UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL
EVIDENCE To be published as HC86-i
House of COMMONS
MINUTES OF EVIDENCE
TAKEN BEFORE
EDUCATION AND SKILLS COMMITTEE
SECONDARY EDUCATION
Wednesday 1 December 2004
DEPARTMENT FOR EDUCATION AND SKILLS
MR CHARLES CLARKE MP
Evidence heard in Public Questions 1-143
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Oral Evidence
Taken before the Education and Skills Committee
on Wednesday 1 December 2004
Members present
Mr Barry Sheerman, in the Chair
Valerie Davey
Mr Nick Gibb
Paul Holmes
Mr Robert Jackson
Helen Jones
Mr Kerry Pollard
Jonathan Shaw
Mr Andrew Turner
________________
Witness: Mr Charles Clarke, a Member of the
House, Secretary of State for Education and Skills, Department for Education
and Skills, examined.
Q1 Chairman: Secretary of State, may I welcome you to our
deliberations. It is not so long since
you were with the Committee, but we wanted to draw together the strands of the
year's work we did on secondary education and we are going to publish that as
an overall report after Christmas. The
main thrust of this meeting is secondary education, but, as we discussed
earlier, because of certain publicity about the closure of another chemistry
department, at Exeter University, we thought we would have just ten minutes on
that aspect of higher education before we got started. It would be wrong of the Committee to ignore
that, given the opportunity we have to have a conversation with you about
it. Would you like to say anything on
higher education before we get started?
Mr Clarke: I should like to, Chairman; thank you for the
opportunity. May I express my
appreciation, as I have done before, of the role of this Committee in the
education debate, both in the secondary field, which is the main subject of our
conversation this morning, but more generally?
You have played a major role in enhancing public debate on these issues
and I want to express appreciation for that.
On higher education, we have been concerned for some time, following the
White Paper on higher education, as to how we can develop the national
strategic interest in relation to these issues, because we have a very
demand-led system and the research assessment exercise (RAE) also operates in
that way. At the end of July, as the
Higher Education Bill came to its conclusion, I formally consulted Cabinet
colleagues to ask them what subjects of national strategic importance they
thought we should think about establishing across the university system as a
whole. I further discussed that at the
universities UK conference in September and we have been having ongoing
official discussions with the Royal Society of Chemistry, Institute of Physics
and others more widely. I met a
delegation from the Royal Society of Chemistry myself much earlier this year to
discuss precisely these issues. What I
have decided to do - and I have made available a copy of this letter for the
Committee through the Committee Clerk - is to write formally to ask for advice
from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) on what courses
of national strategic significance it might be appropriate to intervene in to
strengthen or secure their role within the educational provision of the
country. Following discussions with
Cabinet colleagues, I have identified five areas which I have asked HEFCE to
advise on. Firstly, Arabic and Turkish
language studies and other Middle Eastern area studies, former Soviet Union
Caucasus and Central Asian area studies, which is mainly for strategic security
and inter-cultural awareness reasons. Secondly,
Japanese, Chinese, Mandarin and other Far Eastern languages and area studies
for business and trade purposes.
Thirdly, science, technology, engineering and mathematics, chiefly for
maintaining the UK's excellent science base and it is obviously within that
context that the chemistry is relevant.
Fourthly, vocationally oriented courses of particular interest to
employers in industries, which are of growing importance to the UK economy; for
example the cultural and creative industries and e-skills. Fifthly, courses relating to recent EU
accession countries, especially those in Eastern Europe and the Baltic. The constitutional position is that I am
asking HEFCE to give me advice on how we might secure courses of this strategic
importance in each of these areas. It
is a significant departure, because it is a move away from the purely
demand-led position which has existed over recent years.
Q2 Chairman: What do you mean by "demand led"?
Mr Clarke: It is simply that the funding follows so
closely the students who wish to study a particular subject that universities
have very little flexibility in the situation and as a kind of inadvertent
aspect of that you may find that certain courses which are nationally,
strategically important end up not getting the support they need. I hope that the advice HEFCE gives me will
enable us to be sure that we are strategically certain in these areas. In the case of chemistry, I know HEFCE are
already looking at systems of saying that, for example, in a particular region,
say the South West of the country, there should be a number of chemistry places
available throughout that region whatever else happens, whatever particular
decisions are taken by particular universities. There are quite difficult strategic questions. If you take the case of chemistry, there are
interesting issues about the development of other sciences, for example the
biosciences, the environmental sciences, which are moving forward and the
relationship between that and chemistry.
There are also quite difficult questions about what ought to be the
number of chemistry places and where they should be. Should you, for example, have a small number of relatively large
chemistry departments in universities or a large number of relatively small
chemistry departments? These are
difficult questions upon which we need advice, which is why I have asked HEFCE
to prepare advice in these areas. The
decision of the University of Exeter is a decision for itself of course, but
that is the overall context and I am grateful to you for giving me the opportunity
to say it. I have issued a Written
Answer in the House today, setting out the position I have just described to
you.
Q3 Chairman: Let us remain with chemistry for a
moment. Do you know how many chemistry
departments have closed in universities since 1997?
Mr Clarke: No, I do not have the number to hand.
Q4 Chairman: It is a substantial number though, is it not?
Mr Clarke: There have been several; King's College
London, Swansea, Exeter, a number of chemistry departments. There are other chemistry departments which
are being kept open at significant cost to the university itself because they
have not been economically successful.
Q5 Chairman: Interestingly enough, why I pushed you to
clarify what "demand led" meant, what places like Exeter are saying about
chemistry and indeed Swansea have said, is that they are getting plenty of
students who want to study chemistry, but because they do not have a five-star
rating, they could not use research money to subsidise the teaching of their
students. We are in a pretty poor pass,
are we not, when we get high demand for a subject but it is so expensive to
teach a subject like chemistry that we can only do it economically by
transferring across the research budget.
There is something wrong out there, is there not?
Mr Clarke: There are two issues involved in this. Issue one is the cost of teaching a
particular course and, as you know, HEFCE has a set of different financial
indices for the cost of particular subjects according to their assessment of
what the cost is. The fee regime we
have established also helps look for income streams to help deal with those
particular aspects. You then have the RAE
exercise which is controversial in some circles. Just to make it absolutely clear, we have said throughout, on the
RAE, that a university must decide its strategic approach. If, for example, you have a four in
chemistry or a four in architecture, to take another contemporary example, the
university can and should take a sensible decision about where it is
going. So it can decide to have a
strategic view over two or three years to raise the attainment in the exercise
from a four to a five or to a five star.
That is a perfectly rational course of action to be followed. I do not believe it is acceptable to have a
state of affairs where we argue that every university - whatever it is; 120
universities in the country - has both research and teaching in every
subject. That is simply not
sustainable.
Q6 Chairman: That is true and this Committee accepted that
in its report on the higher education White Paper. What we were disturbed at was that you ceased to have the
critical mass of chemistry departments when actually, as Lord May said to us
and indeed yesterday you might have heard the Provost of University College making
the point ---
Mr Clarke: Debating with your good self on the Today programme.
Q7 Chairman: --- to feed bioscience you need chemistry as
well. Bioscience is not a
replacement: the two have to be there
together. Is that not a concern and a
worry, that we will not have that critical mass?
Mr Clarke: I am accepting that argument in the letter I
have written to HEFCE today. I am
accepting the argument of this Committee and saying you cannot simply have what
I have described - it may not be the correct language - as a demand-led
system. You have to say that there are
certain subjects which are of national strategic importance. Chemistry is the example we are discussing
today, but I have actually set out a range of subjects where, if we were to
lose, in your words, the critical mass, that would be nationally a very serious
state of affairs. The question
therefore for HEFCE to advise me on, is how to get to a state of affairs in each
of these subjects where we do not lose critical mass. There is a further issue which is quite significant: do we believe, for example in chemistry,
that there should be a reasonably even regional spread across the country? That is again a matter which HEFCE will
advise on and there are issues of that type.
I accept the arguments being made, not only by Lord May but by the
Royal Society of Chemistry, that it is necessary to act in these areas and that
is why I have taken the steps I have in what I think is quite an historic shift
in government policy. It is saying that
it is the responsibility of the state to have a view about what we need to be
studying in this country and that HEFCE is the correct organisation, in my
opinion, to advise me on the right way to get to that view.
Q8 Chairman: I do not want to push this for too long, but
you will remember that our Committee, back when we looked at the White Paper,
did prioritise the government's views on research: higher than flexible fees or top-up fees as they became known ---
Mr Clarke: And you were right.
Q9 Chairman: --- for the long-term health of
universities. What worried us at that
time was that certain voices in the university world were pushing a line of
concentration of science excellence in a very small number of institutions
which would have meant really a concentration in London and the South East and
we very strongly say that there should be at the very least a high science
capacity in a university in each of our regions.
Mr Clarke: Of course.
Personally I agree with that very much.
I was at the opening of the new University of Manchester a couple of
weeks ago, an outstanding example of what is a world class university
strengthening its position to be able to do precisely that. To those who argue that there are only four
or five universities in the country, focused in London and the South East as it
happens, which can be our only centres of world-class excellence, I do not
accept that. We have to go down the
line of having world-class universities in various parts of the country; I think that is the right way to go. What is difficult and not a straightforward
point at all is simply to say that for me to say it shall be that university
and not the other university and get into that state of affairs is not
acceptable. Equally, we need to look at
the strategic national interest, which is why I am taking this departure I
mentioned earlier on. I think that is
the right context to decide how it should be.
I know the vice-chancellors who make this argument, but I have never
accepted the argument that there are just four or five universities in the
country to which one can go to down this course.
Q10 Chairman: With the sort of action you are taking would
it be too late to give any hope that the department in Exeter might be saved?
Mr Clarke: That is a matter for the vice-chancellor at
the department in Exeter. I am not
going to comment on that particular case.
I would make quite a serious point here. Your Committee correctly identified in the higher education White
Paper the fact that we were asking universities to focus more sharply on their
most appropriate mission and not to believe that every university can do
everything excellently. That is a very
hard process; it implies a reform agenda and that is in fact what the
vice-chancellors are doing in these various universities. They are trying to come to a view about
where they should focus their excellence.
You or I might contest the judgment on a particular judgment with a
particular course, and one could comment on that, but the universities, and
certainly Exeter, are faithfully carrying through the need to look carefully at
what their mission is and where they are strong and where they are weak. There are consequences of that which can be
painful, as we are seeing in particular areas.
The scientific interest of both the Royal Society for Chemistry and more
widely right across the country rightly says that what we have to do is to look
at the national strategic interest. For
the first time in many years I am setting up a process here to get to that
national strategic interest in key subjects.
Q11 Chairman: That is your responsibility. The responsibility of universities is rather
different: it is to produce a viable
institution. It may be that the rules
which are set by the research exercise, which are heavily penalising those
other departments which do not get a five, but have a four, and because chemistry
or other subjects are expensive they are jettisoning those subjects which we
really need in the national interest to survive as an institution. Surely it is your responsibility to make
sure in that national interest that we do not lose that critical mass.
Mr Clarke: And I am carrying through that responsibility
in the way that I say. What is not my
responsibility, and let us be very clear about it, it has been a central issue
of the relationship between the universities and the state since the foundation
of universities, is that if I were to try to second guess a particular
university on the decision it makes, then that would be against every
historical role of the university in relation to what happens.
Q12 Chairman: If every university gave up chemistry
departments would you say "So be it"?
Mr Clarke: No, I would not and that is precisely why I
have gone through the process I described just now. Up until today it has conventionally been the case under
governments of all parties, that it is a matter for universities to make those
decisions and not for the state to make those decisions. This is a delicate issue; it is a very
difficult issue. The state's role
generally is to give money to the university system and then for universities
to decide how best to use it. HEFCE
takes advice, as its predecessors, the University Grants Committee and so on
going back in time took decisions of this type. The whole establishment of the university funding regime was
predicated on the proposition that universities should decide for themselves
where their resource should be. I am
saying, I think rightly, that we need to look at certain national strategic
interests, which is why I consulted my colleagues in the Cabinet on what they
saw, from their point of view, as key issues and I am asking HEFCE to advise me
on those questions for precisely that reason.
No, I am not saying it is a matter of no concern to me. I am saying that, on the contrary, it is a
matter of concern and I am glad that HEFCE are already, on the particular
Exeter case, looking at the distribution of university places in chemistry in
the South West of the country, for example.
I am saying that in exercising that interest, to get to a situation
where any Secretary of State or anybody else says "You will study chemistry in
Exeter but not in Plymouth" or whatever it might be, is a state of affairs
which most people in the university world would think of as unacceptable.
Q13 Chairman: You could make it attractive financially for
one university in each region to specialise in chemistry.
Mr Clarke: HEFCE already has a series of incentives
through its funding regimes. I am
saying that in addition to that we should look specifically at these courses of
national interest and I am asking HEFCE to identify the right way to go about
that by the process I have described. I
am asking their advice. It is an
important constitutional point just to emphasise. I am asking HEFCE to give me advice on how to proceed and in my
opinion that is their correct statutory role.
Q14 Mr Jackson: I am delighted about the response to the BRISMES
proposals and that the Secretary of State is consulting on that. I actually chaired the conference we had
here on Middle Eastern, Arabic and so forth studies actually in this room, so I
am very pleased about it. I wonder
whether the Secretary of State could comment on the fact that Persian is not
mentioned in this list. It is a very
important language. If our diplomacy
towards Iran works, it will be even more important. There is a real, serious problem in that area and I hope there is
no significance about its omission as a specific mention on that list. I want to make a much more general point and
ask the Secretary of State about this.
I think he is correct to use the language of demand and supply as an
analytical framework for discussing this problem, but I do not think it is
correct to characterise this issue as simply a problem of a demand-led
system. It seems to me that there are
also supply side issues and I want to ask the Secretary of State to comment on
this. If you look at chemistry, that
seems to me to be a supply side problem:
basically there is not enough money going into chemistry courses and
they are therefore too expensive to run.
The appropriate remedy is probably to take some action on the supply side. On the other hand in these Middle Eastern
studies we are talking about the problem is a demand side problem. Basically there are plenty of places
available, but there is not enough demand from UK students. The question is how you can boost
demand. It seems to me that the answer
on the chemistry side is probably to increase the funding on the supply side
for chemistry and on the Middle Eastern studies and so forth to increase the
demand by, for example, providing bursaries to encourage people to do this, as
was done by your predecessor in connection with certain kinds of teacher
training. I wonder whether the
Secretary of State could comment on this point about the analytical framework,
demand and supply.
Mr Clarke: I am very happy to say that Persian is not
excluded by this process here and that would be one of the aspects HEFCE looks
at. It was, Mr Jackson, part of your
own representations on this, with the experience you have had, which led me to
feel that we needed to work further in this direction. In terms of the analytical structure, you
have four quadrants. You have a demand
issue and a supply issue for research and teaching in each of these areas. As you correctly say, and I agree with your
analysis, the assessment in each of those areas will be different as to what
measures are needed to deal with the particular situation. I am absolutely happy to look at bursaries
and other devices to deal with things on that side. I am also happy to look at how money is channelled. It is not correct to say that the money situation
is the entire explanation of the chemistry position. The amount of additional funding this government have put in to
science is very, very substantial indeed.
What I think is more difficult is how to have a conversation about which
chemistry departments should be strengthened and which, by implication, not,
whether it is on the research or the teaching side. Is one arguing that every university in the country should have a
chemistry department and the money should be spent relatively thinly from that
point of view? Or is it a relatively
small number of universities which are teaching chemistry, or research in
chemistry, or both together? I do not
think it is therefore a question of total quantum: it is a question of how the money is actually distributed in that
way. I think - and I am open to
correction on this - that the Royal Society of Chemistry understand that point
and in the discussions we had earlier this year, we had quite a long discussion
around precisely these types of issues.
They are difficult questions; it
is not at all straightforward. I think
addressing precisely both the demand side and the supply side for chemistry is
the thing to do. However, you cannot do
it simply on the basis of saying every university has to have a chemistry
department.
Q15 Mr Turner: A rather more practical question. I have had a letter from someone who is in
the third year of a four-year Eng-Chem course at Exeter and who is currently on
industrial placement. He has been
advised by the university that he can complete his degree there, but by his
tutor to look for another place to do his fourth year because of staff being
dismissed or having left. Has a student
a right to expect that when he starts a course at a particular university that
course can be completed there to a high quality?
Mr Clarke: The student does have a right to expect that
and in fact one of the whole reforms we have in the higher education process is
to make that expectation more explicit.
I have had a large number of e-mails from individual students at Exeter
on my screen and I have read them all carefully. I do not reply to every one in the detail they might perhaps
wish, but I do read them and I am very interested to see what people are
saying. I cannot second guess the
advice being given by the tutor in the university, but I do believe that, put
at the level of generality, your question is right, that once a contract is
entered into to provide a course that a student is going to carry through, then
the university should be fulfilling their side of that particular contract.
Chairman: I am conscious that we want to get onto
secondary education, but two quick questions.
Q16 Valerie Davey: I welcome the emphasis on minority languages
which should not be minority. I just
want to add a caveat there that there are British students for whom this is
their mother tongue in our schools and perhaps the education department should
be enabling those young people to exercise their right to study their own
mother tongue and perhaps that would bring forward the demand for the
university course. Secondly, in the
regional, national dichotomy, to which you were alluding earlier I welcome the
reference to "cultural and creative".
One of the other departments which is being shut in Exeter is the music
department. We met, with the DCMS
minister, some of the South West MPs yesterday to learn that the growth in jobs
and potential in the South West in that area is amazingly high. How would the region feature in this? Will it be HEFCE who gives some guidance as
to where those departments stay open or shut?
Mr Clarke: I very much agree with your first point. By chance I was meeting earlier this morning
the Turkish minister of education who happens to be on a visit in this
country. We talked about precisely this
question in relation to the Turkish and Turkish Cypriot community, about 200,000
in this country, particularly in some parts of London, some of our initiatives,
for example the global gateway exchanges, the discussions we had this morning
about teacher exchanges. I did not know
this until this morning, but there are about 25 teachers, funded by the Turkish
government, helping the Turkish community here. I very much agree with you and our modern foreign languages
strategy and the languages ladders we are developing in that and which will
start rolling out in schools next September do include a number of the
languages you are describing and it will have the effect of building demand in
some of these areas. That will not
apply to some languages, for example Persian, the example Mr Jackson gave. There are relatively few students there, but
in subjects like Arabic and Turkish there are more significant numbers of
students involved whom one can see going forward in those areas. On your second point, I agree very much that
there needs to be a regional dimension.
It was in fact colleagues at the DCMS who made the representation, when
I wrote round Cabinet, that we needed to look at the cultural and creative
industries and how we should be doing that for exactly the reason you
imply. I obviously do not know what the
recommendation from HEFCE will be, but I think there is a very strong case for
saying that the region is a very good basis for looking at this. We are trying to build stronger relations
between universities and the regional development agencies. If I may be absolutely candid, it is also
the case that if you look at any region of the country, not all the university
relationships with each other in those regions are as mellifluous as one would
like. There are occasionally -
temporary I am sure - conflicts of view about how to approach some of these
matters. I think that HEFCE will take
this responsibility on for trying to get people working in a more collaborative
way, which is an important thing to do.
Q17 Jonathan Shaw: Last year you took money from some
universities and gave it to others in terms of the research assessment
exercise. That was against the advice
of the Higher Education Funding Council.
Now you have a problem you are asking them for advice. Are you going to listen to their advice this
time?
Mr Clarke: I am going to listen to their advice. I am not quite sure what you are referring
to. I think you are referring to some
funding for the fours to fives. Yes,
the short answer is that I shall listen to their advice. The reason why I have asked them for advice
is to listen to it.
Q18 Chairman: Jonathan makes a fair point.
Mr Clarke: Jonathan always makes a fair point in my
experience.
Q19 Chairman: You did not heed HEFCE's advice on that last
occasion.
Mr Clarke: I have to put it like this. Mr Shaw made a fair point. You made a fairer point and the fairer point
you made to me earlier on was that I, at the end of the day, bear the
responsibility for these matters. That
is as it should be in a democracy, but I should be properly advised on what I
do and that is why I am asking HEFCE for advice. At the end of the day the responsibility will be mine, as you
correctly said earlier on. I am happy
to assure Mr Shaw that I shall listen very carefully to HEFCE. I have talked to HEFCE officers about this
whole question at some length and I am confident that they will take this remit
extremely seriously and come up with very positive proposals about how we
should deal with these matters. The
list of subjects is quite striking. It
is a wide range of different issues which are of strategic national importance
and it will be very interesting to see what emerges.
Q20 Mr Pollard: Why can you not put a stop on any closures of
chemistry departments here and now and say that they must not do it until the
review has taken place and you get the advice back from HEFCE. Secondly, we are talking about Farsi as a
language, but there are 600,000 Bengalis in this country and 140-odd million
Bangladeshis, yet no provision is made at university level. Can we include that as well?
Mr Clarke: On the second point, I shall certainly ask
HEFCE to consider the comments of Committee members, both in this session and
if they want to write, or you want to write collectively on particular
subjects. There is obviously quite an
issue about what is national priority in terms of studying anything in the
world. On your first point, no, I
cannot, is the short answer. I do not
run the universities and it is correct that I do not run universities so I
cannot say "You will stop".
Q21 Mr Pollard: If it is in the national interest.
Mr Clarke: On the other hand, I am certain that all
universities will look with interest at the remit I have given HEFCE in this
area. They can make their own judgments
in the light of that.
Q22 Chairman: We have had some very interesting information
from the Royal Society of Chemistry. I
am sure you have seen it, but if not would you like to receive the information
we have had?
Mr Clarke: Yes, I should be happy to.
Q23 Chairman: On Exeter in particular.
Mr Clarke: If there is a document going around, I have
not seen it.
Q24 Chairman: We have a document and we shall be pleased to
let you have it.
Mr Clarke: Fine; delighted, but I have not seen it.
Q25 Chairman: Can we now switch modes into secondary
education? Secretary of State, do you
want to say anything to open up, or do you just want to take questions?
Mr Clarke: Go straight to questions.
Q26 Mr Gibb: May I ask you about the five-year
strategy? In it you correctly criticise
this long-standing debate about comprehensive schools versus selective
education. You say that the debate is
still about types of school rather than standards and I do tend to agree with
that. Could you not argue then that
actually your policy is now really all about school types and structure, things
like independent specialist schools, foundation schools, academies? Does that not directly contradict the
foreword and also the 1997 manifesto which said that there had been too much
focus on structure and not enough on standards?
Mr Clarke: You could argue that, but it would not be
true. The fact is that we focus
absolutely on standards at different levels.
If I take the specialist schools as an example, one of my first acts as
Secretary of State was to lift the cap so that all secondary schools could
become specialist schools. I went to
the specialist schools' trust conference last Thursday in Birmingham, a very,
very impressive event by the way, with very large numbers of schools very
motivated, and I said that we now have to shift from looking at individual
schools to systemic change. In the same
way that we have done for sports specialist schools to develop a relationship
for sports right across the whole range, to do the same for languages, arts,
music and so on, so there is a network of collaboration which has been very
positive. I think that is the whole way
we have approached it. I do not accept
that we are focusing on school type rather than on the issue of schools
standards. On the contrary, we are
looking very, very much at how we help schools drive up standards and remove
barriers to them doing so.
Q27 Mr Gibb: Are you going to eliminate mixed ability
teaching then? Again in the 1997
manifesto it talked about increasing the amount of setting and it has increased
marginally, but still 60 per cent of lessons in comprehensives take
place in mixed ability classes. Are you
going to eliminate those to raise standards?
Mr Clarke: I cannot promise to eliminate anything in
that sense. If I were to seek to pass a
law which says that there shall be no mixed ability teaching in schools, you
and others would say that it would not be an appropriate law to pass. You would probably argue, certainly it is
the traditional Conservative position across the House, that actually it should
be for teachers and schools to decide how they organise their schools in the
best possible way. I certainly believe,
in terms of raising standards, that it is for teachers and schools to do that
and it is for me as Secretary of State to provide whatever support I can to
where they go. It is interesting. If you take the setting issue and take your
question of single sex classes, which my colleague the Minister of State raised
at a conference of girls' schools the other day. All I can say is that I think this is an important debate to
have. It should be informed by proper
research, proper evidence, but at the end of the day the decision about how a
school organises itself from that point of view, mixed ability teaching, single
sex classes or whatever, ought to be a matter for the school and the profession
based on that evidence rather than a legal change.
Q28 Mr Gibb: Not necessarily a legal change, but do you
accept that ministers have a duty to engage in the debate on these issues?
Mr Clarke: Completely.
Indeed I should say that we, as a government, have tried to do that in
terms of debate.
Q29 Mr Gibb: If you look at the speech David Milliband
made at that conference, that four-year study by Cambridge University into a
particular co-ed comprehensive, where they did change the configuration of the
classroom and separate out boys and girls for subjects like languages and
maths, they had an increase in the results from 68 per cent of that
school achieving five or more good GCSEs to 81 and 82 per cent. That is a staggering increase in
standards. Does that not reveal first
of all that this should be implemented right across the comprehensive
sector? Does it not also reveal a huge
underperformance, if we can achieve this kind of increase just by that one
measure? Does that not reveal a huge
underperformance in our comprehensive schools in Britain?
Mr Clarke: As an individual I am a strong supporter of
setting. I think it is a right way to
go, but I am not universally a strong supporter of setting. What I mean is that I think there are
different subjects in which these issues arise in different ways. It is not self evident that you should have
setting in all subjects, for example.
There are particular subjects where one can make the case very strongly,
but, again, I do not think as Secretary of State I should say "You must do this
in a particular school". I can stress
my view, as I have just done, and the Minister of State can express his views,
which he did the other day at that conference.
You can express your view. That
is part of developing the debate about how to improve the quality of
education. I very much want to
encourage that and if there were any sense that as a department we were not
encouraging that debate, I should take that as a serious criticism. However, at the end of the day I do not
think we should do more than encourage debate about that and we should say the
profession must make its judgment on that.
Q30 Mr Gibb: Even if the evidence is overwhelming, as it
is in this case, about the configuration of the classroom, boy/girl/boy/girl in
a classroom, even if the evidence is overwhelming that you get a staggering
increase in educational standards by implementing that configuration, you do
not think that national democratically elected politicians have a role or a
duty to ensure that is what happens in our schools.
Mr Clarke: With respect, I think you are confusing
words. Do we have a role? Yes, we certainly do. Do we have a duty? Yes, we certainly do, to make that argument clear. Then you say "to ensure" and I do not think
we can ensure. I do not think I can
come to a school in your constituency and say "You have to organise your
classes in this way with certain pupils going in certain ways". If I were to do that, not only the
profession, but other democratic politicians might say "What's he doing here;
it's down to the profession".
Q31 Mr Gibb: If schools refuse to do it and then that is
the reason for the poor performance in English state schools, do you not think
the public and parents in particular would feel that they had been let down by
national politicians?
Mr Clarke: I know that national politicians take
responsibility for everything in life including the weather. At the end of the day, I think we are trying
to build a balanced society where different people take their own roles, their
own rights and responsibilities within that.
There is a particular responsibility for professionals, in this case for
teachers and it applies in health and other areas as well, to make the right
decisions in that way and it is our job to support them in doing that. If there is a blinkered approach to change,
it is the job of democratically elected politicians to say "Okay, face up to
these issues" and I accept that too. I
do not think we are actually disagreeing very substantially about this, unless
your argument is - and I do not really believe it can be - that it should be
for a minister, a democratically elected politicians or an MP, to say "In this
constituency, this is how you will teach".
You cannot take it that far.
Maybe you are saying that, but I doubt it.
Q32 Mr Gibb: I do think there should be more
involvement. If all of us together in
the House of Commons can identify a key problem which is causing underperformance,
then I think that there is a duty for parliament and government to make those
changes. So I do slightly disagree with
you.
Mr Clarke: I do not say it in any spirit of argument,
but there is a real issue here if that is the case. If it is argued that the democratic parliament should pass a law
about, for example, setting in schools or mixed ability teaching or single sex
classes or whatever, that is a big, big issue and an important role for this
Committee.
Q33 Mr Gibb: It is a big issue.
Mr Clarke: I would have to say, certainly on behalf of
the government, that we would not go down that course.
Q34 Mr Gibb: It does not have to be passing a law. At the moment these things are done
nationally, they are done by the Teacher Training Agency, by education
academics; somebody is determining
these policies nationally. All I am
saying is that perhaps we in parliament should have a little more say in these
issues because the people elect us to run the schools in this country and I
think they are being run by people who are not elected. That is all I am saying. If schools become more independent, with
more foundation schools, do you think that will lessen the role of LEAs when it
becomes universal? Do you think that
will help national politicians to take a more strategic view or hinder it?
Mr Clarke: I think it will help it actually. There is a false antithesis between
independence and collaboration. There
is a lot of evidence that the more independent the institution, the better
collaboration you get. Some disagree
and say independent goes with competition and that is how that goes. I do not actually accept that argument
myself. I think that collaboration, for
example in the specialist schools programme, with the requirement that if you
are to be specialist you are required to collaborate, has been very positive in
lots of different ways. In fact that
idea of independent schools in collaboration is an absolutely central theme of
the five-year plan and is the right direction to follow. The effect of that will be to have more
debate by more authoritative people about the precise issue you are
discussing. I suppose it makes it more
difficult for either a democratically elected politician professionally or a
democratically elected politician locally to say you will teach this in this
way at that school. It is not desirable
that councillor X or Y person, MP, should say "This is how you teach and this
is what you do". We need more
professional self-confidence in these areas.
Q35 Mr Jackson: I want to ask the Secretary of State about
the continuing role for local education authorities. What view does he take of this?
I have a particular concern arising out of Oxfordshire where the
authorities identified a serious problem of relatively poor performance in our
state secondary schools in the county relative to national indicators and also
relative to indicators of comparable authorities. It is also quite clear from the evidence that this does not arise
from any question of the relative proportions going to independent
schools. That has always been an excuse
which has been used in the past. A
serious debate is going on in Oxfordshire and the local authority is playing a
leading role in stimulating that debate and encouraging the secondary schools
to address the problems. Does the
Secretary of State not agree that this shows that there is a very important
continuing role, firstly for local education authorities and secondly for
target setting and the development of performance indicators which actually
enable these points to be measured so that comparisons can be made and judgments
concluded.
Mr Clarke: I very strongly agree and perhaps I might
take the opportunity to commend the work which I know Oxfordshire County
Council is doing to promote this debate.
I see at least three vital areas for the local authorities. The first of these is school improvement and
curriculum support and a whole range of issues of that kind where the local
authorities are particularly well placed to lead, stimulate, encourage
improvement in these areas. The second
is in the development of the 14 to 19 curriculum, where I believe we shall see
more and more collaboration, both between schools and colleges in 14 to 19, but
also with employers. The local
authority has a particularly important role in establishing and encouraging
those relationships. The third is in
developing children's trusts and all the things which follow Every Child
Matters, where the local authority has an absolutely vital role. All of these are important and essential
roles. I reject absolutely those who
say that I am somehow trying to reduce the role of the local authority. The reverse is true and I see very good
local authorities doing precisely what you have prescribed in different areas
to drive standards up. I commend and
support and applaud what they do in those areas. What I do not think is so appropriate is to run and manage the
education resources, the schools, in that particular area. I want a state of affairs where governors
and heads feel confident in their own ability to run their schools and do that
in a proper way. Some people see what
we are saying as a threat to the local authority role in that regard; that has
been a debate. I went to the conference
on education and social services in Newcastle of all local government and I
made this argument very, very strongly indeed.
Local government has a vital central role in those areas I have
mentioned and long should it have that.
If we did not have local government in that role, we should have to
invent it. In fact one of the problems
about what has happened with the development of the Learning and Skills Council,
Connexions and a vast range of other organisations is that you have quangos
which bypass the role of the local authority.
It would be far better if that went through the local authority, but
that requires local authorities to accept that national government has certain
rights and responsibilities in this area and I try to promote this debate more
widely. I gave a number of speeches on
that very subject.
Q36 Paul Holmes: Carrying on this theme, I am not quite clear. In the five-year strategy you are talking
about giving schools much more independence and even allowing one school
governing body to opt out and become independent effectively just on the
strength of the school governing body.
If all the schools are becoming more and more independent, how do you
square that with your oft-repeated urging for local authorities to have a
strategic role? For example, when we
have talked about admissions, you have said that the LEA will make sure that
fair admissions take place. How? They have no power now according to the
report we did in the last year and under the five-year strategy they are going
to have even less power.
Mr Clarke: I do not think it is true that there is less
power. The code of admissions and the
way that operates, a matter you addressed particularly in your report to which
we responded, the issue of how we deal with hard-to-educate children in a wide
variety of different ways, are all matters where the local forum has very real
powers to determine what happens and carry it through. The reason why we talk about foundation
partnerships is that there are many cases, and many heads have talked to me
about this - I do not know how it is in Chesterfield, but in other parts of the
country - where, if a group of five or six secondary heads, for example, and
the schools were able to work together to deal with the education of people
with special educational needs or hard-to-educate situations or to run a pupil
referral unit or to do a deal on other matters as a group of schools with the
money devolved from the local education authority, that would be a strong and
positive thing. I have seen examples
and I can give you examples where that is happening in a positive way. That is a very strong way to go. The more schools themselves possess this
approach, individually and collectively, the more progress you make. The argument was made by Mr Sheerman
yesterday in the debate on the Queen's Speech, that there are barons, school
barons, heads, who somehow want to break out of the whole of the rest of the
system and who need to be reined in by a set of measures of various kinds. That is a legitimate concern, I accept. It is a real issue which needs to be
addressed. Firstly, it is a far lesser
issue than people actually believe.
Secondly, in the five-year plan we are actually giving far greater
ability to intervene. By having the
single conversation, which we have set up, as a conversation between the
alleged baron and the school and the funders, it is quite possible for the
funders to say "If you're going to continue behaving like this you'll get less
resource in the situation because you have to accept overall collaborative
responsibilities". I do not think there
are many barons around in any case, but the proposals we suggest in the five-year
plan actually make such barons have less power than they have now.
Q37 Paul Holmes: On the other hand you are giving schools
direct ring-fenced funding.
Mr Clarke: As we should.
Q38 Paul Holmes: So how are you going to withdraw the funding?
Mr Clarke: They get a funding per pupil which goes to
everybody, but they also get a range of other funding at the moment through the
standards fund and all the rest of it, which is for particular purposes. If you imagine this single conversation,
your school in Chesterfield, looking at the crooked spire, would say they need
to improve their performance in certain subjects, they are actually better in
maths, modern languages or whatever it might be, or they have a group of
students on that estate whom they are not serving properly and they need to be
able to serve them better, or whatever it might be. The local authority and the DfES would put the same question back
the other way: are you dealing with
that properly, are you dealing with the other properly based on the inspection
reports. There is a dialogue and the
funding solution ---
Q39 Paul Holmes: But the successful oversubscribed school in
the leafy suburb which is full and turning people away is not interested in the
money for dealing with deprived children; they are fine without that. So what incentive do they have to
co-operate?
Mr Clarke: I really do not accept that actually. I think there are very few head teachers -
this is a genuine argument between us and in my own party as well - who say
they do not care about the welfare of the education system in our overall
reality. There are some - I have met
them I acknowledge - but they are few and getting even fewer. One of the things which has happened in the
specialist school programme we have had is that we have had more collaboration
and you have the leafy suburb school applying to be a specialist school
required, if it is to be a specialist school, to work with other secondary
schools, with special schools, with primary schools in its locality, actually
beginning to do so, to work together, and collaboration being encouraged in
these ways.
Q40 Paul Holmes: Is it not true that where that co-operation
takes place it is almost entirely between a secondary school and what used to
be called their feeder primary schools?
There is very little between secondary school and competitor secondary
school, which is what they are all becoming in the system now; they are all
competitors.
Mr Clarke: I really do think that is the reverse of the
truth. It may be your experience in
Chesterfield is different to mine. In
Norwich we have a situation where three secondary schools and the local FE
college have made a joint appointment to run jointly the 14 to 19 curriculum
between those schools and you actually have a situation - I personally have
seen it - where the parents are going to talk to a teacher and the teacher
actually says "That school over there has a better course on this than we
do. Maybe you ought to think about
doing that, or doing it in our school" or whatever. I think those kinds of collaborations will become increasingly
common. In fact it is one of the things
I hope we will emphasise in our response to Mike Tomlinson's report on 14
to 19. There will be the odd school
which will say it is going it alone, trust them and so on. That will be absolutely counter the general
trend of what is happening.
Q41 Chairman: May I push you on this? When you said I raised the term "baron" in
my speech yesterday, I regret it. I
meant more busy managers.
Mr Clarke: I may have misunderstood, I am sorry.
Q42 Chairman: I did in a weak moment use that term. More appropriately I should have said a busy
manager of a school, a head, a principal.
I find in my visits to schools, large comprehensive schools, the principal,
the head is absolutely fully committed, 100 per cent of their time,
to running the school. They say to me
that they are too busy to deal with partnerships and a whole network of schools
and have collegiates. It is a lovely
idea but they need someone to do it.
Most of them say they want a really good local education authority to do
that sort of thing. When you said, if
these people do not co-operate, if they are not co-operating with other schools
someone is going to do something nasty to them like not give them enough
funding -
Mr Clarke: As much.
Q43 Chairman: --- as much funding, the only people who can
do that are you in the department. It
is not going to be local education authorities. They do not have the power to do that. It is going to be a direct relationship between you and
individual schools.
Mr Clarke: The key problem at the moment from this point
of view, if you are a school head - and I am sure they say to you what they do
to me - is that they have a whole range of billing streams and initiatives they
have to deal with from a whole range of different bodies. They have the LEA doing it in certain areas,
they have the Learning and Skills Council, they have DfES standard fund money,
they have to bid on a whole set of different criteria and they get up propositions,
whether it is for Excellence in the Cities or for the behaviour strategy or the
school sports, whatever, and they have to find an approach to do that. How do we respond to this? I have to say I plead guilty to this government
having created many of these funding streams.
Why? Because we wanted to
incentivise and encourage particular forms of behaviour. Now is the time to say that actually, having
done that, without reducing the quantum of money, we want to get it into one
dialogue, one approach. Your head in
Huddersfield will talk to Calderdale and to the person from the DfES and to the
LSC in one conversation, saying this is what they want to do, that is what they
want to do. We have been trialling this
as an approach and people are very positive about it. It has a large number of benefits and one of the parts of that
conversation will be how well you are working with other schools or colleges in
your particular locality and what you need.
If the head then says in that conversation that they would love to but
they cannot run the place, it is just all too much, they do not have time to
talk to the school down the road or wherever it might be, then that collaboration
will say it is terrible and they have to find a way of making that work better
in whatever way. In fact - again I
cannot speak for Huddersfield because I do not know -a lot of dialogue is taking
place between heads. I should say it is
at an unparallel level. I take the
point about the feeder primaries; that is true. I do think it is also between secondary schools and secondary
schools and secondary schools and local colleges. I admit that I am talking anecdotally rather than systemically,
but I could provide a large number of anecdotes of where those co-operations
are happening.
Q44 Chairman: Does the Labour Party and the Labour
Government not traditionally believe in locally elected democratic politicians
having some say in what happens in these things?
Mr Clarke: That is why the council has a say. Now we are going back to the conversation
with Mr Jackson. My offer to local
government is: work with me in a
partnership and we will see whether we can get more money and more
responsibilities going through the democratically elected local authority
rather than having our various bypassing structures which exist at the
moment. It is possible to do that. The compacts we have with local government
give many more possibilities in this.
Q45 Chairman: You seem to have a lot of work to do to
persuade people like the Local Government Association.
Mr Clarke: Not as much as you might think. I have a regular meeting with the Local
Government Association on an all-party basis and I went to the Local Government
Association conference in Newcastle to discuss this. There is a lot of opinion in local government, of all parties by
the way, which is very sympathetic to the type of approach I have just
described. It is true to say that there
is some opinion - you are quite right - which says "Keep off our lawn. We run our schools. Just give us the dosh and that is it". One has to make a judgment as to whether
that is an acceptable state of affairs.
I could not put my hand on my heart and say that every democratically
elected authority in Britain has done an absolutely stunning job in running the
schools in its particular patch. I
could say that I completely agree with the question as you phrased it, which is
that it is vital there is an important role in running the local education system
for the democratically elected local authority and for councillors. I agree with that completely. The question is: what is that role and how does it relate to whatever national
imperatives there are as well?
Q46 Chairman: You seemed to be most interested, or perhaps
a little defensive, yesterday in the Queen's Speech debate.
Mr Clarke: Defensive?
Q47 Chairman: At the time of the speech of Stephen Dorrell,
when he suggested that the real relationships between the new foundation
schools and indeed the academies were basically Conservative policies which you
had brushed up and shined up a bit; they were really the same policies. This is a pretty dramatic step, both in
terms of the number of academies you want to roll up, but also to sticking on
foundation schools. You are introducing
a piece of legislation in this Queen's Speech which means with one meeting a
school can decide they are going to become a foundation school. They will own the property, they will own
the whole, I think I said, caboodle.
Perhaps I shall regret that like the "barons". Basically you are going to take them into the same sort of status
as post-16 institutions, are you not?
Mr Clarke: Firstly, I thought Stephen Dorrell made a
very good speech yesterday.
Q48 Chairman: He seemed to irritate you.
Mr Clarke: He did not irritate me at all. I thought he created more questions for the
Conservative Party than he did for the government; let me simply put it like
that. He made an intelligent speech on
this matter which, with the exception of Mr Gibb, was unusual from the
Conservative benches yesterday. It was
an intelligent speech and he was trying to make the analysis in a variety of
different ways both on education and health.
As I said in the speech, the specialist schools are a lineal descendant
of one or two of the things, the CTCs and so on, which the last Conservative
Government did and we have tried to develop that approach. The whole point about the grant-maintained
approach was that it was designed as something which was to be elitist in
concept. It was designed for some
schools but not others. It is like the
approach to grammar schools, for example.
Our whole approach on this is universal in style: universally trying to go to specialist
schools, universally encouraging people if they wish to do so to go down the
foundation route. The issue which
really needs to be addressed is that if you look at the resources in a
particular school, whether it is a landed property or whatever else it might
be, why should a school not have that and be able to say how they should use it
in the best way. Is it the case that it
is going to be taken away from the public interest? It is not. The property,
for example, cannot be disposed of without first going back to the LEA, if that
was the route you went down. Getting
the decisions to use this resource for improving the education for the children
of that particular school must be the right way to go.
Q49 Chairman: You are going to have some time to persuade
even your colleagues in the Labour Party about that. One of the things we face in education all the time is the
dynamic of demographics, where people live, where people go to school, it is a
changing pattern all the time, dramatically in some of our cities. Some cities grow, move to the west from the
east and so on. If you petrify the
system so that every school owns what it stands on, where are you ever going to
get the ability of anyone to say the pattern of schooling is changing, we have
to close some schools, perhaps sell some for redevelopment, even, if you accept
academies, build an academy here? Where
are you ever going to get that strategic ability to do it with all the barons
sitting there saying it is their plot of land and you cannot do it. You have not been very successful with FE,
have you? They are on their own.
Mr Clarke: I shall make an FE point separately, if I
may. The point you just made is a
genuine and correct point. It is the
most serious criticism of how we are envisaging this. There are demographic changes.
We get new developments; we get people leaving certain areas and so
on. It is absolutely right that there
needs to be a strategic impact on that which is why I am going back to the
answer I gave Mr Jackson earlier on. The
LEA does have that strategic responsibility to carry it through. Is it the case that by having more
foundation schools, for example, the LEA is not able to exercise that
role? I do not accept that at all. I simply do not think it is the case. The most powerful measure of demographic
change is pupil numbers. If there are
no pupils in that particular area, then the situation will be that the school
cannot sustain itself in that position in the model you are describing. That will be under any system: what we have now, what we have in the
future. It will still continue to be
the case. It is pupil numbers which are
the key element in the whole process.
As far as further education is concerned, that is a much wider and more
substantive debate. Further education
through our Success for All programme is facing up better than some people
acknowledge to the imperatives of the moment in these questions. There still remain FE colleges which are not
facing up to this in the way that they need to. There is a lot of debate in FE about how to take that forward and
deal with it in that way.
Chairman: Can I hold it there? I was really talking about the independence
of that sector compared with how foundation schools will develop. We will hold that there.
Q50 Helen Jones: Secretary of State, you said in your answer
earlier to Nick Gibb that what we do in education should be based on research
and we all agree with that in the Committee.
What research did the government do to show that putting money into
academies would produce better educational outcomes than putting that money
into redeveloping existing schools?
Mr Clarke: Academies are in many cases redeveloping
existing schools. They are on that
site, they are dealing with a school which has historically been very
unsuccessful. The whole point about the
academies programme is to be a tremendous booster in an area where educational
attainment has been very low. They are
not going into the leafy suburbs to give the examples, they are going into
inner city areas to try to take that forward.
The components of the academy, namely the structure of the school
governors, the way in which the new capital money is there, the teaching
methods which are used, all of those things have been the subject of various
central research. If you are saying,
which is the case, that because we only have a very small number of academies
at this moment, by definition you cannot have had a research programme to look
at that relatively small number of academies before moving forward, that is
true. On the other hand I would say
that a proper scientific assessment of the impact of academies could not
meaningfully take place for two or three years at least, probably six or seven
years of a school cohort going through, to assess what happened. If I am asked to say we should just stop
everything and come back to it in seven or eight years' time, you just cannot
operate in that way. Where you are
right is that it is an obligation on me to look at the components of an academy
and ask whether there is evidence of the particular elements, take for example
brand new buildings, improved quality of education. I would say that does stack up, but I would not accept an
argument which simply says you do nothing until six or seven years down the
line from where we are.
Q51 Helen Jones: Can we look at those components? Clearly one of those components which is
very unusual in the education system is the private sponsor arrangement whereby
for putting a small percentage of the cost of the academy the sponsor gains an
extraordinary amount of influence. What
is the educational benefit of that?
Mr Clarke: If you go through most of the academies so
far, you will see a significant education improvement, even by comparison with
the predecessor school, in each of those areas. The education benefit is the engagement of the sponsor who is
really trying to take it forward. There
are different types of engagement. Some
of the sponsors are networks of schools, some are individuals, there are
different people operating in different ways.
If you talk to the sponsors, which I have done a lot, their motivation
is to improve educational performance.
That is why they are involved in the whole process.
Q52 Helen Jones: I am sure that is the motivation. What we are trying to establish is whether
it works. Is there any research
evidence to show that it is the engagement of the sponsor which produces an
improvement in outcome rather than other things such as more money going into
the school, more teachers and so on?
Mr Clarke: I am certain that it is the case that it is
not simply resources. Let us just remember
in the case of the academies that there are not extra revenue resources
compared with comparative schools locally.
The extra resource has been capital in most cases and, as you correctly
say, the sponsors' money which has been capital money is a relatively small
proportion of the total of capital which has gone in. On the revenue basis, there is no significant difference between
the revenues for an academy and for other schools in the locality. The issues of more teachers and so on are
not tested in that academy context.
There is evidence, by the way, that more revenue money does tend, for
example in Excellence in the Cities, to deliver better results. I would argue - and this goes back to
research conducted literally decades ago - that it is the leadership ethos
structure of the school which determines its results. There was a tremendous report a long time ago, I cannot remember
its exact details, which actually said that the key thing was the ethos
leadership drive in the school. It did
not matter what it was, but there had to be consistency and coherence over
behaviour, discipline, everything else right through the whole approach. I think the academies are working to that
end and the involvement of the external sponsor has helped that to happen in
quite significant ways.
Q53 Helen Jones: You mentioned leadership and the ethos of a
school. Bearing in mind that there is a
great deal of public money going into schools, are there any sponsors which the
DfES would find unacceptable? Should
sponsors have an influence on the teaching, to the extent, for instance, that
they do in Emmanuel and King's, where we are allowing creationism to be taught
in our schools. Is that acceptable in
terms of public policy?
Mr Clarke: That is not correct either. Perhaps I could just do a note for the
Committee on the question of those particular schools as there is a great deal
of confusion about this. Firstly, the
national curriculum is taught in all schools; they teach the national
curriculum in those schools and that is how it operates in science as in other
areas. There is no sense in which
children in those schools are somehow brainwashed to believe that creationism
is the right way. By the way I am
totally against any concept of creationism.
I think it is a crazy way of looking at things. The idea that schools are operating in that
way is completely wrong. I do not have
it with me, but if you would permit me I could drop you a short note on this
particular aspect. It is a widespread
concern, but it is not well founded. It
is not the case that in those schools that is what is happening. There are fears about it which have been
whipped up in a variety of different areas, for example in Doncaster when an
academy was being considered in that area.
I do not think it is substantial.
What is impressive about the schools has been their improved educational
performance.
Q54 Helen Jones: Can we look at that improved educational
performance? There is evidence, is
there not, that while some academies have improved their performance by serving
very deprived communities well, that is not true of all of them. Is it not the case for instance that King's
expelled 37 children in its first year, far more than all the other schools in
that town and that the proportion of children in that school claiming free
school meals has fallen substantially?
Would you agree that it is easy for a school to improve its performance
if it gets rid of any children who are difficult to teach? Is that really what we want?
Mr Clarke: Again I need to write to the Committee about
this. My understanding is - and I do
not have the figures in front of me - that more pupils were excluded by the
prior school from that site than by the current school on that site. I would need to check this out because I do
not want to mislead the Committee and that is why I am asking whether I might
write a note on this question. I do not
think it is the case that they have, as it were, excluded their way to success
by comparison with previous schools in the area. Secondly, I was not aware, but I will check it in the light of
what you have said to me, about the proportion of children with free school
meals going down in that particular area.
Just look at the improvement in educational performance for children getting
good GCSEs. It has gone up absolutely
massively at that school and that is why parents want to go to the school and
take it forward. Do we not care about
that? Do we not put that in the balance
in this discussion at all?
Q55 Helen Jones: Yes, we do care about that, but the point I
was trying to make to you is that there are various ways of improving
educational performance. What we would
want to be assured of as a Committee is that these schools are improving the
educational performance of children who are in very deprived areas ---
Mr Clarke: Of course.
Q56 Helen Jones: --- and not simply sending their problems
elsewhere in order to do that. Would
you agree that if they were doing that, that is not what we are trying to
achieve.
Mr Clarke: I do agree and the reason why academies are
in a sense a diversion from the whole debate is that it is a very small number
of schools out of all the secondary schools in Britain. I can point to specialist schools, also
controversial I know, and say that I think they have raised standards very
substantially where they have been. In
many cases academies are taking on a qualitatively different level of problem
because they are often operating in communities where there has just been an
absolutely endemic level of low achievement and low participation. The problems they are taking on are very
substantial. I should say there are
academies which are not succeeding initially in overcoming those problems. There is also a significant number, far
more, of academies which are succeeding in overcoming those problems. You are right and I accept the challenge you
set down for me correctly. It is
precisely: are the academies in the
areas where they are of very low educational attainment succeeding in improving
educational attainment in that locality and thus hopefully intervening to end a
cycle of despair which has been the situation in many of those areas. That is the question to put. As you imply with your question, we will not
know the answer to that for some considerable period of time and it will be a
matter which is constantly scrutinised, and rightly so, from that point of
view. What we can say initially is that
there have been some initial very, very positive steps in the academies.
Q57 Helen Jones: If we do not know the answer to that - and I
accept your point that it takes some time to know the answers to these
questions properly - how then did the government decide how many further
academies it would need? Where did
these figures come from of 60 in London and 200 overall?
Mr Clarke: We analysed both the geographical areas and
the schools where there were the lowest levels of performance. I do not have the figures in front of me but
my recollection is that there are 400 secondary schools in the country which
are lower than the level which we regard as appropriate. We considered how we could get a boost into
those areas. We set a target, which
looked as well at the overall financial position capital programme that we had,
to see what a reasonable balance to achieve was. That is why we set the target of 200 by 2010. In the case of London, it was a very
scientifically based approach; more so
than elsewhere in the country. As a
result of the London challenge, we have very, very careful co-operation with
the 32 London boroughs about which schools in which particular localities need
this kind of investment. In fact
already I am very, very encouraged.
There are people who are saying they will send their child to the local
school rather than go private in ways which were happening before. We are seeing people who had really given up
on some of the educational opportunities for their children feeling there were
real possibilities. Round London there
is a large number of children from all social backgrounds who have been sent
away from London to go to schools around the London ring and who are now coming
back towards schools in their particular localities. That is a very, very positive aspect and that is how we got the
60 figure for London as such.
Q58 Helen Jones: It is a bit of a leap in the dark though, is
it not? We still do not have the
research to show whether putting money into the academies is better than
putting money into other schools. We
are rolling out this programme without the research to justify it.
Mr Clarke: When we are talking about putting money in,
academies get no extra revenue money at all compared with any other school in a
particular locality.
Q59 Helen Jones: Indeed; but we are using money to set up a
different type of school.
Mr Clarke: On the capital side more money is going in
and it is self-evident almost that to have a brand new school with brand new
facilities and all the rest of it lifts possibilities in those areas compared
with the case before. It is only a
small part of the overall Building Schools for the Future programme which goes
right through the whole area. The
academies programme has attracted tremendous controversy and interest in what
has happened. Let me be very
explicit. I think that the fact that a
number of sponsors, donors, whatever you call them, are ready to commit to
educational improvement for some of our poorest communities is a good thing not
a bad thing and I welcome it. I do not
say "Go away, you are a millionaire, we are not interested in you doing
this". I think getting their engagement
is positive and it is important. For
Socialists and those of us on the Committee who describe ourselves in this way,
it ought to be something we applaud:
the commitment of people right across society to the education of people
in the most deprived communities in the country.
Q60 Helen Jones: I think we all would. It is the structures which we are concerned
about which do it. With all these
academies coming on stream, is it possible to object to an academy being set
up? What is the position, if somebody
wants to object to the positioning of the academy? You may have, for instance, a good school nearby which is
performing very well and it could be that the effect of setting up a new
academy would have a detrimental effect on an existing school. It is not possible at the moment, is it, to
put that into the equation. People say
they do not object per se, they
object to it being in this particular place.
Mr Clarke: On the contrary, it is the case that there is
a very substantial discussion of precisely that type. I can cite London boroughs where the borough has been having
exactly that discussion with the academies about their location because of the
location of other schools and how it operates and not agreeing to a proposal to
be on a particular site for exactly the reason you have said. That is part and parcel of the discussion
that takes place. It is not always an
easy discussion obviously, but that is part and parcel of the discussion which
takes place. It is not that it cannot
be discussed, but it is actively being discussed in many places.
Q61 Valerie Davey: Just to take this a little further, and I
appreciate all you are saying about the London boroughs and the collaboration
you have had and the work that is going on, could you say that generally about
LEAs across the country, that they have been consulted about the next 200
academies, that that was part of their ongoing dialogue with the department for
the raising of standards in their particular LEA?
Mr Clarke: In general I would answer that question yes,
but there is a significant number of specifics where the LEA has not wanted to
go down this path at all. In general I
would answer the question yes, but I could name LEAs who have not wanted to go
down that course in restructuring their own education.
Q62 Valerie Davey: The parent who is looking at their particular
child, wanting a place in one of the new academies but realising that everyone
does not get in, has a knock-on effect on other schools. While I can see your ideal that all these
schools are going to be excellent, the process of getting there needs very
careful local management and it is this which many of us feel is vulnerable in
the thrust which you are making to bring in academies and then to give other
schools where the leadership is strong and things are going well the ability to
opt out as well, which is clearly what a foundation school does, leaving some
very vulnerable schools and some very vulnerable children in that process.
Mr Clarke: This is very interesting discussion and a
very important issue. The question you
raise is how, in a particular location, that is Bristol or Norwich, is there a
proper discussion about the future development of provision for all children in
that community. The argument which is
made, which is a true argument, is that the best people to conduct that
discussion are in the local authority, both for democratic reasons, but also
because they are nearest to it on the ground.
Rather than some officials from my department or anybody else, it should
be the local authority which plays that role and carries it through. I agree with that and I positively think
that is important. Then I come to a
point where I say, as the local authority goes about the process of doing that,
it needs to accept that there will be scrutiny of how well it does. I can point to a number of local authorities
around the country where one can say how well really have they have done this
over time. I can point to others and
say they have done an absolutely excellent job in addressing these issues very
directly and positively. That is a very
dynamic and a very tense relationship into which we in the national government
have then chucked a series of very important factors. In the Building Schools for the Future programme, where we talk
about an entirely systemic chain of capital investment in schools, the devolved
capital as part of that entire capital is working in different ways. At the academies, the single conversation
approach that we are describing, the efforts to promote collaboration with the
specialist schools and the foundation partnerships we develop, this is a
challenging set of issues for Bristol or Norwich or wherever it may happen to
be in these circumstances. I cannot
disagree at all with the principle you adduce that the local authority should
have a key role in that process, but I do say that there are serious questions
with some local authorities about how effectively they carry out that approach
and the way in which they operate. One
of my responsibilities is to try to promote local authorities doing that job
well. I think of some of the
initiatives I have described as going down that course rather than the
opposite.
Q63 Valerie Davey: Could we look briefly at the sixth form
developments? Those schools which are
now saying yes, we would like our own sixth form. On the criteria of them being relatively successful, getting a
good number of good five GCSEs, in all those criteria that is fine, but for the
overall picture, the wider picture perhaps, who is going to determine whether
that happened in that individual school or whether in fact the LSC, which is
now responsible for the capital programme and the department, does not come in
and say "Hold on, who is finally going to determine that sixth form provision"?
Mr Clarke: It will happen through the star process which
the LSC is going through. I was
surprised by this and probably the Committee were not, but if you go through
and analyse all the local authorities and local education authorities in the
country by the proportion of their schools which have sixth forms, which is
quite an interesting little exercise, you discover that there is a whole chunk
of LEAs where zero schools have sixth forms and a whole chunk of LEAs where
100 per cent of the schools have sixth forms and there is actually,
if you go nought, 20, 40, 60, 80 to 100, a very flat distribution. It is very striking how very, very different
this is. That is why we put a further
criterion into these criteria which have to be looked at of creating a more
diverse offer in the situation. If
there were a situation where there were already sixth forms throughout the
whole of the local authority, then another school getting a sixth form would be
not likely to succeed because all the other schools had sixth forms, if you see
what I mean. If on the other hand,
there were zero, then it would be more likely to succeed as well, as you
rightly say, with all the criteria about education performance and so on which
are in that as well. The interesting
question, and it is certainly a question for local authorities and for the LSC
as they conduct the discussion about how the 14 to 19 provision operates,
including the sixth forms, is how well they do it. One of my biggest nervousnesses is that it somehow can be done in
a ham-handed type of way, which does not enable the right solution to emerge
and that has also been the case with LEAs by the way right through the
range. I think it is a very appropriate
question to ask how this will evolve. I
am saying that in areas where there are no sixth forms at all, we are keen to
encourage sixth form provision.
Q64 Paul Holmes: The government says that it believes in
evidence-based policy making and we have said, in several of the reports we
have done on secondary schools for example, that it would be quite nice to see
some evidence of that. The city
academies are quite a good example which you touched on earlier. You say that we have a small number of academies
which are in their infancy, so we cannot hang around to evaluate how or why
they are successful before we have this massive expansion. However, what was the evidence which made
you introduce the academies in the first place? What research was it based upon that showed that setting up the
academies and handing them over effectively to be run by a private controller
would be a good way to go?
Mr Clarke: The particular decision to create the first
academies was actually before my time as a matter of fact, but as I understand
it the motivation was the different aspects of significant capital investment,
relative independence in terms of determining how they run the school and how
they operate, the push of a private sponsor getting involved and really driving
it forward and the view that that might make a difference. In terms of evidence, by definition any new
initiative - and it was a new initiative - cannot be based on evidence of how
that initiative itself works, which is why we have the review proposals all the
way through to review how a particular initiative goes. What it can be based on is evidence about a
number of factors which we then try to draw together into a particular
programme. I do not know the detailed
research evidence, but in each of the areas, there is evidence. I will take the new building example, as it
is the most dramatic one. There is
evidence that a brand new building does actually improve educational
performance and that was before the academy programme. There is evidence that having ethos and
leadership in a school improves educational performance in the school. The question was and the reason why I
support the academies' programme so strongly is that in some parts of the
country there is tremendous evidence of people fleeing from a particular
locality because they thought the schools in that locality simply would not
deliver for them. That had to be
contested, or so it seemed to me.
Q65 Paul Holmes: I am still not clear what the evidence is
which led you to decide to experiment first of all with about ten and then 200
academies and put an average of £25 million of taxpayers' money to set up
a brand new state-of-the-art school and you hand it over effectively to a
private owner. That private owner can
pursue some of their own particular philosophical interests using our children
as guinea pigs. For example, we were
talking about the creationist teaching in some of these academies. I was a history teacher and when I was
teaching about the Spanish Armada I used to teach it as an historical curiosity
---
Mr Clarke: On that evidence, the history of the Liberal
Democrats as well.
Q66 Paul Holmes: --- that the Elizabethans believed that they
were saved by God from the Spanish Armada or in the First World War that the
British and the German armies marched into battle against each other believing
God was on their side. It horrifies me
to read that history in some of these Emmanuel colleges is being taught from
the point of view that we won World War Two because God was on our side. Why hand over to a Christian fundamentalist
car salesman control of essentially a taxpayer funded school?
Mr Clarke: As I said earlier, I should like to write a
memorandum to you about these particular schools, because there are several
really quite false pictures which are being painted, including what is being
described here. The best thing for me
to do is to set out clearly what the facts are for the Committee to judge and
take the discussion forward.
Q67 Chairman: It would be interesting, if they were in
London for example, that a number of the academies were not sponsored and the
government put the money in and in a relatively short period of time you could
have a balance to judge how much importance the sponsorship brought to the
proposal. You would be able to compare
sponsored with non-sponsored.
Mr Clarke: Can we get the scale of this right? You correctly described the average capital
spend on a particular new academy as £25 million or so. The capital programme next year is £5.5 billion
for schools throughout the country.
Twenty five million pounds is a lot of money, but in the great scale of
what we are really trying to achieve, it is not so enormous in what we are
trying to do. The £2 million, as,
by the way, with the specialist schools - and I gather the Liberal Democrats
are going to abolish all specialist schools, that was part of the Liberal
Democratic conference - the sponsorship which went in there was up to £50,000. It is not the money which is so significant
as the commitment and engagement of the people and how it goes. One can make the suggestion that people do
this because they are trying to get pupils as guinea pigs or whatever, but I
absolutely do not accept the picture which is being described. I could go to academy, to academy, to
academy and show you that is absolutely not the case. It is not the motivation of the sponsors, it is not the practice
of the sponsors, it is not the way schools operate and that is the fact of it.
Q68 Paul Holmes: Carrying on with the theme of evidence-based
policy making, just looking at this comparison between why specialist schools
work, why and how they do and why academies work, the government said in
response to our report on diversity of provision that there had not really been
any research into where specialist schools exist and what their impact was on
neighbouring schools. I would suggest
the same is certainly true of academies, which are in their infancy. As I said, I was a teacher and if you
recruited any dynamic state head and told him you would build him a brand new
state-of-the-art school for £25 million, give him total control over
appointing staff, total control over admissions and let him expel as many kids as
he likes and dump them on the neighbouring schools with spare places, he would
create a successful school; there is no secret about it. Take the schools which are successful
specialist schools. We had Sir Cyril
Taylor a couple of years ago giving evidence to us about why specialist
schools, and the CTs before them, were successful. We asked him why they were successful and he said "I don't know
they just are". This is the man who has
been overseeing the programme for donkey's years now: "I don't know they just are". There is no secret to it. If you look at the schools which are at the
top off the league tables, they take far fewer children than national, local
averages who qualify for free school meals and have special educational
needs. Anybody can make a successful
school by getting rid of the kids who have problems educationally.
Mr Clarke: I think this is very, very interesting. Firstly, on the exclusions point, I do not
think the facts are as described in the Middlesborough case. Moreover, the steps which I have announced
and which will be carried through which say every school, including academies,
has to play its full part in working together, dealing with everybody who is
excluded in a particular community, on a fair basis, so you do not get some
schools taking an over large proportion and other schools taking very few ... I
think that is the right policy and collaboration will enable this to happen this
way and including academies. The idea
that people make academies succeed or specialist schools succeed just by saying
"Okay, come in and let's get rid of X number of pupils and that solves it" is
simply wrong. It is not based on what
actually happens in any respect whatsoever.
In terms of the deeper point about specialist schools, I think there can
be no doubt that the specialist schools as a whole have improved their own
performance as a group. There is also
no doubt that that will extend right across the system as they go forward. I also think there is no doubt that the
specialist schools have played a systemic role in improving the quality of
education, both in other secondary schools but also in primary schools in their
locality in the way they have operated.
These are very, very positive things and the position which says "Let's
not do anything. Let's abolish the
specialist schools" is absolutely blind in this situation. There are things which are happening which
are improving the quality of education and that is good. There are people who say they do not want
any change, which I deplore. What makes
me more angry than any other thing in my whole life in education - and I have
heard it said - is people who say you cannot do anything with these kids, there
is no hope, that you are somehow branded on your forehead with your free school
meal qualification or whatever which says "That's it. Forget it". I cannot tell
you how angry that makes me because it is so fundamentally untrue. I simply do not accept the kind of leafy
suburbs version of educational attainment, of what goes on.
Q69 Paul Holmes: I think that is what is called setting up a
straw man to knock it down. I do not
know any political party, certainly not mine, or any teachers' union which says
"Just leave everything as it is, we don't need to improve". That is a false story.
Mr Clarke: There are people who say that it is only
money which counts.
Q70 Paul Holmes: One final point, which is anecdotal but I
could take you there. A school I know
very well because in a former incarnation I attended that school in Sheffield
as a pupil, was a failing school, it was going to close down, it had a new
head, it became a specialist school, it got the extra money and status and so
forth and is now doing quite well, given that it serves a very deprived
area. I talked to the head and asked
why they were now doing well, why they now had full rolls in years seven and
eight, where these kids were coming from.
He said "It's quite simple. I'm
now getting the aspirational parents in the area who were leaving my school, so
that school is suffering and that school is suffering". Back to your response to our report on
diversity of provision where you said there was no real evidence on the effect
of specialist schools on their neighbours and certainly none on the effect of
academies on their neighbours. If we
are just going to create successful schools at the expense of the others in the
area which do not get particular status, the extra money or whatever, then all
we are doing is passing the problem on to somebody else.
Mr Clarke: The pool of "aspirational parents" is not
fixed. It is not the case that you have
a chunk of aspirational parents who switch around. There are large numbers of parents, certainly in my constituency
and I dare say in yours too, who actually want to aspire but feel there is no
real chance in some kind of way and who want to get it right. Our whole thing is how to change those pools
of aspirational parents and get more being aspirational, more children being
aspirational and I think that ---
Q71 Paul Holmes: How to improve every school and not just a
selected minority.
Mr Clarke: Of course; precisely.
Q72 Mr Jackson: This is an argument which is going on among
the Left here, but I am interested in the logic of this knock-on argument. Basically the argument is that you cannot
have academies or foundation schools because this might be to the detriment of
the other schools. The proposition is
that you have school A which is a bad performing school. This obviously benefits schools B, C, D and
E because the pupils go to those schools, so you cannot improve school A by
making them an academy or a foundation school.
Is the logic not then that you should give schools B, C, D and E a veto
on the appointment of the head of school A because there might be a new dynamic
here, you might make that school better?
Mr Clarke: Some would say that is how some of the local
authority relationships actually work in relation to some appointments and some
processes. Getting the schools more
able to make their own decisions is an important thing. There used to be a part of the country where
the first check for a head to be appointed did not have a Labour Party card. It was absolutely outrageous. It was decades ago, but that was what
happened. Just to clarify though, I
think you will find it is the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives who are
fighting for votes in your seat, so it is not an intra-Left discussion.
Q73 Mr Gibb: Just to say that I have looked at Hansard and
you did say "barons" and also "baronesses".
We did seem to spend quite a lot of time talking about structure,
despite the fact that we are not supposed to be talking about structure.
Mr Clarke: You are asking the questions not me.
Q74 Mr Gibb: May I just ask you about PISA? Why did we not get the data in on PISA
2003? Why are English schools going to
be excluded from the OECD PISA 2003 study?
Mr Clarke: They are going to be excluded for the reasons
we set out when we explained what the situation was. The statistical survey was not carried through correctly in terms
of the number of answers they had and the people conducting the PISA study had
a set of rules and regulations about what was acceptable and what was not
acceptable from that point of view which we unfortunately did not meet. Perhaps I might take the opportunity to
express publicly what we said at the time:
my very deep regret that this is the case. We have obviously analysed carefully what has happened and we hope
we have set in motion a process which means it cannot happen again, but it did
happen. The conclusion is as you
correctly describe.
Q75 Mr Gibb: Is it the case that the reason why they did
not submit the figures was because we only got 64 per cent of the
schools which were selected in the sample agreeing to go ahead with the study
and that is below the threshold required by OECD?
Mr Clarke: That is the essential reason: the size of the sample was not big enough
from their point of view.
Q76 Mr Gibb: Was the size of the sample in the 2000 PISA
not even lower, 61 per cent, yet we did agree for that to go ahead?
Mr Clarke: It is not a question of our agreement. It is up to the people conducting the PISA
study. They were very clear that our
statistical submission was not sufficient for us to be included properly in the
tables. That is obviously a matter of
regret for us.
Q77 Mr Gibb: Are they not subject to pressure?
Mr Clarke: Subject to pressure?
Q78 Mr Gibb: If you can put pressure on them to accept
them, like the United States did with a response rate, I understand, of only
56 per cent. They put pressure on
OECD to accept those figures and apparently we did not put pressure on them to
accept our figure of 64 per cent.
I assume, when we had only 61 per cent for the 2000 PISA study,
we had to put pressure on them then to accept our figures. Why did we not put pressure on them this
time to accept our figures?
Mr Clarke: I do not entirely accept your picture of the
way the OECD gets to this. There is a
significant range of professional exchanges between officials in my department
and OECD about all these surveys, which goes on all the time, but there has
never been a question of pressure, certainly from ministers, in this whole
approach. I think it is a matter of
them deciding how it should be and how it should be carried through. I do regret it. I think it is bad and it is a failure on my part and my
department's fault that we have not fulfilled the data in the way that we
should have done. I do not think that
trying to get the OECD to bend their rules is necessarily the right way to
proceed.
Q79 Mr Gibb: In that case we should exclude the US results
as well.
Mr Clarke: That is a question for OECD not a question
for us. I do not know the answer.
Q80 Mr Gibb: We shall see the results anyway on the
internet. We shall be able to have a
look at them.
Mr Clarke: Yes.
Q81 Mr Gibb: Are they good results?
Mr Clarke: It would be wrong for me to pre-state what is
going to be published. I cannot
remember when they are going to be published. I think at the end of the year; maybe the beginning of next
year. They will be available and you
will be able to make a judgment on them.
Q82 Mr Gibb: You do not know whether they are good or bad.
Mr Clarke: I do not have the data in front of me; no, I
do not.
Q83 Mr Gibb: Okay.
We can judge them when they come out.
The suspicion is that this particular PISA is about maths results and a
lot of the results are not good and the reason why the government, or whoever
it is in the department, ONS or DfES, did not press for these figures to be
included was that they were not good, that if they had been included we would
have been quite low down in the table, as we are low down in the table in the
TIMSS study.
Mr Clarke: With respect, you have the wrong end of the
stick. As you correctly said earlier,
the data will be published and so everybody will be able to make their
assessment and judgment on that basis.
It is the OECD which decides what the statistical criteria are for what
goes in and what goes out. I have been
of the view the whole time on all surveys that it is not for me to press the
Office of National Statistics or the OECD or whatever to bend their rules in
some particular regard. I very much
regret what the situation is, but if the allegation is that we somehow were
aware of a poor result and therefore tried to pressurise or not to pressurise
the OECD to publish the data in that way, I reject it entirely. We will publish the data we have, but it
does not fit the formula which the OECD has for the reasons you have correctly
identified.
Q84 Mr Gibb: Neither did we fulfil it in 2000 when it was
only 61 per cent response rate, yet those figures were included in
the OECD results because, perhaps, they happened to be good.
Mr Clarke: Conspiracy theorists abound, not least in the
world of educational statistics, but I am not one of them.
Q85 Chairman: Although it is a failing and you have
admitted it is a failing, but I do not suppose anybody is going to resign as
ever.
Mr Clarke: That is the cynicism of
parliamentarians. Yes, I have admitted
it is a failure, but as I said to you before, when you asked me to resign on
various different occasions ---
Q86 Chairman: I have never asked you to resign.
Mr Clarke: --- I firstly seek to be judged across a wide
range of performance indicators in a number of areas and I hope there will be a
general election soon.
Q87 Chairman: May I put it on the record that I cannot
remember asking you to resign? I just
sometimes cynically want someone to be demoted in the department or moved away
because of their failure to deliver.
Mr Clarke: My memory may be at fault, but it is not a
serious point. I recall being asked
whether I would resign if we did not fulfil a certain performance indicator in
a certain area - I cannot remember which it was.
Q88 Chairman: That is very different.
Mr Clarke: I gave an answer saying I would seek to be
judged right across the range of my responsibilities.
Q89 Mr Jackson: These international comparator studies are
really of great importance because they are a kind of way of breaking into the
secret garden and it is terribly important that they should be carried
out. I wonder whether the Secretary of
State could just complete this discussion by telling us what steps he is going
to take to ensure that we are in a position to meet these OECD criteria for
full participation in all these exercises in the future?
Mr Clarke: I have asked for a detailed submission from
my officials to answer precisely that question. I believe that I will be able to satisfy the Committee that we
will be able to meet those properly in the future in the way you indicate. If you want me at some point as a Committee
to produce data for you on how we are approaching these matters, I should be
happy to do so. In principle I completely
accept the point you make that these international comparisons are a very
important vehicle for change. I had a
meeting with the ministers of education in the German Länder in this country
the other day and the German debate has been utterly transformed by the PISA
figures and them asking serious questions about what they are doing and how
they are doing it. I accept therefore
the importance that you indicate and I am taking steps to ensure we do not fail
again.
Chairman: I am afraid we must move on. We want to look at choice and particularly
admissions arrangements, on which we spent a lot of time.
Q90 Paul Holmes: In our report on admissions we said - and I
paraphrase slightly - that admissions were in a bit of a confused mess and that
because most of it was down to voluntary ways of operating there was no way of
ensuring that all schools played their fair role in the admissions policy, for
example giving looked-after children priority in admissions. That was an aspiration but there was no way of
making sure that all schools played their part in that; and the same would apply to children who
were ESN, to children with free school meals, etcetera. In your response to the Committee and in the
five-year strategy you still seem to be saying essentially that although you
would try to improve the guidance to schools and LEAs and LEAs will have a
strategic role and so forth, there is no statutory obligation on schools to
take part in this.
Mr Clarke: I do not entirely accept that. I did think it was a very helpful report
from the Committee and I noted that there were one or two aspects where you
felt that we did not respond as fully as you wanted. In terms of the central thrust of what you are saying, which is
to increase the authority, standing and the support for the statutory code of
admissions, I think we have accepted a lot of what you said to go down that
course. You then ask at the end of the
day about the legal power issue as to where we go. I remain of the view that for schools to work collaboratively is
a far better way to proceed in this area than by edict. Going back to the "barons" point, it is
possible in those circumstances that somebody will stand out, but I believe
that the powers we take by the various measures I set out in answer to your
report, plus the single conversation which we set out in the five-year
strategy, give us real power and sanctions to address the matter without going as
far as giving lots more resources to the lawyers to fight these cases in that
way. I was in a school in Norfolk on
Friday where literally the first preference that it gives in its selection is
to looked-after children; in fact not
being taken up anything like as much as it should be. I think these issues can be resolved by that co-operative, collaborative,
voluntarist approach more effectively than by recourse to the courts.
Q91 Paul Holmes: When the Committee were in Wakefield taking
evidence on this some of the schools there were talking about the collaborative
approach they were trying to develop. However, two of the heads of struggling inner city schools with a
very transient population, lots of families who were coming because the father,
for example, was in gaol and they were going to be there for a few months or
year and moving through, not an ideal school population in many ways. They were saying that they just end up with
these because there are other schools in the area which are not going to play
their part in finding places for these children.
Mr Clarke: That is why I made the announcement I did
last week to the new heads' conference, saying that hard-to-educate children
should be shared equally between schools in a particular area, for which I have
had a lot of political criticism from others who are saying somehow I am trying
to damage good schools. Actually that
is completely not the case. I do think
it is saying that these responsibilities should be shared by all schools in a
locality and that is exactly the direction we should be going.
Q92 Paul Holmes: Is "should be" statutory or is it an
expression of good intent? A school
which is popular and over-subscribed is going to say, as they did in all my
experience in teaching, that they cannot take them, they are full and somebody
else will have to have them.
Mr Clarke: Again, with respect to you, the landscape has
moved forward on this since the time you were a teacher, in the time you have
been a member of parliament. I do not
mean this in a funny way, but the fact is that the operation of the code of
admissions, the role of the adjudicator, all the various questions which arise
in this area have changed the landscape in a lot of these conversations. There is a big issue here about how we try
to bring about change in the direction which I think probably we would both
agree is the right way to go. My take
is that the best way to do it is by us strengthening the code, as the Committee
recommended, giving better guidance, developing the role of the adjudicator in
the way we have set out, trying to move forward on a co-operative and collaborative
basis. That is a more effective and
more lasting way of achieving the kinds of changes which we are looking for
than giving the secondary head in Wakefield whom you describe the right to take
the next-door school to court. The idea
that the law helps resolve these questions is a very dubious means of getting
change in this area.
Q93 Paul Holmes: I am sure we share the same intention, but it
is only three and a half years since I was a teacher and we were taking
evidence on this only last year in various areas around England, so it is
fairly up-to-date research. One
question on one other area: selection
by ability. Famously the Opposition
spokesman on education before 1997 said "Read my lips: no selection by ability". The five-year strategy more recently is
saying "We will not allow any extension of selection by ability which denies
parents the right to choose". After 1997,
the amount of selection by ability in grammar schools doubled in this
country. Are you now saying in the
five-year strategy that you will not allow any extension of selection by
ability fullstop? Or is the bit you add
on "which denies parents the right to choose" a get-out which still allows
extension of selection by ability.
Mr Clarke: No, it is not a get-out. We took a decision, for which we can be
criticised in 1998, that the approach we would take to stop the extension of
selection by ability, but not to go down the course of trying to reduce it very
substantially by, for example, abolishing grammar schools in a particular area
or whatever it might be, was a political decision which the government took and
which I think was the right decision and we have essentially stuck to that
position throughout. Some people argue
that we should move that line, for example by legislating to abolish all
grammar schools, or other people say that we should extend grammar
schools. Conservatives say we should do
that. I do not think either course is
right; I think the course of saying no
extension plus a series of relatively small - I hate to say the word - Fabian
changes which means that you have less selection by ability, is quite
important. The small change we do, for
example, on the criteria for specialist schools, which you are familiar with,
or the new piece of secondary legislation which we published a year or so ago
on the role of the interview in the selection process, are all small steps
which I think add up to the "no extension of selection by ability" point and
make schools work within a more co-operative framework. I think that is the right course for us to
follow.
Q94 Paul Holmes: In terms of backdoor selection by ability
through interviews or structured discussions or whatever they are called to
avoid calling them interviews, how firm a line will you take against that in
the future?
Mr Clarke: We have; we have passed legislation on the
matter. The legislation has been passed
and there have even been schools which have contested the legislation which we
have carried through. We have said that
you cannot operate interviews and, by the way, with the full agreement of the
churches who are the people most exercised about this and getting to a state of
affairs where we could carry it through.
There are some schools and heads who do not like that and they have
taken that on, but we have changed it already in that way.
Q95 Paul Holmes: Is there no loophole for schools to say they
have taken into account the various criteria but they are choosing to go down
this route? The London Oratory School
is in the High Court at the moment trying to defend its right to select by
interview.
Mr Clarke: You are making my point. Peterborough primary school is contesting
the London Oratory and there is an adjudicator's decision and a decision by
myself - I am not briefed on this particular point, I am speaking from
memory. My understanding is that the
Oratory has not changed my determination in the area but it has challenged and
is seeking to challenge in the courts the adjudicator's decision. That is their right. The fact is that is what they are doing. The law exists. I do not know what the outcome of the court hearing will be but
we shall see what happens. I am sure
the adjudicator felt that her judgment was well made in that process but you
are illustrating the fact that we have changed the law in a way which causes
the Oratory to go to court. You are
also illustrating my point that resolving all these matters in the courts is
not the brightest way of doing things.
We should be trying to operate in a relatively collaborative way as we
make change.
Q96 Paul Holmes: The CTCs are still outside the system due to
a peculiarity of the law. When all the
new independent foundation schools start opting out will they be in or outside
the system? Will the academies be in or
outside the system?
Mr Clarke: Both inside.
There are four CTCs which are outside at the moment out of 4,000 schools,
not exactly a major issue except for those who enjoy discussing these
things. The answer is that the
independent specialist schools, the foundation schools, the academies are all
part of this admissions code structure, the structure we have, and they have to
abide by that.
Q97 Chairman: Coming back to the important point you made
when you said it was controversial that every school should have their share of
more difficult looked-after children, is it more hope and aspiration? You are not really saying that you are going
to flex your muscles and make it happen, are you?
Mr Clarke: Of course; that is what I said the other day
and that is the situation. The only
thing I regret about the remarks I made the other day is that I did not give
sufficient attention to a very important part of the whole strategy that we
have, which is to develop more provision, for example in pupil referral units
and other forms of educational support.
We have already doubled that since 1997 very substantially. It is important that heads should have the
ability to deal with children in these positions in a way which is separate
from the rest of the children if they need to do that. That is what the pupil referral units have
been doing well, where they exist. We
do need to extend that and take that forward.
I believe the best people to do that are groups of schools working
together and looking at how to do it.
The basis of what happens, sharing out equally is what is needed and
certainly that is what I intend.
Q98 Helen Jones: I understand what you say about trying to get
co-operation between schools on admissions.
We were particularly concerned when we took evidence at the fact that,
because an objection has to be made to the admissions arrangements before the
adjudicator can come in, objections are not always being brought when they
should be and particularly where the admission of looked-after children is
concerned because there is not the political pressure for authorities to object
in that situation. What would you say
to the view that the code should have statutory force at least where
looked-after children are concerned? If
we believe that the education of those children has been a scandal in this
country for many years, as many of us do, ought we not to legislate to ensure
that it improves rather than simply leaving it to chance, depending on what
area of the country you happen to be in?
Mr Clarke: This is a very important issue and I agree
with you that the education, in fact the whole upbringing, of looked-after
children, is one of the greatest scandals there has been. I agree with you completely about that. The question, however, is: what is the best path to solve it? I argue, and we have achieved this in the
PSA targets which we have through this comprehensive spending review period,
that the absolutely key target is the stability and the life of the
looked-after child in an environment which promotes their educational
improvement. That is what we have. That requires a major difference in approach
to what there has been. The fact is
that many looked-after children change schools as often as three or four times
a year and in those circumstances to say that a particular school will solve
that problem is wrong; I do not think
they will. Getting stability for the
child is absolutely the core of achieving what you and I agree is the key area
we have to move. The other part of my
remit in terms of children, social services and so on, is that we are working
very, very hard on precisely that. The
statistical releases which have either just been published or are about to be
published indicate the work which still has to be done in this area to take it
further forward. We have 60,000 looked-after
children in the country. I regard the
key thing for us to focus on is getting a stable upbringing for those
looked-after children and education is a part of that. What happens at the moment is that really
large numbers are whizzing round the system looking for a place. I do not say it is a formalistic decision;
it is not. Actually it is not the
admission to the school which is the key thing; it is getting them some base in
life to be able to take it forward. I
agree with you that if it were proved to me that schools were not actually
accepting looked-after children in the way they were, then I would consider
looking at the statutory position. I do
not really think that is what it is. I
think it is the way in which looked-after children are looked after which is at
the core of the problem.
Q99 Helen Jones: We did have some evidence to show that
schools were not giving looked-after children priority and objections were not
being made to it. We are very concerned
about that.
Mr Clarke: The real problem was the "full" schools which
tend to be the more successful schools.
When you have an in-year application the looked-after children end up in
the schools which are less successful, because they had places. That is the core issue in the whole approach. I come back to the point that what is
crucial to get to is a position where there is stability for the looked-after
child. In those circumstances schools
will accept the looked-after children right across the range. My statement on this is about all schools
taking responsibility for this equally.
There is a lot of debate about this which is wrongly focused. I have had a lot of discussions with
voluntary organisations on this which say the key issue is the school. I think the key issue is the setting in
which the child is looked after and getting that right ought to be
educationally supported and carried through.
Q100 Mr Jackson: I want to ask a rather heretical
question. When I was an undergraduate
at Oxford nearly 40 years ago, lots of my contemporaries were going into
education as teachers in state schools.
I do not think anybody now at Oxford or Cambridge goes into state school
teaching and there is a problem about recruitment of teachers in terms of the
quality of degrees, the level of them and so forth. We all know that there are real difficulties, particularly in
some subjects. Does the Secretary of
State see any connection at all between that development and the developments
over the last 40 years in school structures and school admissions policies?
Mr Clarke: I must admit that I have not looked at this
particularly from the Oxbridge or even Oxford angle, but I do not really
recognise the picture. I do not think
it is the case that people are not going into state education. I think that large numbers are going into
state education and we want to encourage more to. The work of Simon Singh, for example, the mathematics writer and his
proposals in getting maths and science undergraduates to act as teaching
assistants in schools from universities such as Oxford, Cambridge and many
others, is actually leading those individuals to say they will go into teaching
for a period because it really is exciting compared with what used to be the
case before. I do not really accept the
central proposition. I will have a look
at the statistics to see whether it is borne out.
Q101 Chairman: The best research on this is contrary to
Robert Jackson's view that it is none. It is less than we should like, but graduates from Oxford and
Cambridge and other fine universities do go into teaching. The best report on this is the Sutton Trust
report which does say that too many go into the independent sector and not
enough go into the state sector. Before
we move to the last section, what worries the Committee, particularly when we
took evidence on secondary, is when the government seems to be using weasel
words about things, when we have a minister in front of us, a Minister for
Schools, who can defend "structured discussions" as not really being interviews.
It just seems to me that if we want to
be considered credible, not only by people who support the party you and I
belong to, but also by people out there, when they see clearly that this is Sir
Humphrey at work, "Minister, for God's sake don't call them interviews, call
them structured discussions", it undermines the quality of the debate on
education. Surely that is wrong?
Mr Clarke: If that were the case, I would accept
it. Maybe I am guilty of weasel
words. I certainly try not to be guilty
of using weasel words and try to address these questions. We try, maybe we do not succeed, to have
straight discussions about what all these situations are. You can get into a very legalistic issue of
what is an interview and what is a structured discussion, it can be tested in
the courts if one wishes and go through this process, but I do not really
accept the description. We are trying
very, very hard, even the Sir Humphries or Ms Humphries are working very,
very hard, to talk in a clear way about these questions.
Q102 Chairman: Let us give you another example. You know this is my opinion, because I aired
it in the debate on the Queen's Speech yesterday. Whatever view you take of grammar schools - and I personally have
taken a view that the government was probably quite right to go round the issue
and get on with improving the 95 per cent of schools which are not
involved with this. If you actually
look at the way in which consultation, the grammar school balance takes place,
the evidence given to this Committee shows that it is awful. It goes against any notion of fairness. Yet, on the one hand, as I said yesterday,
you could have one meeting and a school could become a foundation school; that
is it. Whether you believe in this or
do not believe in it, if people want to challenge what happens at 11-plus in a
particular area it is palpably unfair and you still preside over a system which
you know is unfair, we know is unfair, but you will not do anything about it.
Mr Clarke: Firstly, I do not accept the comparison
between a foundation school decision and a decision to go for selective
admission of this type. I think they
are qualitatively utterly different types of decision.
Q103 Chairman: Perhaps.
Mr Clarke: Therefore different processes arise. Secondly, if you decide you are going to
abolish grammar schools, you have three ways you can deal with it. You can do it by national statute, you can
do it by giving the local authority the power to do it or you can do it with
the local community in some sense taking a decision on this. The decision we have taken, rightly or
wrongly, is that it should be a decision for the local community and that is
why we have the process. One can then
ask what the best process is and that is one of the points to which you are
referring in this conversation. To
which I say: I understand the point
which is being made, but it is not easy to find a significantly better
process. You can make criticisms of
particular procedures which are used in this case and I understand the
criticisms the Committee has made, but getting to a better process is by no
means straightforward in trying to see what might be a better way of doing
it. That is why we have responded as we
have to your report.
Q104 Chairman: So you would like us to come up with an
alternative.
Mr Clarke: I always look very carefully at what the Select
Committee says on any subject. I am not
requesting you to come up with an alternative.
I am saying that the reason why we did not go down the path of changing
this was because we could not immediately see a better process for local
decision taking in this area.
Q105 Chairman: You are out of your comfort zone really, are
you not?
Mr Clarke: Out of my comfort zone?
Q106 Chairman: As a government, not you. It is better to leave it alone. It is just too prickly an area, is it
not? That is the truth. You know that it is an unjust sort of
system. You would really like to change
it, would you not, if it were up to you?
Mr Clarke: I am very happy with the state of affairs
that we have. In answer to Mr Holmes earlier
I described the decision we took in 1998 about moving this line or not. I accept that people can quite legitimately
have different views about moving the line, moving back the other way or
extending or whatever, but I think the line we took was the right line.
Chairman: We do not want to make a meal of it because
we want to cover some 14 to 19 issues before we finish.
Q107 Mr Turner: Do you think all teachers should have
experience of all types of school and all types of pupils?
Mr Clarke: That is an unattainable ambition.
Q108 Mr Turner: But a reasonable ambition.
Mr Clarke: Unreasonable because it is unattainable. For example, the idea that every teacher
should have experience of all primary school, inner city, work-based learning
and everything in between is not attainable and therefore not reasonable. What I do think, if you are asking me simply
about 14 to 19, is that the single biggest challenge we have as between
schools, colleges, work-based learning and so on, is how to get some experience
across the whole range of teachers in this area. That remains a significant weakness of the system.
Q109 Mr Turner: This is an overlap question. Some paper or other which came before us,
and I cannot remember what it was, suggested that teachers should have that broader
experience and I realise it is unattainable in pure terms. However, your objective of handing what you
now call hard-to-educate and what I thought at the time you called excluded
pupils, spreading them out among all schools, means inevitably that they are
spread out among all teachers. I think
Mr Jackson's point was that some teachers are well able and well prepared to
teach motivated pupils and able pupils and some are well prepared and well able
to teach less able pupils, not such academic pupils. To demand that whole range of capacity in each individual teacher
excludes a lot of people from the teaching profession.
Mr Clarke: I agree with you. However, if you take an average secondary school of 100 to 150
teachers, it is precisely the question of leadership in that school to decide
which teachers are best equipped to deal with which pupils and which groups of
pupils, where, as you correctly say, different teachers will have different
strengths and different weaknesses.
Deploying them to the area where they will make the biggest effect is
precisely the job of leading the school in a positive way. That is why I was jibbing. I took the question slightly the wrong way;
I was not understanding you clearly enough.
I was jibbing at the idea that you could have a super teacher who could
cover every conceivable form of teaching.
That is not a realistic or reasonable ambition. A bit wider experience can be beneficial and
it should be encouraged. There are
various devices which people are looking at to do that.
Q110 Mr Turner: But not to the extent that it excludes people
from the profession who might have a very worthwhile contribution to make.
Mr Clarke: Of course; absolutely.
Q111 Mr Turner: When Mr Tomlinson came before us the other
day he told us that one of the reasons why he has made some of his proposals
was that he thought basic skills in literacy and numeracy were absolutely key
and therefore a student should not be able to get an examination pass if they
were unable to demonstrate those basic skills.
Do you think that that is a weakness of the existing GCSE?
Mr Clarke: Weakness is too strong a word. I thought you were going to ask me whether I
agreed with his view, which I do.
Q112 Mr Turner: I thought you would.
Mr Clarke: I hope that our White Paper early in the New
Year will focus on this core skills question.
Do I think this is a weakness of the existing GCSE? I think the extent to which it happens
varies subject by subject. I would not
make a generic remark of that type.
Q113 Mr Turner: He said that these things should be tested at
GCSE.
Mr Clarke: At the age of 16.
Q114 Mr Turner: I think he said that marks should be deducted
at GCSE.
Mr Clarke: Yes, he did.
Q115 Mr Turner: Do you agree or disagree with that?
Mr Clarke: I agree with that.
Q116 Mr Turner: Why do we have to wait until your decision
and the implementation of the Tomlinson proposals before those changes are made
in GCSE?
Mr Clarke: I shall publish my response to Tomlinson
early in the New Year; hopefully in January.
This will go through all of these and will include a detailed timetable
of how we intend to approach implementation of the Tomlinson report. It is quite true that there are some aspects
that we can look to implement earlier than others in what is carried
through. I can say to the Committee
that this core skills question to which Mike Tomlinson referred is a key
question for us to get right and to address early rather than late. What I am keen to avoid, and it is a big
issue for educational reform everywhere, is a sense of permanent revolution at
what is going on. It is quite difficult
to make the judgments as to how quickly you make change in any of these
areas. In fact the single most
difficult judgment out of Mike Tomlinson's report is what to implement when,
what decisions to take now, what decisions to leave until 2006, for the sake of
argument, and so on.
Q117 Mr Turner: May I ask a couple of questions about sixth
forms. On the one hand we have a policy
which is that those high performing specialist schools without sixth forms will
have new opportunities to develop sixth form provision. On the other hand we have LEAs in some
places and LSCs more widely which seem pretty bent on amalgamating sixth forms,
in some cases transferring all sixth form provision into FE. Do those two different approaches rest
conveniently together?
Mr Clarke: I do not really accept the description. There is a very wide range of post-16
provision in terms of the school/FE balance across the country. Our view is that we need more diversity and
that is why we take the view we do, for example, about school sixth forms and
taking that forward. I am optimistic
actually that very creative approaches are being followed. I can think of three schools in rural
Norfolk, for example, which are 11 to 16 schools where there is a key
issue. There has been a battle about
which of them would get a sixth form and how it would be and they are actually
coming to a view, working with the local college, that the three schools and an
FE college - this is not the group to which I was referring earlier - will
jointly establish a sixth form provision which will work together in these
ways. These are towns about 10 to 15
miles apart. I think we will find much
more creative approaches in this area which will be very positive and that is
why I continue to emphasise the collaborative aspects of what is
happening.
Q118 Mr Turner: Would it be a fair signal that if you get rid
of all the sixth forms and then you have a high performing specialist school,
that school would be entitled to open its own sixth form?
Mr Clarke: Yes.
The answer is yes. We are saying
that the basic position is in an area where there is a very low level of sixth
form provision and where you have a successful school, for example a successful
specialist school, and where educational attainment has been low, that there
would be a presumption in favour of such a school being able to establish a
sixth form. Not a right, but a
presumption. It is in the process that
it would go forward. The LSC would do
it in this context.
Q119 Mr Turner: Right; the LSC would decide. Earlier on you pled guilty to creating all
these funding streams and you referred, I though in a fairly derogatory manner,
to the exclusion of Connexions and Learning and Skills Councils from local democratic
accountability. Am I right in
concluding that you think those funding streams should continue to be reduced?
Mr Clarke: Firstly, I am in favour of continuing to
reduce the number of funding streams and that is the approach we will
follow. Secondly, the point I was
trying to make is that the history of local government in this country from the
establishment of the NHS, which was established as the NHS, not the local
authority service, to the Manpower Services Commission, which then became the
LSC, to the Connexions service and so on, has actually been about the central
state bypassing local government because it did not have confidence in local
government to operate in those areas.
The challenge I set is to ask whether it is possible to get local government
taking more of the responsibility in these areas, which would require local
government accepting in those areas more of an acceptance of the overall
position from national government and what it is seeking to achieve.
Q120 Mr Turner: I should just like to rewind that last
sentence, because I did not understand it.
Mr Clarke: What I was trying to say was that if central
government wants to deliver a learning and skills strategy, for the sake of
argument, can it rely on a local education authority to do that? If it cannot rely on it, it will find ways
to bypass it in my experience, governments of all parties. Therefore there needs to be accommodation
and agreement and partnership between local government and central government
which works, if it is to be the case that local government is to get more of a
role in these areas.
Q121 Mr Turner: How close are we to you being satisfied,
because you said that you know which LEAs have run their systems well? How close are we to you being satisfied that
most LEAs are in a position to enter into such partnership and perhaps
therefore Connexions and the Learning and Skills Councils should be more
democratically controlled at local level?
Mr Clarke: Pretty close, if you had used the word
"most", most local authorities. We have
compacts now with all 150 local authorities, where we share our ambitions, and
they are working well in that way and we want to encourage it. There are occasionally LEAs which are
not. We will publish a youth Green
Paper either just before Christmas or just after, which addresses some of the
issues around Connexions. I do not want
to give a wrong impression on the Learning and Skills Councils. I may be misleading you; I was talking in a
slightly broader sense. The solution I
have decided to adopt is to encourage local Learning and Skills Councils to
work closely with their LEAs and to go down that course, rather than abolish
the LSC and hand it all over to the LEA.
That is not the course I think we should follow.
Q122 Mr Turner: So it is more democratic accountability for
youth in Connexions.
Mr Clarke: Yes.
Q123 Mr Turner: In answering Nick Gibb you talked about how
the profession must make its decisions.
You wanted there to be a developing debate, you wanted to have a role,
you had a duty to engage in a debate, but you did not think it was right for
ministers or members of parliament, or, for that matter, councillors, to say
how a subject should be taught or how classrooms should be arranged and I must
say that I agree with you. However, I
am not confident that that responsibility is being taken and I think that is
what leads Mr Gibb to come to the conclusions he came to. Do you feel that the quality of inspection
and the quality of leadership and the quality of the debate is such that
schools are taking the right decisions on matters as diverse as the teaching of
reading and the internal management of classrooms?
Mr Clarke: I would say increasingly so, but not
absolutely yet. There are still too
many people who are worried about the inspection regime or lacking self
confidence in themselves, worried about some sense of political correctness
about how they teach and what they should do on particular areas. That is why I answered Mr Gibb by saying I
thought debate of this kind was very important and a very important participant
in that debate is Ofsted. Ofsted in
fact can hold its head up and say it is trying to promote good practice in
these areas positively in a way that is innovatory rather than simply
conservative with a small c. That is where
we could go.
Q124 Chairman: Why can Ofsted not communicate with the local
education authority when they can perceive systemic failure?
Mr Clarke: I did not know they could not.
Q125 Chairman: They cannot.
David Bell told us very clearly that they cannot and it seems quite
ridiculous.
Mr Clarke: I am sorry, I think we are talking at cross
purposes.
Q126 Chairman: If Ofsted picks up that a number of schools
are failing, they say their duty is only to report to the governors of the
individual schools, not to say anything at all to the LEA.
Mr Clarke: I beg your pardon, I understand that
point. When they publish their reports,
all the reports which are published go to the LEA and the LEA can decide what
action to take in those circumstances.
You are asking a question prior to that. If Ofsted thinks that something is happening, what is the
position? That is because of the idea
that schools run the situation directly.
I will talk to Ofsted about this, if there is a particular role which
can be played.
Q127 Chairman: We picked up a feeling of frustration on
David Bell's part that he actually could not do that.
Mr Clarke: I will have a look at that.
Q128 Jonathan Shaw: You have followed the Chancellor of the
Exchequer in having your five tests, have you not?
Mr Clarke: I follow the Chancellor of the Exchequer in
absolutely everything.
Q129 Jonathan Shaw: Your five tests to assess Tomlinson: excellence, vocational education and
training, employability, assessment and disengagement of learners. Can you tell the Committee how well you
think Mike Tomlinson's proposals stand up and meet those five tests?
Mr Clarke: Pretty well.
I did go through them in detail and went right through. Excellence - will it stretch the most
able? I think the Tomlinson report is
pretty good on that and I think it will lead to changes which succeed. Vocational - will it address the historical
failure? I think it does in principle,
but the practice of actually establishing vocational routes which work is a
massively challenging issue and the engagement of employers is a massively
challenging issue; a long way still to
go. Employability - will it prepare all
young people for the world of work?
Pretty good, particularly round the core skills issues we talked about
earlier. Assessment - will it reduce
the burden of assessment? Yes, it does
pass that test. Disengagement - will it
stop our high drop-our rate at 16? Yes,
the approach he has followed is right, but the key question is whether we can
deliver what he has implied. In
principle I thought it got pretty good marks on those five tests but set us a
number of very serious challenges as to how we implement that.
Q130 Jonathan Shaw: There was a bit of a lukewarm response from
business, was there not?
Mr Clarke: This is very interesting. There was and I was disappointed with the
CBI's response in particular, particularly as the CBI had been very closely
involved in the whole development of the process. If you were to talk to Digby Jones, the Director General of the
CBI about this, as I have, his defence of that lukewarm response is that we
have not yet done a good enough job of talking to employers throughout the
country and explaining what we are really doing so that employers make their
response not being fully aware of what we are trying to do and how we go about
it. I take that explanation quite
seriously. One of our big obligations
and indeed Mike has taken this on himself and has been round regional CBI
councils and so on, is to try to explain better than we have so far been able
to do what the Tomlinson proposals are.
I am confident that we will get the full support of the employer
community in what we are doing.
Q131 Jonathan Shaw: In order to deliver the serious quality
education and training that we want, if we are going to see the aspirations
which we all share for Tomlinson's report, then a key component of that is
going to be our further education colleges.
Do you agree?
Mr Clarke: Indeed.
Q132 Jonathan Shaw: So the concern is - and it is a justifiable
one - that where you are seeing a larger increase in colleges, certainly larger
than participation rates in schools, you are seeing schools getting a larger
increase in terms of funding, yet colleges are receiving two per cent despite a
seven per cent handling in terms of the number of students going there. You have to grapple with this funding
gap. This has to be a key part if
Tomlinson is going to be delivered, has it not? You have to have the infrastructure there.
Mr Clarke: I agree.
It is a central issue and it is a problematic issue. One of our problems in the post-16 phase is
our success. We are over-achieving our
targets in terms of involvement and engagement. FE colleges are doing very well from that point of view. The consequence of that is that there are
serious funding issues for colleges because the overall money available is
limited by the CSR settlement. We have
a good dialogue with the FE colleges on how to bring this together in various
ways, but I agree with your central point, that getting clear funding streams
which correctly reward the institutions which do well is a key challenge out of
Tomlinson.
Q133 Mr Gibb: You said that when Tomlinson was published
you wanted to keep the GCSEs and A-levels as part of the components which make
up intermediate and advanced. Can you
give a categorical assurance that we will keep the GCSEs and A-levels if
Tomlinson is implemented?
Mr Clarke: Yes, that is what we said all the way
through. Exams at 16 and 18 are very,
very important and my own view is that there are several recommendations in
Tomlinson which have to be carried through and then at some point, some future
government has to sort out how it wants to approach the development of the
diploma in a way that recognises the GCSE and A-level quality, which is a key
currency across the whole of the country.
Q134 Mr Gibb: "Recognises the quality". Does that mean keeping the names and the
structures?
Mr Clarke: Yes; we said that explicitly and it would
need to be a decision. We will set out
our detailed proposals in the White Paper.
Q135 Mr Gibb: When we had Tomlinson before us last week he
was talking about more teacher assessment right up the intermediate levels,
that is the GCSE levels. He wants to
have less external examination at the GCSE level and more teaching
assessment. He made a parallel with
universities that universities can assess their own students' results for their
degree. Do you see that happening? Do you agree with that?
Mr Clarke: I see quite a significant evolution of the
way assessment has been done. The
Qualification and Curriculum Authority is doing a lot of work on this. What I think is crucial is that you have to
continue to have external assessment, national moderation and so on. It is quite possible to imagine in certain
areas that you can have a nationally moderated system which is then carried out
by chartered assessors at a more local level.
One could imagine systems of that kind developing. There is a long discussion to be had around
these questions as to how it can be taken forward. The national moderation is the absolute key in my opinion.
Q136 Mr Gibb: But if you reduce the amount of external
examination and you try to ameliorate that with national moderation, do you not
then run the risk of replicating in schools the position we have in
universities that the reputation of your degree will depend on the reputation
of the institution. A first from Oxford
is worth more than, say, a first from my university, Durham.
Mr Clarke: You can assert that: I could not accept that. The fact is that we need a national system
which is coherent and that is why GCSEs and A-levels are so powerful: they are accepted as being a currency which
runs right across the country.
Q137 Mr Gibb: We do not want the position where a GCSE from
an inner city comprehensive is somehow regarded by external people as worth
less than a GCSE from a comprehensive in a leafy suburb.
Mr Clarke: Of course.
I agree and that is why I have said what I said about GCSEs.
Q138 Chairman: It seems to me there is some quite worrying
criticism of the FE sector from the Chief Inspector of Schools recently, almost
like a co-ordinated attack on the FE sector.
What is going on? Do you agree
with the views of David Bell?
Mr Clarke: Firstly, there is no co-ordinated
attack. On the contrary, there is a
very positive relationship with the FE sector.
I was at their conference the other day talking about precisely where we
ought to go. Secondly, it is not for me
to agree or disagree with Her Majesty's Chief Inspector. He makes his judgement as he does. What is the case is that I have asked him,
and he is carrying this through, to be very rigorous in looking at the quality
of education in FE. That is something
most of FE absolutely welcomes because it recognises that it needs to have the
confidence right across the range and that is the right way to go.
Q139 Chairman: The standard, even in those colleges which
were seen to be below a certain level is improving quite rapidly, is it not?
Mr Clarke: Extremely rapidly, as some of the responses
to David Bell's remarks articulated very clearly. There has been some outstanding achievement in FE colleges. If you look at the centres of vocational
excellence, some of the results in particular areas are very good.
Q140 Chairman: The Committee was rather disappointed in your
response to something we picked up a good resonance to and that was what we
picked up from Center X in California in terms of training a cadre of teachers,
particularly to work in the more challenging environments in our particular
schools in our country. Most of the
evidence we got is that there are the makings of that kind of focus
already. Why not go the further step
and do something rather along the lines of Center X?
Mr Clarke: I am sorry if you were disappointed. We think the development of the chartered
London teacher status, for example, is an idea to try to respond to the
direction of what you are saying. I do
not think that simply transporting the experience of California to East London
will necessarily do the business. As I
understood it, what the Select Committee were saying was that we ought to look
carefully at how we train teachers and recognise and validate teachers who can
teach in some of the toughest teaching environments. In that spirit, I certainly would seek to be positive rather than
negative. I am sorry if my answer was
taken as negative. I do think it is a
very positive thing and we think we have a number of approaches to try to go
down that course.
Chairman: It is good to get that on the record. I am giving Paul one final, last question in
this session.
Q141 Paul Holmes: As we have already heard, there is a ten per
cent unit gap on funding between a FE-based post-16 student and a school-based
one and that is going to widen over the next two or three years because of the
four per cent guarantee to school-based sixth forms. The government is saying that every 16-year-old who is recruited
will have a place. It is also saying to
colleges that there is no money to fund that growth. How do you square that circle?
Mr Clarke: By ensuring that places are available. The colleges are working very hard to do
just that. The point made by Mr Shaw is
entirely correct. There are funding
issues about different funding streams going into FE and into schools and we
need to get consistency between them. However, those are not the only differences. If you look at the qualified teacher status,
for example, there is an issue in the different sectors. It is a very substantial and important issue
to resolve. If you look at the
effectiveness or otherwise of vocational pathways, they vary between many FE
colleges and many schools. There is a
whole series of issues, but, as the question Mr Shaw asked me and you are again
asking me correctly identifies, the consequence of Tomlinson is that we need to
get to a unified framework in all of these ways which carries it forward. FE accepts that completely.
Q142 Paul Holmes: But the gap is actually going to get wider in
the next two or three years although the assertion has been that it is going to
get narrower.
Mr Clarke: I do not think that is true actually.
Q143 Chairman: On that note, Secretary of State, as usual it
has been very instructive and useful for us to have you in front of the
Committee. I hope you enjoyed yourself.
Mr Clarke: I did; thank you very much.
Chairman: Thank you.
