Examination of Witnesses (Questions 62
- 79)
WEDNESDAY 15 OCTOBER 2003
DR PHILIP
HUNTER
Q62 Chairman: Can I welcome Dr Philip
Hunter to our deliberations and say what a pleasure it is to have
you here. You know that this is at the beginning of our inquiry
into admissions policy and, of course, as the Chief Schools Adjudicator—I
always think that title has come straight out of The Mikado, it
is a wonderful title—could you open up by telling us a little
bit about how you view your job, as Chief Schools Adjudicator?
Dr Hunter: Certainly. There are
ten of us, all independently appointed by the Secretary of State.
I am the Chief Adjudicator, which means really I have got two
roles. One is to appoint individual adjudicators to individual
cases when they come in, and secondly to try to ensure some co-ordination
between them. Adjudicators have two main roles. One is to deal
with statutory proposals, which is not part of your inquiry today
so I will leave those aside, but they are about school closures
and amalgamations and that sort of thing. On admissions, we get
called in when there is an objection. If an admissions authority
sets up some admissions criteria, other admissions authorities,
and indeed now Community schools, can object to those criteria.
If they do object, in the form in which they are required to object,
within six weeks, then an adjudicator is appointed to go in, find
out what is going on and make a decision about whether that admissions
criterion is fair, objective, and so on. We respond to objections.
That is our role.
Q63 Chairman: You have been working
fully as the Adjudicator for just over a year now, is it?
Dr Hunter: Yes.
Q64 Chairman: The process is developing
and you are sort of building up case law. In the loosest sense
of the term, what is your view in terms of the progress, are you
satisfied with how things are going?
Dr Hunter: I think, on the whole,
we do a very good job. I have got to say that I took over from
an illustrious predecessor, who had set up the system, and it
was working well when I took it over. I have been developing aspects
of it, as one does. We are tightening up a little bit, I think,
on procedures and processes and so on, but we do seem to be able
to cope with an increasing number of cases quickly, we deal with
almost all of them within six weeks. We do seem to be able to
reach decisions which are accepted by most of the people who are
affected by them, and I think we do have a deal of respect out
there, in the field, from people with whom we get involved. I
think also we have got a very good relationship with the Department.
So I think we are working reasonably well. Of course, from time
to time, as indeed has happened very recently, we are taken to
judicial review, and from time to time judges change the rules
under which we have got to operate. These things happen, but we
develop in whatever context we are required to develop.
Q65 Chairman: Is that a concern,
that there have been a number of recent overturnings of your rulings?
Dr Hunter: Nobody likes being
taken to judicial review, it is a pretty awful process, but it
happens. Clearly we are operating within the law, and clearly
the final say on what is the law is with the judges, so they are
there to decide, to make final decisions about processes, and
so on, and, of course, we accept whatever they say.
Q66 Chairman: You have a large number
of schools and admissions authorities up and down the land. Do
you expect your traffic to increase exponentially over the next
few years?
Dr Hunter: I hope it will not.
I have to say, it increased a great deal last year, as a result
of changes in the Code, and so on, and I think we dealt with 233
cases last year, as opposed to 78 the year before. So clearly
we had a very busy year last year, and that was about as many
as we could handle, so I hope it will not increase. Indeed, our
objective, in a sense—and I am glad I am not on performance-related
pay—is to end up with no cases at all, the objective is
to reach decisions so quickly and so clearly that people out there
will understand what we are likely to decide, if cases are ever
referred to us, and hence they do not bother. When there is a
change, as there was last year with the new Code of Practice,
then that changes too, and that has resulted in a large number
of cases. But I think, looking back, one does see you get a spate
of cases about a particular aspect of admissions procedures, you
deal with them and then it gets known out there, if you like,
what the rules of the game are, and from then on people tend to
observe the rules of the game.
Q67 Chairman: Is it not a new rule
of the game, if you do not like what your decision is, you go
to judicial review?
Dr Hunter: I think generally we
are getting into a much more litigious society, and people are
reaching for their lawyers more quickly than they used to, and
that is a concern, but that is the society we are in.
Q68 Chairman: You have enormous experience,
in terms of your very distinguished career in education, both
in London and outside London, and how do you view the process
of admissions, do you think the whole admissions world is settling
down? We have only just started this inquiry so we are not even
beginning to be dangerous, in terms of the amount of knowledge
we have. What we see is, as a Committee, with this plethora of
admissions authorities, on the one hand, and on the other the
Government seeming to have to go up towards centralisation, with
plans to have a London-wide system, and so on, that there does
seem to be something of a collision course there perhaps. Do you
worry about that?
Dr Hunter: Certainly, I think
that something needed to be done before the 2002 Act and the new
Code of Practice, something needed to be done before that. My
own view is that the new Code is right, that making admissions
forums statutory, having admissions schemes agreed locally, and
that sort of thing, was the right thing to do. My view is that,
that having happened so recently, probably it needs a bit of time
to settle down before one can assess whether it has worked. Certainly,
it was in the right direction. I think perhaps, given time, it
will settle down and will work for a while, but people change,
aspirations change, and, I guess, in five or six years' time,
someone will say, "We need another go at that." I think
the recent go was right, it was in the right direction and it
was the right thing to do, and it needs a bit of time to settle
down before it is all thrown up in the air again. As far as the
plethora of admissions authorities is concerned, I am rather ambivalent.
The whole idea about admissions is that somebody, somewhere, is
saying to a group of parents, "You can have a place in this
school," and saying to another group of parents, inevitably,
where you have got oversubscribed schools, "You can't have
a place." Now those parents are going to be very upset about
it, very, very upset, for obvious reasons. Where you have got
something like that happening the whole system depends on trust,
that there are people out there who believe that, despite the
fact they have not got what they want, they are working in a system
which is broadly fair and broadly equitable. That means, I believe,
that a lot of people locally have got to believe in the system,
have got to be involved in the system. What that means, I believe,
is that certainly central government has got a role, I hope a
fairly small role, actually. Local government certainly has a
role and there needs to be something at local authority level,
with councillors and other people involved, and school governors
have got a role. In a sense, what I would do, though not yet,
because I would let the present system settle down, would be to
make all schools their own admissions authorities. Probably I
would give more powers to admissions forums, and that sort of
thing, to counterbalance that to some extent, but certainly the
school governors ought to have a role in school admissions.
Q69 Chairman: Interestingly enough,
you left out the courts having a role?
Dr Hunter: They have got a role,
deciding what we meant.
Q70 Chairman: I am not even referring
back to the recent judgments overruling some of your decisions,
I am referring to the Greenwich judgment particularly, which changed
totally the rules of the game in a fundamental way. I suppose
what most people would say, who are unhappy about the present
admissions system, or parents who do not get their first choice,
they might say, "Well, we had a kind of natural view that
we should have priority because we live near the school,"
and that is the school one naturally would want your child to
go to, the local school. Of course, post-Greenwich that is not
an assumption that parents can make, is it?
Dr Hunter: Greenwich did not say
that you cannot go to your local school, it said you can go to
your local school irrespective of whether that is in your local
authority. I think my view about Greenwich is that it has been
there just for so long that you cannot shift it now, even if you
wanted to; indeed, probably I would not want to. I was Chief Education
Officer for Staffordshire, and a new authority was created in
the middle of it, with a lot of cross-border traffic going on
between that new authority and the county, and there are lots
of places like that. I think Greenwich probably is just there
now, people have got to live with it.
Chairman: Thank you very much for that.
We are going to get into some more detailed questioning now, about
the School Admissions Code of Practice.
Q71 Jonathan Shaw: Within the Code
of Practice it says that admissions criteria should be "clear,
fair and objective, for the benefit of all children, including
those with special educational needs, disabilities or in public
care." It is children in public care that I want to ask you
about. I am sure you are aware that 75% of children who leave
care do so without any educational qualifications, a disproportionate
number are unemployed, in prison and have drug-related problems.
Do you think that this Code gives sufficient weight and priority
to children in care?
Dr Hunter: The Code is very clear.
It is a recommendation, it is not a piece of legislation, but
it is very clear that children in public care should have priority
in school admission procedures. We have had a number of local
authorities referring admissions criteria to us. Just last night,
I realised that the table attached to this paper I put in is rather
misleading. In fact, in every case where we have had admissions
authorities referred to us, because on the ground those criteria
did not include children in public care, we have agreed that schools
should be there. I think the message is getting out there, quite
quickly actually, that all schools should have admissions criteria
which put at the top of their list children in public care.
Q72 Jonathan Shaw: Why would they
not put it in, in the first place? Why does it require you, Dr
Hunter, to tell them?
Dr Hunter: We have had some curious
discussions with schools.
Q73 Jonathan Shaw: Perhaps you could
tell us about some of the cases?
Dr Hunter: They vary, between
schools who say, "We don't need to do that because we do
it anyway," in which case we say, "Why don't you put
it in your admissions criteria?"
Q74 Jonathan Shaw: May I interrupt
again, please. Do you say, "Show us then, show us that you
do it; give us a list of kids who are in care in your school"?
"We haven't got any at the moment," they might say?
Dr Hunter: Absolutely. I had a
discussion about three weeks ago with a school exactly like that,
where they were saying that, and we were saying, "You've
got three children in public care, and the school down the road
has got 17. Why is that?" So you get into that kind of discussion
with them. We are quite clear. Where we have an objection from
a local authority, from another admissions authority, that children
in public care are not there, we say that they should be there.
Q75 Jonathan Shaw: Tell us about
this school, compared with the other schools. Were there any distinguishing
features of this particular school which did not have many kids
in care, compared with the ones which did?
Dr Hunter: This school I am talking
about did not.
Q76 Jonathan Shaw: How would you
describe that school?
Dr Hunter: It was a school that
was doing its best in the area it was in, and clearly did not
want to be disturbed by having to deal with children whom it felt
might be difficult.
Q77 Jonathan Shaw: Are we talking
about a high-achieving school?
Dr Hunter: It was a high-achieving
school.
Q78 Jonathan Shaw: In a leafier area?
Dr Hunter: Yes.
Q79 Jonathan Shaw: Were the other
schools so high-achieving, and perhaps were not in such a leafy
area?
Dr Hunter: Yes. I do not want
to go so far as to identify the school.
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