Robert Buckland Weblog

A very dusty weekend indeed clearing out my garage. Not quite Howard Carter’s exploits in the Valley of the Kings, but not too far removed, I can assure you. The Buckland Archives have been preserved for the nation, you will all be relieved to hear. Busy pairs of teeth, however, have been working hard at the most unlikely of objects. A pair of pyjamas, sofa cushions, a red telephone and a fax machine receiver all bore the marks of a mammal with exceedingly strong fangs. Fieldmice? Rats? Squirrels? Most probably the last of this trio, according to my friend and colleague Mr. Andrew Jones.

I am pleased to report that the garage is now fit for proper purpose, to use the correct legal phrase. The wardrobes that had graced our Swansea home have been put to very good use, making the place resemble Great Uncle Bulgaria’s room in the Wombles’ Burrow.

I unearthed many old posters, amongst which was a picture of the soon-to-be last Prime Minister but one, Sir John Major. I had been able to catch up with Sir John at the Swindon Arts Centre on Wednesday of last week, when he spoke about his new book, “More Than A Game”, a lovingly crafted chronicle of the origins of cricket. As a cricket lover myself, the hour passed very quickly. I snatched a moment of his time to reminisce with Sir John about the 1997 General Election, and the time when he, William Hague and I sat on bales of straw answering questions from floating voters in a barn in Haverfordwest. He remembered the straw, if not the questions. This is a man who is enjoying his life after politics. The mood of the audience at the final event of the excellent Swindon Festival of Literature was warm and welcoming. As we say farewell to one PM, this former PM is maturing very well indeed.

Friday saw the Mayor’s Civic Dinner, held at Swindon Town Football Club. Cllr Michael Barnes will be an able and articulate successor to Mike Bawden, and I wish him well. A happy evening, spent in the company of two new Conservative Councillors, Stephanie Excell (Moredon) and Paul Findlow (St. Phillip), both of whom had worked phenomenally hard to secure their seats in North Swindon. They will be excellent additions to the Group and to the Council and I wish them well.

In a depature from my usual practice, I now add a statement from David Cameron about the Grammar Schools debate:

“Last week, the newspapers were convulsed by a debate about something that the Conservative Party did not do when it was last in office; will not do when it is next in office, and even if it did do it – would almost certainly see it reversed. That’s why I described the debate about bringing back grammar schools as pointless.

National selection was abolished because it was deeply unpopular with parents, who didn’t want their children to be divided into successes and failures at the age of eleven. That’s why in eighteen years of Conservative Government, neither Margaret Thatcher nor John Major created grammar schools. That’s why Conservative MPs and candidates in areas without grammar schools do not campaign for them to be brought back.

If they did, parents would be left asking what happens to the large majority of children who don’t make the grade – and those parents would be right. Far from being some winning slogan, a pledge to build more grammar schools would be an electoral albatross. That’s why Labour want to hang it round our neck. They know it keeps us from joining and leading the real debate over their failure on standards, discipline and opportunity for all.

There is a kind of hopelessness about the demand to ‘bring back’ grammars, an assumption that this country will only ever be able to offer a decent education to a select few. I want the Conservative Party to rise above that attitude. It cannot be the limit of our ambition for some children to get a decent education; any party aspiring to government must aim to ensure a decent education for every single child. We will never be taken seriously by parents – never convince them that we’re on their side and share their aspirations for their children – if we splash around in the shallow end of the educational debate, clinging on to outdated mantras that bear no relation to the reality of life today.

Parents want us to do something about the shocking standards in many of our three thousand secondary schools, not tie ourselves in knots over a grammar schools policy. This is a key test for our Party. Does it want to be a serious force for government and change, or does it want to be a right-wing debating society muttering about what might have been?

A serious party must understand the widespread crisis in education today and respond with a scale of ambition that is appropriate to the challenge. Behind the government’s propaganda, it is clear that on literacy, numeracy, discipline, behaviour, we’re falling way short of what we need. The challenge for our Party is to tackle educational under-achievement across the board.

When it comes to encouraging excellence, of course it’s true that grammar schools can provide a ladder of opportunity for some – but far too few. We need to be the party of aspiration and opportunity for all. With Gordon Brown as our opponent, we can claim that vital territory. He still believes in a know-your-place society where state largesse, not personal responsibility, determine your future. That’s not the Conservative approach, and that’s why we’re doing the serious thinking about how we produce an education reform plan that actually works.

That means no more confusion of ends and means. Every true Conservative believes in aspiration and opportunity for all. But that belief has been obscured by an outdated attachment to a few schools which deliver aspiration and opportunity to some. The modern way to deliver our ambition is set out in the speech David Willetts made to the CBI on Wednesday.

First, we will introduce a policy of zero tolerance of bad behaviour and bad language in every school in the country. This is not something that requires central imposition: in fact it is centralisation that today stands in the way of the right approach. As I found from my two days teaching at a secondary school in Hull last week, teachers are in despair at their inability to impose discipline. We will make sure that in every school, the headteacher is the absolute captain of the ship. He or she will be able to maintain discipline and exclude poorly behaving pupils without being second-guessed or penalised for doing it.

Second, we will take the keys to educational success – often found in private and grammar schools – and apply them everywhere, in every school. Today, because of the way that league tables and inspections work, there is far too much teaching to the test and teaching to get children from D to C instead of stretching the brightest to get A and A star. That’s why we will reform the curriculum, exams and testing, and that’s why we want to see aggressive setting by ability – in effect, a ‘grammar stream’ in every subject, in every school.

Third, we need to create more good school places rather than argue abut how to divide up the ones we have. The fact is, we don’t have enough and we need more. How do we do it? Not by dividing existing schools up into a thousand grammar schools and two thousand secondary moderns, but by a massive liberalisation of the supply-side of education, with open enrolment and money following the pupil.

We need more ‘independent state schools.’ City Academies – themselves the diluted successor of the City Technology Colleges set up by the last Conservative government – offer a structure which can be usefully developed. We will go further, by radically dismantling the barriers to entry so that small organisations can gain the capital funding and revenues to establish and run schools. City Academies should not require a millionaire to make the initial investment. They should not have to undergo the restrictive inspection and regulatory regime which stifles the creativity of heads and teachers.

And we will make it easier for anyone to set up a school. Any individual, company, charity, church, community group, teacher or parent co-operative who wants to set up and run a school – providing they meet certain minimal standards – will be able to, without requiring permission from an LEA. That’s the way countries like Sweden and Holland have transformed their education systems, and that’s what we will do here.

But these reforms require a strong and principled centre-right party to argue for and implement them – and for that matter, a strong and principled centre-right newspaper to champion this cause. So I have a clear and uncompromising message to those who think they can perpetuate the pointless debate about grammar schools: let’s stop looking to the past and all get behind realistic plans for a better future, giving opportunities to every child in our country, not just a select few.”

The majority of Grammar Schools are in areas of the country such as Buckinghamshire where the proportion of children having free school meals will inveitably be dramatically lower than the national average. I do not think that criticising the performance of these excellent schools helps anyone. As I have said in a previous post, the principle of meritocracy must remain at the heart of Tory education policy, no matter what name or description we give to the institutions that best achieve this noble goal.

It could be said that a certain amount of clutter was cleared out of our education policy storeroom this week. Was the reference to Simon Jenkins being “away” in today’s Sunday Times and his replacement with Chris Woodhead a device to ensure an article hostile to the policy development? Simon Jenkins has already said that Willetts and Cameron were absolutely right to make this move.

The concept of creating identical Grammar Schools in every local authority area runs directly against the grain of diversity and choice that we are dedicated to advancing. In his letter, David Cameron makes reference to the notion of allowing local groups and charities to set up their own schools. This has already been tried in Australia by John Howard’s Liberal/National federal Government, with some success.

I do hope, that whenever the leadership indulges in a policy “clear out”, the dust thrown up does not overwhelm any benefits that change may bring.