Examination of Witnesses (Questions 400-419)
MONDAY 20 JANUARY 2003
DR JOHN
DUNFORD OBE AND
MRS KATE
GRIFFIN
400. You did not apply for languages because
it was one of your best subjects but because it was in the end
of most benefit for development.
(Mrs Griffin) No; it was in the end of greatest benefit
to our youngsters and to their employment prospects as well. Within
the Heathrow corridor there are about 34 international headquarters
of major international companies and we cannot actually provide
the youngsters they need because they do not have the language
qualifications.
Valerie Davey
401. Talking about a buzz in schools, there
is a bee in my bonnet about the importance of getting community
languages through the system and enabling children who have this
high quality to succeed in school and therefore bring their other
subjects up and get them recognised. I am delighted to hear that
it has been done and I should like to talk to you at some length
about it on another occasion. Surely you are almost proving the
point which is that the catalyst for that development, in a community
of schools, including the primary, was actually the specialist
status which you were able to achieve and thank you very much
for the money to do it. Are the two of you not actually saying
that there is a middle way here which brings together your specialism
within as a community basis via a specialism. It seems to me that
you are proving the point that the catalyst the Government has
offered, in practice, whatever we might say in theory, what has
happened as a result of these specialist schools, can achieve
the objective which you are looking for.
(Mrs Griffin) It can in certain situations, but the
trouble is that in certain situations it can work in a counter-productive
manner. We are a particular example where co-operation has worked.
It does not always happen that way.
(Dr Dunford) The evidence from Ofsted reports is that
collaboration has been the weakest part of the specialist schools
programme and the Technology Colleges Trust has quite rightly
put a good deal of pressure onto specialist schools to improve
that part of the programme since the Ofsted report came out. We
should be clear that most secondary schools apply for specialist
status because of the money. There is no question about that;
most heads of specialist schools you talk to will say that. In
doing that, because of the rules of the game, they will then go
into the development of that particular specialism, which in some
cases would be the thing they are best at, and in a small number
of cases would actually be one of the things they are not very
good at, but they are going to use to boost. Either way, the idea
that you can develop an individuality for your school and cater
better for the pupil of whatever abilities within your school
is very welcome to heads, particularly when it comes with another
half a million pounds over three years.
402. So you are saying that it is the process
and not the specialism quite clearly. The question I asked earlier
of our earlier witnesses was whether it was the process which
brings about the improvement or the specialism. I have a different
answer than the one you are giving. Are you saying that it is
very much the process?
(Dr Dunford) It varies enormously from case to case.
There are cases, as you pointed out, where it is a specialism
which is really important. In other cases the process is important
because the schools have to think through that plan in a very
detailed way; in other cases it is simply the funding which is
important because there are desperate things which need doing
within the school, which they can only do if they have that access
to another half a million pounds.
403. Are you concluding, as I am from listening
to you and I am from other evidence we have had, that specialisms
which are funnelled through an LEA which is co-ordinating that
process, actually bring out the best of the features?
(Dr Dunford) It need not necessarily be co-ordinated
by an LEA. It can be just a group of schools working together.
If I had stayed longer in the school I was head of in Durham,
one of the things we had just started to talk about at that time
was the idea of making a joint bid between four schools, each
of us offering a different specialism, as a way of having access
to the extra funding, but to create some kind of a logic about
schools in a community. Sometimes that is promoted by LEAs, sometimes
it is promoted by excellence in cities groups.
(Mrs Griffin) One of the benefits of some of the work
the Trust has done has been to provide extremely good training
for heads of department or curricular managers in particular subject
areas. They have been able to draw together best practice examples
and of course that has a beneficial effect when it is rolled out
across the whole of the experienced body of teachers within the
country.
404. Lastly, is it crucial that it is developed
with the primary schools?
(Mrs Griffin) I think it is.
(Dr Dunford) The Ofsted report said that the collaboration
between secondary schools and primary schools was actually quite
good. What was weak was the collaboration between the secondary
school which was specialist and other secondary schools which
were not specialist. Yes, I do think it gives you the opportunity
to have that bit of extra funding in order to do some things you
would like to do anyway.
(Mrs Griffin) It is also important that you collaborate
with some of the special schools in your area to provide opportunities
which are not otherwise available to them.
Ms Munn
405. I am confused now. You said that it is
diversity within the schools rather than between schools which
you want to see.
(Dr Dunford) Yes.
406. What you have described are processes which
mean that schools do something which helps them and, as David
Miliband said to us when he came here, a specialist schools programme
is primarily a school improvement programme. What is wrong with
schools which are diverse? One of the things which I found really
reassuring when we went to Birmingham as a Committee and went
to lots of different schools was that I saw lots of schools really
doing the business, really setting about improving and achieving
and they were all doing it in different ways. I wanted to go and
tell all those parents in Birmingham who go through this terrible
process and get enormously upset to stop worrying, that most of
the schools are doing a good job. It did not matter where their
kid went, they would be having teachers who were really motivated
and head teachers who were pretty outstanding really.
(Dr Dunford) Because they do have that individual
ethos and they are developing in particular ways. Within each
comprehensive school you have to cater for the widest possible
range of students. Therefore it seems to me that to label schools
with particular labels, about the arts or about the languages
or whatever it may be, is actually creating a situation, if it
goes too far, which narrows the range of opportunities open to
somebody who is not in schools with those specialisms. At the
age of 11, when you select, when you decide which school you are
going to, you do not actually know in most cases which of these
things you are going to be good at. If you gradually acquire a
much greater skill in science by the age of about 14, you cannot
just swop from one school to another.
407. The issue there is that schools have a
specialism, but they are also supposed to deliver across the whole
curriculum, are they not?
(Dr Dunford) Yes.
408. I suppose I am struggling to find out what
your concerns are. You have been very positive about the ethos,
you have been very positive about the process which it goes through.
Are you suggesting that it is a good school improvement programme,
but that the Government should really have a different school
improvement programme?
(Dr Dunford) The missing part in the discussion in
the last 15 minutes is that we have not been focusing on the schools
which are not specialist. Where you have a situation where schools
are given funding to develop their individual mission and ethos
and it happens to coincide with their specialism, and all the
schools in the area are doing that and they are all collaborating,
that in a sense is the eventual result which would occur if all
of our recommendations were carried out. Where you have schools
which do not have those advantages, but over a period of nine
years are one and a half million pounds behind in additional funding
and have none of the things going for them that the specialist
schools have got, then it seems to me this whole thing breaks
down. Let us move forward much faster.
409. The Government are saying that it is open
to all schools and they are wanting to see all schools develop
specialist status and have a distinctive ethos about them. They
are certainly very positive about local education authorities
such as the one in Sheffield which is taking an across-the-city
view at this, not just in terms of its specialism but in terms
of its school building programme, that whole strategic approach.
(Dr Dunford) As is Birmingham.
410. Yes. You are saying, provided that happens
you do not have a problem with it.
(Dr Dunford) Then you are building the kind of collegiality
that Tim Brighouse was describing, in which the different parts
of that collegiate are actually developing their own individual
ethos.
411. You are supporting that, but you are not
suggesting a completely different school improvement programme.
(Dr Dunford) No, because we are where we are and we
are not going to stop this, so let us move it in the direction
in which it will actually help all schools to improve, not just
some schools.
412. I am just trying to find out how supportive
you are of the programme or not, that is all. We have just been
getting a few mixed messages.
(Dr Dunford) That is all right, in which case that
is good, because I think the Technology Colleges Trust has done
some really superb things. The specialist schools programme has
put extra funding in and has enabled some of those schools to
do some superb things. There are directions in which that programme
should go, and they are set out in our paper, which would bring
school improvement benefits much more widely than they are at
the moment.
Paul Holmes
413. Just very quickly to remind us of something
you said to David earlier, as we move down the Sheffield or Birmingham
example where everybody becomes specialist and they are working
together, you also said that would be a bit of a nonsense whilst
you have league tables at 16 which are making the schools compete
at the same time.
(Dr Dunford) That is right. In any sense of a 14 to
19 system where you are encouraging a culture of collaboration,
you would not have league tables, but you would have performance
indicators of a group of institutions, which might be a college
and a number of 11 to 16 schools or it might be a group of 11
to 18 schools, so that the schools actually work in terms of admissions,
exclusions, specialisms, shared skills and work to the benefit
of the whole community, feeling a responsibility for the education
of the whole community rather than simply the youngsters who walk
inside their door.
(Mrs Griffin) I was fascinated in the first session.
If the programme that was described, about what was happening
to help a school where their five A to Cs were at something like
5%, was adopted in other areas, it would seem to me there would
be no need for city academies. I do have to say that programme
sounded eminently sensible and perhaps could alleviate the need
for quite so many city academies.
Chairman
414. The whole notion of diversity within schools
all seems a bit trite. I am worried that you are coming over as
a bit woolly on this. You would say that would you not? On the
one hand here is a Government wanting school improvement, wanting
to drive up standards. They have fixed on this as one of their
core policies, that specialist schools can deliver something,
and they are a big exponent of all schools having this ability.
In a sense you are saying you quite like it, but it is not really
what you want. If it is a staging post on the way to somewhere
else, if Secondary Heads Association want to say this is the way
we want to end up, this is the kind of policy which will deliver,
if the Government are not getting it right in school improvement
and driving up achievement, this is the way we would do it. But
it has not happened, has it? For a large number of the children
in our schools, however hard people have tried, it has not delivered.
I keep coming back to the fact that the Birmingham/New Zealand
visits were very good educational tools for this Committee. We
really saw the experience of the two cities very close up and
both of them had a lot of schools trying to deliver, good head
leadership, very good staff, but still this ability to drive up
standards for a significant proportion of our students. It is
not coming to me that you have a bold alternative policy which
would deliver on those two goals.
(Dr Dunford) We have taken a pragmatic view of the
development of specialist schools. By the time we first spoke
out about this, which was December 2000, the programme was well
under way, several hundred schools were already specialist, many
of their headteachers were members of the Secondary Heads Association.
There was no way, in those circumstances, that we were going to
make progress with the Government changing their policy by saying
this programme was a nonsense. So what we said and continue to
say was that these are ways in which the programme should develop
in order to create schools which are well funded, which cater
for the full range of talents and abilities within their own school,
which collaborate with other schools, but yes, which are encouraged
to develop their individual mission and ethos. It is just within
the last two years that we have seen government encouragement
for that degree of collaboration which begins to make a bit more
sense of all of this.
415. What you are saying is that you had deeper
reservations when it all started, that now, as time has come on
and it has become more inclusive, any school can go for it, plus
the fact that you have this notion of collegiality and co-operation
across a community where the schools actually work together, as
we saw with the Birmingham experience, you are fairly happy about
its capacity to deliver the Government's objectives.
(Dr Dunford) And to deliver schools' objectives themselves.
The school improvement agenda is a schools' agenda and not just
the Government's agenda. Part of that is about the access to those
greater resources which the specialist schools programme gives
you. It is also partly about being able to develop those areas
you are good at.
416. You and Kate are much happier now because
in a sense the Government is refining the policy, there is money
about in the educational world as never before—forget about
the extra for being a specialist school—and the collegiality
is adding to the refinement of the policy.
(Dr Dunford) And we are moving now to a stage where
we have reached the critical mass of specialist schools and the
other schools are now looking in vast numbers at how they can
make an application.
417. Take the other point. Are you convinced
by the professor and the knight of the realm who just now were
saying that the statistics backed it up, these are better schools,
they are achieving more for pupils? Are you convinced?
(Mrs Griffin) I would need more statistics before
I was totally convinced about that. I do think we need to look
at the statistics we get with the greater number which have come
through since 1997. We do need to look at those very, very carefully
and we need to look at the number who are getting five A to Gs
and who are getting five A to Es, which is a very telling statistic
in terms of people going on to post-16 courses. You did ask what
we are doing about the third you saw in New Zealand. We have been
doing a tremendous amount of work on social inclusion and we have
been working on policies not just with SHA Council but with our
members. We have had a major summer conference. This is an issue
which is of great importance to all of us and we hope that the
programmes which are currently coming on stream will help the
work we have been doing in this area. We have done a tremendous
amount on this and we would want to talk to you about that at
some point as well.
(Dr Dunford) The statistical comparison between specialist
and non-specialist schools are in a sense not comparing like with
like. The specialist schools are better funded, they have been
through a process which says, yes, you are a good school which
is on the way, so it is not surprising that those schools are
doing a bit better. I do think that five A to Cs is a particularly
weak measure. On the points scores which David Jesson said were
not widely understood, in fact Ofsted uses point scores rather
than five A to Cs and A level results are reported on point scores
rather than any other measure. I do think it would be better.
In a sense that is a minor point. The fact is that good schools
have these effects and there are a lot of very good schools which
are specialist schools. There is no question about that.
Mr Chaytor
418. Going back a moment to the question of
the alternative programmes for school improvement, had you been
the incoming Secretary of State in 1997, would you have adopted
the current policy of adapting the exclusive school improvement
model to a more inclusive one? Or would you have scrapped the
old exclusive specialist school model and devised something else
and what else would it have been? What else would you have used?
(Dr Dunford) In 1997 I would have scrapped it and
put the money into supporting those schools which needed that
support, so that the schools which the Chairman referred to earlier
were brought up to a higher level of performance. It remains the
fact—but this is a much wider agenda which we discussed
last time I was here—that we still do not have the balance
of pressure and support right. The support these specialist schools
get from the Technology Colleges Trust is very good, but there
are many schools outside that who could just do with that kind
of support.
419. In 1997 would it have been a reversal of
the ring fencing? Would you have kept the specialist schools concept
but instead of having it ring-fenced to the old grant maintained
schools, switched it to the schools which were in the most difficult
circumstances, or would you have adopted something completely
different?
(Dr Dunford) No, I think we would have adapted it
to something quite different.
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