Examination of Witnesses (Questions 660
- 664)
MONDAY 17 NOVEMBER 2003
MR DAVID
BELL, MRS
SHEILA BROWN
AND MR
NICK FLIGHT
Q660 Mr Chaytor: Your report is extremely
interesting, but it is limited to the 150 LEAs which are admissions
authorities. In addition there are several hundreds of schools
which are admissions authorities and you are making a virtue almost
of not examining the impact of their admissions policies.
Mr Bell: I suppose we have to
be realistic in what we do and we got at that second hand by looking
at the work of LEAs in relation to many of those other admissions
authorities. It is just being realistic about what we can do.
It is important that Ofsted continues to focus on the quality
of education being offered to the children in any particular school,
rather than getting to other debates and discussions and inspection
activity about how the children got there in the first place,
notwithstanding the value of this kind of thematic report on an
occasional basis.
Q661 Chairman: Children do not go
to an individual school alone, they also go to school in a local
education authority area and that can impact dramatically on the
quality of the education they receive. Is that not right?
Mr Bell: Yes. We did highlight
in our report looking at the impact of local education authorities,
that the effectiveness of the local education authority is not
always a strong determinant of the success of individual pupils
and individual schools. That was something we talked to the Committee
about a year or so ago.
Q662 Chairman: When I accused you
of being a bit timid and said I wanted you to be more bold, I
only want you to be more bold on the basis of your good research
or your investigative skills, your inspections. If the inspections
tell you something strongly which should be changed, then this
Committee would expect you to declare willingly those changes
which should take place without fear or favour or worry about
our political masters.
Mr Bell: I have no such worries.
Q663 Chairman: Is there anything
about admissions policy you would like to see changed, or would
we be right to go away and say you are pretty happy with the situation
as it is and nothing needs changing?
Mr Bell: I think we have demonstrated
that the admissions arrangements can work well, provided local
education authorities exercise their leadership responsibilities
effectively and all admissions authorities—and if one wants
in a sense to say schools, who are admissions authorities—recognise
that they have a commitment to all pupils. In the end, that is
a kind of moral imperative rather than a legislative imperative
or anything which one could necessarily change just by changing
Acts of Parliament.
Q664 Chairman: Is the Prime Minister
right that faith schools get better results than non-faith schools?
Mr Bell: If you look at the data,
there is no doubt that faith schools do a particularly good job,
there is absolutely no argument about that on the basis of the
data. We have looked at inspection evidence as well and there
are some interesting trends there too. Yes, faith schools do offer
a good education, but so do lots and lots of other schools in
the country as well.
Chairman: Thank you very much and thank
you very much for your attendance. We will see you soon.
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