Ex-Gove adviser warns parties failing to make schools priority

Dominic Cummings, who was a key adviser to Education Secretary Michael Gove until last year, said he did not expect big education issues to be dealt with at the next General Election.

He suggested it was not a main priority for Prime Minister David Cameron or Labour leader Ed Miliband adding: “You need to look at where people are putting their resources to see what their priorities are.”

However he said Mr Gove was committed to improving education. Mr Cummings was one of the panellists at the Northern Rocks education conference, an event held for the first time at Leeds Metropolitan University at the weekend.

The event attracted around 300 teachers who attended a series of workshops from leading teachers and figures from within the education sector.

When asked what could be done to support teachers through a time of constant change, Mr Cummings said that he would increase spending on “education universities and science” and said savings should be made from Whitehall which he described as a dysfunctional “nightmare”.

He also called for Westminster and Whitehall to be removed from the process of administering and running exams as he said the process was “intrinsically corrupt”.

However, he said that teaching unions were opposed to this and wanted the Government to remain in control of running exams because they believed they could exert influence over the process when Labour are in power.

The panel also included the National Union of Teachers’ deputy general secretary Kevin Courtney, Prof Mick Waters, a former chief education officer in Manchester and director or curriculum at the QCA, Labour MP Ian Mearns who is a member of the education select committee, and education journalists Richard Garner and Dorothy Lepkowska.

The panel faced questions from the audience on issues ranging from league tables and performance-related pay for teachers to what could be done to support and retain teachers and manage their workload.

During the question and answer sessions Mr Courtney said that schools and teachers should not be expected to tackle the effects of poverty single-handedly.

He said that schools serving children from deprived backgrounds were less likely to get good results and warned: “Hospitals are not judged on the fact that people from working class backgrounds have lower health outcomes than those from middle class backgrounds and schools should not be either.”

Mr Courtney and Mr Cummings clashed on the issue of performance-related pay, with Mr Gove’s ex-adviser saying that the Department for Education wanted to give decision-making power to schools.

Mr Courtney claimed the DfE only wanted to extend the freedom to schools if they introduced performance- related pay.

One issue where there was agreement across the panel was on the need for Ofsted to change.

The Northern Rocks event was organised by teachers Emma Hardy and Debra Kidd, who said they believed that having an event focused on teaching and learning in the North of England was “long overdue”.