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And we are going to kick off ..... with Stephen Dorrell, education spokesman in the opposition party. He did, as you know, run for the leadership, probably hugely relieved that he didn’t get it because he wouldn't have looked right in those caps with the funny bit on them, would he. He's got some hair, after all .....
(Laughter)
John, it is always a pleasure to be speaking under your chairmanship and a special pleasure, again, this evening. My leader tells me, my elected leader, that Conservative spokesmen should listen and not lecture and I have been reflecting on the motorway on the way up that if you are presented with an audience and a lecture hall and a podium how I should carry out this remit.
But what I wanted to do briefly by way of introduction was to set out what are my starting points as the way I approach the education brief, the way I think that we should collectively approach the education brief. To do so in less than ten minutes, John made it clear that in order to ensure that Chris had his full ten minutes I was to restrain myself within a maximum of ten minutes and leave plenty of time for you to pick up the specifics later on in discussion.
But let me begin with the question that John obliquely posed. Whether education, the definition of success that we are looking for out of the school system, the higher education system is one that is related to what George Simpson wants to employ in GC related directly to the wealth creation process or do we have a broader agenda and is there a danger that we become to narrowly focused on the specifics of wealth creation. The education system had, I think, a schizophrenic attitude about this. On the one hand there is a recognition that if you look at this country's living standards, you look at the international market place in which we compete, we must surely recognise that the only point of difference that we have with the great, with any other country in the world, in the rich world or in the developing world as well, the key point of difference is the British people, the people who work here. And if those people and we on their behalf want to enjoy, to continue to enjoy premium living standards compared with other people elsewhere in the world, the only way we can underwrite that is by ensuring that our people are capable of delivering greater value into world markets and the key to that is education, that is to define the purpose of education in very narrow, economic terms. But it is, in my view, an absolutely inescapable part of the purpose of the education system.
It is, as I am fond of reflecting in my view, not a historical accident that the European renaissance began in the region of Europe where the wealth creation process in the late middle ages was best developed. If you want to enlarge the human experience, if you want to enjoy the creativity and cultural activity, all of that. The capacity to earn your living is the essential precondition to creating the space to allow all of that to happen. And so I am unapologetic for my view that the definition of success in education must include an assessment of the capacity of the people emerging from education to earn, to achieve the maximum economic success in the market place in which they are going to be working. And that is, I express it in that way because it is to emphasis the relative nature of the achievement that we are looking for, of the attainment we are looking for. It is no good defining the things we want in terms of absolute standards in relation to what happened ten, twenty years ago.
I always, I'm frankly not much engaged by the argument about whether exams are easier than they were twenty years ago. What matters to (SHORT SECTION MISSING FROM TAPE) today's school (SHORT SECTION MISSING FROM TAPE) is going to be able to compete successfully in a global market place which will be in the coming generation, even more unforgiving than it has been in the past generation and if people leave our education system without that, without the capacity to succeed in the international market place, it isn't just a narrow, economic sense in which they will fail but the society of which they are members, we are all members, will fail and with it we shall fail to deliver all the wider human experiences that we all want to see as well. So I think that one of the disciplines that the education world, both school and higher education, have to embrace is the willingness to look at itself by comparison, not just with some internally generated idea of what is success but to look at itself by the measure of its international comparitors. Today's school leavers will have to earn their living in a market place in direct competition, not just with French and German and Italian and American school leavers but with school leavers around the Philippines and Indonesia and Malaysia, a whole series, India, China, emerging countries and if we want to continue to enjoy premium living standards it is the comparison of the attainment and the skills of our school leavers and our next generation that will determine whether or not that, they have that capacity. That is the definition of success that matters most to me. That is the first point.
Then the second point is to stress what I think is the majority that is too often overlooked in seeking to answer the question "do our schools deliver the standards that we want to see". We have some brilliant schools, schools that deliver the high, the standards that compare with anything that is available anywhere in the world, those are not, in any real sense, a problem. We all know that there are a tiny minority of schools that are catastrophic failures and nobody defends them. But the problem, I think, is not, it is clearly a problems at the bottom end but we all know what has to happen about those and by and large there is political consensus and a willingness to do something about that. The problem is the broad mass in the middle. Do we have in Britain a system that stretches both the schools and the people in them against the kind, the measure of success that I have described and my answer to that question has to be no. I do not believe that the majority experience of education system is demanding enough of the people both, the professions who work in it and of the children and the students who come through it and it isn't, the reason I put the question that way is to underline the fact that isn't just a matter of ministers saying we must have higher standards, we shall direct that there is an initiative we shall deliver those higher standards because if you are looking at the mass experience of education, what you have to ask your self is whether the system we operate for that majority experience of education has within it the structures and the disciplines and the incentives which will deliver the best possible experience.
That's where the emphasis of the last few years of assessment of progress, publishing the results of those assessments and then insisting, right through the system, that day by day, week by week there are incentives on people to improve the experience in the middle of the pack, that is the key that we have to, that has emerged over the last few years, it is the important, it is the most important element of the education debate. Those who say that structures are secondary miss the point because you cannot compel success, you have to create a structure which draws success out and that is what we were, I am not going to engage in a big party argument about the differences between the parties, that is what we were seeking to do and that, it seems to me, is the measure that anyone who is interested in the measure of success that I began by describing, that is the test that has to be applied to the educational policy that we pursue. Is it one that sets in place structures which create the right incentives to deliver the best possible educational experience in the middle of the pack and I shall be listening to those who speak after me and to the questions. I should be interested to hear the answer to that question that comes from the discussion afterwards because that seems to me to be the key that we have only recently begun to address properly.
Link to full debate with audience after main speeches.
This page was last altered on 24th October 1997