Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80
- 99)
WEDNESDAY 31 MARCH 2004
MR PETER
HOUSDEN, MS
PENNY JONES
AND MR
PETER OPENSHAW
Q80 Paul Holmes: Earlier on we were
talking about some of the possible contradictions or overlaps
between, say, this policy from the DfES and transport policy and
health policy on obesity and so on. Could I explore some of the
contradictions within the DfES with different policies and this
draft bill. First of all, alongside CTCs you have the government
policy of massively expanding specialist schools, and then city
academies which are coming on stream. One of the logics of that
whole experiment is that you will have children criss-crossing
all over an area, not going to their local school but all over
the area to the modern languages specialist school, to the engineering
school, to the city academy, to the CTC and so forth. Here you
have a draft bill which is trying to cut down on transport and
travel but a mainstream DfES policy which seems to be encouraging
movement and travel. Do you have any comments on that?
Mr Housden: Yes. Clearly those
balances have to be struck. The first important point you make
is that we are talking here about a legal pattern which enables
parents to express a preference for a school and for that preference
to be met unless there are compelling reasons to the contrary
that are spelt out. There certainly is some evidence that parents
over time have been more willing, able and keen to exercise those
preferences where they exist. We can speculate about the reasons
for this. It may be broadly social movements, about people wanting
to exercise more choice. It may also be about changed patterns
in the labour market and childcare responsibilities: entering
the labour market and working at place X, it may actually be more
convenient for your youngsters to go to a school close to place
X. We know of all those factors that apply. The second question
is whether the specialist school policy and the diversity policy
in general has accentuated or accelerated the tendency for parents
to exercise that choice. On CTCs and academies, there are very
small numbers of those schools in relation to the overall secondary
complement, but your point about specialist schools is important
because the Government's intention—
Q81 Chairman: Could you repeat the
distinction between the two? There is a small number of ----?
Mr Housden: City technology colleges.
Q82 Chairman: You did not include
specialist schools.
Mr Housden: I beg your pardon,
I will come on to that. There is a small number of city technology
colleges and government is using essentially the same legislation
to create academies, but across both those categories these are
very small numbers of schools. It is possible, even in relation
to that small number of schools, to exaggerate the extent to which
pupils are actually drawn from a wide area. They are broadly neighbourhood
schools. The point on specialist schools is of greater importance
numerically because it the Government's intention is, as you know,
that over time all schools should have the opportunity to become
specialist, and already now we have the majority of secondary
pupils in specialist schools. Again, there is no evidence that
that is actually having the effect on admissions that you describe.
Q83 Paul Holmes: In the draft bill
prospectus that you have issued for authorities to have input,
you say on page 38 that increasing numbers of families exercise
parental preference.
Mr Housden: Yes, they do.
Q84 Paul Holmes: You have also mentioned
"the nearest suitable school". The social exclusion
unit identified this issue as one that the DfES should tackle
because wealthy parents are exercising that preference and poorer
families are being excluded from exercising their preference.
You say, "We hope that one or more exemplar LEAs will see
what can be done for low income families who choose to exercise
parental preference." You are saying that this is happening
on a bigger and bigger scale but that poorer families are being
excluded, and you want some of these pilot schemes to help increase
that number. So you have a draft Transport Bill which is trying
to plan car use and travel etcetera, but you are saying that we
also want to increase it for poorer parents so they can take advantage
of the parental preference opportunities that come via specialist
schools, CTCs and academies.
Mr Housden: Yes. I think that
is right, in the sense that you have a range of opportunities
that the Government would like to make available to as wide a
group of parents as possible, but in doing so—and here is
the importance of the transport policy—to minimise the impact
on the environment, congestion, car use through the types of measures
we have been describing this morning. The point I was going to
make about specialist schools is that, in the use of their capacity
to select pupils, only 6 or 7% of them are actually adopting that
within their arrangements, so 93-94% of specialist schools are
not exercising that opportunity. What is tending to happen in
the range of patterns of choice, as far as we know, is that you
will have, yes, at the margins small numbers of youngsters saying,
"Yes, I am so committed to excellence in that area that I
would like, if possible, to attend that school," but generally
that specialism, as part of an offer in a local area, is becoming
significant for youngsters particularly at 14 plus—so that
it might be out of school or on an option day that a youngster
might go to that specialist school, just as they might in the
past have gone to a further education college. You are right to
say this does have the effect of increasing the amount of mobility
in the system, and I think that is one of the trade-offs that
government has to strike, is it not, between choice and opportunity
on the one hand and mobility on the other? You cannot have one
without the other. I think we are trying here to get the cake
and the halfpenny, to enable as broad a range of people to take
advantage of those opportunities but at the same time to minimise
the impact on congestion.
Q85 Paul Holmes: You want to increase
mobility but minimise the impact of increasing mobility. They
seem a bit contradictory. To move on to another area, which is
the massive expansion we are told in faith schools, I am wondering,
again looking at some of the draft regulations and guidelines,
about the potential for more and more legal conflict here. There
is a case going on in Brighton at the moment where the parents,
who are Church of England, are sending their child to a Catholic
school because it is a faith school and they have been told by
the LEA, "We will not pay for that. We will pay if you are
a Catholic but we will not pay if you are Church of England, even
though you are going to the faith school." The other side
of the issue is when children or their parents do not want to
go to a denominational school. A case in Lancashire has been running
through the courts, where a girl who was an atheist did not want
to attend her two nearest schools—one was Catholic, one
was CofE—she wanted to go to a third school, but the LEA
would not pay. On 10 March Lancashire County Council wrote to
them saying, "Our lawyers have looked at the Human Rights
Act. They advise that there could well be a breach here because
we are paying for faith schools but not for children to go to
non faith schools. We will pay up." That decision was only
two and a half weeks ago. You do touch on this in all the guidelines
here for authorities. You say that they need to take into account
preferences for particular schools as a result of religious or
philosophical beliefs and language in Wales. Is there not a big
can of worms that is opened up here? Again, there will be more
and more parental preference being expressed, especially if this
Lancashire decision about the Human Rights Act is interpreted
more widely. If you are going to have a massive expansion of faith
schools, that is going to mean more travel or cost. Secondly,
the Lancashire decision seems to imply that a whole lot of other
people should be getting transport costs as well. If you are paying
for a child to go to a faith school, you should be paying for
a lot of children to go to non faith schools as well.
Ms Jones: I think this is a particularly
difficult area because we do not have any case law. It is only
something that has really cropped up over the last year or two.
When the Human Rights Act talks about religious and philosophical
beliefs, we think there has to be something other than somebody
saying, "I'm not religious." Normally, in order to gain
admission to a denominational school someone would have to show
proof of attending church and that sort of thing. Our preliminary
view is that if someone says they are an atheist you would expect
to see that they are a humanist or some evidence that they adhere
to a particular philosophical body, something that was generally
accepted as being a philosophical belief, rather than just a general
belief that they were not of any particular religious persuasion.
But it is very difficult because we have not had a test case.
When we have, we will know exactly where the legal boundaries
are.
Q86 Paul Holmes: So you are going
to look at the Lancashire judgment with great interest. I saw
you nodding your head when I mentioned it.
Ms Jones: It will be very interesting.
I thought you said the LEA had decided to—
Q87 Paul Holmes: Prior to going through
the court they had taken legal judgment which said, "We'd
better give in on this one before it goes to court."
Ms Jones: Yes, and until we have
a court case we will not know the boundaries are.
Q88 Paul Holmes: In view of what
you have said, which is a bit more open and receptive than previous
comments I have had from the DfES, I am interested in the precise
language you have used in the prospectus here and the draft bill.
In paragraph 22 you start off using the language of the Human
Rights Act under article 2, where you talk about religious or
philosophical beliefs, but when you come to the final sentence
you say, "LEAs should ensure that transport arrangements
support the denominational . . ." and you miss out the "philosophical"
bit there. You start off talking about religion or philosophical
beliefs but end up only talking about providing transport for
religious denominational beliefs. Is that a mistake from the beginning
to the end of the paragraph?
Ms Jones: Yes, it is an inconsistency
but I am trying to give a feeling here for the practicalities
of the situation. We have a situation where we have a fairly large
number of denominational schools in the country. Many of the pupils
who attend those denominational schools will not be attending
their nearest suitable school. Obviously if it is their nearest
school there is no difficulty because transport is provided, but
the purpose of that paragraph is to signal to local education
authorities that if you have a low income family which has strong
religious convictions, which cannot pay bus fares to get their
child to school and it is not the nearest suitable school so the
LEA will not pay up, there could be human rights issues there.
Q89 Paul Holmes: In the first sentence
you mention "faith or philosophy" and then you say "religious
or philosophical belief"—and, as I say, that is very
much the language of article 2 of the Human Rights Act—but
two sentences later you forget the philosophy. Is that an oversight
or is that a deliberate government policy to fudge the issue?
Ms Jones: No. It is only a draft.
I think you have drawn attention to something that we will need
to change when we finalise the draft.
Q90 Paul Holmes: On the same theme
about contradictions in educational policy, you have specialists,
academies, CTCs saying we want more movement but this policy saying
less; you have faith schools saying we want more movement but
this policy saying less; you are also saying that LEAs should
try to look at how they can minimise travel or cooperate on travel
arrangements. How far is that going to be possible when you have
individual head teachers in schools working perhaps to different
agendas from what might be good for transport policy in the area?
If schools increasingly through league tables are seen as being
in competition with each other and through the specialist schools
they are all seen as different and drawing in different people,
how are they going to work together on common transport policies
when it might not be in their interests? Some schools, certainly
some colleges, do offer free transport in order to bring in good
pupils from as far afield as possible. They are not going to want
to cooperate on a transport policy that minimises that movement,
are they?
Mr Housden: The last several years
have seen quite a substantial increase in the capacity/willingness
of head teachers of locally managed schools to collaborate across
a wide range of issues. The Government's Excellence in Cities
policy, for example, would be one, the Leadership Incentive would
be another, where there has been a platform for schools to engage
with each other. Often that has been around the provision of curriculum
opportunities for youngsters or training opportunities for their
staff to collaborate in that way. You will see also government
doing things like creating schools forums and a number of other
bodies to give head teachers a greater stake in decision making
about local education policy. Underpinning all that, you will
typically see in local authorities now quite a dense network of
discussion between primary and secondary head teachers and the
local authorities. In both senses, both laterally and vertically,
I think there is a higher level of good quality conversation going
on now and we certainly will want to encourage schools to look
at transport planning within that construct. I think you are right
to say there are limiting cases to all and this will not be about
compulsion. We would be hoping that the general momentum that
would be established at local level would create a climate of
the school as a good citizen, where people would want to play
the best part they reasonably could. I have one final point. Some
schools—and the denominational schools would be a good example—where
a significant number of youngsters are actually travelling to
the school from some distance every day, have a very real stake
in keeping that arrangement right and proper and as an integral
part of the school, but we want to bring them to the table, to
that sort of discussion.
Q91 Paul Holmes: In terms of Tomlinson's
draft ideas on 14-19, the suggestion that a pupil might spend
two days in school, one day at college, one day with an employer
and so forth, again is going to mean a lot more movement in transport
and travel. Obviously this cannot take that into account, because
it has not come into effect yet, but in the time scale between
now and 2011, how is that going to impact on all this?
Mr Housden: It does not of itself
mean that there will be additional congestion demands because
you will have youngsters from the same family, one of whom might
now be going, for example, to secondary school and one to a college,
and on a particular day they will just be going to the same place.
It does not automatically mean there will be an increase but you
are right to say that is the general impetus of policy. It is
an example also of the type of balances you were describing earlier
on because one of the big concerns of Tomlinson and the government
as a whole has been the poor quality of the vocational offer that
is available to youngsters of 14-plus in its connection to the
world of work. The only way we are going to tackle that sensibly
is by centres of excellence. It is impossible to imagine 3,200
secondary schools all developing a full range of vocational courses
and having the qualified staff to deliver them. It is in the nature
of the beast that youngsters will need to go to places where they
can get specialist tuition. I think that is one of the contexts
in which these local travel plans will be developed: people will
want to plan around all of that. We have seen from the types of
collaboration I was describing before that the basic ground rules
and capacities to do that are already being developed well in
most areas.
Q92 Chairman: Is there not a ruthless
logic that suggests that to sort this all out, at the same time
as you need this Bill, the Department really has to look at this
whole context of admissions policy but particularly at the historic
commitment. We have been looking at one historic commitment in
terms of how far it is reasonable to expect a child to walk below
and above the age of eight. Perhaps it is a time to look at the
historic commitment to free school transport absolutely. Why not
abolish it except on the basis of ability to pay? It could be
linked to free school meals, and everybody else pays whether they
go to religious faith schools or anywhere else. That would evade
any human rights problems, would it not? Is the Department thinking
radical thoughts like that? I thought this was a radical government.
Mr Housden: That is a clear public
expenditure choice for ministers to weigh against others.
Q93 Chairman: Is it discussed? Do
people like you not say, "Minister, this is really what you
should be doing?"
Mr Housden: We certainly have,
in this context and others, laid out the full range of options
that are around on all of that. But the public policy process
has to strike those balances within the resources that are available
to our ministers.
Q94 Chairman: Are those options available
to the Committee? The ones you have laid out? You just said you
have laid out the full range of options to your minister, can
we have a look at them?
Mr Housden: I am sorry, I am not
sure of the precedent in those matters, Chairman.
Q95 Chairman: Could you find out
from the Department?
Mr Housden: Yes.
Q96 Chairman: And perhaps we can
ask the Secretary of State when we see him. Because if the options
are there it would be really nice for us to be able to evaluate
them as well. Our job is to scrutinise your Department. You do
not do these things in secret, do you? You think there is a precedent
there, that we would not be able to see these.
Mr Housden: I am not aware, I
am sorry.
Q97 Chairman: You look very worried.
Mr Housden: Yes, I am afraid that
is the nature of my job! In developing this policy, which I am
pleased to have had, apart from the first footings of all this,
we have certainly talked about the range of issues you have described
here. But I suppose in the back of our minds has been the broad
context of public expenditure, the scope that we are likely to
have to allocate resources to one priority as opposed to another
and the interplay between different policies. So my point really
is to say that those sorts of considerations have been at the
fore. They are not in the sense of a piece of paper this long
that takes every possible option and examines it in a systematic
way, but we have clearly thought about it in the round.
Q98 Chairman: You are retreating
a bit. You said you had looked at the full range of policy options.
That would seem to me, for ministers with scant amount of time,
a document that said: "On the one hand . . . and on the other
. . . and here are seven or 10 . . ." A particular one that
would have been appealing is the one I suggested. That would save
a lot of money, would it not?
Mr Housden: I am not sure.
Chairman: If you abolished free transport
for anyone other than those who have free school meals, that would
be a saving, would it not?
Q99 Paul Holmes: And it would meet
the Human Rights Act about equal treatment for everybody.
Mr Housden: And the judgment would
be about, I suppose, the extent to which that would be a popular
policy to adopt.
Chairman: Of course. That is always for
politicians an important thing to bear in mind.
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