Examination of Witnesses (Questions 283
- 299)
WEDNESDAY 7 DECEMBER 2005
MR MICK
BROOKES, MS
KERRY GEORGE,
DR JOHN
DUNFORD, MS
SUE KIRKHAM
AND MS
CHRISTINA MCANEA
Chairman: Can I welcome Sue Kirkham,
John Dunford, Christina McAnea, Mick Brookes and Kerry George
to our proceedings. You have seen the brisk way in which we have
to operate in order to make things work. I think we had a very
good session, you will agree, and partly it was a good session
because people did stick to short answers to questions and did
not sulk too much if they were not called on every question. If
we can have that same spirit of co-operation I would be very grateful.
I want to get started straight into questions and the answer to
the first question can be a little bit longer. Roberta, would
you like to move the questioning forward?
Q283 Dr Blackman-Woods: I think you
will all be aware that a lot of the controversy about the White
Paper has been about the role of local authorities. Can you tell
us what practical difference you think the White Paper will make
to the role of local authorities?
Mr Dunford: I think some of the
spin that we heard beforehand suggested that the role of local
authorities was practically going to disappear. In fact the White
Paper, if anything, increases the role of local authorities, and
it does that in some quite proper ways in the sense that as we
move into a broader children's agenda it is entirely appropriate
that the local authority should be a strategic leader of children's
services in an area, and that requires some joined-up thinking,
some joined-up services, and that is entirely proper. Where we
part company with the White Paper is in the rather simplistic
view of the local authority's role in school improvement where
I think at page 36 it is of the White Paper it says, "Where
a school has had a bad Ofsted report the local authority shall
consider the following: (1) sack the head teacher." That
really is not a very clever approach, and it suggests to me that
the Government has failed to use the opportunity of this White
Paper to get the balance of pressure and support on schools right
and we hear far too much about pressure. I do not think governments,
in the plural, over the last 20 years have really made any attempt
to get in place a sensible system of support for schools that
are in difficulties.
Mr Brookes: I would second that,
and, indeed, we need to look at the role of the local authority
where schools do not have capacity to provide that infrastructure
themselves, and there are a large number of extremely good local
authorities and we do not want to see that provision threatened.
I would second what John is saying, because that particular page
does not just say, "Sack the head", of course, it says,
"Sack the senior management team and also the governing body",
and we do need to look at where the support for schools is coming
from. There is an awful lot of challenge but we do not see an
awful lot of support.
Q284 Chairman: You have also historically
had some pretty awful local authorities, have you not? Local authorities
could not appoint a director of education for two years. The standards
across all the schools were appalling. You had to send in a private
company to run them. It is not all a wonderful story, is it?
Mr Brookes: In my school I had
some disobedient children; it does not mean to say all of them
were disobedient. You make a rule that covers everything; it is
not just the misprints.
Q285 Dr Blackman-Woods: Following
on from what the Chairman was saying, is there an argument that
local authorities have been too complacent in terms of dealing
with failing schools or accepting coasting schools? Is there an
argument that the whole system does need to be shaken up?
Ms McAnea: I think we probably
take a slightly different view of the role of local authorities,
because we are very concerned about the local authority's role
and that whole range of services to children and the extended
schools and the core services, et cetera. Obviously, local authorities
have an absolutely pivotal role in coordinating and providing
and commissioning and providing and making sure that these services
are actually available, and yet, at the same time I think there
is a contradiction in the White Paper. On the one hand it recognises
that local authorities have that role, but at the same time it
is pushing schools more and more down the independence route,
and I think there is a contradiction of attention there in trying
to square the circle of ensuring that local authorities have that
strategic role but at the same time do not really have any mechanisms
for making sure that schools, if you like, buy into some of these
as their regular agenda. I mention one other thing, which is a
crucial thing for us in terms of the role of local authorities,
which is that removing the local authority's right to have any
more community schools means, inevitably, the end of community
schools, although it may take some time for that to happen. That
has a crucial impact on the support staff in schools, because
it means, in effect, that they are no longer employed by the local
authority, and we have no mechanism there at the moment for ensuring
any kind of national structures, national frameworks, national
good practice, whatever you want to call it, not just on pay and
conditions but a whole range of other things, including training
and staff development, which we think are essential if you are
trying to deliver a coordinated service that will raise standards
in schools, and to do that when at the same time you are fragmenting
the support staff in schools, at a time when their role is even
more important in schools, we do not think makes any sense.
Ms George: Can I come in very
quickly on that same point. One of the things that the White Paper
totally ignores is that the local authority is not just a commissioner
of services, it is a provider of services to schools and a very
important provider of services. The great majority of schools
in this country are, relatively speaking, small. If we are going
to end up with tiny little units, independent little units, trying
to seek all the kinds of services that local authorities currently
provide, and I grant you, Chairman, patchily, but nonetheless
that is a different question. The question of challenge to local
authorities to operate properly is something that needs to be
grappled with, and I would not dispute that for one second, but
how small units will then resource themselves seems to me critical,
and nobody, as far as I can see, has answered the question: what
happens to those schools, currently relatively small ones, community
schools, who do not want to go down the foundation, do not want
to go down the trust route? Where do their support services come
from? Who is the employer? How far are they going to be pushed?
Q286 Chairman: How does that square
with what John Dunford has just said that he sees this as an expanded
role for local authorities? He is not worried about the same thing,
is he?
Ms George: But John represents
secondary schools.
Q287 Chairman: John.
Mr Dunford: I did not catch what
you said, Chairman.
Q288 Chairman: What Kerry George
has just said about "very concerned" does not seem to
square with your thought that there is an expanded role. In fact,
we had the LGA in last week who said that they seemed reasonably
complacent.
Mr Dunford: This reads like a
White Paper for secondary schools. There is really very little
in it for or about primary schools and nothing about colleges,
and I think secondary schools are very much up for a commissioning
relationship with local authorities. I think they require much
less direct support than obviously would be the case in many of
the very small primary schools.
Q289 Dr Blackman-Woods: Can we move
on. I would like to hear your opinions about trust schools. Do
you think they are different from foundation schools? What do
you think about bringing in external sponsors?
Ms Kirkham: We believe, and our
members are so far indicating that they will not be very likely
to take up the opportunity for a number of reasons, and principally
that we do not see that there are additional freedoms to be gained
by taking on trust status. I think there is also the issue that
in many parts of the country it would actually be very difficult
to find either charitable or business sponsorship, which is required
for trust status, and, therefore, the opportunities to do that
would be limited. I think also many schools feel that as they
are beginning and are successfully now working collaboratively
between groups of schools that taking trust status, which might
limit actually your ability to operate collaboratively with the
schools outside the trust, would hinder that relationship.
Mr Brookes: There seems to be
evidence at the moment there is a paucity of companies wanting
to support schools, and I am just concerned that this is going
to place the school leadership team and possibly the governing
body with another raft of things to do in having to go out hunting
for sponsors. Clearly the focus of these teams needs to be on
teaching and learning and promoting the ethos of the school.
Mr Dunford: Can I say in one sentence,
if the proposal for trust schools does not appear in the Bill,
there will be no tears shed in secondary schools amongst secondary
school leaders.
Q290 Dr Blackman-Woods: That is interesting.
I was going to ask was there likely to be a difference in take-up
between secondary and primary?
Mr Dunford: No.
Dr Blackman-Woods: You think not.
Q291 Chairman: Was there a question?
Mr Dunford: I am sorry the answer
is no, there is no interest in secondary.
Chairman: You got the answer.
Dr Blackman-Woods: Yes.
Q292 Mr Wilson: I want to add some
supplementary points to what Roberta has said. Your answer to
why your members are not keen on taking up trust status is that
there are no addition freedoms, or one of the answers. What additional
freedoms would your members like if they had a choice?
Ms Kirkham: As we wrote in our
paper, the freedom that our members would like at the moment would
be freedom from repeated initiatives and the freedom to concentrate
on leading teaching and learning in the school and to concentrate
on school improvement within the structures that we already have.
Q293 Chairman: Does anybody else
want to come back on that one?
Ms George: I think we have learnt
from that one. I do not think there is a school in the country
that feels any differently.
Mr Wilson: That is a negative rather than a
positive reason, though, is it not.
Q294 Chairman: Are there any positives
you want to come back with?
Mr Dunford: There are lots of
negatives. We do not particularly want freedom on pay and conditions.
Grant Maintained Schools were able to have that. Only two schools
ever took it up. We do want curriculum freedoms in terms of detail
but within a national curriculum framework. There are some areas
where, yes, we do want freedom, but Sue is quite right, the main
thing is freedom to be able to concentrate on the teaching and
learning, which is our top priority, and to get away from initiatives.
Q295 Chairman: That is a pretty unanimous
feeling?
Mr Brookes: Yes.
Q296 Mr Wilson: The third reason,
moving the sponsorship to one side, was you said there were limits
to collaboration if you went down the trust status route. I do
not understand why that would stop you collaborating whether other
schools had more independence than yourself. Surely, if you wanted
it to, it could lead to more collaboration if you had more independence.
Ms Kirkham: Where you are working
in a collaborative you have to set up some governance arrangements
between a group of schools. As I understand it, if you become
a trust school you might be working with a group of schools within
that trust led by the trust and you would have different governance
arrangements. I just worry that that actually might impede working
with your closest local schools who might not be members of the
trust. I have to be honest, I think at the moment, from reading
the White Paper, it is quite difficult to see how those arrangements
would operate, but I have some fears around that.
Q297 Dr Blackman-Woods: Can I ask
a question about federation? I thank we have not got quite clear
from you why it is more difficult for schools to federate under
the proposals in the White Paper when, indeed, trusts could bring
a range of schools together.
Mr Dunford: I think there is already
a considerable move towards schools working together. We have
seen hard federations in some places; we have seen soft federations
in other places; we have seen consortia. Sue Kirkham here is head
of a school that is part of a 14-19 consortium—there is
a lot of collaboration work taking place—and we fear the
White Paper proposals which drive schools towards greater independence,
although I think there are some questions over whether the White
Paper actually does that, in fact creates a climate in which collaboration
is less likely. We want to see collaboration being incentivised
more by the Government. They have produced a paper called "Education
Improvement Partnerships" encouraging collaboration, but
it is not really being incentivised, and that is what we want
to see and we do not see any of that in the White Paper, and I
think that is a lost opportunity.
Ms George: Similarly, there are
two problems for us. One is that federation itself may acquire
a rather poor reputation if one of the things that does happen
is that schools that are failing are required to federate. I am
not sure quite how that is going to work. We have seen what is
happening at the moment is a variety of arrangements between schools
which we do think are generally positive, and to allow that to
continue is one thing, to begin to require it to push those things
is another matter altogether. It is not clear to us either that
there will be collaboration between collaborations, and, quite
honestly, that actually is also needed.
Mr Brookes: Yes, just the difference
between collaboration, and we should celebrate what is happening
in the country at the moment and many schools do collaborate around
the country. In terms of federation, I am very concerned about
what may be lurking behind some of the words in this White Paper,
which is the future role of the head teacher, particularly at
primary, and I am concerned that proper consideration should be
given to that key role in raising standards.
Q298 Jeff Ennis: On this specific
point, we have had organisations like the United Learning Trust,
for example, who have already established an academy in a particular
area, said, "We are very interested in taking over all the
primary schools in the pyramid so that we have got one unique
unit." Is that not an initiative we should be welcoming in
terms of collaboration?
Chairman: You are smiling, Kerry.
Ms George: It almost sounds like
a local authority. The reason I am smiling is exactly that, and
indeed, some of the discussions that we have had with people.
I think all this is possible, and allowing schools to do the things
that are best for the children they serve and best for the communities
they serve seems to me to be an incredibly potent way forward.
I am not convinced that what we have got here is actually doing
that.
Ms McAnea: I do not think that
trust schools in themselves will lead to any greater federation.
One of the concerns we have, I suppose, is when we look at examples
like the United Learning Trust, because we have just negotiated
a new national agreement with the United Learning Trust, so in
our eyes they are probably one of the better of the groups who
are running academies and they at least recognise unions. Even
so, having said that, one great example, John said secondary heads
do not want freedom over pay and conditions and hardly any of
them have taken it up, but what he means, of course, is teachers,
because for support staff who are outside of community schools
that is exactly what has happened. A number of schools, foundation
schools, do buy into and do adhere to whatever is agreed at national
and local level for support staff, but large numbers of them do
not, and the United Learning Trust is an example of that where
we have agreed a national set of terms and conditions with them
which will apply in their schools which by and large are reasonably
okay, but they have cut downs. They have cut annual leave and
sick pay schemes, et cetera, for school support staff—they
have increased the hours—so it has not been a totally happy
experience as far as we are concerned having to go down the road
and negotiate with individual companies or trusts who are doing
these things, and they are making savings at the expense of support
staff.
Q299 Tim Farron: Going back to something
you were talking about a moment or two ago about trust schools
and the amount of flexibility they all have, you acknowledged
the fact that there is flexibility built in on pay and conditions.
I just wonder what you think the impact of that would be on teacher
recruitment, for example.
Mr Dunford: I do not think schools
will use it. The essential freedoms around funding and admissions
are exactly the same for trusts schools as they are for foundation
schools. We do not see any real advantage to schools that want
those kinds of freedoms in becoming trust schools, and that, I
think, is why there is so little interest in them. On pay and
conditions, I do not see any change.
Ms George: Can I add to that,
the power to innovate does now allow schools to apply for disapplication
or relaxation, whatever that means, of elements of pay. People
have not tried to do that. Pay should be, in an ideal world, a
neutral. In fact it is a huge problem for schools in all sorts
of ways, and I do not think anybody wants to make it more complicated
or difficult than it already is. However, in reality, I think
if there were greater freedom you would get that, the sort of
thing that I think you were suggesting, which is that a better
off school is able to make different sorts of arrangements and
to pay more.
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