White Paper - a summary

The Importance of Teaching, The Schools White Paper 2010, was published 24 November 2010 with its aim to enact whole-system reform of education in England.

The White Paper celebrates the strengths of the current education system and the many outstanding school teachers and leaders but also highlights the remaining attainment gaps between pupils from different parts of society.

Key aims

The key aims of the government’s plans are to:

free teachers from constraint and improve their professional status and authority
raise the standards set by our curriculum and qualifications to match the best in the world
hold schools effectively to account for the results they achieve
ensure that school funding is fair, with more money for the most disadvantaged
support teachers to learn from one another and from proven best practice

The plans to achieve these aims are summarised below, following the chapter headings of the White Paper.

Teaching and leadership

All the evidence from different education systems around the world shows that the most important factor in determining how well children do is the quality of teachers and teaching. The government will:

Continue to raise the quality of new entrants to the teaching profession, by:
- ceasing to provide Department for Education funding for initial teacher training for those graduates who do not have at least a 2:2 degree or equivalent from September 2012
- expanding Teach First, from 560 new teachers to 1,140 each year by the end of this parliament
- offering financial incentives to attract more of the very best graduates in shortage subjects into teaching
- enabling more talented career changers to become teachers
Ask Teach First to develop Teach Next, a new employment-based route to attract high fliers from other professions. Encouraging armed forces leavers to become teachers, by developing a Troops to Teachers programme, which will sponsor service leavers to train as teachers.
Reform initial teacher training, to increase the proportion of time trainees spend in the classroom and improving and expanding the best of the current school-based routes into teaching. There will be a focus on core teaching skills, especially in teaching reading and mathematics, managing behaviour and responding to pupils’ special educational needs.
Bring together the training school and teaching school models, to create a national network of teaching schools - on the model of teaching hospitals - to lead the training and professional development of teachers and headteachers. The National College will be responsible for quality assuring the work of teaching schools, and will remove accreditation from any school not meeting the standards.
Double the number of National and Local Leaders of Education – headteachers of excellent schools who commit to working to support other schools – by 2015.
Expect teaching schools to draw together outstanding teachers in an area who are committed to supporting other schools. The range of designations (eg advanced skills teachers, excellent teachers) will be re-examined to create a single simple designation which identifies more clearly leading practitioners who work to support others. Alongside this, Specialist Leaders of Education will be designated – excellent professionals in leadership positions below the headteacher (such as deputies, school business managers, heads of department) who will support others in similar positions in other schools.
Through the new teaching schools network, the National College will be expected to enable many more clusters of schools to offer their own high quality middle leader development programmes.
Continue to fund succession planning work (via the teaching schools) in the areas with the biggest challenges.
Ask the National College to review the content of the National Professional Qualification for Headship (NPQH) to make sure that it meets the highest standards for leadership development set in other countries and in other sectors of the economy.
Enhance the National College’s role, asking it to train chairs of governors and leaders of children’s centres. Also, to streamline the National College’s governance so that it becomes an executive agency.
Sharply reduce the bureaucratic burden on schools, cutting away unnecessary duties, processes, guidance and requirements, so that schools are free to focus on doing what is right for the children and young people in their care.
Recognise that schools have always had good pastoral systems and understand well the connections between pupils’ physical and mental health, their safety, and their educational achievement and that they are well placed to make sure additional support is offered to those who need it.
Legislate to remove the duty on schools and colleges to cooperate with Children’s Trusts and abolish the requirement for local authorities to produce a Children and Young People’s Plan. Locally, schools will be relied on to work together with voluntary, business and statutory agencies to create an environment where every child can learn and experience new and challenging opportunities through extended services.
Remove the expectation on every school to complete a centrally designed self-evaluation form (SEF).
Abolish the Financial Management Standard in Schools (FMSiS) because it has become a tick-box paper exercise, and replace it with something simpler and more effective.

Behaviour

The greatest concern voiced by new teachers and a very common reason experienced teachers cite for leaving the profession is poor pupil behaviour. The government will:

Increase the authority of teachers to discipline pupils by strengthening their powers to search pupils, issue same day detentions and use reasonable force where necessary.
Strengthen headteachers’ authority to maintain discipline beyond the school gates, improve exclusion processes and empower headteachers to take a strong stand against bullying, especially racist, homophobic and other prejudice-based bullying.
Change the current system of independent appeals panels for exclusions, so that they take less time and headteachers no longer have to worry that a pupil will be reinstated when the young person concerned has committed a serious offence.
Trial a new approach to exclusions where schools have new responsibilities for the ongoing education and care of excluded children.
Improve the quality of alternative provision, encouraging new providers to set up alternative provision as free schools.
Protect teachers from malicious allegations – speeding up investigations and legislating to grant teachers anonymity when accused by pupils.
Focus Ofsted inspection more strongly on behaviour and safety, including bullying, as one of four key areas. Inspection will consider whether pupils are and feel safe in school.

Curriculum, assessment and qualifications

Raising the status of teachers and giving them renewed freedom and authority will make a significant contribution to improving schools. However, the best performing education systems also set clear expectations for what children must know and be able to do at each stage in their education, and make sure that the standards they set match the best in the world. The government will:

Review the National Curriculum, with the aim of reducing prescription and allowing schools to decide how to teach, while refocusing on the core subject knowledge that every child and young person should gain at each stage of their education.
Academies and free schools will retain the freedom they have at the moment to depart from aspects of the National Curriculum where they consider it appropriate.
Ensure that there is support available to every school for the teaching of systematic synthetic phonics, as the best method for teaching reading.
Ensure that there is proper assessment of pupils at each vital stage of their education, to provide information to parents about how well their child has done and about the effectiveness of schools, and objective evidence for teachers:
- at age 6, a simple test of pupils’ ability to decode words
- at 11, as pupils complete primary education
- at 16 as pupils complete compulsory schooling
Introduce the English baccalaureate to encourage schools to offer a broad set of academic subjects to age 16, whether or not students then go down an academic or vocational route.
Hold an independent review of key stage two testing, seeking to retain a strong basis for accountability and information to parents and secondary schools, while alleviating the damaging effects of over-rehearsal of tests.
Give the independent regulator, Ofqual, the task of making sure that exam standards in this country match the highest standards overseas.
Reform vocational education so that it supports progression to further and higher education and employment, and overhaul our vocational qualifications following Professor Alison Wolf’s review to ensure that they match the world’s best.
Raise to 17 by 2013 and then 18 by 2015 the age to which all young people will be expected to participate in education or training.

The new school system

Across the world, the case for the benefits of school autonomy has been established beyond doubt. In a school system with good quality teachers, flexibility in the curriculum and clearly established accountability measures, it makes sense to devolve as much day-to-day decision-making as possible to the front line. The government will:

Increase freedom and autonomy for all schools, removing unnecessary duties and burdens, and allowing all schools to choose for themselves how best to develop.
Restore for all academies the freedoms they originally had while continuing to ensure a level playing field on admissions particularly in relation to children with special educational needs.
Ensure that the lowest performing schools (attaining poorly and in an Ofsted category or not improving) are considered for conversion to become academies to effect educational transformation.
Dramatically extend the academies programme, opening it up to all schools. Already there are 347 academies, up from 203 in July. All schools – primary and secondary – that wish to benefit from academy freedoms will be able to do so, providing that they work in partnership with a high performing school that will help support improvement, or another sponsor. Every school judged by Ofsted to be outstanding or good with outstanding features which converts into an academy to commit to supporting at least one weaker school in return for academy status. In January 2011, special schools will be invited to apply to become academies as well.
Ensure that there is support for schools increasingly to collaborate through academy chains and multi-school trusts and federations.
Support teachers and parents to set up new free schools to meet parental demand, especially in areas of deprivation. The Department for Communities and Local Government is working with the Department for Education to make it easier to secure land and premises for new schools, and is consulting on changes to planning regulations which will make it easier for schools to be set up in buildings which currently have other uses.
Give local authorities a strong strategic role as champions for parents, families and vulnerable pupils. They will promote educational excellence by ensuring a good supply of high quality school places, co-ordinating fair admissions and developing their own school improvement strategies to support local schools. All state schools, including academies and free schools, are bound by the Admissions Code and participate in fair access protocols.
Consult on a simplified and less prescriptive Admissions Code early in the new year so that a revised code is in place by July 2011.
As academy status becomes the norm, local authorities will increasingly move to a strategic commissioning and oversight role and will have the freedom to define what role they will play in supporting school improvement for local schools.

Accountability

Analysis of the international evidence also demonstrates that, alongside school autonomy, accountability for student performance is critical to driving educational improvement. The government will:

Put far more information into the public domain, so that it is possible to understand a school’s performance more fully than now.
Put an end to the current ‘contextual value added’ (CVA) measure, putting a greater emphasis on the progress of every child.
Place information on expenditure, including the amount allocated per pupil, online.
Reform performance tables so that they set out our high expectations – every pupil should have a broad education (the English baccalaureate), a firm grip of the basics and be making progress.
Institute a new measure of how well deprived pupils do and introduce a measure of how young people do when they leave school.
Require schools to publish comprehensive information online, including for example: admissions information, the school’s curriculum, the school’s phonics and reading schemes, behaviour policy and information about how the school uses the pupil premium.
Reform Ofsted inspection, so that inspectors spend more time in the classroom and focus on key issues of educational effectiveness, rather than the long list of issues they are currently required to consider. The new inspection framework, which will come into force in autumn 2011, will focus on pupil achievement, the quality of teaching, leadership and management, and the behaviour and safety of pupils.
Establish a new ‘floor standard’ for primary and secondary schools, which sets an escalating minimum expectation for attainment. For secondary schools, a school will be below the floor if fewer than 35 per cent of pupils achieve the ‘basics’ standard of 5 A*-C grade GCSEs including English and mathematics, and fewer pupils make good progress between key stage two and key stage four than the national average. For primary schools, a school will be below the floor if fewer than 60 per cent of pupils achieve the ‘basics’ standard of level four in both English and mathematics and fewer pupils than average make the expected levels of progress between key stage one and key stage two.
Make it easier for schools to adopt models of governance which work for them – including smaller, more focused governing bodies, which clearly hold the school to account for children’s progress. The forthcoming Education and Children’s Bill will legislate so that all schools can establish these smaller governing bodies. The National College will offer high quality training for chairs of governors.

School improvement

Over recent years, centralised approaches to improving schools have become the norm. Government has tended to lead, organise and systematise improvement activity seeking to ensure compliance with its priorities. The primary responsibility for improvement rests with schools, and the wider system should be designed so that our best schools and leaders can take on greater responsibility, leading improvement work across the system. The government will:

Make clear that schools – governors, headteachers and teachers – have responsibility for improvement. We will end the requirement for every school to have a local authority school improvement partner (SIP) and end the current centralised target-setting process.
Instead, increase the number of National and Local Leaders of Education – headteachers of excellent schools committed to supporting other schools – from 1,154 to approximately 3,000 over the next four years. Develop teaching schools to make sure that every school has access to highly effective professional development support.
Make it easier for schools to learn from one another, through publishing ‘families of schools’ data from next year for every part of the country, setting out in detail how similar schools in a region perform, so that schools can identify from whom it is possible to learn.
Make sure that schools have access to evidence of best practice, high-quality materials and improvement services, which they can choose to use.
Free local authorities to provide whatever forms of improvement support they choose.
Ensure that schools below the floor standard receive support, and ensure that those which are seriously failing, or unable to improve their results, are transformed through conversion to academy status.
Encourage local authorities and schools to bring forward applications to the new Education Endowment Fund for funding for innovative projects to raise the attainment of deprived children in underperforming schools.
Establish a new collaboration incentive, worth £35 million each year, which financially rewards schools which effectively support weaker schools and demonstrably improve their performance.
As the National Strategies and other field forces come to an end, support a new market of school improvement services with a much wider range of providers and services available for schools to choose from.

School funding

Our school funding system needs radical reform to make it more transparent, fairer and progressive. The government will:

Target more resources on the most deprived pupils over the next four years, through a new pupil premium. In total, we will be spending £2.5 billion per year on the pupil premium by the end of the spending review period.
Consult, in the spring of 2011, on developing and introducing a clear, transparent and fairer national funding formula based on the needs of pupils, to work alongside the pupil premium.
Ensure that considerations of possible reforms to the school funding system take into account the needs of vulnerable pupils, such as those with highly complex special educational needs and those being educated outside mainstream education.
In the meantime, increase the transparency of the current funding system by showing both how much money schools receive and what they spend their funds on.
End the disparity in funding for 16-18 year olds, so that schools and colleges are funded at the same levels as one another.
Subject to legislation, replace the existing Young People’s Learning Agency and set up a new Education Funding Agency (EFA) as an executive agency of the Department for Education, with responsibility for the direct funding of the growing number of academies and free schools and all 16-19 provision.
Take forward the conclusions of the review of capital spending, cutting bureaucracy from the process of allocating capital funding and securing significantly better value for money. Over the next four years there will be a 60 per cent real terms reduction in education capital spending, although £15.8 billion will be spent between 2011-12 and 2014-15.
Expect schools to save at least £1 billion on procurement and back office spend by 2014-15. Obtaining the services of a high quality business manager should be a priority for all governors and headteachers, unless there is someone in the management team with the relevant skills to undertake the role.