Blunkett preaches tough-love gospel to teachers

Education/ Labour's `grand design'

SHADOW Education spokesman David Blunkett is drawing up a "grand design" for primary and secondary schools, discipline and assessment in the classroom, and access to further and higher education.

Stung by Tory jibes that "the Opposition has no strategy for education", Labour is working on a three-pronged programme of policy announcements between June and December, taking the party into what has hitherto been considered Conservative territory.

Under a Tony Blair government, poorly performing teachers could find themselves retired early or "redeployed", university graduates may still be paying for their education when they are 40, and a form of "fast track" streaming may be introduced in comprehensive schools.

Speaking to the National Union of Teachers' conference in Blackpool yesterday, Mr Blunkett conceded that Labour's long-cherished commitment to comprehensivisation had not produced the promised land. "Comprehensive schools have not failed the bulk of our pupils - but they are failing a significant minority," he admitted.

Lambasting "the culture of complacency and lack of ambition" in some schools, he added: "For Labour, comprehensive education in itself will not do. Calling a school comprehensive and allowing it to sink in a way which only the worst secondary modern schools experienced is a betrayal of everything we stand for." This tough talking to the NUT, virtually unheard of from a shadow Education spokesman before, will be translated into a programme of action to raise standards in state schools. Labour's three policy-making steps will be:

n A statement on Partnership for Schools, in June, outlining key principles governing all schools, including equity of funding and local accountability. Labour intends to close the funding gap between the 1,000 grant-maintained schools and the 23,000 other schools.

The link with local education authorities, still being refined, is critical. Mr Blunkett says the role of the LEAs should be "one of leadership, spreading good practice. Schools must be responsible for getting on with the job."

n A subsequent document on standards in schools, retaining the Conservatives' Office of Standards in Education (Ofsted) but beefing up its activities: more inspections of schools, more appraisal of teachers (including heads), greater follow-up of remedial work, and in the few worst-performing cases, an Operation Fresh Start.

Fresh Start would involve closing a school during the summer break and setting up a new school, with a new name, new management, and new head and deputy head, on the site. Good teachers would be retained, poor teachers retrained, redeployed or obliged to take early retirement. "We would have to look at legislation to put that into effect," said a Blunkett aide.

The document will also spell out more comprehensive assessment and performance measures for pupils, publishing a performance index for schools so that parents can judge how well it is doing over, say, a three-year period. Pupils would also be monitored on a "baseline assessment" system, looking at their development of basic-skill "3Rs" from the moment they enter primary school.

Mr Blunkett argues that there can be "diversity and flexibility within a comprehensive campus". Recognising that children have different aptitudes, Labour would allow "setting" - a form of special-attention teaching for pupils with outstanding skills.

n A strategy paper, probably in December, on access to further and higher education. Mr Blunkett's deputy, Bryan Davies, is drafting the statement, which will take up controversial suggestions to Labour's Commission on Social Justice, that those fortunate enough to go to university should be ready to foot more of the bill.

Labour is "not looking at" charging tuition fees, according to sources, but there is a recognition that former students could make a contribution to higher-education funding through the tax system. This could be on the Australian model, with graduates paying up to 20 years after they leave university.

"If we are going to expand access to higher education, we have to take a hard look at spending and funding," said a Blunkett aide."We have to look sensibly at ways in which we can develop the sector that do not assume that all the money is going to come from the taxpayer."

Labour agrees that access to higher education has been extended since 1979, so that about 30 per cent of young people go to university. But it wants to go much further towards the CBI's objective of 40 per cent.

However, while Mr Blunkett is taking a tough line with the teaching unions - criticising strikes and demanding better discipline in schools - he is keen to reassure teachers that Labour wants to enhance their professional status. In his political Cook's Tour of the Easter union conferences, he is promising to set up a General Teaching Council if teachers play their role in raising standards.

But he is not promising to reverse the estimated £400m Conservative cuts as soon as Labour wins office. "You cannot expect to restore underfunding over two or three years," he says. "It will take a decade of investment."

He defends the idea of special-attention teaching, which his fundamentalist critics would argue is a form of streaming. "Recognising the different aptitudes of pupils would let schools offer, instead of the lowest common denominator of a drab uniformity, a flourishing diversity which allows the high-flyers to fly, and which supports and encourages those whose talents and capabilities must be drawn out and fostered," he says.

On grammar schools he will say only: "Changes to the few remaining grammar schools should be a matter of local consensus."

At the heart of his strategy is the argument that Britain is more divided than other successful nations, and that division extends to education as much as economic and social life. "We need to break with that. We have to have a revolution in expectations and what is possible for young people. Are young people in this country thicker than those in other countries, and teachers less effective? The answer from me to both questions is, `No'."