Examination of Witnesses (Quesitons 180-199)
RT HON
ALAN JOHNSON
MP
19 JULY 2006
Q180 Fiona Mactaggart: You said in
reply to an earlier question that the improvements in results
was the best evidence of improved productivity of the Department
and the success it has had, but I have received a lot of evidence
that the emphasis on results has meant that many educational institutions
focus on the children just below a boundary, and I was wondering
what you were doing about the consequences of that, because it
means that groups of children are missed out, so just pushing
them across from Level 3 to Level 4, for example, at Key Stage
2, those are the children who get focused on. What are you doing
about that?
Alan Johnson: It is not something
that I have particularly picked up. Incidentally, when I said
about attainment, I did not say it is the best mark of productivity,
I said I think it is the best example to the public, or information
to the public, about taxpayers' money being spent wisely. Productivity,
I accept, is a different issue. I would like to know more about
the point you are making. Our approach has to be personalised
learning, not just looking at statistics and saying that 5% are
not at the right level at Level 3, therefore there must be a single
solution to get them back on track to Level 4. We have to look
at the specific problems, and personalised learning to me means
concentrating on the specific needs and concerns of individual
children to get them up to that required level.
Q181 Fiona Mactaggart: Do you think
you are going to have a way that you can describe these cohorts
of children in a more personalised way? At the moment the information
that we get is rather crude. You talk about lowering social class
achievement gaps, but there are other big differentials, race
and particular racial groups and so on. Are you going to find
ways of describing the kind of journey of groups of children in
a way that people can see it better so that you can see which
schools are doing what well?
Alan Johnson: I hope so, and I
hope Christine Gilbert's work on personalised learning will help
us to do that. That is certainly my concept.
Q182 Fiona Mactaggart: To follow
up the point that you were making about seeing, what do you think
about the nursery teacher who is told that she cannot have the
SEAL documents and resources because they are designed for people
in Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2?
Alan Johnson: I think the younger
you get to these kinds of non-cognitive skills, as doubtless Stockholm
would have demonstrated, the better it will be. We have introduced
it at primary school level because there was a specific reason
there. You are looking at me mischievously. I do not know where
this nursery teacher stems from, but probably from Slough.
Q183 Fiona Mactaggart: Slough.
Alan Johnson: Okay. Let us look
at how it works at primary school level before we can decide whether
to put it elsewhere.
Chairman: I do not know how we can record
a mischievous look. Never mind. Rob Wilson.
Q184 Mr Wilson: I am interested to
explore this issue of spending or investment and the relationship
to standards. How close do you think that that relationship is?
For example, synthetic phonics, where it has been tried out, has
made a huge difference to attainment standards by children, not
just in literacy but in numeracy as well. That has not involved
any real additional spending or investment, as such. I just wondered
whether you have explored that sort of relationship in detail?
Alan Johnson: Not in detail, but
you make a very good point. The point that I was trying to make
to Stephen Williams, that actually concentrating on educational
and improving education is not all about spending money, I accept
that, but certainly, capital expenditure, you can see the stark
results. In my constituency there were so-called Horsa classrooms
in 1997 for children, a temporary arrangement in 1944, I think
it was, still there in 1997. So there is a very clear effect there,
because when children are taught in better surroundings with better
equipment and good books, I think there is a clear correlation.
Other aspects, I agree, and the work of the Rose Report on phonics
is something that is very exciting and not particularly expensive.[4]
Q185 Chairman: Can I put you straight
on that a little. The thrust of our Report on phonics was actually
teaching children to read. What we showed was that the evidence
suggested that any intensive form of teaching children to read
seemed to work, and the best form was assessing what was right
for that child. Some children responded to one technique and others
to another. We found two things out of that. One is that teachers
in their training were not trained properly to teach children
to read, and that was one of our prime recommendations. We were
rather amazed, some of us, that your Department seems to have
gone rather overboard with this synthetic phonics, because there
has only been one study on the effectiveness of synthetic phonics
in one part of Scotland and we wanted more research not just suddenly
taking up the latest fashion. So, intensive help for those kids
that are struggling with reading does work, but we still, I have
to sayplease come back to me on thiswe are a bit
worried about how enthusiastically you have embraced synthetic
phonics.
Alan Johnson: That is another
piece of reading for me, I think. I will have a look at your Report.
Q186 Paul Holmes: On that point,
the one study that has really assisted us was from Clackmannanshire,
and as I recall the figures now, it was a very small authority
with something like only 18 junior schools and they intensively
trained all the teachers involved. All the people we had from
your Department were pointing out that if you tried to do that
across the whole of England, for example, the implications of
taking every single teacher and training them to that level would
have very significant financial implications. The other thing
about the synthetic phonics schemes is, if you were doing them
to the exclusion of other things, which the enthusiasts were telling
us, you had to buy entire new reading schemes, junk everything
you had got virtually and buy entire new reading schemes. So,
if you want to do that across a country the size of England, there
are massive financial implications. As the Chairman said, the
implications of Clackmannanshire partly was that if you took a
group of teachers from 18 schools and gave them intensive training,
intensive anyway for teaching kids to read, then you would see
an improvement in results because what works works and enthusiastic
teachers can make things work in all sorts of different ways?
Alan Johnson: There appears to
be a difference between Committee Members here.
Q187 Chairman: We still have the
scars of that too. Last one before we move on to research funding.
There is a massive programme of rebuilding schools, building new
schools and refurbishing old schools, and none of us would in
a sense criticise that wonderful programme. We do not want to
see kids in awful conditions. Our Committee is looking at sustainable
schools as a major inquiry, but as this vast expenditure takes
place, do you think we are getting the proportion right between
building new schools and designing what goes into those new and
refurbished schools?
Alan Johnson: Yes, I hope so.
The whole philosophy between the local education partnerships
that will be responsible for BSF is that it is not just someone
going in, sticking up a building. Education informs everything,
the shape, the design and the ICT that goes in there with the
involvement of the local authority, of people who have a background
and a track record in producing iconic, good buildings. This is,
as you rightly say, so crucial, such a huge expenditure, every
secondary school in the country being refurbished or rebuilt and
a fair stock of primary schools. It cannot just be done on the
basis of sticking up buildings and hoping for the best. We have
to ensure that everything is integrated and coordinated. That
is what we are trying to do through LEPs.
Q188 Chairman: We have to go beyond
boasting there are banks of computers and white boards, some of
which unfortunately teachers do not know how to use. Some of the
information we have had from Microsoft, BT and others is that
there is a lot of very good information about new ways of teaching
children to learn and perhaps the Department is rather lagging
behind.
Alan Johnson: I will look at that.
I hope not.[5]
Q189 Chairman: How are your own IT skills?
Alan Johnson: Poor to appalling.
Chairman: Perhaps we can all join together
and improve them.
Q190 Mr Marsden: In the Budget there
was an announcement that the Research Assessment Exercise for
assessing university funding was going to be replaced with a system
based on metrics. As you know, the consultation document has been
already published on that, but it is a rather narrow consultation
document in that it focuses not so much on the merits of change
but more on the process of introducing metrics. Do you think it
makes sense to be arguing for the introduction of a system that
has generally already agreed more than half of the subjects currently
funded for research, particularly the humanities and social sciences,
and more than half the number of the academics and lecturers involved
and a metrics system that will not be fit for purpose?
Alan Johnson: I have some history
on this because when I was Higher Education Minister we published
the Roberts Review. Gareth Roberts recommended moving a long way
towards a metrics based system. We are doing this in the best
way possible, running the traditional RAE alongside a metrics
based system and using that to inform where we go to next. I think
there has been a lot of discussion about this over many years
and, when I was Higher Education Minister, I was amazed quite
frankly that we spent all this money and took up all this timesomething
like 82 different panels and committeeson something that
could be done much more quickly. Our joint objective would be
to maintain the excellent research base we have in this country.
I went through the arguments. You have been through them, I know.
It was pretty tedious stuff in the sense that it got very techy
but I do believe that we need to move away from peer review and
we need to have a better system. Running the two systems alongside
each other which can reassure people who are worried about what
the objective is herei.e., does it mean putting all the
money into a few universities around the south eastwill
give reassurance.
Q191 Mr Marsden: You are obviously
reading my mind. You are absolutely right. I can understand your
world weariness with it. There has been an immense amount of discussion
about the RAE, the problems and difficulties of it and indeed
about the extent to which there are all these problems about assessment
and all the rest of it. Many of those criticisms have focused
on the narrowness and mechanical nature of the RAE as it is at
the moment. Does it make sense to be moving to a system which,
at least on the basis of what is included in your consultation
document, looks as if it is going to move more to a tick box culture
and an assessment of a number of pages of things submitted? How
are we going to assess whether any of these changes have a beneficial
impact on UK research's reputation internationally or not?
Alan Johnson: Gareth Roberts did
make the point about metrics. You could run a metrics system without
peer review and get good results. I am not sure of the answer
to your question. I would want to see these two systems running
side by side. I would want to see the correlation and the outcome.
That is the best way to do this rather than to leap from RAE to
a metrics based system, to see how they operate and to see the
similarity.
Q192 Mr Marsden: Given that this
has been introduced, what research has your Department commissioned
to look at the potential impact of this change? I make that point
because the direction of travel, the buzzwords that we all like
to use these days, internationally appears to be in the opposite
direction.
Alan Johnson: Australia.
Q193 Mr Marsden: Australia and Hong
Kong. In addition, there is an issue in terms of the concentration
in universities on research where the evidence again from the
States suggests that the travel is in the other direction and
is becoming more diffuse and not more concentrated. Academics
will argue about these things until kingdom come but would it
not be a good idea to do a little bit of risk benefit analysis
on it?
Alan Johnson: We will be doing
some research on this. That is the whole reason for running the
two alongside each other. I am a fan of metrics.
Mr Marsden: Would your Department be
able to come back to the Committee in due course and give us details
of what this research is going to be, how you are going to carry
it out and evaluate it?
Q194 Chairman: You have not been
bounced into metrics by the Chancellor, have you?
Alan Johnson: Maybe the other
way round.
Q195 Chairman: Why was it announced
in the Budget?
Alan Johnson: We had the Roberts
Report in 2004. We had the 10-year Science and Innovation Framework
which I was involved with as a DTI minister. It has hardly been
bounced. This has been around for a while. What was in the Budget
was the next steps on the 10-year Science and Innovation Framework.
It is quite right, if you set a 10-year framework, you have to
have the steps along the way. I refute the argument completely
that this is somehow the Chancellor pushing this. The Chancellor
is in a good place on this.
Q196 Mr Marsden: You will be relieved
to know that I am not going to pursue the issue of what the Chancellor's
views are or are not. I am going to move on to the views of the
people at the coal face, the lecturers, the academics, the support
staff who currently work under RAE and will be affected by this.
The UCU, who are launching their own major consultation exercise
at the moment, have pointed out that under the present system
there has been a very strong concentration of research funding
in a small number of departments and institutions. They make the
pointI would like your comment on thisthat we ought
to be questioning whether we fund past performance rather than
potential capacity building. Is there a danger that by entrenching
funding, whether it is by a metrics system or by the RAE system,
in a few very tight universities you are not going to stop the
small and medium sized research enterprises growing in other universities,
particularly the post-1992 ones?
Alan Johnson: That would be a
concern. The objective must be to fund excellent research wherever
it takes place. I do not agree that this change is to lead to
a concentration onto the so-called club. You know who I am talking
about.
Q197 Mr Marsden: You are talking
about the post-1992 universities, the Russell Group, losing out.
Alan Johnson: No, I am not talking
about them losing out. I disagree that this is a process that
will lead to Imperial, Oxford, Cambridge and one other
Q198 Stephen Williams: Bristol?
Alan Johnson: No, not Bristol.
Q199 Chairman: Imperial, University
College, London, Oxford and Cambridge.
Alan Johnson: That is right, that
that is going to lead to all research being concentrated. The
Chairman put it more eloquently than anyone I have heard on this
about a gang of people marching into Number 10.
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