Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120-139)
Mr David Normington, Mr Peter Wanless, Mr David Bell,
examined.
Q120 Mr Jenkins: It is not only parents
I am concerned with at the moment, it is the children as well.
I will tell you now I have been there, I have done it, I have
seen how it happens. I can take you to any school if you want
to, before you get there, and show you the thousands of pounds
which are wasted, photocopying, filing, putting things in place
so you never see the school as it really is, when you get there
it is a showpiece with all the work in place and that money could
have been far better spent if your inspectors knew prior to going
to the school on a much lower key, going in there, seeing how
the school operates, getting the data from the school, you can
see how the teachers get on, you can talk to the head teacher
and a get much fairer analysis of what that school is doing.
Mr Bell: It is absolutely right
that it is a waste of time and effort if schools are getting involved
in that kind of pre-inspection paraphernalia. We do say to schools
now there are only five documents we want in advance of the inspection.
One of those is a school timetable and the other is a map of the
school. Actually we do not ask for huge amounts of paper in advance
of the inspection. I think it is absolutely right, of course,
that schools will want to make sure that they are demonstrating
the things that they do well during inspection but I think we
only have to look at the number of schools that have been identified
over the years as being in difficulties to demonstrate that it
is not a case of just pulling the wool over inspectors' eyes.
Q121 Mr Jenkins: That is information
not just for parents but for the Department and the Department
must act on it. If the Department has not acted on it and improved
the quality of education in this country then the Department is
at fault, am I right?
Mr Bell: Yes, but can I give you—
Q122 Mr Jenkins: If I can move on, I
have a very short amount of time left. One of the areas you watch
over is deprivation. Now I am quite keen on deprivation, I am
quite keen on analysing it, so why do you not use the same figures
as the Department of the Deputy Prime Minister who has classified
deprivation? Why is educational deprivation so different?
Mr Normington: I do not think
it is all that different but it is based on an analysis of what
the characteristics are of deprivation as they affect education
so it is likely to be slightly different.
Q123 Mr Jenkins: When you put that basic
element in, when you look at deprivation and educational needs
costs, why do you not ring fence the amount of money for deprivation
and say "this money should be spent and proved to be spent
on overcoming deprivation and these are the strategies that overcome
it", but instead you send it in a lump sum down to the LEA?
When you talk about educational needs and paying teachers more
money, let me tell you, let us get into the real world in some
of these London boroughs they actually employ Australian and New
Zealand teachers at the bottom end of the pay scale whereas up
and down the country we have a national pay scale and in certain
parts teachers struggle on for a long time and they have experience
but their salaries, staff costs are actually higher than in some
areas we send additional money. So why do you not ring fence that
money and any LEA can pick up what it requires to meet the proven
educational needs costs?
Mr Normington: We do provide the
money to the education authority on the bases I described, including
need. The local authority then can take decisions to allocate
that money differently within the authority and some do. That
is because at the moment we have a system which is based on local
authorities having that choice and that decision. There are plenty
of people telling us that we put too many conditions on the money
as we pass through. All the pressure on us at the moment is to
give more flexibility to local authorities to spend the money
as they think is needed locally.
Q124 Mr Jenkins: You advocate responsibility
to spend that money overcoming deprivation. You have no way of
tackling that, have you?
Mr Normington: No, that is not
the case because with the data we have we do try to measure the
performance of schools. Every school has to set a target for improvement
and we do look at performance in different schools in different
areas and through our agents we challenge a school and an area
when it is underperforming. We look particularly at deprivation
because we have a special programme called Excellence in Cities
which is looking at cities and performance in inner cities particularly.
Q125 Mr Jenkins: Mr Wanless has sat there—I
have one question for you. You have sat there looking at the others,
you have a job and yet the only indicator from what I can make
of this about deprivation or external factors is your input at
11 plus. When they come into that secondary education system that
is the only indicator you are going to take. You know the change
in environment of children as they grow up and develop that is
not taken into consideration. When are you going to start work
on making sure the secondary system in this country works as effectively
and efficiently as it possibly can and delivers the education
our children need, deserve and should have?
Mr Wanless: The prior attainment
at 11 is a very significant factor which, as we have said previously,
is factored into the performance tables through the value added
measures. There are a number of other ways in which we do take
account of many of the factors, which are illustrated in this
Report, to help schools compare their performance with one another,
in order to challenge schools in similar circumstances to ask
themselves "is this performance that we are achieving for
our pupils what it might be, compared with what others are doing?"
The diagrams at the back of the Report show that variability of
performance. We are taking that information and working with LEAs
precisely to confront those sorts of local issues in order to
expose some of the variability that you described.
Chairman: Thank you, Mr Jenkins. Now
just one or two supplementary questions. First of all, Mr Gibb?
Q126 Mr Gibb: You will be aware by now
that 38% of lessons in comprehensive schools are set which means
62% of lessons in comprehensive schools take place in mixed ability
classes. What is the Department's view about the efficacy of setting?
Mr Normington: Generally we have
encouraged setting in subjects like maths but we have not done
a great deal of work on the efficacy of setting.
Q127 Mr Gibb: Given that Excellence
in Schools says that the default position should be setting,
is that not rather an odd answer?
Mr Normington: That is the position
that we have adopted. We have not made setting a central feature
of our policies and we have not done a lot of analysis of the
impact of setting.
Q128 Mr Gibb: Can I ask you why then
the Labour manifesto which you are supposed to be implementing
says that they want an increase in the amount of setting and also
Excellence in Schools, the White Paper of 1997, also says
that unless schools can prove better results than otherwise the
position should be that they should have setting?
Mr Normington: I was not aware
that the Labour manifesto said that, I am sorry. Setting has not
been a major feature of this Government's policy. We have encouraged
it where schools think it can be helpful.
Q129 Mr Gibb: Can I recommend you read
two things, amongst other things, you read the Labour manifesto
of 1997, which you are meant to be implementing, secondly you
read the White Paper Excellence in Schools. You might also
want to read the NIESR report of Professor Prais and also some
of the literature on setting, particularly Kulik & Kulik who
say that you get very, very increased levels of attainment when
you have setting and you tailor a curriculum to the specific ability
levels. Can I ask two more questions on that subject. How do you
change the schools ethos? Where does the power lie in democracy
to try to change what happens in our schools? Does it lie here
in the House of Commons or with you? Does it lie with the LEAs?
Does it lie with people who are not accountable to any officials?
Where does it lie? How can we change these things in our schools
in a democracy?
Mr Normington: Formally, if you
are talking about head teachers, the position is usually that
the governors are responsible with the support of the local authority
for changing the head teacher. A great deal of the activity to
improve schools has to take place at local level. We can provide
the challenge for local authorities and schools to do that. Who
employs the head teacher is usually the governors and they are
the people who appoint a new head teacher as well.
Q130 Mr Gibb: So if my authority, West
Sussex County Council, wish to change a number of these policies,
for example they want schools to set lessons, they would have
the power to do that?
Mr Normington: I do not think
they would have the powers to do that.
Q131 Mr Gibb: Where does the power lie
to do that?
Mr Normington: The final decision,
unless it is in the law, about how to apply the curriculum is
taken in the school.
Q132 Mr Gibb: So the people have no say
at all?
Mr Normington: The people in terms
of how is the efficacy of that then judged, it is judged by Ofsted
when they come to look at the practices of the school. That report
is published and delivered to parents.
Q133 Mr Steinberg: On page 31—basically
I am taking this to its widest extreme—the transition from
primary school to secondary school. Could I just say this is a
vitally important area for the North East of England and I think
Mr Bell might be the best to answer this. I am quite sure he is
fully aware of the problems. We have a situation in the North
East of England where in terms of results and league tables and
performance our primary school pupils do extremely well but within
five years of secondary education they perform appallingly compared
with the rest of the country. Do you think that has anything to
do with culture? Do you think it has anything to do with parental
occupation? Do you think it has anything to do with class background,
if you like? Why is it that we do have this huge problem which
we have not been able to put right? Although performance is improving,
it is still very bad.
Mr Bell: I think there are a couple
of factors that I would draw attention to. One is the value that
is placed on education historically in certain parts of the country—this
is not just a phenomenon that one might expect to find in the
North East of England—where there has not been a tradition,
perhaps, of higher education and further education. That seems
to take a long time to overcome and, therefore, I know schools
and local education authorities are doing much to try to persuade
parents and children and young people the value of education.
The second point I would make is actually one that you began with
and that is the transition between primary and secondary schools.
We looked at this issue in some detail last year and we did see
that for a number of children that was a critical falling off
point. They seemed to be relatively well motivated and enthusiastic
at primary school but for many of them it was not the social transition
between primary and secondary school that really got to them,
it was the education transition; the transition in educational
terms from primary to secondary schools was not smooth enough.
The secondary schools did not always build enough when they came
from primary schools and, therefore, children became less motivated.
I think there are out of school factors which schools and others
can help address but I think one of the themes of today has been
of course those things that schools themselves can do and giving
great attention to the quality of movement between primary and
secondary schools, the quality of education, the continuity of
education, is all very important too.
Q134 Mr Williams: I dealt earlier particularly
with the resources and what I felt was the vilification of staff
who actually were doing good jobs in very difficult circumstances
and I am not suggesting everyone is. From your replies I assume
that you would agree, as we do, that as well the value of having
this information is to allow parents to choose what is best and
what would be worst for their children. That is one of the objectives,
is it not?
Mr Normington: Yes.
Q135 Mr Williams: You see when we look
then at the bottom part of paragraph 2.10 on page 18—and
my couple of questions will all focus on this page—it says
that 621 schools were ranked in the bottom 20% of academic achievement
at GCSE level but when external factors—back to external
factors—were taken into account only 272 were ranked in
the bottom 20%. In fact, 60 of them were in the top 20%, a complete
reversal of the position. 10% of them were wrongly classified
as being amongst the worst when they actually should have been
amongst the best. Now that cannot give you any satisfaction in
terms of the integrity of the information that is being published,
can it?
Mr Normington: We are publishing
this data now alongside—
Q136 Mr Williams: Yes, I know.
Mr Normington: We did not have
it before. We are publishing it alongside the previous data because
all this says is if you measure on this basis, taking account
of these external factors you produce a different order of merit,
if you like, than if you measure on the previous basis. You do
need to look at all those measures, not just at one.
Q137 Mr Williams: You are using a more
limited set of external factors than the NAO has used in its analysis.
You have used just one, prior attainment. If you look at the table
that is immediately below, table 7, you look at the bar diagram
and look at the second from the top and the top 20 and, in fact,
220 of that 621, over a third, are actually in the middle or above.
Mr Normington: Yes.
Q138 Mr Williams: Yet they have been
wrongly classified as below.
Mr Normington: To be clear, we
are using our data which is what the NAO used. We are not doing
an analysis which is not quite as sophisticated as them but what
we are producing are performance results based on prior attainment.
They produced broadly the picture that is in this Report. So although
the NAO has done a lot more sophisticated work, in terms of what
is in this Report this is also what we are now publishing as well,
which I agree is much fairer to schools and gives parents a much
better rounded picture of that school but they do also need to
know what the performance of that school is in GCSE. What we want
is to get as many pupils to good GCSE levels as possible because
that is the way you then progress in education and training after
16. It is really important to be measuring GCSE performance as
well.
Q139 Mr Williams: The NAO refers in paragraph
2.24—there is no need for you to go to it—to the fact
that they have restricted their analysis in some of the schools
to those which Ofsted have inspected since January 2000. So some
of the criticism applies to the modern information. Can I then
go to the NAO and ask if they would mind providing us, and are
able to provide us, with some further information.[3]
First we have had the suggestion from the Department that their
definition of external leads to a broad correlation with your
definition of external in terms of what it shows about the quality
of education. Can you try to give us an analysis of that?
Mr Burr: Yes.
3 Ev 20-21 Back
| 
