Examination of Witnesses (Questions 220
- 239)
THURSDAY 13 JANUARY 2005
PROFESSOR HARRY
BRIGHOUSE, DR
PHILIP HUNTER
CBE AND MR
MARTIN WARD
Q220 Mrs Campbell: They do have that
choice?
Dr Hunter: Yes.
Q221 Mrs Campbell: I think the point
that the Chairman is making and I would like to make to you is
that it should not be the schools that have that choice, because
there are certain very strong incentives for schools to stick
to the status quo?
Dr Hunter: I understand that,
which is why I am saying that I think admission forums should
have more powers than they do. I do not think that central government
should decree that all schools across the country should have
catchment areas, or distance or feeder primary schools, or lotteries,
or whatever. I think it should and does have a Code of Practice
which lays out certain guidance, but I do not believe that that
is a job that central government should take on because different
areas are very different. If central government were to determine
for the whole country what should happen, I would like to bet
that they decide that what is best for London should happen to
the rest of the country. That is a word of caution for me on lotteries,
if you like. I am not against them; I am just saying we should
not impose them on people. On the expanding schools point, there
is what the statutory guidance calls a strong presumption in favour
of schools that want to expand being able to do so, and I think
that is right. Certainly where we get cases where schools want
to expand and perhaps other schools around them are nervous of
that, as often happened, then we do, as we are required to, take
note of that strong presumption in favour of expanding; but I
should say that we get more cases of schools not wanting to expand
where the LEA, or someone else, wants them to expand than the
other way round, and that is because of management reasons in
the school or because they feel the school is not big enough,
or whatever. There is not a huge desire right across the country
for large numbers of schools to expand for ever. Lots of schools
are not popular because they are small, but where schools do want
to expand I think they ought to be able to and certainly the Government's
line is that they should be able to.
Q222 Chairman: Can we finish this
point before we lose it. What about when schools are told they
have to reduce their admission numbers because of spare capacity
in neighbouring schools?
Dr Hunter: Again there is a presumption
that they should not be asked to do that, and again when we get
a case before us we take account of the presumption. There is
a general government line coming through the statutory guidance
that popular schools ought to be able to expand and that they
should not be asked to contract.
Chairman: Thank you very much.
Q223 Mr Prentice: You wrote a piece
in The Guardian last year and you reminded us all there
has been this huge increase in the number of appeals. In 1991
24,500 appeals and in 2001 this has shot up to over 94,000. Are
parents angrier now, more demanding now? What is the reason for
this huge explosion in the number of appeals?
Dr Hunter: I think it is expectations.
Expectations have been built up, and that is a good thing—I
am in favour of people wanting more—and they do not accept
a decision that is handed down to them in the way they used to
and they take it as far as they need to take it, which is to appeal.
Q224 Mr Prentice: But these parents
are taken in, you say in the same article, by schools inventing
a particular ethos or developing a marketing strategy. You talk
about "swanky names and logos", "expensive marketing
strategies" and there are poor gullible parents out there
who are taken in by this?
Dr Hunter: Well, I was writing
in The Guardian, but it happens. Clearly schools market
themselves much more than they did 15 years ago, and that does
affect the way they are perceived by parents. I think parents
are encouraged to believe that they can choose whatever school
they want these days, but, of course, that is clearly not the
case, and they too do tend to pile into the public schools.
Q225 Mr Prentice: Tony and Anne were
talking just a few minutes ago about geographic separation based
on class and wealth. What about segregation based on race and
religion? How big a problem is it that Muslim parents, for example,
do not have a local Muslim school they can send their children
to? Should there be acceleration in the programme of faith schools
that the government is committed to?
Dr Hunter: I would not like from
my position to comment on the Government's policies in these matters.
It is for the Government and for you.
Q226 Mr Prentice: You must have a
view on that.
Dr Hunter: Clearly the Government
are in favour, quite rightly it seems to me, of expanding these
areas. I approved a Sikh school last year, for example, and these
schools are increasing in number in certain areas and adding to
the tapestry of schools.
Q227 Mr Prentice: Would you like
to see more of them? We read in the papers today that Britain's
first all girls Muslim state school—and this is a school
in Bradford—has been judged the best secondary school in
England for adding value to children's education. That is quite
an accolade. Do we need more single-sex Muslim schools?
Dr Hunter: I am in favour of local
government. I grew up with—
Q228 Mr Prentice: This is a cop out,
is it not?
Dr Hunter: No, it is not a cop
out, I have got to say. I do believe that these things happen
better when they start off locally. I am in favour of the Government
having general frameworks and policies and encouragements, but
I am not in favour of imposing solutions from central government.
Q229 Mr Prentice: Is it important
to strive to get a better ethnic balance in our schools?
Dr Hunter: It is important to
have schools that teach children well, where children feel comfortable
and welcome, and that can be achieved by making sure that those
schools are teaching well and are comfortable and are welcoming.
I do not believe in social engineering by shipping people around
the country.
Q230 Mr Prentice: No bussing?
Dr Hunter: No bussing. I do not
think it works.
Q231 Chairman: Do you both want to
come in?
Professor Brighouse: I do believe
in social engineering. I think that is what governments do and
I think that is what they should do. First of all, the issue about
faith schools is complicated because we have lots of Roman Catholic
schools which get a very special kind of status, we have lots
of Church of England schools and we do not have lots of Muslim
schools but we have plenty of Muslims. If you get to 1992 and
then stop introducing any new faith schools, what you are saying
is that we will have plenty of Christian faith schools and no
Muslim faith schools. That is unfair. Get rid of faith schools,
that is one thing, but stopping it just when we have got all these
Muslims, is totally unfair and I think unacceptable, but I think
it is important for all children to mix. I do not think of this
in term of ethnicity, I think of it in terms of religious belief.
I think it is very important for children to be in environments
in which there are other religious believers who think and believe
different things and practice differently than they too do in
growing up. My children grow up in a household which is atheist,
and if they are going to get any kind of understanding of any
religion from the inside, they are going to get it through peers,
and they are going to get it through going to school with those
peers.
Q232 Mr Prentice: How do you do that
then?
Professor Brighouse: This is the
question. One question about an all girls' Muslim school is where
would those girls be going if there was not an all girls' Muslim
school in the state system? If we found out they would be going
to an all girls' Muslim school that was not in the state system,
there is no gain by getting rid of it, there is no gain on any
dimension by getting rid of it. I do not know what the facts are
about this, but I do know that lots of people do not send their
kids back to Pakistan when they become adolescents if they can
send them to an all girls' school here, and that seems better
to me. It is a complex calculation. I certainly think that there
is no reason to allow faith schools to discriminate on the basis
of religious belief. I see no public purpose being served by allowing
a Muslim school, for example, to reject a kid who is not Muslim
whose parents want them to go to a Muslim school so that they
can get an appreciation of one of the world's major faiths as
well as getting a good education. Allowing schools to discriminate
on the basis of faith seems to me unacceptable, and we do allow
them to do that, and I think that is wrong, but I also think this
may be one of the things where education policy is not very helpful.
What we do in civil society, other things that we do to integrate
different religious believers into our society so that they and
their children are more involved in a genuinely inter-faith and
non-faith society, may be more important than trying to figure
out how to get them into the kind of schools we want them to be
in when we are not sure we will be able to succeed anyway?
Mr Ward: Several points on this.
One is to underline the point that I think Phillip Hunter was
making, which is that we need solutions that work across an area.
It may be that it is in some sense a local decision, but it should
not be a school by school decision, because then a whole lot of
separate decisions made for each school may add up to a system
that does not work terribly well. The second is related to it,
which is that the creation of an elite institution does not necessarily
mean that anything has been improved at all, and it is very easy
to look at the Muslim girls school which has done extremely well,
and I am glad they have and good for them, but that does not mean
that the education of children in Bradford as an area has been
improved at all; it may just mean that those particularly successful
girls have been collected into one place. I think there has been
a tendency in recent years to move towards the creation of more
elite institutions, and I do not think there is any evidence that
that actually improves the system as a whole. Those institutions
may be wonderful, but you have to consider also what is happening
in the schools down the road. On the question of faith schools,
we would all agree, I think, that we cannot as a society say we
will allow faith schools for the Church of England, Roman Catholics
and a few Jewish schools, because they got in under the wire,
and then we will stop when we have a large number of Muslims and
Sikhs and Hindus in particular in this country. It would be unreasonable
and unfair to say to those communities, "You may not have
the same rights that your fellows in other religious communities
have." Therefore we do not have a lot of choice, whilst we
have the Church of England and Roman Catholics schools and so
forth, but to allow Muslim and Sikhs and Hindus to open their
schools as well, and I think we must do so but having said that
it is clearly very concerning from a point of view of social cohesion.
I live in Leicester, which is a town which has very good relationships
between its various communities, on the whole. I am very happy
to walk about Leicester in all the districts and meet with the
Muslims, Hindus and Sikh folk who live there and feel very comfortable.
I think they probably feel comfortable with me. I do not think
that would be served in a generation's time if all our children
were attending schools which were effectively ghettoised on that
sort of basis. I cannot see that as being in any way likely to
be helpful. There is a contradiction and conflict there. I do
not want to say to the Muslims, "You may not have a school"
but I would like us to, as far as possible, move away from the
notion that what we need is a whole lot of different schools which
are very diverse as between one school and another and move towards
a notion, and sell this to all sorts of communities, that what
they really need is that diversity existing within a school so
that they are comfortable that their children are attending a
school along with people of different communities; but that their
particular issues, whatever those may be—in the case of
Muslims, it is often to do with girls and sport and what they
regard as appropriate modesty and so forth—can be met and
that their families will be comfortable for them to be in the
schools with other people. Likewise, the Roman Catholic and Church
of England folk and the atheists of which there are many as well,
but they do not generally seek to have their own schools. We cannot
turn away from that but I would like, as far as possible, to try
and persuade people that they do not want to go in that sort of
direction. I would agree with Harry's point that there is no particular
reason why faith schools should be allowed to refuse admission
on grounds of faith. At the moment, we certainly do allow that
and that is at least a question we need to ask. Before we ask
that, we need to address the question of how they make that sort
of decision and in particular turn our face against interviews—there
is a particular case running at the moment on that—which
are nominally to determine whether somebody belongs to the appropriate
faith but which can be used for other purposes as well.
Q233 Mr Hopkins: I agree, but can
we step back a bit and look at the big picture in Britain and
the real world? In terms of education performance compared with
other countries, our top 10% are some of the best in the world.
Our bottom 10% are some of the worst in the world. There is already
much more diversity in performance in Britain than there is in,
say, continental Europe. We have failed. Is this not a result
of the fact that we have had fragmentation and choice for many
decades in Britain? The energetic middle class have sought out
elite schools and society has effectively said, "Devil take
the hindmost" for the poorest performers, all because of
choice?
Mr Ward: Yes is the quick answer
to that.
Dr Hunter: It may be because of
choice but the question is what to do about it now. I do not honestly
believe that it would be right because of that to try and deny
people a choice. The way to handle it is to sort out the schools
that are not performing very well.
Q234 Mr Hopkins: Is the government
not doing this now? In my constituency, we have had four schools
put into special measures. They have all come out with excellent
head teachers driving them upwards and are now doing well. In
a sense, the government is undermining its own case for more diversity
of schools by attending directly to the problem of poorly performing
schools.
Dr Hunter: I do not think it would
regard itself as undermining its own case. What that is doing
is turning four unpopular schools into four popular schools. It
has enhanced choice immensely for people who live in those areas.
Q235 Mr Hopkins: Downing Street is
very keen on diversity, choice and competition. What is actually
happening is that community schools are being improved and made
good.
Dr Hunter: I would not want to
comment.
Professor Brighouse: I want to
be a bit more cautious about the idea that the school system is
what gets the results. The countries in which you get very high
performance and high equity are countries with almost no child
poverty, for example. A lot of what affects these things comes
from out of school variables, things which we cannot expect to
change by fiddling with an education policy. The United States
has appalling inequity. It has 16% of its kids without any health
insurance. Do you think you are going to get them really good
educations? Even if you put loads of money into the schools, kids
who come to school with toothache, who are sick all the time,
who do not get proper health care are not going to perform well
whatever you do. The other thing is about choice. We have had
a system in which the most advantaged have had a lot of choice
and the least advantaged have had none. We are never going to
move to a situation in which we deprive the most advantaged of
choice. That is not something which is on the agenda.
Q236 Mr Hopkins: Can we not close
the gap?
Professor Brighouse: Yes.
Q237 Mr Hopkins: I agree with you.
Economic and social divisions are more complex than just education.
Education, particularly in Britain, is a major component of that.
The divisions between people are very subtle in Britain and they
are often about education and the schools we attended. Would you
not agree?
Professor Brighouse: I agree.
Q238 Mr Hopkins: That is socially
damaging and, in the end, economically damaging.
Professor Brighouse: Yes.
Q239 Mr Hopkins: The fragmentation
of our school system, the choice, the competition, the fine gradations
of status have caused problems for Britain.
Professor Brighouse: Probably,
but it is the particular form of choice and the fact that some
people have had choice and others have not. One solution is to
remove choice from everybody. I am not totally unsympathetic to
that. I just do not think that is on the agenda at all. Another
solution is to have a mix of measures. One is to enhance choice
for the least advantaged. My caution is that is not going to do
it alone. We need to do that but I do not think that can do everything
for us. I agree that in some abstract way central government intervention
somehow goes against the choice rhetoric but you can only do a
bit of both in a way that is complementary. In practice, it is
not as conflicting as it is in the abstract.
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