Stephen Twigg: Time to redraw the line between schools and politics

However, the recent Demos report is of great concern. It shows that if we take inner London out of the picture, we see a worsening position – a widening of the achievement gap between those from the richest backgrounds and those from the poorest – and that must be of concern.

How can we change the position? I think that the big challenge for all of us who have been engaged in education policy in government or in opposition, is to step back as politicians and policy makers, and to empower teachers and school leaders to lead that change.

The brilliant organisation Teaching Leaders is seeking to create the middle leaders of the future who can ensure that our schools improve, particularly those that serve the most deprived communities.

ResearchED 2013 was set up as a grass-roots project by people who loved education and loved teaching, but felt detached from the education debate.

They came together to create a national conference for teachers, researchers and others who were interested in how we inform the way in which we teach our children, in drawing out the best of policy theory and practice, and in finding out what works in the classroom. Then there is the long-standing and brilliant work of subject associations. When I was an Education Minister, I once went to the Geography Association’s Easter conference

Teachers were attending it voluntarily, during their Easter break, and were exchanging in a passionate way their interest in, and information about, their subject. That, I think, must be the way forward, but how can we best get to where we want to be?

There is a great deal of discussion about what happened under the last government, but I think that we did some fantastic things to empower teachers.

I am proud to have given Teach First the go-ahead when I was a Minister, 11 years ago. Its aim is to attract the best and the brightest graduates to teaching, and then to empower those teachers to use the latest research and evidence to inform their classroom practice.

The sponsoring of academies was intended to ensure that the best teachers went into the schools that served the neighbourhoods with the greatest social and economic need. The London Challenge has succeeded in changing a position in which London schools were below the national average, to one in which London has the best-performing secondary schools in the country.

However, we also got some things wrong. Sometimes we were too centralist. We directed too much from Whitehall: there was too much of a “The Department knows best” approach.

My former boss, Baroness Morris – Estelle Morris – said this week that the danger of such a centralised approach was that while the policy might be “designed to empower teachers and raise the status of the profession, it was seen as being owned by the government and not by the profession itself”.

That is why I think that the movement initiated by the profession in favour of a Royal College of Teaching is vital, and deserves the cross-party commitment that it has attracted so far. It is absolutely right that the movement is independent of government and independent of politics.

The countries that have been most successful in education have often forged a cross-party consensus and a wider consensus in society about education and its role. Look, for example, at Germany, and at the technical and vocational education system in Switzerland. Switzerland has a national centre for the use of evidence in education.

I called for it two years ago, when I used the title “Office for Educational Improvement” and the Secretary of State’s response was: “We already have such an office – it is called the Government.” I took that in good humour but I do not think that it is a good enough answer.

Part of the problem with education in this country, under successive governments of different parties, is that the line between education and politics has been drawn in the wrong place. Politicians rightly decide how much money should be available, how it should be divided and the legal structure for education, but I do not think that politicians should get involved in the pedagogy and the curriculum.

The professionals should lead on that and I believe that a centre for evidence could play a crucial role in delivering that.

Stephen Twigg is a Labour MP. He was an education minister in Tony Blair’s government and Shadow Education Secretary from 2011 until 2013.