Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
MR DAVID
NORMINGTON, DR
RUTH THOMPSON
AND MR
STEPHEN CROWNE
25 JUNE 2003
Q20 Chairman: In answer to Meg Munn's
earlier question, out comes the threat of the iron fist to deal
with naughty local authorities. The fact is, if you take somewhere
like Westminster, yes, it only passported 73.8%, but under the
comprehensive performance assessment process, the Audit Commission
reckoned that Westminster had the stamp of approval; it was an
excellent authority. This is the very authority that presumably
you would now want to use the iron fist on. You cannot have your
cake and eat it too with this Committee. From the very beginning
of all this discussion about school funding, there have been messages
coming from ministers that it is a blame culture; it is the schools'
fault; it is the local education authorities' fault; it is everyone's
fault but the Department for Education and Skills. That is what
many on this Committee resent. The backdrop as far as this Committee
is concerned is that here is a Government that is putting more
money into schools than anyone can remember, and you are able
to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by allowing these crises
to run and run for weeks and weeks. Everybody in the country listening
to the radio, or listening to Radio 4, would have assumed that
the poor old schools were being deprived of teachers and resources,
and it was the end of the civilised world in education as we know
it. Do you not feel guilty about that?
Mr Normington: I am not very happy
about it. It does not feel as though everybody else has been blamed.
It feels as though I and my ministerial colleagues have been taking
a great deal of responsibility and flak for it.
Q21 Chairman: But unnecessarily in
some sense?
Mr Normington: No-one will believe
this, but I will say it nevertheless. What we were trying to do
when we set out the facts on the spending, local authority by
local authority, was actually to point out that there was a shared
responsibility in school funding between the national level, the
local level and the school level. Everybody has a part to play
in that, and the decisions people take at each level they have
to be held accountable for. You can see from what we published
in early May about each local authority that there were some local
authorities which, for quite understandable reasons, had not yet
allocated all their money to local schools, and schools did not
know what their budget position was. They were all queuing up
at the door of the Department for Education and Skills to complain
about that. Part of our message was that there were still local
decisions to be taken. Their first port of call needs to be the
local authority, and then, by all means, they can come and talk
to us. This is a system of shared responsibility. I know that
this has been said to be us blaming local authorities, but that
was not our intention, and it was not Charles Clarke's intention.
That is not what we were aiming to do. I think we are entitled
to say that every local authority has a part to play in the local
distribution, and they should be held accountable for that. We
are entitled to ask Westminster, which you named, why it has only
passported 73% of its education budget. We have asked that question.
We have had a debate. We contemplated using our powers and of
course, we decided not to, but in the process Westminster decided
to increase the amount of money that they were putting into their
local schools. So from our point of view, that worked.
Q22 Chairman: Mr Normington, you
are the Department. It is here on page 25 of your answer to my
letter.[5]
You described the problem in terms of turbulence. I have always
known, since I was a little boy, that if a ship is going through
a period of turbulence, it is the captain who is responsible for
getting through that turbulence safely. That is what astonishes
me. You are not the captain, but you are certainly the chief officer.
When was the first time that your intelligence network in the
Department said to you, "Look, there is a bit of turbulence.
There is a squall coming up. I think you had better tell the captain"?
How early did you know that something had gone wrong and that
this turbulence was going to cause a lot of bad publicity?
Mr Normington: There are two points
at which we became worried about this. Before Christmas it was
clear to us that demands in the system were quite significant,
and although there was more money going in nationally than the
demands in the system, there was not that much headroom nationally.
That was the first question. It felt much tighter.
Q23 Chairman: How early was that?
Mr Normington: I do not know precisely,
but it was after Charles Clarke's arrival at the end of October
and before Christmas, some time around then. We were modelling
it at that point. If you ask me when I realised we had a growing
problem, I can tell you that precisely. It was when I went to
the Secondary Head Teachers' conference and was besieged by head
teachers telling me this. I do not know the exact date but it
was mid to late March. The reason why I had a particular problem
was because I had head teachers telling me that they had had an
8, 9 or 10% increase in their budget year on year, but they could
not manage. I have been involved in this for quite a while, but
that seemed extraordinary to me, and Charles Clarke, who spoke
at that conference, was also taken to task, and so between us,
we realised that something was going wrong. We still did not believe—and
I still believe this—that it was everywhere. We were always
going to hear from those who were in difficulty, understandably.
It is still very differential in its effect across the country.
So we did not know at that stage what the scale of it was going
to be. Clearly, the upset has grown since then. I take responsibility
for it, but what we were also saying was we are not solely responsible,
because it is in the nature of the funding system that people
at other levels take decisions as well. We have not given up on
trying to ensure that where there are still problems, we are talking
to local authorities about this. My colleague Stephen Crowne here
is still going round the country, talking to local authorities
that still have problems, and we have examples of local authorities
still finding more money to help their schools.
Q24 Chairman: Mr Normington, I understand
what you are saying, but this Committee's job is to assess the
Department's performance over time, and if there are patterns
that worry this Committee, it has every right to point out
that the kinds of explanations you are giving this morning are
similar to the explanations given over individual learning accounts,
and over the A level problems last summer. It does seem to us
that here you have this leading Department of State, with a large
number of civil servants, paid by the taxpayer, consistently running
into turbulence that does no-one any good. If it was the only
problem you had had, this Committee would have been more sanguine,
but it is not; it is the third time we have had you and your officials
before this Committee, and we are very unhappy about particular
parts of your performance. That is what we worry about.
Mr Normington: I am not happy
about it either. As you said, it has been a very turbulent year,
but you would have to go through each of those things to determine
what happened and why it happened. They are all slightly different,
but I agree, they have all damaged the Department's reputation,
and its reputation for competence. I am not happy about that,
but each one has a different story line behind it. On a different
occasion in front of a different Committee I admitted that individual
learning accounts reflects very badly on the Department. I do
not believe what happened in the expenditure decisions in the
last few months has at all the same cause, and I do not think
it reflects incompetence in the Department.
Q25 Valerie Davey: Another area which
has gone under your control which had an influence on this was
the Learning and Skills Council, who were also contributing to
the totality of the funding. Schools with a 16-plus provision
found themselves getting a different rate of increase in their
funding, which did not tally, again, with the overall figures
that were coming out of the Department. How much collaboration
and coordination was there with the Learning and Skills Council?
Mr Normington: Quite a lot. We
of course understand that there is now a separate funding stream
coming into schools with sixth forms from the Learning and Skills
Council, and we are trying to ensure that the effects of those
two streams are understood, but it is an added complication, and
for some schools it does increase the range of effects on them.
In fact, the Learning and Skills Council has been very active
in trying to ensure that there were not serious losses of money
in sixth forms, and I think have adjusted their allocations as
a result.
Q26 Valerie Davey: It was a decision
of the Department, though, which ministers were encouraged to
take, to formulate funding for 16-plus provision in that way.
Did you tell them it would be just an added complication?
Mr Normington: When the Learning
and Skills Council was set up, it was thought right that all post-16
funding should go through a single course, because you could argue
that the previous system, where there were different bits of the
post-16 system being funded from different places, depending whether
it was FE colleges or schools or sixth form colleges, was equally
unsatisfactory. It was felt that we would get to a more cost-effective
system for judging inputs and outputs of sixth form education
if we had a single funding stream through the Learning and Skills
Council, and they have been trying to get to a position where
it is a more unified system, albeit there are some safeguards
in there for extensive provision, which is often in school sixth
forms.
Q27 Valerie Davey: But the LSC was
set up prior to this round of funding into schools where we have
hit the turbulence. That ought to have been ironed out before
we hit the turbulence this year.
Mr Normington: The main sixth
form funding changes are not this year; they are in the previous
year.
Q28 Valerie Davey: That is exactly
my point.
Mr Normington: Therefore, we did
try to stagger this. We did not try to make all the changes at
the same point, and we did ask the Learning and Skills Council
to put in a floor to ensure that there was a real terms guarantee.
In other words, no school that is not losing pupils from its sixth
form ought to be taking a cut in its sixth form funding. From
memory, about a third of schools with sixth forms are on that
real terms guarantee and so are protected from the effects of
the formula. This is an example of us working with the Learning
and Skills Council to protect schools and to model the effect
on particular schools. So yes, it is a complication. Another complication
is because sixth form funding is done on a different period from
the rest of schools' funding, which I think is something that
is very difficult for them. Nevertheless, we have been trying
both to stagger the effects of these funding changes and also
to put in protection for schools that might have lost money.
Q29 Valerie Davey: That should not
have been part of this year's turbulence.
Mr Normington: It should not have
been. I do not believe it has been a major cause of the problem
this year.
Q30 Valerie Davey: Could I follow
that up? You have said that you handled this as well as you could
have done. Have you, in all your discussions with the LEAs, recognised
that in a difficult situation they have managed it well?
Mr Normington: Yes, I believe
they have managed it well. A lot of them have managed it very
well indeed, and are continuing to do so. I am very happy to say
that.
Valerie Davey: I am glad to have that
on the public record, and I think they will be too.
Q31 Jeff Ennis: I would like to follow
up the last point that Valerie made. In an earlier response, Mr
Normington, you said that school funding was a shared responsibility
between your Department, local authorities and schools themselves.
To some extent, it appears that one of the main reasons that you
are implying things have gone wrong was because of the unknown
factor of the flexibility within the machine that impinges on
local schools. Given that sort of imponderable, do you feel that
the shared responsibility is out of kilter? Was it out of kilter
in the past? Is it going to be out of kilter in the future because
of the system that you are working to?
Mr Normington: It is a very complicated
system. When we made these changes this year, it was supposed
to be more transparent, but I think it is still very difficult
to determine who has taken the decision which has particularly
affected your school. So for schools it does not feel like that.
I do not think we are at a settled position. We do have a previous
model under the previous Government, which this Government abolished,
of a Funding Agency for Schools, which did allocate money from
a national level to schools without an intermediary body, but
they did not do it for all schools in all areas. So we do not
have a model for a system where there is total national funding
for schools without a local intermediary. What I am saying and
what my answers are showing is that, because of the range of local
factors, it is very difficult to think of a system where you could
remove completely the local intermediary. Somebody has to judge
the particular difficulties of particular schools, and be prepared
to step in there and sort those out. I do not think we have heard
the end of the present discussion about what the right funding
system is, but I also think that it would be difficult to devise
a system which did not have local intermediaries.
Q32 Jeff Ennis: So effectively, the
funding model we have we need to tweak slightly, but the principle
is right?
Mr Normington: We cannot have
this kind of problem again. Charles Clarke is on the record as
saying that, and he has also said we must ensure that next year
and the year after there is a reasonable per pupil increase in
every school.
Q33 Chairman: But you are going to
have less money next year.
Mr Normington: We are going to
have an increase in money but it is not as big an increase as
this year.
Q34 Chairman: In real terms? More
money next year?
Mr Normington: I think the settlement
figure is £1.4 billion extra in the education formula, the
EFS.
Q35 Chairman: The information this
Committee has is that in real terms that will be a slight decrease.
Mr Normington: I do not think
so, no.
Q36 Chairman: Let us have communication
about that.
Mr Normington: All right.[6]
Q37 Jeff Ennis: Local authority funding
does not just involve the Department for Education and Skills.
It obviously involves the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.
What discussions and liaison are you having on a day-to-day basis
with the ODPM, particularly in the light of the problems this
year, and are you satisfied that that liaison is good enough?
Mr Normington: We are in contact
almost daily with the ODPM on this subject.
Q38 Chairman: Your body language
is suggesting that is an onerous duty.
Mr Normington: I did not intend
my body language to say that. What I was going on to say was we
actually are, with local government as well, looking at how you
would ensure that there was a reasonable settlement next year
in every school, and that involves the Office of the Deputy Prime
Minister, it involves representatives of local government as well.
So we are working very closely with them.
Q39 Jeff Ennis: Going back to when
the problems first manifested themselves on a large scale, Mr
Normington, would you say it was your Department that picked up
the problems first, or the ODPM?
Mr Normington: I think so, but
I think it is inevitable that we would pick up the education problems
first. It would be odd if we did not.
5 Ev 32 Back
6
Note by witness: The settlement figure for next year is
2.6% real terms and £1.4 billion. Back
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