Examination of Witnesses (Questions 220-239)
TUESDAY 8 APRIL 2003
RT HON
ALUN MICHAEL
MP AND MR
STEPHEN TWIGG
MP
Mr Mitchell
220. Can we talk about transport because we
are all familiar with all these kind of romantic stories about
people who will tell you, as they used to tell me when I used
to make films in the Dales, about how they had had to walk 18
miles to school in all kinds of weather and it was like an extended
Hovis advert. We are presumably agreed that it is desirable to
remove obstacles that might deter people from going to school
and to provide transport on as generous a scale as possible. How
does Defra see its role in relation to homes-to-school transport
in rural areas? (Alun Michael) Well, the primary role
as far as education transport is concerned lies with the Department
for Education, as with other things. I think our initiatives are
basically to try to get people to think laterally, so, for instance,
to see whether we can combine approaches, whether we can get people
to think differently. One of the great successes in recent times,
for instance, was the Wheels to Work programme which relates to
getting young people who are unemployed mobile so that they can
actually get to training to work, and it is something which has
been supported by colleagues at Education, at the Department for
Work and Pensions, supported by the Countryside Agency and by
local authorities. The sort of communities where there is a problem
for children in getting to school, and possibly the issues in
relation to out-of-school activities, are also the sort of communities
where there are problems in older people getting to the surgery
or to town or whatever, therefore, we are very keen for the issue
not to be seen all the time in silos. The ministerial group which
has looked at transport and social exclusion in recent months
has tried to tease out some of the answers which could be available.
We have also made grants available to parishes, the Parish Transport
Grant, to try to enable local communities to have a sum of money
with which they might try taking a different approach in the local
community.
221. Can you tell us about the Parish Transport
Grant? (Alun Michael) Well, the idea there is to make
money available which a parish council can apply for to enable
them to provide a parish solution. In fact take-up was initially
a bit slow because I think people find it difficult to think of
ways of doing things, but it could be through, I think one example
is, a voucher scheme, another is through helping in the sharing
of vehicles and that sort of thing. None of that relates directly
to education transport. As I say, I think our contribution is
to try to think laterally and to work with colleagues at Education,
Health and Transport to say to what extent can we bring a benefit
to a rural community by co-operation.
222. Yes, but you also have a concern for rural
transport, as a Department, and thinking laterally includes innovative
ways of dealing with things, like buses carrying mail and passengers
and that kind of thing, so could school bus services not be used
in the same kind of way? What lateral thinking have you actually
done on innovative ways of getting kids to school? (Alun
Michael) As I say, what we have been trying to do is to give
the opportunity for communities to think of their own ways of
joining up on some of these issues. The direct financing of public
transport, the Public Transport Bus Grant and that sort of thing,
is the responsibility of the Department for Transport and the
direct education responsibilities lie with Stephen's Department.
I think transport is a big issue for all rural areas and for all
services in relation to rural areas, including the question of
who do you bring in one direction, who do you bring to the service
and what services do you bring to the people, the sort of issues
of co-location that I was talking about earlier. (Mr Twigg)
I think clearly Alun is right that there is an opportunity for
us to look at this in a cross-governmental way, but there is a
responsibility on us, as a Department, to get this right. We have
a policy approach to this which is, how shall I put it, longstanding,
dating from the 1944 Education Act in terms of the free provision
of transport for pupils who live within two miles of school if
they are under eight and within three miles if they are over eight,
and this is the basis upon which we fund local education authorities
to provide free transport. There is then discretion and different
local authorities exercise that discretion in different ways in
terms of providing something on top of that minimum. The Department
of Transport have been piloting a number of other schemes. I think
there is a Yellow Bus scheme in north Yorkshire that is being
piloted at the moment and the analysis of that will start soon
and we will be looking at that with our colleagues in the Department
for Transport to see if there are other ways in which we can provide
a service perhaps more flexibly than the one that was dreamt up
back in 1944. The other aspect of this of course is about post-16
education and the importance of removing barriers to those particularly
from families where there is not a tradition of staying on in
education, and the Education Maintenance Allowance has been used
in some cases to give specific support to people with significant
distances to travel with their transport costs, and the analysis
seems to suggest some benefit in that, so as that becomes a national
programme next year, I think that could be a contributor to reducing
the barriers to 16-plus students, perhaps particularly 16 to 19-year-olds,
going to further education, sixth form or other forms of education
and training.
223. Are some local authorities meaner than
others? (Mr Twigg) Yes.
224. There does seem to be a wide variety of
spending, like north Yorkshire. (Mr Twigg) There is
a huge variety between authorities.
225. Why is that? Is that local authority meanness? (Mr
Twigg) It is history, I suppose, and different patterns which
have built up over years or even decades. I made the reference
to 1944 and the statutory conditions were set out in the 1944
Act and since then different authorities responding to different
local concerns and different priorities have responded in very
different ways. Some simply fund that policy that I have just
described and others are a great deal more generous.
Mr Mitchell: Well, north Yorkshire is one of
the most sparse areas in the country. Folk are sparse in north
Yorkshire, are they not, and north Yorkshire spends less than
all the others? You are being very diplomatic, may I say, in the
history and devolution, but is it not also a product of stinginess?
Mr Curry
226. It is also how much you pass down to the
schools and how much you retain in the central budget. (Mr
Twigg) That is certainly an element within it. I think, by
and large, these are services that are funded in that way. I think
some authorities provide some additional funding from outside
their schools or even education budget. I may be being diplomatic.
The other thing I can do is provide that information to the Committee
in terms of how much is spent by each authority and that could
be useful for you.
Mr Mitchell
227. It is quite an interesting point. As I
said, there is this romantic vision of people walking 18 miles
to school in all weathers. Have you made any assessment of whether
kids can be assumed to walk or get there under their own steam,
by bike or whatever, without being financed for transport, and
the degree to which that reflects modern conditions? (Mr
Twigg) There is work going on on this and we are looking at
this in conjunction with colleagues and officials in the Department
for Transport. I know a lot of concern has been expressed perhaps
in terms of safety issues for children with the requirements that
we have got from the 1944 legislation and that is something that
we are working on and it may be that there will be announcements
on that in due course.
228. So is that something which is kept under
review like everything else or is something real being done? (Mr
Twigg) I think we are looking at it a bit more actively than
that.
Chairman
229. Because different local authorities have
different levels of meanness about their transport spend, has
any work been done in the Department of Education about truancy
rates and staying on post-16 rates vis-a"-vis those
authorities that spend more or less on transport? In other words,
how difficult are we making it for them to get to the institution
of education and if it is easier to get to because there is a
lot more transport available either through the EMAs or because
of what the local authority is providing, or does it make any
difference, has any work been done on that? (Mr Twigg)
I do not know the answer to that, so I will find out and contact
you. Common sense says there must be some kind of association
in both areas. How strong it is, I do not know, but I will look
into where we have done some specific work on that and come back
to you.
Mr Curry
230. A little while ago I asked the Secretary
of State if he would set out a table for school balances. It is
quite interesting, but some local authorities think that up to
9% of budgets were being held in school balances, so it would
be interesting if we could have a quarterly analysis of who was
holding the balances and for what purposes and to what extent
they are being drawn down because in north Yorkshire, I know,
the local authority is getting extremely twitchy about the level
of school balances and is actually asking schools to spend the
money. The danger is sometimes they are then pressed to spend
and it means it is not necessarily spent on the most useful things.
Perhaps that is something that the Department needs to keep an
eye on. The other thing is that statutory walking distances are
only relevant where there are pavements. In my constituency, if
you take north Yorkshire, the Yorkshire Dales with a lot of rural
schools, one of the biggest problems I have is not to do with
a school not being excellent schools, but it is the sheer danger
of getting the kids to school because you have a road between
two dry-stone walls, the width of the road is barely the width
between the two sets of chairs here and parents are, quite sensibly,
not willing to let their children walk or cycle to school because
it is too dangerous and the schools discourage it for exactly
the same reasons. We, therefore, have a procession of cars dropping
the pupils at school, which of course goes entirely against the
sustainable development preoccupations of the Department for the
Environment. (Mr Twigg) My understanding, and I will
check this, but my understanding of the policy is that it is the
minimum, that it is the shortest route with reasonable safety,
so it could be, in those circumstances, that the route which is
being taken or were it being taken on foot would not constitute
such a route and that the entitlement could, therefore, fall below
two miles or below three miles for that reason. I am very happy
to check the precise operation of that, but it is not simply as
the crow flies.
231. There clearly should not be an establishment
of a national standard because the circumstances are so different
in one setting from another setting. (Mr Twigg) That
is true, but I think we have sought to bring that flexibility
into how we define the national standard. I cannot be certain
that it is being applied consistently across the country and that
is something I am happy to look into.
232. It would also be interesting, and I do
not know whether you have these figures, to know to what extent
the actual school bus service itself may have been devolved to
schools because perhaps some of the larger secondary schools,
which serve a wide, rural catchment area, might actually themselves
have the process of commissioning the buses themselves from the
local authority. (Mr Twigg) I will come back to you
on that.
Chairman
233. Defra has a target within its public service
agreement to increase the proportion of 16- and 17-year-olds in
rural areas from taking up further education and training, but
you have no policy control, so why has Defra got a target for
an outcome over which it has absolutely no influence or control
over its policy? (Alun Michael) Well, I think in general
if you look at the public service agreement, it is seeking government
performance on particular issues. We have ones which relate to
services generally to people in rural areas and it makes us a
department for co-operation which is actually a very good thing.
I think the way that Defra will work best and the way that rural-proofing
and the promotion of the interests of rural areas works best is
if we are working with other government departments in the way
that I indicated earlier, so our job is to work with rural communities
and with the Department for Education in increasing interest in
these issues and promoting things like skills in rural areas.
We have just, for instance, Larry Whitty and myself, set in hand
a piece of work to examine the availability of training of skills
in rural areas for precisely the same reason, because of its importance
not just in skills per se, but its importance to the advancement
of the economy and the diversification of the economy in rural
areas, so the PSA target does not necessarily mean that you have
the whole of the responsibility, but you have the lead responsibility
within government and that is why we are working very closely
with colleagues in DfES because we cannot deliver on our PSA target
without working very co-operatively with them.
Mr Mitchell
234. What does "mainstreaming rural issues
across all DFES policies" actually mean? It is a nice phrase,
but what does it mean? (Mr Twigg) I think what it means
is very much what Alun was just talking about. It is saying that
if we are setting up a new programme, such as the Extended Schools
programme about which we have talked quite a lot this afternoon,
or Connexions or indeed our own targets of increasing the numbers
in higher education, we want to ensure that we are treating all
parts of the country fairly and with equality. For example, our
Specialist Schools programme is a programme that must not, from
our Department's point of view, be seen simply as an urban programme,
but one which can be of benefit to rural areas as well.
235. So it is not just in terms of deprivation
within urban areas, but it is a balance between urban and rural,
so it is equality you are talking about? (Mr Twigg)
Yes. I do not think it is simply about deprivation, although I
think that is certainly an aspect of it and I mentioned, I think,
in response to David Borrow earlier on that within the group that
I have established, the Rural Schools Group, one of the questions
we are looking at is how we can ensure that there is that equality
of access to programmes and initiatives from DfES and part of
that is recognising that the character of deprivation may be different
in many rural communities from that in urban communities, so there
is certainly a deprivation angle on what we are talking about,
but it is not simply about recognising deprivation, but it is
recognising some of the other different circumstances, such as
distance and sparsity that we have talked about this afternoon.
236. What part does Defra play in this mainstreaming? (Alun
Michael) Well, I think this is the issue of the Rural Services
Standard which was set out for the first time in the Rural White
Paper and is something that we have been working on with colleagues
in other departments. I think essentially the idea is to say that
of course you cannot have the same standard, the same immediacy
of service if you are living in a rural part of Cumbria or the
south-west as if you are living in Central London, but there must
be an idea of what is a reasonable standard. The first attempt
was made following the Rural White Paper and we are actually looking
afresh at the idea of a Rural Standard, looking at what it is
reasonable for people to expect wherever they live in terms of
health, in terms of education , in terms of the whole range of
public services. I think there has been a considerable commitment
on the part of government to recognise the needs of rural areas.
One example is the money that has gone into post offices, for
instance, but I think in the longer term we have to look at different
ways of delivering, otherwise things will become very, very expensive
and that is where things like the co-location, looking at different
ways of assisting with transport and, if you like, a joined-up
way across government is the right way of doing things. I am impressed
at the way that one or two of the newer Connexions is another
good example of co-operation between us where they have looked
at the need to make sure that services are available to young
people growing up, looking for work in rural areas just as much
as in urban areas. Now, in some ways government departments and
agencies can very often meet their targets by performing well
in urban areas and it is encouraging everybody to say, "No,
that's not good enough. We need to make sure that there is a fairness
of service in rural as well as urban areas", which I think
is the way forward, so our job is to work with all government
departments on these issues. I think it is worth mentioning as
well, and I spoke earlier about the meeting with the Secretary
of State, that we have the Countryside Agency doing an annual
check, we have the rural checklist which acts, if you like, as
a tick-list of whether things are being considered in terms of
policy development, but we try to go beyond that to working with
colleagues in other departments. I think we are getting a very
positive response and people at ministerial and senior official
level now are saying at the development of policy stage, "How
do we deliver that in rural areas which might require a tweaking
or a difference of the approach?", so it is thought of at
the policy development stage.
237. So it is different from rural-proofing,
the sort of question of delivering? You have an official invigilating
at the DfES to say, "Do this, but don't do that for rural
areas"? (Alun Michael) The difference is that
rural-proofing is looking at the checklist and seeing whether
they are doing things in a way that acknowledges the needs of
rural areas. The difference, and this is where "mainstreaming",
I suppose, is the right term, is working with colleagues to make
sure that that is built in from the beginning.
Chairman
238. At the start I asked you about how much
you worked together and what role were Defra playing in this policy.
I wonder if you could just tell me a little bit about what Defra's
role is with LEAs. Obviously education has lots of contact with
LEAs because they are the deliverer of their policy, but what
contact does Defra have? How do you obtain information from LEAs
about rural education and those issues facing them? Also why is
Defra better than the LEAs at telling the Department for Education
and Skills the knowledge and understanding that that Department
needs to deliver the policy? Why should it be you and why can
it not be just straight the LEA? (Alun Michael) Well,
I would not say that it is alternatives. I think it is a multi-faceted
role. The relationship between central government and local authorities
is dealt with in a team approach, so I attend all the meetings
of the central local partnership, for instance, to represent Defra.
That means if there is an education issue which comes up, as it
well may, the main responsibility will lie with Charles Clarke
or with one of his ministers who would be there for that purpose,
but I am there to make sure that the rural aspect is not overlooked.
Actually on the local government side, the same is true. There
are representatives there from local government in both urban
and rural areas and they are actually very productive discussions.
Increasingly, of course there is a need to look at issues on a
regional dimension and we also have both the Rural Affairs Forum
for England which you referred to earlier and the regional rural
affairs fora. For instance, the Regional Forum for the North-West
spent a full day on the interests of children and young people
and a lot of young people were actually involved in the day's
process. The mainstream responsibility, the main-line responsibility,
if you like, is clearly the Department for Education and the local
education authorities, but that is not the end of the story. (Mr
Twigg) And I think from our point of view all of those relationships
matter, so we have got our Rural Education Task Force which reports
directly to the Secretary of State, to Charles Clarke, to Alun
and to the Countryside Agency. Then there is my Rural Schools
Group, which is predominantly made up of people on the front line,
headteachers and principals of schools and colleges, working with
officials in the two departments, and then we have our own relationships
obviously with the LEAs.
Mr Borrow
239. I would be interested to know at what point
in the decision-making process within your Department do you actually
check that you have actually done the rural-proofing? Is there
built into the process of decision-making in your Department a
point when somebody says, "Have we done the rural-proof?
Have we checked that aspect?"? Also can you give me an example
of one decision which was changed as a result of that process? (Mr
Twigg) I think it would be fair to say that it is integral
to the process. It is not something that is bolted on at the end.
In fact I think I am right in saying that the Countryside Agency
said that the DFES was the best department in terms of our practice
on rural-proofing. I am slightly stumped by your last question.
I think it is probably true to say that in terms of looking at
the Specialist Schools programme and some of the changes that
we are now planning to make to that, that is a good example of
the rural dimension being considered at the heart of a mainstream
programme. Whether that will constitute a response to the rural-proofing
checklist, I am not sure, but it is a very good recent example
of where we have been reviewing the nature of the specialisms
that are available to schools to apply for and we are looking
at bringing a rural dimension in as part of the new humanities
specialism, and I think that the officials within our Department
who work on rural issues with myself as the Minister have contributed
to ensuring that that happened. (Alun Michael) I think
it is worth saying as well that, for instance, in recent working
groups, if something has been set up, one of my officials has
been included in the team, so that is a recognition from the start.
Things like Wheels to Work were referred to, and the task group
of officials between the two departments provides back-up to the
ministerial discussions. I think there are a lot of opportunities
and I think that is where I would praise the Department for Education
and its ministers in particular in that they are creating the
opportunities for us to be able to comment. (Mr Twigg)
And the other way that we do that is, to mention it again, the
Rural Schools Group that we have now established which has senior
representation from Defra as well as from DfES.
Mr Borrow: Just while we are on the subject
of specialist schools, in the south Ribble end of my constituency,
that is, the district council borders, probably six or seven schools
which are in the more urban, suburban and semi-rural areas have
come to a collective view as to which specialist areas each are
going to apply for and because they are not necessarily that far
apart, they can, for that community, provide a reasonable coverage
and a reasonable choice where people could travel to one or the
other. However, in the west Lancashire part of my constituency,
I have got Tarleton High School which applied, and did not get,
Specialist Grant status, but it will still be seeking it, but
in very rural areas where there is only one high school for most
pupils and where there is not going to be a choice to go to, there
is a danger with the Specialist Schools programme of actually
narrowing down the choice in a way which is not the case in more
urban or suburban areas. I just would be interested in your comments
on that.
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