Citizenship, a lost bag and an act of kindness: a good news story

It's never been the stuff of this blog to go 'personal' but I must relate this story of human kindness, honesty and optimism. Just in case you've put down the newspaper or turned away from the rolling news with its tales of dishonesty, dishonour and the rest - a world where nobody can be trusted, everybody has their snout in the trough and integrity is forever the victim of greed (be it the banker, the politician, the tax evader or the benefits cheat).

Today we got back from our holiday - a lovely week in Madeira, in which we'd experienced nothing but friendliness from everybody we met. It was a lovely journey back even if we were met by a rainy Monday afternoon - our bags came straight off the belt (always a sign that things are going well).  We grabbed them and the connecting bus to London Luton Airport's APCOA mid-term car park. We were home in an hour and all seemed well until we realised, an hour later, that our gadget bag (laptop, iPad, kindle, camera, the boys' 3DS consoles and their games - you get the picture) was missing. I never thought that I knew so many expletives or that I could utter them so quickly: £3,000 or more of kit and a whole lot more personal and professional history, up in smoke.  I'd left the bag behind - either on the connecting bus, at the bus stop or by the car.

Well, the world is not as dark as the papers and the TV tell us; somebody spotted the bag - a lovely woman, who left a message that I only picked up after I'd started heading back to the airport. She had checked the contents, realised their value and found my mobile number on a Breslin business card. She handed the bag in to the APCOA team, who also left a message, one that I only picked up when I arrived back at the airport.

People at airports are in a hurry, rushing to catch a flight or to get home - we were hurrying to get home, but also, and critically, to get into the car and out of the rain. I don't know whether she was intent on catching a flight or getting home or, like us, just out of the rain but the heroine in this story didn't rush - or at least stopped rushing - to check the contents of our bag, to find our contact details, to make the phone call and to walk the length of the car park - and airport car parks are long - to hand our bag in; an act of kindness, generosity, honesty - everything that we are told day-in and day-out has vanished from our society; it hasn't and the lovely man in the car park office told me that similar expensive kit and personal valuables are handed in every day.

Some readers of this blog will know that I spent nine years leading a wonderful charity called the Citizenship Foundation; the core belief that drove - and sill drives - that great organisation is that the prosperity of society depends not simply on GDP but on the active committed, effective engagement of individuals as citizens.  By this way of thinking, society needs people who are, to draw on the title of the Foundation's primary school programme - "go-givers" not just "go-getters".  The woman who handed in our bag is a go-giver - she may be a go-getter too and there's no harm in that but I have no way of knowing.  But I do know that she took 30 or perhaps 45 minutes out of her airport rush for somebody, a family, she didn't know.  And, she is not alone; as other forgetful users of Luton's airport car parks can gratefully testify.

Perhaps its not just about building the 'big' or 'good' society but realising, in spite of the headlines, that there is much to reaffirm about the society we already have, albeit that we can't and shouldn't duck the responsibility of working together to 'fix' the bits that are not working. I suspect far more people would have given the bag in than made off with it, as the popular narrative might have us believe.

I'm relieved that citizenship is alive and thriving, and that kindness, generosity, integrity, trust and honesty are as well;  I'm also relieved to have that laptop, my wife's i-pad and the boys' 3DS consoles. Phew, you bet I am!

Child poverty: what do young people have to say about it?

Breslin Public Policy release new paper on child poverty

We are pleased to announce the publication of our new paper, A Series of Doors: young people talking about the experience of poverty, based on work originally undertaken for the Office of the Children's Commissioner, as part of their response to the government consultation on child poverty conducted earlier this year.

We reproduce the News Release that we have just issued and commend the views of the young people to all with an interest in this area.

News release

For Immediate Release: 16 July 2013

New publication

“A Series of Doors”

Young people talking about the experience of poverty

A Breslin Public Policy paper[1] informed by work carried out for the Office of the Children’s Commissioner[2] as part of its response to a government consultation on child poverty[3]

Poverty is like a series of doors. One door is being poor, another door is being autistic, another door is being a young carer; another door is living in a bad area… The more doors there are, the more keys are needed to open them and people don’t care enough to make the effort to open them all

As this comment demonstrates, children and young people who experience poverty can be highly articulate and insightful about their lives, but their voices are too seldom heard, especially by those in power.  At the invitation of the Office of the Children’s Commissioner, we brought a group of these young people together in Westminster to help inform policy. In this paper their voices are given prominence. They reflect on the issues that matter to them: Money, Access to services, Education, Employment, Community and home life, Aspirations, Access to transport, Networks.

Dr. Maggie Atkinson, Children’s Commissioner for England, said:

Under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, every child and young person has the right to express his or her views, and to have those views heard and taken seriously. That right is hugely important for those who live in poverty and on the margins of society. This document provides a powerful example of the fundamental and essential job of amplifying their voices

Dr Tony Breslin, Director of Breslin Public Policy, said:

The voices of children and young people continue to be excluded from debate about their experience. Much of the literature on child and family poverty is pertinent and incisive, but comparatively little of it presents the voices of first hand experience

These young people were thoughtful, articulate, provocative and insightful. They contributed their views in an inspiringly positive and participative spirit, and it was a privilege to work with them. Their energy and honesty deserves close and sincere support from all who have the power to help make a difference to their lives

Kate Green, Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Poverty, said:

This paper is a wake-up call to all of us charged with the responsibility of addressing the challenges of poverty as experienced by children and young people. Too often, we conduct an adult-to-adult debate that ignores where poverty hits hardest - on children and young people

The paper, and the associated report to the Office of the Children’s Commissioner, can be accessed through the links in the Endnotes below.

Contacts

Tony Breslin, Breslin Public Policy: 07973 885 915; tony.breslin@breslinpublicpolicy.com

Kevin Harris, Breslin Public Policy: 0773 042 9993; kevin.harris@breslinpublicpolicy.com

We will be pleased to arrange access to young people who participated in the event and are prepared to speak about their experience of poverty.

---

[1] The paper, A Series of Doors, is available at:

http://www.breslinpublicpolicy.com/images//ASeriesofDoors.pdf

[2] A Series of Doors is based on an event held in February 2013 organised by Breslin Public Policy for the Office of the Children’s Commissioner. It uses direct quotations from the children and young people recorded on the day, together with some comments from supporting adults who accompanied them, and written contributions made by the participants during a specially designed workshop activity on the day.

[3] The report produced by Breslin Public Policy for the Office of the Children’s Commissioner, Young People Talking About Poverty, is available at:

http://www.breslinpublicpolicy.com/images//YoungPeopleTalkingAboutPoverty.pdf

Ed Miliband and the re-building of trust in politics

Today's speech by Ed Miliband is powerful stuff and an honest, appropriate response to Falkirk but this is not just about 'Labour and the Unions'. Below I share more of my personal experience than is usual on this 'company' blog - experience of Labour's Parliamentary selection process itself. I've framed it as an 'open letter to Ed Miliband'; in fact, it's an open letter to all in politics...

Trust in Politics and the selection of Labour Party Parliamentary Candidates

An open letter to Ed Miliband

Dear Ed

We worked together when you were Minister for the Third Sector at the Cabinet Office and I was CEO at the independent charity, the Citizenship Foundation.  I have been a member of the party since the age of 16 and have long held a commitment to the importance of political engagement in all its guises.

My own recent experience of the Labour Party's parliamentary selection process has, though, been extremely disheartening - not because of the behaviour of some trade unions (which you are right to tackle and challenge) but because of the behaviour of a local party so determined to install a favoured candidate (one named as such on the ‘inside’ from the beginning) that it failed to long list a range of talented candidates on the grounds that it had been overwhelmed with applications. It subsequently provided local members with a shortlist of two (which hardly amounts to a 'list' at all), who then selected the long-tipped individual, the one that the local party had sought to 'protect' from challenge throughout the process.  This individual may prove to be a terrific candidate but they deserve to pass the test of a fair, rigorous process and others deserve the right to enter the contest.

My request from the local party for feedback was refused (I was told that detailed notes were not taken and no scoring mechanism was used – it seemed that standard equal opportunities practice had yet to influence the process of selecting parliamentary candidates, at least in some local Labour Parties) and discussions with the regional party proved fruitless because the local party had, I was assured, 'followed the (now revised) rules'. Conveniently, this selection was held under the ‘old’ process, one that was revamped earlier this year.

My point is that the commitment to deal with those who seek to unfairly install candidates on behalf of trade unions  (while welcome) is insufficient if it is not matched with a commitment to reform local party selection itself, to tackle local (albeit declining) fiefdoms and to end that other privileged (and increasingly dominant) route into parliament - from intern to think tank to special adviser to safe seat.

Open primaries may or may not be an answer (and I think that it is right to explore their potential) but, as you argue, a better and more open, more inclusive politics certainly is.  As somebody who has worked on the ‘project’ of building trust in politics for over a decade and who now works as a public policy analyst committed to opening up access to politics, I would welcome the opportunity to discuss these issues with you and to assist the party's efforts in this regard.

I do hope that whoever is charged with sifting responses to your speech passes this one to you.  In any case, I welcome the debate that you have started.

Best wishes in all that you are seeking to do.

Yours,

Tony Breslin

Director

Breslin Public Policy Limited

0330 660 0525 / 07973 885 915

tony.breslin@breslinpublicpolicy.com

www.breslinpublicpolicy.com

Apprenticeships and Vocational Education programmes: destinations of choice for middle class learners?

Monday was the start of National Apprenticeship Week and, courtesy of an invitation from Fred Grindrod of the the TUC's UnionLearn team, I spent the morning at their Annual Apprenticeship Conference.  As the son of a skilled manual worker - my father was a fitter and turner in the factories of North and West London - and the recently appointed chair of a new awarding body, Industry Qualifications, the future of apprenticeships is of personal and profession interest. That future is closely tied to the value that we place on skilled manual work and, in what some might consider to be the language of an earlier age, on 'craft' and 'trade'.

The truth is that, as a society, we have never given the kind of status to craft and trade that we ought to have. No matter that today's apprenticeships lead, rightly, to far more than the factory floor and that they flourish in other areas, notably the service sectors. For too long white-collar has triumphed over blue-collar, academic over vocational, professional over technical, lawyer over engineer.  Too often young people who end up on a 'vocational' curriculum have landed there because they have fallen off the parallel but higher status 'academic' track; sometimes, they have ended up on a "work related" programme because they have been thrown off the mainstream curriculum for behavioural reasons: "throw the naughty boys a car engine" goes the cry. How, if that is the kind of curricular and behaviour management practice that we condone, will we ever 'sell' engineering and science as high status degree options?

After the better part of two decades championing the advantages of (an academic) higher education, we are beginning to question whether this is the only way to "widen participation".  Clearly, high quality, rigorously assessed vocational pathways, such as those offered by the apprenticeship framework, can offer a viable alternative - and an attractive one to young people given the emergence of university fees, student debt and graduate unemployment.

But our snobbery is longstanding.  The Education Secretary's utterances on his (not entirely satisfied) aspirations for the National Curriculum Review and his late, unlamented E-Bac have reinforced a hierarchy of knowledge in which the less conventionally academic is for the less able and in which, for the middle classes, vocational 'options' are for other people's children.

How can we, in National Apprenticeship Week, address this? Four concrete steps might help:

1. Recast what we mean by 'breadth' in curricular terms - 10 GCSEs or four A levels is not a broad curriculum but 10 (or four) variations on a theme  - "Vocational Education" should be redefined as "Professional and Vocational Education" (an unashamed re-pitch to the middle classes) with every young person having a professional and vocational element to their studies at Key Stage 4 and 5;
2. Build a new partnership between schools and FE colleges, such that we create genuinely integrated 14-19 pathways that allow us to make this new breadth a reality;
3. Place authenticity at the heart of this new curriculum entitlement with internships, mentoring programmes, work shadowing opportunities and work experience placements at the heart of what our education system offers, such that these become a central component of the education of every young person;
4. Embrace Andrew Adonis's call, made at the conference, for a root and branch overhaul of Careers Education - and of Information, Advice and Guidance services for young people more broadly - and for the extension of UCAS's role such that it becomes the national broker for apprenticeships as well as for higher education opportunities - the better integration of tracks from any apprenticeship pathway into higher education ought to be one thing that should follow from this.

Taken together, these steps might just begin to make professional and vocational pathways, such as those offered through apprenticeships, the chosen progression options for an increasing number of aspirational, middle class students and their parents.  

Only when we achieve this can we begin to move towards a better parity between the academic and vocational domains.  Lord Adonis is right to argue that as many young people should progress into apprenticeships as into higher education.  It is vital, though, that each track attracts learners from across the social range. Widening participation doesn't just mean getting working class and minority ethnic students into university; it means a broader social mix entering the full range of educational and training pathways that a reinvigorated approach to professional and vocational education can offer.

Annual GCSE results debate misses the point: passes matter when we're clear on purpose

Without the annual GCSE and A level results season, bad weather and an off-message Prince, what would the press report in August? It is depressing, though, that while (until last August, at least) the results have improved year-on-year, the media and political treatment of this story has not.

Let's start with a bit of context: we've spent the best part of 25 years building an educational culture that has replaced the 3 'R's with the 3 'T's: tests, tables and targets; not all the outcomes of this shift have been negative but we should be wary of one: exams designed to assess the progress and ability of individual students are being increasingly translated into devices for assessing the effectiveness of teachers and schools.  Against such a backdrop, a degree of 'teaching to the test' is inevitable.

Moreover, when schools are cast in competition with each other and where teachers can select the syllabuses their students follow by choosing between examination boards that are also competitors, the rigour of the examination itself is an easy victim - schools that select tough examinations will get fewer passes and be assumed to be worse schools with worse teachers; examination boards that design tough exams, or even overly innovative ones, will lose customers.  In a market that is worth more than that for secondary school text books (a sign that the system is seriously out of kilter), the testing agency, usually one of three dominant awarding bodies, is a reluctant guardian of standards.

Further, when one form of examination, the GCSE, is defined as the standard bearer (whatever that standard might be) there are other unintended outcomes.  Subjects never suited to GCSE assessment - often those with a practical, technical or creative orientation - are only able to secure their place on the timetable if they are forced into this assessment form or if an alternative form of assessment is granted GCSE 'equivalence'.  Thus, a vocational course in, say, hairdressing is granted an equivalence with a GCSE in, say, History, a fact represented without distinction in top-line school performance data.  This renders the resultant league tables less comparative than their clean A-C headlines suggest.  Although the options to do this have been much reduced in recent years (and the tables are more sophisticated), the process has claimed another victim: curriculum breadth and, in particular, the uptake and status of vocational courses: schools are discouraged from adopting courses that do not have a league table currency while, if they do adopt a course from that diminishing range of vocational qualifications that still offer GCSE equivalence, it is assumed that this is a ruse to score in the league tables rather than to broaden the curriculum.

The upshot? Young people of all abilities take a GCSE dominated curriculum in which 10 GCSEs is assumed to constitute breadth.  It does not; it constitutes 10 variations on a particular assessment theme.  Where in this is the place for good quality professional learning for all, for the development of the skills for effective citizenship, for the pursuit of a range of sports, for good quality and highly regarded personal development programmes? In short, the bright follow a curriculum that denies them breadth but gives them grades, those deemed less able chasing in their shadows. Too often, at the other end of the scale, learners are channelled onto 'vocational' programmes, there not out of informed choice but because they have fallen onto a default curriculum that confirms vocational and practical learning as a poor relation to the academic mainstream.  If the UK wants to raise the status of areas like engineering, technology and science, throwing the naughty boys a car engine is no way to do it. And nor is a narrowly academic English Baccalaureate.

The solution (or a first step towards it)? As we are beginning to argue through our Transform Education project, we need to stop obsessing simply about grades and performance measures and start asking questions about what kind of education system we need in the opening decades of the twenty-first century, what kind of young people we want to emerge from it, and what educational breadth really looks like.

Yes, let's measure the performance of this system and, yes, let's measure the progress of young people through this system  (and with real rigour using a range of tools) but shouldn't we start by asking what we want and need it to do? 

Beyond the Bradford Spring: lobbying, party-funding, trust and transforming our politics

The debates on Newsnight this evening about the Bradford West by-election and the role of lobbyists in our democracy, and the related and long-standing concerns about 'cash for access' and party funding serve only to underline the obsolescence of how we currently 'do' politics. How did we get here? It seems to me that several factors have converged to produce this state of affairs, but I'd like to make three observations in particular:

1. The professionalisation of our politics has turned Westminster into a stronger gated community than any that new-build suburbia can offer - access to this community is through a subterranean (and invisible to most) network of internships, lobbyists and think tanks, where a new generation of 'straight from college' (Oxbridge or similar PPE preferred) special advisers are honed, themselves merely serving apprenticeships for elevation (sorry, election) to Parliament itself;
2. For those seeking to influence politicians (honourably, as is usually the case, or otherwise), buddying-up to this network is vital, with the outcome that experienced business and third sector leaders spend a disproportionate amount of their time chasing these influencers - by purchasing access through the professional lobbyists, sponsoring (usually governing) party activity in some way or treading the wine reception floor, seeking to happen upon the youthful bag carrier for the minister concerned;
3. For those wanting to access politics (that is, to be politicians) , especially those who might have 'done something' beyond this Westminster Village, they find the gates all but closed - one unintended consequence of the professionalisation of our politics is the end of the parliamentary road for the mid-career trade unionist, community leader or business executive who fancies their chances at the polls.

For me, these three developments produce at least three negative outcomes:

1. Disconnected politicians with whom we share no history and for whom we have no empathy: trust in politics is the victim and every ignored protest march or expenses transgression strengthens the sense that voting doesn't change things (even if it might) and politicians don't care (even, as I suspect, most of them do);
2. Bad policy: just as voters are cut adrift from politicians, practitioners are largely ignored by these 'not so special' advisers - with the result that impractical but headline hugging policies are foisted on professionals who are often locked into performance frameworks that have come from the same planet;
3. The separation of the formal and informal political spheres: in earlier times the youthful rebel might have become the seasoned campaigner and the mid-life parliamentarian; as noted above, this is increasingly not an option. The result is a separation between the politics of protest and the politics of process, between the 'civil' and the 'civic' as some commentators put it - this separation is bad for democracy itself.

All of this produces disenfranchised citizens. Empowering citizens means creating a politics that isn't accessed through the secret codes of the gated community but through the kind of rich civil society that emerges when individuals realise that they can have an influence without writing a cheque, or selling their soul in some other way.

To do this we need to build an education system and a community engagement culture that gives potential voters the knowledge, skills, confidence and desire to hold their politicians to account, and enables them to self-organise (to lobby), personally and collectively such that the professional lobbyist is obsolete. How about a strengthened (rather than abandoned) Citizenship curriculum in schools and free to access 'social impact' courses in every FE and adult education setting, developing skills in community leadership, public speaking, negotiating and accessing the media?

The result would make for a Big Society to which might all want to belong. And we'd get better politics and politicians too.

Stephen Twigg MP, Professor Geoff Whitty CBE and Children's Commissioner Maggie Atkinson in sparkling form at the launch of Transform Education

Thanks to the masses who packed into the Thatcher Room at Portcullis House, Westminster last night to celebrate the launch of Breslin's Transform Education project (www.breslinpublicpolicy.com) and who heard Stephen Twigg, Geoff Whitty and Maggie Atkinson in sparking form - we've thrown some of their comments out through Twitter (@UKpolicywatch) but these soundbites can't hope to do their efforts justice.

Thanks also to our partners at GlobalNet 21 for helping us to stage what will be the first of three meetings and, we envisage, a much bigger project.

From the ensuing discussion a series of key questions emerged and readers of this blog might want to ponder them further. Here, in no particular order, are just some of them:

• What purpose (or purposes) do we want (and need) a twenty-first century education system to serve?
• What do we mean by 'breadth' in education, and in the curriculum in particular, and how do we ensure such a curriculum for all learners?
• What does meaningful, purposeful engagement-building learner voice or youth participation look like and how might it support the broader educational enterprise?
• What do we mean by professional, practical and vocational education and what is its place, status and purpose in the curriculum of all young people?
• How do we best support the challenged, the challenging, the looked after and the otherwise vulnerable?
• How do we introduce transformative change, especially in the highly structured context of the modern secondary school?
• What can secondary practitioners learn from those in early years and primary education, those in the youth sector, those in the 'alternative' education community and those in adult education and FE?

Comments and additions to the list are welcome. Let the discussion begin!