Taking class out of the classroom

I'm grateful to the Fabian Society for inviting me to attend the launch of their new research project on tackling inequalities in educational outcomes, building on their highly influential Commission on Life Chances and Child Poverty.

For over a hundred years, the Fabians have exposed complex problems and explored solutions in a measured and meticulous way. This project is the latest example of that fine tradition and it will certainly help our deliberations in this important area.

Orwell described Britain as "the most class ridden society under the sun". It is something of a national obsession, dominating the thoughts of successive generations of writers and politicians…

It's not surprising that class remains such a potent and emotive issue: it plays a crucial role in how we define ourselves: as individuals and communities. Our class shapes our identity and instils our values. It is central to our self-perception and it still dominates our politics.

When the Fabians and the trade union movement came together in 1900 to form the Labour Representation Committee, attempts to make it a class based political party were explicitly ruled out.

This decision at the inaugural conference – to reject the class war, and instead unite people from all social classes in a more noble battle against social injustice - demonstrated great foresight by the founders of my party.

This was the harder option. It would have been much easier to pursue the politics of anger and resentment, than to seek to appeal to people's sense of moderation and balance.

It is particularly admirable given the inequity and injustice of Victorian Britain.

Our forefathers chose inclusivity and they were right to.

Labour is at its best tackling the poverty of aspiration, rather than engaging in the politics of envy.

A century later, as we undergo a process of renewal in government, we must recognise that progressives only advance by building a coalition of the nation's aspirants as well as the disadvantaged.

The Thatcher years were scarred by high unemployment, social division and growing disparities in wealth. However we regard her record, what seems to me to be indisputable is that she successfully exploited the innate desire in the British people to do well and hand on something tangible to their children at a time when Labour's slogan appeared to be "no compromise with the electorate".

Mrs Thatcher's success in one respect was matched only by her complete failure to grasp Britain's equally strong sense of justice, compassion and concern for the less well off.

We came to power driven by our belief that economic efficiency can co-exist with the promotion of social justice and that the key to this lies in providing educational opportunity for all.

The connections between our education system and our social structures have long been recognised: both by those who sought to eradicate social division, and those who wished to entrench it.

For centuries, our feudal education system reflected our feudal society. The system was deliberately constructed and engineered to re-enforce class division.

H.G. Wells described the 1870 Education Act as not so much "an Act for a common universal education, [but]… an Act to educate the lower classes … [for employment] on lower class lines."

Over the decades, serious commentators have continued to insist that there were huge social and political dangers in over-educating the masses and extending their aspirations too far. We've heard echoes of this recently in the debate on expanding Higher Education to cover 50% of young people.

Labour has always believed that there should be no limit to people's hopes and aspirations and no barriers to fulfilling them.

Education has been our lodestar: from the TUC's groundbreaking campaign for "secondary education for all" in the late 19th Century, through Attlee's Welfare State, Wilson's Open University to Blair's radical reforms.

We've always believed in using the power of education to widen aspiration for generations to come. As that great auto didact, Ernie Bevin said, "it's inherent in the working class to want a better deal for your children than your parents or grandparents had."

Hence our focus on education; its central importance through three terms of office and the risks we have taken to see through necessary change.

The Higher Education Bill almost brought down a government with a majority of 161. It was an act of immense political courage by the Prime Minister who regarded it as essential not just to the continued expansion of higher education, but to our economic future.

Social class dominated the debate.

The critics argued that Higher Education had to be entirely free for full time English undergraduates (though curiously not for post graduates, part time or overseas students), otherwise working class students would be discouraged.

Of course, the main beneficiaries of a free university education with generous grants were the middle classes. In the thirty years following the 1963 Robbins report, the social class gap in higher education actually widened.

As last month's UCAS statistics showed, in the very first year of variable tuition fees, as well as a 7.1% increase in applications, the social class gap has closed by almost half a per cent.

Our other major focus has been on school standards.

For decades, successive governments ignored the problem of poor schools in deprived areas, failing generations of inner-city kids.

Our philosophy has been simple: high standards, proper accountability, genuine transparency and - above all - no excuses.

Since 1997, 1,300 failing schools have been turned around, helping half a million pupils. When we came into office, there were 616 schools where less than a quarter of pupils achieved five good GCSEs. Today there are 47.

The galvanising force in the most difficult locations have been City Academies, improving results at four times the national rate, despite having twice the average number of pupils on free school meals.

85% of secondary schools now have specialist status. Trust schools are waiting in the wings. We've introduced a new admissions code, which removes backdoor selection. Results have improved significantly at every level and every key stage since 1997.

Some still hark back to a perceived golden age of the grammar schools, claiming they provided a route out of poverty, but grammar schools re-enforced social segregation far more than they nourished social mobility.

Of the nation's 160 remaining state grammar schools, only 2% of pupils are on free school meals, against 4% ten years ago, and 14% in state secondary schools.

We believe that everyone should enjoy the chances and choices which were formerly only available to those in selective schools.

We've doubled spending per pupil. Capital spending has increased seven fold with every secondary school in the country being refurbished or rebuilt. In an historic demonstration of our commitment to high standards, we've undertaken to match the independent sector both in terms of expenditure and the extra curricular and sporting facilities available.

We've achieved an increase in standards for everyone as well as narrowing the social class gap – a heroic feat in itself – but now we must be bolder still.

The most crucial stages in a child's development take place outside of the classroom and before they've started school.

Children from poorer households begin to fall behind less able children from more affluent backgrounds at the age of 22 months, and this gap increases with time.

Sir Michael Barber, the great educationalist, told me recently that a child in a professional family is likely to have heard 45 million words by their fourth birthday. A child from a more deprived background will have heard 13 million.

What starts as a lack of vocabulary at 4, can turn into a problem with reading at age 10, leading to poor English at age 14. At that stage, the problem becomes particularly pronounced for boys who are just 1% behind girls in Maths and Science, but in English the gap opens to 14%. Boys on free school meals are almost half as likely to reach the required standard at age 14 compared to those who are not.

This is the worst possible start for their GCSE years, in which writing skills are so critical. Working class boys are three times less likely than children from professional backgrounds to get five good GCSEs.

Second, the identity and expectations of the working class are being shifted by changes in the global economy.

As one teacher put it to me, in the old days, a working class boy would leave schools facing clear choices. Turn left and he would be working in the coalmine, turn right and he would be working in the shipyard. Go straight ahead, he could go to sea.

In today's changing global economy, careers are not so certain and boys feel the winds of this change most keenly.

In the past, they could walk into unskilled work but many of these low skill, low wage jobs have gone already. Millions more are set to disappear. Lord Leitch, in his recent report, estimates that there will be only around half a million unskilled jobs in our labour market by 2020.

All of this is deeply significant. Working class boys have traditionally defined their identity in terms of their job, their family and their responsibilities. Each has been hit by wider social and economic change. The old supports, once so dependable, have been weakened or removed.

Boys make up 70% of those with identified special education needs; 72% of dyslexics; and 88% of those with behavioural, emotional and social needs.

There is a common strand running through all of this. Within the working class lies a passion to better themselves, but social and economic changes are closing down many of the routes which they might once have taken.

The danger is that this period of change might leave us in a state of flux: potentially generating a gloom and despondency which feeds a corrosive poverty of aspiration which is becoming particularly prevalent amongst today's generation of working class boys.

Education can overcome this.

We need an educational strategy that builds a positive identity for working class boys, instilling in them pride and a love of learning.

We need to show them a bright future, motivating them to aim high, and forcing them to operate outside of their comfort zone.

We need to convince those parents who might not have appreciated their own schooling, that they must still instil a belief in the importance of education in their children.

We must help boys to become skilled, flexible learners so they can become adept, desirable employees. At the same time, we must help them become socially, emotionally and behaviourally confident, so they experience self-respect and a sense of belonging.

We must provide positive role models for them to look up to.

There are six areas which I want to focus on to tackle these problems.

First, we have to start early and support the parents. The research is clear. For working class boys to succeed, they need interested parents who reward their achievements and value their success.

Tomorrow I will be publishing a parenting strategy which looks at what Government can do in this area.

Reading will be a central part of this. The average family spends four hours a day watching television. If they read to their children for a tenth of that time, we could practically eradicate illiteracy.

Fathers play a vital role and we need to be better prepared for when families breakdown, ensuring that a young boy's hopes and dreams do not crumble just because their parent's relationship does.

Nearly 5 million grandparents in Britain regularly care for their grandchildren. Grandfathers can provide a vital male influence in the absence of a responsible father. We should do more to support them.

I am keen to explore what we can do with groups like the Grandparents Association and Grandparents Plus, who are already working closely with the Basic Skills Agency on a project to support intergenerational learning.

Second, our schools should contain more male role models, such as "old boys" or local boys made good. 85% of primary school teachers are women – and doing excellent work – but this can mean that many children from lone parent families can reach the age of 11 without having any significant contact with a male role model.

Together with the Teacher Development Agency we will launch a drive to attract more male teachers to work in primary schools. We will also train up more male teaching assistants so they can build positive relationships with hard to reach boys.

Third, we must do more to make schools engaging.

Sport provides children with a chance to challenge themselves and compete against others. We've increased capital investment ten fold to £6.5 billion a year and now invest more in sport alone than the previous government spent on the entire school capital programme.

Music is another way of lifting a child's aspirations, enabling them to emulate their musical heroes, but also instilling the crucial creative skills which are so necessary for success in today's curriculum and tomorrow's workplace.

Fourth, we need to look at classroom methods. It's easy to fall into stereotypes but we know what works and what doesn't.

Boys do better when their attention is grabbed quickly. They like dealing with practical tasks which make learning tangible. Boys also like clear rules and quick feedback. They prefer structured lessons with factual texts. And they want to get straight to the point.

The importance of reading can not be overstated as literacy is so important to achievement in other subjects. Boys like books which depict their gender in powerful roles often as sporting, spying or fighting heroes – not just Jane Austen, but a necessary dose of Anthony Horowitz as well.

To help get boys reading we need boys' bookshelves in secondary school libraries, containing positive, modern, relevant role models for working class boys.

Fifth, we need to provide extra support and catch up for those who need it combined with a relentless focus on the progression of every pupil so that no one, especially working class boys, gets left behind.

That's why I want to provide 1-2-1 tuition for everyone who needs it. Extra tuition has always been available to more prosperous families. Such extra help must be available to all who need it.

We will be much bolder. We are looking to recognise and reward schools for how much they improve the educational attainment of their pupils, rather than simply how many get five good GCSEs.

This year we will pilot targets, testing and incentives to make the system match the desire of teachers to focus on the progress of all of their students, not just the most attentive and advanced. This radical reform will reconfigure the system to the benefit of all – if it works, we will roll it out nationally.

Sixth, we need to ensure that we don't abandon boys at 16 to drop off the education radar screen. This means delivering on our hundred year old aspiration to raise the age at which young people can leave education and training from 16 to 18.

This is not about keeping disengaged, disinterested young people behind a desk. It is about making sure that if they take a job it is combined with in-house or day release accredited training so that as well as earning a wage, they are investing in their future.

This prevents them falling into the trap of leaving school at 16 with no qualifications and heading straight into a job with no future. It is this path which leads to the death of aspiration and the corrosion of opportunities for the next generation.

To make this work, we need to make sure that the right sort of education and training options are available. A further expansion of apprenticeships will be central to our plans. Since 1997, the number of apprenticeships has trebled to 250,000. In the future, any young person who wants to take an apprenticeship and reaches the required level of attainment should have a guaranteed place available.

That means an additional 90,000 apprenticeships just for 16 to 18 year olds over the next 5 years. And for those who aren't quite ready for a full apprenticeship we will develop 10,000 pre-apprenticeship places.

Our new diplomas provide a further choice.

Diplomas will provide the missing link in our provision: creating the mix of vocational and academic education which we've lacked for so long. Their introduction is one of the most radical educational developments taking place anywhere in the world.

Let me be clear, we are fully committed to the new diplomas and are well on track to make sure they are delivered from 2008. Yes it's challenging, but we have published the line by line criteria for each of the first five Diplomas, involving over 5,000 employers. We are now turning them into the radical, exciting qualifications we all want to see.

GCSEs, "A" levels, greater access to the International Baccalaureate, more apprenticeships and the new diploma will provide working class boys in particular with the range of educational opportunities they need to make the most of the rest of their talents and abilities.

In conclusion, someone's class should neither provide a platinum card into the VIP lounge of life, nor a heavy burden weighing them down. We'll only meet our aspiration to eradicate poverty, if we can first eradicate the poverty of aspiration that remains so pervasive. We must start in our schools: taking class out of the classroom, and putting in its place hope, encouragement and opportunity.

Alan Johnson was speaking to launch the Fabian Society's major research project on educational inequality and life chances, led by Louise Bamfield.