Examination of Witnesses (Questions 300
- 319)
WEDNESDAY 7 DECEMBER 2005
MR MICK
BROOKES, MS
KERRY GEORGE,
DR JOHN
DUNFORD, MS
SUE KIRKHAM
AND MS
CHRISTINA MCANEA
Q300 Tim Farron: Again following
up on something that you were talking about earlier on, we all
seem to be agreed that there is not a lot in the White Paper relating
to primary schools, but surely at least in a second-hand way there
is going to be an impact upon primary schools. I just wonder if
you have any thoughts about what impact that might be?
Mr Brookes: Could I ask what the
second-hand way is?
Q301 Tim Farron: If we start emphasising
the role of choice in secondary education, surely there is then
going to be movement, for example, young people moving into catchment
areas, and so on, as happens already with regard to primary schools.
If the emphasis is on choice at the secondary level, even if we
are not making any structural changes at the primary level, will
it not change parental behaviour or schools' behaviour perhaps?
Mr Brookes: I think there is already
a lot of pressure from some parents to get into particular primary
schools because they then will feed the secondary school, and,
indeed, changing the nature of schools may well exacerbate those
problems, and so, yes, you are quite right, the knock-on effect
would be down to the primary sector.
Ms George: There are some primary
schools that have their own admissions arrangements now, of course.
Again, I think the essence of the concern comes back to some of
the things that were said in the earlier session about what are
the consequences for communities and how communities work and
how communities function if what you are able to do is to take
what Nadine described as the pushy parent trying to get everything
best for their individual children rather than that overriding
concern for the community, which is the business of education.
Ms McAnea: I think the drive towards
greater independence, if you like, greater freedoms for primary
schools, would have an impact on things like the ability of schools
to have proper training and staff development. Because so many
primary schools are relatively small, they do rely, I think more
than secondary schools, on local authorities in terms of getting
training delivered and buying in the services from the local community,
and a lot of the changes around the re-modelling agenda in schools
have a bigger impact in primary schools than they have had in
secondary schools. I think we have all been aware of that, but
it has had medium impact and will potentially go on to have a
medium impact on primary schools and the areas of difficulty have
been more likely to have been in the primary sector than in the
secondary sector, and that is a drive towards, if you like, loosening
the link between primary schools and the local authority. It will
only exacerbate that.
Q302 Tim Farron: A different matter
entirely, the White Paper and in the White Paper the Government
omits to legislate to protect teachers' rights to discipline.
What do you think that might be and do you welcome it?
Mr Dunford: I think the Steer
Report on behaviour in schools was excellent. It was written by
an expert practitioner group, we were very pleased with the recommendations,
and we are delighted that the White Paper in probably its best
section welcomes that report and says that it will legislate on
it. Mick Brookes and I are currently on a ministerial group which
is engaged in designing the legislation that you are asking about.
We have not yet seen a draft of what the right to discipline is
going to look like which will replace the traditional in loco
parentis on which school discipline has previously been based.
Clearly defining anything in law can make an awful lot of money
for lawyers if you get it wrong.
Q303 Chairman: Could you move one
of those bottles, because I think it is stopping your microphone
working. We cannot hear you or see you.
Ms George: Normally bottles do
not cause problems of that nature!
Q304 Mr Marsden: The White Paper
says relatively little about the role of governors, but teachers
can be governors, of course, and others can be governors. What
effect do you think the White Paper's proposals, particularly
perhaps looking at the trust schools issue, is going to have on
the ability or otherwise of schools to recruit governors?
Ms Kirkham: I am not sure that
the White Paper would make any difference to the ability to recruit
governors. The area in which we have the most difficulty recruiting
governors at present is, unfortunately, recruiting parent governors,
and I think that is an interesting statement on the desire of
parents to be involved, but most schools do work very hard to
try and overcome that. I think we are disappointed to see that,
if we are to have trust schools, one of the biggest differences
in trust schools seems to be that they will only have one parent
governor. Although it is difficult to recruit parent governors
to school governing bodies, we do generally believe that it is
very good thing to have them there. The other point about governing
bodies at the moment, which the White Paper does not quite seem
to recognise, is that through our new Ofsted arrangements, for
example, we are already obliged to seek the views of parents,
of pupils at our schools, we are obliged to report through our
self-evaluation form on how we do that, and so our parent governors
and the other governors really do take account of those views
already; and because, as you have mentioned, the governing body
represents both the local business community and other areas of
the community and the staff at the school, it is the best way
of getting a broad view of people to assist and to support the
leadership of the school?
Mr Brookes: What I think will
adversely affect recruitment of governing bodies will be the setting
up of parent councils, and I am not quite sure how governing bodies
will feel about this group operating, I guess, in between themselves
and the school. It is difficult recruiting governing bodies, and
I think sometimes people forget that these people are volunteers.
Q305 Mr Marsden: John Dunford, you
talked about the White Paper increasing the role of local authorities,
but we have heard other concerns here this morning about how people
are actually going to cooperate. I would like to ask you, what
are the specific mechanisms that you see in the White Paper that
will promote the sort of sharing of good practice and what is
the role of local authorities in that?
Mr Dunford: I do not really see
the White Paper as taking this collaboration and federation agenda
further forward. I think we saw in the policy paper on Education
Improvement Partnerships last year, and to a certain extent in
the five-year strategy that the DfES produced last year, a clear
vision of a collaborative way forward for schools. In my school
improvement model, as it were, you have schools getting together
mutually supporting each other and the local authority joining
in, and there are models in local authorities such as Knowsley,
for example, where you have got real commissioning of school improvement
from the local authority to the schools and then the local authority
engaging with the schools and supporting them. Some kind of vision
of that level and type of support and mutual support for schools
and collaboration, I think, is missing from the White Paper.
Q306 Chairman: John, just to tease
you out on that a little, you have had a lot of resources and
you have had a lot of encouragement to tackle this. You talked
about a model, but surely you understand the Government wants
the 30% of under-performing schools, including students who do
not get a really good deal out of the education service at the
moment, they want to push on to make sure those 30% do, but your
members are not delivering? Why have you not been doing it?
Mr Dunford: First of all, I reject
your assertion that our members are not delivering.
Q307 Chairman: Well, someone is not
delivering. Whatever the model, someone is not delivering.
Mr Dunford: You are interpreting
the chief inspector's report in a rather different way than I
am, because I think the secondary schools are delivering and I
think part of the problem is that people continue to assert, without
adequate evidence, that we are not delivering. I just do not think
that is fair.
Q308 Chairman: The drop out of kids
at 16 who we know succeed with no qualifications and little interest
in education seems to be quite a condemnation of what is happening
some schools.
Mr Dunford: I do not think there
is anything in the White Paper that will help us with that.
Q309 Chairman: That is what I want
to get at.
Mr Dunford: Exactly.
Q310 Mr Marsden: Can we come back
to the question of cooperation, John, and can I ask you a quick
supplementary on that? You say you do not think there is anything
in the White Paper that is going to promote it. Do you have any
concerns that the role of the schools commissioner, which we have
discussed previously in this session, may inhibit it?
Mr Dunford: In the part of the
schools commissioner role, which is supposed encourage schools
to become trust schools and become more independent from other
schools, I actually think he or she is going to have rather a
difficult job because the people just are not looking for that
opportunity. In the part of the schools commissioner role which
is about getting local authorities into a more commissioning role
with schools, if they are talking mainly about extended school
services and so on, that is one area. If they get into school
improvement, which is what they are talking about here, then I
think there is a real role for local authorities to play in school
improvement partnerships, but certainly in the secondary sector
those partnerships are likely to be led by the local group of
schools, and that is actually happening in some parts of the country
already.
Q311 Mr Marsden: Kerry George, would
the role of the schools commissioner in the way John has described
it be easier to fulfil if that person was not a career DfES civil
servant?
Ms George: Most things are easier
to fulfil if you are not a career DfES civil servant, I suspect,
judging by some of those that I have spoken to at various times.
The difficulty with the commissioner role is the conflict within
it, and I think everybody has identified that, on the one hand
the promotion of a particular form of schooling and on the other
hand some of the issues around parental power and so on. If it
is going to be delivered and if it is going to be delivered in
terms of the kind of respect that the role will have to have if
it is going to challenge local authorities to do all the things
that we hope they could do, then I think it is going to have to
be someone who has enormous respect from the profession, and,
with the greatest of respect to civil servants, I am not 100%
sure that that would necessarily be the right place to draw from.
Q312 Mr Marsden: Would the role best
be fulfilled by Ofsted?
Ms George: I think that is one
I might defer to my general secretary.
Mr Brookes: I think Ofsted have
a wide enough role already, I would have thought, but Kerry is
absolutely right. If there is to be such a person then this person
does need to command respect from the whole school community not
just the school itself.
Q313 Chairman: So you would like
someone who is a bit of a push over rather than someone who would
annoy you?
Mr Brookes: I think the key thing,
Chairman, is having somebody who understands how schools and communities
work—it is that resonance that we need in schools—and
if this person is going to be a champion of those school communities,
particularly the school communities you are referring to that
really do struggle to raise high educational standards, there
may well be a role here.
Q314 Chairman: Is not the reason
the Government is inserting this role where was pushing John Dunford
earlier: you have had money swishing around in the education sector
for the last eight years, you have been given much better paid
teachers in the system and yet, you can see the view from Number
10, you still have not delivered for 30% of the kids who go to
school in the morning. Surely that is the reason that this White
Paper has been introduced, and what I am trying to get out of
you is, firstly, what you would put in its place and how you would
improve the White Paper?
Mr Brookes: If I could take up
the specific point about funding, and there is no doubt that people
do appreciate that more people are working in schools, there is
better ICT provision and school buildings are in a better condition,
but in the paper itself, in chapter one, it talks about a 29%
increase in per pupil funding over the past eight years, which
is about 3.6% a year, if my maths is right, which is just above
the teacher pay levels. It also talks about the increase from
35 billion to 51 billion between 1997 and 2004, which is 45.7%.
There is a big difference between the money that has gone per
pupil and the money that has been spent on education, and we think
that more money needs to get into the classroom. In this White
Paper more money will be going outside the classroom and into
a super-structure, and that, I believe, is wrong. For looking
at how you raise standards in the toughest communities, there
are two things that need to be taken on board, and, indeed, the
community that I was working in until last year, one is low expectation
of parents and the phenomenal progress that pupils have made in
the primary sector, as well as the secondary sector, so that many
children at nine and 10 have better skills at literacy and numeracy
than their parents, and it is raising that expectation within
the community, and getting at that will not happen by some of
the rhetoric that is in this document.
Q315 Chairman: Choice advisers are
rhetoric, are they? They are an offer of having a particular group
of people helping the people you have described with their school
choice. That is not rhetoric.
Ms George: I think the difficulty
with choice advisors is, first of all, how real is the choice
in any event? Secondly, will those choice advisers get to the
parents that people have talked about before who are the ones
who are the least likely to engage with the system? In terms of
how all of these things might ultimately be achieved, I think
one of the recognitions of the Every Child Matters agenda
is that schools alone cannot do it, and it would be crazy to imagine
that they could. One of the concerns we have with the White Paper
is the lack of clarity between the White Paper and the ECM agenda
and where those things might cut across each other rather than
supporting each other. Having spent a bit of time with an extended
school which came, as it were, out of nowhere long before they
were popular or fashionable, the first thing that a head actually
said to me was that there is no point being an extended school
and there is no point in delivering services unless, first of
all, you have got good parents and you have found what it is that
they want, what it is they want from you and what it is they actually
need from you; and, interestingly enough, to the surprise of all
the heads sitting in the room, when the parents were asked the
first thing they wanted was classes in cookery, which is quite
interesting, but it got them in the school and it got things starting
to happen. That ECM agenda and this agenda must work in parallel.
They cannot cut across each other.
Ms McAnea: I think there is a
missing link somewhere in the White Paper, which is that there
is an assumption that somehow the commissioner or the choice advisers
will tackle that 30% of under-achievers. There is no evidence
to support either of those people or those categories of people
will actually be able to do that. It just seems to be, as I think
somebody said in one of the earlier sessions, there is some really
good stuff in it about more personalised learning, more support
for parents, et cetera, the Every Child Matters agenda,
and then, if you like, the next step as to how you do that, because
there is something missing in there somewhere.
Chairman: Funnily, the person that said that
actually said the sensible bit had been written in the Department
for Education and Skills.
Q316 Helen Jones: That is exactly
the issue I wanted to take up with you. The White Paper envisages
no new community schools, and yet at the same time the Government's
agenda is the Every Child Matters agenda, Extension
of Schools, and so on. What in your view would be the effect
on the whole of that agenda if schools each become their own admissions
authority, move towards becoming independent, and so on? Christina,
you have got a lot of people working across all these areas.
Ms McAnea: I think there is a
complete contradiction in the White Paper, but there are tensions,
if you like, in the White Paper, which is that on the one hand
the Government wants to have this wider agenda on what they want
to do on that. Getting back to something that was said earlier
about how would you tackle some of these things, the evidence
is that one of the key ways that you tackle disadvantage is to
get to children and their families as early as possible and not
wait until they are in secondary school before you try and tackle
these things.
Q317 Chairman: Surely the Government
has been doing that with SureStart and pre-primary schools.
Ms McAnea: They have been, but
SureStart is still relatively new and it is still not being rolled
out everywhere across the country. It is still a fairly limited
programme. The comparison that has been used in some of the recent
evidence that has come out I am not sure is actually apples and
oranges rather than comparing like with like. I fully support
what the Government have been doing, and that is trying to put
resources into that, and I think that is one of the key things
that has to be done, and I think just simply bringing in structural
changes as is in the White Paper will not do. We do have a major
concern that the thinking around Every Child Matters and
how you deliver that still feels very woolly to me, even though
I have been to lots of meetings with ministers to discuss this,
because, as Helen said, Unison, we cover social care staff, health
staff, so we have a very big interest in this and there are a
lot of people who are active in our union who are very concerned
about this, and the thinking still seems incredibly woolly. If
you are looking at the drive towards making schools more and more
independent and separate from local authorities and from that
community involvement, the example I would refer to is to look
at what happened in FE after incorporation in 1993, or whenever
it was, and that is 5-10 years after incorporation when the FE
sector, I think, went slightly mad in that lots of colleges were
all competing with each other and it did not do anything to improve
standards, it did not do anything to improve the chances of those
people entering FE, and that is my worry about this drive towards
independence.
Ms George: I am grateful that
FE has been mentioned, because one of the things that we mention
towards the end of our written submission to you is the Foster
Report, and certainly one of the things that fascinated me is
that clearly Foster had had the benefit of the White Paper thinking,
but it did not look to me much as if the White Paper had had the
benefit of the Foster Report. The learning curves that we ought
to be able to get from looking at our experience in all sorts
of sectors again appear to me in some senses not to be being joined-up.
So, Foster, yes, huge problems for colleges actually when they
incorporated they suddenly had massive increases in overheads,
they had all sorts of difficulties, they were putting money into
the back office rather that the front-line—I think that
is the kind of correct Gershon terminology—and there are
risks here for that as well. But to come back to the Every
Child Matters issue and the joining up of all these things,
one of the things that I do not think the Government has succeeded
in doing is getting many schools to understand very clearly what
that joined up big picture is. As Christina says, people like
us have been attending meetings about this for the last couple
of years or more, and if we are still, at the end of it, not as
clear as we might be as to how all these things are going to work,
how on earth do you get schools to understand that? If you want
to look at some of these things working properly, Lorraine Mansford's
School in Hammersmith has got speech therapists on site, has got
a nursery on site, it has got everything imaginable on site. It
is a real community centre. As far as we are concerned, that has
to be the future and it has got to be the way that you tackle
that 30% under-achievement to get in there.
Chairman: We will await an invitation.
Q318 Helen Jones: I want to ask what
I asked earlier about the White Paper's plan to allow parents
to set up schools where the presumption is with the parent. I
think that is the important bit in the White Paper. Who, in your
view, should a local authority have to consult before it happens?
The White Paper says and the answers I have had say the local
authority must decide if there is support for such a proposal.
Who should be consulted to measure that support, and do you have
a view on who might take up that opportunity? Which parents, in
other words, would be likely to want to set up schools?
Mr Dunford: I think there would
be very few parents in a position to take up this opportunity,
and I do not think we shall see very many of these schools at
all.
Ms McAnea: I think it is a bit
of a charter for middle-class parents, to he honest. I agree with
John; I do not think there will be a mad rush to do it, but, if
it does, that is exactly what it will be: it will be in areas
where it is predominantly middle-class parents who push for these
things.
Mr Brookes: The only incentive
that I can see is that it may attract parents wishing to set up
faith schools.
Q319 Helen Jones: What about the
consultation? Who do that you think should be consulted on such
a proposal?
Mr Dunford: The school organisation
committees are being disbanded and those powers, quite rightly,
given to the local authorities. That is fine because the local
authority should be the strategic body that decides on the need
for local school places. Therefore, the answer to your question
has to be everybody who is affected by local school places: the
local authority should consult local district councils, should
consult all other local schools in the area—that is obviously
crucial—governing bodies of other schools should be able
to take a view, and so on, the widest possible consultation.
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