December 2008
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09 December 2008
My blog has moved
My blog has now moved to a new site (click here)
Hope you like the new design and that you will find it easier to post comments.
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08 December 2008
The dangers of being labelled 'progressive'
I look forward to reading the interim report on the primary school curriculum in England by Sir Jim Rose. The BBC, needing as broadcasters always do, to turn the story into an argument, is presenting Sir Jim’s recommendations as a return to progressive education. The Today programme managed to get the Head of the Campaign for Real Education to express grave misgivings, even though it was clear he hadn’t actually read the report.
Having seen what has happened to previous independent reports that the media have managed to caricature as dangerously progressive (remember Tomlinson), Sir Jim himself was at pains to rebut the ideas that he wanted to do away with subject teaching in favour of more play and emphasis on well-being.
Indeed Sir Jim reminded me of RSA colleagues defending Opening Minds. As he pointed out, there is no contradiction between teaching cross-cutting competencies and subject content. And, as he also pointed out, many schools are already achieving good results through an approach to developing skills and broad understanding as the foundation for knowledge. As for his emphasis on play, health and well-being - surely only the most dyed-in-the-wool Gradgrindian will object.
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08 December 2008
Differing interpretations of the Baby P tragedy
On my way to watch West Brom drop two more home points, I read more chapters from Christopher Hood’s 1997 book ‘The Art of the State’. This offers a cultural theory of public management. In one of his early chapters, Hood illustrates cultural theory’s four paradigms of social relations through reference to public management disasters. This got me thinking about the different interpretations of the Baby P tragedy.
The most predictable response is the hierarchical: this was a failure of supervision and regulation. This tends always to be the view of central government and national media to problems occurring in local government. Within days we saw the hierarchical remedy with Ed Balls’ announcement of annual OFSTED spot checks of social service departments; this despite the failure of the Inspectorate to spot Haringey’s problems a few months before Baby P’s death. Indeed it could be argued that if Haringey had spent less energy trying to convince OFSTED and more on genuinely performing well, they might have seen the problems earlier. From a hierarchical perspective the failure of past supervision is usually more, not less, future supervision.
The egalitarian response is to see Baby P as the outcome of a deeper seated problem of values. From this perspective it is the failure to give social work – and engagement with troubled families in general - the status and support it needs that leads to the service vulnerabilities exposed in this case. A classic exposition of the egalitarian case was offered the other day on Radio Five when a defender of the social work profession pointed out that it was stuck between the Scylla and Charybdis (OK, I’ve added the classical reference) of being too interventionist and thus accused of taking children away from their families needlessly or too trusting and risking more Baby Ps. Of course, the stakes are very high in social work but when you think about it anyone in any job could say they were walking a similar tightrope (between boring truth and untrue sensation if you are a journalist, or between unimaginative complacency and excessive risk taking if you’re a Chief Executive).
The fatalistic response may be the most coherent, even if it is also the least inspiring. There are lots of poor children with screwed up parents. We don’t choose as a society to spend our tax pounds on paying social workers high wages. Local government middle management is hardly a magnet for the brightest and best. So, cases like Baby P are simply inevitable. Any action we take to try to stop future tragedies is likely to cause as many new problems as it solves.
Interestingly, the one perspective I haven’t heard is the individualistic. This tends to be the least well articulated paradigm in public service bureaucracies and, given that individualism tends towards a robust view of risk, it is even less likely to be found in an area like social work. The kind of questions an individualist observer of the Baby P case might ask are ‘what positive incentives are there for professionals who are worried about a child to demand these get addressed?’ or ‘how could we make it easier for mothers who can’t cope to call for help without being dragged into a net of state supervision?’ or even ‘given the pretty basic motivations of the kinds of people who tolerate child abuse, what kind of reward would encourage them to shop each other?’.
The response to Baby P is likely to be largely hierarchical. This will be accompanied by an egalitarian critique and a widespread public attitude of fatalism. Individualism is the least likely voice to be heard even though it is arguably the most obviously missing dimension to the existing system.
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05 December 2008
And so to more cheerful matters
Anyway, enough politics -it’s my birthday today so I want to talk about more cheerful matters.
I mentioned earlier in the week how, at a conference organised by Homeless Link, I had interviewed some people recovering from terrible problems. One of the things that struck me about what they said was the role of creativity in helping their recovery. So for one woman in particular enrolling in a creative writing workshop had transformed her capacity for self-expression and increased her self-confidence.
I was reminded of this again by a fantastic article by Anne Karpf in The Guardian on Wednesday, in which she described the work of John Zeisel, a visiting professor at Salford University. He has been exploring ways in which design can help people suffering from Alzheimers and has designed a number of innovative care homes which have resulted in material improvements in the well-being and safety of patients with dementia.
Examples like this underline the importance of links between creativity and design and individual and collective well-being. It is an area the RSA has looked at before and is doing so again. As we align our activities around the core idea of ‘citizens for the future’, this is a rich seam for us to mine.
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05 December 2008
More on 'Greengate'
I wanted to get an early night last night but I found I couldn’t sleep. The problem was that having watched David Starkey on This Week, the BBC’s late night politics show, I feared that at any moment jack booted thought police would enter my house and drag me away for the crime of having been vaguely critical of the Government in previous blogs.
Discussing the Damian Green affair, Dr Starkey told viewers that we are now as good as living in a ‘neo-fascist state’, Parliamentary democracy is dead and Gordon Brown is ruling as an absolute dictator. Indeed, any viewer who knew nothing of the facts of the Green case would have assumed that Mr Green had been arrested, sentenced and imprisoned on the direct orders of the Prime Minister and that this was a fate now awaiting anyone who dared to be critical of the New Labour junta.
Dr Starkey is one of our most distinguished historians, so I am sure it was just lack of time that stopped him sharing the awkward facts that contradict his claims that parliamentary democracy is dead:
- The Labour Government has been subject to a higher proportion of back bench revolts than most previous modern governments, has been defeated repeatedly in the Lords, and in the Commons on counter terrorism
- The Queen’s Speech includes proposals to increase the powers of Parliament, for example on the calling of war
- The select committee system - a relatively recent invention in Parliamentary terms - is more robust than ever and regularly leads to high powered, all party criticisms of the Government
- On issue after issue over recent years, Ministers – especially the Home Secretary - have had to fight for their jobs by defending their actions to Parliament
- Every week in a form of public accountability that many in other nations –including the USA – find amazing, the Prime Minister is questioned and jeered by MPs in PMQs
- Among the innovations introduced by New Labour are the PM being publicly interrogated by select committee chairs and a significant expansion in pre- legislative scrutiny.
I wrote earlier this week about the Green affair. It does look as though a combination of police heavy handedness and poor communication meant that the investigation lost proportion. But the case does raise genuinely difficult issues. We do not know the degree of collaboration between Mr Green and the civil servant (and it is important to stress that they both deny any). But is it really tenable to claim - as do those like Starkey who argue that police questioning of an MP in a case like this is a fundamental blow to our democracy - that MPs should, as a matter of right, be free to encourage party activists to get senior civil service jobs in order that they can systematically trawl for and leak sensitive documents? How could the civil service work if this were the case? As I asked earlier in the week, would critics like Dr Starkey have the same view if a Sinn Fein MP had persuaded a Republican sympathiser in the Home Office to leak information to discredit the British state?
The issues raised by the Green case are important and unresolved. It may be that serious errors of judgment have been made. Perhaps we do need to agree that MPs should have different and greater rights before the law than other citizens, and that their Westminster offices are sacrosanct. But to encourage people to see this affair as the final nail in the coffin of British democracy is ludicrous. There is, of course, one terrible blot on our democracy, an electoral system that gives a single party a safe majority on a minority of the vote. If Dr Starkey was really worried about Executive power he would be out on the streets demanding electoral reform. But this wouldn’t be nearly as much fun as telling BBC viewers that they live in a dictatorship.
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04 December 2008
Farewell sweet joke ...
Great fun was had by all at Buckingham Palace last night. We were celebrating 100 years since the Society added Royal to its name (if you’re interested there is a chance tomorrow to hear the world’s expert on RSA history, Dr Allan, explaining how the title was first granted). The evening was a wonderful mix of the grand and the informal, and having a dozen or so Fellows from the US joining the 100 plus from the UK added greatly to the mix.
But for me there was a note of tragedy too. Ever since I arrived at the RSA I have relied on an apocryphal (‘made up’ some might harshly say) story about my first staff meeting. In the story I claim I announced to my new colleagues that we would be doing things very differently at the RSA in the future. As a powerful symbol of this I was going to drop the ‘sexist’ moniker ‘Fellow’ in favour of the more democratic title of Member. I was very pleased with the response to this innovation until someone came up to me as I was leaving the meeting and said:
‘It’s a great idea to drop the title Fellow, but are you sure people are going to want MRSA after their name?’
Some of my colleagues (hi, Vivs) have heard this joke so many times that they have threatened to set light to themselves (or me) if I embark upon it again. But it works, so I keep wheeling it out.
But last night my short speech with its opening anecdote was preceded by that of RSA Chair, Gerry Acher. Being on next and feeling appropriately nervous in the magnificent setting and in the company of HRH, I was only half listening. So when a ripple of laughter went round the room I had to perform that strange process of forcing my subconscious short term memory to rewind and play. Yes. It was as I feared - Gerry had used the MRSA joke.
So that’s it! From this day on the joke is consigned to the archival vaults of the RSA only ever to be heard of again when a future Dr Allan is rummaging around for memorabilia for our 200th Royal anniversary. Let’s hope by then the response he gets is ‘what’s MRSA?’
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03 December 2008
Some inspiration amidst the gloom
I was privileged yesterday to chair a conference launching a new coalition of charities concerned with the provision of services to adults with severe and complex needs. The event was organised by Homeless Link.
For the second session, I interviewed three service users who have been helped to turn their lives around by a combination of statutory and third sector services. Their stories were humbling, frightening and inspiring – humbling, in the way in which they had overcome huge personal problems; frightening, in the sense that each of them recognised the need for change, but would not still have been here if the help hadn’t clicked in when it did; and inspiring the way each of them paid tribute to the professionals and volunteers who had helped them.
Against the background of social pessimism (which I have blogged about before) and the more recent despair over the Baby P case, it is important to remember that whilst ‘the system’ does too often fail, it also saves thousands of people every year, enabling them to lead useful and fulfilling lives, when previously they had lived in hopelessness and chaos.
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03 December 2008
Off to hear the Queen's Speech
Off to hear the Queen’s Speech in a few minutes. Is it a sign of ageing that I seem to take up opportunities like this? In the past I would have said ‘why do I want to go - if I want to watch all that Black Rod nonsense, I can watch it on telly?’.
Politically, where do we stand now? We are coming out of the third major pendulum swing since Gordon Brown became Prime Minister, with Labour appearing to fall back in most polls since the PBR. The core factors playing against a Labour victory in 2010 are still there:
- Gordon Brown finds it hard to connect with ‘middle England’
- After three terms the public are bored and disillusioned with Labour
- David Cameron’s Conservatives, while far from convincing, are not useless or frightening.
Labour strategists must feel ambivalent about the QS. On the one hand, any Government wants to set the agenda, talking about how it is trying to make the country better. On the other hand, Gordon seems more credible and popular when he is dealing with a crisis. Whatever today’s headlines I suspect the economy is going to be the dominant issue in British politics right up to the next election. The crisis may suit the Labour Government and it might benefit from any signs of recovery, but it is still most likely that the next election will be fought against the background of a long and exhausting downturn.
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02 December 2008
Two gigs today ...
I’ve got two gigs today. One chairing and interviewing at the launch of a new campaign about the needs of people with complex problems organised by Homeless Link, another speaking to a conference hosted by UrbanBuzz on knowledge transfer projects. I’m still finalising what I’m going to say at the second of these, but I am even more motivated to do a good job on the first having just been sent a powerful piece by Mark Johnson.
I’ve met Mark a few times. As someone who has himself led a chaotic life and had to work incredibly hard to get things back on track he is always worth listening to.
Meeting the needs of the most troubled families has emerged as a Government priority in recent years. These are the people left behind by a generally rising tide of affluence. But as the tide recedes and the public money declines will we still give this group the attention they so badly need?
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02 December 2008
The social brain
I haven’t mentioned cultural theory for a while (my blog advisors tell me it puts people off) but I’ve got Chris Dillow to thank for discovering research by Kathleen Vohs. The research shows that just thinking about money makes us more inclined to be selfish. My explanation - from cultural theory - is that money is the pure medium of individualism. It doesn’t concern itself with the group belonging of egalitarianism or the ranking of hierarchy – your pound is as good as the next person’s. Of course, money can be used for a million purposes but as a thing in itself it triggers our individualist world view.
Speaking of cultural theory, our cognition project has now been renamed ‘the social brain’. The project is seeking to work with a multi-disciplinary panel of thinkers and researchers to develop a model of human decision making which is credible at three levels: the neurological, the individual behavioural and the sociological, and to explore the practical applications to which such a model might be put.
The project is being developed by my new colleague Matt Grist and he has just started his own blog with a piece about incoming President Obama through the lens of cultural theory. He may not have known, but in doing this, Matt is echoing the work of Richard Ellis and Aaron Wildavsky who twenty years ago published a cultural theory analysis of the dilemmas faced by presidential leaders from Washington to Lincoln. -
01 December 2008
The other side of 'Greengate'
I am always suspicious when the commentariat has a collective spasm, as it has in the Damian Green affair. So I was pleased to hear Vernon Bogdanor on the Today programme arguing that things are just a little bit more complex than implied by the tide of righteous indignation filling our newspapers for the last few days. It is all too possible that this is a mixture of cock up and over-reaction and that someone senior will end up carrying the can. But in the RSA’s spirit of asking awkward questions, here are three points that are worth bearing in mind in the rush to judgement:
Police investigations are justified by their ends. We are all innocent citizens until proven otherwise. For anyone to be arrested, or to have their property searched, seems like an unwarranted invasion unless and until they are successfully prosecuted. In a case like this, where paper and electronic documents are crucial, the police will tend to undertake a comprehensive and intrusive search at the point of arrest to avoid anything they are looking for being subsequently destroyed.
Surely the distinction between publicising leaked materials passed over by a conscience stricken whistle blower and encouraging someone to break their contract of employment (and the law) by deliberately seeking out embarrassing information about their employer is pretty substantial. I am not saying anyone is guilty of the latter, but is it right to suggest – as many in the commentariat have – that there cannot possibly be a charge to answer?
As Professor Bogdanor pointed out this morning, the principle of Parliamentary privilege (which arguably doesn’t apply in this case anyway) needs to be balanced by the principle that all citizens are the same before the law. How would the media react if the focus of the allegations was a civil servant with republican sympathies who was leaking information on security matters on the instruction of a Sinn Fein MP?
If the case against the civil servant and Mr Green proves to be groundless (and judging by his loud denials, the Conservative MP clearly feels on strong ground) it may be deeply embarrassing for the police and those who knew about the investigation. But are the issues really as simple and clear cut as most of the commentariat suggests?
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01 December 2008
Public services and the impact of the downturn
My working week started early with an interview last night on The Westminster Hour. The discussion topic was the impact on public services of the sharp deceleration in spending planned to start in 2010.
As I argued a couple of weeks ago in this blog, it is important for public services managers to use the coming months to prepare for the long period of tightening budgets ahead. The reductions in spending – against a backdrop of increasing demands particularly in key areas such as social care – will not be achieved through painless ‘efficiency savings’.
As an example of a more radical approach to improving public service productivity, I suggested that year 10 and 11 pupils in secondary schools might only be expected to attend lessons for four days a week. The students would spend the other day at home or in the school library using on-line materials to structure their learning. This could free up teachers’ time and mean that class sizes could be maintained even with a rising pupil teacher ratio.
So I was fascinated to read this morning in The Independent about the Kunskapsskolan schools in Sweden. Among their many innovations is a system in which older students work much more independently under the supervision of personal tutors.
My prediction is that by 2020 whole class teaching will have been largely abandoned for the upper years of secondary school (KS4 and 5). So this is a good example of how a public service can be innovative, improve its service and improve productivity. But this kind of change needs to be explored now not in 18 months, by which time every change will be portrayed as driven simply by the need for ‘cuts’.
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