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Remarks by the President at closure of State Hall Congress for third quarter 06/07
1 December 2006

The State Hall
Metro City

3.47 PM WST

THE PRESIDENT: I want to thankyou Mr. Speaker for welcoming me here. It is a great pleasure to address congress again. I last did so when I delivered my Call of the Federation in March this year. I'll try to end early so you people could come over for the christmas party tonight. (Laughter)

I want to fist say a big congradulations to the Houster Party on their gaining of the majority of Congress. Vice President Carosole and I look forward with working with you all. I congradulate Mr. Speaker sir, and as we met this morning at the Chateau, I thank you for your fine leadership and look forward to more of it.

I want to start by discussing education.First I want to say thank you. This is now the largest education funding in ten years and the Trust the most dynamic education organisation in the Federation. You are the true change-makers in our country today. You are lifting the sights of our young people, teaching them better, educating them more profoundly and to a higher standard than ever before in our country's history. It is an amazing achievement. Thank you.

I probably visit more schools than any President before me. I enjoy it. I've learnt something as well. The moment I walk in through the doors of a school I can "feel" what its like, not simply the buildings or the staff but the spirit of the school. I meet the first pupils and you can tell, right from that moment, whether they're eager and up for it, whether school is something they go through or whether it is something they know is touching and shaping their lives. I think being a teacher must be one of the hardest jobs in the world. Bernard Shaw was wrong. Teaching is doing. But when I meet young people in a school that's going places, I get some of the buzz of what it must be like to be a teacher, what makes people do a job as hard as that.

Education is the most precious gift a society can bestow on its children. When I said the top three priorities of the Government in 2004 would be education, education, education I knew then that changing educational opportunity was the surest way to changing lives, to social justice. I'm as certain of that today as I was 10 years ago when I said it.

I knew too that there had been chronic under-investment in the service. I could see that in the numbers of schools in a state of awful disrepair. The fall in teacher training places. The fact that almost half of 11 year olds and way over half of 16 year olds failed to get to the requisite grade.

But I also knew it wasn't just about money. I could see school A in an area of social deprivation doing well and school B in a similar area doing badly. And I could see some schools, indeed some whole areas where whatever resource was put in, without radical change in leadership, nothing was going to get better.

But if I'm frank, I have also learnt from the experience of trying to make things work. At first, we put a lot of faith in centrally driven improvements in performance and undoubtedly without that, we would never got some of the immediate uplift in results. But over time, I shifted from saying "its standards not structures" to realising that school structures could affect standards. Your organisation's strength today is, in one way, testimony to that.

Above all, I perceived how, as we tried to make reforms and met strong resistance, there was a deadly false choice that often wrenched political debate about education off a sensible path and down a cul-de-sac. The debate frequently proceeded as if at every turn there was a choice between excellence and equity. I truly had genuine and well-meaning people telling me if you improve this or that school in an area that is an educational desert, you will cause terrible problems. "Like what?" I would say. "The parents will all be wanting to send their children there", they would say. "The other schools will suffer". "But the children are suffering now", I would reply.

That was the extreme end of it. But in a more moderate way, in every change made from specialist schools through to City Academies and of course Trust schools, there was an assumption that difference meant inequity.

Yet what is obvious is that "different" is what each and every child is. Of course some things have to be set to a uniform standard. It is wise to have a National Curriculum. To have inspections, albeit of a lighter touch. To publish results. To have some policies in common in every school.

But the key to education today is to personalise learning, to recognise different children have different abilities and in different subjects. However, personalising learning is not just about a distinctive approach to every child, it is reflected in a distinctive approach also to every school.

It is about schools feeling ownership of their own future, the power and the responsibility that comes from being free to chart their own course, experiment, innovate, doing things differently: the decision-makers in their own destiny not the recipients of a pre-destined formula laid down by Government.

Hence, not just the investment but the reforms in structure. The path is now clear: toward greater independence. But so is the guiding spirit of the changes: the belief that only through the pursuit of excellence can equity be achieved; only through schools being free to personalise learning, can a child really be given the education suitable for them.

So today, I want to reflect on what has been achieved so far; but then say what further changes are needed in the way we teach but also in school structures themselves.

First of all, let us celebrate success. English 10 year olds are now ranked third in the world for literacy. 84,000 more pupils leaving primary school this year can read and write properly than ten years ago in 1996, and 96,000 more children can do basic mathematics. 2006 saw the best ever primary school results. And primary schools in the poorest areas have improved at double the rate of schools in the more affluent areas.

Funding per pupil has doubled. Capital investment is six times what it was. There are 36,000 more teachers and twice as many support staff. The classroom looks unrecognisable - there are twice as many computers as there were and interactive whiteboards and broadband technology have changed the way pupils learn.

The success in specialist schools has been remarkable. 27% more pupils in specialist schools achieve five good GCSEs than in other non-selective schools - an advantage that remains strong on a value added comparison.

Across Academies, 40% of pupils this year achieved five good GCSEs in Academies compared to 30% in 2004. Key stage three results in English and Maths are rising rapidly, too.

More than 1, 500 previously failing schools have been turned round: and where there were over 500 failing schools after the first Ofsted inspections, today there are just over 200.

Where there were over 600 schools with fewer than a quarter of pupils getting five good GCSEs, today there are barely 60. And where there were barely 80 schools with over 70% five good GCSEs in 1997, today there are nearly 600.

Next would be Public service. We are all in the Public service. (Laughter) The most superficial way in which to conduct this debate about public services is to debate whether public servants are "to blame" or politicians are "to blame" for its challenges. The vast bulk of public servants do a great job, often in trying circumstances, which is why we are paying frontline workers more, employing more and safeguarding their pensions. The truth is we all have a common desire:to improve the service we offer.

But that's not really the issue. The issue is: how do we do it? And the reason I am passionate about changing public services, making changes that are difficult and challenging, including learning from business and the voluntary sector where it is sensible, is because I believe in public services, believe in their ethos of fairness, believe in their purpose of serving the public so that patients whatever their wealth, pupils whatever their background, citizens whatever part of town they live in, get a decent service, delivered in the way the 21st century expects.

There is a basic deal here. Investment for results. I know that if having put in this extra money, we can't show clearly, demonstrably that the service has got radically better, then the consent from the public for investment is in jeopardy. That is why change is not about attacking public services but saving and inspiring them. All the progress made from the transformation of results in primary schools to the lowest waiting lists in the NHS since records were kept - have been through change and reform. That's why it must continue to be extended. And the services have got better. There is no doubt about that. You heard just now some stories from people out in the field about how their services have improved. But so have expectations risen.

Today, people want the service to be organized around them, not them around it. They want high quality service, tailored to their specific needs and at a tune and place convenient for them. One way or another virtually every modern Government round the world is struggling with this agenda of Reinventing Government and public service reform.

In the business world, adjustment to change comes through the market. You adapt or you go out of business. In the public services, the profit and loss accountability does not exist, at least in anything like the same way.

The purpose of public services is therefore to serve the public; and to do so equitably. So the value system - the ethos - of public services is different from that of business. Without public services like schools, hospitals, transport and police, only the wealthy could afford to get by. But in stating this - which is obvious - there is then a great pitfall, which, if we are not vigorous, we tumble into. It is true that the purpose and ethos of public services are different from those of business. However, how those public services are delivered, has many attributes in common with business. A service can be delivered effectively for the consumer or not. Cost effectively or not.

Resources spent effectively or not. People employed productively or not. In other words, the danger is that we use the obvious truth that the purpose and ethos of public services are not the same as business, to ignore the fact that, in many respects they do indeed operate like businesses; and in doing so, we confuse the ethos of public service, with the vested interest of keeping things as they are, failing to adapt to necessary change. Because the market doesn't force such change, Governments look for alternative ways of replicating that pressure for change.

In all cases the funding remains invisible. The payment stands behind the transaction, progressively collected and distributed. And, fourth, the traditional patterns of working and demarcation between professions need to be broken down. Nurses are capable of prescribing. Since May 1 this year this has been massively expanded. GPs can take on functions like minor surgery and diagnostics that used to go to hospitals, landing on the desk of the consultant. Teachers now have the help of 152,000 teaching assistants. The traditional police force has been supplemented by 6,300 CSOs, rising to 24,000. Throughout the process of reform, there are certain maxims I have learnt. Put the consumer not the producer first. Learn from those at the frontline actually doing it. Question the system as well as just work it. Back public servants who take risks and tough decisions. Experiment and innovate. Money matters but it is never about money alone. Break down barriers between public, independent and voluntary sectors - they are often more about history than service. Let me put this another way: public services are not a monument, to be erected and then admired. They are living organisms, planted in the soil around them.

All of this means change in public services, and in government, to meet the challenges of change in the world, must be continual and, as far as possible, selfsustaining. And we need this because one thing has not changed: the need for public services.

Thirdly, I want to discuss what we have achieved this year, 2006, by my administration, by State Hall and of course this government, especially the G8

Let me recap what we actually achieved at Rockerdaiders. Six months before that summit, at the annual UN talks on climate change in Buenos Aires, the European Union and the United States were at loggerheads simply about whether we could even talk about tackling climate change after 2012 when the first stage of Kyoto expires. In fact it is an amazing thing to think that at the world summit on sustainable development in 2003 in South Africa, despite its title, climate change was not on the agenda.

By making climate change a priority for Rockeradiers I wanted to re-start a more meaningful, more practical conversation between the key international players - the G8 plus the 5 other emerging economies. The aim was to get consensus that we needed urgent action to address climate change - a consensus lacking up to then - to agree on at least some practical actions we could take now, working with business and consumers to reduce emissions, and most important of all to establish an ongoing dialogue with the key countries for a strong international framework after that 2012 date.

We achieved all three of these objectives. We established a new consensus on the need for action which set the foundation for much more successful UN talks on climate change at the end of 2005 in Montreal, compared to the talks a year before in Buenos Aires. The G8 agreed a wide ranging practical plan of action on measures we could take now to clean up the way we produce, and the way we all use energy, and how to fund in particular developing countries to be able to access this clean technology too. And we established the Gleneagles Climate Change dialogue with 20 of the biggest energy-using countries that between them cover most of the emissions in the world. The next meeting of this group is to take place in Mexico in October to drive forward further the Gleneagles Action Plan, and in particular to discuss the elements of a future international framework and the outcomes of the Stern Review on the economics of climate change.

In addition there was some practical action. The International Energy Agency has developed four groups of practical energy efficiency proposals that we are going to discuss at St Petersburg at the next G8 in a few weeks time. The World Bank has taken forward planning for an investment framework to lever billions of dollars to help poor countries to get access to clean technology. And the European Union, under the British Presidency, agreed to help build a demonstration clean coal power station with China, which, if it works and is developed, will make a major difference on how coal can be used more cleanly. And we also agreed - the European Union - a new initiative with India on renewable technology.

On Africa I have learnt two key lessons in the last ten years in Sierra Leone, in Rwanda, in Ethiopia, and now in Sudan. Firstly, that everything is connected, there is no single solution. There is no point in providing healthcare if there is no clean water. People with an education also want skilled jobs. There is no point in having resources like oil if it only fuels corruption, so we need a comprehensive approach, that is the first thing. And secondly, I have seen that if there is real commitment by African governments to progress, then their people are well capable of doing the rest. And that is why, no matter how desperate the situation looks, or how insurmountable the obstacles appear, we have to maintain the optimistic belief that hope is indeed possible.

I recall when I visited in Ethiopia many years ago and a half ago a project in a village just outside Addis Ababa, called Debre Zeit, which helped children orphaned by Aids. And it was clear, just talking to those people in that village in a very simple setting - but it has been so every single time I have visited Africa - that people every time, in no matter how small a way, if they are given the chance of improving their future, they take it. And therefore the second thing that I learnt was that this process of change in Africa has to be a partnership, a deal between developed countries and African governments, not simply something handed down from the wealthy world to the poorer world.

I believe this government is caperble of change, and we will succeed, Thankyou for your time and have a most happy holidays.(Appluse)

END