Doug Belshaw's Public Library

“What concrete practical difference would it make if my theory were true and its rival(s) false?” Where there is no such difference, there is no genuine (that is, non-verbal) disagreement, and hence no genuine problem.

Moreover, theories and models are to be judged primarily by their fruits and consequences, not by their origins or their relations to antecedent data or facts. The basic idea is presented metaphorically by James and Dewey, for whom scientific theories are instruments or tools for coping with reality.

What is essential is that theories pay their way in the long run—that they can be relied upon time and again to solve pressing problems and to clear up significant difficulties confronting inquirers. To the extent that a theory functions or “works” practically in this way, it makes sense to keep using it—though we must always allow for the possibility that it will eventually have to be replaced by some theory that works even better.

All beliefs and theories are best treated as working hypotheses which may need to be modified—refined, revised, or rejected—in light of future inquiry and experience.

Pragmatists have also inveighed against the Cartesian idea that philosophy should begin with bold global doubt—that is, a doubt capable of demolishing all our old beliefs.

This anti-Cartesian attitude is summed up by Otto Neurath’s celebrated metaphor of the conceptual scheme as raft: inquirers are mariners who must repair their raft plank by plank, adrift all the while on the open sea; for they can never disembark and scrutinize their craft in dry-dock from an external standpoint. In sum, we must begin in media res—in the middle of things—and confess that our starting-points are contingent and historically conditioned inheritances.

Pragmatists typically think, for instance, that Kant was right to say that the world must be interpreted with the aid of a scheme of basic categories; but, they add, he was dead wrong to suggest that this framework is somehow sacrosanct, immutable, or necessary. Our categories and theories are indeed our creations; they reflect our peculiar constitution and history, and are not simply read off from the world. But frameworks can change and be replaced. And just as there is more than one way to skin a cat, there is more than one sound way to conceptualize the world and its content. Which interpretative framework or vocabulary we should use—that of physics, say, or common sense—will depend on our purposes and interests in a given context.

Since the range of “facts” we can countenance or acknowledge is accordingly constrained by our body of previous acquired beliefs, no “fact” can be admitted into our minds unless it can be coherently assimilated or harmonized with beliefs we already hold.

According to a longstanding tradition running from Plato to the present-day, truth is a matter of correspondence or agreement with reality (or with the aforementioned “facts”). But this venerable view is vague and beset with problems, say pragmatists.

So it all comes back to the basic and central importance of education. Education is the spark that can light a love of learning, and we know what learning means - horizons broadened, imaginations are fired, confidence and ambition take root. Success only comes through hard work, but how much easier it is to work hard if you can feel the strength of your own inner potential. That is what a good teacher and a thriving school does, they give a child that most precious asset in life - self-belief.

Comprehensive education was formed out of the injustice of rigid selection on grounds of ability through the 11-Plus, but with it came another injustice. Because there was insufficient focus on educational standards and on high attainment, there seeped into parts of the system a deadening uniformity. The goal was to make the system comprehensive, whereas in reality the goal should have been, through abandoning selection, to bring high quality education to all.

The Schools White Paper is quite simply about releasing that energy inside and outside the school system. In every other walk of life in the 21st century there is flexibility, diversity, an opening up for new ideas and innovation, a breaking down of the barriers between public, private and voluntary sectors. For public services to flourish as universal services, they need that same dynamism.

Education therefore is now the centre of economic policy making for the future

cademies are radical public service reform in action. A wholly new type of school run on independent lines, but forging strong partnerships throughout its community - targeted on areas where, for whatever reason, traditional school management has not succeeded as we would have wished. Where the challenge is greatest, reform must be boldest - and academies embody that principle.

Academies are of course part of a much wider canvas of education reform. Many of the features I have described are spreading rapidly across the secondary school system. Diversity is now widely accepted. A majority of secondary schools now enjoy specialist status. They are building centres of excellence in different curriculum areas, and engaging with external sponsors and employers in wholly new ways. The success of specialist status in improving results is now well attested; most schools aspire to specialist status - a remarkable advance on the position even two years ago - and we are considering how to extend the specialist concept further.

To create an ICT literate workforce through schools, colleges, universities and our adult skills strategy.

We reject this outdated mentality. It is little more than snobbery. It has held back our nation and our people for decades. It is at the root of our low productivity and our historic class divisions.

I will set out what I believe to be our fundamental goal: an education system combining diversity with excellence. High standards for everyone in the basics in primary schools, as a platform for an education liberating the talent and capacity of each individual. For our primary schools this means investment in a broader curriculum and set of opportunities as we achieve near universal competence in the basics. But the most radical implications are for our secondary schools, where we need to abandon, once and for all, a mindset which views only two broad options: an entire system based on selection, with some kind of 11-plus, on the one hand; or on the other, standardised, monolithic comprehensives offering a standardised, monolithic provision for pupils whose needs are highly diverse and individual. We need diversity with excellence to be the hallmark of the secondary system, rejecting completely the notion of a comprehensive education treating different provision for different individuals as a betrayal of their equal worth. In the modern world, diversity with excellence - schools with distinct centres of excellence, providing radically different opportunities and provision for pupils with different needs - is the only viable future for our secondary schools. This is now increasingly recognised in the secondary sector; we need it to become universally so.

abolish, once and for all, the notion of an education leaving age of 16

We said the nation's key priority was early education, and shaped our programme accordingly. Under-five provision so that children start school ready to learn. Primary schools with no classes of more than 30 in the infant years. Far better and more focused teaching in the key skills of literacy and numeracy. We have done as we promised - a nursery place for every four year old whose parents want one. A large increase in places for three year olds. On target next year virtually to eliminate classes of more than 30 for five, six and seven year-olds. A significant advance in literacy and numeracy standards.

Consider the nation's most basic educational objective of all - ensuring that all our young people are literate and numerate. Until the introduction of national tests for eleven year-olds four years ago, and the publication of the results, there was no means of parents knowing the success of primary schools, school by school, in getting children up to standard in English and maths, let alone what the national picture was.

At this point, abstract arguments dissolve. Ensuring that children leave primary school with the basic tools of literacy and numeracy is the most fundamental task of the education system

It is equally clear that the concept of basic skills can no longer be restricted to literacy and numeracy. Proficiency in ICT has become a basic skill, even for a Prime Minister. Its importance will increase exponentially within very few years, not least within the learning process itself. After 500 years of just 'teachers and books', we suddenly have a continuous stream of new technologies enhancing the learning process. Leading edge schools are already deploying composition programmes in Music, digital cameras in Art, simulation software in Design and Technology and Science, spreadsheets in Mathematics and in Business Studies, the Internet across the curriculum and interactive programmes in languages and many other subjects. ICT is permeating every school and the entire curriculum.

Entering the 21st century with the new technology, our goal is to become 'learning bound' not 'teacher bound' - not to replace teachers, but to enhance and supplement them - in and out of school - with the vast interactive resources of ICT. It has been estimated that the full cost of one school teacher-hour is £50 and, rightly for our teachers, it is rising; but the full cost of one school ICT-hour is about 75p, and dropping at 20% year, at the same time as the inherent capability of the technology is rising. And as it rises, in the hands of skilled teachers as learning managers, so too does the capacity for ICT to personalise learning - to provide the tailored support for different aptitudes and needs which is critical to the future. This is one of the most exciting and important implications of ICT.

Literacy, numeracy and the ability to use ICT are the three key skills which every school and college leaver requires, and which every adult should have the means of mastering and updating, whether in the workplace, at home, in college or through the new technology itself.

Education is for life, not just for jobs.

Singapore, with academic results among the highest in the world, recently appointed a commission to report on education for the 21st century. It concluded that education needed to go beyond skill acquisition 'to instil qualities such as curiosity, creativity, enterprise, leadership, teamwork and perseverance', developing young people in the 'moral, social, physical and aesthetic domains'. That is our ambition too.

To move forward, we need to confront our past in secondary education, and to understand what went wrong here in particular. Comprehensive schools were devised as a way of radically improving a system which consigned 80% of children to a second-class education and second-class jobs thereafter.

What this Government is undertaking is, in effect, a radical modernisation of the comprehensive system. We are replacing the 'one size fits all' concept with a massive extension of diversity within the system - on the basis of high standards for all in basic skills as the platform for excellence. This is why we are pushing forward so strongly with specialist schools. Specialist schools build on the national curriculum to develop areas of specialist excellence within comprehensives, whether technology, sport, the arts or modern languages, with business and community sponsorship. Setting is also being encouraged

You are at threshold of an ICT revolution which could transform the very idea of the university as a community of learning, as surely as ICT will transform learning in schools. In the knowledge economy, entrepreneurial universities will be as important as entrepreneurial businesses, the one fostering the other.

We look to you, and to our other leading universities, not only as the guardians of traditions of humane learning on which your reputation depends; but also as one of our key global industries of the future, able to give the UK a decisive competitive advantage within Europe and beyond in the 21st century economy. This means government giving you the support only we can provide; but it means universities generating the maximum possible entrepreneurial drive on a national and international plane.

Underpinning all that I have said this evening is a broader theme. A learning society does not just depend upon well-educated individuals. It requires learning institutions throughout society. I don't just mean schools, colleges and universities. In the knowledge economy, every organisation, from the business to the community group, the hospital to the employment agency, has constantly to improve itself. To succeed, it must be open and receptive to change, to best practice at home and abroad, to competitive pressures, to new ways of working, to the new demands of customers and consumers. Organisations capable of reflecting systematically on what they do - lessons learned, evaluations, assessments, benchmarking against the best in the world - and developing their staff accordingly.

The education revolution is under way. We are putting more money into the education and training of young people in Britain today. We are reforming student finance, to raise student numbers and improve our science and research base. This is about developing tomorrow's workforce. We are prioritising literacy and numeracy for primary school children. We are cracking down on truancy and indiscipline.

there is no greater thing for a child than to be motivated, curious, anxious to learn more and more.

very successful business partnership with Bankers Trust