Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
WEDNESDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2002
PROFESSOR STEPHEN
GORARD, PROFESSOR
JAMES TOOLEY
AND PROFESSOR
RICHARD PRING
20. We have been advised that 50% of the exclusions
of youngsters in secondary schools takes place in those early
years, the first two years of secondary school and that perhaps
the reason why youngsters manage to stay in primary school is
because of the relationship with one teacher. They have the focus
of that one teacher rather than rattling around in a secondary
school. Is that the group you are referring to?
(Professor Pring) That is right. The transition from
primary to secondary, though I would not be able to lay my hands
on clear evidence but it has been very well researched, is an
exceedingly difficult time for many young people, especially if
there are other background features which may make them less steady.
There are varying ways in which you can do this. I am not really
advocating the Oxford collegiate system for Sheffield secondary
schools, but the idea of groups of schools thinking collegiately,
where the unit is much smaller but where they are able to draw
upon the resources of each, is one in which one would be able
to overcome some of the impersonal factors which some young people
feel when they move to a school of about 1,300. Last night I was
chairing a research committee at a school in Abingdon where we
have been interviewing a lot of young people when they first come
up from the primary school. For a lot of these young people it
was a deeply unsettling experience: the fear of bullying, actual
bullying—though bullying now is stretched so widely it embraces
even looking at somebody—the anxiety amongst many of these
young people. I do not have proof but one feels that it leads
to all sorts of anti-social behaviour. I think this is something
worth experimenting with, when in a place like New York, which
for goodness sake has had many difficult problems to cope with,
they have managed to incorporate this, side by side with other
larger schools.
Mr Pollard
21. In my constituency I have a Steiner school
and I am very attracted by the way in which they operate and what
they turn out. I understand from the little research I have done,
that Steiner work in some disadvantaged areas and actually turn
out good quality at the end. Could and should that be included
in the Government's diversity agenda and Montessori as well?
(Professor Pring) I always find it rather sad that
a system which is advocating diversity, and has ever since Choice
and Diversity, still wants to exclude schools like Steiner and
Montessori which do offer an alternative way. This is not diversity
in terms of changing resources or in terms of objectives which
I do not particularly appreciate. This is people who have a very
distinctive philosophy of education which many parents would embrace
and yet which we are, in a way other countries do not, excluding
from the diverse system which we are advocating. I quite agree.
They really do stress the importance of that holistic view of
the whole person.
22. Some of the other diversity we have talked
about such as specialist schools is just a way of leading new
money into schools. It is a game which is being played in one
sense.
(Professor Tooley) The best examples are Denmark and
the Netherlands in particular but other European countries who
have state funding of Montessori and Steiner schools through their
quasi voucher system or whatever you like to call it, public subsidy
of those schools. What I advocate in my memorandum is something
similar where we do not have the top down diversity agenda which
governments seem to like, but we allow the bottom-up diversity
agenda to emerge and through choice and competition to bring out
what the people really want. It is very interesting that Professor
Pring has focused on this whole secondary versus primary school
split. I like to say that is an anachronism introduced under the
1944 Act; most of the other things in the 1944 Act have been abolished
but that still remains and causes great difficulties for students.
In your Steiner and Montessori schools you have all three schools.
In the private schools I am working on in India and Africa you
have all three schools, starting in nursery and ending in class
10. They are eminently satisfactory. They are chosen by parents
because they alleviate most of the problems discussed here. Diversity
rather than that top-down thing could well include focusing on
genuine reforms which would help students and parents cope with
schooling and abolishing that distinction would be a good step.
(Professor Gorard) I want to agree with what both
my colleagues have said which is that Steiner is an example, but
there are many other examples, of quite a few very small, very
challenged schools, which have survived over a period when in
a sense their existence has not been encouraged. I am talking
also about the invisible sector of very small private schools
which quite often have a distinct ethos for particular groups.
I am thinking of the South Wales coalfield valleys where there
are many very small private schools which deal with very, very
poor children with very poor facilities but which seem to do a
reasonable job. These are the ones which have emerged bottom-up.
They are market-driven in the sense that these are what the parents
are wanting in these communities and they are different from state
or large group-imposed forms of diversification. I think we should
judge all these in terms of what they are in their own right.
I am sorry to pick on the specialist school programme again but
I just take that as an example. What I mean by that is if you
were to take away the differences in admission criteria, the over-subscription
criteria and also the ability to select and the extra money they
would get, what is left that people would be wanting from those
schools? A similar thing with the faith-based schools. People
say faith-based schools are popular but they are like the Welsh-medium
schools in Wales: people see them as being better schools and
the reason the advocates of these schools move very quickly from
talking about these schools as schools in their own right, with
these characteristics which are desirable, to schools which appear
to be better than neighbouring schools suggests there is not much
appeal in their sui generis status as either faith-based
or specialist schools. People are saying these schools are better
because they are actually better schools. We could have done it
some other way and we would have got similarly better schools.
That is very different from these very small schools thriving
under very difficult circumstances, quite often in very poor communities.
23. Professor Pring said earlier on that faith
schools need looking at. What did you mean by that and could you
tease out a little bit on that because the Government is moving
in a completely different direction from what you were perhaps
suggesting?
(Professor Pring) That is right. There are now four
Muslem schools in the country and within the Muslem community
they are now wanting quite a few more. In terms of fairness in
so far as you have faith schools with different admission policies
for the Church of England, for Roman Catholics and also for an
increasing number of Jewish schools, then, quite rightly, to be
consistent one would also need to enable the voluntary aided status
for Muslem schools to be established. On the other hand a policy
which functioned in the past, in the history certainly of Roman
Catholic schools both here and in Australia which I am quite familiar
with, was enabling a population which generally was an immigrant
and working class population to develop a certain sense of dignity
and to come into the mainstream of public life. Those same sorts
of arguments do not work now, although I can see that they could
work within the Muslem community. Now what we shall be getting
by pursuing that policy is the division of schools not just on
faith grounds but also on ethnic and racial grounds. I really
do feel that one of the most important social objectives in this
country is, to put it in the words of that marvellous book Jonathan
Sachs has just produced, The Dignity of Differences, to enable
people to live together, learning from each other and respecting
those differences. I am not advocating a relativism or anything
like that, but the idea of finding schools where people's own
distinctive philosophy or religious life is respected, is promoted
and through which they interact with other people so there can
be that respect. If we do not do that then society is going to
be in for an exceedingly difficult time. You would have failed
the most important educational objective then quite frankly which
is to enable different communities to live in harmony together
and with respect and to learn from each other in the John Dewey
principle ( if I might be allowed now to quote John Dewey who
was for a long time on the Index of forbidden books). That is
what I really would want and unless we address that issue we shall
be failing. Secondly, there is no doubt, the research now is fairly
conclusive on this, that the faith schools which were philosophically
promoted under the 1944 Education Act, which were to enable the
nurturing of faith within particular communities, have now also
become a means of selection on grounds other than faith. That
is now causing quite considerable difficulties in some communities
where people are not able to attend their local school simply
because they do not pass a religious test and therefore have to
move quite a long way away to the disruption of that local community.
I do think this is something which is very difficult to address.
It is one thing which always gets put on the back burner as soon
as any new Secretary of State is appointed, but it is one which
has to be faced.
Mr Baron
24. May I press all three of you further on
the actual role of government in education? It does seem that
to a certain extent the diversity agenda is being led by the government
rather than demand-driven. There are schools in my constituency
who are becoming specialist schools or are trying to become specialist
schools because basically they receive more finance as a result
of it. It is not necessarily the parents and teachers getting
together and saying they want to become a specialist school. Having
said that in your own different ways you criticised or are not
happy with the present system, if you had a blank sheet of paper,
what would be the role of government? There has to be a role for
government to ensure certain provisions with regard to standards,
but do you think we are going down the wrong track?
(Professor Gorard) My answer would be that I could
not really say. None of the evidence I have would directly bear
on the question. I could you give you an opinion as an individual
member of the country, but that presumably is not what I am here
for.
25. I should like your opinion.
(Professor Gorard) Looked at from my side of the counter,
there appears to be too much intervention. It is not that any
particular intervention is misguided or wrong. You need a period
in secondary education where people know the rules, they know
what is going on, they try to work well within it and they are
given the resources and the time to do that. The other thing goes
back to my point about equity. The Government's role would be
to ensure that there is an equitable distribution of education
resources. The levels of pupil funding in particular areas still
seem odd to me: the way that appears to have historical and no
longer particularly relevant things; the fact that in some areas
children can get means-tested free transport to a school which
is not their nearest school, in some areas they cannot and so
on. It seems we have this post-code lottery thing. I would say
government's role would be to overcome that, to break down the
barriers to equity across the secondary sector.
(Professor Tooley) I suppose the answer, if I am wearing
my politically-feasible hat, is that I would say "Not a lot".
If I am wearing my thinking-the-unthinkable hat I would say "No
role at all". Probably I should keep the politically-feasible
hat on for this occasion, so "Not a lot". I do not see
why, provided we have accountability—this is the key we
are looking for—in the education system, government has
to be involved in any of the areas you indicated: curriculum,
assessment, league tables. All these things as far as I am concerned
just ossify the state system in ways which are extremely hard
to change. Professor Pring talked about moving a battleship. Why
should something as important as education be like moving a battleship?
We are used to great flexibility and innovation in other areas
of our lives. I would say none of those things are needed but
with my politically-feasible hat I would see funding as necessary,
which is why I advocate something like a voucher system, a learning
credit system, which could allow the accountability brought from
parents—no they are not perfect, of course they are not
perfect, but perhaps they are the least imperfect method we know
of keeping standards high—to come in. The way I see it,
the private sector is better than the public sector in this area.
I respect Stephen Gorard's work immensely, but the one problem
with the school effectiveness work which he points to is that
it takes the status quo as a given by and large, it is looking
at state schools, so one of the factors which does not come through
is whether or not they are privately managed. There has been work
on this, starting from James Coleman's work in America in 1982
and going through a range of World Bank studies looking at a range
of countries. These studies are very sophisticated, they control
the school choice process, multi-redefinition analysis and so
on. They control all these things and uniformly they find that
private schools attain higher standards than the public schools.
The only time it does not work is in the Philippines in terms
of mathematics. The rest of the country studies from a whole range
of countries are the same and private schools are uniformly more
cost effective than the public schools. If that is true in most
studies, and I suspect it would be the same if we could do those
sorts of studies elsewhere, that raises a question: what on earth
is government doing in here? In terms of standards the private
sector has better standards.
Chairman
26. The Department for Education and Skills
should just be disbanded and let them get on with it.
(Professor Tooley) I said that was my politically-feasible
hat so yes, of course. No, it would have a role in ensuring funding
arrangements.
27. Professor Gorard, that speaks to your research
not merely to your opinion as an individual citizen. Do you have
any comment on Professor Tooley's views there?
(Professor Gorard) When I do work in the school effective
genre, which I do, it is largely to combat what would appear to
me to be unsupported claims, it is to go over old ground. So in
a sense we would have no argument about some of the claims about
school effectiveness. It should be clear that the kinds of fee-paying
schools he is talking about in the World Bank studies are not
perhaps what people around the table would imagine. We are not
talking about Eton and Harrow here. We are talking about what
I would refer to as the invisible sector. These are quite often
religion-based, very small schools with very poor facilities taking
in poor children from disadvantaged circumstances because, for
whatever reason, the parents want to opt out of the state sector.
Quite often they have grown up out of home schooling, villages
where parents decided to leave their children out of the state
sector, provide their own education, probably with bought in curriculum
materials, possibly from the US and then a neighbour has asked
if they would take his child and then another and eventually they
have whatever number, four children, and suddenly they are a school.
(Professor Pring) What one has to say about private
schools is that of course there are some very good ones and there
are some pretty awful ones. Just saying private education is better
than public education is really one of the daftest things I have
heard yet. Could I just say something about the assumption behind
the question? The question assumed that things seemed to be going
wrong. A lot is not going wrong. What we are talking about is
how to improve a system which in many respects is a very, very
good system. I do not think saying there are things we can do
to improve a system should be seen as a trenchant criticism of
what is going on.
Mr Baron
28. That was not the implication. I think there
is a general acceptance that things could be much better. I am
not saying things are going terribly wrong in every sense, because
that is obviously not true, but things could be much better. I
am just trying to explore, through yourselves, ways of how we
could make it better and whether the government has a role here.
(Professor Pring) Okay. There are things we ought
to acknowledge which are going right. Our department works entirely
with comprehensive schools and we are about the only education
department in the country which does and I get fully supported
by Oxford University in pursuing this policy. The reason is because
I believe that some sort of comprehensive form of education must
be the way forward if we are going to have a coherent society
where everybody really counts. As a result of that we are a very
school centred department. I know every comprehensive school within
Oxfordshire well and there are some excellent comprehensive schools.
When a comprehensive system is working well it does produce the
best education for all young people, including the most able.
Of course there are poor schools, but there will be poor schools
in any system and then it is a question of how you improve that.
An enormous amount has been done now in making that progression
from early years, development of literacy and numeracy, but what
things can be done to improve it? I think there is still this
tail of underachievement. May I say that this is not just a problem
here, but it is a problem in many, many countries? For some reason
it is simply very, very difficult to get some people through.
It has to be tackled. I suggested experimenting in certain areas
with more person-centred schools. I think where things have improved
over the last few years this goes across different administrations
and indeed it was the Conservative administration which insisted
upon tightening up the accountability of schools. When I first
started teaching in Camden Town many years ago, there were some
brilliant teachers and there were some pretty awful things going
on. When I started teaching I wrote to the headteacher and asked
for my timetable for when I was to start in September. He wrote
back to say he would give it to me on the day I arrived. I had
hoped to spend my summer preparing my lessons. I arrived. "What
did you do at university?" I said philosophy, so they gave
me the slow learners. That is not something which could be allowed
to happen now. In many ways the system has much greater accountability
and has become much more professional but we have reached the
stage now in which the level of accountability and the bureaucracy
which is imposed upon us is so massive it becomes demoralising
and it becomes frustrating. One of the things I have been advocating,
but obviously either not coherently enough or because I have no
power or authority, is that it is about time the Audit Commission
really addressed the massive, massive amount of money which goes
into throttling creativity in schools. One thinks of tier upon
tier of inspections. I got a letter the other day from the DfES
which said they are now starting up another set of advisers around
the country looking at professional development. I wrote, tongue
in cheek, to ask how this group of advisers relates to the group
of advisers which the Training Agency has. Finally they rang me
up to explain that they were just about to sort out that problem.
I told them that at Oxford when we appoint people, we usually
have a job for them to do before we appoint them and we do not
appoint them first. I have seen so much of this now, this tier
upon tier costing millions and million and millions of pounds.
Unless we actually get to grips with that, there is going to be
a strangling effect upon the creativity which is there in schools.
It is diverting a massive amount of resources from teaching and
the actual job which goes on to all these people who are now encouraged
out of the classroom to have meetings and go around in big cars.
If you want to know where we are going wrong, we are strangling
with bureaucracy and we ought to do something about that. That
would release an enormous amount of potential in schools. I go
round lots of schools, I work in these schools, I teach in these
schools and I am constantly amazed by the dedication, the experience
and sheer brilliance and creativity of many teachers. For heaven's
sake let them work at it.
29. May I summarise what I think the three of
you believe? You believe that there is too much bureaucracy and
interference. The government is not spending enough time ensuring
there is fairness, certainly with regard to funding, and as long
as accountability is in the system—and that is probably
the government's prime role and accountability has to be there—it
should be a much more hand's-off approach. Certainly going round
the schools talking to headteachers and teachers that view would
get a lot of support. Am I wrong in drawing that conclusion from
the three of you? Where do you differ with that view?
(Professor Pring) I agree.
(Professor Tooley) I could more or less subscribe
to that.
30. With your politically-correct hat on.
(Professor Tooley) Yes; politically-feasible hat.
31. Would you agree with that, Professor Gorard?
(Professor Gorard) Yes.
32. We all agree with regard to the issue of
diversity, which is our brief at the moment. It does seem that
we are going slightly wrong, despite what you say, in the sense
that diversity is being, not forced but certainly being led by
the government. How can we put this right in the sense that, in
my view certainly, it is not being demand led in a lot of places
and certainly within my constituency? That is what we are looking
at at the moment as a Committee. What should we do to put this
situation right?
(Professor Tooley) You should allow demand to be expressed.
The way you do that is through some form of money channelled to
parents which they can use at the school of their choice, public
or private.
33. How would you actually do that? Through
a voucher system?
(Professor Tooley) Yes, that is one option. You do
not have to call it a voucher system.
Chairman
34. If you call it that system, I do not think
it has much hope of success.
(Professor Tooley) The Institute of Directors call
it a passport system. Learning credit is a nice name. A rose would
smell as sweet by any other name. If we all agree, and we do seem
to agree, that one problem is that diversity has been imposed
top down and that the desirable form of diversity, if at all,
is bottom up, then you have to allow bottom up diversity to be
expressed. We have had great praise for small schools, small private
schools, Montessori, Steiner schools. All these schools should
be allowed to flourish and similar schools should be created and
allowed to grow. The only way you can do that is through, call
it what you like, a voucher system.
Mr Baron
35. Where parents actually have a choice.
(Professor Tooley) Yes; it is the only way.
Chairman
36. Professor Gorard, you have done a lot of
work on why parents choose particular schools. Do you think what
we have now should be scrapped and we should introduce some sort
of voucher system?
(Professor Gorard) No, I do not; I did not indicate
that. I was hesitant to answer the question about what the role
of government should be and that was what my hesitancy was, about
agreeing to the summary you gave. I do not disagree with it but
obviously there is going to be a point at which you have to say
you cannot allow demand to determine the nature and type and number
of schools in this country because of the nature of what the schools
might be doing and teaching and so on. Unfortunately I do not
have a solution. I cannot stand up and say yes, this is what we
should do.
(Professor Tooley) A regulatory framework.
(Professor Gorard) I agree with what Richard Pring
said earlier about the comprehensive system and about comprehensive
schools, but I find it odd that he does not have a comparator
and has only one system to make the claims. I do think the claims
are substantiated by other work There is no particular problem;
obviously we can get it better. I suppose my role is simply to
ask people to look very carefully at claims of the superiority
of one school or one type of school over another. My argument
would be, without getting too technical, that you do need four
data points and you need a proportionate approach to this. Over
your period of sitting you will be talking to experts and they
will be arguing about whether we should use this technique or
not this technique to decide on school effectiveness. There is
an issue about that for me. Sorry to stick on specialist schools
but if you take those as an example you would want to take a point
before they started, look at the scores or the standards in those
schools, divide them into two groups, those which are going to
remain comprehensive and those which are going to change over
the coming years, roll forward to today—and we have data
for all of this—and look at the same two groups, the ones
which have become specialist and the others. What you get in most
school effectiveness studies—and that is why I disagreed
with James Tooley's summary to some extent about the school effectiveness
work—is that they simply look at two data points. They look
at one group of schools and they have these schools, however contextualised
and value added they are, and then they look at another group
of schools and they assume the causal mechanism underlying the
difference is the nature of the schools. If you take before data
points and you take these schools before they became this type,
then it is absolutely clear that none of the sectors have any
advantage over any other. In other words, in terms of equity stick
with comprehensives.
Mr Baron
37. Provided there is proper accountability
there, where would you stop demand dictating what type of school
one had locally? You said there that you cannot allow demand to
run its full course broadly speaking. Where would you draw the
line, provided you had accountability?
(Professor Gorard) I do not know. Is that an allowable
answer?
38. It is an allowable answer. I am just intrigued.
(Professor Gorard) I can come back to you on that.
39. If you could.
(Professor Pring) I think the role of government must
be significant. You cannot live in a modern society unless, if
everyone is going to have the right to opportunity, there has
to be distribution of a great amount of resources to enable everybody
to have the proper education, to be able to contribute to their
community and also for their own personal welfare. It goes back
to the 1944 Education Act and I had to learn this when I was a
civil servant. Really you need a Government to provide the legal
framework within which everybody can get access to proper schooling.
It needs the provision of schools which will enable them to get
that education. It means the proper supply, payment and recruitment
and training of teachers. It means ensuring that resources are
spread equally and are not given on grounds which cannot be justified
in terms of differences between different youngsters, etcetera.
That is it. Where one adds to that now from the 1944 Act is quite
rightly that the Government can no longer hold back from ensuring
a proper framework for the curriculum. However, I think the whole
specialist schools initiative is one of the daftest things which
has happened quite frankly. There is no justification for the
differential funding for somehow having PE experts in one town
and not another. It becomes a question of what degree of involvement
and also of accountability to make sure the legal framework and
resources are properly used. The dispute becomes a question of
first, how far we should allow a certain amount of experimentation
within that system in order to deal with problems which are by
no means unique to this country, secondly, the extent to which
that curriculum should be prescribed and to what extent there
should be freedom within that overall framework. Those are the
real points of difference.
|
