Examination of Witnesses (Questions 620
- 639)
MONDAY 17 NOVEMBER 2003
MR DAVID
BELL, MRS
SHEILA BROWN
AND MR
NICK FLIGHT
Q620 Mr Turner: So what is the social
tension?
Mr Bell: It is clearly evidenced
that people in the local community were very concerned that there
was a school in their community which very few local youngsters
were able to attend. One of the things we do not say in paragraph
31—and I am pleased that you cited that—is that because
of that particular admissions criteria it is therefore wrong.
We actually say, if we are talking about voluntary aided or foundation
schools, potentially faith schools, they have had an historic
obligation to serve beyond their own boundaries and that is fine.
What we are trying to highlight there is that potential tension
between, on the one hand, the admissions authority acting in good
faith against its own mission[2]
and on the other hand the local community thinking they cannot
get access to this school. It is right for us to highlight that
without saying one approach is right or the other approach is
wrong. There is another example of policy tensions between schools
serving the local community on the one hand and schools with a
wider admissions policy, perhaps related to a faith background
and so on.
Q621 Mr Turner: On the recommendations
in paragraph 34, you refer to restrictive admissions again. Clearly
any admissions criteria are designed to be restrictive, are they
not, because they are designed to choose pupils?
Mr Bell: Yes. Clearly your admissions
criteria determine the basis on which you will admit pupils to
the school and those are obviously particularly relevant, whether
you have more pupils applying for places than there are places
available. What we highlighted here—and this is something
which local authorities and other admissions authorities said
to us—was that in some cases there can be practices which
perhaps do seem to disadvantage one group of pupils or another
or may not necessarily let enough pupils from the local area come
in and so on. Examples were given to us of restrictive admissions
arrangements which we felt local authorities should at least look
at and potentially challenge.
Mr Flight: Yes, I would agree
that is the case. There are also issues that local authorities
have to consider in relation to the appropriateness of admissions
criteria under the code of practice and whether those are being
fairly applied, whether individual schools are operating fair
criteria.
Q622 Mr Turner: But even within the
code of practice, all admissions criteria advantage one group
and disadvantage another group where a school is oversubscribed,
do they not?
Mr Bell: By definition you might
say that if a school is saying it has something to do with local
children as opposed to children who live far away, you might describe
that as restrictive but within the bounds of the regulations that
is quite reasonable. What the admissions code of practice does
is identify those elements of admissions arrangements which may
be considered less fair. That is what Nick was citing. You are
absolutely right of course: admissions will highlight particular
characteristics which need to be promoted.
Q623 Mr Turner: Could I take you
to paragraph 61, deliberately and artificially limiting the percentage
of pupils from one ethnic group cuts across the principle of local
schools serving their local communities. You give that as a reason
for rejecting that sort of criterion. That would be true if you
substituted the words "social class" for "ethnic
group", would it not?
Mr Bell: I am not entirely sure
what point you are making.
Q624 Mr Turner: There has been some
suggestion during our evidence sessions that schools which have
a preponderance of one social class have something wrong with
them educationally. You have rejected the idea of deliberately
limiting concentration of an ethnic group in a school and I am
asking you whether you would reject the idea of deliberately limiting
the concentration of one social class in a school.
Mr Bell: In some ways we are back
to the question about banding which was raised earlier. It is
a difficult one in some ways for me to comment on, because that
really is a matter of policy. What I would say is that I am not
persuaded that such limits on social class or background as suggested
are sensible, frankly.
Q625 Chairman: I get the impression
that you are treading on egg shells, you are very nervous. After
all, you are Ofsted. We have had academics in front of us, we
have had people from think tanks who believe that a selective
admissions system for all the children in one local education
authority actually delivers an inferior service across the piece.
It might advantage the third of children who go to a selective
school, but overall there has been evidence both from PISA and
from the academics we have had in front of us, that that does
not deliver. Surely your remit in Ofsted should make you less
timid. If children are getting less good education than they otherwise
would, you should be the champion, should you not? You should
be saying to ministers that the evidence out there is that most
children get a worse deal in a selective system.
Mr Bell: That in itself is a contestable
proposition.
Q626 Chairman: It is a hypothesis.
I am saying, if that were the evidence. Why do we have academics
saying this and Ofsted too timid to say anything of the kind?
Mr Bell: I have been described
as many things, but timid is perhaps not one of them. As far as
what you have said about the makeup of a school is concerned and
that determining the success of the school, that is not correct.
There are schools serving disadvantaged communities, which are
doing a first-rate job for their students and there are schools
which serve very advantaged communities which do not do such a
good job for the students. I would not come in front of you and
say the evidence suggests that if you have the social composition
of this sort in a school it is destined for failure. Certainly
not. What we would recognise and we have said this publicly and
said it again last year in the annual report, is that some schools
face greater difficulties than others where you have a concentration
of students, where attitudes to education are not positive, where
parental support is lacking. I would be very nervous indeed about
suggesting that schools could not be good schools just because
of the social makeup of the community they serve.
Q627 Jonathan Shaw: Do you ever find
in your inspections that there are schools completely flouting
the admissions criteria, the code of practice?
Mr Bell: It is not something that
Ofsted would look at in relation to school inspection. We do not
look in detail at that. It is not something we have the evidence
to comment on. This study did not take us further on that and
we would not get down to the level of detail, the general work
on LEA inspection, looking at school admissions.
Q628 Jonathan Shaw: Do you think
it is something you might look at in the future, given the changing
role of Ofsted with the Green Paper?
Mr Bell: We have had this conversation
before about how much Ofsted is asked to do in an inspection.
I think we would resist it and I shall say why. It would divert
us from what we should really be doing.
Q629 Chairman: We probably ask this
question because every time you come before us your empire has
grown.
Mr Bell: You must have been here
in spirit at the last meeting because that point was made frequently.
I will tell you why I do not think we should do that. I think
that is to focus on the process side of school performance and
less on what that school is doing with the pupils it has. We are
then back to the danger that we are starting to make assumptions
about what the pupils can achieve in that school because they
come from a particular background. I believe that is very dangerous
indeed.
Mrs Brown: As we move towards
children's services and the inspection of children's services
and the whole way in which different departments within a council
and agencies work together for the benefit of children and young
people, though we will not necessarily look specifically at the
admissions policies of individual schools, the experience and
the outcomes for those individual children and young people and
particularly vulnerable young people will be part of the whole
perspective. In a sense, we will be getting at it from a different
end of the telescope.
Q630 Jonathan Shaw: That was the
point I wanted to expand on. An admissions policy may well impact
upon children in public care. Children in public care, as we have
heard from the Chief Adjudicating Officer, is number one for surplus
places. If you are inspecting a school which does have a history
of surplus places and has consistently said no, we are not going
to take children in public care, that impacts upon the rest of
the services and the opportunities for the most vulnerable children.
Surely, in the future, that is something you are going to have
to look at.
Mrs Brown: Inspections of LEAs
at the moments do comment on the provision made by the LEA in
terms of supporting children and young people who are looked after,
children who are in public care. We already have the base line
for that in terms of LEAs' performance, so it would link very
nicely.
Q631 Jonathan Shaw: That is the LEA,
but obviously it is difficult to be so prescriptive for every
single school and issues do arise, particularly where schools
are their own admissions authorities. What I am wanting to discuss
is the point that if we are going to create opportunities for
children who are number one in terms of surplus places according
to the adjudicator and schools are continuing you flout that and
you find that, will you make a comment on that? Will you say that,
especially given your wider role? You surely cannot operate in
silos, because that is the whole point of the Green Paper, that
you have to be part of the glue which joins it all together. Mr
Bell: Exactly. There is certainly greater focus in the
new inspection framework on the educational outcomes of different
groups of pupils. If such children were in the school, there is
a better opportunity to look at what is happening. You are making
the point that that is all very well, but they cannot get into
the school.
Q632 Jonathan Shaw: Absolutely.
Mr Bell: Then I think we are back
to Sheila's point about trying to use our joined-up responsibilities
to find out what is happening. One way of getting at that, for
example, is if there is going to be a focus on the opportunities
for children in public care. Generally in our work we would begin
to tease out what happens to these children, where they go to
school, what kind of experience they have had when they or their
surrogate parents have turned up and said they wanted a place.
You are absolutely right, that there is an opportunity to get
at that through our wider responsibilities, but probably in the
main not through the inspection of individual institutions.
Q633 Jonathan Shaw: I suppose that
is right for surrogate parents. What ability will you be looking
at? What demands does the local authority make on behalf of the
children in their care to get into the best school or does it
just collude with the education department and say they will go
to the school which all the kids in public care go to because
there is a surplus of places. It is not going to challenge to
make sure the school does follow the code of practice.
Mr Bell: Again one would emphasise
the kind of partnership rules to that; schools working together
would say that they all have a responsibility to those children.
You are right, we have an opportunity, through this new approach,
to find out what is happening to particular groups of vulnerable
children. Children in public care are a great example. These are
children who have done abysmally in the education system historically
and it seems to me to be only right that we use what mechanisms
we have to find out what is happening to them in the future.
Jonathan Shaw: I am very pleased to hear
that. We had a very eminent head teacher of a very successful
school before the Committee and he said that his school had never
considered—very openly which is very helpful and refreshing
that we hear that—the issue of surplus places for children
in care. It is certainly out there.
Q634 Valerie Davey: We have covered
some of my questions but I should like to go straight to the issue
of the LEAs and their remit as admissions authorities. Do you
have any evidence from your inspections of LEAs that they have
systems which are either more effective in improving standards
in schools or more detrimental in that factor?
Mrs Brown: In terms of education
standards, not in relation to admissions?
Q635 Valerie Davey: Yes; in terms
of the admissions policy they use. What relationship does it have
to the standards attained by all those children for whom they
are responsible? Are there some admissions policies which are
better than others?
Mrs Brown: Certainly the findings
for last year's inspections—and Nick has looked at this
in more detail—indicate that LEAs are better at making the
link in terms of their strategies, in terms of the pieces of papers.
When they are planning they make the link between school place
planning and admissions policies and school improvement, but we
found it more difficult to identify where that was actually having
an impact. From my reading of things, I should be interested 12
months from now, when the new code of practice is more embedded
and the expectations on an LEA are being fulfilled in a more coherent
fashion, to see whether in fact we can see that. Currently we
do not see much evidence of it.
Q636 Valerie Davey: Do you have any
guidance to give local authorities when you are discussing during
their inspection their admissions policy? What do you say to them?
What issues are raised on admissions on those inspections?
Mr Flight: During the inspection
of LEAs in terms of the criteria they use we found very few examples
of unfair criteria or criteria which appear to be working against
the educational interests of the pupils of the area. The inspection
evidence is that generally LEAs do operate fair criteria. Even
when all the criteria are fair, that does not necessarily solve
the problem. If a school is oversubscribed, you change the criteria,
you get a different set of unhappy people. The important thing
and what we therefore look at in inspections is to make sure they
are fair, transparent and are properly explained to parents. That
is another very important part of the inspection process: parents
need to know exactly what it is that the LEA is going to do when
they allocate places and the explanation of it is important.
Q637 Valerie Davey: That does not
cover the attainment of those children, does it? How are you looking
and what evidence do you have that one system or another ensures
that there is a wider attainment by all young people as opposed
to some doing very well or others not doing very well? Or is it
easier in an authority where the LEA is the only admissions authority
as opposed to where it is one of five or ten?
Mr Bell: I would have thought—and
I am happy to hear what colleagues say on this—that it is
quite difficult and would be quite difficult to demonstrate a
causal link between the admissions policy and the outcomes achieved
by the pupils. I just need to think that through, but it would
be quite difficult to find the evidence which would support the
admissions policy in a direct impact on how students learn and
the quality of students' learning. We do know that lots of in-school
factors then start to come into play about how students learn.
I would have to be quite honest with you and say we do not have
that link and aspirations are laid out in policy and strategy
documents, but that is quite different from being able to see
what impact this is having and finding the evidence you are looking
for. I shall have to go away and think about that one, but I have
my doubts.
Chairman: Some members would like to
push you a little on that.
Q638 Valerie Davey: If you come back
to saying, as Ofsted has clearly done, that these are the characteristics
of a good school and this is what is going to lead to attainment,
for all children, not just for a minority, then surely the admissions
policy is an element in ensuring that there are more schools like
that, not fewer, within an LEA.
Mr Bell: If you take Nick's point
then one can demonstrate with admissions policies that they are
clear, they are transparent, they are fair and so on—and
that is not unimportant of course; it is important that people
have confidence in the admissions systems and that can have an
impact—that is quite different from saying that you can
demonstrate that as a result of these admissions criteria pupils
achieve better things in schools. I just think that is very difficult
to do.
Valerie Davey: Fair to whom? I have heard
this word and it stands out very clearly and it is very important.
To whom is a particular admissions policy fair?
Q639 Chairman: For example, when
you look at Kent and 18 months ago, there is fair which is fair
because it is open, transparent and all the rest, for those people
in a selective system, but if you take something which has not
only a selective system but then a system of specialist schools,
some of which are taking 10% on aptitude, what does that say to
you as a chief inspector about those schools which the rest of
the kids go to? In other words, one third perhaps go to the selective
system, people going off to the specialist schools with some degree
of selection and what we are asking in a sense is what Ofsted
says about the quality of education for those children who do
not go into the selective system.
Mr Bell: We said very publicly
at the time we were asked to provide data on Kent that it was
not for us to get into the locally determined questions of what
policies the council adopted. Our evidence suggested that Kent
had amongst some of the highest performing schools in the country
and had some low performing schools. Even within those groups
there was variation in performance. It is a bit of a leap then
to go from that to say that is all to do with the admissions criteria
of the selective system in Kent. That seems to me to be a debate
of a different order altogether. One could look at a lot of systems
which are not selective and still see that very wide range of
pupil attainment in schools. We have to be careful we do not jump
to conclusions on the basis of what appears to be evidence which
supports the line of argument, very cautious in that respect.
We were very open in what we said in Kent schools and nobody disputed
that because it came from our inspection evidence and the evidence
of the performance in tests and examinations of Kent pupils.
The Committee suspended from 5.06pm to
5.16pm for a division in the House.
2 Note by Witness: There is a potential tension
between the admissions authority acting in good faith consistent
with its own mission, not against its own mission. Back
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