Examination of Witnesses (Questions 480-499)
18 JANUARY 2005
DR IAN
COLWILL AND
MR JOHN
WESTAWAY
Q480 Mr Thomas: I just wondered in an
imaginary situation in a scenario where, say, the Action Plan
had been delivered to every school in the country and every headmaster
had put it in the bin, would that have made a material difference
to where we are now?
Mr Westaway: It would have to
go in the recycling bin!
Q481 Mr Thomas: If they had put it in
the recycling bin they would have learned something from it, would
they not? I am trying to see if they learned anything at all.
Mr Westaway: I think the form
in which the document went into schools would have been largely
immaterial without some statement or some expression of the importance
of this from government. I remember back at the sounding board
meeting before the Action Plan was launched that the Secretary
of State said that he thought this was a gradual evolution with
the occasional dramatic moment. I think we have had the gradual
evolution but I do not think we have had many dramatic moments.
Q482 Mr Thomas: Looking at the Action
Plan itself you do, however, point to some things that you say
have been progressed under the plan. One of the things you mention
is your own ESD web site and you report that as part of the progress.
However, you also say that this is likely now to cease in March
this year and be subsumed into the larger TeacherNet—I presume
that is a portal—and that that may in fact have an adverse
effect of reducing the visibility of ESD. How did it come about
that the decision was taken that a dedicated web site for ESD
be subsumed into a larger portal? Was that your decision?
Mr Westaway: No, you are asking
the wrong person.
Q483 Chairman: Who is the right person?
Mr Westaway: It was a Department
decision.
Q484 Mr Thomas: It was the DfES?
Mr Westaway: Yes and our understanding
as of the beginning of December—and clearly there have been
changes since the beginning of December which may have influenced
that—was that there was a plan to remove content from the
current ESD web site, to reformat it, and to include it on the
TeacherNet site, or whatever the successor to TeacherNet site
will be. With all these things there is a balance between the
visibility of a small, separate site and the much larger traffic
that a site like TeacherNet would get but it may get buried and
lost, that is right.
Q485 Mr Thomas: Can I just press this
question a little bit. It is still a dedicated ESD web site at
the moment. Who is responsible now for maintaining that web site?
Is that a Department or QCA responsibility?
Mr Westaway: QCA maintains it
on a day-to-day and month-by-month basis. Each year we put a work
programme to the Department who approve that work programme and
provide the finance for running it.
Q486 Mr Thomas: What will happen when
it goes to TeacherNet? Will that then become a departmental responsibility?
Mr Westaway: I do not know.
Q487 Mr Thomas: Do you expect to have
any on-going role in that?
Dr Colwill: I would expect our
expertise would still contribute, as indeed DfES and other bodies
contribute to the steering group of our current web site, and
I would be surprised if we do not have that continued involvement
in looking at the various materials on that site, and indeed possibly
continuing as we do now to generate some of those materials by
gathering case studies and so on. It is worth noting in this context
that quite separately from the Department's decisions about the
bigger sustainable development site we have been looking more
broadly as part of our own communication strategy at the variety
of satellite sites which over the years we have developed as stand-alone
sites. We have been looking at a strategy of how we bring those
more centrally into the QCA site, so again you do not have people
going into the QCA site and then going out to look for other sites.
So we were looking at the Education for Sustainable Development
site and it is quite likely that we will continue to have a presence
on our web site in relation to education for sustainable ethics
which will link into any larger site. It is quite clear that the
sustainable development site that the Department is looking to
develop will be much broader than the current ESD site, and there
are advantages and disadvantages to that. Then, as you were asking
Brian Stevens, there are also issues about the value of sites
per se being the main means of communication, and that
is another key issue that we have been grappling with. We have
evidence on the use of the site but also the level of awareness
of the site.
Q488 Mr Thomas: I want to ask about that
in a second but before we leave the TeacherNet site—this
is my ignorance—is this a new site or is it an already established
site? What sort of traffic does it have?
Mr Westaway: I think it must go
back a couple of years and it certainly has plenty of traffic.
My younger son who has just started primary teacher training swears
by it as being the source of all his good lesson plans!
Q489 Mr Thomas: It is well-known?
Mr Westaway: It is well-known,
yes, but whether he would have found the Education for Sustainable
Development section of it I do not know.
Q490 Mr Thomas: To go back to the point
you just raised, if I may, which is whether these web sites are
a useful way of communicating when you are talking about something
that people do not have much base knowledge of and how it compares
to other methods of communication, what you are doing to look
at that at the moment?
Dr Colwill: Over the last six
years in line with Government policy we have been putting more
and more information on the web rather than putting it in print
form and sending it out to schools. As I said, we carry out this
annual evaluation and one of the things we ask them about is their
awareness of our resources and the support that we provide. The
one thing that that shows is that where people are aware of our
resources they find them very useful but more people are unaware
of our resources than are aware of them. That is an issue not
only about Education for Sustainable Development. It is a general
issue, whether it is a history innovation site or whatever. It
is something we are looking to address. We are looking to address
it through a variety of means—by drawing these things to
attention, by mailings into schools, possibly by book marks, or
whatever, by links on e-mails and so on. But it is quite a significant
issue because there are lots of advantages to developing a web
site in the sense that it is not a one-off, it is something that
can evolve, you can add to it, you can provide depth to it, you
can allow people to pursue it to whatever depth they want to go,
and they can customise it. As a way of communicating, if this
is not the way forward in future then we have a serious problem.
However we are also increasingly looking at horses for courses
and saying is this particular piece of information that we have
to put out the right way of doing it?
Q491 Chairman: I want to come in on that
point, if I may, just before we leave it and ask Mr Westaway a
question because I understand however many years ago it was you
were part of the Panel for Sustainable Development which preceded
what we have at the moment. I understand then—and correct
me if I am wrong—that there was a recommendation from that
panel to the DfES that there should be some communication with
schools so that schools could be made aware of what wider resources
were available. What happened to that recommendation and would
you say that it is as much needed now as it was then?
Mr Westaway: I do not know what
happened to that recommendation. I think it is as relevant now
as it was then. I am just trying to think which recommendation
it was. Certainly when we developed the web site we also produced
a leaflet that went to all schools telling them about the web
site. At one level we could say we probably did more with the
ESD web site more than some of our other web sites—
Q492 Chairman: Given the debate we are
having at the moment, is there some kind of circular to all schools
that this is needed now given the way in which throughout the
whole of this evidence session one of the complaints has been
that schools have not really been aware unless they have been
the converted, as it were, of what is available and what resources
they can tap into? Is that needed now?
Mr Westaway: It is needed now
but I think it would have a limited effect unless it was accompanied
by a letter from the Secretary of State saying, "By the way,
we are expecting you to be doing Education for Sustainable Development
by the end of this school year," in which case traffic on
the web site would increase phenomenally.
Chairman: Sorry, Mr Thomas.
Mr Thomas: I have finished.
Q493 Mr Ainsworth: Can we try and put
this in the context of the Government's review of the sustainable
development strategy. You indicated that education should be a
key feature of the sustainable development strategy. Did your
organisation have any role in the development of the new strategy?
Mr Westaway: No.
Q494 Mr Ainsworth: How is that compatible
with making education a key part of the new strategy?
Mr Westaway: I am not sure that
that is an area we would be proactive in. You mean we should be
saying, "We should be part of your sustainable development
strategy"?
Q495 Mr Ainsworth: No, the Government
has been reviewing the sustainable development strategy. You said
that education should be a key part of the new sustainable development
strategy and yet your organisation appears to have had no involvement
in the review of the strategy. Is that not odd?
Mr Westaway: In the sense of QCA
standing up and saying, "We think we should be part of this
Government review; here we are"?
Q496 Mr Ainsworth: If, as you say, education
is a key part of the sustainable development strategy—
Mr Westaway: I suspect that we
have been waiting to be asked is the honest answer.
Q497 Mr Ainsworth: Too many organisations
are waiting to be asked and then come along here and say that
they believe in Education for Sustainable Development and all
that goes with it.
Mr Westaway: I suspect we have
been a bit guilty of tunnel vision in that we have seen our remit
as being Education for Sustainable Development rather than the
broader sustainable development strategy.
Q498 Mr Ainsworth: I am sorry, it was
you yourselves that drew attention to the new strategy in your
memorandum.
Mr Westaway: I was reflecting
a view, going back to the panel days, of the panel but if education
was perceived by the Government to be an important part of the
sustainable development strategy then the headline indicators
should bear more connection to Education for Sustainable Development
than the current headline indicators.
Q499 Mr Ainsworth: You were sufficiently
aware after the review of the sustainable development strategy
to say that it needs to contain "a headline indicator focusing
on ESD rather than—or to compliment—the more general
current educational indicator." You expressed that opinion
but you obviously have not expressed it to anyone who is going
to take a decision about what the now strategy is go to look like.
Mr Westaway: Mea culpa.
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