Examination of Witnesses (Questions 324
- 339)
TUESDAY 18 JANUARY 2005
MR CHRIS
PALMER, MR
TONY HOWELL
AND MR
TIM BOYES
Q324 Chairman: We are delighted to
have Tim Boyes with us, who we saw informally this morning at
his school, Queensbridge. We enjoyed the visit hugely, and have
been talking about it ever since. Thank you for coming along this
afternoon. Until Tony Howell arrives, we have Chris Palmer, Senior
Policy Officer. We would like to continue the discussion that
we began informally this morning; then formalise it and think
about some of the over-arching issues that were involved. What
we are trying to get our heads around is this. Everyone now seems
to be signed up to the proposition that more choice is a good
thing, that it gives more power to people inside public services;
that the more we personalise services and the more we can allow
people to choose for themselves what they want the better. We
would like to explore what that means for a major school system
like Birmingham because in our informal discussions this morning
we were hearing that this is not without its problems. It might
be easier and fairer to start with Chris because we have had a
go at the school level already. Can you understand why a head
teacher like Tim—and I am not putting words in his mouth—might
find choice a bit problematic?
Mr Palmer: I can do indeed. If
you are talking about which schools children go to, then in most
respects parents and children themselves do not actually have
a choice. I do not believe you can simply choose one school over
another, in the same way that you choose, say, one mobile phone
supplier over another mobile phone provider. That is not the way
that it works. They cannot simply choose a grammar school because
they want a grammar school, or a Catholic school, or even say
a specialist language college just because they want that. That
is not the way that the system works. What has been created is
a system in which there is a variety of schools, what the Government
might call "diversity", but having a variety of schools
does not equate with parents having a choice. When it comes to
which school you go to, choice is an illusion rather than reality.
Q325 Chairman: Is it not the case
that if you have lots of different kinds of schools, therefore
the menu of choice is expanded?
Mr Palmer: You can have lots of
different types of schools, but those schools have a particular
intake. Sometimes they will make selection by ability, as in the
case of a grammar school; at other times they will be accepting
pupils because of their geographical proximity to the school—where
they live. If, for example, you wanted your child particularly
to go to a specialist language college, that may well not be possible
because the school is so far away and you simply do not, as a
parent, stand a chance of getting your child into that school,
even if they are prepared to make a long journey across the city.
Q326 Chairman: In Birmingham is it
not something like 85% of parents who do get their first choice?
Mr Palmer: It is 95.59% of parents
who can get a school of their choice but it is only about 65%
who get their first choice.
Q327 Chairman: The national figure
was 85, but Birmingham is lower than that.
Mr Boyes: But when they are making
their choices, they have some realism about what is possible,
and know that if they make stupid choices they are wasting a valuable
strategic choice which is not really a choice.
Q328 Chairman: So in a sense this
is not a real expression of choice; it is an expression of condition
of choice.
Mr Boyes: Yes.
Q329 Chairman: Even so, the figures
are substantial enough to make us think that most people are getting
reasonably satisfied. Just this week we had Professor Harry Brighouse,
Tim Brighouse's son, who is a leading educational expert, telling
us that he thought a life built around second choices was pretty
good, and if people were getting their second choices, that was
not a bad thing to get in life. We should not be too sniffy about
this, should we?
Mr Palmer: The only point I am
trying to make is that when I came to "choose" a school
for my son, my choices in practice were very limited, and geographical
proximity is a much stronger determinant than most other things.
Q330 Chairman: I am sorry to press
you, and I think we are getting into an argument now, but in a
city like Birmingham, as in any other big urban area, where you
have loads and loads of schools now, of increasingly different
types, and people are used now to travelling across the city for
all kinds of purposes—leisure and sport—and movement
around the city is quite usual, the idea of looking at what is
on the menu for secondary schools—potentially people have
quite a large range if they can get in. So we have a pattern of
distribution that reflects as far as possible what people think
they want from a school. That produces consequences: some schools
benefit and some schools suffer. Some schools are in high demand
and therefore get all the benefits of that; and schools in lower
demand get all the disbenefits of that. That, surely, is just
what this system does for us? Unless we can think of another system,
this is what we are stuck with, is it not?
Mr Palmer: I would like to turn
that argument around slightly. I would say that a major strategic
task is to make all schools a good choice, to make all schools
a good school to go to, so that we do not end up in the situation
that David Milliband described before he left the DfES, where
the poorest parents in most deprived areas have the worst schools.
That is no kind of choice at all. If choice is to be in any sense
meaningful, and if the variety of schools is to be in any sense
meaningful, it has to be based on all schools delivering good
basic education across the board. That is the basis for any kind
of choice.
Q331 Chairman: I think everyone would
sign up to the proposition that we want every school to be a good
school, but that does not help us, does it?
Mr Palmer: Sometimes the expansion
of so-called successful schools and allowing them to grow ever
bigger actually works against other schools maintaining high standards.
It actually works against other schools doing well.
Q332 Chairman: There is evidence,
though, which we have seen, that says the possibility of exit
in fact does improve standards in the school that could be exited
from.
Mr Palmer: I am not aware of that
evidence myself, but I am not doubting it.
Q333 Chairman: But it is not implausible,
is it?
Mr Palmer: It is not implausible
that you could find a school feeling under pressure and therefore
needing to make changes in order to maintain its position in a
market place, but it would be my contention that the most successful
schools in expanding would also end up taking probably the most
able pupils and have the broadest distribution of different types
of pupils, ending up with the other schools perceived as less
successful, and perceived as less desirable schools to go to,
ending up with pupils that other schools did not particularly
want.
Q334 Chairman: Looking at Birmingham—and
Tim this morning gave us a nice map showing his school and the
whole cluster of the city around it, plotting the other schools,
which brought all this sharply home—if you could reconfigure
the way in which school choice operates in Birmingham to produce
consequences that you think might be more desirable than the ones
we have now, how do you want to do it?
Mr Palmer: The other point I would
want to go on and make—and in this sense it has taken the
issue away from the debate about choosing a particular school—is
that it is possible to go a lot further towards establishing choice
within schools and through the collaboration of a partnership
of schools working together. We are reaching a situation where
one individual school or college for that matter cannot, in and
of itself, meet the full level of demand that real choice in the
education system would demand, which implies that schools, colleges
and other providers work together collaboratively. In other words,
we would lead away from an education system that is driven primarily
by supply. I remember that when my child went on to Key Stage
4, he could "choose" his options so-called, but in actual
fact he could only choose particular things that a particular
school could offer and balance out in school staffing. What we
are talking about is creating a system that is led by a demand
side rather than by the supply side, because in that way you can
begin to develop real choice. What that effectively moves away
from is that notion of one child just going to one school, but
one child getting an educational offer that is delivered by one,
two, three schools, a college and other providers working in partnership.
That is the way we have to head if we are going to start achieving
real choice in education.
Q335 Chairman: This is the cross-over
moment.
Mr Howell: Excuse me.
Q336 Chairman: While you are getting
your breath, can I ask Tim if he wants to come in on this point.
Mr Boyes: Chris has very usefully
and moderately stated some of what we were talking about this
morning. I have to inject a little bit of anger at the assumption
that choice is here and choice is a good thing, and what we do
to tinker with and cope with the realities of choice, because
choice itself perpetuates or exacerbates inequality if there are
not checks and measures in a system where people do not have equal
power in the choosing. To quote the folk from housing, it is about
an unequal playing-field. Because we are working with an unequal
playing-field, because the resources of my school do not match
the resources of the grammar schools because of the inequality
of inputs and history, if you have unbridled choice you are going
not only to perpetuate but exacerbate inequality. That means that
in Birmingham there are more than 30 schools that have over 76%
of their pupils—and I know because I am no.30—in the
poorest quintile of society—in that one school put together,
with between 30 and 50% of our kids on the Special Needs Register.
Schools cannot function like that.
Q337 Chairman: Mr Howell, you understand
what we are talking about.
Mr Howell: I do understand.
Q338 Chairman: Let me try this one
more time, and then I will bring other colleagues in. Schools
live by catchment areas, do they not? That is a curious concept
because we have just come from talking to the primary care trust
in south Birmingham, and there it is all about how they are going
to liberate people from their local suppliers. They are going
to have the choice of four or five different providers all over
the shop. Is one of the problems that we are attached to this
catchment area issue, particularly in urban areas where people
travel quite freely? We know that in a sense this is selection
by estate agents, and we know that people say there is a 30% cost
premium around certain school areas, so you segregate just by
social geographical patterns. One way of loosening up the system
would be to allow anybody to go anywhere potentially. Would this
be a better way of doing it?
Mr Howell: I have had conversations
with other civil servants and politicians about this very issue
because the reality is that some schools live by catchment areas,
particularly primary schools and some secondary schools. People
often said to me when I first came to Birmingham, "Why are
you going to Birmingham? They have got grammar schools there!"
I said: "They have got more than grammar schools; they have
faith schools, single-sex schools, comprehensive schools and now
specialist schools." The reality is that the catchment area
is only one of the driving forces around choice of school. If
you are a Roman Catholic, then the faith criterion takes precedence
over others. If you apply and pass the test to go to a grammar
school, that takes precedence. In fact, we have lots of children
travelling significant distances across the city, similar to the
London situation, but we do not have separate boroughs. Children
do travel for secondary school. That then interacts with the whole
issue around catchment areas, because there are also some community
schools which are very popular, and it is absolutely right that
house-price premium is effective there, to the extent that there
are local children that cannot get into a local school. They have
to travel, but they are travelling to schools that their parents
never expressed a preference for. There are relatively few of
those in Birmingham, but there are some. There I think there is
a myth about choice because the interaction both with explicit
selection for certain schools, and the whole issue about getting
into popular schools, which skews the demography of the pupils
going to other schools and actually mixes this up in a rather
unfair way. We are trying to deal with that by getting schools
to work together in collaborations, partly because young people,
particularly at secondary age, will have access to a broader range
of curricula than they have in any single school; and Mike Tomlinson
has acknowledged that no single school can meet all the individual
needs of all its children. It is also one of the ways in which
we improve schools because people will be happier to go to a local
school if the school is good. One of the ways we improve schools
in Birmingham is by getting them to collaborate with other schools,
and to share staff. The King Edward's Foundation operates some
very highly rated schools and I asked them this: "Within
our collegiates within collaborative arrangements with our secondary
schools, what is to stop six very bright mathematical students
in a community school accessing the very high-quality courses
in your schools in the King Edward's Foundation?" They said:
"Absolutely nothing." Choice is not about the choice
of school, it is the choice of courses for the young people, and
we are a little bit more fluid about that, because that is what
true personalisation entails.
Q339 Mr Prentice: Can boys travel
to girls' schools to access those courses?
Mr Howell: Boys can travel to
girls' schools once that door has been opened up. For example,
one of our very successful girls' schools, which is a community
school and a specialist school, now also has boys in the sixth
form.
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