Select Committee on Education and Skills Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60 - 79)

WEDNESDAY 12 OCTOBER 2005

SIR DAVID NORMINGTON, MR STEPHEN KERSHAW AND MR STEPHEN CROWNE

  Q60  Mr Marsden: Time will tell on the funding and the resources for schools forums, but I would like to press you a little further on some of these new roles or potentially expanded roles. Now, in your written answers to the Committee, the Department said that schools forums would be able to make minor changes to the operation of the minimum funding guarantee where the outcome would otherwise be anomalous. Can you give us any examples of what an anomalous outcome might be?

  Mr Crowne: It is possible to think of situations, and I am desperately trying to think of one now, in which the way that the national, as it were, regulations work with the MFG is to produce a result which does not really fit local circumstances and that might be around small schools, it might be around big population shifts, it might be around where schools are being closed and opened, those kinds of situations where pupil numbers shift to a large degree from year to year, so it is those kinds of situations we are talking about. We recognise that the principle of the minimum funding guarantee is the thing really. It is about giving people predictability and stability. If there is a better way of doing that at a local level to deal with a particular set of circumstances, fine.

  Mr Marsden: So taking the answers you have given, if you are going to have the potential for that sort of submission coming through, does this not bring us on to a broader question about the issue of how you actually define the validity of these arguments? Let's take, for example, the broader issue of an authority which, awarded this fair funding formula, says it should redistribute the resources, let's say, for instance, in terms of social need. Is that not going to lead schools to hit the buffer in terms of the minimum funding guarantee in circumstances in which presumably local school spending will rise and the Department will have to pick up the tab? Will that not cause a major problem?

  Mr Crowne: We designed the system carefully to ensure that every local authority will have some headroom once it has met the individual school minimum funding guarantee.

  Q61  Mr Marsden: How much?

  Mr Crowne: It is at least 1% in every authority, so what we are saying is for 2006-07 and 2007-08 every local authority will have an increase of at least 5% per pupil. We do not yet know the level of the minimum funding guarantee in each of those years because it will be dependent critically on the teachers' pay settlement, but if previous experience is anything to go by there will be a significant degree of headroom in each local authority.

  Q62  Mr Marsden: If it were to be proven that that 1% was inadequate, would the Department within its current spending predictions be able to adjust it?

  Mr Crowne: No. What we are saying is that is the absolute minimum for every authority. Many authorities will get more. The overall increase in each of those years across the country is 6%, so there will be some authorities on that floor but many will be distinctly above it. What we are saying is that the principle of the DSG is we will set a two-year budget for local authorities and it is for them to work through their local formula with their schools' forums to establish the best way of distributing that locally.

  Q63  Mr Marsden: Can I put a final point to you which brings in a broader issue and Sir David might want to comment on it as well. To go back to what you said, you used various examples of what might be anomalous and I have also referred to social need. There is a question mark, is there not then, under this new streamlined system of pots of money concerning those issues which have currently or recently been recognised by the Department as being important but which do not currently find a place in the public funding formula? I am referring particularly there to the issue of transience and the effect of transience in schools. The Department had a couple of reports by Sally Dobson. There was an indication in correspondence to me and I know there have been indications in other correspondence from Ministers that the Government recognises the importance of that, but there is an issue about what that actually means. We can all recognise things but if we do not put our money where our mouths are in terms of the funding formula then it is not going to achieve a great deal. A point my colleague Rob Wilson made earlier on about a particular day being taken for the qualification number will have a particularly significant impact on those areas like my own in Blackpool where transience flows go very fast during the year. How are we going to cope with that? Will the issue of transience receiving special formula funding consideration be adversely affected by your streamlining?

  Mr Crowne: I will take that first, if I may. I will deal first with the national distributions to local authorities. We did look very closely at this because, you are right, a number of authorities have said to us is it possible somehow to recognise in the national formula an element of transience. We looked very closely at that and the available data and we concluded two things. One is actually we could not find any databases for identifying authorities who face a particular set of challenges on transience when you looked on an authority-wide basis. It is quite hard to get a data-driven approach and of course we are committed to ensuring that our national funding formula is based on objective and data-driven criteria. A second point: that is not to say, of course, that those problems do not present serious challenges at local level and what we are committed to doing, and we have started now, is looking at the whole issue of deprivation and the manifestations of that. I see the issue of transience very much in that context and the Government is concerned to ensure that local formulae reflect levels of deprivation and the challenges that imposes for schools, many of whom are in deprived areas and face transient populations of various kinds. We are committed to reviewing that. It comes back to a point David was making earlier about formulae; you have to keep them under review to make sure that the way that they operate and the factors they take into account correspond with the realities that local authorities and schools are facing on the ground. That is not to say we are going to make changes every year but we do have to think about whether—

  Q64  Mr Marsden: With respect, you have been making warm noises as a Department about the transience issue for at least two to three years and you have now had two major reports from Sally Dobson on the issue and all you are coming along to say today is that "we will keep the issue under review." That does not sound very satisfactory to me. Have we a timeframe for when you are going to make some decisions?

  Sir David Normington: We will not make any more changes until this next two-year period starting in 2006 is over and we will then be doing a review. I know it sounds as though we are brushing this aside. As we know, because we discussed it here before, the distribution of money from a national to a local level (which is not a new issue of course, it has been in the system all along) is highly complex and controversial, and to try to get a system which distributes the money fairly at a national level has been a constant issue over many years and all the time one is trying find the data that enables you to make the best allocation to local authorities. It takes account of rural issues, it takes account of deprivation, but we cannot make the national formula sensitive enough to deal with all these issues, and that is why there has to be laid over this a set of local decisions which take account of particular needs in the area. I know that sound like passing the buck but it is the reality of how a system of national funding has to work. It is why we cannot have a national funding system which in a sense distributes the money straight from us to schools because we cannot at a national level take account of everything that happening at the local level. Alongside that, the Government has over time introduced a lot of other grants. Some of that funding will continue in a separate stream although we will try to make sure, again, that it is not all earmarked money for specific things but actually the money goes out under a more general tag so that some of these local issues at school level can be dealt with. In other words you can decide what your local issue is and spend the money on it, all this within a system where year on year school funding is increasing in real terms by about 6% over this period.

  Q65  Chairman: So, Sir David, are the demands on schools? It is all very well saying that it is a very complex system and it is difficult to get a transformation into a new system, I understand that and you have our sympathy, but at the same time to give you three examples, just recently I noticed when Charles Clarke was Secretary of State he appeared before another Select Committee and said, that the lead role in education for sustainability is with the DfES. I understand that that is now accepted and you have a new policy on education for sustainability of the environment and all that. Does it come with a budget? Who funds it? Then you have the reaction to the Jamie Oliver thing. I have to say that nearly four years ago this Committee wrote a report on school meals so rather than anyone carrying it on in the wake of Jamie Oliver he rather carried it on in our wake. You have now placed another responsibility on schools which is an expensive one in addition to everything else they do. Indeed, who is going to pay for extended schools? If schools are going to open earlier and close at six, who is going to pay for that? Here are three new policies laid on to schools. How are they going to cope?

  Sir David Normington: We will be providing extra money for extended schools of course, dealing with that one.

  Q66  Chairman: How much?

  Sir David Normington: I do not know. I can let you know but I do not know it off the top of my head. [1]

  Q67  Chairman: What about education for sustainability?

  Sir David Normington: Well, I was going to make a general point.

  Q68  Chairman: A general point evades answering the specific!

  Sir David Normington: Yes, I will come back to the specific, if I may. I do not have an answer on education for sustainability.

  Q69  Chairman: Make your general point first.

  Sir David Normington: We do have a system which is highly devolved and for a lot of years now we have said that the school should be the budget-holder and should make the local decisions.

  Q70  Chairman: Then you introduce the school meals, which is like Soviet Russia because you say they cannot have vending machines unless they are non-sugar and non-fizzy, and you tell them that they have got to have totally different new school meals. Here is a devolutionary government who suddenly says, "On this issue you will do as you are told and you will do it immediately".

  Sir David Normington: Yes and we are putting somewhere approaching £300 million extra into the system to help them do that. What I was going to say was this is a system which is highly devolved. It is a system which both in capital and in revenue there have been huge increases so no school should be telling us they have not had those increases. We have to allow local decisions to take their course and priorities to be set. Quite often when we impose a further national demand on a school, as we have with school meals, we provide extra money. Sometimes—and I think sustainability is a very good example—if the school has the right policy we can support them on this. Sustainability is not necessarily going to cost them more, it may cost them less. We have a very, very big building programme and designing sustainability into that building programme is a key issue for us.

  Q71  Chairman: I thought the Treasury stopped you doing that because it is too expensive.

  Sir David Normington: It is not expensive to make sure you have the most efficient heating systems in new schools, for instance.

  Q72  Chairman: Has the Treasury stopped you doing a lot of that work?.

  Sir David Normington: I do not think so.

  Q73  Chairman: You do not think so?

  Mr Crowne: I am confident.

  Sir David Normington: I do not think so.

  Mr Crowne: In designing our space standards for schools and in the specifications that we are supporting through our capital programmes we are building in very good practice in sustainability.

  Q74  Chairman: We are minded to look at sustainability for schools. What about the third one?

  Sir David Normington: Remind me what it was.

  Q75  Chairman: Extended schools. It is a big responsibility. Who is going to pay for all that supervision?

  Sir David Normington: Well, there is a budget for extended schools and, if you like, I will provide you a note about it. I am not precisely sure what we have yet said publicly about it but we cannot expect schools to be open eight until six and expect all the costs somehow to be found by the school.

  Chairman: Can we have a note on those three items? [2]

  Q76 Mrs Dorries: Sir David, I would like to come back to a point the Chairman raised a moment ago about the top-performing schools taking less than their fair share of children with SEN. I do not have the figures with me but it is the case that a large number of excluded children from less well-performing schools have quite complex SEN needs. In addition to this, the evidence also shows that in the less well-performing schools once those children have been excluded—and in fact this is the reason for the exclusions being on the increase—the learning environment improves. Is this not in itself evidence that funding should continue to go towards special schools and that the programme of inclusion should be reviewed and perhaps halted given the fact that the better-performing schools do not have their fair share and the less well-performing schools are suffering as a result of it?

  Sir David Normington: I think investment needs to continue to go into special units and special schools. It is important that we try to design a system which meets the needs of each individual child. Sometimes that will be a special school. Sometimes that will be a special unit for particularly badly behaved children and that will be off-site. Sometimes that will be a unit on-site. We have put a lot of money into developing on-site provision. I think that some of the things that we have done in the special needs area to invest in special provision on-site in the schools is a very good way of going. We all have these anecdotes, but I saw a school which had a special unit for dealing with children who had various problems of deafness, and what you are able to do if you have those special units is you are both able to provide them with special support in the school and you are also able to enable them to join in with the other activities in the school as well. Clearly there is a need for some children to be in special schools. We do not have a policy of closing down all special schools and forcing those children into mainstream schools. We have a policy of trying to have special schools, special on-site units and also, where that is feasible, support for children in the classroom. It ought to be a mix of those things. I would really hate it if we jumped to one solution. We have to try to design this system for children of all sorts and, frankly, it does not quite match that yet.

  Q77  Mrs Dorries: No, and in fact we have seen 91 closures of special schools in recent years. The on-site units which you are talking about, which are actually orbital units to the schools themselves where the children are treated separately, do not exist in very many schools. What we do see is inclusion within the classroom, which is not working in many many schools particularly in the area about which I have particular knowledge. A moment ago you stated in answer to my earlier question to you that you can see where funding goes there are better outcomes. I do not think you can make the assertion of those outcomes unless you have the evidence to back it up, but surely seeing the funding going to special schools is one of those cases where you can prove and do have the evidence that funding going into a particular area produces the right outcomes?

  Sir David Normington: At the risk of repeating myself, I think you can point to very successful examples of children with special needs in mainstream schools in classrooms with support. I think you can point to successful cases of children who are in special schools. I do not want to be categorised as saying that there is one right solution. We have to try to do all these things. It is true that there have been closures of special schools but it is also true that there are a lot of special schools still and the policy of trying to build those schools as centres of expertise which can offer their expertise to schools which do not have that specialism is a very important policy too so you improve the capacity of schools which do not have special units to deal with children with disabilities and special needs. Can I just say I will not have the suggestion that we are closing down special schools as a matter of policy. I will not have the suggestion that inclusion is the wrong policy. Sometimes it is the right policy. We have to try to design the policy for the parents and the children. It will not always be right for them to be put in a special school.

  Q78  Mrs Dorries: You have just made the point that special schools provide training to the teachers at the schools with inclusion, but actually that is a major problem that because of the 91 closures of special schools there is not the training, there are not these centres of expertise. They are reducing the number of centres to help those schools with that training. I know of many schools where the teachers cannot get any assistance or specialist training because the number of teachers who have that experience is dwindling because those special schools are closing.

  Sir David Normington: I do not think over a lot of years that it has been the case that special schools have provided their expertise to mainstream schools. I think that is what we are trying to do. I agree that where special schools have been closed it is just a fact that they do not exist, but our policy is to build up special schools as centres of expertise in a way that they have not been before, so I do not think we come from a time when the schools did offer enough help to children who were in mainstream schools. So that is what we want to do. Can I come back to the on-site units. It is true that they are not everywhere, but we have been trying to support the development of on-site units which both provide support to that school but can also support other schools. It is another way of doing it. However, the system is not perfect and I would not dream of saying it is.

  Q79  Mr Williams: Just to clarify the answer to a question Rob Wilson asked right at the end of his series of questions, to make sure I understood the point about the new funding arrangements. You said a couple of times in your remarks earlier that the new funding arrangements took schools funding out of local taxation. I hope I am quoting you correctly there. Does that mean that the funding that the Department will give to local authorities will reflect what, when I was a councillor, was called the SSA or will it take into account the excess spending that many local authorities do on top of that? Bristol and Avon have all spent well above the SSA. Will the new grant that goes directly to the authorities from the Department take into account that discretionary spending?

  Sir David Normington: Yes, it starts from the basis of what is being spent.


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