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Departmental Strategy
Five Year Strategy for Children and Learners
Chapter 1: A success story
1. We already have an education system which is among the best in the world, and children's services which make life better for hundreds of thousands of children each year. Since 1997, there has been a step-change in both investment and reform. Spending on education in England has risen from £35 billion in 1997-98 to £51 billion in 2004-05.1 As well as transforming life-chances, our reforms have shattered myths about education and shown that it is possible to make real change and improvement quickly at every phase and stage of learning.
2. In the Government's first term we laid the foundations for reform. We inherited a system which was suffering from under investment, where standards were variable, and which often let down those people in the poorest and most disadvantaged communities. We set about putting that right by:
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investing in the early years, making a commitment to free nursery education for increasing numbers of three and four year-olds;
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concentrating on the basics in primary schools with smaller class sizes and a drive to improve reading, writing and maths;
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putting a drive for higher standards for every child at the heart of our approach to education and tackling failure wherever it occurred;
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reversing the long standing under investment in teachers, buildings and information and communications technology and in the areas of greatest need;
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beginning our drive to raise adult basic skills.
3. In the second term we have built on these foundations and extended our investment to further and higher education. This has enabled us:
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to embark on a drive to raise secondary school standards with specialist schools at the heart of the improvement;
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to develop a National Skills Strategy designed to close the skills gap which holds back our productivity;
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to take tough decisions on the funding of higher education so that we can sustain excellence and widen participation; and
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to invest in better leadership and a more skilled and flexible education workforce.
4. We have also published in Every Child Matters a long term programme for improving services for children and families. As part of this, the Government has brought together within the Department for Education and Skills responsibilities for children's services and education, and given it a remit to work together with other Government Departments to achieve more joined up support for children and young people locally. This is an historic move which recognises that services for children do not fit neatly into institutional and policy silos. It paves the way for the Government to help all children and young people stay safe, be healthy, enjoy and achieve, make a positive contribution to society and achieve economic well-being. We believe that this provides the firm foundation children need to succeed in and enjoy learning throughout their lives.
5. The results are clear to see. There is a clear way ahead for children's services, building on past progress. The education system is flourishing. Skill levels are on the rise. Standards everywhere are improving fast.
6. There are at least 500,000 fewer children living in relative poverty than there were in 1997 2. The Government has spent an extra £12bn supporting families with children over the period 1998-99 to 2004-05. 3
7. Sure Start is already giving 400,000 children a better start in life. There is in 2004 for the first time an offer of a free part-time nursery place for every three and four year-old.
8. More children at risk are getting better help and protection the first time round, with a reduction in the number of re-registrations on the child protection register from 20 percent in 1997-98 to 13 percent in 2002-03. 4 The proportion of looked-after children placed for adoption has risen as a result of Quality Protects.
9. Our primary school children are performing better than ever before. In 1996 almost half of all 11 year-olds were unable to read, write or do basic maths at an acceptable standard. Now it is only a quarter. Since 1998, about 84,000 more 11 year-olds are achieving the expected level for their age in maths and around 60,000 more are doing so in English. 5
10. Specialist schools are leading rapid improvement in secondary education. 14year-olds are performing better then ever before in English, maths and science. At GCSE 53 percent of 16 year olds are now achieving 5 A*-C, compared with 45 percent in 1997 - almost 50,000 more 16 year olds than seven years ago. 6
11. Results beyond 16 continue to improve and there is a wider range of opportunities for young people to choose from - including high quality vocational routes. 255,000 young people are currently undertaking apprenticeships.
12. Following the introduction of our teenage pregnancy strategy, there has been a reduction of over 9 percent in the rate of under-18 conceptions in 2002 compared to the rate in 1998, and a significant increase in the number of teenage parents re-engaged in learning.
13. Over 2 million adults so far have received support in the skills of reading, writing or using numbers. Taken together, the number of people of working age with no qualifications in England fell from 10.8 million adults (38 percent of all people of working age) in 1985 to 4.1 million (14 percent of all people of working age) in 2003.
14. 44 percent of 18 to 30 year-olds are now entering Higher Education,7 in universities which continue to lead the world - compared to 12 percent of 18 to 21 year-olds in 1980.
The next stage of reform
15. These successes are a credit to those who work in all parts of our education and training sector, and in children's services. They are making a real difference to people's lives. They have, above all, laid the basis for long term reform.
16. As a result, we now have within reach a once in a generation transformation in the standards and quality of education and training, and services for children and families. It is now within our grasp to:
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achieve and sustain world class excellence in every part of the system;
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move further towards early intervention and work to prevent problems, rather than picking up the pieces afterwards;
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create services which are truly personalised around the needs and aspirations of every child, young person and adult; and
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put learning - and the high quality workforce and institutions needed to provide it - at the heart of successful communities and local and regional regeneration.
Priorities for reform
17. In identifying our priorities for reform, we have sought to do two things:
- First, to use good data and analysis that pinpoints the weaknesses of our system and address them; and
- Second, to make the whole system work better for every child, young person and adult. This is not a one-off effort, and it cannot be confined to small parts of the system; as the economy and the world are changing, our whole education system needs to improve rapidly to keep pace, andto keep changing to stay ahead.
Measuring ourselves against world class standards
18. If we are to aspire to world class standards, we must measure ourselves against the best in the world. OECD comparative data makes that increasingly possible as the chart opposite demonstrates.
19. It shows, in summary, three things:
- the current generation of children are now performing well:
- at age 10 England is rated 3rd overall in reading among 35 countries, with only Sweden being significantly better
- at age 15 our young people are 4th out of 31 countries in science (only Korea and Japan being significantly better) and 7th and 8th respectively in literacy and maths;
- Higher Education is a major strength: the rate of return to individuals from a first degree is the highest amongst OECD countries. The return has hardly changed as the number of graduates has grown. And in research our universities punch well above their weight on the normal measures of output and impact, with only the US significantly ahead;
- the UK's key weakness is the low participation of 16-19-year olds in education and training (The UK participation rate for 17-year-olds is ranked 27th out of 30 countries). In turn this reinforces the historic skills deficit in the adult workforce with the latest comparisons showing we are 18th out of 30 countries in the proportion of adults with level 2 skills (the equivalent of five good GCSEs).
20. Behind these headlines is a fundamental weakness in equality of opportunity. Those from higher socio-economic groups do significantly better at each stage of our system than those from lower ones - indeed, as the chart over the page shows, socio-economic group is a stronger predictor of attainment than early ability: 8
21. In general, though, those that do well early do even better later in life, while those that do not perform well fall further behind; and the chances of breaking out of this cycle of underachievement reduce with age.
22. Those who do better than average at age 7 are more than twice as likely to get qualifications at degree level by the age of 25 than those who performed poorly at 7. Results for 11 year-olds show an even starker picture - over 85 percent of 11 year-olds that do not reach the expected level for their age will not get five good GCSEs at age 16. Throughout secondary school, the pattern of attainment becomes increasingly fixed - 95 percent of those who fail to reach the expected level at the age of 14 will not get five good GCSEs. 9 This pattern persists in the adult workforce, with highly qualified workers receiving more training and investment than less qualified workers.10
23. This is not simply a case of the system recognising and labelling learners' innate levels of ability. The gap between the best and worst performers in our system actually widens as they go through education; and it is both significantly wider and more closely related to socio-economic status in this country than elsewhere.11
24. We also fail our most disadvantaged children and young people - those in public care, those with complex family lives, and those most at risk of drug abuse, teenage pregnancy, and involvement in criminal activity. Internationally, our rate of child poverty is still high, as are the rates of worklessness in one-parent families, the rate of teenage pregnancy, and the level of poor diet among children.12 The links between poor health, disadvantage and low educational outcomes are stark.
25. But as well as failing those with disadvantages, our system also performs less well than it should for the middle group. In international comparisons, our top performers help pull up our averages and mask the fact that the middle group - on some reckonings, as much as 40 percent of the population - are not so successful.13 This large group has also traditionally not had a great deal of attention focused on it. But it is one of the causes of under performance in secondary schools which then feeds into our poor staying-on rates after 16.
26. It is from this analysis that we have derived the five priorities which underpin our strategy in this document:
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early intervention to support very young children and families to lay the foundations for later success - not just in education, but in supporting the welfare of the whole child, carrying through into better services for all children and young people;
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a continuing drive to ensure that every child leaves primary school with the basics in reading, writing and maths; and an enjoyment of learning, built through an enriched curriculum including the arts, music, sport and a foreign language;
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creating secondary and further education which widens choice, stretches and engages the underachieving and prepares young people better for working life;
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reducing the historic deficit in adult skills, not just by greater participation and attainment by 16-19 year olds, but by addressing the needs of those in the workforce to update their skills; and
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sustaining an excellent university sector, capable of high quality teaching, world class research and increasing responsiveness to employers.
Improvement in every part of the system
27. Fundamental to our approach is a belief that it will not be enough just to focus on the most obvious areas of under performance or weakness in standards. As our analysis reveals, it is not only the most vulnerable and disadvantaged who are ill-served by our system; a large group of middle-performers are not being helped well enough either.
28. Furthermore, the world is changing, and our education system needs to change with it. Employers are looking for higher-skilled workers, adept in techniques of communication and teamwork. People are less likely to have a single job for life, and more likely to want to change and develop their skills. Learners expect the same choice and innovation in education as they have in other parts of their lives, and parents want more for their children.
29. We need a system which can respond to these positive demands not just by eliminating weaknesses but by giving a better deal to everyone - not just serving the average person, but serving each individual aswell as possible.
Investment and reform
30. Ambitious reform must be supported by substantial investment. We said at the beginning of this chapter that spending on education since 1997 had increased by nearly £16 billion, an increase of over 45 percent in real terms. In the Budget the Chancellor committed the Government to increase investment further - by over £11 billion by 2008. This will bring total expenditure on education in England to £58 billion in real terms - 5.6 percent of GDP,14 above the OECD average.
31. The total investment in education and training is, however, much bigger than this. Families have always invested heavily in their own children's care and development and will continue to do so. Employers, on some estimates, spend £23 billion on the training and development of their workforces. The support for education - in cash and in kind - is growing: specialist school and Academy sponsors, for example, are currently putting about £50 million a year into support for secondary education. We expect co-funding togrow over the period of this strategy, as individuals and employers become readier to invest in better education and training that meets their needs.
The Principles of Reform
32. But investment alone will not be enough. Itmust come hand in hand with reform. We must be clear about what we expect this extra investment to deliver for children and for all learners.
33. Our aim is excellence for everyone, with good information to support real choice. The quality of current provision has been improving fast and there are many beacons of excellence setting the standard in education, training and children's services. But there are still too many places - often in the most deprived communities - where such choice as there is, is between the average and the mediocre.
34. We see greater personalisation and choice as being at the heart of better public services and higher standards. This will mean different things for different services. Choice within a compulsory service - like primary and secondary education - will be very different from choice for older learners, who can opt out if they want to do so. Services for children and families - where the priority must always be the welfare of the child - are different again. Nevertheless our aim is that there should be in every service, and in every phase of learning:
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a stronger voice for children, young people and adults in the development of policy and the design of services;
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services and learning designed around the needs of the individual and available at a time and place and in a form which suits their needs, with no artificial distinctions made (for example) between good learning and children's well-being;
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better advice and information to enable people to make choices;
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better support and incentives particularly where financial barriers would work as a disincentive to participation; and
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high minimum standards for everyone, irrespective of who they are or where they live.
35. These are high ambitions. Too often universal provision has been developed around one model and has struggled to meet the differing needs of individuals. Too often, as well, choice has only been real for a minority - those who could afford it. In this strategy the aim is for choice and quality for all - driven by good quality provision without selection by ability or income.
36. Choice also implies greater diversity of provision and providers. This will mean actively encouraging a wider variety of providers in some localities and sectors. It may mean lowering the barriers to new types of providers to enable them to come into the system and to replace weak services. And choice within an institution will be just as important as choice between institutions. For some, real choice will be offered by information technology making it possible for people to learn from home. The strategy which follows reflects these different approaches. It contains, for example, proposals for stimulating different patterns for childcare and children's services, particularly through the private, voluntary and community sectors; enabling successful schools to expand; encouraging partnerships of schools and colleges to widen choice pre- and post-16; and bringing new providers into secondary and further education, particularly where current provision is weak.
37. Personalisation of services places great demands on the quality of the leadership and the skills and commitment of the workforce at national and local level. Much has already been done since 1997 to set standards, to develop centres of leadership excellence, to invest in leadership and workforce development and to improve the flexibility of the workforce. This work, which started in the Government's first term, is now being extended to further and higher education. Building a more flexible, coherent and skilled workforce for children's services will be similarly important.
38. Tailoring services to meet individual needs means that schools, colleges and children's services must have the freedom to innovate and adapt. So, in the next phase of reform we will give freedom and autonomy to the front line. We will simplify the planning, funding and accountability systems which often get in the way of innovation and change. In the next chapters of the document there are proposals for creating a system of independent specialist schools, and major reforms for children's services and for further education.
39. None of this will be possible without effective partnerships. It is a major theme of this strategy that Government shares the responsibility for making change happen with many others - individuals, employers, voluntary bodies, local authorities, and a wide range of national and local partners, including children's social workers, childminders, schools, colleges, universities and training providers. Successful partnerships are a key element in ensuring that services are joined up and are more than the sum of their parts. We want Children's Trusts to be the engines for reform in children services locally, joining together health, education and social services provision. And there is an expectation that schools, colleges, and universities will have ever growing links with employers and with the wider economy and community.
40. Taken together these five principles of reform will, we believe, achieve our aim of world class public services for children, young people and adults: a new generation of personalised services where equity and excellence go hand in hand, enabling people to achieve their potential, to be economically secure and to be fully contributing citizens, contributing both to strong communities and a productive and competitive economy.
1 In real terms at 2003-04 prices. HM Treasury Figures, including HMT (2004), Economic and Fiscal Strategy Report.
2 There were 500,000 fewer children living in relative poverty by 2002-03 than there were in 1998-99. IFS (2004), Poverty and Inequality in Britain.
3 IFS (2004), Poverty and Inequality in Britain.
4 DfES Statistical volume: Referrals, Assessments, and Children and Young People on Child Protection Registers, England - year ending 31 March 2003
5 DfES (2003), Education and Skills: The Economic Benefit.
6 DfES (2003), Education and Skills: The Economic Benefit; DfES (2004), Statistical First Release 23/2004.
7 Figure is for 2003. Source: DfES (2004) Statistical First Release 07/2004.
8 Feinstein (2003), 'Inequality in the Early Cognitive Development of British Children in the 1970 Cohort,' Economica.
9 DfES calculations based on 2003 National Pupil Database.
10 DfES calculation based on Labour Force Survey, Spring 2002.
11 OECD (2001), Knowledge and Skills for Life: First Results from PISA 2000.
12 The Well Being of Children in the UK, ed Jonathon Bradshaw, Save the Children 2002.
13 For example, in OECD (2001), Knowledge and Skills for Life: First Results from PISA 2002, our top quartile of 15-year olds were the best in the OECD; the second and third quartiles came 4th and 7th respectively.
14 HMT(2004), Economic and Fiscal Strategy Report. Based on planned UK education expenditure.
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