Select Committee on Education and Skills Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 480 - 497)

MONDAY 12 DECEMBER 2005

SIR CYRIL TAYLOR, MS ELIZABETH REID, DR ELIZABETH SIDWELL, DR MELVYN KERSHAW AND MRS SUE FOWLER

  Q480  Jeff Ennis: Are there not attractions there in getting more commercial sponsors in though?

  Dr Kershaw: I think there are attractions. You are rightly and properly looking at all the checks and balances and I understand what you are saying and I support everything that is behind those questions, but in my experience the biggest step forward that schools have made in the last 20 years was when schools took on their own finances, the local management of schools. It was a huge step forward. I remember those days. I was a deputy. My next big step forward was when we became a specialist school and we had those extra reserves and extra funding from local businesses to do those things that we wanted to do to benefit all of our children. It seems to me that this is the same sort of thing, that we would wish to opt into this system.

  Q481  Chairman: You are a specialist school now, are you not?

  Dr Kershaw: We are a specialist school, but a community school.

  Q482  Chairman: What sort of school do you want to be?

  Dr Kershaw: We want to be very much as we are now but working more closely with our local schools.

  Q483  Chairman: Why have you not become a foundation school?

  Dr Kershaw: Because it does not enable us to work with those other schools unless they also become foundation schools. We are six schools together. We are looking for some way of moving forward as six schools together. We are looking at quite deprived areas.

  Q484  Jeff Ennis: Or become trust schools?

  Dr Kershaw: Trust schools will be separate and my understanding is that the idea of the trust side would be that we would do that together.

  Q485  Chairman: I thought in the old days but you were a CTC but you were an academy; right. Why does this interest you then? Academies have got more powers and more independence than a trust school.

  Dr Sidwell: What interests me is independence and what has motivated me is independence because I have been able to direct the skills that I work with in a way that I believe has bettered it for those children. Mr Ennis's idea of that bigger bureaucracy is not what we want. We do work together and heads do. You have only got to look at the independent sector because they do work in groups together. We like working with heads. The Specialist Schools Trust's motto is "By schools for schools". I have been a CTC and I have not stayed as a CTC; I have become an academy. I have not stayed as one academy just grabbing what I can get. I have taken on the worst school in the country as well and that is what I want to do. I want to work with my colleagues and with a strong team. That is what businesses do as well: they build strong teams around them. I have got a brilliant finance director and we would not be able to have him if I did not have two schools. We would not be able to afford him. I have got a brilliant ICT person. Having a number of schools in a trust and being able to go forward is very powerful.

  Q486  Chairman: But, Dr Sidwell, is that not an argument for saying that all schools should be academies like you?

  Dr Sidwell: Well, there we are, yes. That would be nice.

  Q487  Chairman: Really? Is that what you are saying?

  Dr Sidwell: No. I am saying that a degree of independence brings responsibility and responsibility means you have to be successful and it means you work with others around you.

  Mrs Dorries: What is to stop organisations abusing the trust school status and, if they were, who do you think would abuse it?

  Q488  Chairman: Sir Cyril, you have been going to too many schools. There is a little boy at the back, which allows me to say that we are looking forward to visiting your school, Dr Sidwell.

  Dr Sidwell: We would be delighted to have you.

  Q489  Chairman: You are a bit further, Dr Kershaw.

  Dr Kershaw: You should get out more and come to both of them.

  Q490  Chairman: They often say that to the Committee: "You should get out more". Sir Cyril?

  Sir Cyril Taylor: They will be registered charities. You have to file accounts every year and quickly; otherwise the Charity Commissioners put you on to their website, and any financial impropriety should be picked up by the audit which will be conducted for the charity. This is not about people wanting to get involved to make money. It is not about that at all. It is about sponsors wishing to help to raise standards within the schools in their area. If there were examples of a trust that went wrong I would hope that the rules would require the Charity Commissioners to take immediate action and the Secretary of State presumably to change the trustees.

  Q491  Mrs Dorries: I am sure those administrative safeguards would be in place but I am thinking more along the lines of various groups of parents, various faith groups and sponsor groups who would form a trust for other reasons. I do not mean particularly these administrative safeguards but what would stop a group of parents of a particular faith or a particular organisation setting up a group of trust schools? How could that be prevented?

  Sir Cyril Taylor: I think that is a very reasonable question to ask. Obviously, with the difficulties we have had this past summer, it is an issue that is going to become increasingly important. I have been asked to go up to Oldham to meet a group of imams who are concerned about the schools in Oldham, one of which is 98% Muslim, and want to do something to improve the diversity of the student body. I agree with you that there ought to be safeguards from somebody wishing to take over state-funded schools for a very narrow religious purpose. The schools will have to teach the National Curriculum, will have to be accountable through the examination results if the Charity Commissioners are to make sure that the money is spent against the education of the children, and obviously this is a concern that has to be looked at.

  Q492  Mrs Dorries: There are no safeguards in the White Paper against organisations such as that forming a trust school. Are you pro-selection by faith because that is the kind of selection criterion we would see being introduced and there is no safeguard against that in the White Paper either? Although you say they will have to teach the curriculum and there are various sorts of safeguards, there actually is nothing to stop a group of 98% Muslims or 98% Catholics in a particular area setting up their own faith school and having false selection criteria based on faith.

  Sir Cyril Taylor: I am not sure about the admissions, although I suppose some of the Christian schools require church attendance more vigorously than others, but if you look at the Church of England secondary schools, Sir John Cass, for example, in Tower Hamlets, has a majority of Muslim children attending that school. Our trust, the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, has just agreed with the Church of England a multi-faith initiative where more of their schools will overtly adopt a multi-faith approach and we are inviting other religions to join in that. I think this is something you do by persuasion but I agree with you that it is something that the Secretary of State would need to keep an eye on so that you did not get some very radical religious group taking over a group of schools.

  Q493  Mrs Dorries: Yes, but you cannot keep an eye on it. It has to be legislated for. The Education White Paper does not do anything to prevent that happening. It is not good enough. It is very vague to say that the Secretary of State keeps an eye on this. That just is not satisfactory.

  Sir Cyril Taylor: I have to pass on that.

  Q494  Chairman: Does anybody else want to come in on this question?

  Dr Kershaw: I would agree with the thrust of your question. That is a much more dangerous example of division than the concept of the trust school, which is also, I gather, one of your fears. I would wish to see some very careful thought on your part.

  Q495  Mr Wilson: You spoke earlier about the brand that you have in your school and how important it is. To extend that more widely we are going to need hundreds of companies to come in and sponsor trust schools. One of the sponsors that was trumpeted at the start was Microsoft getting very involved in trust schools. They happen to be in my constituency, so I went to visit them to talk to them about this. They told me that they had absolutely no interest whatsoever in being a sponsor of trusts or academies. Is this not going to be true of a lot of big businesses? They are not really going to want to get involved in this, are they?

  Chairman: Who wants to come in on this? Sue Fowler, do you want to come in on it? What is wrong with Microsoft?

  Mrs Fowler: There is nothing wrong with Microsoft. We use them all the time.

  Q496  Chairman: It seems to me that someone is always trying to get money out of the Microsoft Foundation but they concentrate it on anywhere but Britain, but never mind.

  Mrs Fowler: I would say that employers will need to consider this particularly carefully. I would not want to see this as being a route of funding the education system by the back door. Whilst I would applaud any further development of the relationship between business and the education sector, both in terms of making sure that education is in contact with the real world and also at the same that business has the opportunity to develop the employability of the next generation of employees, I can see that this is still a very new topic. I think that the majority of businesses will want to consider very carefully what the implications of the trust school structure is and what commitments and liabilities that will bring to employers in entering into that relationship in a more formal way than is currently the case.

  Mr Wilson: Chairman, I can see how my questions are clearing the room very quickly.

  Chairman: My apologies to the witnesses. Some of our members are going across to see the Prime Minister and I am very sorry but that was at six o'clock and they have waited as long as they could.

  Q497  Mr Wilson: Your evidence this afternoon in terms of your support for trust status has been very much about the collaboration that it brings, but we had witnesses in here from the teachers' union, I think a week ago, who told us that it is going to make it much more difficult for schools to collaborate. Who should the Committee believe?

  Dr Sidwell: The head teachers. I think you should believe the heads, but you have got to listen to everybody, as you obviously do, and look at the evidence on the ground. I think the evidence is not that head teachers who lead the schools go into competition with each other. We are collaborative and will work together but we may choose to work with one group of schools for one thing, like I work with some independents and some other state schools on initial teacher training, and I work with other schools for something else, and so you may look at different groupings, but we like to work together and that is where we get our strength from.

  Chairman: Can I say that this has been an extremely good session and I wish we had more time. Normally at the end I ask if there is any question that we should have asked you that we did not. As you travel home do think about this strange thing called a select committee inquiry and, if you do have some ideas that you should wish to impart to us which would benefit this inquiry, please let us know. We do not make these things up. We listen to the resonance out there. A good inquiry listens, picks up what the resonance is and that informs our inquiry and makes us write good reports. If you can help in any way please remain in touch with us. It is quite urgent because we will be writing our report up over the Christmas recess, so you only have a few days to do that. Do e-mail us or write to us or telephone and we look forward to visiting a couple of your schools. Thank you very much for your attendance.





 
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