Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-119)
1 NOVEMBER 2004
MS HELEN
WILLIAMS AND
MR STEPHEN
CROWNE
Q100 Chairman: Who came up with the notion
of calling it a manifesto?
Ms Williams: The music manifesto?
I suspect David Miliband may have been the author of the term
"manifesto".
Jonathan Shaw: He does write them, you
know.
Chairman: It is a very interesting use
of the word "manifesto". I thought manifestos led to
mandates and were used in a rather different context. We will
come back to that. Let us carry on and look at the litigation
and bureaucracy that allegedly dogs this whole subject.
Q101 Paul Holmes: There is a well known
phenomenon now in terms of European legislation whereby Europe
passes some regulations and then the relevant body in Britain
gold-plates it, makes it belt and braces, makes it really complicated
and poor old Europe gets the blame. It seems, looking at this,
that there is a similar process going on in that for example the
DfES issue Health and Safety of Pupils on Educational Visits guidelines
and then the LEAs add their bit to it, except that each LEA adds
a different slant so you are not getting any consistency, and
then the school governors add their slant and the poor old classroom
teacher looks at all this stuff and says, "I don't think
I'll bother organising that trip after all". Do you think
that is a fair assessment?
Mr Crowne: There is always a risk
that we will end up with more complicated arrangements than we
need as a result of that kind of process. What we are concerned
to do, as in the other areas we have been talking about, is to
build confidence at school level so that they know the best way
to approach in particular the risk assessment side of this which
drives a lot of the bureaucracy. What we have been doing is focusing
the guidance that is prepared at national level on practical steps
that can be taken. In fact, it has had pretty good feedback from
the users. We have to recognise that at the end of the day it
is the employers of the teachers and those with responsibility
for the children who bear most of the legal responsibilities here,
so there is always a risk that, with that responsibility and the
onerous legal burden that places on you, you will want perhaps
to go a little further than you might in protecting against risk.
What we have to do is work with local authorities to ensure that
that is not happening. We can use Ofsted, which will comment on
these things in inspecting LEAs, and we need to ensure that where
there is evidence local authorities may be going a little too
far we can encourage them to look at best practice elsewhere.
We have to have sympathy for those at the front line here because
in the end it is the risk assessment that you do locally that
is key to this. That determines how much effort, what kinds of
resources, what kind of expertise you need to apply and everything
that we do at local authority government level needs to support
that. I am confident, as I say, that our guidance has been helpful
but we are not complacent about this and I recognise that it is
a big issue for schools and we need to continue to work to build
that sense of confidence in how to approach the issues sensibly.
[2]
Q102 Paul Holmes: You said though that
you needed to try to work with local education authorities, for
example, and heads and governors on this issue. Since you issue
the initial advice through the Health and Safety of Pupils on
Educational Visits guidance could you not also take a more proactive
role in issuing the standard assessment forms to use? We heard
from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds an example
where they had prepared material to fill in these risk assessment
forms but different schools coming from different LEAs had to
have the information in all sorts of different formats because
there was no standard process and that just creates more work
for everybody. Why not produce with your initial guidance some
standard forms as well?
Mr Crowne: That is an idea we
could well follow up. If the committee felt that was a fruitful
avenue to go down we would be very happy to do that. I would be
the first to recognise that there are almost inevitably going
to be some inconsistencies of practice here across local authorities
and we do need to make sure we are focused on what the best practice
is, and if there is anything we can do to help that process I
am sure we would be willing to consider it.
Q103 Paul Holmes: We also had the suggestion
from previous evidence that where you have adventure activity
licensing authority licences issued to certain centres why then
would schools which are using those already accredited and licensed
centres have to go through the same hoops of risk assessment when
those centres have already gone through a very rigorous process?
Mr Crowne: The process of risk
assessment is all about making a judgment from the point of view
of the people who are actually responsible for the safety of the
children as to what they should do. Obviously, if you are working
with a licensed centre that will change the nature of your risk
assessment because you know you have a quality assurance there
in place. If you are working in some other context you will perhaps
come to a different conclusion. I think you still have to go through
the process of risk assessment. What I do not think you need to
assume is that it is at the same level of detail in every case.
I would hope that if you are working with a licensed adventure
provider you will not have to go through the same degree of risk
assessment as if you are working with a different kind of provider
who does not have that kind of background. [3]
Q104 Paul Holmes: You said you would
hope that and that would be the commonsense approach, but again
are you aware whether that hope is realised?
Mr Crowne: I am only saying "hope"
because if we accept that there is a variation in practice there
are bound to be some examples of where that is not the case and
our job is to work with local authorities to make sure there is
consistency based on best practice.
Q105 Paul Holmes: In general terms do
you think we need to step back and look at this whole area anyway,
not just the specific examples I have been giving? We keep reading
these examples of schools that ban playing conkers because it
is dangerous, which sounds ludicrous. I can think back to four
years ago almost exactly to this week when I was still teaching
and I was taking my year seven form down to the local library
to familiarise them with the library in case they had not been.
These kids every morning walked up from the town centre to the
school on their own and every night walked back and yet we had
to fill in pages and pages of risk assessments to walk these kids
eight minutes down the road from the school to the library. We
have got stopping conkers, stopping playing contact sports, rugby,
whatever, and doing risk assessments to walk down to the local
library. Is it not all going a bit far?
Mr Crowne: I am certainly not
complacent about the need to continue to work on this because
I think there are pressures in the system which tend to encourage
people to err on the side of ultra caution, and you can understand
that, given that we are talking about safety. We have to continue
to work to get common sense applied at every level in this and
we recognise that we have a role in doing that as well. The first
thing we should do is make sure our guidance is clear and based
on best practice and is encouraging straightforward common sense
approaches and then we have to try and work with local authorities
to make sure we are not overlaying that with more complexity than
we need. It is just working away at the common sense approaches
in partnership on a continuing basis. It is not a job that has
been done fully yet. [4]
Q106 Paul Holmes: You keep saying this
will be the logical thing to do and then you say it has not been
done fully yet, so how proactively is the department doing this
or planning to do it in the near future?
Mr Crowne: We have worked on our
guidance, we have produced updates, we work with local authority
folk in their efforts to work with local schools co-ordinators'
activities. We are encouraging professional development in areas
like risk assessment. I would want to avoid us taking an overly
prescriptive approach here. What we are interested in doing is
making sure the best practice is identified and that we are working
with our partners to ensure that that is fed down through the
system, but when you have 24,000-odd schools that is a lot of
partners to work with. We have to be sensitive to local circumstances
and avoid being overly prescriptive where that might not fit the
bill. At the same time we need, as I say, to drive through the
common sense approach to make sure that people locally feel confident
about the processes. It is not just about the schools, of course.
The parents have to feel confident in these processes as well.
Often I suspect we get these extreme cases because the school
is bending over backwards to show to parents that they have taken
this very seriously, that they are doing everything in the best
interests of the child, so I think it is building confidence throughout:
parents, pupils and the staff, that the approaches we want are
the right ones.
Q107 Paul Holmes: I have two final questions,
both relating to the fact that you are at the centre of the whole
process. You initiate it by issuing the regulations to start with;
other people then respond to it and build on it. Are you aware
from your central position of any hard facts about how far litigation
arising out of activities of this kind are rising or falling or
not? Again, we hear that schools ban conkers because they do not
want to be sued because a kid gets injured playing with conkers.
We hear of local authorities chopping down horse-chestnut trees
so that kids are not putting sticks up to knock the conkers down.
We hear of one of the major teachers' unions saying to teachers,
"Do not get involved in this at all because of the dangers
of litigation". From your central position does anybody collate
figures on this? Is there really an increase in litigation or
is it an urban myth?
Mr Crowne: It is rather hard to
answer those questions. We do not have detailed information covering
all those different examples. [5]
Q108 Jonathan Shaw: Not every conker?
Mr Crowne: Not every conker, no.
What you can say is the amount of civil litigation in this general
area does not seem to be going up. That tends to cover more serious
cases though, so I would not like to speculate on whether the
number of examples of conker banning, for example, is going up
or down. I think we tend to see those as one-off reports in the
press and it is difficult to get a sense of scale there. Again,
I come back to the key point which is that for us it is about
making sure that at every level of the system people are feeling
confident that they know what is the right thing to do. If there
was evidence that suggested there were particular areas of problem
we would certainly be prepared to respond to those but I am not
aware of evidence that shows that any particular area is becoming
more of a problem than it has been.
Q109 Paul Holmes: If you were aware of
a particular problem then it would be your role to do something
about it. Some of the evidence we have heard so far suggests that
it is now becoming very difficult to get insurance policies in
this area. Would you agree with that from your central position
and should the government do something about that since they are
issuing the requirements that are leading to the lack of insurance
companies willing to do this? Should you do something about providing
the insurance cover?
Mr Crowne: I agree: I think there
is an issue there. It is frankly part of a wider issue to do with
school insurance where we have a current position which is of
concern, that it is difficult and expensive to get insurance cover
for a wide range of school activities and so we are working across
government and also commissioning some studies on possible options
for the future. As I say, it goes wider than this area because
it is about the overall cost to schools of insurance which is
becoming higher for a number of different reasons and it is about
the availability of alternatives in the market places which again,
for various reasons, has been rather restricted. We are looking
actively at that. We have a study in progress now which we hope
by the end of this year will illuminate some of the options that
might be available. [6]
Q110 Paul Holmes: What possible options
are you considering?
Mr Crowne: There is a range of
things, is there not? There are market development options using
private sector employers, but there are also options around developing
local authorities' capacity to insure for themselves. There are
examples in larger authorities where these things happen. Of course,
in some of the areas we are talking about, third party liability
and so on, you would expect a market solution, so we want to look
very carefully at the possibilities there.
Q111 Valerie Davey: We seem to have come
full circle. It seems to me that the insurance is based on the
risk assessment; the risk assessment ought to be based on some
factors which apparently we do not know. In other words, how many
accidents on overseas, local, regional trips are there? What is
the risk of taking a child on different types of trip? If we have
not got that how on earth do we do a general risk assessment and
does that not affect the insurance? [7]
Mr Crowne: The kinds of cases
I suspect you are thinking about are the more serious ones where
you are expecting a civil case or whatever to flow. We do have
evidence in the sense that we do not see the overall numbers of
those cases rising. What we have seen, of course, is a rising
cost of the awards that are made where the cases have been successful
and that tends to follow from the cost of medical treatment going
up faster than inflation and some other factors. I do not think
we should assume that the cost of premiums is necessarily only
affected by the assessment of risk in the particular cases. There
are other factors that tend to influence what the private sector
charges for insurance. There is no doubt that, for a number of
reasons, the private sector has not seen this market as a particularly
attractive one, which tends to be why you get the higher premiums.
I do not think that is driven only by an assessment of the particular
risks and the costs to insurance.
Q112 Chairman: Is it not the fact that
it is a kind of fashion thing? Evidence to this committee is that
the most dangerous place for your child to be is home with the
parents, the stats show that, or being driven by the parents on
the roads and all that, and children's likelihood of having an
accident at home is far higher than at school. Though they are
tragic when they happen these are very unusual accidents that
happen when a school is in charge. Does the department not have
a responsibility both to parents and to the public and to trade
unions to come out with the statistics, to say, "Look: this
is a very rare occurrence", and the nonsense you get in the
tabloids you very rarely have in these sorts of committees because
we use long words, so we do not get them here; we do not ever
have a dialogue with those sorts of journalists. There is no counterbalance
to the nonsense they publish when there is a tragic accident,
as though this was something that was likely to happen every other
weekend.
Mr Crowne: I do agree. I think
the Department has got an important role to play in explaining
what the situation is, what the facts are where we have them.
The fact is that any serious incident involving children's safety
is a serious matter and one should never denigrate that but there
is no sign that there are increasing problems here. In fact, for
the most serious incidents there are encouraging signs that the
numbers of cases are going down. The various steps that have been
taken, certainly working with trips co-ordinators and the rest,
show that the system as a whole is taking this area very seriously
and there are very few cases which reveal serious failures in
the system. I do not want to sound complacent but I am responding
to your point about the need to get the balance right. Of course,
we will strive to ensure that we get a balanced view here in the
interests of balance but also in the interests of encouraging
the practice in the system that we want to see because it is often
fear of repercussions and the way cases are treated that is
deterring some of the schools and teachers from undertaking
these important activities.
Q113 Helen Jones: Can I ask you to clarify
something for the committee please? You referred to having no
evidence of the number of cases going up. Are you referring to
cases that actually proceed to court, not to cases that are settled
before they get to that stage and is there a fear amongst schools
of what are often very minor claims which are often settled very
early on, because, frankly, people do not want the bother of the
litigation; it costs more than settling the thing?
Mr Crowne: That is a good question.
I was referring to the number of cases that proceed. I do not
think we could estimate the numbers that are settled before but
that is a good point. [8]
Q114 Mr Turner: Could I come back to
a question that you answered earlier? You said something about
the need to convince heads and staff of the value of outdoor education
but you do not seem able to express it yourself.
Ms Williams: There is a lot of
material that the Department has put out which defines the value
that outdoor education can add in a number of subject areas generally.
Q115 Mr Turner: As the Chairman said,
it is very waffly. I do not argue with the idea that it might
be a good thing but there does not seem to be any evidence that
it is a good thing.
Ms Williams: I think there is
a lot of evidence. Maybe we have not done justice to the evidence
in the memorandum that we gave the Committee. We can certainly
have a go at distilling some of the key facts from the evidence
about what outdoor education can provide. I am quite confident
that we have got that evidence base. If we could pull it out and
present it in a summary perhaps the committee would find that
helpful.
Q116 Mr Turner: You rejected the Chairman's
proposal for a guaranteed number of hours because it did not offer
any assurance about quality or relevance. Do you have evidence
that what is offered is of good quality or poor quality, and relevant
to what?
Ms Williams: We rely on Ofsted's
report on the quality of the provision made in schools, including
provision made for outdoor education where that is part of the
curriculum. Ofsted, under the current inspection arrangements,
does look at outdoor learning when it goes to schools. Under the
new inspection arrangements, which are going to be based more
on school self-evaluation, the self-evaluation form which schools
have to complete includes questions which invite the head to consider
the contribution that outdoor education is making to the whole
school offer. We should be able to rely on Ofsted to monitor this
aspect of schools' provision. It would also be open to us to ask
Ofsted at some point to do a special survey of outdoor education
in schools.
Q117 Mr Turner: But the fact is that
you have not asked them and you are spending £35 million
as far as I can judge from your report—maybe there is more—and
most of that is coming from DCMS. It does not sound as if you
regard this as a very high priority.
Ms Williams: Outdoor education
is one of a large number of priorities for the department. We
do accord it a reasonable measure of priority and we have been
extremely active with partners over the last two or three years
in commissioning research, commissioning surveys, identifying
what works. We have commissioned, for example, the Association
for Science Education and the Geographical Association to produce
CPD modules for field work for geography teachers, science teachers.
We are supporting bringing money into Growing Schools which also
enables them to have this much-visited website. I can point to
quite a long catalogue of things that we are doing to promote
outdoor education.
Q118 Mr Turner: Mr Crowne, if you were
in the position where, for example, one of those advocates of
abolishing the DfES and giving the money to the schools was saying
to you, "Look: you are allowed to keep a small amount of
money", how would you justify spending that money on outdoor
education rather than one of the other myriad of priorities which
the department appears to have?
Mr Crowne: Do you mean if I was
able to retain it in the budget centrally?
Q119 Mr Turner: A small budget for one
aspect.
Mr Crowne: Our basic strategy
is, as I was describing earlier, to provide a maximum amount of
flexibility to schools to apply their overall budget in support
of their priorities. The key thing for the Department in areas
like this where we are trying to signal a degree of priority is
to provide some incentive and some encouragement for schools to
prioritise locally and we are trying to move away from doing that
by ring-fencing sums of money or defining the inputs, as Helen
was saying. If I had a small central budget to do this, the way
we would do it is the way we are doing it, which is to identify,
working with partners, what activities are beneficial, how we
can promote the capacity of the system to make best use of them
and how we encourage those responsible for defining school level
priorities to make this a priority. The way you do that for schools
is to point out the benefits, to draw attention to other schools
who are getting the most out of them. That is the way we try to
approach these things. I am the first to admit that it is the
more indirect way than some of the approaches we have used in
the past, which tended to involve identifying a sum of money for
a particular purpose and limiting it to that purpose.
2 Also see Ev 61. Back
3
Also see Ev 61. Back
4
Also see Ev 61. Back
5
Ev 62. Back
6
Also see Ev 62. Back
7
See Ev 62. Back
8
Ev 62. Back
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