WEDNESDAY 22 MARCH 2000
_________
Members present:
Mr Barry Sheerman, in the Chair
Valerie Davey
Helen Jones
Mr Gordon Marsden
Mr Nick St Aubyn
_________
SUPPLEMENTARY MEMORANDUM SUBMITTED BY DEPARTMENT FOR EDUCATION AND
EMPLOYMENT
EXAMINATION OF WITNESSES
ESTELLE MORRIS, a Member of the House, (Minister for School Standards)
further examined; and PROFESSOR MICHAEL BARBER, Head, Standards and
Effectiveness Unit, Department for Education and Employment,
examined.
Chairman
296. Minister, may I welcome you and thank you for responding to
the Committee's invitation at such short notice. As I said informally a
little while ago, so rapid was your response that three of our members are
away doing Budget briefings this morning. We are very grateful that you were
able to come. Many of us who have been working on this private sector in
education for some months, of course were very interested, as we were almost
writing up our report, suddenly to hear about Academies and the other
initiatives that were announced only a few days ago. First of all, may I say
that I do hope that as there is a small number here we may have relatively
informal proceedings this morning. We are really here to glean as much as we
can in order to make our report on the private sector in education as good as
it can be. One of the things that I would like to start by saying is in both
the Secretary of State's speech and the subsequent press notices and much else
that came out of the Department, we see that this is not just the Academies
but it is a three-pronged approach; the three elements to reacting to the
situation that we find ourselves in, in particular areas. Could I ask you two
questions. First of all, how long has this policy been in gestation in the
Department, particularly with Academies, and secondly how the three elements
hang together.
(Estelle Morris) Thank you very much, Chairman, for the invitation to
appear for a second time on this particular inquiry. Perhaps I may put this
in context. I know the inquiry of the Select Committee into the role of the
independent and the private sector in school delivery, so may I take a minute
and a bit to put it into the context of failing schools and making sure that
all schools succeed, because it is from that route that the idea of City
Academies comes more than anything else. You know that much of the central
thrust of Government's policy is to make sure that every child gets a chance,
no matter which school they go to, and that we have always, since the year
dot, had a level of failure, usually in the same geographical area, decade
after decade, generation after generation. Schools and children have failed
to live up the standard which we have a right to expect. It is very important
to remember this that the schools that we talk about now within that category
of Fresh Start or what might be City Academies, the whole of that have always
been there. They have not appeared in the last three years since the General
Election. They have always been there but they have been swept under the
carpet. There is so much performance data now and there is such a feeling of
making sure every school succeeds, I think now that we have an education
service that faces up to those problems. They are not new problems. They are
problems that have not been faced up to before. The second thing I would want
to say is I do want to acknowledge that in all this area, routing it back to
failing schools, we are talking about some of the most challenging schools in
some of the most challenging urban areas in this country, where generations
of teachers have tried their best to make things good for kids but have not
had the level of support and innovation that they have a right to expect. If
I wanted to root the policy back, it roots right back to the core of making
sure we do something about schools that have let down children in the past,
and where previous Governments have failed to take their fair share of
responsibility and their fair share of new initiatives for changing that
about. Then that fits in right to almost the first words (maybe not the first
words) but some of the first announcements we made after the General Election,
when you will remember that we had a list of schools that had been in special
measures for well over 24 months and what we did to try to pull those back.
Not new, but putting them into the public arena, and not just doing that but
addressing the problem. What we have tried over the last two and a half years
is to develop a range of policies to tackle this failure at root cause.
Without going into them you know what they are. It is about the extra
resources through the School Improvement Grant; the advice to the LEAs through
our new advisers that are in Professor Barber's team; dissemination of best
practice; conferences we are holding on Fresh Start, which we are holding
these very months; the Mentoring for Heads, which David Blunkett talked about
two weeks ago now. The idea of heads not taking over but working with heads
who have a cluster of schools that are under-achieving. There are a whole
panoply of measures already in place. Fresh Start is one of those things.
What we want to do is to build on that. We want to see if there are more
partners in education and if there are different ways of tackling this
problem. It is very much rooted into that school improvement model rather
than anything else. If I could very quickly answer your question. The three
further options that the Secretary of State said in his speech to the Social
Market Foundation: that we do want to continue to invite private schools to
become part of the public provider education service. You will know we have
done that with a number of schools, often those who represent minority
religious groups over the last three years. Also, I think with some success,
performing well. May I say that one of the things which I am particularly
interested in looking at them - I have been looking for a way for this for
ages - is to look at some of those schools like the Steiner schools that have
an alternative curriculum. It is an invitation. We would like to see if
through that route we could bring some of those into the family of schools.
Secondly, very much in response to the recent report by the Church of England,
who noted their role within primary education and their much lesser role in
secondary education: if they too want to put forward proposals where there is
local demand for new foundation or new voluntary aided schools we would be
receptive to that. I have met, coincidentally, people of the Church of
England and religious groups when I was on a visit last week. They welcome
that. Then the City Academies. What we want to do there is to explore within
two frameworks: one, the framework that the Secretary of State is very keen
to preserve of a family of schools. This is about planned provision. It is
not about damaging the existing provision. That is very important to him.
Within the criteria that he set out in his speech, which I am sure you will
want to come to, we want to see if these new partnerships, new ways of doing
things, will help us tackle what have been generations of failure and
under-achievement. The sorts of partnerships we are talking about are
partnerships that involve the Government, the voluntary sector, the private
sector, and see if between us with extra resources, with some freeing up the
curriculum, and with some invitation to innovate, we can come forward with
solutions that have been in this country for too long.
297. Thank you very much for those introductory remarks and the
answers to some of my first questions. May I push you. Because this inquiry
is about the private sector one of the things that has concerned the
Committee, as we have looked at different kinds of innovation in this country
and some Members of the Committee in the United States, is whether the private
sector is actually there as a partner in every case we look at. Of course,
it is not in every case. But constantly I have colleagues of ours coming to
me and saying, "There is a specialist school in my area. We have to find
matched funding. We do not have big private sector companies any more in this
area to find œ50,000." One wonders also as you look at the evidence whether
there is too much reliance on private sector. I wondered, for example, in
terms of the EAZs, the Education Action Zones. What has been the experience
of the Department in finding willing private sector partners that will give
time and resources in order to help in the partnership that you describe?
(Estelle Morris) I think they are necessary partners. Education is so
important that, with no disrespect to those of us who spent our lifetime
working within public sector education, it cannot be that all the solutions
to the problems facing us within education lie within the existing public
sector education workers. We want to use the skills and the experiences of
a whole range of people. I am a great pragmatist: the private sector,
industry, commerce, if it has anything to offer to raising standards in the
education of the next generation, that is all that matters. It is not who
they are and where they come from but what they can contribute. Our
experience has been good and it is growing on two levels. Michael, correct
me if I am wrong, there is œ6 million in Education Action Zones at the moment,
and remember for each specialist school that we announce that is œ100,000 that
they have raised from the private sector. If you put that together with the
support we have had for the National Year of Reading, Maths 2000, and for a
whole range of out of school activities, it is there and growing but I do not
think it is just about money. I attended a conference in Liverpool last
Thursday of all Education Action Zones. What was heartening - and I noted it
then again at that conference - there was a sizable number of people in the
audience who were there because they were private sector partners in Education
Action Zones. I have never, ever, ever been to a launch of an EAZ or an EAZ
conference where there have not been representatives from the private sector.
Yes, they give their money and their kine, but I do believe that many of our
large and small companies now are going further than giving resources. They
are becoming genuine partners and in that way getting something back in terms
of their own professional development for their own staff. So it is there and
growing but nowhere near as large as we would like.
(Professor Barber) May I add one example which brings out
the point the Minister has just made. Last week on Tuesday, at Downing
Street, the heads of the most improved primary, secondary and special schools
in the country, were invited to a reception and seminar. The head of the most
improved primary school in the country, which is Calverton School in Newham,
the head is called Sharon Hollows(?), spoke about what she had done to bring
about improvements in her school. She rooted that both in the EAZ and
specifically in bringing in private sector and business advice and solutions
into the way she ran her school. So she was not running her school but she
was drawing on business expertise in the way she found staff and the way she
managed her school and the way she set expectations. She said that was a very
significant part of the huge improvement in her school. It is that kind of
example.
298. Is not the commitment to making the Academy similar in size
and proportion of resources to the City Technology College contribution? As
I remember, the aim of the previous administration was to establish 22 and
they peaked at 15, just because they could not get the private sector
partnership. There may be other reasons for that. In a sense, the Committee
in its investigations have noticed two things. First of all, that the
commitment to the CTCs was quite large and it did not reach its goals. Also,
even where CTCs were established, we were very concerned - certainly in one
of the visits we took to Gateshead - about the inability of the CTC to spread
the message of good practice which all of us, when they were established,
thought would be one of the spin-offs.
(Estelle Morris) I think that is right. May I say that I have been
particularly appreciative of the CTCs' co-operation with us since the election
in trying to become part of the family of schools. They have done that with
a great deal of success. There are examples now, Thomas Telford, and Brook
Weston(?) only recently, where they are spreading that good practice. You are
right that when the CTCs were set up, and they have taught us a great deal,
they were set up in isolation from the rest of the family of schools. There
was, I have to say, a fair amount of hostility from neighbouring schools and
other partners in the service at the time which made it very, very difficult
for CTCs to become part of that family. That is why in the speech the
Secretary of State gave last week he did outline a framework in which he wants
the City Academies to start. The top of that line is that they become part
of the family of schools so they replace schools rather than add to the number
of surplus places. If we can use the best of the CTCs - because they have
been engines for innovation, have done that well, and I admire some of the
relationships that have happened with the CTCs - if we can do that but put
that within the framework of school improvements showing good practice, family
of schools and local planning, maybe we can learn from the past and take the
best of a number of worlds. Your observation is right. We will not make that
mistake this time round.
Helen Jones
299. May I explore with you a little more the precise framework
for setting up the City Academies. What legislation will be used to create
them? Am I correct in thinking that they will be set up under the 1988
Education Reform Act legislation?
(Estelle Morris) We will be using the legislation that the CTCs were
set up under.
300. Because as you have told the Committee you want them to be
different from the way that CTCs were originally set up, can you explain to
us in a little more detail what the precise criteria will be if we are judging
whether a school should become a City Academy or not.
(Estelle Morris) What we will do is that some time in the summer term,
some time after Easter, we will issue a prospectus inviting partners to work
with us to develop a number of City Academies, hopefully to start by September
2001. In that prospectus we will build on the announcements that David made.
If you look at the primary legislation on CTCs it is not a great deal. It
sets out the framework, the bare bones. So what we will want to do in the
prospectus is flesh out some of the framework on which we want to operate.
If I go through them, you may then want to take us up on some of them. We
will want to make sure that they replace schools rather than add to the number
of places. I sense what we will do with that is what we are already working
on, which is looking at the geographical areas where City Academies might do
most good. Clearly these will be areas where we have a number of things.
Where we have a concentration of under-performing schools or where maybe there
is school reorganisation going on at the present time and there is a
concentration of under-performing schools, so that the City Academy can be
built into the reorganisation plans. The second thing - and again this is
where it differs from the CTCs - is that we will not be asking them to set up
a new school regardless of other provision in the area. One of the criteria
which will need to be is that they will have to have plans for the education
of all the pupils in the school being replaced. That will take form in a
number of ways but we will need them to accept that responsibility and come
forward with ways of making sure that children were in school. Of course the
admissions policy, whilst agreed with us, would have to be consistent with the
Code of Practice. Essential parts of the National Curriculum would have to
be taught but we want to invite innovation there and we would be as flexible
as we possibly could. Of course, the teacher should have qualified teacher
status. That is the framework. Those are the givens. If you think about it
the balance is there. Those givens are about protecting children and about
protecting pupils. The freedom and the innovation is invited from our
partners in education. It is a wavy line that we will try to keep to but any
restrictions are to protect children. We want to invite freedoms and we want
to say to our partners, "If you have the answers we want to hear them. We
want to work with you."
301. That is very helpful. May I just press you a little further
on that. We see two possible problems in that. The first, it appears to me,
is that whereas you are very clear that you want City Academies to replace
existing schools rather than provide new provision, do you accept that it
might be difficult to arrange that in that the private sector or voluntary
organisations, charities or whatever, may well be interested in setting up
City Academies in different areas from the ones which would be the
Government's targets? I would like your comments on how you are going to
overcome that. The second question is about local involvement in the decision
making. You were very clear in saying that anyone setting up a new school or
replacing schools would have to have plans for the education of all the pupils
in the school being replaced. The question that arises from that is how would
parents and the LEA be involved in those decisions? You can easily envisage
a scenario, can you not, where the parents might not be happy with the plans
that were being promoted by a City Academy, or some of the parents might not
be happy with the plans for the future of their children. How is all that
going to be brought into the equation?
(Estelle Morris) In our prospectus we are likely to identify the
geographical areas where we extend invitations to set up City Academies. If
they want them in another area it cannot be a City Academy.
302. So there is planning, etcetera.
(Estelle Morris) Not that we are prescriptive but, as I say, rooting
it back this is about long standing under-achievement. That is where we need
this initiative to work best. You are right to raise the other question. I
think it is sensitive and difficult and challenging. I do understand quite
clearly that sometimes you do not make it easy for a new school to start by
not being careful about the intake and how you manage the transition of the
children who are already in the school. We have already seen some examples
of that. We have to note that and realise that and understand that. What I
also do not want is for some children who are perhaps going to poor buildings
where they are under-performing, where they have had a raw deal, losing out
on this good chance to have a good school which is well built, has nice
facilities, and is going to succeed. Somehow it is about balancing those two
things. We give a good chance to the school to make a success but you do not
deny children the opportunity to access the good that is going on there.
There could be a range of things. The model that we have done with Fresh
Start, there was no change of pupil intake at all. There is a range of
things. There are some children, as I think happened in Hackney, who were
educated elsewhere, that willingly moved to other schools. I think it has to
be done in consultation with a series of options with parents. There is not
a blue print for that. It would be wrong if we either said, "You must take
all the existing children," or, "You will not take all the existing children
and we will grow it from year 7." The guiding principle has got to be giving
the school the best possible chance for success and acknowledging that the
pupils there are going to be part of that equation. Secondly, making no child
feel squeezed out. In terms of parental preference, these children are at
schools which are not achieving. You must hang on to that. It is not about
taking them out of highly successful schools where all is going well. But
what you do not want to say to parents of children is that they have been
going to schools which have been failing for a long time. That is not a good
message. I think we have to work with both the local authority, who will have
a responsibility because they are the ones who manage other schools in the
area for working with us on this, and other admission authorities, to work out
some sort of solution. I tend to think it will be different in each
geographical area. Michael, do you want to mention the case of Kingsbury?
(Professor Barber) What happened in the case of the closure
at Hackney Downs, which took place at the end of December, which is relatively
unusual in state schools, the pupils were given the option (as they would in
any of these cases) of the parents choosing from any school where there are
places available. The vast majority of them transferred to Homerton House
School, which is now called Homerton College. That school then received a
significant investment of additional Government funds, both to strengthen the
provision there for the long-term and to support the year 11 pupils in
particular who were transferring over at a rather usual time. That worked
well. Most parents supported the shift of their pupils to Homerton House.
Those pupils have since gone on and achieved relatively well in terms of exam
performance. In the case of most of the Fresh Start schools which have take
taken place so far - as you know, there were three started in September 1998
and another six in September 1999 - they have proved popular with parents.
303. May I follow that up with my final question because you
mentioned that at Homerton House there were additional resources put in for
that school to take on additional pupils. If a City Academy is being set up,
and accepting what you said, there will always be judgments to be made about
how many children to be retained. We all know that there can be cases in
schools where you have a cohort of very difficult children who need to be
split up. Will there be extra resources for other schools in the area around
the City Academy if they have to take some of those children? My concern is
that otherwise you could end up with a situation, which, let us be honest, was
there in many City Technology Colleges, where one school was seen as getting
fast extra resources and other schools were having to cope with difficulties
around it without the resources to do so.
(Estelle Morris) We have always tried, as a matter of principle, that
where we have asked extra of schools we have given them the resources to cope
with that. I do not think there is a single initiative in the last two and
a half or three years where that has not happened. When the Secretary of
State makes announcements about funding for City Academies he will want to
comment on how those funds will be spent. That will be made to the House in
due course.
Mr St Aubyn
304. Minister, just to clarify one thing. You mentioned the
tender process presumably, but when you have issued this prospectus for those
who might be involved in setting up City Academies, do you imagine you will
get people bidding to be on a list of approved providers of these schools?
Is that how you are going to get round the problems we encountered in
Guildford with the tender process and the cost of going through a full-scale
tender in order to set up such a school?
(Estelle Morris) I do not think I would. I hope I am not proved wrong
on this but what I would imagine a prospectus would do is that because we
would be naming the areas, is to invite partners to work with us on specific
projects. So I am not sure a list of approved people would be the way
forward. I am thinking out loud now. I suppose that sponsors are not going
to be in for more than one, two, three, four, five, six, so it is not like
when we have a list of tenders for early aid interventions where they are
companies which might want to be with more than one school. I do not know.
What we would be looking for initially is partners to work with us on specific
projects. Clearly we will have to have a way, as we always do with the
private sector, of making sure that they are robust and the sort of people we
would want to work with us in the education sector, and then testing out their
ideas. What I can say is that we have not worked out in any detail what that
process will be. We would want it to be non-bureaucratic and move quickly.
305. You are talking in terms of sponsors. Obviously if you are
asking for additional money to come into a school there is not a way you can
particularly go out to tender. But if you look at the management of the
school do you envisage that process being run by the private sector? The
actual management of it?
(Estelle Morris) I would like to explore those innovative, new,
different ways from the private sector of improving actual management in
schools, yes. I observe what is going on at the school in your own
constituency with interest. It seems to have some early success. I would
very much like to feel we could build on that.
306. The lesson we learned from Emmanuel College in Gateshead is
that if the private sector sponsor has a sense of ownership about the success
of the school, they are much more likely to come forward with the funding and
give the commitment and management expertise fully that the school needs to
succeed.
(Estelle Morris) We would like to enable them to do that, yes.
307. If that is the case and you are doing that, taking over an
existing school rather than being completely green field site, will it not be
required under European law, as we found in Guildford, that the proposers who
want to come forward with these proposals to take over the management of an
existing school have to go through a tender process?
(Estelle Morris) In pan-European law the (inaudible) Regulations
will apply so within that framework. I must admit I am not sufficiently
knowledgeable about the details of European law to make a judgment here on
that. I would not like to give the wrong impression. Where we want to go on
this is that we want to invite private sector management of schools. We want
to give them the freedom to manage and the incentive to manage within the
criteria laid down. Nothing changes from the comments we made to the Select
Committee, when we were first here, that we understand that people who manage
schools get a fee for managing but we are not into profit as such for such
running of schools. Within that we would want to look at whatever barriers
there were that might stop that happening effectively.
308. I am not an expert on European law either but I know it
caused a real problem in our constituency. Could we ask the Department to
write to us on this particular issue because in evidence from those who bid
in the King's College situation, three of the four bidders said that they
would be very reluctant to go through the process again unless the process of
tendering was stream-lined.
(Estelle Morris) That might be the case. I also think that some of the
things that put people off were the restrictions that are in place, not
through European law but in British law as well, and the way we run schools.
The point of having Pathfinders, the City Academies, is to try to explore
which of those safeguards are really necessary for children and which we could
raise in order to get more partners into education. So it may very well not
be that there are things which we could not move. I just want to be
absolutely clear that wherever we need to move so that we can free things up,
so that we can get this innovation into the system, we want to do that.
309. In your last evidence session with us you said that you did
not envisage the need for any changes in the law in order to involve the
private sector in education. If you find, for example in examination, that
certain responsibilities for the running of schools can be safely transferred
to these private sector providers, are you willing to contemplate changes in
the law as it currently stands?
(Estelle Morris) We would need to look at what the law was. I would
only give an open-ended commitment to that but having gone down that avenue
and saying this is what we want, as long as it is in the interests of children
and will turn round city schools and raise standards, yes, we are prepared to
look at that.
(Professor Barber) In relation to setting up these schools,
within the criteria that Estelle has described, and in David's speech and
within the existing legal framework, which clearly applies to Pathfinders, we
will be talking to potential sponsors about what they see as the barriers and
how we can systematically remove them to establish the school and get the kind
of management they would like to see.
Chairman
310. Minister, may I be clear about this, did you offer a report
or a letter to Nick?
(Estelle Morris) I am happy to offer to Mr St Aubyn a letter on the
European law. Somebody will enjoy writing that, I am sure! To the Committee,
of course.
Valerie Davey
311. At an earlier session we asked you for evidence of the
progress made by CTCs and how carefully that would be monitored. You were
kind enough to send us a report. That, however, did not include cost
effectiveness. I think you will agree that one of the elements in the
hostility which the CTCs provoked was on account of the huge capital
investment, partly by the private but largely by the public sector to these
particular schools. Now the query will be again, if success was gained as a
result of funding, is that not the criteria that we are anticipating again
and, if so, are we not right to be concerned about further hostility?
Secondly, the element of hostility was that they came outside the LEA remit.
Is that again what we are anticipating for the Academies?
(Estelle Morris) There was a difference. Remember what we are talking
about here is taking over pretty poor urban schools. It is not the same remit
that CTCs had. In some ways it is using the success of the CTC schools in
some of these most challenging areas. It is very important that that is a key
difference. I sleep easy at night thinking that there is extra capital going
into those schools which have been struggling for years and no-one has helped.
So I do not mind that. The other thing is that as part of our Fresh Start
policy, of course, and on which this spills, there is extra capital into Fresh
Start schools. We have already gone down that road about acknowledging that
part of the thing we need to do, when we want to turn around failing urban
schools, is to invest capital. It might have been seen as political for a
time. When the CTCs were set up against the background of rapidly declining
investment in capital within the LEA sector, it was the difference between
those two. Increasing investment in CTC and declining capital in every other
school that caused a lot of the heartache. It is a slightly different
situation. If I had to choose where to invest capital, I rest easy at it
going into some of these schools and some of these kids which have been let
down. The second question about the relationship with the LEA. We want to
explore new sets of relationships. If you are asking me about our
relationship with the LEA I want to be tied in, in a relationship, with the
LEA. Mr St Aubyn talked about the freedoms they will need. We want to
explore relationships with partners that can go outside of that framework.
I want to give that message quite clearly. What we do want to see - and I
know the Secretary of State has made this clear - that there is other
provision in the area and the local authority are the admissions criteria and
they maintain a fair amount of that provision. So, of course, they will have
to have a relationship with the LEA, in pretty much the same way as CTCs have
had since the election. They now talk to their LEAs. There is a LEA governor
on almost every CTC board of governors, following talks with us. That
relationship is working quite well but it is very, very much at arm's length
and it is a relationship which is needed to cement the family of schools. No
more than that. We do not want that sort of heavy-handed relationship holding
back the innovation that we need. I would not want any partnership that was
coming forward not to be absolutely about that. I would want them to
acknowledge the role they have within the family of schools locally.
312. Can we take that very specifically on admissions because that
is crucial. Are you telling me that since the election the City Technology
Colleges are now within the ambit of LEA in terms of admissions because that
is not what we found at Gateshead, certainly with Emmanuel School. I think
the LEAs need to know very clearly, in terms of the new Academies, whether
they will be part of the totality of the admissions policy or not. This is
really very keen, very crucial.
(Estelle Morris) Yes and no. The yes bit is that we do not want them
to create unnecessary surplus places. I will tell you the scenario I do not
want. It is a City Academy starting and one of the consequences is a
neighbouring school just dies year after year, as it cannot take the kids in.
I am not interested in that. I do not want to save some kid's life chances
at the expense of another's life chances. In that sense that is where it is
different from CTCs. CTCs built in surplus places in almost every local
authority where they were. In that sense it does have a relationship. You
will notice in the guidelines that are set out by the Secretary of State that
the admissions policy would be agreed with the Department for Education and
Employment and they would follow the Code of Practice. That is all we have
said. What I do not want them to get bogged down in is a year's debate and
row with local partners about their very existence. We are determined these
will go ahead. We will link them into the framework but we are not letting
bureaucracy or anything else stand in the way of getting them off the ground.
That is why as long as they fit in with the Code of Admissions that is fine.
I pay tribute to the CTCs. They have had a lot of blame for banding. You
will know that where they have changed since the General Election is that they
now do not interview parents as part of their over-subscription criteria.
They have made changes - and this is Thomas Telford in particular where
relationships were not good - they are much more open about the children who
they take in and where they come from. That has done a lot to allay fears.
You will know that fair banding, as long as it is subject to the statutory
consultation, it is it an approved form of admissions under the Code of
Admissions. The bottom line is that it has to stick to the Code of Practice.
It is not excused from that.
(Professor Barber) We have now been through all the CTCs on
their admissions policy and we can give you details of those. As Estelle
said, those are very different from what was established back in the late
1980s when the CTCs were first banded. That would be a starting point for
many of our discussions with potential sponsors. The second thing is to
reinforce the point we have made, that as these proposals come forward we need
to take account of the interests of all the people in the existing schools
that are going forward, not just the pupils who happen to attend the new
school.
(Estelle Morris) The appeals panels will not be responsible for the
Academies.
(Professor Barber) The arrangements would be the same as
for the CTCs but it would have to be within the Admissions Code of Practice.
Mr Marsden
313. I would like to probe some of the implications of the new
Academies for the curriculum but before I do that perhaps I could pick up on
the previous discussion about intake and ask you what safeguards you are going
to build in for the proper inclusion of representation of SEN pupils in the
new City Academies. I ask that quite specifically because when the Select
Committee was in the United States, the superintendent of schools in Boston,
Dr Payzant, said that one of the problems they had encountered with chartered
schools in Boston had been the relatively low level of SEN pupils there and
the lack of provision for them.
(Estelle Morris) I am not sure. I genuinely do not know whether that
is reflected with CTC intakes here. When I have been to some CTCs they
certainly take in some children with special educational needs. The Code of
Practice does say that those children with special educational needs should
have as much access to schools and as much parental choice within our
framework on the inclusion policy as any other children, and we would want to
make sure that continued. I would think that would be exactly one of the
details that we would wish to discuss with any promoters, any supporters, when
we discussed this admissions policy.
314. So we can take it that this would be one of the hurdles that
they would have to overcome?
(Estelle Morris) Yes. The whole policy of the Government on SEN is one
of inclusion and it goes without saying that we want those children to have
access to these schools.
(Professor Barber) The last thing we would want is someone
who pushed the special educational needs pupils out of the school, out of
their opportunities.
315. I am sure they would not do it explicitly. The question is
whether the structure of policies does it implicitly, so I am reassured by
that. May I come on to the question of variation of the curriculum. In the
memorandum which the Department has submitted to the Committee - indeed this
builds on what David Blunkett said in his speech - it says that the new
Academy will have an admissions policy agreed by the DfEE. It will meet the
essential requirements of the National Curriculum but will be able to agree
variations with the DfEE. I would like to explore a little further with you
what those variations are likely to be and what their implications might be
for core parts of the curriculum, such as the literacy and numeracy strategy.
(Estelle Morris) I do not think we would want anybody not to
concentrate on literacy and numeracy in primary years. It is so successful
that without jumping the gun I am pretty confident in saying that any
variation on the curriculum that excluded literacy and numeracy strategy is
not one that we would find immediately attractive, to put it mildly. But we
have tried to innovate with key stage 4. We accept that for some children an
alternative curriculum is needed. You will know we have relaxed some of the
requirements at key stage 4 and we want to develop more links with both work
based learning and with further education. To some extent, one of the reasons
why I struggle with the question is that I do not have an idea of what they
might come back with. I just know that when I have visited some alternative
schools I have seen similar outputs but different inputs. We have to be grown
up about this. If when you visit some of these schools they seem to be doing
things with children that the National Curriculum does not manage to do well,
I am not going to prevent that progress with children because of the National
Curriculum. Within literacy, numeracy, science, the core subjects, I think
what we would want to say is if somebody has an innovative way of developing
the curriculum so that we can maintain standards, they can get that broad
education, we would want to hear it. What I am not interested in is children
not having access to whole chunks of the curriculum. I tend to think it is a
way, it is a different way of giving them that breadth of curriculum than
actually changing the nature of the breadth of curriculum that they have got.
316. I think we would all be sympathetic to that but could I press
you on that because, again, if I draw on our American experience where we
looked at some pilot schools which were, of course, slightly different from
Charter Schools in Boston, indeed there were teachers with very strong views
about them having discretion over input as long as they produce the right
output. The definitive point there was that these decisions were being made
by groups of teachers within the schools and not necessarily by a private
sector provider or a private sector sponsor. Again, I wonder what guarantees
or what encouragement you would give for those diversions from the curriculum
coming from the teachers within that school as opposed to necessarily the
private provider or sponsor? I think that is particularly important, if I
might say so, if you intend to involve more schools from churches and
religious sectors because there you may well find a situation where the views
of the teachers in the schools are not entirely at one with the views of the
sponsor of them.
(Professor Barber) I will come to that point but I just
want to go back to your original question. These schools, their performance
is going to be measured by the same set of accountability measures as existing
schools. They will be inspected, the pupils will do the tests, the tests at
Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4. We are talking about secondary schools, we are
talking about piloting a Key Stage 3 strategy building on the primary school
literacy and numeracy strategies from this autumn. That assumes the English
and maths national curriculum but will encourage schools where they can meet
the high standards to vary the way they teach English and maths. Similarly
in primary schools where they are doing the national literacy and numeracy
strategies now, assuming they can hit their targets, it is up to them, if they
want to, to vary the literacy programme as long as they hit high standards.
These schools in terms of the core of curriculum, I am sure they will be
expected to do the core elements in the national curriculum but they will be
allowed variations in the way they teach the pupils, assuming they can hit the
high standards and there is some evidence that will work. Where sponsors
come forward with proposals to vary the national curriculum, clearly that is
going to be a matter for negotiation with us but also discussion within the
school as the school is established between the people who manage it and the
people who are going to deliver the curriculum in the classroom day to day.
There is quite a bit of innovation in existing CTCs and in some specialist
schools, and indeed in some EAZs, none of which has led to the tension that
I think you are drawing attention to here between sponsors of schools and
teachers in the classroom. Bear in mind, of course, America has a very
different tradition of not having had a national curriculum for ten years.
317. I am very well aware of that and I think my colleague is
going to touch on that in a moment. Can I just put one final point in that
respect. Again, I make this point quite specifically if you are going to
broaden out into church and religious groups. Can we take it that any amended
guidelines on the teaching of sexual relationships in schools which come about
as a result of amendments to the Learning and Skills Council Bill will be
operable in the City Academies in the same way as any other schools?
(Estelle Morris) It never entered my head for it to be anything other
than that.
Valerie Davey
318. The debate about emphasis on outcomes has an interesting
impact on the size of the school and that is something we found in America
where, as you say, without the tradition of a national curriculum many of the
Charter Schools we visited were small because a small group of teachers were
able to deliver for, in some cases, very special needs children something
special. I am wondering whether this is a possible outcome of the Academies,
that they need not be now as large if we do not have to have in a secondary
school the 40 or 50 teachers on whom the full national curriculum is
dependent?
(Estelle Morris) I would not be happy if subjects could not be
covered. There is a difference between the breadth of the curriculum that
children have access to and the way they have access to what they do within
that framework. I would not be happy with there being no humanities there or
no science there or something like that, I would not want to deprive children
of that, I think it is important to keep that breadth there. You raise an
interesting question and I do not know whether promoters will come to us with
those ideas. Take the ridiculous example of a secondary school of 30 students
or something like that, I suppose that does not fit into the overall planning
for urban area but what you are saying is there are models that might be
small, as long as we have got sufficient places.
319. 300 children we met in a Charter School in Boston, none of
them had achieved in their previous school, brought together with some very
dedicated staff.
(Estelle Morris) Yes.
320. Who for that group of children made them feel special,
different.
(Estelle Morris) I can see that.
321. They were offering something which we could not in this
country at the present time because of the need for the sheer breadth of the
subjects and the need for the staffing in that whole range of areas.
(Estelle Morris) If I did something like that I would sooner do it in
partnership with the schools so that it becomes a sort of compass of learning,
something like that. I am very much thinking as I speak, or speaking as I
think, at the moment because I know what you mean. If you look at the whole
small school movement, I know that it has had some success, the standard
schools have had some success, and one of the things is that they are small,
but I do not want to give the impression that what we are inviting is schools
being so small because they do not have to cover the breadth of the national
curriculum. It is really, really key that we do not exclude that. If there
is some innovation, I do not know, so that within an average sized secondary
school a group of children could have access to that sort of education, I
would be interested certainly in reading about that.
322. I am not necessarily advocating it, I am just aware from our
experience in America this is a possible outcome.
(Estelle Morris) Yes.
Chairman
323. Some of the promotional literature or coverage of certainly
the Secretary of State's speech did seem to offer to the private sector and
voluntary sector in terms of these new initiatives, the real possibility of
flexibility of curriculum, flexibility of staffing, flexibility on hours.
(Estelle Morris) Yes.
324. It did seem as if you could do anything under this head. A
lot of people may be queuing up not quite sure there were going to be any
regulations at all.
(Estelle Morris) There are clearly regulations. In the Secretary of
State's speech, as I say, there is that framework set down for the setting up
of schools and there is the framework of inspection, of testing, of targets
that we want to keep. What we are saying is within that framework we want to
invite innovation. In terms of the way schools might look in terms of length
of day, pattern of school terms, how they might use facilities there 15 hours
a day, family learning, community learning, how they might have a balance of
mentors from business, classroom assistants, ICT. If you go into a CTC, one
of the things you notice is that there is not that pattern there of one
teacher and 30 children sitting for 40 minutes, eight times a day, five times
a week, it is not like that and that is the sort of innovation we need. I am
very conscious because I do not want to squeeze it out, but if you look at
some of the curricula which are being used in some of these small schools at
the moment, they feel they have got a contribution to play in allowing
children to reach the outcomes through slightly different inputs and we would
want to invite that. I just did not want to give the impression that we were
going back to the days of the 1970s when some children, because they were
challenging and fairly difficult to handle, were not taught a broad
curriculum. It has got to be more opportunity, not less opportunity.
(Professor Barber) Just one point of clarification. As you
know there are many different charter laws in the different states. The other
thing is the American tradition, and particularly at the high school level,
has much, much larger schools than our secondary schools so there is much
greater emphasis in their charter laws in breaking up very often schools with
four or five thousand pupils or three thousand. To an American, our secondary
schools already look small.
Chairman
325. Before we proceed I wonder if we can nip on to a rather
different subject. What we have not hammered out here really, which I am very
interested in, is a basic thing. How many of these Academies does the
Government think we might end up with? Is there any ballpark figure that the
Government is looking for?
(Estelle Morris) I think when the Secretary of State makes the
announcement about the funding he will want to talk about numbers as well.
With respect, I ought to leave him to do that.
326. Will he be saying more about just how they will be governed,
the nuts and bolts of how they will be governed?
(Estelle Morris) I think there will be two announcements. One in terms
of the resources available, which he is likely to talk about in his speech in
the House tomorrow as part of the Budget debate. Secondly, after Easter, the
prospectus will have the sort of details about governing and framework, to
which we have referred throughout the meeting.
Mr St Aubyn
327. When we visited Lambeth and the EAZ in Lambeth we visited a
secondary school where 85 per cent of the staff had been changed in the course
of a year. Now the LEA in that case was a partner in that school and no doubt
could find alternative careers for those teachers who had been at that school
and were moving on. The problem it seems to me with your City Academies is
the City Academy is a stand alone school. If they decide for good reason that
some of the staff of the old school, which they are taking over, are not
appropriate for the new school, how are they going to get round their
obligations to that employee when they do not have an alternative place to put
them?
(Estelle Morris) I think the days of LEAs being able to find
alternative places for teachers have gone, it just does not happen now.
Thankfully they neither keep that much money back centrally for it to happen
nor even where a lot of the employment duties have been transferred to
governing bodies in community schools. So I think that is a bit of a myth
that they can move people around. I do feel very much with you that that level
of staff mobility, probably matched by pupil mobility, makes it very difficult
to succeed. What we would need to do is, working within the framework of
employment law, we would want to make sure that staffing was such that it
could deliver the high standards as we have tried to help with Fresh Start
schools as well.
328. We have a situation in my constituency where the National
Union of Teachers is saying because the LEA cannot guarantee alternative
employment or posting for some of the teachers at the school in my
constituency, which is going through a very similar process, they are
objecting to the idea that these teachers should be moved at all. They are
saying they have contractual rights to carry on teaching at the school. Here
there is a conflict between the needs of what is a prototype City Academy and
seeing which of the teachers it believes are right for its new schools and the
rights of some of the teachers at the old school on the same site whose Union
are saying "whatever your wishes, despite the fact that nine out of ten
parents locally want you to go your route, you cannot do so at the expense of
the employment rights of our member".
(Estelle Morris) I understand that and that period of change is
difficult for everybody with instability there in terms of teachers'
prospects. In the ten Fresh Start schools that we have got at the moment that
has been managed, and it needs to be managed locally and it needs to be
managed sensitively. I think with Fresh Start schools, as there will be with
City Academies, there is often the need to recruit teachers who are on board
about where the school is going and the general direction. Although you may
have problems, there have been one or two local problems, I do actually think
that the way it has been managed so far with Fresh Start has actually been
done quite successfully in most schools.
329. I entirely agree. I think the newcomers setting up the new
school with the new approach should have the right to make a decisive change
of direction. The difficulty we are finding is unlike the Fresh Start
programme where it is the LEAs involved both in that school and all the other
schools, you have one institution running this one City Academy prototype
which has not got alternative avenues, alternative opportunities particularly
to offer the employees that were at the school. The Union is saying "We do not
accept the fact simply that the Council has already said they will use their
best efforts to find an alternative career or post for those teachers." The
Union is not accepting that. Do you think the Union is being unreasonable
there?
(Estelle Morris) I think the Union's job is to look after its members
and I can see why they do that, and I do not blame them for that. Our job is
to raise standards in schools as well as taking into account decent working
conditions and fairness for teachers as well. We have to get that balance
right. As I said, it is not that LEAs can find jobs for these teachers, they
just do not have that power, but what there has been locally is sensible talk,
sensible discussion and most teachers have found places in other schools. In
fact many of them may not want to take on the challenges of a Fresh Start
school or of a City Academy, and may seek employment elsewhere but I think in
most areas where it has happened, easy it is not but it has actually worked
within the confines of both the transfer of employment rights and other
employment legislation.
Chairman: I do want to remind the Committee that in the minutes we have
got left I do want to focus on what value we can add to our investigation into
the private sector in education. If there is a little more focus on this in
the last few questions. Nick, can I hold you for a minute and bring Helen in.
Helen Jones
330. In your answer to Valerie earlier you made it clear that you
did not want to impose too much bureaucracy on these schools. The relationship
with the LEA is an arms length relationship. I want to ask you, bearing that
in mind and bearing in mind that LEAs have a duty both to produce educational
development plans and to raise standards in their schools, how do you see that
relationship working in practice? How can the LEA plan for the overall
provision in its area? How can any good practice from these City Academies be
spread to other schools if you have an arm's length relationship?
(Professor Barber) I will start on that. We would hope
that these new schools when established will be established with the full
support of the communities locally, parents that you referred to earlier and
the local authority. Anybody at ground level, as it were, with a duty to
raise standards I think will see these schools as a huge asset to the locality
with the innovative ideas, with the investment they will have, with the new
buildings, with the new sense of energy which they should have. In terms of
meeting a duty to raise standards they should be absolutely ideally placed.
By taking account of the experience of the CTC, something we have explored in
previous questions, we hope that the whole of that set of arrangements can be
done in a way that will have co-operation. There is no reason at all why a
new City Academy cannot work in a family of schools in exactly the way that
current CTCs are now doing, although they were not necessarily at the
beginning, sharing best practice, offering opportunities, working with other
schools. Remember in some of the areas we have new wider frameworks of co-
operation that are working extremely well. If you look at excellence in cities
where you have all the secondary schools across cities working together being
quite innovative, thinking about the distribution of resources, thinking about
how their school can contribute to the wider raising of standards across a
city, we would expect that it would be perfectly possible to set these up
profitably. Once we have identified the areas where we think these schools
should be established and where we think they can make a difference and we
support them locally, we would want to go ahead with them.
331. Can I just press you on that. I understand your hope, what I
am asking about is the mechanisms for doing it. Is the Government going to set
in place mechanisms which require the sharing of good practice and spreading
of good practice from these schools to other schools in the area?
(Professor Barber) In David's speech it says explicitly
that they should both contribute to improvements in other schools and learn
from other schools locally.
Chairman
332. Is "David" the Secretary of State?
(Professor Barber) Yes.
(Estelle Morris) The other thing is that the Secretary of State also
made clear in his speech the sponsors have a specialism. As you know, one of
the things we have done with specialist schools is to give them resources so
that they do work with neighbouring schools. We have got so many mechanisms,
they are not all controlled by the LEA. It is not just the LEAs that are
spreaders of good practice and make the link. These schools as part of their
revenue funding will receive an element of money per pupil that must be used
for making links with neighbouring schools. If they do not, they do not get
it, quite frankly, and that is one of the things that we look at carefully now
when we are designating specialist schools. The other thing now, beacon
schools, the ICT, the standards web site that we have got, people actually
want to spread good practice, as long as you allow them to do it and
facilitate it, it is not something which you usually have great battles about.
What happened before was nobody addressed it and I think we have put lots of
mechanisms in place but I do not for a minute think that the only mechanism
would be the local authority.
333. One brief question following that, if these schools are going
to replace existing schools and get extra funding, will that mean a consequent
reduction of funds to the LEA in the area?
(Estelle Morris) They will not be funded for a school they did not run.
I think the way the mechanism works at the moment is that under the CTC
legislation there is a separate agreement between the CTC directly and the
Department and we approve their revenue capital funding each year. Clearly,
we would not be giving them money for a schools they did not run.
Chairman
334. We have heard teachers talk about initiative burn up but in
terms of this Committee perhaps if over in your building there is a map of the
country with blue and pink and all sorts of dots scattered around the country,
we would like to come and see it, in terms of beacon schools, specialist
schools, and just see a spatial distribution.
(Estelle Morris) Yes.
335. Perhaps you can show us a good map of the country. I am
making a serious point.
(Estelle Morris) You are making a serious point.
336. The diversity of choice, I can understand, and the Committee
I am sure understands, the aim is to have diversity and excellence and it is
something we are pursuing in terms of our inquiry. But there are so many
avenues for this diversity at the moment that you could not blame people on
the ground being confused about the great deal of diversity.
(Estelle Morris) No, I can understand that and I do understand that
people on the ground get confused. Can I just say we can provide you with
that map, with that route map and with that geographical map because when we
are allocating specialist schools, beacon schools, EAZs we do it with a view
to getting a geographical spread. Can I just say, because this is really
important, I think, there are lots of initiatives but they are part of a
pattern and really the pattern is based on two main things. One that every
child matters and that we have for the first time to raise standards in every
school but we know that we cannot do that just in one way so we have got to
have a range of ways in which we do that. That is the first ground rule. The
second ground rule is that we must have a school system where people learn
from each other as well as being accountable for themselves. Whether it is
EAZs, EIC, beacon schools, the community element of specialist schools, all
those are different ways of doing that very same thing. One thing I think
that we need to do more of - and that is why I would be very happy to provide
yourself and the Committee with a memo and perhaps a nicely coloured map on
this, is that all our initiatives need to be judged by that and they do
actually fit in to that main thrust of Government policy.
337. Minister, what would you say to someone who said that they
admire your pragmatic attitude and the Government's pragmatic attitude to
these questions but much of the pragmatism always ends up in a private sector
solution rather than a public sector solution?
(Estelle Morris) I would remind them that most of the 24,000 schools
in this country are public sector schools, many of them in relationship with
the local authority and most of them achieving very, very good standards for
pupils. Because we are talking now about areas where there are problems,
sometimes we forget about that. What I would then go on to say is that in
some of the worst problems, the most challenging difficulties facing this
country at the moment as far as schools are concerned, if you call me a
pragmatist because I am willing to take whatever anybody else has to offer,
I think I would just say "Thank you and judge us by the results".
338. Minister, I did not mean that unkindly, what I meant to probe
on behalf of the people who have given evidence to this Committee, was that
some people believe that even in failing schools if there was a fine tradition
or a fine administrative institution which produced first rate public
servants, public managers who understood the market driven solutions perhaps,
perhaps sometimes we ought to put that sort of expertise into failing schools,
failing LEAs and so on rather than scraping away, which we found as a
Committee, a very thin resource of private sector provision, both in terms of
how many companies are out there to draft in because there do not appear to
us to be that many, and secondly how truly private sector are they because
many of them are education administrators and teachers who very recently were
working in the public sector themselves.
(Estelle Morris) I think Professor Barber wishes to come in on this but
I think that is exactly the point. Almost "does it matter" as long as it
raises standards. I think to some extent there will be development over the
next few years and we are trying to encourage this. It is not private sector
or public sector, it is a range of different partnerships between the private
and public sector. In a speech I made at a capital conference last week I
actually announced five innovation projects for innovative ways of local
authorities working with the private sector. I tell you what I want to get
away from, and this takes up your point really, I do not want both with LEAs
and schools, the private sector to only have an involvement where there are
huge levels of failure. I do not think that is the nature of the relationship
that we want. I think what will happen over the next few years that we need
to use their skills because there are real skills in the private sector, that
public sector employees have not often had the chance to develop in previous
years because training has not been good enough. We want to use those but I
would genuinely like to see new organisations that might have the best of
private/public sector in terms of both LEA work and school work.
(Professor Barber) I just want to go back to the beginning
of your question and point out that there has been a great deal of success.
Once the under performing schools are identified through the Ofsted process,
there has been a great deal of success over the last year or so in turning
around those failing schools. The number of failing schools dropped steadily
through last year. The time it takes to turn round the school is now 17
months, it was 25 months at the election. The vast majority of those turn
rounds are wholly public sector turn rounds where LEAs, learning from each
other, learning from us, learning from our advisers have developed and refined
the methods for turning round schools. That will remain the starting point
of our policy, that is what we want. We have, beyond that, the Fresh Start
option and now there is the City Academies option. We are not always leaping
to the private sector solutions, that is one of a number of things.
Chairman
339. Minister, I know you are on a tight time but have you got
time for two quick questions because there are two Members of our Committee
straining at the leash here.
(Estelle Morris) Yes.
Mr Marsden
340. I just want to take you back to this business about the
relationship with the Local Education Authorities and accepting the fact that
you can only really see how those develop when you have the bids in. I take
the point about the LEAs not being the providers of all the initiatives but
you have put a great deal of stress on things like early year development
plans, various other plans being produced by LEAs. How confident are you that
involving if you have in an LEA area, for example, you might have two or
possibly three City Academies, no reason why you should not have, how
confident are you that they will be involved in that programme, that is not
going to skew the development programme for the whole area and, secondly, as
the Academies proceed what review mechanisms will you have to make sure that
your aspiration that you have given today that they will co-operate with other
schools, that they will be part of the family of schools, will actually be
carried out? That has been, until the election, one of the very substantial
criticisms that was levelled against the CTCs.
(Estelle Morris) I think the biggest danger is that of building in
surplus places and I think we can manage that because we are determined to
manage it and the final approval process and the rest of it. That is the
essential bit of planning that needs to happen, we need to work with local
authorities and look at the provision of places. I am not too worried about
that, we have just got to get it right. In the nicest sense it is a numbers
game. We are talking about secondary schools, and it is a case of looking at
all the ways in which you normally plan for places. The second one is we will
need to evaluate these carefully, and we will do that through all the normal
processes like Ofsted inspections, special inspections, etc.. In terms of
their development plans, they will have to produce a development plan for us
in exactly the same way that specialist schools have to produce a development
plan for us. Just to offer reassurance, it is not quite known sometimes, I
am about to redesignate or otherwise some of the existing specialist schools
and some of them, and those which do not get designation first time round will
be pulled up on their community plan. It is not there just for decoration, it
is something which they are judged by. They stand the risk of not getting
redesignated and the same would happen to CTCs. We may think, I do not know,
Michael, of some further evaluation as well as we do of some of our key
priorities.
(Professor Barber) Indeed. I think that in a sense your
question used the words "Don't deal with these problems until the election."
The crucial thing is the framework within which the City Academies are being
set up. The whole framework of the policy, the whole thrust of the policy,
is quite different from the time when the CTCs were established.
Mr St Aubyn
341. You have put in place legislation to determine the future of
local selective schools through local ballot. What provision do you think
there should be for a local ballot when a school becomes a City Academy, and
who should have votes on it?
(Estelle Morris) You are absolutely right, therefore you will also know
that what we have said on City Academies is that as far as admissions are
concerned, we shall need them to stick to the code of practice, but we will
of course need to go through the statutory proposals which there are when any
new school is started; it is through that mechanism that parents will have a
say.
342. But they will not have a vote on the future of their school?
(Estelle Morris) We are not planning a ballot.
Chairman
343. We are very keen - one last bite - to know whether sponsors
of these new academies will have the same rules applied to them as the people
applying for private sector intervention in terms of other areas, in terms of
taking over a school, say, in Guildford or an LEA. Are they going to have the
same framework as that, or a new framework, or is it going to be a framework
which reverts back to the CTCs?
(Professor Barber) These City Academies will be
established, as we said in answer to an earlier question, under the CTCs.
344. You had financial incentives, penalties, a whole range of
things in one category. Are you going to bring these over into City
Academies?
(Estelle Morris) You mean like LEAs?
345. Yes.
(Estelle Morris) No, I think it will be a different relationship. We
are not talking about a school, so I think it will be a different
relationship. What will be a common thread is that we will expect them to
have targets and we will expect them to meet those targets, but the
relationship of accountability will be more that of our relationship with
other schools than that of our relationship with LEA intervention companies.
346. If anyone from the Department wants to add to that, we would
appreciate a note, is that all right, in terms of a comparison between the
two, for the record?
(Estelle Morris) Yes, I think that might be useful, because I do not
think the contract between us would be the same, I do not think it is a
similar contract at all, therefore clarification of that would be very useful.
Chairman: Thank you for that. Minister, on a day when I think it was
Dorothy Parker who said that the three most beautiful words in the English
language were "cheque in post", whether the schools get their cheque directly
or it is going through the local education authority, I am sure they are
feeling very bright this morning. Can I just say to the Committee that the
Minister knows that an uncorrected version of the transcript of this session
will go out on the Internet later. There is a link to the Committee's home
page on links page www.dfee.gov.uk, or it can be found on part of
www.parliament.uk or even elsewhere. Thank you for your attendance, Minister
and Professor Barber.
