Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120
- 139)
WEDNESDAY 30 NOVEMBER 2005
CLLR ALISON
KING, CLLR
JAMES KEMPTON,
MR STEPHEN
MEEK AND
MS CHRISTINE
DAVIES
Q120 Helen Jones: If it is correct,
and I think you are right, local authorities have to balance the
needs of various parts of their communities, how do you feel about
the proposal that elected local authorities can be overruled on
school expansion, on the provision of new schools by a schools
adjudicator who is not accountable?
Ms Davies: Can I relay to you
a conversation that I have recently had with all of our schools,
and in Telford we have every kind of category of school you could
name? They are extremely concerned about this, particularly in
relation to the expansion of schools. Their concern is that if
successful schools are encouraged to expand exponentially, the
danger is, first of all, that those schools cease to become as
effective as they are because there is an optimum size for highly
successful schools and what worries them more, and this includes
the most successful schools, is that the schools serving the most
challenging areas will wither on the vine because the vast majority
of parents will, if encouraged, want to see their children going
to the most successful schools, and those schools serving the
most challenging areas, their populations will fall, and it is
exactly in those communities where they require the very best
of education; and so all the schools in my local area are very
concerned that an external body will have the responsibility potentially
to overrule the local authority holding the strategic ring, not
the strategic ring in splendid isolation, but the strategic ring
in partnership with all schools in the locality.
Chairman: In passing, would it show my age if
I said I was very impressed at an early stage of my career when
reading a book by Schumacher, called "Small is Beautiful"?
Perhaps it will be required reading in the Department!
Q121 Mr Chaytor: The new strategic
powers that the White Paper gives to local authorities do not
apply to 14-19. Are you satisfied with the fairly ambiguous arrangements
between local authorities and LSEs that cover 14-19?
Cllr King: I think that is causing
us a great deal of concern, and the LGA has included this aspect
in its lobbying strategy. We feel that again it is a recipe for
terrible complexity and confusion because we have 14-19 and 16-19
and two different sets of people responsible, one accountable,
one, of course, not accountable. Also, of course, if you have
got the local authority who has been dealing with a child through
the school system from the very earliest days, they do tend to
be able to follow that child through and they have a very significant
input make into further education. 14-19, or whatever, I think
that there is a very significant role there for the local authority
to play. We believe that having two sets of people with strategic
responsibilities for this age group is a potential for disaster,
and we are lobbying very had to have a single strategic partner
for that particular stage of education because to us it makes
absolute sense.
Q122 Mr Chaytor: There is actually
a third element here, is there not, and that is the class of individual
schools who expand?
Cllr King: Yes.
Q123 Mr Chaytor: How do you feel
about that and do you think that needs to be constrained if there
is any concept of strategic planning?
Cllr King: Well, can I defer to
Christine who might like to talk about the experience in her area
and the sixth form.
Ms Davies: Given the needs of
the future workforce for both academic and vocational education,
the only way that you can actually in a local area provide for
that diversity of need is for local schools and local further
education colleges and sixth-form colleges to be working collaboratively
together in order to provide a broad matrix of curriculum offer,
which actually serves all children and young people need, not
just a few children and young people. By and large, it is local
authorities who have brokered those arrangements with their schools
and their local colleges and, where it is working well, supported,
encouraged and enabled by the LSC, but the reality is that it
is the local authority that has that ongoing relationship with
schools and colleges that have enabled that broad offer to come
about. There are excellent examples across the country of where
the 14-19 curriculum is genuinely taking effect where you have
groups of schools who have a common timetabling arrangement with
local colleges and where you have young people moving from institution
to institution to take up the pathway that they need.
Q124 Mr Chaytor: Can I ask specifically
about the presumption in favour of the opening of new sixth forms
by successful specialist schools. The logic of your argument is
that you would be completely opposed to that.
Ms Davies: I think "completely
opposed" is perhaps stating it too strongly. The collaborative
arrangements between schools and colleges will be seriously undermined
if one or two schools in a local area make a decision unilaterally
that they will open a sixth form and provide what is often in
school sixth forms a narrow range of courses, thus meaning that
the sort of overall capacity of a local area to provide 14-19
education is diminished, and the experience of many young people
and parents is that the local school sixth form is not necessarily
the best place for 16-19 education to be delivered to meet a broad
range of needs.
Q125 Mr Chaytor: Does that argument
apply equally to the opening of new 11-18 academies?
Ms Davies: That argument would
apply to the opening of new 11-18 academies if those academies
were not prepared to play their full role in the network, the
family of schools, and that holistic provision in a local area.
Where those academies are playing their full role, then there
is no fear. It is not the category of school that poses the difficulty;
it is the style, the ethos and the delivery of that school which
can either support the family of schools and the holistic offer
in the area or undermine it.
Cllr Kempton: I think you are
right to focus on this area because one of the key challenges
we have in the education system is staying-on rates at 16 and
I think we are disappointed in what the White Paper has got to
say on that issue. We do not think the challenge is answered by
providing more academic A-level opportunities in a traditional
sixth form and whether it is in an academy or somewhere else.
Where that is addressed is, I think, in some of the proposals
that Mike Tomlinson produced about curriculum reform and the LGA
warmly supported his report and we were disappointed that it has
made less progress than we hoped. I think the issue here is about
curriculum choice rather than institution choice so that the opportunities
are there for the 47% of people who are not getting five good
GCSEs and it is about giving them opportunities, and I think we
would say that those opportunities are best served by a breadth
of opportunity at 14 or 16 and that breadth of opportunity has
been successfully brokered in some areas by LEAs and we see that
as the future rather than a future where schools are narrowly
focused on the pupils on their roll from 11-18. Therefore, I think
the choice as far as the curriculum is concerned and the broadening
of that is something we fully support.
Q126 Mr Chaytor: Do the arguments
about school autonomy and diversity apply equally to primary schools
as they do to secondary schools?
Ms Davies: Every primary school,
as does every secondary school, has its own distinctive ethos
and distinctive character, to quote David Blunkett when he was
Secretary of State.
Q127 Mr Chaytor: Should it be an
object of policy to increase the differences between those individual
characters?
Ms Davies: The vast majority of
primary schools want to, and do, cater for the needs of their
local children in their local area and I think that the vast majority
of primary headteachers would say that they have no need to take
on different and discrete categories in order to continue to meet
that broad range of needs. The vast majority do it very successfully.
Their request is only for continued support of the local authority
and more money, not a change of category.
Q128 Mr Marsden: The White Paper
talks about a school commissioner for trusts and says that the
school commissioner is to be a champion for the trusts, is to
be a link person with local authorities and also to be a monitor
and referee. The LGA, in the written evidence, you have said that
you are concerned about the contradictions in that role and you
have asked for the commissioner to be independent of government,
but do you think it is a necessary role in the first place?
Cllr King: No, I do not personally.
I do not think it is a necessary role at all because of course
local authorities are expected to be the champions of parents
and children and their educational opportunities, so why do we
need to have a commissioner of a particular type of school? I
think it is, and again I keep going back to this, adding to the
layers, adding to the complexities, adding to the confusions.
I think if you have got a person or a group of people who are
there expected to be champions who are going to be tested regularly
as to the level of provision that they are overseeing, I think
that should be adequate. I really do not think that having a commissioner
or a tsar of trust schools, whatever you like to call it, is necessarily
going to be effective or necessary.
Q129 Mr Marsden: You may or may not
agree with that, but assuming that you have thrown out the role
of champion, is there a role for someone, whether it is a school
commissioner or otherwise, who would actually monitor and, if
you like, be a standards commissioner for the new trust schools?
Cllr Kempton: Do you mean a different
role in relation to what Ofsted will have for those schools in
terms of monitoring them?
Q130 Mr Marsden: Yes. I assume the
Government, in setting this up, is thinking, "This is a new
category of schools and we need to make sure that they keep up
standards and we also need to make sure they are successful",
hence the promoter role, which I think is where the confusion
comes. If I can ask the question in a slightly different way,
do we need someone in the initial stages to monitor and to be
a referee for trust schools other than Ofsted?
Cllr Kempton: I think we have
great confidence in Ofsted in terms of looking at the standards
of schools. The only argument would be to have a commissioner
who is responsible for structures in schools rather than standards
and I think we do not warm to the idea, as you have picked up,
on that issue. We think that local government is best placed to
arbitrate between the conflicting demands of parents in an area
when it comes to expansion of federation or new types of school
and we would expect local authorities to be held to account by
the regulatory regimes for that.
Q131 Mr Marsden: So you think it
is another unnecessary layer?
Ms Davies: I think where we are
really most concerned about the introduction of a schools adjudicator
is in relation to delivering the Building Schools for the Future
programme which, as you know, is the Government's £2.2 billion
invested in secondary schools across the country. The Building
Schools for the Future programme can only be delivered where the
local authority is the client, having a vision for its locality
which is fit for purpose, supported by all the schools in the
local area, and that is the local authority's job with all of
its schools. The very real danger if the schools commissioner
is interpreted in one way is that there will be some kind of mechanistic
checklist which says, "In your vision for schools in your
area, you have to have an academy, a trust school, a single-sex
school", and so on. I know I am being somewhat crude, but
if the schools commissioner's job is to promote trust schools
and academies, you can see this very real danger and that completely
undermines the vision and the delivery of BSF for a local area
because it will not necessarily be fit for purpose.
Q132 Mr Marsden: Are you then worried,
in the light of what you have said, that, whatever the intentions,
the reality of the schools commissioner is that he or she would
end up as another agent of central government micromanaging the
system?
Cllr Kempton: The proposal that
this will be a civil servant rather than an independent person
points in that direction. As we have said, if there is to be such
a role, we would like them to be independent, but we do not think
that the role is required.
Mr Meek: As far as we can tell,
there is no intention to legislate for a schools commissioner,
so I am assuming there would be no additional powers above and
beyond simply the championing sort of advocate role for trust
schools. I do not see that it could be given any powers to sort
of oversee standards elsewhere, so I would just repeat the point
that what we want to be held accountable for is standards, not
for the tick box and I do not see that the commissioner could
have a role beyond that.
Chairman: This is all very useful, but we must
press on and have a look in some more depth at choice.
Q133 Helen Jones: The White Paper
places on authorities a duty to promote choice and diversity and
the assumption is that one assists the other. Do you have any
evidence to offer the Committee that a greater diversity of schools
actually helps to meet more parents' first preferences for schools,
bearing in mind what was in the survey of the TES recently which
showed, for instance, in Barnet that there was a wide diversity
of schools and only 52% of parents get their choice and in Oldham
99% do? Do you have any evidence to offer us that would help with
that?
Cllr King: No, only the evidence
that you have already referred to which I read in The Times
Educational Supplement a couple of weeks ago where they were
making the point that increasing diversity of provision and increasing
fragmentation leads to more problems rather than solving them
when it comes to children being able to access the school that
is their first preference or even their second, I understand.
Cllr Kempton: I guess I am forming
the role of flying the flag for London, but if you look as a case
study at the pan-London co-ordinated admissions which have recently
been brought in, supported by the DfES, but led from local government,
the evidence is that 90% of applicants got a place at one of their
preferred schools and—
Q134 Helen Jones: Sorry, but that
is not the same as getting your first choice of school, and we
need to be clear about that.
Cllr Kempton: I understand that,
but the question is whether you are happy with your second choice
or whether there is only one choice as far as you are concerned.
What this shows to me is that by getting the system right, it
is possible to meet more parents' aspirations than having an uncoordinated
system which is the direction we appear to be moving in. Certainly
in the London case, 40% of children, fewer were without a place
at the same stage compared to the previous year and I think that
has got to be right because obviously our concern is that parents
get their first choice of school, but our concern is also that
children have a school place at all and it is about reconciling
those two and making sure that as many as possible get a place
in a preferred school as opposed to an allocated school.
Q135 Helen Jones: There is always
a difficulty, is there not, in reconciling parental preferences
and meeting the needs of the community as a whole? Now, under
the proposals in the White Paper that successful schools would
be allowed to expand, how do you believe local authorities could
manage that system, bearing in mind schools do not exist in isolation
and there may well be another school down the road which is then
contracting? What would be the effect on other children in the
area? Choice is not a one-way street, is it, and there are other
people affected?
Cllr King: No, and what is a benefit
to one person may be a total disadvantage or disbenefit to somebody
else. I think Christine is best placed to answer this because
she has already referred to the ability of local authorities to
encourage federations of schools instead of just looking at expanding
one particular school, looking at a different way of managing
this situation within a community because you can end up offering
no improvement in choice for a lot of parents at all by talking
just crudely, saying, "We are going to expand this school",
because you can terribly disadvantage some groups of children.
Ms Davies: There is a variety
of ways of better meeting parental choice and aspiration than
necessarily expanding schools rapidly and, thus, closing other
schools equally rapidly and they are through network learning
communities, collaboration, amalgamations; there is a whole raft
of ways. Progressive local authorities are brokering these arrangements
across the country and, if I can just reiterate the point I made
previously, many highly successful schools do not want to expand
exponentially and rapidly and they are concerned about the effect
on schools that are seemingly less popular serving the most challenging
areas and the effect on those schools and, therefore, meeting
the needs of those local communities.
Q136 Helen Jones: I understand that,
but the question is a little wider than that, if I may say so.
Let's say that a school is permitted to expand under the White
Paper, as we were discussing earlier, so it may take 100 or 150
more pupils than the school down the road, so what happens to
the pupils in the school down the road, given that that school
will be using funding and, therefore, staff? You do not have a
way, as local authorities, to deal with that, do you, now that
all the money is passported to schools?
Ms Davies: The consequence on
the school down the road which is less popular is exactly as I
describe; it would potentially wither on the vine. I think that
is very important. We are currently able to hold the ring on school
expansion and the planning of school places. That is the role
of a local authority and it is a duty placed on us and actually
it is also a duty envisaged in the White Paper, that the local
authority should continue to be responsible for the planning of
school places, and I do not think the White Paper envisages a
free-for-all whereby schools can expand without due regard to
the planning of school places across the local authority.
Q137 Helen Jones: But the assumption
is in favour of expansion in the White Paper, is it not?
Ms Davies: My understanding of
the White Paper is that there may be a presumption in favour of
expansion, but that there are the necessary checks and balances
in place, I hope.
Mr Meek: Just to follow up on
that point, I think Christine is right, that there are statements
in the White Paper that give us some reassurance that the local
authority role to be the strategic manager remains, but I think
what we would be looking for from legislation is clarity around
the definition of the presumption. On what basis can the presumption
be resisted because a presumption is a sort of dangerous thing
if it is not very clear what the rules of the game are and if
the presumption is that you can expand regardless of the impact
on the surrounding schools, regardless of the strategic plans,
regardless of efficiency in managing financial resources, then
that is not right, but that is one of the critical things for
legislation.
Q138 Helen Jones: If I can ask another
question about parental choice, the White Paper also envisages
a situation where parents want to set up new schools. Again the
presumption is in favour of the parents. Now, I have asked a number
of questions about who in that case the local authority would
have to consult before making the decision on that. What are the
implications, in your view, of that for a local authority and,
in your view, who should be part of the discussion on that? I
think this is probably going to be a rare event, but I would be
interested to know who should be consulted because we are told
that the local authority will have to respond to parents and provide
the consultancy if they can show the demand, so is it clear to
you how that demand should be shown and who should be involved
in this consultation?
Ms Davies: I think that there
is a distinct lack of clarity in the White Paper about this issue
and the vast majority of parents actually do not want to have
the power to open or close schools. They want to have as much
information as they can have available to choose schools for their
children and as much information as they can have available to
help their children when in school. There is no detail given about
who to consult, but if there was going to be a parental lobby
to open a school, and I think it is more likely there would be
a parental lobby to close a school rather than open a school,
then you would need to consult all parents in that local area,
both present and future because a parent is only a parent for
a fixed term in terms of school age. The very real danger of course
is that it is likely that only the highly articulate and highly
motivated parents will have the confidence and the competence
to raise issues about opening new schools and whilst of course
no parent should be debarred from having a view about education,
the views, the needs, the aspirations of those who are less articulate,
less confident and less competent will also need to be taken fully
into account. Therefore, you have to have at the end of the day
somebody who is holding the strategic ring and being an advocate
not only on behalf of the articulate parent, but also being the
advocate on the part of the less articulate, less confident parent.
Chairman: It sounds a very revolutionary tool
for the future if we take it out of the context of the question
that was asked and confine it to grammar schools and the future
of grammar schools. Christine, I hope it will not come back to
haunt you when we do an inquiry on that.
Q139 Mr Wilson: Just on an earlier
question about this presumption in favour of expansion, which
I asked about earlier, one of the key things I believe you will
be taking into consideration is, therefore, surplus places that
are left as a result of expansion, yet the Prime Minister said
only a few weeks ago at Prime Minister's Question Time that there
can be no account taken of surplus places and there will certainly
be none in the future. How does that square?
Cllr King: It does not.
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