Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
MR DAVID
BELL AND
MR JONATHAN
THOMPSON
14 JUNE 2006
Q40 Mr Wilson: It does appear to
me that despite you sitting there and citing those examples that
there has not really been a break in the generational cycle that
seems to have developed, longer than the period of this government,
in those areas where essentially poor education and life chances
have been passed from one generation to the next. Nothing I see
happening in education at the moment is actually breaking that
cycle. I see education as the only way of those children getting
out of the circumstances they find themselves in.
Mr Bell: I absolutely agree with
that point. Education is crucial. We know that thousands more
children are achieving the expected levels in literacy and numeracy
at the age of eleven. We know that more and more young people
are staying on but we know we have more to do for their education.
More and more young people are achieving the benchmark of five
A plus to C grades at GCSE. All of those things are assisting
in doing what it is that you are describing. I would be the last
person to sit here and suggest that the kind of inter-generational
problems that you have described are easy to crack. They are not;
of course they are not. I think those policies and approaches
taken together demonstrate that the Department is absolutely committed
to trying to do the very best for those young people and their
families.
Q41 Mr Marsden: Can I take you back
to the new arrangements for 2008-09 and to that initial consultation?
This Committee in its last Report on the whole issue expressed
a considerable amount of interest. Was there a particular reason
why this Committee was not asked to contribute to that initial
consultation?
Mr Thompson: The simple answer
is that it was a mistake. We should have consulted you and we
thought we had, but it appears we had not and we have to apologise
for that. As David said earlier in one of his answers our consultation
on the terms of reference for that review was with a wide number
of groups and it clearly should have included the Committee and
it did not so we have to offer you that apology.
Q42 Mr Marsden: I am sure there will
be other opportunities as we drill down into some of the detail,
and particularly perhaps to pick up some of the issues that this
Committee in specific funding terms has commented on in the past.
One of the ones that we have commented on in the past and I want
to touch on again today picks up some of Jonathan Thompson's remarks
about looking closely at the link between funding and deprivation,
and that is the whole issue of funding issues to do with children
with transience and mobility. In your Department gathering I hope
not dust but a little bit of reflection are two reports on this
issue by Sally Dobson. When your predecessors came before this
Committee last October I questioned them on what you might or
might not do in that context. The then permanent secretary said
there were no plans to change the existing situation. Given what
you have said and given that this is actually an issue and that
you, David, in your previous role as Chief Inspector of Ofsted,
must be well aware that this is an issue for a significant number
of schools—inner city schools, schools with a high number
of ethnic minorities, seaside and coastal towns—is it not
about time that you looked very specifically at this link in the
context of 2008-09 in terms of the funding stream?
Mr Bell: We have looked at this
one but I think our conclusion is that there are two specific
problems with distributing funding to local authorities on the
basis of that mobility measure. First of all it is a surprisingly
widespread phenomenon so we actually think that inclusion of a
mobility factor would not have much overall impact on the dedicated
schools grant. Secondly—this is probably the hardest point—the
actual data that the Department currently collects is not sufficient
or is not a robust enough indicator. I think that is a very serious
point because if you are going to fund according to any element
you have to have an indicator that people actually respect and
see as fairly applied. All the research on this has been looked
at very carefully within the Department and all the research suggests
that we cannot get that kind of robust indicator.
Q43 Mr Marsden: I accept, not least
in your battles with the Treasury, that robust indicators are
always very important, but is it not possibly the case that it
is also in some degrees inconvenient for you to have robust indicators
on this issue because it would mean you would have to open another
funding stream which you do not have. If you are not going to
go down that route, what are you going to do to address the very
real issues in those areas that your own Department has had identified
by the reports that I have referred to?
Mr Bell: I can assure you on the
robust indicator point this is not one that is in a sense constrained
by the Treasury, this is a very real issue. I can speak from some
experience on this one given my time in Newcastle when there were
some schools with huge turnovers but to try to nail down what
kind of indicator you would have used to measure that would have
actually involved the schools concerned in a phenomenal amount
of additional paper work and bureaucracy. I think you always have
to bear that in mind. I think Jon can give some consolation on
this point.
Mr Thompson: We have looked at
the advice which was initially available to us and what we would
now like to do is take that into account in the deprivation indicators
review as part of our longer term review of school funding. It
may well be that there are other indicators that we can use which
are more robust which take into account the deprivation of those
individual children, which we could then use in terms of distributing
the schools grant. It may be there is a different way of tackling
the issue through the use of those deprivation indicators.
Q44 Mr Marsden: There is some degree
of consolation in that but the issue will not go away. Can I suggest,
therefore, that if you are looking in that area that you discuss
obviously very closely with colleagues in the community but also
with the Social Exclusion Minister, not least because the Social
Exclusion Unit is now, as we learn, to be relocated outside of
Number 10 and therefore the involvement of the Social Exclusion
Minister and that aspect of government in terms of what you decide
is very important.
Mr Bell: Yes.
Q45 Mr Carswell: I would like to
build on some of the things that Gordon was saying. There is a
huge unfairness and inequality in the current system. I know this
from representatives of a local authority in Yorkshire who showed
me some data. They showed that per pupil terms there are enormous
inequalities. You have said there are problems with getting robust
indicators and whatever, but the question I really wanted to put
to you is, if you were to come up with a formula based on various
factors—age, location, social deprivation—and this
formula showed you what every pupil in the country could expect
to receive in terms of funding from their local authority, would
that allow you to give every parent in the country a legal right
to request and receive control over that share of LA funding?
Up until now the great stumbling block to doing that has been
people saying what constitutes their share of local authority
funding. If you came up with a formula surely you could open the
door to doing that.
Mr Bell: Do you mean their share
at a level of individual school or the level of the individual
pupil?
Q46 Mr Carswell: Pupil.
Mr Bell: It is a requirement on
local authorities in relation to what we publish to demonstrate
per pupil spending in their schools. Any parent can look within
the local authority area what is spent in any particular school
and the decisions about the allocation within a local authority
area are decided through the funding forum arrangements. As you
rightly point out, if you want to make those comparisons from
one place to another you can also make those comparisons. I think
you are, however, beginning to touch on the issue of a national
funding formula. There has always been a debate about on the one
hand having something that is perceived to be fair nationally
yet on the other hand not trying to prescribe to a particular
area what should be spent. I think the balance of the argument
has always been that we want to ensure that the totality of expenditure
on schools is secured by the dedicated schools grant and then
there is a good degree of local discretion about how that money
is then allocated and what decisions are made locally. I think
that is where we are at the moment in relation to your question.
Q47 Mr Carswell: I am not talking
about a national funding formula, I am talking about something
which would be extremely localist because rather than having the
national funding formula which is not the answer—I am against
that—but as a local issue it would be giving people a legal
entitlement to request and receive from the LA their share of
funding; it would actually be devolving to an even lower tier,
directly to the people.
Mr Bell: I think you are perhaps
in the territory that Mr Wilson described in relation to direct
funding in relation to a voucher system.
Q48 Mr Carswell: I am not using that
term.
Mr Bell: I know you are not, but
I am trying to understand the distinction between them.
Q49 Mr Carswell: A legal right and
a legal entitlement to request and receive.
Mr Bell: I am not quite sure what
added benefit you would get from that.
Q50 Mr Carswell: Choices.
Mr Bell: There are obviously a
lot of choice mechanisms already in the system. The system is
such that every school will get its allocated share and parents
have the freedom and right to know how that money is spent from
school to school. Obviously because of a variety of choice mechanisms
and levers in the system that does drive the distribution of funding
between schools because the more successful schools inevitably
attract more students which attract more money.
Q51 Mr Carswell: Under the current
system all too often the people end up having to follow the money
as allocated by the so called experts at the LA. With this system
the money would follow the pupil.
Mr Bell: I think it is really
important to deal with the point about the so called experts at
the LA. The arrangements for agreeing the distribution of funding
in a local authority have to include representatives of all the
schools in the area.
Q52 Mr Carswell: That is okay then.
Mr Bell: I think it is a counter
point to the argument that it is all about LA experts. I think
this is an agreement at local level about how money is distributed.
There are some broad rules, for example the majority of the funding
has to follow the pupils. It is a proper engagement of those who
are on the receiving end of fund decisions, ie head teachers and
school governors. That seems to me entirely consistent with the
local spirit.
Q53 Chairman: You are a Scots, are
you not?
Mr Bell: Yes. I sense a World
Cup question here.
Q54 Chairman: No, I would not ask
you if you were going to be supporting Trinidad and Tobago, but
have you ever mused what more expenditure you could give to schools
if England were beneficiaries of the Barnet formula
Mr Bell: No, I have never mused
on that point.
Chairman: Perhaps it is something some
of you may consider at some stage.
Q55 Jeff Ennis: Could you tell us
what the current funding gap is for a student studying in a school
sixth form as compared with an FE college?
Mr Bell: The gap was 13%. The
previous Secretary of State announced at the AoC conference last
November that that gap had dropped to 8% and there is a proposal
that that drops a further 3%. We are moving in the direction of
trying to equalise further between school sixth forms and colleges.
You might say that that has not gone the whole way but I think
that then becomes quite an important issue in relation to the
14-19 reform. I think the movement that has been made now is getting
us closer between the funded schools and further education. I
am sure the system is going to change as a result of 14-19. I
think we are going in the right direction but we have to look
at it quite fundamentally.
Q56 Jeff Ennis: I do feel a certain
amount of frustration given that almost two years ago now I asked
Charles Clarke what the gap was then and it was then 7%. He told
this Committee nearly two years ago that the gap would be closed
in three years, in other words in just over 12 months. We are
not going to hit that target, are we?
Mr Bell: We are not going to equalise
the funding in 12 months, no.
Q57 Jeff Ennis: What priority does
this particular problem get now with the Department, given the
fact that the Department has actually failed to hit our previous
Secretary of State's targets? You intimated to me that we are
actually down in the right direction; we are going to close it
with the passage of time down to 3%. How high a priority does
it have with ministers?
Mr Bell: It is a very important
priority and I hope you would have recognised in the Further Education
White Paper the priority that is given not just to the funding
issue—and I do not in any sense under-estimate the significance
of that—but also about further education more generally.
There are some difficult choices, as we know, about quite where
you put the money when it comes to post-compulsory education.
I can absolutely reassure you that it does have priority. There
have been a lot of arrangements to ensure that we get and keep
more young people in further education through things like Education
Maintenance Allowances through to expanding our Apprenticeship
programme and so on. There has been a lot of priority given to
it, but I accept the point that the funding issue remains one
that causes great concern.
Q58 Jeff Ennis: In Barnsley, for
example, 85-90% of the kids go to an FE college which has central
provision and I do not think it is fair that kids in Barnsley
should be funded 13% less than other LA areas for sixth form provision.
Mr Bell: I can only repeat the
point about trying to move over time.
Q59 Jeff Ennis: Do we have any sort
of research in terms of the impact it is having on pass rates
or exam success between students who are studying in school sixth
forms as opposed to FE colleges?
Mr Bell: We will have the data
but I do not have it to hand. I could get it in relation to the
achievements of students studying in different post-16 institutions,
whether that is a college, a school sixth form or a sixth-form
college. We can get that but I think you are perhaps asking a
slightly different question, can we draw some direct connection
between the funding and the outcomes and I suspect we do not have
that but I will undertake to look at that. We have the raw data
about who achieves what and where, but not data in relation to
what you spend and what you get. [2]
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