David Miliband MP Minister of State for Schools

I went to a school which boasted students speaking 64 languages; I represent a constituency where Yemeni and Bangladeshi communities are an important part of our heritage and our future; and as a member of the government I know that ours will never be a country that fulfils its potential until each and every one of our citizens, whatever their origin, whatever their religion, whatever their race, gets the chance to fulfil their potential.

I feel a special responsibility as Minister for Schools. Our leaders of tomorrow need to come from all backgrounds. So if we care about tomorrow's leadership by all sections of society we must care about today's schooling for all sections of society.

Our promise must be a simple one: full and equal citizenship for all citizens based on full and equal educational opportunity of all citizens.

It means a big change. In the past, the educational inputs seemed fixed and the aspirations variable. The result: poverty of expectation, inequality of result. Now and in the future, the aspirations must be high and fixed, the inputs variable. Then we will get the result we seek: every child with the chance first of all to dream, and then to fulfil their dreams.

Today, I see the central challenge for public services is in meeting this challenge. I will argue that if we are to serve all our citizens we need to break out of a false choice between either universal or targeted provision. We need both.

Good schools and good hospitals and good policing serve all citizens effectively because they treat all citizens equally. But we know that different citizens face different barriers to achievement, and so we need targeted programmes as well. Hence the importance of the Race Relations (Amendment) Act; Aiming High: our consultation on raising ethnic minority achievement in school; and the new student census data that closely monitors performance.

So far so consensual. But we need a new perspective. We have learnt to recognise and debate the needs of different groups. But in the 21st century we cannot simply target groups of people; we need to target individuals. We need to recognise the specific challenges facing ethnic minority groups, but we need to address the different challenges and needs for individuals within those groups.

The most targeted programme of all is service tailored around the needs of each citizen. In education we call it personalised learning: education shaped around the needs, interests and aptitudes of each child, black or white, in a solid family or in care, thriving at school or struggling to keep up. The challenge for teachers and educators is the same - to deliver an education suited to individual need. Different means, the same ends. That is my focus.

The context

The good news is that we can build on success. Our independent tests and international studies tell us that standards in our schools are rising, and that on average they are rising fastest in our most disadvantaged areas.

Research suggests that attainment at GCSE by all minority ethnic groups has improved since 2000. And there has also been really outstanding achievement by students and by schools. Across the country, Chinese and Indian students are the highest achievers in our education system. And at schools like Selly Park Girls School and Technology College in Birmingham, students are bucking the national trends: from just 27 per cent of students achieving five good GCSEs in 1997, 82 per cent did last year, with 67 per cent of students from black Caribbean backgrounds reaching that standard, 81 per cent of students from Pakistani households, and 89 per cent of students from Bangladeshi communities.

So there is much to celebrate. But tough issues remain. Whilst these schools demonstrate that the historic trend of educational underperformance amongst ethnic minorities is not fixed, systemic underachievement amongst specific groups still remains:

Whilst students from black Caribbean communities achieved the second fastest rate of improvement at GCSE last year, with achievement up by nearly 4 percentage points, this was from the lowest base, so that only about a third gained five good grades, compared to over half of all students nationally
Whilst girls from Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities achieved at about the national average, boys continued to underperform, with less than 40 per cent achieving five good GCSEs.

There are complex and diverse reasons for this underperformance, with significant barriers to achievement created in all communities faced by high levels of poverty, low levels of successful educational experience, low levels of English-speaking at home, and any level of discrimination.

The factors that hold students back, whatever their background, are common: quality of teaching, quality of parenting, quality of support. Yet while the factors are common, the circumstances can be different. That is why to make progress we need to target the needs of individual students.

That means tailoring our universal system to their needs. It means building the organisation of schooling around their interests and aptitudes. And it means taking the care to nurture their unique talents. That is the promise of personalised learning. I believe the idea has relevance well beyond the education system: it means taking seriously our responsibilities to each citizen.

Personalised learning

Personalised learning is the way in which our best schools tailor education to ensure that every pupil achieves the highest standard possible. There are five key elements to doing so. I want to briefly set each out in turn.

First, a personalised offer in education depends on really knowing the strengths and weaknesses of individual students. Comparative data helps tackle disadvantage. So the biggest driver for change is assessment for learning and the use of data and dialogue to diagnose every pupil's learning needs.

Too often in the past hunches about group performance have distracted from clear evidence about what will drive up individual attainment. Stereotypes have dampened expectations. And some pupils have been allowed to coast at their own preferred pace, rather than being helped along as fast as they can.
Personalised learning demands hard facts not soft assumptions about pupil achievement, benchmarked against national standards. At St Bonaventure's School in Newham the combination of student tracking and agreed individual targets has helped tackle underperformance right across the school. The result: overall attainment up from about a third of students achieving five good GCSEs in 1994 to over three-quarters last year, with 60 per cent of black Caribbean and 100 per cent of Pakistani and Bangladeshi pupils achieving that standard.

Show professionals the data, whatever their field, be it education or health or policing, and they can fashion solutions; duck the data and they are reduced to guesswork. That is why the Race Relations (Amendment) Act demands that schools, LEAs and the DfES monitor pupil achievement by ethnicity. It is why the new student census provides the PLASC data for them to do so.

Second, personalised learning demands that teachers actively engage all students and accommodate their different styles of learning. No easy task. And a challenge that demands innovation to ensure teachers have the time, support and skills necessary to give every pupil the attention they desire.

This is the thinking behind the national agreement on workforce reform. An agreement designed to give teachers more time to prepare and plan lessons, and more and better support from a flexible whole school team - made up not only of teachers and head teachers, but teaching assistants, learning mentors, and behavioural support staff, itself an important way to broaden the staff pool.

It is also the thinking behind putting better pay and professional development to the service of meeting student needs. We want every teacher to be motivated to identify their own development goals, whether that be to overcome barriers to learning, to develop tailored programmes for particularly gifted and talented students, or to better reflect in their lessons the diverse cultures and identities represented in the classroom.

Third, personalised learning demands a curriculum choice that engages and respects students, with clear pathways through the system. In other words, choice within school as well as choice between school. New GCSEs in subjects like engineering, ICT, health and social care offer an important way to combine broader choice with more intellectual stretch.

My experience of working with schools and national partners in developing the music manifesto - a new commitment to music in all schools for the next five years and beyond - is that when students are introduced to a wide range of musical instruments, traditions and styles they respond with creativity and enthusiasm as well as discipline and teamwork. We need to take such insights and make sure they are spread across the whole curriculum.

Fourth, personalised learning demands a student-centred approach to school organisation. This means staff taking the time to get to know students. It means students involved in the drive for whole school improvement. And it means schools creating an inclusive ethos of mutual respect in which all students are able to have their voices heard. Our best schools have no tolerance of bad behaviour, bullying and racism - if it affects one pupil it infects the whole school - and they know that the values as well as the subjects they teach are vital to their success.

Fifth, personalised learning means parents, the community, local institutions and social services supporting schools to drive forward progress in the classroom. There is already real innovation:

The building of a stronger partnership with parents, like at Grange Primary School in Long Eaton where there is regular communication about each child's progress, giving parents the confidence and knowledge to provide effective support at home.
Creative thinking about how best to support learning beyond the school day, like at Millfields Community school in Hackney, that offers students a breakfast club, an after-school club and a Saturday school that teaches an accelerated learning curriculum
And the benefit of working in partnership with community initiatives, such as at St George Community College in Bristol which supports a Somali supplementary school by providing tutors, educational material and school premises to help engage parents and respond to the risks of underachievement by building on the value they attached to education.

The red thread running through the five elements of personalised learning is the tailoring of provision to meet the needs and develops the talents of all students. Leadership makes it happen: not just leadership from the head teacher, but leadership at every level in the school; leadership that develops the next generation of leaders, by giving them an example to follow.

Leadership

Leadership and vision are vital to raising standards, and to narrowing achievement gaps. To build success for all students from ethnic minorities, schools need:

Leadership that analyses the impact of the school's ethnic minority policy, and uses this to guide and develop practice
Leadership that sets a strong commitment to valuing and including pupils and setting them the challenge of high expectations
Leadership that promotes respect across racial divides, develops strategies to teach students about cultural diversity and deals effectively with racist incidents and attitudes
Leadership to drive effective strategies across the whole school
And, most importantly, leadership to make clear that the underperformance of any group is unacceptable.

It should be no surprise Ofsted tell us that this is the single most important factor in schools that successfully raise the attainment of ethnic minority students. Schools that buck the trend of underachievement are essentially good schools - with a leadership focussed on meeting the needs of all pupils, whatever their individual needs.

Conclusion

Our schooling system has some outstanding practice. I have highlighted some of the best schools. But their practice is not yet universal. That is the barrier to ethnic minority group and individual achievement, just as it is the barrier to achievement by disadvantaged white students.
Good schools are good for majorities and minorities. That is what makes them good. They defeat disadvantage and discrimination by allying excellence with diversity, both in terms of the learning pathways they offer and the cultures they embrace. They combine high standards for all, with programmes targeted to tackle the different barriers to success facing each individual. They deliver an education that is universal in its aspirations and personal in its provision.

Today, the hard facts are that despite all the progress, where you are born has more impact on educational achievement in our country than in most others. Our job is to make a difference to that, and that is what we are determined to do.
'Next Steps' is about optimism, aspiration, hope. It's about ambition - how to get from where we are now, to the place we want to be. To be genuinely ambitious as a nation, we must be ambitious for each and every one of our citizens. That is the way to build a modern citizenship and a diverse leadership that is fit for 21st-century Britain.

DAVID MILIBAND MP
Minister of State for School Standards

David takes an overview of all schools' strategy. Within that he has a particular focus on transforming secondary schools, school funding; transforming the school workforce and the secondary school curriculum.