Supplementary Memorandum
by Minister of State for School Standards to Support Joint Memorandum
from Minister of State (Health) at the Department of Health, Minister
of State for Local and Regional Government and Minister of State
for School Standards (CVP 24c)
'The Case for User Choice
in Public Services'
1. The DfES is proud of the way it has placed choice
and voice at the heart of its policy making and service delivery.
The recently published 'Five Year Strategy for Children and
Learners' (www.dfes.gov.uk/publications/5yearstrategy/) sets
out the Department's plans to radically reshape the system for
delivering education and children's services so that its central
characteristic will be personalisation - a system that fits the
individual rather than the individual fitting the system.
2. We want to continue to mould our services around
the needs of individuals as they learn and develop through life.
The system of the future will pivot on:
· Empowered
learners: a strong confident voice for children, young people
and adults to articulate their personal learning needs.
· Responsive
providers: schools, colleges and universities that are uniformly
excellent but can design their offering around the needs of individual
learners.
· Engaged
communities: a role for parents, employers, experts and volunteers
to work together in support of children's learning.
3. For learners, empowerment will mean more diversity,
greater choice and a decisive shift toward personalisation. People
learn in different ways and at different paces, so their learning
experience should be bespoke: with individual assessment, tailored
teaching and learning and personal tracking of performance. And
alongside this commitment must go another to personalised support
- the essentials that put education within everyone's reach, from
protection for the vulnerable child to career advice for teenagers
and financial packages for adults wishing to acquire new skills.
4. For the many thousands of separate providers up
and down the country there can be no centrally dispensed prescription.
But the strongest institutions and services are already acutely
alert to the needs of users, and they have important characteristics
in common. They are strongly, imaginatively and sensitively led,
with a powerful sense of mission to serve the public. And they
exploit the freedom to re-think their services in response to
changing needs.
5. The wish to harness a wider range of people and
resources again reflects the example of the best schools and colleges.
These are institutions at the heart of their communities, engaging
parents and families in their children's education; linking with
health, housing and other organisations to influence and improve
life chances; drawing in sports stars and coaches, local broadcasters
and artists to enrich the process of learning and development.
6. The Department will apply the same principles
across the system as a whole, while recognising that each part
of the system is at a different stage of evolution, and each institution
different to the next. Our aim throughout is services that are
fair for all, personal to each.
7. For example, in response to broadening choice
and personalisation, the Department:
· is
developing Children's Trusts which bring together local
partners - education, social care, health, Connexions, Sure Start,
Youth Offending Teams, and the voluntary and community sector
- so that they can work better to meet the needs of children,
young people and families, and at the same time, responding to
the current fragmentation of responsibilities for children's services;
· revolutionised
the early years provision in deprived areas by introducing Sure
Start which brings together health, learning and parenting
support to meet the need of local parents, their children, and
the community they live in;
· has
begun to engage with individual families and communities through
the promotion and development of extended schools
(before and after school hours, at weekends and during school
holidays, helping parents to juggle their busy lives). Schools
that have already adopted this approach have found that extended
schools impact positively on pupil attainment, behaviour and attendance,
offering activities and facilities to increase engagement and
motivation. Involvement in extended activities may also have
a positive impact on the culture of schools and their communities,
particularly in terms of how learning is viewed. There are currently
119 'full service' extended schools in England. There will be
240 'full service' extended school models by 2005-06, offering
a prescribed core range of services;
· has
increased diversity in the secondary school system by expanding
the number of specialist schools. Over half of all maintained
secondary schools now have specialist status. Their plans reflect
key principles for personalised and effective teaching and learning;
· provides
targeted capital funding that faith communities can bid for via
their LEA, in response to parental demand for places. The Code
of Practice on School Admissions allows faith schools to
admit pupils on the basis of religious affiliation but it also
encourages them to give priority for at least some places to local
children of other faiths or none;
· has
included, in its Five Year Strategy for Children and Learners,
proposals (for secondary schools only) for increasing the
number of places in popular and successful schools; allowing
high-performing specialist schools to add sixth forms; and making
it easier for new promoters, including parents' groups, to open
schools in response to local demand. This should allow schools
to strengthen their individual ethos and develop in the direction
they think appropriate, and to better meet local needs as part
of the drive for higher performance in the local system;
· has
extended the arrangements (via the Education Bill currently before
Parliament) for inviting proposals for new secondary schools so
that it is easier for new promoters, including parents' groups,
to open schools in response to local demand;
· has
allowed schools, through improvements in performance data,
to compare individual pupil results against expectations - pinpointing
areas for improvement and allowing more targeted teaching;
· has
empowered young people to help to design the Connexions Service
so that it responds to their needs and from which they can access
information, advice and guidance in a variety of ways, at times
and places that suit them;
· has
initiated a fundamental review of 14-19 education, with
the ambition of creating a system of personalised learning for
every student, with the opportunities for the less able and underachievers
to enter the national framework of qualifications. Sir Mike Tomlinson's
report constitutes a substantial longer term agenda which will
not distract from medium term objectives to introduce greater
flexibility into the current system. Delivery of a future 14-19
curriculum and qualification structure will need to address the
issues of too much assessment, a poor vocational offering, and
being sufficiently challenging for the most able;
· has
implemented 14-19 pathfinders which led to the development
of broader curricula, offering greater choice add flexibility,
especially for 14-16 year olds;
· has
planned, in the context of the Skills Strategy, for a reform
of qualifications which will create a more flexible framework
for recognising achievement: one which measures and values learning,
welcomes diversity in provision and equips individuals for work
and life;
· has
developed a package of reform of higher education that
will lead to a financially secure and diverse system which is
more responsive to the rising demands of students and business.
Raising achievement in schools and colleges will lead to more
students from non-traditional backgrounds aspiring to enter higher
education. The reform will also abolish up-front payment of tuition
fees and allow every full-time student to defer their contribution
to the cost of their course until after they have graduated.
8. In terms of voice, the Department:
· has
extended the opportunities for young people to shape policy.
A young person's version of the two consultations: 14-19:
extending opportunities, raising standards (www.dfes.gov.uk/14-19)
and Every Child Matters (www.everychildmatters.gov.uk/)
were created. Both consultations were extensive and inclusive,
including events to discuss proposals with young people face
to face with Ministers and senior officials;
· is involving
key stakeholders in various ways: the use of critical friends
(such as the Implementation Review Unit), particularly in shaping
secondary school policies, wider qualitative involvement in key
dimensions of policy formulation and the execution of communications
and regular quantitative surveys of stakeholder opinion;
· has
implemented a national programme of strategic area reviews
over the past two years that has engaged many stakeholders in
discussion about the further education and training in their local
areas;
· moved
its service personalisation beyond a focus on an individual making
complaints or having an involvement in formal governance
arrangements, to learners having a key and active role
in helping to design their provision. This gives
them more say in how they use services once they access them by
making them co-producers of services. A good example of this
is the Connexions Service;
· promotes
the representation of parents and other members of the community
on the Governing bodies of schools. For 16-19 provision
governing bodies involve representatives of the local community,
parents and young people themselves in the management of their
institutions;
· has
developed a strategy for increasing parental involvement in
children's education. This includes an element of 'giving
parents a voice' for example through the introduction of home-school
agreements. A study, carried out by the British Market Research
Bureau (BMRB) and published by the Department in 2002, found that 85
per cent of parents say they are either very involved or fairly
involved in their child's education;
· has
promoted citizenship as part of the school curriculum.
This helps to develop pupils' formal knowledge of how political
processes work, how decisions are made and how individuals can
play a part. It also provides opportunities for pupils to take
responsibility and action in their neighbourhoods and communities
to change things for the better.
· has
encouraged the setting up of school councils to give pupils
a greater voice in the running of their schools;
· has
set up the participation programme which ensures that children
and young people have more say by engaging them in decision-making,
influencing Government departments, supporting mechanisms through
which their voices can be heard, encouraging their participation
as full members of society, modelling good practice and funding
the development of innovative approaches to participation.
· Sector
Skills Councils are being established
in each major sector to provide a voice for employers. These Councils
will develop Sector Skills Agreements in consultation with the
employers in their industries. They will provide a means by which
the Learning and Skills Council, Regional Skills Partnerships
and Learning providers can focus their resources and energies
on delivering the skills that employers and the economy really
need.
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