:00:01. > :00:11.Government programmes and rejection of this nihilism, the problem
:00:11. > :00:17.
:00:17. > :00:21.In Newsnight Scotland: Schools in London have improved so rapidly over
:00:21. > :00:26.the past decade that it is claimed that a child in the pristine area of
:00:26. > :00:31.the city can expect to do better than the average child elsewhere in
:00:31. > :00:38.England. Can Scotland learn from the extraordinary success of the
:00:38. > :00:40.so-called London Challenge? Good evening.
:00:40. > :00:43.It is pretty well universally accepted that a good school
:00:43. > :00:45.education system is the key to most other sorts of success. Is it
:00:46. > :00:48.possible some of Scotland's more troubled educational establishments
:00:48. > :00:52.could learn from an experiment which seems to have succeeded in turning
:00:52. > :01:02.some of London's worst schools into some of the best in England? Ian
:01:02. > :01:04.
:01:04. > :01:11.Hamilton headed south to that there has been an economic
:01:11. > :01:17.downturn. But London is a city of extreme contrast. In some of the
:01:17. > :01:21.richest in the country to some of the poorest. In the last 13 years,
:01:21. > :01:26.there have been radical changes in the education system in England, no
:01:26. > :01:30.more so than here. This area has gone to having some of the worst
:01:30. > :01:40.schools in the country to some of the best. So what on earth are they
:01:40. > :01:50.
:01:50. > :01:55.early start, and 15 a.m.. All of the pupils have breakfast. More than 80%
:01:55. > :02:00.of the pupils come from an ethnic minority background. The school is
:02:00. > :02:03.located in one of the poorest parts of the capital. But the claim here
:02:03. > :02:10.at that they have turned around the fortune of these children and have
:02:10. > :02:16.become an academy school. They are one of 33 in London and one of just
:02:16. > :02:21.33,000 in England as a whole. have learnt is that good education
:02:21. > :02:26.is essential. This is the principal. He is taking me for a tour of his
:02:26. > :02:34.new school. Can you summarise what is academy school is -- what an
:02:34. > :02:39.academy school is? It is an organisation set up to run
:02:39. > :02:45.independently and it is run by a trust. In our situation, we are
:02:45. > :02:55.helped by the dioceses, we are answerable to the governors of
:02:55. > :02:59.
:02:59. > :03:05.school. St Paul's Academy draws all its pupils from the local community.
:03:05. > :03:12.But the only criteria is that 75% of them must be Catholic. This is
:03:12. > :03:17.Oxford. It is one of the centres in the heart of academia. There is an
:03:17. > :03:22.intense debate happening here about the future of education in England.
:03:22. > :03:28.This professor believes that changes should have been carefully
:03:28. > :03:32.considered and sated Scotland as an example. If you take curriculum for
:03:32. > :03:38.excellence, the document produced in Scotland, it has taken place over a
:03:38. > :03:43.long period of time, there has been thorough deliberation with all sorts
:03:43. > :03:48.of interested parties, there has been an enormous amount of
:03:48. > :03:53.deliberation before they finally produce that report. This used to
:03:53. > :03:55.happen in England, there was a tradition of the Royal commission on
:03:55. > :03:58.the central advisory Council which was spent to three years
:03:58. > :04:04.deliberating before finally producing the report which would
:04:04. > :04:12.base itself as it the base of legislation. That is not happening
:04:12. > :04:14.now in our country. -- that would form the base of legislation. That
:04:14. > :04:21.is the massive difference between what is happening in England and
:04:21. > :04:26.what is happening in Scotland. use in Scotland they had a specific
:04:26. > :04:29.problem of schools underperforming. Over a decade ago the then Labour
:04:29. > :04:33.Government created something called a London Challenge. According to
:04:33. > :04:38.education experts it was that and not the expansion of academy schools
:04:38. > :04:43.that improved standards. They did this by improving salaries to
:04:43. > :04:48.attract better teachers. They improved their opportunity for
:04:48. > :04:53.promotion and retention. They also set aside affordable housing for
:04:53. > :05:02.teachers and the targeted schools that were feeling the most. -- the
:05:02. > :05:06.targeted schools. Overall attainment in inner London was the worst in all
:05:06. > :05:13.the regions in England, it is now the second best, second only to
:05:13. > :05:18.enter in London. That is a massive change in end -- in attainment. In
:05:18. > :05:21.particular, attainment for the most disadvantaged children, those
:05:21. > :05:27.eligible for free school meals, has gone up massively, it is now
:05:27. > :05:34.something like 12 percentage points above the attainment of that group
:05:34. > :05:40.across the country as a whole. is at least ten different kinds of
:05:40. > :05:43.secondary school in England. There are six broad categories. Two of
:05:43. > :05:47.those are different flavours of academy school, one is free schools
:05:47. > :05:53.and the others are conversion academies like the polls which were
:05:53. > :05:59.once run by local authorities. -- the polls Academy. They have a say
:05:59. > :06:05.in how they teach the children. I have come here to find out about
:06:05. > :06:09.what the main teachers union thinks about all the changes south of the
:06:09. > :06:14.border, and Hermes of them to name the building after me. The union
:06:14. > :06:19.says that it is not against radical ideas but it should get academic
:06:19. > :06:24.evidence. But Google says that academies lead to better results,
:06:24. > :06:29.but there is no substantial evidence base to say that point It is an
:06:29. > :06:39.untried experiment. No other during extraction in the developed world
:06:39. > :06:40.
:06:40. > :06:50.has done this change -- jurisdiction. Can Scotland learn
:06:50. > :07:00.
:07:00. > :07:03.anything at all. English and might I am joined now from London by
:07:03. > :07:06.Professor David Woods, who was chief adviser to the London Challenge.
:07:06. > :07:08.Here in Glasgow, council education convener Stephen Curran, and Dr. Sue
:07:08. > :07:10.Ellis from Strathclyde University, who researches how policy affects
:07:10. > :07:12.literacy skills, especially in disadvantaged areas. And in
:07:12. > :07:21.Edinburgh councillor Dave Berry, who promoted some radical education
:07:21. > :07:24.reform ideas in East Lothian when he led the council there.
:07:24. > :07:29.In all this has complicated so I just want to pick out some themes.
:07:29. > :07:33.One of the things crucial to the London Challenge as with some of the
:07:33. > :07:37.other reforms in England is intervention. That if you are a
:07:37. > :07:44.school that is performing below par, you simply were not any longer going
:07:44. > :07:49.to be allowed to get away with it, is that right? Yes, it is right, but
:07:50. > :07:55.it is hearts and minds, it is intervention done with the schools,
:07:55. > :07:59.not done too. There is no appointments -- in seeing that 20%
:07:59. > :08:06.of the underperforming schools in London need to be radically dealt
:08:06. > :08:13.with, the issue is, how can we help them get better? So there was a raft
:08:13. > :08:17.of measures. The expert advisers. There are funded programmes, better
:08:17. > :08:21.teaching, better leadership. That is the intervention. They do not want
:08:21. > :08:27.to give the impression that the intervention was harsh and
:08:27. > :08:32.externally imposed, it was done with them. Of course we expected the
:08:32. > :08:42.schools to respond to the extra resource. And in the vast majority
:08:42. > :08:48.of cases be altered. That might be altered. What was happening before?
:08:48. > :08:53.Everything is just allowed to chug along as they had always done?
:08:53. > :09:00.think that is the case. We have some good and some not so good in London.
:09:00. > :09:03.People just moved along. Once we got the accountability measures in with
:09:03. > :09:07.four targets, and like Scotland we have an inspection system, once you
:09:07. > :09:16.have a group of schools that are feeling the inspection or reforming
:09:16. > :09:20.below and expected standard, then it was just accepted at that time left
:09:20. > :09:27.to the local authorities to do something about it. This was a
:09:27. > :09:33.special central Government programme. Accountability was huge.
:09:33. > :09:39.But from having a minister from London Challenge and accountability.
:09:40. > :09:45.We will come unto details later, Dr Sue Ellis, this is a theme that
:09:45. > :09:49.interests you, intervention? Yes, one of the things that distinguished
:09:49. > :09:53.the London Challenge was that the schools who needed intervention but
:09:53. > :09:57.very expert advice from people who actually knew what was going to work
:09:58. > :10:03.in those particular circumstances. It was very tailored advice, it was
:10:03. > :10:09.not general advice. But presumably, if we were to emulate something like
:10:09. > :10:15.that up here, you have to have that specific advice. You have to get
:10:15. > :10:23.much more serious. Yes.They had schools training teachers who
:10:23. > :10:26.trained teachers. What they had was that they drew very heavily on the
:10:26. > :10:30.advice from researchers at the Institute of education who were able
:10:30. > :10:35.to say that for the particular school, it is very data driven,
:10:35. > :10:39.these are the issues, these are the sort of thing that will get the
:10:39. > :10:43.biggest payoff, and if there are two ways to go about it, for your type
:10:44. > :10:48.of catchment area, this is the way that is going to work. It was very
:10:48. > :10:54.highly tailored advice. That advice both meant that it worked, but it
:10:54. > :11:02.also encouraged the staff to take the ideas on board and that is
:11:02. > :11:05.really important in any sort of intervention if you wanted to work.
:11:05. > :11:10.Stephen Curran, in Glasgow you have a problem when you look at the
:11:10. > :11:14.league tables because you have got many socially disadvantaged
:11:14. > :11:18.children. But presumably you must look at this with some interest
:11:18. > :11:22.because one of the most extraordinary things about the
:11:22. > :11:26.London Challenge is that it is disadvantaged children who seem to
:11:26. > :11:32.benefit most. It is a fantastic report we saw earlier and also it is
:11:32. > :11:36.not about blame and shame in terms of the schools and staff, it is
:11:37. > :11:46.about supporting the challenge. The things we have been doing in
:11:46. > :11:55.Glasgow... Will it have the same effect on education in Glasgow as it
:11:55. > :11:59.had in London? We are certainly looking at this, the OECD has done
:11:59. > :12:06.similar research in terms of learning and teaching in the
:12:06. > :12:09.classroom and making sure that the kids are in the classroom, we have
:12:09. > :12:16.got exclusions down, substantially more young people doing this.
:12:16. > :12:19.the things they do in London, the school that Ian was at, some of the
:12:19. > :12:25.schoolchildren come in and have breakfast at 8:15 in the morning, is
:12:25. > :12:30.it part of the issue about safety? Some children stay there for 12
:12:30. > :12:35.hours a day. Is that something you are trying to emulate? A bespoke
:12:35. > :12:40.solution that has been spoken of already, and that is important. The
:12:40. > :12:44.school may have been open earlier or open on Saturday, the safety issue
:12:44. > :12:48.around the challenge and the support of the police and other services,
:12:48. > :12:51.the way that young people feel about going to school and that is making a
:12:51. > :12:57.difference. If you feel safer, you perform better. Right macro Dave
:12:57. > :13:01.Berry, to dig another strand from this, one of the other things that
:13:01. > :13:09.seems to distinguish this from what they have done in London and other
:13:09. > :13:15.areas of England, a sort of radical agnosticism about who does the
:13:15. > :13:22.running of schools. Some of them are modelled on local authorities, or
:13:22. > :13:28.run by an independent trust, like an academy. You floated some ideas in
:13:28. > :13:33.East Lothian... I think the issue is to allow the school itself to have a
:13:34. > :13:40.say in what goes on. What macro you tried to do some stuff in East
:13:40. > :13:43.Lothian, I am curious -- you tried to do some stuff in East Lothian.
:13:43. > :13:47.The first thing was to try to devolve control to the school were
:13:47. > :13:54.it had a lot more financial say in how it was run. The key thing for
:13:54. > :13:59.that was to have the parents involved. We offer not talking about
:13:59. > :14:02.the same thing. The teaching staff and management but also the
:14:03. > :14:09.involvement of the parents. In my opinion, that is the involvement of
:14:09. > :14:12.the community. And that means you try to get the community involved
:14:13. > :14:19.and not just the academics running it. But it was also involving the
:14:19. > :14:25.younger kids. You had talked about how schools can pretty much be free
:14:25. > :14:31.of local authority control. Did that happen in East Lothian? No, but it
:14:31. > :14:34.was never an aim to achieve that radical solution. But to have that
:14:34. > :14:39.as a possibility meant that the intermediate stages seemed that much
:14:39. > :14:46.more reasonable and had it meant that the community was much more
:14:46. > :14:50.keen on making it work and being under their control, then it was an
:14:50. > :14:56.excluded from the beginning. There is this act notices in the London
:14:56. > :15:01.project. You could perhaps make clear for us, because we may not
:15:01. > :15:06.know how the English system works. While some academies are involved in
:15:06. > :15:14.the London Challenge, the whole Michael Gove Project is a different
:15:14. > :15:17.issue, the London Challenge was not just about academies? When it
:15:17. > :15:26.started in 2003, we did not have academies. I don't particularly care
:15:26. > :15:30.if the school is what Assistant -- is Protestant, Catholic, faith
:15:31. > :15:37.school or not, and that is not the point, it was about how well they
:15:37. > :15:41.are doing and some might argue that it is better to have an academy or a
:15:41. > :15:45.community or whatever. The issue is, as one of your professors spoke
:15:45. > :15:50.about, is what is the best bespoke intervention for each particular
:15:50. > :15:54.school? In England, we have failing academy schools and failing
:15:54. > :16:00.community schools and lots of great schools so that was the whole point.
:16:00. > :16:04.They put aside their differences and even today, the legacy of the London
:16:04. > :16:14.Challenge... And the thing we must not forget about it is that schools
:16:14. > :16:15.
:16:15. > :16:18.work with schools. You anticipated my next question, but there is this
:16:18. > :16:22.extraordinary thing that you seem to have got both the schools as
:16:22. > :16:25.institutions and teachers within the schools in London to think of all
:16:25. > :16:31.the children in London as their responsibility, not just the
:16:31. > :16:37.children in their school. How did you do that? By a cliche, moral
:16:37. > :16:41.purpose. We make them feel special. They were London teachers so we
:16:41. > :16:45.introduced a London chartered teachers scheme. They were London
:16:45. > :16:50.Headteachers and teachers. Of course their first loyalty was to the
:16:50. > :16:58.school they were teaching in so they got the sense of collective pride,
:16:58. > :17:08.collective endeavour. Helped by London business and other things.
:17:08. > :17:08.
:17:08. > :17:13.That meant you could send teachers from one school but was doing very
:17:13. > :17:16.well to other schools that were not doing very well. Based on the model
:17:16. > :17:21.of teaching hospitals, Hobbs with extra capacity teachers who could
:17:21. > :17:25.come across, work alongside other teachers and heads of department and
:17:25. > :17:31.not permanently but the expression are used to use about schools that
:17:31. > :17:36.were struggling a bit will give you a school -- we will give you a
:17:36. > :17:41.school and more the school alongside you. You have got greater capacity
:17:41. > :17:46.to work alongside and that, two years on from the end of the London
:17:46. > :17:52.Challenge is still part of the DNA of London. Schools work with schools
:17:52. > :18:00.irrespective of what title they have. Stephen Curran, do we have
:18:00. > :18:04.anything like that? Do you have to choose schools in Glasgow? We have
:18:04. > :18:09.teachers of best practice and we work across council boundaries.
:18:09. > :18:16.is more than sharing, they would actually send teachers from the
:18:16. > :18:21.teaching schools to, not to take over, it was not that
:18:21. > :18:24.confrontational but there was a bottom line. One of the interesting
:18:24. > :18:26.things about the London Challenge is the type of intervention that worked
:18:26. > :18:33.in different schools depended on where that school was in terms of
:18:33. > :18:39.its developmental spectrum. Some schools benefited from having very
:18:39. > :18:43.expert input about the school improvement, literacy, numerous E,
:18:43. > :18:51.teaching that was very focused on the school and built it. Schools
:18:51. > :18:53.that were coasting with the schools that benefited from being paired
:18:53. > :18:59.with other schools and visited each other. Schools that were good
:19:00. > :19:07.benefited from staff being sent out to conferences and staff going to
:19:07. > :19:10.watch each other teacher. -- teach. In more detail, what do you mean
:19:10. > :19:15.about the lowest performing schools? The lowest performing
:19:15. > :19:19.schools seem to be the ones that benefited most from getting very
:19:19. > :19:25.accurate, expert advice about what was going to give the biggest
:19:25. > :19:28.learning payoff in terms of literacy and numeracy learning mix, the sorts
:19:29. > :19:34.of things that needed to take place for that particular school so it was
:19:34. > :19:40.tailored and expert advice. In Scotland, we do not actually have
:19:40. > :19:42.that level of expert advice in our national system. We have got a
:19:42. > :19:48.national literacy commission which does not have a single literacy
:19:49. > :19:55.research on it. It is like having... It is there to provide
:19:55. > :20:01.advice but can you imagine a health board or committee there to give
:20:01. > :20:05.school advice where the people sitting on it are patient
:20:05. > :20:13.representatives of hospital managers and not single person knows about
:20:13. > :20:17.which drugs work and don't work? With do have teams though. We do not
:20:17. > :20:20.have the right people in the right places. People are having to seek
:20:21. > :20:25.out their own advice because the national advice they are getting is
:20:25. > :20:30.either not accurate or not sufficiently specific to help the
:20:30. > :20:37.schools improved. Presumably they could do this on a Glasgow base,
:20:37. > :20:43.Stephen Curran? Glasgow worked closely with Strathclyde
:20:43. > :20:49.University, yes. I want to hear the thoughts on Dave Berry on what you
:20:49. > :20:54.have had. When you're running schools in East Lothian, do you
:20:54. > :20:59.think that you could have tried this and that? There is a system whereby
:20:59. > :21:03.you can help underperforming schools but that to me is the skin on the
:21:03. > :21:09.top. The real driving force behind this is the empowerment and ink
:21:09. > :21:15.agent of teachers and the ones who run the schools are the teachers. --
:21:15. > :21:19.empowerment and engagement. Having this attention paid to them, they
:21:19. > :21:22.also feel more valued. It is an example of what the Finnish people
:21:22. > :21:27.have been doing, that you make the teachers socially one of the key
:21:27. > :21:31.members of the community, you report them but you don't just reward them
:21:31. > :21:38.with money, you reward them with status and they have the
:21:38. > :21:44.professional drive. But they must be willing to accept quite radical
:21:44. > :21:48.change, don't they? Yes, but I think in London and Finland, there are
:21:48. > :21:52.examples where they think outside the box. Examples of ideas coming in
:21:52. > :21:58.that they must be prepared to accept and they benefit all of the pupils
:21:58. > :22:05.but also the ones that are most disadvantaged. The final strand, we
:22:05. > :22:08.are running out of time, David Woods, what struck me was formally
:22:08. > :22:14.the London Challenge has finished. The funding was cut a couple of
:22:14. > :22:20.years ago but it seems to continue but I don't know what level of
:22:20. > :22:27.formality it operates on. But one of the things emerging, they do not
:22:27. > :22:36.formally need to do it, you affected a change in the whole culture of
:22:36. > :22:40.schooling. Yes, the landscape of London, many schools are in what we
:22:40. > :22:46.called teaching school alliances. There were programmes for everybody.
:22:46. > :22:50.The good schools give support to the week schools but we have a good to
:22:50. > :22:57.great school, why are you not an outstanding school? That is what we
:22:57. > :23:00.would ask them. The outstanding schools in London are beyond
:23:00. > :23:04.outstanding programmes. There is something for everybody. You give
:23:04. > :23:10.and receive that most of all, you collaborate and share best practice
:23:10. > :23:18.and of course, you drive each other on to even better standards and the
:23:18. > :23:25.great strapline is that... I want to bring Stephen Curran in again. You
:23:25. > :23:33.have heard a lot of ideas from Sue Ellis and David Woods. What do you
:23:34. > :23:38.take away from this? We must lift expectations, we have got a great
:23:38. > :23:47.opportunity. Parents must expect more of young people. Not just in
:23:47. > :23:52.Glasgow, it can apply everywhere. Yes, closing the gap, it makes a big
:23:52. > :23:58.difference to the Scottish figures. It is an exciting time for Scottish
:23:58. > :24:01.education. Thank you very much indeed. A quick look at the pages.
:24:01. > :24:11.Most of them at pictures Drummer Lee Rigby killed in the attack in London
:24:11. > :24:12.
:24:12. > :24:18.in Woolwich. A hero father. A loving father who survived war in
:24:18. > :24:24.Afghanistan only to be murdered on a UK street in the Scotsman. In the
:24:24. > :24:30.daily Telegraph, why was he free to kill is the headline and the
:24:30. > :24:40.off-duty soldier knifed to death in the i. That is all we have got time
:24:40. > :24:47.
:24:47. > :24:51.chilly, wet and windy weather on the way for England and Wales to bring
:24:51. > :24:56.this weekend to a close. Scotland and Northern Ireland, a slightly
:24:56. > :25:00.quieter day with lighter winds and a story and warmer in the sunshine. A
:25:00. > :25:03.big contrast between the north and the south. The south-western England
:25:03. > :25:06.and Wales, some brighter spells through the afternoon but it will
:25:06. > :25:11.feel cold because of the lower temperatures and the strong and
:25:11. > :25:14.gusty winds. Across central and eastern areas of England, highs of
:25:14. > :25:17.nine Celsius which will be compromised by the rain and wind. It
:25:17. > :25:24.will feel cold here. For Scotland and Northern Ireland in the sunshine
:25:24. > :25:31.and light breeze, highs of 16 Celsius, it will feel pleasant. For
:25:31. > :25:35.the start of the weekend, an improvement where we lose that wet
:25:35. > :25:41.and windy weather. And for the majority of the UK, we are looking
:25:42. > :25:46.for a fine start to the bank holiday weekend. A chance of some rain
:25:46. > :25:54.pushing into the Northwest but warmer thanks to lighter winds and
:25:55. > :25:58.highs of 17 Celsius. Sunday feeling warmer as well but the chance of