Examination of Witnesses (Questions 480
- 499)
WEDNESDAY 9 JULY 2003
MR DAVID
MILIBAND MP
Q480 Chairman: I am a bit worried
about something you said there. You seem to hold in two compartments
the difference between continuing professional development and
research that came out of a number of studies, including that
of Professor Smithers, that the things that really turn people
off teaching are pupil behaviour, workload and so on. But there
is a world of difference, is there not, between someone who is
well supported in the first three years of their professional
development, their professional teaching career, to get through
the pupil behaviour and all that? That is what good support management
is about in those early years. I am reminded of when we did our
inquiry into higher education retention. For retention, we pinpointed
after a lot of evidence, it is so important that you spend a lot
of resource in the first year of a student's undergraduate career
because that is when they drop out. Anything spent in that first
year would seem to be good value for money, in the same way that
the evidence that is coming to us is that spending money in schools
on teachers in their first three years, making sure they are really
professionally supported, gets them through the rough times when
they have bad behaviour of pupils, when they feel that workload
is higher than they anticipated and so on.
Mr Miliband: The STRB said that
the problem in London was years 5 and 6. That is why they targeted
threshold. I think that was a 2001 study. So "Yes, but"
would I think be my answer to that.
Chairman: Thank you for that, Minister.
Let us move on now to look at retention issues. Jonathan is going
to lead us through the wilderness.
Q481 Jonathan Shaw: We have covered
some of the workload issues. As you said, Minister, the two issues
that Alan Smithers has identified—which do not really come
as a surprise—are workload and pupil behaviour. The Government
is spending £470 million over the next three years looking
at the behaviour improvement projects. What can you tell us about
the progress of those projects?
Mr Miliband: It is obviously early
days—
Q482 Jonathan Shaw: This was an initiative
which you did not launch, you inherited.
Mr Miliband: Exactly, and obviously
Ivan Lewis has taken the lead in this area. As you know, we are
making a really big push on Key Stage 3, 11-14 year olds. I am
sure every parent's worry is that when kids go to "big"
school they get bored, fall into the wrong company, go off the
rails. The challenge for us is to build on the progress in the
primary sector over the last Parliament and see if we can make
that 11-14 stage stimulating and secure for young people. The
important part of that is obviously the teaching strategies, but
critical also is pupil discipline, which is what a lot of parents
worry about in the early years of secondary education, and so
for the first time we have a behaviour improvement programme built
into the Key Stage 3 strategy. It has been going for a year. It
has been monitored very carefully. There is no independent evaluation
yet but the feedback I get from the ground, from teachers, about
the role of learning mentors and other aspects of the programme
is pretty positive, but I do not want to claim success before
we have got it bolted down.
Q483 Jonathan Shaw: What does the
Department think are the key influences in terms of bad pupil
behaviour?
Mr Miliband: The first driver
to bad behaviour is boredom. If kids are bored in classes, that
is a bad start. Secondly, clear boundaries and rules in the school
that are consistently and coherently applied. If the boundaries
are clear, if the rules are clear and if they are consistently
enforced, that is very, very critical. Thirdly, I think a culture
and ethos of high aspiration for every pupil transmits itself
down to a sense either of engagement with learning or of "This
is not an institution for me and I am going to rebel against it."
Fourthly—there is no point in pretending otherwise—what
is going on before nine o'clock and outside 3.30 in the pupil's
home. Any of us as constituency MPs know that is critical to a
pupil's sense of security and engagement and commitment to school.
We have much more direct levers on the first three than we do
on the fourth. That is the answer to the question.
Q484 Jonathan Shaw: You referred
to teaching methods as being one of the key issues in terms of
being able to manage pupil behaviour. The Secondary Heads Association
told us that this is the aspect that most often causes young teachers
particular problems. Have you looked at the training courses and
what you can do in terms of pupil management? Going back to my
point earlier, Minister, of one payment fits all, should we be
developing teaching strategies/methods for particular types of
schools?
Mr Miliband: Whenever I say "with
respect!" it is a bad time and when you say "Minister"
it is a bad sign: it is the sort of way in which we say that we
disagree with each other. Does it need to be different in different
schools? Obviously, yes. Should I mandate how it is different?
No. Are there different issues between boys and girls? Yes. Ofsted
have a report coming out on boys' achievement, which I understand
has particular things to say about personal tuition from classroom
assistants, about the use of ICT and about the disciplined nature
of the learning environment. I think the workload issue is huge.
If you are a teacher, especially a new teacher, going into a secondary
school, if some of the kids are taller than you are and you are
told, "Close the door and you are on your own" and there
are 30 kids in there, that is a pretty big ask. If you are told,
"You are going in, you have got some classroom support, there
is another pair or two pairs of eyes and ears and hands in the
classroom," that is a very big thing for teachers. I see
that having and have seen it having a massive impact on pupil
behaviour. It is much harder to sit at the back and be a nuisance
with three of your mates if in fact you have a classroom assistant
standing behind you. I think that is one of the big benefits of
workforce reform.
Chairman: We will tackle pay and allowances
now. Andrew is going to lead us through this one.
Q485 Mr Turner: In a way I think
you have shot my fox on pay because you have said it does not
really matter.
Mr Miliband: I would never say
that because I think that might lead to some misunderstandings
among some of our colleagues who faithfully report what I say
and sometimes get reactions to it. I would not say pay never matters,
pay does not matter; but I would say that pay is not the main
issue in terms of retention, no.
Q486 Mr Turner: What about recruitment,
particularly in high cost areas. I mean, teachers do aspire to
own their own homes, not live in council houses, for example.
Can we really compensate them by means of housing schemes rather
than by paying them properly?
Mr Miliband: We said in our evidence
to the STRB last year that outside London we were convinced that
pay was competitive. All of the evidence we have—and we
talk about evidence-based policy—is that pay is competitive.
That is why we argued last year for three years low inflation
pay settlement because we did not believe that it was needed to
meet recruitment or retention difficulties. Talk about blunt instruments:
bunging up teachers pay would be a blunt way of tackling the rather
"nuanced" and focused problems that we have talked about
today. You are right, if you mean in London there are particular
issues there. The STRB pinpointed, at the point around the threshold,
the 22-23 year old teacher who has been in London for four or
five years, is beginning to think about starting a family, setting
up with someone, that is why they went for the £4,000 extra
which takes a teacher in London up to £34,000. Now you and
I can do the maths pretty fast about what sort of housing does
a £34,000 income get you with an ordinary mortgage. If you
are living with another professional or if there are two teachers
living together, I do not know, there is obviously a different
set of maths associated with that. My instinct, actually, is that
what you call the housing schemes have a role to play. I would
not dismiss them actually. I think the particular twist that the
Department and Stephen Twigg are putting on support, the mortgage
credit for the London teachers, has a role to play. I would not
knock that. Also, it does not have the deadweight that a general
across-the-board pay increase has.
Q487 Mr Turner: You think it is adequate
to deal with problems of recruitment in high-cost areas.
Mr Miliband: I have to be very
careful about saying something is adequate because I think it
is very challenging.
Q488 Mr Turner: On a scale of 1 to
10, how adequate is it, then?
Mr Miliband: It is certainly above
1. I think that is a fair question. I always say, "How are
we doing?" In this area, if we were really trying to spin
our case, we would say we deserved a B+. You might beat us down
to a B. We have to accept that we are fighting against some pretty
strong market forces in terms of London housing. We are making
a fist of it, but it is tough. I certainly would not claim victory
in this area.
Q489 Mr Turner: This is related,
I think, to some of the points on which you earlier offered some
soothing words to the Chairman. He said on the reform of funding
that you had snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory.
Mr Miliband: He said it or I said
it?
Q490 Mr Turner: He said it and you
offered some very soothing words about what was going to happen
in the future. You were on the bench when I asked Charles Clarke
about this. Did you and did ministers anticipate, whether told
or not, the difficulties that would arise by introducing the changes
to the resourcing of local authorities so late in the budget cycle?
Mr Miliband: With respect, I do
not think the changes were announced late in the budget cycle.
The Education Funding Group, sat for two years and had support
and modelling and consultation options between us and local government
. . . It was announced at the same time as every year. Nick Raynsford
made his announcement in December, which is when he always makes
it, so I do not think that was the particular issue.
Q491 Mr Turner: People usually say
it is too late.
Mr Miliband: Yes.
Q492 Mr Turner: They say it is too
late and this year there was much greater turbulence.
Mr Miliband: I would like to bring
it earlier. You can announce the local government formula in November/December—late
November used to be the local government statement, and I think
it was 5 December—and then by the time that rolls through
the local authority, of course, and budget setting, council tax
setting—that is why I emphasised at the beginning that local
authorities have a role not just in distributing money but in
raising it—there is often a February budget setting meeting
and then you are late in the day. The timetable for the decision
making through the Education Funding Support group and all the
rest of it, I do not think people think that was the core of the
problem.
Q493 Mr Turner: The Permanent Secretary
accepted that changes were made too late to allow local authorities
to revise their funding formulae.
Mr Miliband: I think he was also
pointing to the decisions about the Standards Fund rather than
simply the local government funding distribution. For the schools
that have found it the toughest, often it has been the Standards
Fund issue that has been the real added component. There is an
irony in this, which is that my predecessors, and even to some
extent me when I first came into the job, could not go to a meeting
in the education world without being told, "For goodness
sake, whatever you do, the first thing you have to do is to reduce
the amount of central funding." Sure enough, after December
I was proudly able to go round and say to people, "Whatever
you say about this local government funding system, the good news
is I am spending less. I have a declining cash line of spend that
I am doing," and they were all very pleased about that. Now
I cannot go to a meeting without being told, "For goodness
sake, do not put the Advanced Skills Teacher money into the local
government formula; do not put the Support Staff money into the
formula." There is a, sort of, not very wry smile about it.
But I think David Nornington and others would say that the Standards
Fund issue is a critical decision for next year and the year after.
Q494 Mr Turner: It was a critical
decision for this year and, unlike the other decisions, you cannot
blame it on the ODPM.
Mr Miliband: We do not blame any
decisions. We take responsibility where it is due. I do not know
what that is reference to. The Standards Fund issue, which, as
I say, was fully supported by all sections—it is not a question
of anyone giving warnings or anything—was recognised as
being the right thing to do. However, people are now very concerned
about 2004-05 and 2005-06 and we are looking hard at what can
be done about that.
Q495 Mr Turner: You accept it is
possible to make the right decision but implement it in the wrong
way.
Mr Miliband: Absolutely.
Q496 Mr Turner: And this is what
has happened.
Mr Miliband: I think a lot of
people are now worried that it is not the right decision! I mean,
a lot of people who were telling us to reduce the amount of Standards
Fund are now thinking maybe it is not so bad. We are looking at
that. My general principle is: What is the point of central funding?
We spend £4 billion out of the £26 billion budget by
2005-06. Why do we have central funds? £1 billion or so is
non-school based Standards Fund money, such as—although
it ends up in schools—Advanced Skills Teachers type things.
What is the point of that spending? It is to promote innovation;
it is to spread best practice; it is to tackle specific inequalities.
Once you have the innovation accepted and the structure and culture
of the system, you want to devolve the money rather than just
keep it as a central thing. But the transition to that has been
much more painful than people expected out there.
Q497 Mr Turner: Including you.
Mr Miliband: I think the—
Q498 Mr Turner: Particularly you.
Mr Miliband: I think no one in
the Department would say that if we could have avoided the last
three or four months we would not have chosen to do so. It has
not been the sort of ordeal of choice.
Q499 Mr Chaytor: Minister, when the
French Government announced they were going to increase the working
life of teachers before they could claim their pension, it led
to hundreds of thousands of people on the street and almost a
general strike in schools and public transport. Your Government
has done the same. You seem to have got off very lightly. Do you
think you will continue to get off lightly with the increase in
the pension age from 60 to 65?
Mr Miliband: I do not think we
have "got off lightly," as you put it—although
admittedly there has not been a general strike, so I suppose that
is reassuring. This is an important issue. I think there is a
lot of misinformation out there about this. If you are an ordinary
teacher sitting in the staff room and you have been working for
20 years, you might think that you are not going to be allowed
to retire until you are 65. That is 100% untrue. The Government
is absolutely clear that if you have worked for 20 years on the
basis there is retirement age at 60, that credit is banked, and
if you want to claim it when you are 60 you can claim it when
you are 60. It is really important that the message goes out to
teachers that there is no question of taking away from them the
entitlements that they have earned on the basis that they can
retire at 60. The Government is absolutely clear about that. When
you meet people in your constituency, you should absolutely tell
them there is no question of them losing the entitlement that
they have built up—and a lot of teachers do not know that.
We have got a job to make that clear. Obviously the Government
is going through a process of recognising much longer lifespans,
and a desire in some quarters actually to work longer although
to work more flexibly. We want to try to recognise that. We have
to recognise that in a way that does real justice to the assumptions
that people have made about the pension entitlements that they
have built up and we will do justice to that. We also have to
give proper warning and preparation for those who are coming into
the profession in x-years time, so that they know what they are
letting themselves in for, and we are going to do that in a very
consultative and very open way. The stage we are at is that the
Work and Pensions Department has published for the whole of government,
and it is now for each department to take it forward in its own
area. We will do that in a considered and careful way, we will
do it with proper notice and proper planning, and we will do it
every time saying, "What is yours is yours and we will not
take it away from you. If you have 20 years of credits and you
want to retire at 60 and take that, you will get it." I do
not know the details of the French proposals actually. It sounds
like I should get someone to do me a brief on what to do.
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