...is going to start at 20 past
but actually the hall is chockablock and we can't get any more people in
and my speakers are here
and so it seems to make sense to get started
and we can get more questions
and we can get more information from these people.
So we had a really good session just before the break
and for those of you who were with us, thank you for that.
And this session should be equally as interesting.
And I'm delighted to kick off with a very, very good friend of mine
who's the Schools Commissioner from the Department, Liz Sidwell.
Liz also led on one of the early academies
and indeed one of the earlier groups of academies.
So I'm delighted to welcome Liz to the stage.
Would you welcome Liz Sidwell, please?
Good morning, everybody. It's lovely to be here
and I'm really grateful for the invitation to speak to you all.
Make sure that that's low enough for me.
And also really grateful that so many of you have come.
It's brilliant to be speaking to a packed hall.
I'm really sorry that everybody isn't able to sit down
but thank you for being interested
and wanting to hear what we've got to say.
I've been looking forward to today
because we've been talking about it at the Department,
The Academies Show,
but also because I'm a convert to Twitter
and there's been quite a bit on Twitter about The Academies Show
and who's speaking.
So it's something that's been in my calendar
and something I've been looking forward to.
So I hope you enjoy it
as much as me and my team are going to, I know.
First of all, if you bear with me,
I'd just like to take you back to 2005
which was a very important time for me.
I was running Haberdashers’ Aske’s Hatcham College
which was an early academy,
had been a CTC in Lewisham.
And on a particular day in 2005 I was visiting another school in Lewisham
called Malory School and it faced multiple challenges
and it was bottom of the league table, couldn't fill its role,
really, really facing a lot of challenge.
And I visited the school, drove in, worried a bit about my car,
but got through the gates and was walking round the school
and a few Year 10s came up to me, as Year 10s tend to do,
and said, 'What are you doing, Miss? Why are you here?'
And I said, 'Because I really want to work with this school
and I thought it might like to join my Haberdashers group,'
and this one girl said to me,
'Miss, you don't want us, we're rubbish.'
And I have never forgotten that.
Of course immediately I did want them, I wanted them anyway.
They're kids. It's a school.
They deserve everything that all of us can give.
So that was important for me.
We did work with the school, it came into our group.
And with everybody working together,
that school now is on a very good pathway,
well over 50% from single figures.
50%, getting 5 A-C with English and maths and doing well.
So that girl and her friends, the cycle of depravation was broken,
she did achieve and so did others.
And that was because of a lot of us getting together
and working together.
So that was a very important moment for me.
This morning, then,
I just want to talk a little bit about why that girl felt like that.
Why we are worried about that.
And then go on a bit to what I've done, what we're doing
and how we can all work together and help.
So let's look at some of the problems that some of our children face today
and some stats.
If by age seven you're in deficit, something's gone wrong.
Children on free school meals are behind.
This is too early, this can't be, this is not right
and it goes on as you see on that slide.
Right through, Key Stage 2, GCSE
and even through to access to university.
A positive correlation between a child on free school meals
and not achieving at university.
Nothing to do with your brain power.
And that's something that I'm ashamed of,
that we should all be ashamed of and that is why we're all here
packed in the hall, packed in this place,
working in our schools to break that cycle,
to make sure that those stats never come up again.
We all know that children can overcome things.
They have to be resilient, we have to help them.
Who's going to help them? It is the schools, isn't it?
All of you. It's us together helping them.
Of course it's their families, of course it's society.
But we can really help them to be resilient.
We can make them feel confident.
We can make them proud of their school.
And never have a child who believes that he or she
has drawn such a short straw that there is no hope
and just accept that.
That can never be.
And so it's us helping children to overcome the problems that they have
and working from the base of our schools.
What I did in the early days
which is what so many people are doing now better, more
and it's great to see this academy movement and how it's grown.
but it was from Haberdasher's Aske's Hatcham College in those early days
in New Cross that I started, took over that school
and I moved from the private independent sector
to the state independent sector.
And never looked back.
Not that I don't want to work with independent private schools,
of course I do, I work with any schools
and respect every type of school.
But I never looked back and worked with Hatcham College,
took on Knights Academy which was Malory School,
the one I mentioned earlier.
Did well, over subscribed, children achieving,
didn't matter what their background was.
We proved then as you've all proved and we've all proved lately,
you can do it if you have ambition for these children.
But then I realised,
and it's these things that you realise as you go through your work
and working with children and so on,
that actually it was primary...
I was a secondary specialist but it was primary that was so important.
That is where you make the difference.
That is where we should focus.
That is what is so important in a child's life,
to have a really fantastic and strong primary experience.
If primary's right, the secondaries can take that forward
we can future proof the secondary system.
So in 2008 there was a primary school in Deptford
again struggling and I talked with the local authority
and we agreed and brought it into my group.
Now that was difficult.
That was the first primary coming into a secondary grouping
and everybody said to me, 'Liz, what do you know about primary?'
and I didn't know a lot at all.
I knew how to run a school but not a primary school
and we brought in primary specialists, learnt about primary.
Now, today, the chains, the groups,
they recognise the importance of the primary specialist,
secondary specialist and how you work together.
But that was early days and we had to get over some difficulties
but we did and established two more primaries in the chain
and all-through schools.
Something that I really believe in actually.
Let's smooth that journey for the children.
Let's work on that transition between primary and secondary.
But it's not the only way.
What we're keen on is diversity.
What works, what breaks that chain of depravation and problem
for children.
Then what happened to me a year ago, or just over a year ago.
I was driving back from a family do, it was a Sunday night,
checked my voicemail, Michael Gove leaving me a message,
'Liz, ring me back.'
Now you know as heads, I thought I bet they want to do a visit
and now I'll have to reorganise tomorrow.
That's what you always think, you have to get it all right for Monday.
But it wasn't that. He just said, when I listened to the message,
'Liz, would you like a job?'
Actually it wasn't when I listened to the message,
it was when I phoned him back, 'Would you like a job?'
The funny thing was he also said, 'Hold on, someone's at the door.'
It was quite a nice chat like that but, yes, of course I wanted a job.
Schools Commissioner for England. Wow!
What does that mean, Secretary of State? What is that?
That's tackling under-performance across England. Fine.
'Is it full time?' I said, because you always ask a stupid question.
And he said, 'Four and a half days a week.'
And that was a bit of a fib really because it's five and a half.
But it's the most brilliant job
and I, therefore, look outside,
I feel it's a strong external role
championing academies and the programme,
believing in children and schools and I visit a lot of schools.
It's just as well I was head of geography once
because I'm north, south, east, west, I'm going all over the place.
Brilliant.
But I also have at the Department the Office of the Schools Commissioner,
the OSC, which I hope you know.
A great group of officials and sponsor brokers
working together to make the Academy programme really go well
and our particular job is to establish, develop,
look after sponsors.
Now sponsors aren't these rich people.
Sponsors are the people that will take accountability for a school,
take responsibility for a school, be accountable.
They may be all sorts of organisations, especially you,
especially heads and schools.
So we look after and are really developing the sponsor side
and I think that's the quality control side
of the Academy programme.
If Dominic, who you heard earlier,
has got lots of schools he needs to broker as academies,
he needs good sponsors.
My group, OSC, making sure of that.
We also have what I call the accident and emergency kind of wing
when they are academies,
and we've got about 300-plus sponsored academies
and nearly 800, 900 converters,
something can go wrong
and so then I have a team who goes in and says,
'Right, what are we going to do about this?'
We're not going to leave failure or problems for children
if they're in academies or anywhere else.
So I do have a group working with me, a really strong group of officials
and ex-HMIs monitoring academies once they are there
to make sure they are delivering for children
because children are what I care about
and that's what I know you all care about, too.
So that's the OSC, the Office of the Schools Commissioner,
and I've said to them if the schools are supposed to be outstanding,
you've got to be outstanding, I've got to be outstanding.
And they've got to deal well with you
because it's not easy dealing with the Department -
I tried that for 20 years and it's so big
but the OSC's not so big, we're a small crack team,
you can always get in touch with us
and we will put you in the right place, I hope.
So let's just have a look at quick things
because I bet they're going to move me on in a minute.
We've got some good results from academies,
driving up standards.
So really pleased about that. It's at the core of the thing.
If it doesn't work, then why do it?
It's not just the structural change, it's the people,
it's the freedom, it's the collaboration.
As I've said, it's a great privilege to be Schools Commissioner
and I insist on visiting schools every week.
And this was one but I've visited 50-plus just in the first year
and I'm well into my second year now.
But this was Victory in Norwich, Rachel de Souza,
taking on a school, 30-odd%, getting 5 or more now,
68%, well into the 70s she reckons this year.
Why? Because she has sky-high ambition for those children.
And that's what you need.
They need confidence that they can do it
and with us, they can, all of you.
So Rachel, wonderful with her children.
Time to do another one?
Another one, Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical School.
Gary Holden, who's the head there has taken on the Hundred of Hoo,
difficult school, so he's a sponsor of another school.
The thing that he's proved, that I've proved,
that all of us who are doing this sponsorship,
not with money but with our expertise,
taking on and working with another school,
is that your own school does better.
The Hundred of Hoo and the Maths School
when they first tied together, both their results went up,
not just the one because it does so much in CPD terms for staff.
We can tell you more about that.
So, those are two... There are so many I could mention
and so many that I'm so proud to have visited and worked with.
Anyway, now I think you've probably heard from Dominic
that we've got many, many academies open now
and let's just look at some of the chains that are doing well.
So I think you've heard of ULT, ARK, Harris and Oasis,
and Ormiston there, again, just some of many
who are doing really well in big groups.
We've got 1800 academies open now.
Half of secondary schools are now academies.
A smaller number of primaries.
And I want to work much more with primaries
because of the importance of primary.
See how we can develop that primary expertise
and help them to do what they want to do
and what's right for their children.
We've got 1300 under-performing primaries still at the moment.
So it is a big task.
When I talk to heads of outstanding primary schools
they tell me something that really bothers me.
That the children coming in at five
are coming in less and less ready for school.
Still problems with toilet training, problems with speech,
problems with sitting down.
And that's why a couple of weeks ago I was agreeing with Frank Field
about this idea of what can we do with these very young children
to help them, how can we help parents?
I want to work with parents. I want to work with you
but I want to work with parents as well.
How can they help the school? How can they help the child
to make sure that we can do our job?
So I want to bring them in.
Sometimes secondaries don't work so well with parents
but the primaries usually do.
Let's try and make that even better.
So that's a big passion for me to work more with parents
and I had this Frank Field idea of five a day.
What is the five a day that a parent must do with a young child?
And we can discuss that, of course.
I'm on orange now and I know I'm going to get told to stop any second.
So I shall just press on fairly quickly
and say that we welcome all sorts of people who want to be sponsors.
Whether it's businessmen or women, FE colleges, whatever,
universities, grammar schools.
But the main bulk of our sponsor group should be the schools
and, indeed, is the schools and so that's why we're talking to you.
And it's not about money, as I've said, it's about expertise,
about your staff and the staff in the other school working together
and all the children working together.
We want to have primary chains and groups -
I'm on red now -
as well as mixed secondary and primary groups.
So, ladies and gentlemen, I want to work with you.
I want to come and visit you, I want you to email me
and ensure that I do a good job over these couple of years
that I seem to have got doing this fantastic work with all of you.
So thank you very much.
Before it starts flashing red, I'm going to stop.
Thank you so much for listening to me.