Examination of Witnesses (Questions 141-159)
TUESDAY 1 APRIL 2003
MRS CHERYLE
BERRY, CLLR
MRS SAXON
SPENCE AND
CLLR MR
DON RULE
Chairman: Welcome and thank you again for coming
from the Local Government Association. To you, too, can I express
my apologies for the delay of this meeting. I understand, as a
result of that, you, too, have a slightly different team that
you have put out and Raymond Wilkinson is not with us today, as
originally was going to happen on 18 March. As you appreciate,
we had other issues on that day. We have Cllr Saxon Spence from
Devon, Mrs Cheryle Berry, Chief Education Officer from Lincolnshire
County Council and Cllr Don Rule. Thank you very much and we will
start with Mr Mitchell.
Mr Mitchell
141. One of the big contributions that this
Government has made is to produce more targets than any other
government before or since. Some of them may not have been achieved.
I just wonder whether, in your view, the targets for connecting
all schools to broadband by 2006 is achievable?
(Mrs Berry) Yes, it is. I speak from experience because
as we speak already all our 63 secondary schools are on broadband
and over a quarter of our 289 primaries and our special schools,
but we have taken a conscious decision as an LEA to do that, to
use 21st century technology to link our rural areas. Also, we
have coastal deprivation, transient populations, where in fact
broadband can be the key to a good education for children, for
adults and to promote lifelong learning. So I would say, yes,
it is achievable but it is not without its difficulties. Quite
often the infrastructure, the lines, are not there when you want
them, and to connect rural areas you have to use all your technology—satellite,
wireless and so on—and for smaller schools can be very,
very costly, but I do believe it is an achievable target.
142. Somebody from central Lincolnshire saying
something favourable about a Labour government! You are speaking
there from experience. Do you think throughout the country as
a whole it will be achieved?
(Mrs Berry) I think it depends on the consortia that
you have and the providers in the consortia. We are in the East
Midlands broadband which includes another nine LEAs and we have
found with our provider they are trying every possible solution
they can think of to connect. I know colleagues share the frustration
sometimes that they want things quicker than they can actually
be delivered. I think there is variability across the country.
(Cllr Spence) We will have 103 primary schools connected
by August 2003 but they are mainly the urban schools. We expect
another 40 but it is the availability (and I am not an expert)
of ADSL, and it is not going to be widely available in Devon and
it is unavailable in some of our rural areas, so this strategy
is not going to benefit our rural primary schools. We are not
aware that Defra has made any contact with us over this issue
and the issue of access to broadband is a very serious issue not
just for schools but for the rural economy in parts of Devon.
We have got great big moorlands and areas where it is difficult
which we have certainly raised with the RDA as one of its economic
drivers but any help that Defra can give to accelerate this will
be very much appreciated.
143. Do you not think Defra is doing its share?
(Cllr Spence) As far as we are know, Defra is not
doing anything.
(Mrs Berry) If I could comment about the economic
regeneration, I think links with our Government Offices have been
very important, and if you want an example of joined-up directorates
the DFES has allowed the matched funding of the broadband within
our National Grid for Learning to go against ERDF funding. We
have a major project to pull down £9 million into the county
to link all our businesses. We have written it up as a case study
because we think this is a bit of a breakthrough of matching up
funding between the two. With Defra I have been asked to work
with them on the Lifelong Learning agenda and I am very pleased
to do that. I think Defra and the Government Offices have been
trying to join up funding streams and work across your directorates.
144. Clearly I would have thought that ICT would
make a bigger contribution and a bigger impact and be more beneficial
in your areas than in other areas, therefore it is important to
encourage it. What can government do to increase the growth and
the use of ICT in rural schools?
(Mrs Berry) You may be interested to know that an
unlikely resource came forward for our Rural Academy infrastructure
from the Countryside Agency because we proved to them that we
could have an impact on adult skills as well as children's learning.
They provided £50,000 to get the mobile video learning link
set-ups between the schools and to help pump prime because it
is the smallness, there will always be small schools in rural
areas, their budgets are very tight, and you do not have the capital
always to pump prime innovation and initiatives. I think the money
is there and the willingness is there and the Countryside Agency
did not hesitate when they said, "We think we have an idea
that is on your agenda as well as ours."
145. It is good to hear that. Do either of our
other witnesses have a view on things the government should do
to boost it?
(Cllr Rule) Most certainly we have. I would also like
to express optimism. We have now connected up all of our high
schools and 30 or so of our primary schools. Coming back to cost,
typically the cost of connection in Hereford city has been about
£1,200, when moving up to rural areas it is £4,200,
and that is a big barrier.
(Cllr Spence) That is basically the problem, is it
not, the smaller the community the fewer people benefiting and
therefore you put your money where it is going to have most benefit.
In fact, for schools and rural communities the benefit can be
so much more. For instance, in primary schools there is a lot
of interest in sharing resources. Video conferencing is an excellent
way to share resources but if you are not on broadband, if you
are on ISDN, it takes your whole system out and it is not very
good, so that I think if you could advocate accelerating the introduction
of broadband for the smaller communities in general, and the primary
schools in particular, I think that would be extremely helpful
to us because we are getting it in urban areas, that is where
it is rolling out because the numbers are there.
Chairman: I must say I think you have shocked
this Committee by talking about something that the Countryside
Agency has done and that you are pleased about. It is not something
that we often hear.
Mr Jack
146. I wanted to follow on Councillor Spence's
very interesting observation. I was going to ask what the before
and after effect was of broadband, and you have given us an example.
People talk about it as if it is a piece of magic, broadband;
yes, rural regeneration, fantastic, let's have it. Give a few
more examples of what the before and after effect has meant.
(Mrs Berry) We talked about targets before and accountability
and children's and adults' achievement are terribly important
and we have kept track of the improvement in our schools and in
our adult learning so that we can show a progression. You are
absolutely right, it is only a tool, but what it does do is connect
up. You have heard this afternoon and we have listened to the
evidence from the colleges, staffing is the real issue so we have
used our advanced skills teachers via broadband and via video
conferencing so the skills in one establishment can be used across.
We have used native French speakers, both children and adults,
to promote foreign language leaning, so you use your resourcing
in a different way but it is absolutely a tool when you use it
in this way. I believe there is hard evidence from other authorities
that on-line learning can be very beneficial and laptops in the
home is what we have advocated as well because you cannot always
get adults into buildings.
(Cllr Rule) We are one of the first to have a rural
Educational Action Zone and they work very hard to link up with
schools in IT in the initial stages, and again it was very a ponderous
but it did have big advantages. When they were connected up to
broadband the interchange of knowledge between the schools was
dramatically increased. That is the fundamental thing. It is,
as you say, something wonderful which suddenly happens with this.
147. You tip-toed up to indicating the effect
on rural communities in the wider sense. I do not want to trespass
into the further inquiry this Committee is doing but would you
say that in the context of broadband being put into schools and
colleges that there is a knock-on effect economically in the communities
where that facility is available, and are there any examples that
you can say it went into the school, therefore, it was available
to the community and that happened?
(Mrs Berry) Yes, from the Rural Academy again, one
of our extended schools pilots has a business centre and from
that business centre we have examples of where smaller businesses
have benefited from the ICT skills in terms of their audit trailing,
their book keeping, their more efficient ordering, their promoting,
because you can market yourself very much better if you have got
a web site than if you are a little company in a rural area. There
are real examples of that where the business centre has helped
others. We want to do more. We are eager to spread it out across
the county but it will need funding.
(Cllr Rule) I am afraid I have the opposite situation
in that local businesses have been very envious of the fact that
schools have got it and the provider will not extend it to them.
Mr Borrow
148. I want to touch a bit on transport. I could
see you sat at the back of the previous session so initially if
we could concentrate on transport problems up to 16 and then look
at the 16 to 19 issue separately. I want to look a little bit
at the extent to which transport in rural areas does affect the
provision of education and the way in which that is met by the
existing funding formula SSA.
(Cllr Spence) I have in preparation for this got the
current situation in Devon where we are transporting 14,000 secondary
pupils, over 3,000 primary pupils, nearly 1,000 special school
pupils, and 2,500 at FE colleges, and at the moment that is costing
us just under £20 million and we get as a sparsity element
£13.5 million so we have got a funding gap of £6.3 million.
The other problem, of course, which you will be very familiar
with because you come from rural areas and you know, is that you
may only have one transport contractor and what we are finding
is when we tender for transport contracts prices are going up
enormously. Like other authorities, Staffordshire for instance,
we are going to look at whether we can run our own yellow buses
and work with the social services but on the whole we are relying
on the local transport contractors. One of the pilots that we
have done is called Life in the Bus Lane and it is for the older
children. We are trying to move children on to stage routes rather
than school buses because the other problem when you are looking
at the breadth of education if you are tied down to a school bus
you have to go at a certain time and you have to leave at a certain
time. I know when I had a brief period teaching in a rural school
a great number of children disappeared before the end of the school
day and they certainly do not get the benefit of homework clubs
or out-of-school activities so it is not just the cost, it is
the lack of flexibility. There is also a major problem—and
I have to say that it would be good if Defra gave government some
nudge because the legislation on school transport is totally out-of-date-
in that if you are from a rural area and you know that under-eights
can walk two miles, over-eights three miles safely, it is not
facing up to modern life and I think most of us think there ought
to be a flat rate payment for two miles or three miles and then
free transport because you have this anomaly that if you live
3.1 miles away from your school you get free transport, if you
live 2.9 you have to either get concessionary transport, which
we try to provide, or provide your own transport. It is a very
out-dated system and does not meet the realities of rural life,
or urban life come to that.
Mr Borrow: I agree to the extent things have
changed. I can remember my headmaster when I was at the grammar
school who had come from County Durham recalling the days when
it was an eight-mile walk to school and eight miles back.
Mr Drew: Those were the days!
Mr Borrow
149. In a way society has changed and again
David Drew and myself were in Ethiopia before Christmas, talking
to youngsters there who walk similar distances to school but,
you are right, circumstances have changed and people do not expect
their children to walk the sort of distances they did even 30
years ago. I think that is true. I was interested, Councillor
Spence, in your budget figures. You mentioned that there was a
shortfall between the sparsity element of the SSA and the cost
of providing school transport. I want to be clear is the sparsity
element of the SSA designed to meet the total cost of school transport
or is school transport within urban areas also included in the
general SSA?
(Cllr Spence) This is a long-standing problem that
authorities with rural schools have had, that the cost of school
transport falls on our central budget and it is one of the reasons
why much of our funding in the centre has to go into school transport
and we have to make up that deficit. Can I say we were very pleased
that the DFES recognised sparsity as far as primary schools went
this year but it does not recognise sparsity for secondary schools.
Again, if you were able through your Committee to say that this
does not seem to make sense, I think we would appreciate it.
150. Because presumably you have got this shortfall
and that needs to be met through increases in council tax or through
cuts in the schools budget or other county council services?
(Cllr Spence) Yes, we had an 18% council tax rise
but we did improve school budgets.
(Cllr Rule) There is another factor with sparsity.
Sparsity means different things to different counties. In my county
we have a sparsity factor of a very big county and a very small
population but we have no extensive moorland and mountains so
they are spread out in little mini pockets all over the county.
There is a big difference between sparsity with large areas unoccupied
of the authority and having these spreads all over the place.
It make life much more complicated and in the provision of home/school
transport often having to fall back on taxis because there is
no other way.
(Mrs Berry) Could I make a comment about post-16.
151. I was going to move on to post-16 now.
We would be interested in your perception of the changes since
January and the extent to which you have been able to rise to
the challenge.
(Mrs Berry) If we look at the 14 to 19 agenda working
with our colleges and the LSC, Lincolnshire is probably one of
the only LEAs that is paying for post-16 transport. We are consciously
putting £2 million extra into the budget every year for those
young people because recruitment and retention is an issue. We
did ask through our local LSC who made a case nationally that
there should be a recognition that that is very much an entitlement
for those young people. Their deprivation is as real as urban
deprivation. We did wonder if there is an opportunity with the
roll out of the Education Maintenance Allowance to build in a
transport access weighting so that those young people in our rural
areas would by rights have their transport because really it is
a big burden on LEAs and LSCs to try and find that transport cost.
(Cllr Spence) You may be interested that Councillor
Lane, who chairs our education executive, chaired a committee
with the DFES on the Education Maintenance Allowance and the findings
of that committee were that transport was one of the biggest barriers
to going into post-16 education. We are seeing more students coming
into sixth forms. I think you need also to look at the tension
because while they may enroll, if they are travelling an hour
or two and their whole life is being taken up with studying and
travelling, that can put young people off, as we know. So I think
you need to talk to the LSC to look at what we are doing to retain
young people and how far the cost and difficulty of transport
is a factor.
152. Turning to the existing powers and responsibilities
that LEAs have got as far as education transport is concerned,
do you think that is effective or are there things that you think
should be changed within those powers and responsibilities?
(Mrs Berry) I know that with delegation the bigger
the percentage we passport through to schools there would probably
be a case made to allow schools to arrange some of their own transport.
I would be extremely worried because it is already a logistical
nightmare trying to tie up procurement routes with different contractors.
The prices keep going up and you are very much tied to a neighbouring
school to deliver the children. I would like to make a plea though
for alternative forms of transport. We have tried very hard with
not just the walking buses but something we have called "park
and stride" which Defra could help with where you encourage
cars to bring more than one child along, to use a parking area
that may be just a little way from school and then you walk the
children from there, hence the park and stride thing. Even the
local public houses have been extremely good at allowing their
car parks to be used during the day. We do not need to be fixated
on buses. There are other ways that young children can safely
come to school and Defra could help with that. They could build
up some jobs and some networks of things for that.
Mr Drew
153. If we could move on to rural proofing.
Why do you think Bath and South East Somerset are so dismissive
of it? It basically says in their submission get rid of it.
(Cllr Rule) You have the upper hand on us.
154. I was interested, after all we get a number
of sides.
(Cllr Spence) Could you give us the context?
155. Basically they thought this was a counter-productive
educational agenda, that this is something that they felt took
away their ability to decide on how they wanted to educate their
children and was in a sense giving disproportionate help to those
children in rural areas whereas they should be looking to help
all their children regardless of where they were located.
(Cllr Spence) There is tension in a large authority
that has large urban schools. 64% of our primary schools come
within the classification of small schools adopted by the DFES
of under 200. We think it is quite comical to call those small
schools; it is not what we call small schools, but undoubtedly
because we do give a substantial sum of money so that all our
schools over 14 children will have 2.2 staff, and because they
have the same overheads they do get well funded and this has caused
a lot of problems for schools. I am from Exeter where we have
very large primary schools and in Tavistock and so on and it is
only this year we have been able to readdress the formula so that
there was not this tension, because it does cause ill feeling.
156. Certainly I have had both teachers and
councillors come to me saying it is all very well for the City
of Gloucester to be banging on about rural areas and lack of funding
going into village schools, but it comes at the cost of a much
more deprived group of people. I think that is an argument that
we in rural areas fail to really contend with because we tend
to think because we have got small pockets of rural deprivation
that that argument will eventually be understood by those in urban
areas. I have to say my experience is not one of great success
in trying to get that argument across.
(Mrs Berry) I think I would argue you have got to
equally value the people in your areas and be mindful that you
are trying to help as many as you can and that some strategies
probably are weighted more one way than the other, but I think
nationally that is increasingly what is happening. I believe that
the different agencies—be they the LSC, be they Connexions,
be they LEAs—are looking far more at the multiplicity of
strategies and weighing up the balance that what is suitable for
urban areas may or may not be suitable for rural. Your Education
Action Zones, for instance, have become Excellence Clusters. We
are very pleased that three of those will be started in Lincolnshire
in September. Strategies can be adapted not at a cost to somebody
else but similar to.
(Cllr Spence) I think you have to put effort into
showing all your schools that you are funding fairly. On the F40
campaign, with which I am sure you are very familiar—
157. Very.
(Cllr Spence)—We have tremendous support from
all our schools in Devon. The small schools recognise that large
schools also have problems. We have done a lot of work which demonstrates
that simply closing small schools saves you about 6p a head because
you end up with extra transport costs. Whilst we would not keep
a school open if it were not providing a good education, it is
a bit simplistic to suggest in an area of scattered population
that you save money when you then ask primary children particularly
to travel long distances.
(Cllr Rule) This is a subject of discussion and consultation
with our primary heads in particular when they have their heads
conference as to exactly how we set out the formula. We tend to
get an agreement eventually.
158. How much of a role has either Defra or
the Countryside Agency got with regard to taking forward rural
proofing in the education sphere? Has it got any role? Do they
do anything? Do you think they should do something?
(Cllr Rule) It is more applicable in secondary education.
Certainly I have seen no signs of intervention on primary schools
and small schools. In the secondaries one of our problems is very
small sixth forms and we are concerned with the LSEs about how
can we support small sixth forms. As has already been explained,
if you do not have sixth forms and you send people to sixth form
colleges, with long travelling, the drop-out rate is tremendous.
That is our experience anyway. I certainly would like to see Defra
more involved in trying to encourage or manipulate the curriculum
for our very small sixth forms.
(Mrs Berry) Defra play a very good role for us in
looking at the Lifelong Learning agenda. We know it is an area
they are pursuing and if we look at the other NTOs there is a
real role there. We need these skills in agricultural areas, we
need these land-based things. There are levels of strategy. It
is most important that they play their part. I have already told
you of the practical example of the Countryside Agency doing that.
I think everybody nationally has been trying to find their niche.
If I could just say to you it is very different when you have
districts and counties. We have all got local strategic plans,
we have all got learning partnerships and in trying to tie together
national policies that have come out in different timescales and
on the ground to really make a difference it is down to people
and pulling it together but we most certainly need that national
voice. We cannot influence at the levels that Defra and the Countryside
Agency could do.
Mr Mitchell
159. To round off David's point about rural
proofing, your own evidence is pretty tepid about it. It says
the LGA "understands rural proofing as being seen as . .
." then you say later on in 3.12 that there is still a long
way to go. Why do you not come out and say it is a load of codswallop?
Is it?
(Mrs Berry) No, if we thought it was we would tell
you that.
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