2020 VISION: Lessons learned in fight for education excellence

“WHEN you have a young fast-growing diverse population, that’s all the ingredients you need to succeed, as long as you can translate it into economic power, and the key to that is education.

“There’s no excuses. You can’t flick a switch and sort it overnight. Good education needs to be pursued relentlessly for places like Bradford to succeed in the long run.”

So said the former chief executive of Bradford Council, Tony Reeves, back in 2015.

The Vision was spot on about having a huge young population in 2020 and it recognised that education would be the foundation of its success:

“The District will stand or fall by the skills of its workforce. The foundation of these skills is education and training.”

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However, it did not set out how academic excellence and educational attainment were going to reached, just that GCSE results should be compared year on year.

But just a month after the Vision was published there was devastating news – Bradford’s education authority was labelled ‘poor’.

The local authority was publicly humiliated when the then chief inspector of schools in England, Chris Woodhead, told a news conference that here there was “an ingrained culture of failure and hopelessness”.

“For many children their education is their best hope for a decent life.

“These children and parents deserve the best possible support and it is depressing to report this is not what they receive.”

Councillor David Ward was the portfolio holder for education from 2000 to 2004, during his Liberal Democrats party’s local coalition with the Conservatives, and he remembers a tumultuous period in education in the district.

“I took over education in May 2000 after a change of control of the Council and my first job was to apologise to the headteachers for the Council having let them down. I said we would work together to support them to improve things.”

It didn’t help the situation that at the time schools were having to deal with moving from a three to two-tier education system, resulting in 57 middle schools being shut down and former First Schools and Upper Schools having to expand.

Schools were badly underfunded with much of the budget going towards ‘Statements’ for children with special educational needs.

“We also closed 12 special schools which was unpopular at the time but the buildings were inadequate so we built state-of-the-art ‘co-located’ schools which meant that, for the first time, children were able to mix in mainstream schools but with their own improved facilities.”

All parties recognised the need to increase investment and the Council poured more funding into schools to counter the arguments of lack of resources but, ten years later, education in the district still hadn’t improved enough and control was handed back to the local authority. “The experiment with a privatised education service was deemed to have failed, it didn’t bring about the ‘step-change’ in performance that was promised.”

Cllr Ward said that 20 years on, educational standards still fell woefully short in the district, especially for children from the most deprived communities.

But still, there have also been Herculean efforts to really make a difference to the education of young people in the district.

Superheads like Sir Nick Weller at Dixons City Academy have revolutionised some of the district’s most poorly performing schools. Written off as being in ‘rough’ areas, with lack of discipline and a high rate of staff turnover, there are schools here which have won awards for excellence. Beckfoot School in Cottingley earned an Outstanding rating from Ofsted and has been awarded World Class School Status.

Headteacher David Horn said coming to Bradford to work had been the best decision he ever made.

“I became headteacher of Beckfoot School in 1997. It was the best decision I ever made. I have absolutely loved being a part of this school’s evolution and working in Bradford. It is a great city with fantastic people.

“I remember the 2020 Vision document when it came out and was excited by its aspirational vision for our city. It gave us all momentum. It put the city on the front foot. It showed ambition, pride and belief. Something that we must never lose.

“I am immensely proud that we were able to create a great community school at Beckfoot which always sought to put our children first and care for staff.”

He said he was proud to have shaped an inclusive joined-up vision on the Beckfoot campus between Beckfoot and partner special school Hazelbeck.

“The benefits of the two schools working closely together have been so significant for us all. We are all better people for learning in an inclusive environment. It is no coincidence that as a result both schools secured outstanding judgements from Ofsted and each awarded World Class School Status.

“Our vision for creating remarkable schools that sit at the heart of their local community is beginning to really take off.

“All of our schools are getting stronger and in some cases they have already been transformed. It is so much more rewarding for schools to work in partnership rather than in isolation and it is great to see a wide range of School Trusts doing similar things across our city.

“On that theme, if I have a wish moving forward, I would love to see a continued move towards a more joined-up approach taken between School Trusts, our university, the health service, social care, community advocates, employers and the Council. There is so much amazing practice taking place in our city. We need to harness that collectively for the benefit of future generations. I know it will come.”

Councillor Imran Khan, portfolio holder for education, employment and skills, underlined the Council’s commitment to raising education levels of young people here.

“Improving education is vital for everything that we want to achieve in Bradford. We know that the education landscape has changed dramatically over the last two decades. Austerity, academisation, changes in curriculum and inspection, and increasing numbers of children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) have all had a major impact on who delivers education and how they do it. These are national issues, not just ones that affect Bradford.

“Responsibility for education in Bradford returned to the Council with the end of the Serco contract in 2011, but at the same time there was a strong government incentive given to schools to move away from being maintained by the Council and to becoming academies. Currently, the Council only maintains seven out of 34 secondary schools in the district.

“This has meant that while the Council still sees education as a top priority, our role has changed and we need to work far more in partnership. We see education as an issue everyone across our district needs to support: schools, early years, parents, communities, businesses and young people themselves can all contribute and make a difference. This is why we developed the education covenant as a way of engaging communities in supporting education.

“Despite the challenges education faces, our primary schools, where the Council still maintains more than 50% of schools, are showing an improving picture and are beginning to close the performance gap on the national average.

“We’ve also taken action over the last ten years to improve outcomes for children and young people. This includes working with businesses to support career and technical education with our Industrial Centres of Excellence programme and SkillsHouse, our recruitment and training initiative which has supported 1,450 local people into work and helped over 120 businesses.

“We’ve invested more than £600,000 in promoting our district as a good place to come and teach and this has seen more newly qualified teachers arrive in our district. Our Teaching Schools initiative, funded as part of our £6m Opportunity Area programme, is helping keep teachers in Bradford with strong mentoring and support.

“We’ve also worked in partnership with schools to provide more education places for our growing population and in particular the SEND places families need.”

Despite all the obvious challenges and obstacles, good education must still be pursued relentlessly in Bradford. No excuses.