Oral evidence

Taken before the Education and Skills Committee on Wednesday 15 October 2003

Members present:

Mr Barry Sheerman, in the Chair
Mr David Chaytor
Valerie Davey
Jeff Ennis
Jonathan Shaw
Mr Andrew Turner

__________

Memoranda submitted by Dr Philip Hunter and Natalie Seeve-McKenna

Examination of Witness

Witness: DR PHILIP HUNTER, Chief Schools Adjudicator, examined.

Q62  Chairman: Can I welcome Dr Philip Hunter to our deliberations and say what a pleasure it is to have you here. You know that this is at the beginning of our inquiry into admissions policy and, of course, as the Chief Schools Adjudicator - I always think that title has come straight out of The Mikado, it is a wonderful title - could you open up by telling us a little bit about how you view your job, as Chief Schools Adjudicator?

Dr Hunter: Certainly. There are ten of us, all independently appointed by the Secretary of State. I am the Chief Adjudicator, which means really I have got two roles. One is to appoint individual adjudicators to individual cases when they come in, and secondly to try to ensure some co-ordination between them. Adjudicators have two main roles. One is to deal with statutory proposals, which is not part of your inquiry today so I will leave those aside, but they are about school closures and amalgamations and that sort of thing. On admissions, we get called in when there is an objection. If an admissions authority sets up some admissions criteria, other admissions authorities, and indeed now Community schools, can object to those criteria. If they do object, in the form in which they are required to object, within six weeks, then an adjudicator is appointed to go in, find out what is going on and make a decision about whether that admissions criterion is fair, objective, and so on. We respond to objections. That is our role.

Q63  Chairman: You have been working fully as the Adjudicator for just over a year now, is it?

Dr Hunter: Yes.

Q64  Chairman: The process is developing and you are sort of building up case law. In the loosest sense of the term, what is your view in terms of the progress, are you satisfied with how things are going?

Dr Hunter: I think, on the whole, we do a very good job. I have got to say that I took over from an illustrious predecessor, who had set up the system, and it was working well when I took it over. I have been developing aspects of it, as one does. We are tightening up a little bit, I think, on procedures and processes and so on, but we do seem to be able to cope with an increasing number of cases quickly, we deal with almost all of them within six weeks. We do seem to be able to reach decisions which are accepted by most of the people who are affected by them, and I think we do have a deal of respect out there, in the field, from people with whom we get involved. I think also we have got a very good relationship with the Department. So I think we are working reasonably well. Of course, from time to time, as indeed has happened very recently, we are taken to judicial review, and from time to time judges change the rules under which we have got to operate. These things happen, but we develop in whatever context we are required to develop.

Q65  Chairman: Is that a concern, that there have been a number of recent overturnings of your rulings?

Dr Hunter: Nobody likes being taken to judicial review, it is a pretty awful process, but it happens. Clearly we are operating within the law, and clearly the final say on what is the law is with the judges, so they are there to decide, to make final decisions about processes, and so on, and, of course, we accept whatever they say.

Q66  Chairman: You have a large number of schools and admissions authorities up and down the land. Do you expect your traffic to increase exponentially over the next few years?

Dr Hunter: I hope it will not. I have to say, it increased a great deal last year, as a result of changes in the Code, and so on, and I think we dealt with 233 cases last year, as opposed to 78 the year before. So clearly we had a very busy year last year, and that was about as many as we could handle, so I hope it will not increase. Indeed, our objective, in a sense - and I am glad I am not on performance-related pay - is to end up with no cases at all, the objective is to reach decisions so quickly and so clearly that people out there will understand what we are likely to decide, if cases are ever referred to us, and hence they do not bother. When there is a change, as there was last year with the new Code of Practice, then that changes too, and that has resulted in a large number of cases. But I think, looking back, one does see you get a spate of cases about a particular aspect of admissions procedures, you deal with them and then it gets known out there, if you like, what the rules of the game are, and from then on people tend to observe the rules of the game.

Q67  Chairman: Is it not a new rule of the game, if you do not like what your decision is, you go to judicial review?

Dr Hunter: I think generally we are getting into a much more litigious society, and people are reaching for their lawyers more quickly than they used to, and that is a concern, but that is the society we are in.

Q68  Chairman: You have enormous experience, in terms of your very distinguished career in education, both in London and outside London, and how do you view the process of admissions, do you think the whole admissions world is settling down? We have only just started this inquiry so we are not even beginning to be dangerous, in terms of the amount of knowledge we have. What we see is, as a Committee, with this plethora of admissions authorities, on the one hand, and on the other the Government seeming to have to go up towards centralisation, with plans to have a London-wide system, and so on, that there does seem to be something of a collision course there perhaps. Do you worry about that?

Dr Hunter: Certainly, I think that something needed to be done before the 2002 Act and the new Code of Practice, something needed to be done before that. My own view is that the new Code is right, that making admissions forums statutory, having admissions schemes agreed locally, and that sort of thing, was the right thing to do. My view is that, that having happened so recently, probably it needs a bit of time to settle down before one can assess whether it has worked. Certainly, it was in the right direction. I think perhaps, given time, it will settle down and will work for a while, but people change, aspirations change, and, I guess, in five or six years' time, someone will say, "We need another go at that." I think the recent go was right, it was in the right direction and it was the right thing to do, and it needs a bit of time to settle down before it is all thrown up in the air again. As far as the plethora of admissions authorities is concerned, I am rather ambivalent. The whole idea about admissions is that somebody, somewhere, is saying to a group of parents, "You can have a place in this school," and saying to another group of parents, inevitably, where you have got oversubscribed schools, "You can't have a place." Now those parents are going to be very upset about it, very, very upset, for obvious reasons. Where you have got something like that happening the whole system depends on trust, that there are people out there who believe that, despite the fact they have not got what they want, they are working in a system which is broadly fair and broadly equitable. That means, I believe, that a lot of people locally have got to believe in the system, have got to be involved in the system. What that means, I believe, is that certainly central government has got a role, I hope a fairly small role, actually. Local government certainly has a role and there needs to be something at local authority level, with councillors and other people involved, and school governors have got a role. In a sense, what I would do, though not yet, because I would let the present system settle down, would be to make all schools their own admissions authorities. Probably I would give more powers to admissions forums, and that sort of thing, to counterbalance that to some extent, but certainly the school governors ought to have a role in school admissions.

Q69  Chairman: Interestingly enough, you left out the courts having a role?

Dr Hunter: They have got a role, deciding what we meant.

Q70  Chairman: I am not even referring back to the recent judgments overruling some of your decisions, I am referring to the Greenwich judgment particularly, which changed totally the rules of the game in a fundamental way. I suppose what most people would say, who are unhappy about the present admissions system, or parents who do not get their first choice, they might say, "Well, we had a kind of natural view that we should have priority because we live near the school," and that is the school one naturally would want your child to go to, the local school. Of course, post-Greenwich that is not an assumption that parents can make, is it?

Dr Hunter: Greenwich did not say that you cannot go to your local school, it said you can go to your local school irrespective of whether that is in your local authority. I think my view about Greenwich is that it has been there just for so long that you cannot shift it now, even if you wanted to; indeed, probably I would not want to. I was Chief Education Officer for Staffordshire, and a new authority was created in the middle of it, with a lot of cross-border traffic going on between that new authority and the county, and there are lots of places like that. I think Greenwich probably is just there now, people have got to look at it.

Chairman: Thank you very much for that. We are going to get into some more detailed questioning now, about the School Admissions Code of Practice.

Q71  Jonathan Shaw: Within the Code of Practice it says that admissions criteria should be "clear, fair and objective, for the benefit of all children, including those with special educational needs, disabilities or in public care." It is children in public care that I want to ask you about. I am sure you are aware that 75 per cent of children who leave care do so without any educational qualifications, a disproportionate number are unemployed, in prison and have drug-related problems. Do you think that this Code gives sufficient weight and priority to children in care?

Dr Hunter: The Code is very clear. It is a recommendation, it is not a piece of legislation, but it is very clear that children in public care should have priority in school admission procedures. We have had a number of local authorities referring admissions criteria to us. Just last night, I realised that the table attached to this paper I put in is rather misleading. In fact, in every case where we have had admissions authorities referred to us, because on the ground those criteria did not include children in public care, we have agreed that they should be there. I think the message is getting out there, quite quickly actually, that all schools should have admissions criteria which put at the top of their list children in public care.

Q72  Jonathan Shaw: Why would they not put it in, in the first place? Why does it require you, Dr Hunter, to tell them?

Dr Hunter: We have had some curious discussions with schools.

Q73  Jonathan Shaw: Perhaps you could tell us about some of the cases?

Dr Hunter: They vary, between schools who say, "We don't need to do that because we do it anyway," in which case we say, "Why don't you put it in your admissions criteria?"

Q74  Jonathan Shaw: May I interrupt again, please. Do you say, "Show us then, show us that you do it; give us a list of kids who are in care in your school"? "We haven't got any at the moment," they might say?

Dr Hunter: Absolutely. I had a discussion about three weeks ago with a school exactly like that, where they were saying that, and we were saying, "You've got three children in public care, and the school down the road has got 17. Why is that?" So you get into that kind of discussion with them. We are quite clear. Where we have an objection from a local authority, from another admissions authority, that children in public care are not there, we say that they should be there.

Q75  Jonathan Shaw: Tell us about this school, compared with the other schools. Were there any distinguishing features of this particular school which did not have many kids in care, compared with the ones which did?

Dr Hunter: This school I am talking about did not.

Q76  Jonathan Shaw: How would you describe that school?

Dr Hunter: It was a school that was doing its best in the area it was in, and clearly did not want to be disturbed by having to deal with children whom it felt might be difficult.

Q77  Jonathan Shaw: Are we talking about a high-achieving school?

Dr Hunter: It was a high-achieving school.

Q78  Jonathan Shaw: In a leafier area?

Dr Hunter: Yes.

Q79  Jonathan Shaw: Were the other schools so high-achieving, and perhaps were not in such a leafy area?

Dr Hunter: Yes. I do not want to go so far as to identify the school.

Q80  Jonathan Shaw: I think the prejudice that I might be accused of, with regard to this issue, in the manner that I have put the questions to you, is borne out, that prejudice is correct?

Dr Hunter: Yes.

Q81  Jonathan Shaw: The poorest kids, the ones who leave without qualifications, the ones that we, the public, have got a responsibility for, who have been abused in every manner, are not getting into the best schools, effectively. These best schools do not even want to put in criteria. That is the bottom line, is it not?

Dr Hunter: I think, given the Code of Practice, given the fact that people can complain to us, given the fact that it is getting around what we decide, that will change.

Q82  Jonathan Shaw: If you are a child in care, in terms of it being a priority, are the priorities all equal, i.e. sibling, near the school, kid in care?

Dr Hunter: Yes.

Q83  Jonathan Shaw: The admissions criteria that I have looked at, there is the top one, you live round the corner, the next one, you have got a sister or a brother, and that is the way it works, in terms of the cut-off point in terms of an available place, is it not?

Dr Hunter: My reading of the Code of Practice is that children in public care should go at the top, they should get in first.

Q84  Jonathan Shaw: So the Chief Adjudicator is sending this message to all schools in England and Wales, that kids in care should be top of the list, over and above everyone else?

Dr Hunter: Yes.

Q85  Mr Turner: Is the Code of Practice guidance?

Dr Hunter: In our legal terms, we have to have regard to it. It is more than guidance, but it is not instructions, it is not law. So that we are able to say, "This bit of the Act says..." this, "but there are other factors around, somewhere else, which point in a different direction, and therefore we do not agree with it," but we do have to be extremely careful with it.

Q86  Mr Turner: So where you say, to quote, "kids in public care should get in first," you are expressing a view, you are not expressing the law?

Dr Hunter: I am expressing the view expressed in the Code of Practice, which is quite clear.

Q87  Mr Turner: To which admissions authorities have to have regard?

Dr Hunter: Yes.

Q88  Mr Turner: Having had regard, they are entitled, if they have done so honestly, to come to a different view. Is that the case?

Dr Hunter: Yes, that is the case, but they should do that only in circumstances in which they have got a very, very clear set of evidence that having regard to this would put them in grave trouble somewhere else.

Q89  Chairman: Sorry. Could you repeat that, Dr Hunter?

Dr Hunter: If an admissions authority, or an adjudicator, looks at what the Code of Practice says and, having had regard to it, decides to do something else, I believe there has got to be very strong evidence that would not be in the interests of the children in the area, or what have you, in order for them to be able to do that. In other words, they are very easily challenged.

Q90  Mr Turner: In the interests of all of the children in the area?

Dr Hunter: Yes, in the legal position in which they are. If I ended up in court defending a decision, that I had regard to what the Code said and decided to do something else, I would be on a pretty shaky wicket, I think.

Q91  Mr Turner: Just as a matter of interest, how much does it cost to run your office?

Dr Hunter: About a million pounds a year.

Q92  Mr Turner: The reason I ask is because, clearly, nobody wants to end up in court, and that applies to schools about which you make decisions, as well as you, in respect of decisions you have made. Have you any examples of cases where admissions authorities, in your view, have had regard to the Code of Practice and come to conclusions which, to some extent or other, run counter to the Code of Practice but which either you have challenged and have been found to be wrongly challenging them, or which you have chosen not to challenge because you felt that the school was right, broadly, in coming to that conclusion?

Dr Hunter: Just off the top of my head, I cannot think of one. I suppose they must be around, but the fact that I cannot bring one to my mind immediately says, I think, that this Code of Practice is a very powerful animal, that it is a very powerful piece of writing here. In my experience, all admissions authorities, once they have had it drawn to their attention, of course, and certainly all adjudicators and local authorities read this very carefully, and almost always, I would say, do what this recommends.

Q93  Mr Turner: One example is interviewing children, and if you want to establish that a child is a practising Anglican, one way obviously is to see how many times they go to church, which is an objective measure. Is a school justified in finding out how the child feels its faith?

Dr Hunter: According to the Code of Practice, no, and according to me, no, because that is what the Code of Practice says. As I understand it, there was a big debate about that before this piece of the Code of Practice was drawn up, and it ended up with the churches recommending that they should not be interviewing, and it ended with a political decision, if you like, by the Secretary of State that that should go in the Code of Practice. That was agreed in the way it is by Parliament. So there it stands, there shall be no interviewing. That being the case, I work to the Code of Practice, so it is not for me to have a different view. I work to the Code of Practice.

Q94  Mr Turner: The admissions authority is entitled to come to the conclusion that it is easy to turn up at church but it is very much more difficult to be a Christian, and that they are entitled to interview to establish whether a child is a Christian. Would you agree with that?

Dr Hunter: I would agree with the sort of legal interpretation, that this is guidance and it is having regard to it, and the discussion we have just had. I have to say that if a case came to us - one should not be too hypothetical about these things - it is conceivable that they could advance some reasons and evidence somewhere why they should be able to interview. It is conceivable. In practice, I think I would find it very difficult to work out what those circumstances would be.

Q95  Chairman: In terms of how you operate in terms of the Code of Practice, and the way in which you operate, what seems to be lacking is, in a sense, because you react only to people approaching you who are discontent with the process, then you make a decision, but that decision does not become generalised. Each school, every admissions authority, I think you have a particular one which involves the children of teachers in a school, where consistently you are making a particular judgment on that but still it keeps coming back because you have no power really to say, "These are the rules." When you started talking to the Committee just now, you said that you thought that would all settle down. Do you think it will settle down, or do you think there is still a problem?

Dr Hunter: We will see, is the answer. There were two very sharp changes, three, including the interviewing, in this Code of Practice. One was children of teachers and the other was children in public care, where there is a clear message in this Code of Practice that it is not something that ought to be happening. We have upheld consistently objections on those grounds since the Code of Practice came in at the end of January. I believe it is getting out there that this is likely to happen if objections come to us, and I guess that in a couple of years it will disappear. We will see. It may not be a terribly efficient way of doing it, but that is the system we have got.

Chairman: That is a fair point. Dr Hunter, we want to move on and look at school admissions authorities, and Val Davey would like to put some questions on that.

Q96  Valerie Davey: I was genuinely surprised to realise just how many admissions authorities there are, well over 5,000. If I were a parent reading the Code, I think I would be really pleased to feel that we had a national Code of Practice of such calibre, and yet, with over 5,000 admissions authorities, should I still be as confident, as a parent, that is going to be the criterion that genuinely is used in all of those admissions authorities?

Dr Hunter: Clearly, it is not, because we have upheld so many objections. Clearly, it is the case that many of these admissions authorities are not abiding by the Code at present. Really, there are two points. The first is the criteria they are using and whether they are in line with the Code on that. Clearly, as this new Code has come in, it is going to take some time, at least, before all of those admissions authorities know what the Code says and are abiding by it, and, as I say, we will find out in two years' time whether that has happened or not. The other aspect of that I think is probably a little bit more worrying, and that is, it is quite clear that many admissions authorities, many of the school governing bodies that are admissions authorities, are not following the processes correctly. The processes are laid down very clearly here. You are supposed to consult about your criteria, you are supposed to meet to determine what they are, you are supposed to inform people what those are and allow people to object to them. We have come across many, many, many admissions authorities that are not doing that properly, and that is a problem.

Q97  Valerie Davey: That indicates that you have taken a proactive role in trying to ensure that these processes are being carried out. Is that part of your job, in fact?

Dr Hunter: No. These are objections we have received. We receive an objection, the first thing we ask is, "Let us see your determined arrangements, let's see the minutes of the governing body in which you've made them?" The answer comes, "Well, we didn't have to bother." So you have to go into the processes, too.

Q98  Valerie Davey: Do you think somebody should be taking that proactive role, because it is clear from what you are saying, I think, that parents who are not perhaps as aware of some of these nuances, or some of these issues, are going to be less able than others to exert their right, as parents, to have the choice, which everyone assumes this new Code will give them?

Dr Hunter: I think they should, and I believe it is for local authorities to get in there. Where it works properly is where a local authority and the admissions authorities within its area have got an agreement that the local authority should do the processes on their behalf. Where that is happening, on the whole, it is working properly. Where it is not happening is where there has been a poor relationship between ex-GM schools, or what have you, and the LEA, and where there is no agreement about who is doing what. I think that there is a role for local authorities there, and when I meet chief education officers I am telling them that.

Q99  Valerie Davey: As a former chief education officer, I would expect you to do no less. Can I just say though that you seem to be reasonably confident, with the umbrella collaboration established by a local authority, that individual schools will not end up choosing the children, as opposed to what clearly we are identifying as the policy of parents, as far as is humanly possible, having the right of choice?

Dr Hunter: You are raising another question there, which is an interesting one. The fact is that wherever you have got an oversubscribed school it is the school that is choosing the children, that is the fact, it is the admissions authority that is choosing the children, and that happens wherever you have got oversubscription. We cannot stop that. Coming back to your general point, I am interested to see, and I think I would expect, given time to settle down, with the new systems, the new schemes, the new admissions forums, and so on, that certainly things will get better, and in a couple of years' time we will be able to see whether actually it has worked properly and whether it needs tweaking.

Q100  Mr Chaytor: Dr Hunter, in your written evidence you imply that you have seen extensive abuse by individual admissions authorities of the correct procedures. Currently, you can only respond to complaints. Do you think the system would be more effective if you had powers to investigate where you had reasonable suspicion that an individual admissions authority was not playing by the rules?

Dr Hunter: I do not think so. I am not generally seeking more powers, I think I am powerful enough, thank you very much. Certainly it is the case that if somebody thinks there is something going wrong that should not be going wrong then usually there is a route where they can object, and at that point I can take that up.

Q101  Mr Chaytor: But if you have received only 233 objections this year, are you saying that is the sum total?

Dr Hunter: No, not at all.

Q102  Mr Chaytor: What about the missing schools?

Dr Hunter: I believe it is for local authorities, local education authorities, to get much more involved in admissions in their area, whether or not they are community schools or foundation schools or aided schools, or what have you. I believe it is for admissions forums and local education authorities to object, where they come across them, to start by negotiating their way through, actually, and, having done that, if they find they cannot do that, then to object. I think that is happening in a number of authorities now. Where that happens we are able to find our way through it, and I think that over a period of time we will get to a stage where all local authorities are taking on that responsibility, and I think that is the way forward.

Q103  Mr Chaytor: In your opening remarks, you said also that you thought school governors should have a stronger role and should express their views more. Did you mean about the admissions policies of their own schools, where they are the admissions authorities, or do you think that school governing bodies should have a wider role in expressing a view on the admission arrangements throughout the local authority?

Dr Hunter: No. I was saying, what I believe is that all governing bodies should have a role, whether or not they are at present their admissions authorities. I do not believe that, in general, there is any good reason for some schools being their own admissions authorities and some not being their own admissions authorities. In the long term what I would like to see is Government deciding that it has got some minimal role in this, that local authorities at local authority level, local authorities and admissions authorities should have some role in that. I think rather I would strengthen that a little bit, and that all governors have got a role in this and that all three are involved and all three are involved equally, whether the school happened to be a foundation school or an aided school, or what have you. That is what I believe.

Q104  Mr Chaytor: In terms of central government's role, do you think the powers that central government has currently are about right, or, just as you feel that local education authorities should play a bigger role, do you think there is an expanded role for central government in determining the shape of the system?

Dr Hunter: No; certainly I do not believe there is an expanded role for central government. I think that central government has a role. If, for example, the Secretary of State, Parliament, whatever, decides that all 'looked after' children should be first on the list then that is a very proper thing for central government to do, but I hope that central government is quite sparing in its use of the powers it has got. Certainly I do not believe there should be some grand, national system, in the way I think that some people are suggesting for admissions. I think that would be a total disaster.

Q105  Mr Chaytor: Between the local authority level and the central government level, is there room for greater co-ordination between local education authorities in the major conurbations?

Dr Hunter: Yes, certainly, I think there is, I think it is happening. One of the difficulties that I think the education system in the country is faced with is that there are too many local education authorities, but, given that we have got what we have got, I think people are just getting down to it and doing what they can. Certainly in the old counties where a unitary has sprung up, I think relationships are generally good between those people. It is happening in London. I go to regional meetings of admission officers, and they get on very well together and discuss things properly and professionally at their level. So I think it is happening.

Q106  Chairman: Dr Hunter, do you think you are accessible enough to parents objecting to the way in which they have been treated by an admissions authority, or are you a bit of a secret organisation for most parents?

Dr Hunter: Certainly we try not to be secret. We go to a great deal of trouble in publishing on our website every decision we make, and all of those things, and putting out press releases, and the rest of it. I would guess that 98 per cent, 99 per cent, of parents in the country do not know we exist, and possibly they ought to. I think there might be a case, in due course, for giving parents more access to us. They have got access to us, as you know, in partial selection, they have got access to us where an admissions authority has reduced the admission number below the capacity, and they are using that, from time to time. Perhaps.

Q107  Chairman: It just seems that the number of parents who actually end up bringing an objection to you is small?

Dr Hunter: Yes, that is right.

Q108  Chairman: One would have thought, the ten per cent of parents who actually appeal against the decision of the admissions authority, it is strange that such a small number then end up on your side of it?

Dr Hunter: Most individual appeals are about the individual circumstances of an individual child, that is the admissions criteria, and I would guess that it is quite difficult to get a number of parents who have been turned down for the same reason, if you like. It might be helpful, at some stage, to give some parents more access to us, but I would not advocate it as a pressing priority.

Chairman: Thank you for that. We are now going to move on to school admissions criteria, and Jeff Ennis is going to open the questions.

Q109  Jeff Ennis: Dr Hunter, how widespread is the use of admissions criteria that are contrary to the guidance in the Code of Practice?

Dr Hunter: Clearly, in terms of the number of objections we uphold, it is quite common. I think there has been a particular problem this year because the new Code of Practice came in at the end of January. By that time, a number of school admissions authorities had moved into deciding what they were going to do, and I do not think really there was time for them to adjust to the new Code of Practice. I would hope that next year there will be fewer cases.

Q110  Jeff Ennis: Are there any particular categories of admissions authorities where you are getting the largest numbers of problems?

Dr Hunter: Yes. It is the school admissions authorities, the foundation schools and aided schools, and so on. Most local authorities have got the thing pretty clear, there are one or two that have not, I have got to say, and that is worrying, particularly, I guess, some of the smaller unitaries. The trouble in local authorities comes from the smaller ones that have got only one, or perhaps two admissions officers, and often they are super people who really have got the thing sorted out, but if that officer goes ill, or something, then there is a problem, and they do go down from time to time.

Q111  Jeff Ennis: Looking at the individual schools admissions authorities, is it the ones where we are having problems which are not co-operating with the local education authorities, or is that too much of a generalisation to see?

Dr Hunter: I think probably it is too much of a generalisation. Clearly, it is where relationships are not good, for historic or other reasons, that things are going wrong, and that is where we get the difficulties. Whether that is due entirely to the school, whether it is due sometimes to the local authority, I think that is a different matter.

Q112  Jeff Ennis: You said, in response to an earlier question, that for certain criteria, for example, the one to do with the children of staff in a particular school, which currently is outside the Code but it is not outlawed, you feel, with the passage of time, this will disappear as a problem, as news of the Code is spread around the admissions authorities. If it does not disappear, do you think there ought to be a mechanism to remove a criterion like that, which is constantly working outside the Code?

Dr Hunter: Of course, the mechanism is you. You are in a position to change the law, and that is the only way it can be done, through making something against the law.

Q113  Jeff Ennis: Going back to the Chairman's earlier question about the Greenwich ruling, when you said that, obviously, because of the time factor, it has been here since 1989, it is here to stay, given that you feel it is here to stay, do you see it as a barrier to an effective admissions policy across all authorities?

Dr Hunter: In a sense, it has been around for so long it is part of the fabric of the thing, and I would not regard it as a barrier. Looking back, it was a problem when it first happened, in a number of areas. I do not think it was a particular problem in most of the county areas, frankly. It would have been a problem had it come in - the establishment of the new unitaries in the middle of counties, where there is a lot of cross-border traffic, I think it would be impossible to go back now on that, really I do.

Q114  Jonathan Shaw: I wonder if I can talk about specifics, rather than generalities. The Chairman said that there were not very many parents contacting you, but perhaps there might be a disproportionate number of parents from Kent contacting you. I know that is an area of the country with which you have had a number of dealings. Can I ask you about the admissions criteria and how that can seem then to contradict rulings. If one of the criteria is to maximise, to every possible extent, parents' wishes, and many people in Kent would not wish to send their child to a grammar school so they would want to send them to a school that had a wider mix of ability, therefore what we have seen is some admissions authorities, individual schools, saying to parents, "Well, if you want to come to this school, we don't want your child to take the 11 plus, in order that we can have as wide a mix of ability as possible." If you are looking across the piece, at somewhere like Kent, trying to please everyone is very difficult, but surely is it not reasonable for admissions authorities to do that, given that is a criterion?

Dr Hunter: I hope you will forgive me but really I would find it very, very difficult to get into questions about Kent just at the moment. To explain. We have an objection from the local authority to, I think it is, 45 schools in Kent, some of which involve just the questions arising here. About three weeks ago, because of the timing, we put out what we call a 'minded' letter, which said that although we had not been able to reach a decision yet - and, incidentally, the reason we could not reach a decision was that so many of the individual authorities had not done their processes correctly and we had to wait until that had finished - the two adjudicators who are dealing with it "are minded to reach the following decisions." Having put out that letter, we said to the local authority and to the schools, and we had a meeting down there, "Here is our minded letter, this is what we are minded to do, but please give us other views, other information, other evidence, if you have got it." The two adjudicators concerned are writing their determinations at this moment. They will come out in about ten days' time, and it would be extremely difficult if I were to comment.

Q115  Jonathan Shaw: I appreciate that, but you could tell the Committee what the minded letter said, because you talked about generalities, and here is an opportunity for members of the Committee to understand the specifics of your task?

Dr Hunter: The minded letter said the following, and it is public so we can discuss it, it said there were a number of objections, there were objections on children of staff, there were objections on 'looked after' children, and we upheld all of those objections. That is the first point. The second point was, the minded letter said there was an objection about conditionality, which is the point you are raising. Conditionality is where an admissions authority says "We will give priority to people who do not enter the 11 plus." The minded letter said "We are minded" (the two adjudicators) "to uphold that objection" on the grounds that it did not seem fair, it did not seem fair, to some parents, to say, no matter who you are, no matter where you live, no matter what your child is like, "the fact that your parent has decided to enter you for a test should be a factor in whether or not you get into that school." So the minded letter said "We are minded to uphold that." The other ground, the other objection, was on preference. The objection was that schools should not be allowed to give priority to parents who expressed a preference for that school. I will not go into all the ins and outs of that. The minded letter said "We are minded not to uphold that objection." Having said all of that, as I say, the adjudicators have gone away to consider not only what the minded letter said but also the response to that minded letter from the local authority and from the schools themselves.

Chairman: Thank you for that extended answer, Dr Hunter. It is most useful.

Q116  Jonathan Shaw: Chairman, if I may just wind back the clock to pick up something that we have talked about, children in public care, something which has occurred to me. The Green Paper, 'Every Child Counts', are you part of that consultation process?

Dr Hunter: No. I am sorry, perhaps I should have seen it but I have not.

Q117  Jonathan Shaw: I am wondering, if you are considering children in public care, might something that you would consider be children who were at risk, in terms of a priority?

Dr Hunter: As I say, children in public care, I think, got a good deal out of the Code. It is very clear, and we are very clear, about what it says and how to react to this.

Q118  Jonathan Shaw: I am wondering about children on the 'at risk' register, whether you had a view as to whether children on the 'at risk' register should be a priority?

Dr Hunter: I confess, I am not an expert on that matter.

Q119  Jonathan Shaw: You are not aware of the recent Green Paper?

Dr Hunter: I think I am aware of it, but I have not studied it in the way you have.

Q120  Mr Turner: Dr Hunter, I appreciate that you do not want to go into the details of Kent, and I have no right to, other than as of generally with this Committee and my colleague, but perhaps you could explain how you reached the views in the minded letter on two particular issues, because they seem to me to be exactly the contrary of commonsense. One is that you say it is not the child's fault they have been entered into an examination by their parents, and therefore you cannot prevent a child having priority for a comprehensive school because they have not entered the 11 plus. Point one, of course, does that extend to selective schools as well, where clearly it is not the child's fault if they were not entered into the exam., does that mean that a selective school is not allowed to take account of whether they were entered into the exam.? Point two, on that. I confess, in a previous life, I advised some comprehensive schools in Kent about inserting this into their admissions policies because they wished to remain comprehensive. The second one is the one about first preferences. A first preference, essentially, is gambling, it is not a lottery, where there is an equal chance, but is gambling on where you place your preference, which is much less predictable, which is one of your criteria, than that all preferences are equal. Could you go into a little more detail of how you came to those minded conclusions?

Dr Hunter: Let us take the first preference one first. There are two arguments. The argument in favour of schools accepting preference as one of my criteria is that they want to know which parents really want to go there, parental commitment is an important factor for them to take into account, and so on and so on, and the Code of Practice is very clear that preference matters and that schools should know which children have first preference. They are the arguments in favour of that. The argument against is the one you have just mentioned, that where you have schools that have preference as a criteria it tends to force parents into second-guessing what is happening to other parents, what are they doing. It encourages tactical voting, if you like, in your terms, and that is a real problem. That is the problem for Kent LEA, that is the reason why Kent LEA are against preference coming in at that stage. Kent LEA want to take preference into account but only at the later stage when parents have got more than one school offered to them. Those two arguments are there. The two adjudicators concerned - it is not me, I have got to say, it is two other adjudicators - took the view that, on balance, at that stage, on the evidence available to them at that time, they came down in favour of preference remaining one of the criteria that would be acceptable. Who knows what they will say in Kent; well I do know what they will say in Kent, I know what they have been saying. There is a real tension there, a real issue and it is a balance of advantages and disadvantages. The same with conditionality. There are real arguments about whether schools should be able to take into account what that parent is saying about other schools. Again, it is about commitment, all those things. Equally, there is quite a strong argument to say that is a kind of blackmail, in a way, saying, "Look, if you put something else down, we're going to take that into account in what we do." So none of those issues are easy. There are arguments on both sides, for both of them, and it is a matter for these two adjudicators, appointed by the Secretary of State, to take just these decisions, to weigh up the balance of those arguments, and that is what they do.

Q121  Mr Turner: Thank you for those very full answers, and I accept that it is for the adjudicators and that is the law at present, but is it actually any better that the decision should be taken by two adjudicators rather than by the governing bodies?

Dr Hunter: Certainly there is a very strong message around, in the Code and elsewhere, that where you have got a number of admissions authorities in an area those admissions authorities should come together and reach agreement about the way forward, so that they are not all adopting different ways of doing things. That is the message that is around at the moment, and I think that is the right message. Kent came up with a model scheme, they could not reach agreement amongst their admissions authorities about what it should be. The Secretary of State imposed a scheme, that scheme he called an equal preference scheme, but actually it is still allowed for a first preference to appear in it. Whether that was right or wrong I do not know, but that is the scheme that Kent were with. It is now for the adjudicators to interpret what that Secretary of State scheme is saying, what the Code of Practice is saying, what the individual circumstances are of individual schools and to make decisions, and that is what they do.

Q122  Mr Turner: In the end though, unless the schools change in either capacity or character, I mean that in the non-technical sense, admissions is a zero-sum game, is it not, one person wins, another person loses?

Dr Hunter: Yes. That is what happens. You get some schools that are oversubscribed and decisions have to be made about which children get in and which ones do not. As I say, I believe quite strongly the key to it is, is there a system across the country with a lot of people involved in it, a lot of people feeling some ownership of it, and is there some trust that the system, on the whole, is fair, equitable, clear.

Q123  Chairman: The Code, as presently constructed, does not permit a banding system, which is intended to get a kind of representative sample of children. It does not allow that, does it?

Dr Hunter: Yes, it does.

Q124  Chairman: Do you think the arguments have been developed fully on that? When we had three professors here talking about this, they had some concerns about the banding approach?

Dr Hunter: Certainly it is around in certain places. It was common in ILEA, and a number of parts of London, where it was used, are still using it. I think there are arguments for saying that where you have got a school that is in an area which has got a very high proportion of difficult families and difficult children, and so on, they should be allowed to try to achieve a reasonably comprehensive intake by some kind of selection, which is what it is. I think, clearly, that is a powerful argument for some schools, in some areas. I do not think it is a generally applicable way of going about things and I do not think one will see it operating very widely, but in some areas it is perfectly alright, Lewisham, for example, have it, and parts of Camden, and so on.

Q125  Mr Chaytor: Chairman, can I pursue the point about banding just a little bit. You are saying that there is an advantage in banding for individual schools who are their own admissions authorities, but not necessarily for local education authorities?

Dr Hunter: I think, both. I think there are areas where it can work. I think probably it works better actually where an area, a number of schools or a cluster of schools, decides to go in for it. It is not very common and I do not think it should be very common, but I think it is acceptable, permissible or desirable, probably, in some places.

Q126  Mr Chaytor: Why should it not be very common?

Dr Hunter: I do not think there are many areas where the circumstances demand that sort of approach. Certainly it was true in London, some bits of London, I would guess. I cannot think of anywhere else where really it is widespread other than London.

Q127  Mr Chaytor: Can I just refer to the document which was published yesterday by the Audit Commission and Ofsted, 'School Place Planning'. One of the recommendations of that document is that local authorities should take into account social inclusion in their admissions policies and criteria. Would you agree with that?

Dr Hunter: I read that document last night. It is a good document. It is like a lot of these Ofsted things, they are very, very good on the analysis but they do not seem to take it very far other than that.

Q128  Mr Chaytor: Is it not for you to take it further when cases come before you? What status will the Audit Commission's and Ofsted's recommendations have in your deliberations?

Dr Hunter: Clearly, I have not had time to discuss it properly yet, and we will be doing that. Can I say that I do not believe, and this touches on banding and other things, that you can improve a school by forcing parents to send their children there, and that is the last thing that a school wants which needs improving. You have got to improve schools by other means, you have got to get to the stage where a school is improved and parents want to send their children there. There is absolutely no doubt at all that schools operate better and find the educational standards rising, and the rest of it, if there is a proper mix of children across the ability range. The question is how you get there, and I do not think you get there by forcing parents to send their children there, on the whole.

Q129  Chairman: The banding system does not force parents to go there, necessarily, does it?

Dr Hunter: Although I was not on the schools side when I was working in ILEA, the banding system I think worked pretty well in ILEA, because it was accepted it was what happened, if you like, and it was across the piece and there it was, and it did provide a reasonable mix of children in schools across the authority. Clearly, it cannot work with 13 different authorities operating in a small geographical area like London, and clearly it has to work. There are bits of London, I believe, where it has been carried on, Lewisham, for example, and, as I understand it, it is working perfectly well there. It is a matter of looking at each individual area and asking yourself "Is that right for this particular area?"

Chairman: Thank you. That has been most illuminating. We are working you hard, I realise, Dr Hunter, but, thank you, it is very valuable information you are giving us. We will move on to selection, and Jonathan is going to open the batting on that one.

Q130  Jonathan Shaw: Obviously, the Committee has received a great deal of written evidence, and one of the pieces of evidence we received was from a parent governor from Liverpool, Ms Natalie Seeve-McKenna. She has said that the increase in selection in schools in her community has skewed the gender and the ability mix of the non-selective schools. What criteria do you use to determine whether selection, in any form, is skewing the ability range in the population of neighbouring schools which happen to be non-selective?

Dr Hunter: Forgive me, are these schools which are selecting by aptitude, they are specialist schools?

Q131  Jonathan Shaw: Yes?

Dr Hunter: I think the difficulty for an adjudicator looking at it, and clearly I have looked at a number of cases recently in this area, is trying to find the evidence. If you have got selection, commonsense tells you that if one school is selecting children, if it is taking brighter children from elsewhere, one would say that has some effect on those other schools, that is commonsense. But where is the evidence? I looked recently at a number of schools in Hertfordshire and I was faced with an objection which said that "These selective schools are affecting other schools in the area and producing circumstances in which those other schools are receiving children who are less bright, more children on free school meals," and the rest of it. So I looked at the figures, I looked at them in detail, and, yes, there is a difference between the selective schools and the non-selective schools, on average, in terms of CAT scores, ability scores and free school meals, and the rest of it, but there is a much bigger difference within the comprehensive schools, in terms of CAT scores and free school meals. Those much bigger differences are created by a variation in house prices and all the other things that affect these things. So where is the direct evidence which sees a causal link between selection and these things; the answer is, there is none. I used to be a research scientist, there is nothing there that gives you that causal link, the figures do not prove it, if you like, and that is the position we are in. There are huge differences in ability and free school meals parents, and the rest of it, in a truly comprehensive area. If you look at a town like Stafford, where I live, there is a school up on the hill which has got about five per cent, or whatever, free school meals, and then there is a school a mile and a half away with 25 per cent free school meals, and that is because of housing, that is because of the house prices and so on. Those are things that are happening anywhere. The question is, if you removed selection, would it make any difference, and I do not see the evidence to say that it would.

Q132  Chairman: Selection, full stop, or the ten per cent?

Dr Hunter: That is at ten per cent. I do not see any hard evidence that selection at ten per cent is having any effect on schools around. I have got no evidence that selection at ten per cent is having an effect on the schools themselves either.

Q133  Jonathan Shaw: How many objections have you received, on partial selection?

Dr Hunter: I think we had 41 last year.

Q134  Jonathan Shaw: How have you decided in these cases, does it vary, or are they all the same?

Dr Hunter: Upheld 18, partially upheld 14, and not upheld nine.

Q135  Jonathan Shaw: Can you give us a snapshot? That is what I said to you before, about Kent, it is just helpful for us to get some illustrative examples. Can you give us one from each?

Dr Hunter: Let us take the Hertfordshire ones; perhaps I should not, actually, given what is happening in the High Court at the moment, but, never mind, let us take those. There were 14 schools. Seven of them were selecting only by aptitude, seven of them were selecting by ability and aptitude. Of the aptitude selections, I upheld the objections to ten of them, but they were on the grounds not about the effect they were having on other schools but because they were not using aptitude tests, they were using ability tests. So I did not uphold any of those on the grounds that they were having an effect on other schools around them.

Q136  Mr Chaytor: You said that, selection at ten per cent, you have seen no evidence that it has either an adverse effect on the schools not selecting or a positive effect on the schools selecting. What about selection at 100 per cent?

Dr Hunter: Clearly, that has an effect, yes. Those are grammar schools and I am not allowed to get involved with those, so I do not.

Q137  Mr Chaytor: We are talking about the ten per cent, therefore your argument is that the variation between schools defined as comprehensive is as great or greater than the variation between the selective and the non-selective schools, and you say this is a function of house prices. Really it is a function of land-use planning, is it not, and the house price is the proxy?

Dr Hunter: I think all sorts of things get in there, actually, reputation, bus routes, all sorts of things suddenly create a position in which one school becomes oversubscribed and schools around them are not, and the chemistry of that is quite difficult.

Q138  Mr Chaytor: Coming to testing by ability, rather than aptitude, where schools use tests of ability, either on partial selection or through the 11 plus, or for banding purposes, what is the purpose of a school's own test of ability now we have a national testing assessment regime? Why are not Key Stage Two results good enough?

Dr Hunter: The Key Stage Two results are not finely enough tuned to allow a school, if they have got 60 applicants and they are going to take 18, or whatever, to work out which are the 18 to take, so they have to have a separate test and they often use NFER tests.

Q139  Mr Chaytor: Are you confident that the testing that individual schools use is accurate?

Dr Hunter: No, but they are using accepted, standardised, recognised tests. We are getting back into the old question of was the 11 plus accurate, or not, and the answer to that is, clearly, it was not, but they are using a test that is accepted.

Q140  Mr Chaytor: If you are saying, as a Chief Schools Adjudicator, you have no confidence in these tests, who is accepting them? By whose criteria are they accepted?

Dr Hunter: I am saying they are legal.

Mr Chaytor: They are legal. They are decent, honest, but not necessarily true.

Q141  Jonathan Shaw: Lots of things are legal?

Dr Hunter: Yes, but, aptitude tests, I am saying that there is a certain number of recognised aptitude tests that have been devised by universities, or the NFER, or what have you, and those are legal. I am not saying anything about whether they are any good, and so on.

Q142  Mr Chaytor: You just had said something about whether they were any good, actually, because you said you were not confident of their accuracy?

Dr Hunter: Take the common aptitude test for music, which is a perfectly good aptitude test, it has been around for years, and all the rest of it. That will pick out Mozart, clearly it will, but whether it will pick out, if we have got 60 applicants and 18 places, who is the 12th best and the 18th best, the 24th best, is a completely different question. I think, if you asked the academics again, if you called them back in, they would say it would not, but that is not for me. I am saying it is legal.

Q143  Mr Chaytor: On tests for ability then?

Dr Hunter: It is the same sort of question, actually.

Q144  Mr Chaytor: It will not pick out necessarily the future Einstein?

Dr Hunter: It would pick out Einstein alright, well, I do not know who it would, actually, but it would pick out the best, the ones who are streets ahead.

Q145  Mr Chaytor: Is there not an issue though that, if we accept that standards in primary schools are rising steadily and levels of literacy and numeracy and scientific understanding are rising, and therefore the proportion of the cohort is achieving high levels at Key Stage Two, actually it becomes more difficult to differentiate, even through a separate ability test and just leaving the approximation of Key Stage Two results, it becomes more difficult to differentiate, certainly once you get to between the 20th and the 30th percentile point? Is this an issue in selecting by ability? If you have only 50 per cent of children attaining a particular level at Key Stage Two, it is easy, but once you get 85 per cent it must be more difficult to differentiate. Is that not true?

Dr Hunter: These tests test what they test and they put children in rank order, and that is what they do. What that means, I think, is a completely different question. What that means, in terms of their potential, whether they are going to achieve or not, what precisely they know about a range of things that are passed or not tested on, all of those are huge issues, but where you have got selection, where you are using a standard selection test, as far as I am concerned, it is legal. I am not saying anything about whether it is a good idea or a bad idea, I am saying just that it is legal.

Q146  Mr Chaytor: Leaving aside whether it is a good idea or a bad idea, are you saying you have confidence in the ability of standard tests, either of aptitude or of ability, accurately to predict future levels?

Dr Hunter: No, I am not.

Q147  Chairman: This certainly runs, Dr Hunter, in terms of a previous inquiry that we have held, that not one of the distinguished academics and experts that we had in front of the Committee could say with any confidence the difference between an aptitude and an ability test?

Dr Hunter: Clearly, I have given some thought to those things and I am told that there is a small number of recognised aptitude tests that were devised as aptitude tests, that are labelled as aptitude tests and are marketed as aptitude tests, and that is what they are, and if a school is using one of them then it is legal, as far as I am concerned.

Q148  Chairman: But you would recognise that there is a lot of evidence out there about the difficulty of discerning the difference between the two? You are challenged?

Dr Hunter: I would challenge anyone who says that you cannot tell what an aptitude test is, in the sense of being devised as an aptitude test and marketed as an aptitude test and it is described and recognised as an aptitude test. I can tell the difference.

Q149  Chairman: Level four in music?

Dr Hunter: Level four in music is not an aptitude test, that is a test of what children can achieve.

Q150  Chairman: So an ability test?

Dr Hunter: That is an ability test.

Q151  Chairman: You have to have the aptitude to get to level four?

Dr Hunter: It tells you a bit about aptitude. It tells you also about how well that child had been taught, how much parental support that child has got, whether it had been told to do its practice, and all the rest of it. There is, in music, a well-recognised aptitude test on the market which does not rely on all of those things, it is a test which tests how good children are at recognising pitch and rhythm and melody and texture, and that sort of thing. There it is, there is an aptitude test. If you are telling parents you are selecting by aptitude, you should be using that. I am not saying anything about whether that is any good or not, I am just saying there it is.

Q152  Valerie Davey: Chair, the parent governor who wrote from Liverpool was concerned also about gender. Have you had any appeals from those parents who want either single-sex or co-ed for their young people, and, secondly, when decisions are being made about changes of school, the nature of the school, do you take that into consideration, if that comes to your attention?

Dr Hunter: Certainly it is an issue, and one that is around at the moment. I will not tell you where it is, but certainly individual adjudicators from time to time run into precisely this question and have to take it into account.

Q153  Jonathan Shaw: Dr Hunter, you have just described to the Chairman the aptitude test for music and said you did not make a judgment as to whether it is any good or not. Is there a similar aptitude test for sport, performing arts, modern foreign languages, design technology, information technology?

Dr Hunter: Yes. There is one for sport, which was developed by Education Victoria, in Australia, and I think there is another one around as well which the Sports Council are coming up with and it is all about how far you can throw and jump and do all those things.

Q154  Jonathan Shaw: So they are coming up with it now?

Dr Hunter: The Education Victoria one I think has been around for some time, but there is another one being developed. There is one for languages, which I think was developed by the University of York.

Q155  Jonathan Shaw: When was that done?

Dr Hunter: It has been around for some time. I think it developed in the war, with American soldiers, or something. I do not know. Anyway, it has been around for some time. There is one on information technology, which the NFER came up with.

Q156  Jonathan Shaw: That cannot have been around for years?

Dr Hunter: No, that is fairly recent, I think, but it is around.

Q157  Jonathan Shaw: What I am coming on to is that there are these aptitude tests for the criteria that the ten per cent of selection is allowed, but it is not allowed for humanities, science and mathematics. Do you know of any aptitude tests for those three subjects?

Dr Hunter: No, I do not, I am afraid.

Q158  Jonathan Shaw: This has been a question we have asked quite a lot. Could that be the answer to it? The reason why the Government have made these two distinctive categories, one, that you can select ten per cent, and, one, that you cannot, is because there are no tests. I am being a great help to the Secretary of State.

Dr Hunter: Honestly, I do not know what is behind all of this.

Q159  Jonathan Shaw: You do not know, but you can tell us categorically, for those criteria that require tests, there are aptitude tests, the one thing you are not allowed to have an aptitude test for there are none?

Dr Hunter: No, I am not saying that, I just have not looked.

Q160  Jonathan Shaw: You are just advising us that you do not know of any aptitude tests for humanities, and so one could conclude that is why the DfES made that decision. That would be very cerebral of them, would it not?

Dr Hunter: Sorry; just thinking this out. I would guess, if you are looking for an aptitude test in maths, clearly that is going to be very, very difficult to distinguish from an ability test, that is what ability tests do, is it not? Humanities, I would need some notice of that. I have not come across those, I have not looked.

Jonathan Shaw: No, well we get a bit baffled by it as well, and why science but not information technology?

Q161  Chairman: What is coming out of your remarks though, Dr Hunter, is that you recognise these things exist, they are described as tests of not ability but of aptitude, they are there, so they are legal, but there is a deep note of scepticism in what you have told this Committee about how you rate these tests?

Dr Hunter: Yes. I would not want to be too sceptical about all of them. I think they have their uses, I guess all of them have their uses, and I would guess that some of them are better than others at picking out kids that later are going to demonstrate some aptitude for these things. As Chief Adjudicator, I am asked the question "Are these things legal?" and my answer is, clearly, they are, there were designed as aptitude tests, they are recognised, they have been designed by people of repute, respect, and there they are.

Chairman: Let us draw a line under that for the moment. Let us go on to the last couple of sections. I am sorry to keep you here so long but we are getting great value out of this, so we are grateful. We would like to look at the admissions process.

Q162  Mr Chaytor: Can I just come back to this question of the overall objective of admissions policy. Do you think our system actually is characterised by parental choice?

Dr Hunter: Yes, I think it is. I think that whenever you talk about parental choice in questions of admissions you have to qualify it by saying that parental choice is choice where there is choice available, and that wherever you get an oversubscribed school it is not the parents' choosing, it is the school choosing, or the admissions authority choosing, and that is the fact that people have got to recognise. You get people who tend to go on about parental choice, "Isn't parental choice a wonderful thing?" Of course it is a wonderful thing, but you run up constantly against this point, that it can operate only in schools where there is choice.

Q163  Mr Chaytor: Is it more accurate to describe it as a system of parental preference?

Dr Hunter: Yes, I think that is right.

Q164  Mr Chaytor: Coming back to the Audit Commission/Ofsted report yesterday, another of their conclusions is that allowing popular schools to expand actually has severe consequences on other schools in the immediate area. My question is, how do you reconcile the maximisation of parental preference with the implications for social exclusion?

Dr Hunter: My answer to that is that all these are very difficult questions. Not only does an expanding school have a consequence on other schools around it, it has a consequence on itself. Often you get popular schools which are popular because they are not too big, and clearly it operates against itself if you expand it constantly. Questions like that, the answer is complex and it is local, and in my view that is what local education authorities are for, and that is what they are good at. They are local groups of politicians and officers who are considering all of these very complex balances, and it really is better if you have got a system where they are in a position to make these decisions.

Q165  Mr Chaytor: Where the issue comes before you, and this is what we are concerned about, do you take into account the consequences of allowing popular schools to expand with the impact of social exclusion on neighbouring schools and neighbouring communities?

Dr Hunter: Yes, indeed, of course we do, much more so in our work on statutory proposals, actually, than admissions, but even in admissions we look at future numbers and decide how far they go, and the rest of it.

Q166  Mr Chaytor: Was that a factor in the recent adjudication on North Yorkshire, on Skipton?

Dr Hunter: That was a statutory proposal, was it not; that was a school closure?

Q167  Mr Chaytor: No, it is an expansion of a school?

Dr Hunter: Yes, of course. I am sorry, I could not tell you that.

Q168  Mr Chaytor: Could you write to the Committee about that, because I am just interested in if you are saying the impact on social exclusion in the surrounding area is a factor, in your judgment?

Dr Hunter: Yes, it is.

Q169  Mr Chaytor: I think it would be interesting for us to see the Skipton judgment?

Dr Hunter: I shall send you the full determination.

Q170  Mr Chaytor: That will be very helpful. Could I ask about conurbations, and earlier you did hint that you thought there was a need not only for a stronger role for many areas but greater co-ordination between LEAs. What is your view on the idea that there should be an all-London admissions system?

Dr Hunter: I think that the all-London system is probably right. There are a number of problems in London and I think that Ian Birnbaum and his colleagues are doing a good job in sorting that out. I think that they and you and everyone else should bear some things in mind about it, and Ian himself describes that as one of the biggest and most complex systems that there are around. It will go wrong, in five years, ten years, seven years, whatever, probably an election year, it will go wrong, and it is possible probably that in London there are enough people with pencils and paper to be able to sort that out when it goes wrong, and it will go wrong. It will cost twice as much as they think it will and it will go wrong. That will happen. To expand that into a national system would be barmy, because you can have things going wrong in London, you cannot have it going wrong all over the country.

Q171  Mr Chaytor: Is there an argument for extending it to the other conurbations? Would you see an all-Birmingham or an all-Manchester or an all-Bradford admissions system?

Dr Hunter: Let us see how the London one goes first. May I say, I do not think the needs are so great in Birmingham and Bradford and Manchester, and so on, as they are in London. The need in London has arisen particularly because there are so many small ones around. I think it was needed in London and I do hope it works, and I am sure it will for 95 per cent of the time.

Q172  Chairman: So you think it might work in London, you think it is necessary?

Dr Hunter: I think it is necessary in London.

Q173  Chairman: You think at some stage it will go wrong and it will be barmy to have a national system?

Dr Hunter: Yes.

Q174  Chairman: I thought you were going to use only very cautious words in front of the Committee.

Dr Hunter: Perhaps I have been here too long, actually.

Chairman: Dr Hunter, you are a breath of fresh air as a witness, I have to tell you this.

Q175  Jonathan Shaw: The City Academies and the CTCs are outside?

Dr Hunter: Yes. The City Academies are sort of semi-outside, they have got funding agreements, which means they have got to have regard to what admissions forums, and so on, say. The CTCs are completely outside, and if you want to know what I think about that, I think that is wrong.

Q176  Chairman: Can we talk just for a moment about admissions and the satisfaction of parents. It seems to me there still is a message going back to parents. I was looking at the statistics. It is 96 per cent of parents nationally are offered a place in a school for which they have expressed a preference. If that is true, how do you account for only 91 per cent expressing satisfaction with the outcome of the admissions processes? It seems a bit daft, does it not?

Dr Hunter: I read that, I think it was in the Department's submission, and questioned that myself. I guess it is because the first figure was about people given a preference that they had listed, and often there is a big difference between their first preference and their third, and I think the second one was about "Are you generally satisfied with what happened to you?" and people tend to say "No" to that. I am sorry, I cannot explain that.

Q177  Chairman: It goes on to say, if 98 per cent of parents are offered places at schools for which they have expressed a preference, how come ten per cent of parents then appeal?

Dr Hunter: Yes; a good question, and I have not got the answer.

 

Q178  Chairman: The truth is, there are a lot of quite unhappy parents out there?

Dr Hunter: Yes. I return to the principal point I think I am making, which is that an admissions system is extraordinarily complex and extraordinarily difficult, because inevitably it leads to a position where a small number of parents do not get what they want, and what they want they want passionately for their children, for very obvious reasons. That is inevitable. In whatever system we have got, you are going to have that. In order for the system to survive, generally people have got to have faith in it, they have got to believe that the general system is run by people who are trying to do their best to be fair, objective and reasonable. That means that a lot of local people have got to be involved, have got to have some ownership of what is going on. If you have got that then, if you like, you can put up with the fact that there are a number of very unhappy people around, and having unhappy people around is going to be inevitable.

Q179  Chairman: There is a bit of a confidence trick really, in preference, is there not? When a parent is given three choices, the second preference is not the school that a parent wants?

Dr Hunter: It depends who they are, it depends where they are, frankly. I was the worst parent out of hell, and I took these decisions for my own children. We were offered a school for our two children, we said, "No, we don't want that one, we want another one." We were offered the other one, by which time we had changed our minds and wanted the first one back. These things happen, and sometimes you can have two schools you cannot make up your mind about, and sometimes for very bad reasons parents want this school instead of that school.

Q180  Chairman: Dr Hunter, that is true, but it is a lottery, is it not? There is a body of evidence which suggests that people who have the least chance are the people with the least wherewithal, the lower incomes, the least education, and the whole system really is predicated on an awful lot of people who are less knowledgeable, do not exercise their options, in the way perhaps a middle-class, professional parent would exercise those options. For a lot of parents from the working-class communities in many of our constituencies there is no choice, is not that the case?

Dr Hunter: I think we are back to the role of local authorities, and all the rest of it, because the general system that we have got is predicated, I think correctly, on the idea that you should be able to aspire to send your child to the local school, and we have this system, and, I think correctly, across the country, a feeling of community spirit. Where you have got that, it is inevitable that you have high-performing, posh schools in posh areas and schools that are finding it much more difficult to deliver the same sorts of results in other areas, and that is inevitable. Honestly, I do not see anything wrong with that. If you have got a good community school in a difficult estate which is doing good things for those children, adding value, then that seems to me to be fine.

Q181  Chairman: What I am pressing you on, Dr Hunter, is that if you have those two schools, those two sorts of neighbourhoods, what I resent, on behalf of some of my constituents, who are less articulate and less well-heeled, is that presumably they should have the option to apply to go to the high-achieving school, which is not the school on their rather run-down estate. To what extent do you think the process that we have now gives them that full opportunity to do so?

Dr Hunter: Clearly, it does not, because the school up the hill is oversubscribed by children who are more local to that school than the ones on the estate. Clearly, those parents would like the opportunity to send their child to that school up the hill but cannot do it because that is further away than their own school, and that is the way the system is operating. This is what I am trying to say, you will not deal with that problem through the admissions system, you will deal with that problem by making sure that those schools on those estates are improving fast and turn into schools which themselves are attractive to those local people. You do that not through the admissions system, you do it through all sorts of other ways, you do it through leadership and in-service training and support, and all the rest of it. You cannot turn a poor-performing school into a higher-performing school by forcing parents to send their children there.

Q182  Chairman: In an age of published test results and examination results, you will know as well as members of this Committee that what we see is an accelerated process of where there used to be quite a mixed community school, where parents were happy to send their children to the local school, even if they were more affluent and had a differentiated area. As those tests and exams have been published, there has been this much, much more mobile population amongst those either who can afford to travel or can afford to buy a house in a different area. In a sense, it is all very well saying, "Okay, it's up to those schools to become more attractive than the higher-achieving, with greater leadership;" is that totally honest?

Dr Hunter: Yes, I think it is. Of course, you were correct in what you were saying, but to counter that, to some extent, there is the fact that the difference between examination results in high-performing schools and local authority schools is narrowing, and that is what we must see. We must see a position in which those poor-performing schools are getting better, faster, than the higher-performing schools, and that is happening to some extent, and that is the hopeful side.

Chairman: I am not disagreeing with you on that, Dr Hunter.

Q183  Mr Chaytor: Just pursuing that issue, Chair. The impact of league tables on the exercise of parental preference, do you think it has made your job and the administration of the whole system easier or more difficult? You referred earlier to the importance of value added, where do you think value-added measures should be in this whole process?

Dr Hunter: It was interesting, looking at the Sheffield research, how low down league tables came in the way parents perceived their local school. Parents perceived their local school in a lot of other ways, behaviour and just looking at it, and league tables came quite low down that list, and that is interesting. I think people are getting to grips with league tables now, actually, the general population, and are beginning to put them into context. I do not think that people know the difference generally between value-added tables and other kinds of league tables. I think that, on the whole, they are looking at raw results.

Q184  Mr Chaytor: Do you think they ought to be looking at value added?

Dr Hunter: Yes, of course they should, but they tend not to, because local newspapers tend not to.

Q185  Mr Chaytor: When you say you cannot even out the mix of children through the admissions process, what is wrong with the system that applies in New Zealand, where oversubscribed schools are allocated by lottery, it is entirely at random? Would not this give the opportunity for less well-informed parents, who nevertheless aspire to the school up the hill, to get there?

Dr Hunter: I come back to the question of trust. They use that in America too, I may say, quite a lot. I do not think the British population, the English population, is familiar with that. I think they would think of that as being rather unfair, and certainly it is better if you can have some very clear, objective criteria, related to distance, or what have you.

Q186  Mr Chaytor: This is a nation which plays the Lottery every Wednesday night and every Saturday night, and you say they would not accept it in terms of the allocation of places in schools?

Dr Hunter: It is a matter for you to decide; you write this thing, not me, I just administer it. If you want lotteries then write it in there and I will administer it.

Q187  Chairman: I think that was about three to one to Dr Hunter. All of us do have this concern about certain people in our community having real choice, and others not. Of course, some people have the choice to enunciate that they would rather go begging on the streets than send their children to a comprehensive school.

Dr Hunter: You will not expect me to comment on that.

Q188  Chairman: I am sure you are not going to comment on that, Dr Hunter, and nor will I. The fact of the matter is that we do have, when things go wrong, objections and an adjudication process. If you have thrown the ball back into our court and said, "Look, you're the politicians, you make these laws," are there bits of what you have to administer at the moment that you would like to see strengthened, or improved, or just made better, because you have worked the system for over a year, you know it? Just advising us, is there something that would make your job more efficient and more effective?

Dr Hunter: I think that my principal demand of you is clarity. If you are very clear and if the Code is very clear about what you expect of me, as a Chief Adjudicator, of adjudicators, then we can administer it. Where we get into difficulties is where the rules seem to be changing somehow, perhaps because a judge takes a different view on what has been happening and what should happen. That is difficult. For example, this Code was less clear than the last one on distance as being an important factor to take into account in admissions procedures. Now that was unhelpful. It would have been much better if you had stuck to the old words and made it clear that is an important thing. What we need, as adjudicators, is clarity. I think, on the whole, we are managing reasonably well. I think, on the whole, we are administering the system, I hope, in the way that you want us to administer the system. Certainly we are managing to do it reasonably quickly, certainly we are managing to do it clearly, in producing all our stuff on the website, and all the rest of it, and I hope you are satisfied with it, that is all I can say.

Chairman: We are very satisfied with the evidence you have given us this morning. Can I thank you a great deal, Dr Hunter. It has been a really informative session and we value it very much. Thank you.