Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-99)
1 NOVEMBER 2004
MS HELEN
WILLIAMS AND
MR STEPHEN
CROWNE
Q80 Chairman: How many people in the
Department will be working on this area?
Ms Williams: In our curriculum
area, for which I am responsible, we have a small team of four
or five people which covers two or three subjects in the national
curriculum—geography, design and technology, ICT—as
subjects within the national curriculum and that team is also
the focus for work on outdoor education. They are focused and
mobilise other people in other subject teams. For example, people
who work in science have an interest in outdoor education, as
do people who work on citizenship. It is quite difficult to give
you a figure but there is a significant staff effort in the Department
going into working with partners on outdoor education. Following
on from what Stephen was saying about what we are doing, the Department
is doing quite a lot to promote, publicise and disseminate guidance
about outdoor education. I will not take the Committee's time
up with reading off a lot of detail but there is guidance on the
foundation stage curriculum which talks about the role of outdoor
learning to develop young children. There is stuff in the primary
national strategy materials on outdoor education. There is some
material in the Key Stage 3 strategy. We also have supported the
Growing Schools programme which is an alliance that brings together
some 25 organisations which are interested in outdoor education.
That Growing Schools programme we support in various ways but
in particular we have supported them to undertake research on
identifying good practice. There is a Growing Schools web site
which has an enormous amount of material on it about what works
in outdoor learning at different stages in different subjects,
what advice is available to teachers, and that web site is a very
well visited web site.
Q81 Chairman: Do you think there is a
problem that too often we discuss this, and perhaps even the Department
may look at this, as beneficial to a particular subject, like
geography or one of the science subjects, as a practical aspect
of getting out there and looking at real plants and so on rather
than looking at it as a beneficial exercise for the ethos of the
school, for the team building of the kids? Is it the less focused
bit of it the bit that you are least comfortable with? You tend
to come back to curriculum-related issues rather than the other
thing that we are trying to tease out.
Ms Williams: That is a very interesting
question. My instinctive response would be that we value both
the specific curricular contribution of outdoor education
but also its contribution to the less tangible things like team
building and developing pupils' horizons and experience. I very
much hope that is reflected in the guidance and materials we put
out. I am sure it is although I cannot quote chapter and verse.
Q82 Helen Jones: I want to take up what
you said about continuing professional development. How many teachers
are undertaking or have undertaken continuing professional development
which relates specifically to outdoor education?
Mr Crowne: I do not think we can
answer that. [1]
Q83 Helen Jones: That is exactly my point.
Mr Crowne: If I could say a little
more about this, there is a lot of continuing professional development
which is highly relevant to this which covers different subject
areas and covers the way school activities are organised. The
key thing is that the school itself should have a clear overall
view of how it wants to use outdoor education across a broad range
of its curricular areas and the other aspects of the life of the
school and it should ensure that the professional development
necessary to realise that particular vision is in place. Often
when it is said, "How do we ensure there is enough training?",
you do that by being very clear at the school level about what
you want to deliver and how you are going to deliver it. We could
of course seek to collect more and more information about this.
I am not quite sure that we could come up with a methodology for
doing it that would fully illuminate the picture that you want,
but I do not think we have that data at the moment.
Q84 Helen Jones: That is my point really,
that you cannot be sure because you say to us, quite rightly,
that schools should do this. Do you have any information as a
department on how many schools actually do it?
Ms Williams: It depends what you
mean by "do it".
Q85 Helen Jones: I am taking up Mr Crowne's
point. Tell me what schools should do. I would like to know if
you know whether they are doing it.
Ms Williams: We know that 10,000
schools registered last year in the Growing Schools programme.
Growing Schools is an alliance which is promoting the use of the
outdoors as a learning resource. It does not follow from that
that in each of those 10,000 schools all the teachers have necessarily
been very energetic in following up and getting relevant CPD but
it is of some significance that that number of schools, which
is more than 50% of the total number, is positively participating
in that programme.
Q86 Helen Jones: I just want to be clear.
You are not telling the Committee that that necessarily means
that their teachers have undertaken continuous professional development
work in that area, are you?
Ms Williams: No.
Q87 Mr Chaytor: Can I ask about the impact
of the Workforce Reform programme on the amount of electorate
taking place? In your submission it says that the limits on cover
introduced in September, the commitment to guaranteed planning,
preparation and assessment times, together with enhanced roles
for support staff, present real opportunities to make a difference.
It does not say "a difference to outdoor learning".
I thought it did. It says, "a difference to each pupil's
learning". In fact, I am not sure why it is here because
it does not say anything about outdoor learning at all. I will
revise my question. Why is this paragraph in because it does not
seem relevant to the inquiry? Previous witnesses have flagged
up school Workforce Reform as an obstacle to the expansion of
outdoor learning. The implication of this paragraph being here
in this submission, even though it does not mention outdoor learning,
is that school Workforce Reform could provide an incentive to
outdoor learning. What is your view on the pros and considerations
of the Workforce Reform agreement?
Mr Crowne: We are aware of concerns
that there maybe an obstacle here but we are very clear—and
this is working with our partners on the Workforce Reform agreement—that
there are real opportunities. One of the issues for us is to ensure
that the advice and briefing going to schools about the opportunities
with Workforce Reform cover this and other areas. What we see
as the opportunity essentially is that there is now a broader
range of ways of organising and covering for activities of this
kind. We are not and should not be wholly reliant on supply cover;
there are different ways that we can use the evolving school workforce
to help manage these kinds of activities. The first point is that
we need to be clear in our guidance to schools in order to build
their confidence about how it can be done. The other opportunity
there is about what happens in the school while these trips and
other activities are going on because that does open up opportunities
for different kinds of provision with the groups of children that
are left, and again, with a more flexible workforce, teachers
and others, it should be possible to devise stimulating, interesting
and different kinds of activity back in the school as well. I
do see it as an opportunity but I recognise that there is a real
job to be done to identify the practices that work and help and
help all schools to understand what they can do to access the
opportunities.
Q88 Mr Chaytor: What you are saying is
that the opportunities really are that teaching assistants and
other support staff take on many of the functions of organising
these activities?
Mr Crowne: Absolutely.
Q89 Mr Chaytor: But are you not then
getting the worst of both worlds in your relations with the NUT
and the NASUWT, because the NASUWT is saying to teachers, "Do
not get involved in these activities at all", and the NUT
was opposed to teaching assistants in the first place? How are
you going to get out of all that?
Mr Crowne: If I can answer that
more generally, we recognise that there are various kinds of concern.
Certainly in relation to the NASUWT concerns, and we have been
working very closely with NASUWT to see how we can take those
matters forward, there are plenty of practices now in schools
about the way different groups have started to contribute to these
activities. All we are saying with Workforce Reform is that there
is now a wider range of opportunities because we have a stronger
cadre of non-teaching staff available and we just want to build
on the experience of using the whole school staff to support these
kinds of activities.
Q90 Mr Chaytor: Leaving aside the impact
of the administrative tasks and the use of non-teaching assistants,
if a teacher is taken out of the classroom for a given period
of time the Workforce Agreement means that supply cover will kick
in earlier than it would have done before 1 September, so there
is going to be an additional pressure in terms of supply cover
that was not there previously, is there not?
Mr Crowne: That is only if you
assume that that is the only way you can deal with the teacher
absence.
Q91 Mr Chaytor: The non-teaching assistants
will be covering for absent teachers in addition to organising
the trip in the first place?
Mr Crowne: What I am saying is
that because we are now developing the notion of high level teaching
assistants there are different ways of providing for teacher absences.
As I said before, those provide some opportunities back at the
school to do some different things as well. I am not laying down
the law on this. The way we have to proceed is looking with our
partners at examples of where the different approaches work well
and share those quite widely. In the end it does not matter what
we say. It is the confidence that schools have in their ability
to organise and deliver these things that matters. That above
all is the obstacle to progress. It is about delivering that confidence
and sharing the practice that seems to work.
Q92 Mr Chaytor: There is not a specific
funding stream directly to schools for outdoor learning, or is
there? There has never been a strand of the standards funds?
Mr Crowne: I could not say never.
Q93 Chairman: Helen Williams, for the
record, is shaking her head.
Ms Williams: Within living memory
we are not aware of there having been a specific strand.
Q94 Mr Chaytor: If the Department is
so confident that this has advantages for pupils and their learning
is there not a case for having a ring-fenced funding stream as
there is for certain other parts of the curriculum?
Mr Crowne: As you will know, within
our overall strategy we are trying to get away from the ring-fencing
of specific sums for specific purposes. That builds on the very
solid consensus across all of our education partners that a much
more effective approach is to give maximum flexibility at local
level and encourage schools to be very clear about what their
priorities are and then to use their budgets flexibly to deliver
those. The challenge for the Department is, rather than using
a directed approach through ring-fenced finding, finding a style
of leadership which encourages schools to want to take up these
opportunities and to prioritise them within their overall budgets,
and then we come in to provide guidance and support and access
to best practice which will influence behaviour locally. It is
getting away from what I call the regulatory ring-fencing approach
which we have found over time has rather diminishing returns in
terms of leading the system. It is a deliberate attempt to move
away from that but we recognise nevertheless that there are some
challenges in how you influence and provide the kind of leadership
where it is clear that we want more schools to be able to benefit
from these kinds of activities.
Q95 Mr Chaytor: Finally, can I ask about
academies? In your submission it says, "We expect as more
of them open that many academies will be at the forefront of the
provision of outdoor education". Is there any evidence that
the first wave of academies have put particular emphasis on outdoor
education?
Ms Williams: I am not personally
aware of the evidence but we can certainly let you have whatever
evidence there is.
Q96 Mr Chaytor: Has there yet been the
review? I think when the Secretary of State was here last time
he said there was going to be an internal review of the first
year of academies to be published, as I recall, at the end of
September.
Ms Williams: We do not know about
that but we can put in a note about that.
Q97 Chairman: How would you take the
notion that there should be a dedicated part of the budget to
a school? There are two ways of looking at this, are there not?
One is that every school spend X amount of its budget on outdoor
education, or there can be an entitlement for every student to
have so many hours per term in outdoor education. Which of those
would you favour, or none?
Ms Williams: Shall I comment on
the idea of some kind of entitlement in terms of hours? We would
be rather inclined against an entitlement expressed in terms of
hours per pupil because that does not offer any assurance about
the quality or the relevance of the experience. It is an input
measure. The important thing, as Stephen has said and as I have
said already, is to create the demand in schools to convince heads
and their staff that outdoor education is something that can make
a contribution. You have to create that sense of ownership and
buy-in within the profession. Simply having a statutory entitlement
for pupils to have so many hours per week or per month of outdoor
education does not in itself carry the profession with you. Our
instinct would be to stick with the approach of promoting the
benefits of outdoor education to schools, to building up the capacity
and confidence of staff through CPD and through information and
by signposting the opportunities that already exist for schools
to take advantage of that.
Q98 Chairman: I would say that sounds
a bit weak and waffly in the sense that if you were going to look
for an energiser in the past you would look at the local education
authority. A good LEA was at the heart of providing good outdoor
education. Of course, the government has given LEAs relatively
a weaker role in most of these things, or at least that is the
view that some of us on this committee have. Is it all going to
be done from Sanctuary House that you are going to encourage people
or is there a mechanism? I gave you two possibilities, a certain
amount of time that students should expect of outdoor education
or a special budget like the e-learning budget. What about making
Ofsted take it much more seriously? I am looking for ways in which
you are going to convince me that the department takes it seriously.
Ms Williams: Perhaps I can suggest
a third possibility.
Q99 Chairman: Do you not mean the fourth?
I have given you three now.
Ms Williams: This is something
we have already talked to partners about, the possibility of developing
with partners, including local authority organisations, including
teacher union organisations as well as professional organisations,
the idea of agreeing some kind of manifesto for outdoor learning
on the lines of the manifesto that has recently been agreed among
partners on school music. The idea of having such a manifesto
would be that it would identify what the partners saw as the contribution
of outdoor education within the curriculum to teaching and learning.
It could identify some agreed key issues. It could set out a set
of priorities and this would be a kind of agreed framework not
just for the partners but also for local authorities, non-government
bodies. Everyone who has a stake in this field could work together
to promote outdoor education.
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