Sir Cyril's long goodbye
Two great salesmen boarded a train from London to Darlington in December 1996, and one of them exerted all his skills on the other. By the time they arrived, Sir Cyril Taylor had a convert in the man who was by then almost certain to be the next Prime Minister. Tony Blair got off the train certain that specialist schools were the answer, and Sir Cyril was the man to deliver them.
In the same month as his momentous train journey with Sir Cyril, December 1996, Blair saw an article in the Observer headlined "Let Blair be his own education chief". It began: "Tony Blair should take two posts in the next Labour government: prime minister and education secretary." If he did not want to take the title, Blair should at least control the policy. He could find a cipher to implement his policy: “Enter David Blunkett.” Blunkett was Labour’s education spokesman. Blair appointed the clever young journalist who wrote it – Andrew Adonis – as his education adviser.
So in that month, the team was brought together which, for the ten years of Blair’s premiership, dictated what happened in the British education system. Now Sir Cyril has been fired. It’s a seminal moment, arguably even more significant than if Adonis had been fired.
For 20 years, Sir Cyril had the absolute confidence of three Prime Ministers – Thatcher, Major and Blair. He was therefore listened to closely by all their education secretaries, from Kenneth Baker in 1987 all the war through to Alan Johnson in 2007. All these education secretaries made him their adviser on specialist schools, and he had the ear of all of them whenever he required it.
When Gordon Brown became Prime Minister in the summer, he was the first occupant on Number Ten for two decades not to have listened to Sir Cyril before taking any education decisions. He appointed Ed Balls as his schools secretary, and Balls became the first minister responsible for schools to decline to make Sir Cyril his adviser. Sir Cyril was bullish – he always is – but he knew the writing was on the wall.
And this week he has been fired as chairman of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust. The deed wasn’t formally done by the government, of course. Theoretically the SSAT is independent of government and the deed was done by its 12-strong board of trustees. But it’s inconceivable that the Trust could have done this when Tony Blair was PM.
The idea that the SSAT was independent was fostered by Taylor, who boasted that he raised a considerable portion of its income from the city. Actually, he didn’t. The private sector money going into it – just like the private sector money going into Sir Cyril’s pet project, academies – was mostly smoke and mirrors. If you look closely at the figures, you find that the taxpayer – that is, the schools budget - coughed up £36 million out of a total SSAT income of £39 million last year.
So what does it mean, this startling dismissal of a man thought to be invulnerable? Here’s what I hope it means.
It means that we are going to stop the foolish pretence that benevolent companies are going to pay for our education system voluntarily, without the need to tax them. It means a slow but sure death to the Blairite policy of creating a few showpiece well-funded schools in each area for the lucky or clever few. It means an eventual end to the idea of specialist schools: as Alan Smithers, director of the centre for education and employment research at Buckingham University, put it, “Cyril Taylor is a superb salesman and has been selling this essentially daft idea of specialist schools to secretary of state after secretary of state.”
It means an end to the idea of state schools being independent, as academies are, with boards of governors on which the sponsor has an inbuilt absolute majority, and parents and teachers are squeezed out. It means the state and the community once again making themselves responsible for what is its responsibility: the education of our children.
If this is what it means, a good start has been made. The state has made itself responsible for who runs the SSAT, and spends £36 million out of our education budget.
In the same month as his momentous train journey with Sir Cyril, December 1996, Blair saw an article in the Observer headlined "Let Blair be his own education chief". It began: "Tony Blair should take two posts in the next Labour government: prime minister and education secretary." If he did not want to take the title, Blair should at least control the policy. He could find a cipher to implement his policy: “Enter David Blunkett.” Blunkett was Labour’s education spokesman. Blair appointed the clever young journalist who wrote it – Andrew Adonis – as his education adviser.
So in that month, the team was brought together which, for the ten years of Blair’s premiership, dictated what happened in the British education system. Now Sir Cyril has been fired. It’s a seminal moment, arguably even more significant than if Adonis had been fired.
For 20 years, Sir Cyril had the absolute confidence of three Prime Ministers – Thatcher, Major and Blair. He was therefore listened to closely by all their education secretaries, from Kenneth Baker in 1987 all the war through to Alan Johnson in 2007. All these education secretaries made him their adviser on specialist schools, and he had the ear of all of them whenever he required it.
When Gordon Brown became Prime Minister in the summer, he was the first occupant on Number Ten for two decades not to have listened to Sir Cyril before taking any education decisions. He appointed Ed Balls as his schools secretary, and Balls became the first minister responsible for schools to decline to make Sir Cyril his adviser. Sir Cyril was bullish – he always is – but he knew the writing was on the wall.
And this week he has been fired as chairman of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust. The deed wasn’t formally done by the government, of course. Theoretically the SSAT is independent of government and the deed was done by its 12-strong board of trustees. But it’s inconceivable that the Trust could have done this when Tony Blair was PM.
The idea that the SSAT was independent was fostered by Taylor, who boasted that he raised a considerable portion of its income from the city. Actually, he didn’t. The private sector money going into it – just like the private sector money going into Sir Cyril’s pet project, academies – was mostly smoke and mirrors. If you look closely at the figures, you find that the taxpayer – that is, the schools budget - coughed up £36 million out of a total SSAT income of £39 million last year.
So what does it mean, this startling dismissal of a man thought to be invulnerable? Here’s what I hope it means.
It means that we are going to stop the foolish pretence that benevolent companies are going to pay for our education system voluntarily, without the need to tax them. It means a slow but sure death to the Blairite policy of creating a few showpiece well-funded schools in each area for the lucky or clever few. It means an eventual end to the idea of specialist schools: as Alan Smithers, director of the centre for education and employment research at Buckingham University, put it, “Cyril Taylor is a superb salesman and has been selling this essentially daft idea of specialist schools to secretary of state after secretary of state.”
It means an end to the idea of state schools being independent, as academies are, with boards of governors on which the sponsor has an inbuilt absolute majority, and parents and teachers are squeezed out. It means the state and the community once again making themselves responsible for what is its responsibility: the education of our children.
If this is what it means, a good start has been made. The state has made itself responsible for who runs the SSAT, and spends £36 million out of our education budget.
posted by Francis Beckett at
5:45 AM
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