Examination of Witnesses (Questions 220
- 239)
TUESDAY 14 DECEMBER 2004
DCMS, DFES, ODPM
Q220 Ms Shipley: Does it bother you
at all, Minister, that there is a very large number, it is not
specific at the moment but there are a very significant number
who are not buying back in the way that government envisaged that
they would?
Mr Twigg: I think my answer to
that, Debra, would depend on what they were doing instead. If
schools are providing alternative ways of ensuring there is a
good library service within the school and promoting literacy
and the love of books in other ways, I would be more relaxed about
it. If they are not providing those alternatives, I would be very
concerned about it.
Q221 Ms Shipley: So are they?
Mr Twigg: Ofsted has a function
there school by school to determine whether that is happening.
I am not convinced there is a wide-spread issue of schools not
promoting good library services and the love of books within the
school.
Q222 Ms Shipley: What are the Ofsted
figures?
Mr Twigg: I do not have the figures
to hand. I do not know whether we collate figures, but I will
check that, Debra, and write to the Committee.
Q223 Ms Shipley: You have just based
your whole argument on Ofsted's figures, but you do not know what
they are and you are not sure that they exist?
Mr Twigg: No, I did not base it
on that. What I based it on is that we delegate these things to
schools for a good reason, because we think schools are the best
people to make these decisions, not us.
Q224 Ms Shipley: I understood your
argument. You based the outcome of that argument on Ofsted, but
you do not know whether Ofsted actually has the figures?
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: We
do have statistics on the overall number of pupils who are funded
by the school library service, and that has declined from 85%
to 63%, but, as Steven says, that is not the only way of providing
library services in schools.
Q225 Ms Shipley: What interests me
is that we have very significant numbers of schools, not a minority
who are doing a bad job or have forgotten about it but a very
significant number, who are not buying back into library services
and we have half our library services not up to scratch in the
country on the Audit Commission's research, roughly half not up
to scratch and not getting sufficient funding, and we have schools
not buying back into the service. Do you have the evidence that
can tell you which are buying in, which are not; what are they
doing instead and all of that? Do you have it?
Mr Twigg: What we certainly know,
and Andrew has given you the figure, is that there has been a
decline since the decision to delegate in terms of the coverage
of schools by school library services.
Q226 Ms Shipley: I am aware of that,
but that is not what I asked you, Minister?
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I gave
figures on the coverage of pupils, which is a pretty appropriate
figure.
Q227 Ms Shipley: Is that area by
area, borough by borough?
Mr Twigg: No, 63% is a national
figure.
Q228 Ms Shipley: Is that broken down
area by area? Can you identify where schools and libraries are
doing an excellent job or not and whether they are buying back
in or not and whether that has effects or not?
Mr Twigg: I think we can identify
which the 63% are. Within that we are, as I just said, reliant
on Ofsted for judgments that are made about whether schools are
doing an effective job or not, whether they buy into the school
library service or not. I think, in a sense, looking at the overall
figure is helpful in one respect, but in a sense is not that helpful
because there will be schools that are buying into a service that
maybe still are not doing a very good job, whereas there will
be other schools that are not buying into that service that are
making their own decisions and their own investments and are doing
a very good job of promoting the love of reading and all the other
benefits that a library brings.
Q229 Ms Shipley: If I looked at the
Ofsted results, would I be able to tell which local libraries
are receiving funding via or linked to schools?
Mr Twigg: No, you would not, because
Ofsted report on schools every so often. They do not report on
schools all of the time. We are introducing a new framework for
Ofsted where Ofsted will be going to schools more frequently,
so it may be possible, as part of that, to look at Ofsted's report
into schools and have information that is more up to date, but
Ofsted is only one tool that we have available to us.
Q230 Ms Shipley: Given that answer,
which I think is absolutely accurate, I cannot understand how
you said Ofsted gives us that information because you said Ofsted
does not?
Mr Twigg: Ofsted gives us the
information, but you could not rely on Ofsted to give an up-to-date
2004 picture for every school, because they do not go into every
school every year, and even under the new framework they will
not.
Q231 Ms Shipley: So we have a large
pot of money delegated by Government to be spent by school libraries,
some of which is not but some is, but we have no way of tracking
it.
Mr Twigg: I do not understand
what you mean "dedicated to school libraries". Those
are decisions that are made at the school level.
Q232 Ms Shipley: Government devolve
money to schools to buy back school services. Do we know that
is happening? The answer, "No, we have no way of tracking
it"?
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: The
figures that I gave you, the percentage figures of the overall
numbers of pupils covered by the school library service, can only
have been produced school by school. There is no other way of
producing them. Therefore, it is known which schools are—
Q233 Ms Shipley: But you have just
told me that you could not tell me borough by borough?
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: It
is not necessarily that these figures have been published, but
the figures can only be produced by schools reporting.
Q234 Ms Shipley: Can you produce
them or not?
Mr Twigg: It may be my misunderstanding.
I thought you asked about the quality school by school, to which
I said it would vary and we do not necessarily know the figures.
Q235 Ms Shipley: No, what I want
to know is where is the money going, basically. Where is the money
going, that pot of money that was devolved for schools to buy
back library services? Where is it going? Do you have a way of
tracking that?
Mr Twigg: We certainly know which
local education authorities continue to have a schools library
service, which the vast majority do, and we know from the figures
that we have already given you what the coverage is of schools
that are using that service. I think I may be misunderstanding
what you are trying to ask me.
Q236 Ms Shipley: Let me try one last
time. Central government has devolved money to schools to buy
back library services. Yes?
Mr Twigg: It works differently
in primary schools than in secondary schools. There is delegation
and devolution. It is not exactly the same in primary schools
as it was in secondary schools.
Q237 Ms Shipley: They are two different
models.
Mr Twigg: They are different.
Q238 Ms Shipley: One each?
Mr Twigg: Yes.
Q239 Ms Shipley: The devolved model.
Are you able to track that? Yes or no?
Mr Twigg: I do not understand
what you mean by "tracked".
| 
