If we are serious about reform, then public services must be agents of change, says Anthony Painter
“You try getting change in the public sector and the public services. I bear the scars on my back after two years in government and heaven knows what it will be like after a bit longer. People in the public sector [are] more rooted in the concept that ‘if it has always been done this way, it must always be done this way’ than any group of people I have come across.”
So proclaimed Tony Blair at the Venture Capital Association in 1999. It was a curious thing to say the time. The Labour Government had kept to Conservative spending plans at the beginning of its first term. All the arguments about the public sector being starved of resources and investment that the party had made in opposition were disregarded and the slow pace of change was blamed on public sector workers.
The Prime Minister’s analysis seemed to contradict itself. If the problem was lack of resources and investment, then how could the blame be attached to the workers? It was not as if there hadn’t been seismic change in the years of Margaret Thatcher and John Major. If anything, public sector workers have demonstrated enormous capacity for reform. Change is the only constant.
The fact is that public sector workers be more than partners in change. They can also be agents of change. Serious change is again on the horizon. It is heartening to see that, despite the Tories’ attempts to propose public spending cuts as the major means of making a dent in the fiscal deficit, the majority of the British people are resistant to cuts that hit frontline public services even if it means accepting that their own personal taxation must rise.
According to a recent Ipsos-Mori poll,
44 per cent disagree with the notion that public services must be cut to pay off the national debt, while only 43 per cent agree. Moreover, 53 per cent agree that spending should be maintained “even if it means increasing the taxes I pay”. While the return to growth, once it happens, and, presumably, increasing employment will make a significant dent in the deficit as tax revenues rise and welfare transfers decline, it will still be optimistic to suppose a retrenchment in spending will not also be necessary.
While it is easy to argue that high rate taxpayers to shoulder more of the burden, the levels of revenue from this approach are uncertain and the amount that can be raised will not be spectacular. It might be fair, but it’s fiscally problematic. So, despite popular resistance, public expenditure will undoubtedly be hit.
Therefore, we have a choice. There can be an antagonistic approach, with change forced from the top down, or there can be one that is based on true partnership. This cuts both ways.
And partnership does work. Across the Atlantic, there is the example of Green Dot. This is a not-for-profit education provider. It now runs a number of schools in the poorest districts of Los Angeles and elsewhere. Its results are phenomenal, with graduation rates of almost double the Los Angeles school district average. The schools Green Dot have taken over were failing. There is no trickery with admissions and access is fair.
One of the major features of these schools is a strong partnership with the teaching staff. Steve Barr, Green Dot’s founder, took over one school in a hostile fashion. California’s education laws allow for a school to opt for independence if 50 per cent of its tenured staff vote for this. Barr started discussions with the school’s staff and convinced them to agitate for change. They did and, after a ferocious battle, the school finally became a “charter school” (similar to Britain’s academies).
Why did the teaching staff want change? Because they knew that they couldn’t do a good job with the management and bureaucracy as things were. They took a chance and the school has been transformed.
Now the unions are coming on board. The American Federation of Teachers signed a three-year contract agreement with Green Dot in New York.
Recently, AFT head Randi Weingarten had this to say of Green Dot: “By design and by choice, Green Dot has union contracts for 100 per cent of the teachers in the charter schools it operates. These contracts maintain due process and contain strong provisions regarding class size and teacher voice.”
Teacher involvement, unionisation and rapidly improving results: it would seem that public sector workers can be protagonists of change rather than the antagonists they are often assumed to be. It is little wonder that Arne Duncan, Barack Obama’s Education Secretary, has held talks with Steve Barr to see what Green Dot can do across the US.
The example of Green Dot makes the emphasis of the Conservative Party on parent-run schools look as if it misses the point. Schools such as Locke High School went independent because of teacher action. They are not teacher-governed, which would be problematic, but their governance and management has strong teacher involvement.
Recently, there has been much discussion and some movement on introducing co-operative organisations to improve public services. This has been seen in education with 25 co-operative trust schools already opening. The model can be applied in social care (co-operatives offering services to those who hold individual budgets), healthcare and a myriad of other services. Staff form a key stakeholder in the provision of co-operative public services.
Whether it is co-operatives, not-for-profit organisations such as Green Dot or simply more autonomy and involvement for frontline public service providers, the fiscal challenges ahead will be more effectively met if staff are involved in the decisions. Given the opportunity, as those teachers in Los Angeles were, staff could instigate change.
There is still a huge debate to be had about the timing and degree of public expenditure cuts over the coming years. Once that argument is concluded, the big question will concern how these are implemented. If there is bedrock of trust, respect and involvement, then standards of services could certainly be maintained and even improved. If we see public sector workers as the enemy, the results will be very different.
