WEDNESDAY 15 JANUARY 2003

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Members present:

Mr Barry Sheerman, in the Chair
Mr David Chaytor
Valerie Davey
Jeff Ennis
Paul Holmes
Ms Meg Munn
Mr Kerry Pollard
Jonathan Shaw
Mr Mark Simmonds
Mr Andrew Turner

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Examination of Witnesses

MRS MARGARET-ANNE BARNETT and MR RON JACOBS, School Diversity Division, DfES, and MR RAY SHOSTAK, Hertfordshire LEA, examined.

Chairman

Can I welcome Margaret-Ann Barnett and Ron Jacobs from the Department, the School Diversity Division, and Ray Shostak who is from Hertfordshire LEA. We are grateful that you have given us the time to help inform our inquiry into secondary education, the first phase of which you will know for most of this year, when we are not rushing off to do other things like respond to White Papers or statutory documents for higher education, we are looking at secondary education in four sections but diversity is the first. We have taken quite a lot of evidence, particularly from academics, on the diversity strategy and we thought it was only appropriate that we talk to the people who really know what is going on in the Department and in the project areas to find out how you can help us. Can I begin - and I do not know who wants to lead on this - by asking you to give a little background of the history of the pathfinder project. Mrs Barnett, I believe you are from New Zealand.

(Mrs Barnett) Yes, I am.

You will know that we recently visited New Zealand and, if you want to make any comparisons with what does or does not go on in New Zealand, that would be very welcome because it will bring back very happy memories.

(Mrs Barnett) I am here on secondment. I joined the Department in September of the year before last and was asked to take on this Diversity Pathfinders Project, which had its beginning during the Green Paper consultation Schools Achieving Success and, in the course of those consultations, the Secretary of State, Estelle Morris, visited a number of LEAs around the country and head teachers. At that stage, you will recall that they were talking about expanding the specialist schools programme and talking about diversity being an important component of the secondary reform and raising standards and, in her discussions with people, she could see that there were a number of implications around expanding diversity and a number of things that people were particularly interested to explore. So, she decided at that time that she would establish a very small project that would enable us to put some of these things into practice and to look at how an expansion of diversity and an expansion particularly of the specialist schools programme would work in a rural area and in an urban environment and that was really the beginnings of this project. We were interested to see what the factors were going to be that would make this successful and what we could learn from the work of the pathfinders. That was really the beginnings of it.

(Mr Jacobs) I would only add, in the context of my presence here, that, if the Committee has questions that it wants to ask more broadly about specialist schools and diversity policy, I will be very happy to answer those. Mrs Barnett is very much the expert on the Diversity Pathfinder Project which is part of the division that I am currently heading.

Mr Jacobs, you are one of the constants in the Department.

(Mr Jacobs) Yes. We do not actually keep records on this!

People say to me, "Thank God Ron Jacobs is still there when everybody else seems to have moved elsewhere." You know the history; I would suggest you would know in the Department where some of the bodies are buried!

(Mr Jacobs) Well, I hope you are not going to ask me about that!

Could you give us a little more of a context to supplement what Mrs Barnett has said.

(Mr Jacobs) Yes, certainly. My involvement with specialist schools goes back nearly seven years which is a very long time in terms of a civil servant's stay with a programme. That comes about because, at about the start of that time, the Department abandoned its policy of moving everybody at least every three years and it was a policy which I found extremely interesting because, as you will know, it has evolved a great deal over those seven years. It has developed enormously from something that was originally, I think, perceived certainly and probably in practice exclusive into something that we now recognise as being targeted to go right across the secondary system.

Who was the Secretary of State when you started?

(Mr Jacobs) The Secretary of State when I started on this would have been John Patten, I suppose, or it might just have changed to Gillian Shephard by the time I started on it. The reason for my confusion there is that I was associated with city technology colleges immediately before that and of course dealt with both and was therefore already very close to the specialist schools programme even though I was actually dealing with the city technology colleges. As background to the pathfinder project, by the time the events that Mrs Barnett was describing in relation to Estelle Morris took place, we had already clearly established that what we were looking for was a specialist school programme to go across the board and therefore it did seem highly appropriate to have some areas in which that might happen more quickly than in others in order that we could see what lessons might be learnt. Even from then we have moved on in the sense that, at that stage, I think it would be fair to say that we were thinking in terms of those authorities being somewhat in advance of others in possibly reaching a stage at which all or nearly all their schools might be specialist whereas now, since the 28 November announcement, all authorities potentially are in the same position in relation to how quickly they might achieve specialist school status across the board.

In terms of the development of the specialist school concept, it starts under the last Conservative administration?

(Mr Jacobs) Yes.

It moves, which we are aware of, and it is much more of an elite system then; it is a small number of schools. What is the trigger for it becoming a general programme? Was that during David Blunkett's period of office or was it not until Estelle Morris came?

(Mr Jacobs) I would say that it was still under David Blunkett's term in office because of course, going back to 1997, there were 181 specialist schools. The new Government decided to keep the programme; they immediately decided it should be broader, both in terms of expanding the planned numbers and in terms of the community programme coming in. It was really in 2001, with the Green Paper and the White Paper, that the clear shift from a policy that was not necessarily directed at the whole system became directed at the whole system. The Green Paper targeted 1,500 schools by 2006 and the White Paper revised that target to 2005, and that was clearly the time at which we were saying, "This is not about two-tier; this is not about setting up divisions within the system; this is about a programme that we want all schools to be able to take the benefit of."

If this programme were building, expanding and developing, what was the earliest discussion about how you evaluate it and monitor it?

(Mr Jacobs) The earliest discussions on that would have been back in 1997, which is when we were first talking about setting up the research projects that became the London School of Economics and Leeds University research projects that were carried out in 1998 and 1999 and published in 2000.

So, you were really getting outside consultants, albeit universities, to evaluate?

(Mr Jacobs) To look at the impact of the programme, yes.

What is different about pathfinder to that sort of ...?

(Mr Jacobs) The research that I was talking about was to see how it affected individual schools and the pathfinder project is very much about how best benefit can be gained from a whole area or from subdivisions of areas within that area.

That is exactly what I wanted to get on record. Mr Shostak, do you want to say anything to get us started?

(Mr Shostak) No.

Jonathan Shaw

Mrs Barnett, you said that when the Government were looking at pathfinder bids, you were looking at how their bids would work and how the diversity would work in urban and rural areas. You have given us a précis of those pathfinders which are now a year old and you have told us in the report that you provided to the Committee what is happening in those areas. You are telling us the good things that are happening. Tell us what has not worked in rural areas. Tell us what has not worked in urban areas. If the diversity were going to be spread out across the board, then other local education authorities other than Hertfordshire would want to know what the pitfalls are as well as things that work.

(Mrs Barnett) First of all, one of the interesting things about this project is that we are looking at, in particular, diversity and collaboration and one of the really exciting outcomes of the project to date has been that although it started on the basis of expanding the specialist schools programme and expanding diversity, it very quickly developed with head teachers very closely involved into a project that was much more about joining up initiatives, about working together and about collaboration in local areas and of course that raises some particular challenges when you are looking at an area such as Cornwall where your schools are quite spread apart. So, they have looked at a number of strategies and are looking and are using a number of strategies to get around that isolation, such as in particular with Cornwall ICT. I think that one of the interesting things - and I am sure that Mr Shostak will have something to say about this as well - is that, in some of our pathfinder areas, when head teachers first started to get together, in some cases, some of those head teachers had not really had very much to do with their other local secondary schools up to that point. So we are very encouraged that, in the course of the pathfinder project, we are seeing head teachers working together and, perhaps more significantly, we are beginning to see subject leaders working together. For example, in the Birmingham Oaks Academy, in that urban area, every Wednesday afternoon, their heads of departments from different subject areas come together and they will get to the point of sharing their data with each other and looking at poor performance and looking at good performance and looking at how they can achieve best practice. They are the really encouraging signs; they are the good things that are happening. Some of the challenges are that, in some cases, there has been quite a competitive environment. In some cases, there has been a lot of change. In Middlesbrough, for example, there has been a huge amount of change in the education system and that has not always made it easy for head teachers to work closely together and to work in an environment of trust, but the interesting thing is that they have a determination to move on and to make it work/to make it happen.

What were the problems in Middlesbrough?

(Mrs Barnett) There has been some pressure on numbers. The rolls in Middlesbrough, as I understand it - and I would need to check this - are dropping and that creates difficulties in maintaining student numbers when your schools are all very close together. There have been some changes; there have been mergers and closures; there has been the establishment of two city academies; and there have also been changes in the LEA. Their CEO has just moved and our pathfinder co-ordinator moved. In an environment where there is a great deal of change, it is harder to make a project like this work effectively, particularly when you are asking people to collaborate closely and share best practice and so on.

The project has been going for a year in Middlesbrough. You gave them the money from their pathfinder and, during that year, there has been a great deal of upheaval within Middlesbrough and some of that within local government we are aware of. If you compare Middlesbrough to some of the other areas - you mentioned Cornwall for example - have they all performed equally as well? Has this been a good use of public money?

(Mrs Barnett) In many respects, it is hard to compare them because each of the projects is very different. I think it would be fair to say that, in some cases, it has been more difficult for them, just as I have described. We knew when we established this project that we were looking at very different areas, that there would be different impacts and that there would be different rates of progress and we felt that that was as much an important thing for us to be evaluating as anything else that we were evaluating about the project. In answer to your question, I think that, although these are early days, this relatively small amount of funding - it is £2.5 million over the period of the project - is a relatively small amount of money to be spending and has been quite a powerful catalyst for some very good work.

Mr Shostak, has £2.5 million been enough? What have you managed to do with it in Hertfordshire? What have been the pitfalls in Hertfordshire? Not enough money?

(Mr Shostak) Which of those would you like me to start with?

Jonathan Shaw: All of them.

Chairman

Please use your own priorities, Mr Shostak.

(Mr Shostak) I suppose I ought to begin by saying that although you have asked us to sit up here together, I really am not equipped to comment on the diversity pathfinder as a whole in terms of the overall project. My colleagues on the left will need to do that. I am able to talk confidently about what we are doing in Hertfordshire and, in respect of the question as to whether or not the money is being well spent in Hertfordshire, I have no doubt that the money is being well spent and is actually beginning to make a difference. What I would want to say, which I think follows on from Mrs Barnett's and Mr Jacobs's contribution, is that we do not regard the diversity pathfinder, the diversity policy if you want to put it that way, as, as it were, a 'done deal'. It is not one of those policies/programmes that has been rolled out like the Key Stage III strategy or the literacy numeracy strategy. Hertfordshire became involved with the diversity pathfinder - we put ourselves forward - because it aligned with the direction of travel that we within the authority were taking in terms of raising standards and it enabled us to actually test, as it were, some of the assumptions that were being made about diversity in partnership with the Department and, from that point of view, as Mrs Barnett has said, these are reasonably early days but it has been, without question within the county, a further catalyst in terms of the work we are doing with schools to focus on the individual child as opposed to getting caught by the institutional boundaries that very often is the case and has been the case for many years.

Is it the case, from Hertfordshire's point of view, that this was driven by you? You believed that there was a relationship between diversity and raising standards and, as soon as you heard that there was a possibility of making a bid for this money, you saw that this was an opportunity to further the work in the diversity position.

(Mr Shostak) You will have seen some details about Hertfordshire, that Hertfordshire, as an authority, has for some time been looking at how it is we can focus on, in my case but this is more broadly across the council, the needs of our users, as it were, in my case children. What we have been looking at is the extent to which, by identifying the needs of the youngsters within the county, asking ourselves, if you start from the child, what is the best response and provision for that? My own service, for example, is, as you will know, the first integrated children service which cuts across both the social care and education boundaries because we felt that, when we asked the question, if you started from the child, would you end up with a separate education department and a separate social services department, the answer was "no". That direction of travel within the authority is similarly asked in terms of diversity pathfinder. If you start from the child, the needs of a child in the secondary sector, do you believe that any individual school is going to be able to meet those needs and the needs of that community on their own, and the answer from the work we have done in post-16, because we have been working on collaborative approaches post-16, is that they cannot. There are actually advantages in stronger collaborative networks of schools for serving individual youngsters and serving communities. So, the answer to the question, "Is it driven by us?" is that there is a set of principles to which we have been working which, as I say, the direction of travel for the pathway aligned with. I would also have to say that, post- the White Paper, the interest in specialist schools was such that, when it became apparent ... As Mr Jacobs said, first of all it was going to be 40/50 per cent of secondary schools that were going to have the opportunity for specialism and now it is a completely different climate in terms of specialist schools than we have been operating in before. We had an existing policy which we put in place in 1998 in terms of supporting in partnership our schools moving towards specialism and we felt that we needed to look again at all of that. As Mr Jacobs indicated, subsequently that has developed to where, very recently, it looks as if all schools will be able to have that opportunity. That is where we start in terms of the diversity. Part of the motivation for Hertfordshire to become involved in the diversity pathfinder was aspects of the chaos that was beginning to develop because of the various interests of individual schools in terms of looking at the additional resource and the additional opportunity that was available for them through the new opportunity of the expansion.

Jeff Ennis

In some of the pathfinder projects, like with the Hertfordshire one for example, there is a broad brush approach across the LEA whereas with some of the other ones, like Birmingham, it is more cluster specific. In the more cluster specific pathfinder areas, how is the impact and the evaluation on neighbouring schools being carried out and are there any early conclusions to the schools outside the cluster areas?

(Mrs Barnett) It is not part of our current evaluation to look at the impact of the Oaks Academy on neighbouring schools in Birmingham. However, the project was established through Tim Brighouse's work and it was really his idea and I believe that the Oaks Academy was not established in isolation of its surrounding schools. It was part of a look at how best to develop a system of education in that part of Birmingham that would be congruent and coherent. So, I guess the answer to your question is, no, we are not evaluating it specifically but we do not believe that there will be negative impacts and, in particular, I did visit the Oaks Academy in late December and talked to the head teachers and to their project co-ordinator about this very point and the Oaks Academy, although it is a very close collaborative exercise, if you like, as a project, does work with its neighbouring secondary school, so it does have those links even though those secondary schools are not tightly involved in the project.

Do you think that it ought to include the impact on neighbouring schools? Do you think that ought to be included in the evaluation to make it as objective as possible?

(Mrs Barnett) Yes. I think you have raised an interesting point and I think it is something that is worth us looking at.

I think we have already hit upon the fact that, in the diversity projects, there seems to be a more enhanced role for co-ordination by the local education authorities in terms of trying to steer schools towards a variety of specialisms that all balance up within the LEA. How important is that development in terms of increasing the effectiveness of specialist schools on LEA areas? Is it a force for good or is a force for central interference basically?

(Mrs Barnett) I would suggest that it is a force for good. One of the underlying principles of the pathfinder project was that if you are going to increase diversity, if you are going to have more specialist schools and you want them to genuinely benefit as many students as possible, then it seems logical to have a good spread of different specialisms in local areas and to have schools working together in order that every child attending his or her local school can benefit not just from the specialism in their own school and subjects in their own school but the specialist expertise in schools around them. That was the underlying principle and it remains the underlying principle and is one that head teachers were really eager to embrace.

Chairman

When did it become the underlying principle? It was not from the very beginning.

(Mrs Barnett) It developed in the course of the project as the LEAs worked with their head teachers. It was something that I had a personal belief about and it was one of the reasons why, as we put together this project, we were keen to involve the LEAs because we felt that they had a role in this.

Ron Jacobs has been around a long time and I have to ask when in terms of the history. One of the interesting parallels with New Zealand when we were there is that, in New Zealand, the real problem is getting systemic change: allowing every school to become independent and do its own thing, a dog eat dog, absolute competition, and they have almost re-invented an education department and massively increased it because of that problem. That is what we found. In the UK, it seems to us, or it certainly seems to me, that we started off specialist schools saying that every school should do its own thing. What I am trying to nail down for the record is, when did we start saying, "Really, we should be looking at how schools work together?" and you could see the change? When we talked to Tim Brighouse in Birmingham, the collegiate system of working together. When, if you like, in the Department did it stop being, "Every school can do its own thing and it adds up to the greatest good for the greatest number" to when someone said, "Come on, this actually does not really deliver systemic change"? When was that, Mr Jacobs?

(Mr Jacobs) Certainly in terms of an action we took, it started to change in 1999 with the announcement of the Excellence in Cities programme which included, as one of its strands, the specialist schools in those areas. That is where we started to give a role to LEAs, the LEAs in the first of the EiC areas, in talking with the secondary heads in that area about what the most sensible approach was to specialist schools both in terms of which schools would apply for which specialism and at what date they would apply.

Jeff Ennis

Moving to a related issue, the last OFSTED report on specialist schools criticised those specialist schools apart from sports specialist schools for not broadening their community role as widely as they should have done. Are we seeing any evidence within the pathfinder projects that this failing that was occurring previously is being addressed in the new pathfinder areas?

(Mrs Barnett) Yes, I think we are. The basis for the project was a collaborative approach to diversity, a strategic collaborative approach to diversity, and I think that we are seeing it. For example, in Portsmouth, the head teachers have agreed that they will work together and they will see the child as being at the centre with the schools around the child there to support every individual child. So, in a sense, they are saying that we are going to take collectively the responsibility to meet the needs of students, and we see that with their response to disaffected children and how they are, as a group, managing to meet the needs of those children. I think that philosophy, if you like, is most certainly being embraced by head teachers and LEAs in the project.

So it is in fact not just the inter-relationship between schools but the impact within the wider schools communities, shall we say?

(Mrs Barnett) Yes.

(Mr Jacobs) If I may just add to that. One of the difficulties that schools were finding at the stage of the OFSTED report's field work was in getting non-specialist schools to engage with them and that was in a situation very much of competition where those schools that were being asked to engage, for example, thought, if we partner this school, that might disadvantage us in relation to becoming a specialist school because we will be thought of as being in a subsidiary position. That is the sort of thinking that has changed dramatically with the recognition that all the schools will have the opportunity to become specialist schools and we have also removed the requirement, in the light of that, for all schools that are becoming specialist to have a non-specialist partner. We have opened it up that the school's partner can be specialist already or be about to become specialist or schools can be applying together naming each other partner, that sort of co-operative arrangement.

Valerie Davey

It sounds like a rather expensive way of re-inventing a good LEA! What else have you done?

(Mrs Barnett) I am not quite sure ...

I am sorry, perhaps your background in LEAs in this country is not the same as mine! The collaborative idea where the child is the centre and all schools within an area are responsible for seeing the development of the individual child says to me a good LEA that I was in 20 years ago. Perhaps our Hertfordshire contact might like to comment.

(Mr Shostak) Whether or not it is re-inventing good LEAs or just building upon good LEAs, I do not know, but I think what you have in front of you in terms of the new investigation into diversity are two issues running, trying to pick up on the issues you have raised this morning and from what I picked up in your questioning just before Christmas. It seems to me that you have running the whole issue of systemic change and what is the best way of actually supporting that systemic change at local level, and I think that is about good LEAs working in partnership with their schools in their communities, and you also have specialist schools and the question really is, how can you turn the specialist school component of diversity, of which it is only one component of diversity, into that programme of systemic change at LEA or local level? Yes, in good LEAs, as you are saying, that is what LEAs have been doing for some time against a culture which was, picking up some of the comments earlier, for many, many years questioning the contribution of LEAs and indeed encouraging what somebody was describing earlier on as the 'dog eat dog, we are out on our own' climate and culture. I guess that within Hertfordshire, we are looking to ensure that the learning across institutions and at local level is secure and the diversity pathfinder is just one way to actually support that process.

Do we have enough evidence already - and I know pathfinders have not been running that long - now to say, "The individual specialist school system that we had earlier should not now be encouraged" because it does not deliver what you are seeing in the pathfinder collaborative method?

(Mr Shostak) I do not think you can separate it out in that way bearing in mind that the specialist schools within the diversity culture is very, very new. The diversity pathfinder's first steering group meeting was around this time last year. The first group of schools which were approved started since that time; they started in September of last year, so they have been specialist schools a term. What we had prior to that was specialist schools that date back some period of time. So, what you have is that culture change happening, what I am describing as the "direction of travel" and then the development of specialist schools within that.

Does it not stress the importance of evaluation to determine what the DfES ought to be advising for the future, that there must be a format for the evaluation which does enable the DfES to indicate which is the preferred method in order that those individual children, not the whole grouping or the individual schools but the individual children, do get the best out of what we are putting a considerable amount of money into for the future?

(Mr Shostak) Yes although it is not rocket science. We know very clearly that what makes the difference in terms of raised standards is primarily what teachers do, much more so than anybody else, and what school leaders do and it is not rocket science that, if you have a climate where sharing across those institutions is regarded as some sort of industrial espionage ... What you want to create is an opportunity for science teachers to learn from science teachers and maths teachers to learn from maths teachers and school leaders to learn from school leaders and you do wonder why we are in a climate where that somehow was difficult and I would not have thought that you need to spend a great deal of money to come to understand that that makes sense.

Ms Munn

I want to explore a little further into this whole issue of collaboration versus competition. I understand that the early evaluation has said that the projects seem to work best and seem to be doing well where schools are not competing for students and, given the way our systems work at the moment, is that something that you feel is the case in terms of how the whole situation is operating?

(Mrs Barnett) I think it is fairly obvious why that would be the case, why it would be harder to collaborate in a more competitive environment. I think there is a tension here, is there not, between the benefits of collaboration which we are seeing through the pathfinder project and the fact that some competition is quite healthy and, in finding that balance, I think that the pendulum swings a little from end to end on that. I think the outcome of the project evaluation will be interesting in terms of looking at how, in different parts of the country, and indeed just in a single county such as in Hertfordshire, there are areas that are more competitive between schools than others. The evaluation of what impact that has will be very interesting for us.

Certainly when the Minister, David Miliband, came, he was very clear that a specialist school programme is a school improvement programme. That is what it is about. It is not about specialism, it is about improving standards within schools. I would like to have your comments on the different mechanisms that are being used to try and do that. Specialisation is one; competition, as you have just mentioned, is one in terms of the assumption being that parents are going to choose schools which appear to be doing well and therefore it is a lever to drive up standards within schools. Do you see these things conflicting or working together?

(Mrs Barnett) It is a hard question to answer.

Good!

(Mrs Barnett) Mr Jacobs?

(Mr Jacobs) As I suppose we have already said - and we did not use the word "tension" but it is a favourite word these days - there is a tension between competition and collaboration. The point Mrs Barnett was making is that both can contribute towards raising standards. I think that evidence for that is axiomatic. What we are trying to do with the specialist schools programme in having gone, as it were, nation wide, is to overcome that tension in relation to this particular programme. I attended several of the autumn conferences that ministers held for secondary heads and it was noticeable in this particular respect that the amount of concern and criticism about the programme being not compatible with the competitive situation had diminished greatly and I think that most heads I spoke with - and I spoke to a number at those conferences - were very positive about the specialist school programme now in terms of seeing that it was a genuine opportunity for their school to take advantage of and was not a matter of having to worry about whether school X down the road was going to get there first or was already there and therefore they could not get involved. So, I think that whilst that tension will always be there and it will always have more influence in some areas than others because of the history, there is a great improvement on that and I think we have generally established an acceptance that the programme is open to all and is not going to make matters worse, as it were.

One of the things that I want to finish on - and it is a debate to which we keep coming back in the Committee and I think there was a level of that in some of the questions that Valerie Davey was just asking - is, if all this money had just been given out to all the schools, would we have had the same outcomes or is there in fact a possibility that actually diversity is a way of achieving equality of outcomes in a way that we have not just by giving money across the board to schools?

(Mr Jacobs) We certainly see it as a challenge programme that has value as a challenge programme. It is a difficult area to touch on, I suppose, when we do both: we give moneys to schools without strings attached and moneys to schools with strings attached. I think that all the measurement that has taken place in relation to specialist schools, and that has varying outcomes, is positive rather than negative. Sometimes it is quite significantly positive and sometimes it is only slightly positive, but it is all positive and that is specifically a work carried out in relation to specialist schools who are the beneficiaries also obviously of all the other money that is going into schools in like circumstances. So, there certainly does seem to be value in the challenge programme in those quantitative terms although we also do value the qualitative and I was struck by something you said to David Miliband about a child that had said that their mother was now wanting them to go to the school because it was an arts college and that, I think, small though it is in one sense, is actually quite typical of the kind of spirit that can grow around a successful specialist school application.

(Mr Shostak) Can I come in there because I think there are some important points to be made reflecting on some of the comments made by Mrs Barnett and Mr Jacobs. There is a balance, of course, in terms of the importance of competition within the system and the importance of collaboration within the system. There has been serious development and improvement in standards as a consequence of many of the Government reforms. However, I think it will be the case that, as the diversity programme begins to unfold - and I welcome the fact that it is not a 'done deal' and that the Department is working with local authorities and is being responsive to the messages that local authorities and schools are giving the Department in terms of the developing policy - they will need to respond if the evidence is clear that there are barriers in the way in terms of raising standards and it would certainly be the case that a lot of the current drivers in the system do not support collaboration. The funding regime within a system at the minute is very much an individual school based regime; the accountability regime within the system is very much a school based regime which actually creates and further supports the independence and the competition between schools and if in fact the Government are looking to support collaboration as a mechanism of improvement, then they will need to look at those and a variety of other drivers within the system which very often have a much stronger pull than the push of collaboration, school improvement and development. So, there are very real tensions that this policy or this development is drawing up which will need to be responded to if in fact it is going to continue.

Mr Turner

It seems to me that you do not need an LEA to deliver systemic change, you need a system. Is that not correct?

(Mr Shostak) No, I do not think that it is correct. The reality is that what change is about is people. Our education service is delivered by people and people, in terms of the work that they do, bounded within their institutions within their communities are, from my experience, very, very positive about improvement and change, but actually get caught within the culture within which they are working and the fact that they are just people, and actually what change is about is changing behaviours, the behaviours of those folk within the system, and in fact, from what we have seen in terms of the work we are doing, is that it is finding that balance between the drivers, the important elements within a system, that leads to one direction or another. What we have found is that actually, in supporting schools in their developments - and I come back to what I said earlier on - it is about those people, it is about individual teachers changing the behaviour in the classrooms and it is about individual school leaders changing the behaviours in terms of the climates they are creating within schools and actually that needs some sort of facilitating, that needs some sort of support. It does not need control, it does not need managing, but does actually need somebody at local level who knows the people and can support the people because there are serious tensions within the system, as you will well know, that need to be overcome.

You used the words "based at local level". The Oaks is such a system based at local level, it is not an LEA. It is bigger than my LEA as it happens. Why is it not an LEA?

(Mr Shostak) We are getting into two debates here: one is whether or not you need support at local level and the second is whether or not that support should be publically accountable to its local communities, which is what the LEA is. It is certainly my view that, when you are dealing with contentious decisions, which is about school opening, which is about school closing, which is about admissions and which is about special educational needs and I could go on, it is right and proper that local people should be able to eyeball the people who are making those local decisions in their local supermarkets and in local streets and be able to say what it is they think and hold them publically accountable to do so. So, from that point of view, I do think that it ought to be at an LEA level.

Mr Turner: What we have had is a swing of the pendulum, Mrs Barnett is quite right, and it swung in the direction of individual institutions. Now it is swinging back. Do people really need diversity or do they just not need quality? Take the analogy of the supermarket which you have just mentioned. Supermarkets are all actually pretty much of a muchness - you know what you are buying because you know the label of the supermarket. Far more people go to supermarkets than go to corner shops. Schools are much more, it seems to me, analogous with corner shops than with supermarket chains and yet the diversity in the corner shop is rejected by the population in favour of a measured uniformity, if you like, but with quality of varying degrees, perhaps under different labels - Aldi and Sainsbury are a little different - but do they really need the diversity of individual institutions in the way that your pathfinder seems to be delivering?

Chairman

I think I follow that! If you want to ask for clearer definition of the question, you are very welcome.

(Mr Shostak) I will not ask for a clearer definition but I will avoid the supermarket, if you will forgive me! In my view, there is a difference between supermarkets and public services. What Hertfordshire parents say to me is that what they want is a high quality local school. So, the question we ask ourselves is, what is the best way to ensure that the good people of Hertfordshire are getting a high quality local school? Once you begin to ask that question, you then begin to get into the debate that we were having earlier on and that is about, how is it you can support the development of the people, the teachers and the school leaders within those schools, because it is public service and people have a right to get to a high quality local school and not have to, as it were, shop around for it. They go to their local schools which is right and proper and we have a responsibility to ensure that they are of a high quality and to support the development and the continuous improvement of those schools. Now, when you then get to diversity, the question is, does the diversity programme, in terms of the direction of travel we are moving in, actually support the raising of standards, i.e. the development of the people within those schools, and offer broader opportunities for youngsters than would be available within their one individual school because they have available within their local community because one school happens to have developed a specialism in the arts and another within science and so on? Just because I send my youngster to the art school does not mean that my youngster is not interested in science and, if my youngster is also interested in science, as a parent, I would want them to be able to be attending master classes and extracurricular activities and I would also want the science teachers in my youngster's school to be able to learn from those other science specialisms who are particularly focusing on that in another school. So, what you are creating is an environment where youngsters have enhanced opportunities in terms of what provision is available for them but also teachers and school leaders do.

Mr Chaytor

I was hoping to translate Mr Turner's question but I think that he has perhaps answered it! My translation would have been that, from the point of view of Hertfordshire parents, if the choice were in any given neighbourhood a single school with a proven track record of high levels of achievement or a variety of schools each with its own niche of variable quality, which model do you think the majority of Hertfordshire parents would choose? I think that is really what Mr Turner was getting at.

(Mr Shostak) There is a third alternative there which is a variety of schools within a community each with its own interests or specialisms or expertise, as logically is the same, and they are all of a high quality.

Of course there is, but that is avoiding my question, is it not? My question really is, do parents put a higher premium on difference or quality?

(Mr Shostak) Bearing in mind that the specialist schools programme does not create a specialism uniquely, so if you go to a science specialist school, all you get is science because there is the national curriculum because all schools are delivering that entitlement, what you have, which your previous witnesses said before Christmas, is that the specialism itself is additionality in terms of what is happening within the school, so in fact that stark choice as you are creating it would never really exist in this system. At the end of the day, what parents want is high quality local schools.

Mr Chaytor: Let me put it again. Do parents put a higher premium on quality or additionality?

Chairman

Let Mr Shostak have a rest and allow Mr Jacobs to come in here.

(Mr Jacobs) Mr Shostak seems reticent on this but, from the Department's point of view, I have no difficulty in asking Mr Chaytor's question directly. We are aware that parents place a higher premium on high quality than on difference as such. What we believe is that this programme offering difference enhances the quality of any individual school.

Mr Chaytor

Can I just pursue the questions that Ms Munn was raising about the impact of competition on the pathfinder projects. In each of the six pathfinder areas, there will be schools competing with each other for students but there will also be schools who have different admission policies and are their own admission authorities. What I would like to ask is, what is your evidence about the development of the projects in those areas where there are a larger number of schools that are their own admission authorities because if the thesis is that the purpose of the projects is to develop collaboration which focuses all schools' attention on the needs of all children, how can that be compatible with some schools in their own admission authorities and therefore, by definition, intending to keep out certain kinds of children?

(Mrs Barnett) I could say something about that but I think that Mr Shostak, being in an authority with a high number of schools that are their own admissions authority, would have something to say about it as well. I think it would be true to say that all of our projects have started from a different basis in terms of the level of collaboration, in terms of the level of competition and the degree to which admissions are an issue in their particular areas and so on, from some such as in Birmingham where it is a fairly level playing field among those schools that are in the Oaks Academy to Hertfordshire where there are some real differences to Middlesbrough where there are issues around pupil numbers and so on. I guess that what is encouraging about the project is the willingness of head teachers to grapple with some of these issues and to take them head on and that varies too, of course. What these clusters of schools are doing, for example in Hertfordshire, are beginning with where the collaboration is going to be most helpful to them. So, where they can get the benefits from working together. In some cases, that will mean not tackling some of the more vexed issues about admissions and so on and just getting on with how they can share best practice, how they can challenge poor performance, how they can help support their teachers and so on. In other cases, it means taking a really good look at admissions arrangements and looking at how they can make sure that children do not slip through the net. It will be an interesting evaluation of this project to see the extent to which issues such as inclusion can be addressed through collaborative means.

Of the six projects, which areas have started to take a good look at the issue of admissions policies?

(Mrs Barnett) Certainly in Portsmouth, that is part of what they are looking at. Mr Shostak will be answer as to what extent they are looking at it in Hertfordshire. In Birmingham, the Oaks Academy, this is not something they have decided yet; they have other things that they are looking at at the moment, but they are thinking that potentially they may have a joint admissions policy across these six schools and that children will be admitted into the collegiate and state a preference for a school rather than be admitted into individual schools. So, that would be our tightest model. In other areas, it is going to be different. Of course, in Cornwall, it is quite different again because you go to your local school in Cornwall because of the nature of the authority.

(Mr Shostak) Just to make sure there is no misunderstanding here, collaboration is not some soft, wishy-washy blurring of accountability or merging or avoidance of standards; it is actually about building upon the autonomy of individual institutions in a way that enhances learning for youngsters. It is not some sort of soft option. Within Hertfordshire, in respect of admissions, as Margaret-Anne says, we do have a very large number of admitting authorities in a very wide pattern of admissions and it is one which includes aspects of selection, both by aptitude and by ability, in some aspects of our schools. It is an extremely complex set of circumstances. We have evened the playing field, so that community schools are able, should their governors wish, to exercise their right in terms of the selective element in terms of the current legislation. No school has yet chosen to do so, but we have levelled the playing field so that that would be the case, so that all the schools across the authority have the same opportunities. Within our collaborative clusters, they have not yet looked at those sorts of issues, but they would be one of those drivers which ultimately, depending upon where the Government goes in terms of this direction of travel, almost certainly needs to be considered.

Mr Pollard: I am a Hertfordshire parent - in fact, with seven children now grown up with grandchildren, I am probably your best customer! - and I have to say that Hertfordshire is a cracking authority and very well led by you - I want to put that on record as well - and your team at County House. You have excellent schools. I do not know of any schools that are not good, and they are also well led. In Hertfordshire we have a great diversity of provision, from grammar schools, fee-paying schools, special schools, standard comprehensive schools - I have to be very careful how I describe those - to Steiner schools even. Is that enough, and is that model working well in our county?

Chairman

I hope this is not going to become a sort of love-in between you!

(Mr Shostak) I will try to avoid that. Thank you for your comments, by the way. We are trying to create, within the authority, the capacity for people to learn from each other, to identify where best practice is, wherever it is - within the state system, within the independent system, within industry - so that we can actually learn the lessons of best practice wherever that happens to be. We are trying to celebrate the diversity that exists within our schools. We may now begin to tag it as diversity, but schools have been different and are different and have different sets of expertise within them and we are trying actually to develop structures and mechanisms that facilitate that learning across those various institutions.

Mr Pollard

Each year in February my surgery is full with people who do not get their choice. One of the reasons that they cite is that because of the grammar schools, the fee-paying schools, schools like Parmiter's, for example, people are putting in multi-applications. Is this not a disadvantage, a great disadvantage of the school diversity system?

(Mr Shostak) It is certainly the case that parents within the county do have a challenge in terms of working their way through the various admissions' details. We have actually been extremely successful in serving parents by coordinating the admission arrangements, so that there are single applications. We have coordinated in terms of the way in which we have worked with all the admitting authorities. All youngsters now get an offer of a place on the same day, so that we have avoided all those sorts of difficulties. But it would be true to say that again there are competing policies in this regard. We would want nothing more than for as many parents as possible actually to get their school of preference, and all of our policies year by year we have developed to try to ensure that we are maximising against that objective. But it is worth your Committee just remembering that that policy sits alongside a set of other legislative requirements, in terms of school place planning, surplus places, the effective use of resources within a locality, which cuts across that. We are trying to maximise the number of parents who do get the school of their preference. But, you are absolutely right, wonderfully so, Hertfordshire parents have high aspirations for their young people and want to do the best by them, and long may that continue.

Does the funding for the Diversity of Pathfinders cover the full costs in Hertfordshire?

(Mr Shostak) The answer to that is no. It is a particular worry for us, partly because many of the Government policies do target additional resource for this sort of work within urban areas which Hertfordshire as a county has not actually been able to access, but also in the light of our most recent local government finance settlement which is going to leave us with some serious challenges in terms of financing. Again that will need to be looked at if this is the sort of direction of travel the government wishes. The main money that we get as part of the Diversity Pathfinder, not surprisingly, goes into the coordination of the central level, what we call "clusters", in terms of our groups of schools, so that they have been able to release staff for that leadership. We have also employed a professional fund-raiser to try to reduce the amount of time that seeps out of the system in schools chasing that additional funding, which in itself is a major issue the programme needs to look at and which we have some questions about. So we have basically used the central funding to try to add value, to reduce the bureaucracy and increase the learning for schools at school level.

Jonathan Shaw

Would it assist you if there was one admissions' authority? Would it deal with the type of problems referred to by Kerry Pollard?

(Mr Shostak) I think the question you need to ask is not whether it would assist me but whether or not it would it assist the parents.

Yes, I think that is right.

(Mr Shostak) There is no question that the admissions' round for parents is a huge thing for young people, is a hugely stressful time. The lack of certainty is very, very severe for many parents and young people. We also have to ask ourselves the question, in school improvement terms, whether or not a parent not knowing which secondary school they are going to go to until this time of the year before they get there, is really the best mechanism of harnessing the interests of parents in terms of supporting school development. Because most parents will not know - or many parents, not most - until a couple of months before the youngsters are going to transfer and the uncertainty is really quite severe for parents.

Mr Simmonds

If we all accept local accountability and we also accept - although some of us would challenge - that historically LEAs have been a good idea in Hertfordshire and other areas, why has it been left to the Department to instigate the Diversity Pathfinder project? Why did not LEAs do it themselves? What additional benefits, other than funding, did the Department actually bring to the process? In my particular constituency I have grammar schools and secondary modern schools that are linked together, collaborating off their own bat, so what additional processes and support can the Department bring to that process that is not already in place?

(Mr Shostak) I think you will find that in the best LEAs they have been doing it and have been doing it for some time. I hope I have been effective in communicating to you this morning that we have used the Diversity Pathfinder as a method of supporting the direction of travel and the work that we have been doing as part of our clear and unambiguous school improvement strategy. I think you will find that in many LEAs; although it is worth reminding ourselves that there have been a good number of years where the LEAs have been downsizing and there have been questions about whether or not LEAs have a role to play within the system and so on.

If I may interrupt you there - and I apologise for interrupting you - if you were doing it already, are you just not getting involved with the Diversity Pathfinder process to access a greater number of funds?

(Mr Shostak) The Diversity pathfinder is, as you have outlined in Ron and Margaret-Anne's early interventions, a new direction of travel, so you have the local authority working now with the Government in terms of supporting that change process, going back to Andrew's question, at local level. Although within Hertfordshire it is the direction in which we have been moving, we find that for other local authorities, because of their education development plans and because of the work we have been doing in recent years in building capacity or rebuilding capacity, going back to Valerie's comment, actually to support school improvement, school development - and there has been a need to rebuild that capacity - the Diversity Pathfinder creates a policy context in which we can support our schools in moving in that direction. In Hertfordshire's case the six Diversity Pathfinders actually give us a very small amount of resource to work with the Department, identifying what the policy issues will need to be as we move down this direction of travel.

Could I ask a representative from the Department to answer that question?

(Mrs Barnett) I think that the partnership that we have with those Pathfinder LEAs is an important aspect of what we are doing. I think it is quite right that it gives us a chance to look very closely at some of the issues that are arising out of the diversity agenda and some of the opportunities that are there for us to build on in a way that we could not do with 150 authorities in the same way. I think that the expansion of the diversity agenda, the expansion of specialist schools, does present us with some opportunities that are worth really putting under the microscope in the way that we are able to do it through this kind of project. And it is not a hugely funded project in the great scheme of things. I think that when you look at the funding that will go into schools, and, consequently, if you look across an authority as a result of the specialist schools' expansion, that is considerable funding. That is where the real funding is going to go into the education system. The Pathfinder funding provides a bit of extra capacity for LEAs to look at how they can be much more strategic about planning the development of diversity across their authorities and how they can facilitate much stronger links between schools to ensure that benefits are gained by all the students.

The Department's role is merely one of obviously providing funding but, secondly, of evaluation and an analysis rather than any sort of controlling role, which to my mind may provide, if this is rolled out, a system which has uniformity and conformity in it rather than the diversity that each particular geographical area may desire.

(Mrs Barnett) I would agree that that is the case, that this is not a controlling role at all; this is a role where we work in partnership, looking together at the issues, and also, as the project develops, being prepared to see those projects change and move as they go through. So it is certainly not something that is prescribed.

Is there any evidence in any of the areas that have been piloted so far that the collaboration has actually raised educational standards in those schools that are within specific areas? Is there any statistical evidence to show that standards have been increased?

(Mrs Barnett) It is too early for us to measure. We can say - and I guess this is where accurate measures and sort of qualitative anecdotal evidence come into play - that there is a great deal of enthusiasm, excitement and commitment from head teachers and subject leaders in these Pathfinder LEAs. For example, in Birmingham, with subject leaders coming together now on a regular basis and teachers meeting together, we have teachers and subject leaders saying that this is the first time that they have had such an opportunity to work with colleagues at this sort of level. It would seem quite fair to say that the likelihood is that is going to have an impact on raising the quality of teaching and learning, which is what this is about.

How long will it be before you have that information?

(Mrs Barnett) You could ask the researchers that. Our final report, the evaluation report, will be published in October 2005 but we have interim reports. They will be reporting to us annually on the project.

Paul Holmes

A lot of the advantages you have talked about in the cooperative clusters and various Pathfinders have been to do not with schools offering specialisms like science or whatever but to do with the collaborative work you are doing to the benefit of the community in general. If we must go down the road of specialist schools, are the Government not missing out on a trick in not allowing schools to become specialist in other things like, for example, good community schools or comprehensives?

(Mr Jacobs) I have two things to say about that. I will address the community school issue specifically in a moment, but the first is to say that ministers are currently considering whether there are further additions that should be made to the offer to schools on specialisms, and so I cannot anticipate that in any way. That is under discussion at present and I understand an announcement will be made in due course on that. Community schools as an option: certainly the view taken throughout the campaign for this - and a lot of schools have expressed a lot of interest in it, particularly schools that have badged themselves as community schools for many years - is that this programme has always been about curriculum specialism and that that is at the core of it. But that is not in any way an obstacle to a badged community school becoming a specialist school - indeed, there are well over 50 community schools that are specialist schools. The feeling has been that, since the programme has been based on curriculum specialism and since all the evidence that has been looked at in relation to it has been about curriculum specialism, something called "community as a specialism" would be a different programme rather than part of this programme. That is the view taken.

When the Committee visited Birmingham, we looked at a number of schools involved in some of the collegiate groups. When we had an open evidence session at the City Hall, a group of parents from one of those areas came to the meeting and said, "The problem is that all our kids go to the local junior schools, and that is great. Then we come to age 11, and we have two local schools. One is a grammar school, and most of us can't get into that, and the other one is, you know, a sink school, and we don't want the kids to go there." They are then looking at schools five,10, 15 miles away into which they are desperately trying to get their kids, most of them do not get their first choice and so they end up coming back to what they regard as a poor local school. One of the mothers actually said, "We do not want excellent schools that we are chasing all over the city for, we want a good local school," which comes back to what we were talking about earlier: Where is the evidence for this choice and diversity, or do parents just want a good local school? If choice is really going to work - and the Government emphasise choice an awful lot - would the Government not have to, for example, re-write a lot of the rules on school travel? At the moment you can only get subsidised free school travel if there is a certain reason why you have to go so many miles away to a school, like going to a faith school. If you look at that choice, of parents in Birmingham going from this side of the city over there to the science school and from that side of the city over here to the language school and so forth, are the Government not going to have to re-write all the rules on free school travel?

(Mr Jacobs) It would only have to do so if it was going down the road of actively encouraging parents to make those choices over distances that were relatively difficult for pupils in attending those schools, and that is not the current position. We are not actively encouraging people to travel unreasonable distances to school. I would answer it in terms of: only if there were a change of policy would those issues come in

The area in which I taught in Derbyshire, most of which is very rural, if specialist schools and choice is to mean anything at all - all the things that the Minister in November last year was praising: the choice that is available - it must mean parents moving their kids who are very good at languages here, or at science over there, but miles down the road, to the specialist school of their choice that fits the specialism for their child. Otherwise the whole specialist thing is meaningless, is it not?

(Mr Jacobs) No, the Secretary of State has made clear that the programme is primarily about school improvement and we certainly do not see it as a programme where people should think, particularly in rural areas, in terms of travelling great distances in order to attend an arts college, say. Each individual specialist school will continue to provide the National Curriculum, each individual school will continue to provide for all its pupils whatever their particular talents. So they are about 'additionality' in the specialism; they are not about subtracting from other parts of the curriculum.

In November 2001, the former Education Secretary said, "We have achieved significant diversity over the last four years .... This greater diversity is good for pupils and parents and will ensure there is more choice and innovation in the school system." More choice.

(Mr Jacobs) Yes.

But what choice, if you are actually moving to get the so-called benefit of the specialism?

(Mr Jacobs) You may, I suppose, feel it is semantic but there is more choice because some parents, because of the particular location they live in, will be able to see this as providing more choice. But the Department does not intend to disguise the fact that that is something that does not apply uniformly across the country; it is something that is meaningful in certain situations. It will have some meaning in some small towns but there are many situations in which it will not in practical terms enhance choice, but it does provide more choice rather than no change or less choice.

So the choice and the ability to select 10 per cent of pupils by aptitude or ability, you do not see applying in the country area at all. Even in a relatively small town like my constituency, Chesterfield, there are still a number of parents who, for various reasons over the years, have wanted their child or have been told their child has to go a certain number of miles away, they have found it is beyond the limit where they will get free school transport and yet if they come from a poor family, which a lot of people in Chesterfield do, they cannot afford that. Therefore, even in a pretty compact area like Chesterfield, the choice will be pretty curtailed unless you provide free school transport. There are two questions there: the choice in the10 per cent selection by aptitude you do not envisage applying in rural areas at all, and, even in fairly small areas like Chesterfield, such choice as there is is so little if free school transport is not available.

(Mr Jacobs) We have no plans to change the transport rules, no.

So a lot of backtracking on what we have heard about choice in the last five years.

(Mr Jacobs) I think the Government now says less about choice than it did five years ago. I think that is valid comment. It also says a great deal more about Specialist Schools Programme being about school improvement rather than about specialism, which was the case in 1997. At that stage the programme was mainly about specialism rather than about school improvement.

(Mrs Barnett) Choice could be said to be as much about choice of subject and choices within schools as it is choices between schools - probably more so. I think what we are most interested in is making sure that students can go to their local school and feel that they can have their own aspirations, their own talents, their own educational needs met. It goes back to what Ray was saying about schools developing some additionality, but that not being the focus for parents making the choice. Parents will make a choice for a number of different reasons. Primarily they want their children to go to a good school, and they may want their children to go the school that their brothers and sisters go to, that is closest to them. There is a range of different reasons why they would make that choice. We do not envisage that the expansion of the Specialist Schools Programme will necessarily give parents a greater choice between schools; we do hope that the way that the programme is developed, with closer links between schools and a sensible geographical spread of specialisms, with those schools working together, will mean that any child going to any school should be able to access the subjects in which they are most interested. For example, if you look at Stevenage in Hertfordshire, they are looking at a very interesting plan to develop themselves as a "specialist town", with every school taking a different specialist subject and those schools working together so that they are, in effect, sort of centres of excellence for their subject but sharing that expertise across all of those schools. And Cornwall, of course, sees immediately that that is the way they are going to have to operate because it is quite impractical to go to the sports college if you are a keen sports person. In Cornwall they have quite strategically placed their three sports colleges as a spine along the authority, along the county, and they have a hub and spoke model so that each of those three sports colleges has a slightly different area of expertise and they have coordinators who work right across the authority to make sure that the excellence is spread. That is the kind of model that I think we are most interested in looking at in the future as the model develops.

(Mr Jacobs) On that point which Margaret-Anne was making, that particular model in relation to sports colleges is in fact a national strategy. That is how all sports colleges are intended to operate.

David Chaytor

If Stevenage pursues the model of having every school a specialist school, strategically located through the town, will Stevenage change its transport policy to enable poor parents to exercise a preference for any of those schools? Or will some pupils be prevented from attending the school of their choice because of the school transport rule?

(Mr Shostak) Remember the current legislation allows for 10 per cent, which is a very small number of youngsters within any cohort. We have five-form/six-form entry schools generally within the county, so that is 15 kids. In fact Stevenage would not have to change its transport. That just happens to be the geography of Stevenage. I have no doubt that, as this policy unfolds, the issue you are looking at now will need to be looked at and considered. I think they are very real issues. I do not think there are very easy answers to them but they are very real issues. This matter is partly dependent upon the objectives in terms of the policy. The legislation, if there is new legislation or regulations, whatever, will have consequences and so it will be something one needs to look at.

Chairman

Ray Shostak, you have been involved in this for some time and you have given the indication that you have read some of the evidence we have taken from various academics in earlier sessions of this Committee. Are you content, in your position in Hertfordshire, that this diversity programme, that has really been across parties and across administrations, is actually working in improving standards in the schools with which you are familiar?

(Mr Shostak) It is too early to say. This is not something that is going to turn itself around, that is going to see big indications. I have absolutely no doubt from the previous work we have done post-16 that the approach we have taken in terms of raising standards is making an impact. I am clear that the Diversity Pathfinder has the potential to support a further enhancement of standards within the county - we would not have expressed an interest unless we did - but it has all of the tensions and issues that you have rightly touched upon in your previous evidence and now. But there is no quick-win within aspects of what we are talking about in terms of the continued development of standards within schools. The Diversity Pathfinder provides our next step in terms of change in culture, change of relationships, and an opening in terms of the sharing that we have described today, but in itself has all sorts of consequences. Having listened to ourselves this morning, I would not want the Committee to go away thinking everybody out there thinks this is the bees' knees. There are tensions within it all. Not all schools are keen on it because of the various tensions within it. The point that you were making earlier on, Paul, in respect of the very restricted number of specialisms - bearing in mind that if it is a school improvement divide what you are talking about is the process in terms of the planning, in terms of the defining, in terms of the sharing and in terms of the collaboration - it is not actually very relevant, not hugely important what the specialism is; it is actually partly about those processes. Again, as this begins to unfold I certainly hope that the Government will be looking at the bureaucracy, will be looking at the barriers that exist in terms of the funding regimes, the additional money that schools need to raise, the community links, the relationships not only across secondary schools but within Hertfordshire, the relationships between secondary schools and their local primary schools and their local communities, which in our approach is equally important in terms of the development of that good practice. But the simple answer - it is a long answer - is that I have no doubt that it will be helpful to us.

Is there any last word you would like to give the Committee, Margaret-Anne, Ron? Is there anything which you think we have missed out, which you would like to tell the Committee on this programme?

(Mr Jacobs) No. There are some awkward questions you have not asked but I do not want to go into that at this stage.

Chairman: I think you have talked yourself into a second visit!

Examination of Witnesses

MRS JENNIFER EVANS, The Institute of Education, University of London, PROFESSOR RON GLATTER, The Open University, and DR PHILIP WOODS, The Open University, examined.

Chairman

Professor Glatter, you are known to the Committee from previous appearances. May I welcome you and Dr Woods and Jennifer Evans to our deliberations. You are the evaluators of diversity. I take it you are familiar that there is quite an academic industry out there also taking part in evaluation not as part of an official team but certainly there is a range of people who have appeared before this Committee with very strong opinions about the diversity programme. But you will know all about that and you will know the different positions they take. To start this session, can you tell us a little bit about what your evaluation work comprises.

(Professor Glatter) Chairman, could I say that when we had the initial invitation I gathered there were two things in which you were interested: one is our work on the evaluation but also some of the things which I referred to in our private session when I attended in July about diversity more generally. You will see that the material divides to some extent into those two sections. We have more or less decided, but we do not want to stick rigidly to it and create a firm boundary, that my colleagues will respond to the points on evaluation and I will respond on the other issues, but, as I say, we may vary it because I am a member of the evaluation team as well.

(Dr Woods) I would like to say something about the research we are involved with. This research started in April last year and it runs until October 2005, so it is a three-and-a-half year study. One of the things which attracted us to this was that it ran over a reasonable period of time, over which it is possible to get some idea of what is happening in a very complex initiative. We are using both quantitative and qualitative methods. That is very important. We are doing measures of performance over a period of time in the schools involved, we are doing surveys of pupils and we are doing some small questionnaires to staff over that period of time, and we are collecting a variety of data that is of a financial nature and other statistical data from the areas. So there is quantitative data that we are collecting over a period of time and then we are also doing interviews with head teachers and others in schools, talking to pupils as well as doing the survey with pupils, so that we get some of that depth that you cannot get from the statistics. The aims, in essence, are to see if the Diversity Pathfinder projects in each of the areas are meeting the aims as laid down by the DfES and the local aims as conceived by the LEA and the schools locally, and that covers the final outcomes (as they are referred to) of their projects; that is, how they are contributing to the educational performance and achievement and opportunities of pupils, and the processes in between, how well they are doing in terms of developing collaboration, managing specialisation and so on. So it covers quite a range and we will have quite an array of data by the time we have completed three and a half years.

(Mrs Evans) I suppose I just want to add that in a sense it is very early days, in that we will not be seeing yet any impacts on what pupils are experiencing. The data we are gathering at the moment is baseline data really. We are looking at how things are now, so that in three-and-a-half years time we can say what changes have taken place and, as Phil has said, we are looking at the processes that have happened to make those changes take place. Currently we are very much focusing on what has been happening at the level of the local authority and what has been happening at the level of the individual schools and head teachers, but things have not yet permeated down to the classroom level. Currently we are focusing on the kind of organisations and the setting up of systems, rather than what is actually happening at the classroom or even what is happening in terms of professional development for teachers, because that is still a beginning thing and has not got very far yet.

So you are both saying that it is far too early for you to tell us anything about whether this diversity programme is driving up standards or not.

(Dr Woods) Yes, it is.

(Mrs Evans) I think that is what we are saying.

(Professor Glatter) Was your question about diversity generally or Diversity Pathfinder, which I think we see is a very specific kind of pilot programme, changing quite a lot of the dynamics? It is that we are looking at, and that has really only just started.

(Dr Woods) We have seen glimpses of what is happening in some of the areas where we have been going along; it is too early to evaluate what is going on.

As professionals in this field - and you have heard the information coming from the team which was on before you, in terms of the longevity of this interest in, if not fashion or love affair with, diversity as a way of driving up standards - what do you think about the debate that we have been hearing from the academic world about the relationship between diversity and standards? What is your view in terms of your professional opinion?

(Professor Glatter) I can say a little bit about what my view is about the relationship between diversity and choice. If I could focus on that one, but you may want to draw out issues about standards. One of the things that interests me is the way in which choice and diversity have tended to be used as near synonyms over the years, almost as inseparable twins, and yet I think they are quite distinct, and some of that has actually come out this morning in a very interesting way. As I think Professor Tooley said at an earlier session, choice does not necessarily produce diversity. From the 1998 Education Reform Act on this - and there is quite a lot of research to back this up - it was then actually that schools started to become somewhat more alike. That was actually due to a combination of factors, partly the new central prescriptions that started about that time, with the introduction of the National Curriculum and the linked assessment regime and the introduction of league tables and of inspection a little bit later on, and then, from a different policy stand within the Labour Government, you had the whole market forces push and the whole business of pupil related funding and more open enrolment. Then - and this is a huge generalisation but broadly there seems to be evidence for this - schools began to appeal much more to the middle ground, and they did not go, if you like, for the niche markets, because they felt that was where their survival and their funding base was most likely to be assured. It was quite sensible from that point of view. It was not so much 'comprehensivisation' incidentally, a view in the 1960s and 1970s, that brought that sort of development; it was actually much later than that, with the Education Reform Act and so on. Since the early 1990s, governments have been trying to inject more diversity of provision. As I said in the paper, and as I think others have said, there is not really evidence of a strong demand for that, but, nevertheless, that is the way governments have gone. It will be very interesting to see, once the diversity is fully rolled out, as it were, whether people's views change and there is actually a demand. The current Government is searching for diversity linked with equity, and I think that a number of challenges have got to be met for that to work. First, of course, we have to avoid greater polarisation and segregation - and that is the whole two-tier argument with which I know you are very familiar. For that to happen, choices have to be spread a lot more widely, and you will recall that the PISA study showed that the key impact that the nature of a school's intake has on student achievement is fundamental. In this country, it matters more than in many other countries which school a child goes to, and in a way we need to try to reduce that. I think a number of the Government's policies are aimed at trying to reduce that. The second challenge with trying to link diversity and equity is the whole business, which has been touched on in many different questions this morning, about availability and access, the whole logistical problem. I think that is an underplayed element and I was interested to hear the discussion earlier in fact. In most areas, even urban ones - that is an important point - many parents see their realistic choice as limited to two or three schools at most, and so in a diverse system they could actually only express a preference among very few types or specialisms - let us say, perhaps a grammar school and a science school, or a college and a sports college, and you could make up any list of two or three - and it could be - and there is no evidence for this yet and it is important to watch whether this is so - that diversity will be perceived by families as in fact constraining rather than enhancing choice. The key point is that choice and diversity do not go together. They are different ideas. Finally, which is specific to the specialist school notion, it is not just an issue of 10 per cent selection, which, as we know, is not widely practised, but even where there is no selection families may feel pressure to judge children's aptitudes at a very early age, around nine or 10. We know that is okay with things like a small number of students in areas like music or other performing arts, perhaps - and there are a number of respective establishments that have been going many decades on that - but is it something that will be a problem more broadly? I have a few suggestions on that. This is becoming a long answer, I am sorry about that, but I would just say, first, on the issue of broader specialisms, that it has been suggested that schools might be allowed to define their own specialisms or at least that they might not be linked with particular subjects or subject groups - and we have heard comment on that this morning. Secondly, that there could be more stakeholder input to decisions about diversity at national and local level to promote more local ownership among teachers, parents and communities. Thirdly, that there ought to be some professional marketing input, I feel, on branding, because these are branding issues really - it is a particular brand - and, given that is the case, there could be some professional on that which could be useful. Fourthly, coming back to diversity and collaboration, which I do think is potentially very significant but it is a huge cultural change, that we have got decades of institutional separateness to contend with and we cannot expect quick results, I feel, but the idea of focusing on the student rather than on the institution is a very challenging one, and I know that our team is really fascinated to see what is going to happen because it is a very radical approach. I am sorry for the length of that answer.

Chairman: Thank you for that, Professor Glatter. That was a very good introduction.

Mr Turner

Would I be right in saying that one of the key determinants of whether parents really have choice is actually nothing to do with education; it is the density of transport networks and the efficiency of transport networks.

(Professor Glatter) I think that is a factor.

(Dr Woods) It certainly is part of it. There is also a difference in terms of the capacity for people to travel around who do not have their own resources or the flexibility in their work patterns to travel and take a child further. That is a capacity. Also I think Professor Glatter pointed to the issue of cultural capital, as it were, being a factor in the ability to negotiate the system: to know where you can go, to know who to ask if you do not know something and so on. So there are a number of factors. The idea of the Diversity Pathfinder project, as I understand it, is that you move away from the focus on institutional choice and you enter an area of a group of schools. You are based in one school but you then access the educational opportunities within the whole group, and you access that perhaps by travelling to the school but in other ways, by perhaps that expertise coming to your home school base through ICT or through teachers from other schools travelling to that school and in other ways that have not yet been developed.

(Professor Glatter) I remember that in 1994 there was an extremely interesting OECD report on school choice in a number of countries. The point that that report made, and I have not seen any later work on this, was that while in England there was more emphasis on choice than in most other countries, the arrangements for the funding of school transport were less generous than in many other countries. There was that paradox to which that report drew attention. I suspect that the situation may still be rather similar now.

Addressing the issue of cultural capital, clearly the ease or difficulty in applications is quite significant. One of the things which I think this Government has drawn attention to is your chances of success must become more open when you make the application. Is there something fundamentally wrong with a system that gives priority to people who express first preferences rather than people who express lower preferences?

(Dr Woods) I do not think we have looked at it from that perspective. From previous research, it was clear - without going into whether it is right or wrong - that where you had a selective system you had a much greater degree of anxiety about choice - which came out from the questioning earlier on. I think I would have to reflect on the specific question that you are putting about whether it is fundamentally wrong to favour those with first preferences. I suppose that what is meant to happen is that the stated admissions' criteria are what should operate, and it should be open and understood and known that that is how your application is going to be judged. That is only fair and right, that it follows what is clear. If first preferences are not part of the criteria, whether you put first preferences on, then that should not be a part of the judgment of applications.

I think what concerns people is that they have to gamble, when they make their application, against the likelihood of other people's first preference begin more important than their first preference, and so they do not necessarily put the first preference for the school of their first choice, they put their first preference for the school which they are most likely to succeed with. As far as you know, do any LEAs, or for that matter any admissions systems in this country, treat preferences equally rather than treat the first preferences above other preferences?

(Professor Glatter) I am trying to remember the work on admissions that I have seen. I do not think there is anything like that. I think there was one area that had a lottery system at one point and I think that was declared illegal or something, but I do not recall that example being operated anywhere.

Professor Glatter, you said that since 1988 schools had gone more for the middle ground. That suggests to me that before 1988 there were more sort of niche schools or at least schools outside the middle ground, but also before 1988 there was less choice enforced by legislation. Was there also less choice? If the answer to that last question is yes, what was the consequence on pupils of them going to schools which were outside the middle ground, about which they had no choice?

(Professor Glatter) This was more to do with school responsiveness rather than student or parent choice. Schools all felt ... I am sorry, this is getting to very big generalisations. There appears to have been a movement towards schools saying, "Okay, we cannot just go for a niche market for the less advantaged" - if you like, to take that example. "Because of things like league tables and so on, we have to do everything we possibly can, not only to get the largest number of students through the door but also to get a reasonable intake of higher ability students." It was that process. Your point earlier about the supermarket reminded me of this, that it was something like that process - and there has been some academic work on the effects of competition generally that I have seen which actually does use the supermarket analogy in terms of schools, saying "Why do we expect choice necessarily to produce diversity? It does not in things like mass car manufacturers and supermarkets and so on." It may well be that there is that sort of process and I thought that example was extremely interesting.

Chairman

Professor Glatter, in your introduction you gave the impression that up until the National Curriculum and the whole swathe of reforms that came about when one government tried to find ways of raising achievement and standards, we had a more diverse system - you say niche schools and so on; then we got a much more uniform - and I will not use the description - more standardised provision across comprehensives because of the National Curriculum and all that; and now we are in a new fashion, a new fashion which is back to specialism and niches and all the rest of it. Do you not, as an academic with a lot of experience in this field, sometimes despair at the way governments sort of switch and swatch and move? At the same time, some of the research that disturbs me particularly, the research that was produced for Sutton Trust, for example, shows that social mobility in recent years has actually slowed down. We are less socially mobile as a nation and as a society than we used to be. People are not using education to move up and improve on the achievements of their parents. Achievement is much more like that of your parents than it was if you take the two cohorts 1958 and 1970. Here we have a society where we think education opens up all the doors to all the children, but it obviously is not doing that. Does that not concern you?

(Professor Glatter) Yes, absolutely. I just want to say I hope I did not make that business about before 1988 and after 1988 starker than I think can be warranted, if you like, by the evidence. There was competition. It is not that 1988 was the dawn of competition in the education system. Those of us who were around in the eighties, the seventies and eighties, will remember the era of falling roles, when there was quite tough competition, particularly where schools were concerned about their survival. So I do not want to make it as stark as that, but I think that is right. Another thing which is in the supporting paper: you spoke to Professor Gorard earlier and one of his rather controversial findings was that the whole choice and competition movement did not have as much impact as many other people said it had. I think one of the reasons for that - and again I refer to that in the supporting paper - may well be - I have spoken to him and I think he agrees with it - that actually when you think of all the other movements that are going on, all the population movements, for example, then the impact of policies is often a good deal less than we actually think at the time. Even policies like those that were introduced in 1988, which looked like very forceful policies, in fact, when you look at all the other things that are happening ... For example, one of the things to which he draws attention is the way in which school roles rose because there were a lot of closures of schools and also because of the increasing population. That is one of the reasons, arguably, that the choice and competition policy did not produce as much segregation, in his view and on his data, as many people expected. The impact of policies, government policies, is not as great as we often assume it must be.

Jeff Ennis

Coming back to what emerged from a previous line of questioning from Margaret-Anne about the Birmingham model, looking at Pathfinder projects, it appears that there is no evaluation being done for neighbouring schools. Is this an oversight of the evaluation process and should it be incorporated?

(Dr Woods) I would not describe it as an oversight, in that the brief for the research evaluation is quite taxing in terms of trying to assess what is going on within those clusters and those schools. To add looking at the effect on schools outside it would be interesting but it would ad quite a bit of extra work and costs which I think is beyond what the Department want to do. I do think it is a good question, an important question, because it is conceivable that you could have a cluster of schools that is working very, very collaboratively within its own borders but is having detrimental effects outside it. I would say that the idea, as far as I understand it, in Birmingham is that you build up a number of clusters and that the culture generally becomes one of working together, not, "Oh, well, we are all right within our little area, we are just not interested in going outside it."

There is a possible danger in that.

(Dr Woods) Yes. With the project as it is set up at the moment for research we could not simply add it on.

One of the more attractive dimensions of special schools for me is this collegiate approach, which is the next dimension, rather than schools just being specialist schools. That is something I view more positively than the general idea of specialist schools in principle. Does that mean that to some extent you will be moving away from individual league tables for schools if this catches on, and that we can look at more qualitative rather than quantitative things for schools?

(Dr Woods) That is a very good question, again. It is coming up within certainly some of the areas, that if you are working together you have a commitment to the educational opportunities and standards within your collaborative area and group of schools. At the moment, as a school, you are judged as a school and your own performance, your own measures, so the implication is that the accountability structure should reflect what we are trying to achieve on the ground and in fact the accountability structure which focuses expressly on the school can actually be one of the disincentives to collaboration - not that it automatically would put people off, but it is a problem, and it has come up amongst the schools in one of the areas already.

It appears to me that it may act as a barrier against schools working collegiately, carrying on with the same old schools league table system.

(Dr Woods) Yes, it does. If I were a head teacher in my school and helping out others - I am sending some of my staff with a certain expertise over because I have a commitment to their development in that school as well - then I should not be criticised by OFSTED, or having to worry first and foremost only about your own performance measures.

Chairman

Unless OFSTED is looking at a grouping of schools in terms of their collegiate performance, they perhaps might be persuaded to .....

(Dr Woods) I think it is going to come up in the project.

Jonathan Shaw

Just considering secondary education, Professor Glatter, you said that the impact of government policies did not perhaps make that much difference.

(Professor Glatter) Compared with the whole culture.

That is sad news for us politicians, whether we are taking the credit or pointing the finger of blame.

(Professor Glatter) It was a speculation based on his -----

Chairman: There was deep resonance around the group!

Jonathan Shaw

Reflecting on that deep resonance, which policies would you point to in recent years that you feel have had the most impact, whether that is good or bad?

(Professor Glatter) Where does one start?

Jonathan Shaw: We are trying to focus on what works in terms of the diversity agenda. You have told us that there is a range of things that we think are big milestones for education but which in fact have limited effect in terms of improvement. Help us focus. Your colleagues are welcome to join in.

Chairman

I did tell you this was more or less a seminar situation.

(Professor Glatter) Every policy, in my view, is by way of being an experiment. They are often put forward as being something different from that.

Jonathan Shaw

The dawning of new eras.

(Professor Glatter) Yes, the dawning of new eras and so on, and that is the real excitement about them. But it is only through looking carefully at lots of data on the policy of parental choice and so on, very complex data, that you can start to say, "Well, there is something odd happening here. Could it be that the policy is less significant?" and so on. In this one, one of the things which is coming up here is this whole notion of partnership. In various different ways, a number of projects, funded both by the Department and by other bodies, are starting to look at these various types of partnership arrangements. One of the exciting things is we are starting to learn about this last issue, about the whole business of the accountability measures focused on particular schools. I heard of a case recently of a situation in Victoria, Australia, where they had very a successful network of schools going for a number of years and then that particular issue arose and there were major problems in terms of getting agreement and so on. The whole issue of understanding how partnerships work, what are the problems, what are the barriers, is something we are going to all learn about, and all these policies, at least for me, are experiments. The key thing is: Is there proper evaluation built in so that we and future generations can learn how to do it better? It is not a direct answer to your question because it was too tough a question.

And we do not have a fortnight, but the answer is the quality of the evaluation and the seriousness with which politicians respond to that evaluation. That evaluation needs to be done over a long period of time.

(Professor Glatter) There is a lot of talk, as you know, about the idea of the learning organisation. I think we also need learning systems, and I think we are starting to get them actually. We are starting to get more in the way of feedback and evaluation mechanisms to learn about what is being effective and what are the problems in challenging the processes, like doing partnerships and collaboration.

(Dr Woods) One of the effects of the accumulation of policies over the years is that it has focused attention on certain indicators, in particular the headline indicator of five A-Cs. In research that we have done, quite major research, one of the themes that is coming through is that relentless focus on five A-C GCSEs. That is coming through, that it is there in schools. That does not mean that schools ignore other things but it is a tension that often is there in schools, but I would relate it to the fact that one of the aims of the Diversity Pathfinder project is not just to attend to the headline indicators but to make sure that the policy of diversification and collaboration benefits all students, and particularly disadvantaged students as well as advantaged students. We are specifically looking at that within our research. That will be an important test of the success of the Diversity Pathfinders project.

An important part of the evaluation will be the distribution of pupils from disadvantaged sectors and circumstances, the mix of all pupils in terms of their socio-economic make up. Is that right?

(Dr Woods) It will be how much the changes brought about by the Diversity Pathfinders benefit those who come from more disadvantaged backgrounds compared with those from more advantaged backgrounds. Where they exactly are in the cluster may or may not be important; it is how much it benefits those as well as the advantaged. That is built into the contract we are working to and so is a specific thing at which we must look.

We will be able to understand the impact of diversity for students from disadvantaged backgrounds and how that enables one child compared to another child in terms of their educational opportunity. Is that right?

(Dr Woods) Yes, the effect of the Diversity Pathfinders projects.

(Professor Glatter) Not just diversity generally.

(Dr Woods) Collaboration is the key thing, is it not?

(Professor Glatter) Collaboration with diversity.

It might then provide us with a set of solutions to the point you make, Professor Glatter, about the PISA study saying that for a kid from England the impact of their educational opportunities differs from ----

(Professor Glatter) No.

- is at a considerable disadvantage compared to other countries. The most important thing is going to the right school in that area, and that is more important in England than it is in many of the other OECD countries. Is that right? You made that point. What you are saying may provide us with the solutions how to change that and provide it not being quite so important.

(Professor Glatter) Yes, that is the radical input, it seems to me, and the objective behind this particular Diversity Pathfinder set of pilots.

That is something on which you would suggest we need to focus.

(Professor Glatter) Yes.

In terms of all these policies.

(Professor Glatter) I think that is important.

It An important part of your evaluation so that they could b e an important part of policy development in the future. Is that right?

(Mrs Evans) Could I just say something? You are talking about the role of research and research evidence and research evaluation informing policy. It is my experience that actually it is not, it does not, and policy makers have other considerations as well as what research evidence can say when they are formulating their policies. I am currently involved with a new movement, the Evidence-Based Policy and Practice Movement, which is looking at research on particular questions within education and drawing together lots of research that has been done over the last 20 to 30 years to try to find solutions to policy problems. My colleague Sue Hammond has done a very thorough look at the impact of streaming on educational attainment. Her research shows that mixed-ability teaching has no adverse impacts on the more able pupils but setting and streaming has very marked adverse impacts on less able pupils. Nevertheless, the current Government's advice and policy is that setting and streaming is a good thing and that schools should be adopting it and it is being adopted even at the primary level. The impact of that policy is, in a sense, going against what research evidence is saying about what is effective and what works.

Chairman

Surely if you listen to - and I know you have - the evidence that we have had, just taking this area, the conflicting policy advice that we have had from a range of academics, some of who sit exactly where you are, the one on the left absolutely saying that there is this new policy, this new fashion about diversity, it is unproven, the research shows that it makes very little difference, it is a waste of money, if you like, and then the person sitting on the right saying the exact opposite. Then a whole group of new academics come in the next week and say, "It is all right talking about research-driven policy over a period of time. If you can look at it over 30 years, then I think that could be very valuable." The one thing that is quite interesting is that we live in an age, do we not, where the ideological fights and disagreements over educational policy really are much less polarised then they used to be? Many politicians are just looking pragmatically and asking, "What works?" You would think it is a climate in which, if you as academics would give us evidence on which to build good, pragmatic policy, people would say they would be open to that. This is your perfect time, is it not? Politicians are basically saying, "Give us the research-based evidence and we will follow it."

(Mrs Evans) But then when it is given .....

Jonathan Shaw

There is lots of research, is there not? As the Chairman says, if someone-----

(Mrs Evans) But if someone draws together a body of research on a particular issue and looks at 20, 30, 40 different research evaluations and comes to a conclusion based on that evidence, then that is a stronger evidence base then I saying one thing and my colleague saying another.

Chairman

In terms of this whole notion of diversity and specialist schools, we have had a period - I think a previous witnesses said seven years - of this experimentation - if not a little longer. In seven years there has been quite a lot of research done, tell us, as politicians, should we continue with this diversity agenda because it is driving up standards and it is helping to improve schools or should we abandon it?

(Professor Glatter) There is a very brief summary of some of the work on that in the supporting paper I gave. This goes back to your first question, I think, about the link between diversity and performance - and it is difficult to talk about diversity generally because the specialist school part of it is such a dominating part, although there is some work on faith schools. It does appear that in terms of performance there is a very small (and I think the authors tend to use - you have heard this before in your sessions - very "slight") performance advantage but the cause of that is unknown. It may not at all be that it is because of that particular feature of the schools, but it might be because with specialist schools, as you have heard before, the schools which were stronger in a number of respects were the ones which bid and so on and the performance advantage is so slight that you could not with confidence attribute it.

This is absolutely at the centre of our inquiries and our interest. When we talk about higher education - and we are going to be talking about it a great deal more next week, I predict - we constantly talk about: On the one hand the Government has the objective of 50 per cent inclusion in education for people under 30 - we have 40 per cent and we think it might go up - but there is another objective; that is, broadening the social base, getting people from less advantaged backgrounds to come into education. We have a history of failure of all parties, very plainly, of getting people from less privileged backgrounds into higher education; in other words, as our growth goes on we are getting more of the same. If you take the LSE research that I mentioned earlier that says social mobility, rather than increasing with increased higher education, is actually slowing down, that to us as politicians will be very, very worrying. If we then take it down, a lot of the work we have done in this Committee actually points to the fact that much of the difficulty of getting people into higher education from the lower socio-economic backgrounds is what happens in schools: by the time they are 14, perhaps it is too late or by the time they are 16 it is too late. So very early on. What is the policy that we can base on research that says we have an endemic problem of getting less privileged children to stay on in education and then go on to higher education? I do not see policies that have been identified on the research base that would help politicians.

(Mrs Evans) I think the Government is doing a lot in early years education but this is going to take a long time to filter through. You have your Sure-Start Programme and your early years programmes and a lot, it seems to me, of very effective work going on at that level, but that is going to take some time -----

We had an academic sitting in your seat exactly who said that if you look at similar sure-start programmes in the United States they have a short-term effect and they do not last very long.

(Mrs Evans) I think there is conflicting evidence there.

Exactly!

(Professor Glatter) Surely the PISA results flag up a number of worrying issues for us, but overall I think we could take a certain amount of comfort from those results, in terms of the policies so far in our practice and everything that teachers have done and so on. But the expectation surely was going to be: this is going to be a disaster for us. But it was not a disaster for us. There were things we needed to attend to, but the results were: "You are doing quite well but you have problems in terms of a class divide and things like that." But look at the Germans: they have had a year of fretting and turmoil and concern, and other countries that we thought we were definitely below in the league. So I do not think it is all bad news.

(Dr Woods) The general point which Jennifer was pointing to that has applicability, is that where you have differentiation on a hierarchy - we were talking about streaming and setting - and the same can be said between schools, then that acts as a barrier to overcoming the inequality gap between advantaged and disadvantaged. Further, I think we can say that the Specialist School Programme, the creation of specialist schools in themselves, does not shift that inequality gap, and the Diversity Pathfinders challenge is to develop a form of diversity and working together that does not keep going or create differentiation by hierarchy but has a creative diversity. I think I would further say that that takes you to think about diversity - Ron has pointed to that in part in his memorandum - that what we mean by diversity, what we are talking about by diversity, shifts sometimes. Often it is about specialist schools but that is a rather rigid idea of diversity. There is a lot of diversity between schools which can be described maybe, instead of as a formalised or designated diversity, as a dynamic diversity. In one school they have developed, over many years, a very good maths department, for a number of reasons. One of the things in the Oaks Collegiate Academy in Birmingham is that they are trying to unlock that expertise. It is not a maths specialist school, it is just that they are doing well in it. But what other schools are doing well in other departments or in other ways? It could be linking the community and so on and so forth. That idea of diversity is rather a dynamic thing which will change over time or there will be innovations which we can unlock from one particular school to spread around and develop. I think we are pointing to something which is not a rigid specialist diversity schools system but something which is more dynamic and I think the research helps to point in that direction.

Mr Simmonds

A tremendous number of school initiatives exist between 11 and 16 at the moment: specialist schools, extended schools, advanced schools, Key Stage 3, 14-19, voluntary training schools, excellence in cities, schools facing challenging circumstances, leadership incentive. How is your analysis of the Diversity Pathfinder process going to evaluate all those? How are you going to measure the impact of those individual policy initiatives on the success or failure of the Diversity Pathfinder process?

(Dr Woods) A very good question. It is one we asked ourselves before put forward our proposal which was eventually successful. This is a key thing and part of the answer to that is we have to be very careful in concluding from it. But one of the reasons I emphasised the qualitative evidence that we are getting is that that allows us to get some insight into the specific effects of initiatives that come under the Diversity Pathfinder heading. We can try to trace through, if it has encouraged more shared professional development between schools, for example, in what ways people see that as affecting the classroom. We can try to follow things through and distinguish them. It will not be a complete answer, we will be able to make an informed judgment at the end of the project but you cannot so easily just do statistical tests and say that on this variable the Diversity Pathfinder has had this effect.

If there is an increase in educational standards where the Diversity Pathfinder policy has been put in place, how are you going to know that it is down to the Diversity Pathfinder agenda? It could be Key Stage 3, for example.

(Professor Glatter) That is where, as Phil has said, it is important to see the thing as just a mechanistic type of study where you just simply look at the exam results but it has to be a depth study and that has become more difficult over the last few years with more and more government initiatives and local authority initiatives as well, and then, when you focus on a particular thing, you have to disentangle that and the only way is to do an in-depth piece of research with a lot of interviewing of the people involved to get as close as you can to a link in cause and effect.

It would be a subjective analysis rather than an objective one.

(Professor Glatter) Not subjective really, because it will be based on a lot of data generated and systematically gathered during individual interviews, group interviews and so on.

(Mrs Evans) I think there is also a statistical element where it will be comparing the results from Diversity Pathfinder LEAs with a national results. We might be able to say, "Okay, from the results in the Diversity Pathfinder LEAs for particular groups of children" because we will be getting the PASC(?) data for individual pupils - "they are doing better than children in comparable local authorities nationally." We are not gathering that material ourselves but that material is routinely gathered by the DfES statistics, so we have access to that material.

Will you be able to analyse out of that national material the effect that is being had on those schools immediately outside the collaboration area? - the point Jeff was making earlier.

(Mrs Evans) We would be able to do that, yes.

Mr Chaytor

I want to return to the question of the relationship between diversity and choice and ask if any study has been done on the impact of the diversity programme over the last few years on the exercise of parental preference; that is to say, has there been a significant increase in the number of parents exercising their right to state a preference and actively seeking and evaluating the strengths of different schools? Do we find that parents are now weighing up the pros and cons of a sports college against an arts college, or that they are more interested in a faith schools as against standard schooling?

(Professor Glatter) I do not know if we have been looking for that kind of work; as you would expect from the kinds of thing I have said, I do not know anything about that. The most recent fairly significant study of parents was a study commissioned by the Department which was published about two years ago and that did not address that issue at all. The main thing that came out of that, for me, was how people were a lot more dissatisfied in London than elsewhere in the country, but I have not seen anything focusing on that. That is exactly the point, actually, that I make in my submission. We have to look much more closely at that link between diversity and choice and we have not done that, the researchers have not done that and we need to do that.

Just pursuing this a little, building on the remarks earlier about the noticeable shift in focus of the Specialist Schools Programme being primarily a school improvement programme and also referring to Philip's comment about the search to extend ways of good practice within the Pathfinder areas, logically would it not be the case that over time, if those two criteria are the main criteria, school improvement and extension of good practice, we could expect a reduction in the exercise of parental choice as for more parents their local school became increasingly attractive? Would that not be the logic of these two objectives?

(Professor Glatter) Yes, it would. The only thing is that it is hard to conceive of a diversity policy which does not have choice, an enhancing choice, as an objective. I have heard the discussion that really improvement is the strongest thing, but I did notice that the Secretary of State, I think, in his press release, when the Specialists School Programme was rolled out further, said that any school that wanted to and had a good application would be able to become a specialist school, and he referred both to improvement and choice. The other thing is of course that the extent to which the Specialist School Programme does lead to improvement is something that still needs to be the subject of research investigation, it seems to me. Because at the moment we can see that many schools are saying that the whole process in which they engaged, through the application period and so on, led them to question things and targets and all the rest of it, but it is not clear at the moment whether overall it is itself a mechanism for school improvement. That is something which also needs to be investigated.

Finally, on the question of the categories of specialist schools, is it not paradoxical that we have a diversity policy that limits the amount of diversity there can be? Do you have a view on this question of whether there ought to be a wider range of categories of specialist schools and schools should be encouraged to define their own specialist strength rather than have it imposed from the top down?

(Professor Glatter) I have drawn attention to something that was put in the White Paper or Green Paper two years ago, when the Government itself proposed, under the Beacon Programme, that there should nevertheless be the Beacon status for schools that were particularly effective in working with their communities or particularly effective in terms of the skills relating to the emerging economy and ICT and so on. I do hope that when the Government considers an extension to new specialisms a broader view is taken. I heard what Ron Jacobs said earlier and I understood the point he was making and I hope there is some manoeuvre within that general position, because I do believe that many parents would feel - and this is a personal hunch - more comfortable with the whole anxieties of the choice process that we heard about from Ray Shostak earlier, if there were some broader options available. To me, the notion of a school which is maths and computing, for example - just to take one example - seems quite daunting. Why should computing be linked specifically with maths? Why should it not be seen much more in the way that the Government themselves mention it in that Green Paper, where they say, "The skills of the emerging economy, particularly in ICT"? That is a completely different way of looking at computing and one that I think would be more popular. A lot of families would feel more comfortable with that kind of offer.

Paul Holmes

In one of the evidence papers that you submitted to the committee, School Choice and Diversity in England: a Brief Overview of Research and Key Issues, you say that the current Government, elected in 1997, has retained the essential quasi-market elements of the system introduced by the 1988 Education Act: "The main structures ... are still in place - parental choice, open enrolment .." etc. This is hot off the press, this is "Draft: January 2003", so it is written in the last two weeks. Were you surprised then to hear the School Diversity Division say that they do not really see a role for choice in rural areas at all and not very much in urban areas? Is that not a direct contradiction of what you were summarising in the last two weeks when you wrote this draft?

(Professor Glatter) I was talking there about the various mechanisms, like pupil-related funding, more open enrolment, those things that were brought in by the Education Reform Act 1988. Obviously there have been changes in terms of the degree of mechanisms, fair funding and so on, but the structures which are related to competition and choice and the individual institution are to a large extent still there. It is exactly the same point that Ray Shostak was making earlier. It is interesting to explore why there is the pull-back from the notion of choice. It is hard to speculate on that, but the key point is that the structures, I think, are mostly still in place. That is where this whole issue, with pathfinding and collaboration and so on and how these things are going to mesh together, will be very important.

When, on 28 November, the Secretary of State announced the roll-out of specialism, the press release still emphasised choice as being one of the key factors.

(Professor Glatter) Yes.

Do you see a difference between the evidence we have just heard and what the Secretary of State said a few weeks ago? Is there pull-back?

(Professor Glatter) I have read the transcripts of what the ministers have said to you here and it seemed to me they were saying that the improvement objective has now become more important than the choice objective. But I still think there is an issue, because presumably there is a concern about how families will view it. I am concerned, if that is the view that is taken, that there will be a sort of 'marginalisation' of families, and there is so much talk about public service delivery that surely an important part of that is how satisfied families are and how far they feel there is delivery in this area. So I do not think one can completely ignore the choice dimension of this. I think it is a very important one.

Chairman

If you take Paul's point, there is much more diversity of choice if you are a well-informed class of family that has, first of all, the option, if they do not like the choice, to go into independent education or to be highly mobile - not only well informed but highly mobile - in terms of travelling long distances. There is a whole sector of the population which has a great deal of diversity of choice because of the background they come from. That is true, is it not? The people who are on lower incomes, with less availability of knowledge and transport, rely very much on what is delivered close to the doorstep.

(Professor Glatter) Absolutely.

Could I just finish by asking you what is the reporting process from you to the DfES? When do you report? At what stages? When do you finish your report?

(Dr Woods) We have to report on an annual basis. We do an annual report which is a written report. We did one in October. It was only a few months after we started, but it was our first annual report nonetheless. We will do one later this year, in October, and each year. We also attend the annual Diversity Pathfinders Conference, which involves the Department and the LEAs involved. Jennifer and I did a presentation to that conference and I anticipate we will be doing a presentation at this year's and so on. So there is reporting, written and in presentation, on a regular basis and then there will be a final full report at the end of the project. So findings will come back before the end of the project. The Department attached importance to that, and to a point we can do that.

I know it is a difficult relationship for you, because you do have a lot of contracts and a lot of income from the Department commissioning the research, but if you did early on think that this was all not a very good project and it really was not worth carrying on, Jennifer, because of your great belief in research-based policy, would you recommend and expect the Department to pull the programme?

(Mrs Evans) To be honest, I do not think we are going to be able to tell. This is something that is so attractive about this project, that it is a longitudinal thing: it is going to take two or three years for things to begin to show an impact, so I do not think we will be able to say very much about whether the impacts have been what are expected until the project is more or less coming to an end. Obviously, if at the end of three and a half years our evidence is that this has not been particularly successful in achieving the aims that it set out to achieve, then we would say so.

(Dr Woods) Ray Shostak mentioned that the project is developmental. You are not working to a set down protocol or set of instructions or guidelines. A large part of it, on the local ground, they are developing it as they go along. Some things may work and some things may not work. Part of our research will be looking at what develops and seems to work well but also things may fall by the wayside. But it is not a monolith, it is a developmental project which is developing in different ways locally - that is part of the interest too - and we can feed back our perspective from our data on what we believe has worked well and perhaps what has worked not so well.

Chairman: Can I thank you, Professor Glatter, Jennifer and Philip. It has been a very good session. We are grateful for your patience and your frankness and for that of previous witnesses. If, as you travel home or when you get back to your institutions, you think of something you should have said to the Committee or wonder "Why on earth did that Committee not ask this question" - and I am looking across at certain people as I say that! - do drop us a line. Thank you.