Examination of Witnesses (Questions 760
- 779)
MONDAY 19 DECEMBER 2005
RT HON
RUTH KELLY
MP, RT HON
JACQUI SMITH
MP, AND MR
STEPHEN CROWNE
Q760 Helen Jones: Why the change
then? Local authorities can do that now, why does the White Paper
specifically say that the presumption should be with the parents?
Ruth Kelly: Because local authorities
can do it now but often do not. That is what we are trying to
address. There are good local authorities are out there engaged
in their local communities really working to make this happen,
but there are some that do not do it sufficiently well and that
is the challenge. We want everyone everywhere to do this properly
and well. It has worked well for children's trusts.
Jacqui Smith: That is part of
the reason for changing the legal duty, of course, because you
could argue that you do not have that legal duty as a local authority
but you will not be able to argue that after the legislation.
Q761 Helen Jones: Do you accept that
there may well be a conflict of interest, that a group of one
parents in one area of a local authority might feel the need for
a new school but that might have an effect on the school down
the road, and it is the local authority's duty to look at the
wider public interest?
Ruth Kelly: Absolutely, and they
will, and they will have to take into account the wider public
duty because they are responsible for the use of public funds
and all of those issues.
Jacqui Smith: In fact, we already
made it explicit in the guidance we give to decision makers who
should be consulted and what factors, including the impact on
standards in the area and on other schools that should be taken
into consideration.
Chairman: We have got one last very important
section to deal with and we are running out of time, but a very
quick one from Rob on this first.
Q762 Mr Wilson: You may remember
last time I asked you about school expansion and I am still waiting
with bated breath for a reply to my letter of mid-October following
that session. I hope that a reminder will mean that one will be
winging its way to me very quickly. You said just then that one
of the reasons you would support school expansion was in terms
of shortage of places, but what if there are—it follows
along similar lines to questions from Helen Jones—already
surplus places in an area, and quite a number of surplus places?
Would that mean that the old surplus places rule continues to
exist as it has done previously.
Ruth Kelly: There is no surplus
places rule. That does not mean to say that a local authority
is not responsible for good use of public funds and they do not
have to take into account the value for money arguments associated
with new school buildings and so forth. That is not a change from
the current system.
Mr Wilson: That surprises me because my local
authority still believe there is a surplus places rule and the
Prime Minister at Prime Minister's Question Time not so long ago
said that you had just abolished it, admitting that, therefore,
there had been a surplus places rule. Again, if we go back to
the very start of the session you can see why there seems to be
this confusion amongst people and even amongst this Committee
as to whether something is as you say it is.
Chairman: Who are you asking that to?
Q763 Mr Wilson: The Secretary of
State might be a start.
Ruth Kelly: The Prime Minister
did not say that. That is not the situation. There is not a surplus
places rule and sensible decisions have to be taken. Just to expand
on this point a little: we can argue about how it operates but
the way the organisation operates through the school organisation
committee is that the institutions themselves take decisions about
school expansion. That means it is quite often the case that a
school will not even put forward a proposal if it thinks neighbouring
head teachers will not like it very much. I do not think that
is the right way to operate. I do not think we should base decisions
on what institutions think, we should base decisions on the public
interest and the interest of children, educational standards and
so forth. Therefore, I think that the local authority is better
placed to take that decision than the school organisation committee,
because it can take that decision on the basis of what is in pupils'
best interests.
Jacqui Smith: It is interesting
that the 2002 Education Act allowed community schools, for example,
also to put forward proposals for expansion.
Q764 Mr Wilson: Would you encourage
a local authority to say no to an expansion of a popular school
if there were surplus places in an area?
Ruth Kelly: I do not think that
should be the sole criterion on which it is judged, absolutely
not. First of all, I want to encourage schools that have sensible
proposals to make to put them forward so that they are objectively
assessed and the local authority takes the decision on the best
interests of pupils in the area. Then I think the local authority
should look at those proposals, think, "Yes" and forefront
in their mind be that this would create more good school places
and, therefore, the presumption should be that it is a sensible
good proposition, but also take into account the impact on neighbouring
schools and on overall standards in the area and to weigh those
things up.
Chairman: I have got to draw a line under that
because we must deal with choice. There has been much discussion
and much evidence before this Committee on the relationship between
expanding choice and diversity of provision and social segregation.
We have had some worrying evidence from some academics that there
is research out there which shows that greater choice actually
increases social segregation. Jeff is going to lead on this.
Jeff Ennis: Thank you, Chairman. It is going
back to the principle, Secretary of State, of where the trust
model came from. There has been a lot of speculation that it came
from the Swedish model. I know the Chairman likes Swedish models,
for example!
Chairman: A jibe too far.
Q765 Jeff Ennis: The evidence coming
out of Sweden is where you increase parental choice it leads to
further segregation and that works against the children from disadvantaged
backgrounds. This is evidence that has come from both the academic
witnesses we have had and also representatives from the trade
unions. Is it the Swedish model that we are going to make the
mistake of following, shall I say?
Ruth Kelly: Before I came to this
job at one point I strangely enough studied the evidence on segregation
in Sweden. What I can tell the Committee is that this is not based
on the Swedish model. The critical thing here is that we have
more autonomy for the schools, or at least the ability to take
up that autonomy, and we have a very clear framework in which
that autonomy operates. We are absolutely clear, for instance,
about fair admissions. They have to operate within the code of
fair admissions, and also in funding all maintained schools have
to be on the same local funding formula and they have to deal
fairly with looked after children and children with statements
and children with special educational needs. I have looked at
the evidence but I am not expert on how each school in Sweden
operates but I am convinced it is very different.
Q766 Chairman: If not Sweden, what
about charter schools in the United States?
Ruth Kelly: I have never had the
opportunity to study charter schools.
Q767 Chairman: There is a parliamentary
question here, a reply to Dr Alan Whitehead from Bill Rammell
and from Jacqui Smith talking about the Milwaukee charter schools
in Jacqui Smith's case and the Minnesota State Education officials
who visited the UK and the Department talked to. Is it not this
evidence from the United States that informed you?
Ruth Kelly: Absolutely not.
Jacqui Smith: I think the specific
question was whether or not anybody had ever visited or had ever
come to the Department. Well, they had, but then the Yemeni Education
Minister has visited me. I have visited Jordan and I have visited
Germany. We get out and about in the Department. I think the key
point about this White Paper is that it is grown in this country
and it has grown from our experience.
Q768 Chairman: We understand that
but the charter schools were much talked about.
Jacqui Smith: No.
Q769 Chairman: If you ask colleagues
they believe that the charter schools were—
Ruth Kelly: I must honestly tell
you, Chairman, before they were mentioned recently by some of
my colleagues, and I am talking about in the last few weeks, I
had never had a discussion about charter schools.
Q770 Chairman: But there is a member
of your team who knows a lot about charter schools, you admit
that.
Ruth Kelly: I do not know about
that actually because I have never studied the charter school
model as I have actually studied the Swedish school model at one
time. I can tell you there is not much similarity between what
we are proposing here and there. Since then, however, in the last
few weeks I have had a brief discussion on one or two occasions
about charter schools just to find out how they operate and, again,
they are entirely different from what we are trying to do which
is operate schools within the local framework where the local
authority has strategic responsibility. As far as I understand
it, charter schools are completely outside that framework.
Q771 Chairman: The view is that a
bit of this White Paper came from Number 10 and a little bit came
from the Department for Education and Skills. Could it be that
someone in Number 10 has been influenced by the charter school
movement?
Ruth Kelly: Charter schools do
not inform this White Paper. My challenge in writing this White
Paper was to deliver maximum devolution to the front line with
the proper strategic role for local authorities. Charter schools
operate entirely outside such a framework. The trust school model
is built on what we know works in Britain, what produces and promotes
collaboration and what will drive higher school standards in the
system.
Q772 Jeff Ennis: We recently took
evidence from Dr Hunter, the Schools Adjudicator, and I made a
note of the exact expression he said in response to one of the
questions. He said: "Every school should be treated the same",
and I am sure that is something we can all agree to, but if that
is the case why can community schools not expand under the new
model?
Ruth Kelly: They can.
Q773 Jeff Ennis: Can they?
Ruth Kelly: Yes.
Jacqui Smith: 62,000—
Jeff Ennis: Thank you for clarification on that.
Q774 Chairman: There will be no new
ones?
Ruth Kelly: That is absolutely
right. What we are trying to do is to encourage local authorities
to look properly at the strategic role and for there not to be
a confusion of roles between their responsibility for community
schools and the strategic framework. As I have said in relation
to other questions, I think that gives rise to some problems.
While I would not like to take away the ability from an existing
school to stay as a community school if it is doing very well,
I think it should be enabling, I would not in the future like
to see more community schools set up because I think it aids local
authorities in their strategic role if progressively we go down
this route.
Q775 Jeff Ennis: One final question
on the potential expansion of the good schools which obviously
we are trying to encourage. We have heard evidence from some witnesses
that some of the better schools might not want to change the formula
at their particular school and not want to expand. Will the better
performing schools come under pressure, shall we say, to expand
as part of the new regime or will it be entirely up to the governing
body, et cetera?
Ruth Kelly: As I say, the problem
at the moment is that schools do not come forward with proposals
for expansion. I would like to think that more will come forward
when the presumption in favour of expansion is moved from the
school organisation committee level to the local authority level.
In fact, we are promoting some new strategic powers for local
authorities on school expansion as well and local authorities
will themselves be able to promote expansion of particular schools
where they think the local area would be best served by that.
Then again, if there is a disagreement between the school and
the local authority there will be the usual appeal to the adjudicator.
Jacqui Smith: One of the interesting
things about the trust model, of course, and one of the areas
of interest that we have had particularly from very high performing
head teachers, and I think you had two of them in front of the
Committee last week, is that actually an important way in which
you can expand the influence of a good school and help to ensure
there are more good school places is by using a trust model as
a vehicle for spreading that good practice and that leadership
which has developed over the last eight years across the system
more widely. That is a very important opportunity which they can
see and which we believe exists in the trust model.
Q776 Chairman: I want to call David
but there is one specific thing. You mentioned at one stage previously,
not today, that: "Preliminary conclusions of our research
showed there is no correlation whatever between the number of
own admission authorities and social segregation". There
is no doubt departmental research has been going on on this, can
we have sight of it?
Ruth Kelly: Certainly when it
is finished. It is quite a difficult thing to do and there is
a lot of technical work going on within the Department to complete
that research. It builds on some other research that is in the
public domain that we do not feel is very robust actually and
we want to take it to the next stage. As soon as it is finished
we can do that.
Q777 Chairman: Does that mean you
do not know whether diversity of choice leads to greater social
segregation?
Ruth Kelly: Our preliminary evidence
suggests that there is no direct correlation, that other factors
are much more important, such as whether there is selection by
academic ability.
Q778 Mr Chaytor: You referred earlier
to the differentials in achievement between secondary schools
and primary schools, and by and large there are narrower differentials
between primary schools. Is that because there is more choice
and diversity in the primary sector, or the other way round?
Ruth Kelly: I do not think it
is a function directly of choice actually. I think it is for a
variety of reasons, including the fact that they are smaller,
that there is a lot of attention that has been given to literacy,
numeracy and personalisation of lessons, that there is a more
consistent approach to behaviour and all sorts of other issues.
Q779 Mr Chaytor: Do you think the
extension of the choice and diversity model for secondary schools,
though less so for primary schools, is going to automatically
improve levels of achievement?
Ruth Kelly: I do not think there
is an automatic link at primary or secondary, I think it is one
factor among many, including having more parental voice in the
system, including having a new duty on the local authorities,
new strategic powers for local authorities. It is more an element
among a package of measures.
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