12 September 2005
On a visit to the City of London Academy Mr Blair said the basic principles of equality of opportunity had been ‘opened up to new and different ways of education, built round the needs of the individual child.’
Read the full text of the speech
It is a privilege to be here today on the first day of the new school year at City of London Academy.
I am pleased that some sponsors from other Academies and heads of other successful London schools could also be here with us to share the excitement of students and teachers starting in these wonderful new buildings.
The £33 million investment from government and the Corporation of London is already bringing new hope to the children of Bermondsey and the borough of Southwark.
This year, I gather your 590 students also include 50 sixth formers for the first time. Within two years, you will be educating 1200 students.
Of course, today is a tribute not only to your principal Martyn Coles, who has led this school to where it is today, but to your chair of governors William Fraser and sponsors the Corporation of London, whose contribution has been invaluable.
Not only does the Corporation already run two of the best private schools in the country - City of London Boys’ and Girls’ - they have committed themselves to supporting three Academies including this one. Nothing symbolises better the extension of quality and opportunity in the state system, bridging the old private-state divide.
With a business-oriented curriculum, I understand your pupils are already learning the ins and outs of the Stock Exchange, and your teachers can earn bursaries to develop business and enterprise lessons related to the subjects they teach.
Not only has the Academy got new buildings, it is bringing new hope and breathing new life into the local community.
So, when I see the superb work being achieved at this Academy, I believe we should also take the opportunity to celebrate a growing and increasingly successful movement in our secondary schools. I would like to set it in context.
Both the NHS and our education system are today going through the most systematic process of reform since the war. The NHS reforms were set out in the 10 year plan of 2000, supplemented by last year’s 5 year White Paper.
The education reforms, which started with literary and numeracy in primary education and the expansion of specialist schools in secondary education, will be taken through to their final state in this Autumn’s White Paper.
In each case, reform has been accompanied by substantial extra investment, which within a few years will bring us up to the average of our main overseas competitors.
In each case, the reform programme is roughly half-way through.
In each case, the means of reform is the same: to break down monolithic ‘one size fits all’ provision, encourage new providers, give users more power and more choice, create incentives to improve, allow far greater flexibility in the way the public services and the frontline staff work.
It is, in a sense, to do for the public services, what greater customisation, and the end to mass production has done for the private sector.
Sometimes, however, we have been so immersed in getting reform of the means of delivery right - something that is hugely complex in vast state organisations - that we have failed to explain the end purpose of reform.
The purpose is very simple: fairness and opportunity for all. Public services exist so that those that cannot afford to buy good healthcare or schooling are not at a disadvantage. Collectively we pool resources and pay for universal services, access which is not based on wealth but on need. That’s the theory.
But, in practice, of course, the well-off can continue to buy services. And if what they can buy becomes greatly different in quality from what the state provides, this results in the very unfairness the public services were supposed to correct.
And let’s be brutally honest here. In schooling, the better off do have choice and power over the system. If they are sufficiently wealthy, they can send their children to a range of independent, fee-paying schools which, by and large, provide excellent education. Or they can move house to be next to the best state schools. Or they can buy private tuition.
In other words, for the better off, the British education system is full of options. But for a middle or lower income family, whose local school is the option and which is underperforming, there is nothing they can do, except take what they are given.
Now I am not naïve enough to believe that we will ever achieve a situation where wealth does not matter in schooling. But neither am I defeatist enough to believe we cannot improve what we have.
Actually over the past few years there has been much improvement.
Primary test results at 11 improved again this summer, producing the best ever results. 84,000 more pupils leaving primary school this year can read and write better and 96,000 more pupils can do basic maths than was the case before we introduced the literacy and numeracy strategies.
Being tough on failure has already ensured that more than 1200 primary and secondary schools have been successfully turned around.
Teaching is now one of the most popular career choices for graduates, as salaries have increased in real terms by 15%. And teachers are backed by almost 130,000 more teaching assistants and support staff, improving adult:teacher ratios and giving teachers the time to teach and prepare good lessons.
Standards of teaching have risen too: according to Ofsted, the proportion of good or excellent teaching in schools has risen in primaries from 45% in 1997 to 72% last year, and from 59% to 72% in secondary schools.
Teachers can use the latest technology to deliver livelier lessons: the average secondary school now has 218 computers, compared with 101 in 1998. Most have interactive whiteboards and broadband access.
All this is helping produce better results. The number of all-ability secondaries where 70% or more pupils gain five good GCSEs has risen five-fold to more than 400, while those with fewer than a quarter of pupils gaining five good GCSEs has fallen by two thirds since 1997.
No London borough now has fewer than 40% of its pupils achieving five good GCSEs, whereas in 1997 seven boroughs were below 30%.
These improvements are a tribute to the leadership of good headteachers, not least those of you here today. But it has relied, to a great extent, on central and local government direction. And it has tended to shy away from following through the logic of the reforms so far.
The logic of changing to the specialist schools, of starting City Academies, of giving greater freedom to schools in who they hire, what they pay, how they run their school day, is very clear.
It is to escape the straitjacket of the traditional comprehensive school and embrace the idea of genuinely independent non-fee paying state schools.
It is to break down the barriers to new providers, to schools associating with outside sponsors, to the ability to start and expand schools; and to give parental choice its proper place.
This will never mean every parent has the place they want for their child. But it will mean that their preferences start shaping the way the system works.
Hence, City Academies. Independent State schools are what they are. And the test of their success will not come in media stories about the odd case of failure (and incidentally such stories could be written, but rarely are, about the non-Academy failures); it will come in the list of parents trying to get into school.
There is now a spectrum including specialist schools, foundation schools and Academies.
Any school can now become a foundation school with a simple vote of its governing body, giving it the freedom to manage its own buildings and employ its own staff.
And the Academies movement continues to go from strength to strength.
I know some people still don’t fully understand what Academies do and how they operate.
Academies are independent schools, which are free to parents.
As here at City of London, they are providing new hope and new opportunities in the poorest parts of the country, helping to overcome the effects of generational disadvantage and years of school failure.
They are about much more than state of the art buildings, though when I come to schools like this, I don’t underestimate the importance of bricks, mortar and computers
What really makes Academies different is their ethos, their sense of purpose, the strength of their leaders, teachers and support staff, the motivation of their parents and pupils.
And much of that comes from the can-do attitude of their principals and staff, and the drive that their business and educational sponsors bring to their development - backed by their willingness to innovate.
In practice, that combination means that things can be done differently if that’s what’s going to get results.
So, Mossbourne Academy, in Hackney has extended its school day so that every student gets an extra two hours study a week.
They can take an extra language, an advanced maths class, join the debating society or learn about web design. Those who have fallen behind in the basics can use the time for extra literacy or numeracy lessons.
Or take Walsall Academy, where they have followed the example of Thomas Telford CTC by opting for a new style of timetable where students do all their Maths or English in a single morning.
The advantage is that time is not wasted moving between classrooms - and the clear focus on a single subject helps students to learn better.
And, at the City Academy Bristol, local business people have been brought in to work as mentors with school staff to help the school operate in a more business-like way.
Bristol also has an outreach team drawn from the local community helping to persuade parents of the importance of their children staying on at school. It has already had results improving staying-on rates for Muslim girls.
This year’s GCSE results showed an average 8 percentage point improvement in Academies in the numbers getting five good GCSEs - at least four times the national average.
Particularly good results were achieved by Academies in Haringey, Bristol, Walsall and Manchester. All are areas where parents and pupils have been demanding the change that Academies can bring for years.
No wonder word is spreading in local communities. It is not government edict that is determining the fate of city academies, but parent power - parents are choosing city academies, and that’s good enough for me.
So, Academies have many more applications than places. Which is hardly news to anybody at City of London, where I understand that for your 180 places this year, 3000 parents listed this Academy as a preference, and 970 pupils took the fair banding test which gives you your all-ability intake.
And let nobody say that Academies aren’t helping the poorest children, when a third of those attending this school receive free school meals - more than twice the national average.
Before visiting you today, I opened the new Haberdashers’ Aske’s Federation of Academies in Lewisham.
Two schools - one a City Technology College with a tradition of success, the other a secondary school facing huge challenges - will now work together as Academies to share teaching expertise and facilities.
The new federation will not just benefit from a greater capital investment, it will benefit from schools helping each other.
They will share expertise and specialist facilities. But above all, they will have shared values, ethos and approaches to teaching.
Already there are at least 37 pilot federations operating across the country, many involving high-performing specialist schools. I hope to see many more evolving in the future.
Federations are not just good schools helping those that are struggling, but schools coming together to share specialist expertise or schools and colleges working to provide more choices for 14-19 year olds.
We have made it easier for good schools like those run by many of you here to expand, and we will work to remove remaining obstacles that prevent such expansions.
For small expansions, including in primary schools, we are looking at how to further remove barriers while keeping infant class sizes at 30 pupils or below.
Our White Paper later this year will ensure that local authorities make this shift in attitude, not fearing and opposing expansion but being the champions of parents and pupils, keen to expand choice where that is what their community wants.
But many good schools like yours tell me that they would find it physically impossible to expand without damaging the standards that have made them a success.
That’s where federations are such a good idea. And if we can successfully transfer that ethos between schools through a federation, that is just as valuable as adding extra classrooms.
The results bear this out. Federations and similar links between schools are already helping bring about remarkable improvements across the country.
Kings Norton High School in Birmingham improved from 16 to 50% five good GCSEs between 2004 and 2005 as a result of a federation with Kings Norton Girls School. At Sedgefield Community College, 63% of students got five or more good GCSEs this year compared with 34% last year through a similar partnership.
Academies are here to stay: more than 40 will be open by this time next year, and we will meet our pledge to have at least 200 open or in the pipeline within five years.
Moreover, we are also extending many of their freedoms to all schools. The ethos guiding Academies and the best specialist and foundation schools should be one that every school can aim for.
Many heads tell me that they want to have more freedoms to plan the future of their schools in ways that best meet the needs of their students.
So, already we are introducing multi-year budgets for schools so that they can plan ahead with confidence in support of their school improvement priorities.
And when we publish our White Paper next month, we will be proposing more freedoms and flexibilities available to every school.
Moreover, we will ensure that as we invest £2 billion a year in rebuilding or renewing every secondary school in the country, we will achieve not only a step-change in standards, but increased diversity and innovation.
This unprecedented investment gives us an unprecedented opportunity to reshape our school system so that it equips the young people of today and tomorrow with the skills and attributes they need to succeed in today’s fast-changing world.
Three years ago, I said that we needed to move to the post-comprehensive era, where schools keep the comprehensive principle of equality of opportunity but where we open up the system to new and different ways of education, built round the needs of the individual child.
The work you are doing in Academies and specialist schools is making that concept a reality. The improvements and results that you have managed to achieve - often struggling against apparently impossible odds - are testimony to what can be achieved.
Our task is to make sure that you not only have the investment we are providing, but the freedoms and flexibilities you need to make a difference.
We have made big strides together over the last eight years, but we still have more to do to ensure that every child has the sort of education that is increasingly available in our best state schools.
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