Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100
- 119)
WEDNESDAY 30 NOVEMBER 2005
CLLR ALISON
KING, CLLR
JAMES KEMPTON,
MR STEPHEN
MEEK AND
MS CHRISTINE
DAVIES
Q100 Mr Marsden: I have driven across
the roads of Norfolk, so I know what it is like when you get to
the north of the county particularly?
Cllr King: Yes. Personally, I
would much rather see that money spent on school improvement than
on bussing children all over the county. This is a significant
difficulty for us when it comes down to choice of school. I am
sorry, we are getting back to choice again, but it does say in
the White Paper that a child should have a choice of three schools
within a six-mile radius. In parts of my area, and this not unusual,
you could be very lucky to have the choice of one school within
a six-mile radius?
Q101 Chairman: We will be coming
back to choice.
Cllr King: So the costs associated
with transporting children large distances are extremely worrying,
and apart from the financial cost you are, of course, removing
children from their natural communities in order to bring this
about and a lot of parents will not be happy with that, will not
see that as a real choice at all. That is me from a rural perspective
on the sort of costs that we are concerned about. James is from
a more urban area.
Q102 Chairman: James, you are from
the rural parts of Islington?
Cllr Kempton: Very rural parts.
Sadly, though, the Islington farm is not in my ward, but it is
very close to it! I want to pick up the issue about expansion
and the presumption for expansion. You started off, Chairman,
talking about the confusions and inconsistencies in the White
Paper, and I think this is one of them. The presumption for schools
to expand and for schools to expand with sixth-forms, on the one
hand, and, on the other hand, the role of local government in
tempering those aspirations with regards to the needs of the local
area, and, I guess, the question is whether this makes financial
sense. Where we have got surplus capacity in the secondary system
already of something like quarter of a million spare places, surplus
capacity in the primary system of nearly half a million places,
I think there is a real question-mark over whether expansion is
the right thing to do. It may be the right thing to do to respond
to parental demand, but whether it remains financial good sense
to spend money on building new buildings on one school site and
leaving those buildings empty on another school site, or whether
it might make better financial sense to spend the money that would
have gone on expansion or would have gone on transport on helping
to raise standards of achievement for those less popular schools
which generally are less popular for standards issues rather than
ethos issues I question.
Q103 Mr Marsden: Leaving aside whether
it is a good thing in theory, in practice is the White Paper too
optimistic about how quick it would be to make the transition
from one failing school to one brand new working school and the
cost and expenditure associated with that?
Cllr Kempton: Chris has given
an example of a federation which was able to deliver in two years
but not one. I think we could give you examples of where there
have been proposals for academies that take very many years to
set up. In term of the interests of young people in the area,
there are other interventions that will deliver much more quickly
than building new schools.
Q104 Mr Marsden: Can I ask you, James,
one of the issues that the White Paper really does not mention
a great deal at all is the issue of the impact of transience in
schools. Certainly this is a big issue for my local authority.
I assume, given it is Islington, it is a big issue for your local
authority as well.
Cllr Kempton: Yes.
Q105 Mr Marsden: At the moment there
is no dedicated funding stream to cope with the consequence of
transience for local authorities, but you still have to do so
even under the present circumstances. Are you worried that that
situation would become more difficult or less difficult under
the new White Paper?
Cllr Kempton: In financial terms,
the Association of London Government has lobbied on a cross-party
basis to make sure that there is a financial aspect for mobility.
That is not necessarily a view that all authorities would share,
but I think there are clearly those within local government who
share the view that we need to provide some financial support
for transience and the effect it has on schools and pupils; but
I think in terms of the White Paper you are right, it may be that
what is described as personalised learning would help in this,
because tabling learning to the needs of pupils will, I think,
help to address the needs of pupils who are quite mobile, but
I am not sure that there is very much else in the White Paper
that addresses that issue.
Q106 Mr Marsden: Schools have more
independence from local authorities. The local authority's ability,
as it were, to make sure that they take their fair share of the
burdens in terms of transience, as, indeed, with special educational
needs, will be restricted, will they not?
Cllr Kempton: I think there is
an issue about placing children. I would not necessarily make
the assumption that just because someone is mobile they are necessarily
vulnerable, but clearly a lot of the mobile population are children
whose learning may be behind because of either difficulties with
finding a placement in a school or because of the turnover. I
think there are questions there in relation to admissions and
whether these are some of the less popular pupils that schools
will either find attractive or unattractive and whether the code
of practice would protect that. Going back to the point that you
were talking about before on PRUs, you were exploring the issue
about PRUs as institutions, but what is important to authorities,
I think, is the ability to reintegrate the pupils into mainstream
education and the authorities that have been very successful—and
East Sussex springs to mind—where they have had a great
success in reintegrating pupils who have been excluded from other
schools, I think that is to the benefit of the pupils; but that
can only work if you have all schools signing up to a code of
practice which says that they will take pupils who have been excluded
from other schools to give them a fresh start, where the necessary
support is available and where they know that the appropriate
facilities are available, where that does not necessarily suit
the needs of that child or where the fresh start in the new school
does not work out; but if you have schools opting out of that
system, it just means you have difficult pupils circulating around
a smaller number of schools, and that makes it harder.
Cllr King: James has talked about
transience and the difficulty that causes. We also have large
pockets of economic migrants in certain parts of the country from
other parts of Europe, notably Eastern Europe, huge numbers of
children coming into our schools who are not bi-lingual, and that
places an enormous stress on schools, usually in fairly specific
geographical areas. The amount of effort needed to get those children
imbedded in the system, get their language skills up to where
they should be so that they can then, of course, improve their
education and get the required outcomes, the need is very intense
and we do not feel that the White Paper is addressing this at
all, because there is a significant, of course, resource issue
behind this, "resource" being taken in its widest meaning.
Chairman: There is a very familiar pattern in
West Yorkshire, I have to say. I want to move on to diversity
of school provision. We will come back to some of these because
obviously these issues overlap.
Q107 Mr Wilson: Good morning. The
White Paper says, "Every school needs to be free to develop
a distinctive ethos and to shape its curriculum, organisation
and use of resources." At the end of this process we are
going to have academies, foundation, trusts, community schools
and others as well. Do you think we need any new legislation to
allow these schools to exist or have we got the legislation in
place?
Cllr King: I have not exactly
noticed a rush to trust status across the country, although that
has been available already to schools.
Q108 Mr Wilson: What is the difference,
in your view, between foundation schools and—
Cllr King: Not a lot, in my view.
I do not think fragmentation of the system is particularly helpful,
because again, to get back to what I said earlier, it does create
huge complexity and a lot of uncertainty for the recipients of
the education service and for the parents. I am more concerned,
and this may be a naive aspiration, about making all schools good
schools so that we do not have to go through these structural
hoops. I do not necessarily think that calling a school a different
name and hoping that someone will come forward as a sponsor to
create a trust school, or whatever, is necessarily going to always
have a positive impact upon education. It does create a huge diversity
of provision. I remain to be persuaded that this is going to achieve
the ends of an improved outcome for children, improved educational
attainment.
Q109 Mr Wilson: So the short answer
to that is, no, you do not think there is any new legislation?
Cllr King: No, I do not.
Ms Davies: All of the legislation
for schools to attain foundation status is in place, and it is
very difficult to understand the distinction between the proposed
trust schools and the existing foundation schools, as Alison has
said. There is little evidence across the country, urban and shire
authorities, where schools have sought foundation status because
the vast majority of schools really appreciate and welcome the
support that they receive from local authorities and from neighbouring
schools, and again it is only local authorities who can broker
the supportive arrangements that exist between schools.
Q110 Mr Wilson: Have you had any
indications of how much take-up there will be of this new trust
school status?
Cllr Kempton: I think it is difficult
to say, but what we can say is that the presumption in the White
Paper is that new schools have to be trusts or academies, not
community schools, and what we see at the moment, as you have
heard, the general feeling in the education system is schools
are happy with the status of community school and we would certainly
to like see the option of community schools being available for
new schools alongside those other options so that people are not
being shoe-horned into a structure set by the White Paper; they
are being allowed a diversity of structure as appeals to that
institution. What is key, I think, to us is not so much what you
call it but that all schools are treated equally, that there is
no unfairness in terms of admissions and that we have the opportunity,
as we said earlier, to support and challenge schools in our local
areas irrespective of their status, because that is what will
drive up standards in schools, and we have got the evidence that
local authorities are intervening successfully at the moment.
Q111 Mr Wilson: Do you think trust
schools will affect the academies at all?
Cllr Kempton: I think it is difficult
to know how the target for 200 academies sits alongside the notion
of trust schools, particularly given what I have said earlier
about expansion and the falling roll position; so I think it is
difficult to know how many new schools will be coming on stream.
Certainly there will be parts of the country where new schools
will be happening, but I think this is one of the areas where
the White Paper and the Government's intentions are unclear.
Q112 Mr Wilson: Going back to the
content of your previous answer, you obviously feel that there
should be room for new community schools as opposed to other schools.
Given the thrust of government policy the way it is at the moment,
do you think that schools that choose to remain community schools
will be disadvantaged in any way?
Cllr King: I would certainly hope
not.
Q113 Mr Wilson: Hoping is not the
same as what you actually think will happen.
Cllr King: I cannot answer for
the way that the final legislation is implemented across the country,
but I do not think that any local authority would be seeking to
disadvantage a school within its area because it remained a community
school.
Cllr Kempton: The area that worries
me is in terms of capital. We have been huge supporters of Building
Schools for the Future, but we know that Building Schools
for the Future timescales have been expanded, the amount of
money available to individual schemes is less in practice than
it appeared. I think the idea that some of this capital is going
to be set aside either for the parents' pot, I think it is called,
where there is parental demand for the new schools but they are
not necessarily on stream at the moment, where academies are being
set up and where new schools are being established. Clearly, unless
there is an increased pot of financial resource on the capital
side, it will disadvantage existing schools and the plans that
they have and whether they expect themselves to be in the BSF
order of priority. It is sort of self-evident that unless there
is more money there will have to be cut-backs and constraints
in the existing capital programme, and I think that will disadvantage
schools.
Ms Davies: There will be a disadvantage
to community schools if the admission arrangements are not secure
and robust. At the moment the White Paper suggests that all schools,
including trust schools, have to have regard to the code of practice
on fair admissions. It is our contention that that is too weak
a requirement and actually we would like to see that strengthened
so that all schools have a duty to adhere to the code of practice
in order to secure fair admissions. The consequence of not doing
that is that potentially some schools will elect not to have those
children who present the greatest challenge, which will include
children with special educational needs, it will include some
children who have behavioural difficulties, it will include those
children who are in the looked-after system, and, if that happens,
that will mean that some schools take a disproportionate number
of those young people, and that will be unfair to those schools
in terms of the challenges they will face and it will be profoundly
unfair to those children who have most need.
Q114 Mr Wilson: We are advised that
spare places cost local authorities about £10,000 per extra
place within the authority area. Obviously there is a desire for
expansion in schools in the White Paper. How do you think we are
going to be able to make that work with the potential financial
implications of surplus places elsewhere?
Cllr Kempton: There clearly is
a conflict in that area, and we touched on it before when we were
being asked about value for money in the system. I think what
it would be helpful to understand is some of reasons for the demand
for expansion of some schools over others. It may be that other
options can address those concerns, and so the option of federation
or the option of schools working together helping to drive up
standards may be an issue. It may be that the issue is to do with
new communities being established or being expanded and the distance
being travelled by other people, and in those circumstances there
will have to be changes. The record shows that there have been
something like 500 expansions over the past few years, so there
are changes going on in the schools system—it is a dynamic
system—and what we want to be clear about is that expansion
is the best option in those circumstances. It may be that there
is a lot of local pressure for the expansion of one school or
for a new school. That may not work out as the best option, but
I think what we would say is that local authorities are best placed
to hear the arguments and to find a way through them. In some
cases, I guess, we would say it may be that the local authority
has to say, no, and I think we need clarity within the White Paper.
We must retain the right to say no, with the appropriate appeals
procedures on that, but generally I think what we hope to do and
what we do in practice is work with local communities to find
the right solution, and setting up a new school or expanding a
successful school is sometimes the most obvious thing to do but
it may not be the thing that serves all children in that local
area best.
Q115 Mr Wilson: I asked the Secretary
of State when she came before us about that very point, about
expansion of schools, and she said that there would be a presumption
in all cases in favour of expansion of schools. How do you feel
about that?
Cllr Kempton: That is one of the
areas that we have some concern about, because the Secretary of
State has also said that she is looking to local authorities to
explore other options to make sure we get the right solution for
the local area. I think those two statements do not necessarily
fit entirely together. I think this goes back to the concern that
we have about whether these additional powers for local authorities
stack up as coherent and as sufficient levers in the system to
deliver a local education system which meets the needs of the
local community. I think you are right, there is a significant
concern in this area.
Q116 Chairman: Is it not the truth
that the White Paper and some of the statements that have come
from ministers have scared a lot of people in local government,
whereas if you look at them in detail, and there are going to
be a lot of countervailing powers to easing school expansion—I
mentioned all the unelected bodies—they are all going to
have a bite into this before expansion takes place. Is that not
the truth?
Cllr King: I think it is true.
I think there was an enormous amount of hype around at the beginning,
saying the White Paper is going to remove schools from local authority
strangle-holds, the strangle-hold of town halls. I think "strangle-hold"
and "town halls" are phrases that fit together very
well in the tabloid press, but it actually is not accurate.
Q117 Chairman: But all the press
is now tabloid!
Cllr King: Sometimes they all
turn into tabloids, yes, but I do not think that is universally
the case. In fact, there is evidence to suggest that the amount
of intervention in the day-to-day running of schools does not,
in fact, come from local government but from central government.
When I go into my local head's office and see the enormous bundle
of mail that still seems to come through, a lot of it now, thankfully,
electronically, from DfES, I see just what it is that local heads
have to cope with on a daily basis. They tend to feel in many
areas that their relationships with their local authority are
very positive and very helpful and enable them to feel, particularly
in the case of small schools, or smaller schools, that they are
part of a network, they are part of a family, and they have someone
to whom they can turn for support and advice when they need it
and that there is somebody on hand. I think that is a very important
role and it is certainly one that should continue.
Q118 Chairman: You want that spelt
out in the legislation?
Cllr King: Yes. I would like this
spelt out in the education bill. I can feel Christine nodding
next to me, but it is terribly important, because, as I said right
at the beginning, we feel that the accountability of schools to
their local communities is hugely important. Of course, people
like James and myself are the buffers in many instances, and also
the messengers, as it were, and most of us are schools governors,
and so we are very closely involved with education in our own
areas, and I never get messages from the schools where I am on
the governing body that they feel that they are being throttled
by the local authority at all. Occasionally there are spats, as
there is in any sort of relationship, of course, but that is not,
generally speaking, my experience or the experience of schools.
Cllr Kempton: I wanted to expand
a little bit. I think if you went to talk schools in Kirklees
they would say they value their local education authority or their
local council very highly and the support they give. If you went
to places like Moseley where the local authority has been driving
up not very good standards at one point and has got a whole set
of collaborative arrangements in place, I think they would say
they value their local authority and would say that none of this
would be in place without the work that they have done. If you
went to Wolverhampton, where they have got a very impressive 14-19
offer brokered by the local authority, they would say, "None
of us individually could have done that but we recognise that
what we have created here together is better than we could all
individually have offered." So I think there is a very real
sense around the country that the role of local authorities, where
it is not about challenging school autonomy but where it is about
working with schools as schools grow independent in relation to
deciding who they employ, how they spend money and what goes in
the classroom, I think where there is a recognition that that
is the strength of schools, but the strength of local authorities
is about making sure that the schools serve all children in the
local area well and in working towards school collaboration I
think that is highly effective.
Q119 Chairman: But, James, there
is a danger of getting too rosy a picture of local governments.
Some of us know of local governments that seemingly fail to deliver
the quality of education that we would expect for the children
in our communities, and Ofsted has a whole history of having to
go in and we have had the Department having to send in independent
people to run local authorities when it goes wrong. It is not
all rosy.
Cllr Kempton: It is not all rosy,
and Islington is a case in point where there was intervention
and a year after intervention Ofsted came back and said that the
tide had turned. Tomorrow in Islington we are going to be signing
a new contract with our outsourcing partners, CEA, on the basis
of a voluntary agreement because the Department has rescinded
intervention powers in my authority on the basis of proven track
record of success. I think what the evidence shows is that something
like 43% of authorities have the highest grading or have improved
in terms of education services. There is, I think, a real sense
of movement in the right direction. There will be some authorities
who are still working towards the standards that others have achieved,
but I think we are not looking at a sector where education is
in crisis as far as local government is concerned, we are looking
at a track record of improvement and success across the board.
|
