My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families (Ed Balls) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.
I am today launching the National Challenge: a detailed strategy to make sure that parents and pupils experience good standards in all secondary schools, with the expectation that, by 2011, every school will have at least 30 per cent of its pupils achieving five or more higher grade GCSEs, including both English and mathematics. This takes forward a key Children’s Plan commitment. I have placed copies of the relevant documents in the Libraries of both Houses.
Every child deserves a school where there is effective leadership, with a strong focus on the basics: excellent teaching and learning with good discipline. Schools should have a strong ethos which promotes high aspiration and a love of learning. They must develop the talents of all their pupils and be resolute in raising standards, while supporting the needs of every child. The barriers to learning, both inside and out of schools, need to be overcome by excellent co-operation between schools and wider children’s services working seamlessly together.
The National Challenge will help make this a reality for all schools. It will end a culture of failure and low attainment. It will confront complacency and provide incentives for every secondary school to improve.
The National Challenge is founded on the principle that schools themselves must lead the changes necessary to meet the 2011 goal by working effectively, and with other schools, local partners, parents, carers and communities, to make sure every child is supported in a way that secures educational success.
Local authorities will play a central role in the National Challenge. Working with other children’s trust partners, they provide strategic leadership to the schools system locally and bring together all the wider services that enable children to succeed and achieve, and create the environment in which children and families can thrive. Each local authority will need to provide support and challenge to the efforts of schools and take bold steps where necessary to ensure success.
National Challenge schools will be strongly supported. The Government will now deploy £400 million of funding to secure extra support and, where needed, transformational strategies for the most vulnerable secondary schools, with solutions matched to schools’ individual needs and the level of risk that they will not meet the 2011 target. National Challenge schools that is, the 638 currently below the 30 per cent threshold, will be able to draw additional resources, for example in English, maths or behaviour support, to meet their needs. National Challenge schools will also be among the first to benefit from our policies to make teaching a Masters-level profession.
The National Challenge will draw on lessons we have learnt from the success of the London Challenge programme, which has already been extended to Greater Manchester and the Black Country. This has given us experience of working with large numbers of schools in challenging circumstances in some of the most deprived areas of the country. It will also be an opportunity for national leaders of education and other strong heads to play a key role in mentoring and in leading partnerships with weaker schools.
The National Challenge will involve the creation of more partnerships between schools, where a strong school may be funded to drive improvement in a weaker one, developing and sustaining a new culture of excellence. Experience shows that such partnerships—usually cemented as trusts—can deliver substantial and rapid improvements in weak schools. Some National Challenge trusts will involve closure of a weak school, linked to a plan to reopen as a new trust school. Alongside the closure plan, we envisage an improvement partnership led by a strong local school, to build capacity and share good practice. In many cases, a powerful external partner such as a local business or university will also add energy to the trust. National Challenge trusts will receive appropriate additional funding to enable the new school to make a fresh beginning.
In addition, the National Challenge will facilitate an acceleration of the academy programme in areas where it is most needed, and particularly in those schools where previous interventions and support have not worked.
The National Challenge will be supported by a panel of expert advisers, under the chairmanship of Sir Mike Tomlinson, formerly Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Schools. They will provide independent expertise in relation to the most significant problems faced by local authorities with National Challenge schools.
The National Challenge is a vital step towards the Government’s ambitions to achieve world-class standards in all our schools, to put an end to all low educational expectations and complacency, and to enable every child to achieve success and fulfil their potential.