Oral evidence

Taken before the Education and Skills Committee on Wednesday 22 October 2003

Members present:

Mr Barry Sheerman, Chair
Mr David Chaytor
Valerie Davey
Jeff Ennis
Paul Holmes
Mr Kerry Pollard
Jonathan Shaw
Mr Andrew Turner

__________

Memoranda submitted by Dr Slater and Mr Douglas

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: DR BRYAN SLATER, Director of Education, Norfolk County Council, and MR ROBERT DOUGLAS, Team Leader Admissions, Education Leeds, examined.

Q189  Chairman: May I welcome Robert Douglas from Leeds to our deliberations. We will be joined by Bryan Slater, Director of Education for Norfolk. There has been a security alert at Liverpool Street Station and he is on his way in a taxi. He will be with us shortly but we will start Thank you, Robert Douglas, for joining us. You are Team Leader for Admissions, Education Leeds. Would you start by telling is a little about Education Leeds?

Mr Douglas: Certainly. Education Leeds is a private company formed in April 2002 to take over the provision of education services to Leeds City Council and to run most of the functions of the local education authority. It is a company that is wholly-owned by Leeds City Council and has a major involvement from Capita Educational Services. The company deals with most aspects, except early years education, in the provisional of education services for the city. Would you like me to tell you a little more about the city?

Q190  Chairman: Please do so.

Mr Douglas: The city is the second largest metropolitan area in England. We have a population of approximately 740,000 residents. Within the secondary sector, we have 42 secondary schools, 35 of which are community and seven voluntary aided, two Church of England voluntary aided and five Roman Catholic voluntary aided schools. The majority of those schools provide places for the 11 to 18 age group. Out of the 42, there are only four that are 11 to 16 schools. At the present time, we are at the peak of the secondary school population, and so there is very little flexibility in the system. Most of the secondary schools are full, with the exception of schools mainly within the central area of the city, which are not terribly popular and are not over-subscribed in terms of pupil applications, but do tend to fill up as a result of directly placing pupils at those schools because of that lack of flexibility. The secondary school numbers are forecast to begin to drop in 2004, but, more significantly, from 2005 onwards, we will begin to see quite a rapid drop in the number of secondary school admissions. Certainly up until the end of the decade, I think we are looking at 4,000 fewer secondary-aged pupils by 2010. Beyond that, we cannot really forecast with any degree of certainty but expect that fall to continue after that. At the present time, there is very little flexibility, which can cause us quite major issues in terms of schools admissions.

Q191  Chairman: How do you view the school admission process as it impacts? What is your assessment of it in terms of its effectiveness and efficiency as a system?

Mr Douglas: By and large, what tends to happen is that in terms of first preference satisfaction, Leeds is very much in line with the national average, and so we are looking at around about 91 per cent first preference satisfaction and 94 per cent parental satisfaction in terms of the first three preferences at secondary age. What happens is that the 6 to 9 per cent of parents who are unsuccessful in gaining a place become very vociferous. That small minority tends to predominate in the way that the admissions system is then perceived because it does take up an enormous amount of time. The legislative framework that now exists around admissions has made that 6 to 9 per cent of parents much more litigious. They are very well aware of their rights and are not slow in coming forward to take the admission authority to task if they are not gaining the school of their preference. I think, by and large, the system works reasonably well but there is a vociferous minority of parents that clearly perceives the system not to serve them in their best interests and they are not getting the schools of their choices. The word "choice" also confuses the situation. We do not very often hear about preference; we hear more about choice. That colours perception as well.

Q192  Chairman: May I welcome Dr Bryan Slater to our proceedings. Dr Slater, may I sympathise with you. I know you had a horrendous journey and troubles at Liverpool Street, which have also affected some of our staff. We have only just started. Mr Douglas, what about the private sector in this? Is there much provision of a private sector. As a Yorkshire MP, I know there is a very large Leeds Grammar School, but what is the private sector role in this?

Mr Douglas: There is a private sector in Leeds. In my experience, it has not impacted enormously on the profile of Leeds. I think it does impact to the north of the city where there is movement out of the city into North Yorkshire for private education. It is the more well off parent who possibly will look outside the metropolitan area in terms of private provision. That is something that, when I discuss admissions with head teachers of schools on the edge of the city, they refer to, that we do lose some more able children, in their belief to private education within North Yorkshire.

Q193  Chairman: How many appeals do you have of admissions? What is the level of appeals by parents? How many are successful?

Mr Douglas: We have a high level of appeals. That is partly to do with the fact that we publicise very well the mechanisms parents have in terms of challenging any placements that they are given. In 2003-04 across the primary and secondary sector, we had 2,400 appeals. The greater proportion of that will be in the secondary sector. I would say about one-fifth to one-third of those appeals are successful; most of them are not successful. We defend them reasonably well. Probably about one-fifth of those appeals are successful within the secondary sector, but we do have a high number of appeals at the present time. That is partly because we publicise how parents can access that system and also parental perception of inner city schools at the present time.

Q194  Mr Pollard: To follow up on the school numbers, you suggested that there might be 4,000 fewer in a very short period of time. I think you suggest in your memorandum that you would take the opportunity of scaling down the least successful schools, and then scaling up. That is one option. Another option might be to shut down one of the least popular schools. Have you thought of that?

Mr Douglas: We have undertaken quite a radical review of secondary and post-16 education in Leeds. The Schools Organisation Committee agreed in September a number of proposals which will effectively close four schools serving the central area of Leeds, which have traditionally been unpopular and not achieving the results we need. Two schools in the south are closing. We will lose about 180 places per year as a result of that. We are opening a new school in south Leeds to provide provision there. Of the other two schools, one is a voluptuary-aided Church of England school and the other is an all-boys school, which is effectively being replaced by proposals for a city academy within Leeds, and again I think we are losing about 180 places per year as a result of that. There has been quite a radical secondary review process, which has resulted in some closures. We are now moving on to Building Schools for the Future and using Building Schools for the Future as a mechanism to look at the supply and demand situation within the central area. Within Building Schools for Future, we have had some difficult discussions with schools about what their appropriate size should be against the demographic patterns that are emerging. That does include the possibility of amalgamation of two secondary schools, and again we will lose a significant number of places, and reducing the admission numbers at a number of other schools in terms of a replacement building through the BSF process. That then leads on to an outer ring of schools, which are the more successful schools, popular schools. The members within Leeds have taken the decision to maintain the provision within the inner city because these schools do serve distinct communities, the more deprived communities. Again, on the demographic patterns, if we are to maintain viability within the central area, we will have to look at engaging with those more popular, more successful schools in a discussion about their appropriate size as well. If we do not do something about that, they will simply, assuming that parental preference and admission patterns remain as they are, draw children out of the central area, and hence viability issues will creep in again, and I do not believe that certain communities will be served to best effect.

Q195  Jonathan Shaw: Mr Douglas, you have made a virtue of the fact that you have publicised the information about appeals in Leeds. Within that information, do you provide parents with the figures that you gave us in terms of the success rate?

Mr Douglas: I do not think we do, no. I do not think we give an indication of how successful or otherwise appeals might be.

Q196  Jonathan Shaw: On the one hand you are saying, "Appeal; it is your democratic right; this is the process", and so you are getting lots of appeals, but the chances of them getting through are pretty remote, on the figures?

Mr Douglas: Yes.

Q197  Jonathan Shaw: Do you think you should tell parents that and be straightforward? If you are giving them information, you are giving them false hope, it sounds to me.

Mr Douglas: In the spirit of transparency, yes, we probably should.

Q198  Chairman: Dr Slater, thank you for agreeing to help us with this inquiry on admissions. Thank you for your briefing. We know about some of your experience. I do not think any of our members are from the Norfolk area. We are intrigued by your experience. Where are you in terms of your own thinking on admissions? Mr Douglas has mentioned the high degree of happiness or contentment among parents. How do you feel that the admissions system serves your pupils at the moment?

Dr Slater: I will try to be brief but that is quite a wide-ranging question. I will do my best to answer it. It is a good opening interview question. First, I think sometimes people think Norfolk is purely leafy lanes, and it is not. We have one fairly sizeable conurbation in Norwich, which, as I have indicated in the paper, has a population of about 300,000. It is a reasonably large urban area. We also have considerable pockets of real deprivation. We have some of the most deprived wards in the UK inside some of the urban areas of Norfolk. When it comes to admissions, I suppose the way I would describe it is that there are three contexts for an authority like Norfolk. First, there is the urban context, where admission matters happen purely internally to an urban area like Norwich or Great Yarmouth. Secondly, there is the periphery of the urban area, where similar things happen to those described for Leeds. Then there is the purely rural area where effectively there is no competition between schools; you go to your local school or you travel 30 miles to the next nearest one. We have an interesting range of experiences of the effects of admissions arrangements. In the past, we have had a large proportion of foundation schools and in some parts almost all the secondary schools becoming grant-maintained, now foundation schools, so they are their own admission authorities, which has had a particular effect on the pattern of admissions in localities. We have seen the effects in the urban area that freedom of parental choice has had on school effectiveness. What I have tried to do in my submission, and where I would sit in this, is simply to argue that we should examine what we think we are achieving with the present arrangements because there is emerging evidence as to what the effects of the present arrangements are. I am not sure that they are the ones expected when those arrangements were originally put in place fundamentally with the 1988 Education Act. I can only understand those arrangements in terms of parental choice and children being worth money to a school as being someone's belief that that would improve the quality of education across the board. I do not believe that there is evidence that that is so. I believe there is very strong evidence that it causes a separation of education and standards where competition is rife between schools. I could evidence that, and have done in my paper in relation to what has happened in the Norwich conurbation over the years. There are those effects. There are also very important effects for us on the fringes of urban areas where the present legislation does not allow local authorities to keep places at schools when schools are over-subscribed. You know, for example, that there is going to be development in the area but you cannot say that you will keep another 25 per cent of the places for the new housing. You get those schools filling up, often with people coming out of the urban area, and then you do not have local places at local schools for local children. I believe there are significant problems with the present arrangements. The recent OFSTED report highlighted a number of those, and Norfolk would be a place where you could evidence some of the things that OFSTED was saying.

Chairman: Thank you for that. Previously in the inquiry, it was pointed out to this Committee that the eastern region is in fact the lowest performing region in the country in terms of children staying in education and going on to higher education. We understand your problems in the eastern region generally.

Q199  Mr Pollard: It does not apply across the whole of the eastern region, Chairman. I must defend my area. We do very well in Hertfordshire.

Dr Slater: I would say to the Committee that Norfolk has one of the lowest rates in the country for those staying on in education post-16. That is largely to do with the local economy.

Chairman: We did not have the feeling that there was a perfect rural idyl. Getting down to brass tacks, I invite Jeff Ennis to ask questions about the school admissions code of practice. We want to get in as many questions as possible, so please make your answers reasonably succinct,but either of you may come in as you wish.

Q200  Jeff Ennis: My first questions is about how education in the Leeds and Norfolk LEAs have promoted the use of the schools Code of Practice, both formally and informally.

Mr Douglas: Within our authority in Leeds, there was a tradition prior to Education Leeds taking over, of a culture whereby quite a significant number of secondary schools paid little heed to the education authority. Since Education Leeds has taken over, that has changed. The introduction of the revised code has helped that to some extent, because it does give a context in which, with my statutory duty to admit children and to provide places according to parental preference, I can be more forthright with our schools in terms of their legal responsibilities. We have engaged together within the various forums - head teacher meetings, governor forum and admissions forum - and are publicising and explaining responsibilities and duties across the board. I believe the situation in Leeds has improved over the last two years in terms of our ability, as an admissions authority, to be stronger and more direct with the schools for which we are the admissions authority and in engaging with the diocesan authorities as well. I still believe there is some way to go on that.

Dr Slater: My position is similar. Our context in secondary schools, however, is that in 62 secondary schools, 16 are their own admission authorities and 14 are former grant-maintained foundation schools. Our discussions have been in that context. We have had very constructive discussions and we will be operating the Code of Practice. We will have an admissions forum and local arrangements whereby admissions are more co-ordinated than they have been in the past. My view of the Code of Practice is that it remains a relatively cosmetic change.

Q201  Jeff Ennis: Of course admissions authorities only have to take notice of you; they do not have to act on what you say. Is that sufficient, do you think, or does it need to be beefed up to any degree?

Dr Slater: I would ask you: sufficient to what purpose, to what end? What system do you want?

Q202  Jeff Ennis: Is it sufficient to comply with the Code of Practice as laid down?

Dr Slater: Generally speaking, we have good relationships with foundation schools and with aided schools. We do have local arrangements that work but they are still built on the foundations of a system based on choice and the ability of schools which are their own admission authorities to set their own over-subscription criteria.

Mr Douglas: In our local area and from talking with other admission authorities, there is perhaps a localised view that the code is not prescriptive enough. As Dr Slater has said, to some extent it is cosmetic. Certainly, other admissions officers with whom I talk hold the view that it should be more prescriptive and that there should be a stronger framework in which we can implement and deliver admissions policies.

Q203  Jeff Ennis: I am not talking specifically about your area, Mr Douglas. You mention that because we have a national standards framework for achievement across all schools, this is often working against pupils with special educational needs or pupils with EBD, or whatever. From an admissions' point of view, what can we do to try and rectify this contradictory situation?

Mr Douglas: It is a difficult issue and it is one of the biggest challenges that faces Education Leeds. The recent OFSTED report is quite helpful in encouraging local authorities, admissions, schools organisations and school improvements to work more closely together. I certainly think that is one area at which local authorities need to look. I have developed within my service good links with behaviour attendants and work very closely with the behaviour attendance service in dealing with the admission of challenging children. We have quite a significant problem in Leeds. A significant number of children exhibit a challenge. These children are directed mainly to the same schools time after time. That leads to a polarisation in terms of provision and how school provision is perceived by communities. I mentioned in the briefing notes that a number of head teachers, when I engaged with them on the challenging children issue, felt that they need, one, to meet floor targets, and two, to perform and strive to meet national targets. Admission is just one issue. A challenging child can push them to the absolute limit and that can affect their target for attendance, their five A* to C, and we are getting more and more of that. We have to find some way for a more equitable distribution. To some extent, it is up to the local education authority to use the structures and frameworks that currently exist. From a personal point of view, in my day-to-day work, I have no compunction about directing a school to admit a challenging child if I feel that is necessary. However, that sets up a negative relationship with the school,. It is not a good relationship then for the child to be admitted to that school, and all the things that follow on from that. This is a tremendously wide-ranging issue. Admissions is just one part of that. We need to develop linkages with school improvements. We need to look at things like funding streams as well. In terms of funding social inclusion, there are about 15 to 20 different distribution factors. There are many issues that impinge on that

Dr Slater: I cannot really add much to that. My situation is similar. Precisely the same dilemmas apply in relation to children with special educational needs. I would only add that I do not believe that the needs of those children are put to the front of the queue in our current system and they should be.

Q204  Paul Holmes: This is not one of the main questions. I am picking up on what Robert Douglas was saying, that he felt no compunction to direct a school to take a child. In reality, if it is a popular, over-subscribed school, you cannot do that because you have no places anyway. The school that has spare places, for whatever reason, ends up with a much higher concentration of children with special needs, simply because it has spare places and it cannot refuse to take these children.

Mr Douglas: That is true, but we have to try to get some equity into the system. We engage with our head teachers on a fairly regular basis about challenging children. Because we are at the peak of our secondary population and there is not that flexibility in the system, we have to look in some cases at directing schools that are full because there is no reasonable alternative. It is not reasonable, in my view, in some cases to push the challenging child into a school that is already overwhelmed with children with existing challenging behaviour. That will do the school no good and it is not going to do that pupil any good. Therefore, we have to find some ways of making a more equitable distribution. The OFSTED report talks about local agreement to do that, and that is fine and we should be working on that, but we encounter a lot of resistance from the more popular schools and increasingly from those schools that do have surplus capacity because they are beginning, in some cases, not to cope.

Q205  Paul Holmes: If it is a more popular school that is over-subscribed and it has a greater degree of independence on admissions - it is a faith school, a city academy or one of the old direct grammar schools from the past - you could try all you like to get that child in there and say that school is the only one able to take that child, but the school can refuse.

Mr Douglas: They can do and they do. Then we engage in a discussion with the school about how they can assist us. The Code does say that an admission authority can direct another admission authority if that is the only reasonable alternative. I have done that on a number of occasions because I believe that is the only reasonable alternative.

Q206  Paul Holmes: That was just to pick up on some of the things that Jeff Ennis asked. In the written submissions you have made, you have both been fairly critical of the concept of parental preference, saying that in reality it does not exist, by and large, for all sorts of reasons. One of the factors in parental preference is the cost. If you do not want your child to go to the local school, there is a cost to get your child to somewhere else that is further away. One of the anomalies that arises with that is that if you want to send your child to a faith school some miles away, the local education authority will pay the transport costs, which can be quite expensive. Bryan Slater is talking about a different category but he says that his authority is moving children out daily because the local school is full and they are planning for new housing and the costs are £900,000 a year. It costs over £1,000 pounds for a child to travel to school, although that might be a bit less in an urban area. Recently I was talking to a small church school in Monyash, a village in Derbyshire. It is a Church of England school that has a very strong religious ethos. Anybody in the village who does not want their child to go there because of its very strong religious ethos does not have much choice unless they can personally afford to transport their child some miles away to the next village school, if they can get in there in the first place. No LEAs will pay the transport costs of parents who wants their child to go to a school that does not have a strong religious ethos. Am I right in that?

Dr Slater: Yes, that is the case.

Mr Douglas: Yes.

Q207  Paul Holmes: Yet, the schools admissions Code of Practice says that the arrangements should enable parents' preferences for the schools of their choice to be met to the maximum extent possible. Across the country that is clearly not being met. The transport costs can be met if the parents' preference is for the faith school but not if it is for a school that is not a faith school and the local school happens to be a faith school.

Dr Slater: No, I do not think it works that way round, if I have understood what you said correctly. Parents can obtain a place at any school, whether it is a faith school or a community school. The question is whether someone will pay their transport costs in order to go there. Those are two distinct issues.

Q208  Paul Holmes: In effect, there is a practical, physical barrier to parents who are less well off because they cannot afford the transport costs of £1,000 a year?

Dr Slater: That is so in practice to attend the school of their choice, particularly in rural areas, yes. Could I mention, though, in that context why local authorities take that line? The cost of home-to-school transport in Norfolk is currently £20 million a year out of a total schools budget of something like £400 million. That is a significant element of money already being spent on home-to-school transport in order to carry out our minimum statutory duty.

Q209  Paul Holmes: Financially the system is loaded in favour of one particular group in that instance against other people across the country - not in your area, but everywhere?

Dr Slater: In practice, it is easier for more affluent parents to exercise parental choice.

Q210  Paul Holmes: On a related theme to that of transport costs, when we were taking evidence some time ago on the expansion of specialists schools, we talked to the DfES officials and to Ministers about one of the anomalies there. They are saying that specialist schools, which are expanding rapidly, are supposed to specialise in a particular service, say, modern languages or engineering. I said that surely this is not going to work unless the local education authority pays the transport costs for the parents who cannot afford transport costs but want to send their child to the specialist engineering school five miles away or the specialist language school seven miles away. The DfES seemed to back off again, presumably for the reason you have just given, by saying that they do not intend to do that. Surely, that undermines the whole concept of specialist schools, parental choice and specialisation?

Mr Douglas: Yes, it makes it more difficult for certain groups of parents to access those schools, undoubtedly.

Dr Slater: However, it depends on how you view the notion of specialist schools. In my authority, we have gone down the road of trying to have a strategic set of different specialism geographically located and an expectation on specialist schools that they will support neighbouring schools in their area of specialism. We see this as a network of expertise which is intended to improve all schools, not necessarily something which should result in parental preferences for a particular specialism because all schools will offer those areas of work but they will not necessarily be the experts in them. We have tried to go down that road in relation to specialism. Almost every secondary school in Norfolk is either a specialist school or on the road to becoming a specialist school. We have tried to do that in a way whereby we have encouraged schools to going into different geographical locations for those specialism that will help the system best.

Q211  Paul Holmes: In the rural areas of Norfolk, as in the rural areas of Derbyshire where I worked as a teacher, that will not really work in the sense that you have a geographical spread but the geographical spread from this specialist school is then 20 miles down the road from the next secondary school?

Dr Slater: However, if you see the future as co-operation between schools and not competition, then you can make that improve the system. Given that we have specialism and the system we have, I see that as a way of everybody upping their game.

Q212  Paul Holmes: The final point is this. That is so, although, as both of you say in your written submissions, the existence of school league tables and competition actually can work totally against what you have just said.

Dr Slater: With the present arrangements whereby we incentivise the individual behaviour of schools, as opposed to the collective behaviour of schools, that is so.

Q213  Jonathan Shaw: On the matter of the criteria, which has been described as a cosmetic change by you, Mr Slater, and endorsed by you, Mr Douglas, last week I asked the Chief Adjudicator about the priority of children in care in terms of the over-subscriptions criteria. He said that should be the top priority, the very top, above sibling status. He said that there were still a number of schools that had not placed this as the top priority in their criteria. Is that the experience of your schools in your area?

Mr Douglas: No. In Leeds, we have only five voluntary-aided secondary schools and they have come on board and changed their admission policies to put that as top priority. The Education in Leeds policy has now changed that so that that is top priority as well. We do not have a particular issue about that in Leeds.

Dr Slater: I had a bit of time this morning on my hands, and I had with me our admissions booklet called Parents, which lists the over-subscription criteria of every secondary school. I quickly read through it, thinking that someone might ask that kind of question. I have not done a statistical analysis of it. Of the schools that are their own admission authority, some have adopted that as a criterion, but certainly not the majority. Only a few have done that.

Q214  Jonathan Shaw: Would it be a function of your role, in terms of working with those admission authorities within your area, to bring to the attention of those admission authorities the words of the Chief Adjudicator that we heard last week at this Committee?

Dr Slater: Indeed, absolutely, but we have no way of enforcing that. Those schools are able to set their own criteria.

Q215  Jonathan Shaw: Indeed, but you can bring it to their attention?

Dr Slater: Indeed we can.

Q216  Mr Turner: To follow that up, we have now established, I think, that Mr Douglas said that children exhibiting challenging behaviour should be the top priority; Dr Slater said it should be children with special educational needs who should be the top priority; and the Chief Adjudicator says it should be children in care. Who is better to decide these things: the Government, the local authority, the schools, or the Chief Adjudicator?

Mr Douglas: I am not sure that I said that children with challenging behaviour should be the top priority. I was saying that we need to get an equity into a system to enable us to admit children with challenging behaviour into school in a timely fashion, and that does not happen. I do not think I was saying that they should be top priority in admissions criteria.

Dr Slater: It is the case, and it is sad that it is the case, but these are often the same children.

Q217  Mr Turner: My question was: who should decide?

Dr Slater: In a democratic society, we should allow politicians to make these decisions. We are administrators. We can run a system that you set down for us in law. I think it is for the politicians to come to those decisions. The point we have both been trying to make is that those with the highest need, with the most difficulty, should be given some priority in the overall scheme of things. The present arrangements do not secure that.

Q218  Mr Turner: My local authority, which is that of the Isle of Wight, run by a local independent coalition, to be politically clear, certainly believes that more decisions should be taken at local level and fewer decisions at government level. Which politicians should make these decisions?

Dr Slater: You are asking us a political question and we are not politicians. My view is that we are giving you evidence about the effects of the present arrangements. It is for politicians to decide whether or not those arrangements are suitable and whether or not to change them. As to the effects, however, I would say in theory, and as an administrator of these things, that the more you have local decision-making, the more the effects of one person's decisions impact on somebody else. That is something to which we have not given sufficient attention, in my view, in the past. We have to decide as a democratic society where to take these decisions and understand the effects of the decisions on our society and on the children within it. That is what we are trying to help you with today.

Mr Douglas: May I add that I think at present, with the framework that exists, there is a lot of local interpretation of admissions law and how that impacts within a locality. Co-ordinated arrangements go some way to standardising that, but it still allows for local determination within wider local areas. That is possibly going to be a difficulty in terms of effective administration of co-ordinated arrangements. This comes back to the point I made earlier about perhaps there being more prescription within a national code of practice. I think it is quite difficult within an authority like ours, where four or five other authorities border us, to operate different systems for different groups of children. It really comes back to that point: should there be more prescription on a national basis? That begs the question: should we be moving to a national system of admissions that is the same from Cornwall to Cumbria?

Q219  Mr Turner: Since you have asked the question, what do you think?

Mr Douglas: I think that would make my job a lot easier!

Q220  Mr Turner: Could I ask Dr Slater a question about his paper where he describes the current system as purely market-driven?

Dr Slater: Not perhaps purely but the fundaments of the system are based on parental choice and children being assigned a sum of money. The fundaments of a market underpin the arrangements for school admissions, yes.

Q221  Mr Turner: You have answered my question because I think you have accepted that it is not purely market-driven.

Dr Slater: Perhaps that was not appropriate.

Q222  Mr Turner: May I read something from Public Finance, and it is very brief: Inner city comprehensives tend to fail mainly because they have to cope with children who suffer from poverty, an inadequate grasp of English or disrupted home backgrounds or all three. Do you agree with that?

Mr Douglas: That is a very loaded question. No, I do not think I do agree entirely. It does impact upon inner city comprehensives and I certainly think in Leeds we can see some effect of that, but what those inner city comprehensives are doing with a difficult client group is actually very good. I do not think we are able to take enough account of that. The system as it presently stands does not support that. It is a very loaded question and I would not entirely agree with it. There is an impact in terms of national targets, but the work that goes on in those schools is of an extremely high quality and, by and large, is serving that client group very well indeed.

Dr Slater: I very much agree with that. Some schools have a much more difficult job than other schools to reach national targets. If failure is defined in relation to those national targets rather than in terms of how well a school is doing in its circumstances, then the effect is clear. What I hope and what I work for is a system in which every school is a good school because I think every child is entitled to go to a good school. I do not believe it is necessary for some schools to fail for other schools to be good. We can have a system in which all schools are good schools. We may need to be more subtle in the way in which we judge schools as to whether they are failing or not in their circumstances.

Chairman: We move on to school admissions authorities.

Q223  Valerie Davey: Mr Slater, you said that within your authority there were 16 other admission authorities. Can you tell us how you have co-ordinated that approach and whether this increases the likelihood of schools choosing and having their preference rather than parents, or whether that is largely a factor of over-subscription?

Dr Slater: I will give you a very straightforward answer: it is because in an authority like Norfolk we have very widely geographically distanced schools. Some of those schools are 50 miles distant one from the other. We have local arrangements. Our co-ordination of admission arrangements under the code will happen on a geographic basis, so that we take account of local context and so that what we are doing is working with groups of schools. The way in which we need to do that is slightly different in the proportion of schools which are their own admission authorities - for example, in Great Yarmouth, all but one of the high schools are their own admissions authority. That is a very singular context in which to work. The way in which admissions are made, of course, is in relation to over-subscription. If a school is not over-subscribed in the first place, the admission over-subscription rules do not apply. What you tend to get in an urban context is that popular schools are always over-subscribed and unpopular schools are never over-subscribed. It is then that the effect of the individual school's own over-subscription criteria clicks in and has an effect on the system. This is one of the reasons why it is hard for schools which are seen as unpopular to climb out of that; they are always in a situation where they are at the end of the line when it comes to everybody having had their own over-subscription criteria applied to the system. Does that help?

Q224  Valerie Davey: It does but in the context that you have clearly set out - and we are looking for way in which we either change the law or use best practice - have you either good advice for other authorities or are you saying that this aspect of it does not work until you change?

Dr Slater: I think we have already said, in a way, that you can go so far down the road of securing an equitable system and a system where every school has a chance to be a good school; but you cannot guarantee it. However well and however cordial your arrangements are with schools that are their own admission authorities, they remain their own admission authorities.

Q225  Valerie Davey: Could I ask whether Leeds has a difference experience in this same context of how many other admission authorities you are working with within Leeds, and then the effect of it?

Mr Douglas: It is really the voluntary-aided sector.

Q226  Valerie Davey: The seven?

Mr Douglas: There are seven, two of which are not particularly popular voluntary-aided schools. I do not think the impact is as great in Leeds because we do not have foundation schools. It is still a question of certain schools remaining popular and over-subscribed and other schools remaining under-subscribed, and that cycle continues. Parents will preference the voluntary-aided sector because they perceive it to be better. That is a difficult one to determine. Within co-ordinated arrangements, we are talking with the diocesan authorities about how they seek to establish the validity of a parent's preference in terms of their religious preference.

Q227  Valerie Davey: Do either of you have an admissions forum? I admit that, seeing the context here, it is the first time of this for me. I do not have any experience of an admission forum. Do either of you work with them and, if so, have they been beneficial, and should the rest of us know more about them?

Mr Douglas: We have an admissions forum. Personally, I think it could be a lot stronger than it is.

Q228  Valerie Davey: Can you tell us a bit about it for those of us who have no direct experience of that?

Mr Douglas: The admissions forum is an independent group, independent of the local education authority, and has been established to determine on particularly contentious admission issues. If there is disagreement between admission authorities, the admissions forum is a body where that problem can go. The admissions forum will then make some form of judgment on that and seek to broker an effective partnership. They are potentially very useful. Certainly, I am very happy to work with an admissions forum but I would like it to be a strong body, one that does have clout and power effectively to determine admission disputes.

Q229  Valerie Davey: Are you saying it does not at the moment?

Mr Douglas: I do not think it does at the moment, no.

Q230  Valerie Davey: Dr Slater, can we ask for your experience as well.

Dr Slater: We are just establishing them now, as a result of the Code of Practice, in relation the 2004 admission round which we are just entering. We will be having four local versions of this because of our geography, but, yes, they will work in that way. They are a step forward. But they can go only so far: they do not actually, in the end, have teeth.

Q231  Valerie Davey: I have two supplementaries specifically on that. Will they in time, do you think, determine or give further influence to changes in admissions policy? Secondly, do they work cross-border, between local authorities.

Mr Douglas: Other authorities send representatives to other authority forums. For example, in Leeds we have a representative from North Yorkshire who attends our forum. I do not think at the present time, in the way that they are constituted, they have any specific power to change admissions policies. I think that would be a difficult area for them to stray into because it is a function of the elected local council to set the admissions policy. But certainly I think they should have a role in advising on the effectiveness of an admissions policy and how it is operating within an area.

Dr Slater: Yes, very much the same.

Valerie Davey: Thank you.

Q232  Jonathan Shaw: Dr Slater, Mr Douglas, if you were a head teacher of a school that was not popular - both of you have described such schools, both of you have those within your responsibilities - and the local education authority, the main admission authority, kept on saying, "Because you have some surplus places: you have got to take this child, you have got to take this child, you have got to take this child," and so it went on, and the school then became more unpopular, the behaviour got worse, standards went down, recruitment became more difficult, retention became more problematic - all those things - would you think, "I've tried my level best to talk to the local education authority but they keep doing this to me. They are really not interested," and might you be tempted to think, "The only way I can get round this, to bring a bit more fairness into the system, so that some of the other schools within the area take some of the difficult, challenging children, is to become a foundation school, become my own admissions authority"? To bring up the drawbridge, effectively, saying, "This is my last stand. This is all I can do to bring a bit more stability, to bring a bit more of a mixed intake, to give parents out there some confidence that this school is not one which takes all the troublesome kids."

Dr Slater: You are right, that is a natural way for someone to think. Could I go back to the situation in one urban area in my own authority where every secondary school did become a foundation school except one, which heroically withstood all those pressures and all those temptations in order that there was a place where we could find a school place for local youngsters. But people make their own choice, do they not, as to how they behave within the framework of the law that we have? You have to take a view in these matters, in my own personal view, about whether the system is for the children or not. If the system is for the children, then we have to have arrangements where we can secure a good school place for every child. Some of the things about which we have given evidence this morning are based on knowledge of circumstances where that is extremely difficult, precisely because people have been put in the position over the years that you describe.

Mr Douglas: I do not really have anything to add to that. I think it would be an entirely natural reaction. It would be something to consider if you were put in that position. And it is tremendously difficult for some schools. Without a doubt, some schools, certainly within Leeds, are suffering as a result of that constant influx of children, partly because of the area they serve and the nature of the child who is that little bit more challenging, so even a straightforward admission or in-year admission can cause difficulty. There are certainly two or three, and possibly four, schools in Leeds where that is now a real problem and those schools are suffering as a result of it.

Q233  Jonathan Shaw: Where does it end with those schools in Leeds that you are talking about? Do you just sort of bump along and do the best you can?

Mr Douglas: We are trying very hard to engage with those schools to give them perhaps a little bit of breathing space and holding off from admitting the more challenging children and seeking to admit them to other schools. We are engaged in that discussion, we are actively working with our community of schools to try to get some equity into this and to look at what other strategies are available. One of the things at which we are looking is trying to develop Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4 Intervention and Assessment Centres where children who are exhibiting challenging behaviour can go, so they are not excluded from school and they do not become an admission issue.

Q234  Jonathan Shaw: In terms of children excluded from school, what is your experience where a child is placed in a school because that is the only available place, so they are effectively from out of area or another estate - which brings its own problems? Have you experienced the likelihood of those particular children staying put at that school? Or do they just abscond? This is certainly what heads of schools say to me: "They are placed here, they are here for a week, the kids from such and such estate soon work out they are not from that area and that creates some confrontation. This is a child who has a whole series of problems anyway, so they are off. Within a week, I will not see them again."

Mr Douglas: That does happen, but conversely where a child is taken out of their local circumstance and the influences that that local circumstance may have upon them, sometimes they are actually successful in a school that is not in their area. So it does work the other way.

Q235  Jonathan Shaw: I appreciate that.

Dr Slater: Absolutely the same experience.

Q236  Jonathan Shaw: Do your authorities both have a register of all the children? Do you have a central register of all the children in your LEA area?

Dr Slater: Yes.

Q237  Jonathan Shaw: You do. And you know where every child is.

Dr Slater: We think we do. And that is the problem.

Q238  Jonathan Shaw: Mr Douglas?

Mr Douglas: I would say we think we do, as well.

Q239  Jonathan Shaw: Do you think that is a similar pattern across the country?

Mr Douglas: I suspect it probably is.

Q240  Jonathan Shaw: "We think we do." What is making you say, "We think we do"? What are at the edges of this doubt?

Mr Douglas: The child who will appear as a casual admission with a history of non-attendance at a school. That may amount to a couple of years and that concerns me. How does that child fall out of the system?

Dr Slater: Similarly. Official exclusions is one thing: those are children we know about. But there is a lot of anecdotal evidence - but it is very difficult to pin down - about what is often termed "unofficial exclusions" where a youngster gets into difficulty in the school. They may be near to the end of their school career, and it is not necessarily seen within this school or by the parents as being in everyone's interest for there to be a formal exclusion. You may find that those are the youngsters who are on the street corners when they are supposed to be in school and they may be regularly not in the school. It is very hard to pin down, but there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that those kinds of things do happen, and that is why we say we think we know where the youngsters are, because some children we think - we have no evidence to the contrary - are supposed to be in school, sometimes are not.

Q241  Jonathan Shaw: The group to which you were referring: absenteeism for a couple of years, put from one authority into another, these are potentially high risk children, are they not?

Dr Slater: Yes.

Q242  Jonathan Shaw: High risk children. The type of children that the Green Paper concerns itself about.

Mr Douglas: Undoubtedly. They are vulnerable children.

Q243  Jonathan Shaw: What could be done to allow you to sit in front of us giving evidence and to say, "I am much more confident about knowing where all the children are all the time"? Or is that beyond the boundary?

Dr Slater: It is about people's behaviour, is it not? You can regulate everything as much as you want but, in the end, how people behave in the system when there is a lot of devolved autonomy - and we would all argue for the value of devolution of decision-making to schools ... Fundamentally, in many ways that works -----

Q244  Jonathan Shaw: Does the issue of so many different admission authorities and people being self-excluded ... On the one hand that might be a chaotic family and non-attendance; on the other hand, it might be a pregnant teenager in a grammar school, for example - you know, "We don't want any fuss, we will not have an exclusion. It does not look good for you, it does not look good for the school." Those are the two extremes in terms of the socio-economics. There are lots of different admission authorities, does that heighten risk in terms of a particular vulnerable group of children? Therefore this is an issue that needs to be taken account of when we are looking at the Green Paper Every Child Matters.

Dr Slater: Absolutely, yes. That is why I did not talk about behaviour within the present system, because we cannot create the kind of safe and secure system for children if .... It is all in the end down to how people behave in the system and what their cultures are and what their belief systems are. We have incentivised behaviour which enables schools to think it right to put the school above the child. In some cases, their exam results are the overriding factor in how they might handle a particular youngster. While no one is saying that schools should not have regard to their academic performance - of course they should - the issue is whether the way in which they do in practice handle a youngster is in the interests of that child, and, for a child with high levels of need and a child who may potentially be at risk, whether we are currently giving schools the incentives to deal with that youngster in relation to their need.

Q245  Jonathan Shaw: You could argue in fact that it is not the admissions authority; it is the way we encourage those admission authorities to behave.

Dr Slater: It is both, is it not: you have the system and then it is how people behave within the system that gives you what you get.

Mr Douglas: I think with the number of different admission authorities it is much more difficult to keep a track of certain children.

Chairman: Kerry Pollard wanted to come in on this.

Q246  Mr Pollard: Going back to the forum, how do you access a forum? I am confused about how it all hangs together, because you fill the application form in for a school, you do not get your school and then you appeal, then do you go to a forum and then do you go to an adjudicator? When does it actually stop and how does it all knit together?

Mr Douglas: The forum does not actually deal with individual applications for admission; it deals with disputes between admission authorities.

Q247  Mr Pollard: And they would go to their adjudicator subsequently.

Mr Douglas: Yes, it can go to adjudication. For example, if there is a dispute between the admission authority and a school over its admission limit, that would go to a forum, and if it cannot be resolved in the forum it could go to adjudication. But individual parents do not access the forum.

Dr Slater: They have access to an appeal system, and every local authority has to have its appeal system, but the outcome of the appeal system is binding on all parties.

Q248  Mr Pollard: I am getting the view that you both suggest that if admissions policy was different we would not have any failing schools. That is coming strongly across to me. I could argue, and I have a case in my own constituency, Marlborough School - it was failing five years ago, a new was head teacher put in, freedom, money, and all of that, and now it is oversubscribed - that schools can turn round. Would you comment on that. Perhaps failing schools it is not about admissions entirely, but leadership, funding and a whole range of things.

Dr Slater: Of course it is about those things, but we can either make it easier or less easy for all schools to be good schools, to be successful schools. I personally want to live in a world where it is possible for every school to be a good school.

Q249  Mr Pollard: I think we would all agree with you there.

Dr Slater: I do not want to live in one where it is impossible for some to be good. We have a system which makes it very difficult for some schools to be good schools.

Q250  Chairman: Is it a council of despair that we are hearing here? Dr Slater, you are a director of education and you are saying that at the end of the day you do not have any power, or you do not have sufficient power, to stop some schools in your patch being discriminated against; in other words, they end up having to take more than their fair share of difficult pupils. You are saying, as a director of education, that is inevitable and there is nothing you can do about it.

Dr Slater: I am saying that that is so and that it is a consequence of the present system, even with the present Code of Practice, which will enable us to work more effectively, with the range of ... It is not just the other admission authorities. I mean, that is the sharpest end of it, but of course popularity and lack of popularity operates across schools for which the local authority is the admissions authority. That is true also. I have tried to say that the present system results in certain consequences, and one of the main consequences is that, even with the Code of Practice, even with admissions forums, even with better coordination of admission arrangements, admission in practice does not result in even intakes across schools. It is more difficult for some schools, therefore, to be as successful as others.

Q251  Chairman: Mr Douglas said earlier that he does have the power to direct a school to take a pupil.

Dr Slater: Yes, he could do that.

Q252  Chairman: Why can that not be used more widely?

Dr Slater: You can use it in certain circumstances, where you cannot otherwise provide a school place. You can direct a foundation school to admit a pupil, where otherwise you would not have a school place. But that cannot be the basis of a system. It is only at the tail end of the system that such things come into play as a final safeguard.

Q253  Mr Chaytor: Is there any case whatsoever - because I think this underpins a lot of what we have been talking about in the last few minutes - for individual schools to be their own admission authorities?

Mr Douglas: That is a very difficult question to answer. From a personal point of view, I would prefer to see a common admission authority. I think it would be far easier to coordinate more effectively and I think it would be more in the interests of a greater number of parents to have one admission authority that deals with admission into school. That is a very simplistic answer to the question. I think there are probably more strands to it and more depth.

Q254  Mr Chaytor: Would that be based in Whitehall?

Mr Douglas: No. I do not think it should be based in Whitehall. Within a national framework of a national admissions policy, local education authorities operating a national admission policy across the board for all schools within its jurisdiction. I would not suggest for a moment it should be based at Whitehall; it should be within the local education authority. But, to have one policy that is common to all schools operated by the admission authority for that area, I think would greatly simplify the system for parents.

Dr Slater: If we want to design an education system in which the needs of all children are best met and the greatest good is delivered to the greatest number and there is equity and the greatest chance for all schools to be good schools, then that is what you would need to have. That is simply based on experience that the present system does not maximise educational good for all children.

Chairman: Jeff?

Jeff Ennis: That is the question I was going to ask, Chairman.

Chairman: Right, we will move on to the next section, school admissions criteria.

Q255  Jonathan Shaw: Greenwich. Did Greenwich affect you?

Dr Slater: It affected everybody.

Q256  Jonathan Shaw: It affected some more than others.

Dr Slater: Yes.

Chairman: I think Jonathan is trying to tease out the difference. People say that London coped with Greenwich in a different way from outside London. Is that correct?

Q257  Jonathan Shaw: No, it was not.

Mr Douglas: It affects us, in that we do have quite a significant migration into Leeds from the south and that can lead to contentions within local communities, where a local community perceives its local school to be X school, even though it may not be their closest school, and children from that community are displaced by children who live outside of the authority being admitted to that school over and above those particular children, and therefore they are not successful in their preference for that school.

Q258  Jonathan Shaw: Representative distribution of pupil ability within schools. Is that a desirable outcome to an effective admissions policy?

Dr Slater: You keep asking us these questions as to what is desirable and -----

Q259  Jonathan Shaw: Okay.

Dr Slater: -- the way I keep answering them is that it depends on what you want as politicians.

Q260  Jonathan Shaw: Certainly. As politicians, in order to come to a judgment, we ask experts. If we just sat in a room amongst ourselves and came to a decision, and said, "We think this ..." certainly educational experts would say, "You never consulted with us. You did not ask us." That would be my reply to you.

Dr Slater: Okay. I was not meaning to be challenging, I am trying to be clear. My view would be that if you believe that it is best to have a system in which all schools have an equal chance to be good schools, because that produces the greatest good for the greatest number of children and the greatest equity for the greatest number of children, then having a balanced intake is clearly going to assist that. That is not to say that schools which currently have more challenging children and so on cannot be good schools. They can. They can.

Q261  Mr Turner: I am getting confused, because when I quoted that passage from Public Finance you were both very quick to say, "But these may be good schools because they are doing a good job." Surely you measure a school by what it does with the pupils it has, not what it does with the pupils it does not have.

Mr Douglas: Yes, but national targets do not support that.

Q262  Mr Turner: No, I am interested in good schools, not national targets.

Mr Douglas: But good schools are defined by national targets by and large.

Q263  Mr Turner: I think by you, but they are not by me and they are not by most parents, are they?

Mr Douglas: Well, parents make judgments about schools on a variety of factors but they do look at the grades that are achieved by schools in making those decisions. So, I am not sure. I think most parents do take national targets into account.

Dr Slater: I agree absolutely with that. This is why this is not a straightforward issue. This is a complex issue. The question is, I think: What is a good school? I think I would define a good school as one which is capable of enabling every child to maximise their potential.

Q264  Mr Turner: Every child in the school?

Dr Slater: Every child in the school to maximise their potential. It is harder to do that with an imbalanced intake than it is with a balanced intake, simply because with a balanced intake you are dealing with a normal distribution curve of abilities and it is easier then to meet the needs of that range of children. Children have very different needs. A school which has a much higher proportion of children with high levels of need, in order to maximise their potential clearly has a more difficult job than a school which does not.

Q265  Mr Turner: You assert that a normal distribution curve ... Actually, I cannot remember what you asserted about it but you referred to a normal distribution curve, but many areas, the catchment areas of particular schools, do not have a normal distribution curve of population in terms of ability. Are you saying that you should strive to achieve that, even if it means pupils having to go past their nearest school to boost or lower the ability range in a school which has an unbalanced ability?

Dr Slater: The very fact that we have to have that debate in this country is a measure of how little we understand these matters, in my view. I do not take the view that children from more deprived areas have lower academic ability than children from more affluent areas; I do take the view that it is harder for them to achieve academically at school because of the background that would or would not support that kind of academic performance. We have to be very careful in thinking about how we define those matters in relation to school admissions.

Q266  Chairman: Mr Douglas, you are nodding.

Mr Douglas: Yes, I would agree with what Dr Slater has said.

Chairman: One last point on that, Andrew, or shall we move on?

Mr Turner: I think we had better move on while I think about it.

Chairman: You do not agree, but we are moving on.

Mr Turner: No, I need to think about it.

Chairman: We will be able to come back in a moment. We are moving on to selection.

Q267  Mr Chaytor: Could I ask about the extent of unofficial selection in your two areas and whether any schools were partially selecting before 1997 and what has happened to partial selection since 1997.

Dr Slater: We have, I think, two schools that have some partial selection still and they were there before 1997.

Q268  Mr Chaytor: Has anyone challenged that since 1997?

Dr Slater: Challenged it? The only mechanism for challenging it will be through the admissions forums, when/if it is seen locally that those partial admission arrangements do lead to an overall problem in the pattern of admissions. And probably we are not quite there yet.

Q269  Mr Chaytor: It can be challenged through the adjudicator.

Dr Slater: Yes, it could happen through the adjudicator. No, that has not happened.

Q270  Mr Chaytor: The schools partially selecting have continued to partially select but it has not been a contentious issue in your area.

Dr Slater: It has not got to the point where that is seen as a significant problem across the local pattern of admissions, yes.

Q271  Mr Chaytor: In Leeds, was there any partial selection?

Mr Douglas: Not of which I am aware. We do have one secondary school that selects for performing arts on aptitude: ten per cent of its intake for performing arts on aptitude. That is all we have in Leeds at the present time. The issue of informal selection is a bit more difficult. There has been some evidence of the more popular schools using some form of informal selection to get children into schools, which we have begun to challenge quite strenuously with those particular schools.

Mr Chaytor: What do you think are the most common divisors by which notionally non-selective schools are in reality selecting by ability by using different methods?

Q272  Chairman: Yes, what are these informal methods?

Mr Douglas: I have known of circumstances where schools have interviewed parents and children and portrayed it as part of the admissions process. That has happened and we have challenged that.

Q273  Mr Chaytor: That will be outlawed under the new Code of Practice.

Mr Douglas: Completely, yes.

Q274  Chairman: Dr Slater?

Dr Slater: It is probably, in some places, easier to see that in relation to casual admissions; in other words, not those coming through as of year group transfers but people moving into areas, for example. It is part of the folk lore that sometimes schools say to parents, "We would not be very good at meeting your child's particular needs. The school down the road is a lot better at dealing with youngsters with special educational needs," for example. I would always seek to redress that where we were able to do that, but the folk lore out there is that that happens.

Q275  Mr Chaytor: In Norfolk, where there are more schools that are their own admissions authorities, presumably there are more devices by which informal selection takes place. What about, for example, admissions criteria that gives priority to children of former pupils or serving teachers. Does this exist in Norfolk?

Dr Slater: Yes, some schools that are their own admission authority do have those as part of their oversubscription criteria, yes.

Q276  Mr Chaytor: What else does the folk lore say about the methods of operation of schools that are their own admission authorities?

Dr Slater: I think I have given the most obvious one.

Q277  Mr Chaytor: There must be some less obvious ones that it would be interesting to have.

Dr Slater: One of the problems with describing this is that it is not surface behaviour. It is buried in the system and we do not have direct evidence of it, but when you look at the pattern of attendance at schools and the addresses of the youngsters and the schools to which they go, you can often see patterns which would not be random, let us say. So something has happened. Sometimes it is self-selection by parents, who think their child would not be welcome at a school, would not fit in, or however it is described.

Q278  Chairman: They think the school exudes a different culture.

Dr Slater: Yes. And the system has those features in it, does it not? It is self-regulating in some ways. Parents will not select a school, perhaps, because they think their child would not be happy there or would not fit in. That is not selection but it is the system operating on parental ----

Q279  Mr Chaytor: If I may pursue this point very briefly. The issue of a school's ethos is commonly seen by government as a very positive thing, one which helps to drive up standards, but your argument therefore is that ethos, distinctive ethos, cuts both ways, because distinctive ethos can actually deter some parents from applying to that school. Is that what you are saying?

Dr Slater: I do not want to be seen as arguing against schools having a positive and distinct ethos. Such things are good. I was saying that parents react to their perceptions of schools.

Mr Douglas: I think in the system as it exists at the moment, certain schools target certain areas as well. They heavily market themselves in certain areas because they want that particular catchment and therefore a school is then perceived by that community as being the local school for its children, when in fact it is not, it is some distance away. That does happen.

Q280  Chairman: What about introducing more random elements into the allocation of places on first preference? Would you be in favour of that? That has been mooted as a way of ensuring that you have a broader cross-section of the community in a school of first preference.

Dr Slater: It is defining your community, really - because how big is your community?

Q281  Chairman: Or just in terms of first preference: you take all the first preferences, you shake them up, and there you have it. They are allocating places in medical schools in Holland on the basis of lottery, after all.

Mr Douglas: I think that would lead to ...

Q282  Chairman: Insurrection?

Mr Douglas: -- more confusion on the part of parents.

Q283  Jonathan Shaw: Loss of parliamentary seats, I would think!

Mr Douglas: It would be very difficult. Very, very difficult.

Dr Slater: I do not think I could argue for a random allocation of youngsters to schools. I think schools work best when they are part of their local community. That is important. The issue for me is how do we enable schools to have that link with their local community without the negative side that that sometimes can introduce, and enabling schools serving communities where there are more youngsters with higher educational needs still to be successful. That is the trick.

Q284  Mr Chaytor: Just following the random question, what about the random allocation to schools who are oversubscribed; that is to say, dealing with the additional applications by lottery? That is to say you would have a basic admissions criteria whereby the school recruited presumably from its reasonably well defined catchment area, although anyone who applied out of that catchment area would be allocated at random. Would that be feasible?

Mr Douglas: I am not sure, actually.

Dr Slater: It certainly would not work in Norfolk because the geography just is against that. Many of the subscription criteria that enable out-of-area youngsters to come in are related to high level need, so I am not sure about that.

Mr Douglas: Again, I think that would be difficult.

Jonathan Shaw: The system that we found out about in Auckland seemed to work well in an urban area but we had to challenge them on things like disability and children in care. On the folk lore, do you know of popular schools that were full, where they have a place that becomes available, which will ring up the parent of a child who wanted to go to that school but did not and went to a less popular school, and say to them, "We've got a place now."

Q285  Chairman: There is certainly evidence in your submission, Mr Douglas. You have said that is a real problem in Leeds, people moving from school to school, after the whole admission process, during term time. Does that speak to Jonathan's question? Why were you concerned about that? Was that a way of people bucking the system after the rules have been set, as it were?

Mr Douglas: It may happen on a very limited basis. I do not think it happens generally within Leeds. Where a parent directly approaches a school, they may not be given the full picture by that school in some cases, depending on the type of child that that parent has. In Leeds, all casual admissions come through the admission authority for all our community schools, so there is not a system whereby a parent just goes to the school and if the school has a place they are admitted. For any casual transfer or in-year admission, they have to apply to the admission authority, so we do perhaps have a stronger mechanism for challenging that if that is happening.

Q286  Jonathan Shaw: But if the schools are their own admission authorities, you would not know.

Mr Douglas: Yes, if the schools are their own admission authorities, it is obviously more difficult, and certainly within the voluntary aided sector there are examples of parents having been turned away yet, I think, we believe there is capacity.

Q287  Jonathan Shaw: Does anything like that happen in Norwich?

Dr Slater: I have no direct knowledge of that being a significant feature of what happens. But we cannot rule out any aspect of human behaviour, can we?

Jonathan Shaw: If the system allows it!

Chairman: I want to move onto the admissions process.

Q288  Mr Pollard: Could I first of all congratulate you both on the submissions you have put through. I thought they were unusually clear, direct and unequivocal. That is a big statement - from all of us, I think. In Hertfordshire, we used to have a letter attached to each of our admissions application forms two or three years ago, and it was pretty clear where people were in the social order of things because the letters written by the more working-class folk were often not there and the chattering middle classes did particularly good letters, so there was a bit of selection going on. I am pleased to say that all stopped. There is nothing like that in your area, is there?

Dr Slater: No.

Mr Douglas: No.

Q289  Mr Pollard: Thank you. Moving right on, when a parent places schools in order of preference, should all preferences be equal?

Mr Douglas: It is difficult, is it not, where you are saying that parents have a preference if all their preferences are equal? We have a system where we invite parents to express five preferences - which personally I think is too many.

Q290  Mr Pollard: Absolutely.

Mr Douglas: I think coordinated arrangements will deal with that, in that we will have to come into line with other authorities, but we have a system where five preferences are expressed or can be expressed. The majority of parents do not express five; they express normally three, possibly four. Yes, I think they probably should be given equal validity but there is an educative process that would need to be undertaken in relation to parents' understanding of that because parents clearly feel, certainly when they are challenging us, that they have a choice. It is not a preference, it is a choice. If they are given equal preference, then that clearly has to be understood by parents in the way that they then seek to preference schools.

Dr Slater: I think we have thought of this. We are just entering a system where we are going to have three choices, in order: 1, 2, 3. We have had a system where we thought it legal only to allow one first choice to be active at any time, but we are now going to have 1, 2, 3. We think it practical to have ordered choice, so that first preferences are clearly first preferences, and you can deal with those on an equal basis and then move to second choices and so on. That seems to me to be in accordance with the parental right to express a preference - because a preference is a preference, and I cannot see that expressing a preference for every school is an expressed preference.

Q291  Mr Pollard: Are all parents equally well placed to navigate the schools admission process?

Dr Slater: No.

Q292  Mr Pollard: How might we equip parents to be equally well placed? Make the process simpler, more straightforward, more transparent? Or have a choice of only one: put this school down and that is it.

Mr Douglas: Preference is there and there is nothing to suggest it is going to go away. No, I do not think all parents can access it equitably across the board. We try very hard. We publicise very widely, we publicise in community centres. We actually attend school open evenings. Admissions staff will attend at school open evenings and talk to parents at those open evenings - and the majority of schools take us up on that. So we try very, very hard to engage with as many parents as possible, to explain what they need to do in order to access the system and to be as successful as they can within that system. But for some parents it is difficult. We do have a small minority of parents who do not apply, they just turn up, because they think it is automatic. They do not even bother applying. We have to deal with that as a group of parents very late on within the process, and those parents have no choice at all because by that time most schools are full. So, no, there is not equality across the board.

Q293  Mr Pollard: Should we try to row back from the choice and preference thing? - so that in reality there is not much choice: where you live is where you go to your nearest school, that is the practice.

Mr Douglas: That would be great. For that to happen, every school needs to be a good school.

Dr Slater: This is what I was reading on the train. It is our attempt to help parents. I am sure most authorities do something like this. It describes every secondary school.

Q294  Chairman: What is that document, Dr Slater?

Dr Slater: It is: A Parent's Guide to Secondary Schools in Norfolk: School Year 2004/5.

Q295  Chairman: Could we have a copy of that for our records?

Dr Slater: Of course. We will happily supply this, and we have lots of them. Every parent is sent one of these. We describe each school with its oversubscription criteria. We say what the first year intake number is going to be and how many applied for the school the previous year - so whether the school is likely to be oversubscribed, and that parents should therefore take that into account in the way they express their preferences. We try to make this document accessible and in easy language. Unfortunately it has a photograph of me in the front, which can put people off! We have, in several languages, an introduction at the front, and we can help people whose first language is not English. But, clearly, to access and understand this and to understand the rules is not straightforward. I think the system is becoming more straightforward because of the Code of Practice in arrangements for this forthcoming round, but, clearly, some parents are at an advantage and some at a disadvantage in coping with a document like this.

Q296  Chairman: What role do feeder schools play in informing parents about choice and there ability to access certain schools. Is that a role that is taken seriously by the feeder schools?

Dr Slater: Yes.

Q297  Chairman: Are they encouraged to do so?

Dr Slater: Yes, they are.

Q298  Chairman: Mr Douglas said that people just turn up. I am surprised, in the sense that: Where on earth were the feeder schools? - which were not trying to reach out to the parents and saying, "Look, you have a very important choice to make for your child. This is how you should consider it."

Dr Slater: Yes, they do. We would expect every school, knowing that a child was transferring, to know that the child knows where they are transferring to and to have access to the system. They would support them in doing that. We communicate directly with each parent by giving them these documents and ...

Q299  Chairman: In a sense, why I am asking that, Dr Slater and Mr Douglas, is that we all want the situation where all schools are good schools, but we may have a situation where all schools are good schools but they may have different specialisms. They are all good schools but one may be more right for one child than another. In a sense, this is a crucial stage, is it not, coming up to the choice at 10 or 11, for teachers to bring some appraisal of what the next phase for that child would be and advise the parent.

Mr Douglas: Yes, I certainly think there is a role. Could I perhaps clarify one point. I think where the parents tend not to apply is more moving into reception rather than to year 7. That is where the problem more likely occurs.

Q300  Chairman: I am sorry, we are assuming secondary, because this is about secondary school admissions.

Mr Douglas: Yes. I just wanted to clarify that. I think the slight danger with feeder schools is they could also give parents misleading information about their chances of getting into certain schools. Again, because they may perceive a secondary school to be the local school but they can in some cases be no absolute guarantee, so that there is also that issue in terms of giving correct and well-informed information to parents, and we have to be a little bit careful about that. I think certainly they can play a role but we have to ensure that they have proper, well-informed information that they are advising parents with, and sometimes that does not happen.

Q301  Chairman: On the other hand, you would expect a school that had seen a young child develop over a period of time to be able to say, "Your child has some real ability in science. There is a specialist science school down the road, you might want to prioritise an application there." Presumably that is precisely what we would want to see, is it not? - advice of that quality.

Dr Slater: I think it is something to which we need to give more attention, actually. I would start from: What is going to happen with the 14-19 curriculum? If we succeed - and there are issues about how easy it is going to be to deliver this, but we will get there - if we have a much more differentiated curriculum post-14, with a number of possible high status routes through for youngsters, then the advice given to youngsters and their parents about what is the best route through the system for their own child needs to start very early, and it probably does need to start before year 7, in some senses, in terms of youngsters and their parents thinking through the route through the school system that later on they are going to follow. I would agree with you, that ought to have a bearing on how they look at transfer at year 7.

Q302  Chairman: Before we move on to the last section, if a school is its own admissions authority, what is the role of checking? One hears on the grapevine that if a school is its own admission authority it sends out a message: If you do not put us down as your first choice, then you are very unlikely to succeed in entering this school. How is that handled as part of an admissions process?

Dr Slater: As part of the information process, did you say?

Q303  Chairman: Yes.

Dr Slater: In our case we will simply say that a school is its own admissions authority. We will say whether the school has been oversubscribed in previous years and therefore whether it is likely to be oversubscribed in future years, and we set out what those oversubscription criteria are. We simply give the information to the parents.

Q304  Chairman: If it is clear that a school will not take a child who has not put the school down as its first choice, how does that become part of the information that the parent has?

Dr Slater: If the school is heavily oversubscribed, then it is logical the you have more chance of getting a place there if you put it down as a first choice rather than as a second choice.

Q305  Chairman: It goes back to the level of the quality of information.

Dr Slater: Sure.

Q306  Chairman: This is what I am trying to tease out. Many parents may not even know about the oversubscription, may not even read that document that you put out, and so will have no chance at all of getting into a school because they happen to have put it as a second preference.

Mr Douglas: I would think that most parents, the great majority, will know whether a school is oversubscribed or not. The great majority will - certainly in an urban area.

Q307  Chairman: But would not at any time put down three oversubscribed schools?

Mr Douglas: It sometimes happens, in a preference system that asks for more than one preference, that they will preference one school three times. They will not give us another preference, in the belief that doing that will mean that we cannot offer then anything other than the school that they have preferenced. So there may be an issue there about clear understanding of how a preference will work.

Chairman: I think all of us in the education sector assume that these are very simple application procedures and everyone will understand them and maximise their application for their best benefit. However, on to section 6: Objections, Appeals and Adjudications.

Q308  Mr Chaytor: First of all, could I just check the figures we were given earlier for Leeds, and then ask about Norfolk. In Leeds there are about 8,000 transfers from primary to secondary - or there were last year. Of those 8,000, there were 2,400 appeals.

Mr Douglas: Sorry, that figure was across the primary and secondary sectors.

Q309  Mr Chaytor: In terms of secondary appeals, do we know how many there were?

Mr Douglas: I do not know the exact figures, but it is round about 1,500, 1,600.

Q310  Mr Chaytor: The success rate for appeals is about 20 per cent.

Mr Douglas: Yes.

Q311  Mr Chaytor: That would apply equally to primary and secondary.

Mr Douglas: Yes.

Q312  Mr Chaytor: About 1,200, therefore, are going to fail.

Mr Douglas: Yes, the majority of appeals are unsuccessful.

Q313  Mr Chaytor: We have a significant percentage of total applications. In Norfolk, are there similar figures?

Dr Slater: They are a little bit lower. I can supply you with the precise figures but I do not have them with me. I will do that subsequently. The number of appeals annually is about 500, and a similar success rate to Leeds, around a third to a quarter, but I would need to give you those precise figures.

Q314  Mr Chaytor: In Leeds, then, over 15, 17, 18 per cent of total applications go to appeal and fail every year. My question is: What does that cost?

Mr Douglas: There is certainly a considerable cost in terms of the fact that for mainly three months of the year, from May onwards, there is significant officer time invested in defending those appeals. I can at any one point in time have five members of my team out on appeal hearings, so there is a significant cost. Again, I cannot quantify it in terms of actual money, but if we were to do that we would be talking about a significant amount of ----

Q315  Mr Chaytor: What is your best guess?

Mr Douglas: It is difficult for me to say. I would not feel happy about giving you a figure unless I could check it out.

Q316  Mr Chaytor: Do you have a figure for the total costs of processing primary to secondary transfers?

Mr Douglas: Again, not with me, but we could make some assessment.

Q317  Mr Chaytor: You could identify that figure.

Mr Douglas: Yes.

Q318  Mr Chaytor: And Dr Slater?

Dr Slater: Very similar.

Q319  Mr Chaytor: It would be very useful to get as much information about the costs, both of the total system and the appeals procedure itself. My recollection is that earlier in the summer the council for tribunals published a report which actually criticised the appeals mechanisms for school transfer and recommended it be taken out of the local authorities. I think it proposed it was on a sub-regional basis. Do you feel that it is rightly done at the local authority level? Are you satisfied with the way the appeals tribunals work and the expertise of the people on appeals tribunals and the objectivity of their judgments?

Dr Slater: Not in all cases, inevitably, because we go to admissions appeals panels defending a decision not to admit a child, so generally we would only do that in circumstances where we felt it was right, and many are overturned. However, that is the system. Those arrangements are not actually run by the local education authority, they are at arm's length from us. We do not make those arrangements ourselves. Similarly all the schools that are their own admission authority have to have their own appeal arrangements. But with some local knowledge. I think having it at the level of the local authority enables that to happen. The people who are making those decisions are sufficiently local to know what they are deciding. I think that is not unhelpful, given that that is the system.

Mr Douglas: I would agree that there needs to be a level of local knowledge. I do have some issues about the quality of the training of appeals panels that can lead to perhaps misconceptions on their part. So there is a big issue about the training of appeals panels, how that is undertaken. The Code of Practice on admission appeals is a helpful document but I would, again, question: Is it strong enough? We do have particular issues where we can find that a school will argue directly against the appeals presenting officer. Where we have an agreed admission limit, we have gone through all the consultation processes. That admission limit has not been challenged through the routes that are open to the school, but when it comes to the appeals we have had instances where the school will directly undermine the ability of the authority to defend those appeals because it will turn round and say, "Actually, we can take (x number) of additional children," particularly if it perceives that those children will come from a particular area that the school wants to serve. That does happen. That then leads on to other difficulties in terms of an authority's strategic management ability in terms of supply and demand. You may say, "There are procedures in place for that to be challenged at an earlier point," and that is true, there are, but we are then reliant on that actually happening and it can cause problems.

Q320  Mr Chaytor: Are you saying schools are reneging on previous agreements over admission?

Mr Douglas: It does happen.

Q321  Mr Chaytor: There is now a national formula to determine admission limits, is there not?

How could that kind of reneging under agreements established as a result of a national formula be prohibited?

Mr Douglas: The net capacity calculation does not actually come into force until 2004 in terms of setting admission limits, but it is a rational tool by which to judge capacity, and we have had an instance this year where the net capacity clearly supports an admission limit of X but the school has said, "No, we feel we can take in excess of that number," and said that publicly, and hence the appeals committee agreed a number of appeals. For the life of me, I do not know how the school is fitting them in because the net capacity certainly does not support the number that they have been taking. Then that leads on to a position where the school may then come back to the authority and say, "Actually, we are overfull, we need some additional capital investment to address this." It strays into quite major strategic areas for the authority.

Q322  Mr Chaytor: Could I move on to the role of the adjudicator. Parents have quite limited access to the adjudicator. I would like to ask for your views on whether you feel that parents should be able to go to the adjudicator on more grounds. Secondly, do you think the adjudicator's office should be more proactive, and, rather than simply responding to cases brought before it, whether it should have the powers to investigate cases where there are good grounds to believe that there are abuses of the system?

Dr Slater: Again, it is the absolutism of your question: should or should not. It depends what you want, again, from the system. If you have such a system, then many parents would inevitably use it. Many would pursue, quite rightly and understandably, what they want to the end of the road. The question, to answer that, is: Are the present arrangements insecure? Do they fail to give parents a sufficient recourse to a system whereby the first decision is challenged? Although it is not a perfect system, I think the present arrangements do give parents a very good opportunity to have their wishes re-examined independently. I think the adjudicator should operate at the level, if there were problems perceived in the system, if the local system were seen to be not operating effectively and fairly, then that might be something at which the adjudicator could look. But, I think, to make it a route to access to the individual parent, that would become the system.

Mr Douglas: I would agree with that.

Q323  Paul Holmes: I would like to pick up on two of the points that have been raised. Robert Douglas was saying that he thought the appeals panel should have local knowledge. In Derbyshire it has generally been the practice that they have brought people in from another part of the county, so they do not have knowledge, they are seen as being independent and impartial. Do you have any comment on the different systems?

Mr Douglas: Why I say they should have some local knowledge is that they can understand the context in which agreements have been reached with schools. I think in an urban area such as Leeds that is quite important. It may be different in a county authority - and it comes back to the strategic need, in my opinion, to manage supply and demand as effectively as possible as well. I think there needs to be a context around the knowledge base of appeals panels. Having said that, maybe that has some elements of impartiality, I do not know, but it is that "context" element that I do think is quite important.

Dr Slater: I do not think it hurts to have some additional objectivity, provided it is additional. The point about the local knowledge is very, very important, and I think if there is a perception of some influence from somebody who is completely from the outside and therefore completely uninfluenced by those things, that may be an additional feature, but I certainly would not want to lose the local knowledge.

Q324  Paul Holmes: That perhaps has some bearing on the next question as well. Appeals panels can insist that a school takes somebody on appeal, even though the school is already full. Certainly one of the most popular schools in my constituency contacted me last year. Every year they cannot cope with the number of children in the catchment area because their admission limits are smaller than the actual number in the catchment area. They always end up over the planned admission limit and then the appeals panels - because they are one of the most popular schools in the constituency - always force them to take more on top of that. A school which is always bursting at the seams, after the appeals panels have done their round is bursting even more at the seams. This is happening every year, year after year after year. Should appeals panels be able to force a school to take somebody on appeal if they are already over the limit?

Dr Slater: There are a number of things in that question. First, has the local authority set an appropriate admission limit, given the accommodation? Has the local authority set that limit appropriately in relation to its overall need to provide school places? In some cases schools do need to expand because there is population growth locally.

Q325  Paul Holmes: Yes, that is the case in this school.

Dr Slater: So that is a strategic decision for the authority. Very often it is not the LEA versus the LEA at admissions appeals; very often the school is defending the appeal as well and does not want the additional children. If they are in that circumstance, the arrangement is very much that the appeals panel can make a decision and it is binding on everyone, and, even though the authority and the school are both saying it is prejudicial to the efficient use of resources and so on and impossible and all the rest of it, nevertheless an admission is made and everyone has to cope with it. I do not think the provision of school places through appeals is a proper system. I think that if there is a fundamental flaw in the total number of places available locally, then the local authority should be addressing that at source, so you should not be structurally in that position every year, hopefully. That should not be the system. It may be because of popularity, but that is a different issue.

Q326  Paul Holmes: Is it also - again, the point that both of you made in your written submissions - that all the emphasis since 1980 on parental choice is a bit of a sham, because in lots of cases there is no parental choice? The appeals panels are then the last resort for parents, who are saying, "We want to go to that school" and often the appeals panel is backing that up.

Mr Douglas: But for a small minority of parents, in our case six to nine per cent of parents. I think with any parental preference system, while you have a system of parental preference, you are not going to satisfy 100 per cent every parent. I do not see how that is possible.

Q327  Mr Turner: I have just gone back to this curve. That curve is perhaps a teachability curve, is it not, rather than an ability curve. Am I right?

Dr Slater: I would be very cautious in accepting your definition because there is a difference between teaching and learning, but go on.

Q328  Mr Turner: The problem, I think, that you have identified is that some schools do not want some pupils because they are difficult to teach or they otherwise upset their perception of their ethos. Can we not reward them for taking more of those pupils by giving them less money for everyone else and a bit more for those more difficult to teach pupils? Would that help?

Dr Slater: There are ways of doing that. I am not sure I believe solely in the chequebook as the only meaningful incentive in the system. I think there could be others. However, it is often more expensive to meet the needs of youngsters who have additional needs. Of course it is. There are ways within the system of doing that. Most local authorities give schools with high levels of free school meal entitlement, as a proxy (simply because it is information that is available across the system and a correlate of other factors known to relate to educational underachievement, if I may put it like that) as a way of giving schools extra money, and do so already. But it is a pretty crude system.

Mr Douglas: In reading your previous submissions to this select committee, the idea of more sensitive indicators of deprivation was raised. I should think that is quite important when you are looking at inner city schools providing levels of education and dealing with high levels of challenging children. I think we do need to look at more sensitive indicators of deprivation, so that we can target funding more equitably within the system.

Q329  Mr Turner: You have, at some length, criticised the disincentives of taking these pupils. What would be the other incentives, then, besides the chequebook?

Dr Slater: An index of inclusion. Such things are being worked on. There is an index of achievement, which my authority and a number of other authorities are working with the DfES in trying to develop, which gives a broader measure of how well a school is achieving that which I was talking about earlier, about enabling every child to maximise their potential: broader measures of achievement than straightforward examination results. I think that when we have such measures - and we are getting such measures - the use of them in league tables as a way of signalling to the system that those are the things that are valued, and not just crude examination results on their own - although those always will be important - would incentivise schools to behave in ways that were likely to maximise their performance against those measures. I think there is quite a lot you can do. At the moment, the system of accountability, if you like, the way in which a school is portrayed, is very crude indeed. We get Ofsted inspections, and they are pass or fail - both a sharp line - and public examination results, which we are getting, to better measures. We are talking about value-added measures now, but still only those measures, and we need a more subtle, more developed way of expressing to parents and the public at large the value of a school.

Mr Douglas: I would agree entirely.

Q330  Chairman: We have had a very good session. One last question. Both in terms of what you have said to the Committee and what you gave us in terms of the memorandum you sent in, there is a kind of feeling, reading that and listening to you, that you are rather discontent about the present situation in terms of admissions. I understand that you say that much of this is in our court, as politicians, to change things, but, as Jonathan said earlier on, we do rely on good advice. Are there things that you would want to change in order to make you happier about the admissions process?

Mr Douglas: I think I have alluded to some things that I think could help. Certainly the Code of Practice being a more prescriptive document and a stronger document would help. In terms of the casual admission process and the admission of challenging children, I think the things we have just articulated in terms of giving those schools broader measures in which we can assist them would help as well. Those are the two major things that would certainly make my job easier than it is at the present time. I do not mean to give a sense of something that is not working. I think it does work for the majority of parents; but it does not work for a minority and I do not think it works for those most vulnerable children in our society. That is my big concern.

Dr Slater: I agree with those. Perhaps I could add one other, which would be I think the clear establishment of an expectation that it is the job of schools to meet the needs of all the pupils in their area - and that could be groups of schools and might best be groups of schools - but that, together with the local education authority, they share a responsibility for meeting the needs of all of the children. We should give that message to the system and we should incentivise that behaviour.

Chairman: Thank you very much. Thank you for your evidence. It has been most useful.