Select Committee on Education and Skills Minutes of Evidence


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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