Examination of Witnesses (Questions 420-439)
MONDAY 20 JANUARY 2003
DR JOHN
DUNFORD OBE AND
MRS KATE
GRIFFIN
420. What would that something have been?
(Dr Dunford) A schools improvement programme which
focused on need, but focused particularly on schools in disadvantaged
areas, focused on schools which served disadvantaged children.
Most disadvantaged children are actually not in disadvantaged
areas. Although the excellence in cities programme has been very
successful, it is not an efficient use of money in the sense that
there are a lot of disadvantaged children in schools outside those
areas. The money could have been used more efficiently.
421. I understand your shift of priorities,
but how would the money have been used. There is the specialist
schools model and we have a clear attempt to use the specialism
as a driver for curriculum change. What would you have done?
(Dr Dunford) Hugely raise the adult/child ratios in
the schools which were in the most difficult circumstances and
spread good practice around the system.
Chairman
422. Money following the disadvantaged child.
(Dr Dunford) Yes.
Mr Chaytor
423. May I move to the situation we have now?
You mentioned earlier the question of the impact on the non-specialist
schools. Do you have evidence about the impact on the non-specialist
schools? Is a gap developing in achievement, in morale, in recruitment?
(Dr Dunford) We have anecdotal evidence in terms of
the cumulative effect of falling further behind with the funding.
The windows and the classrooms and so on which you could not replace
three years ago and are being replaced down the road, you still
cannot replace. There is that cumulative effect and that goes
into recruitment of teachers as well, because you cannot afford.
424. If this is the case, it needs to be properly
documented. Just to say there is anecdotal evidence is not really
going to change anything, is it?
(Dr Dunford) No.
425. Are there any plans to do a systematic
analysis of this, on teacher recruitment particularly?
(Dr Dunford) I accept that. I think that would be
a good idea and somebody with more resources than a single association
should be doing that.
426. We are looking to you actually.
(Dr Dunford) Okay, but it is also important that David
Jesson's statistics should be analysing the effect on performance
in the area, not simply in the schools which have the additional
status.
Chairman
427. The nearest we can get to that at the moment
is talking to you and why we are really wanting to see secondary
heads is because we want to know what your members are saying
on the ground, what your people down the road from specialist
schools are saying about the impact of a specialist school down
the road. Is it healthy collaboration and general improvement?
What are they saying? Or is it just a stimulation for them to
have a go at becoming a specialist school? What is the talk?
(Dr Dunford) A couple of years ago there was a huge
degree of frustration about specialist schools and that feeling
of frustration dominated everything else. Now that we have had
a clear signal from the government that this is open to everybody,
what that has changed into is a realisation that they themselves
are going to have to apply for specialist school status. I was
particularly pleased that the government announced, not very long
ago, a fund to help those schools which found it very difficult
to raise £50,000. I happened to think it was a terrific waste
of six months of senior management time in having to raise that
kind of money in order to gain specialist status.
428. If our colleague from Barnsley were here
he would have asked that very question. In certain parts of the
country, it is a high mountain to climb to £50,000.
(Dr Dunford) Quite a lot of schools are the biggest
employers in their area and therefore find it very difficult to
go to other employers and ask for that kind of money.
Valerie Davey
429. This is the first time you have mentioned
those outside bodies which are an integral part of the bid for
status in most situations. Do you not welcome that involvement
from local groups? It does not have to be those who bring a lot
of wealth, but that outside involvement is something which the
specialist schools have brought with them which those of us who
have been in local authorities over the years and in different
schools have not perhaps exploited. I use that word quite specifically.
(Dr Dunford) I was a head teacher during industry
year in 1986 and I remember then beginning to develop a wide range
of these kinds of outside contacts. Some schools have found that
the need to go to their local businesses on bended knee and with
a begging bowl in front of them is not the way to develop the
right kind of reciprocal relationship between the school and a
business. There are as many things a school can do to help businesses
as there are things that businesses can do to help schools. The
one thing they have, and we sometimes do not, is the money. To
have to go and ask for some of that money in order to gain specialist
status can put firms in a very difficult position because there
may be a number of competing demands from different schools in
their locality and it sets up the wrong kind of relationship between
school and business.
430. Sometimes those links were not there. I
keep using this word "catalyst" and it does seem to
me that the specialist school approach, which initially, certainly
in terms of City Technology Colleges, I was hugely critical of,
has, as it has developed, brought about links which we previously
would never have considered. The performing arts specialist school
in my constituency has brought about links with the BBC and the
Old Vic Theatre School, neither of which has given a lot of money
but which have given expertise and have given a new vision of
how schools can draw down expertise in a way which nobody in our
old LEA, I have to say, would have considered was possible or
achievable. Yet it is and it has been proved to be so. Perhaps
this new approach has opened minds and opened channels of communication
which up to now in SHA and in LEAs we have not even considered.
(Dr Dunford) In old LEAs this did not happen: in good
schools it did happen. I have described already the industry year
1986 opening up these possibilities for other schools. Lots of
schools have done that and have broadened out their range of contacts.
431. Hold on. I would have to challenge that
it happened in good LEAs as well. Perhaps what we have not been
able to do up to now, without this process and programme, is share
some of that best experience which was going on in individual
schools and in individual LEAs.
(Mrs Griffin) I think it did go on. I think it is
now going on quite commonly across the board. There are wonderful
examples where you do not necessarily get money but we get access
to British Airways training facilities and that sort of co-operation
which is very, very beneficial and is happening on a much, much
wider basis than ever before.
Chairman: In Val's characteristic way
has she not absolutely put her finger on where we find resistance
to the Secondary Heads Association approach to diversity in school—it
is all right, there is nothing wrong with you saying that—but
what the diversity programme and specialist schools seem to be
delivering is a change in culture, certainly that is the attempt,
to change culture. There are very few things which are successful
in something as sophisticated as an education system which significantly
change culture and this is what Val is putting her finger on:
changing culture that we have seen some evidence of. I wonder
whether you think that is true.
Valerie Davey
432. And also add to that whether SHA has been
instrumental, through its heads, wherever it is good practice,
in doing just that? Is SHA being instrumental in that?
(Mrs Griffin) Yes, we have been.
433. I do not want to detract from the Chairman's
question, but it is allied to it.
(Mrs Griffin) Yes, I think we have been. It is very
difficult to change culture. One of the problems, which as a head
I have certainly felt, is the detestation of the competitive culture
which John said he served all his headship under. I valued the
change from being in competition with my local colleagues to working
collaboratively with them. However, I do not think they are necessarily
going to solve everything just by going down this route. We do
have to look at our inclusion agenda, we have to look at curriculum
development and we do have to look at reforming the workforce
in a very creative manner. It is going to be all sorts of things
before we get it right.
Chairman
434. It does not deal with everything but the
trip to New Zealand taught us that a society which educationally
gives every school total independence and says dog eat dog, the
devil take the hindmost, all that sort of philosophy, does not
deliver systemic change, does not change the culture of education.
They are back-peddling like mad to find ways of getting to a situation
where they can change systemically. In a sense what is intriguing
in the evidence we are getting to this Committee is whether we
can get system change or culture change using this. It is not
the only tool, but is this an interesting tool as far as you are
concerned?
(Dr Dunford) If you had taken evidence even two years
ago, you would not have found nearly as much emphasis on successful
collaboration between schools. It is my impression that this is
something the Government have signalled, which the Technology
Colleges Trust has very much taken up. You only have to go to
their conference to see the way in which those technology colleges
and specialist schools support each other. All of that is part
of a cultural change which is taking place which is very welcome
and which we ourselves have been doing a lot to drive, to move
more towards schools which have a feeling of responsibility for
the education of all the children in the area. That was not the
case in the earlier part of the specialist schools programme where
there were limited numbers and it was very much hiding behind
weak collaboration and the thing was going wrong and was damaging.
We are now at a stage where we can say, let us put our foot on
the accelerator, a lot of schools are very interested in applying
and let us just hope that the Government can put in sufficient
money to enable them to do it. I should like to see the hoops
they have to jump through in order to apply being changed and
we have made some recommendations about that.
Ms Munn
435. The other Friday I had a mother come to
my surgery very concerned that the school she was going to did
not recognise that her daughter was a particularly good ice skater
and they would not be flexible about her timetable and the like.
If her daughter had been a few years younger I would have said
that the obvious thing would be for the daughter to go to a specialist
sports school, who would no doubt have been delighted to have
her and would have supported her. You want to stop specialist
schools being able to select by aptitude. Why?
(Dr Dunford) Except possibly in sport and music, there
is no aptitude test which is not really an ability test. That
is a nonsense. One of the dangers of having so many more schools
and specialist schools, as we put in our evidence to you, is that
gradually more will take on the ability to select in order to
have an advantage over other schools in those situations where
collaboration is weak. There are parts of the country where collaboration
is much weaker.
Chairman
436. Not many of them are using even aptitude
tests are they?
(Dr Dunford) No, it is only a small proportion at
the moment and we hope very much that it will stay that way. We
should very much like to see that ability to select even that
small percentage disappear, because it has the potential for growth
and it has the potential to damage that collaboration between
schools.
Ms Munn
437. Do you think there is any way you can separate
out in other subjects differences between aptitude and ability?
Surely with aptitude we are talking about relatively young children.
(Dr Dunford) But if you look at specialisms you have
business for example: for goodness sake, how do you do an aptitude
test for business?
438. How they spend their pocket money.
(Dr Dunford) Then you have another group, engineering,
science, maths, computing, where you certainly would not be able
to distinguish between types. There are no aptitude tests for
those particular new specialisms.
439. If I were a parent with a child who showed
a particular interest in a particular area, it might be computing
or something like that, and there was an opportunity, a bit like
we were hearing earlier, a child maybe lives outside a catchment
area and the family would really like the child to go there because
they have shown an interest, it might be in engineering, the boy
next door is building robots, those kinds of things, should that
not be part of the process?
(Dr Dunford) But we want all of our comprehensive
schools to be able to produce the engineers of the future. We
cannot concentrate just on these specialist schools. One of the
great faults of the languages announcement which the Department
made just before Christmas, that a big part of their programme
was that there were going to be a couple of hundred language schools
and that they are going to use these in order to carry out their
languages policy, just will not happen because it is not widespread
enough. You have to make sure that all schools have that kind
of ability to offer to the engineers of the future, the scientists
of the future, as well as the artists and the sportsmen. That
is in the end what comprehensive schools are all about and that
is why you want diversity within.
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