Murnaghan 20.01.13 Lord Baker, former Education Secretary and Stephen Twigg, Shadow Education Secretary

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now then, does the National Curriculum need a shake up? Well Kenneth Baker, now of course Lord Baker, was Education Secretary under Lady Thatcher and created the National Curriculum. Now though he says we need to change the way we educate 14 to 18 year olds and I’m glad to say Lord Baker joins me now as does the Shadow Education Secretary, Stephen Twigg, a very good morning to you both. Tell us about your prescription, why does education need yet another shake up?

LORD BAKER: It’s about trying to revolution because this year the school leaving age is going up to 17 and in two years’ time it is going up to 18 so education is going to stretch from 5 to 18, it’s a long process and so you’ve got to think, what opportunity does that give you? I think it gives us an opportunity to examine 14 to 18 as a segment, a very important segment, something which I know Stephen Twigg agrees with. Therefore that throws up the whole question of what happens to the rest of the system? Now we started 14 to 18 long before I published this book this week and these are the university technical colleges of which we’ve now got 30 approved and we are looking at another 20. These are 14 to 18 colleges, they operate from 8.30 in the morning to 5 every day for 40 weeks of the year as opposed to 36 so over a four year period you’re getting a whole teaching year and in those colleges the youngsters spend up to two days learning with their hands, doing things, problem solving and academic subjects as well.

DM: But the implication then, Lord Baker, being since you were Education Secretary that we’ve gone back to too narrow a focus on academic achievement and exam results.

LORD BAKER: I think there is a great need for youngsters at 13 and 14 who are really fed up going to school in many cases, and the reason why David Cameron likes these colleges is you are engaging the disengaged at 13 and 14. In the ones that we’ve set up so far we’ve found truancy and disruptive behaviour disappear because you treat the 14 year olds as adults, they wear business dress to college like you’re wearing and they each have an iPad and they are expected to be in at 8.30 and they are doing something interesting. When you meld English and maths into engineering, the improvement is dramatic. In the one that has been going for two years in Staffordshire, last summer there were no NEETs …

DM: Not in education, employment or training.

LORD BAKER: … every youngster either had a job, an apprentice, went to college or university and that wasn’t a particularly gifted, selected group of people, that was a comprehensive mix.

DM: Looking at this broad thrust of the development of education since you were Education Secretary, 25 years ago now wasn’t it, my goodness me, Stephen Twigg, part of that focus, that narrowing of focus on simple academic achievement happened under the Labour years – education, education, education.

STEPHEN TWIGG: We certainly placed great emphasis on English and maths and I think that is absolutely vital. In fact we are now saying that English and maths should continue right up to 18 with the education age rising to 18 as Ken Baker has said. I very much welcome Ken Baker’s book and his contributions, my fear is the government is going in precisely the opposite direction.

DM: Why?

ST: The proposed English Baccalaureate that’s already a measure of how well schools are doing, they narrow the curriculum, they precisely put off the sort of young people that Ken Baker is talking about and they devalue very, very important subjects so academic subjects like Religious Studies, creative subjects like the arts and drama but also very important vocational subjects like engineering and design technology, aren’t given any weight in this English Baccalaureate.

DM: Ken Baker, you’ve got to agree with that haven’t you and therefore that’s an implicit criticism of Michael Gove?

LORD BAKER: But I think that actually the National Curriculum, which I started 25 years ago, should now stop at 14 and if you look across Europe, this is happening. Europe is now making a break between lower secondary at 14 and upper secondary and the country that has got the lowest level of young unemployment is Austria and Austria stops the National Curriculum at 14 and there is a direct correlation between vocational practical learning and lower youth unemployment.

DM: Okay, but just that point from Stephen Twigg, Michael Gove is pushing it along it seems in a different direction.

LORD BAKER: My answer to that is that we’ve already published a Tech Bacc. I’d like a TechBac alongside the EBAC and also there to be an ArtBac alongside the EBAC as well so there is a group of vocational, technical and practical subjects and artistic creative performance subjects. That’s what I recommend in this book, which we’ve mentioned twice now I’m glad to say, in which I recommend four types of colleges. There should be a Liberal Arts college, there should be a Technical college, there should be a Careers college – I saw a wonderful one in New York. New York is doing what I’m recommending and I went to one that did catering and finance, 14-18, a difficult area, West 44th Street by the river, very depressed, supported by a university and oversubscribed.

DM: But what I’m going to say to you as a parent for most of those 25 years, well for 20 of those 25 years, is goodness me, can this permanent revolution not stop? Can we not settle on one main form of education so that parents, teachers and the poor students know what kind of exams they’re going to be facing at the end of a course? They’re getting the rug continually pulled from under them, Stephen Twigg.

ST: I think that’s a really powerful point. I mean GCSEs were implemented by Ken as Education Secretary in the late 80s, that was the culmination of a decade of these matters being considered properly, there was a consensus behind them. There is no such consensus behind Michael Gove’s English Baccalaureate reforms. I’d rather be working on a cross party basis with business, with education, so that we can get some changes – because I think we do need changes and I think the kind of changes that Ken is talking about are the direction of travel that we need to have, but let’s get change that can last and let’s get change that parents will support.

DM: But if, and you are going to tell me when, you become Education Secretary, what do you do with free schools, with the flourishing of academies, of all this power and money that’s been devolved down to individual schools and head teachers?

ST: What’s interesting about this is the concern about what the government is doing is shared in Academies and in maintained schools, this isn’t an issue which divides the different sorts of schools. What we are doing is what the government didn’t do, we’ve got a group of experts addressing this. Chris Husbands who heads the Institute of Education at London University is leading a group from business and education so that we can develop our own Technical Baccalaureate, as Ken Baker has talked about. The key to this is so many young people are leaving education, going into unemployment, high youth unemployment, there aren’t enough quality apprenticeships for young people. If we can get the technical, practical, vocational education right and increase the number of quality apprenticeships for school and college leavers, that will …

DM: We are running out of time, I just want to make a rather inelegant segue into the European question, talking about Baccalaureate you see, an idea we’ve borrowed from some of our continental friends. Lord Baker, this question of Europe, we’re talking about history repeating itself in educational changes dating back 25 years, your lot, the Conservatives were rowing more or less about the same issues then. Do you just see the Conservative party never getting over this issue?

LORD BAKER: On Europe, on Europe itself, I’ve just listened to William Hague when you interviewed William Hague earlier, I think it is going to be much less of a problem for the Tories than it was under John Major. It was a problem under John Major because it was the end of a long period of Conservative government. It is the beginning of a coalition period of government and you’ll find that David Cameron has very substantial eloquent supporters on the back benches supporting the line he is going to take tomorrow and I don’t think it is going to be the corner into which John Major was pushed. That’s my own take on it because I think it’s fairly clear from what William Hague said that there is going to be a referendum. He talked very sensibly, we need a democratic mandate. Now that’s quite appealing and it is a problem for the Labour party, they are going to have to decide, they are going to have to go through the same agony as we’re going through as to whether they’re going to have one or not. I remember the last referendum we had when Wilson handled by allowing the Cabinet to take two points of view and I think the vision is about move from the Tories to Labour fairly soon on what they will decide.

DM: Well thank you very much Lord Baker for doing my job for me because that was just the very question I was going to put to Stephen Twigg. The point is, Stephen Twigg, there is no point in Labour sitting back and thinking all right, this is the age old question that divides the Conservatives, we can sit back and reap the benefits. People are, as Lord Baker has said, going to ask you if they promise a referendum, will you match it?

ST: Well the difference is that we are united behind our position.

DM: But what is your position?

ST: Our position is that what Europe needs is what the UK needs which is a change in direction to create jobs and growth in our economy. The last thing we need is a long period of uncertainty and that’s why Ed has said very clearly right now we don’t see a case to have a referendum but of course you don’t rule out a referendum forever. Douglas Alexander was on the programme earlier and he made the point, this speech is much more about the management of the Conservative party than about what is in the best national interests.

DM: But that’s not quite Labour’s position is it because you are promising a referendum, you are not going to repeat the Europe Act of 2011 which promises a referendum if there is a proposed transfer of power to Brussels so you are not averse to a referendum?

ST: Absolutely, we supported that legislation as it went through and Ed has made clear that that’s legislation we would keep in place so if we see a significant transfer of authority to Europe, of course there should be a referendum but an in/out referendum that promises years and years of uncertainty is the last thing our economy needs and that’s what business leaders have been telling us over the last couple of weeks. I think David Cameron is making a big mistake in terms of our national interest.

DM: We are nearly out of time, very quickly Lord Baker?

LORD BAKER: The important phrase that Stephen said was ‘we will never rule out a referendum’. Remember it. Remember it in letters of gold.

DM: Okay and we’ll remember the book, Kenneth Baker’s Prescription for Education for 14-18 Year Olds’. Stephen Twigg, Lord Baker, thank you very much indeed.