A speech for Bedfordshire’s Blue Sky Seminar – 31^st January 2002

David, thank you for inviting me here to day to speak at your Blue Sky Seminar. I’m really pleased (and not a little apprehensive) to be here –for two reasons.

Firstly, because of the issues we’re facing today. I know that at a previous meeting like this, you began to explore the challenges we face with globalisation. Today, I want both to broaden the debate and focus down at the same time –

I need to be clear from the outset that my aim is to raise some issues for us all to explore. I am not a researcher, nor a politician. My evidence will therefore often be anecdotal and I don’t pretend to have any marvellous answers – other than BGOs – blinding glimpses of the obvious. But I hope the issues I’m going to explore will excite some debate and some ideas from you about how they might be developed.

And that brings me to the second reason for my delight at being here. As David mentioned, I am a former headteacher. I know two things about groups of headteachers and educationalists. The first is that within them they now hold the keys to change and regeneration in their own communities – in the same way that the Church did over a century ago. The second is that, as a group, headteachers make the most challenging and demanding audience any speaker is likely to face. (or so said Barbara Castle in her autobiography.) So I’m excited to be speaking to you – but I do feel a bit like someone who’s just about to be fed to the lions.

Before I begin, though, let me set a context for what I’m going to talk about with a quick introduction to my own organisation. Very few people outside business have any knowledge of us. In the world of education, particularly, I have been seen by some as ‘the headteacher who sold out to Mammon’, the man who sold his soul to the people who want to get every text and exercise book in the country branded with a McDonalds or Walkers Crisps logo. Two years ago, immediately after my appointment to the job, I was introduced on one stage as the man who had been employed to destroy state education through insidious privatisation.

The truth is a bit different, honest. And it might help to create context for our discussions this morning if I were to teach a quick history lesson.

Twenty years ago, almost to the month, if you’d been a visitor to Toxteth or Brixton, or St Pauls in Bristol, you would have encountered communities in turmoil. You would have found mistrust of local services, a growing frustration with the way in which those with money had turned their back on those living within those communities, a seething rage, often racially polarised. This mistrust, frustration and rage finally boiled over into the riots that took hold of a number of inner city areas of our country. You will remember the news pictures of street fights, looting, burnt out cars and CS gas.

What you may not remember is the fact that, in all three communities, amongst the destruction and anger, one particular chain of stores remained unscathed. And that was Marks and Spencers. No-one broke their windows, despite the fact that they had a strong presence in each of the riot torn areas. People, business people particularly, asked why – and it became apparent from interviews with local community leaders, that people had left M&S alone because it was trusted within the communities it served. It supported where others ignored.

And from this discovery, Business in the Community was born. Chief Executives of other companies, stunned by what they saw on visits to the communities that had been torn apart by the riots, felt that ‘something should be done’ and that they should follow M&S’s example. From that inauspicious beginning, BITC has grown to become a unique organisation of over 750 companies in the UK (the largest of its sort in the world) committed to doing business in a better way – by working to improve environmental performance, developing truly diverse employment policy, trading ethically and, still, by putting time, talent and a percentage of profit, back into the community. We continue to believe that a healthy back street makes a healthy high street.

So on to the exploration ; What sort of a world are schools now preparing their young people to enter? If you’d asked that question thirty years ago, the answer wouldn’t have been too difficult. Now, I suspect, we’d have a much more challenging time coming up with an answer.

There is an old Chinese saying that "forecasting is difficult – especially about the future!"

One thing we can say without any difficulty is that we are already living in a time of profound change – and the speed and extent of this change is going to intensify.

Just reflect that only 12 years ago, the Berlin Wall was still place; Communist regimes ruled in Eastern and Central Europe; and the apartheid regime in South Africa still held Nelson Mandela in jail.

12 years, the time it’ll take a child who joined the Reception class in September, to work through the school system to reach statutory school leaving age.

That is the reality of the speed and extent of change through which we are all now living.

I believe we’re living through 4 revolutions of change – and that these will have a major effect on our education system.

The most dramatic changes are coming from the growth in the power of computing and telecommunications.

Our ability to access and transmit information is increasing dramatically with the phenomenal increase in computing power and telecommunications capacity and reduction in cost.

Computer power is 8000 times cheaper than it was 30 years ago.

If there was a similar rate of progress in the automobile industry, today you would buy a Jaguar car for $2, it would travel at the speed of sound and travel 1000 miles on a thimble of fuel.

 

a transatlantic telephone call in 1999 costs less than 1.5% of the 1939 price

A US Department of Commerce report (1998) suggested that Internet usage was doubling worldwide every 100 days. By next year, there will be 500 million people connected to the Internet worldwide.

One result is the growth of electronic commerce. Already, you can buy cars, books, CDs, airline tickets on the Internet; pay your bills; find new products - pretty soon you will be able to put your mouse where your money is!

This transforms work: what work is done, where it is done, when it is done

and by whom:

What we do know is that higher levels of skills – regularly renewed throughout one’s life – will be essential for finding and keeping a good job.

The technology revolution is driving and is driven by the second revolution: of markets.

Since the collapse of Communism and the fall of the Berlin Wall, there has been a rapid process of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation.

Three billion new consumers have entered the world economy in the past decade.

We now have powerful transnational companies with global brands.

From Cape Town to Buenos Aires; from Sydney to New York; from Los Angeles to Moscow: you will find the same global brands – especially in popular music; in fashion; in fast-food.

Think of the Nike swish and "Just do it" – the golden arches of McDonalds; the ubiquitous Levis.

Some see this as the CNN world – that we have been coca-colonised!

The youth culture is global – and the Internet and other new global media will intensify this.

I was in Uganda just a couple of months ago. When I was travelling around the South East, it was fascinating to watch the teenage taxi driver who was ferrying me around, appear each morning, wearing a different, designer-label T-shirt and listening to the same pop music that was playing in London.

But less than half an hour’s drive from the capital city: Kampala – villages which did not seem to have changed in a thousand years. But in Kampala itself, young Ugandans were flocking to the multi-media leisure and food centres; and to the Internet cafes.

Bill Gates – the worldwide boss of Microsoft – says:

"The Internet changes everything!"

We are at a moment in history like the arrival of the printing press or the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.

Some suggest there is a conflict: global cosmopolitans or locals. I think the two can co-incide, and our education system can help it to do so:

After 3.85 billion years of evolution, world population had risen to 2.5 billion by 1950 and has doubled over the last 50 years to 5.9 billion, and is set to double over the next 50 years to 9.5 billion. Source: Business in the Environment.

85 million more people are added to the world’s population every single year. Around November 10^th this year, somewhere on this planet, a baby will be born who will tip the world’s population over six billion.

The other key feature of this revolution of demographics is that we are getting older!

We’ve got to think more carefully about how we can use the skills of everyone.

The fourth revolution I want to highlight is that of Values.

Across the world, there is the phenomenon of the decline of deference to the established sources of authority – intensified by the wider availability of information and knowledge which means that "experts" are no longer so much in control.

This has had an enormous effect on the way that young people view adults. We have to begin understanding that teaching is more about a relationship based on partnership than hierarchy – and this goes for the teachers as well as young people.

We have to be more aware of and open to our different stakeholders.

Tom Delfgaauw at Shell describes this changing attitude to business as: from:

"Trust me -- Tell me -- Show me" (and query increasingly: -- Include me)

Organisations in all three sectors are being moved along from top to bottom

Obviously the pace of change in society that I’ve already spoken about affects business as much as it affects young people. We see that in the way companies fall in and out of the FTSE much more often than ever before.

But change isn’t the only pressure on business.

I asked one Chief Exec recently what kept him awake at night.

He reeled off the following list:

"diminishing role of government

regulatory pressures – you can tell he worked in the telecom industry!

Media scrutiny

Society’s expectations of his company

The need to attract and retain the best staff

Returns on investment

The transparency that is now required about product information

Adherence to standards

The pressures of globalisation

Corporate governance"

… and I thought the pressures of the Key Stage 2 SATS had been bad enough when I was a headteacher!

Last year, The Financial Times and PriceWaterhouse Coopers asked the same question to 750 Chief Execs listed in their ‘Most respected Companies’ survey.

One can begin to see why companies are getting more and more interested in education and what our education system turns out. Why peddling products to young people seems rather less important than ensuring that young people are properly prepared for adult life.

In 1999, in fact, the McInsey War on Talent research showed that only 3% of companies believed they were recruiting enough talent to reach their business objectives in 5 years time.

And as for acting responsibly, last year’s Choosy Grads survey suggested that, all things being equal, today’s graduates choose socially responsible companies to go and work for.

If one then adds some other issues to the melting pot,

The argument for business getting a stake in the education system becomes all the more strong.

Tomorrow’s workforce is going to look very different from today’s.

So companies have begun to wake up to the fact that involving themselves in education for education’s sake could be important

And that, as MORI have shown, if you’re going to recruit the right people, you’d better act in a responsible way.

So, Business wants to get a stake in education, but why should schools bother to interact with business? I’m not sure that I have an answer, other than a very obvious one. Schools and businesses are parts of local communities – those communities will develop more effectively if the constituent parts of them work collaboratively.

The big question for me is about the appropriateness of different roles. And I think we have a long way to go before we get this right. Look at the development over the past few years of the governance of schools. In my view the rationale for altering the make up of governing bodies to include more community representation (including business) was a good one. But no-one gave really effective thought to the time that people would have to give, the skills and expertise of the Headteacher and their staff, the scale of the challenge on finding so many effective people who could understand the difference between strategic thinking and operational meddling. So we’ve struggled in finding a way for business and the rest of the community to get properly involved in governance – and we continue to struggle.

Similarly, and this brings me back to the very beginning of this exploration, business has, in the past, tried to impose itself on schools (through the curriculum or sponsorship with ties attached) without properly engaging in a discussion with headteachers and the educational establishment about what’s appropriate and what’s not. This has led to mistrust – on both sides – and, in my view, in many places a potential for good in raising standards of achievement, going unrealised.

Schools haven’t understood business’s motivations for getting engaged with them. Business hasn’t recognised educationalists’ aspirations for their young people.

If only the two could understand each other, so much more could happen. So let’s get back to basics.

The challenge for business has been to explore just what acting responsibly really means. We describe it as corporate social responsibility, the way in which a company’s business behaviour affects its marketplace, the environment, the workplace and the community.

And, as getting involved in the education agenda is concerned, we see the areas of workplace and community as being particularly important.

We see involvement in education as allowing a business to meet these challenges:

We know that it can build the business. The Dow Jones Sustainability group index showed that 1 in 2 customers pay attention to the social behaviour of the companies with whom they do business. Tesco’s direct support for schools through their cause related marketing scheme completely alters their market share every year for the two months that the campaign runs.

We know that involvement in education can build the people.

Amex staff satisfaction results shot up in Brighton three years ago when it started to get engaged in reading volunteer programmes

We know that involvement in education can build the trust of companies

The evidence for this is more anecdotal, but companies tell us that getting involved gives them the feeling of a licence to operate in their local community. Mars’ support for the Education Action Zone in Slough has, one of its directors suggests, re-energised its standing within the local community

And we know about building the communication

British Airports Authority has re-energised its standing within the local area of Crawley following its rigorous communication of its education activity.

And what’s interesting to see is that, whilst education is not the only way that a company can demonstrate its corporate social responsibility, it is certainly the most popular amongst employees

Last year, the DTI carried out some research with us to find out from companies just what benefits they felt they accrued from education business links. The results of the survey tell us an extraordinary story – and one that you might like to pass on to schools.

Once again, they show that peddling products directly is unimportant. What excites companies are a range of more sophisticated benefits – and that when schools understood those benefits they were much keener to welcome business through their doors.

As one human resource director commented to me the other day, "If you had said to me last year that you could offer me a training opportunity for staff that provided them with hands on experience of leading teams, improving communication skills, planning and organising, managing change, to name just a few, then I would have bitten your hand off in trying to get hold of it."

The six big benefits to business are:

Just as we want young people to come out of school prepared for a life of uncertainty, so business needs to develop its current staff in the same way.

Planning a work experience programme for young people in Dudley, provided one local employer with an opportunity to develop their staff’s business and interpersonal skills. Staff were able to develop their planning and review techniques away from the core business of the company and, as the HR director told me, "The partnership has given more junior staff the chance to practise coaching and supervisory skills. This has given the firm a good idea of who is ready for promotion."

In fact…

Here is a list of competencies that our research has shown can be developed through staff getting involved in running a project with their local school.

I guess these are really BGO’s, but the trick is for us to sell the opportunity to companies.

This is the second benefit. A small bakery in the North East decided that it would get involved with its local school. As part of a Key Stage 3 project in design technology, the head of department and the MD of the company gave the students a project which was to design a new savoury product. The young people got very excited, knowing that what they were designing would really be for sale in their local shops. They came up with a savoury line which is still in the bakery’s top twenty sellers, out of 1400 products. They sell 6000 a week.

Successful busineses get ahead, and then stay ahead, through innovation. Innovation in the markets they create and the processes, products and services they provide to the market. Our research has found that partnerships with education are a powerful way of developing the competences neded by the firms of tomorrow, including innovation, creativity and personal initiative.

Just by getting involved in education shows that a company has a learning culture. Employees report a stronger affection for the company, a growth in enthusiasm and a greater wish to work co-operatively with colleagues.

McDonalds readers – Weston super Mare

Another company organised a work placement for a young person with learning and mobility difficulties from a local special school. As the HR Director told me, "the placement lifted the whole atmosphere of our workshop… We weren;t expecting morale to be affected so much or for it to raise the atmosphere as much.

The ability to recruit and retain quality staff comes from the image the company projects and the actions it takes. Providing quality work experiences for young people can lead to easier recruitment later on. Up in Grimsby, one employer told me, ‘It’s nice to see their faces when they come in. They think they are going to see a nasty, slimy fish factory. But when they see our state of the art technology it opens their eyes. They think about us differently. We have gained some seriously good apprentices as a result of this."

I mentioned peddling product, but gaining and retaining customers tends to be more subtlethan this.

Garden centre and maths trail

WHSmith

Companies that work with schools report a gain in standing within the community, often at little or no cost to themselves.

Walkers Crisps

Boots

This sort of enlightened self interest is a long way away from the hard nosed unacceptable face of capitalism which many assume United Kingdom plc to portray.

But despite everything, comparatively few companies, particularly small ones, get heavily involved in supporting their local schools.

Much of this is down to a natural reticence from companies who don’t want to be seen to be ‘interfering’ in education

But if companies and schools recognise the genuine benefits that can be accrued through partnership, that supporting education doesn’t mean peddling products but is more about ensuring the creation of the healthy backstreets that lead to healthy high streets, then the movement to support schools will grow.

And that brings me, briefly, to the Government’s agenda. All the examples of business education links I’ve mentioned so far are fairly small scale, though replicable around the country to achieve real scale and impact.

They’re not really about blank cheques being paid by business to sponsor schools; nor are they about companies gaining profit through public private partnership activity in the running of schools.

I remain hopeful that the forthcoming green paper on 14 – 19 education reform will increase choice, provide greater breadth pf study and break down the traditional prejudices against vocational studies. The Secretary of State has even, in a recent speech to the Social Market Foundation, suggested that business leaders and young managers might support teachers in the delivery of vocational GCSEs, the first time I’ve heard the government properly recognising the potential in employee volunteers rather than just expecting the private sector to stump up cash.

I continue to applaud the original thinking behind the Education Action Zone movement – (and Excellence in Cities, for that matter) and I confess to being a supporter in principle of specialist schools, but only if business’s commitment to them can be recognised in terms of investment of time and talent as well as straight cash.

And, if you think schools are confused by the last few years’ mountain of initiatives, you should ask any Chief Exec of a corporate what he or she thinks. Generally, the pinstripes are confused and befuddled by it all.

They want to support schools, they want to reap benefits for their workforce, they don’t want to be confused.

So we have created a simple agenda for business involvement in education… an agenda where, if companies and schools are both open about the benefits they can accrue, and plan together to generate them, real progress can be made. The agenda has been built following discussions with teacher unions, headteachers and students – as well as business leaders and HR directors

And in the last few minutes of this presentation, I want to outline this agenda to you:

Volunteering

Raising pupil achievement

Employee motivation

Primary and transition

Work experience

1:1 mentoring

integrated curriculum for vocational training

enterprise

School Governance

Partners in Leadership

Last year we asked our member companies what they would be likely to concentrate on in the next few years. Here’s the ranking order, compared with a similar survey we did with the Centre for Education and Industry five years before.

You’ll see that employee volunteering in all its guises is very high

Sponsorship of schools came 20^th – the bottom of the list.

So if there’s something to learn from all of this it’s this.

Young people deserve to be properly prepared for the unpredictable

Companies want to support schools in doing this, for reasons that are far from the most crass

There is a commitment from United Kingdom plc to support you in your work with local communities, particularly the most vulnerable ones, but that commitment is about investment of time and talent, not cash

Being transparent about one’s objectives leads to success.

And we can’t afford not to work in partnership, because today’s reception class child, experimenting with floating and sinking in the water tray, deserves the chance to grow up to be the next generation’s leading engineer and scientist.

As Pablo Cassals wrote:

"We should say to each of them: do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the world there is no other child exactly like you. In the millions of years that have passed, there has never been a child like you. And look at your body – what a wonder it is. Your legs, your arms, your cunning fingers, the way you move. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michaelagngeo, A beethoven. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel. You must cherish one another. You must work – we must all work – to make this world worthy of its children."

Thank you.