Examination of Witness (Questions 423-439)
18 JANUARY 2005
MR BRIAN
STEVENS
Q423 Chairman: Good afternoon, Mr Stevens.
I think you sat through the previous session so I think you are
aware of the direction of our enquiry. Can I welcome you and begin
by saying we have received your evidence, and thank you very much
indeed for that. It would certainly be helpful for me and for
the Committee if you could perhaps just give us a little bit of
background about your business, really. It would be very helpful
to know where you fit into the overall scheme of things in respect
of this agenda that we are pursuing in terms of our enquiry, so
perhaps that might be an opportune moment for you to allow us
to catch up with where you are at.
Mr Stevens: OK. I have brought
some packs for you so that you have some information afterwards
as well. I set FEdS up as a company in 1996 and we act really
as a small catalyst company between some 56 multinationals in
our business forum on lifelong learning and the government on
a whole range of issues. In the realm of learning the government
means Edinburgh, Cardiff, and from time to time Belfast as well
now, these days. Those issues are not all to do with schools,
necessarily; they are to do with corporate universities as well;
so it is both learning issues within companies and the companies
who manage their programmes in the education sector. Where I became
involved in this particular area—two reasons. One, Sir Geoffrey
Holland works with me for 20 or so days a year, and of course
was deeply involved in the early part of this. Secondly, when
I read the development plan that was published in September 2003
I read with considerable interest that the DfES did not mention
in the development plan anything to do with the private sector
being engaged in this, and yet virtually all the companies I work
with, from Marks & Spencer through to Microsoft to BP, are
working with schools. So I approached Michael Stevenson and his
team at the DfES and said "Surely there's an opportunity
here to look at the way those private sector companies, for whom
this is a hugely important area, as part of their work with schools,
might be able to share some of their thinking". I put forward
the suggestion of developing an alliance on sustainable development
amongst companies. We had a seminar in July of last year, and
I think you have the paper arising out of that; I put it in the
packs for you just to make sure you have it. I have not really
taken it very much further than that, partly because, as I think
you know, I have been very closely involved in the Tomlinson report,
and I am beginning to get the other part of my life back now,
and partly because at that seminar the companies there were slightly
reticent about moving forward very much because it became terribly
clear that this was not an awfully high agenda in the schools.
They did not feel like coming forward, taking a major initiative
of their own. That interest remains very strongly and I am still
talking to the DfES about this. I still think there is an important
area of partnership to be developed. We were a little taken aback
that there was not a strong lead coming from the school sector
to respond to what we were trying to say.
Q424 Chairman: That is helpful. Just
so I can understand a little bit more about this, are you saying
that the response from the schools was linked to the way in which
DfES educated or failed to educate schools about the content of
the actual package? Do you happen to know, for example, why it
was not disseminated in the way you might have expected?
Mr Stevens: I am fairly certain
this document never reached schools.
Q425 Chairman: That is an amazing statement,
is it not, because it was sent to the schools?
Mr Stevens: That was what I thought.
I think probably it was not sent out to schools.
Q426 Chairman: Have you asked if it was?
Mr Stevens: I checked with the
person I was working with who did not come into the unit at the
DfES when this was launched. If I can go a little broader than
that because you have been talking quite a lot about this with
Ofsted. I think right at the centre of the problem is a communications
one. There is a very strong injunction almost, on civil servants
not to overload schools with paper, which one understands. A great
deal of weight is now being put on the possibilities of technology.
That is fine, but the impression I have—I am not as closely
involved in all of this as Ofsted, obviously—is that frameworks
are established and papers are put on the Web, but that does
not constitute communication. For communication to take place
there has to be a receiver of the message.
Q427 Chairman: Is it not called leadership?
Mr Stevens: You are putting words
into my mouth. It is strange because Charles Clarke had this very,
very strongly in his wish to move on this. I am not quite sure
why it did not go through, to be honest, because the organisations,
which you have not mentioned this afternoon yet which can be quite
important in this, are organisations like the Secretary Heads
Association and the National Association of Headteachers, which
can pick up a number of these things. I think there are other
ways of approaching schools. Looking at it from a different point
of view, if a headteacher in a secondary school either receives
this through the Web or in the post, he needs to know what its
status is also. Does he or she bin it or do they do something
about it? It is not part of their accountability programme—we
have just heard about that earlier this afternoon—and they
have got an awful lot of other things they have to be accountable
for. If you are running a system for which you are accountable,
those are the things you put your mind to and if this is not part
of it—it may be part of your personal agenda, in which case,
fine—then you do not do it. I think there is an issue here,
it is rather like financial literacy. Everyone says financial
literacy is hugely important, probably as important in a different
way as this, but it happens sporadically. It is yet another one
of these issues, it is not accountable, it is mentioned in the
Education for Citizenship, but it is not required. It is one of
these very, very broad areas—unlike financial literacy,
it is very broad. As I said in my statement, I doubt this term
of Education for Sustainable Development has any resonance in
the public, let alone in schools. There is a huge interest in
it in a vague sort of way, but it is mighty difficult when you
are trying to pin it down to precisely to what you do as a driver
for your daily exercise of running a school when you have so many
other things to do.
Q428 Chairman: In view of what you have
just said, I wonder whether or not you would expect organisations
like the Headteachers' Association to be falling over backwards
to contribute to this inquiry?
Mr Stevens: I think probably it
says quite a lot about the position of this whole issue, that
they are not. Probably it says quite a lot about this issue that
Ofsted inspectors are not being trained to do it and it says quite
a lot about this issue that there is not an Ofsted inspector who
has this as his primary duty. I think you ought to draw your own
conclusions from that.
Q429 Chairman: In the memorandum we have
had from the DfES, they talk about this process of change already
being underway with the Action Plan. We are looking at achievements
against the Plan like, for example, the Global Gateway and the
Healthy Living Blueprint. Are you aware of these initiatives and
do you think they might succeed where others might not succeed
so well?
Mr Stevens: Those are some and
there are a lot of other initiatives, for example, the initiative
of Eco-schools, of Learning through Landscapes. There are a lot
of organisations working and I think I am right in saying that
45% of Scottish schools have already signed up to the Eco-schools
programme.
Q430 Chairman: Do you know what it is
for English schools?
Mr Stevens: I do not know. There
are a lot of these initiatives and in some ways the way the DfES
is operating now, since the Gershon Report, and the new relationship
it is establishing with its schools, is an important one here
because it is establishing, as you heard from Ofsted, a framework
rather than being involved in the micro-management of what goes
on in schools. An awful lot of us are very pleased and we think
that is right. It is very much part, as well, is it not, of the
crucial management problem we have in any organisations—business,
NGO or others—at the moment—of how do you properly
manage a devolved organisation? You can provide a framework and
if you are insisting on the details being done in parts of the
organisation in a sense it is no longer devolved, so you have
got a real issue here.
Q431 Chairman: You are saying this is
as much a failure of new management techniques, the new ways of
doing things?
Mr Stevens: Yes, I think it needs
thinking through a great deal more. On the other hand, it would
be wrong to say it is entirely ineffective because the framework
is there. I think I said in my submission it is a well written
document. I like the way the four objectives feed together and
form a circular momentum, I think that goes really well. It gives
a framework for the Eco-schools, the Forum for The Future and
lots of other organisations to work within, but there is no driving
necessity for them to do so. The issue we have not worked through
is how does the framework become live so it is driving action
as well. There can be business reasons developed here—about
simply saving on budgets over issues to do with electricity and
waste disposal. I do not think this is about the curriculum entirely,
this is about people living this and not just learning it. There
is not much point in having 30 minutes on learning the finer arts
of waste disposal if the school is in a tip, there has to be a
bit of both. There is a huge opportunity for that, which is what
Forum for The Future and others are engaged in and most successfully
engaged in. At the moment we have got a lot of ponds, it would
be very nice to make a lake.
Q432 Mr Ainsworth: Whose job is it to
make the business case which you just referred to?
Mr Stevens: I do not think there
is one area for blame. That is what I was hoping we might be able
to do through the alliance with the private sector working with
the Department. We have not done that yet, but we might still
do so. I think it can be something that the Department can do
as an additional part of the framework and it can be done at a
lot of different levels. There is an organisation called HTI,
which you may have come across—Heads and Teachers Into Industry—which
works with Severn Trent Water and they have produced a very interesting
training pack for schools and teachers which Severn Trent Water
are running. Like me they work on the interface between business
and schools and they have been putting together some evidence
of two secondary schools in the Midlands which they have looked.
Q433 Chairman: Which ones are they?
Mr Stevens: I do not know offhand,
but I would be happy to tell you. This is where there is a deliberate
policy on saving electricity—by turning computer screens
off, turning lights off and so on—has amounted to £25
per head, per child, per year in savings. If that happens, it
will start getting quite interesting.
Q434 Mr Ainsworth: The business case
you referred to in your memorandum and spoke about is effectively
an agenda to do with saving costs at individual schools?
Mr Stevens: I would not like to
give it just a cost because in the business of schools part of
it is costs, but it seems to me there has to be a driving rationale
for schools to pick this up voluntarily if it is not going to
be part of a statutory requirement. Obviously it becomes even
stronger if there is a statutory underpinning of the thing. For
governors of schools, £25 per pupil, per year saved is significant.
Q435 Mr Ainsworth: Do you approach this
issue as, essentially, a business proposition or do you have personal
feelings about the merits of environmental education and sustainable
development?
Mr Stevens: Both. The Prime Minister
is making it very clear in the Presidency of the G8 and he spoke
very clearly at the tenth anniversary of the Prince of Wales Trust
in November about this. I drove from the M1 up to Bedford on a
business visit last week, and that is about 10 miles of landfill.
I was absolutely staggered, there was plastic everywhere and that
cannot make sense. The use of raw materials, fossil fuels, cannot
make sense for us to go on at this level. There is a hugely strong
issue there and I think the public is aware of all of those things.
After the terrible events in Asia and the equally terrible events
for the individuals involved in Carlisle, which was partly because
of the drainage of farmland as well as unusual weather, you cannot
have those things happening without being aware that we have a
responsibility somewhere, but it is so big, it is how do you get
hold of it and I think that is what we are trying to get to the
schools.
Q436 Mr Ainsworth: I think you had some
involvement in the Tomlinson issue?
Mr Stevens: Yes, I did.
Q437 Mr Ainsworth: Including chairing
the Employers Group?
Mr Stevens: Yes.
Q438 Mr Ainsworth: You said that neither
of the two groups you were involved with, the Unified Qualifications
Group or the Employers Group, dealt at all with Education for
Sustainable Development. If you are committed personally to this
agenda, as Chairman, why did you not ensure that at least the
Employers Group looked at the issue?
Mr Stevens: Because I am committed
also to about six other big agendas, this is not the only one.
Apart from anything else, the Tomlinson Committee, and the discussion
you have just been having, was off-balance with Ofsted. The Tomlinson
Committee was not looking at this sort of detail, it was setting
a learning framework. As I put in my submission, we do not know
what will happen to the Committee's proposals, we are waiting
for the White Paper which is due towards the end of February.
The opportunities through core learning, as opposed to main learning,
are very considerable in this area as with financial literacy
as well. The Tomlinson Committee did not have Ofsted on it, but
it did not have the Adult Learning Inspectorate on it either[2]The
members of the Committee were invited by Mike Tomlinson, they
were not put there by the DfES. Mike Tomlinson was given a completely
separate remit. Those of us working with him were working to the
very clear remit which was set by the Secretary of State and that
was about frameworks of learning.
Q439 Mr Challen: You do not agree with
Ofsted and others who have given evidence here that Tomlinson
was a lost opportunity to promote the ESD agenda?
Mr Stevens: No, I do not think
it was a lost opportunity.
2 Witness addition: (This is an error, which
I have corrected in my subsequent paper to the Committee; David
Sherlock, Chief Executive of ALI, was on the Main group of the
Tomlinson Committee) Back
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