Select Committee on Education and Skills Minutes of Evidence


Memorandum submitted by the National Union of Teachers (NUT)

  1.  The National Union of Teachers welcomes the decision by the Education and Skills Select Committee to conduct an inquiry into the Government's White Paper, "Higher Standards, Better Schools for All".

  2.  In the last year, the NUT has published three major policy documents:

    —  "Bringing Down the Barriers", published in November 2004, set out proposals on the structure of the Education Service; on the National Curriculum and its assessment; on the teaching profession; and on school accountability;

    —  "Learning to Behave—a Charter for Teachers" sets out practical proposals to tackle unacceptable pupil behaviour; and

    —  "Bringing Down the Barriers to 14-19 Education" sets out proposals to protect young people from the potential inequities in the current dual Diploma proposals.

  3.  A number of proposals in these NUT documents have been adopted by Government, including; the idea of a Pupil Behaviour Charter; the need for a clear, unambiguous legal right for teachers to discipline pupils; and funded practical personalised learning. The documents above are attached for the Committee's consideration.[1]

  4.  The NUT is in a strong position, therefore, to evaluate the Government's proposals, using its own as a template.

TWO WHITE PAPERS AND THE NEED FOR EVIDENCE TO INFORM REFORM

  5.  There is a strong case for arguing that the White Paper is, in fact, two papers; one which contains wholly unnecessary and damaging structural reform; the other which sets out proposals which have the potential for supporting teaching and learning.

  6.  It may well be that the White Paper's proposals for structural reforms draw on evidence; but references are extremely sketchy. A YouGov poll on parental views is referred to, in paragraph 3.1, without any accompanying explanation. The Prime Minister refers to developments in Sweden and Florida in his introduction. No serious analysis of the evidence behind these references is included. No evidence is brought forward at all to substantiate the majority of proposals for structural reform. The NUT believes that reforms of such a radical nature cannot proceed without a much greater exploration and analysis of the assumptions behind the White Paper.

  7.  The NUT submission does not address all the proposals in the White Paper therefore. It concentrates primarily on those which relate to the strategic direction of the education service. It focuses on the implications of "choice" and "diversity" and on the implications of proposals affecting local authorities' relationships with schools.

THE IMPLICATIONS OF "CHOICE" AND "DIVERSITY"

  8.  Fundamental to the White Paper is the Government's case for reform. It believes that choice for parents and diversity of provision will, in themselves, raise standards. The White Paper is predicated on the need to promote choice and, in promoting it, seeks to address the imbalance between "the affluent (who) can buy choice and the `least well-off parent'". While the case for reform is well-rehearsed, its goal, in contrast, is completely obscure:

    "Our goal is no less than to transform our school system by turning it from one focused on the success of institutions into one which is shaped and driven by the success, needs and aspirations of parents and pupils."

  9.  As a goal, it appears to contrast institutional success with that of the needs of pupils and parents; a completely invidious distinction. For such an avowedly radical White Paper, the opacity of its goal should lead members of the Select Committee to ask what exactly is the White Paper's objective.

  10.  The Government's agenda appears to rest on a number of assumptions. They are that:

    —  it is possible to neutralise the effects of social disadvantage by ameliorative measures applying to education only;

    —  all will benefit from an education service based on choice and diversity;

    —  parents want to attend parents' councils and establish new schools; and

    —  the involvement of the private sector will improve education.

  11.  The evidence base for the above assumptions is shaky, to say the least. The proposal for parents' councils seems to be drawn from the need to provide a voice to parents who would be disenfranchised from standing for election to Trust school governing bodies. It is an ill-considered attempt by the Government to restore a voice for parents in the context of its promise to expand parental rights. As a proposal it seems not to take into account the history of badly attended school Annual Parents' Meetings.

  12.  The other assumptions in the Government's proposals also need unpacking. The Education and Skills Select Committee will be familiar with the OECD PISA Report, "Knowledge and Skills for Life", and its conclusion that, "social segregation brings benefits for the advantaged", and that, "segregation of schools is likely to decrease equality". Members may be familiar with the report's message that education systems which enable choice of provision within schools, rather than between schools, are far more likely to meet the needs of all young people.

  13.  In this context, it would be worthwhile for the Education and Skills Select Committee to explore the Prime Minister's claim, in his introduction to the White Paper, that:

    "Swedish parents can choose an alternative school to their local one, including a diverse range of state-funded independent schools and that . . . schools and areas where there is more choice have improved most rapidly."

  14.  Such references are worth exploring, because there is some evidence that the proposals for Trust Schools are based on the Swedish model, supported, as they were at the time of the launch of the White Paper, by a chorus of support from sympathetic think tanks.

  15.  The NUT believes that the Swedish system is worth a far greater in-depth analysis than that provided by the White Paper; an analysis which the NUT believes should lead the Education and Skills Select Committee to very different conclusions from those of the Prime Minister.

  16.  The report, "School Choice and its Effects in Sweden", by the Swedish National Agency for Education (2003), contains a sharp analysis of the independent/public schools system in Sweden. The Agency describes choice in Sweden as an urban issue; a finding which could apply equally to the English White Paper. In Sweden the conditions for choice vary between authorities; "The likelihood of parents making a choice of schools increases dramatically if they live in a city and are highly educated".

  17.  While the Agency finds that the idea of school choice is popular with parents in Sweden, there are major costs which the Swedish National Agency acknowledges.

    —  "Schools which experience difficulties are likely to find that conditions for development work have deteriorated."

    —  "There is little that points to school choice resulting in a more effective use of resources."

    —  "Real school choice requires over-provision, which is not cost-effective."

    —  "It is doubtful whether . . . we dare draw the conclusion that school choice in itself affects parental participation and involvement."

    —  "In local authorities with a strong element of competition, school closures are a reality . . . talk of collaboration has been replaced by talk of competition . . . various forms of selection mechanism are already in use and a clear division of not only pupils but schools into `better' and `worse' is today a reality . . . the school system is becoming more and more differentiated (with) schools with different statuses . . . and we . . . are thus approaching the point of talking about a new type of parallel school system."

    —  "While those who will and can actively obtain the information they need . . . increased school choice requires will, knowledge and time to the extent that ever larger groups of parents and pupils end up being left outside."

  18.  The above points, themselves, should have prompted the Prime Minister and his advisers at least to draw breath before wholeheartedly endorsing the Swedish system. But there is one major cost which deserves attention on its own. Its conclusion is that, "school choice has reinforced segregation", particularly in the matter of ethnic composition. It is a conclusion which is directly linked to that of the OECD PISA Report.

  19.  The NUT has highlighted the issues above from the Swedish National Agency Report, not because it wishes to cherry pick the criticisms and hide the conclusions in the report, but because there is a case to answer.

  20.  In England the admissions system currently enables parents to have a measure of choice but the White Paper predicates its version of choice on an internal market between self-governing independent Trust schools; a clear attempt at imitating the Swedish model without acknowledgement of its dangers.

  21.  The attempts at redressing the balance in the model proposed by the White Paper may have a marginal impact on the circumstances of those families. It is worth noting in this context that "less affluent" parents while able to have their children bussed free of charge to one of three schools chosen by them, may then be unable to be "fully engaged" in those schools because they cannot afford to travel the distance between school and home themselves.

  22.  There are important lessons to be learnt from Sweden, including a national agency which seeks to evaluate the evidence of strengths and weaknesses of a system without apparent spin. The Swedish system has very real defects, however, against the UK Government's own criteria for the education service in England. The Swedish system of choice, as its National Agency concludes, may lead to an "increased willingness by teachers and local authorities to listen to parents", but the NUT believes that there are plenty of mechanisms available in the education service to enable that to happen already; including elected parent governors, parent/teacher associations and the range of opportunities for parent/teacher contact which schools employ already. Indeed there is an argument for less affluent parents having the facility to access advisers to enable them to negotiate the system.

  23.  Probably the starkest contrast between the Swedish Agency's analysis and the White Paper's aspiration can be drawn from the two following statements:

    —  "Assume that half benefit and a quarter lose from school choice and on a quarter it has no effect. Using a utilitarian view of justice, we should be satisfied with such a situation . . . The middle classes are favoured . . . and, overall, the performance of the country schools is possibly improved". There is, however, a crucial obstacle to this . . . a development . . . characterised as `parallel school systems' would be worrying from an equality point of view." (The Swedish National Agency)

    —  "We cannot content ourselves with a school system which, while much improved, is not universally good; or a system that succeeds for most pupils, but not for all pupils". (The White Paper)

  24.  The trouble with the Government's proposals is that they draw on a model with which the Government itself, against its own criteria, cannot be content. In short, the Government's encouragement of an internal market concentrating on parental choice at the expense of the idea of a good local school for every child could lead to the kind of social segregation already in evidence in Sweden.

  25.  Indeed the underlying fault line with the Government's model of choice is based on a pessimistic premise.

  26.  The NUT has addressed explicitly the issue of choice in Bringing Down the Barriers. The NUT's contrasting vision, which is focused on how equality of access to high quality education can be secured, is summarised below:

    "It would be profoundly pessimistic to assume that the idea of good local schools for every community is a less powerful idea than the concept of the right to choose schools . . . All parents should be entitled to send their children to good local schools . . . This is the wish of the vast majority of parents . . . Local schools are enhanced by their communities and communities are enhanced by their local schools."

  27.  Compared with the White Paper, Bringing Down the Barriers, provides a practical and optimistic strategy for ensuring that good local schools are at the heart of their communities.

  28.  The NUT believes in the concept of a good local school for every child. Unlike the Government it believes this goal is attainable.

  29.  For such a goal to be achieved the causes of economic and social disadvantage need to be tackled. Latest census data, analysed by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, illustrates that, in broad terms, wealth, poverty and poor health are distributed on a geographical basis across the United Kingdom.

  30. With reference to education, the Foundation found that "an inverse education law" appears to exist in which areas that have the highest proportions of young people with no qualifications tend to have the fewest teachers available. It is this inverse education law which needs to be tackled.

  31.  The choice agenda, described by the Government in its White Paper, appears not only to ignore the root causes of social disadvantage, but also appears wilfully to propose measures which will exacerbate the educational effects of social disadvantage through encouraging segregation as the evidence from Sweden indicates.

  32.  In contrast, the NUT believes that the Government's Every Child Matters agenda has the capacity to contribute not only to the concept of a good local school for every community, but also to the regeneration of communities. Such an agenda will be undermined by the Government's proposals.

  33.  Alongside the establishment of self-governing independent schools (Trust schools and Academies), is an acknowledgement by the Government that, "where a new school is established as a result of parental demand or an existing school chooses to expand, the result may be that there are more surplus places". The consequences, according to the Government, are such that, "local authorities will need to move quickly to close schools that are failing to attract sufficient pupils" (paragraph 2.36) and to establish new schools which may involve housing new schools in, "high quality, temporary buildings"(!) (Paragraph 2.34). This revival of the idea of an internal market is boosted by the new statutory requirements on local authorities to promote choice, diversity and fair access to school provisions.

  34.  This revival of a market between schools could be devastating for schools in the most fragile communities. Schools which should be at the centre of their communities could be closed as a result of the removal of planned pupil numbers for each school. This would threaten the rights of parents least able to choose schools, the capacity of schools to help regenerate their local communities and the jobs of some of the most committed teachers and support staff in the education service. The idea of a revived market based on expansion of "popular" schools certainly undermines the White Paper's promotion of partnerships and collaboration between schools; an idea for which the NUT has long argued.

  35.  In this context the Select Committee should note that the Government has subtly changed its target for the number of Academies it wishes to be open by 2010 from 200 to "at least 200" (paragraph 2.30). The Select Committee has expressed concerns rightly that Academies have not been subject to independent evaluation. Claims by the Government that Academy status of itself has boosted achievement do not stand up to examination. The Government has failed to answer a whole range of questions about the impact of Academy status on other schools, on admissions including pupils with special educational needs and on funding including funding for pupils which Academies exclude. The Select Committee should both question the Government on its changed target and, separate from the current study being conducted for Government by PricewaterhouseCoopers, reiterate its call on the Government to commission an independent study prior to the programme being expanded further.

  36.  The proposed requirement on schools to have regard to Local Authorities' Children and Young People's Plans fails to provide sufficient protection against the effects of unlimited expansion of "popular schools", "Academies" and self-governing independent status, particularly since the new Schools' Commissioner will have the responsibility of chivvying local authorities which do not go down the "choice" and "diversity" route when planning provision.

  37.  The capacity of local authorities to have at their fingertips a range of options, such as federations and clusters, will be constrained further by the Government's decision to prevent local authorities publishing proposals for the establishment of new community schools. The decision to discontinue community school status is incomprehensible since the vast majority of schools have appreciated the partnerships with local authorities and with each other that community school status enables.

  38.  Indeed, Trust and Foundation status are answers to problems which do not exist but the removal of community status will certainly create problems. There is long standing research, commissioned by the NUT from Warwick University, which showed that allocating a range of additional administrative responsibilities to schools, through the then GM status, diverted the attention of school leaderships away from pupil achievement. There is little evidence also that head teachers want these proposed additional responsibilities.

  39.  The international evidence against the diversity of provision the Government is proposing is well established. The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment's findings stands as a well established critique of Government proposals. The Government would have done better if it had concentrated on proposals informed by OECD findings: a funding system which meets need; a curriculum which encourages all schools to innovate; an accountability system which supports schools, and high quality professional development as an entitlement for all teachers and support staff.

ADMISSIONS AND CHOICE

  40.  The Government's proposed approach to the mechanism for enabling choice is both unclear and could lead to chaos.

  41.  It appears that all self-governing schools (those that have Foundation, Voluntary-Aided or Trust status) can construct their own admissions policies in the context of the Admissions Code of Practice. No reference is made to School Admissions Forums; the implication being that the new Schools' Commissioner will be able to intervene and redress injustices to local admissions practices. Indeed, it is possible that there could be a two-tiered approach to admissions, with community schools following the pattern of admissions agreed at Schools Admissions Forums and self-governing schools constructing their own.

  42.  The proposal to allow individual schools to establish a banding system looks superficially attractive, but is fraught with problems and the potential to operate subtle selection practices despite the Secretary of State's denial that this will take place.

  43.  If schools have their own individual banding systems, then each school will be able to select its own number of bands and the thresholds of attainment at each band level. There is no guarantee, in the White Paper, that the range of bands should cover the entire range of need in a local population cohort and, as a consequence, youngsters with learning difficulties, and statements of special educational need, could be barred from being admitted to schools simply because they could not reach the lowest band. One of the most significant effects, however, of an individual school banding approach, could be that a considerable number of pupils may not be able to be admitted to their local school because of over-subscription in particular bands.

  44.  A single common banding system, combined with a proximity criteria across a local authority or across a geographically coherent area, should remain an option for local authorities if local communities, after consultation, agree with that approach. The chaos arising from the operation of individual school admissions criteria, all purporting to conform to the Admissions Code of Practice, will neither benefit parents, nor school communities, as they will simply fuel the competitiveness of an internal market.

  45.  Indeed many questions posed by the White Paper. For example:

    —  how can extended/full service schools maintain and provide a range of services if they can be closed as a result of local authorities having to "move quickly to close schools that are failing to attract sufficient pupils"?

    —  how does the concept of school choice sit with the encouragement to schools to federate and organise in clusters?

    —  how can parents be enabled to choose schools, instead of schools choosing parents, when schools themselves are able to operate their own admissions' arrangements? and

    —  how can parents have choice when a local school is not amongst the range of choices?

  46.  The alternative is a successful one, which the Government has decided to dismantle only seven years after its creation by the Schools Standards and Framework Act. School Organisation Committees are to be abolished because they give a "bias to the status quo" (paragraph 9.12). Schools Admissions Forums will become an irrelevance. Although not perfect, both sets of arrangements have worked despite the Government's criticisms. They have provided a forum for community consensus and dialogue. Abolishing them because local communities favour the status quo, smacks of a zealous top down agenda which ignores inconvenient evidence.

  47.  The issue of admissions will always be tough and, indeed, there is no "holy grail" for best admissions practice. A Code of Practice and Admissions Forums provide a good framework for fair local authority-wide admissions arrangements. All that is needed is some fine tuning. In terms of creating new provision, the Government, in fact, needs to be much more radical. It should establish a strategic approach to meeting social and economic disadvantage across communities.

  48.  For all the above reasons, the NUT would reiterate the proposals which it set out in Bringing Down the Barriers, which it believes that the Government should have adopted in its White Paper.

    —  Local authorities should establish Children's Services Advisory Forums whose membership would include representatives of parents, governors, teacher and support staff organisations and would be chaired by lead members of Social Services.

    —  Local Admissions Forums should determine schools' admissions policies. All state funded schools, including Academies, should be required to adopt the admissions arrangements determined after consultation by Local Admissions Forums.

    —  School Organisation Committees should be retained. Proposals for the establishment of new schools should come from local communities, including parents. School Organisation Committees will be required to consider proposals, both from local authorities and local communities. Local authorities should be able to combine to determine where new schools should be built.

    —  Specific funding, to support collaborative arrangements between schools, should be available to schools from Government to local authorities. It should be a requirement that specialist facilities developed by individual schools should be available to schools in the wider community.

    —  The Government should re-establish its Education Funding Strategy Group as a Children's Services Funding Strategy Group. It should have two roles. The first should be to draw on the previous work conducted by the Government's Education Funding Strategy Group and establish a funding mechanism for schools and local authority services that is based on activity-led funding, costing the requirements placed on schools. In the context of a wider and refocused strategy for promoting economic and social regeneration it should examine the capacity of local authorities to sustain, across all services, the needs of socially and economically disadvantaged communities.

  49.  There are a range of other proposals within the NUT's Education Statement, but the above illustrates the kind of strategic approach needed to tackle genuinely the effects of economic and social disadvantage.

OTHER PROPOSALS IN THE WHITE PAPER

  50.  The NUT would wish to comment briefly on other proposals contained in the White Paper. The NUT has made proposals itself in the three education statements referred to earlier. There are a number of proposals in the White Paper with which the NUT would agree.

  51.  The NUT welcomes the £335 million allocated for practical personalised learning, including small group tuition. It welcomes that the funding will be targeted towards local authorities with the largest number of underachieving and deprived children. It welcomes also the proposal that nutritional standards will be applied to tuck shops and vending machines and that all schools are expected to achieve healthy school status by 2009. The proposal to ensure that each primary and secondary cluster has a school nurse is a very real step forward in terms of monitoring the health of children and young people.

  52.  The NUT welcomes also the fact that chapter 7 on school discipline adopts directly a range of NUT proposals. The NUT supports much of the Alan Steer Practitioner Group report and welcomes the group's adoption of the idea of a national behaviour charter and the introduction of a "clear unambiguous legal right for teachers to discipline pupils". It is vital that the Government now adopts the idea of a national behaviour charter. The NUT's own behaviour charter has been sent to all schools and has been welcomed by teachers.

  53.  The NUT welcomes also the Government's commitment to further advice on bullying, including a focus on racism and homophobic bullying alongside a new proposed requirement on local authorities to make provision from the sixth day for excluded pupils. In addition, the Government's adoption of the Steer Group's recommendation that further investigation is required to determine how BESD provision might be expanded and improved is a positive step.

  54.  There are a number of further steps which the Government should take in relation to supporting teachers and support staff in tackling unacceptable pupil behaviour. They include inserting into the criteria for exclusion, "persistent low level disruption", and guaranteeing a place for a classroom teacher on independent appeals panels. In addition, the national guidance on physical restraint and physical contact with pupils is not sufficient and neither is the availability of professional development dealing with violent pupils and situations where teachers may feel that they have to use physical restraint or physical guidance for pupils. Those issues need to be taken up by the Government including through the Ministerial Stakeholder Group.

  55.  Nevertheless, the White Paper's proposals on school discipline are a very real step forward.

  56.  There are a range of other proposals within the White Paper which are sensible including:

    —  single point of contact for parents;

    —  a national campaign on the benefits of parental engagement;

    —  the range of proposals in chapter 6 on supporting children and parents;

    —  new proposals on Looked After Children;

    —  an increase in boarding provision;

    —  work with schools' partners on how more black and minority ethnic teachers can become school leaders; and

    —  the mentoring programme for chairs of school governors.

  57.  The NUT believes that this range of proposals can be worked on and developed with the teaching profession and they could have positive impact on all children and young people's learning. It is regrettable that the importance of such proposals are obscured by Government's proposals on choice and diversity.

  58.  There are a range of proposals within the White Paper which the NUT believes require further explanation or with which the NUT would disagree.

THE SCHOOLS COMMISSIONER AND CHOICE AND DIVERSITY

  59.  The establishment of a "Schools Commissioner" is unnecessary. A Schools Adjudicator already exists with powers to intervene on admissions and school provision. It is the powers of the Schools Adjudicator which need review to ensure fair admission access. The requirement on local authorities to promote choice and diversity should be dropped although the proposed requirement to maximise fair access should be retained.

SCHOOL TRUSTS AND NEW FLEXIBILITIES

  60.  Schools should not have the ability to vary teachers' pay and conditions. The Secretary of State should make it clear that the STPCD should apply to all maintained and aided schools including Foundation schools and, if created, Trust schools.

  61.  The NUT is deeply concerned also about the implication that curriculum flexibility will be awarded as bait for achieving Trust status. In the context of the NUT's believe that the current overloaded National Curriculum needs a fundamental review, the Select Committee should ask itself whether the concept of a broad and balanced curriculum is an entitlement for all young people or a punishment. Either all schools should be granted new curriculum flexibilities within the revised National Curriculum because it is right for children's learning (as the NUT has argued), or the current arrangements should apply to all schools.

14-19 OPPORTUNITIES

  62.  The NUT welcomes the proposals for new cooperative relationships between Local Learning and Skills Councils and local authorities. The NUT believes that local authorities should retain their powers to create new 16-19 provision.

  63.  The NUT believes that the Government should, however, review aspects of its 14-19 White Paper proposals. In its Education Statement, "Bringing Down the Barriers to 14-19 Education", the NUT argues for:

    —  the award of a level 1 foundation award within the general GCSE diploma in order to prevent the haemorrhaging of young people at 16 into the "Not in Education Employment or Training" (NEET) group;

    —  setting up of a specific working group to examine the needs of youngsters who could face learning dead ends;

    —  the adoption of a range of principles prior to the roll out of further 14-19 reform including a proper thorough piloting period prior to the introduction of a new qualification and an audit of funding implications; and

    —  a reversal of the decision by the Government to introduce a first tranche of specialist diplomas alongside the implementation of a revised Key Stage 3 National Curriculum in 2008.

SPECIAL MEASURES AND NOTICES TO IMPROVE

  64.  One year guillotines for schools under special measures or subject to notices to improve present an absurdly rigid approach to school improvement. The net affect of such an approach will be to drive away committed and good teachers from schools in those schools which receive such designations. This requirement should be withdrawn.

SCHOOL PERFORMANCE TABLES AND CONTEXTUAL VALUE ADDED

  65.  School performance tables should be dropped as they have been in all other parts of the United Kingdom. There may be advantages to a contextual value-added approach but the overarching disadvantage of performance tables is that they cannot summarise the overall quality of work in each school. Contextual value-added may lend the impression of authenticity to the essential lack of fairness enshrined in performance tables but it is the performance tables concept itself which should be removed.

BILINGUAL SUPPORT AND THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF WHITE WORKING CLASS BOYS

  66.  The NUT welcomes the proposal to expand the programmes targeting the achievement of young black people. It believes also there is a strong argument for a specific funded programme for targeting the achievement of white working class boys.

GROUPING AND SETTING

  67.  Latest research from Brighton, Sussex and Cambridge Universities demonstrate that there are no overall advantages to grouping and setting and, in some circumstances, such approaches can depress expectations and achievements. It is not the place of Government to micro-manage the way schools organise the teaching of their pupils.

THE NATIONAL CURRICULUM AND ITS ASSESSMENT

  68.  There are no new proposals within the White Paper on the National Curriculum and its assessment. The six teacher associations have submitted proposals to the Secretary of State for a review of Key Stage 2 assessment. The NUT looks forward to meeting the Schools Minister to discuss the NUT's proposals.

  69. Alongside the reviews being conducted of the English National Curriculum and the curriculum at Key Stage 3, the Government should introduce reviews of the overloaded primary curriculum. It should review also the Key Stage 4 curriculum to ensure a broad and balanced entitlement including access to a modern foreign language and/or community language.

  70.  With respect to the last point, the NUT makes it clear in its 14-19 Education Statement that it believes that the "bunching" of reforms facing secondary schools and colleges during the academic year 2008-09 is unacceptable and that such an introduction could repeat the turbulence that affected the introduction of the Curriculum 2000 reforms.

INFORMATION TO PARENTS

  71.  While the NUT agrees that parents should have face-to-face discussions with teachers about their children's needs, the proposed amendment to regulations requiring schools to give information on progress to parents at least three times a year will create additional and unnecessary workload for teachers. The Select Committee should explore the implications of this proposal as it appears to run counter to the Government's own intentions to remove unnecessary bureaucratic requirements.

SCHOOL LEADERS

  72.  The NUT welcomed the Government's intention to push more minority ethnic teachers to become school leaders. The number of minority ethnic teachers who become school leaders should match at least the percentage of minority ethnic young people within the education service.

CONCLUSION

  73.  There are a range of other proposals within the White Paper which require further exploration with Government. The NUT believes that the Government can only successfully move on the initiatives with which the profession agrees if all teacher and support staff, unions and organisations are fully consulted. The Select Committee should include within its report a recommendation to Government that all teacher organisations are consulted fully about its next steps on the White Paper, including proposals for the new Education Bill and any subsequent government guidance.

November 2005





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