Select Committee on Public Accounts Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140-152)

Mr David Normington, Mr Peter Wanless, Mr David Bell, examined.

  Q140 Mr Williams: The second thing I would ask for, if I can find it, yes, the information you have provided in 2.10 about the bottom 20%, can you give us the equivalent reverse information of the top 20% so we can see how many of those should have been there?

  Mrs Hands: I understand.[4]

  Mr Burr: Yes.

  Mr Williams: These are not questions, Chairman, they are just requesting information.

  Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr Williams. Mr Bacon?

  Q141 Mr Bacon: Very quickly. Mr Normington, you said you hope to move from 72 streams of funding down to five. How long will that take?

  Mr Normington: I do not know. I cannot promise you a period in which that is going to happen. We are on the case now and we are reducing the number of funding streams. I still do not really think it should be 72.

  Q142 Mr Bacon: Does it worry you that schools applying for specialist status, sometimes extremely good schools, invest a huge amount of money and time and then fail right at the end when they find the goalposts have moved slightly and then they fail a second time or a third time or a fourth time?

  Mr Normington: It would worry me if schools were failing because they had not understood where the pass mark was.

  Q143 Mr Bacon: The goalposts kept moving.

  Mr Normington: It would worry me if they did not know that and if that had happened.

  Q144 Mr Bacon: Why do they keep moving slightly?

  Mr Wanless: Each adjustment has been in order to simplify the application process to make it easier for schools, and for much the sort of reasons that you are suggesting in the line of questioning. The specialist school trust is there to help applicants ensure that they understand the process.

  Q145 Mr Bacon: Mr Normington, we talked about schools being eight times oversubscribed. Can you say what you think normally happens when something is oversubscribed?

  Mr Wanless: Do you mean when lots of parents do not get their children in?

  Q146 Mr Bacon: Yes, I am talking about in the abstract, what happens normally when demand for something rises?

  Mr Normington: There is greater competition for those places. I am sorry, I am not quite sure what you are asking.

  Q147 Mr Bacon: The point I am making is about demand and supply. When demand for something goes up and something is oversubscribed the supply disappears. If everyone wants to buy one record it ends up as number one in the charts. What is so strange about education is that if the demand for some particular thing rises, at least to some extent one cannot develop arrangements which enable the supply element to rise as well. For example, more money to follow those pupils so the school builds an extension and gets new classrooms because the demand has gone up, why can that not happen?

  Mr Normington: We have changed the guidance to local organisation committees which take these decisions to provide a greater possibility for schools that are popular to expand and also to ensure that some money is available to make that happen. But there are all kinds of reasons why in a particular area it is not possible for that school to expand first. It is not like a sort of consumer good which you can just switch on because you have to have more classrooms, you have to have more teachers, you have to have more facilities. Those things are not just created overnight unless the school by some chance has the ability to do that. Many of them do not because many of them are in very constrained circumstances and would have to build.

  Mr Bacon: I would like to keep going but I have had a message from the Chairman.

  Q148 Mr Jenkins: Mr Bell, you said in a previous reply that in September you changed your inspection regime resulting in a third more failures. Could you let us have a note, please, on why you changed the regime, what you changed it to, why you had this level of failures and what you will do about it?

  Mr Bell: Yes.[5]

  Q149 Mr Jenkins: Mr Normington, you said that free school meals are a good indicator—I am quoting now—and the Working Families Tax Credit has taken many families above the income level and it has taken free school dinners out but they are still deprived. Also can you tell me why you feel that the behaviour of school children now is not given greater credence in a society that is getting more and more difficult to place in all areas?

  Mr Normington: We do not think free school meals is a perfect measure for some of the reasons you have described. We are looking for alternatives. Secondly, I think it is a whole new subject, is it not, why behaviour in society amongst children is declining but it seems to be.

  Mr Williams: Can I draw your attention to one extra thing which has emerged recently in the press analysis of the housing boom. There it is pointed out there is such a thing as school premium in terms of house prices in that people are actually deliberately moving into catchment areas and, therefore, inflating prices on the basis of the reputation of individual schools and where those reputations are based on imbalanced statistics you can see there is a social implication to this beyond the educational factors we have been considering.

  Q150 Chairman: That is a point, not a question. I have one question to remain within my time. Why is it that—I was referring to the complexity of funding streams, Mr Normington—pupils in secondary schools in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea receive £1,400 more in Kensington and Chelsea than in Hammersmith and Fulham in secondary schools?

  Mr Normington: That will be to do with the range of factors in the formula which will be to do with need.

  Q151 Chairman: The need in Kensington and Chelsea is greater?

  Mr Normington: North Kensington is a very deprived bit of London. We all have a picture of Kensington and Chelsea but it is not all the bit around Harrods. I can provide you with a note on that.[6]

  Q152 Chairman: Please provide me with a note.

  Mr Normington: On why it happens. It is how the formula allocates the money.

  Chairman: All right. Gentlemen, thank you very much for what has been a very interesting session. This is the front line of party politics but we have tried to look at the figures and derive some knowledge so we can base our own opinions on that. We will attempt to produce a report which draws some interesting conclusions, particularly on what we have heard about external factors. Thank you very much.





4   Ev 21 Back

5   Ev 16-18 Back

6   Ev 19-20

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