Examination of Witnesses (Questions 460
- 479)
MONDAY 12 DECEMBER 2005
SIR CYRIL
TAYLOR, MS
ELIZABETH REID,
DR ELIZABETH
SIDWELL, DR
MELVYN KERSHAW
AND MRS
SUE FOWLER
Q460 Mr Marsden: So you do not think
you are going to have a poacher and gamekeeper situation?
Sir Cyril Taylor: I have not seen
the job description so I cannot really say.
Q461 Mr Marsden: No, but you know
how it is described in the White Paper. You have seen the White
Paper and you have seen the comments that have been made upon
it. I am asking your view on whether there is a danger.
Sir Cyril Taylor: Sorry; would
you repeat the question?
Q462 Mr Marsden: The White Paper
talks about the Schools Commissioner for Trusts having a role
in promoting the concept of trusts. It also talks about that person
having a role regulating the activities of the trusts. What I
am asking you is, do you think there is an inherent contradiction
in those two roles being in the same person?
Mrs Fowler: Not an inherent contradiction
but I can see the concerns that you are worried about. I would
hope that the commissioner would focus more on taking action to
improve under-performing schools.
Q463 Mr Chaytor: Sir Cyril, the section
of the White Paper that deals with the Schools Commissioner for
Trusts does not say anything about his or her powers to deal with
under-performing schools or to close under-performing schools.
Sir Cyril Taylor: I was under
the impression that the White Paper said that the commissioner
could require authority to take action on a failing school. Maybe
I misread that.
Q464 Mr Chaytor: It says that the
commissioner will be able to challenge local authorities that
fail to exercise their new duties adequately, including in relation
to school expansion and sixth form provision, but it does not
say that the commissioner has to challenge local authorities in
terms of their failure to deal with under-performing schools.
There may well be a good role for that.
Sir Cyril Taylor: I think it is
a bit moot because I suspect the academy programme, if it succeeds
in the way that I think it will do, will take care of the bulk
of the under-performing schools in the country and that is why
I am strongly supporting it, because it is aimed at the under-performing
schools.
Q465 Mr Chaytor: I am confused; I
am still not clear about what specific advantage a trust school
has that is not available to schools within the existing system.
All the issues we have heard about: the branding of the school,
the uniform, common timetabling, the ability to collaborate over
the governance and planning, are clearly there now. You are arguing
the case for trusts as an option open to some schools in some
circumstances, but in the White Paper it is absolutely central
to it. It says, "We are developing a radical new school system
based on a system of independent, non-fee paying state schools".
There seems to be a huge difference between the complete revolution
the White Paper is arguing for and the piecemeal optional extra
you envisage. Is that a fair comment?
Sir Cyril Taylor: Would Elizabeth
want to answer that?
Q466 Mr Chaytor: Elizabeth has put
the case for a step-by-step approach.
Ms Reid: I would like to draw
an analogy with the specialist schools movement and the whole
progress of the specialist schools policy. What has been interesting
about that as a policy is that it is one of the very few policies
that is bottom-up. Schools opt into it. It is a policy that reached
critical mass perhaps a couple of years ago and has succeeded
because of its voluntary nature, because schools are engaged by
it and schools are interested by it and schools test themselves.
Q467 Mr Chaytor: It will be compulsory.
There is nothing voluntary about the new status for new schools.
Ms Reid: Specialist school status?
Q468 Mr Chaytor: No; I am talking
about the trust system. There is nothing voluntary about it. It
says that new schools will be trust or foundation schools. They
will be self-managing, independent, state schools. That is top-down
with a vengeance, surely?
Ms Reid: This part of it is very
much about defining a new role for local authorities. That is
really what this is about. I think there is a clarity, whether
one agrees with it or not, in the White Paper about a move to
a role for local authorities which is essentially a commissioning
role rather than a provider role. On the question of trusts, one
might envisage that if it is proposed in the way that it is, which
is essentially that it is an option, and if it is an option that
succeeds, it will grow in the way that the specialist schools
movement has grown. That seems to me to be at least a possibility.
If it does not work in the same way then perhaps it will not flourish.
That is really the argument: is this something that schools, their
governors, their parents, their communities, all want to buy into?
Are there advantages? The argument is being put that there are
advantages. The test of that in a sense will be the take-up, just
as it has been the test of the specialist schools programme.
Q469 Mr Chaytor: What will be the
difference between trusts and foundation schools in terms of financial
autonomy and ownership of assets?
Ms Reid: My understanding is that
there will be no essential difference but that the trust provides
an umbrella governance for more than one school. That is the key
to it.
Q470 Mr Chaytor: But the White Paper
describes two kinds of trust, does it not, those trusts that are
attached simply to one school and those trusts that include a
number of different schools? The issue in terms of finance and
assets is, will trust schools, whether they are individual trusts
or collective trusts, be subject to different rules from foundation
schools? Will there be greater freedoms or greater autonomy?
Ms Reid: As I understand it, no.
There are foundation schools at present that have foundations,
that do have small-scale resource in a foundation behind them.
Q471 Chairman: "Can I sell off
the family silver?" I think that is what David wants to ask.
Ms Reid: No, and there are Treasury
rules about that.
Sir Cyril Taylor: There is a technical
difference between a foundation school and a trust school. A trust
school is a foundation school with a foundation. That sounds silly
but let me explain it. A foundation school will own its own property,
hire its own staff directly, have its own views about admissions
in conjunction with the Admissions Forum. A trust school will
have all of those functions but it will also have an overarching
foundation over perhaps a number of schools and that foundation
could, for example, raise money if it wanted to. It could have
an endowment. It would have a group of trustees who may or may
not appoint the individual governors along with the governance
procedures, and I notice that parents could even end up with more
governors in the trust schools than with the existing structure
of schools. I find that very interesting.
Q472 Mr Chaytor: Sir Cyril, is it
not the case that foundation schools now have foundations and
some of those foundations have significant endowments?
Sir Cyril Taylor: They can have
but all trusts will have.
Q473 Mr Chaytor: So some foundation
schools do have foundations?
Sir Cyril Taylor: Yes.
Q474 Mr Chaytor: All trust schools
will have foundations?
Sir Cyril Taylor: Yes.
Q475 Mr Chaytor: But in terms of
the financial autonomy of either kind of foundation school and
the trust schools, what is the difference?
Sir Cyril Taylor: I do not think
there are many groupings of foundation schools; I do know not
the answer to that.
Q476 Mr Chaytor: Is there a difference
between the financial autonomy and the arrangements over the control
of assets between the trust schools and the foundation schools
that have foundations?
Sir Cyril Taylor: I believe the
funding in a trust school will still go to the individual school
and is coming from the LA. Do not forget these are maintained
schools; they are not academies, but there is the possibility
of the pooling voluntarily of a group of schools under a trust
arrangement saying, "We would like to put some money towards
an IT co-ordinator, a bursar perhaps, maybe a fund-raiser",
and that is a much more explicit possibility than currently exists.
Q477 Mr Chaytor: I do not understand
how that is different from what applies with foundation schools
now that currently have foundations.
Sir Cyril Taylor: I do not know
the answer to this question, but it would be very interesting
to see how many foundation schools are operating with more than
one school. I suspect it is very few.
Chairman: We have the Secretary of State here
next week.
Q478 Jeff Ennis: I am glad we are
focusing on the issue that I think we all agree with, that we
want to try and make every school in this country a good school.
Sir Cyril Taylor: Absolutely.
Q479 Jeff Ennis: I hope that is the
driving force behind the White Paper. Having listened to our witnesses,
Chairman, is the Government not being a bit timid here? Would
it not be better to have a New Zealand-type model where every
school has to become a trust school and to have an overarching
trust arrangement across an LA area which all commercial sponsors
can feed into? That would make it easy to attract the SMEs, for
example. It would also be more helpful for the deprived areas
where you do not have a major employer, for example, to get commercial
sponsorship in. Are we having the glass half-empty rather than
the glass half-full approach here?
Dr Kershaw: I think this element
of choice, of schools taking some control over their own destiny
and working with others, is crucial to this. If one replaced one
governing authority with another governing authority I think the
schools beneath it may not particularly take ownership or notice
the difference.
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