Ruth Kelly's 'annus horribilis'

By Mike Baker BBC News education correspondent

At the end of last year I wrote that 2006 could be Ruth Kelly's "annus horribilis". I never expected it to go so badly wrong, so quickly.

Last year ended with some worrying portents: Labour MPs were joining forces with teacher unions and local council leaders to denounce the schools White Paper, which is due to become an Education Bill within the next few weeks.

As Ms Kelly reached the sanctuary of the Christmas period, it looked as if she would have a breathing space to win round Labour Party colleagues before the bill began its progress through parliament.

It was not to be. The New Year hangovers had barely receded before her speech at the North of England education conference was receiving poor notices.

That could, perhaps, have been dismissed as bad luck. The audience of local education authority leaders was never going to be easily persuaded of the benefits of releasing schools from local council control.

Frenzied row

Then, on the first day of Parliament's return, a quite unexpected torpedo hit Ms Kelly. Amongst the many things that might have been predicted to sit up and bite her, the appointment of a PE teacher in Norfolk was not one of them.

It has turned into a full-blooded, sometimes frenzied, row over whether sex offenders should ever be deemed suitable to work in schools. It has also triggered one of those pursuits of a minister that seem to preoccupy the media from time to time.

It took a little while to build but - with determined fanning from newspapers, some of which launched highly personal attacks on the education secretary - it spread quickly from a minor blaze to a conflagration.

Ms Kelly has undoubtedly been unlucky. Just consider some of the facts.

It was not her decision to keep the Norfolk PE teacher, Paul Reeve, off List 99, which bans people from working in schools.

That decision was taken by a junior minister, Kim Howells, whose responsibilities covered not schools, but universities. He, in turn, was presumably following the advice of his experts.

Ruth Kelly took responsibility for her minister's decision

It was not Ms Kelly who appointed Mr Reeve despite the fact that he had owned up to being on the sex offenders register after receiving a caution following the Operation Ore inquiry into child pornography.

Moreover, the system did work. The fact that Reeve's name was on the sex offenders' register meant the police could track his whereabouts. They tipped off the school within a few days of his starting work there.

Also, even if he had not admitted his record, it would have emerged from the compulsory Criminal Records Bureau check that was being run on him.

Incidentally, it is not quite clear what advice the school that appointed Reeve took from professional bodies.

The national head teachers' associations have both indicated that, in general if they were asked about cases like this, they would counsel against the risks of similar appointments.

One also wonders what advice was offered from Reeve's previous school, both about his record there and the reasons why he left. It has been claimed that his references were positive.

Nevertheless, as Ms Kelly told the Commons, the buck stops with her. While she could not be blamed for this specific decision, she is responsible for the government's apparent tardiness in implementing the recommendation of the Bichard Inquiry that there should be a single list of those unsuitable to work in schools.

She also failed to allay fears about the numbers of other cases that might have occurred. As these start to emerge, the pressure on her will intensify, even if (as is most likely since she has only been in the job since December 2004) they occurred before her time.

She now faces a tough choice: either battling on and risking defeat or making the tough decision to back down

However, under other circumstances, this would not have brought down such a storm upon her head.

But in politics it is all about timing. And, unluckily for Kelly, the opposition parties and large parts of the media had decided that she was the latest vulnerable political target.

The moment photographers start to gather at a minister's door before breakfast you know the heat is on.

Meanwhile, other events added to the precariousness of her position. This week a National Audit Office report suggested that almost one million children are being taught in "poorly performing" schools.

This suggested a crisis in schools. Yet the National Audit Office was not identifying anything new. It was only conducting an accountancy exercise, adding up all the schools on various existing lists of failing, under-performing or "coasting" schools.

Indeed the main thrust of the report - an assessment of the value-for-money of government programmes for school improvement - found that these had halved the number of failing schools and were mostly proving effective.

Selling the reforms

Amid all this, the government's controversial school reforms were not forgotten. The former Labour leader, Lord Kinnock, sided with the rebels, describing the plans as "at best a distraction and at worst dangerous".

In the medium term, it is the fate of the education reforms that pose a bigger threat to Ms Kelly's tenure in office than the List 99 row.

As a major policy issue there can be no doubt that she should take responsibility for the success or failure of the Education Bill. It is her job within government to sell the reforms.

So far she has failed to persuade a large number of her backbenchers and supporters that the reforms are needed.

She now faces a tough choice: either battling on and risking defeat (or at least the humiliation of seeing the reforms saved by the Conservative vote) or making the tough decision to back down.

Leaders of the teaching profession, including those who are far from Luddite, see little point in the reforms.

What makes the government's troubles with the bill so strange is that so many people in education think it will not make much difference anyway.

They point out that there is no desire amongst schools to become trust schools. Moreover, they argue that there really is no need for a change in the law.

The prospectus for trust schools makes it clear that, legally, they are no different from existing foundation schools.

And, despite last year's legislation that made it easier for a school to become a foundation school, there has been no rush to do so.

There is a further irony. The government is being urged to pacify the rebels by putting some of the code of practice on admissions into law.

Yet those involved in supervising admissions point out that this might, in fact, make the code weaker.

At present the code sets out broad principles that are then enforced by the adjudicators. So far, with just one notable exception, the adjudicators' rulings have been followed.

If, however, the code were put into legally enforceable regulations, these would have to be much narrower and more specific, and might actually constrain the adjudicators.

Leaders of the teaching profession, including those who are far from Luddite, see little point in the reforms.

They were disappointed when Kelly appeared to follow Downing Street's line and refused to accept the demise of A-levels and GCSEs following Sir Mike Tomlinson's proposals for a new school diploma system.

They believe the education secretary should now tell Downing Street that these reforms are not worth the hassle, especially as they jeopardise many other widely-welcomed aspects of the bill, such as the measures on discipline and "personalised" education.

This, then, is the big test for Ruth Kelly: as time runs out for her to persuade her MPs and the profession that the reforms are needed, will she be prepared to advise Tony Blair there is no alternative but to amend them?

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