Ten years ago, Tony Blair entered Downing Street promising a policy agenda focused on ‘education, education, education'. He leaves office with school spending reaching almost £1.2bn a week and social inequality rife within a centralised bureaucracy.
The extent of disengagement in our classrooms is shocking. By the final year of GCSEs, 7,000 children have dropped out of school and 30,000 are not entered for exams.
Of those who do sit their GCSEs, 29,800 pupils do not gain any qualifications, a rise of 6,600 from 2005.
Pupils taking free school meals and those with special educational needs are most likely to be the victims of disengagement and educational failure. Indeed, statistics show that 41% of persistent truants have SEN, as do 64% of excluded pupils. In 695 wards across the country – mostly in inner-city areas of deprivation – the percentage of pupils gaining five GCSEs of any grade has actually fallen. More than one-quarter (27%) of boys do not gain a single GCSE above a C grade, together with a total of 130,000 pupils.
Furthermore, failure is not the domain of the bottom quarter. Although the Government is proud to declare the number of pupils gaining five GCSE grades A* and C, including English and maths has increased, it has omitted to mention that nearly 334,600 pupils – almost half of all pupils sitting GCSEs – did not reach the acceptable level of functional English and maths.
In my opinion, any system which fails so many must be labelled not fit for purpose. So, what can be done to engage these overlooked children?
One way would be to raise the status and quality of practical learning across all schools. This should not mean the academic curriculum becomes less rigorous but the value of practical learning is more highly recognised and used as a tool to engage less academic pupils.
Good practical learning means tapping into the latent skills and experience of the business community to generate credible content and work placements.
The most effective conduit to achieve this is to give local authorities the power to develop learning programmes which reflect local economies.
But getting buy-in from local businesses will be tough. Gordon Brown's much-heralded summer enterprise camps promised participation of 3,000 businesses, but failed when just 236 businesses signed up.
Children's services and economic development departments should become the primary gateway for local public services to engage with small businesses. They require the power to offer business rate exemptions for small businesses hoping to participate with local learning programmes. This would be incentive enough for many small businesses. Business rates are the third-largest item of expenditure for many, and the burden of business rates falls heavily on the smallest.
Central government would need to be prepared to meet the costs of the shortfall in revenue. Perhaps worst hit would be the Learning and Skills Council (LSC). It's main aim is to improve the skills of England's young people. However, out of a budget of £10.4bn in 2006, only £8.6bn of this money reaches the frontline. A staggering £1.8bn is spent on staff costs.
If Brown's Government wants to prove its localist credentials, then it needs to realise that education spending alone will not raise standards. It's now time to give local authorities real power to reach out to business and build practical learning programmes which are both credible and practical for the local economy.
Nick Cuff is a Conservative councillor on Wandsworth LBC