NB: THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A TRANSCRIPTION UNIT RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT: BECAUSE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF MIS-HEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY, IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS ACCURACY. ............................................................................... ON THE RECORD JOHN PATTEN INTERVIEW RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC-1 DATE: 28.2.93 ............................................................................... JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: Secretary of State, do you regret the impression that you've given of being somewhat arrogant and overbearing in your approach to your task? JOHN PATTEN: I think one of the most important things in political life, like in private life, is to say those things you believe in. Now I can remember a year ago - when I was a minster of state in the Home Office, saying the sorts of things in the House of Commons that Tony Blair's been saying recently, about the need to balance responsiblities with rights. I used to be howled down in the House of Commons by Labour then, it's now become very fashionable, so by the same token I think when you come to a world of education which has been very much inward looking as though an educational establishment which has had a grip on education, it's very important to bring it out into the open, make it a matter of public debate, and that's what I'm determined to do, whether it's over surplus places, truancy or whatever else. DIMBLEBY: And is it okay to go around calling those who disagree with you Neanderthals? PATTEN: Well, I think if you read the transcript... DIMBLEBY: Views, Neanderthal views? PATTEN: I think if you read the transcript of the excellent World at One programme, where I was being interviewed by Jim Naughtie, I said that I thought anyone who thought that testing should not happen to our children was taking a Neanderthal view. That's what I was saying and I hold to that very, very clearly indeed. I think if we're ever going to have a competitive English, British schooling system we need to have as much testing as we can in order to bring us up to the levels of the French and the Germans. DIMBLEBY: So we're not about the see a new humble Mr Patten? PATTEN: You see the Mr Patten that you saw a year ago when I was a Home Office minister and you'll see the same Mr Patten I hope, in my job as Secretary of State for Education for the whole of this parliament. DIMBLEBY: You see, of course, the charge is more serious than the mere tone or the odd phrase. It's that you've taken a vast new panoply of powers upon yourself which allows yourself which allows you, as one or two people were suggesting in the film, to ride roughshod over contrary opinion and simply heed those who are compliant to your own assumptions and attitudes. PATTEN: I take exactly the opposite view. We have got the Education Bill which has gone very successfully through the House of Commons. There hasn't been a government defeat, it's the longest Education
Bill in history. We only had a majority of one on the committee. There's been enormous support as many Members of Parliament would have told you if you'd asked them for the Bill, but secondly, I also see the taking of powers which you've accurately identified. I don't diminish the fact there are more powers coming to the centre. It's to take powers to the centre so we can then redistribute power back to the rim of the wheel from the hub, to borrow a phrase of Ken Baker's and a very good phrase. That's why you want to see more diversity, more choice, more local control. DIMBLEBY: What do you then retort to the man who runs the Select Committee on Education, Sir Malcolm Thornton, who says that you are being advised by, and he describes them as, the Lords of misrule, the spindle and loom of chaos - they've cornered the market in advice? PATTEN: Well, I'd love to know who all these people are and I'd love anyone to produce a copy of my diary showing me when I've seen all these people or indeed who they are. I have certainly seen the Chief Education Office of Hillingdon and very good she is too, who was shown on your film, and a whole lot of people across a broad range of educational
interest. Myself and my two fellow schools ministers, Emily Blatch and Eric Forth will by the middle of March have visited a hundred schools. I'm told that's far more than has ever happened before. DIMBLEBY: How many have you seen yourself? PATTEN: Just thirty. DIMBLEBY: What about the criticism of Brian Cox, who was the author of the Black Paper, the first assault on all the trendy, liberal ideas against which you've set yourself, who says that you have been undermining, the government's been undermining the morale of teachers by refusing to hear their professional advice? PATTEN: Well, that's not the case. If you have as I have, every week, groups of individual teachers and educationalists coming in to see me and I try and set aside an hour every day to do this as much as I can, if you've been to about thirty schools, I'm also responsible incidentally,
for further education colleges and universities and I visit them as well, you get a whole range of advice coming in from people. One thing that has been quite clear to me though, is that fashions are changing very fast indeed in the education world. Just as I said a year ago, some of my views on right and wrong and law and order were jeered at and now they're part of the present political othodoxy, so I have to tell you that people who twenty, twenty-five years ago, look at Professor Hawsley(phon.) my distinguished constituent in Oxford, Tony Crossland's special advisor, the architect of the comprehensive revolution in this country, is now saying he got it badly wrong, and I think you'll find that people like Professor Cox, who I respect, will be changing their views quite quickly. DIMBLEBY: It's a little bit arrogant, I suggest to youm to simply rule out of account what Cox might say, what Thornton might say, I know that I'm doing it right, I know that I'm speaking to the right people. These are senior figures and they don't use words lightly when they say that you've been listening to the Lords of Misrule, that you pray and aid their zealot advice. PATTEN: Well, these are words with which I disagree and I think it's very important sometimes to say when you do disagree with things. DIMBLEBY: Okay, now look, you've said you acknowledge that more power was now at the centre of the hub, as you put it.
The charge fundamentally also, or what people fear in someone who is so certain as you are in what ought to be done, is that you can put around you in positions of advice, in the bodies, the quangos that you are creating, your own people, and if you don't like what they do, you now have the power to get rid of them and get those who are more compliant and more amenable. PATTEN: Well, these are your words, not mine. As always, in selecting people, I'll actually be making an announcement fairly soon, about the new chairman, the man or women who'll be taking over the schools curriculum and assessment authority, we'll be picking the best person for the job, as always in government. DIMBLEBY: But there is no check and balance on that, it's what you want. PATTEN: Well, there are checks and balances throughout the whole of political life, and one of the checks and balances is.. DIMBLEBY: You could get the sack, of course, in the end, but that's about all. PATTEN: Well, so could you - we both face that. DIMBLEBY: Absolutely. PATTEN: Your performance and my performance is measured daily and I think it's a very good thing. The professional's performance should be measured, that's why performance tables in the schools
are so important. DIMBLEBY: Isn't there a certain arrogance in saying, not so much... PATTEN: You keep turning to the a word, never a word you've used before about me on this programme and I have been on it a few times. DIMBLEBY: Yes, I haven't had a chance to interview a Secretary of State for Education for some eight months. It's very nice to have you on. A certain arrogance, I'm putting to you what is felt by some professionals as we've already detected. It's not my view of ... PATTEN: ...it's not by some of the educational establishment. DIMBLEBY: What you would describe as the educational establishment, which they detect you see, as a dismissive arrogance, when you say that, because they think that they have useful and valuable contributions to make, which you dismiss by saying they're the establishment, or they're Neanderthal, or they are militants motivated by policical extremes. PATTEN: I think what we need to do is to try to get much more understanding about the state education system and get people to feel they own the state education system in this country, in the way in which I think most people, certainly my constituents, feel they own the national Health Service. DIMBLEBY: Okay, let's stick there with this test which you quite rightly want to resist, or understandably want to resist, of the arrogance of power. Now, not that it's arrogant to say, there shall be testing through the system, but to say, "I am going to publish the results despite what everyone says of fourteen year-olds, this year, and in effect, anyone who thinks that I shouldn't do that is off the wall". That was, misquided or arrogant? PATTEN: No, I think it's trying to deal with the reality of the situation whereby, although we've got a lot of very good, hardworking teachers in this country, although we spend more on state education than they do for example in Germany, that there still is a major problem with some of the products of the state education system. That's why only two Fridays ago we published I think, the alarming results that about a third of children going on to further education aged sixteen have still only got the reading age of a fourteen-year-old. It's very important if we're going to have a competitive school system in this country, if we're going to have a competitive economy in the nineteen-nineties, that we expose the performance of schools up and down the land, and that has got to be the right things to do, and there's been enormous interest, not least of all by the media in the publication of these results. Look at the attention the BBC paid to them when I first brought them to the public attention. DIMBLEBY: Of course, but if you take the test for fourteen-year-olds you have now backed down on making those public this year. Was that because you were wrong, or simply weren't strong enough to hold the line? PATTEN: I think nether of those things, if you don't mind. I think there's a third reason, and that is that some schools and some teachers felt that they were a bit nervous about the introduction of these English tests. They therefore felt they needed more time to prepare for them, I happened to disagree with them. They should have been preparing for these tests for the last three years. They've been teaching the national curriculum in advance of these tests since the age of eleven, with the children since the age of eleven, but I'm also equally nervous about the output of our schools in terms of the substantial numbers of those children who are still grappling with the English language, and that's got to be wrong. We see to have more adult illiterates in this country than Germany or France, I'm not proud of that... DIMBLEBY: So these teachers were wrong, these heads, these teachers were wrong to say that they couldn't deliver it. Nonetheless you have yielded to it. Now is that a sort of - Mr Patten isn't quite sure where he is? PATTEN: The test will be going ahead this summer, parents will be told the results of their children's performance, quite right too, governors will know in schools how the schools have been getting on and, of course, very valuably we'll have a national, we'll have a national baseline, because I shall be publishing the national figures for averages across the country. DIMBLEBY: Let's move on then, to what you have put at the heart of your reform process, namely the freedom of choice that the parent has in the school market place, which was dealt with in the film. You heard a parent saying there, "It's a fraud, because in reality I have no such choice, I cannot send my child to the school of my choice". He's right isn't he? PATTEN: It was a she. Increasingly .. DIMBLEBY: Well, actually it was a he, there was a he and a she. PATTEN: I thought it was the mother that was saying ... DIMBLEBY: No, I was referring to the father. PATTEN: I beg your pardon, it was both a he and a she. I think that we never have been able to guarantee and we never will be able to guarantee a hundred per cent first choice to everyone who applies. That's happened under the state system, since 1945. I think we've been through two periods in the past when we've tried to get things right educationally. We're having a third go now, briefly. The first of all was in 1944, when Butler had his three-fold system, Grammar School, Secondary Schools, Technical Schools. I often think it would have worked if it had been underpinned by the national curriculum, delivering minimum entitlement to all children in the country to study the same thing. It didn't work obviously by the nineteen-sixties. People went right the other way. The Pendulum swung right back and we had the Comprehensive system. Now we have the architects of the Comprehensive system like Professor Hawsey (phon.) saying that it didn't work in the way in which it should, so now what we're trying to do, and it will take years to do, it can't be done overnight, it can't be done by me, however many powers you say I'm taking to myself, it can't be done in twenty-four hours or twelve months. It can be done in maybe five, six years, introducing much more a competitive system which has far greeater variety of schools and much greater choice. What we see in Hillingdon is that transition from the old system to the new system. DIMBLEBY: Well let's see whether it really is the transition. You say, I'm taking part of the hub in order to get it out via the spokes to the rim. Truth of the matter is, you've just acknowledged it, that it goes out to the rim in part but they'll be a lot of people on the rim who don't actually benefit from this key reform at all because they don't get what they want. PATTEN: Well they will benefit in increasing amount over the next three or four years when we get to grips with the massive problem that we have in this country of up to one and a half million surplus school places. I'm told by my officials that this is actually costing three hundred and twenty million pounds a year in premises related costs. That's entirely wrong, that money should be being spent on teachers, on the curriculum, on the classroom, someone's got to make himself or herself historically unpopular in dealing with this issue and it's going to be me. DIMBLEBY: But what... the individual that you referred to as being... earlier as being a distinguished person who you greatly respected, namely the Chief Education Officer of Hillingdon, is saying that as a consequence of implementing the reforms, of a consequence of going grant-maintained so heavily in exactly the way you want, their ability to place children in the schools of their parents' choice is actually being reduced. The direct contrary of what you are claiming to deliver, that's why they say it's a con. PATTEN: We're going through a transitional period as the old system changes in Hillingdon, they've got almost more grant-maintained schools then any other education authority in the country. I was actually in Hillingdon within the last two weeks and I spoke both to the leader of the council and to the chairman of the Education Authority and they are both fully behind goverment policy, fully committed to making it work in that particular area. DIMBLEBY: But clearly they are, they're saying they can't make it work and by your reasoning, unless I misunderstood you, they're doing what you want, more and more grant-maintained schools, they say... PATTEN: Well they're self-governing State schools is what we should really call them, that's all they are, they're not opt-out schools, they're self-governing State schools. DIMBLEBY: Okay, self-governing schools and the more they do what you want, because of the constraints on places, the less they're able to deliver what you are promising and the more they get like Hillingdon, the worse the problem's going to get and Hillingdon's in the advance of vanguard. PATTEN: Let's take Hillingdon, let's also take Oxford where Martin Roberts, the head teacher of the Cherwell School in Oxford in my constituency was talking. What we're seeing.. DIMBLEBY: Criticising you. PATTEN: What we're seeing, certainly, what we're seeing in both those areas is the beginnings of the effects of the policy which I've had and I've inherited it from my predecessors, from Ken Clarke, from John MacGregor and from Kenneth Baker, of beginning to publish the performance of individual schools. Naturally when you have a few school in the area performing particularly well, parents will flock to those schools, those walls will bulge but the very virtue of those tables themselves, is they then begin to expose schools which are not performing so well. Two things will happen, either those schools will shut because they fail, or the performance of those schools will improve and therefore people will no longer flock to this school in Hillingdon or that school in Oxford. They'll distribute themselves much more widely around the State system and that's why it's so important to have improving standards in this country. DIMBLEBY: They may share all those ideals but the problem is something very much simpler which is if you get rid of surplus places, you do not have the flexibility to offer parents their choices. PATTEN: You can never get rid of all surplus school places, we have to protect small rural schools, that's one thing and you have to have a measure of free places in the system in order to provide for choice. DIMBLEBY: What sort of proportion? PATTEN: I think it's very hard to estimate from place to place because in some areas school populations are going up and in other areas school populations are going down but... DIMBLEBY: But you said there were one point five million excess... PATTEN: Overall in England. DIMBLEBY: ...surplus places in England. What would be the sort of figure that you would guess at as being appropriate in order to retain the flexibility, in order to deliver choice? PATTEN: I should think taking into account the fact that demography is going up more, children are coming to the school system and taking into account the fact that you have to maintain a bit of choice in the system, I should think we'll probably be aiming to get rid of between seven hundred and fifty and nine hundred thousand school places leaving the balance to take up the extra school places we're going to need in the next three or four years and also to get rid of some of the... DIMBLEBY: So leaving on a national basis something like between forty and fifty per cent of excess places? PATTEN: I think it's very hard to say because... DIMBLEBY: That's just what you said, unless I've done my maths wrong... PATTEN: I was talking in national term....global terms but, of course, locally demography seems to work in different ways in local areas and that's where... DIMBLEBY: No, that's a useful national benchmark that you've offered your critics who will be interested in what you said but let me move on then to the point, the suggestion that you've made matters worse for yourself in delivering the commitment by withdrawing Ken Clarke, your
predecessors' popular schools initiative, which was to give money to those schools that were popular, like that school Cherwell in Oxford, so that they could offer more places. PATTEN: We've replaced this with a much bigger scheme which is to get rid of the surplus school places that I think we can get rid of in the next two or three years. Some of our major local authorities, the Birminghams and Sheffields have got a shamefully high number of surplus school places and to plough back some of that money not all of it, some of that money will go back into improving education and enlarging popular schools. DIMBLEBY: But hang on, that's a slightly different point, isn't it? The...what Ken Clarke was doing was very specifically targetting those schools that were in demand and saying, we recognise you're in demand, you need more classrooms, we are going to provide some of the money to help you do that. That's what you've prevented happening. PATTEN: No, we've replaced it with a much bigger drive across the country as a whole to get rid of surplus school places and some of the powers to which you refer... DIMBLEBY; But that doesn't resolve the problem, with great respect, that Ken Clarke was addressing, does it? PATTEN: Let me explain how it will solve the problem, if I may, and I apologise for not having done so clearly before. The Bill to which you've referred gives the holder of my office, Secretary of State for Education, for the time being, powers to get rid of surplus school places, that's going to allow me or my successors, to use the money saved in order to deal not just with a few schools, which is all the earlier initiative could have done but to deal with a very large number of schools across the country who may need extra help. And, of course, we're also beginning, which I think is very important indeed, to get business and others coming in to be sponsor governors of many of these popular schools, bringing in additional money. This is happening in Lincolnshire, not in grant-maintained schools but the local education authorities. DIMBLEBY: You could have left Ken Clarke's proposition in place, which was more money, at the same time as saving money from getting rid of surplus places and applying that across the country. PATTEN: This way round because we're taking the powers which the Education Bill - which Ken Clarke didn't have, he didn't have those powers at that particular stage - will allow us and enable us I think to bring about a transformation in many parts of the country using the money saved from surplus school places. DIMBLEBY: But as you begin to run these surplus places down, how are you going to make sure that the money goes in as targetted a fashion to those popular schools that are in demand and that demand which you wish to satisfy? PATTEN: Well, we'll do that in the normal way through capital allocations which come centrally from us and also go to grant-maintained schools centrally and we reserved about half a billion pounds for the grant-maintained schools centrally over the next three years. DIMBLEBY: Let's get it clear then, you say you're doing something bigger than Ken Clarke was doing. Are you telling me that the money that you saved from closing down surplus places will all be targetted - you claim that you were doing more than he was doing - will all be targetted to those schools which are most popular and need to expand in order to meet the demands? PATTEN: No, it'll be targetted on a whole range of educational needs. Apart from anything else, bringing special help to a number of those schools who are less popular and who need the help to bring them up, I guess, in future years to higher performance, if they have greater capital needs, if capital's been one of the things which has harmed them in the past, then I think we'll have to bring special help to them. DIMBLEBY: Now is all the money that you've saved from closing these schools going to be - I think the technical term is - hypothecated, that's to say directed to your schools or is the Treasury going to claw some of it back? PATTEN: You've been asking ministers that kind of question in all government departments ever since you've been on this programme and we treat each year's public expenditure round on its own merits and you can ask me twenty times that question and I'll give you the same answer. DIMBLEBY: I know why I asked you the question, and you know why I asked the question, you've left the impression with the public that the money you were saving from those surplus places was all going to go back into the education system. Now you're quite rightly, as a cautious minister, telling me, I can't promise you that it will all go, I can't indeed promise you that any of it will go back in. PATTEN: You'll have to wait and see but year on year, of course, we've been been providing more and more for education, that's why I think it's very interesting to see when we compare the British education system with say the German education system, we spend more in Britain and yet to the German education system is always being held up to us as an example which we should follow. Prince Albert did it a hundred and fifty years ago incidentally. DIMBLEBY: And, if, of course, with a budget deficit zooming way up, no one knows how far to fifty million, the Chancellor says, sorry, you can't have that money - not an inconceivable outcome - you will not be delivering nearly as much as Ken Clarke was delivering with his popular schools initiative. PATTEN: You're concentrating on money, reasonably enough, quite rightly.. DIMBLEBY: Not unimportant. PATTEN: ...not unimportant, but there are lots of other things which are happening in education where our excellent head teachers and hard working school teachers are performing I think to a very high level particularly since the '88 Greater Education Reform Act, and what we are seeing is the national curriculum being put into place; we're seeing testing exposing school performance; we're seeing a more competitive system of education and I think in three or four years time when you ask me back, perhaps for my valedictory appearance on your programme as Secretary of State for Education... DIMBLEBY: You're in for four years, are you? PATTEN: I hope to be because I think the task which we've got in front of us is a historic one. DIMBLEBY: Now that last answer interesting itself, could have been understood as diversion from my question but I don't... PATTEN: But it wasn't. DIMBLEBY: ...well, you didn't answer, with great respect, you didn't the question. Let me put one more to you, which is my final question... PATTEN: I thought that was your final question. DIMBLEBY: I thought you did. Let's get the real final one which is this: Until parents get the choice that they have been promised which you said will take time, this isn't a short thing, they're going to have to in practice, put up with, sending children to schools that they regard as inferior, there is no magic wand. PATTEN: There's no magic wand, they've been having to do that since the 1960s, we've started I think on the long road of turning round school education in this country and I think over the next four or five years people will see the fruits of that. DIMBLEBY: And the test will be for them whether or not the power that you're taking to the hub actually ever gets out to the rim to their advantage. PATTEN: Oh, it's going to do that but it's not only to do that to the benefit of schools which in 1993 are popular, it's also going to do that to the benefit of schools which in 1993 are less popular because over the next two or three years, the disciplines of the national curriculum, of testing and of the new inspectorate, I think, are going to radically improve the performance of the average British school and quite right too. DIMBLEBY: Parents will be watching, I hope we'll have you on before four years is up. Secretary of State, thank you.