Reforms to early years, care and schools lie ahead for new ministers

Prime Minister David Cameron’s reshuffle this month marks a new era at the Department for Education. Although Education Secretary Michael Gove remains at the helm, children’s ministers Sarah Teather and Tim Loughton and schools minister Nick Gibb have been ousted after 28 months of government service, to be replaced by three new faces. Liberal Democrat David Laws returns to government, having been appointed jointly as minister for schools at the DfE and a minister at the Cabinet Office, while Edward Timpson and Elizabeth Truss take on junior ministerial roles.

David Laws
Laws is no stranger to the education sector, having served as the Lib Dems’ shadow children’s secretary under the last government. In opposition, he was the architect of the pupil premium, one of the key Liberal Democrat policies to make the coalition agreement, but he missed out on the opportunity to directly oversee its introduction in office, after being given the job of chief secretary to the Treasury when the coalition government was formed.

During his short spell in the job – a role he decided to resign from after being implicated in the expenses scandal – he was responsible for announcing that the Department for Education would have to find £670m of efficiency savings in 2010/11.

Laws now takes on the role of minister responsible for schools at a time of heightened tension within the teaching profession, not least because of disputes over pay, proposed changes to the exam system, and the continued drive to increase the number of academies and free schools. Concern over shortages in primary and secondary school places over the coming years is a key concern, as is school accountability and the role of local authorities in the developing school system. Laws will also oversee the raising of the participation age: from summer 2013, young people will have to stay on in education or training for the whole of the academic year in which they turn 17. From 2015, this will increase to 18.

Protecting the growth of the pupil premium is likely to be paramount for Laws. It amounts to £1.25bn this year, and is scheduled to double over the next two years. Prior to the 2010 general election, he proposed the possibility of merging education quangos including Ofsted and Ofqual in order to help fund the premium.

Laws – in his capacity as joint minister at the Cabinet Office – also takes on the child poverty brief amid widespread anxiety that more children will be plunged into deprivation due to unemployment, cuts to services and welfare reforms. Ministers have mooted the possibility of changing the way child poverty is measured, while social mobility tsar Alan Milburn has suggested that the government should narrow its focus to lifting 800,000 children aged under five out of poverty, because the target of eradicating child poverty by 2020 is almost certain to be missed.

Elizabeth Truss
Seen by many as a rising star of the Conservative Party, Elizabeth Truss has elicited comparisons to former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, due to her zeal for economic reform and profit-making enterprise. Prior to entering parliament she was deputy director at the think-tank Reform, where she called, among other things, for more rigorous academic standards in schools.

Her paper on academic rigour and social mobility, published last March, argued for an end to a bias against serious academic subjects. The same report said head teachers should use the pupil premium to recruit high quality teachers rather than spend it on other activities.

She takes over responsibility for assessment, qualifications and curriculum reform at a time when the future of GCSEs is in doubt. Education Secretary Michael Gove has made clear that he favours a return to a system similar to the old O-levels.

Truss has meanwhile outlined her views on childcare in the paper Affordable Quality, which claimed that childcare in Britain fails to provide value for money for either parents or the government. It set out a number of recommendations for change and called for the country to adopt a model of childcare regulation and inspection similar to that used in the Netherlands.

Under the Dutch model, agencies are funded to train and monitor childminders, and act as intermediaries between providers and parents.

Truss believes this would allow for higher ratios of children to staff. She argues that where childminders can currently only care for three children aged under five, this should increase to five. She has also suggested that nurseries should be allowed to apply for academy status.

But early years professionals want Truss to address concerns that the government’s free childcare entitlement for three- and four-year-olds does not fully cover the costs of providers.

There is a degree of uncertainty around the Prime Minister’s childcare commission, which is looking at issues that affect working parents such as after-school and holiday care. Both of the commission’s co-chairs, Maria Miller and Sarah Teather, are no longer in post since the reshuffle. Truss will also have to respond to the Nutbrown review of qualifications in the early years, which called for an overhaul of existing professional standards.

Edward Timpson
Since being elected in a by-election in 2008, Conservative MP Timpson has taken to parliamentary life with gusto, sitting on several groups and committees related to children and young people. In addition to sitting on the now defunct Children, Schools and Families Select Committee, he was chair of the all-party parliamentary groups (APPGs) on adoption and fostering and looked-after children and care leavers and also vice chair of both the APPG for runaway missing children and the APPG on epilepsy.

His connection to children’s services is reflected in his own experiences. In addition to growing up with an elder sister and brother, he has two adopted younger brothers, and his parents have fostered 87 children over 30 years. Timpson takes responsibility for policy on care at a time when the government is intent on seeing the number of adoptions rise. Under changes proposed by government adoption adviser Martin Narey, a new assessment process will be introduced in 2013 to make checking would-be adopters quicker.

Timpson will also supervise the development of policies on siblings in care and contact with birth families, depending on feedback from two government discussion papers, launched in July, calling for views from the sector. He could attempt to improve outcomes for looked-after children by introducing a “pupil premium plus”, a proposal he has called on the Prime Minister to consider. The concept, outlined in a report by the APPG for looked-after children and care leavers, would see schools receive more than £1,000 in additional funding for every looked-after child that they teach.

Timpson will also be charged with capitalising on the success of the Olympics through school sports – as well as monitoring the success of government reforms intended to improve support for children with special educational needs and disabilities.

Meanwhile, youth workers will be keen to hear how Timpson plans to drive forward improvements to service provision following the publication of Positive for Youth.


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