TRANSCRIPT
David Blunkett
and John Humphrys
John Humphrys:
Let's deal first with this new scheme. In fact, is it a new one because wasn't an Adult Literacy Package announced at your party conference last year?
David Blunkett:
Yes, we announced the money, today we're announcing the programme. Firstly a curriculum for adult literacy programmes for the first time. Secondly we're announcing that all those who have a lack of basic skills, not in just literacy but also in numeracy, will have free provision so people needn't worry about the cost of attending. Thirdly we are developing a coalition with employers, with the prison service, with the military to engage with those who are either in employment or in a situation as with the prison service we've got them as a captured audience. And making sure that that literacy programme is engaged with them at that moment in time which is most important to them.
John Humphrys:
If they don't take it up and they're applying for work or benefits, might their benefits be docked?
David Blunkett:
We're going to pilot a scheme. We've got nine programmes across the country, two of which will pilot the idea of stick and carrot to which we'll have incentives built in so in two of the programmes we'll see what it does in terms of giving a £100 bonus for completing a programme and then giving themselves on the way to work. Two of the programmes we'll have the option of a sanction so that people if they receive to actually take any steps whatsoever to prepare themselves through literacy and numeracy to the ability to get a job and they are claiming benefit, then we think it's only fair to actually pull their finger out and do it.
John Humphrys:
This might be one of those things that Chris Woodhead says is another one of the daft initiatives that you've been introducing all the time. You've obviously read or know what he has said in The Daily Telegraph this morning it is as I say a very savage attack. In which he says amongst other things that our children have been betrayed.
David Blunkett:
Yes, I think personal abuse and vitriol diminish us all so I don't intend to engage in that side of it all, because I think that Chris did a good job as Chief Inspector. I still hold to that view. I think he's diminishing his credibility in what he's saying this morning. Not least because so because so many of the things that he's now criticising he was in favour of or wanted us to go further on. Let me give you the example of the literacy and numeracy programme …
John Humphrys:
Of which he approves by the way …
David Blunkett:
Yes he does and we were very pleased indeed that he welcomed that. I think on the first interview he did within two days of my appointment back in '97, when he also incidentally welcomed our class size pledge for infants which we're also implementing. But he does criticise the rest or our policies. However on literacy and numeracy he wanted us to go further. He wanted me to prescribe for teachers an even more rigorous approach in terms of the - I'm sorry John I'm getting someone typing into a machine in my ear from your end.
John Humphrys:
I'm sorry we'll stop that.
David Blunkett:
He actually came to me and said to me look you're not being prescriptive enough you're not being vigorous enough in terms of implementing the phonics approach to teaching you've got to actually tell teachers to be more rigorous. I said look we've gone as far as we can at this moment in time. Firstly in ensuring that there's a curriculum that implements it, secondly introducing for the first time a curriculum that for primary teacher training and in service courses and thirdly in not actually not over-loading teachers. So there are contradictions here which are very very strange.
John Humphrys:
Well, let's deal with that. He does as I say, he said so again on this programme an hour ago, he has always approved of the literacy and numeracy programmes which he says you inherited from the last government, that's what he says …
David Blunkett:
No, no … he does. Two hundred schools out of the 16,000 primary schools have started to experiment with whole class …
John Humphrys:
Right, so you extended it …
David Blunkett:
We had a working party on both literacy and numeracy before the election. We published what we were going to do, we put £200m plus all the extra help to teachers and in service training behind it, we've now got it in every single primary school …
John Humphrys:
Right, on which as I say he approves, but then he goes on to say that there were 60 different initiatives in four years. He lists some of them in the Telegraph this morning. What does it all add up to? With the exception of national literacy and numeracy strategies very little.
David Blunkett:
That's very strange indeed because just to take a couple of them, the Beacon School Initiative for spreading best practice between schools, and there will be 1,000 of those by this September was his idea and I give him credit for it. Let's take performance related pay, John, very important …
John Humphrys:
Which he hasn't actually written about this morning incidentally, he'll write about it tomorrow.
David Blunkett:
I know he hasn't but he's spoken about it on various radio and television programmes that I've engaged with during the course of breakfast this morning. And I just want to make just one thing clear. We did have a disagreement about performance related pay, we had a disagreement because Chris said to me true performance related pay involved cutting the pay of teachers, not simply increasing it. And I said that was unacceptable …
John Humphrys:
He's right though isn't he - it's true - if pay is related to performance if you're doing a great job you get more if you doing a lousy job you get less.
David Blunkett:
You only get performance related pay if you're doing a good job. But you don't get your pay docked because someone at one moment in time on one month has decided that you weren't quite up to it. If there's a problem with your capability we've dealt with it. And the consequence of all the things that we've done so far was Chris's annual report last year confirmed by the new Chief Inspector that said this John "the quality of teaching has improved in all types of schools, in all subjects and in all year groups", now if that's not a tribute to the change in education being delivered to children, I don't what is.
John Humphrys:
Something he says and I would guess from my own limited experience of talking to teachers and headteachers they would all agree with is that the bureaucratic interference that they have come against it has often made it and I'm quoting him now "impossible for them to lead their schools in a properly autonomous, professional manner. As a taxpayer I couldn't stomach the way which public money was being squandered. As an individual I was no longer prepared to waste my time in discussions that had no connection with the classroom". You cannot deny, can you that the bureaucracy in the system now is greater than it's ever been? Every single teacher you talk to tells you that.
David Blunkett:
No I don't deny that there's a problem about bureaucracy and administration. The very act of having a national curriculum and revising it means that materials go out. The act of introducing the literacy and numeracy programmes actually meant that we had to be more prescriptive. The irony in the contradiction, not just in his position, but in that of the Conservative Party who, incidentally, opposed literacy and numeracy programmes is that they actually want more not less prescription. We're saying look, we have to implement these programmes, we had to get things moving more rapidly than would otherwise have been the case, but we now accept that having now put them in place we do need to let teachers get on with it. Chris this morning said that he wanted more emphasis on broader education. What we call in our Green Paper quoting Gandhi "education with character". I want it, I want reasoning skills, and creative skills in secondary schools. Chris dismisses that as thinking skills, he's agin it. He can't have it both …
John Humphrys:
Thinking without knowledge is no good he says.
David Blunkett:
I agree entirely which is why the basis of knowledge is to be able to read and write and add up and then to be able to open up the love of learning then to be able to engage with reasoning and creativity and what Chris said to me was that reasoning and creativity was really for those who could manage to do it, so I'm a little bewildered by the contradiction of a man who wants more prescription but who accuses me of utilitarianism when it's him that's actually being the most utilitarian advocate of all. And together, we didn't do a bad job. I haven't transformed the education service yet in the way that I would wish but I've laid the foundations and the seeds and I'm very sorry indeed that Chris has chosen to abuse us in this way.
John Humphrys:
David Blunkett, thank you very much.
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Please Note:
This transcript was typed from an on-air broadcast and not copied from an original script. Because of the possibility of mis-hearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, the 91Èȱ¬ cannot vouch for its accuracy.
