Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40
- 59)
WEDNESDAY 12 OCTOBER 2005
SIR DAVID
NORMINGTON, MR
STEPHEN KERSHAW
AND MR
STEPHEN CROWNE
Q40 Tim Farron: So when the A-levels
are good, Ruth Kelly goes on the radio and when it is a school
with special measures, it is the LEA that gets the blame?
Sir David Normington: No, we take
responsibility for the successes and failures in the system, but
we always say, which is true, that it is the schools that are
delivering both the successes and the failures. It is what they
do that really matters.
Q41 Tim Farron: I am obviously concerned
about outcomes in the end and whatever the process of this is,
there surely must be some assumption as to what the outcomes are
likely to be. Clearly it would appear that the Dedicated Schools
Grant and the new system in general will ensure more popular schools
are rewarded less quickly and less for their popularity and less
popular schools will be hit less and less quickly for their unpopularity
and those unpopular schools that make successful attempts to turn
things around will be encouraged to do so in a slower and less
effective way. Are these the Government's intentions?
Sir David Normington: I do not
think any of that is right actually. The Government's policy is
to allow popular schools to expand and to set aside capital to
enable that to happen faster than it has. The Government's policy
is also to ensure that where a school is weak or failing, there
is faster action taken so that schools are not left lingering,
which they sometimes have been in the past. I think that the conversation
we have just had about money following the pupil, the money will
follow the pupil, but it is just that in reality to take the money
away from a school just like that is a big problem for a school.
The reality of how you manage a school is that if your numbers
fall, you cannot get the costs out fast enough, so if you take
the budget away from them, the school would be in terrible difficulty.
Therefore, all we are doing is just dealing with that, as far
as I can see, and it will still be the case that money will follow
the pupil and that we will be encouraging popular schools to expand
and providing capital money for that to happen.
Q42 Tim Farron: I have a final question
of particular concern to the constituency I represent. What work
has the Department done on the likely outcomes with regard to
small rural schools, particularly those with falling rolls, of
these changes?
Mr Crowne: One of the great strengths
of the local formula system we have is that local authorities
with schools in that position can, with a great deal of discretion,
design a local system which will be fit for purpose in those circumstances.
We have been very careful when we have been designing the minimum
funding guarantee and so on to ensure that that discretion is
still there. Indeed quite a lot of authorities with large numbers
of very small schools have very distinctive arrangements for funding
those schools. That is because such a high proportion of their
costs are fixed compared with larger schools. Therefore, I am
confident that the current architecture, the architecture that
we are introducing certainly does not reduce the ability of the
local authority to design a locally fit-for-purpose system and
indeed I think in some respects it increases it.
Sir David Normington: Well, we
do have falling rolls in some places and they are quite sharp
in some parts of the country and that is obviously raising issues
about—
Q43 Tim Farron: But they are not
as a result of schools failing; they are as a result of communities
dwindling and the schools do not need to be punished for that.
Sir David Normington: It is the
result of school demographics really and also movements of population
actually from north to south in many respects.
Q44 Chairman: If you have got so
many fewer pupils coming through because of the sharp demographic
downturn, most of our electors would say that the budget should
go down if you are educating less children.
Sir David Normington: And that
is what happens of course in the end.
Q45 Chairman: Is it? On a previous
occasion one of your members of staff told us that you could save
50,000 teachers' salaries. Because of the demographic downturn,
are we going to see that sort of scale of saving?
Sir David Normington: I do not
know if it is that scale, but it is certainly the case that primary
school numbers have been falling and that is moving through into
secondary. It is quite sharp in some places rather than others.
It is not very sharp at all in London, and in fact there are some
increases. It is a question of what you do with the money. The
money does come out. If there are not the pupils there, you do
not eventually get paid for them and that happens relatively quickly.
The question then is: what do you do with that money? Up until
now the Government has taken the view that you should put that
back into the education system to improve elements of teachers'
development or school development.
Q46 Mr Wilson: Sir David, can I just
explore the impact of some of the new funding arrangements and
go down into some of the detail. Can I refer you to the document
which was sent to us by Jacqui Smith, the Minister for Schools,
in particular, if you go to the section on school budgets where
she talks about giving schools stability and certainty and under
bullet point two where she talks about a single count date for
schools in January. Now, I am not convinced that you have thought
through the implications of this particular policy because, as
I understand it, many LEAs have a three-point entry system particularly
for reception children, which includes the Easter intake. For
a three-point entry school, this could mean a projected deficit
in the region of about £80,000 in the financial year 2006-07.
Now, that would obviously cause severe financial difficulties
and many schools would not be able to deal with a deficit of that
sort, so really what I am asking you is can you clarify that?
Am I missing something or has the Department looked at that in
detail?
Mr Crowne: I think it is very
important to distinguish two things here. One is that we needed
to establish, and we have established, with a complete consensus
amongst local authority representatives and school heads what
should be the basis for us to distribute money to local authorities
with DSG and we had to have a single consistent basis for doing
that. Quite separately, the local authority then needs to have
a basis for producing the pupil numbers that will guide the local
distribution and what we are basically saying is that we need
consistency at both levels. Whatever option you go for, and there
is a wide variety of practice out there of local distribution,
there will be some complications of the kind you have identified.
The key thing is to get some consistency and then locally to work
out how you deal with the complications. No system is going to
be free of those complications. We have road-tested this and are
road-testing this with a large group of local authorities. We
are not finding that we are getting under-predicted consequences
of what we are doing. The message coming back from local authorities
essentially is that these changes are manageable, but of course
one of the key things we are doing for next year and the year
after is testing out the basic elements of this new system and
we will be reviewing that operation, but at the moment I think
I can give you the assurance that, based on the work that has
been done and the feedback we are getting, we think the system
is manageable.
Q47 Mr Wilson: So you are setting
up the problems for the LEAs to deal with?
Mr Crowne: Not at all. The local
authorities already have the issue of how they count pupil numbers
and how they deal with unpredictability and changes; they do that
already. What we are saying is that we are trying to get to a
system with more consistency in it based around really what is
agreed to be the best practice in local authorities and that is
actually well worth doing in its own right and local authorities
have learnt a lot in this process.
Sir David Normington: It is just
important to say that local authorities have been distributing
money to schools for a long time of course and they will continue
to. They are very familiar with these local patterns and they
will continue to be. The reason for having a local distribution
system is precisely to deal with these different patterns which
impact differently in different places because there are a lot
of different systems for when pupils are admitted and so on, but
they are used to dealing with that.
Q48 Mr Wilson: The message you are
giving me is that it is manageable and the message I am getting
from schools is that it is not going to be manageable, so I think
there needs to be some further thinking on that. Can I move you
on to special educational needs because again that is an area
I am particularly concerned about. For example, inclusion means
that schools are accepting a growing number of children with very
challenging behaviours and also disabilities. Currently, as I
understand it, statementing allows 26 weeks for a statement to
be issued and the statement currently cannot be backdated. Am
I correct in saying that?
Sir David Normington: I think
that is right, yes.
Q49 Mr Wilson: That means a child
can be in a school for seven months before there is any support
for that child and when a statement does finally arrive, there
are only 20 hours allowed in terms of full-time support for that
child. That means the schools are left facing a choice of either
not providing support in advance of a statement being issued,
which has a detrimental effect on the rest of the pupils in the
class, or instigating large-scale cuts in other parts of the school.
Now, that obviously is another massive problem and either the
Government is going to fund properly inclusion or it is not and
I would like to know which it is going to do.
Sir David Normington: Well, there
is a lot of money going into supporting children with special
needs and statements are only the top level of a system which
provides different levels of support for children with different
sorts of needs. I am not sure that the changes we are making actually
make this better or worse. There is always an issue about how
we get support to children with the greatest need and I would
not say that the system is perfect, but I do not think that the
changes we are making will actually make that different.
Q50 Mr Wilson: Why is there no backdating
of funding with regard to these statementing issues? Seven months
is a lot of money for a school.
Mr Crowne: The answer has to be
that the process of statementing defines the entitlement of the
child to the level of provision and the process of statementing
looks at the needs and works out what is required in that case,
but, as David has said, this sits on top of other monies which
local authorities have a lot of discretion about how to distribute
to deal with all of the pupils with lesser special needs who would
not qualify for statements and indeed for those pupils who are
going through a statementing process, and you are right, it can
take some time. When you have got complex special needs, it takes
understandably a while to work out what the right kind of provision
is. I think the answer has to be that you have to look at the
budgetary arrangements in the round and what we would expect local
authorities to do is make sure that individual schools facing
those kind of challenges do have access not only to the money
that goes with the statement, but other resources for SEN which
deal with those children for the statement date.
Sir David Normington: Quite a
lot of that money goes to the local authorities so that they can
distribute it. Obviously you cannot distribute it evenly among
schools because it has to follow particular types of pupils.
Q51 Mr Wilson: In the responses to
the written questions which we sent to the DfES, in response 1.4
it says that the base will be the 2005-06 spending total. Does
that take account of money local authorities are spending on schools
this year over and above the money provided by the Government?
Sir David Normington: Yes.
Q52 Mr Wilson: The £28 billion?
Sir David Normington: Yes, it
takes that as the starting point.
Q53 Chairman: You will know, Sir
David, that we are embarking on an inquiry into special education.
Sir David Normington: I do.
Q54 Chairman: One of the frustrations
when we look at it is people who say that it takes so long to
get a statement and then if they need an educational psychologist
or, heaven help us, if they find they then need a different kind
of psychological treatment, that is a nightmare area for most
constituents. Of course perhaps the problem would be better if
we saw more schools taking their share of SEN and problem pupils
and I am sure you will have been as upset as we were by the Sutton
Trust Report this week where so many state schools, top-performing
state schools take such a small number of such pupils at all.
You may have been disturbed by that.
Sir David Normington: Well, of
course I was not surprised by that. Of course it looked just at
the 200 top schools, I think.
Q55 Chairman: Comprehensive and grammar.
Sir David Normington: Where 161
of which were grammar schools and 39 were comprehensive, so it
is not really a comment on the whole system; it is a comment on
the top-performing schools.
Q56 Chairman: You know very well
that we said earlier this year in our Report on admissions that
unless you grasp the nettle of admissions and make the code on
admissions obligatory, not something you just take note of, you
all the time will get schools, especially faith schools, dodging
their responsibilities. You know that.
Sir David Normington: Well, we
are going to say something about this in the White Paper. I am
very familiar with the point. On the SEN issue, I actually welcome
your study because I suppose that throughout all my time in this
area, both before this as Director General for Schools and now,
the issues that are the most difficult are the issues of special
needs. We have always had people coming to the Department unhappy
with the treatment they are getting and fighting for their children.
It is distressing and it is very difficult to deal with. I understand
that if you have got a child with special needs, actually you
do not really care what the system is like, but you want the best
for your children. The system sometimes involves parents having
to fight the system and I think that is difficult and I am sure
that is what the discussion will be about around this committee
table.
Chairman: We will meet again.
Q57 Mr Marsden: Mr Crowne, I wonder
if I can take you back to the schools forums which you were talking
of a few moments ago. If the schools forums are going to have
all these expanded responsibilities, where are the resources going
to come from?
Mr Crowne: Schools forums have
been there for a couple of years now. The best practice we have
seen is actually for local authorities themselves to provide the
services that they need relatively straightforwardly actually.
What schools forums need above all is clear information and up-to-date
data and in a form which is useful to them. They are not particularly
labour-intensive operations.
Q58 Mr Marsden: That is what we have
been told in the past about school governors.
Mr Crowne: I understand the risk
you are alluding to. We have spent quite a lot of time talking
to schools forums over the last few months because we have been
keen to learn about what people's experience of them actually
is and where they are perceived to be more or less successful.
I think it is quite clear to me that where they are seen to be
more successful, they are based upon a really open and supportive
relationship with the local authority.
Q59 Mr Marsden: You are not worried
that in the wake of the inevitable scaling down of some local
authority functions in the light of the Dedicated Schools Grant
local authorities may prove unwilling or unable to provide those
resources?
Mr Crowne: That is not what we
are seeing on the ground. I would not say to you that every local
authority is an exemplar of best practice, I do not think we can
say that yet, but I am confident that there are now a substantial
group of authorities within which the schools forums are doing
an extremely good job and the relationship between the forums
and the local authorities is a strong and good one.
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