CentreForum's latest publication on special educational needs is published today (read it here): arguing that parental empowerment and choice should drive SEN provision - rather than the opinions of bureaucrats or the artificial 'inclusion' debate. It gets trailed in today's Guardian ('Minister seeks more help for dyslexic pupils'); keep an eye out for more press coverage coming soon...

On to the US, where the democrats can now definitively be said to have a nominee. Hillary Clinton went into the night needing a big  win in Indiana and a narrow loss in North Carolina to solidify the doubts about Obama's electability in the minds of undecided superdelegates. It didn't happen. She got pummelled by 14 points in North Carolina and won Indiana by just 2. Obama won more delegates, more votes, and the larger state (and the one which is more likely to be competitive in November). The night's events blew a massive hole in Clinton's claim to be the more electable candidate.

Crucially, the media is also beginning to conclude that this race is over. Tim Russert declared on MSNBC that Obama has won the nomination. The opinion forming Drudge Report headlined with a photo of Obama and the words 'the nominee', while Obama's victory speech moved him firmly into general election mode. Rumours are circulating that Wes Clark - an important Clinton surrogate and long-time member of the inner circle - called her to tell her to withdraw. Fundraising is likely to dry up, and advisors are conceding that the campaign is effectively broke. If she wants to continue, she will likely have to put more of her own money into the race.

She needs to ask whether such an investment is likely to reap dividends. I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that she will have withdrawn from the race by the weekend.

On Tuesday Michael Gove delivered a speech at a CentreForum meeting called "Making opportunity more equal: closing the achievement gap in our schools" The full text is available from the CentreForum website.

It picked up a fair amount of press interest  including the BBC ("Tories attack 'opportunity block'), The Mail ('Failing schools to be taken out of council control, Tories pledge') and The Telegraph ("Tories to end town hall grip on failing schools") which also made it the subject of one of its leaders ("Michael Gove's idea to free our failing schools")

Gove's analysis of the growing gap between the advantaged and disadvantaged echoes much of CentreForum's work.  What's more, he shows that schools amplify those differences throughout a pupil's school career. Gove's prescription is simple. Academies have worked for a simple reason.

"...who has presided over this failure – who should take responsibility for this record of under achievement and deepening inequality? The buck has to stop with the local authorities in whose areas failure has been concentrated."

Unfortunately, Gove gives few details of local authority failings and instead concentrates on what successful academies have done:

"[Academies are] Free to choose and shape their own curriculum. Free to hire and reward their own staff in their own way. Free to co-operate and collaborate with who they wanted, in the private and public sector, in the way they wanted. Free to exclude disruptive pupils and set their own discipline policies... And the bureaucracy from which they were liberated was – in Lewisham, or in Hackney, or in Manchester, - the Labour-run bureaucracy which had... tolerated, entrenched failure for years."

The Liberal Democrat front bench is grappling with the same issues. Nick Clegg's much plugged pupil premium is one way of addressing the same problem.  However, to pursue a similar line to Gove, Nick Clegg and his team will have to persuade their Lib Dem councillor colleagues many of whom run LEAs now.

Many of those councillors feel misunderstood in this debate.  They feel the notion that they are stifling innovation is misplaced when central government allows them few opportunities to experiment in ways they would like.

Those advancing the cause of school innovation need to show they understand these nuances in order to build a convincing critique of Local Education Authorities.

Also in the news:

The BBC publishes the first "First 100 days" article assessing Clegg's leadership.

Since its launch CentreForum has had a particular interest in tackling inequality in childhood.  Our pamphlets have sought answers to the growing inequality in the UK and most often we have concluded that taking measures in early childhood is the most effective way to do this.  (see pamphlets including 'Tackling Educational Inequality', 'The surest route: early years education and life chances' and 'Climbing the ladder: how can Britain become more socially mobile?' )

Indeed, a leader in The Independent last year stated:

"The Prime Minister and his education ministers would do well to study this week's report from the liberal think tank CentreForum... Some of the measure recommended by CentreForum would make the kind of radiocal package Mr Brown needs to strengthen his credibility as the prime minister who sough to end child poverty."

We continue our interest in this topic, so it was the two comment pieces that addressed this issue that caught our eye today.

"Yes! Parenting classes for kids" by Alice Miles in The Times outlines some well-worn, but still valid reasons to prepare children for the stresses and strains of parenting from an early age.

"Proof that we fail too many children" by Deborah Orr in The Independent reminds us of the vicious circle that is our youth justice system.

If you share our interest in this area you might be interested in attending the talk Michael Gove MP on "Making opportunity more equal: the moral urgency of closing the achievement gap in our schools" next week - details from the CentreForum website.

As predicted yesterday, the more interesting coverage of Clegg's public services speech would come when the commentariat started to get their teeth into it. And today, Steve Richards does so.

Richards' argument is that all politicians seek local decision making, but that none of them have much of an answer to the question of how to do it. Although he credits Clegg with leaping 'ahead in the race', he raises various questions for him. Particularly, he asks:

how do we achieve local accountability when central government raises the money and has responsibility for overall standards?

Though Richards implies that Clegg doesn't have answers to these questions, I suspect that he does, or at least, is developing them. After all, Liberal Democrats have long called for a greater proportion of money to be raised locally. And while central government will still have responsibility for overall standards, if a more genuinely localised system raises standards overall, then any accountable central government ought to implement such a system.

Clearly there are political risks for Ministers in 'letting go' of some of the levers they cling to. But they may be less than the risks of continuing to defend the over-centralised public services which fail to deliver the quality of education or health that the electorate demands.

Further, in other areas, we are quite happy to devolve spending power. Richards says:

'(Clegg) would be acting irresponsibly to hand over the cash and say: "Spend it how you want"'.

But what are welfare payments if not handing over money to individuals and allowing them to spend it on what they want? What are tax credits? Of course, some people will spend the money on drugs, or alcohol, or some other non-state approved activity. But the question is, does such a system deliver better outcomes than one in which the government prescribes what that money should be spent on? If the answer is yes, there is nothing irresponsible about it.

Nick Clegg's first major speech this this weekend has gained significant coverage, and significant plaudits, including among the Tory press.  Echoing many of the themes in CentreForum's various education papers (a summary of which can be found here), his combination of a coherent and radical vision of supply side liberalisation alongside the minor but media friendly call to cull the bottom two GCSE pass grades seems to have been a popular one:

BBC: LibDems want parent-run schools

Guardian: Clegg prepares to end state intervention in schools

Spectator: Clegg steps up

Independent: Clegg to call for smaller state in first major speech

PA: Clegg in call to scrap low grades

Sunday Telegraph: Nick Clegg shifts to right

ePolitix: Clegg backs "diversity and choice"

Channel 4 News: Clegg makes first keynote speech

However, what will be more interesting is how the commentators will react, both on the left and right. Watch out for discussion as it filters into the consciousness of the commentariat.

Ed Balls has been busy previewing his plans for Primary Schools.  Compulsory foreign language lessons was widely trailed over the weekend.  The Times clearly received a more detailed briefing today. ('Tailored testing for pupils at primaries') which includes giving schools far more flexibility in deciding when individual pupils are ready to take national tests.

In her commentary Alexandra Frean sets these announcements in the context of the Government's approach to children in general ('Focus on the individual is not without problems')

With the Conservatives setting out their own plans and Lib Dem leadership candidates eager to express their views, it seems that education is creeping up the political agenda to a level it hasn't been since the early days of the Blair Government.

Also in today's news:

Courage and Coalition - Peter Preston in The Guardian asks Clegg and Huhne to commit political hara-kire by being more explicit their likely negotiation positions for coalition deals after the next General Election.

The next decade might just belong to the Lib Dems - Martin Kettle - The Guardian (actually appeared on Saturday 8th Dec)

Iain Martin in today’s Telegraph lauds the Conservatives’ plans for schools.  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;jsessionid=PBT00JS0UMSG3QFIQMGSFFWAVCBQWIV0?xml=/opinion/2007/11/22/do2203.xml

 The Tory plans for schools…are genuinely exciting: the Tories promise to unleash a wave of reform in our moribund state education system.

 Iain points out that the Conservative’s green paper on education, ‘Raising the bar, closing the gap’ promises:

 a supply side revolution, stripping away the monopoly power of local education authorities, the state monoliths that strangle diversity of provision and competition. Would any parents want to open and run schools, as they would be allowed to under Tory plans? Perhaps. They did in Sweden, when such a scheme was a trigger for widespread improvements.

 From the perspective of CentreForum, however, the most interesting aspect of the Conservative proposal is to recommends a pupil premium: an increased per capita funding for pupils from deprived backgrounds. This measure would incentivise schools to accept less advantaged pupils. This is, of course, the policy CentreForum proposed and articulated in the recent pamphlet ‘Tackling Educational Inequality’. It is interesting and positive that the Conservatives are now proposing a genuinely liberal vision for school reform.

The columnists are sticking with tried and tested issues.  So much so that when you see the list of topics (poor schooling, poor prisons, poor planning) you wonder if the pieces themselves will be derivative. 

One such piece is Steve Richard's in The Independent ('How the bloggers are making politics more febrile, more fun - and more challenging') In it, he rehearses the rather patronising  political-blogs-are-quite-interesting observation. So do today's columnists put up a reasonable fight?

Education

• Johann Hari in The Independent blends the true life events of Big Brother with the failings of the education system. ('Big Brother and the failed generation')

Prisons

• Camilla Cavendish in The Times uses the news that indefinite detention was attacked by the courts yesterday to launch a full frontal on the lack of direction or vision for prisoners. ('This is your prison scandal, Prime Minister')

• Ross Clark, also in The Times, refreshes the ongoing planning debates with a series of challenges to policy makers ('We've got lots of Countryside. Lets start building')

• Peter Riddell, in the last piece for today from The Times, suggests that it might not be a good thing for the Tories to descend into leadership introspection and civil war ('Get rid of Cameron? Tory mutineers are bonkers')
  

• Lib Dem members are often exasperated by the fact that other people just don't get them.  No doubt eyes will therefore roll when seeing the headline to Alan Cochrane's piece for The Telegraph -  'What are the Scottish Lib Dems for?'.  However, the question is worth while asking following the news that the Lib Dems have sunk to just 4% in the polls since May's elections (see the piece for various caveats on the poll itself)

Steve Richards argue that newspapers are still more influential than blogs.  Given today's interesting crop of opinion (especially the Prisons and Planning stories) the dead tree press is still very much in the ring.

On Monday, Cabinet Office minister Ed Miliband used a Guardian interview  to indicate that measures to tackle inequality would figure prominently in the Labour manifesto he has begun to draft ('Miliband: "I want a buzz back in the manifesto"').  In it he said:

"I think we have to take a sober look in the manifesto work on whether we are on a path to tackle some of the great causes of inequality. In the kind of market economy we live in and the kind of world we live in, it is much harder than we thought to make a difference to child poverty."

[Mr Miliband] thinks most people care about "where are the poorest in society relative to the middle.

"I think the gap itself is an issue, but what a lot of people would say about Britain is that when we are the fourth richest society in the world, why do we have people with such low incomes and what can we do about them?"

Today's release of the policy document Freedom from Poverty, Opportunity for All: Policies for a Fairer Britain by Shadow  Schools Secretary David Laws and Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Danny Alexander suggests that the Lib Dems are willing to enter the debate. The paper proposes:

• Introducing a 'pupil premium', with £1.5bn extra targeted at the children with the greatest need, as recommended in Paul Marshall's recent paper Tackling Educational Inequality

• Reforming tax credits by ending the overpayments crisis and taking higher earners out of the system all together.

• Increasing Child Benefit by around £5 per family per week, taking 150,000 children out of poverty.

• Replacing Job Centre Plus with a new 'First Steps' agency, while outsourcing properly funded employment support to the private and voluntary sector and introducing a single working-age benefit.

• Immediately restoring the earnings link to the basic state pension and in the long run introducing a citizens' pension.

• Establishing an Independent Commission on Public Sector Pensions to ensure that they are fair and affordable - with any savings re-invested in a higher state pension.

The policy paper has already received coverage from the BBC ('Lib Dems unveil anti-policy plan') and the Guardian ('Lib Dem pledge on poverty'), with more considered responses likely to emerge in the coming days. For political and ideological context, Menzies Campbell's IPPR speech from last December is well worth reading ('Poverty and Opportunity: The Liberal Way').

With Ian Duncan-Smith's 'Breakthrough Britain', the Conservatives are also signalling they don't want to be left out of the debate.

The FreeThink blog appears to have two kinds of readers: those attracted by party political comment; and those attracted by policy debate.  This weekend's papers has plenty on offer for both.

On the party political track, we have the fevered speculation about the health or otherwise of the Tory party - with columnists such as Andrew Rawnsley ('Could Cameron turn out to be the Tories' Kinnock?') and Janet Daley ('Tories must stop their modernisation mania') seemingly conspiring with the denizens of Conservative Home - and a fair share of opposition bloggers - to stoke a crisis in the Cameron project. In a similar vein but with very different conclusions, William Rees-Mogg in The Times makes a fairly bizarre case that the Ealing Southall and Sedgefield results represent a disaster for Brown - without so much as a nod to the fact that the government vote almost always gets squeezed at by-elections, especially in previously safe seats ('Why Brown should be reeling over Ealing').

Those who foam at the mouth for policy have an even meatier menu to choose from:

• Lynsey Hanley, author of the recently acclaimed book Estates, uses an article in The Guardian to make a strong case for the limitations of family elder-care. Certainly, it is well-known that it's not always possible for older people to live with family members, but Hanley's argument that extended family living arrangements may offer a less-than-ideal solution to the problems of care in old age even when they are possible perhaps represents a salutary corrective to the idealized picture of family responsibility painted by many on the right. ('Don't assume family care is always best for our elderly'.) No one wants to leave welfare in the hands of an impersonal state, but the social care system has no more of a monopoly on neglect and abuse than blood relatives have on the social commodities of trust and companionship.

• Writing in the FT ahead of today's housing green paper, Mark Clare of Barratt Developments calls for further reforms to the planning system to facilitate an expansion in housing supply.  Echoing Tim Leunig's paper for CentreForum, 'In my back yard', he advocates "giving local authorities a greater incentive to promote and escure development for the benefit of the communities for which they are responsible". Clare also argues that publicly-funded housebuilding deserves more consideration, and that housebuilders face a challenge of keeping costs down whilst improving environmental standards in the years ahead. ('Release land to build the homes Britain needs'.)
• The vocational training debate rumbles on with the revelation in The Guardian that a school in Sunderland has fitted out a classroom especially to train pupils for jobs in a call-centre. The school claims that the scheme is preparing pupils for work; the NUT argues that the scheme is depressing pupils' aspirations. ('School with call centre training site in classroom criticized'.)
• Finally, an IFS study has found that the new university grant system will benefit only those with household incomes over £17,500, since the poorest students already receive full grants and fee remission. ('New university grants "are no help to poorest"'.) I thought that was the point, though. After all, families with annual incomes in the region of £20-£30,000 are hardly well off, and may - with good reason - be just as averse to incurring debt to pay for education as those with lower incomes. Moreover, raising the threshold helps reduce the disincentive effect on earnings which all means-tested systems create in some form or another. Or must all policies be measured exclusively by their impact on the very poorest?
  

Paul Marshall's report on Tackling Educational Inequality, released by CentreForum on Tuesday and available for download here, has received widespread coverage in the national and local media, ranging from the marvellously titled 'School's Not Out' piece on GMTV to articles by Jon Boone in the FT ('Schools study backs "pupil premium"') and Richard Garner in the Belfast Telegraph ('Schools "should get reward for taking poor pupils"').

Over at the Liberal England blog, Jonathan Calder wonders whether the money might not be better spent on improving the quality of teaching within existing school hours, rather than extending the school week. ('CentreForum: Saturday lessons for poor children'). However, the report has received a firm endorsement from Kate Green, chief executive of the Child Poverty Action Group, who commented in a CPAG press release:

"We strongly welcome the approach taken by Centre Forum, which recognises the need to tackle the inequality of school pupils at source. The proposal for extra schools funding to be delivered to the most disadvantaged through a 'Pupil Premium' is an important step in the right direction.

"Funding models that give schools extra resources according to individual pupils' needs are essential in the fight to end child poverty, but not enough on their own. Income inequality must be addressed too, or the poorest pupils will continue to come through the school gates with more barriers to learning than a pupil premium alone can fully compensate for. We hope that Liberal Democrat party members will not only endorse the 'pupil premium' proposal, but will support the extra investment of £4 billion that the Institute for Fiscal Studies says is needed to meet the Government's target of halving child poverty by 2010."

There are two big policy debates raging at the moment in the newspapers: Grammar Schools and Housing.  By rights the former shouldn't be commanding the headlines it has as it is a re-statement of existing policy.  Margaret Hodge brings a genuinely new angle to the second with her remarks about "indigenous" people in her constituency who can't get a house.

The commentators are queuing up to guide you through the arguments.  You can read the main protagonists.  David Cameron in today's Times sets out his argument ("This sterile fixation with grammar schools is a dead end")  Janet Daley is so angry in her counterblast ("When did wanting the best for your children become a crime?") that it becomes rather entertaining.

Steve Richards, in The Independent, does a much better job at shedding light on the subject in "Cameron must learn the lessons of this pointless furore over grammar schools".  It seems that the newspaper's sub editor has done Richards a disservice by titling it so, as Richards actually concludes that Cameron has acted perfectly properly and that its the right wing press that are keeping the Conservative Party from achieving its greatest potential.

On the issue of housing there is "Ignore myths, stick to the facts" from Michael White in The Guardian and "Shame on you, Margaret Hodge" in the Telegraph (which is worth reading for the comments alone).

However, the best article of the day is in The Times, penned by David Aaronovitch.  "Come paddle with me in the soupy Middle Sea" draws the grammar schools and Housing strands together in a hymn of praise for the centreground in politics today. 

"[Parties moving to the centre] is only a difficulty if you think that, say, climate change is either not a threat or quite fun, or that Britain should become a very high-tax or very low-tax economy. If you don’t think those things it is positively capricious to blame politicians for not conjuring up imaginary storms just to keep you entertained.

Outrageous policy pronouncements like those by Margaret Hodge and Janet Daley sell more newspapers than prosaic arguments of the centreground.  However, that doesn't make grammar schools right. It just means that politicians of the centre need to work harder on presentation.

CentreForum's latest pamphlet , 'The surest route: early years education and life chances' was published today and attracted the attention of Alexandra Frean in The Times under the title 'Unemployed mothers need free childcare 'for welfare of children'

The report is premised on the growing body of evidence from around the world that a preschool education helps boost children's intellectual and social development.

The report quotes Julian Astle, the author:

The Government’s obsession with using childcare subsidies to boost employment, rather than to promote child development, has resulted in children from nonworking families being given less financial support than all other families... The result is that access to childcare remains a key issue for the very group of children who most need — and would most benefit from — a high-quality preschool education”

The hard copy of the report is being sent to all CentreForum subscribers and a pdf can be found on the CentreForum website.

Also in today's news

Theres lots of campaign coverage for election junkies today.  Also several budding entries for our ever popular 'longest headline of the week' competition:

• The FT covers the local elections 'Labour faces wipe-out in south with fewest councillors for 35 years' - no great shocks but a useful canter through what's happening in England in May. Similar coverage is available in The Independent in a piece entitled 'Cameron's test is to secure Tory votes 'north of Watford''.
  
• James Blitz, also in the FT, has a slightly different take, suggesting that a bad local election performance, though inevitable for Labour, may be good news for Gordon Brown 'Brown may get boost from 'Super Thursday''
• The Times is one of the few papers today (or this week) to cover the elections in Wales, in particular drawing attention to 'a steady, if unspectacular, recovery in Conservative support that predates David Cameron' in 'Blair visits traditional heartland as voters turn to the Tories'
• The Times also has a look at the Lib Dems' manifesto launch in Edinburgh and find Nicol Stephen wanting 'One bright future dims in the cold light of morning.
• Finally they say that the Lib Dems have given the firmest indication yet that they would not be interested in an Independence referendum with the SNP in 'Scottish Lib Dems rule out Nationalist power deal'.  The Guardian has a similar take in 'Lib Dem blow to SNP hopes of referendum on home rule'
  

The higher education funding debate continues to hold media interest.  An article titled 'The price of knowledge' in today's Economist picks up on a CentreForum issue that we tackled in a pamphlet last year ('Open Universities') and again in an event just a few weeks ago (imaginatively called 'The university funding system')

Since holding our event it has emerged that the education history of an applicant's parents will be made available to admissions officers. This is part of the ongoing laudable attempt to increase stalled social mobility.

The Economist points out, however:

The evidence, though, is that the real stumbling block for poor would-be undergraduates comes much earlier. With the same exam results they are as likely to apply, and to be accepted, at university as the well-off are.

The Economist

Government should be targeting its resources at much younger children in order to maximise educational opportunity before they get anywhere near university age.  In fact, good quality education in the very early years of a child's life seems to be key in delivering life chances later on. 

Exactly how these opportunities could be made available for those traditionally excluded is the subject of a forthcoming CentreForum publication.  Watch this space for news.

Two major policy initiatives that Labour are likely to take into the next General Election were announced yesterday. 

The Prime Minister put his weight behind an NHS restructuring that would, amongst other things, see the closure of many A&E units. All papers provide extensive coverage (though it has been knocked off the front pages generally by speculation over the Pre Budget Report).  That the Telegraph is so lukewarm signals that the Government have a long way to go to win this argument:

"...the common-sense objection to this plan remains: the most sophisticated treatments will be of little use to a patient who has died before he arrives at hospital."

The Telegraph

Many people's experiences of A&Es - especially if they attend at the most critical times - are far from perfect.  But the sense of reassurance that people gain from being within striking distance of their local A&E will be more of a critical factor in the debate than the promises of superior care that accompany them.

Education is the other area that policy proposals now look set to become election pledges in the future.  The proposals contained in Lord Leitch's review of skills suggests, again amongst other things, that we should gradually raise the period of being in compulsory education or training to 18.  (See The Guardian, The Telegraph or The Times)

As this is one of Gordon Brown's own commissioned reports this will probably have more legs than the Tomlinson Report - which covered some of the same ground and was quickly dumped.

"Education for all till 18" from one side sounds like almost as interesting election slogan as "Save our A&E."

The Telegraph

Also in today's news

• Vince Cable develops the idea of independence for our financial institutions further in an article in The Financial Times.
  
• The Indepdendent reports that sales of 4x4s have fallen for the first time for 10 years both here and in the US - a reaction to policy or public opinion?