Examination of Witnesses (Question 80-99)
MS ALTHEA
EFUNSHILE, MR
ANDREW MCCULLY
AND MR
IAN COATES
14 NOVEMBER 2005
Q80 Tim Farron: Given that having
a large percentage of your students having special educational
needs does not tend to do your league table position an awful
lot of good and given the reliance of the Government on clusters,
I am not saying necessarily that is a bad thing, and given the
emphasis on school autonomy in the White Paper, how are you going
to coerce those successful schools which do not want to get involved
in such a cluster to do so?
Mr McCully: Can I just pick up
again perhaps, because you have not been able to see the memorandum,
that one important commitment set out in the White Paper is the
further steps we are making to look at the progress of all pupils
and to recognise the progress of pupils within the accountability
arrangement for schools. We are already along that path, in the
sense that school performance is already measured in value added
terms, by which I mean the improvements given the prior attainment
of the individual children. We are moving to the next stage by—and
apologies for these technicalities—contextual value added,
which specifically takes account of some key factors which influence
the child's progress, and SEN is certainly one of those factors
in the contextual value added calculations. All of that data for
the performance arrangements feeds into the work that the accountability
regime, as assessed by Ofsted in their inspections, will be looking
at, therefore the improvements for all pupils will be a key part
of what Ofsted will be inspecting when it goes into schools. There
is also work of the new addition to the accountability regime,
the school improvement partner, a skilled, normally serving headteacher,
or in some instances headteachers with recent experience but perhaps
now retired from their posts, who will be working with all schools,
in terms of the progress towards their own objectives and targets.
Again they will have the data that I have just been talking about,
which looks at the performance of those schools, or those groups
of schools, compared with schools in similar circumstances and
they will see whether those schools are making progress compared
with the expectations that may be put on those schools. There
is a whole range of changes to the accountability regime that
progressively looks at the performance for all pupils and the
progress for all pupils. Like you, I am sure, I have heard of
schools which are worried about their relative position in so-called
performance tables, because of issues with SEN. That has been
a constant issue which headteachers always raise with me and my
colleagues, but I think, as the White Paper sets out, we are progressively
looking at a changing system which picks up on the progress of
all pupils.
Q81 Tim Farron: We have been used
to responding, for the last hour or so and for the last 25 years,
to things that Baroness Warnock has said, so I will throw in as
well. She said at the meeting when she was here that she was extremely
worried, when I asked her a question she agreed, in the context
of admission of special educational needs children to mainstream
schools, about the provisions in the White Paper with regard to
the growth of independent state schools and a freeing up of the
admissions process. Is she right to be considering that to be
extremely worrying?
Mr McCully: I do not think so.
I think the proposals in the White Paper very much support, and
I think we can point her to some very powerful parts in the White
Paper that meet many of the concerns that she was raising. From
the point of view of admissions, all schools continue to sit within
the law for admissions, so even those schools I think she was
referring to particularly, in terms of the new status of Trust
schools, they sit within the law of admissions and have regard
to the Code of Admissions. I do not think she has any need to
be concerned about that.
Q82 Tim Farron: In that case, why
are we not making the Admissions Code of Practice compulsory?
Mr McCully: I think we have yet
to see the evidence that the range of issues covered by the Code
of Admissions and the flexibility within that Code require that
full statutory background.
Q83 Helen Jones: Can I follow up
from what you have just said. I think it must be so nice to be
within the DfES and believe that everyone is going to do all these
wonderful things. Let us imagine for a moment that you are running
an independent Trust school, you do not have a lot of children
with SEN and particularly perhaps those whose special needs lead
to behavioural difficulties. What is going to make you want to
change your admissions policy in order to admit more of those
children under the proposals in the White Paper?
Mr McCully: For all proposals
on new schools and therefore for any school moving to Trust status,
these will be new proposals published, the local authority will
have the power to set the community that the school should cover.
Q84 Helen Jones: It may well do that,
but the whole point that the White Paper is trying to tell us
is that good schools, that are well-performing schools, might
well, it says, change their admission criteria to admit more children
from deprived areas, more children with special needs, is what
is being said in the White Paper. How are you going to make them
do that if they have control over their own admissions? If the
local authority sets the community, the community can be very
narrowly defined.
Ms Efunshile: The White Paper
says that it will have a responsibility for setting a local admissions
framework and that the Trust schools, when they are setting their
own admissions criteria, will need to demonstrate that their admissions
criteria fit within that local framework, so that is one of the
points made in the Schools White Paper. That is along with the
point to which Andrew was just referring, that there is also a
new requirement, as it were, for new schools when they are being
established, that the local authority can set a requirement in
terms of the SEN intake for that school. The White Paper, in fact,
is not setting out a free for all, where there would be a number
of different schools with their own separate admissions criteria,
and which would mean that they are all considered completely unattached.
There is a framework at the local level.
Q85 Helen Jones: Firstly, the White
Paper does say that schools will have control over their own admissions,
it says that very clearly. Secondly, this Select Committee found,
when it investigated admissions, that the Code of Practice did
not work well, because it does not have statutory force. What
information have you got for us to show that it will work better
when all schools become independent schools with control over
their own admissions, particularly with regard to SEN, which is
what we are considering here?
Mr McCully: It might help if I
clarified one important point about SEN. You referred to independent
schools. Of course, Trust schools and Foundation schools will
be maintained schools.
Q86 Helen Jones: They are described,
in the White Paper, I think, they talk about having schools that
are independent, non-fee paying schools, "our aim is the
creation of a system of independent non-fee paying schools."
Mr McCully: Independent of ethos,
independent of some of the direct relationships with the local
authority, but they will be maintained schools, and therefore
all Foundation and Trust schools, since they are maintained, will
have to take, for instance, statemented pupils if they are named
in the statement. These are maintained schools, they are not independent
schools outside the maintained system.
Q87 Helen Jones: Indeed. If they
have a statement that may well be right, but what we are talking
about here is how you deal with pupils who have special educational
needs, who are not perhaps going to a special school but have
special educational needs which need to be dealt with within a
mainstream school. My question to you is, which still I have not
been given an answer to, why those schools, which now do not take
their fair share of those pupils, will be taking any more of them
under the proposals in the White Paper? If they set their own
admissions criteria, how will more of those children with special
needs get into the better-performing schools?
Mr McCully: No school can set
criteria which could possibly prevent children with special educational
needs being educated there.
Q88 Chairman: Can you say that again?
Mr McCully: If you set criteria
which exclude children with special educational needs, that would
be demonstrably unfair and would be directly in contravention
to the law and indeed certainly would not be having regard to
the Code of Admissions.
Q89 Helen Jones: When we looked at
this, we found that many schools have regard to the Code of Practice
on admissions and then ignore it, and it is only if a complaint
is made to the Schools Adjudicator that anything happens. We were
discussing earlier the relationship between deprivation and SEN
which sometimes exists. Are you confident that the most deprived
families, or those who are already under an awful lot of pressure
because they are dealing with a child with special educational
needs, are going to make these complaints to the Adjudicator?
Mr McCully: I am very confident
about the support for parents to take advantage of the growing
diversity of schools. The White Paper set out a number of ways
in which the choice of parents would be supported, that the information
for parents would be improved and that the outreach, especially
towards groups of parents who are often most distant from the
education system in their area, would be supported. The White
Paper talked about choice advisers being the responsibility of
local authorities to help parents in that respect, so I am confident
that parents will have increased support about the choices they
can make and that there should be real choices. Again, perhaps
we might talk about other provisions, such as the provisions on
transport in the White Paper, all of which are about improving
the choices available to parents.
Ms Efunshile: We commissioned
some work from the National Foundation for Educational Research,
which we published earlier this year, which found that there was
no evidence of any systematic discrimination in terms of schools
and admissions against children with SEN and no statement. I am
sure we can send that to you. They did find that children with
SEN who were seeking admission to schools outside of the normal
admissions process, sort of casual admissions, in fact for those
children there could be difficulties. We can think of anecdotes
here but we have not found evidence of the systematic discrimination
against children with SEN. This is one of the things we will send
you.
Helen Jones: We will come back to that
because, having done our work on admissions, I do not think we
are terribly convinced about that as a Committee.
Q90 Chairman: Before you finish,
Helen, can we have a note on that because some of us have not
interpreted what you have just said about the White Paper in quite
the same way? If we had a note on that it would be very useful
for the Committee.
Ms Efunshile: Yes.
Mr McCully: Certainly we can do
that. Although the memorandum which we thought had been sent to
you does touch on those, we will expand on the written memorandum.
Q91 Helen Jones: Can I go back to
the personalisation agenda, which is in the White Paper. Perhaps
you can clarify for the Committee how much money currently is
going to schools to drive the personalisation agenda? Also, what
assessment have you made for how that will work for children with
special educational needs, bearing in mind two things, that contractually
teachers are entitled to non-contact time, and if you are going
to have a lot more personalised learning therefore you are going
to need a lot more staff time, also in terms of the training of
the teaching staff and teaching assistants to deal with different
types of special needs?
Mr McCully: I think it would be
misleading if I were to put an overall figure on personalisation.
Personalisation is about the whole way in which the school uses
all its resources to meet the needs of an individual child. Having
said that, there are a number of new commitments that the White
Paper makes to support the objectives which are set out and for
personalisation in a number of ways. There is support already
announced, given your point about non-contact time and meeting
children's needs outside the normal school day, there is funding
already announced for extended schools, and extended schools have
a key part to play in meeting the range of needs of children in
the personalisation agenda. In the new Dedicated School Budget,
after the pupil guarantee has been met, there is some headroom
for local authorities from the overall totals already announced.
The Secretary of State set out, just before the publication of
the White Paper, that £335 million of that overall headroom
available to local authorities would be targeted at meeting the
personalisation agenda, with the specific focus of improving the
small group provision, from which children with specific needs
often would benefit more than just in whole-class, excellent teaching.
In addition, the School Standards Fund, which is used to target
particular local authorities with problems of low attainment,
we will be looking through that to help schools which have difficulties
perhaps with managing a range of interventions for individual
children. Again, when I was last before the Committee we talked
about different interventions to help with reading. Those extra
funds of £60 million, for both primary and secondary schools,
will be used to help train teachers to manage those interventions
better, to have better access to the range of materials available
and therefore contribute very significantly to the personalisation
agenda. Some specific extra sums of money are announced, but that
is only to advance key parts of the agenda, it is not a total
for personalisation.
Q92 Helen Jones: Do you accept that
to deliver personalised learning in schools really it is going
to require a lot more staff? Are we supposed to deliver it with
the existing staff?
Mr McCully: Certainly a continuing
development of the workforce is needed. Personalisation is about
looking at the curriculum and the curriculum offer and ensuring
that the curriculum is not unnecessarily prescriptive so that
teachers and schools can plan their curriculum offer in a way
that meets the needs of the children. It is about the access to
provision in and beyond the school day. It is about the relationship
with other agencies outside the school. It is not just about extra
hours in the day or extra time from teachers and skilled teaching
assistants to add further lessons or smaller classes.
Q93 Helen Jones: I am not sure whether
that is a yes or a no. Do you think it requires more staff, or
not?
Mr McCully: I am saying it requires
a different use of staff from the one we have been dedicated to.
Q94 Helen Jones: It is to be delivered
without more staff, is that what you are saying?
Mr McCully: The White Paper talked
about the considerable increase in staff that we have seen over
recent years, and certainly the funding in the headroom of the
DSG was on the assumption that schools would be able to recruit
additional staff, either schoolteachers or teaching assistants,
to help with that personalisation agenda.
Mr Wilson: Just trying to look at that
from another direction, why should a headmaster who is worried
about resourcing and funding and discipline be forced to take
pupils with special educational needs?
Chairman: Could you rephrase it because
you have stumped them?
Q95 Mr Wilson: Why should schools
be forced to take more children with special educational needs
if they felt it would affect the education of others within the
school?
Mr Coates: They would not be forced
to take children with special educational needs.
Q96 Mr Wilson: If there was a statutory
code of practice, for example, which currently there is not, they
would be forced to, would they not?
Mr Coates: As it works at present,
again there is a distinction between children with a statement
of SEN and children without. For children with a statement, a
local authority must name the maintained school that the child's
parents require, unless they can demonstrate that it would be
inappropriate for the educational needs of that child, or they
can demonstrate that it would be inconsistent with the efficient
education of other children, your point, or that it would be inconsistent
with the efficient use of resources. That is the checklist, if
you like, for a child with a statement. There is the protection
there that, yes, the parent has the first say, but it is important
that a school is named on a statement only if those conditions
are met appropriately and not inappropriately. For a child without
a statement of SEN then it will be for the local authority to
delegate appropriate funding to schools to meet, using Andrew's
word, the community of intake that they are meant to be meeting.
The local authority may need to consider, if there is a particular
influx of children with special educational needs or maybe a small
number of children with higher needs who are going to be attending
that school, changing the funding arrangement accordingly. That
then would be very much for the school and the local authority
to determine appropriately.
Q97 Mr Wilson: I understand that.
If, for example, the Government made the admissions system a statutory
requirement on a school, presumably that would mean they would
have to take a certain number of special educational needs pupils
into their school?
Ms Efunshile: First of all, there
is no plan to have a statutory admissions code in that way.
Q98 Mr Wilson: I know, but in the
past this Committee has advised that would be a good thing.
Ms Efunshile: The conditions as
set out would have to be in place, so that what one could not
imagine doing is setting out a quota, for example, that there
needed to be X number of pupils with special educational needs
in each school. It would need, again, to start with the needs
of the child, that the child's needs could be met in that school
so the right provision was available at that school, that by placing
the child at that school it would not prejudice the education
of other children at the school and, taking account of the resources
available in the local area, that it would not be a prejudicial
use of the resources either.
Q99 Mr Wilson: One of the things
which concerns schools at the moment is that it can take seven
months to go through a statementing process. There are no resources
given to that school while they are going through that process.
Would not one of the ways be to encourage more schools to take
more special educational needs pupils to provide the funding and
the resources to go through that process, so that they do not
have to take existing resources from elsewhere?
Mr Coates: Certainly we are working
continually, particularly through the SEN adviser team, with local
authorities to speed up the statutory assessment process whilst
at the same time, of course, maintaining its rigour and maintaining
the expert input that is required. Yes, we should streamline the
process as much as is reasonable, given the need for it to be
a very rigorous process. Certainly what we have encouraged local
authorities to do in their management of SEN expenditure is, where
appropriate, to increase the delegation of funding to schools
so that schools have got the funding there to meet the special
educational needs of their children, potentially either without
even going through the statutory assessment and statementing process,
if they can do that, or indeed they have got the resources there
in parallel with the statutory assessment process. That whole
issue of increased delegation of funding is I think exactly meeting
the point that you are making.
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