Speech to the North of England Education Conference by Tristram Hunt MP, Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary
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Thank you.
It is a great pleasure to be invited here to Nottingham. 
The city where King Charles I chose to raise his standard in 1642 against a dangerous clique of zealous ideologues bent on centralising authority, imposing unwelcome forms of discipline, and with a very divisive view of the saved and the fallen.
So very different from public policy today…
Also a city, I know from Graham Allen MP, carrying out fantastic work in seeking to break cycles of disadvantage by focusing in a holistic way on the early years of children’s lives; at the same time as confronting the challenge thrown up by recent Ofsted inspections. 
Today I want to talk to you about the Labour Party’s vision for education, where teaching and learning fits within our broader purpose of building a strong society and growing economy, and how we intend to place motivated, skilled and professional teachers at the core of that strategy. 
My argument is that the surest way to raise our children’s attainment is to boost the status, elevate the standing and enhance the standards of the teaching profession. 
 
Purpose of Education
Let me begin with the purpose of education and the Labour movement. 
For it never does any harm for politicians to stress their personal and political conviction in the value of education – and their profound admiration for those who deliver it. 
Whether it be William Lovett’s Chartist Schools, R.H Tawney and the Workers Educational Association, Anthony Crosland and the Comprehensive Movement, or Andrew Adonis’s Sponsored Academy Programme; the belief in the emancipatory power of schooling, its ability to lift people out of poverty and deliver social justice, has always been core to the Labour movement. 
Instilling a sense of history and shared fate; encouraging cultural literacy and reflection; the maintenance of community, nation and place - in all of these what takes place in the classroom, on the school trip and at the sports day plays an essential role.  
Equally importantly, a rich experience at school is vital to empowering citizens with the positive freedom necessary to know their own mind and choose how they want to live their life.
And that, writ large, leads to a fairer, more democratic society. 
Yet, simply to list its uses does not describe the nature of what education is - something valuable in and of itself. 
Indeed, one of the many attractions of Ed Miliband’s One Nation approach to our politics is a revival of an older argument that everything of value is not reducible to price.
“There is no wealth but life” as John Ruskin once said. 
As John Dewey, the American educationalist, put it: “Education in its broadest sense, is the means of the social continuity of life”. 
What Dewey captures here is the power of education as one of the most important ties that bind us together - a union between past and future generations in a continuous, learning community.
In short, education exerts a vast social value on the public realm.  
And as an educator myself, there also resides that great wonder of watching how skills, knowledge and confidence emerge in a student. 
How one step in understanding can lead to another; how learners start to take themselves beyond the curriculum; and then start to inform your own understanding of the subject and ability to teach it. 
 
Need for Education
But with one million young people unemployed and – as the recent OECD PISA report revealed – growing international competition, we also have an urgent need for schools that can deliver the kind of strong society and growing economy the Labour Party is committed to. 
So we don’t forget: in the latest results we are 21st amongst 65 participants in the world for science, 23rd for reading and 26th for mathematics. 
And we know, from both Alan Milburn’s recent report for the Government’s Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission and the latest Ofsted findings, that there are huge areas of unfulfilled potential across England. 
The solution, of course, lies in an education system that delivers for all learners from all parts of the country. 
And that has certainly been the impetus for Labour’s focus on the forgotten 50% – those hundreds of thousands of young people who will not pursue a university route, more interested in vocational and technical pathways. 
That is why the task that we have, to develop a new political economy which shows how we can earn our way out of the cost-of-living crisis, is so important.
Because if we are successful, then educational supply and economic demand will be reconnected. And it is teachers who can play a role as ‘architects of growth.’
Which is why in November I set out our vision for delivering excellence in vocational education, which would see FE colleges that demonstrate a strong record in specialist teaching, good links with local employers, and high quality English and Maths provision recognised as Institutes of Technical Education, able to offer young people a gold-standard vocational route. 
And Chris Husbands of the Institute of Education will be reporting in the spring for Labour’s Skills Taskforce on our plans for a 14-19 framework and a technical baccalaureate able to meet those requirements. 
 
It’s the Teaching, Stupid
But when it comes to raising standards in schools, the Labour Party will be adopting a different approach to the current Government. 
The last few years has witnessed a relentless focus on structural change in our schooling system. 
I am told there is a large map in the Department for Education – not of a World War I battlefield – but of all the schools that have converted to Academy status or sprung up as free schools. 
As if the job of educational improvement is done when another dot is put on the map and the name of a school is changed. 
But surely what the OECD PISA analysis proved was that, as Andreas Schleicher puts it, no education system can exceed the quality of its teachers.
Yes, innovation, leadership and autonomy (underpinned by safeguards and minimum standards) matter enormously, but it is teacher quality that must be the priority for public policy. 
Not just on the grounds of raising standards – but also because of Labour’s driving belief in social justice. 
We know that children from disadvantaged backgrounds suffer most from poor teaching in the classroom. 
Without social capital or parental input to fall back upon, the classroom provides the essential lifeline for their prospects of further education, apprenticeships and work. 
In short, disadvantaged children deserve top quality teaching. 
And the good news is that we now have one of the best generations of teachers and headteachers this country has ever seen.
However, my priority as Education Secretary in the next Labour Government would be to make sure we have ‘a world class teacher in every classroom’ - a highly qualified, inspiring, self-motivating and dedicated professional workforce. 
Our starting point must be a commitment to ensuring that all teachers in our schools are qualified. So under a Labour Government, all teachers in state schools would have qualified teacher status or be working towards it.
Under a Labour Government you would not have the scandal of an Academy school advertising for an ‘Unqualified Maths Teacher.’  
But we also need to look at new ways of getting the best people into teaching and the best teachers into under-performing schools. 
We need to make sure that Initial Teacher Training is preparing teachers properly for school pressures, in particular when it comes to classroom management and discipline.
But QTS is the minimum we should expect. 
That is the beginning of a teacher’s professional development. 
So, what I can announce today is that under a Labour Government, teachers would be expected to undertake regular professional development throughout their careers in order to keep their skills and knowledge up to date. Re-validating the expertise of teachers would bring them into line with other high-status, mature professions such as lawyers, doctors and accountants.
This policy is not about bashing teachers. This is about elevating teachers to be all they can and should be – professionals whose job is so important it requires the very highest standards. 
It is also about righting a historic wrong on teacher development that has held us back for too long. 
The Institute of Education finds that the ‘proportion of teacher time devoted to CPD in England is lower than in the best-performing school systems.’ 
And the Education Select Committee argues that ‘successive education ministers have neglected CPD and focused overly much on initial teacher training.’
No more.
For in subjects as fast-moving as Information Technology or the science of climate change; with new understandings of cognitive development and literacy strategies emerging – we need our teachers up to date and across the most effective techniques.
I think Ian Fenn, the head teacher of Burnage Media Arts College in Manchester, has caught the essence of my proposals well:
He said: “I think that if we can see this as a way of validating the profession, of developing ourselves into becoming better practitioners, then it’s to be welcomed ….”
I can tell Mr Fenn and colleagues today, that is exactly what we hope the policy will entail.    
However, we are absolutely committed to getting the details of this proposal right.
So between now and 2015 we will be consulting with teachers, professional bodies and trade unions on the criteria for re-validation, the mechanisms for implementation and how best to raise the standard of professional development on offer.
In particular, we believe that the proposed profession-led Royal College of Teaching might have an important and independent role to play in this process.
But this also demands a broader conversation about what kind of CPD works; how does it sit with an annual appraisal process; what is the best mix between school-based professional development and external support; and what systems of support and collaboration it requires? 
What is more, when it comes to retaining top teachers in the classroom, we also need more effective policies to ensure we have sufficient career pathways available.
Teachers who want to build their expertise in a particular subject or pedagogical practice should be given the opportunity to progress in their careers whilst staying in the classroom. 
So we would create a framework of new career pathways for teachers ‘taking inspiration from’ career progression routes in Singapore, one of the world’s leading education systems.  And also learning the lesson and building on the best of the Advanced Skills Teacher model.
 
Future of Teaching
We need these reforms not simply because of the challenge of PISA and Ofsted.
Super-fast broadband; affordable tablet computers; interactive textbooks; adaptive-learning software; big data - there is a perfect storm of emerging technologies that possess the power to transform the way teachers carry out their craft and young people learn.  
Imagine, for a second, a school where every lesson can be tailored to the needs of each individual pupil simultaneously; a school where data about the effectiveness of different pedagogical approaches can be delivered to teachers in real time; a school where teachers have been liberated from the yoke of marking exercise books. 
There will be no need to imagine it for long - all of this and more is upon the horizon. 
What is more, thanks to the Internet, the entire history of human achievement, the collective knowledge of civilisation; every intellectual enquiry, every practical enterprise and every artistic endeavour is available to all at the swipe of a finger. 
In the 21st century, success will depend as much upon what you can do with what you know, as what you know. 
A Princeton University study has shown how the demands for skills have changed in the workplace. 
It showed a sharp increase in demand for non-routine analytic and interactive skills. Employers reported that they needed people who were innovative, flexible and team players.
So if, on the one hand, the forces of technology will encourage us to rethink some classroom techniques, we also know that some very ancient ideals of education are returning to vogue. 
Whether we call it resilience, character, or mindfulness; whether we talk about social skills or emotional intelligence, it is clear that what employers want from young people and what points to further educational achievement is a range of attributes which often cannot be configured within 5 A*-C.
Do not mistake me: I would never give an inch on the importance of getting the academic basics right. 
Literacy and numeracy are fundamental to the life chances of young people in my constituency or here in Nottingham. 
And as the work of Daniel T Willingham from the University of Virginia has shown, there is a vital relationship between critical thinking and knowledge.  Thought processes are intertwined with what is being thought about.  Knowledge enhances cognitive processes like problem solving and reasoning.
What is more, I think the Government has made a step in the right direction with its focus on the ‘Best Eight’ of subjects for GCSE bench-marking. 
And I am equally encouraged by the move away from the C/D borderline and different levels of assessment. 
And, unlike some Government ministers, I will not be interested in change just for change sake. 
But what I am concerned about is, first of all, the threat to creative subjects in the curriculum (which I hope Best 8 will address). 
And then the broader range of activities which schools and youth services can provide to build exactly those classical attributes that a good education delivers. 
Geography fieldwork; practical lab-work; extended projects; the speaking component of English GCSE; music; art; team sports – this is some of the terrain currently being taken out of schooling, which can only impact upon young people’s development as rounded, inquiring, creative individuals. 
For in practically every other country ‘broad’ educational frameworks are currently being drawn up that, in the words of former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, “combine a mix of ‘old-fashioned skills and knowledge’, such as numeracy and literacy, with ‘twenty-first-century’ skills, such as using digital tools to research and solve problems”.
Which brings me back to the fundamental importance of teaching. 
With the growth of technology in the classroom, alongside the need to develop character and resilience, the role of the teacher is set to undergo something of a transformation.
Increasingly, teachers could become more like a coach or a mentor than an instructor, project designers and subject specialists, putting the fuller development of the person at the very centre of what they do.
Technology does not remove the need for human contact; it makes socialising the education experience all the more important.
So, our continued professional development policy is not a bureaucratic exercise to box-tick teachers; it is about a policy to best prepare teachers for the 21st century.
 
Death Knell for Low Expectations
And none of it is impossible.
Because what very recent history also shows us is that our schools and teachers are also capable of delivering quite remarkable improvements when the policy is right and the profession is motivated.   
For another vital component of the Labour Party’s vision for education is a truly collaborative education system, where schools, communities and parents work together to raise standards.  
But we saw what collaboration and hard-edged partnership could do with the remarkable success of London Challenge – turning around life-chances for young people in Tower Hamlets, Hackney and Haringey. 
We have seen it work with the Raising Achievement Transforming Lives programme and the networks previously brought together by the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust . 
We have seen it at a with the collaborative approaches of forward-thinking local authorities, such as Wigan. 
And where challenge and collaboration work we begin to see the shameful link between economic status and educational attainment break down altogether. 
Background does not define their destiny. Poverty placing no caps upon individual aspiration. 
That is what Labour wants for our whole education system – and we have seen that it is possible. 
Because whether it be the highest performing jurisdictions in the PISA survey or the most successful local authorities in England, it is now clear that there is no policy choice which needs to be made between doing well for some young people and doing well for all. 
Educational excellence for all is attainable.  
And I have seen it. I have seen it at Woodside High School in Wood Green, London; the RSA Academy in Tipton; St Augustine’s Junior School in Worksop.
When we get things right, we do make a difference. 
When schools come together in networks of challenge and collaboration, working together to raise standards and root out underperformance, we make a difference.
When outstanding headteachers are given the freedom to innovate and make decisions about what is best for their pupils without undue interference from politicians, civil servants or local authorities, we make a difference.
But most of all, when highly qualified and motivated teachers are trusted to awaken the passion for learning that a strong society and a growing economy so desperately need, we make a difference. 
It is outstanding teachers in exceptional schools that have offered us this tantalising glimpse of what is possible.
It is they who have sounded a death knell for low expectations.
The Labour Party is committed to following their example. 
And we believe that it begins with great teachers challenging, inspiring and educating young people in the classroom.