
on Thursday don't put your hand up as a teacher every time we say we're going 
to root out failure.  We're not talking about the vast majority of the half 
million people doing a good job but we are talking about realising there is a 
problem, we know there's a problem in comparison with the best in this country 
and the worst, and between this country and other developed nations.  Let's get 
on and do something about it. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Part of the problem you see may be that 
you're sending a bit of a mixed message.  I mean you talk about getting tough 
on teachers but you also talk about giving teachers who've had fifteen years 
service a year's holiday paid for by the taxpayer. 
 
BLUNKETT:                              You're a very mischievous man this 
afternoon John - a year's holiday.  What I talked about was offering a term, 
perhaps longer in some instances.. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Up to a year you said. 
 
BLUNKETT:                              Yes it could be up to a year, there are 
headteachers who at the moment take advantage of headteachers in industry. 
We're talking about a situation where there are lots of teachers who after 
fifteen years would welcome the opportunity of a placement in industry and 
commerce, in in-service training to refresh and update their skills, we 
believe, and we know, that industry welcome as part of the business 
partnership, joining us in helping to fund that arrangement. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              The fact is they would have a year off 
and they would have to be replaced and that would cost the taxpayer.  So it may 
be marginally mischievous to describe it as a holiday but some people would see 
it like that and some people would say they're doing a job that they're paid 
to and why after fifteen years should they, anymore than you or me, or anybody 
else have the time off. 
 
BLUNKETT:                              Well, I think that anyone who doesn't 
believe that in-service training, that experience in industry and commerce, 
that actually ensuring that the person is updating their skills is necessary 
really can't be serious about ensuring that we lift those standards.  I believe 
after fifteen years it's crucial that people have their skills refreshed.  It 
will be a combination of private and public funding.  We currently spend four 
hundred million pounds on what's called Education Support and Training, and I 
think that we need to redirect that to ensure that we're enabling people to 
learn those new skills.  
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Alright.  
 
BLUNKETT:                              For instance, information technology, 
crucial to the the twenty-first century, not only to equip the children but to 
ensure that the available resources are used in technology to improve teaching 
methods. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              And a- 
 
BLUNKETT:                              Both of those can be achieved by placing 
people, by encouraging industry to help the education profession to understand 
the world that's changing around them. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              And that would be available to all 
teachers whether they're good, bad or indifferent? 
 
BLUNKETT:                              Well, obviously, if you've got an 
indifferent teacher, we're going to do something about it.  I've explained that 
on this programme, and I've explained it over the last eighteen months very 
clearly.  You heard at least one of my colleagues quite worried about it on the 
grounds that he thought that any questioning of teachers' competence was 
somehow betraying my Socialist principles.  I think quite the opposite.  I 
think getting to grips with it. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Right.  
 
BLUNKETT:                              The education service and lifting the 
quality, and expecting a great deal more, and giving in return is crucial to 
carrying out our programme. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              So it'll be performance-related then? 
 
BLUNKETT:                              Well, of course, in the sense that 
you're not going to send people on a course that they're not capable of taking. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Right.  
 
BLUNKETT:                              But, you can help people who have never, 
ever, had experience outside the education service to be a better teacher by 
giving them that experience. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Now, you said, partly paid for by the 
public.  We do at least now presumably know where the money is going to come 
from, because we heard Clare Short saying earlier this morning that people 
paying  - earning more than an MP which is what? - thirty-four thousand pounds, 
 - as much as an MP, should have to pay more tax.     
 
BLUNKETT:                              Yes, I thought it was very interesting 
that this has been picked up on, as though Clare was saying something 
exceptional.  Twenty-two different tax increases have been brought in- 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              I mean, that's policy, is it? 
 
BLUNKETT:                              - by the Tories.  They've actually 
inflicted seven hundred - six-hundred and forty pounds extra on average on each 
family, seven p on Income Tax or one p on Income Tax, or a plus of 6p on Income 
Tax.  How dare they question someone actually saying what I consider to be 
totally unexceptional? 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Oh, so, this is policy? 
 
BLUNKETT:                              That there are people in this country 
who would pay a little bit more if they had the chance.  Of course it's not 
policy.  
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Well.  
 
BLUNKETT:                              Our policy is to protect those who have 
had their taxes jacked up over the last four years in a way that the Tories 
supposed we were going to do.  In other words they've jacked up taxes, and now 
they're trying to suggest that a few words from Clare Short in a perfectly 
reasonable interview constitutes a change of policy. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              So-So, only those who want to pay this 
extra tax will have to do so.  That's what you're saying. 
 
BLUNKETT                               Well I'm saying that we all know from 
1992 that the British people do not like high tax policies.  They've discovered 
since 1992 just what the Tories meant by being a low tax party.  Twenty-two 
different new impositions in the last four years, and of course they gave their 
verdict in South-east Staffordshire on Thursday. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Right.  Let's return to the education 
question specifically then, and the question of how you measure standards.  You 
can't improve standards obviously unless you know where they are at the 
moment.  There is a system for testing seven, eleven, and fourteen-year-old 
children - tells you how the schools are performing.  Are you going to keep 
that system in place? 
 
BLUNKETT:                              We believe that the balance between 
testing and assessment is crucial.  We believe it should be based on the 
assessment of a child at the moment they enter full time schooling, at the age 
of five, so that you can then assess how your targets and your development 
plans are working; whether the school's performance is up to scratch, how that 
individual child's improvement is working; and we put that forward.  The 
Government now accept it, that both base-line assessment and target-setting is 
something that would be valuable.  It all needs to be based on a foundation, 
not merely of providing universal nursery education instead of a voucher 
system, but also in terms of working with parents, because this is a 
partnership between what happens in the classroom and what happens at home, and 
the combination of the school and the family, the school and the Education 
Authority will be crucial to our success. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              I'm-I'm still not clear as to whether 
you would keep the SAS - the Standard Assessment Tests.  
 
BLUNKETT:                              Well, we've made it clear that we will 
not be abolishing the tests.  There are very considerable question marks over 
the way that they've been conducted, and I hope that we can get that right with 
the assessment and curriculum authority being able to take a look at what's 
gone wrong. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Alright.  Let's turn to selection.  
Another of your proposals is - to improve standards - is to allow schools to 
specialise, different schools would specialise in different subjects.  That is 
in reality a form of selection isn't it? 
 
BLUNKETT:                              No, it isn't.  And in the lecture I gave 
at the end of February I described two forms of specialism - specialism within 
the school itself and specialism between schools.   I have to say that the film 
misunderstood or mistook the difference between city technology colleges and 
specialisms in the schools that have been given special support and help with 
the development of science and technology, and in particular the comments of 
the head in Derby related to a system that creamed children away. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Yeah, maybe it was there, but the impact 
on other schools is exactly the same.  You take away the best pupils, you 
impoverish the other schools that don't get them. 
 
BLUNKETT:                              No, I'm sorry.  Selection is about 
providing a test which selects the children with the broad academic ability or 
attainment at that particular age.  Creaming them off and putting them in 
schools that provide excellence that's the theory.  Now what you do in that 
case, you give excellence to a very small minority, and you write off the 
rest.  And I'm not talking about doing that.  I'm not talking about a handful 
of schools specialising and creaming off pupils.  I'm talking about all schools 
developing their strengths, providing a broad curriculum, and being able to 
encourage children to play to their strengths.  Technology- 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              So, every school could be a specialist 
school? 
 
BLUNKETT:                              Well, they could specialise in different 
areas, and share them.  In our document I talked about the family of schools - 
not individual schools competing with each other, not a market knocking each 
other out, but - schools actually collaborating.  And, where that's working in 
the family of schools, for instance in Leeds, you have co-operation where 
schools share the resources, they share the teaching, they use technology to 
the full, so that they can actually draw on what's available in one school and 
share with another.  We need new imagination, we need to think about a new 
centre.  Instead, of people constantly looking over their shoulder and as with 
the Government wanting to go back to the Nineteen-Fifties rather than forward 
to the twenty-first century.     
 
HUMPHRYS:                              This is an interesting concept, that 
every school might become a specialist school. 
BLUNKETT:                              Yes, they may specialise in music, in 
drama.  They may specialise in technology but they will offer and share that 
expertise and specialism.  Take in my own city.  There's one school that 
teaches Russian.  All schools in Sheffield can't teach Russian but they can 
organise to support and help pupils who want to develop that particular 
specialism and expertise.  Why not?  It just seems to me that there's been a 
gross lack of imagination and every time you come up with a new idea, a new way 
of thinking, people freeze as though you've suggested going backwards. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Well, no, no because people look at it 
with some interest.  I mean, let's take that example of the school that does 
Russian in Leeds.  Now, every kid who wants to learn Russian or every parent 
who wants their kid to learn Russian will want to send her to that school - 
obviously.  Now, if that isn't the kind of selection, Heaven knows what it is.
What it certainly is is the end of true comprehensive education.  
 
BLUNKETT:                              No, no.  True comprehensive education as 
envisaged by the pioneers offered real diversity.  It didn't offer a sameness.  
It offered opportunity. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Within each school? 
 
BLUNKETT:                              Not precluded within and between schools 
and we have a bigger opportunity now, as we approach the Twenty-First Century 
to share resources than we've ever had before.   
 
                                       Strathclyde, for instance, before it  
was abolished as a region last week, actually was able to provide for the 
schools on the islands, the expertise that existed in Glasgow.  Now, that is 
imaginative thinking.  That's not betraying the comprehensive principle.  I 
want comprehensive schools that work and I want them to work in the interest of 
every child in every community in Britain.  
 
HUMPHRYS:                              OK.  So, we have these comprehensive 
schools - let's call them that for the moment.  Some people might decide the 
name ought to be changed.  But, we have these schools that specialise in 
different things.  You mentioned Russian.  It might be a particular type of 
science, it might be other languages, or whatever and every school might go 
down this route.   
 
BLUNKETT:                              Well, in theory, they could.  In 
practice, I doubt whether schools right across the country would suddenly jump 
on a particular expertise, but why not?  Let's open up the vistas.  Let's... 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Because you then have to select.  You 
ask me why not.  The answer to the why not question is because, then, every 
school would have to impose a kind of selection because what would be the point 
of taking say, let us say, a youngster who has absolutely no aptitude for 
Russian, or any other language, or whatever it may be, without some kind of 
test.  You'd have to have some kind of test.  
 
BLUNKETT:                              They may have an aptitude and assessed 
academic ability in maths, English and science - which is really what you're 
talking about with an Eleven-Plus examination.  Is not what I'm addressing and 
you know it, John.  
 
HUMPHRYS:                              No, no.  I'm genuinely interested in 
this.   
 
BLUNKETT:                              And, a child expressing and developing 
an aptitude either within a school, or in terms of finding a school that has 
that particular expertise actually makes it possible for youngsters, for 
instance, who have a particular skill, particular aptitude in, say, music or 
drama, not to have to leave the public sector to develop that expertise.  And, 
very often, the public sector has, actually, paid for them to go into a 
specialist school. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Right.  So, we get to the situation 
where children have to show clearly some sort of aptitude for whatever subject 
it is, whatever specialisation it is, speciality, that they want to get 
involved with.  So, therefore, you've got to have some kind of aptitude or 
ability test.  What Michael Barber, Professor Barber, said on that film was 
that, maybe, primary school heads could recommend children, or Local Education 
Authorities could determine a particular admission policy.  You'd be happy 
with that? 
 
BLUNKETT:                              Well, I'm in favour of an admissions 
policy that is open, transparent, that's agreed by the local authority 
under criteria laid down by the new Secretary of State - very clear about 
that.  The admissions policy would primarily be based on the way the particular 
neighbourhood in which the youngster lived.  It could be directed through 
feeder schools - that's the primary school that the children go to.  I'm not in 
favour and I've made it abundantly clear of selection by prior attainment at 
the age of eleven.  I am not ruling out, as we've discussed for the last ten 
minutes, the issue of using aptitude, where that exists.  But, it's not about 
selecting a child and saying: look, there's a quality education for a small 
minority, be it twenty or twenty-five per cent and the Devil take the hindmost. 
 
                                       I'm saying quite the opposite.  I'm not 
saying what John Major's saying, which is we'll spend as a nation two - two and 
a half billion pounds setting a grammar school up in, perhaps, three hundred 
towns across Britain, so that only five per cent of the population can get an 
education of high quality.  I've talking about quality education in every 
single neighbourhood school.   
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Right. The Government has also said that 
schools should be able to select.  By next year, schools should be able to 
select fifteen per cent of their pupils.  
 
BLUNKETT:                              Yeah.  
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Would you reverse that? 
 
BLUNKETT:                              Well, only forty-three have taken up the 
offer of the ten per cent. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              So far.   But, would you... 
 
BLUNKETT:                              Forty-three out of six thousand 
secondary schools.  I would examine changing it because I think that selection 
by prior attainment at eleven is not healthy and I've made that very clear, 
indeed.  I think, it precludes rather than including children.  Everything I 
intend to do will be inclusive.  My own children in an Inner City comprehensive 
school, they deserve the best and, therefore, so do every other parent and 
every other child in this country. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              David Blunkett, thank you very much, 
indeed.  
 
BLUNKETT:                              Thank you. 

 
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