Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40
- 59)
WEDNESDAY 2 NOVEMBER 2005
RT HON
RUTH KELLY
MP
Q40 Chairman: You are aware of my
view, shared by some on this Committee, that the more innovative
partnerships where you have a university with someone like KPMG
are for many people preferable. It gives an assurance that that
blend of educational background and experience with commercial
experience seems to work better and provide some safeguards for
the educational ethos and content.
Ruth Kelly: Universities are a
prime example of the sort of external partner we would like to
see working with schools that choose to go down that route. We
have already had expressions of interest from a number of universities.
I spoke at a dinner last night where many people round the table
said they were interested in getting involved in trusts as well.
The more we can link it to raising aspirations, the easier it
is for people to understand how this might drive skill improvement.
Where you, for example, have a university linking up with a commercial
organisation like Microsoft, which also has a direct input in
terms of ICT and raising capacity in the school, I think people
will see that it has the potential to make quite a marked difference
to outcomes for the school.
Q41 Mr Marsden: I would like to probe
what the White Paper has to say about the new roles envisaged
for local authorities and also in particular the Schools Commissioner.
The White Paper says on page 103 that local authorities are to
be given the role of championing parents and pupils in their areas.
You have given numerous examples today of how that might work
and it talks about them having more of a commissioning role rather
than providing education. What is the need for a Schools Commissioner?
Ruth Kelly: The Schools Commissioner
is to work with external partners who might want to set up trusts,
to make it as easy as possible for them to do so—the local
authority will have some responsibility for developing proposals
at a local level as well—and to try to point those potential
trusts in the direction of schools in particular disadvantaged
areas or schools that particularly need help to improve.
Q42 Mr Marsden: The wording on page
28 is: "We will establish a new office to act as a national
champion for the development of trust schools and to work with
potential trusts", which is what you have outlined. Will
the Commissioner have a regulation role for these trusts as well?
Ruth Kelly: We are developing
the detailed proposals and the vetting requirements for trusts
and we are considering the role of the Schools Commissioner in
that respect and indeed of the local authority. We will set out
proposals in the run-up to the legislation on how precisely that
might work.
Q43 Mr Marsden: You have not decided
yet whether the Schools Commissioner should have a regulation
role?
Ruth Kelly: The Schools Commissioner
will have some regulation role and will also advise the Secretary
of State on the exercise of the Secretary of State's power if
a local authority is under-performing.
Q44 Mr Marsden: I accept that obviously
details will be laid out in advance of legislation but is there
not an inherent contradiction in having an official, a Schools
Commissioner, who has a job both to promote and to champion a
new idea—in this case, trust schools—and also one
to regulate it? This is not a model which, so far as I am aware,
is currently in the education sector, is it? It is certainly not
one you would use for Ofsted.
Ruth Kelly: The trusts will be
charitable bodies and they will be governed by charity law. They
will have the same duty, for example, to promote race relations
as currently exists and to promote social cohesion as currently
exists under charity law. They will also have a duty to promote
educational outcomes. What we are thinking about is a much more
arm's length role for the Schools Commissioner.
Q45 Mr Marsden: I referred to Ofsted
and the regulatory powers of Ofsted at the moment. Ofsted have
an inspection role; they do not have an improvement role. Other
organisations such as the Adult Learning Inspectorate, who we
had before us earlier in the week, do currently have that role,
whatever role they may have under new proposals that are coming
forward. If you gave inspection powers to a Schools Commissioner,
would that Schools Commissioner have a pure inspection role or
would he or she in his or her office have an improvement role
as well?
Ruth Kelly: We are not talking
about that sort of inspection role at all for a Schools Commissioner.
We are thinking about how the trustees might be vetted, for example,
when a trust is set up.
Q46 Mr Marsden: Who is going to monitor
them?
Ruth Kelly: The trusts would be
monitored by Ofsted but the governing bodies would be the ones
responsible. Ofsted would monitor the performance of the school
at the level of the governing body because they would be the ones
who would be accountable for the performance of the school.
Q47 Mr Marsden: Are you concerned
that, whatever the final role for the Schools Commissioner is
defined in legislation as, there may be a danger of ambiguities?
You are talking about the Schools Commissioner having a promotional
and championing role; you are talking about local authorities
having a promotional and championing role and at one point in
the White Paper you talk about the Schools Commissioner challenging
local authorities. Obviously there is an audit role for anybody
in some of these things but are you not in danger of setting up
some sort of perpetual conflict zone between the Schools Commissioner
and local authorities?
Ruth Kelly: I do not think so.
The Schools Commissioner is going to be a high level Department
for Education official.
Q48 Mr Marsden: That will not necessarily
stop him conflicting with local authorities.
Ruth Kelly: The Department already
monitors what is going on in local authorities and expects them
to be carrying out their job effectively. The Secretary of State
can take powers in relation to that. What we are talking about
is bringing that together.
Q49 Mr Marsden: He or she will be
an adjunct to DfES. It will not be a separate, stand alone organisation?
Ruth Kelly: An employee.
Q50 Mr Marsden: Can I move to one
of the other parts of the White Paper that most of us welcome
and that is the emphasis placed on improved discipline, particularly
as someone coming from a local authority where we make particular
efforts to tackle absenteeism and with the new targets in terms
of attendance, that will put considerable pressures on the very
excellent pupil referral units that we currently have. Where do
you envisage the additional support and funding for those pupil
referral units coming from?
Ruth Kelly: You are right to point
to the fact that we have to improve quality at pupil referral
units. It is not necessarily the case that more pressure will
be put on them if we get this policy right. Pupils can be temporarily
excluded from schools at the moment for up to 15 days before alternative
provision is required. I think that is too long and that alternative
provision ought to be required earlier. If you get discipline
right in schools there ought to be fewer temporary exclusions
and you create a virtual circle. This is about pre-emptive action.
Q51 Mr Marsden: You do not envisage
this new regulation having an unintended consequence of increasing
substantially the cohort of people who would have to attend pupil
referral units?
Ruth Kelly: Schools may choose
to educate some children off site and they may choose, in collaboration
and partnership with each other, what provision is needed. Some
of that may be on school premises, maybe in a learning support
unit or in a separate unit. Some of it may be off the school site.
It may be in a pupil referral unit or in parallel to a pupil referral
unit. If schools work together and plan provision between them,
what I think will happen is that the quality will improve as well
as the approach to discipline within schools.
Q52 Mr Marsden: What you are talking
about is a more graduated system, rather than just being straightforwardly
in schools?
Ruth Kelly: Absolutely.
Q53 Mr Marsden: One of the other
things in the White Paper that will be widely supported, which
you recommend, is to improve the position for disadvantaged pupils
in terms of school transport. You have talked about legislation
to entitle them to that. You have also talked about some of the
innovative schemes like customised yellow buses that are being
piloted at the moment. You say in the White Paper: "We will
also expect local authorities to consider all home to school and
other travel as part of their new duty to support choice, diversity
and fair access." I do not think anyone would quarrel with
that but what are the budget implications on local authorities
for that? Are you going to give them extra funding to assist them
in that process?
Ruth Kelly: Yes. We have allocated
some of our departmental resource towards that end.
Q54 Mr Marsden: Have you any figures
on that?
Ruth Kelly: I do. I can certainly
write to the Committee with the precise figures.
Q55 Mr Marsden: That would be very
useful.
Ruth Kelly: You are talking tens
of millions of pounds in the long run.[2]
Q56 Chairman: That is much more refreshing
than your former school transport initiative but that was before
your time. I have been doodling here in terms of here is the Treasury
attempting to reduce regulation. At the top of the pyramid there
is the Department for Education and Skills. Then you have the
Commissioner, then Ofsted, then the Audit Commission and the local
authority. It does not look as though much regulation has disappeared.
Ruth Kelly: It is becoming much
more light touch, more proportionate and less bureaucratic so
the Department for Education is becoming more strategic and the
relationship is becoming much more informed.
Q57 Tim Farron: If we could go back
to the issue of parental choice, the White Paper talks about choice
particularly with regard to expansion. Section 2.4 of the Paper
says, "Often parents are less interested in a brand new school
for their child than in having the opportunity to get their child
into an existing good school. Schools that are popular with local
parents but are oversubscribed should have an easy route to expansion."
That is the headline quote that people—parents in particular—will
latch on to but I think you have said and certainly Lord Adonis
has said over the last week that schools are not going to be forced
into expansion and the evidence is so far that very few opt to
do so. What exactly is going to change?
Ruth Kelly: Very few opt to do
so for a variety of reasons, partly because of the way the school
organisational committee is set up. It represents other schools
in the area and so forth which have a direct interest in protecting
their own interest rather than seeing a successful school expand.
Some schools go through that process and expand and are widely
accepted because everyone accepts that it is in the interests
of the local area. Other schools do not even put forward proposals
at the moment because they think they might get blocked and that
other people might think it is not such a good idea at a local
level. We want to change the presumption so that, where a school
has a sensible proposal for expansion and there is clear parental
demand for that, they do not need to go through that process and
it is determined by the local authority in the interests of the
local area. I would expect to see schools more willing to come
forward with proposals under the new system. What I am not suggesting
is that somehow every secondary school in the country will be
saying, "We are doing quite well. Let's expand" because
not all schools will think that way. Some think that the size
they have at the moment is right to preserve their individual
ethos and the parents do not want to see that school expand either.
There will be some schools however that do want to go down that
route.
Q58 Tim Farron: I cannot see many
head teachers with so much on their plate already wanting to embark
upon an aggressive funding policy.
Ruth Kelly: I do not think that
is right either. I think there are a lot of fairly ambitious,
talented head teachers in the system who want to make more of
an impact on education. One of the proposals in the White Paper
was to create a new breed of national education leaders, people
that we would talk to directly in the department, who would get
involved in policy, who are very successful head teachers in their
own right and who might well want to take on more of a leading
role in their local area. That may include setting up a trust
and therefore sharing their expertise with less high performing
schools or under-performing or failing schools in their local
area. It may mean helping out in some less formal way. I would
like to see that capacity for good leadership in the system grow
and be shared more widely across the system.
Q59 Tim Farron: The evidence is that
it is not going to be a majority; it is not even going to be a
vast minority of schools that do this. Are we not raising expectations
of parents about the likelihood of getting their child into their
first choice school only to disappoint them?
Ruth Kelly: I am not raising expectations
about every school wanting to expand at all. Some schools will
want to and where they want to and they have a good case we should
make it as easy as possible for them to do so.
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