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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