Talking with the inspiring Rakesh Ram at Community LD, a town centre group that provides training and support for people seeking employment, I got a clear understanding of what a crushing burden the top down, bureaucracy beloved of Prime Minister Brown can be.  Rakesh is local, highly motivated, experienced and capable. In short, he is exactly the sort of person that someone in Bedford would want to turn to get advice and encouragement.  However, because of the intrusive, restricting and obsessive requirements of the bureaucracy, Rakesh finds much of his time taken up by the requirements of form filling, and less of his time available for doing what he loves to do –serve the needs of his clients.

In this election , there are competing visions for how we provide the social goods – the schools, the health services, the policing etc – that we all share and we all benefit from.  Labour’s proposal is more of the same obsessive and controlling formats of the bureaucratic state. The stifling of local initiative, the restriction on the exercise of judgement by those – the teachers, doctors, police officers etc – who we trust to provide those services here in our local schools, hospital and on our streets.  More of the same is what we will get if Mr Brown and Labour are re-elected.

The other model, proposed by Mr Cameron and the Conservatives, is to push authority for our public services down to a local level.  We want to empower local communities with enhanced authority over their hospital – with more foundation hospitals; their schools – with more rights for parents and teachers to establish their own schools; and with our local policing – via directly elected heads of our local police authority.  We also want to empower more discretion for those who are on the frontline – freeing them up from the “box ticking”, target driven culture that is so loved by the bureaucrats, but so frustrates those whose job it is to provide the services.

This is a big change – and one that will free Rakesh and his team to achieve all they would wish to achieve here for the people of Bedford.

Richard with participants in the Evening with the Entrepreneurs Event at Bedford College

The question that is most on the minds of people when I chat with them on the doorstep is “What can we do about the economy?”

People know that the country’e economy is in a mess – and they will render their judgement on those responsible when the time comes.  They know it is tough to answer all the questions; that there is no magic wand that can wave away the colossal debts racked up by the Government.  What people are looking for is a clear way forward and for leaders who can inspire confidence and who can lead.

Well, Bedford College was the venue in late March for a panel of leaders of business and social enterprise; people who can inspire, who have led, and who had very clear views of the way forward.  Their audience was the next generation of leaders – those in our upper schools, our colleges and other young people who have an idea, an inspiration of their own – and who were looking for advice and guidance about how to move forward.  You can see a video clip from Local News TV below:

Hosted by Irfan Latif, Deputy Head of Bedford School, the panellists took turns to describe their passion for what they do, how they got a start in life and what drives them forward.  First up was Adele Blakebrough, a pioneer in social enterprise and founder of the Breakthrough Foundation.  Damon Buffini, the Chairman of Permira spoke next and spoke of his work with Fairbridge, a nationwide charity that helps young people in to work.

Tim Campbell, the winner of the TV show “The Apprentice” spoke about the motivations from his childhood, about working with Alan Sugar and of his current project, The Bright Ideas Trust, that invests in businesses started up by young people in London.  Next up was our own, Lance Haggith, founder of Sports Traider and he was followed by Shaa Wasmund, who spoke directly of the drive that came from her experiences at school and which led her to work for Chris Eubanks, Bob Geldof and James Dyson.

Sparking, nurturing, investing behind and supporting entrepreneurial talent is the key to our country’s future success.  We have enormous talents here in Bedford and Kempston, and also across our nation – talents that can revolutionise our social services, create breakthrough ideas and build world beating companies.  Government can help to enable those who aspire; it can break down barriers that inhibit people from stepping forward with their idea; it can encourage people to take entrepreneurial risks; it can reward those who succeed from those risks, and for those who fail, give them a second chance to learn from their mistakes by trying again.

It was an exceptional panel discussion, expertly hosted by Irfan Latif who managed to draw out common themes and produce a vivid picture of entrepreneurship that can inspire a new generation of Bedfordians.

So the Mayor, Executive and now the Council have made the decision to move, now, to a two-tier education system.  We will embark on an expensive overhaul of our soon to be “Upper” schools and an expansion of the size of our Primary schools. 

Putting on one-side the educational merits of two-tier vs three-tier – and on balance, I believe the arguments were in favour of two tier – the decision for a change is a very risky one at this time.  The current government has so severely undermined the economy that there is very little faith that it has the money needed to meet its public funding promises.  When the current period of artificial stimulus is over, and whichever party is in government, there will be a strain on the public finances more severe than any in living memory.  Yet, despite this backdrop, the Mayor has led the decision to ask the Government for more money and foolishly taken them at their word that they have the wherewithal to pay.  I have my doubts. 

I say the Mayor has led this decision because his election was pivotal.  Once the Liberal Democrats won the recent mayoral by-election, the middle schools gooses had been well and truly cooked.  Although all parties split on the decision, Mayor Hodgson came out aggressively pro-two tier in the election, in marked contrast to the Conservative candidate, Parvez Akhtar, who favoured the status quo. 

All the assurances about the availability of finances that have been made by the Labour government are now inherited by the Mayor.  It his upon his assurances that this major upheaval in education is based.  I, for one, would not have taken such a risk with our children’s education, but for all our children’s sake, I wish him luck.

With Karen Jackson, Head Westfield Middle School Reviewing the Ofsted Report

I visited Westfield Middle School last week and Head, Karen Jackson kindly gave me a tour and discussed plans for the future of the school.  Like many head teachers, Karen has a passion for the education of children and a firm belief that no child should be abandoned or written off.

I really enjoyed the visit and a highlight was an early look at the Ofsted Inspection report that was completed in June and published last week.  Westfield was rated Good – up one grade from its last report.  That’s great news.  One comment that particularly caught my eye “Pupils mirror the particularly enthusiastic and characterful teaching….” – my observation too!

The real impact of the Government’s overblown borrowing hit schools in Bedford and Kempston last week.

Speaking in the House of Commons, local Conservative MPs Alistair Burt and Nadine Dorries continually challenged the Minister to guarantee the promised funding for Bedford Borough Upper Schools.

This is critical as any change from three to two tier will require major construction; expenditures that our local council cannot afford.  The Minister failed to provide the guarantee – undermining comments from local Labour MP that “The Government has committed to BSF capital investment…”

So where does this leave us?

First of all, Alistair and Nadine have done a huge service for local parents by putting the Minister on the spot and clarifying what many of us suspected all along; that the state of the country’s finances made any guarantees of funding dubious at best.

Second of all, a mighty hole has been blown in the Borough Council’s strategy for school reorganization.  They led from the front with the carrot of oodles of cash from the Government, despite the efforts of many head teachers at the public meetings, rightly in my opinion, to focus on competing visions of how our children would be educated in the two systems and the plusses and minuses of each.

This strategy has now failed and the Council needs urgently to reassess where we go from here.

I think the Council can now only take a vote in principle for a move to two tier.  It would be unwise to embark on reconstruction without the funding in place.  We don’t want a generation of kids educated in portakabins on construction sites, but we should set a direction for the future.

Bedford is already an evolving landscape of educational choices with educational trusts focused around upper schools at Wootton, Sharnbrook, Hastingsbury and Mark Rutherford and also with the new Academy at John Bunyan.  The excellent performance of Goldington Middle School has been too much overlooked in the “tiers” debate.  All these schools should be free to prosper, whatever the decision over tiers.

The next Conservative government will greatly expand choice in education – allowing greater freedom for local parents, charities and others to set up schools and play a much more direct role in how their children are educated.  Real Parent Power – Real Choice – Excellent Teachers.  In these, rather than false cash hopes for fancy buildings – there is real hope for the future of education in Bedford and Kempston.