User:ThatRandomGuy1/sandbox/David Blunkett's tenure as Education and Employment Secretary

British Labour Party politician David Blunkett served as Secretary of State for Education and Employment from 1997 to 2001. He was preceded in office by Gillian Shephard, and succeeded by Estelle Morris, the education and skills secretary, and Alistair Darling, the work and pensions secretary.

Blunkett was appointed as Education and Employment Secretary on 2 May 1997, shortly after the formation of Tony Blair's first government, and remained in the post until the formation of Blair's second government on 8 June 2001, when he was promoted to the role of Home Secretary. He previously served as Shadow Secretary of State for Education and Employment from 20 October 1994.

Blunkett's appointment made him the first blind cabinet minister in the history of the United Kingdom, and the first education secretary to have been educated in a comprehensive school. He is the third longest-serving education secretary, having been overtaken for second place in 2014 by Conservative Party politician Michael Gove by one month. Despite having come from the radical left-wing of the party, Blunkett battled the teaching unions and pursued conservative reforms, introducing university tuition fees and increasing involvement from the private sector in the education system (e.g. Education Action Zones and city academies). He also presided over an increase in school funding and focused on improving educational standards in numeracy and literacy.

Background
Labour leader Tony Blair, elected to the party leadership in 1994, focused on education in his campaign. At the 1996 Labour Party conference, Blair stated that his three top priorities on coming to government were "education, education, and education". A variant of this phrase became Labour's campaign slogan for the 1997 general election,  and education was listed in the party's election manifesto as "our number one priority". In his first speech after Labour's victory in the election, Blair pledged to deliver a "world class education service" – his first promise as prime minister.

Shadow Health Secretary David Blunkett was reshuffled in Blair's Shadow Cabinet to the post of Shadow Secretary of State for Education on 20 October 1994. Blunkett's appointment was meant to cause an attentional shift toward improving educational standards, beginning in primary schools, to indicate a change in the party's education policy. These changes included the toleration of reforms from the governing Conservative Party such as the introduction of school league tables and the national curriculum, and the party's political realignment from teaching unions to council representatives and head teachers. At the time, Blunkett was viewed as having a less amicable approach to the teaching unions than his predecessor in the shadow cabinet Ann Taylor, and Blair had used his appointment to distance himself from her policies, including the proposed abolition of league tables.

In his biography of Blunkett, Stephen Pollard writes that Taylor was viewed as representing Labour's traditional submission to the teaching unions in its education policy and that Blunkett, a known moderniser in the party, had replaced her with the view of building on the Conservatives' reforms, which the unions had opposed, to win over Conservative-voting marginal seats and middle class voters as part of Blair's New Labour policy programme. Clyde Chitty writes that Blair and Blunkett "worked tirelessly" to change the party's education policy in opposition to be less traditionalist (as in traditional Labour policy) and more acceptable to voters. The government's relationship with teaching unions would reach a low point during Blunkett's tenure as Education and Employment Secretary; interventionist policies such as school targets and league tables put stress on the teaching sector leading to strikes in the late 1990s.

Blair's advisers helped Blunkett and his adviser Conor Ryan co-write Excellence for Everyone and Diversity and Excellence in 1995. These were policy papers that set out Labour's early plans for education in government. Excellence for Everyone in particular proposed many of the policies and programmes for education that were eventually adopted during Blunkett's tenure as Education and Employment Secretary, and Diversity and Excellence proposed the creation of foundation schools, which the Labour government would go on to implement in 1998. Blunkett's resistance to the party membership's strong opposition to the foundation school proposal at the 1995 Labour Party Conference led Blair to give him the role of Shadow Education and Employment Secretary in favour of Harriet Harman, the shadow employment secretary, following the government's merger of the Department for Education and the Department of Employment in 1995.

Appointment
Tony Blair appointed Blunkett to his first cabinet as Secretary of State for Education and Employment on 2 May 1997, shortly after the formation of his first government following Labour's landslide victory in the 1997 general election. As a result, Blunkett became the first blind cabinet minister in the history of the United Kingdom. He has also been described as the first education secretary to have been educated in a comprehensive school, though this is disputed.

As Secretary of State for Education and Employment, Blunkett was responsible for the government's Department for Education and Employment (DfEE), specifically its policies, strategy, finances, public expenditure, and major departmental appointments. The Department was headquartered at Sanctuary Buildings.

Staff and ministerial team
Blunkett was supported by schools ministers Stephen Byers and Estelle Morris, employment ministers Andrew Smith and Alan Howarth, and education and employment ministers Kim Howells and Baroness Blackstone. He took the special advice of Sophie Linden, Conor Ryan, Hilary Benn, Nick Pearce, James Purcell, Michael Barber, Cyril Taylor, Tom Engel from 1999, and, for most of 1998, Tom Bentley. From 2000, his parliamentary private secretary was Paul Goggins and his principal private secretary was Mike Wardle. Blunkett held meetings with his ministerial team on a weekly basis. His special advisers would also attend these meetings.

Early actions
Blunkett had a roadmap for his education policies. To begin, the "basics" would be dealt with in primary schools, followed by a focus on dealing with secondary school truancies and expulsions, before finally ending with a focus on having comprehensive schools become specialist schools.

Standards Unit
The Standards and Effectiveness Unit, Blunkett's first policy initiative in his new role, was set up at the DfEE by his adviser Michael Barber in the days following the 1997 general election. An expansion of the previous government's School Effectiveness Unit, it was advertised as a method to improve schools and was established to implement several education reforms of the first Blair ministry, including the scrutiny of "failing" schools and the government's national numeracy and literacy strategies. Another reason for its establishment was to emphasise the importance of "standards not structures", which Labour had done in its 1997 election campaign in response to the Conservative government's attempts to introduce significant structural changes to the education system.

Mike Baker described the Labour government's plans for improving school standards as "ambitious [...] with far-reaching targets for improving school standards", but added that its structural plans for schools were cautious, and Labour had adopted a "soft[..]" approach to any structural changes while in government. Blunkett viewed improving standards in the British education system as essential to his political credibility, and he

Blunkett 18
Three weeks after winning the 1997 general election, Labour, on Blunkett's orders, named 18 schools that the party thought were the "worst in the country", dubbed the "Blunkett 18". This was done to express the Department for Education and Employment's (DfEE) firm commitment to improving educational standards under Blunkett's leadership. Teaching unions responded negatively, citing the potential demoralisation of staff and pupils in these schools and a possible increase in truancy as a result. Blunkett dismissed these reactions and defended the practice of publicly naming "poor" schools as a "moral matter" and said he was willing to do this a second time. This never came to fruition.

Most of the Blunkett 18 improved and no longer needed to be closed by November 1997.

1997 education white paper
Blunkett's first white paper Excellence in Schools was published in July 1997. This paper covered Blunkett's first plans for early childhood education and compulsory education, with the intention that these plans be implemented by 2002. Six principles were declared in regards to policy making; education would be central to the government, policies would advantage the majority rather than the minority, school standards would be focused on rather than the structure of the education system, "successful" schools would be celebrated by the government whilst "underperforming" schools would be intervened against, the government would have a zero tolerance policy toward underperformance, and it would cooperate with those who wanted to improve standards.

The white paper pledged a good standard of education for all four year-olds with parents who wanted such a standard, a maximum class size of 30 for pupils aged seven and below, the creation of Education Action Zones to focus support on underperforming schools and schools in the poorest areas of the country, the tracking of school students in every subject according to their ability, improved teacher education including a required qualification for new head teachers, a new classification called Advanced Skills Teacher and the introduction of training for teachers who were already employed, and more parental representation in local education authorities (LEAs) and school governing bodies.

Class sizes
In 1997, the average class size in the United Kingdom

Targets
New government targets expected to be met before 2002 accompanied the white paper. For children in early childhood, the government expected 66% of three year-olds, primarily those living in areas of deprivation, to have a place at preschool. For 11 year-olds, the government expected 75% of them to meet expectations in numeracy standards for their age, and 80% of them to meet expectations in literacy standards for their age. The government also expected 95% of 16 year-olds to have achieved at least one grade G in their GCSE qualifications (or any equivalent grade outside of GCSE) and 50% of 16 year-olds to have achieved five GCSE qualifications at grade C or above. For 19 year-olds, the government expected 85% to attain a level 2 NVQ qualification (or an equivalent grade outside of NVQ). The targets for truancy and expulsion included the number of individual permanent expulsions staying below 8,400, the number of absences without authorisation remaining below 0.5% of half-absent school days, and the expectation that LEAs offer expelled students with a full-time education before the passage of 15 days from their expulsion. Targets for schools themselves included having 2,000 schools gain beacon status and every school having WIFI network access.

To emphasise the government's drive for improving standards, Blunkett promised to resign if these targets were not met on time. Targets relating to GCSE qualifications were successfully met by 2002, but the numeracy and literacy targets for 11 year-olds were narrowly missed by 2% for numeracy and 5% for literacy respectively. Blunkett had moved to the Home Office as Secretary of State for the Home Department by the deadline. Estelle Morris, his successor as education secretary, also promised to resign if the targets were not met when she was schools minister in 1999, so she took the blame and resigned in October 2002.

Other targets were also set to be met in different years. The government set a target for 50% of looked-after 16 year-olds to have achieved at least one GCSE qualification with a grade by 2001, and it expected this percentage to rise to 75% by 2003. Another was set for September 2000, and included the expectation that class sizes for pupils between the ages of five and seven would not exceed 30 pupils. A target for 800 specialist schools operating in the secondary sector of education by 2003 was also declared.

Devolution
Devolved legislatures for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were established in 1998 and 1999. Education was one of the devolved matters granted to these new legislatures, and MPs in the House of Commons had little say in the policies for education in these countries. However, the Welsh Assembly had less powers than its Scottish and Northern Irish counterparts, and an attempt by First Secretary Rhodri Morgan's Labour–Liberal Democrat coalition government to delink examination results and performance-related pay for teachers was blocked by Blunkett. The High Court of Justice ruled this as unfairly overruling the assembly and the British parliament as Blunkett had introduced new employment contracts for teachers. In Scotland, the Labour–Liberal Democrat coalition led by First Minister Donald Dewar and his successor Henry McLeish abolished tuition fees and paid for the tuition of Scottish students studying in the rest of the United Kingdom, while students from the other constituent countries studying in Scotland still had to pay tuition fees. His coalition government also gave teachers a 21.5% pay rise in January 2001.

National Literacy and Numeracy Strategy
In January 1998, Blunkett removed the non-core subjects of art,

Legacy
Blunkett's success in introducing reforms as Education and Employment Secretary earned him a promotion to the post of Secretary of State for the Home Department following Labour's victory in the 2001 general election. He was succeeded as Education Secretary by his schools minister Estelle Morris, who was appointed to the renamed post of Secretary of State for Education and Skills. Responsibility for employment was transferred to the newly-created Department for Work and Pensions headed by Alistair Darling, the new work and pensions secretary.

Blunkett has been described as one of the most consequential education secretaries. Professor Michael Barber lists him as one of the noteworthy education secretaries alongside Kenneth Baker and Rab Butler. Blunkett was the second longest-serving education secretary behind Keith Joseph until 2014, when Michael Gove overtook him for second place by one month.