Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
MR DAVID
BELL AND
MR JONATHAN
THOMPSON
14 JUNE 2006
Q60 Jeff Ennis: Is it something we ought
to be able to have a handle on?
Mr Bell: I think it is an important
question. It is notoriously difficult to get the data and measure
it. How do you make that absolute connection between the funding
and the outcome? I think there is a recognition in terms of the
direction of government policy that it does matter to get the
funding as close as possible wherever a student is being educated.
One of the historic reasons has been that what goes on in a school,
sixth form or a sixth-form college is different in type and nature
to what goes on in college. That is why I made the point about
14-19 reform. That argument is a less sustainable one to advance
even if there were a single argument in the first place. I think
we really will have to look very seriously at this as the full
impact of 14-19 reform kicks in.
Q61 Chairman: As I go round schools
I detect a real worry that what came out of the Tomlinson recommendations
and the Government's take on that that the new diplomas are going
to come in in something over a year's time, 2008. Many of the
schools I talk to are very concerned. This is a fundamental change
in our educational system and the schools are worried about whether
the resources are being allocated, whether planning is being done,
the staff are being trained for what is after all a very big change
in our secondary education system. Why is there almost an absence
of reference to that in your report?
Mr Bell: I am a bit concerned
that you are picking up that kind of mood and feeling because
part of our whole programme of change towards 14-19 is to prepare
schools and teachers. I think the most important thing to say
is that we have to remind ourselves there will be five diplomas
introduced in 2008 but we are not expecting and have never expected
every school and every college to have in place in their own institutions
provision for all five. That was never the assumption. Part of
the assumption, as you know, is that we get better collaborative
arrangements between schools and colleges, and a lot of that is
happening already ahead of the 14-19 diplomas. For example, students
who may be pursuing a diploma route may well do that in a further
education college in one place but in another place that diploma
will not be on offer but something else will be on offer. I think
it is very important just to remind ourselves that this is about
progressively rolling out the 14-19 reform and not a big bang
where every institution has to have it all in place immediately.
Q62 Chairman: This is what I am picking
up. You would say that, would you not, that you do not need extra
resources, you do not need extra training, this big change is
going to take place on the same budget under the same style, but
people on the ground are telling me that if that is what you think
you are wrong. Even if it is going to happen piecemeal, even it
is going to be a gentle move into that direction without training
people, this Committee has some very severe reservations about
the quality of teacher training as it is. Someone said to me yesterday
that what they are worried about is that if they are going to
finish up teaching 14-19 the people teaching will be PE teachers
with bad knees. That is a real concern. The 14-19 new agenda is
not easy and if you think as permanent secretary it is going to
be done on a shoe string and it is going to be done with no training
then I think there is going to be a lot of concern out there in
the schools.
Mr Bell: I am not suggesting that,
Mr Chairman. I think it is absolutely right that people are going
to have to be trained because the quality of the teaching as well
as the quality of the facilities will be central to the success
of the 14-19 reform programme. There is money earmarked for training
and development. We are a couple of years off; I am not underestimating
how long it takes to get things into place. We do not yet know
until the end of June this year quite what the initial diploma
is going to look like in terms of content. That is fine because
that is against the timetable that we specified. I think on the
back of that you will see more progress as we understand what
the diploma requirements are and who is going to be teaching what.
In the autumn I would be happy to respond further and follow up
on the very specific detail of how the roll-out and the implementation
is going to be carried out.
Q63 Chairman: You know the underlying
concern that this is a new format where the academic stream will
still be reasonably resourced and supported but kids who chose
that other course, the other route into vocational if they do
not get into the very best on parallel with equal funding they
will get some second class offering that is under-resourced. That
is a fear. I am not saying it is going to happen, but that is
a fear out there amongst some of the people who are going to deliver.
Mr Bell: Therefore we have to
do all that we can do to reassure people on the back of what is
proposed that we do want to have people well trained and qualified.
Part of the problem that we have seen on some vocational initiatives
in the past is precisely one that you have raised and it has not
been seen as having the status within the school or the status
within the teaching force. We cannot allow that to happen under
the 14-19 report. To reassure you, we have a detailed implementation
plan about how we are going to take all of this forward. I would
be happy to come back to the Committee to tell you a bit more
about that if you wish.
Chairman: Thank you for that. We are
going to move on now to look at efficiency savings.
Q64 Helen Jones: I want to try to
look at this business of cashable gains and non-cashable gains.
When the Government replied to the Committee's report in March
of this year they said that most of the DfES's efficiency programme
were measures to improve the quality of provision, in other words
what they call non-cashable gains.
Mr Bell: That is correct.
Q65 Helen Jones: What proportion
of the programme falls into that category? Can you give us the
figures?
Mr Bell: On the £4.3 billion
of efficiency savings, those are all non-cashable. The Department's
cashable element is in many ways relatively modest and relates
to the reduction in the number of posts in the Department. We
are due to reduce by 1,400 posts.
Q66 Helen Jones: Do you think it
is helpful to quantify non-cashable efficiency gains in money
terms because no money is being used to fund additional activity,
is it? You talk about a saving which, in some respects, is not
there.
Mr Bell: It is about making better
use of what you have. Quite a lot of the emphasis on that £4.3
billion is in workforce reform and remodelling. That seems to
me to be a classic example of saying that if you restructure the
workforce by, for example, allowing teachers more time for preparation
and so on, you should generate the efficiency of more time available
for teachers to prepare effectively and to teach better. I think
these are very real issues about efficiency. By ensuring—as
we are trying to do in further and higher education sectors—that
you have bulk buying of goods and services, providing advice and
support to that, the money that you release by procuring business
services more cheaply one can then recycle into the basic provisions.
That is a very reasonable expectation on the back of an efficiency
programme. You are right, it is not cash that is coming out of
the system, it is using what you have more effectively on the
basis of the actions you take with it and what forms of procurement
and the like.
Q67 Helen Jones: I understand that
but we hear these answers and they are very non-specific. To help
us understand can you actually give us some examples of individual
schools where they have made efficiency savings and where those
efficiency savings have been used?
Mr Bell: With the Office of Government
Commerce we have done some direct visits. For example, schools
that have made more use of cover supervisors have released teachers
from doing that work and in a sense they have given teachers more
time for planning and preparation and the schools concerned say
that that has had an impact on the quality of the education of
the students. The cover supervisors are within the school; they
are not purchased from outside so there is a saving in not having
expensive supply teachers but having people known to the students.
That is a very concrete example of what schools can and actually
are doing. I can take procurement, for example. Providing on-line
procurement advice to primary schools saves the head teacher or
the deputy head spending hours and hours and hours going through
catalogues trying to find the best deal. If you have services
on-line you can type in a particular product and you can draw
up the best buys. Those are very practical examples. We are very
conscious of your point; we need to give schools and colleges
and other institutions that very practical kind of support so
that they can change their behaviour to generate those efficiencies.
Q68 Helen Jones: I understand that
and I understand what you are saying about the savings and teachers
having extra preparation time. Do you have any way of measuring
whether that is feeding through into improved educational outcomes
because what you said earlier was that schools feel that that
improves education? Is there any measure that this is actually
improving outcome?
Mr Bell: The reality is that it
is very hard to get that direct correlation between saving time
here and achieving X amounts of examination results there.
Q69 Helen Jones: That is what it
is supposed to do.
Mr Bell: Yes, it is, absolutely;
it is supposed to do that but it seems to me it is part of a package
of measures to bring about that improvement. We do have evidence
about teachers having time to be well prepared to teach their
lessons. If we know that that has a connection, if you can release
more time for teachers to do that substantial kind of preparation
we know that improves teacher quality and we know from Ofsted
reports that teaching quality is a very important factor. That
is a kind of fuzzy connection—I absolutely accept that—but
I think it is important to stress the point that we are giving
schools the encouragement, the advice and the support to generate
that kind of activity at school level so they can make better
use of the teachers so the teachers can do what they know makes
the most impact on pupil performance.
Q70 Helen Jones: Are you satisfied
then that the schools have in place the appropriate systems both
to monitor their financial efficiency and to ensure that when
they are making changes they are actually improving educational
outcomes? Is it hope or have we got a rigorous system in place?
If not, what do we need to do to improve that? I am thinking particularly
of smaller primary schools where it is quite difficult.
Mr Bell: The answer to the first
part of your question is yes, we have a financial benchmarking
website. There are 18,000 schools that have received specific
financial management training. We have training being done through
the National College for School Leadership on precisely those
points. You can now benchmark how well your school is doing against
other schools. That gives you indicators of how you are doing
but it does not provide answers. I think you are absolutely right,
if schools are going to improve their performance they need to
know how they are doing and that is why it has been a very key
part of the whole efficiency programme, to have those kinds of
systems in place. I think the small primary schools point is a
very fair point because one can understand intuitively that if
you are in a larger institution you are more likely to be able
to generate those kinds of efficiencies, but it is certainly true
that even the smallest primary school, by doing some of the things
that I have described, can free up more money. That would be proportionate
to the size of the institution and to scale that up into further
education and higher education you would get greater savings because
of the size of school and institution.
Q71 Helen Jones: I understand that
but the question was partly about staff as well. Are you convinced
that heads necessarily have the financial expertise or that they
have the staff in schools with the financial expertise to look
at these things properly? That is why I mentioned small primary
schools where you probably have someone doing it part time. We
seem to have moved in secondary schools from school secretaries
to bursars to what are now called business managers. Is the Department
convinced that the people you have do have the right training
to make sure that the budgets are spent effectively and efficiently?
Mr Bell: If you take bursars,
for example, that is a thoroughly positive development particularly
in larger schools and certainly in colleges and universities where
you have technically trained staff to do that kind of work so
that those who are responsible for teaching and learning are able
to focus their time and attention. Again I accept the point in
relation to smaller primary schools that it is going to be harder
and we have taken that into account. The National College have
taken that into account in the training they are giving. Have
we enough people in schools that actually understand it? It is
difficult to quantify that. I think you can tell from those numbers
that I have given you earlier about a very large percentage of
head teachers having undergone financial management training;
more and more head teachers are making use of benchmarking information
and data. I am cautiously optimistic that people really do get
this now. We also get it, as it were, because a lot of the recent
changes and reforms in the system have been explicitly premised
on making better use of the teaching quality by making better
use of support staff and so on. I will ask Jon if he wants to
come in here.
Mr Thompson: Just to add slightly
to what David said, I think we feel there is further that schools
could go and we need to talk about, for example, the employment
of a professional bursar that is shared by a number of different
schools so there is that expertise which is used by a group. We
think there is further potential in this area.
Q72 Helen Jones: What about the differences
between schools? We have talked about those schools that find
themselves in very deprived circumstances. You find that although
the money they have had has increased they are still not as well
resourced as many of other schools in affluent areas where parents
are very good at raising money. How are we going to tackle that
problem, to direct more money to the more deprived schools? Do
they find it more difficult to make the kind of efficiency gains,
bearing in mind they have come from a lower base anyway?
Mr Bell: In all the data that
we have so far there is no suggestion that schools certainly in
one kind of area as opposed to another are finding it more difficult.
I think the point perhaps goes back to your earlier one that larger
schools by definition find they have more room to manoeuvre. That
is irrespective of whether you are in a leafy suburb or an inner
city deprived area. I think the general point about funding for
deprivation perhaps takes us back to the conversation we were
having earlier about how you find the right mechanisms to do that.
It seems to me that the point applies in whatever school you are
in, you should be looking at the means by which you can make the
most efficient use of what it is you have to spare. That applies
in every educational institution.
Mr Thompson: Is there more that
can be done at the local authority area which could differentiate
further in relation to the deprivation? We think that is something
we need to have a look at and it is part of the review; there
is potential to differentiate further and follow the specific
needs, possibly of some of the children within that local authority
area. That is something which we think we ought to have a look
at.
Q73 Helen Jones: What you are saying
I think is that things would have to be done locally. A local
authority like mine, for instance, if you measure the overall
deprivation we do not score very highly but if you look at some
of the schools in the centre of my local authority there are some
very deprived circumstances. It is also about them getting the
necessary expertise down to local levels to do that.
Mr Thompson: Yes.
Mr Bell: To give you a slightly
different example but an important one, if you look at the amount
of money that local authorities spend on children with complex
needs I am sure you are all aware in your own areas of the very
substantial sums of money that are spent. I think there is a shared
recognition between local authorities and central government that
we do not always get best value out of that because of things
like support purchasing where you very much find yourselves in
the hands of the provider if you have a child who needs to be
placed. We have very small number of procurement experts in the
Department working with local authorities to try to build up regional
purchasing arrangements so in a sense you get a consortium set
up so that you get a more efficient way and a cheaper way of purchasing
high quality services. Local authorities will tell you that that
is really, really important, given the huge expenditure on children
with complex needs. I think that is exactly your point. That is
not about central imposition, that is about helping to build that
expertise at local level.
Q74 Helen Jones: Is there any part
of the DfES that has not achieved its efficiency savings in the
last year? Headquarters? Schools? Anywhere?
Mr Bell: As far as the Department
is concerned as I have stressed today this is a very small element
of the overall picture. We are just slightly ahead of trajectory
in reducing staff numbers and we are ahead of trajectory in relocation.
As far as the overall £4.3 billion efficiency savings are
concerned we are slightly ahead of trajectory in terms of what
has been generated as efficiency savings but the big hike up comes
in the next year or so. The Office of Government Commerce quite
rightly says we have trajectory but you have quite a low base
line. What is going to happen next year? We are confident we are
going to achieve that; we are slightly ahead of trajectory in
those areas.
Q75 Paul Holmes: The National Audit
Office in their report in February raised some concerns about
how you might measure efficiencies. For example, if you put an
ICT system in that could lead to all sorts of efficiencies, but
are you taking account of the on-going costs for maintenance,
depreciation, replacement of capital later on?
Mr Bell: Yes, it is very important
to us. A proper question asked of us by the Office of Government
Commerce when it reviews these is: are these savings sustainable?
That is a really important point that has been asked of us. You
could make a one off saving but actually costs hike up. All of
the programmes that we have in place have to pass that sustainability
test: is this going to be an embedded savings? I can assure you,
to take the technology example, we do make assumptions about technology
savings that those will be on-going efficiencies; we will not
be making that saving one year and then all of a sudden that efficiency
is not captured. These are real efficiencies that are captured
over time.
Q76 Paul Holmes: In relation to the
answers you gave to Helen I was intrigued by some of the definitions
of efficiencies, of non-cashable efficiencies. I do agree with
what you are saying that if teachers get more preparation time
that is educationally good, but you are suggesting that if teachers
get more preparation time you think that is a non-cashable efficiency
and that you are also saving money because you are not bringing
in supply teachers, you are using cheaper exam supervisors, classroom
supervisors, et cetera.
Mr Bell: Yes.
Q77 Paul Holmes: In my experience
in secondary schools we would cover exams in our free time. As
the schools are moving more and more to employing outside people
at cheaper rates that is an extra financial cost to the school.
They are not actually saving any money there.
Mr Bell: There are two dimensions
to that. If you take supply cover there is a real saving in financial
terms if you do not employ supply teachers. It is much, much more
important and usually far better to have your own cadre of staff
inside to do that.
Q78 Paul Holmes: I agree absolutely
with what you are saying but in all three schools that I have
worked in over 22 years we have never used outside invigilators,
it was always the teachers in their non-contact time who would
supervise an exam. If you then start in any of those three schools
that I worked in to bring in outside invigilators, even though
they are cheaper per hour than a qualified teacher, it is actually
a cash cost to the school.
Mr Bell: It is, but the cost of
that is actually marginal against the school budget. Secondly
you are then not having teachers doing exam invigilation which
I think we would probably agree is not necessarily the most productive
use of a teacher's time. So in a sense you are generating the
efficiency not simply just in terms of cash but you are actually
seeing on the back of the time that has been freed up that teachers
have more time for preparation than doing an activity which may
not be making the best use of their expertise.
Q79 Paul Holmes: In your account
in the secondary school case you say there is a marginal extra
cash cost but there is an extra cash cost; are you off-setting
that against how you judge the educational efficiency saving?
Mr Bell: All of these data requirements
under each of the savings are set with the Office of Government
Commerce and are subject to reviews so we have to be able to demonstrate
against a set of calculations or formulae that have been established
that all relevant costs have been taken into account in generating
the efficiency. One of the issues that we have is that sometimes
we have to use proxy indicators because one of the concerns that
ministers had I think quite properly was that they did not want
to have a huge additional bureaucratic burden in schools which
would then defeat the purpose that you have to account in all
sorts of complex ways for these efficiency savings. For example
we do sampling through time diaries so you take a certain number
of schools and a certain number of teachers, looking at what has
been done and we have made some assumptions. That is all fair
and reasonable. Throughout this we have had to strike a careful
balance between measuring the efficiencies so they are robust
and at the same time not over-burdening the schools with a whole
lot of data requirements. That is a fine line to tread I have
to acknowledge.
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