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  • Estelle Morris: ‘The education system is a political tool’

    Estelle Morris: ‘The education system is a political tool’

    Blair’s former education secretary on how lessons from 1997-2007 can be applied to the current moment.

    These are difficult times for education. It didn’t come up much in the election or the leadership campaign.

    I’m not critical of Keir Starmer – he’s done outstandingly well so far. But I’m not entirely happy with where the party is on education at the moment. It needs to get back to the top of our agenda.

    Under Tony Blair, we used to say to teachers: ‘If you want, you can teach when education isn’t a priority of the government.’ It’s true that when education is a focus of government, there’s a lot of pressure, and that perhaps goes away when education ceases to be the main talking point. No one will be on your back; the government won’t be passing laws or monitoring you – but they won’t be giving you money or leadership.

    Under Blair, if teachers were under the cosh, so were ministers: he was monitoring every detail. He was a consummate politician – and human being. He would admit if he didn’t know something. If we had a catch-up meeting and we raised something quite detailed – on literacy, for example – he would turn to Michael Barber (his chief education adviser) and say, ‘Michael, what does that sound like to you?’ And if we had a big initiative, he would make time. He never once said no.

    That kind of leadership matters. It’s sometimes not what the leader does; it’s what the leader gives cause to do that counts. Everyone thinks: ‘This is the bus to be on; this bus is going places.’

    But I was never sure where his motivation on education came from. When I worked for David Blunkett you could see it was all to do with his background. But Tony’s not got that. His socialism was all about social justice because he’d had those advantages. He knew the value of education.

    It comes down to this: there really isn’t an easy route out of poverty besides education. If you have a dictator, what do they do first? They go and fiddle with the education system. It’s the institution by which we lay down our values regarding the society we are, and the sort of world we want to inhabit.

    No one wants to say that the education system is a political tool, but it is. Whatever you dream your society to be, you need to see it worked out in school – otherwise you won’t see that vision of society in the next generation either.

    It’s been a period of great loss – certainly in education. It’s not a bad thing that we’ve not had fumes going into the air; but it’s definitely not a good thing not having kids in school. We need to get it right from here, but I wouldn’t go through this again to learn the lessons we’re learning now: they were learnable before. Once again we’ve been much too slow on the uptake.

    If you go to the health service, you can see relationships changing. One example I’ve heard about involved a nurse on
    a Covid-19 ward. Senior consultants from outside that discipline were filling syringes for nurses. A huge amount of
    goodwill is generated by those sorts of things. But where is that spirit in education? There’s been no sense of the government, the unions, and the local authorities sowing the seeds of a new relationship for the future.

    So education hasn’t had a good crisis. The government has done well to get the Whitehall machinery moving quickly and been imaginative in general, but it dismays me that we haven’t come together more.

    Universities have a responsibility on the quality of provision. If you are at a university or a school in this period of online learning, not all students have had the same high quality. That really bothers me.

    When you have a child of five you’re always trying to catch up on in-built disadvantage. It’s not a party political point.

    Each government has tried to make new initiatives on this, and that’s the reason we’ve closed the gap. But now in the last few months, we’ve built a new gap in terms of social class and deprivation. I hope the virus will push us to do better.

    In terms of Boris Johnson, I don’t see anything in his background that will turn him onto education intellectually. What we don’t want is another argument about academies, and we don’t want 50 years arguing about whether a school should be an academy or local authority.

    A good leader frees up something in society that’s already there. Blair used to do a lot of speeches about sport. He didn’t personally then go and teach sport. But if you were a PE teacher in that room, metaphorically you grew. It’s the power of the office.

    Estelle Morris was Secretary of State for Education and Skills from 2001-2002.

  • The Chair: Robert Halfon interview

    The Chair: Robert Halfon interview

    The Chair of the Education Select Committee tells us about his latest fight for guaranteed apprenticeships and why universities need to up their game to survive.

    It doesn’t matter how good policy is, unless there’s genuine evangelisation it doesn’t make any difference. When I die – which hopefully will be a long way away – I’d like it on my grave that I was a campaigner.

    The big thing in politics is relentless repetition: it takes about ten years to get people to notice what you’re saying. I liken it to pizza delivery. How many times do you get a Domino’s leaflet through your letterbox? 99 times out of 100, you’ll throw it away. But it’s when you have no food, and you’re knackered, and you have no food in the fridge, that you suddenly remember that pizza leaflet.

    In politics it’s the same. I push my ideas in every forum I can: in committees, in articles, speeches and interviews. I’ll raise things in parliament in questions, debates, and Commons motions, and try and keep what I’m working on at the time in the prime minister’s mind, and in the minds of his advisers.

    This year, it looks like they’ve picked up my pizza leaflet. It’s been an exciting time. In June, I met with Prime Minister Boris Johnson before the Liaison Committee, and I used the phrase ‘apprenticeship guarantee’. A week later, he repeated the whole phrase in a speech. What that signifies is that policy-makers in 10 Downing Street are clearly looking at this, and I hope as Chair of the Education Select Committee, I can move the policy forward. It’s the best offer we can make to young people.

    My hope is that one day 50 percent of students will be doing apprenticeships. So, for instance, if you are doing English you should be working during your degree in a publishing house or alongside an editor – and that should be part of your degree. A history graduate should be working in a museum or alongside an archaeologist. I also think work experience should be compulsory, or at least be encouraged as much as possible by government.

    I had the best time of my life at university. But I’ve always worked doing summer jobs – and that’s the advantage of apprenticeships.

    You do your degree and get academic experience. You go to the student bars, but you also learn about office work and about teamwork. And of course, if you do a career apprenticeship you get paid, so there’s no loan. It’s a no-brainer to me and now’s
    the time for the government to act.

    We’re hopeful we won’t have the usual battle with the Treasury on this. There’s a £3 billion skills fund in the manifesto,
    which has now been confirmed by the Chancellor Rishi Sunak in his most recent budget. But I think at some stage, we’ll need to consider skills credits for businesses. We might structure a policy whereby the more disadvantaged and younger people a business has taken on, the bigger their skills credit.

    I’m sometimes asked how to stop the golf club mentality of people giving jobs to their friends – or more likely their friend’s children. That’s human nature. But businesses will have to change because the world has changed. We’ve got the 4th Industrial Revolution and jobs will be affected by it. That trend has only been exacerbated by coronavirus. We’ll have lots of redundancies, but if people have the right skills and get good qualifications and on-the-job training, it will make a huge difference.

    That’s why I want government incentivising every company in the country to work with universities. I also think grants to universities should be conditional on whether they have a significant number of degree apprenticeships. It depresses me that Oxford has closed its doors to any kind of apprenticeship at all. I think they’re snooty, and seem to think university is about research and nothing else. Meanwhile, Cambridge to their credit at least kept the door open.

    Fortunately, there are amazing universities – Warwick especially springs to mind – doing wonderful work. We look at the whole idea of an elite university the wrong way round: an elite university to me should have a lot of people from  isadvantaged backgrounds, brilliant graduate outcomes, and should embed work experience in the curriculum. Many universities are trading on their marketing.

    It’s a long road, but we have a PM who’s a vision person. The doom-mongers will say it can’t be done but one of my favourite
    quotations is from Sir Nicholas Winton: ‘If it’s not impossible, there must be a way to do it.’

    The Rt Hon Robert Halfon MP for Harlow and political director of Conservative Friends of Israel.

  • Mentor Q&A: Andy Inman

    Mentor Q&A: Andy Inman

    When one of our students was furloughed from his job, he needed help to make the best use of his day-to-day. So, we brought in one of our mentors, Andy Inman, to show him that time waits for no man. 

    Andy, where did you first learn the importance of making the best use of your time?

    Retiring from a 30-year career in the military, I’d been well trained in making good use of time. From the very early days at Sandhurst – getting out of bed at 04.30 hrs to make my bed – to more recent projects like rapidly developing a workable plan on live operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, I know from first-hand experience that time can work for you as easily as it can work against you.

    What made you want to become a mentor with Finito?

    Now I own a small company that delivers military training to overseas customers, I’ve been able to take the skills acquired throughout my career and use them in a new and closely aligned environment. But having benefited enormously from mentoring before I started my career, and knowing what a huge difference it made for my life, I was delighted to learn of the work done by Finito. It resonated with me, and I realised that my hard-earned skills could be beneficial to an entirely different set of people.

    What was the situation when you first met our student?

    Having already mentored a number of the Finito students, the Covid-19 lockdown period came with its own challenges. Simon, having been furloughed from his job, had altered his daily routine to such an extent that he was getting up in the early afternoon to play games online, message mates and eventually get to sleep at around 05.00 hrs, having achieved little. He would repeat the routine daily, to the extent that he had lost track of the days and was growing despondent with “life going nowhere” and achieving little of substance each day.

    What advice were you able to offer Simon?

    I had already discussed with a number of my students a technique taught by the military to deal with isolation and imprisonment – and let’s face it, for many, Covid-19 lockdown wasn’t far off. By building structure into his day and including four simple elements, together we ensured Simon was feeding his mind, body and soul, and using the time that was forced upon him in useful ways. 

    What was the first step in the process?

    Simon and I discussed a way to bring his body clock more in line with the outside world. By sleeping through the morning, he was experiencing disturbed sleep because of the noise going on outside. So, through short WhatsApp discussions, we were able to get Simon to a point where he was getting up at 08.30 and going to bed at 11.00 pm, which was a significant improvement on where he had been! Once his sleeping pattern was in a better state, we were all set to move on to the next chapter of his journey – introducing the four elements.

    Can you talk us through that? What do you mean by skill-building?

    I wanted to find something that Simon was interested in learning, so he could exercise his brain. He eventually went for an app that taught him French, a subject he had learnt at school but hadn’t worked on for years. As with all of the elements, it was vital that this was not a chore – but something he would enjoy, and saw the point in doing. Plans to holiday in France were all the reason he needed to make it work.

    How did Simon handle the creative element of his day?

    Getting the creative juices flowing is crucial to exercise a different part of the brain. Simon is like me, in that the traditional arts didn’t sit easily with him, and he wasn’t keen to display his writing skills either. We settled on cookery – not necessarily the first thing that springs to mind when looking for a way to express creativity, but by coming up with recipes and cooking some meals, he was able to express himself as well as helping his parents by taking on the chore of feeding the family in the evening. He did admit that some of his creations were less successful than others, but using a variety of resources he became quite adept at creating dinner for the three of them.

    Physical activity is an important one – how did you bring this into Simon’s routine?

    With both sides of the brain busy with skill-building and creativity, the third element was to exercise the body. I explained that this could range from daily yoga to a brisk stroll, but Simon opted for taking the dog for a run, again ticking off a household task while completing the activity.

    Productivity can be really difficult during lockdown. How did you mentor Simon through this?

    The final piece of the daily routine was to “achieve” something, not necessarily completing it in a day, but at least spending the allotted time working towards the completion of a project before moving onto a new one. Once again the breadth and range of possibilities in this element were huge. Simon started off with reorganising his wardrobe and eventually went on to painting a wall and digging a new vegetable bed in his parent’s garden. This created valuable self-esteem, and a sense of accomplishment.

    Was it easy to keep Simon on track?

    With delightful candour and open honesty, Simon would report via short WhatsApp chats every other day between our regular mentoring chats, to let me know how he was doing. Initially he was only able to weave a couple of the elements into each day, but over the following fortnight he got used to ticking off all four, with the weekends being days where he could drop the routine entirely if he wished. Remember this is a young man who – only a couple of weeks before – had not been getting out of bed until after lunchtime. I worked for a few weeks more before moving Simon onto another Finito Mentor who had significant experience in the industry where he wanted to work.

    Andy Inman is a business mentor for Finito, helping students and career change mentoring candidates. Take a look at part one of this short series, to learn more about Andy’s background, and discover how he got Simon on the path to productivity.

  • Nicky Morgan: ‘We need more agile working’

    Nicky Morgan: ‘We need more agile working’

    We’re in the fortunate position of being in lockdown in Leicestershire so we have countryside and walks. We’re lucky having a garden; our lane has got quite busy but everyone’s social distancing. 

    My last day in Parliament was the 12th March so things weren’t as serious as the following week. Once people started cancelling things in London, it felt the wrong place to be.

    One thing I’m interested in – especially now – is the formation of character. This period may give us lots of examples to draw from in terms of that. People have found themselves in an extraordinary situation. Obviously, there’s the sheer number of people sadly losing their lives; but then there’s the speed at which things changed. Normally, if you’re in a war or a recession, you can see it approaching down the tracks. With the virus, those who were tracking these things may have had an inkling, but even a couple of weeks before, we were watching Italy’s lockdown and not thinking it would happen here. 

    Normal politics has been suspended. What the virus has done is make ministers prioritise. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport will be focused a lot on the question of charities; they’ll be listening to various sectors about what is happening economically. It must be very difficult for those who arrived after the reshuffle with their own agenda – and then within three weeks found that has gone out of the window. 

    And then your boss goes down with the illness himself. That also concentrates minds. I haven’t spoken to the PM, but I sent him a get well message. I got a brief acknowledgement, and we’re all thankful he’s come out the other side. 

    Both David Cameron and Boris Johnson are similar to work for. Both lead from the front and have firm views about what they think on things; both are willing to engage in discussion, but ultimately make their own decisions. That’s why the Cabinet was able to carry on without Boris there – because he will have set them a firm goal as to where they’re going.

    The Department for Education will have its priorities too. They’ll be looking at education of keyworker‘s children; and trying to work out what schools can do to help vulnerable children. There are always going to be tensions between DfE, schools and the teaching unions but everyone threw those tensions aside. But suspending exams was the big decision, of course.

    The financial situation is concerning. When I was chairing the Treasury Select Committee in 2017, we found that there are millions of people in this country with less than £100 in savings. There’ll be people applying for universal credit – especially the self-employed – who never thought they’d have to explore that option. 

    Unfortunately, we can’t help everyone. There could be a crunch at the end of April, when people have to run payroll. If businesses haven’t got the cash in the bank, and the HMRC payments don’t get through, then workers may not be paid. That’s a huge concern: and the lockdown happened so quickly, there was no time to prepare for it. 

    The historic parallels don’t always run. With the Spanish flu, the media was very different. The influenza was mentioned just once in the House of Commons in 1918. Lloyd George got it and returned to Westminster with a respirator. Interestingly, the only public health legislation that went through during the flu was for better ventilation in theatres.

    It’s hard to imagine what the ‘new normal’ will look like for people leaving university. One big thing will be more agile working. There’s no doubt that there are people who’ve wanted to work from home and do hours differently who can now prove to their employers they can get work done without being in an office. It will also be interesting to see if business travel returns. We will need to recalibrate. We’ve been saying for years that climate change is a global emergency. Now we know what a global emergency looks like. The good news is that innovation comes to the fore in times of crisis. 

    Meanwhile, my post-politics employment plan is suspended too. I’m still working out my new role in the House of Lords. At DCMS, I came to realise that data is the new gold. Those who control data are in a commanding position, and we need to think about who we’re handing it over to. So that, alongside the character agenda, is something I’ll be talking about. 

    Baroness Morgan of Cotes is a former Secretary of State for Education from 2014-2016 and Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport form 2019-2020.