The OU’s vice-chancellor leads a varied life. One day I may sit through a national meeting that is like watching paint dry, the next I am zooming around the sky in a jet fighter learning how the RAF trains its pilots. (With 6,000 members of the armed services as OU students, including 4% of all RAF personnel, this is useful knowledge). Even by my normal standards, however, a single day in October showed me two very different facets of life in the United Kingdom at the end of the 20th century. First, there was a state banquet at Buckingham Palace in honour of the President of China, Jiang Zemin. The next morning I attended a seminar by the Cabinet Office’s Social Exclusion Unit about the creation of a national centre for neighbourhood renewal.
A state banquet is an inspiring and enjoyable occasion. Although it shows the state at its most formal, the members of the Royal Household do an extraordinary job of making everyone feel at home. Almost all members of the Royal Family were with an impressive Chinese delegation. Betty Boothroyd, our Chancellor, who had just come back from a visit to China herself, was telling people how much she enjoyed her association with the OU and how, after being elected Speaker, becoming the Chancellor of the OU was the achievement of which she was most proud.
The faces of many other guests were familiar from television and the press: senior politicians, civic dignitaries, business heads, civil servants – a cross section of the country’s leadership. The event proceeded like clockwork, yet such was the quality of the organisation and the personal attention to each guest that it all seemed relaxed and unhurried. This was my fourth visit to the Palace and each time I have felt very proud at the way this building, one of the great symbols of our national life, is used for ceremonial events.
It is a long way from Buckingham Palace to the run-down neighbourhoods of our inner cities, yet some of those I met at the banquet are themselves engaged in trying to address the difficult challenge of social exclusion. To the government’s credit, it has made reducing social exclusion a priority. Although most western nations find this an increasing problem, hand-wringing about its intractability is no answer for a civilised society. The government’s approach is refreshingly candid about the inadequacies of current approaches to helping poor neighbourhoods and appropriately reluctant to propose instant panaceas.
One of the ways forward is a much tighter focus on distilling and using the evidence for what works and what does not and for managing that knowledge in an effective way. Another principle is to see the difficulties of these neighbourhoods as a whole; to understand that joblessness, crime, poor health and low educational attainment are all related and must be tackled together. Sadly, many of those formulating policy to address deprivation and poverty of aspiration have little experience of the world at which policy is directed, while those who are working at the local level are poorly trained. In particular, too little attention is paid to supporting the social entrepreneurs, those special people who have the energy, drive and commitment to make things happen in a poor community.
I was invited to the seminar because the OU has given good help to people in deprived areas whenever it has been encouraged to do so by government policy. The OU courses in parenting that have run for many years in poor areas of Glasgow have made a real difference and many of the women involved have been motivated by them to embark on degree study. The OU also has a distinguished record in responding quickly and effectively to national training needs arising out of government policy, such as the training required by the reform of the Children Act some years ago. We could do an excellent job in providing some of the training in neighbourhood development that reducing social exclusion will require.
It would be easy to point to the contrast between the splendour of a state banquet and the distress of the derelict areas of our cities. It is more productive to see them as two sides of our national life and to insist on our collective responsibility to assist the deprived areas in a lucid and energetic manner. The Open University will play its part.
May I once again encourage you to enter the Imperial Cancer Research Fund’s Christmas Quiz ?