Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
RT HON
RUTH KELLY
MP
2 MARCH 2005
Q40 Helen Jones: What I am really trying
to get at is that with the failure to implement Tomlinson I think
there is a failure to look historically at what has been wrong
with the English education system, which is to look at what children
should be learning and instead we are in danger of perpetuating
the divide. May I ask you about the stretch business? Do you think
stretch is best achieved simply by having different A-level grades,
A*, A** or whatever, or should our young people who are very academically
bright be doing something completely different like extended projects,
like other work in their specialisms? In other words, is more
of the same better or should we putting in something completely
different?
Ruth Kelly: That is a critical
question. Whereas there is a fair degree of consensus about the
basics and that every child ought to have pretty high standards
in functional maths and English, there is a pretty high degree
of consensus that there should be greater options on the vocational
side. There really is not a great degree of consensus, particularly
among the higher education sector, as to what they are looking
for from students who are not going to be studying one of these
specialised lines. If the university sector came to me and said
that it was pretty obvious that students should have greater breadth
of study rather than just be challenged more in the subjects which
they are studying, for example, they ought all to have critical
theory or a modern foreign language or everybody ought to be studying
science and that everyone definitely ought to have an extended
project, that is something I would want to explore with them and
to see whether we could add value to the current system. There
is no consensus about breadth and there are certainly some in
the higher education system who argue quite passionately that
they want students to be sufficiently well-prepared at school/college
before coming, that they can deliver a degree course in three
years. They are worried about that having to be lengthened. I
said last week that I would work with the sector to see whether
we could establish a consensus about what we might add to pure
A-level studies on breadth and whether we could add value, but
I have a completely open mind on that subject.
Q41 Helen Jones: Arising from that may
I ask you about the curriculum? I know that the QCA is starting
a review of both the history and the English curriculum and I
am particularly interested in the English curriculum. Do you think
that the DfES has concentrated too much on structures and not
enough on curriculum in the past? In particular, where the English
curriculum is concerned, have you had any thoughts yet about what
changes you might want to see in that?
Ruth Kelly: I am pretty clear
that we need to separate out functional literacy within the GCSE.
On curriculum review, I do not know whether you are talking about
primary here or secondary—
Q42 Helen Jones: Secondary.
Ruth Kelly: We are reviewing the
Key Stage 3 curriculum and in due course I shall be considering
the issue of which and how subjects should be taught. As I said
last week, I have asked the QCA to look at those issues and report,
so I shall be coming back to that in due course.
Q43 Helen Jones: Do you believe, for
instance, that in English in secondary schools, when we separate
out the functional literacy aspects which I think everyone would
support, our young people should not simply be studying individual
pieces of literature but should end up with some overall grasp
of the history of English literature and how those things fit
into the overall sweep of English.
Ruth Kelly: There is definitely
an argument for breadth and for an understanding of English as
a subject. I do not have firm views about the English curriculum
and how it should be taught, but I will be coming back to that
in the context of the review.
Q44 Helen Jones: The Parliamentary Answers
I have had from some of your predecessors show quite clearly that
we have a lot of people teaching English in secondary schools
who do not have English degrees; that is also true of other subjects,
but English is the one we tend to forget about because of the
assumption that anyone who speaks English can teach it, which
underlies a lot of these things. If we were going to broaden the
curriculum and we were going to make sure that there was greater
depth in studies like this, do you not agree we would need to
find ways of attracting many more people with degrees in teaching
the subject?
Ruth Kelly: I certainly want to
attract people who are excited by their subject and want to teach
a particular subject in school. We have already looked at science
and maths in particular and how we get graduates there and indeed
foreign languages; there is a real need to get graduates into
the profession who have those specialist skills. I guess the same
principle applies to the rest of the curriculum as well. One of
the things we need to do at Key Stage 3 in particular is look
at the professionalism and try to increase the professionalism
of how teachers, not just in the core subjects where there has
been a high degree of focus, but outside the core subjects, assess
their subjects and that is one of the proposals in the 14-19 review.
Your broad point is right that we need people who are excited
by their subject and want to teach it. At this stage I do not
have firm views as to whether particular changes are required.
Q45 Paul Holmes: May I start by adding
my comments to what Jeff Ennis said rather than to what Nick said
in terms of response to the Tomlinson report. Everybody in the
education world that I have spoken to since last Wednesday is
very, very disappointed and feels that you have bottled out of
what could have been a very exciting set of reforms and that includes
a whole bunch of head teachers who were here on Monday for a reception
on the terrace. The ones I walked round and talked to, whom I
had never met before, were all saying how disappointed they were
last Wednesday. You talked in glowing terms about working with
Cambridge University trying to see what they would accept in the
way of diplomas which would get them to accept students who had
vocational qualifications as well as purely academic. The point
I made to last Wednesday when you made the statement in the Commons
was that the Vice Chancellor of Oxford University sat where you
are now last Wednesday morning and made it absolutely clear that
Oxford University had never had any interest in taking students
with vocational qualifications. He could not give us any examples
of any vocational process that he would ever see the university
being interested in. How do you respond to that?
Ruth Kelly: I actually looked
at the figures recently to see what proportion of the cohort of
children who entered higher education had vocational qualifications.
I think it was about 17%. Clearly, there are children with vocational
qualifications who do go on to study at a higher level. One of
the things I am trying to do is design the courses so that they
are relevant for higher education and the current courses are
not necessarily designed with that in mind. These are not vocational
qualifications and there is a degree of misunderstanding out there.
These are specialised diplomas which include A-levels where appropriate
and practical subjects as well. If you asked him the question—I
do not think Oxford does engineering, but for Cambridge—"Would
you accept a student who had an A-level with an AEA in maths to
do engineering, plus an A-level in physics but instead of an A-level
in French or history, or whatever the student might otherwise
have studied, they had actually built a car and had shown flair
and had done something different" the answer might have been
very different.
Q46 Paul Holmes: It might be and I hope
your optimism is well placed. I am really sure that you will find
the vast majority of the 17% you talk about who go to university
with vocational qualifications are at the modern universities
and hardly any in the Russell group of universities, for example.
It is a very uphill struggle, which I think the flunking of the
Tomlinson reforms is not going to help. I was intrigued by something
you said in a statement last Wednesday about seeing a comprehensive
system of education being established. We know the antipathy in
your government towards comprehensive schools, bog standard or
not, so I was intrigued as to what exactly a comprehensive system
of education was. It could have been said that grammar schools
and secondary moderns were a comprehensive system where the academic
sheep went to the grammar schools and university and everybody
else went to the under-funded secondary moderns and got a job
as soon as possible. How do you see a comprehensive system?
Ruth Kelly: The complete reverse
of that, where schools co-operate together with FE colleges, with
employers, with centres of vocational excellence, where the teaching
becomes less based around the institution and more around the
need of the individual pupil. So, for example, a 14 or 15 year
old who particularly wanted to do mechanics or engineering had
the opportunity to go and learn in a practical setting, indeed
maybe in the workplace, that skill taught by someone who worked
in the sector or had worked in the sector in the past and was
really proficient in it and could talk not just about what they
were doing but also their job opportunities and raise the child's
aspiration. A pupil might move between different institutions,
but you would get a system based on the needs of the individual
pupil being met in the network rather than surely by one institution.
Q47 Paul Holmes: So you do still see
each school basically covering the whole range of pupils rather
than some "specialising" in academic and some in vocational.
Ruth Kelly: They will have mixed
intakes; they may specialise in different things and take pupils
from different schools because they have a particular excellence.
Specialist schools for example may at the moment have a specialism
in science and business, or something like that. Their next specialism
may be in something practical and then they can spread that expertise
across the network of schools and colleges and even become the
place where pupils from other schools come in to learn that subject.
The system will work in quite a different fashion.
Q48 Paul Holmes: So you disagree with
David Bell who made a speech a couple of months ago as head of
Ofsted suggesting that perhaps we ought to see more vocational
schools being set up rather than going to the colleges to do the
vocational under Tomlinson, we ought to have more individual vocational
schools which would specialise in that area.
Ruth Kelly: I disagree with selection.
What I should like to see is mixed intake schools with specialisms.
I do not think every single institution will be able to meet the
needs of all their pupils alone. I think they will have to work
with other schools and colleges and employers to meet the needs
of their pupils.
Q49 Paul Holmes: A final question which
leads us on to the area of funding. In whichever way Tomlinson
is going to be implemented, the vision is that there will be more
children following vocational courses of various kinds and that
may be in schools, but they may go to the college for part of
the week, they may go to the workplace for part of the week. If
that is really going to happen, does there not have to be parity
of funding? At the moment the vast majority of vocational courses
between 14-19 take place in FE colleges; not in schools, certainly
not in universities but in FE colleges. The colleges are 10% under-funded
compared with schools. College lecturers are about 8% under the
salary of equivalents in schools. If, for example, under the start
reviews which are going on at the moment you set up new sixth
form provision, 100% of the funding is provided to build sixth
forms for schools, but only 35% for FE colleges. Surely that under-funding
in the FE sector, which provides most of the vocational training
from 14-19 just cannot continue.
Ruth Kelly: As a government we
have recognised the issue of FE salaries and so forth and the
gap has been narrowing over time; though not fast enough for some,
it has been narrowing. We do have to think very carefully about
how the FE sector adapts to these challenges; it would be a really
big challenge for the FE sector. Sir Andrew Foster is currently
conducting a review of the FE sector which will report in the
autumn, which I hope will help us think through some of these
challenges and delivery is going to be key to getting this right.
Q50 Paul Holmes: The Association of Colleges
presented lots of evidence to say that they cannot see how that
10% differential is actually going to disappear in a few years.
Now you have the guaranteed funding for secondary schools which
was brought in last year, they just cannot see how the gap is
going to disappear for the FE colleges unless significantly more
money is provided over and above what has so far gone into the
system.
Ruth Kelly: It is pretty difficult
for anyone to predict what is going to happen in the next spending
round. Over the last spending round and this spending round we
have made some progress on narrowing the differential. I know
this is an issue, I am well aware of it, and I do also know that
we have to invest in the facilities required to make the 14-19
reform programme work. One of the issues we were talking about
earlier, the demographic change, will enable resources to be freed
up. It is not always easy to redirect resources which are freed
up through those sorts of changes but it does give us some opportunity
to meet the pressures on funding arising from the 14-19 curriculum
agenda.
Q51 Jeff Ennis: This issue is very important
to places like Barnsley because we have a total tertiary system,
apart from one small sixth form in the west of the borough which
is beyond the range of the students I represent; it is too far
to travel. Effectively, on the issue of equality of opportunity,
we have students studying post 16 in Barnsley who are getting
funded 10% less than students elsewhere. It is an issue which
we need to address urgently. I just wondered when you thought
the gap would be closed. The previous secretary of state last
year said it would be five years, so that is effectively now four
years. Are we still looking at a gap of four or five years before
we get rid of this inequity in funding?
Ruth Kelly: I cannot give any
commitment on that. What I do say is that we have to look at this
in the round and we have to make sure that we have an implementation
plan for the 14-19 phase that works. We will in due course publish
proposals about how we intend to implement reform.
Q52 Jeff Ennis: It cannot be right that
students in Barnsley are funded 10% less than sixth form students
in Sheffield or wherever.
Ruth Kelly: I hear what you say.
Q53 Mr Chaytor: The Tomlinson consensus
stretched from the CBI to the NUT via the independent school heads
and they included somebody in Bolton West. The Kelly consensus
seems to include the editor of The Sun, the editor of the
Daily Mail and the former chief inspector of schools and
our colleague here. What is the single most important thing that
you can do to develop a broad consensus behind your proposals?
Ruth Kelly: Let us just look at
this consensus issue for a bit. The CBI have welcomed the proposals,
the IoD have welcomed the proposals, UUK have welcomed the proposals,
the LSC have welcomed the proposals, the QCA have welcomed the
proposals. This a radical set of proposals which will make a huge
difference to education opportunities. People have over-estimated
the degree of consensus there was around an over-arching diploma.
Lots of groups had particular issues they wanted to see addressed,
many of which are being addressed in the package of reforms which
you call the Kelly proposals.
Q54 Mr Chaytor: One of the Government's
most influential advisers on education, Sir Cyril Taylor, stated
in his speech to the specialist schools' trust conference this
year that he wanted to see every 11-16 school become an 11-18
school. Another influential government adviser, Mr Andrew Adonis,
stated that when he argued the case for more 11-18 schools he
had not anticipated the consequences outside London. My question
to you is: had you thought of the consequences of a proliferation
of small sixth forms outside London and if so, what conclusions
have you come to?
Ruth Kelly: Of course I think
of things outside London because I spend a lot of my time in Bolton
and clearly the Bolton experience influences my view considerably,
although I like to think that I am able to think about the consequences
across the country as well, including rural communities; that
is something I always have at the back of my mind. On proposals
to open or expand sixth forms, the key here is to use a common-sense
approach and proposals at the moment are decided by the school
organisation committee, they are decided locally. They are often
decided unanimously and only if they are not, do they then go
up to the adjudicator. The challenge for local communities is
to try to meet parental demand. It is something I was talking
about earlier and is actually an incredibly difficult thing to
do but it is something all local communities ought to aspire to
do.
Q55 Mr Chaytor: The government have said
that there will be a strong presumption in favour of 11-16 schools
becoming 11-18 schools. You are saying this has to be decided
locally, but will the school organisation committees have a veto
over any proposal to open a new sixth form?
Ruth Kelly: At the moment they
do not and I do not think they should. I am currently—
Q56 Mr Chaytor: In what sense is it decided
locally then? The individual school can draw up a proposal. Who
is going to approve the proposal if it is not the local community?
Ruth Kelly: No, let me just continue.
The ideal is if all of these things are decided locally and local
communities have to think strategically about demand and how they
meet demand in particular areas and for particular sorts of provision.
It is a huge challenge for local communities to do that; it is
not an easy thing to do, but I think that is ideally where the
decisions ought to be taken. On the process by which sixth forms
are opened, I would just be completely honest with you. I am currently
looking at those proposals. In due course I will publish a view
as to the procedure which has to be followed. No decisions have
yet been taken.
Q57 Mr Chaytor: If an individual school
put forward a proposal and the local school organisation committee
and the local schools admissions forum and the local education
authority resisted it, would that then lead you to think this
was not a proposal which should go forward?
Ruth Kelly: I am not going to
pre-empt my own decision on this, if you will allow me. I am currently
thinking through those issues with a view to publishing plans
and the procedure which needs to be followed before a school can
open a sixth form.
Q58 Mr Chaytor: Leaving aside the process
and the response to the consultation document you publish, how
does this fit in with the Learning and Skills Council's responsibility
to conduct strategic area reviews? Is it not through the essence
of that that there should be greater co-ordination of provision
and a greater element of strategic planning, whereas what the
government's presumption in favour of more small sixth forms suggests
is an increase in the freedom of the marketplace.
Ruth Kelly: It is not necessarily
an increase in the freedom of the marketplace. The way I approach
it is how can you meet parental demand effectively? That is the
principle which I shall use as a benchmark when approaching these
decisions. I have not yet taken them and currently I am looking
at this and I shall come back with proposals which you can ask
me about then.
Q59 Mr Chaytor: If there were a proliferation
of small sixth forms is it more likely or less likely, given we
now have the big curriculum divide at 14, that pupils will get
objective advice about their curriculum options from the school
in which they were studying?
Ruth Kelly: That is a really important
point and it is something we are looking at. In the post 14-19
White Paper era it is really important that we have good quality
information, advice and guidance for students, not just during
that phase but before it in Key Stage 3 as well, so that they
are appropriately directed to particular specialised lines and
have the opportunity to move between them later and are not overly
narrowed down too early. I shall be publishing proposals on how
we intend to take this forward shortly.
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