Examination of Witnesses (Questions 330-339)
MONDAY 20 JANUARY 2003
SIR CYRIL
TAYLOR AND
PROFESSOR DAVID
JESSON
Chairman
330. Good afternoon, May I welcome Sir Cyril
and Professor David Jesson to our proceedings? We have been looking
forward to having you meet the Committee. As you know, for some
time we have been looking at secondary education. We have been
away from what some people describe as mainstream school education
for some time and we are happy to be back for almost a whole year
with a few interruptions from White Papers which will take us
away for a little while. The fact of the matter is that this is
an area of great concern, both to this Committee and to the Government.
A significant amount of taxpayers' money is being spent on developing
the whole notion of diversity in secondary education and specialist
schools in particular. It is a great pleasure to have you here,
Sir Cyril, because you have been involved with this under eight
secretaries of state.
(Sir Cyril Taylor) I am not sure I shall
make it to a ninth.
331. Your experience in this is almost unparalleled,
so we are looking forward to exploring some issues with you. May
I invite you to give us not a long introduction but three or four
minutes to tell us where you see the history and the background
and why it is that suddenly diversity is the fashionable watchword
in secondary education?
(Sir Cyril Taylor) Thank you for inviting me to give
evidence; it is a great privilege. I thought I would just try
to ask the question: why do we need specialist schools? My distinguished
colleague David Jesson is going to handle all of the data, I am
not a brilliant numbers man, but the first reason is that specialist
schools are helping to raise standards of achievement within our
schools, which is obviously very important. The 650 non-selective
secondary schools excluding 30 specialist schools which are grammar
schools, which were in operation this past summer, achieved 54%
with five A to Cs at GCSE and that is a verified final DfES number.
This compares with 47% in the non-specialist comprehensive and
modern schools. It very important when comparing data that you
break out the specialist schools from the other schools. The intake
ability at age 11, however, in both specialist and non-specialist
schools, is almost precisely the same, as David will explain.
He has been able to match 550,000 eleven-year-olds in 1997 with
their GCSE at age 15 results this year. The average point count
for our pupils in the intake in 1997 of eleven-year-olds was almost
exactly the same as for the other non-specialist and comprehensive
schools. We think the second reason is that while our schools
are very proud of being comprehensive schools. we do believe,
especially in the larger urban conurbations, that we do provide
some diversity and choice because we now have eight different
specialisms. We think this is popular, as is shown by the number
of applications we get from parents. The third reason is that
whilst all our schools teach the national curriculum, and that
is a point a lot of people do not understand, many of our schools
also specialise in areas which cover maths, science, technology,
languages and we think this is providing the schools which a prosperous
modern economy requires. The performance of our schools in their
specialist subjects is very, very good indeed. For example, in
languages they are performing about 50% better than the other
schools. The fourth reason is that one third of our specialist
schools is located in the inner city areas. I have a list here
of 250 schools which have a higher free school meals eligibility
than the national average. Seventy-five of those have raised their
results by more than 10 points in the last three years and we
are very proud of the particularly strong performance of schools
starting from a lower than national average performance. The fifth
reason is that all our schools have to partner both a primary
and at least one secondary and we think there is evidence that
we are beginning to raise performance within our partner schools:
one third of the extra money has to be spent within the community
area. The sixth reason is that we think specialist schools have
been pioneers in developing innovative ways to improve learning,
especially in the use of ICT, many of our schools now have one
electronic write board in every classroom, internet based learning.
The seventh and final reason is that we think specialist schools
are a leading example of the value of business/education partnerships.
Since we started in 1987 when the trust was founded, over 400
sponsors have donated £100 million towards helping their
specialist school and it is not just money, it is time. Many of
them appoint sponsor governors. Rolls-Royce, for example, virtually
adopt their schools. We want to make sure that people understand
we are not boasting about the performance of our schools: some
of our schools do not do that well and some of them get de-designated,
thirty-three of them out of 1000, although six have come back.
We think overall that the record which started 15 years ago with
the opening of the first CTC in Birmingham in 1988 has been consistently
good. All of us involved in the initiative are committed to raising
standards of achievement, especially in our schools which are
in areas of social disadvantage. Thank you very much.
332. Professor Jesson, do you have anything
to add to that?
(Professor Jesson) One of the important things is
the opportunity which has been taken to look at the progress which
pupils make over the full five years of their secondary education.
In the past year we have looked at the examination results of
something like 530,000 pupils and it is that strong basis which
allows us to place those who are in specialist schools and look
at their performance and compare those pupils with those who are
not in specialist schools and look at their performance. It seems
to me that the time we have spent matching data from the age of
11 to the age of 16 is a crucial element in our understanding
about the way this whole system is changing and particularly the
role specialist schools have to play in that. The other point
I would make about being able to look at pupils' entry qualifications
is that it does nail the issue which is sometimes suggested that
specialist schools only get their good results because they select
better pupils. As Sir Cyril has already mentioned, our data shows
quite clearly that although there may be a very small advantage
in terms of key stage two point scores of youngsters at the age
of 11 in specialist schools, it is by no means sufficient to account
for the much better performance in those schools.
(Sir Cyril Taylor) I believe the number this year
is 25.9 in our schools and 25.6 in non-specialist schools.
(Professor Jesson) Yes, I believe it is though that
still has to be checked. We are still going through this issue
with the schools.
333. May I direct this to both of you but perhaps
Professor Jesson would want to take on the main thrust as Sir
Cyril is not a numbers man, although you gave us a few? The fact
of the matter is that we have had some very diverse opinion on
whether diversity with specialist schools really does make a difference.
We have seen eminent professors sitting just where you are emphatically
telling us that there is not much evidence that all this money
being spent on specialist schools makes a great difference. Why
is it that respected academics have such a variance with you on
the impact of this investment of money in specialist schools?
(Professor Jesson) I find the question an interesting
one because I would like to see the data on which they base their
observations. I think that the most comprehensive data which is
available is made available by the government's Department for
Education and Skills. The data which they make available is, I
would have thought, the key source of such information. We would
not publish anything which did not square with what the data actually
says and we are in a creative debate with some of those who have
already made contributions. I think that debate continues, but
we shall be producing a further report fairly shortly which will
simply articulate the degree to which the advantage of specialism
appears not only to be maintained but, since we have a larger
number of schools, actually to be increasing.
(Sir Cyril Taylor) We are going to meet David Bell
tomorrow at Ofsted because there was some concern before Christmas
that some of the Ofsted numbers did not seem to match ours. We
now think we have reached agreement on what we can jointly support.
There are two key points which are a result of some of the confusion.
One is that when you are making a judgement about an initiative
like specialist schools it is very important to look at the length
of time that a school has been specialist. We now have verified
data by year of entry, eight years of entry, and the rate of improvement.
Six out of the eight entry groups have improved faster than other
schools. The first specialist schools were designated in 1994.
They had improved by in 2002 25 gross points versus their base
year versus other schools who gained about 12. We believe that
Ofsted will agree to these numbers. It is very important that
you do not just pool all specialist schools; some of them may
only have been in the programme a year. School improvement takes
considerable time. The City Academies will need four or five years
before they start to show results. The other key point is that
many people have been comparing the data for all schools versus
the data for specialist schools. As the differences can be relatively
small, five, six, seven, eight point differences, it is very important
to take the specialist schools out of the total universe and to
compare specialist schools by year of entry into the programme
with all other non-specialist schools. I suspect this is a large
source of the confusion, especially from parliamentary answers
and things like that.
334. Do you ever take the results of your schools,
the specialist schools, and compare them with what is happening
in the remainder of grammar schools?
(Professor Jesson) It is something which I am engaged
on at the moment. It is one of these areas where the conventional
measures for grammar school performance, the percentage of children
who get five A* to Cs is actually quite a derisory statistic.
(Sir Cyril Taylor) Every grammar school should get
100%.
(Professor Jesson) Every grammar school pupil should
get five A* to Cs. I am developing a new framework which I am
talking about with both Ofsted and others over the next few weeks
to get some better way of looking at grammar school performance.
That should be quite helpful.
(Sir Cyril Taylor) Which could be the proportion of
those who get As and starred As. You can predict what they should
get from their intake ability.
335. This Committee is very interested in knowing
of all institutions by group what the value added of each is;
whether they get A to C, it is the value added which most of us
would be interested in.
(Professor Jesson) May I just make a point there?
Where you have a ceiling of A*s to Cs, the measure itself is not
a good one for grammar schools. In a very real sense there needs
to be a different indicator here which would be one of those like
I am proposing. At the moment we do not have a means of preparing
that properly.
(Sir Cyril Taylor) What you might be interested in
is that we have a number of schools which were secondary modern;
they do not call themselves secondary modern any more. There is
an example in Louth where there is an ancient grammar school a
few hundred yards away from what was a secondary modern. It is
now a technology college and has been a technology college for
six or seven years. It has gone from 20% to nearly 60% and the
parents in Louth and the rural areas surrounding Louth now genuinely
consider the technology college, even if they have been offered
a place in the grammar school. The grammar school used to be 13
to 19 and they used to take nearly all of the bright kids from
the secondary modern. Now they have had to start to recruit at
age 11 because the pupils who have gone to the technology college
do not want to go to the grammar school. That is an interesting
area to look at the role of what were secondary moderns. There
is one in Sandwich, for example.
336. Is that not why in a sense we get into
those allegations that you do not compare like with like? A lot
of your earlier schools were grant maintained; some of them were
city technology colleges, all these were rather better endowed
and one might say had a different group of pupils coming through.
Even though you are five years, your results are bound to look
better than if you compare like with like.
(Sir Cyril Taylor) I have here a list which I am happy
to give you which is of 250 specialist schools with a very high
free school meals eligibility. The results are very encouraging.
Let me just pick the one which is top. Sir John Cass School, 1999,
had 22% five A to Cs. It had 69% free school meals eligibility.
This past year it got 69%. That is good for any type of school
and we are very proud of the results of schools in the areas of
social disadvantage which are doing so well.
337. With great respect—you said you are
not a numbers man and Professor Jesson is—are we comparing
like with like, which is one of the criticisms of some of the
work you have done?
(Professor Jesson) It is an ill-informed criticism.
In terms of the way that we are now able to compare pupils' starting
points at the age of 11 with their outcomes at the age of 16,
we now have a total like for like comparison. This country should
be proud of the frameworks which have now been developed, not
by me but by others both in the department and elsewhere, which
allow us to look at the progress of individual pupils. It is these
pupils which provide the basis of the comparisons we are talking
about. If we find that pupils in specialist schools make more
progress than those in other schools, the fact that some started
at this level and some started at that level in a sense is irrelevant
because the progress we are comparing is from pupils from the
same starting points. To me that is the crucial point. You mentioned
that in the early days of the specialist school initiative grant-maintained
schools and then voluntary aided schools were the only ones which
were allowed to apply. Thank goodness somebody saw the error of
their ways. Subsequently what has happened has been that a wide
range of schools from many inner city areas, which have never
in the least been seen as advantaged schools, have applied for
designation, have become designated, have taken children from
very low starting points at key stage two to some of the kinds
of outcomes that Cyril's paper will no doubt identify. The point
is that value added is the key measure for looking at like with
like. In fact I have been an advocate of this for something like
the last 12 years, so it is quite comforting for me to see that
we are beginning now to recognise that this is the way to make
comparisons.
338. You would expect us to try to get to the
bottom of these criticisms of like for like.
(Professor Jesson) Yes, I would hope so.
Ms Munn
339. I want to come back to this issue of how
long a school had been designated a specialist school and to try
to tease out some of what you are saying about the difference
between schools which have been City Technology Colleges for a
period and the newer specialist school programme, because that
got a bit confused early on. I very well remember a City Technology
College starting up in Nottingham just outside the council ward
I represented but certainly in quite a deprived area. That was
one of the early ones, so it has now been going for a number of
years. They were new schools so there was no comparison with a
previous school, but at what point do you think schools really
start to have an impact on children when they have that kind of
specialist focus?
(Sir Cyril Taylor) There were 15 original City Technology,
four of which were created from existing schools and took over
their existing pupils: Haberdashers', Harris, Bacons and Leigh
CTC. Those four schools took several years even before they started
to have dramatic improvements. I do think you have brought up
a very important point. School improvement is very hard work;
changing an ethos, getting an ethos of achievement is not easy
to achieve and a lot of people expect instant results which simply
do not come. If you have taken a school which is down 20%, it
could take four or five years before it even reaches the national
average. You make a very important point. What is encouraging
is that the improvements in the schools which have joined in the
excellence in cities areas since 1997 percentagewise are absolutely
outstanding. Not all of them, because some have not made it and
some have been de-designated. You always get some of that, but
generally they have done very well.
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