WEDNESDAY 18 DECEMBER 2002

__________

Members present:

Mr David Chaytor
Valerie Davey
Mr Jeff Ennis
Paul Holmes
Ms Meg Munn
Mr Kerry Pollard
Jonathan Shaw
Mr Mark Simmonds
Mr Andrew Turner

In the absence of the Chairman, Valerie Davey was called to the Chair

__________

MR DAVID MILIBAND, a Member of the House, Minister of State for School Standards, examined.

Valerie Davey

  1. Good morning, Minister. We are delighted to have you back this time in the main in the context of the secondary school report which we are taking a full year on but which we have divided into four main areas, the first of which is diversity, so the concentration this morning will be on diversity. We are then going to look at student achievements, teacher retention and admissions. However, the one we have started on and the one we shall pursue with you this morning in the main will be diversity. Looking at your remit, which I have to say is absolutely huge, it starts off, as we have it anyway, "Transforming Secondary Education". We are not quite sure which way that is going. We would like your comments initially on how you see that brief. How and in what direction are you going to transform secondary education?
  2. (Mr Miliband) Thank you very much, and thank you for inviting me back. It feels like rather more than six months since I was last here. Looking back at the transcript it was only 24 June that I was here last but quite a lot has happened since then. I am pleased to come back. It is a good opportunity to take stock for me as well as, I hope, for you, and if I can contribute to your inquiry all to the better. I try not to look at my list of responsibilities. It makes me very tired to look at it, but one of the things I think I said when I was here last was that it read more like a list of problems under the previous dispensation and what we have tried to do is get a slightly more strategic listing of responsibilities among the different ministers and certainly Stephen Twigg and I on the schools side are going to try and work in a more coherent way. I would say in relation to secondary education that what we are trying to achieve is step change in the standards of achievement that are attained by young people measured significantly by test and examination results but not only by those. We think there are four key priorities to achieving that step change in student performance and if we can achieve these four things in every school in the country we will be a significant way towards a much more successful education system. Would it be helpful if I reprised those briefly and that will give you quite a lot to chew on?

  3. By all means.
  4. (Mr Miliband) The first is school leadership because we all know that if you have effective school leadership, by which I mean the senior management team of a school, not just the charismatic John Harvey Jones figure who is the headteacher, if you have a strong management team that is able to set the right vision and motivate students and staff alike, you are well on the way towards creating a successful institution and that is certainly the first of our four priorities. The work of the National College for School Leadership is critical in that, and similarly the leadership incentive grant which offers nearly £400,000 over three years to 1,400 schools around the country with the specific purpose of improving school leadership. The second focus for us is to ensure that every institution has both a strong sense of its own mission and ethos, a distinctive focus for its work, but combines that with collaborative arrangements locally, regionally and nationally that help professional development and the provision of education to children in the school. It is a balance between on the one hand institutional specialisation and on the other hand collaboration. The third focus for us is on the reform of the school workforce and the deployment of a wide range of staff to support teachers in the delivery of effective teaching and learning. We are coming to the end of some quite productive discussions with leading partners from the education world: teacher unions, headteacher representatives, local government and so on about a package of reforms that would both reform the teachers' contract to guarantee time for preparation, planning and assessment of lessons, and also put downward pressure on overall hours and tackle some of the workload issues that have been prevalent but at the same time bring a wider range of adults into the classroom under the direction of teachers to improve the learning experience of the student. The fourth priority for us is to promote the partnerships beyond the classroom, most notably with parents but also with community groups, with universities, which I was able to discuss with Jeff Ennis in an adjournment debate on Monday night, that is, the importance of bringing other partners into relationship with the schools to help broaden horizons, raise aspirations and improve attainment. Those four agenda items constitute the core priorities that I see for the secondary education system. Of course, at their heart is the teaching and learning experience of individual pupils. That is what all this is about in the end. What unites our programmes for leadership, for specialisation and collaboration, for workforce reform and for partnership beyond the classroom is the development of an effective learning experience for every child in the country. We have no embarrassment about the prospect of standards going up. We do not subscribe to the terrible English curse that somehow more means worse and that every time standards (as measured by independent data) show improvement we should all wring our hands and say how terrible this is when standards rise because teachers are teaching better or students are working harder. That is a good thing and we should not be embarrassed about it. Certainly our agenda for secondary education is dedicated to the structural reforms and the standards reforms that will deliver better outcomes.

    Valerie Davey: Thank you for that. I think we can all say that you have been very consistent in that message since you have been office and that uniting of the commitment by the Government and everyone else involved to raise standards has come over as a clear message. Our Committee would like to explore the detail that underpins that and some of the arguments and concerns that are being put forward, and we would like to look first of all at the standards issue.

    Mr Chaytor

  5. Minister, in your opening statement you did not mention the word "diversity". You have talked about a distinctive ethos within schools but do you think there is a value in having differential status between schools and does the Government still subscribe to this notion of a hierarchy of schools?
  6. (Mr Miliband) There is quite a lot in the question if I could unpack it a bit. For me diversity is a state, not a policy. It is a description of a reality and one can think that diversity is good or bad. In my view the sort of diversity that is bad is between good schools and bad schools. If that is what you mean by a status hierarchy I do not like that sort of diversity at all and we certainly do not want to be in a situation where the diversity that we either promote or allow is that some schools are good and some schools are bad. That is not a helpful form of diversity. Having said that, I think there will be diverse institutions within our education system and they do not necessarily have to have different status. Some schools will be faith schools and some schools will not be faith schools. In my book that does not make one a higher status than the other. Similarly, some schools will have sixth forms and in other parts of the country there will be sixth form colleges or FE institutions or 14-19 institutions. That does not to me determine a hierarchy. That just says that different local custom and practice and need are being recognised in different institutional arrangements. In that sense I think that sort of diversity is perfectly healthy and welcome. Maybe just to anticipate where you might be going, I think it is important that we do encourage institutions to be as good as possible. We should not be in the least bit embarrassed about institutions striving and becoming excellent. One of my aspirations is that excellence is available for, in the case of a secondary school, the 1,000 or 1,200 pupils who are in that secondary school and that is very important, but the more we can spread that excellence, either through the sharing of facilities or the development in a local area of the teaching practices in other schools that reflect the good practice in the excellent schools or in the excellent departments, that is a good thing. I hope that is a reasonable way of addressing your question.

  7. You are saying that the distinctive ethos and the specialism of each school is compatible with the concept of parity of esteem between schools?
  8. (Mr Miliband) Yes.

  9. Between particular designations of school?
  10. (Mr Miliband) Certainly in my book there is no status differentiation between a science college and an arts college if you are referring to specialist status. Similarly, I do not see a status hierarchy, as I said, between a faith school and a non-faith school, or between a school that is 11-18 or a school that is 11-16. I think that sort of diversity is healthy and appropriate to local need.

  11. In the process of considering applications for specialist school status what are the main criteria that are used?
  12. (Mr Miliband) They are published and open. The most important is that it can raise standards in the school. When I say "in the school" I mean across the school and not just in the particular area of specialism. I do not know if we are going to come on to this, Chair, but for me the purpose of the specialist school programme is that it is a school improvement programme, not, as said in the speech in Birmingham to the Technology Colleges Trust conference, a sort of fetishism of a particular subject. There is a danger that because we have the label "specialist schools" it could give off the idea that if you go to a science college all we are interested in doing is teaching you science whereas that is not true. The purpose of the specialist school programme is to help raise standards across the board. There are other criteria to do with community benefits etc, which you know about, but the prime one is about standards.

  13. In terms of the track record of individual schools, have any schools in special measures or with serious weaknesses been designated as specialist schools?
  14. (Mr Miliband) I think I am right in saying that if you are in special measures you cannot become a specialist school but if you are in serious weaknesses you can. My understanding is that some have, and that the process of specialism has in some cases helped them improve. I will need to write back to you to clarify that.

  15. In the annual report of the OFSTED Chief Inspector recently he suggested that leadership in 20 per cent of schools was not adequate. Again, would it be conceivable that a school with leadership that was deemed to be not adequate could be designated a specialist school or would you need to be convinced that the existing leadership was at least sound?
  16. (Mr Miliband) When I say that the purpose of the specialist school programme and the criteria for designation are that the school shows that it can raise standards, if the assessors have no confidence in the headteacher that would be a serious drag anchor on the application.

  17. In view of that does it not follow that if schools in serious weaknesses are excluded and if schools with weaker leadership are excluded there will inevitably be a widening differential in achievement between the specialist schools and those who are left behind? It is like creating a premier league out of the old first division, is it not?
  18. (Mr Miliband) No, because the test is school improvement. If there is a school with inadequate leadership, to use your terminology, that is something that should be a serious issue for governors and for LEAs whether the school is specialist or not. I take your word for it on the 20 per cent figure but if there is inadequate leadership that should be a serious concern for the school, full stop, whether or not it wants to become specialist. Our data suggest that there is a wide range of schools in the specialist school programme. It is not confined to those that are above average in terms of pupil performance. The key test is whether becoming a specialist school will help the school improve the education of the children in it.

  19. But you have got to be convinced that there is the capacity for improvement there, if not already a track record of improvement?
  20. (Mr Miliband) Capacity for improvement, yes.

  21. Therefore is it not inevitable that there will be a widening gap, however slight that gap will be, because we are excluding excellent schools without a capacity for reform?
  22. (Mr Miliband) No, we are excluding a tiny minority of schools who are in the most desperate straits and for whom intensive action to put in the basic conditions for effective schooling is required. That is a small minority which should not give anyone watching this on the Parliament Channel the idea that the majority of schools are in special measures, but those special measures are decidedly special and I am pleased to say that the number of schools that are in the lowest category has halved in the last six years. I think it is about 248 nationwide now of schools in special measures. The preponderance of those is secondary schools but it is less than 200. There is a small minority of schools for whom we really need to get the basics right before they can be eligible for the specialist school programme, but for the rest there is an open field and the Secretary of State has announced that we are removing any cap on numbers. We have previously always had targets and we have over-performed against those targets for specialist schools but there has been a perception around that it was not a universal programme and I hope the Secretary of State's announcement made clear that this is open to any school and it will be a demand-led programme and to the extent that quality is shown in the applications we will respond to them.

  23. In your recent speech in Glasgow you qualified the Government's previous statements about the performance of specialist schools by saying that now specialist schools designated 1996 or earlier outperform non-specialist schools in GCSE and GNVQ, so what are we now saying about the evidence on performance?
  24. (Mr Miliband) There is a more recent speech which I gave just a couple of weeks ago to the Technology Colleges Trust and which maybe we can arrange for the Department to circulate to you and that was to the 1,500 heads who are part of the specialist school movement. I tried to give them an honest message which is that there is emerging evidence that the specialist schools programme does provide (a) a catalyst for higher achievement (not a guarantee but a catalyst); (b) that the longer schools are in the programme the stronger the effect is, which maybe is what you are referring to, but (c) there are under-performing schools who are specialist schools as well and we should be as rigorous with specialist schools as with any other school in trying to help them improve performance.

    Valerie Davey: We will get circulate your latest speech and I am sure we will come back in more detail to that particular aspect.

    Paul Holmes

  25. One of the criticisms that we have heard in taking evidence of the Government's policy on things like specialist schools is that there is a lack of evidence to explain why you have leapt into this programme and where is the evidence for what you say that specialist schools, for example, improve the standards of the schools around them? There are two pieces of evidence which we have had. One is that across the board, using the Government's own figures that are collected every February in Form 7, specialist schools of various kinds take below the national averages of children with special educational needs and who qualify for free school meals. Is that a reason why specialist schools are so successful?
  26. (Mr Miliband) I do not think so because on a value-added basis any "bias" in intake would be recognised. Certainly the free school meal figures which I am more familiar with are pretty close to the national average for specialist schools and closer year by year so that the specialist school programme is increasing reflective of the nation's schools (a) in free school meals and (b) in the achievement of 11-year olds as they come into specialist schools. The purpose of the value added data is to try to screen out the effects of prior attainment and to recognise those schools that are helping to improve performance. I do not think it is as simple as saying that the schools are getting a cushy intake and therefore that explains their success. I think it is a more complex picture than that.

  27. You do not think there is any relationship between the fact that they take fewer children with free school meals and fewer children with special needs?
  28. (Mr Miliband) In relation to the value added data, no. I think the purpose of value added data is to see how a school builds on prior attainment. My own view is that the most important thing about the specialist school programme is the process of critical self-review that it sets off in institutions. For any institution, public, private or voluntary sector, - for government departments as well, one might say, - the requirement to look critically at one's performance: what are the areas that one is doing well in, what are the areas that one is doing badly in, how can one build on the excellence, how can one tackle the weakness, is a very powerful process for any institution to go through. It is human nature that it is a hard thing to step up and do that but the incentive that comes with additional finance and the chance to develop a specialism can help catalyse that sort of critical self-review. That is why I talk about the specialist school programme being a school improvement programme rather than the fetishism of a particular subject.

  29. OFSTED a week or two ago when giving evidence to us looked at this year's figures and they said that the trend of improvement in specialist schools - and they were particularly talking about the 500 or so specialist schools that have been created in the last two years rather than the slightly older ones - is broadly similar to the national picture, in which case where is the justification for giving all the extra money and the extra status to specialist schools?
  30. (Mr Miliband) I am unable to quote from memory what you are reading out but I think the same evidence said that two years was a very early stage at which to measure that sort of performance. One would expect it to take longer to come through and the evidence is that the longer a school is a specialist school the more profound the effect. I think that is what we have seen in other specialist schools. I think that is the fairest way of answering the point.

    Jonathan Shaw

  31. We need to be clear about what the emerging evidence is. The parliamentary answers show that they are exactly the same.
  32. (Mr Miliband) What is exactly the same?

  33. The specialist schools and regular secondary schools. Between 1997 and 2000 it was plus six per cent both for the maintained and for the specialist schools.
  34. (Mr Miliband) I do not know what data set you are referring to. As I understand it there are two sets of main researchers, one conducted by Professor Jesson at York University, and then we have the qualitative evidence of the OFSTED data.

  35. The average percentage of pupils obtaining five GCSEs or GNVQ A-C grades in the academic years from 1 September 1997 and mainstream schools are the same improvement levels, plus six per cent. That is in the parliamentary answer, so there is no difference. What is the emerging evidence?
  36. (Mr Miliband) Just hear me out. There are two data sets. One is the value added data analysis.

  37. We are talking about value added.
  38. (Mr Miliband) Let me make my point. There are two sets of data. One is the value added data. On the other hand there is the OFSTED evidence that comes out of qualitative studies that OFSTED inspectors do and you have quoted some of the national evidence. On the value added scores there does seem to be a significant effect and the Jesson work bears that out. The qualitative inspections by OFSTED have shown that in a significant number of cases the process of becoming a specialist school has contributed to significant change in the school. That level of improvement is not confined to specialist schools. There are examples of other schools that have made significant improvements too, sometimes through change in leadership or for a variety of reasons, but the components of the specialist school programme in relationship to the building up of a centre of excellence, the development of a partnership with an outside partner or sponsor, have in the qualitative evidence of OFSTED made a significant difference. The final point in relation to your data is that within a data set that is (a) growing every year and (b) has a different time line for different schools, there are sub-trends and the trend I am referring you to is that the longer a school is a specialist school the stronger the evidence that its performance outstrips other similar schools.

  39. You said in your speech to Glasgow University, "From 1997 to 2001, GCSE/GNVQ scores of schools designated specialist on or before 1996 have risen faster year-on-year than the average of mainstream ...". That is what you said.
  40. (Mr Miliband) Yes.

  41. You see my confusion? Now you are talking about what OFSTED are saying and about what the added value is. You said on 19 September that they had improved more so but in answer to parliamentary questions on 15 October that they had not.
  42. (Mr Miliband) I am very happy to lay this out in complete detail. Why do I not write to the Committee giving our full picture of the data? You have quoted two snapshots: one sentence from a speech in September, which I am sure is wholly accurate since I put it into the speech, and secondly from part of a parliamentary answer, which I am sure is also wholly accurate but I am afraid I do not remember the details of what surrounded those things. What I would like to do is, if you have an issue about inconsistent use of data or inconsistencies in our answers about data, to set out at great length for you our data base.

    Valerie Davey: We are going to have to concentrate on this evidence issue but I do want to move on. We will get that reply from you, and thank you very much.

    Ms Munn

  43. We had oral evidence from two Drs Schagen, Dr Sandie Schagen and Dr Ian Schagen. One of the things that Dr Ian Schagen said was that in their research over a number of years, not just on specialist schools but more widely, they had found a very positive link between outcomes for children and attitudes in schools. Do you subscribe to that?
  44. (Mr Miliband) That obviously must be right, yes. Go on. Next? Where is this going?

  45. I am not trying to trip you up.
  46. (Mr Miliband) No!

  47. The point they were making was that in relation to going through the process of becoming a specialist school and therefore focusing on that and increasing expectations of children, that in itself makes a difference.
  48. (Mr Miliband) That must be right.

  49. You think it is right but is it part of the Department's thinking in terms of putting in place specialist schools?
  50. (Mr Miliband) Certainly it is part of our thinking that the development of a distinctive school ethos and mission that unites the teachers, the pupils, the parents, the wider community, is a good thing and that will be reflected in the drive in the school, the aspirations of the kids, the sense of purpose and understanding that they have, the attitude that you referred to. My basic view is that if it looks like children are respected by the rest of the community when they come into school they will be more likely to respect themselves and respect the institution that they are entering and that can be in the sense of the school having a clear set of values that drive through its organisation and ethos; it can happen through the development of a distinctive specialism. It also happens through capital investment. If students go into buildings that are falling down, that say, "We do not respect you as children", they are much less likely to offer any respect back, so all those things contribute to attitude and attitude plays into behaviour and we know the importance of that.

  51. As the Chair said, one of the things that the Committee is looking at very closely is this issue about what evidence is there for particularly the specialist school programme but also for having diversity and is it a good thing. You have referred to some different bits of research. Has the Department itself got programmes in place? What is the way in which the Department is going about collecting the evidence?
  52. (Mr Miliband) The most important way is that we monitor the exam results closely. I believe in evidence based policy and I think that the more you can shed qualitative or quantitative light on some of that evidence the better. I would say that with a new idea there is not any evidence for you to start it and if one is not careful one gets into the position that one never does anything new because there is no evidence for it. The whole point of an innovation is that you are trying something out. In the specialist school movement, which comprised only 181 schools in 1997 of a particular character with a particular set of admissions and other issues, we now have a much broader base from which to go on. However, we are still talking about half the specialist schools only having been created in the last couple of years and so we have to look at that data in a nuanced and serious way and that is why I emphasise the need to look at qualitative as well as quantitative data sets.

  53. I am particularly interested in qualitative as well rather than just focusing on exam results. I think sometimes a criticism we get is that we only focus on how children perform at a certain level instead of also looking at things like, are children engaged with school truancy rates and the like. Those things interact and that is important. Given what you have said, the Department has obviously decided (and it is something which I personally welcome because I asked the question to which Charles Clarke announced that he was expanding the programme), that that is the route that we want to go down for school improvement. He said to us last week, "I take the preliminary view that specialist schools are doing very well", and then he went on to say, "I see a distinction at present in specialist schools", so that was his personal instinctive response to it rather than necessarily just looking at exam results. Having no doubt been into a number of specialist schools, what is your feel about them?
  54. (Mr Miliband) My feel is that in a significant number of cases it has provided the important catalyst for change in a school. I choose my words carefully because I do not want to say either that specialism is the route to school improvement, which is the phrase that you used, or that it is impossible for schools that are not specialist schools to make improvements as well. My personal instinct is that it is playing an important role in a significant number of schools, making important changes in the way they organise teaching and learning in the way it delivers for children. That is why we are supporting the programme, because we think that the instinct of what we see as well as what we read in the data is suggestive enough to give us confidence that the programme can deliver. That is not to say it cannot be improved and there are various aspects of it that we are trying to improve, but it does have a contribution to make, yes.

    Mr Pollard

  55. Earlier, Minister, you said that we should look at longer trends rather than over two years which you stated was too short, and yet OFSTED recently said that technology colleges, which form the largest number of specialist schools, have shown a fall in their improvement trend. How does that square with what you were saying earlier because technology colleges have been going for some long time now? They are the largest group.
  56. (Mr Miliband) I do not recognise that description. There are the city technology colleges. I do not know if you are talking about them or about particular technology colleges that were designated between 1993 and 1997. I do not recognise that. What they said was that they were worried about some of the sports colleges but I have not heard that about the technology colleges.

  57. It is in the OFSTED report, Minister.
  58. (Mr Miliband) The data that was brought to my attention did not highlight that as an issue. I understand that there are issues in different sorts of specialist schools about the extent to which school improvement is happening across the curriculum or in the particular area of specialism, which is a slightly different issue, which is the ability of different specialisms to drive school-wide improvement. About 470 of the specialist schools are technology colleges so it is a significant block. As I say, I am very happy to set out the data in whatever detail is necessary to answer that point.

    Valerie Davey

  59. Could I raise something specific that you mentioned earlier about the capital money that is going in? Is that in the Department's view tied in with this whole understanding of how standards are being raised in schools?
  60. (Mr Miliband) One always has to be careful to say yes, everything is beautifully joined up and aligned and perfectly co-ordinated. In 1997 we were spending as a country £700 million a year on schools' capital in 24,000 schools which works out at a very low investment, pretty obviously. We are now up to about three billon or so this year. That will rise to over five billion by 2005/2006. It is fair to say that we have spent a lot of the last five years making up for backlog and having to do some pretty basic repairs to get schools up to a pretty basic standard. What I would hope is that in the years ahead we can increasingly shift towards a closer alignment between a standards improvement and a capital investment and I think that we will have the latitude in the growing budget increasingly to do that. Obviously, quite a lot of money goes out on a formulaic basis either to LEAs or direct to schools, which is a good thing, and those schools use it for what they see as priorities. My own sense is that a lot of the most basic work has been done and schools are now able to think not just about putting roofs on loos or getting rid of outside loos; they are also able to think about language labs and science blocks in a way that they could not three or four years ago.

  61. Could I ask that you do go back to the technology college situation because we do have this quote from OFSTED that there has been a slight fall? No-one is saying that year on year everything is going to progress.
  62. (Mr Miliband) Was it the year fall that you were referring to, Kerry?

    Mr Pollard

  63. It was indeed.
  64. (Mr Miliband) Okay. One has to be pretty careful about a one-year slip.

    Valerie Davey: The technology colleges did have a huge investment in capital and it does seem that some evidence could perhaps be drawn out from that. That is another issue that we and you need to come back to if we may. Moving on, the other very closely linked area is admissions.

    Mr Turner

  65. Just before I go on to that, could you tell us when ministers became convinced by this evidence that specialist schools were doing so well and were not merely continuing a policy inherited from a previous government?
  66. (Mr Miliband) I do not think it is black and white in a number of senses. First of all, the specialist school programme as it exists now is a different programme from the one that existed before 1997 in some important respects, as you know. Secondly, in politics or policy in government one is always going on the basis of a balance of hard qualitative data and one's own impressions. The danger as an Education Minister is that you always get shown the good things and not the bad things and you get a warped impression and you end up with government by anecdote. We try as we go round schools and round the country to avoid that sort of danger. I would say that the data is not so clear that one can switch from one to the other, that one can go from the evidence that one sees with one's own eyes and what people tell one and say we have abandoned that basis for policy development and moved on to solely the hard data. There is more nuance in the data and in what one sees with one's own eyes, so I am not going to name a date or a particular month.

  67. I rather thought you would not do that but you might at least have some idea of whether it was in 1998/1999 or 2001/2002.
  68. (Mr Miliband) It would be fair to say that the Government has become increasingly convinced that specialism can play a significant role in the education of children within a school and in the spreading of excellence around the system.

  69. I assumed that. That was why I was asking. There must have been some time when ministers, and perhaps their advisers, said, "This really is a policy that is worth grasping and running with and putting a lot of money into" in preference to some other policy that might be on the agenda.
  70. (Mr Miliband) As you know, it is always ministers rather than advisers who decide on these things. There was obviously a decision by the Government in 1997 to run with, as you say, the specialist schools programme and expand dramatically the speed of growth, so there was a decision taken then. There have been subsequent decisions to increase the annual designation rate and there has now been a decision to allow all schools who want it to make clear that there is a demand-led programme. I think it has been a progressive process and I think we have learned as we have gone along. One of the things OFSTED highlighted was the importance of strengthening the community aspect, not just in terms of the wider community but in terms of pupils in other schools. That is something where we and the Technology Colleges Trust want to develop because we know that if you put a lot of money into science in a particular school, or sports, that is important for the kids in that school but you also want other children to have access to that. I think this is a developing programme but in that sense there has been a series of decisions rather than one date that I would point to.

  71. Perhaps the Minister could enumerate those decisions for us in a letter.
  72. (Mr Miliband) As there has been a series of public announcements about the expansion of the programme and about the changes to the policy criteria I am very happy to re-state them for the Committee if that would be helpful.

    Valerie Davey

  73. Perhaps you could include the last one Meg elicited from the Secretary of State which I think was very important.
  74. (Mr Miliband) Culminating in the one that Meg elicited from the Secretary of State.

    Mr Turner

  75. The question I was going to ask was about admissions. Do you not think age 11 is too young to select pupils?
  76. (Mr Miliband) By "select" do you mean an 11-plus style selection?

  77. We are talking about specialist schools.
  78. (Mr Miliband) In relation to specialist schools there is the capacity for schools to select up to ten per cent of pupils on the basis of aptitude. The vast majority of specialist schools do not use that power. Nonetheless we think it is important to keep it there. They are not allowed to select in science but in music I think there is a case that if one has a particular centre of excellence in music a small percentage of kids with a particular talent in music should be allowed preferential access to that school. That was certainly the arrangement at Pimlico Comprehensive when I was at school in London on the other side of town. I think most people would say that you can see musical aptitude at the age of 11.

  79. This morning on the radio there was talk of an aptitude recognition on the same basis as the music tests, the Associated Board tests, for languages being rolled out nationally.
  80. (Mr Miliband) In music grades 1 to 8 are a series of attainment criteria rather than aptitude criteria. Sorry to be pernickety but it is important to be clear. What was being suggested was that for languages there could be a similar system that allowed children to recognise their achievement in different languages. I think that is what you are referring to.

  81. That is right.
  82. (Mr Miliband) I was not listening to the radio this morning, by the way, so I am slightly flying blind there. I am assuming that is what this was about.

  83. All the better. That is what we like with ministers.
  84. (Mr Miliband) I was busy cramming for my interrogation.

  85. Clearly you think that selection for music of a limited number of pupils is okay and you would extend that to the other specialisms without exception for which specialist schools can be set up?
  86. (Mr Miliband) Yes, although not science, I think I am right in saying.

  87. Why not science?
  88. (Mr Miliband) Because the evidence that we have been presented with and certainly my view is that the difference between selection by aptitude and selection by ability is that aptitude is in a particular area of the curriculum and selection by ability is a general intelligence test which I think is not a good basis on which to sort out children at age 11.

  89. I do not see why it should be science bad, language good, for selection.
  90. (Mr Miliband) Science is a very broad designation. We know that within science there is a whole range of subjects. I think that is different from music.

  91. Or languages?
  92. (Mr Miliband) Or languages, yes.

    Valerie Davey

  93. Can we establish then which of the specialist schools you would allow the ten per cent?
  94. (Mr Miliband) I think I am right in saying it is in all the colleges apart from the science colleges.

  95. Is this in enterprise? You could have an aptitude for business and enterprise or an aptitude for engineering.
  96. (Mr Miliband) I think an aptitude for engineering is perfectly -----

  97. I think personally the distinction is very difficult to make. I think parents must find it fairly bewildering. Do we offer them any support in making this decision as to whether their child has an aptitude rather than an ability?
  98. (Mr Miliband) I think there is a distinction between aptitude and ability. It is more for individual schools if they choose that they want to use the power to select up to ten per cent to then make clear what they mean by that in an open and objective way. I think that is the best way in which it could be developed.

  99. The majority of course have not used it, perhaps understandably.
  100. (Mr Miliband) Not just the majority. The vast majority. I think it is right that 94 per cent of specialist schools do not use this power. That includes all of those that were created before 1997 which had greater powers in this area.. I think post-1997 it is a very small number of schools that have used this power.

    Mr Chaytor

  101. Just pursuing the distinction between aptitude and ability, you are saying that you cannot test for aptitude in science because it is indistinguishable from ability. What does that say about the status of the science specialist schools compared to the rest?
  102. (Mr Miliband) I do not think I said it was indistinguishable from ability. I said that I thought it veered into a general ability test. What do you mean, what does it say about the science colleges?

  103. Does it not say that higher ability children are likely to go to science schools?
  104. (Mr Miliband) Not if they are not using an aptitude test for the ten per cent of places that might be reserved.

  105. But do you not think there is a hierarchy within the designated specialisms?
  106. (Mr Miliband) You asked me that before, David, and I do not actually. I was at a meeting on Monday with a group of heads, some representing sports colleges, others science colleges. Each was fiercely proud of their own specialism, determined that it made a particular contribution in their own area. I think it is only a peculiarly English problem if one insists that a technology college is somehow lower grade than a science college, etc.

  107. How many years before the first Cabinet Minister sends their child to a sports college?
  108. (Mr Miliband) I have no idea if any Cabinet minister currently sends their child to a sport college. I think quite a lot of Cabinet ministers would quite like their sons or daughters to become leading sports people who can keep them in their old age in the style to which they have become accustomed.

  109. Just shifting to a different aspect of admissions, last week the Secretary of State said, and I am quoting from the transcript, "At the end of the day the bottom line is that selection regimes produce a system that inhibits educational opportunities for significant numbers of people.". At that point we were talking about ability, not aptitude. He then said, "There are major questions about how we deal with that". What do you think the major questions are about selection by ability?
  110. (Mr Miliband) There is one major question which is whether or not it is good for the kids.

  111. What do you propose the Government should be doing about that?
  112. (Mr Miliband) Our view is that the Government has to strike an important balance between setting a framework for admissions at the centre and respecting local parental wishes and local consensus. We have struck that balance through the 1997/1998 legislation. We think that that balance is one that places considerable responsibilities at local level and I think the Secretary of State said that he thought that it was incumbent on all 150 LEAs to interrogate their own systems for school improvement against the single criterion, the extent to which they help raise standards, and that that responsibility applied to all LEAs without exception.

  113. In terms of the evidence base about selective admission systems as against non-selective admission systems, what does the Department's evidence suggest?
  114. (Mr Miliband) What I know is that in the 30 years since the introduction of widespread comprehensive all-ability admissions there have been very significant improvements in school achievement by young people. I do not think one should have a mono-causal view of the link but notably for girls there have been significant improvements. I think that significant educational research would suggest that there has been a positive contribution from comprehensivisation, if I can use that word, the end of the 11-plus, and certainly I think that was beneficial for the country, to get rid of the 11-plus, and the preponderance of LEAs chose to follow the circular that requested them to look at this. Having said that, I am sure Mr Turner will jump in if I do not say that his view is that the Northern Ireland system, where they have kept the 11-plus, suggests other factors at work. I think the Northern Ireland situation is exceptional for other reasons but none the less this is an area that academics fight over. Our own view is that overall the end of the 11-plus has been beneficial. In the areas where the local authorities have chosen to end the 11-plus it has been beneficial for educational opportunity.

  115. But Professor Jesson, whose research the Department has depended on heavily in terms of the specialist schools policy, has also done research in terms of the comparative performance of different admission systems and his conclusion is that areas with selective admissions policies perform overall less well than areas with comprehensive admissions policies. The Department has not chosen to give a high profile to those conclusions.
  116. (Mr Miliband) That is your assertion. I do not know if that is true.

  117. It did not appear in the White Paper. His research on selective admissions systems was not quoted in the Schools White Paper but his research on specialist schools performance was.
  118. (Mr Miliband) Maybe that is because the Schools White Paper did not go into questions of admission in the way that it did into the questions of specialism. I have read Professor Jesson's report on Kent but not the broader piece that you are referring to. I think he would say himself that that research has some relatively crude categories that it is working to, partly because he had difficulty getting hold of some data. What the Secretary of State said was that it is important for every LEA to look hard at any data that relates to its schools' performance and the Jesson data has as much status as any other.

  119. But if the LEA looks hard, the LEA has no power to change the admissions system because this is now determined nationally and we have just published a new code of practice.
  120. (Mr Miliband) With respect, it is not determined nationally. There is an important principle of local consent that we have tried to insert into the legislative arrangements. That means parental consent, so an LEA cannot decide on its own to change its school organisation. It needs parental consent and that is an important principle of the system. We are often accused of having too centralised a system of education in this country. This is one area where we have tried to strike a balance between central prescription and local responsibility.

    Valerie Davey: I think we have come back full circle on this because this is the last element of our report.

    Paul Holmes

  121. Continuing on this theme of admissions and government attitudes and conflict of evidence, you said that in general you think that the end of the 11-plus was a good thing, that the Government are not saying categorically that therefore they would want to end it in areas like Kent or Lincolnshire, for example, which still retain the 11-plus. Why not? You say you are in favour of an evidence based approach. If the evidence is, and the Government thinks that the evidence is, that ending selection at 11 through the 11-plus is a good thing, why not end it everywhere?
  122. (Mr Miliband) Because we have since 1944 had a system of education in this country that balances local and national power and we think that it is incumbent on us to be respectful of the boundaries for national power in this area. The original circulars that brought in comprehensive schooling requested local authorities to make proposals for school reorganisation and it would be a very big step for central government and for me or the Secretary of State to decide that we knew better than parents how to organise schooling in different areas.

  123. You were talking about local consent and parental consent as being an important plank of the current policy, but you only allow the parents to vote by and large who benefit from the continuing existence of grammar schools. You do not allow the parents at a local secondary modern whose children suffer from the existence of the grammar schools to vote. You do not allow the parents of junior feeder schools who go to the secondary moderns instead of in the grammar system to vote, so it is a very one-sided system of parental consent.
  124. (Mr Miliband) These things were debated extensively during the passage of the 1997/1998 legislation and obviously there are balances to be struck at every stage. The Government felt it struck the right balance for reasons that were extensively set out at the time. Our belief is that it is incumbent on us to make sure that significant changes to local admissions do have parental consent and we have tried to articulate that in a set of regulations and rules. We are now three or four years into seeing them operate. We think that was the right way of organising it.

  125. You made a speech at Glasgow University on 19 September.
  126. (Mr Miliband) You are all quoting the speech.

    Jonathan Shaw

  127. We were all there.
  128. (Mr Miliband) I know you were not. This suggests that my publicity machine is not as effective as I thought.

    Valerie Davey

  129. It was a very comprehensive (dare I say) speech.
  130. (Mr Miliband) Am I allowed to interject a moment of levity into our proceedings? When I gave this speech in Glasgow University it was just as the A-level imbroglio was getting particularly exciting. I was giving this lecture at seven o'clock and the Vice-Chancellor came up to the lectern to introduce me and said he was delighted that the Schools Minister had come all the way from London to talk about co-operation and what we could learn from each other and he said, "I would just like to reassure the Minister that I have just listened to the six o'clock news and I can confirm he still is the Schools Minister." It had me feeling for my pager in a rather nervous way, so the Glasgow lecture is imprinted on my mind as well as yours.

    Paul Holmes

  131. In the speech you praised the existence of different systems within the UK - Wales, Scotland, England, Northern Ireland - because you could learn across the borders and so forth. We have already heard that we might look at Northern Ireland where it is said that results are better because they have a selective system, although the Northern Irish are looking at scrapping the 11-plus and grammar schools. What about looking at the Scottish system where 96 per cent of the children go to comprehensive schools? They have better exam results than we do and they have a higher staying-on rate for higher education and more respect for education.
  132. (Mr Miliband) We should certainly look at the Scottish system. They obviously have many things that are different in their system, not just the degree to which there are comprehensive schools. They have a different post-16 system. They have a different educational history. I was astonished to learn when I was there that 25 per cent of Edinburgh pupils go to private schools, so it is not quite as comprehensive as I had thought, at least in that city. Of course we should learn from them. One of the reasons I went to Scotland on my first "foreign" visit was that we should be learning from different systems.

    Mr Simmonds

  133. I am sure, Minister, the people of Lincolnshire will be delighted to hear that you are not unilaterally going to shut down the grammar school system in Lincolnshire which does have fairly universal support. One of the issues I want to pick up on is the parental choice. How does the diversity agenda and specialist schools programme increase parental choice, particularly bearing in mind your comments about the schools' ability to select?
  134. (Mr Miliband) In my view choice only exists when you have got choice of good options, so the first thing about parental choice is that there have to be good schools for them to choose from. If they are presented with a choice between a good school and a bad school it is no choice at all. Secondly, within that the fact that we will have schools with a range of specialisms, that some parents if they wish can choose a faith school for their kids, those are important parts of our pluralistic education system. You made reference to the specialist schools being able to select up to ten per cent, although, to repeat the point, 95-plus per cent do not do so. Choice is extended to the extent to which there are good options on offer and so the school improvement programme and the specialist programme are both relevant to that.

  135. Is parental choice though part of the driving force behind the diversity agenda?
  136. (Mr Miliband) The central focus for the diversity agenda is to help raise school standards. That is a way of giving parents choice. There is a separate question which is to what extent does parental choice contribute to the diversity, or at any rate contribute to school improvement? Certainly it is a very strong signal to schools if parents do not want their kids to go there and schools with falling rolls are giving off a very clear market signal about their weakness. Of course, the difficulty is that in many parts of the country there is not choice of schools because of geography or whatever and we have to find other mechanisms of intervening to tackle problems.

  137. I accept that point. Certainly in rural areas in my own constituency there would be tremendous issues regarding the point you have just made, but what about the diversity and parental choice within the curriculum within a particular school?
  138. (Mr Miliband) Yes, that is important. Andrew, we did not talk about that at all when we were talking about diversity. I think it is a really important point that Charles Clarke made. It is also a point that I made in my first speech to the NAHT. It is striking in this country that within-school variation in pupil performance is four times as great as between-school variation in pupil performance. That partly reflects the fact that in comparison to some countries we have more comprehensive intake, but only partly reflects that. Within-school variation sets up a very clear agenda about teaching quality. There is then a separate issue about how we offer more choice to pupils within schools. Parents can have an influence on that but it is obviously up to pupils in the end to make their choices about studies. We have taken the view that there is a need for significantly greater curriculum flexibility at 14-plus. I do not know if that is what you were beginning to refer to. We certainly want to free up the curriculum at that stage and part of the announcement today was about that, although we are going to have to come forward with wider ranging proposals in the new year in relation to 14-19. I think that that flexibility for pupils to make choices within schools is a good thing and something we should promote.

  139. How do you balance that potential different streaming of pupils within a particular school to generate that additional diversity sit comfortably with the other comments that you made earlier in your introduction about trying to cut down the workload of teachers? Presumably you are adding to the potential workload of teachers by creating these different -----
  140. (Mr Miliband) We have got an expanding teaching profession, I am pleased to say. There are 20,000 more teachers than there were in 1997, 9,000 more in the last year. I think that vision of an expanding teaching force is a good one but it should be complemented by a wider range of support professionals. A hard question for us, which may be the generic one you are asking, is that in a rural area where there is one school is it a danger if you have a science college and in fact you think your kids have got an aptitude for music? Is that what you are driving at?

  141. What I am trying to establish is how you are going to deliver the diversity of curriculum within a particular school.
  142. (Mr Miliband) A school has responsibility to hire the appropriate number of teachers. Personally I would say the opposite, that, far from workforce reform threatening the delivery of a diverse curriculum, it actually supports it because it allows teachers to bring into the classroom to support learning a range of professionals who have skills that can contribute to the pupils' learning. If I was coming here saying I wanted to reduce the number of teachers and increase the number of support staff who do not have QTS (qualified teacher status) qualification, then I think you could say, "Hang on. This is going to reduce choice". I am not saying that. I am saying we should increase the number of teachers and increase the range of support staff.

  143. I hear what you say, Minister. All of us, and every single Member of Parliament, when we go to visit schools in our constituencies, there is one theme that runs through what teachers say to us, which is that they have too much workload. Whether or not you believe what you have told us about 20,000 new teachers, and I am sure we can debate that although we will not bother here today, there is no doubt that teachers say they have got too much bureaucracy and too much paperwork to deal with. What I am suggesting is that you are going to burden them with additional work by creating this potential diversity, which I approve of, within schools, but the two things do not seem to sit comfortably side by side.
  144. (Mr Miliband) Do you know what percentage of their time teachers spend teaching?

  145. It depends what role they have within the school, obviously.
  146. (Mr Miliband) It is about a third of teachers' time that is spent teaching. You are right. A lot of their workload is being bunged up with not just administrative tasks but with other duties, some of them managerial but some of them, from exam invigilation to shepherding pupils around the school, could be done by other people. You do not need a teacher qualification to invigilate an exam. Yes, there is a workload problem. No, it is not caused by too much teaching. It is caused by too many other tasks and that is what we want to reduce significantly. There are different issues between the primary and the secondary sector, obviously, ,which we are engaging with. I certainly do not see that the development of a science specialism or a technology specialism and which a school then develops itself in that area and hires more teachers in that area, I do not see why that adds to teacher workload. Why should it?

    Valerie Davey: We need to move on. We will leave that question hanging.

    Mr Pollard

  147. Minister, you were quoted in the St Albans Observer on 23 September as saying, "There are huge potential gains from diversity", and yet the Government does not include Steiner or Montessori schools in that diversity, and that is real diversity rather than variations on a theme which is what you have been talking about so far.
  148. (Mr Miliband) I pay particular attention to my media profile in the St Albans area. I have hade a meeting with the Steiner Foundation and we are in serious discussion with them about whether or not or how really, because I think there is positive commitment on both sides, one or more of their schools could become part of the mainstream schooling system. Given what we say about school standards, we have to make sure that the contribution of Steiner schools would be positive and there are some quite profound issues raised about their approach to examinations and other matters that make this quite a ticklish area, but I think there is a positive commitment on both sides to see if we can do it. Of course, my meeting with national representation of Steiner does not mean we can click our fingers and create a school. This has got to be something that a local authority or a local area wants to develop and that is where the discussion is at the moment with a number of local authorities who have expressed an interest. I would not pretend to you it is without problems.

  149. Is there any limit on the number of faith schools that you would support? I am thinking particularly that there is a worry outside that some faith schools could promulgate racism and anti-Semitism.
  150. (Mr Miliband) It would be disastrous if that was the case, and the Government takes a number of steps to make sure that is not the case. I certainly do not know of any faith school that is promoting anti-semitism or racism.

  151. There is a worry that extreme Muslim schools could promulgate that sort of rubbish.
  152. (Mr Miliband) One has to be very careful about damning a whole religion or the adherence to a religion. There are now 14 Muslim schools. I would be very wary of saying that they have a particular responsibility in this respect.

  153. I was not talking about Muslim schools, I was talking about the perception from others about Muslim schools.
  154. (Mr Miliband) It is very important that all faith schools deliver the National Curriculum, that they are inspected in the appropriate way and that they live up to the standards we would expect of a maintained school. Obviously there is widespread scope for a laissez-faire attitude outside the maintained sector and these schools are totally unregulated or much less regulated outside the state sector. We do have a responsibility to promote community cohesion, we cannot expect schools to do it on their own and certainly we cannot expect them to do it on their own within the school day and that is why the collaboration across religious and other divides outside school hours is an important part of the response we can make to the challenges that a multi-faith, multi-cultural society faces.

  155. We need consistency in the classroom. Many schools have too many supply teachers. Certainly in my own area we spend an awful lot of time recruiting supply teachers because we cannot retain teachers. Teachers leaving after two or three years is quite common for some of the reasons that Mark Simmonds was saying earlier on. How do we retain our classroom teachers?
  156. (Mr Miliband) I think the good news is that we have an expanding teaching profession. We have had more applications for teacher training than we have had for the last 15/20 years, we have had 35,000 people coming in to teacher training -

  157. Minister, with respect, the 20,000 that you quoted is fine in global terms, but the reality is, if you go around my constituency, that they are spending too much money on supply teachers and their teachers are leaving after two or three years. That is the situation on the ground.
  158. (Mr Miliband) I understand that. Unless we are short of time I would just like to answer the question by giving you the general position.

  159. I was not suggesting you knew exactly what was going on in schools in my constituency.
  160. (Mr Miliband) I want to do justice to the question by addressing the point you are making because I do think the overall picture is important. We have an expanding profession, we have more people coming into teacher training. No less an authority than The Guardian - who I think have left the room - said that teaching is now the career change of choice in the jobs market. We have significantly better paid teachers and I want to see them better supported. That is not to say we do not have significant pinch points around the system and those pinch points are reflected in the large sums of money that are paid for recruitment and retention advertising or for supply. I do not think it is a nationwide thing, I think there are particular pinch points. There was the OFSTED report about the quality of supply teaching which asked some important questions about the way schools were inducting and using supply teachers. It also pointed out that on average we had 2,000 fewer supply teachers in the system every day this year than we did in previous years. I never like to take one year as the be-all and end-all, but that is suggested. There is no question in my mind that we have to continue to be very competitive in the jobs market to hold on to teachers especially beyond the three to five year position that you referred to. One of the major changes that has got very little coverage and certainly before I came a Minister I had not appreciated the significance of is the shortening of the pay spine blow the threshold, which sounds like a piece of ghastly management jargon but actually in simple terms means that teachers can expect about a 7 or 8 per cent pay rise by increment every year for the first five years in the profession, which is designed specifically to promote retention in that critical three to five year period. I do not think any members of the Committee represent London constituencies, but there are particular problems with recruitment and retention in London where teachers are paid approximately £30,000 after they pass the threshold. In a particularly high cost centre like London there are real struggles holding on to teachers especially when they start a family. We have asked the school teachers' review body to look particularly at that extreme pinch point. I certainly do not deny there are problems elsewhere and I hope what we are doing in general as well as specifically can tackle them.

    Jonathan Shaw

  161. The quality of supply teachers does vary. They are an important part of the workforce and provide the sort of flexibility and cover necessary for schools. When you spoke on the radio the other morning you referred to the kite-mark that some agencies have. This Committee has asked two inspectors, OFSTED and the Chief Inspector, whether they thought they had a role in inspecting the agencies. At the moment if you are a headteacher and a person is sent along you have got an emergency cover and if they are not satisfactory you tell that agency please do not send this guy along again. That might happen to that guy half a dozen times. What does the Agency do about that? Should OFSTED have a role? At the moment the agencies come under DTI legislation. If you did a risk assessment in terms of the number of supply teachers that there are you would find we are at a higher position than we have been for a long time. Is there not a role for OFSTED to ensure the quality of those agencies so that we can sort out the good ones from the not so good ones?
  162. (Mr Miliband) I spoke informally to the Chief Inspector about this because we were in the same radio station on Monday morning. It would take OFSTED into new areas if they were forced to start looking at the employment status and regulation. I think they would be very wary of that. I do not rule out change on the educational side. Yes, there are problems with the school that asks for an agency to supply someone and they are not good enough, they feel they get no feedback and the person gets recycled. It is worth pointing out that only one-third of the supply teachers come through private agencies, two-thirds do not.

  163. But it will be about pinch points, will it not, Minister?
  164. (Mr Miliband) Just hear me out. At the other end of the spectrum you have got the schools that have very very informal relationships that govern the school supply process. In my own constituency I know a retired teacher who pops into the school when there is a problem, the head just rings her up. I do not want to set up such a bureaucratic system that we end up constraining professional discretion. What we need is the feedback mechanisms to make sure that either unsuitable people are not regularly sent to schools or other schools do not suffer in the same way. I do not think we should close our minds to that. We are moving into the regulatory field with the new kite-mark that is intended to give reassurance and an explanation to schools. Equally, we must not bung up the system in such a way that it makes it so bureaucratic it just falls apart.

  165. You do not think a flag could be raised at a certain stage when there are complaints about a particular agency and that OFSTED could have a role to go in and inspect what they were doing? It is not about the contractual legislation, it is about whether they are providing training for those teachers where weaknesses have been provided and are they just pushing out people to schools irrespective of the number of complaints? It is about ensuring the quality of the people and the educational standard that they provide to schools often in dire circumstances. Your tales about the old teacher coming down the road is all very well and nice, but there are stressful situations where headteachers do not know what to do and they ring up an agency and then a teacher is put in front of a class and they are an important part of their educational career before SATS etcetera. So let us compare the nice story that you said about to a real problem, the worst scenario. Is there not a role to inspect, given we have got 10,000 people -
  166. (Mr Miliband) I do not rule out action in this area, but I do not want to take action that ends up clogging the system or having perverse effects. Of course I am not saying let us only look at the rosy scenario.

  167. That is the example you chose to use.
  168. (Mr Miliband) With respect, I did not do that, Jonathan. What I said was that there was a range of experience, some of which was the high stress and destructive relationship that you have talked about and the other end of the spectrum is the more positive one. The purpose of design policy is to take account of that wide variation and even in your own contribution in the last five minutes you have thrown up two or three different ways in which this regulation can be done. We need to think very carefully in this area to make sure we are providing the right sort of reassurance and the right sort of quality assurance to the system.

    Jeff Ennis

  169. I want to look very fleetingly at the new categories of specialism. One new category is engineering and we have only had four bids nationally, one from my constituency of Doncaster and it has engineering specialist school status. Are you disappointed by the fact that nationally we have only had four bids for engineering specialist school status? What are the reasons behind that?
  170. (Mr Miliband) I want to see more. I am happy to repeat my comment on Monday that I look forward to the independent assessment of individual school's application and, as I do to all four applications, I wish it good luck and full speed. I think it is important we increase those numbers. It is striking that a company like British Aerospace is now in partnership with 40 technology colleagues and I hope that we can generate the sort of long-term commitment that would allow the engineering college base to be developed because it has got obvious potential not only in constituencies like yours but more widely. I think the introduction of the engineering double GCSE is rather an exciting development across the academic vocational divide.

  171. Going back to your opening remarks about the four priorities, one which struck a very strong chord with me was partnerships beyond the classroom and yet in a recent OFSTED report it said that a lot of the specialist schools, other than sports schools, were not actually knitting together with the partnerships course and with the local communities, they were failing in that area of responsibility. What can we do to address what I consider to be a very important element of specialist school status?
  172. (Mr Miliband) I consider it to be very important as well. Certainly the Technology Colleges Trust, who are significant players in this field, have had a very strong steer from us and are very keen themselves to strengthen this aspect of the programme because they can see that it is not playing the full role that it should. When I was at the Technology Colleges Trust conference I used my speech to highlight the need to make the most of the new facilities that are put into specialist schools more broadly than for the pupils in that school. The commitment to collaborate is there but it does require a change of mind set and we have just got to push it hard. In disadvantaged communities especially the prospect of schools being open a wider range of hours for pupils and the wider community and with high quality facilities must be a central part of the education agenda for those children otherwise we are going to find that, however good the quality of education and welfare between 9.00 and 3.30, they will drift away outside school hours and in school holidays.

  173. Do you think there could be a case then, where specialist schools are not delivering on the wider aspects of linking into the partnership schools and the local communities, for actually removing the specialist school status?
  174. (Mr Miliband) The criteria for re-designation are clear. I think it is 33 schools have been de-designated. The standards contribution is the primary one, but it is important that the criteria do give a full reflection of the range of tasks that specialist schools are set.

  175. Just changing the subject slightly and going back to my Adjournment Debate of the other day because none of the members was at it so I have got to refresh your memories about it -
  176. (Mr Miliband) I was very disappointed there was such a poor turn out from members of the Committee.

  177. So was I, Minister. You are perfectly aware of the profile of performance and particularly under-achievement in coal field area schools particularly at secondary level. I did suggest during the course of my Adjournment Debate that the main target for initiatives we have got nationally now is Excellence in Cities and yet a lot of coal field areas do not fit the profile that is necessary for the current Excellence in Cities regime, and I actually floated the idea of extending the Excellence in Cities initiative to all coal field areas. Now that you have had a chance to think about that, have you any further positive thoughts along that line?
  178. (Mr Miliband) What I can reassure you about is that the commitment to so-called excellence clusters, which are areas outside cities but nonetheless exhibit the characteristics of disadvantage and under-performance that are the focus of this programme, does offer an opportunity for those coal field areas that have not yet been designated to be so and I think that is a very positive route. The work that the Excellence in Cities partnerships have developed in relation to gifted and talented provision and in relation to learning mentors are appropriate across the schooling system not only in disadvantaged areas. So I want to see those lessons being spread as widely as possible and certainly the excellence clusters approach provides an obvious route for those coal field areas, unlike Barnsley and Doncaster who are not yet the happy beneficiaries of the programme.

    Paul Holmes

  179. One of the complaints one gets when you go into a school is they will say the school up the road has got money for this and the school over there has got money for that but we do not get anything. One example of this was the Excellence in Cities initiative, and for a long time I complained that areas in north Derbyshire and Chesterfield that were just as deprived as anything that I knew well in Sheffield but they did not get the money because they were not in the Excellence in Cities initiative. I was very pleased when you wrote to me to say that there were 12 experiments, including Chesterfield, where Excellence in Cities money would become available. Of the six secondary schools that physically are within Chesterfield, three serve noticeably deprived areas. Two of them have got money out of this new scheme and they are very very pleased. One of the three, who is just as deprived, is not in the cluster that is going to get this money and they are feeling quite bitter.
  180. (Mr Miliband) Why are they not in the cluster?

  181. I do not know. You would know that better than me.
  182. (Mr Miliband) Presumably the cluster is designed by you, not by us or, is it designed by us? Excellence in Cities come forward with plans. There is always an element of rough justice in these things and we have to try and smooth out the roughness as far as possible. It should not be the case that your school is feeling particularly hard done by. The LEA funding formula should reflect a significant amount of its needs in its formula. As a result of the new reforms our aim is that similar children in different parts of the country should have a similar amount of money attached to them. That partly depends on us having a formula that delivers that to LEAs. It then depends on LEAs having formulae that recognise need at school level. While I can understand their frustration which is that they feel they are not part of this cluster, they should be benefiting from rising expenditure going to meet need.

  183. I want to enlarge on that from a slightly different angle. You could look again at the six secondary schools in Chesterfield and the two most successful schools, one of them is specialist and one of them is in the running to be one. You have then got this school who are saying we have not got the money that the deprived schools are getting under this extension of Excellence in Cities and we have not got the money that is available for specialist schools even though they have tried for both, so you have got a real patchwork quilt. In your Glasgow speech you talked about the fact that in 1997 the Government had a very fragmented system. Chesterfield is an even more fragmented system where one or two schools who were already very very successful are getting the extra £1/2 million or the extra status that goes with being a specialist school and you have got another two schools in similarly deprived areas who are getting the extension of Excellence in Cities money and then you have got another two schools who are not getting either of those things. If the extra money and status is good for those two, why is it not good for all six?
  184. (Mr Miliband) There is a perfectly respectable argument that we should move towards a national funding formula which would iron out funding across the country and different people would earn different amounts of money attached to their headteachers and it is a perfectly respectable argument. It is not one the Government shares because we think there would be a degree of centralisation that would be quite difficult to defend. If one does not go for that sort of purity of solution one ends up with a compromise that involves us giving money to LEAs or, in the case of a School Standards Grant, a grant direct to schools. We want to make it less of a patchwork. I accept that there are frustrations and bureaucracies in the system that we are trying to iron out. Part of that is about cutting down the number of parts of the status (?) fund, part of it is about a self-denying ordinance on the Department not to create new pots of money. Notwithstanding the sniggers from the Chair, I think it is significant that over the next three years the Department is having a cash cut in its central programmes. So every single penny of extra money that comes into the schooling system as a result of the Government's largesse in the Spending Review is going to the front line and that means our share of overall spending as a Department is falling significantly, but that does not make the system perfect. In my view we have to keep on moving towards a system that has a bias towards front-line flexibility within the context of an intelligent accountability framework that sets the incentives appropriately for school leavers be they governors or the heads of governors.

    Mr Simmonds

  185. I wanted to make sure you were aware that there are very severe areas of deprivation both in rural areas as well as in coal field areas like Jeff highlighted and I think part of the knock-on impact of that is the low level of aspiration that many people have in rural areas and to make sure that that is recognised not just in generic funding formulas but perhaps specific funding streams that maybe in existence now or in the future.
  186. (Mr Miliband) Your point is well made or at least the first 95 per cent of it because the last five per cent seemed to suggest that we should create a new funding stream and I would be wary of that because we have just moved through the local Government funding reforms and tried to introduce a simpler, fair, more transparent system. Simpler, fair and more transparent because it is based on three things: a basic entitlement for every pupil, a recognition of additional educational needs and a recognition of extra costs, for example sparsity which is probably a significant issue. I very much take your point that within a county area there will be different needs and part of our job and yours as a representative there is to help the challenge of culture lower expectations. That is not only about money but it is partly about money. I hope that the LEA takes the message too that, as they design their formula to pass on the money to schools, they need to tackle different needs within the county because we do not specify what formula the LEA should use. We require them to have a recognition of need in it. The LEAs make their own decisions about distributing on especially in large counties, but I can imagine in Lincolnshire as well there are issues about how money is distributed between schools. At a time of rising spending it is necessary to get a fair distribution at the local level.

    Mr Chaytor

  187. In measuring the performance of schools we use a single indicator of five A to Cs at GCSE level. What signal do you think that sends to those pupils and their parents who do not get five A to Cs? Do you think the time has come for a broader range of indicators to measure school improvement?
  188. (Mr Miliband) I think we have moved from a situation where we did not measure at all to one where we now have a much clearer accountability framework, but clarity sometimes comes at the expense of nuance and specificity. I do not want to lose the institutional accountability that has come from the five A to C measure and it is striking, to return to the example of Barnsley which is much in my mind at the moment, that the percentage of schools with less than 25 per cent of kids getting five A to Cs has fallen from nearly 30 per cent in 1999 to 15 per cent today. Obviously Jeff can fill us in on that. There is little question in my mind that the clarity of the five A to C measure has helped those schools think and has contributed to challenging a culture of low aspiration and that is a precious thing to hang onto and there are still parts of the country where we have not got an agreement. It is wholly legitimate, however poor the area, to have high aspirations in terms of GCSE performance for disadvantaged children. We really must carry that drive through because it is only 40 or 50 per cent done yet, it is not wholly done. Having said that, some children get four GCSEs and others get a grade D for which they have worked hard and have not failed the exam. When we talk about an intelligent accountability framework we have got to think if there are ways in which we can recognise that without losing the clarity and the drive that comes from the current system. I see this as an evolving system, more flexibility at the front line within an intelligent accountability framework. I do not want to end up with performance data that is so overwhelming in its complexity that no one understands it, but I am not averse to the intelligent distribution of data and recognition of achievement especially as we must remember that assessment and examination has the purpose of institutional accountability, but its most important purpose is probably to help children move on and recognise their own strengths and weaknesses and make the most of their own studies.

    Mr Turner

  189. We have really confined ourselves to talking about diversity of admissions and specialism and so on within schools. Could you cast your mind to diversity of management and structure and particularly to the work that was done at King's Manor School in Guildford. In the light of the recent Education Act have you had applications to dis-apply parts of education legislation to enable new structures of management and accountability within the maintained sector such as that which was developed with some difficulty?
  190. (Mr Miliband) I believe that we have had some applications under the power to innovate. I have not seen the detailed listings so I do not know if they refer to structural issues of the sort that you are referring to.

  191. Could you let us know?
  192. (Mr Miliband) I can find out. My guess is that it is pretty early days. We are in the first term of the implementation of the Act, but I will look into what the situation is. If we have a round in process, we will wait until it is completed until you see it, but I will come back to you on that.

    Jonathan Shaw

  193. Coming back to another one of your speeches, Minister, and you have said again this morning that the variation in performance within schools is four times as great as the variation between performance between schools, to what extent does increasing diversity between schools address the key issue of variance within schools?
  194. (Mr Miliband) To the extent that it provides a unifying mission for a school, to the extent that it drives improvement in management and organisation and to the extent that it exposes under-performing departments within a school it does contribute, but what really drives performance within the school is the quality of teaching and learning in different departments and different classes.

  195. The Pisa study found that countries which had a highly differentiated and selective education system showed greater difference between achievements of students from the most and the least advantaged backgrounds and there were similarities between ourselves, the United States and New Zealand. Also, a common feature of those three countries is that they have very high rates of teenage pregnancy and we know from the Social Exclusion Unit that teenage pregnancy occurs most in poor areas. In terms of the social stratification within schools, if diversity and selection is widening that or is making it -
  196. (Mr Miliband) There is no evidence of that. The important thing to note from the Pisa study is that high standards of excellence, far from being incompatible with an equitable distribution of achievement, actually goes with it, so Finland, Korea and Ireland, interestingly enough, perform high on average and are also low in the league of inequality, they have more equitable systems. The significant thing is they have high average schools as well as low inequality, so it is not dumbing down or levelling down, it is levelling up and that must be the aspiration. I think we can take inspiration from that. The striking thing is that Finland and Korea are extremely different countries, so there are different things going on there and one has to be careful in drawing out mono-causal links, but there is suggestive data which I think is useful.

  197. Finland and Korea are different countries from each other.
  198. (Mr Miliband) They are different countries, that is true.

  199. They are different in terms of their make up etcetera.
  200. (Mr Miliband) That is what I am saying.

  201. They are different from Britain, but they have a similar system.
  202. (Mr Miliband) The most important thing they share is that there are consistently high standards of teaching and learning wherever you go in those systems and that seems to me to be at the heart of what we have been talking about. In all the discussion about the structures let us not forget that in the end it is the relationship between the teacher, their support and the pupil that defines the life chances of those kids. I do not want to venture too far into this terrain because it is slightly off my beat. My understanding of the data is that the better the performance of girls in secondary schools the lower the teenage pregnancy rate. It is not just a socio-economics thing. If we inspire them and motivate them to learn they are much less likely to get pregnant. That confirms to me that education can be a real pile driver for social advance. It is not that you can solve every problem by education alone, you certainly cannot solve any of them without education and education can make a major difference to a lot of them.

    Ms Munn

  203. Sheffield is not the only city where there is quite a lot of segregation between the well-off people in certain areas and less well-off people in other areas. The majority of children in Sheffield go to their local school and they are coming from a community which is either doing very well or not doing very well. Is there any evidence yet that specialist schools are having an impact on the wider community in the way that I think it was hoped they might?
  204. (Mr Miliband) I think there are examples of specialist schools using their facilities in imaginative and positive ways and having a beacon effect, but we have got to do more. I am excited by the prospects of some of the city academies which we did not talk about. In the second priority I referred to of specialism and collaboration one form of specialism comes through the innovation that the academies represent. They are talking about new structures of management and learning, they are pioneering all year opening, being genuine centres of the whole community. There is significant Government investment going into those academies and I think the halo effect is potentially quite large and important. As I said earlier, one of the weaker aspects of the specialist school programme is in relation to the community use and we have to work on that.

  205. One of the schools which I visited as part of the Select Committee's visit to Birmingham was Castle Vale School, which was quite inspirational, and that was serving a very white working class area. One of the kids said to me, "Since we have become performing arts my mum is always saying 'When can I come up to school?' whereas she was never interested before" and that has obviously had a beneficial impact on her daughter's education. It seems to me that you have probably got a community out there of people who were turned off by learning from their own schooling experiences. Is there anything you can do, working in a joined-up way with your Minister who has responsibility for lifelong learning, to look at whether there are opportunities perhaps to be supporting schools like that where there is the potential to get people back into learning?
  206. (Mr Miliband) You and I discussed on my last visit here the temptation for ministers to think that for every problem there should be a programme or even for every good idea there should be a programme solution and we have to try and resist the temptation to do that. I want to be wary of saying that with every good school I find I should create a programme to support what it is doing. What we have to do is try and create a system that creates the right incentives (a) to share the information (b) to share the practice and (c) to put the money in. The money goes in from the bottom up rather than from the top down. We can help a bit by sponsoring innovation. There is an extended schools project which is not just about wider opening hours but it is about community schools in the sense of providing health and other facilities which I think is interesting and potentially a real hub of community re-education. I do not want education to have to wait for health and leisure and libraries to get their act together before we really plough on. I think schools that have a good relationship with their local community can make sure their facilities are more widely used and I think the development of out of hours and summer programmes is really an important part of that.

    Valerie Davey

  207. There is one last issue, Minister, which we would like to raise with you before you go and that is the A-level standards and the work of the QCA and to ask whether you are satisfied that the Department is now implementing what you believe to be the core recommendations of Tomlinson?
  208. (Mr Miliband) Most importantly, the QCA is implementing the recommendations of Tomlinson, but to the extent that they apply to us I think we are taking them seriously. The new leaders of the QCA, Ken Boston and Sir Anthony Greener, have both made a very impressive start. They are absolutely determined to make the QCA an institution with a genuinely high reputation. There are implications for us in relation to the memorandum of understanding that would govern our relationship to the QCA and we are taking that seriously and we are all utterly focused on making sure that the 2,000 students who this year got the wrong overall grades and the 10,000 who got the wrong unit grades never happens again and we are working on putting the systems in place to make that happen and that is primarily a responsibility for the QCA, but to the extent that we can help, we are doing so and the Secretary of State has announced a significant sum of money, up to £6 million, to help support that.

  209. The relationship between the Government and the QCA, is that going to come under further scrutiny?
  210. (Mr Miliband) I think the Tomlinson Report warned that we should not prejudice the efficiency improvements that are necessary in the short-term with structural change, that is why he advocated a memorandum of understanding. I think the Secretary of State has made clear that we have not closed our mind to institutional change in the direction of a more independent QCA, but our absolute priority at the moment is to make sure that the examination system has the organisational structure and resources to be run efficiently and effectively so that people do have confidence that they are getting the grades they deserve.

  211. Are you satisfied you know how the £6 million that is going to the QCA is going to be spent? Will it go to them or is it going to go to the schools?
  212. (Mr Miliband) It will not go to schools, it will go to pay for examiners and other key parts of the infrastructure. I think the new team in the QCA is getting stuck into its work in an impressive way and I think we should back them because when you appoint people you should support them.

    Jonathan Shaw

  213. There is concern about the number of examiners available. You say that you have provided the additional £6 million which NCSL has welcomed. The pay for doing the marking on things like Key Stage 2 is very low, is it not? I understand that it is about £5 an hour.
  214. (Mr Miliband) Ken Boston described it as a cottage industry in his evidence. I think all aspects of this industry need to be looked at and that includes pay.

  215. I want to give you some idea of what you have to do for that £5 an hour. A very experienced headteacher advised me that she gets £2.75 per script for Key Stage 2 during which time they have to test the spelling, handwriting, reading and writing and then there is a whole series of administrative checks that they have to do as well. Doing that for £5 an hour on top of her other job I think means she is not going to be looking to do it next year, which is a concern.
  216. (Mr Miliband) Take it from me, if you think you are concerned, I do not want to be back here in a year's time with you beating me over the head about this. We have said very clearly that we will do whatever the QCA recommend is necessary to get it done. When the Secretary of State made his statement to the House we did not get any ideas back from our own side or from the Opposition. If anyone does have any bright ideas, please speak now or forever hold your peace. The QCA are on to the pay rates for examiners issue.

    Valerie Davey

  217. Minister, I think schools and colleges can be well assured that you are looking carefully at this and I hope will have more confidence in the system. We have come to the end of a long session at the end of quite an engaging time during the whole of this session. Can we say thank you very much indeed for coming at the end of term and can we wish you a very happy break for Christmas and the New Year.

(Mr Miliband) Thank you very much. I am happy to reciprocate that.