The worst thing was how this affected the poorest in our society. Just forty-five of the 80,000 sixteen-year-olds on free school meals in 2005 (a measure of disadvantage) went to Oxbridge in 2007. And the seeds of inequality were sown at a young age. Low-ability children from rich families overtook high-ability children from poor families as early as primary school (I remember Michael repeating that fact with venom). Far from making opportunity more equal, public services were cementing class divisions.
We discussed what had gone so wrong. The 1960s ‘cultural revolution’ in education – the dumbing down of standards, the all-must-have-prizes mentality, the idea that knowledge should be ‘discovered’ rather than taught. The fact that town hall bureaucrats had been calling the shots, while head teachers were unable to innovate or to sack bad staff.
We discussed, too, where our party had failed in its response. Our answer seemed to have been to try to get people out of the state sector. The Assisted Places Scheme set up by Margaret Thatcher had some incredible successes, but all it was doing was helping some children escape the state system rather than improving it for everyone. The grammar schools obsession, which I came up against in 2007, was similar. Again, these schools have helped bright children from poor homes, but only a very few, and they would only ever lead to an improvement to part of the state sector. Besides, I believed that separating children into ‘sheep’ and ‘goats’ – in entirely different buildings and environments – at the age of eleven was wrong. Wrong because children’s brains haven’t fully developed at that age, and wrong because you can’t categorise children in such a binary way. Instead of having selection between schools, it is far better to promote selection within schools, through setting and streaming.
But my biggest complaint was this. A few private-school places here, or new grammars there, lacked sufficient reach. They were nutcrackers. We needed sledgehammers if we were going to pursue that ultimate progressive ambition – the thing that really excited me, my vision – which was to spread opportunity far and wide and do something many thought impossible: to make our comprehensive schools as world-class as our private schools.
I really believed it was achievable. I had seen that it was achievable. In November 2007 I first went to Mossbourne Academy in Hackney. Here, in the poorest part of London, children from all backgrounds were learning Shakespeare and Austen; they were doing the most complex equations and excelling at sports. The headmaster, Michael Wilshaw – who would later become head of the schools inspectorate OFSTED – believed that every one of them had potential. Their results were proving that they had.
Burlington Danes, down the road from my house in North Kensington, represented the revolution in inner-city schooling that Labour had begun to undertake. It was in a deprived area, with nearly 30 per cent of pupils on free school meals. But given greater freedom, under the headship of the formidable Sally Coates it had increased its proportion of five A*–C GCSE grades from 31 to 75 per cent. In doing so, it was outpacing schools in my relatively wealthy West Oxfordshire constituency.
In opposition we studied schools like Mossbourne and Burlington, and we looked at what was going on around the world. That helped us develop the progressive conservative approach to education we would deploy in government.
First, many of these successful new schools were academies: independent schools run in the state sector.
This wasn’t a totally new idea. Thatcher had partially introduced autonomy with grant-maintained schools and City Technology Colleges, both of which were free of local education authority control. Tony Blair started the academies programme – again, creating schools no longer answerable to their local town hall, but to parents. Allowing heads to steer their own ship worked wonders, because they could do the things they thought necessary to improve education, from lengthening the school day to introducing new extra-curricular activities.
But both Thatcher’s and Blair’s policies lacked the scale to make a real difference. We wanted all schools to be free to excel, giving every one of them the chance to become an academy. Even more radically, we wanted to enable groups of teachers, businesses, charities, faith groups and parents to set up their own institutions to increase choice and standards in their area. We called them Free Schools.
The evidence was there. In Britain, academies were more likely to be rated ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ than other schools. And around the world, Free Schools or their equivalents were transforming education in the most deprived areas. We would boost academy numbers by rapidly expanding the numbers of Sponsored academies – those backed by philanthropists, businesses and charities. And we added a new type of Converter academy – schools that had reached key standards and were ready to take on new freedoms.
Second, Mossbourne and their ilk were employing the best graduates.
One of the problems we found was that teacher training was being controlled by lecturers, many of them on the far left of politics, who prioritised nebulous ‘critical thinking’ skills and ‘creativity’ over necessities like subject knowledge and how to manage behaviour. But then in 2002 the TeachFirst scheme was launched, enabling top graduates to train on the job, often in challenging inner-city schools. We would expand the scheme massively, raising the calibre of new teachers, and introduce a fundamental reform of teacher training through the School Direct programme, putting schools and the best head teachers (the real experts) in control of teacher-training courses and the selection of potential trainees. By 2015 half of all teachers were being trained through school-led programmes, and the number of Oxbridge graduates teaching in state schools had doubled.
We were convinced that raising standards rested on who taught children. But we also knew it relied on what pupils were taught. Therefore we would slim down the National Curriculum so the young focused on the fundamentals – mathematics, grammar, punctuation, spelling and phonics – and as they got older they studied more rigorous subjects.
The third thing we saw was that successful schools confronted failure, and mediocrity too. That meant insisting pupils had to sit and resit core subjects like English and maths until they passed. And by pass we meant C grade or above.
In addition, I knew that ring-fencing the schools budget, even in financially tough times, was important – specifically linking the number of students with the amount of funding. And that’s what we did, effectively freezing (actually marginally increasing) the education budget.
So this was our progressive conservative, Big Society, open public services answer on education: rolling back the left-wing ideology that was wrecking state education; extending the school autonomy that Labour had started; and driving huge improvements in standards. The last of the ‘prizes for all’ had been given out.
That’s not to say it all went according to plan.
When we came into office we had to deal with a Labour policy called ‘Building Schools for the Future’. The scheme was poorly managed and wasteful, and Michael had to go to Parliament on 5 July 2010 to explain that 715 schools signed up to building projects under the scheme could no longer go ahead with the improvements they had been promised. This was our first big education announcement. It was a huge knock to many schools, and it was compounded by the repeated inability of Michael’s department to give him the correct figures on the number of projects and schools – and by his own uncompromising tone.
Ever the decent man, Michael came to my office, his head bowed. ‘I’ll resign if you want me to,’ he said. Of course I wouldn’t let him go.
But that decision had an unintended consequence.
He told me he thought his department had been completely brainwashed by Labour and was working to thwart everything he did. He said he needed someone good to help him. ‘I want you to let me have Jeremy Heywood,’ he said. ‘Hardly!’ I replied. ‘He’s the permanent secretary at No. 10, for God’s sake.’ In a moment of weakness I let him rehire Dominic Cummings, his adviser in opposition
whose departure I had made a condition of Michael’s appointment in government.
I had seen how Rottweiler spads caused huge issues for the Labour government. Not only did Cummings seem to be set against the team that was running the party; the aggressive and abrasive edge he brought would have huge ramifications for his boss. Teachers often appreciated Michael’s reforms, which gave them more powers. But many could not stand Michael himself, who, encouraged by Cummings, indulged in what was seen as unnecessary teacher bashing. This would store up problems for the future.
School reform dominated much of my thinking in opposition and my time in government. But the more prominent reforms during our earliest months in power were in higher education.
The policy will forever be remembered for the scenes of protesters smashing the windows of CCHQ in November 2010, hurling debris at riot police and storming the building. But it ended up with more people than ever going to university, and, crucially, more people from disadvantaged backgrounds. By 2017 students from low-income families were 30 per cent more likely to attend university than in Labour’s final year in power.
How did we get there?
After the First World War, higher education became increasingly state-funded. It was only affordable because so few people attended. In 1970 just one in twenty school-leavers went to university. But as numbers rose – a third of school-leavers were seeking places by the mid-90s – a £1,000 yearly fee was introduced. When attendance approached 40 per cent in 2004, Labour increased the cap on fees to £3,000.
But it wasn’t enough. With government funding and other sources of income not keeping up with the rapid expansion, institutions were finding it difficult to maintain their estates and their services. Even more seriously, young people were being turned away because of the limit on the number of places. Vice chancellors were pleading with the government to be able to increase fees and for the cap on the number of university places to be lifted.
The first question for me was whether an expansion of higher education was actually the right thing to do.
There were those in our party who said ‘no’: almost half of all young people going to university was already too many, and the numbers should fall. The respectable part to their argument was that there should be more technical training through apprenticeships, providing a genuine choice for school-leavers. But there was often an undertone that university should be reserved for an elite minority.
However, there were also some, like George Osborne, Michael Gove and David Willetts, by now devoting both brains to this issue as our universities minister, who said the proportion absolutely must increase.
There was the economic argument: that in a knowledge economy and a world of competition, the future belonged to highly trained graduates. There was also the opportunity argument: wanting your children to go to university is like wanting to own a home of your own – and as the party of aspiration, we should absolutely support this.
As someone who started off as a sceptic about the never-ending expansion of higher education, I began to warm to their point. Those opposing the further expansion of higher education had usually enjoyed a university education themselves – and hoped their children would do the same. Meanwhile, we had almost half of all young people going to university, but just one in five poor children doing so. This wasn’t just about creating the workforce of the future – it was about smashing the barriers between rich and poor. And anyway, reducing the number of university places wouldn’t solve the need for technical training. We had to do both.
Which forced the second question: how to pay for it?
Back in opposition, David Willetts had been in contact with the business secretary (who therefore covered universities), Peter Mandelson, as Labour planned a review of tuition fees. We agreed to the businessman and former BP chief executive John Browne leading it, and in our manifesto we committed to looking at its findings. We knew full well that Browne would recommend increasing fees after the election. David wrote to all our candidates ensuring that no one signed up to the campaign the National Union of Students was running to get MPs to pledge to vote against any rises.
Lord Browne, who was known for his fairness and his ability to advise across the political divide, wanted no limit on fees, and for universities to charge whatever they wanted. We vetoed this, but we did agree to students funding a much greater proportion of their tuition as the only way to achieve a highly educated, opportunity-driven society.
So, having promised to scrap tuition fees in our 2005 manifesto (which was opportunistic) and been ambivalent on the issue in the years since (which was lazy), we now had a proper policy on higher education: advocating an increase to a maximum of £9,000 a year.
On the face of it, this increase was dramatic. But the rationale was in the detail. Students would not have to pay any fees or charges in advance. In fact, they wouldn’t have to start paying anything back until they earned £21,000 a year (up from £15,000 previously). They wouldn’t start paying back in full until they earned £41,000. There would be generous bursaries and help for the poorest.
When it came to expanding higher education, it was always said that there is a simple choice about who pays – it’s either taxpayers or it’s students. Our answer was that it was only successful graduates who would pay. Indeed, under our plans, only a quarter were likely ever to pay off their fees in full. Taxpayers were still bearing a proportion of the cost, but now it was a manageable one. Because we had to consider fairness there, too. And there is surely no fairness in asking someone working on a checkout who left school at eighteen to subsidise a future lawyer.
Of course, making savings was part of the motivation. The Business Department was one of the highest-spending in government. Increasing fees was a way to make savings without reducing either the quantity or the quality of the service provided.
The system in my student days was hugely regressive. Yes, university was free, but it was only free because so few people – usually white, wealthy people like me – actually went. And that was the choice. Free university for the privileged few, or paid-for university for the many. We chose the many, in the only way that was sustainable.
But there was a problem: the Liberal Democrats. Nick Clegg had campaigned in the 2010 election on a promise not to raise tuition fees. He and his MPs had signed the NUS pledge – and he had proudly posed with a sign saying so. His manifesto included a pledge to ‘scrap unfair university tuition fees’, and the Coalition Programme for Government confirmed that his party wouldn’t be forced to support the reform. With them abstaining, we’d just about have the votes needed.
I always held out hope that he’d change his party’s policy, because I knew he had misgivings. He knew it was unaffordable and wouldn’t enhance social mobility. Then, during one of our ‘Quad’ meetings around the cabinet table with George and Danny Alexander in October 2010, he declared, ‘I’m going to support you on fees.’
But George did something surprising. ‘Don’t do it,’ he told Nick. ‘It would be a huge political mistake for you.’
George’s concern for Nick was genuine. And he worried about the health of the coalition if one partner damaged itself like this.
I saw it differently. ‘George makes a good point, but I want us to do things together,’ I said. ‘And this is the right thing to do.’
Nick was adamant: ‘Our old policy was wrong; this is a good policy.’
It was one of the bravest steps I’ve ever seen a politician take.
The culmination of our reforms came during the 2013 Autumn Statement, when George removed the cap on university places completely. It was the best of all worlds: the universities had more money, the burden on taxpayers was reduced, around £7 billion in savings was made each year, and higher education became sustainable. We had – arguably – the best higher education in the world, and most importantly, the cap on aspiration had been lifted.
But
when it came to the Lib Dems, George was right. It was political suicide.
The rage was initially directed at the Conservatives. It came to a head when I was at the G20 in South Korea. I sat on my hotel bed watching the television helplessly as protesters encircled party headquarters.
As hard as we had it physically on the issue, the Lib Dems got it worse politically. They were the party of students, university towns and academics. This was an attack on their core support at a time when they needed it particularly badly. Their tuition-fee reversal was also the worst type of broken promise: the type you break by actively going back on your word, rather than by failing to meet a target that you have set. In my view, that type is far more serious, and will be seen as such by voters. This is what I used to call ‘Cameron’s law of broken promises’, and the Lib Dems are still feeling the effects of it today.
Police reform followed a similar pattern to university and school reform. The service needed improvement, and that improvement could also contribute to our much-needed savings.
We acted quickly to cut bureaucracy, make efficiencies and free up professionals to run their forces. We scrapped all the ‘police performance indicators’, and replaced them with just one: cut crime. We introduced 101, the non-emergency police number that prevented people calling 999 unnecessarily, thus saving police time. Pensions and pay were reformed. Instead of retiring after thirty years (meaning that some were receiving full pensions at just forty-eight), the police would now move towards retirement at sixty. Police funding by central government fell by 20 per cent (though as they’re also funded by council tax, this was not a fall across the board).
The backlash was inevitable, and the Police Federation were as bad as anything Michael faced from the teachers’ unions. But fortunately we had a long-serving, reform-minded minister to face them down and see it all through: Theresa May.
For the Record Page 29