House of Commons - Education and Skills

Select Committee on Education and Skills Fourth Report

5. Issues arising from the evidence

87 In this exploration of diversity in secondary education it has been notable how narrowly the definition of diversity has been drawn. While one might expect to see much that is distinctive in terms of pedagogy and curriculum, in practice one encounters conformity to a narrowly constructed norm; schools wishing to operate within the maintained sector, but without these norms, find little in the way of welcome. Diversity has been defined largely in structural terms, with the focus on increasing the number of school types and thereby the superficial differences between schools. As all maintained schools are required to deliver the national curriculum, it would have been more helpful if greater emphasis had been given to the concept of diversity within each school and to curricular flexibility as a means of enabling schools to respond more effectively to the individual learning needs of each pupil.

88 We have noted the evidence from Summerhill School[84] regarding the difficulties it has faced in relation to Ofsted inspections and the expectations of inspectors. We have also received submissions regarding Steiner Waldorf schools and Human Scale Education, revealing a far broader definition of diversity than that currently offered by the Government's diversity policy.[85]

89 We welcome the commitment of the Secretary of State and the Minister of State for School Standards to pursue discussions with providers outside the maintained system[86] and look forward to revisiting this issue when next we take evidence from them.

Communities of schools: how schools impact upon their neighbours

90 In focusing our attention on the evidence underpinning the Government's diversity policy we have been interested to discover how thoroughly and to what effect the evidence on the impact of diversity policy has been collected and evaluated. It is central to the development and operation of school improvement initiatives that they should have the effect of supporting and improving achievement across the board. It is therefore critical that evaluation takes account of the impact on neighbouring schools and measures achievement not just in individual schools which can be affected by changing patterns of admission or exclusion, but area wide. An early area of interest in this context was the extent to which evaluation of the specialist schools programme took cognisance of the intake and performance over time of the non-specialist neighbours of specialist schools.

91 It is apparent from our inquiry that the impact of specialist schools on their neighbours has been a neglected area of work and one which renders the existing evidence incomplete and any conclusions arising from it, potentially unsound. Without data relating to the composition and performance of schools surrounding specialist schools it is all but impossible to believe that the policy, and therefore the extent to which public funds have been wisely spent, can be properly evaluated.

92 That the neglect of this important aspect of policy evaluation continues into the experimental Diversity Pathfinder projects is a matter of particular concern. In evidence to the Committee Dr Philip Woods commented that "I do think it is a good question, an important question, because it is conceivable that you could have a cluster of schools that is working very, very collaboratively within its own borders but is having detrimental effects outside it."[87] The acknowledgement by the Departmental team that the issue is worthy of further consideration by the team is therefore welcome.[88]

93 The Minister of State for School Standards told us that "the key test is whether becoming a specialist school will help the school improve the education of the children in it".[89] While it would be hard to disagree with the sentiment behind this statement, it is equally important that specialist status in one school should not impact adversely on the education of children in neighbouring schools.

94 The Government's emphasis on evidence-based policy is to be welcomed, but care should be taken to ensure that research models are sufficiently well developed in order to deliver meaningful analysis. For example, the absence of data on the impact of initiatives on neighbouring schools is a very serious weakness in the existing analysis and should be addressed.

Diversity and standards

95 The assertion that diversity drives up standards has often been made, most recently in the Government's strategy paper A New Specialist System: Transforming Secondary Education,[90] although the precise mechanism by which this goal is achieved remains unclear, except that the characteristics of successful specialist schools are generally those shared by all successful schools.[91]

96 The evidence is rather more equivocal than Government claims suggest, as David Bell, Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Schools told us:

"You cannot argue for a massive differential in achievement between specialist schools and other schools and I think that is widely accepted, but there are other benefits that specialist status has brought and we have reported on those over the past months."[92]

97 During the course of our inquiry we have used four key sources of evaluation on the impact of specialist schools: the research undertaken by Professor David Jesson for the Specialist Schools Trust;[93] the research report from the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER), commissioned by the Local Government Association; evidence drawn from Ofsted inspections; and analysis and the value-added data on school performance, published during the course of our inquiry. In order to further our understanding of this research we took oral evidence from Professor David Jesson, Dr Sandie Schagen and Dr Ian Schagen from NFER and a team from Ofsted.

98 The Government's claims for the success of the specialist schools programme rely heavily on the work undertaken by Professor Jesson for the Specialist Schools Trust.[94] Professor Jesson's analysis is supportive of the initiative, claiming a premium on performance in specialist schools of a net value-added of 5% compared to other schools.[95]

99 Other sources are more cautious in their assessment. In evidence to the Committee, Dr Sandie Schagen told us:

"The impact we found is not as big as is sometimes claimed. It is relatively small in terms of total point score, for example. I think it was just under two points' difference between pupils in specialist schools and pupils in other schools, so it is not so big. The other point is making the inference which we feel is not justified that because pupils in specialist schools appear to do slightly better in value added terms one cannot therefore assume that that difference is due to the fact that they are in specialist schools, because there are clearly other factors that could be at work which, for various reasons, we have not been able to take account of."[96]

100 Data from Ofsted, based on the 2001 evaluation of specialist schools and evidence from subsequent inspections,[97] indicate that while pupils in specialist schools may achieve slightly higher average point scores at GCSE, there is no significant differential in the trend of improvement between specialist schools and their non-specialist counterparts. Mike Raleigh, Divisional Manager of the Secondary Education Division within Ofsted, told us:

"With the exception of sports colleges, the other categories of specialist schools achieved higher GCSE average point scores than schools nationally, with language colleges having the highest proportion of five or more A to C GCSE grades. The trend of improvement—and I think this is an important fact—since 1997 for those schools is broadly similar to the national picture…. It is also perhaps worth pointing out that technology colleges, which form easily the biggest group of specialist schools, have shown a slight fall in their improvement trend since the analysis we undertook in 2001."[98]

101 The Minister of State for School Standards, David Miliband MP, was more positive in his appraisal of the relative performance of specialist schools and their non-specialist counterparts. He told us "the longer a school is a specialist school the stronger the evidence that its performance outstrips other similar schools."[99] The Minister backed up this assertion in a letter to the committee. He wrote:

"From 1997 to 2001 GCSE/GNVQ scores of schools designated specialist on or before 1996 have risen faster year-on-year than the average of mainstream, maintained schools not in the programme."[100]

102 Mr Miliband's claim was energetically challenged by Professor Stephen Gorard. He argued that the early specialist schools were not representative of the whole group and therefore could not be taken as an indicator of how other schools would perform in time.[101] The Department's statistics bear this out: only one third of the specialist schools designated in or before 1996 were community schools, while nearly two thirds of the current 992 are community schools.

103 In addition, Professor Gorard argued that the statistical analysis used by Professor Jesson, the key source for the Department, did not take sufficient account of year on year improvements in pupils' GCSE attainment. Professor Gorard said:

"As you will know… every year the GCSE scores are going up, by and large, for whatever reason… Therefore you have to factor that increase in. If you take that out, there is no difference. The further you go back in time, the bigger the difference between any school, specialist or otherwise, now and the school then."[102]

104 What is clear is that the Government's over-reliance on a narrow range of research on the comparative performance of specialist schools has served to obscure rather than illuminate the issue. In choosing research partners, the independence of all parties may be compromised by too close an alliance of Government, research providers (however distinguished) and stakeholder groups.

Measures of achievement

105 During the course of our inquiry we have considered the manner in which the performance of schools is measured and compared. In the recent past this has been done chiefly by means of a measure based on the proportion of a school's year 11 gaining 5 or more GCSEs at grade A* to C. This is a relatively crude measure, originating in the school leaving certificate, which has persisted through the development of GCEs to the present day. The development of value-added measures, pupil level calculations of learning based on distance travelled rather than destination, has been welcomed. Value-added scores were published for all schools for the first time in January 2003.

106 Since the introduction of school performance tables in 1992, schools have been subject to comparison through the unofficial league tables published in the national press. These tables are produced using GCSE performance data published by the DfES and have become an important resource for parents, although their value has been widely questioned.

The 5 A*-C GCSE measure

107 During the course of our inquiry we have found the 5 A*-C GCSEs indicator for attainment at 16 to be an inadequate and misleading measure of pupil achievement. For the most able, in grammar schools for example, the measure is meaningless as all pupils will be expected to exceed 5 A*-C GCSEs,[103] while for the least able it does nothing to reflect the often very considerable distance travelled by individual pupils who, despite their and their teachers' best efforts, fall short of 5 A*-C GCSEs.

108 Researchers in school performance have also found the 5 A*-C GCSEs measure deficient. Dr Sandie Schagen told the Committee:

"We regard it as unstable because it can be influenced by the performance of just a few children. We all know there are schools which deliberately focus on children who are on the C/D borderline to try to push up their results. There is no secret that that happens, and we feel that from a statistical point of view the outcome measures you use should be ones that reflect the performance of all the pupils in the school and cannot just be influenced by the performance of a few."[104]

109 Refining this point and reflecting on the purpose of such data beyond headline-grabbing league tables Dr Ian Schagen told us:

"Schools are complex, multi-faceted organisations. You need a range of outcome measures to look at different schools, which is why we use about seven or so and there are a number of others. You can look at schools subject by subject and find that certain schools are doing well in certain subjects and not so well in others. That kind of information is more of value in terms of driving school improvement than in publishing league tables. If you can tell schools where they are doing well and not so well compared with what you might expect given their prior attainment and other circumstances you can give them a lot of valuable information which can help them to improve."[105]

110 Professor Jesson defended the 5 A*-C GCSEs measure and argued that alternatives, such as the average point score, had not been widely understood or entered meaningfully into the discourse on school performance:

"The issue is that the point score, in spite of its introduction seven or eight years ago, is still misunderstood as a means of evaluating the performance of a school. I find it still very difficult to understand what it means when I find a point score, which is identified as being the reference point for a school, but it bears no relation to the public debate about how well that school has done… It would have been perverse for the work which I do to have taken the less well understood measure and used that in preference to one which I have to say is very current, appears to be well understood and even though it relates at the moment to only half the population is something we wish to see increased."[106]

111 Narrow and simplistic approaches to measuring school improvement have not and cannot provide sufficient evidence as to the efficacy of the Government's diversity policy across the ability range. This raises questions about the planned expansion of the programme: without further evaluation it is not possible to assess the extent to which the apparent benefits of specialisation might be extended across secondary education, not least because in a universal specialist model the programme will necessarily be evaluated on the performance of all pupils, including those who are at present selected out of this sector.

112 It is the responsibility of all concerned with pupil achievement and school improvement to use those measures which give the fullest possible picture of performance. The Department for Education and Skills and researchers in this field share a responsibility to use these measures in the discourse on school standards and to bring them to public attention and understanding.

Value-added measures

113 The recently published value-added measures of pupil achievement offer an important contribution to the evaluation of school performance and have been widely welcomed. In evidence to the Committee, Professor Jesson told us 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."[107] However, Professor Jesson has subsequently qualified this view, expressing his anxiety that "Even though the method is called 'value-added' - it does not compare like-with-like in any reasonable manner: it appears to operate precisely in the direction of favouring schools with 'high' intakes, whilst at the same time disadvantaging those in more difficult circumstances."[108]

114 It is apparent from the evidence submitted to the inquiry and the debate in both the academic literature and the media that there is an unresolved dispute regarding how best to measure and evaluate school performance and improvement.[109] The recent publication of value added scores, which take into account the level of attainment at entry compared to achievement at GCSE, have added both richness and further complexity to the debate without yet contributing much in the way of clarity. HMCI, David Bell told us:

"I seem to recall a discussion maybe a few years ago when people were saying, 'Just wait until we get the value-added data and all will be well. We will really know what is going on.' I think that, to some extent, the value-added data does what all data does. Yes, it is important but it actually raises other questions. It does not give you, as it were, the final answer about whether a school is good or bad. I think it adds to that richness of data and I think it will, over time, be utilised and more and more people will become comfortable with what it means, but I think it is not going to give us, as it were, the answer to whether a school is a good or bad school."[110]

Performance tables

115. The publication of school performance tables has been a contentions issue from the outset. Initially promoted as an instrument of choice, performance tables and their unofficial counterparts in the media, school league tables, have over time, taken on a new mission as an instrument of public accountability and school improvement. The Minister of State for School Standards, while recognising the limitations of the 5 A*-C GCSE measure told us:

"I do not want to lose the institutional accountability that has come from the five A to C measure… I do not want to end up with performance data that is so overwhelming in its complexity that no one understands it, but I am not averse to the intelligent distribution of data and recognition of achievement especially as we must remember that assessment and examination has the purpose of institutional accountability, but its most important purpose is probably to help children move on and recognise their own strengths and weaknesses and make the most of their own studies."[111]

116 Performance tables, while providing welcome information to parents, have painted a one-dimensional picture of the work of schools, focussed entirely on the GCSE pass rate. There is some evidence that this has affected the ways in which some schools work and provided an incentive for schools to concentrate their efforts on those pupils at the grade C/D borderline,[112] arguably at the expense of both more and less able pupils, limiting the extent to which the tables reflect the full range of the schools' achievements.

117 While we acknowledge and support the use of pupil attainment data for the purposes of strengthening public accountability, the emphasis must be on the use of such data for school improvement. For pupil attainment data to be meaningful in this context the key measures for pupil and school achievement need further development and to be applied consistently across the range of school improvement and pupil attainment projects. In particular, it is vital that these measures provide a picture of the full ability range, including the proportion of pupils who at 16 do not obtain any qualifications, and take full account of the intake profile of each school.

Measures of disadvantage

118 In order to compare accurately the performance of schools it is essential to calculate, not only prior attainment, but also the extent to which their populations differ in social and economic terms. The leading indicator used to identify disadvantage is eligibility for free school meals, although since the introduction of the Working Parents' Tax Credit, this has become a less accurate proxy for disadvantage. In the future the data made available through the Pupil Level Annual School Census (PLASC) will enable greater refinement of measures of disadvantage, and this is to be encouraged.

119 For an accurate picture of school populations the use of free school meals data must be balanced with data on the pupils who do not qualify for free school meals. In this way it is possible to differentiate, for example, between a school with 40% of pupils eligible for free school meals with the remainder just above the qualifying line and another school with the same proportion of children eligible for free school meals but where the rest of pupils are from affluent homes. At present this detailed analysis is not undertaken and the lack of this additional data detracts from the value of free school meal eligibility statistics.

120 The development of more sensitive measures of deprivation than that offered by free school meals eligibility is critical to improving the effectiveness with which policy and resources may be targeted. The use of data on parental level of education combined with socio-economic indicators offers a helpful way forward.

121 During the course of our inquiry we have been particularly interested to learn about Professor Stephen Gorard's work on social segregation in schools, measuring the extent to which schools have a representative sample of the population in social and economic terms.[113] This work is important because it gives access to data about what are often the unintended consequences of policy initiatives. We expect to return to the issue of social segregation in more detail during the final stage of our secondary education inquiry, on school admissions.

Separating the impact of investment from specialism and other initiatives

122 During this inquiry we have tried to establish the extent to which the impact of the specialist schools programme, the process of application and designation together with the creation of a subject focus within a school, can be distinguished from the effect of the significant injection of cash that follows designation together with the recurrent specialist premium on per pupil funding. In 2002-03 the specialist schools programme cost £145.3m. Specialist schools receive a capital grant of £100,000 to add to the £50,000 raised through sponsorship and an additional £123 per student per annum.

123 Given the scale of this additional investment it was therefore a surprise to us to learn that no evaluation has taken place on this aspect of the programme.[114] The effect of this investment is important because it may be that it is the process leading to designation, rather than the funding or the specialist focus, that is the key to school improvement. Giving evidence to the Committee, Sir Cyril Taylor acknowledged that there has been no systematic evaluation of the way in which specialist status is thought to contribute to school improvement.[115]

124 We asked Dr John Dunford, General Secretary of the Secondary Heads' Association how he saw the effect of designation. He told us:

"It varies enormously from case to case. There are cases… 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."[116]

125 There are a number of other school improvement and pupil attainment initiatives operating in parallel with the expansion of the specialist schools programme which complicate any attempt to evaluate the impact of the specialist model in isolation. It is a matter of concern that the Government has made its decision to extend access to the specialist schools programme, and associated funding to all schools, in the absence of clear evidence as to the alleged benefits of specialism, balanced against those of other initiatives. Evaluation of this initiative is essential so that the public and policy makers alike can be assured that policy is developed on the basis of sound evidence rather than wishful thinking.

School admissions

126 The organisation of school admissions is an issue that we will return to in the final stage of this inquiry. However, so interwoven are the threads of school admissions, school diversity and pupil achievement, that we cannot conclude this first part of our inquiry without some mention of their interaction.

127 Much of the anxiety surrounding diversity policies is associated with their impact on neighbouring schools and the extent to which any change in performance may be attributable to a shift in the population of the school. Professor Stephen Gorard told us:

"What appears to happen is that in areas where specialist schools are prevalent, there is more segregation than in areas where they are not. The majority of the long-standing specialist schools are also tending to be either voluntary aided, voluntary controlled or foundation schools. What they have in common, and some of the other schools I have put in my study, is that they have different admission arrangements and different over-subscription criteria to the LEA schools with which they are competing in their local markets. In the LEAs where that is not the case, such as one LEA in our study in the south-east of England, specialist schools have to use the same criteria as the local comprehensives and the[ir] results… are indistinguishable from the other schools in the LEA and the composition of the schools is indistinguishable."[117]

128 Research by Professor Anne West and Audrey Hind at the LSE supports the view that it is admission arrangements rather than school diversity that is the key factor in social segregation:

"In a significant minority of schools, notably those that are their own admission authorities - voluntary-aided and foundation schools - a variety of criteria are used which appear to be designed to select certain groups of pupils and so exclude others. These include children of employees; children of former pupils; partial selection by ability/aptitude in a subject area or by general ability; and children with a family connection to the school."[118]

129 For parents, multiple admissions authorities with diverse and sometimes conflicting criteria present a bewildering prospect and we are mindful that it is the least advantaged parents, including those from minority ethnic groups, who experience the greatest difficulty in this context.[119] Legislation now requires coordinated admissions arrangements both within and between LEAs. This change calls into question the whole issue of schools retaining the role as their own admissions authorities.

130 The evidence we received suggested that any rationale for schools operating as their own admissions authority may not be significantly outweighed by the wider benefits, not least to parents, associated with equity and clarity of process. We will return to this issue in more detail during the final stage of our secondary inquiry.

131 Both partial selection and schools operating as their own admissions authorities provide opportunities for schools to influence the profile of their intake 'selecting in' and 'selecting out' pupils with particular characteristics.[120] The potential for the manipulation of pupil intakes by these means is undesirable and may be socially divisive.

Selection by aptitude: rationale and evidence?

132 The School Standards and Framework Act 1998 allows the admissions authority of any maintained secondary school which declares it to have a specialism in one of the prescribed subjects[121] to select up to 10% of its intake on the basis of aptitude in that subject. Legislation limits selection by aptitude to specialisms in physical education or sport; the performing arts; the visual arts; modern foreign languages; design and technology and information technology. Selection is not permitted in the humanities, science and mathematics.[122] It is unlawful for schools permitted to select by aptitude to test for ability or to test for any subject other than those prescribed.[123]

133 During the course of our inquiry we were interested to gain a better understanding of the rationale for this policy; the nature of aptitude; how is it distinguishable from ability; what impact selection by aptitude has had on the performance of schools which make use of this facility and how the pupils selected on the basis of aptitude differ in performance from their non-selected counterparts within the same schools.

134 In the year 2001-02, only 5.8%[124] of all designated specialist schools entitled to select pupils on the basis of aptitude did so. The Department told us that the rationale for the facility for partial selection was rooted in the Government's view that "it is appropriate for the admission authorities of schools with a specialism to be able to select a small proportion of pupils on the basis of aptitude for that specialism so as to give opportunities to pupils who might not be able to gain admission under other admission criteria."[125]

135 The rationale for the subjects in which aptitude testing is considered appropriate was explained by the DfES in written evidence to the Committee.

"When subjects were prescribed in the Regulations under the 1998 Act the intention was to cover as much as reasonably possible of the specialist schools offer at that time. Technology, Language, Arts and Sports Colleges existed at that time.

The Department had previously commissioned research from NFER [National Foundation for Educational Research] into aptitude testing for Technology Colleges. The research left open the possibility that there could be valid tests for aptitude for technology but considered that the tests examined for aptitude for science and for mathematics were close to being measures of general ability. The Government concluded that it would not be appropriate to prescribe science and mathematics. The absence of media arts reflected the fact that the Government was not aware of any aptitude test in that area."

136 The Code of Practice on school admissions offers a definition of aptitude to the effect that "a pupil with aptitude is one who is identified as being able to benefit from teaching in a specific subject, or who demonstrates a particular capacity to succeed in that subject"[126] although this is qualified by evidence from the Department for Education and Skills by the advice that any test for aptitude "should not assume prior knowledge of the subject."[127] This gives rise to the bizarre conclusion that a child without aptitude for a subject would not benefit from being taught it, surely an unsustainable position for anyone with an interest in education and contrary to the most basic tenets of education theory.

137 Clarity on this issue was not significantly improved by the contribution of the Minister of State for School Standards. The Minister set out his view that ability testing refers to general intelligence, aptitude testing is focused on a particular area of the curriculum.[128] However, he declined to offer a definitive statement and instead argued that it was "more for individual schools if they choose that they want to use the power to select up to 10% to then make clear what they mean by that in an open and objective way."[129]

138 When the Government first expanded the specialist schools programme, the ability to select by aptitude was considered a key feature for improving standards of attainment. It is clear that the Government no longer considers selection by aptitude to be central to the purpose of the specialist schools programme as a school improvement initiative.

139 We are not satisfied that any meaningful distinction between aptitude and ability has been made and we have found no justification for any reliance on the distinction between them.

140 Research by Professor Anne West and Audrey Hind at the LSE revealed a range of practices, indicative of the confusion as to the nature of aptitude. Some schools selected on the basis of demonstrated ability or attainment (thereby assuming prior knowledge) while others extended selection into subjects for which selection is not permitted under the Code. The research team also found that while specialist schools were three times more likely to select on the basis of ability/aptitude, the dominant factor appeared to be school type, with voluntary aided/foundation schools[130] being over 27 times more likely than community/voluntary-controlled schools to select on this basis.[131] Of the 992 specialist schools currently in operation, over 35% are their own admissions authorities. This broadly represents the picture for all schools.[132]

141 Evidence from the Secretary of State on the issue of selection was contradictory. While acknowledging that "selection regimes produce a system that inhibits educational opportunities for significant numbers of people"[133] he made clear that he did not envisage either extending the capacity for selection or pursuing legislation to end the practice.[134] These views are interesting set alongside those of the Minister of State for School Standards who told us that he considered it important that specialist schools should retain the ability to select a proportion of their pupils.[135]

142 Specialist schools which use the power to select a proportion of their intake by aptitude, achieve greater academic success in the 5 A*-C measure; in 2001-02 such schools achieved 61.5% of pupils gaining 5+ A*-C GCSEs compared to 52% in non-selective specialist schools. Regrettably, the Department does not collect data on the differential performance of selected and non-selected pupils.[136]

143. For schools which are their own admissions authorities, the drive to improve pupil attainment creates an inevitable tension between the interests of the school and those of wider society. Evidence on the extent to which some schools admit pupils with special needs gives rise to particular concern.[137]

144 It is apparent from the evidence gathered during this inquiry that the current policy which enables schools to select on the basis of aptitude rests on insecure grounds. We are not convinced of the case for selection by aptitude. The broader issue of selection for the purpose of school admissions will be a focus of the final stage of our inquiry into secondary education.

Competition vs. Collaboration

145 Strong leadership and good teaching are key ingredients in the process of school improvement. Schools that find it hard to attract and retain staff, particularly in subject areas where teachers are in short supply, face a particular challenge in driving forward school improvement.[138] Specialist schools, by virtue of additional funds and physical resources, are at an advantage in the competition to recruit staff, not least because their preferential funding enables them to offer more attractive terms and conditions.

146 In many schools it is the expertise and vigour of a few specialist staff that is key to obtaining and maintaining specialist status. As the specialist model expands across the secondary sector, competition for staff will inevitably grow as staff in shortage subjects move to the best resourced schools. If the expertise of specialist teaching staff are to be appropriately shared, schools will need to develop ways of working together to achieve this end.

147 In written evidence to the Committee, officials from the DfES, commenting on the initial evaluation of the Diversity Pathfinder projects, observed that:

"Early indications are that the project has been a powerful catalyst for collaboration in the pathfinder LEAs. The depth of the collaboration, i.e. the degree to which collaboration between schools genuinely challenges poor performance and confronts issues such as social inclusion, varies across the pathfinders. Unsurprisingly it appears to be strongest in areas where the schools are not competing for students. Head teachers across the pathfinders are unanimous in their view that partnerships work best when the schools involved are in the partnerships as equals; not necessarily in terms of absolute school performance, but in the sense that each is seen as having something to contribute."[139]

148 The message contained in this observation is at the core of the Government's hopes for a new culture of collaboration between schools and groups of schools, although a significant amount of work will need to be done before effective collaboration can be made a reality. League tables and inspections will need to be adapted to take account of collegiate structures so to enable proper evaluation of their impact. Written evidence from the DfES[140] confirms that the Diversity Pathfinder projects are leading the way in these areas and we will monitor their progress with great interest.

149 The coordination of diversity initiatives, for example the distribution of specialisms within an area, has been a long neglected aspect of diversity policy. While we acknowledge the view expressed by Dr John Dunford that this role is not necessarily one which must be undertaken by an LEA,[141] it is certainly the case that LEAs are well placed to undertake this work. This view was strengthened by our experience of visiting Birmingham and Auckland in the autumn of 2002 where we were able to contrast two models of educational provision. In Auckland, as elsewhere in New Zealand, schools are independent units managed by a Board of Trustees[142] with no intermediate layer of management or accountability between the Ministry of Education and individual Boards of Trustees. This model contrasted sharply with the situation in Birmingham where the local education authority provided, in addition to its regulatory role, a welcome source of support and advocacy to many of its maintained schools.[143]

150 Politicians and officials in New Zealand identified the particular difficulty that their model presented. A high degree of independence for schools had led to significant difficulty in establishing a culture that enabled systemic change. Again, the contrast with our experience in Birmingham was stark: the 'can-do' attitude demonstrated by all we met in the city was striking and strongly associated with the work of the LEA, which had done much to bring schools together to encourage co-operation and improvement.[144]

151 The Secretary of State has acknowledged the importance of cooperation and coordination. He told us:

"It seems to me that not only groups of schools but also groups of primary and secondary schools working together and the LEA all have the responsibility of trying to promote collaborative rather than competitive roles between schools. I shall try to ensure that my department promotes that approach."[145]

152 An important area for coordination, and one where some progress is being made, is in the area of school admissions. The Oaks Academy in Birmingham, one of the Diversity Pathfinder projects, is considering the potential of a joint admission policy across all schools within the group, with admission to the collegiate, rather than to a particular school.[146]

153 Our conclusion is that competition and institutional autonomy are forces that can be barriers to the capacity for systemic change. The careful coordination of diversity policy so as to ensure the capacity for broad based change should be a prime consideration in the further development of the Government's schools policy.

Equality of opportunity - access to specialist education

154 The extent to which the Government's diversity policy limits or extends access to learning opportunities has been at the centre of the debate on the impact of the specialist schools programme. The requirement for participating schools to take up active roles within their communities and to extend access to their enhanced resources was added in 1997 when the new Labour Government took on and extended the programme. The manner of this collaboration is left to individual schools to define in their submissions for specialist status and is therefore variable in its nature and impact. The community aspect of the programme was considered in the Ofsted evaluation of specialist schools conducted in 2001 and was found to be "the weakest element of specialist schools' work."[147]

155 Competition between schools, combined with teacher shortages, particularly in certain subjects, has contributed to a sharp contrast between schools which find it relatively easy to recruit and retain experienced teachers and those that do not. It was in part a recognition of this situation that led Professor Tim Brighouse to develop his 'collegiate' model[148] for school cooperation. During our visit to Birmingham, Professor Brighouse told us:

"I believe that every school should be a specialist school and they ought to have the resource that goes with it because there is a huge danger at the moment that the pecking order means that those who are higher up the pecking order under the rules of becoming a specialist school get the extra resource. They already, if you look at the data, have the most advantaged children because of the pecking order system. That does not help the issue of social justice and every kid getting a fair chance of developing their talents, so the sooner it is directed to all schools the better. … I think they need to move boldly to create groups or circles of schools where each is a school in its own right but where children at 11 choose to join a school and another educational body, a collegiate for the sake of argument, and the collegiate will be made up of the group of schools and would offer before and after school programmes and occasional inset and share their intranet and share their professional development, and where that collegiate would have its results published as a collegiate as well as individual schools, but where the resourcing of any individual school would depend on the results of each of the schools, to encourage collegiality."[149]

156 The Government's new found emphasis on collaboration and cooperation between groups of schools, currently being pursued through the Diversity Pathfinder project and promulgated most recently in the strategy document A New Specialist System: Transforming Secondary Education[150] owes much to the Brighouse model and gives some cause to hope that any negative effects of the specialist schools programme can be mitigated.

157 While in general we welcome the development of collegiate, cooperative models, we sound one note of caution. During our visit to Northern Ireland we discussed informally with a number of those we met the report of the Post-Primary Review Body,[151] which advocates a system of 20 collegiates with a complex set of arrangements for coordinating and managing them. It was clear that the suggested imposition of the collegiate model generated resistance in the schools community. Collaborative working will only succeed when all parties are happy to be involved

158 The Committee acknowledges the Department's renewed emphasis on the collaborative and community aspects of the specialist schools programme and initiatives being developed through the Diversity Pathfinder project. However, we believe that the nature of this collaboration is at present insufficiently focused on raising pupil achievement and therefore (to be consistent with the Government's stated policy) recommend that future funding for specialist schools and the basis of their evaluation should be explicitly linked to measurable success in raising pupil achievement in partner schools.

What matters most?

159 One of the lessons we have learned from the evidence in this inquiry, and one that has been reiterated in successive Ofsted reports, is that all good schools are good in broadly the same way: they demonstrate good management; good teaching; good personal support; good relations and good links with parents.[152] It is apparent that these characteristics are present in a number of specialist schools, although the extent to which they possessed these characteristics prior to designation is less clear. However, it is also the case that these characteristics are shared by a significant number of non-specialist schools. While Government certainly has a part to play, good schools are predominantly the result of the hard work and commitment of school leaders, staff and governors with, in many cases, valuable support from LEAs.

160 While some schools have used both the process and the funding associated with specialist status to

great effect, the specialist schools programme, because it aims to identify good and improving schools, has had the paradoxical effect of granting additional funding to some already successful and well funded schools. The 47 maintained grammar schools that have gained specialist status are not the only example of this.

161 In our view, allowing selective schools to become specialist schools and so receive the extra funding that specialist school status brings, has had the effect of increasing the gap between high and low achieving schools rather than reducing it. If the specialist schools programme is a school improvement programme, the money might be better spent on schools which are attempting to raise levels of attainment from a lower base.

162 We recommend that the position of selective schools in the specialist schools programme should be reconsidered. Eligibility for the specialist schools programme should be contingent upon each school's membership of a community of schools and on the achievement of measurable improvements in pupil attainment across the group of schools.

84 Education and Skills Committee, Minutes of Evidence, Session 2002-03, Standards and Quality in Education, HC 531-i, Q 94 Back

85 DP34 [not printed], Memoranda from Dr Brien Masters (DP 34) and Dr Richard House (DP 36), and Steiner Waldorf Schools Fellowship (DP 37) [not printed], Ev 195, Memoranda from Human Scale Education (DP 32) (DP 33) [not printed], DP33 (Human Scale Education). Back

86 HC 177-i, Session 2002-03, Q 43. HC 177-ii, Q 172. Back

87 Q 293 Back

88 Q 242 Back

89 HC 177-ii, Session 2002-03, Q 107. Back

90 A New Specialist System: Transforming Secondary Education, DfES, 10 February 2003, p 11. Back

91 Tooley, J , Howes A (1999) The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Schools. Technology Colleges Trust, cited in Jesson, Taylor evidence Q 356. Back

92 Education and Skills Committee, Minutes of Evidence, Session 2002-03, Standards and Quality in Education: HM Chief Inspector's Annual Report 2001-02, HC 531-i, Q 30. Back

93 Previously known as the Technology Colleges Trust. Back

94 Schools Achieving Success, Cm 5230, 2001 p 40. Back

95 Professor David Jesson, Value added and the benefits of specialism, Technology Colleges Trust, April 2002, p 5. Professor Jesson compares non-selective specialist schools with non-selective other schools. Value-added measures attempt to calculate the distance travelled by pupils between two assessment points. Back