If William Beveridge were commissioned to write another report into Britain’s social ills, he would find that two of his ‘giant evils’ — ignorance and idleness — still stalk and shame Britain.
If William Beveridge were commissioned to write another report into Britain’s social ills, he would find that two of his ‘giant evils’ — ignorance and idleness — still stalk and shame Britain. At the time, one might have argued that this was because schools lacked enough money or because the economy was a ruin. But today, when schools enjoy record funding and immigrants occupy one in seven jobs, only one conclusion can be drawn: that the welfare state has been incubating the very evils it was designed to eradicate. It betrays our country’s most vulnerable people. David Cameron has committed himself to reversing this.
His social agenda — led by Michael Gove in education and Iain Duncan Smith in welfare — is as bold as any we have seen since the creation of the welfare state. But there are disconcerting signs about the pace of reform. In welfare, a ten-year plan has been announced: a disconcertingly leisurely timetable for a government that can by no means count on lasting the full decade. And in education, the battle is fierce — and the government undermanned. There are signs of reforms being watered down, and a slower pace of change adopted.
This week, Gove released a White Paper on education full of laudable ideas: the importance of teacher training, emphasis on discipline and a less proscriptive curriculum. But what makes him think the system will do as he says? The great secret is that the Education Secretary does not control education: power lies in the hands of local authorities and the unions.
Any top-down solution, no matter how sensible, is usually doomed. Reform cannot come from bureaucratic edict, but by competition. Tony Blair confesses as much in his memoirs: ‘Structures beget standards.’ All the White Papers in the world won’t make a difference. The problem is not what instructions are fed into the system — the problem is the system. The remedy is competition between schools, the type envisaged by Gove’s ‘free schools’ agenda based on the Swedish system and the American charter schools movement. If they are free to set up, and the road is cleared for them to compete with unpopular schools, then all else follows.
Smaller schools will set up, and they’d be free to poach (and properly pay) extraordinary headmasters such as the one Dennis Sewell interviews on page 20. When free schools reach about 10 per cent of the national total, a tipping point will be reached — where competition becomes real, and the race to the top begins. So it was alarming to hear Gove talk about ‘very, very few’ free schools. Several hundred are needed. Plans to directly fund all schools, cutting the councils out of the loop, appear to have vanished.
There is no doubt Gove is going as fast as he can, but his ambition is now swimming its way through the quagmire of the Civil Service. His leaky department is either hostile to his agenda, or too incompetent to implement it. The unions, by contrast, are fighting an energetic, below-the-radar campaign to crush each new school that wants to open. It will be a peculiar feeling for Gove: to be in office, in a £650 billion government, yet still be undermanned and outgunned.
Anyone can announce a bold reform agenda, or a sparkling ten-year plan. The mark of a transformative Prime Minister is the ability to deliver it. Cameron must realise that the Gove agenda is mission-critical to the coalition, and that no dilution should be tolerated. Britain is four times as wealthy as it was when Beveridge was commissioned: there is no economic excuse for the ignorance of school-leavers. The problems are political — and the Prime Minister should not let bureaucratic obstacles dampen his ambition.
Towering ambition
Soon London will be the proud owner of Europe’s tallest building. In two weeks, the concrete core of the Shard at London Bridge will reach 235 feet, matching Canary Wharf as the country’s highest construction; soon afterwards — in 2012, it is hoped — the glass spire will soar up to 310 metres, 61 metres higher than Europe’s current sky-scraping champion, the Commerzbank Tower in Frankfurt.
But though we should by all means revel in outdoing our European friends, the reality is that the Shard is less a monument to British success, than a warning against hubris. First sketched on the back of a restaurant menu by the architect Renzo Piano in 2000, the tower was at first intended to be an expression of London’s great financial resurgence. By the time it came to laying the Shard’s foundations, the City’s fortunes had deteriorated and the project struggled for funding. It is now only nearing completion thanks to a £50 million investment from Qatar. But it can nonetheless act as a beacon — a reminder in the current gloom that the good times will come again. Remember that for several years after its optimistic erection in 1991, Canary Wharf’s main tower remained desolate. Today, even in these dismal times, the Wharf is thriving. Perhaps we should save our celebration of the Shard until 2031, when it presides over a once more prosperous Britain.
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