Examination of Witnesses (Questions 331
- 339)
MONDAY 10 NOVEMBER 2003
SIR PETER
LAMPL AND
DR TESSA
STONE
Q331 Chairman: May I welcome Sir
Peter Lampl and Dr Tessa Stone from The Sutton Trust to our deliberations.
We are mid way really through our year on secondary education,
where we have been looking at a range of issues and coming to
the conclusion in that year on report—and we have been reporting
out the different discrete sections as we have done them—that
school admissions is one of the most challenging areas we have
looked at. As I tend to say to the Committee, we are getting dangerous
because we are learning something about it at this stage. We are
in a situation where we are looking for guidance. The Sutton Trust
has a reputation for finding that particular niche which gets
us all thinking and the study you commissioned from the London
School of Economics certainly got people thinking about social
mobility and what the education system is contributing to that.
In terms of the admissions system on which we are focusing today,
what part do you think the admissions system in this country contributes
to that decrease in social mobility, or do you think that has
nothing to do with it?
Sir Peter Lampl: Before I answer
that may I say a couple of words? First of all, Tessa Stone will
contribute as appropriate, she is my colleague. Thank you very
much for the invitation to come here. Yes, obviously the social
mobility work which was done at LSE has shown that in fact social
mobility has declined in this country over the last 30 years or
so and it is actually rather disappointing. The movement towards
a comprehensive system was meant to make us more socially mobile
rather than less socially mobile. The problem is, as we explain
in our memorandum, we do not have a comprehensive system. We have
private schools where parents with the means can opt out, we have
grammar schools which are selective schools, we have church schools
where there are many opportunities for covert selection; I am
not saying they necessarily do it, but there are certainly opportunities.
That is a big percentage of schools; our data says 17% of secondary
schools are church schools. You have a lot of special cases and
the data we have put together in looking at high performance schools
shows that although we have all these rules which theoretically
should be assigning children to schools in a fair way, in practice
there seems to be something else going on. If you look at the
best performing schools in the country, they have about 3% free
school meals compared with a national average of around 17%. There
is a lot going on here that is preventing us becoming a socially
mobile society.
Q332 Chairman: Many of us who admire
the work The Sutton Trust has done recognise that it has been
pretty sharply focused—this has been one of your strengths—on
helping bright children from poor backgrounds succeed. Some of
us, when we are looking at this particular topic of admissions,
wonder how you square that with what happens to the kids who are
not quite so bright and what happens to those if you are encouraging
more of the bright ones to leave schools they would otherwise
be in and go to schools where there is a concentration of bright
young people.
Sir Peter Lampl: You are right
that this is where we originally focused and where a lot our focus
is. We have now developed the work of the trust and we now start
with early years, in primary and secondary. We try to cover the
whole spectrum. I think my view is that action at the top does
not preclude action at the bottom or action in the middle. We
have a problem in all areas. The kinds of things we are proposing,
which are related to independent schools and grammar schools,
are not in any way suggesting going back to a selective system
or increasing selection. What we are saying is that there are
some high performing schools out there, but when you look at the
data they are almost exclusively the domain of well-off kids and
we think there are some practical ways in which you can make those
opportunities available to a wider audience. Just to address your
point about the so-called creaming off effect, one of the things
you will have read about is the school in Liverpool, the Belvedere
school, which is an independent school where we have provided
open access to everybody. The facts are that 72 children a year
go to that school and we, together with the Girls' Day School
Trust, are funding just over 50 a year, so it is over 70%. We
take from all over Liverpool and surrounding areas. When you look
at the transition from primary to secondary in the catchment area
of the school, it is about 10,000 a year. We are looking at 50
who might not have gone to state schools who are going to the
Belvedere school. It is not a big effect. What we are doing is
recognising reality. There are these schools out there. We are
into the seventh year of a Labour Government, little has been
done in a meaningful way about independent schools in terms of
working with them. Grammar schools are still here, seven years
later. I am just recognising reality. These schools are there,
they are obviously excellent schools and what we are trying to
do is give kids who otherwise would not have the opportunity to
go there, the opportunity to go there.
Q333 Chairman: Do you think there
is an opportunity to develop your particular ideas in that regard
through the modification of the charitable status of private sector
schools?
Sir Peter Lampl: When you look
at private sector schools, unfortunately they do not do a huge
amount which is charitable. The biggest thing they do is spend
just over 6% of their income on funding students who are not paying
fees. They are subsidising fees. When you look at where that is
going, about half of that goes on scholarships which are not means
tested and are for up to a maximum of 50% of the full fee. So
half of the 6%, 3%, is not really focused on the kind of kids
we are trying to help who are kids who cannot afford the fees.
If you look at the other 3%, you find that a part of that is used
to fund the parents who get into trouble while their kids are
at schools; they are essentially people who have been able to
afford the fees, but because of divorce or loss of job they then
need funding. Part of that is actually used to fund teachers'
children, which is a big benefit for teachers who go into independent
schools. We estimate the amount of money actually left to fund
children who genuinely need more than 50% of their fees paid is
probably less than 1%. Yes, there is a lot more that independent
schools could be doing and I made this point at the HMC conference;
I made a speech there about this and said there was a lot more
they should be doing in this respect.
Q334 Chairman: You have done a lot
of work. Have any of your projects led you to the conclusion that
they could be generalised? Are there things we could take up as
a government?
Sir Peter Lampl: Yes, there are
several. Let us stay with this topic; there are obviously SATs
and higher education, but we are not talking about those. Staying
with this topic, we are now into the fourth year of the scheme
in the Belvedere school, we have proposed to the government that
scheme be expanded to 12 schools. That scheme could be expanded
to over 100 or 200 schools eventually. There is no shortage of
candidates, of schools which would like to do it. These are schools
which are in the inner cities, independent schools which would
like essentially to have "needs-blind" admissions, as
the Americans call it; we call it open access. This means that
children are admitted to those schools irrespective of their ability
to pay. That scheme can be expanded cost effectively; the average
cost we are paying per pupil at the Belvedere school works out
at about £3,400, because we are paying about 55% to 60% of
the fees, that is the Girls' Day School Trust and The Sutton Trust,
and parents are paying the rest. Essentially we have a partnership
between sponsors, which in our case means us and the parents.
If the government stepped into our shoes, they could be funding
an excellent school for a little bit less than the full cost of
a state school place. The economics of it work and we have suggested
that initially it could be expanded to a dozen schools and eventually
to many more schools. We could talk about the other scheme which
is the Pate's scheme, but maybe you want to open up to other people.
I should just like to say that the Pate's scheme, where we have
taken a state school which has very low free school meals eligibility,
and it has essentially become, like many good state schools, not
just grammar schools but also comprehensive, a middle-class school
and we are spending about £40,000 a year to put in a full-time
outreach officer running master classes at the school for children
from primaries in under-privileged areas. We have increased the
number of children going to the school from these primaries substantially
from an average of about 7 per year to 20 last year. We have also
had 160 children[5]
on enrichment classes who are all getting the benefit of spending
time at a very good secondary school and creating relationships
there. That is a scheme which could be taken up more widely. The
one thing I have learned since doing this educational philanthropy
is that positive intervention actually works, not just in the
schools sector, but also in the university sector. There are two
examples here. The success of the Belvedere scheme has been a
full-time outreach officer at the school, master classes at the
school, working with primaries. We take students from about 90%
of the primary schools in the catchment area. This has been a
scheme which has been generally accepted and taken up by large
numbers of people.
Q335 Jeff Ennis: May I go back to
your memorandum and the conclusion you drew about the fact that
in the case of school admissions choice is something which is
disproportionately available to the middle classes, and you have
already quoted the Belvedere example and the Pate's scheme? In
the types of LEAs I represent in Doncaster there is no independent
sector. How can we develop a best practice model when there is
no independent sector available over and above this Pate's scheme?
Sir Peter Lampl: I presume, like
everywhere else in the country, Doncaster is an urban area, you
are going to have a big disparity, some good state schools and
some not so good state schools. There are several things you can
do. The first is clearly that if you have a good state school
which has a disproportionate mix of children from well-off backgrounds,
you can do something positive at relatively low cost. I want to
come on to a couple of issues, which have developed since we submitted
our memorandum. One is to let children from less-privileged backgrounds
know what choices are available to them. Very often they do not
know. Middle-class people usually know. That is the kind of thing
we are doing in Cheltenham. We are actually exposing them to the
opportunity. The second thing is making that opportunity available
if they decide they want to do it, or giving them a chance. Obviously
in the case of an independent school this requires funding, but
in the case of a state school, it just means they are sensitive
to them applying. The other side of the coin, which I know some
of your previous witnesses have talked about, has been physically
getting kids to a school of their choice. Since we submitted our
memorandum, we have had the Boston Consulting Group do a study
of school transport, of getting kids to school. It is very obvious
from that, for instance, if you take the bottom income quintile,
that the average distance most kids travel to school is just over
one mile. If you take the top income quintile in this country,
they travel almost three miles. There is a huge difference. If
you look at car ownership, the bottom quintile has about 0.6 cars
per family. The top quintile has almost two. This is not just
a matter of saying we have to provide transport. This is a big
issue. In fact what we have looked in some detail at is school
busing and it is a very exciting and interesting proposition.
You can actually bus kids to school very cost effectively and
do a huge amount for social inclusion. A lot of the reason for
kids from less-privileged background not exercising school choice
is because physically parents cannot get their children there.
Also, over and above just the educational thing, the cost benefit
shows that if you bus all primary school—you could also
bus secondary children—children who have to travel over
one mile, it would cost about £180 million to provide the
buses and save you £450 million in terms of saved time for
parents, fewer environmental effects, saved time for everybody
else. It is a very interesting proposition. I think something
you need to think about as part of this inquiry is the whole transportation
aspect of this.
Q336 Jeff Ennis: As the Chairman
knows, I have mentioned home to school transport at a number of
previous evidence sessions, not just on this subject. It seems
to have a very low priority with the Secretary of State in terms
of educational provision, because it is not directly into the
classroom. It appears to me that you are guiding us more towards
a hands-on involvement by the local education authority in terms
of the school admissions policy. Would that be the case?
Sir Peter Lampl: Yes, I think
it should be more proactive. To think that you are going to come
up with a set of rules so theoretically everyone has choice is
just not the reality. There are two things here. One is that the
rules are quite difficult to devise anyway in the first place.
Secondly, you cannot prove this but I always suspect that covert
selection is always going on over and above the rules. To think
you can just devise a set of rules which is correct is not the
answer. You have to expose kids to the opportunities and you have
to let them partake of those opportunities if they decide to take
up those opportunities. Most importantly, you have to give them
a way of getting there reasonably efficiently and I am advocating
free school busing. Right now they cannot: unless you go to your
local school you do not get subsidised to go to school. Even if
you did, buses do not generally run from your home to the school.
It can be very inconvenient to get from home to school on public
transport. That is a big area.
Q337 Jeff Ennis: You have already
indicated that we have a mixed economy in education in this country.
There is no totally comprehensive local education authority area.
Is there a model which you would recommend to the Committee in
terms of achieving equity in school admissions, one which can
favour kids from poorer backgrounds whose parents are not particularly
interested in which school they go to as well as the kids from
middle-class backgrounds?
Sir Peter Lampl: School transport,
proactive intervention in situations are the key issues. In terms
of getting the rules right, I have a lot of sympathy with having
fewer admissions authorities. You have so many admissions authorities,
the thing is so complicated, so many schools do their own admissions.
You should try as far as possible to have the LEA do the admissions
and go for that model. I have seen that some of the previous witnesses
have testified to that.
Q338 Valerie Davey: By contrast to
Jeff's, my constituency has ten independent schools. The need
there is to get the social mix in the 20 state schools. Would
you be prepared to look at working in the other direction? If
diverse social mix is a criterion of a good school, then we actually
need it the other way.
Sir Peter Lampl: Yes, that is
right. You have to get diverse social mixes as far as you can
in independent schools and state schools.
Q339 Valerie Davey: So the admissions
policy in Bristol needs to be looking at both.
Sir Peter Lampl: Yes. We have
to take the independent sector into account in all of this and
as far as possible I should like to include them in the solution.
Just because they are not under government control, etcetera,
it is really important. A lot of them would like to help. I think
we have come up with a scheme which does make sense and is acceptable
to a lot of independent schools, which is this voluntary "needs-blind"
admission. I really think that can help the situation.
5 Note by witness: There are in fact, 130 children
on enrichment classes, not 160. Back
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