................................................................................ ON THE RECORD ANN TAYLOR INTERVIEW RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION BBC-1 DATE: 6.3.94 ................................................................................ JOHN HUMPHRYS: So Ann Taylor, can they? What's the essence of what you want to do that's different to what's happening now? ANN TAYLOR MP: The essence is that we believe that the education of every single child matters, and that therefore we've got to have an education system that can suit every child. At the moment we've got a two tier system, we've got lots of situations where lots of people are denied access to education. It was only just before Christmas that the Prime Minister actually said that fifteen per cent of young people in Britain get an education which is as good as anywhere in the world. He then went on to say that unfortunately for the rest, for eighty-five per cent, the same could not be said. I think that after fifteen years of Conservative government that's an incredible indictment. I don't think it's good enough for this country. It's not good enough for our children. They deserve better, but it's also not good enough for the country, because as we get to the next century, as we get to the twenty-first century, we're going to have to rely on the skills of every single individual and therefore we've got to have an education system which will allow our young people to develop those skills. HUMPHRYS: And one of the ways the government thinks that can be brought about is through national testing for instance, so you know what's going on objectively. Now are you opposed to that because you think it isn't working practically, or because you're opposed to it philosophically? TAYLOR: Well, I think we would all say as parents and all teachers would say that children have to be tested and assessed on an on-going basis. It's an essential part of education, and parents need to know how their children are doing in those tests. What the government is doing however is trying to move away from on-going continuous assessment and having snapshots and assuming that everything can be determined and assessed from those snapshots, and I think that that is wrong. I mean given what happened last year when the government had to back down because central government was imposing on education a system of testing which didn't have the confidence of parents, which didn't have the confidence of teachers. In those circumstances at the end of the day, at the very last minute, the government backed down from its confrontational approach. What we've got to do is establish a new framework in education, one which can create partnerships, ones which can create trust, ones which can create a two-way relationship, and I think that the Green Paper exercise that we've embarked on is really to develop that kind of consensus. The desire for stability is there. What we've got to do is work out the way forward, not by sitting in Westminster and dictating everything ourselves in the way that the government is sitting in Whitehall and dictating everything, but by working people to get things right. We're all in favour of assessment, but it's got to be for the purpose of improving the education of the child, not simply for drawing up league tables for ministers. HUMPHRYS: So what about having that assessment that you're talking about - the ongoing assessment and having these snapshot tests, these national tests, with league tables? TAYLOR: Well, what the government has agreed to do in Scotland, what Conservative government ministers in Scotland have agreed is that there is a pool of tests and teachers in Scotland can draw on them when they think the children are ready to take those tests. HUMPHRYS: Now, that's not the equivalent of national testing them, the sort of thing we've been hearing about in that film. TAYLOR: Well, it is, - well it is a variation on national testing, because those tests are actually validated nationally, and parents know that there is some bench-mark against which their children's progress is being measured, so you've got the security that it isn't just the teacher's word that you have to take for their progress, you have got tests which give that monitoring impact as well, and I think that's quite important. HUMPHRYS: And you've got that assurance with this other system, the existing system of national testing as well haven't you? TAYLOR: No, we don't, and that's why the government was forced to withdraw it and go back to the drawing board and indeed if you read Ron Deering's report he actually says that teacher assessment is more important than the snapshot tests. HUMPHRYS: But he also approves of snapshot tests. TAYLOR: Well, he does and we're saying that parents should be able to have the teacher's assessment validated by other tests. What we don't want is an imposition by government ministers on the nature of testing, and if it's good enough in Scotland and these Conservative government ministers have agreed this system in Scotland I don't see any reason why we can't look at it for England. What we've got to have is a system that reassures parents that teachers know where their children are going and not only assesses where they are at the present time, but looks forward to where they should be going and how they should be developing. HUMPHRYS: But the latest opinion polls suggest that the parents overwhelmingly, ninety-three per cent actually want a system of national testing, what you call snapshot testing, with the publication of league tables. TAYLOR: I don't think the parents do want the publication of league tables. They want information but I don't think it's of much use to me as a parent in Dewsbury to find out how children at schools in Kent have gone on. I'm not going to use that kind of information to choose which school I should send my own children to. HUMPHRYS: No but you want to know whether your school in Dewsbury is as good as that school in Kent, because if for some reason that school in Kent is doing brilliantly well and your school in Dewsbury isn't, you want to know that as the person sitting in Whitehall or Westminister, so you can direct resources to the school that's doing less well. That's why these national tests are so important. TAYLOR: Well, it would be very interesting if the government were going to address that question and send resources into those schools that needed it most. The whole pull of government policy has been in the opposite direction. HUMPHRYS: Yes, but what .... TAYLOR: Leaving that aside for one moment, what I want is for parents to know what progress their children are making, where their strengths are, where their weaknesses are. HUMPHRYS: That's common ground. That's common ground. TAYLOR: Well, is it common ground. I wish it was common ground. HUMPHRYS: Well, let's assume that it's common ground for the purpose of this interview, because we really must move on to whether you are prepared - I mean I'm not quite clear to be perfectly honest, whether you're saying if you come into power you'll dump this system of national testing with the publication of league tables. Now my understanding was the answer to that was yes. Is it? TAYLOR: I'm saying that we will stop publishing league tables on a national basis. HUMPHRYS: So you will do it? TAYLOR: I'm quite happy for schools to publish their information, but I as a Secretary of State for Education will not be spending millions of pounds of taxpayers' money drawing up league tables. HUMPHRYS: So you will be depriving parents of that degree of information and, therefore, that degree of power. TAYLOR: No, that is not the case because I'm quite happy.. HUMPHRYS: ...if it's being published now and you say you will stop it being published then manifestly that's the case. TAYLOR: Let's hang on a minute. It was being published very often before - it doesn't have to be published on a "national" basis for parents to get to know what the local situation is. Most schools are telling parents - in fact I think all schools are telling prospective parents - about their examination results, but if I'm going to be making a choice, as that parent in the bit of film said (the parent I think from Basildon) we want better information, we want more information, we can't judge a school simply on the basis of the examination results for the children. I want a freedom of information act which has an education chapter, which tells me about class sizes, which tells me how relationships develop in the school, which tells me what kind of tutoring system. If my child's in a large secondary school, where do they go to for help and assistance. I think that's the kind of information that parents want when it comes to assessing which school their children should go to. HUMPHRYS: You quote the parent from Basildon, why not quote the headmaster from Basildon who said "as a result of knowing where we are and knowing where we're going wrong, because the information was published, because the league tables were published, we improved our performance, crudely as he said, by four hundred per cent. So listen to the experts perhaps. TAYLOR: I think that's very depressing that a headmaster is saying that he couldn't do anything about that problem until he got those results. I don't think... HUMPHRYS: Surely you should say it's encouraging
that given this situation he was able to improve the standard of his school. TAYLOR: It's very worrying if the head teacher has to wait until results are published nationally before doing anything... HUMPHRYS: But he was able to identify the problem you see, that's the point. TAYLOR: Well, hang on a minute. I think he should have been able to identify that problem long before we had the league tables. And I think... HUMPHRYS: But who are you to say to him as a politician, who are you to say that I know better than you headmaster. You should have been able to handle it. TAYLOR: Well, he should, and if I was a parent in that area and results were of the order that he's talking about and nothing was being done, then I think that I'd have been extremely worried. Nothing's being done at a national level to help that school. It has got to come from the locality - from the parents, from the governors, from the way that individual school is run - and I think it's a bit depressing that that head felt he couldn't do anything until he saw some national league tables. I don't think that that's where the improvement is coming from, and I don't think.... HUMPHRYS: But in this case he says it was you see. It helped him enormously and he's a headmaster with "hands-on" experience, so use that ugly phrase. TAYLOR: I'm afraid I think that's an admission of failure on his part that he wasn't tackling the problem before, but I don't think that these problems are going to be dealt with by government ministers sitting in Whitehall dictating what should be going on in every school - that's why we've had this confrontation. HUMPHRYS: Ah, but they're not doing that are they? TAYLOR: But they are. Why else have we had the confrontation, why else have we had the chopping and changing, why else have we had the experimentation that has dogged education for the last decade. Over the last few years ministers have been sitting in Whitehall deciding themselves what should go on in every classroom in the country - interfering in the curriculum, interfering in the assessment and testing of children, interfering with the professionism of teachers, taking them away from the classroom, making them administrators. This is because government ministers are imposing their will on education and I think we've got to remove the feeling of uncertainty, we've got to stop the chopping and changing, stop the experimentation, stop the confrontation and start delivering an education service upon which we can all agree. HUMPHRYS: But you're going to start experimenting all over again aren't you because you're going to say we've now got a system that is up and running - alright, we don't like it, it doesn't work the way we would like to see it working, but we're going to scrap it, and we're going to put something else in its place, just as people are beginning to get used to it, just as teachers are coming around to the idea, just as parents are coming around to the idea, and are delighted that now they actually have objective measurements and, this is the point, and you don't need to talk to teachers, you can talk to Neil Fletcher, one of your Labour.. former Chairman of the Labour Education Authority who said absolutely the right thing to do and you cannot, yo use his phrase, put the genie back in the bottle. TAYLOR: When we get into government we've got two choices: we can either come in and sit in Whitehall and impose our education policies on the whole country, or we can adopt the position that we've adopted by publishing this green paper and say that we want to consult, we want to discuss, we want to be partners in an education system, and that's what we're actually doing. We are bringing the consultation period forward so that when we get into government we are not going to be imposing change on the education world - we're actually developing support for it before we get there, and we want to outline our principles, develop a framework which can have a partnership and have the confidence of all those people who are going to be affected and that, judging by the responses that we're getting to the green paper, that is very much how people out there - parents, school governors and teachers alike - have taken this consultation process. HUMPHRYS: So if enough people out there say to you "Minister, potential Minister, we want to keep grant-maintained schools", you'll say "okay, if that's what you want you can have it". TAYLOR: We'd have to take their views on board, but I have to tell you that that is not the kind of response that we have been getting and the meetings that we've had and the written submissions do say very clearly that people think that grant-maintained status hasn't worked, isn't working and is not the way forward and, indeed, I would suggest that the Government's got more problems with GM status than we have, because all of their targets have not been met, they've reduced the target time and time again, and they still can't meet it. They're finding it difficult to find the money for new GM schools. The old GM schools might have got some very nice bribes but the funds are running out. Later this week I'm going to be publishing figures that show that today's GM schools are only getting eight per cent of the capital that they actually ask for. The bribes are running out, cash protection is running out. Those schools are running into difficulties; they're getting their budgets late; some are sacking teachers at the very moment, so everything in the GM garden isn't rosy and GM heads are actually agreeing that as well. HUMPHRYS: Everything in the garden is never rosy, is it, there are always problems here and there, but the fact is you have seven hundred thousand parents who have opted for their children to go to grant-maintained schools, probably a million so the figures tell us, by the time... if you get into power. Are you going to say to those seven hundred thousand or that million parents - your schools no longer can be grant-maintained, you've got to go back under LEA control? TAYLOR: We've actually already been talking to grant-maintained heads about what the future should hold and indeed only on Friday I got a response from them on the green paper where they say, very clearly, that they greet our green paper with warm approval (is their word), they say in this statement that they're worried about the concentration of power, they're worried about centralisation, they're worried about quangos, and they're... HUMPHRYS: ... broad generalisations? TAYLOR: No, well actually, they actually said that they want to talk with the Labour Party about an agreed framework of local accountability. They say that they're more worried about control from Whitehall than anything else. HUMPHRYS: But that isn't the same as saying we want to get rid of our grant-maintained status. Did you talk to our headmaster from Baverstock in Birmingham? TAYLOR: I have to say that this is the grant-maintained schools saying that they may have to learn to live with a Labour Government and they may have to anticipate a Labour Government and look how they come back into a framework. HUMPHRYS: Oh, but that's rather different to saying "we want to lose our GM status", isn't it? I mean, what they're saying is if we have a Labour Government we're going to have to live with it. That's pragmatism. TAYLOR: It's the first step in the recognition that GM status is not the way forward. HUMPHRYS: It's nothing of the sort is it, it's merely accepting that you may win power and if you win power they're going to have to do business with you, as Mrs. Thatcher might have said. TAYLOR: Well I have to say they're talking about the dangers of bureaucracy, they're talking about the need for equity in resourcing, which hasn't happened in the past with GM schools, but which is the siutation that they can see coming up in the future, the bribes, they know the bribes are running out, they know that they're sacking teachers, they know the difficulties that are there and they know that they haven't got the support of local authorities to fall back on. And therefore I think we're in a whole new ball game and ever since Mr. Patten threatened that he was going to force all secondary schools to opt out, that he was actually going to natioinalise secondary education, I think a lot of people in the GM sector have become increasingly worried about control from Whitehall. HUMPHRYS: So what about all those parents then, the parents whose children are now in grant maintained schools or who may be within the next couple of years. You are actually going to say to them, sorry, we know you like that system, or at least a lot of you like that system, but you may not have it in future, under a Labour Government, I mean that's a pretty straightforward question isn't it? TAYLOR: What we're going to say is that all schools should be funded on a equitable basis and all schools should have the same rules of governance. Now the ... HUMPHRYS: So the answer to them is no you can't keep it? TAYLOR: You can't keep grant maintained status, that's the answer in that sense. But let me just tell you what we're talking about putting in its place, because there is a suggestion, and even in that film the idea was there, that we were saying that local authorities were going to control everything that happened in the school. People are talking as if they haven't actually realised that we now have local management of schools, with individual schools getting eighty-five, ninety, ninety-two per cent of their own budget delegated... HUMPHRYS: A system introduced by the government. TAYLOR: ...and many Labour authorities before the government, and making many of the decisions themselves, about their funding priorities. Now local management of schools is not something we would abolish, and that gives a very significant degree of freedom to individual
schools and is a situation that most schools like and most schools prefer to being....well just let me finish, because the alternative is that you're a GM
school, each school is an island, competing against each other in a market situation. I reject the idea that we should have schools like that, we need co-operation, we need partnerships in education if we're actually going to be producing the best. HUMPHRYS: Your predecessor Jack Straw didn't reject that idea altogether did he because he said a couple years ago...
eighteen months ago "Labour should not appear to be placed in a hostile position to parents making the decision about their children's future, leave the decision to the parents". And in the case of grant maintained schools, seven hundred thousand people so far, a million by the time of the election, have opted for grant maintained schools, and what they're going to say is Labour is depriving us of the choice. TAYLOR: Not if they look at the powers that local management of schools has actually given to individual schools. HUMPHRYS: Well they're not daft, they have looked at that haven't they and they've opted for grant maintained status. TAYLOR: Hang on a minute, they haven't, because a lot of them have had children who've gone to those schools and therefore they haven't kept up with the changes that have happened in the local authority sector. We're not talking about local authorities controlling every school in a hands on way, there's a great deal of independence in each school at the moment, and that's got to be strengthed, we've got to have more flexibility because the government has introduced a rigid framework and said there should be nothing else. That's part of the trouble, when you get everything being determined in Whitehall. HUMPHRYS: Ann Taylor, thank you very much indeed. ...oooOooo...