Examination of Witnesses (Questions 391-399)
MONDAY 20 JANUARY 2003
DR JOHN
DUNFORD OBE AND
MRS KATE
GRIFFIN
Chairman
391. It is a pleasure to have John Dunford and
Kate Griffin before the Committee again; they are regulars and
nonetheless welcome. You have been sitting here listening to the
types of things we have been focusing on. Do you want very briefly
to give us a little idea of your feelings about specialist schools
and the trend in government policy with regard to specialist schools?
Who would like to start?
(Dr Dunford) We submitted a paper to
you on the broader questions of diversity and although specialist
schools formed a central part of this paper, we were addressing
the whole issue of labelling of schools and the development of
a very proactive policy of diversity.
392. You can cover anything you like.
(Dr Dunford) It is interesting to us that this policy
of labelling of schools and diversity is happening in England
but not happening in Scotland or Wales. There is a stronger commitment
to a community of comprehensive schools in those countries where
we also have Secondary Heads Association members than there is
in England. It is interesting to get letters, as you must do,
from head teachers from time to time, where there is practically
no room for the print on the front page because there are so many
badges around the outside, so many labels. It is our view that
this has created a hierarchy of secondary schools in every town
and that hierarchy is compounded by the fact that these labels
generally come with some additional funding. On the question of
the specialist schools, I am pleased to say that the Government
have moved quite a long way and in particular in December 2000
I wrote a letter to David Blunkett outlining various proposals
for change and at that time the programme for specialist schools
was being limited to a certain number in each LEA. The whole thing
was becoming very inequitable and we were creating what we described
as a two-tier system of secondary schools. We were unhappy about
that. I am pleased to say that the Government has adopted many
of those recommendations and you will see in paragraph 17 of our
evidence a range of new recommendations, which we can come to
in due course, to a time where I hope all secondary schools will
have their individual mission and ethos, as it is described, encouraged
and funded and part of that specialist schools programme. I suppose
what we have said is that this programme is here, it is here to
stay, so let us make sure that it is available to all secondary
schools to encourage them. There is a myth that is still perpetuated
that parents choose schools because of their specialism. They
do not. There is hardly any evidence of parents choosing schools
because of their specialism. Parents choose schools because the
schools are good and if you are a good specialist school, you
will be over-subscribed and if you are a good non-specialist school
you will be over-subscribed. Might I just comment on one or two
comments in the previous evidence? That buzz which David Jesson
referred to and that locomotive effect which Sir Cyril Taylor
referred to are both things which happen in good schools and not
things which happen necessarily in specialist schools. I have
been to St Paul's Way School in the East End of London and it
is a quite remarkable school. It is doing fantastic work. There
is a buzz there, there is a locomotive effect there, but I have
been into non-specialist schools where there is that same effect
and I am sure you have too as Members of Parliament. Of the recommendations
in paragraph 17, perhaps the one I should like to highlight at
this stage, which has already been mentioned, is the specialist
community school, particularly for rural schools. It just does
not make sense to require rural schools to specialise because
there is effectively no parental choice in those areas. I hope
very much that the Committee will adopt that recommendation which
we have been putting forward for quite a long time now. The other
thing I should like to highlight in our evidence to you is the
need that I feel, perhaps even more after hearing the previous
evidence, to study the progress of schools in an area where there
is a specialist school and not to focus on the results of the
individual specialist schools themselves. I do not have any doubt
that there is a knock-on effect. If you have a good school, if
you have a school which is being funded better in one part of
an area, there is a knock-on effect in the other schools. Let
us see the effect before and after on the area. One or two other
comments about other parts of the diversity agenda but keeping
my preliminary comments very, very brief indeed. You will be aware
that beacon secondary schools will be disappearing, advanced schools
are coming in. Schools are going to get a certain amount of funding
to be advanced schools and spread the gospel, but if those schools
are getting leadership incentive grants, there will be no extra
funding attached to advanced schools. There will still be the
advanced school status. When this was first suggested—I
cannot remember whether it was in a Green Paper or a White Paper—it
was suggested that they should be advanced specialist schools.
I immediately wrote and said that if we were going to have these
things, let us have advanced schools, not just advanced specialist
schools. I am pleased to say that is happening. It is for the
status rather than the money that schools will want advanced school
status. The reason I think we do not like that, apart from it
being yet another label, is that there are advanced parts of all
schools. If you go into even a school which is deemed in Ofsted's
terms to have serious weaknesses, you will find beacons of excellence
in that school, maybe in the geography department, or the science
department or in sport or in the programme of visits they have
or whatever. Rather than labelling schools, we ought to encourage
the system more by developing parts of schools and encouraging
good practice to be spread from there. What we are looking at
and have always wanted in the Secondary Heads Association is diversity
within schools rather than diversity between. In paragraph 26
of our evidence I quoted the Prime Minister saying what he wants
is first rate secondaries for all with the excellence and flexibility
within each school to make the most of every pupil. That is what
we want too in the Secondary Heads Association and in my view
that is support for our call for diversity within rather than
diversity between.
Mr Chaytor
393. May I ask about your association's strong
support for the concept of earned autonomy? What are the implications
of that likely to be for the relations between schools? You have
spoken very strongly about the need for collaboration and parity
of esteem, but is it not inevitable that the more schools which
achieve the status of earned autonomy, the more a very strong
competitive element will develop between schools and this will
go counter to the other principles the association stands for.
(Dr Dunford) First of all on the concept of earned
autonomy, I am not sure about the "earned" and the process
of earning it; I am not too happy about that. What I am happy
for schools to have is a greater degree of autonomy within a sensible
range of accountability. We have too many accountabilities at
the moment but that is separate. What we do have to ensure, and
I think the present government, really for the first time in perhaps
20 years, is beginning to encourage this, is greater collaboration
between schools and that is all to the good. Throughout my period
of headship, which started in 1982, all the encouragement was
towards a culture of competition and now to see the beginnings
of encouragement of the culture of collaboration is very welcome.
The autonomy though is only in pay and conditions and in curriculum,
so it is limited autonomy, although one could envisage situations
in which schools were able to use pay and conditions autonomy
to great advantage in the recruitment and retention situation.
There are dangers and you are absolutely right to highlight them.
394. As long as we have individual school league
tables is it possible to get the kind of collaboration you are
wanting?
(Dr Dunford) It is much more difficult. One of the
interesting things in tomorrow's 14 to 19 Green Paper is to see
the way in which the very small hint about the need to change
league tables in the original Green Paper last February is taken
forward. Clearly if you are going to develop a culture of collaboration
in a 14 to 19 context, then league tables of performance at 16
are an absolute nonsense.
395. In terms of the greater co-operation you
want to see, does that extend to admissions policies? Do you think
it is right that we have this large number of schools which remain
their own admissions authority?
(Dr Dunford) It should extend to admissions; it should
extend to exclusions as well.
Paul Holmes
396. In your submission initially to the Government
and then to us you are very critical of the Government's talk
about one size fits all and bog standard schools. You say diversity
should be within schools and not between schools. Do you see any
factual basis for the Government's diversity programme, where
it is said that having special schools of one kind or another
pulls up everybody else in the area by the example they give?
(Dr Dunford) I have just said that I do not think
it is that specialism which does that. The buzz and locomotive
effects apply elsewhere too. No, I do not think there is a sensible
intellectual basis to the Government's diversity agenda, is the
short answer to your question. But—there is always a "but"
is there not?—there is a sense in which the Government has
failed to recognise that all of us as head teachers try to develop
the individual mission and ethos—to use their term—of
our schools. That is in order to create the diversity within our
schools that we are talking about. Therefore any system—and
this is what our recommendations in paragraph 17 set out to do—should
encourage schools in developing that individual mission and ethos.
It might be interesting to hear about Kate Griffin's particular
situation in Ealing.
(Mrs Griffin) I am also head of a language college
and we became a language college in September 2001 when community
languages and a much more focused community programme were essential
to the success of the bid. We were our excellence in cities nominated
school and the work we have done in languages is much more to
do with language development for those youngsters who have English
as a second language and that actually is helping right across
the board within our school, but across the board in terms of
the authority schools as well. We are looking very much at how
the youngsters in the primary schools benefit from studying European
languages, but are also looking at catch-up programmes to ensure
that those youngsters who are struggling with examinations in
English are supported, because they have a lot of linguistic talent,
a darn sight more talent in speaking foreign languages than I
have. We have been able to use specialist college status to develop
some of those programmes and those ideas.
397. In the sense that you are emphasising the
value of being a language school not in terms of marking you out
as being separate from the surrounding schools that you are competing
with, but in terms of the internal value to your pupils.
(Mrs Griffin) The internal value to our pupils and
also to provide a resource for the schools within the area in
terms of particular programmes with the additional resources we
get. Let us not beat about the bush, resources do make a difference,
but those are programme which are available to others within our
area and to others via the Technology Colleges Trust if they prove
to work.
398. You said that when this happened you were
the designated school within your cluster or area. Was it an area
you would have chosen to be a specialist in?
(Mrs Griffin) Yes; I have applied four times before
and not been successful.
399. For the same area, for languages?
(Mrs Griffin) Yes, because it was the absolutely correct
specialism for the youngsters in our school. We were not successful
first of all because community languages were not seen as eligible
for the target-setting process and a lot of our youngsters succeed
in community languages and find European languages harder. Also,
it was not the strength of the school. Our other subjects were
much, much stronger than languages but we knew and stuck to the
fact that if we were really going to make a difference—it
was talked about a lot in the previous session—and be an
engine for improvement, the engine for improvement within our
school and others within the area is to look at the language development
of the youngsters and that is why we stuck at it.
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