Examination of Witnesses (Questions 360-379)
MONDAY 20 JANUARY 2003
SIR CYRIL
TAYLOR AND
PROFESSOR DAVID
JESSON
360. Are you planning to do any kind of evaluation
which would try to separate out the possible reasons for improvement?
Everybody knows what the characteristics of a successful improving
school are. What we want to know are the precise tools which deliver
that consistently across the board.
(Sir Cyril Taylor) An interesting book has just come
out which David Miliband is always quoting and I strongly advise
you to read it; it is a very interesting book. It is called Good
to Great by Jim Collins. He is talking about what makes a
good organisation, what makes it a really great organisation and
there are some interesting thoughts in there. I think it is very
difficult to go to a school and ask what one thing they are doing
to make them successful. It is the interaction of several things.
We know it is very difficult to make an improvement if you do
not have an outstanding teacher; that is absolutely critical.
May I make a really important point which has not come out yet?
We have a thousand specialist schools and now 800 affiliated schools;
many of them will want to become specialist but not all of them.
In some curious way—we do not know quite how this has happened—there
is a collaboration ethos in this group of 1,800 schools. Our conference
is very well attended, 1,600 head teachers came last November.
There is sharing going on, best practice sharing and we think
that is very important. In the old days people used to think there
was a limited amount of excellence and you had to bottle it and
hide it in case somebody stole it. We personally think that raising
excellence in one school does not come at the cost of another
school being harmed. We think the overall level of performance
can be raised.
361. On the question you raised earlier about
the longer the school has been in the programme, the greater the
gain, put in the context where year on year all schools are improving,
is that not self-evident?
(Sir Cyril Taylor) Yes, but then the rate of improvement
for long established schools is significant.
362. The differential rate.
(Professor Jesson) Yes.
(Sir Cyril Taylor) Yes.
363. Is there a differential rate of improvement
between the earlier specialist schools and the latest specialist
schools?
(Sir Cyril Taylor) The first class of 50 designated
in 1994 has improved by 25 points from 40 to 65; the other schools,
comprehensives and modern were 36% and they are now 48% this year.
The very latest group have only been in the programme one year.
They have increased by three points, 46 to 49; the other schools
have increased by two. In the previous year, five to three, the
previous year five to three, the previous year eight to five.
This is getting to be quite important.
Chairman
364. I now want to turn briefly to this rollout
of specialist schools potentially to all schools being able to
become specialist schools. You have been around some time. When
this whole concept started, you were part of a pretty elitist
scheme and this was for the few, not the many. Now it is for all.
Whether we like it or not, this is a status ridden society still,
if not a class ridden society, but is not one of the attractions
not just the money which specialism brings, but the status, the
exclusivity? Is that not what drives parents to say they would
like their child to go to that because it is different and perhaps,
being England or the UK, better? If that is the case, are we not
doomed to disappointment in this rollout because then everyone
has the ability to be a specialist and it will not be specialist?
(Sir Cyril Taylor) We have our heart in our mouths
every time we get the data from our schools because we cannot
wait to get the Department's data. We ask our schools to send
us the data within August and hurriedly start to put these numbers
together and we are extremely pleased to say that so far the rates
of overall improvement are holding up.
365. What percentage of schools are you at?
(Sir Cyril Taylor) This last year 650 out of 3,100.
There are now 1,000, so next year's results will be quite interesting.
I cannot forecast what will happen. I suspect that there are many
good signs out there, because we had Key Stage 3 data, that they
are still going to go on performing quite well. This is not an
exclusive movement any more. We have 1,100,000 children in our
1,000 schools, which is one in three.
366. I was really pushing you for what you thought
about this. When you signed up for this it was special and exclusive
and now here you are—
(Sir Cyril Taylor) It is known that there could have
been 30 CTCs if the Government had not pulled the plug on the
financing, but never mind that. Our sponsors and certainly myself
and certainly the staff at the TC Trust care passionately about
the overall performance for all children. This is a school improvement
agenda as well as being a diversity agenda. You might argue which
is more important. We think school improvement is the way we should
be judged.
367. Will it work as a mass rather than an elite
concept?
(Sir Cyril Taylor) With 1,000 schools it is already
a mass. We shall see what happens next August. The signs are encouraging.
Obviously, as we become a greater and greater part of the share
of the schools, it is going to be a bit of a challenge maintaining
the 54% unless we raise the overall performance and that is what
we hope to do.
(Professor Jesson) I am just fascinated by the degree
to which the issue about where these schools started still continues
to dog the debate. I think there was a sense in which the schools
initially were set up as some kind of counter to the local authority
provision of state maintained education. As the system has gone
on and developed, what has happened has been that one third of
the specialist schools which were in place last year serves proportions
of pupils from highly disadvantaged areas and I think that the
degree to which this movement has become much less divisive, selective,
anything other than a school improvement programme, is a very
marked change in the way that the policy has been implemented.
To my way of thinking, when you meet with the teachers in these
schools, as I did at the annual conference recently, I came away
sad that my children had completed their education without the
opportunity to go to one of these specialist schools. I really
do feel that there is a buzz around in the secondary education
world which has given a much needed fillip to many schools, to
many children, to many teachers and I just feel that if I keep
repeating the value-added analysis and we keep getting additional
results emerging from this, there is something here which is good
for the education of the nation as a whole, not simply for those
who happen to be within the specialist school movement.
Chairman: We may have to ask you to write
to us on another section which I am going to skip now because
I wanted to push a little further on why the eight specialisms
and the narrowness of the engineering specialism. Time is running
out and I want to move on to specialist schools and social segregation.
Ms Munn
368. Are you saying that diversity is a different
way of achieving better quality equality of outcomes?
(Professor Jesson) In a sense we have always reckoned
that schools should play to their strengths. Diversity in this
sense is offering schools the opportunity to do what they have
always done, but to be even better in areas where they have set
themselves targets to do better. To that extent it is almost like
a locomotive driving the way that the schools move forward. I
do not have a general answer about diversity and whether it is
the best thing since sliced bread. What I do have an understanding
of is that, where we have applied a system which has created distinctive
specialisms within schools, many of those schools do seem to have
benefited from the process. Much more importantly, the pupils
within them have. That is the key point about the value added
work which I do. It is the pupils which benefit.
(Sir Cyril Taylor) If you look down the road where
we are going to have 2,000, I do think it makes sense having some
sort of nudging co-ordination; not a requirement, that would be
totally wrong. We should have a wide range of specialisms within
an area. I have the list of Sheffield schools, which you know.
Over 20 of them want to become specialist schools and they are
very sensibly collaborating now on who is going to be within which
area. One thing which would be very interesting to speculate on
is that if down the road an area like Sheffield gets all 20 of
its secondary schools with specialist status, and as centres of
excellence in different subjects in each school, at post-16 you
could have all sorts of collaboration. A lot of them are only
up to 16, but the idea that a school is particularly good in one
subject and it is going to share that expertise with neighbouring
schools is a very interesting idea, especially in smaller urban
areas. Sheffield is just about the maximum size where that might
work.
369. What some of the head teachers within my
constituency say is that they are very happy to support their
next secondary school in its bid, but I have one which is an ICT
specialist and one which is language and they say they find it
difficult to see, certainly at this time, how pupils in the ICT
school would particularly benefit from the language school or
vice-versa. They are happy to say yes, broadly, but at the moment
it is affecting more significantly the pupils within the school.
Do you have evidence that this process of school diversity is
affecting social segregation within schools? Obviously as we move
to more, perhaps that is less likely to happen, but has that been
the case so far?
(Sir Cyril Taylor) This goes straight into the admissions
area. Whilst 60% of admissions is done by LEAs and a lot of them
use proximity, I personally hope down the road that at least a
reasonable proportion of places will be kept for pupils and parents
just outside the catchment who are particularly interested in
the subject that school does. The unfortunate thing, the way the
comprehensive school system panned out, was that when it was first
started in the 1960s wealth was more evenly spread than it is
now. The huge increase in our prosperity has not been evenly spread
and the extremes of social disadvantage are worse now than in
the 1960s. Regrettably there are some parents, if their child
has to attend the immediate local comprehensive schools, who do
not have a choice of a good school. I think that is unfair on
those parents and pupils and hopefully down the road, when we
have enough good schools, that will not be the case. In the meantime
some reasonable choice, without removing this important guarantee
that you do not want your pupil to be travelling across town to
attend school.
Mr Chaytor
370. Aptitude. We have the capacity in specialist
schools to select 10% by aptitude. Do you support that still?
(Sir Cyril Taylor) Very few ever use it. I personally
think it is really only of use in areas where you can clearly
identify aptitude: music, sport perhaps, maybe maths. Most so-called
aptitude tests are also intelligence tests. However, the right
to use aptitude tests in a specific area is a good idea.
371. For a small proportion of pupils or in
designated areas? How do you separate aptitude from ability?
(Sir Cyril Taylor) Only 6% of schools actually use
their right to admit pupils on the basis of aptitude.
372. Is that an argument for a policy if only
a few people choose to implement it?
(Sir Cyril Taylor) I do not know. It would be an awful
shame if we missed a fantastic musician because there was no music
school in his or her area but there was one a bit of a way away.
373. You mentioned mathematics. How do you separate
aptitude from ability in mathematics?
(Sir Cyril Taylor) Most tests in subjects would measure
both aptitude and intelligence.
374. Have you advised the Government of your
views on this?
(Sir Cyril Taylor) Yes, we have.
375. They have ignored your advice because we
still have aptitude testing across the board.
(Sir Cyril Taylor) We have commissioned some research.
They have not ignored our advice: they still think on balance
it is a good right to have even though many schools do not use
it.
376. In terms of music of the arts, if, say,
in your school in Tower Hamlets the head of graphic arts suddenly
decided to get a job down the road at the technology college,
how does that impact on applications for that school?
(Sir Cyril Taylor) He is not the head. The head does
not know about graphic arts but he has a fantastic head of department.
377. If the head of graphic arts suddenly left.
(Sir Cyril Taylor) Hopefully they would have such
a reputation that they would get somebody else.
Paul Holmes
378. The Secondary Heads Association have recommended,
as have other people, that we should expand the different specialisms
available. One suggestion is having a category of humanity schools.
Another suggestion is community schools, which I suggested last
week you might call comprehensives. What are your thoughts on
those?
(Sir Cyril Taylor) I very strongly support a humanities
school. We have submitted to the Secretary of State evidence that
we should like him to consider designating schools with an excellence
in English literature and drama. It is ridiculous in the land
of Shakespeare, Chaucer and Milton not to have schools which are
particularly good in that. We rather think history and classics
might be an interesting combination. We think music by itself
could be interesting. Many of our rural schools have said they
would like to have rural science, environmental studies, ecology,
biology, animal husbandry, that sort of thing. Those would be
quite good to go on with. We have just had four new ones started
of course.
379. Related to that is the idea of expanding
the different types of specialisms. We discussed previously with
the people involved in the pathfinder schools projects, the fact
that there seems to be less emphasis now on specialisms allowing
choice between schools so that parents could move the kids from
this side of a city to that and so forth and much more on school
improvements. As specialism expands to more and more schools is
all this choice going to go out of the window and bring us back
to individual school improvements?
(Sir Cyril Taylor) Choice is a very good thing. I
am a parent myself. It obviously has to be fair. You cannot have
a free-for-all. There has to be some framework in which it operates.
If somebody lives half an hour from a school and their child is
particularly wizard at computing and there is an excellent computing
school there, it seems to me reasonable that child should have
at least the possibility of entering the school.
| 
