Department for Education and Skills: Five-year Strategy for Children and Learners
Putting people at the heart of public services
The DfES launched its five-year strategy on 8 July 2004. Listed below are the key points about how it will affect schools. Download the complete document to read more about its implications for you and your students, or see the summary.
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Prime Minister Tony Blair answered your questions on the Five-Year Strategy when he joined TeacherNet on 15 July. Read a transcript of the hotseat here.
Five key principles of reform underpin the drive for a step change in children's services, education and training:
- Greater personalisation and choice, with the wishes and needs of children's services, parents and learners centre-stage.
- Opening up services to new and different providers and ways of delivering services.
- Freedom and independence for frontline headteachers, governors and managers with clear simple accountabilities and more secure streamlined funding arrangements.
- A major commitment to staff development with high-quality support and training to improve assessment, care and teaching.
- Partnerships with parents, employers, volunteers and voluntary organisations to maximise the life chances of children, young people and adults.
Early years
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A flexible system of 'educare' that joins up education and childcare and provides 12.5 hours' free support per week for 3 and 4-year-olds before they go to school.
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Dawn-to-dusk schools, with breakfast childcare and after-school clubs.
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Children's Trusts bringing together all those who provide services for children and families in each local area, and making sure children at risk get proper care, education and protection.
Primary schools
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Every child making the best possible progress in reading, writing and mathematics, with high-quality teachers and support staff in the classroom giving children more tailored learning.
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A wider school curriculum and the choice for every child to learn a foreign language, play music and take part in competitive sport.
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A closer relationship between parents and schools, with better information through a new 'school profile' and more family learning.
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More primary schools working together in networks, supporting each other and challenging failure, with the best heads helping to improve the rest; poor schools turned around quickly or closed.
Secondary schools
Reform of secondary education is intended to drive up quality and choice and ensure that every student has the personalised teaching they need to succeed. For schools, there will be increased freedoms and independence, greater pace in the reform of teaching and learning, and sustained and rising investment.
At the heart of these reforms is the development of independent specialist schools in place of the traditional comprehensive — a decisive system-wide advance. This is not a new category of schools — rather, it's giving more independence to all schools within a specialist system. This new system will be underpinned by a new role for local authorities, as champions of parents and students, acting as strategic leaders of education in their area.
The system is designed to deliver excellent teaching, a broad and rich curriculum with more choice and a wider set of out-of-hours opportunities, innovative use of technology, good discipline and attendance, and closer working with communities and parents.
Click here for further details of the following eight key reforms for secondary education:
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Guaranteed three-year budgets for every school from 2006, with every school guaranteed a minimum per pupil increase each year.
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Universal and better specialist schools.
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Freedom for all secondary schools to own their land and buildings, manage their assets, employ their staff, improve their governing bodies, and forge partnerships with outside sponsors and educational foundations.
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More places in popular schools.
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A 'new relationship with schools' to cut the red tape involved in accountability.
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Two hundred academies by 2010 — and more new schools..
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Every secondary school to be refurbished or rebuilt to a modern standard over the next ten to 15 years.
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'Foundation partnerships'.
14 to 19
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A much wider choice of what and where to study, with high standards in every subject and new sixth forms and sixth-form colleges where they are needed.
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Demanding courses for the most able pupils, whether they take academic or vocational options, and Young Apprenticeships that start at 14.
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Closer links between schools and employers, so vocational learning means something in the world of work.
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Extra support for young people leaving care.
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High-quality advice and guidance to help young people make good decisions, and a wide range of things to do and places to go for young people outside school or college.
Last updated: 23 August 2004
