Reform The Week

25 April 2008

Reform – The Week

Two events have dominated the news this week: firstly, the debate on the removal of the 10p tax rate; and secondly, the teachers’ strike. The two are, in fact, connected. The intensity of the debate over the 10p tax highlighted the high level of concern about the difficult position of people on the lowest incomes. However, as Reform’s new report Shifting the unequal state: from public apathy to personal capability shows, high levels of social mobility will only exist once there has been real reform of the education system. There should be moves towards a more decentralised system, where parents have real choice, Heads have autonomy, and teachers’ pay is set on a local basis.

Laura Kounine, Editor

Reformer of the week

David Davis, for his part in the plans to provide more information on police performance. Plans were outlined to publish “crime maps” to enable residents to discover where crimes take place in their area. Under the plans, police forces would publish crime figures each month on a street by street basis. Crime maps would empower the individual to avoid crime hotspots, make the police force more accountable at a local level and increase transparency.

Reactionary of the week

National Union of Teachers, for calling a strike on Thursday in protest of a pay settlement below the rate of inflation. This led to over 8,000 schools being closed and has set a precedent for a wave of future strikes by public sector workers. On Today, Andrew Haldenby, Reform's Director, said the response is not as much pay restraint as “a reformed public pay system which is about decentralisation, about a much closer relationship between what people pay and what they do”.

Good week for

Tax and benefits reform

Initial research from a study commissioned by the Mirrlees Review suggests that the problem of low social mobility in the UK could be partly addressed through an overhaul of the tax and benefits system. This approach was also recommended in Reform’s report this week. The research, carried out for the Institute for Fiscal Studies, advocates reducing complexity of the system and lowering marginal tax rates in order to strengthen work incentives.

British banking

The Bank of England unveiled a Special Liquidity Scheme to help boost the UK’s banking sector. The scheme allows banks to temporarily swap their high quality mortgage-backed and other securities for UK Treasury Bills. Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, said that the scheme was designed to “increase the liquidity in the banking system as a whole and to restore confidence”, not to encourage banks to return to the “wild lending” before the turmoil began last summer, nor to act as a “bail out” for failing banks.

Prisoners

According to Glynn Travis, the Assistant General Secretary of the Prison Officers Association, “prisoners were so comfortable in the environment that they were living in that none tried to… escape”.

Bad week for

Pupils from low income families

A Bow Group study exposed the significant gap between the performance of rich and poor pupils. Only one in five children on Free School Meals (FSM) obtain the Government’s benchmark of five GCSEs at grades A*-C including maths and English. The report calculated that more than £70 billion of taxpayers’ money had been spent educating almost 4 million young people who failed to achieve the benchmark.

Headteachers

Professor David Hargreaves, the Senior Researcher with the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, argued that the days of the charismatic individual single-handedly transforming a school were probably numbered, as a result of the Government’s obsession with a “top-down” approach to education. Professor Hargreaves’ speech coincides with Ed Balls’ “superheads” policy proposal. Although the role of leadership in improving educational standards should not be underestimated, the drawback to the scheme is that it will allow insufficient time for the “superheads” to develop the levels of trust, with staff and pupils, required to generate long-term improvement.

Gordon Brown

Gordon Brown received widespread criticism for his decision to introduce compensation for the 10p tax rate. Peter Riddell commented that “Mr Brown's leadership has been seriously damaged”.

Quote of the week

"If you look at the opinion polling, it's actually people in the most deprived areas who value choice more because they tend to be the people who have the lowest quality of public services."

Ben Bradshaw, HSJ

Reform’s week

Reform published its latest paper Shifting the unequal State: From public apathy to personal capability on Monday. A Telegraph leader said: ”The ‘why bother’ society identified in the study is the result of poor education and a misconceived welfare structure that discourages personal responsibility and hope” (Telegraph; Mail; Spectator; inthenews.co.uk; Conservative home; Liberal Democrat Voice).

Andrew Haldenby, Director of Reform, appeared on the Today programme on Thursday, with Mark Serwotka of the PCS, talking about public sector pay (BBC Radio 4).

Elizabeth Truss, Reform's Deputy Director, wrote in a letter to the Times criticising Alice Miles's arguments on childcare earlier this week.

Reform Scotland was mentioned in Scotland on Sunday supporting their proposals to introduce a voucher system similar to that of Holland and Sweden which would revolutionise the Scottish education system. Andrew Bolger in the FT mentions Reform Scotland’s launch party in Edinburgh and questions whether the think tank’s “enthusiasm for lower taxes and a smaller public sector will prove an unpalatable brew for most Holyrood politicians” The launch was also covered in the Herald and the Sunday Times (Ecosse).

Reform held a seminar on our social mobility report with David Laws MP and a panel including David Walker, editor of Guardian Public magazine, and Professor Nick Bosanquet, on Tuesday at St Stephens Club, kindly supported by the ICAEW,. It was widely attended by officials from the Treasury, Department for Work and Pensions and Department for Children, Schools and Families.

Professor Nick Bosanquet addressed a lunch seminar at Reform on Wednesday to discuss Reform’s forthcoming report on the future demands on the NHS.