Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160-179)
TUESDAY 1 APRIL 2003
MRS CHERYLE
BERRY, CLLR
MRS SAXON
SPENCE AND
CLLR MR
DON RULE
160. You are not just mouthing the correct political
platitudes?
(Mrs Berry) Absolutely not. None of us is like that.
We have come along because we want to make a difference for children,
for adults, for the community. We are telling you as it is. A
good old Lincolnshire saying.
Mr Drew
161. You tell him off. He does not know what
is going on.
(Cllr Rule) A rose by any other name. What is so encouraging
is this interest—
Chairman: Mr Mitchell, do not walk away because
you are being told off.
David Taylor
162. He has not been spoken to like that for
years.
(Cllr Spence) One of the problems for an area like
Devon where we get inward migration is that some of our countryside
becomes dormitories where people in towns go off and live. We
have got the Met Office relocating to Exeter and they are scattering
all over Devon and they are going to commute in. If you want to
have vital local communities you have got to use your schools
and your local country schools with their computers and their
parents' activities and all that goes on there, your libraries—I
put in a word for the libraries—so that can encourage people
to stay in the countryside whereas the tendency is for people
on lower incomes would be to migrate into town and you are going
to just be left with empty places filled with weekenders or commuters.
I think you would lose a great deal there. I went over to the
South Tyrol and it might be worth Defra looking at the policies
they have got.
Chairman
163. We could go there.
(Cllr Spence) I recommend it, it is lovely. They have
put lots of effort into retaining local communities so they do
not want anyone commuting more than 20 kilometres and they are
putting lots of effort into retaining people in their rural communities
and I think that is where Defra can be useful. Can I put in a
word for adult community learning which has not been mentioned
because, for instance, in the Ilfracombe area we have flying laptops.
The adult tutors take the laptops out to communities and just
as our mobile libraries take them, we are hoping to get computer
facilities into those. I think there is a lot we can do and if
Defra can help us it would be much appreciated.
Chairman: Making the point that you did about
schools being the centre of the community, Councillor Spence,
we move on to schools as community resources.
David Taylor
164. Thank you, Chairman. Your submission does
not include very much reference to this as far as I can see. That
is not a criticism necessarily but the Rural White Paper did give
great importance to using rural school facilities for the whole
community—libraries, play schools, lunch clubs for pensioners,
and so on. I come from a county that is at the very forefront
of this, Leicestershire, which together with Cambridgeshire is
well noted for community education and yet Leicestershire is the
worst funded LEA in the land. Of the 150 LEAs we are there right
at the very bottom. Of course in Herefordshire and Devon you are
very generously funded, as I am sure you would agree—relative
to Leicestershire you are. What more do you think could be done
to enable you to deliver on the Government's vision in relation
to community education because a lot of schools are village schools.
I live right next to my own village school, ten yards away, and
an excellent school it is. A lot of schools are reluctant to share
their facilities with the community. Why are they so reluctant?
(Mrs Berry) I do not think it is a reluctance. I know
it can vary from area to area but we have been positively encouraging
our schools using the Education Act 2002 and extended schools
benefits. We have talked to heads, talked to governors and bodies
and already in some small way they tend to be doing that. They
have a shared library, they have adult classes, they have family
learning going on. Yes, it does need revenue and we have been
saying to them, "How can we help you, how can we work with
you to pull in that sustainable money?", not the one-off
bidding that you tend to get raise people's expectations and then
suddenly cannot deliver it the next year to keep going. We welcome
the Government's initiative. Baroness Ashton came and did a national
conference for us talking to schools and promoting this idea.
We have got two or three pilots going. We are saying yes please,
let's have more of this. We applaud Leicestershire and Cambridgeshire
because you have done it for so long and we are running to catch
up. We are not that well off but we are trying to deliver.
165. Nor is Leicestershire. Some of the very
best of community schools, two that I visited very recently I
know well at Long Whatton and Breedon on the Hill, are in quite
small communities I would guess less than 1,000 in both cases,
and are still able to provide first-rate facilities.
(Mrs Berry) That is because the resources are there,
the investment is so important.
166. Is it just a matter of throwing money at
it? Is that what you are saying? What do your LEA do to positively
encourage village schools to share their largesse with the wider
community? I am sure you write pleading letters and you exhort
them to but there is more to it than the money.
(Mrs Berry) We talk to them and do something about
it. With adult and community learning we put the tutors in. Part
of the problem usually is who is going to teach them and who is
going to be there for safety of the campus and so on. We put money
where our mouth is and go in there and work alongside schools,
not just entreat them to do so. I am admitting we have got a long
way to go with some of that but what grieves us sometimes is that
for the things the schools have—the ICT suites, the sport
halls—if you do not give the wherewithal with revenue then
they are trapped and in the evenings and weekends they are not
used as much as they could be.
(Cllr Rule) There is a question of practicality as
well. I have got one very small school which is absolutely wonderful
on the Welsh border. It has 30 pupils and it does a wonderful
job for community learning—high school children round about
use it as a homework centre, the locals come in and do IT training
and so forth. But there are others where it is just not practical
for the school, it is not fit for adults. One of the things that
I know is happening elsewhere within Herefordshire is that some
of our schools were built in the 1700s and 1800s when a wealthy
land owner said, "Have this piece of land and build a school
on it", so they did but it was about three miles outside
the village and it is still three miles outside the village, and
trying to use that as a community facility is impossible. Similarly,
there is a major capital investment needed in some to make them
suitable for this sort of work. We are encouraging it most certainly
and our schools really do like to get long with it. The more they
get the community involved or the more they help the community,
the more the community gets involved in the school itself.
167. You are using some of this sparsity lolly
that we in Leicestershire do not get in the interests of community
education in schools?
(Cllr Rule) Most certainly.
168. More specifically and finally, what do
you believe Defra should be doing in this to encourage an environment
in which it is the norm for the village school to be used in ways
which we would all agree are very well worthwhile to the local
communities?
(Cllr Spence) Certainly, as you can imagine, a county
like Devon has had a lot of involvement with Defra in particular.
The person who is coming to your next session Alun Michael will
give you the details because we were extremely badly hit by foot-and-mouth
disease and we had a recovery plan. I think if they can encourage—and
you are talking about low expectations—the great need to
diversify and the importance of the cultural industries in providing
employment and life in rural areas, I think that is extremely
important. I think it is enriching life, giving people more opportunities
and that does begin with the school and that can be the starting
point. So, yes, it is extremely important. One group that you
might like to think about who are quite crucial to the operation
and the use of our schools is the governors. They are very important
people in rural communities. Parishes often fight like cats to
get a governor on and their view of how their school should be
used is going to be very important. The other concern that we
have got is with leadership because it is not so easy now to find
well-qualified heads and there is a problem if your head is not
outward looking, and perhaps Defra might like to take an interest
in the programmes we are running to encourage people to take leadership
roles in small schools.
David Taylor: You may be interested to hear
that I am a parish councillor and a school governor in two schools
so I get 10 Brownie points for that.
Mr Drew
169. As a fellow town councillor, I would endorse
that.
(Cllr Rule) Could I add where I think they could help
is to try and develop better employment. We have got a ridiculous
situation in Herefordshire where we have got almost 100% employment.
Unfortunately, we have also, alongside that, the second lowest
level of wages in the whole of the country. The consequence of
that, as far as education is concerned, is 16-year-olds say, "I
may as well leave school now because the job I get now will be
exactly the same one I get when I get my GCSEs." The great
shame about that is that the county education services are producing
very well-qualified students. We are well above the national average
in A-levels and GCSEs right across the board. The disappointment
in that is there is nothing more for youngsters who go on and
do them. Defra ought to get to grips with it and appreciate that
situation. It is so annoying to talk to a young person and they
say, "Why bother to go on? I can go and get that job and
by the time I would have got it if I had stayed on at school I
will have two years' increments of pay as well." We are very
disappointed.
David Taylor: I was interested to hear that
final point. I accept of course what you say in relation to your
own area but it just does not square with my own experience with
a mixed urban/rural seat where the educational performance, the
stay-on rate, the participation in higher education are all distinctly
higher amongst the young people in the rural parts of the constituency
than they are in the urban parts. I do not say that to criticise
what you said; it just does not square with my own experience.
Mr Drew
170. I will not enter into that debate but I
do think there is an issue which I want to raise through what
you have been saying—and I was not in the first Committee
hearing but it has not quite come up in this one yet—and
that is the tension within rural schools. I do not deny what David
was saying but there is a tension in rural schools between those
I would call the innate group of people very often who come from
parents who work on the land who may subsequently have left the
land but who have not got the same self-esteem as those incomers
into the village. It has been put to me on more than one occasion
by heads that when the incoming parents see the results and they
are not quite as wonderful in terms of targets and all these various
reference points that we all know and love, that people are somewhat
taken aback that the schools their children have gone to are not
in the top bracket of every possible target imaginable. Do you
see that as something of a problem in some of your schools? I
am not saying it is general, I am not saying it is widespread,
but it is certainly true in some of my villages that that tension
is quite difficult to manage because of the different expectations.
(Mrs Berry) I think I would agree with you because
lots of the areas are still growing. You might tend to think of
the countryside as an area where it is not but people are consciously
moving to live in those villages even if they work elsewhere and
what we have found is low self-esteem and aspirations of the existing
families sometimes, and that is where you have to consciously
work with the school. We have done it through family learning
programmes, working with universities, working with the colleges.
In many ways if you harness the help of people coming into the
village in terms of leadership, as we have said, in mentoring,
in being school governors, it is this feeling of belonging because
it can work both ways and people can come into a village and feel
not part of it for a long while.
Mr Mitchell: Like Linda Snell in The Archers.
Chairman
171. You know nothing about rural areas. David
finally, we are going to move on to funding.
(Cllr Rule) You are absolutely right, it is a problem.
One of the other problems we have had is if very high-performing
village schools are within three or four miles of the town they
are all piling into there and it gives us a great problem.
(Cllr Spence) We actually would think it very helpful
if Defra could do some work. They say we have got to keep rural
schools but they need to be looking at the fluctuations and trends
in the local village school populations. We have got enormous
fluctuations and parental preference does mean sometimes that
if schools are seen as not providing the best, parents will move
children and that is very destabilising. We are not aware they
have done any work. They say they want rural schools but we do
need to look at numbers because we have duties to not have surplus
places and so on.
(Mrs Berry) I think there is a chance there for Defra
to promote the federation of schools. We have been making pleas
to DFES to say in a federation of schools could you not have a
composite target because you are going to have fluctuations in
population and achievement no matter what the value added is.
At the moment the answer appears to be no and we would say could
there not be some flexibility here around the definition of "federation"
and if the LSC can do strategic reviews and look at an area, why
could you not have a federation that delivered a target? I think
that would get you over saying this school is better than that
school and parents moving children around. It is a collective
responsibility.
Chairman: We are finally going to come to funding
which I know you will all be thrilled about.
Mr Borrow
172. We have talked about funding and SSAs and
transport and various issues. I do want to be quite specific in
that the Small Schools Grant is to be merged with the Teaching
Assistants Grant from this year and frozen in cash terms. I just
wondered if you have general comments on how that is likely to
affect schools?
(Cllr Rule) It is a big disappointment. One of the
main things about funding of small schools, of course, is that
in rural areas it is very much perceived that this is the only
public spending that is made in rural areas. We are all disappointed
that that is not going to be continued because it has been of
very great value. I suppose we are getting used to the grants
situation which is there one day and gone the next and we hopefully
adapt to it, but this is going to be particularly difficult.
173. So you say it is going but in cash terms
it is a merger of existing grants?
(Mrs Berry) It is this lack of flexibility again.
Many of us are really worried, Mr Taylor used the phrase about
throwing money at something.
David Taylor
174. I was being provocative.
(Mrs Berry) You cannot always use the money to recruit
and in many of our small rural schools to meet the workforce development
criteria is a huge worry. We have not got very long in which to
deliver it and there is a huge expectation not just from the teaching
associations but from the whole of the teaching profession that
we are going to be able to deliver it. Most LEAs would reflect
that worry of having to do it in a difficult recruitment scenario
at the best of times.
(Cllr Rule) Head teachers are worried too, as you
know.
Mr Borrow
175. There are issues around funding rural education
and that is part of the general work of the Committee, but there
are specific issues around very small rural schools which are
not in most areas the generality of rural schools, which are perhaps
very small and ones which were almost closed three years ago,
so there are specific issues. To what extent do you think the
Government in its funding mechanisms is reflecting or recognising
the specific needs of the very small rural schools as against
rural schools?
(Mrs Berry) I do not think there is enough. The moment
you start using funding formulae that have got to be consistent
across the whole county, and there is only a limited number of
factors that can be variables within that, I think we have lost
the strategic wherewithal to actually help individual schools
as they fluctuate. The formula was fine when it was first introduced,
now it has taken away that ability to be flexible. As you know
within your area, you put more money in and some schools have
finished up with far more than they need through the same factor
and you cannot move it around.
(Cllr Spence) The central funding over which we have
any flexibility is more and more limited, and more and more funding
is devolved to schools. Ironically, for instance, most of our
special needs funding is devolved to schools and schools then
say why can you not help us with particular problems?
176. Just to continue on that point, I have
certainly recognised that there has been some questioning about
the advantages and disadvantages of devolving budgets to schools.
I can remember when I first came in as a chairman of the governing
body on a primary school that this was seen as wonderful, but
there was always a downside to it that you were on your own and
that when things happened you had to cope with it as a school,
and that is obviously more difficult for a very small school.
I have certainly detected mixed feelings as to whether or not
it may have been better in the old days when at least you had
the LEA there to pick up and deal with these fluctuations and
you always knew you would have the teachers' wages being paid
and the building would be repaired and books and equipment would
be delivered, and whether you had got ten children that year or
20 children it did not make a lot of difference, the bits and
pieces you needed to do the education and staff would be there.
(Mrs Berry) It is economies of scale. I think devolved
capital has been a very positive way of looking at some of this
in that you can bring forward two or three years' devolved capital
to do something. I am not against devolution. As an ex-head teacher
I welcome that flexibility, but I think it has maybe gone too
far in that we have left nothing to be responsive to the small
schools that suddenly find an influx of young people whether it
is on the coast or, as Councillor Spence said, in her area where
you have suddenly got people coming in. It can be difficult.
(Cllr Rule) At the other end of the scale in terms
of the funding we find it difficult, and really the policy on
funding is unsettling. We think that blanket protection of village
schools seriously inhibits strategic planning. I have one example
myself where we put up a school last year for closure. Unfortunately,
there was one objection on the organisation committee, it went
to the adjudicator and he said we have got to protect the rural
schools. The school now has 22 pupils and it is losing six in
September and has not got a single new applicant at the moment
and I think we ought to have a bit more freedom in planning.
(Cllr Spence) Could I stress the importance for the
small schools of central procurement. A large secondary school
can be very attractive to a commercial caterer whereas we feel
our school meals service is absolutely vital to our small schools
through central procurement. It does take tremendous burdens away.
Competition is fine, the large schools get very good bargains
but it make it more expensive to provide services to small schools
and they need them just as much. It might be worth remembering
that.
Mr Jack
177. I wanted to ask a question about the balance
that has to be struck between urban and rural small schools because
you might believe that the only place where small schools exist
is in rural communities. Given that you have a pot for small schools,
what criteria do you use to determine where the money goes?
(Mrs Berry) On this one we understand that there can
be small urban schools. Frankly, within our own county that is
not the case. Our small schools are rural schools and the strange
thing for us is that according to the Audit Commission reference
to 600 for a secondary and 200 for a primary, 80% of our schools
fall into that category anyway. We have very few large schools
so our criteria really is not in the way you have just said.
178. But in the context of some areas where
clearly they might have small rural outposts they might also have
small schools within the urban setting. The message I get from
you is that if you get a Small Schools Grant it goes into the
general pot. Is that right?
(Mrs Berry) Yes.
179. So obviously if you got the majority of
schools below or at the 200 limit then they are going to be beneficiaries
of the funding. Councillor Spence, you look as though you want
to leap in.
(Cllr Spence) We would not make a distinction because
it would be done on the number of pupils a school had, so would
you consider a small urban school within a market town as a small
school? It depends what you mean by "urban". Other than
Exeter the next largest place in Devon has 30,000 people so we
are not talking about large conurbations.
| 
