Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1014
- 1019)
THURSDAY 5 FEBRUARY 2004
MR SIMON
FLOWERS, MR
GRAHAM MYERS,
MR STUART
WILSON, MR
TERRY HALL
AND MR
JIM WINTER
Q1014 Chairman: Can I welcome our
witnesses this afternoon to this formal meeting, it is very good
to have Stewart Wilson, Simon Flowers, Jim Winter, Graham Myers
and Terry Hall with us. Thank you for your time. We have had a
very good informal session, this is a session for the record.
No one can remember a select committee taking official evidence
on record in Wakefield before so it is a first. Can we get you
started by pointing out that in the informal session the only
worrying thing about it was that it all seemed too good to be
true, everyone seemed happy about it. Is that the case? Are there
any improvements that you would like to see from where you are
coming as two heads and as a parent of a pupil working in the
system here?
Mr Flowers: The main concern I
have is the whole concept of parental preference and the way that
that is understood by parents and the way that it affects my school's
ability to be full and therefore to be able to manage the school
effectively. I feel the parental preference issue is key, I know
it is set down and I know it is accepted but it is the main concern
for me.
Q1015 Chairman: I would like to send
you some evidence that was given to this Committee from Archbishop
Tenison's School and the head said exactly that. He turned round
a school in London only when he was given the ability to choose
a different ability balance, he was in charge of the ability balance.
We will send you what he said, however you can no longer do what
he benefited from. Instead of parental preference, Simon, are
you saying in a sense that that is what you would like? Would
you like the sort of control where you could say I want 30% from
the higher band and 30% from the lower band, do you want to be
able to do that?
Mr Flowers: No, that is not what
I am interested in. What I am interested in is local children
coming to my school, the community I serve filling the school
I work in.
Q1016 Jonathan Shaw: The local community
will come to your school if it has confidence that their children
are going to get a good education? I can think of examples in
my constituency where parents did not send their children and
things have now changed, they have turned the reputation round
and now they are queuing up at the door, why can that not be the
same for your school?
Mr Flowers: I think it can be,
I think that is possible. I think the parent preference agenda
stands in the way of that. It will take an awful long time and
a lot of children will suffer in the time scale between that being
the case—and I believe we will get there—and where
we are now. I think it can be solved a lot quicker if we can change
the way that parents preference schools.
Q1017 Jonathan Shaw: It would be
quite Stalinist to say, "that is your area, you have to come
to this school" and there will be no choice about it. You
will come to this school, you will have one choice, that is it,
that will effectively be what you are advocating.
Mr Flowers: What I am advocating
is a community school. What I am advocating is a school and a
community identifying with each other and then a project in that
community to regenerate that community. The communities I serve,
where my children come from, are some of the most deprived communities
in the area and they need help. The best source of help can come
through the education that children receive locally. Too many
of my students, potentially my students, leave to go to schools
else where, it dilutes the issue, creates the ghetto and we are
trying to get away from that ghetto idea and say, "this is
a community school we are going to do this together".
Q1018 Jonathan Shaw: Surely what
you are saying is that it will take too long in order for the
community to get to that position in a voluntary way rather than
a forced way, the way that you are subscribing it is a very difficult
thing to implement.
Mr Flowers: We were there before
with catchments. The idea is that you have consistency over a
significant length of time, you do not have this trend idea of
people looking at league tables and not really understanding what
they are saying and parents making parental preference on limited
information. There is a predictability about it, there is an expectation
and accountability and the community and the school are working
together to provide that.
Chairman: It is interesting that my colleague
is describing a Stalinist approach, we have just come from a Schwarzenegger—
Jonathan Shaw: Governator!
Chairman: Indeed you have to go to school
in your local district. That is a very interesting contrast. Post
the Greenwich decision you can move across the boundaries in counties.
We have had evidence to the Committee that it is almost impossible
to run a community school because hardly any of the children come
from the local community, so we understand your position.
Q1019 Mr Gibb: I know you have only
been the head for two years, you are the new head, so this is
not an attack on you, to be brutally frank the Cathedral School
has 960 pupils, 16% of them manage to achieve five or more GCSEs,
11% get no GCSEs at all. If you talk about the intake, let us
look at the value-added, you get 94.3, which is in the bottom
of the bottom quartile. Frankly these are hideous excuses, why
would anybody want to send their children to your school with
those kind of statistics? This is not a false picture, this is
a brutally—
Mr Flowers: That is a false picture,
this is the point.
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