Examination of witnesses (Questions 1
- 19)
WEDNESDAY 9 FEBRUARY 2000
LORD PUTTNAM
and MS CAROL
ADAMS
Chairman
1. Can I welcome Lord Puttnam and Ms Adams to
our deliberations. This is an interesting first for us in the
sense that we would like to think of this as a sort of confirmation
hearing but we will not be asking whether you are employing a
Colombian maid or not. It is not going to be quite like the Senate.
Can I start by welcoming you and asking, Lord Puttnam, whether
you would like to say a couple of words to start the proceedings?
(Lord Puttnam) Yes, just a couple of quick points.
First of all, can I apologise, I have got laryngitis so from time
to time I will be throwing one of these Strepsils down my throat
and sometimes cutting my answers shorter than might appear normal!
Thank you very much for having us. Can I simply say that I followed
the passage of the Bill under which the GTC was created through
the House of Lords. I became more and more intrigued and interested.
I then read myself in by going back to the 1944 Education Act
and beyond that to 1912 to see what the history of the GTC was.
It is quite extraordinary. For example, there is a Royal Society
of Teachers that was founded in 1912 and got its charter in 1929.
There is nothing particularly unique about this type of organisation
or the desire for this type of organisation. What is unique is
the Government recognising it and encouraging its implementation.
When the advertisement went out for a chair I was aware of the
fact that pretty well all of the applicants came from the educational
sector and, having had a couple of experiences of what could be
brought to a situation like this by somebody from the outside,
I decided to apply. I do believe that my lack of baggage, the
fact that I am not caught up in any of the history of the arguments
and debates surrounding education, is probably what tipped the
scales for me when the Secretary of State came to make his decision.
2. Thank you for that. Some of us would have
thought that in terms of baggage you, like me, left school at
16, and I think I have four more O levels than you.
(Lord Puttnam) I noticed.
3. But some people would have thought perhaps
not being from a teaching background or a particularly academic
background was a disadvantage. Some of our Committee will be pressing
you a little later on that. Can I start the questioning by just
saying how do you view the way in which this new body is going
to interact with the other major players? There has been some
suggestion in the press that with the Teaching Training Authority
and Ofsted and the other major players there could be tensions.
How do you see the GTC working with them?
(Lord Puttnam) I will take them one at a time. First
of all, the unions. One of the very nice things that has happened
in the last six months, or four months, is the degree to which
my appointment and Carol's appointment has been welcomed by the
unions. In all but one case absolutely specifically welcomed and
in another case reluctantly welcomed. That is not bad, five out
of six, I will settle for that. I think the relationship with
the unions is going to be a very interesting one because at certain
points we will be running parallel courses. I have to assume,
also, because they are fairly fragmented in their views about
the way forward, that we will not always agree. But least the
personal relationships and the underlying intentions are fine,
I think. In the case of the TTA, I know Ralph Tabberer, the new
director, very well indeed, I have an enormous amount of respect
for him. I have actually worked with him quite closely for the
last 18 months. I think he is a first class man. We have already
had a discussion, Carol has already met with him. It is clear
to all of us that there are some very specific areas that he wants
to concentrate on and very specific areas that he is keen for
us to concentrate on. In very simple terms, his major issue is
recruitment, our major issue will be defining and beginning to
implement continuous professional development. Professional development
has loosely come under the ambit of the TTA in the past but it
has not been something they have been able to wrestle with all
that comfortably. I think that we have found a nice and natural
division where we can complement each other. In the case of Ofsted,
it is impossible to say. We will be representing teachers, I hope
we will be representing teachers sympathetically and accurately.
There is no question the teaching profession as a whole regards
Ofsted as important. It is also regarded with some suspicion and
even some hostility. I hope that we will not mirror the hostility
but I think from time to time we are likely to mirror the healthy
scepticism.
4. There was a time when you said some rather
strong things about Ofsted, do you think that is a bit of a hostage
to fortune in terms of your future working relationship?
(Lord Puttnam) No, because I know Chris Woodhead well.
He is a good robust, knock about chap and he is perfectly capable
of dishing it out and equally capable of taking it. There are
things I have said I feel very strongly about. I feel that you
cannot build a first class education system in this country without
building on the basis of a tremendous amount of confidence. I
have said many times that it is quite extraordinary to me that
the very people who we look to to instil confidence in our young
people are the same section of the community whose confidence
we have probably more systematically undermined over the last
12 years than any other. This is an extraordinary paradox and
I would hope it is something you, as a Committee, will take a
look at. We are actually asking people to create a society for
the future without doing very much at all to underpin their ability
to achieve that. My view of Ofsted is that many of the criticisms
and many of the decisions taken by Ofsted in the last three, four
or five years were necessary, they were necessary preconditions
for change. At a certain point, and this is a political decision,
nothing to do with GTC, somebody has to signal a change of direction
and start showering the teaching profession with the kind of affection,
regard and respect that, Lord knows, it deserves. This is the
tone which must come through, it is a very important tone, and
I think at some point along the way it has to be recognised and
implemented.
Charlotte Atkins
5. How can the GTC protect the quality of education
and protect the public if not all teachers are going to register
or are urged to register initially?
(Lord Puttnam) I think the challenge for Carol and
me is to try to make sure that all first class teachers do register.
We will have largely failed if 15 or 20 per cent of them stay
off the register.
6. What about people like supply teachers? Clearly,
especially in places like London, a lot of supply teachers come
from abroad, how are you going to include them in your ambit when
so many children's education does depend on supply teachers?
(Lord Puttnam) I think this is a very tricky issue,
not just supply teachers, the whole issue of classroom assistants
and the status afforded to classroom assistants. If I had to make
one prediction over the next five to ten years, it is that you
will see a lot more semi-qualified teachers working in the classroom,
people who are currently termed classroom assistants. We have
to find a way of addressing that issue.
(Ms Adams) As you will know, the basis of registration
for the GTC is qualified teacher status and we have to start from
that basis. Our first major effort will be to get every single
teacher with qualified teacher status on to the register. That
will include people not necessarily teaching but people working
in the independent sector, many people working in other fields
of education. I think then we will try to move on from that and
try to look at ways of getting some kind of relationship between
the Council and those without QTS who we still want to be part
of our drive towards a coherent, well supported profession. That
is something that we will be looking at in the coming months.
7. That does not answer my question about supply
teachers. I come across some marvellous supply teachers but also
there have been supply teachers that the school where I am a governor
has had to effectively dismiss. What are you going to do about
those because they can be, especially in places like London, a
vital part of children's education?
(Ms Adams) I have just been in discussions with officials
at the DfEE who are looking at the whole question of supply teachers.
Those supply teachers who have qualified teacher status, and many
of them do, will be required to register with the Council and
we are working with the supply agencies and with the LEAs to make
sure we can communicate effectively and reach out to those teachers.
I recognise they are the most difficult group to make communication
with because they are not necessarily always in one school. All
those with qualifications we need to reach out to and make part
of the Council. Those without, of course, at the moment we have
no statutory responsibility for but I intend, and I am working
with the DfEE on this, to find ways in which we can meet with
them, meet with their representatives and work on ensuring that
they have the opportunities for training to reach the highest
standards of the very best supply teachers.
(Lord Puttnam) Can I add to that by turning your question
upside down in a way. This in a strange way says more about the
GTC and its potential than anything else. Our idea of the GTC
is to turn it into an organisation to which every single teacher,
at whatever point in their career, aspires to join and regards
themselves as not having been fully qualified, forget the technical
issue of qualification, not being fully qualified if they are
not on our register and not a member of the GTC. I would hope
that we can put in place and create a series of benchmarks where
any semi-qualified or supply teacher or classroom assistant would
be able to go through thresholds and become a registered teacher
and that would be the aspiration that all of them would hold.
That is a very different model from that which has existed in
the past.
8. How would you deal with incompetence? Would
you deregister teachers and how would that work? If you come across
an incompetent teacher, despite being qualified, who does not
live up to expectations, perhaps being failed by Ofsted, how would
the GTC then proceed?
(Ms Adams) At the moment we are working on the regulations
which the Government will complete or consult on in the coming
months and then the procedures for the GTC. The proposals are
that in terms of competence, there are already procedures which
are followed by employers and they will be followed, up until
the stage at which the teacher is dismissed for incompetence.
All of those cases will then be referred to the Council and there
will be a committee of the Council which will consider those cases.
9. It can take up to two years to dismiss an
incompetent teacher but you would have to wait for two years before
that incompetent teacher can come off the register?
(Ms Adams) If I can respond in a number of ways. First
of all, there are the new, much faster procedures for incompetence
which have been agreed with the employers. I know that those are
being pursued and from the evidence I have from the local authorities
the procedures are increasingly speeded up, so I do not envisage
that it will be taking as long in the future. Secondly, in my
view and that of the trade unions and DfEE, it will be quite wrong
for the GTC to start to interfere before the already agreed local
employment law has been followed through. Those procedures will
take place and then the GTC will consider the case of somebody
who has been dismissed. Also, if I may add, the role of the Council
needs to be to encourage and support all teachers to improve.
We intend to make that the emphasis. We hope that those very small
number of teachers who end up being dismissed for incompetence
will of course be dealt with very effectively, impeccably and
in a way that is proper. Our emphasis will be on working with
all the partners—schools, local authorities—to ensure
that very, very few teachers, the very minimum, hopefully no teachers,
eventually actually get to that stage. Part of the Council's role
is, of course, a gatekeeping role in advising on initial training,
on being the appeal body for induction and so in the coming years
we ought to see really an end to teachers entering and continuing
in the profession that do not have the skills and tools and training
to do the job.
Mr Marsden
10. Lord Puttnam, you have been very passionate
about broadening the basic involvement in schools, particularly
in terms of the arts. You have just been talking about how the
membership of the GTC might widen. I want to ask you a rather
different, rather broader question and that is to what extent
do you see scope for broadening the involvement in schools of
non teaching assistants and of other people brought in, perhaps
in the area of the arts, as part of the curriculum? Do you feel
that may then present some tensions between those strongly expressed
views you have and your role representing teachers and representing
teachers' positions in schools?
(Lord Puttnam) That is a very good question. I will
try and answer it in a rather embracing way, if I may. My vision,
and I think most teachers' vision for the profession, is that
it has enhanced status, much more of a sense of it being a profession,
but that is not incompatible with being a very generous profession.
One of the rigidities of the past has been the rather narrow gateway
you pass through in order to be a teacher. I will give you, if
I may, two examples of things I would like to see. I come from
a world in which at any given time there are 80 per cent unemployed
actors. Actors have many, many qualities, and most of the good
actors are trained in the ability to deliver confidence, voice
control. Lord knows I need that! Actors have a lot of skills and
I would like to see a teaching profession that would be generous
enough to say "When you have the time, would you like to
come and help teach teachers how to project themselves?"
The art of being a good teacher, and I think we all recognise
this, watching a good teacher in action is a performance, there
is no question about that. Some teachers resent that notion but
in reality when I go to visit a school one of the teachers will
often say "By the way, before you leave, if you can, go up
and watch Ms Adams teaching English it is well worthwhile. She
is quite extraordinary". If you do that you will inevitably
see somebody putting on an incredible performance, the energy
they put into it is quite incredible. Teaching can only be aided
and supported by basic acting skills. I would like to think that
the teaching profession could look around at the other skills
which exist and borrow from them and use them. We are all borrowing
heavily from the ITC area. Another area which strikes me as being
worth addressing is our dramatic under supply of peripatetic music
teachers. At the same time we have some wonderful music colleges
which are under tremendous strain in terms of getting the best
of their students able to pay their fees. It seems absolutely
natural to me in a sensible, hopefully dynamic economy like this,
there must be a way of trading a year out of music college, let
us say in year three, for work in a primary school in exchange
for student fees. Now there are two benefits to this. Firstly,
it could have a dramatic impact on the availability of music teachers
and, possibly more important than that, many, many young people
go into life thinking that the world is their oyster and they
will end up, using music as the example, as the lead violinist
of the London Symphony Orchestra. It can become quite clear, quite
early on that this is not going to happen. If you have the memory
of a very happy year you spent as a music teacher in a primary
school it is quite possible you will decide that was not such
a terrible way of earning a living and you might decide to return
to teaching. Overall I would like us to encourage an ethos where
more and more people sample teaching and try it as part of their
careers. I think one of the dangers we have in recruitment—and
I do not want to get into the issue of recruitment—is the
sense that a student leaving university is saying "Do I want
to be a teacher for the rest of my life" and the answer is
"Well, I am not really sure I do". In fact, the training
for a teacher and the ability to be a teacher requires a tremendously
broad complement of skills. If you teach well for four, five,
six, seven years, there are all sorts of things you could go on
to do. I think you have got to break down these barriers and get
young people to understand that professional skills, professional
commitment is not incompatible with moving in and out of the profession
or incompatible with bringing people into the profession who can
bring new things to the party. I am sorry, that is an overlong
answer.
11. On that specific point of sampling, the
Schools Minister, Estelle Morris, when she came before this Committee,
floated the idea that under certain circumstances students who
were particularly good in their second or third year as an under
graduate might spend a certain amount of time in schools teaching
in a particular subject, and particularly in areas where we might
be deficient like maths or Latin or whatever. Is that something
which would fall within the ambit of the sort of sampling vision
that you have?
(Lord Puttnam) Very much so. I think sometimes we
are not as flexible as we might be. The United States is good
at things like this. When the Berlin Wall came down, one of the
first things the Americans did was created very, very simple visa
entry for Eastern European teachers. They knew they needed teachers,
they knew that here was a workforce which would in some cases
be eager to take up the opportunities offered and they made it
very simple for them. As a nation, we sometimes find it very difficult
to make the things we want to make happen easy to achieve.
Valerie Davey
12. I am encouraged by your creative professional
words you have used in that context. You are reported to have
said of the BBC staff: "They are creative people. They need
to be loved into shape, not bullied into shape". Given your
creative response to teachers so far, would you say the same of
them?
(Lord Puttnam) Entirely. Of all the things I can offer
you, that is the most professionally informed statement I can
give. I have spent 30 years dealing with difficult, sometimes
recalcitrant, but certainly very disparate groups of pepole and
forging them into teams making a movie in a highly creative, highly
pressured business. You cannot bully people into doing good work,
what you can do—and I apologise if it sounds a bit wimpish—you
can love them into doing good work, you can encourage them into
doing their best work and you can make them feel ten feet tall.
Once they feel ten feet tall they will be looking to work with
other people who are ten feet tall. That is the core of my ongoing
brush with Ofsted, that I do not believe you get good work out
of people by telling them they are not very good. When we actually
analysed the figures Ofsted published very early on, we were talking
of between 10, 12, maybe 15,000 teachers, that is three per cent
of the workforce. Let me put it to you, it is just possible that
three per cent of the Members of the lower House are incompetent
and if only three per cent of the Members of the House I sit in
were incompetent I would be the happiest man in Christendom. This
is a tiny amount of people. What that implies is that 97 per cent
are competent and it is the 97 per cent that Carol and I are desperately
keen to get on to a register and to encourage them to believe
that they are very, very special people indeed. One other point—and
I am quite passionate about this—there is no future for
this country without a world class teaching profession, none.
I have asked employers up and down the country, I have never got
anyone to explain to me a vision of the future which does not
include a superbly educated workforce and which does not in turn
rely on a superbly committed generation of school teachers. It
is not as though there is some other fantasy version of the future
for us.
13. What I want to develop from that is that
this body is the professional body of the teachers themselves.
(Lord Puttnam) Yes.
14. So your next step, presumably, is leading
this body as a non teacher to form from it a body of professionalism
of the teachers themselves because this is a vacuum we have had
in the teaching profession for a long time?
(Lord Puttnam) Yes.
15. There will be a professional body of teachers
who are able to give their comment professionally, outside the
unions but not unrelated to them, to Government, to other bodies
and creating that is a tremendous opportunity. So how are you
going to do that, to not only love these people and recognise
their creativity and take them forward but actually—dare
I say—do yourself out of a job to bring those teachers into
that position of professionalism with their own GTC?
(Lord Puttnam) I think your question sparked something
which I have been mulling over, you are quite right. If, as Chairman,
I do the job properly then the last person in the world they should
need in two or three years' time is me because what they will
have is someone that represents everything they wish to be. I
cannot do that, I have not worked at the chalkface. There are
two great issues. One is that teachers have not necessarily represented
themselves properly, and that is a fact of life, partly because
of the fragmentation of the unions—and I was Chairman of
a union for a number of years so I know the problem—because
union meetings and particularly annual conferences tend to be
dominated by the noise of the extreme, I am afraid the gentlemen
of the press only heighten this problem by giving a quite disproportionate
amount of attention to and interest in the extreme minority, so
you get the impression of a very, very difficult, fractious group
of people. It is not the case when you meet the teachers on the
ground, it is not the case. I am hoping that Carol and
I can represent teachers as they really are, that's number one.
Secondly, and this is a criticism of Government, by that I mean
successive governments, we have to persuade governments they have
to stop pretending to consult with teachers, that here
is a body that represents teachers, represents the best of teachers,
that must be listened to. I have been infuriated over the last
few years by this pretence at consultation. It is not consultation,
it is a series of semi-instructions, drafted in a form that looks
as though they are asking for advice but actually one senses the
preconditions that are already in place. So the creation of a
coherant group of people that can get very early into the game
of designing the architecture of the future of their own profession—this
is what is desperately needed—with sufficient respect and
sufficient clout that the Government of the day will genuinely
and unambiguously listen to them. This is part of the frustration
of the teaching profession, they know how to do the job but they
have been misrepresented in the media and frequently not listened
to sufficiently by Government. There is also a job to be done,
I think, with the Department, convincing the DfEE that the teachers
are their partners, they are not a difficult "client state"
that they have to deal with, they are actually partners
in achieving the precise ends that the Department wishes to achieve.
Chairman
16. Lord Puttnam, you said in passing teachers
want to teach. We have a number of investigations including urban
schools in more deprived areas, and the role of the private sector
in education. We have been visiting a number of schools of different
types. One of the heads of a school recently said to me "Look,
the trouble is teachers come into this profession wanting to teach,
they do not want to spend all their time in an environment where
they are fighting to teach" and yet another teacher said
to us "Actually I want to be a teacher, I do not want to
be a manager. I want to spend my time in my chosen career of teaching".
How do you see, on the one hand, giving teachers the ability to
teach in an environment where children want to learn and, on the
other, this push all the time of bright teachers, teachers with
ability being pushed in a way into management?
(Lord Puttnam) I have to say I think the Government
have addressed that with the development of advanced skills teachers.
It was true at one point that in order to advance financially
in the profession you had to move into management; that is no
longer strictly true. The new wage structures make it possible
for you to be an advanced skills teachers and earn much the same
as management. I think it is a dramatic development and a very
important improvement. I believe a lot of the thinking of the
Government in that area has been very sound and has the opportunity
to be remarkably successful. Do you agree, Carol?
(Ms Adams) Yes.
(Lord Puttnam) I think we have cracked that. There
are other issues that certainly we have not cracked. I was thinking
on the way here, Chairman, as a young man I saw a film—and
maybe you and I are the only people here old enough to remember
it—Blackboard Jungle?
17. Sidney Poitier?
(Lord Puttnam) No, that was To Sir With Love.
No, Blackboard Jungle starred Glenn Ford, for the record.[1]
18. Right.
(Lord Puttnam) The late Glenn Ford. What I remember
vividly from originally watching that film, which was set in the
United States, was it was like watching a kind of science fiction
movie. Lunatic kids, not taking any notice of their teacher, carrying
knives to school. It was literally like looking at a science fiction
film. It is no longer science fiction. There was a fascinating
report done showing teachers principal concerns in 1940 compared
with 1990. In 1940 the principal concerns were running in the
corridor—these are just some that I remember—chewing
gum, whistling, chattering in class. These were the things that
teachers had to cope with. In 1990 there were teenage pregnancies,
assault, drugs and the whole panoply of things we now have to
deal with. It is a completely different job in that sense and
I think that is what you are referring to. When you went to school
as a teacher in the 1930s, 1940s, even 1950s, it was reasonable
to assume that the class would sit there, reasonably quietly,
they may not work very hard but you would have some real degree
of control. Today the teacher walking into a classroom in many,
many urban schools is walking into a combat-zone, a situation
which is not sufficiently appreciated.
19. What role will you have in trying to give
them the position where, as the teachers said to us, they do not
want to be lion tamers, they want to be teachers?
(Lord Puttnam) Possibly tranquillisers for the entire
student population! I do not know. I wish I knew. I think it is
an enormous issue. What I do think would help is the recognition
that part and parcel of a teacher's job today is a function that
we used to ascribe to social workers. That needs to be recognised,
understood and properly trained for.
1 Note: Sidney Poitier, who played the lead
role in To Sir with Love (1967), made his first major film
appearance in The Blackboard Jungle (1955) which starred
Glenn Ford. Back
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