Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80
- 82)
WEDNESDAY 2 NOVEMBER 2005
RT HON
RUTH KELLY
MP
Q80 Dr Blackman-Woods: One of the
interesting aspects of the White Paper is the greater emphasis
being placed on personalised and tailored learning. Does this
imply a need for a reduced pupil/teacher ratio? If so, is that
going to be achieved if we continue to reduce the numbers of teachers
training at secondary level?
Ruth Kelly: It is very tied up
with better use of the entire school workforce. What has been
happening on school remodelling is that teachers have increasingly
been able to concentrate on preparing lessons and teaching to
the best of their ability, focusing on teaching rather than other
objectives of the school. Increasingly, as we move towards a personalised
system, schools will be able to supplement teachers with experts.
Those may, if you take a foreign language for example, be mother
tongue speakers or they may, if you are talking about a vocational
subject, be someone who works part-time in the field. They do
not necessarily have to be qualified teachers. They could be high
level teaching assistants with particular expertise or they could
be other forms of support staff. As you move down a route towards
personalised learning in which you have small group tuition, even
one-to-one tuition in certain circumstances, I think it is important
that the right expertise is there rather than that this is necessarily,
in each and every case, a fully qualified teacher. That is about
using the whole workforce to its best effect rather than about
any prescription as to who does what. Those decisions are better
decided at the level of the individual school.
Q81 Dr Blackman-Woods: Does that
mean you are not going to take this as an opportunity to reduce
the teacher/pupil ratio in the system generally as we move towards
personalised learning?
Ruth Kelly: Lots of pupils will
experience a dramatic reduction in the teacher/pupil ratio because
they will be taken out of classes to have small group or one-to-one
tuition or indeed they will have support within the classroom
which is relevant to them. That is a slight variant on saying
that everybody should be taught in a slightly smaller group. It
is just getting the balance right and making sure that everyone
has the individual attention they need within the whole workforce
brief.
Q82 Stephen Williams: This Committee
is going to look at special educational needs. Baroness Warnock
was here on Monday. She disagreed with the statement in the White
Paper that there is not a need for a fresh look at SENs. Do you
agree with her? She also said that statementing, she felt, was
now a complete waste of money and a disaster. Do you agree with
that? She was worried that trust schools would effectively marginalise
SEN pupils. Do you think there is a worry? What safeguards are
you building into the trust model to make sure that SEN pupils
will have a fair deal?
Ruth Kelly: Let me take the point
about SEN pupils having a fair deal. Trust schools will be subject
to the admissions code. Rulings on a statutory basis will be made
by the adjudicator, just as the adjudicator does now for schools
which comply with the admissions code. One of the elements of
the admissions code is that they have to treat special educational
needs pupils fairly. That could be one reason, if a school clearly
sets its catchment area, for example, in order to exclude particular
categories of pupils or has a particular system which excludes
SEN pupils, potentially for referring them to the adjudicator,
who could then rule against that admissions policy. On statementing,
the answer is not that statementing is a disaster but that we
need to be much better at early preventative work with special
needs pupils to make statementing a question of last resort. We
are increasingly moving in that direction although I think there
is further to go. Getting good action at the level of the school,
getting expert support in early when pupils' needs are first identified,
making sure they are identified as early as possible, is in the
SEN community considered the best way forward. Getting that right
will take a lot of pressure off the statementing process. Some
local authority areas have been fantastic at early intervention.
That has reduced public dissatisfaction with the statementing
process enormously. It is just not used as much. It is not a sign
of the local authority not wanting to statement; it is a sign
of the local authority taking special needs much more seriously,
more early on in the process and making a real difference to outcomes.
The last question was about taking a fresh look at special educational
needs. We do and in the White Paper we propose new measures for
special schools, for example, saying for the first time that special
schools could develop a particular curriculum specialism, perhaps
in a mainstream subject; or they might develop a special educational
needs specialism which they could share their expertise on with
other schools and create links with other schools. What is most
important in all of this debate is putting the needs of the pupil
first, not the institution in which they are based. There will
always be a need for special schools, particularly for those children
with complex needs. There are other children who are best served
within a special unit within a mainstream school. Other pupils
are best supported in the classroom. The most important thing
is that pupils get the support which is appropriate to their needs
and we will never cease taking a good look at anything we can
do to help that process along.
Chairman: Secretary of State, it has been an
excellent session. I wish more people had been able to listen
to the questions and the answers. I am very disturbed, you are
the third Secretary of State in the last few days that the broadcasting
authorities have not televised. I believe the broadcasting authorities
are really losing the plot. If my colleagues agree, I intend to
bring the broadcasting people in here to ask why on earth they
are not serving Parliament better because it would have been a
lot better if this had been a televised session. Thank you very
much.
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