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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 1201-ii House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE EDUCATION AND SKILLS COMMITTEE
PUBLIC EXPENDITURE ON EDUCATION AND SKILLS
Wednesday 19 July 2006 RT HON ALAN JOHNSON MP Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 142
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Education and Skills Committee on Wednesday 19 July 2006 Members present Mr Barry Sheerman, in the Chair Mr David Chaytor Mrs Nadine Dorries Paul Holmes Fiona Mactaggart Mr Gordon Marsden Stephen Williams Mr Rob Wilson ________________ Witnesses: Rt Hon Alan Johnson, a Member of the House, Secretary of State for Education and Skills, gave evidence. Q1 Chairman: Secretary of State, as everyone makes themselves comfortable, can I welcome you to your first session with the Committee as Secretary of State, although as Minister of State you did come in front of the Committee a couple of years ago. You have been in a couple of other departments since then, and so you will have been before select committee there, I take it. You said you did not particularly want to make an opening statement, so we will get straight into questions. Seriously, in terms of how a department runs, you have got a lot of experience now because you have been in four or five departments, do you think it really adds up to an effective and efficient department to have so much change? Some of us used to brag that the continuity in having at large a Secretary of State who is going to stay for the whole of a Parliament (from 1997 through to 2001) was actually something to be quite proud of because it had stability. Do you think that this department suffers from the fact that what seems only a very short time ago it was Charles Clarke, it was you, it was Margaret Hodge, it was Ivan and the whole team changed very quickly and changed again? Alan Johnson: Yes. Q2 Chairman: Do you think it is helpful? Alan Johnson: As far as the Secretary of State's position goes, I support the change until I get there and then I am quite opposed to change now I am there as Secretary of State. So, I do not know. I think, if you look at the department, since 1997 there was a lot of stability. David Blunkett was there for a while. Of course he resigned, so it was not a reshuffle. There have been some changes since. I tend to think the role of the Civil Service is to cope with changes in ministers. I think I have got really a good ministerial team, I love each and every one of them, and I would like that team to stay together, of course I would, but politics is politics and reshuffles happen. Q3 Chairman: The Prime Minister is in the Financial Times this morning calling on a whole new view of how we run departments, and some of us believe that with the turnover in civil servants, whether it is under the name of continuous professional development or what else, on the one hand you have got the ministerial team moving fast, but you have got a pretty turbulent and fast-moving Civil Service these days? Alan Johnson: I think we have to accept that people want to make their mark and then move up and move onwards. There is the capability review actually published this afternoon, which will be a lot about how my department operates and organises on a very technical basis. I would instinctively, like you, think that if you have a got a good team of people you want that team to stay together, but I recognise the realities both of the Civil Service professional career development and, as I say, of ministerial reshuffles. Q4 Chairman: You, like me, have had a career outside this place, and there are not many organisations that would run in the real world with that turbulence of management of all kinds. Alan Johnson: I do not think the turbulence is there in the Civil Service to the same degree as you are mentioning for ministers. It is true, I think, that when Charles Clarke left David Miliband left at the same time, Ivan Lewis left at the same time, there was quite a churn there, but that is the benefit of the Permanent Secretary and the Civil Service. Incidentally, when I was a postman working in Slough, there was an 87 per cent turnover of staff, I seem to remember, but that is another story. Q5 Chairman: Not in the senior management. Let us get on with it. This is the scrutiny committee of the department, and we can only do that job properly if we have the data and we know about expenditure in a proper form over time so we can compare year on year. Particularly when a new government comes in, as in 1997, it is very important for us to be able to track and, if your Annual Report does start regularly changing its format but crucially changes the way it presents data, that puts us at a great disadvantage. This most recent publication has caused us a lot of problems, and I have been in correspondence with you about that. We were not consulted on that. We are the main scrutiny body for your department. Why were we not consulted, do you think? Alan Johnson: Let me add my apologies to those of David Bell and John Thompson. You should have been consulted. I think my reply of 10 June sets out some of the reasons why there was some movement, there were some technical reasons, but your general point is absolutely right, we should try to ensure that you are comparing like with like, and we will do our very best to make sure that happens. Q6 Chairman: Some of my colleagues are going to come back to that a bit later, but what are your priorities? This Government has been in power since 1997, education has been a priority from the very beginning. What do you think now? Nine years in, what are your priorities, what do you think the big challenges are now? Alan Johnson: Improve attainment, close the social class gap. It is as simple as that. Q7 Chairman: What do you say then to the head of the school I visited on Monday, a very challenged but hard working and not in any special measures school just here in Bermondsey and 50 feeder schools unable to cope with a number of young people turning up at 11, unable to read and unable to deploy the right resources to actually get them to read English? Is not that pretty awful? Alan Johnson: Yes, and it is a crucial part. I see Key Stage 2 and English and maths at age 11 as crucial in all of this, not least of all because of the amazing statistic, I think it is, 66 per cent of children who get the right level at Level Four in English and maths will go on to get five decent GCSEs, whatever their social class background, and if they get five decent GCSEs 70 per cent of them will go on to get two decent A levels, and if they get two decent A levels 90 per cent of them will go to university, so it is crucial, and we have made huge improvements since 1997. Indeed, I was looking at something that the National Federation for Educational Research did in the mid-sixties which influenced Kenneth Baker and the Conservative Government that showed that, on that precise measure of primary school children, there had been absolutely no improvement for 40 years, 20 years either side of the 11 Plus it just flatlined. There was an amazing complacency about poor results at any level but at that crucial level. So, we have to redouble our efforts and keep this improvement going. It is an incredible improvement, and it is not me that has done this or our department, it is teachers and head teachers that have transformed the situation, but we need to go much further. Q8 Chairman: Why are these 11-year-olds pitching up in our schools, after a career in the primary sector, unable to read and why can they not have enough resource to tackle it: because unless they can understand the curriculum they can have no access to the curriculum? It is crazy, is it not, that children pitch up at 11, they are identified as unable to read properly and they are not taken into some intensive situation that gives them the skills to then open up the curriculum? If they sit there in regular classes unable to participate, it is going to lead to unhappiness, stress, chaos, is it not? Alan Johnson: Yes, it is fundamental, but we do need to put in the resources. I would argue the resources are there. The whole idea of developing personalised learning, and we are waiting for Christine Gilbert's report on this, is to ensure that if you see the signs at Level 3 you need to put that extra effort with those individuals, and it might be over a variety of different reasons. It might be because of family problems, there might be pastoral care involved there; it might be that they need extra time, Extended Schools will give us help there as well; it may be for specific reasons about attendance that need to be the resolved, but, whatever it is, it needs to be much more personalised and, I agree with you, much more intensive to ensure you get that child that is looking at Level 3 as if they are going to have problems at Level 4 to make that attainment leap. Q9 Chairman: The first inquiry that we did when I became Chairman of this committee five years ago was on early years, and the settings we looked at, there was this great emphasis on personalised assessment, so you knew how a child was developing very clearly, very carefully, a written report every week, every month so there was real understanding of the child's educational needs. When I visited that school on Monday they said they do not read those; it does not come in the right form. They are too busy to even look at it, and it does not come in the right form. They say, "Look, there is a whole folder with pictures and things." Surely there is something wrong with the transition from primary school into secondary school if that is the real nature of personalised assessment? Alan Johnson: I would like to know more about this school and this head teacher, their circumstances and their definition of being under too much pressure, or whatever the reason was. We have gone on the latest polls survey from somewhere like 18th in the world for age 11 reading ability to third in the world, and that is not by accident, that is because of the concentration on literacy and numeracy. If anything, I am not keen on this idea. We are on a journey here and we have made a huge amount of progress on this journey, but I was at a school yesterday in Nottingham where teachers were saying to me, "Ease up a bit", and there was even a view that league tables ought to be abolished. You have heard this many times, but I accept the pressure and the extra intensity and the stress it puts on teachers, but it is absolutely the right thing to do. The whole kit and caboodle from Ofsted, from league tables, from the concentration on tests and exams and, if anything, we need to intensify that rather than relax, for the very reasons you say. We are up to 75 per cent; we need to go much higher. Q10 Chairman: What I am in a sense trying to push is: is this not something the department could take as a real priority under your leadership that absolutely targets these kids that still are at the bottom of the pile and cannot get off the bottom unless they can have access to language. Is there not a campaign that you could put your name to so that across departments there was a real carrot and stick for everyone involved - families, background, the welfare system - actually leading up to this prioritisation of access through language? Alan Johnson: Yes, Chairman, but I do not have to put my name to this, it is already there. It is called Every Child Matters, it is called SureStart, it is called tackling these cross-overs between a black child from a poor background and a less bright child from a richer background at age 22 months when that kind of cross over occurs. It is tackling all of that right the way through the system. As I say, I think age 11 is a crucial position there, but it is keeping kids on at school rather than leaving school. All of that is there. It is the focus of the Government. I would love to say it is somehow Johnsonian, but it is not, it is what this Government has been about since 1997. This is part of the point I was making in my maiden (which two people may have read) when I first came in that, because we have been in for nine years (and it is not just in education it is in other areas as well), people say, "You have been there nine years, you must be in the land of milk and honey after the first term and then you just sit back and relax", but it is a constant process with constant challenges and, as I say, it is a journey. As I said, that is one of my priorities, improving attainment and closing the social class gap. Chairman: That is why I was pushing on closing the social class gap. Let us move on. Paul. Q11 Paul Holmes: In the Chairman's initial comments you have already touched on this one. The presentation of statistics in departmental reports was started specifically for select committees back in the 1980s so that they could oversee what departments were doing. Clearly, if select committees and MPs and journalists and the public and the educational world are going to make the maximum use out of that information to see how the Government (in this case the education department) are doing, they need to have consistent figures. We have already had this exchange with the Chairman. Charts on real terms expenditure which have been in the 2005 report and earlier ones suddenly disappeared from this year's without anybody knowing that that was going to happen. In response to a letter the Chairman sent to you, you have given some detailed answers to those and you have provided some of the statistics in the format we requested. Have we on the record now got from you a clear commitment that in future you think the department or its future secretaries of state as well should maintain a consistent format for reporting this information? Alan Johnson: We should. If we are changing any format, we should consult the select committee and explain to them why we are doing it and have a dialogue about that. So, yes, not a problem, and I quite understand the difficulties you have because I had the same difficulty when I came into this job of comparing data, and whilst the letter explains some, I think, understandable technical reasons, there is an acceptance by my Permanent Secretary and myself that we really need to work harder at this and we need to work with you. Q12 Paul Holmes: Again, in view of the earlier question from the Chairman about the turnover of people at the DfES, both civil servants and politicians, do you feel that future people who occupy the post that you do should follow the same principle as well? Alan Johnson: I will make a commitment that this department must get this right. This is a really important committee. I know all select committees are important, but the work of this Committee I think has been exceptional, and there is no reason why we should not ensure that any changes to any statistics are discussed with you, explained to you, cleared with you before the changes. I think it would have saved at least 20 minutes of understandable questioning at two hearings if we could have done that. Q13 Paul Holmes: In the tables that you did provide in response to the letter from the Chairman of the Committee you point out in the explanatory notes that this causes extra problems, that the longer the series goes on the more you have to have explanatory footnotes, and so on. Nonetheless, you were able to do it when asked, so you accept that, whatever explanatory footnotes have to be added and however complicated the explanations get, it is still worth sticking to one format? Alan Johnson: I want to give you the information in a format that is easy for you to do your job of scrutinising my department. Whatever that means and however many footnotes are there, that is what needs to be done, and I do accept that, yes. Q14 Paul Holmes: You specifically in one or two of the new charts you provided point out that it is a bit difficult to do this because the answer will depend partly on how local government provides grants and top-ups to sixth forms, for example, but that has always been the case. In social services in all sorts of areas, local government often provide a considerable top-up to what the government formula provides, so that difficulty has always been there. It is not a new one. People have met that before. Alan Johnson: I accept that, but why do not we carry on this exchange until we get to perhaps a valid point and perhaps one you can make in response. I have not got a grasp of all those tables in detail but the general thrust of your question is absolutely right. We should be presenting information to you in a way that you can easily compare it with the record of the past, and I accept that completely. Q15 Paul Holmes: One final very specific one on this theme. A number of the charts that your department and other departments have produced over the years will start in 1999, running up to 2005/2006, and so forth. Why 1999? Surely if we are looking at how your Government has performed, the start date should always be 1997, which is the position you inherit at that point? Alan Johnson: Most of the statistics I have got start at 1997 in terms of improvements at every level (capital expenditure, number of teachers, number of support staff). I guess I can see the sub-text of your question, which would be the first two years of carrying on from a previous government. I do not want to play tricks like that, and I am quite sure no-one in the department would want to, but we have to deal with that sub-text and explain why we are using 1999 and, if there is no good reason to use 1999, we ought to be using 1997 because I tend to think our records should be reflective from when we came into government. Q16 Paul Holmes: Again, you feel that ought to be good practice that everybody else in your department should follow as well? Alan Johnson: Other departments can speak for themselves; I am talking about this department. Q17 Mr Chaytor: I would like to ask about the Gershon efficiency savings. The target for the department is 4.3 billion by the 2007/2008 financial year, and these savings appear to be of two kinds, the cashable and the non-cashable. Could you explain to us, Secretary of State, what is the difference between the two terms? Alan Johnson: The cashable are the ones you can get your hands on pretty easily and it is money you can bank; so that the 1,400 job cuts are cashable, which we are well on our way to achieving. The non-cashable are savings that can be made, efficiency savings at the front-line, in schools throughout the country where the freeing up of that time allows more time to be spent on teaching. We are not looking for it to be money that we bank or bring back in, we are looking for greater efficiency, we are looking for the resources, the incredible increase in resources that we are putting into education, to actually show potential benefits, which I think they have but there is always more you can do there, but that is basically the difference. Q18 Mr Chaytor: In the 2006 Annual Report it does not use the term "cashable" and "non-cashable", it uses "recyclable" and "non-recyclable". Do we assume that that means the same? Alan Johnson: I would assume it means the same, but if there is a difference in that I will drop you a line. Q19 Mr Chaytor: When the Permanent Secretary came to the Committee on 14 June he told us that all of the 4.3 billion would be non-cashable. Is that absolutely right? Alan Johnson: I think that is right. I am just wondering. I am not absolutely sure whether the cuts in staff are part of the 4.3 billion. Q20 Chairman: They are not. Alan Johnson: They are not. So they are all non-cashable, yes. Q21 Mr Chaytor: They are all non-cashable? Alan Johnson: Yes. Q22 Mr Chaytor: But in the Annual Report it says, of the 4.3 billion, 3.2 billion is recyclable and 1.1 is non-recyclable? Alan Johnson: Maybe "recyclable" and "non-recyclable" do mean something different. My understanding is that the 4.3 billion is non-cashable. Q23 Mr Chaytor: So 4.3 billion is non-cashable but the 1,800 job losses will be cashable on top of the 4.3? Alan Johnson: Yes, 1,900 if you count Ofsted. Q24 Mr Chaytor: Can we have some clarification of this and how the 4.3 billion is divided, because we have got two categories. We have got the 4.3 billion, which is divided into recyclable and non-recyclable, then we have got the total amounts of which the 4.3 billion is non-cashable and the equivalent of 1,800 job losses is cashable? Alan Johnson: That is my understanding. Q25 Mr Chaytor: When are we going to find out how all this is going to be achieved in detail? You have got to do it by the end of the next financial year, but will there be some kind of interim public statement as to how? Alan Johnson: I think the National Audit Office are due to say something, but the Office of Government Commerce keep a regular track of this, and they are quite satisfied that we are on track. Q26 Mr Chaytor: But is that currently public information? Alan Johnson: I will find out. That must be a pretty long letter. Q27 Mr Chaytor: In terms of the non-cashable savings, the squeezing out of productivity in the schools, what will be put in place to assess how that increased productivity is measured in terms of attainment or, your other objective, closing the social class gap? Alan Johnson: There are various technical ways to ensure that we are getting those saving. I think the Permanent Secretary, John Thompson, went through some of them. Measuring productivity is much harder. There is a piece of work going on as to how you can measure productivity more accurately or, indeed, at all - some would argue there has not been any success in measuring it at all - to see whether we can find a mechanism to do that. I do not think we are there yet. Q28 Mr Chaytor: If teachers, as a result of the Workforce Reform Programme, have less contact and more preparation time and it does not lead to improvements in attainment, the question is why has it been done in the first place? Is there going to be some systematic monitoring of the Workforce Reform Programme, the introduction of IT on overall levels of attainment? Alan Johnson: Yes, there is a monitoring programme to make sure of the effect the investment (and that includes the investment in giving half a day to teachers to prepare, analyse and plan) is having on the absolute reason why we are all in existence, which is to improve attainment. Q29 Mr Chaytor: Finally, when the non-cashable 4.3 billion has been achieved will the process stop there or will there be a permanent revolution in non-cashable savings? Alan Johnson: There will be a permanent concentration on value for money, and that is not going to stop. Of course we have got the Comprehensive Spending Review coming up, so in that sense there will be a permanent revolution. There will never be a period where we will say, "That is fine now. We think we have got the right level of efficiency", but at the same time we need to be concentrating on the resources that teachers need. We have got a very good social partnership working with most of the teachers' unions and are moving on to issues like, for instance, the turnover of head teachers and how we can tackle a problem that is not right at the moment. It is a constant process. Q30 Chairman: We would be more confident about real saving if we could get some real examples in schools and colleges: what savings have been made and what has happened to the resources that have been saved? There are no examples of that at the moment, we have been given none, and you do lay yourself open to charges that these are fantasy savings rather than real savings if we cannot see, because we know, your predecessors have said, they will be made by schools and colleges, the bulk of these Gershon reform savings. So, when can we have some examples of what savings have been made and where have the resources been shifted to? Alan Johnson: I would have thought you would have some examples now, particularly on procurement and on freeing up teacher time and that being used more productively. I will see whether we have got some examples. It comes back to your original question about who is monitoring this, whether it is the National Audit Office or the Office of Government Commerce because, I accept, we should not be just be setting targets and saying everything is hunky dory if we cannot provide examples of that. Chairman: We now move seamlessly to school funding. Rob Wilson is going lead on that. Mr Wilson: Thank you, Secretary of State, for coming today. I know how busy you are in the department, and on top that you have also got your leadership campaign to run. Chairman: Fortunately, Rob, there is something wrong with your microphone. We cannot quite hear what you are saying! Mr Wilson: I have to say, I got a few quid on the outcome, so I am interested. When Tony Blair steps down next year and you take over as Prime Minister, would your priority be, as his was: "Education, education, education"? Q31 Chairman: Stick to the education. Alan Johnson: Yes, I think so. I would probably classify it more as "learning, learning, learning", but it is the same thing expressed in a different way. Q32 Chairman: Would that mean significant extra funding for schools, for example? Do you think extra funding is needed even at this stage? Alan Johnson: I think the extra funding that has gone in has been phenomenal. I certainly do not think, in terms of where we are moving to education as a percentage of GDP, that we are there yet, we will be at something like 5.4 per cent next year, so I do think investment is important, yes. Q33 Mr Wilson: You do not think we are quite there in terms of extra investment that is needed, but you cannot say at the moment how much further you think we need to go? Alan Johnson: We have got the Comprehensive Spending Review coming up, and that is a process that will be taking a lot of my time over the next year. It is absolutely the case, as I think has been mentioned at previous hearings of this Committee, that the level of increase in expenditure that we have seen since 1997, which has been quite phenomenal, can probably not be maintained, but I very much hope that we have got increased funding. Q34 Mr Wilson: It is interesting, because your rival for the top job of Chancellor thinks that funding per pupil in schools should rise from £5,000 a year to £8,000 a year at current prices, and that means an extra £17 billion worth of investment into schools. Do you agree with him? Do you think that is practical? Alan Johnson: What the Chancellor said is that our long-term aim is to match the "per pupil" spending in the state sector with that in the independent sector and to bring it up to 8,000. Actually we will be at the level of capital expenditure by 2011. So, all of this is remarkable and no previous government has got to this level of expenditure and investment in education, and I certainly agree that with that long-term aim. I think it is true crucial. Q35 Mr Wilson: So you are in agreement, £17 billion extra into school funding? Alan Johnson: I am in agreement with a long-term aim of matching "per pupil" spending in the state sector with the independent sector. Q36 Mr Wilson: Is that an aspiration or a pledge? Alan Johnson: That is an aim. Q37 Mr Wilson: So it is an aspiration? Alan Johnson: It is an aim. Q38 Mr Wilson: We do not want to give politicians the name of being shifty, so we will move on. Has your department done anything about the aim that the Chancellor announced in his budget to get to this considerable increase in funding in schools? Has there been any research undertaken, for example? Alan Johnson: It is a long-term aim. What we are doing is concentrating on the money we are putting in at the moment, the extra investment at the moment. We are very pleased that the Chancellor has set the long-term aim, I think it is consistent with everything we have been doing since 1997, and, of course, the short-term aim by 2011 and matching capital expenditure is very important. We are also thinking very carefully about how public schools can contribute here. There is a very important Charities Bill in front of the House at the moment and the independent sector has charitable status. There are issues there around their facilities and how they could be used to help close this social class gap in the state sector. That is what we are concentrating our mind on at the moment. Q39 Mr Wilson: Can I move on then. The department has made growing use of "Velcroing" spending, as it were, to the pupil, and we were talking about the £5,000, £8,000 just a moment ago. Have you had a chance, as I am sure you have not had, to look at one of the amendments I tried to make to the Education Inspections Bill which would have Velcroed an extra 30 percent to disadvantaged children? Alan Johnson: I have studied it carefully. The first thing did when I came into office was to say, "Can I see Rob Wilson's amendments to the Education and Inspections Bill", but unfortunately that was eight weeks ago, so it has slipped, so, no, I cannot remember that, the Velcro amendment. Q40 Mr Wilson: Can you see the advantages of Velcroing an extra 30 per cent in terms of funding to the back of disadvantaged pupils? Alan Johnson: I think you are making a really serious point here, and I think it came up at the session that David Bell and John Thompson had with you. How can we get a statistic, a determinant, that would follow as accurately as you would like, and I think this Committee made the point that there needs to be more work on this, but I hope in some of the responses we have reassured you that the Velcro is there but it would be good to have a better method and a better determinant of how that money can follow absolutely. I think the point you made is that in many affluent areas there are pupils who are disadvantaged, so it is much harder to identify them in those situations, and I tend to agree that, but David and John explained some of the difficulties about that at their session. I do think that is a serious point. Q41 Mr Wilson: Are you doing any work, because the only measure that I could find was free school meals? Is the department doing any work on ways of better evaluating deprivation? Alan Johnson: I think this comes into our review of school funding, and I think this is a good opportunity to see whether we could better focus that money on disadvantaged pupils. Q42 Mr Wilson: So there is work on-going? Alan Johnson: Yes. Q43 Mr Wilson: Have you any indication for the Committee as to what direction that might take? Alan Johnson: You will have to wait for the outcome. We will consult you very closely on the review. Mr Wilson: Thank you, Chairman. Q44 Chairman: Secretary of State, we have had evidence to this Committee that there is already some good research on how you more accurately look at social deprivation rather than just free school meals. There is stuff out there, so in a sense there is challenge that you could as a department move quite fast on this to become more focused. Alan Johnson: Okay. Chairman: Mainly university research, as we understand it. We want to move on to education expenditure and the CSR. Stephen. Q45 Stephen Williams: Good morning, Secretary of State. We have mentioned the CSR once already and you have described that as the next stage in the permanent revolution in government. Do you think in this forthcoming CSR that education will be the top priority for the Chancellor? Alan Johnson: The Chancellor has made it quite clear that education is a priority. Q46 Stephen Williams: A priority not the top priority? Alan Johnson: Well, I forget whether he said "a" or "the", but it is a priority nonetheless, and that is very reassuring to me. Q47 Stephen Williams: In 1997 the Government, of which you are a part, was elected on, "Education, education, education", but if you look at the increases in public expenditure since 1997, it is heath that has actually got the lion's share. In 1997 there was a gap of 0.7 per cent of GDP in health's favour, and in the current year it has widened to 1.6 per cent. In your negotiations with your cabinet colleagues are you expecting to maintain that gap at a constant level, or are you resigned to the fact that health will continue to be the Government's top priority? Alan Johnson: We did, indeed, say, "Education, education, education", and I think John Major said his priorities were the same but in a different order at the time! I saw your point about this. I do not particularly go along with this, that if education is our priority then, if you compare health and everything, we have to show the same percentage increase. It depends on what you are seeking to tackle and the issues you are seeking to tackle. Transport was one of the issues. In actual fact I think your figures stop short of the last year, I think, where that would be rebalanced, but our priority is education. It is not just all about spending money. A lot of it is about spending money but it is not all about spending money, it is about the concentration on attainment, it is about the concentration on ensuring that we are focusing on children from a very young age rather than waiting until they get to school, on issues like 14-19 where you get the cliff edge at 16. There is a financial tag to that but it is not all about money. Q48 Chairman: When you say "your figures", can I make clear, you are not talking about Stephen's figures, you are talking about our Committee's report figures. Alan Johnson: Which came from us, you are going to tell me. Yes, okay. Q49 Stephen Williams: You have obviously studied the transcript of our last session with your Permanent Secretary carefully, and you may have noticed that I also asked the Permanent Secretary about projected figures for the future. Since 1997 there have been in real terms increases of around about 4.6 per cent a year for education, but the Institute of Fiscal Studies have suggested, based on the information currently available, that in future increases will be around 3.4 per cent per annum, so there is going to be deceleration in increased expenditure for education, so we will not have the "land of milk honey" which I think you mentioned earlier. Do you accept that figure, that there is going to be a fall-off in increases for education expenditure, and what are the implications of that given what Mr Wilson was asking you about this long-term aim of raising public expenditure in the state sector to match the independent sector? Alan Johnson: I cannot see beyond the Comprehensive Spending Review. What I can see is that the expenditure in my department this year is 60 billion and next year will be 64 billion. That is an incredible uplift in just one year. The Chancellor's long-term aim would depend on the financial situation at the time, the demographics, all those issues. I know it is going to be a stroked bat that will be used quite often during this session, but I really cannot predict what is going to happen after the Comprehensive Spending Review. Q50 Stephen Williams: But you accept that the CSR itself in 2008 to 2011 is going to be very tight for your department relative to the largesse your predecessors had? Alan Johnson: Yes, a point I have made before. Q51 Stephen Williams: Given that type of situation, what are your personal priorities to achieve out of this CSR? Alan Johnson: I think this uplift from 60 billion to 64 billion, which will be something like a 52 per cent increase since 1997, not 1999, we have to ensure that we get the best value for money for that huge increase in expenditure, and that is going to be a big focus of what we are doing. We have to ensure that public money is used in that way, and this is not us dictating this from the Tower of Maldon, or whatever, the schools are up for this as well. So, there is a lot to be done there, and we lock in all of that. I have just come from the DTI where we had a very different the spending situation, and to be in a department where you have had that increased expenditure, you are going to get another four billion next year, you are 52 per cent up in the last nine years and the prospect of more real terms increases is a place where many secretaries of state in education over the years would love to have been. Q52 Stephen Williams: To repeat my question, what are your personal priorities out of that increased expenditure? Alan Johnson: We will have to get the CSR over with first. We have to decide our priorities as part of that. Of course, that is a discussion I will be having with the Treasury as we go through the CSR. Q53 Stephen Williams: The Committee has just completed and published its report on special educational needs. I know the department has not responded to that yet, but can we have some assurance from you that SEN will get quite a high priority within your discussions and your bids for extra expenditure? Alan Johnson: SEN, I think, will always be a priority. I think "looked after children", and it probably will not register on the Richter scale because there are only 60,000 of them, their treatment has been pretty dreadful by successive governments, and I think that is a priority but it is not a hugely expensive priority just to concentrate on some of the problems that a corporate parent has with these children as opposed to real parents. Q54 Stephen Williams: I think we all agree that education has had large amounts of public expenditure squirted into it since 1997. Are you confident that value for money is being delivered from that increase in expenditure in terms of the outcomes in literacy and numeracy on other measurable outputs? Alan Johnson: Eight weeks in, I cannot say I am absolutely confident. I am confident that we have got the mechanisms in place to ensure that we get value for money, but, as I say, I think there is going to be a real push to ensure that. I would want to have studied the situation far more into that 4.3 billion - the point that David Chaytor was making earlier - before I say I am confident that that is happening. Q55 Stephen Williams: Do you think it is quite hard to measure productivity in your department in the private sector if you train your staff better. If you buy a machine probably more widgets come out and they are of a better quality at the other end. How are you able to be confident that we have got better educated children and well educated students and graduate workforce as well at the end of all this extra expenditure? Alan Johnson: You can be confident because it is measured, the results are published and it can be seen. Going back to David Chaytor's question, whether we are getting the savings in line with our ambitions, particularly under Gershon, then it is the National Audit Office, it is the Public Accounts Committee, it is the Office of Government Commerce and all the usual channels, but it is more difficult. Widgets are easy. Education, as it should be, is much more complex. Q56 Chairman: Is not it true, Secretary of State, that this question of measuring productivity is at the heart? On the one hand our Committee's report did point out that it was not just the relationship between health spending and education spending but that also overall there is a forecast plateau of expenditure, and while I take your response to Stephen Williams on that as a positive response, if we cannot measure productivity, people are going to say, "Look at the money we have put in", and we would not question that, would we, but what our constituents would say is, "Show us the value. Show us that that has been productive", and if you do not have a good measure of productivity you make yourself vulnerable. Alan Johnson: I accept there is a point about productivity, but just running through these, you know them well. Primary schools, English 79 per cent attainment against 63 per cent in 1997, 75 per cent in maths against 62 per cent. In London at secondary school level an incredible turn around of five GCSEs. Thirty-two point three per cent of children in Inner London got five decent GCSEs in 1997, and now it is 15.2 per cent. Thirty-six thousand extra teachers, 90,000 extra support staff, capital expenditure that is absolutely extraordinary: 700 million being spent in our schools in 1997, 6.5 billion this year rising to eight billion next year. I think the public understands full well what this means for education. They do not need a measure of productivity. We do, I accept, but in terms of whether they have faith that that investment is worthwhile and producing results, the statistics are clear. Q57 Paul Holmes: You quite rightly talk about the extra money and capital and so forth that has gone into education. One way of measuring the output would be rising illiteracy standards and rising exam passes. One of the criticisms that employers make, it is not the one that the newspaper tend to pick up on, when they are recruiting people, whether direct from schools or from universities, is that people are not flexible enough, they are not able to work in teams enough and these are not things that can be measured by how many exam passes and what grades somebody has got. Yet you go to Scandinavia they would argue that there it is the other way, that the children they produce are much more free-standing, mature and independent. Have you got any thoughts on that and how you measure that sort of outcome? Alan Johnson: Yes, we had an interesting session in our ministerial meeting last Friday about non-cognitive skills. There is an issue here. Part of what we are doing, and I do not know whether this Committee will know about the SEAL Programme (Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning). I was in Nottingham yesterday talking to primary school head teachers. Fifty per cent of primary schools have now adopted this. In Nottingham they have adopted it with knobs on because they have got particular social problems. Q58 Chairman: Graham Allen's great campaign. Alan Johnson: Absolutely, and seeing it first hand. So the idea of SEAL it is to work on those aspects of team working in primary schools. I think issues like citizenship are very important as well, and what we are trying to do as we work up to 14-19 diplomas is introduce an element of this, because, I think you are absolutely right, employers are increasingly pointing to this as a difference, and the reason why they are pointing to it as a difference is because, in my patch and probably yours, lots of workers are coming from Poland and Eastern Europe who have these kinds of skills instinctively and so it is becoming a bigger issue. Q59 Paul Holmes: One of the things that you must have heard teachers say when you refer to teachers saying that league tables are a problem, both at junior and secondary level, is that the pressure to get better and better results partly squeezes out the sort of team working and cognitive thinking work that takes more time but does not reflect in something that hits a league table. I was in Stockholm with Graham Allen earlier this year, for example, looking at some of the earlier years there. Graham came specifically to look from that point of view, were we squeezing out of our young children those sorts of personal social skills in favour of league table results. Alan Johnson: This was the discussion we had yesterday with teachers, not just head teachers but teachers, and the majority of them thought it was not either/or, it was not non-cognitive skills verses exams and tests, it was an add-on, it was to actually help children in primary schools to get to the right level of Level 3 and Level 4. For kids in Nottingham it was very important for them to acquire those skills so that they could go on to achieve in literacy and numeracy, and I think the add-ons were the majority, but I accept there are issues here. The stress there must be being involved as a teacher, the joy and satisfaction as well, I know, so I am not here to say it is something they can absorb. SEAL is very new and it is very important that we get the right feedback. Of course, the idea of it is that it is embedded right across the curriculum. It is not a half an hour a week to look at non-cognitive skills, you actually do it in the way you teach the whole curriculum. Q60 Paul Holmes: I remember back in 2000 when I was still teaching, we had somebody from the DfES come to talk to us in a secondary school about what was going to happen in literacy and numeracy in the primaries, and when they were talking about what was going to be built, we were saying, "But with the national curriculum requirements, how can you put the time into doing that?", and he said, "We will disallow it. We will remove a lot of those strictures from the national curriculum on junior school teachers so we can deliver the literacy and numeracy programme." Are you coming to a point where you have to remove some of the other pressures to allow more freedom to teach these other skills? Alan Johnson: I do not think there is way of doing that at Key Stage 3 to free up for 14-19. I would not go as far as thinking that there is a specific problem there. Certainly yesterday's discussion did not lead me to that view, but if there is an issue, as I say, we have got a very good social partnership here, we get good feedback from teachers through their trade unions and through other methods. Q61 Paul Holmes: One final question on this question of how you measure the output. Are there more sophisticated ways than just exam results? David Chaytor was talking about if you are giving primary teachers non-contact time, which they have never traditionally had, but you cannot then, two or three years down the line, see some sort of increase in educational attainment, how do you measure whether that is worthwhile? Another way of measuring might be if you had a lower turnover of primary school teachers leaving the profession because they are so ragged and worn out, that that would justify providing non-contact time rather than an increase in literacy, for example. Are you looking at other ways of measuring the success of these initiatives? Alan Johnson: I think that is a valid point. I instinctively feel that it must be right to have that non-contact time, but it is going to have to prove itself, maybe in reduced wastage and reduced turnover. I certainly think we ought to monitor the situation but without making teachers feel that it is somehow under threat. I just think it is the right thing to do. Everything you heard and we heard about the pressures on teachers meant that they could do better at teaching if they had some time to analyse, plan and prepare. Q62 Paul Holmes: So you will be talking to teachers' unions and to head teachers about how you measure the success of non-contact time, for example? Alan Johnson: It is essential to talk to the unions, yes. Q63 Fiona Mactaggart: You said in reply to an earlier question that the improvements in results was the best evidence of improved productivity of the department and the success it has had, but I have received a lot of evidence that the emphasis on results has meant that many educational institutions focus on the children just below a boundary, and I was wondering what you were doing about the consequences of that, because it means that groups of children are missed out, so just pushing them across from Level 3 to Level 4, for example, at Key Stage 2, those are the children who get focused on. What are you doing about that? Alan Johnson: It is not something that I have particularly picked up. Incidentally, when I said about attainment, I did not say it is the best mark of productivity, I said I think it is the best example to the public, or information to the public, about taxpayers' money being spent wisely. Productivity, I accept, is a different issue. I would like to know more about the point you are making. Our approach has to be personalised learning, not just looking at statistics and saying that five per cent are not at the right level at Level 3, therefore there must be a single solution to get them back on track by Level 4. We have to look at the specific problems, and personalised learning to me means concentrating on the specific needs and concerns of individual children to get them up to that required level. Q64 Fiona Mactaggart: Do you think you are going to have a way that you can describe these cohorts of children in a more personalised way? At the moment the information that we get is rather crude. You talk about lowering social class achievement gaps, but there are other big differentials, race and particular racial groups and so on. Are you going to find ways of describing the kind of journey of groups of children in a way that people can see it better so that you can see which schools are doing what well? Alan Johnson: I hope so, and I hope Christine Gilbert's work on personalised learning will help us to do that. That is certainly my concept. Q65 Fiona Mactaggart: To follow up the point that you were making about seeing, what do you think about the nursery teacher who is told that she cannot have the SEAL documents and resources because they are designed for people in Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2? Alan Johnson: I think the younger you get to these kinds of non-cognitive skills, as doubtless Stockholm would have demonstrated, the better it will be. We have introduced it at primary school level because there was a specific reason there. You are looking at me mischievously. I do not know where this nursery teacher stems from, but probably from Slough. Q66 Fiona Mactaggart: Slough. Alan Johnson: Okay. Let us look at how it works at primary school level before we can decide whether to put it elsewhere. Chairman: I do not know how we can record a mischievous look. Never mind. Rob Wilson. Q67 Mr Wilson: I am interested to explore this issue of spending or investment and the relationship to standards. How close do you think that that relationship is? For example, synthetic phonics, where it has been tried out, has made a huge difference to attainment standards by children, not just in literacy but in numeracy as well. That has not involved any real additional spending or investment, as such. I just wondered whether you have explored that sort of relationship in detail? Alan Johnson: Not in detail, but you make a very good point. The point that I was trying to make to Stephen Williams, that actually concentrating on educational and improving education is not all about spending money, I accept that, but certainly, capital expenditure, you can see the stark results. In my constituency there were so-called Halser(?) classrooms in 1997 for children, a temporary arrangement in 1944, I think it was, still there in 1997. So there is a very clear effect there, because when children are taught in better surroundings with better equipment and good books, I think there is a clear correlation. Other aspects, I agree, and the work of the Rose Report on phonics is something that is very exciting and not particularly expensive. Q68 Chairman: Can I put you straight on that a little. The thrust of our report on phonics was actually teaching children to read. What we showed was that the evidence suggested that any intensive form of teaching children to read seemed to work, and the best form was assessing what was right for that child. Some children responded to one technique and others to another. We found two things out of that. One is that teachers in their training were not trained properly to teach children to read, and that was one of our prime recommendations. We were rather amazed, some of us, that your department seems to have gone rather overboard with this synthetic phonics, because there has only been one study on the effectiveness of synthetic phonics in one part of Scotland and we wanted more research not just suddenly taking up the latest fashion. So, intensive help for those kids that are struggling with reading does work, but we still, I have to say - please come back to me on this- we are a bit worried about how enthusiastically you have embraced synthetic phonics. Alan Johnson: That is another piece of reading for me, I think. I will have a look at your report. Q69 Paul Holmes: On that point, the one study that has really assisted us was from Clackmannanshire, and as I recall the figures now, it was a very small authority with something like only 18 junior schools and they intensively trained all the teachers involved. All the people we had from your department were pointing out that if you tried to do that across the whole of England, for example, the implications of taking every single teacher and training them to that level would have very significant financial implications. The other thing about the synthetic phonics schemes is, if you were going them to the exclusion of other things, which the enthusiasts were telling us, you had to buy entire new reading schemes, junk everything you had got virtually and buy entire new reading schemes. So, if you want to do that across a country the size of England, there are massive financial implications. As the Chairman said, the implications of Clackmannanshire partly was that if you took a group of teachers from 18 schools and gave them intensive training, inversely anyway. for teaching kids to read, then you would see an improvement in results because what works works and enthusiastic teachers can make things work in all sorts of different ways? Alan Johnson: There appears to be a difference between committee members here. Q70 Chairman: We still have the scars of that too. Last one before we move on to research funding. There is a massive programme of rebuilding schools, building new schools and refurbishing old schools, and none of us would in a sense criticise that wonderful programme. We do not want to see kids in awful conditions. Our Committee is looking at sustainable schools as a major inquiry, but as this vast expenditure takes place, do you think we are getting the proportion right between building new schools and designing what goes into those new and refurbished schools? Alan Johnson: Yes, I hope so. The whole philosophy between the local education partnerships that will be responsible for BSF is that it is not just someone going in, sticking up a building. Education informs everything, the shape, the design and the ICT that goes in there with the involvement of the local authority, of people who have a background and a track record in producing iconic, good buildings. This is, as you rightly say, so crucial, such a huge expenditure, every secondary school in the country being refurbished or rebuilt and a fair stock of primary schools. It cannot just be done on the basis of sticking up buildings and hoping for the best. We have to ensure that everything is integrated and coordinated. That is what we are trying to do through LEPs. Q71 Chairman: We have to go beyond boasting there are banks of computers and white boards, some of which unfortunately teachers do not know how to use. Some of the information we have had from Microsoft, BT and others is that there is a lot of very good information about new ways of teaching children to learn and perhaps the Department is rather lagging behind. Alan Johnson: I will look at that. I hope not. Q72 Chairman: How are your own IT skills? Alan Johnson: Poor to appalling. Chairman: Perhaps we can all join together and improve them. Q73 Mr Marsden: In the Budget there was an announcement that the Research Assessment Exercise for assessing university funding was going to be replaced with a system based on metrics. As you know, the consultation document has been already published on that, but it is a rather narrow consultation document in that it focuses not so much on the merits of change but more on the process of introducing metrics. Do you think it makes sense to be arguing for the introduction of a system that has generally already agreed more than half of the subjects currently funded for research, particularly the humanities and social sciences, and more than half the number of the academics and lecturers involved and a metrics system that will not be fit for purpose? Alan Johnson: I have some history on this because when I was Higher Education Minister we published the Roberts Review. Gareth Roberts recommended moving a long way towards a metrics based system. We are doing this in the best way possible, running the traditional RAE alongside a metrics based system and using that to inform where we go to next. I think there has been a lot of discussion about this over many years and, when I was Higher Education Minister, I was amazed quite frankly that we spent all this money and took up all this time - something like 82 different panels and committees - on something that could be done much more quickly. Our joint objective would be to maintain the excellent research base we have in this country. I went through the arguments. You have been through them, I know. It was pretty tedious stuff in the sense that it got very techy but I do believe that we need to move away from peer review and we need to have a better system. Running the two systems alongside each other which can reassure people who are worried about what the objective is here - i.e., does it mean putting all the money into a few universities around the south east - will give reassurance. Q74 Mr Marsden: You are obviously reading my mind. You are absolutely right. I can understand your world weariness with it. There has been an immense amount of discussion about the RAE, the problems and difficulties of it and indeed about the extent to which there are all these problems about assessment and all the rest of it. Many of those criticisms have focused on the narrowness and mechanical nature of the RAE as it is at the moment. Does it make sense to be moving to a system which, at least on the basis of what is included in your consultation document, looks as if it is going to move more to a tick box culture and an assessment of a number of pages of things submitted? How are we going to assess whether any of these changes have a beneficial impact on UK research's reputation internationally or not? Alan Johnson: Gareth Roberts did make the point about metrics. You could run a metrics system without peer review and get good results. I am not sure of the answer to your question. I would want to see these two systems running side by side. I would want to see the correlation and the outcome. That is the best way to do this rather than to leap from RAE to a metrics based system, to see how they operate and to see the similarity. Q75 Mr Marsden: Given that this has been introduced, what research has your Department commissioned to look at the potential impact of this change? I make that point because the direction of travel, the buzzwords that we all like to use these days, internationally appears to be in the opposite direction. Alan Johnson: Australia. Q76 Mr Marsden: Australia and Hong Kong. In addition, there is an issue in terms of the concentration in universities on research where the evidence again from the States suggests that the travel is in the other direction and is becoming more diffuse and not more concentrated. Academics will argue about these things until kingdom come but would it not be a good idea to do a little bit of risk benefit analysis on it? Alan Johnson: We will be doing some research on this. That is the whole reason for running the two alongside each other. I am a fan of metrics. Mr Marsden: Would your Department be able to come back to the Committee in due course and give us details of what this research is going to be, how you are going to carry it out and evaluate it? Q77 Chairman: You have not been bounced into metrics by the Chancellor, have you? Alan Johnson: Maybe the other way round. Q78 Chairman: Why was it announced in the Budget? Alan Johnson: We had the Roberts Report in 2004. We had the ten year Science and Innovation Framework which I was involved with as a DTI minister. It has hardly been bounced. This has been around for a while. What was in the Budget was the next steps on the ten year Science and Innovation Framework. It is quite right, if you set a ten year framework, you have to have the steps along the way. I refute the argument completely that this is somehow the Chancellor pushing this. The Chancellor is in a good place on this. Q79 Mr Marsden: You will be relieved to know that I am not going to pursue the issue of what the Chancellor's views are or are not. I am going to move on to the views of the people at the coal face, the lecturers, the academics, the support staff who currently work under RAE and will be affected by this. The UCU, who are launching their own major consultation exercise at the moment, have pointed out that under the present system there has been a very strong concentration of research funding in a small number of departments and institutions. They make the point - I would like your comment on this - that we ought to be questioning whether we fund past performance rather than potential capacity building. Is there a danger that by entrenching funding, whether it is by a metrics system or by the RAE system, in a few very tight universities you are not going to stop the small and medium sized research enterprises growing in other universities, particularly the post-1992 ones? Alan Johnson: That would be a concern. The objective must be to fund excellent research wherever it takes place. I do not agree that this change is to lead to a concentration onto the so-called club. You know who I am talking about. Q80 Mr Marsden: You are talking about the post-1992 universities, the Russell Group, losing out. Alan Johnson: No, I am not talking about them losing out. I disagree that this is a process that will lead to Imperial, Oxford, Cambridge and one other ---- Q81 Stephen Williams: Bristol? Alan Johnson: No, not Bristol. Q82 Chairman: Imperial, University College, London, Oxford and Cambridge. Alan Johnson: That is right, that that is going to lead to all research being concentrated. The Chairman put it more eloquently than anyone I have heard on this about a gang of people marching into Number 10. Q83 Mr Marsden: Highly motivated people. Alan Johnson: That is not where this comes from. It comes from the tortuous debates I had as Higher Education Minister, where you had people in different camps. The one thing that unites us is that we support the dual support system and we want to fund excellent research wherever it takes place. If running these two exercises alongside each other and the research around that shows some of the fears UCU have suggested, we will have to tackle that because I certainly believe that we can save £8 million and put more into research, not save it back for the Treasury. We can stop a long system of 82 committees and peer reviews. We could have a much better system because behind the metrics is peer review. Metrics is a dreadful term but it is the best one we can think of. I do not agree with these fears. These certainly are concerns that we will have to watch. Q84 Mr Marsden: I share your frustration with the 82 committees or whatever it is. For what it is worth, I think so do many people in academia which is why they would like to have seen a much broader consultation on successes of the RAE. The former chief executive, Howard Newby, speaking at the higher education policy unit conference said, more eloquently than I can, you are putting the cart before the horse. One of the concerns is that you will be replacing a restrictive and difficult process with an even more restrictive one, particularly in terms of the humanities and social sciences. Does it not worry you, given your passion for life long learning and further education, that you will be missing an opportunity to look at the way in which we translate research into teaching and communication, because that is one of the major criticisms of the RAE at the moment, that it up ends the system. It does not give value to the dissemination and communication of academic ideas across the piece. Alan Johnson: That does concern me, yes. We have a consultation period that is running to October on this. There are zealots on both sides of this argument. We have to sort this out once and for all. The RAE has been going for about 20 years and as long as the RAE has been going there has been an argument about whether ---- Q85 Mr Marsden: You are open to the possibility that this consultation might raise some broader issues about the relationship between research and teaching and how that should be rewarded, particularly for younger academics? Alan Johnson: Yes. Q86 Mr Marsden: There is an issue, is there not, that if you focus research into a narrow band of universities, whether it is the ones you named or whether it is the ones that other people name, you miss the bright stars and the people coming through. Albert Einstein was a patent clerk when he started working on the theory of relativity. Do you think he would have got it right under a metrics system? Alan Johnson: I would like to think so. Q87 Chairman: What Howard Newby said is, "Get your policy objectives right first. Then consult and then evaluate whether metrics will help you in achieving your policy objectives." Our mutual friend, Sir Alan Wilson, when he was in front of the Committee, did not seem altogether happy about the place he was at on that day. I may be wrong. Howard Newby and Sir Alan pretty much know where this issue is. You will take their views into account, will you? Alan Johnson: There are no more wise and sagacious people than Alan Wilson and Howard Newby and I will take their views into account, yes. Q88 Chairman: What are you going to do when Sir Alan leaves you? Who is going to replace him? Alan Johnson: Cry. He will be a great loss to us. If you had the offer that he had to go to Corpus Christi, you might follow that route. Q89 Chairman: I tested the catering on Thursday night. If you look at the context, this is taking place. You and I and some other people in this room were more or less on the same side on variable fees two years ago. Some of us saw them as putting one of the mainstays of higher education on the right track. The other is research and it is very important to get that right, is it not? I know you said you were a fan and it worried me a bit, but this is a government that believes in evidence based policy. On the evidence, no one will be against change but it will be on a careful analysis of the evidence. Can you assure the Committee of that? Alan Johnson: It will be because this is not about cutting costs. The investment in science and research, never mind about what it does socially for this country, the economic challenges that we face from globalisation et cetera mean that we have to stay ahead of the game. This whole process is underpinned by a passion for ensuring that we stay second in the world only to America in terms of our research base. If we jeopardise that it would be ludicrous. I would happily cease to be a fan of metrics if I could see quite clearly that peer pressure is the best system. Q90 Chairman: If you look at your table in terms of expenditure on various sectors of education over the last nine years, the fact still does come through that higher education is the one that has not the same kind of percentage increase that other areas of education have. That is not to deny that good things have not happened since 2002. There has been, for example, a very substantial increase in university pay at last but overall there is no doubt Lord Sainsbury and the regime have been pretty consistent - there has been some good investment in science - but any vice-chancellor looking at the overall package here, overall spending on HE which is at the cutting edge of our competitive struggle against other countries, the figures are not really very inspiring, are they, in percentage terms? Alan Johnson: That is because you are comparing it with other areas of education. If you look at schools, for instance, there was huge under-investment there. Let me give you my take on this. In higher education there was a 36 per cent reduction in per student spending between something like 1989 and 1997. The previous government set up the Deering Report. The Deering Report said that we need another £3 billion to go into higher education. We put 2.9 billion of public money into higher education since the Deering Report. We put 800 million from the £1,000 up front fees and we will be putting 1.35 billion from variable fees up to £3,000. You add all that together. Deering had all party support. Remember, at the 1997 election, everybody was saying wait to see what we are going to do on HE. God bless Lord Deering for the work he has done on higher education. What people in higher education should acknowledge is we have done what Deering said we should do and some more in terms of investment. Very importantly, the introduction of fees has not affected the public per student funding that we put in. The thing that higher education must be most concerned about is that, for whatever reason, a government says, "Now you have that money from fees income, we will cut the money you get from HEFCE and from public expenditure" because that would have been a betrayal of everything we went through on that very difficult Bill. That has not happened. Rather than a comparison saying, "We are badly off because there has not been as much money spent on us as in schools." What we did in schools was address the problems in schools. What we have done on Sure Start is address the problems there. In FE, there has been an enormous increase in expenditure from those figures. Goodness, it needed it. What we have done on higher education is pursue what Deering said we should pursue, not immediately, of course. We went through the highways and byways before we got back to where Deering said we should go but, in terms of the expenditure and the investment in higher education, that is a very good story. Q91 Chairman: Earlier on I asked you whether you could set your stall out for delivering a campaign on teaching children language skills. I wondered if the other one that matched that would be making universities more adept at producing entrepreneurs. Some of us met the chief executive of BT yesterday and he made that very strong call. Our educational system still does not seem to be able to produce enough young people coming through the system with entrepreneurial skills and the courage to get into business on their own. Do you think that is a problem? Alan Johnson: Yes, it is a problem we were looking at very closely in the DTI as part of the general problem in entrepreneurial skills. Women and entrepreneurship, for instance. If we had the same level in this country as they have in the US, we would have a much bigger economy and many more businesses. It is particularly important in universities. Whereas we have had a huge amount of success on spin-out companies from universities which, by definition, involves some entrepreneurship that is just helping students with really good ideas to get them into a commercial place, that has been hugely successful. There does seem to be a problem here vis-à-vis our international competitors. That was the real driving force for us in the DTI. What is happening with students coming out of universities in China, India and America? There seems to be a much better grasp of entrepreneurial skills. There is more we could do in that area. Q92 Stephen Williams: You have widened the discussion into other higher education areas away from research. I get the impression that you mean what you say. Did you really mean it when you said in The Sunday Times, "The students will learn to love top-up fees"? Alan Johnson: Incidentally, these are not top-up fees; they are variable fees but let us leave that to one side. No, I do not think I did say that. That was the David Cracknell interview. I did not say they would learn to love top-up fees because that would have been silly. I do not expect students to love a £3,000 a year contribution. The point I was making is that I found time and time again, as the Higher Education Minister going to universities to talk to students who were by definition hostile, once you went through the arguments and once you explained the arguments, it took a fair bit of explaining. Most people thought and still think probably it is £3,000 up front, who do not understand about income contingent repayments, who do not fully realise that if your earnings ever drop below 15,000 you stop paying. It is quite a chunky pitch. What I was explaining was that variable fees will not prevent kids who get two or three decent 'A' levels going to university. We have to get more kids from poorer backgrounds to the starting blocks. I do not think fees, properly explained, particularly once there is experience of them which will not start until this academic year, will put them off. Q93 Stephen Williams: We have talked about the review of Research Assessment Funding and the Comprehensive Spending Review. Of that period of the CSR, the government is going to review the impact of variable fees, top-up fees, call them what you will. How meaningful is that review going to be? We have already had the Prime Minister saying he wanted nuclear energy and that effectively undermined the energy review. We have had the Chancellor, when he spoke at the launch of a Centre for European Reform pamphlet on higher education in Europe, more or less indicating that he wanted a market in fees in the future, taking the cap off the existing £3,000. How can the aspiring students in school at the moment be confident that in the future the levels of debt from top-up fees are not going to go through the roof? Alan Johnson: I am going to have to be a little bit pedantic here because it really is not top-up fees. It is relevant because the whole point you make about the cap is what means these are not top-up fees. The debate was about whether there should be a level of fee that we charged that government said was appropriate but universities could, if they wished, top that up to whatever level they liked. If anything, this is top down because the system now that we are replacing is £1,000 that you must pay. You cannot charge any less or any more. In a sense, we moved that 1,000 to 3,000 but said, "You can charge less." That is not top-up fees; that is variable fees with a cap tightly screwed down in legislation. You laugh but I am not an anorak; I have become a kagool on this. It was relevant to our manifesto. 2009 is going to be a very meaningful review. I wish it was a bit later because 2009 is the first year when you have the whole university paying fees. Nevertheless, we are where we are. We said 2009 because at the time in Parliament people wanted a very early review of this. The review could lead to us abandoning this policy altogether. It could be damaging. We could find that kids from social classes four and five will find it more difficult. That is not what I want to do. Quite the opposite. I know David Chaytor, this Committee and you, Chairman, are in the same camp. We could abandon it altogether. It is going to be a very serious review. The legislation is screwed down. That 3,000 cap cannot be lifted without primary legislation through both Houses of Parliament. The independent review goes direct to both Houses of Parliament. The Parliament of 2003 by a very narrow whisker did their job very well in ensuring that, if we were going to go down this route, no tinpot Secretary of State for Education, no Chancellor, no Prime Minister was going to be able to lift this easily. It is Parliament's job and that is why it has to be a serious review, because there has to be a serious debate that follows it. Chairman: I want to reassure Stephen that once you have any witness in front of the Committee you can ask anything you like. Q94 Fiona Mactaggart: I want to start with the announcement about giving the Mayor of London powers in relation to skills in London. I was wondering why you did it. Alan Johnson: Because we had a situation where there were four, maybe five, Learning and Skills Councils in London. The issue of skills is so crucial to everything that the GLA and the Mayor are trying to do in London. It made absolute sense. There is already a parallel with Regional Development Agencies where the Mayor is responsible for appointing the Regional Development Agency in London. Everywhere else the appointment is made by the DTI and government. The Mayor made a very persuasive argument - to be honest, he was pushing at an open door here - that we should redefine learning skills so it is London wide. The Mayor is responsible for operating the strategy and the policies that are set by government but to give him more control over that in terms of the way that money is spent and the way that strategy is implemented in London was absolute common sense. Q95 Fiona Mactaggart: Do you think it is a model that other regions might be attracted by to put some public/political force around developing a skills strategy rather than the present rather anonymous Learning and Skills Council approach? Alan Johnson: The Learning and Skills Council is going through a big change anyway because they are moving away from their 47 areas and becoming much more localised. You can reach out and touch it, rather than it seeming fairly remote at the moment. Q96 Chairman: That is not true. You are going the other way, are you not? We have gone from the 43 to regional centres. Alan Johnson: We put a regional dimension there. God knows why it was not there in the first place. There were 47 councils and a headquarters in Coventry introduced at exactly the time we were setting up nine RDAs across the country. The absence of a regional focus was just palpable. Several years ago when I was in the junior minister job in education we put the regional tier there to the LSC. Now there is a regional tier and there are 47 local councils as there have been since 1999. If you keep the regional level there, it is not huge; there is a regional link with the Learning and Skills Councils. These 47 which have not been seen to work become much more localised. There is one at the moment in my patch that covers both sides of the River Humber. That would be a much more whole focus Learning and Skills Council. Do I think it is going to be replicated elsewhere? I doubt it. The RDAs are already different in London. Q97 Chairman: Why on earth should London get this special treatment? In our region of Yorkshire and Humber, why should we not have more independence in the way that the London area is going to get? It does seem to many of us who are in Yorkshire, Members outside London, that not only did London get the Olympics and so much more investment; they get the special privileges that other regions do not get. This is why I was elected to Parliament and so were you, Secretary of State, to stick up for our region. Alan Johnson: London is different. Every region could have been in this situation had the north east voted a different way. We came in in 1997 looking to decentralise. Part of that was a GLA; the rest of it were Regional Development Agencies which were decentralisation rather than devolution. It could have gone to a much more devolutionary route. It did not. If you are asking me are there ways in which your region could become much more focused on skills, it is the number one issue on the agenda of every RDA in the country. London has the structure there; it has a Mayor, a GLA and an autonomous system. As far as RDAs are concerned, it is in a different place because the Mayor appoints the RDA. They are self-contained in that respect. I am certainly up for an argument and a discussion about how we can improve the regional position on skills. We do not want to hug all of this. I am a great believer in decentralisation but Ken Livingstone is not making up his skills policy. It is the skills policy decided by government. He just has much more freedom over how he implements that. Q98 Chairman: There will not be a shift. You know the difficulty now on any issue in the Greater London areas that Members of Parliament cannot ask questions directly on a number of issues like transport, for example. That will not mean that Members of Parliament in this House cannot ask questions about skills because they are a deferred responsibility? Alan Johnson: No. Q99 Chairman: There will be none of that? Alan Johnson: Of course not. Chairman: We will come back to this issue because we are about to start a major inquiry into skills. You know we finished our FE inquiry. That will be published in September. We then start a major inquiry into skills so we will join that discussion again. Q100 Mr Chaytor: Are you saying that, following the publication of the Local Government White Paper which may well put the case for the concept of city regions rather than geographical regions as we have known them so far, if city regions have the powers of establishing their own directly elected mayor, what will be the logic of denying to the city region of Greater Manchester the same powers that apply in London? Alan Johnson: You are a few steps ahead of me. If we get to that position, if the Local Government White Paper does come out heavily on city regions and if city regions have a city mayor, there is an argument to say we want to replicate what is happening in London. Q101 Chairman: You are rather enthused about city regions, are you? Alan Johnson: I am very enthusiastic. When I was at the DTI responsible for RDAs, so were the RDAs. It was not seen as a threat to Regional Development Agencies; it was seen as an enhancement. The David Miliband idea of city regions was very exciting. Q102 Fiona Mactaggart: I was going to move on to the new Ofsted inspection regime. This links back to the issue that I raised before about the tendency in some schools to focus on children who are just below an achieving boundary and improve their results by pushing them over that relatively narrow distance between one level of achievement and the next. I have seen some things which suggest that the new Ofsted inspection regime that has been proposed by a local national association of head teachers representative, because it focused very much on short information prepared before a visit to the school and so on, is encouraging teaching to the test rather than education and learning. Have you had any evidence about that and what would you think about the new regime if that was true? Alan Johnson: I feel ill equipped to answer. I have not had any evidence on that. I would like to look at that and the earlier question you asked because it is not something that has registered on my Richter scale over the last eight weeks. Let me look into it. Q103 Fiona Mactaggart: Do you have any particular views about the new inspection regime? Have you had time to reflect? Alan Johnson: It seems to me to be eminently sensible and of course it is part of a reduction of 500 posts in Ofsted in this whole concentration, which has been very difficult to implement but it is going remarkably successfully. I am going to make a general point on the point you raise because this comes up a lot: are you pushing kids to get through a test at the expense of some of the wider issues around education? Q104 Fiona Mactaggart: I am not so worried about pushing kids to get through tests. I think it is wonderful getting through tests. I am very worried about focusing on that group of children who do not achieve it at the moment, who have a relatively short gap of achievement, because I think it misses out the group of youngsters who have a longer distance to travel to achieve and get through a gateway. Alan Johnson: Because they are not low hanging fruit, so to speak? Q105 Fiona Mactaggart: Exactly. Alan Johnson: Let me look into that. Q106 Mr Marsden: I would like to ask you about demand and funding for apprenticeships, a major plank of the government's re-election promises in education. The good news is that the completion rates on them are going very well indeed. Every success brings its problems and I want to raise an issue that has been raised by the chief executive of the Association of Learning Providers who gave, together with his colleagues, some very useful evidence to this select committee as part of its FE inquiry back in January. What they are concerned about is what this is doing further down the line to funding. If I can quote two things that they have said in a letter to us, the figure for completion of apprenticeships may be going to be as high as 53 per cent. I do not know whether you are able to confirm that or not. The side effect of that is that one major national provider, they say, has had to postpone starting over 2,500 apprentices until well into 2006/7 because the funding for 2005/6 is exhausted. They have also said that they have heard lots of stories of small providers - obviously that is a key area as well - turning away employers and youngsters, saying, "We cannot deal with you" and they are worried that these people are going to drop out of the system. Have you had concerns about that expressed to you? Alan Johnson: Yes. There has been a huge improvement in the staying on rate of apprenticeships. It was pretty poor and now it is at the figure of 53 per cent. I am doing a lot of thinking about this. So is Sandy Leech and the Leech Report on skills will have something to say about apprenticeships. I would like to dwell on this with a view to doing something later in the year about apprenticeships. It seems to me that apprenticeships are the brand that everyone knows in this whole skills area that is rather complex and you have lots of things happening. The one thing that everyone understands is apprenticeships and it is a respected brand. Firstly, I think we could be doing more on apprenticeships. Secondly, as part of the 14-19 agenda, apprenticeships are a really important part and will have a renewed emphasis. Thirdly, some of the problems you quite rightly identify are problems of success rates now around the funding and we are going to have to look at them. It is great to be in that area but it means we have to have a complete relook at apprenticeships because I think we could be doing more. Q107 Mr Marsden: Could you, because it would be very useful not least with the Committee's forthcoming skills inquiry, and your department give us in writing as soon as possible the latest figures on that, that we can quote chapter and verse on? Secondly, can we take it that you will make a maximum plug for some of these areas in terms of the comprehensive spending review because obviously, as you know, if we will the end we need to will the means. Alan Johnson: Yes to the first question and a straight bat on the second one because it involves those magic words "comprehensive spending review" Q108 Chairman: The Committee went to the Republic of Ireland recently. One of the things that we found there was a very interesting focus on technician skills. You, as well as anyone on this Committee, know that people will tell you in industry all the time, especially having just come from the DTI, that technician level skills are seen as something we need to concentrate on. In Ireland they seem to have this ability. They have kept more of a kind of polytechnic structure, very focused on providing technician level skills, a pretty sophisticated level. We saw one example in Dublin that was focused on technician skills for the pharmaceutical industry, and a very impressive outfit it was. They also have an apprentice scheme there. I wondered whether you thought we were having enough joined up thinking in terms of the relationship between apprentices, what we do in technician training in this country and whether you see that as something that we could do a lot better. Alan Johnson: Like you, I have heard a lot of good things about what is happening in the Republic of Ireland. Yesterday I had a discussion about this and decided I should go to Dublin and see it for myself. That is very interesting. Secondly, foundation degrees have been enormously important in meeting that demand for technician level skills. They are very successful and we are pleased two years on to come back to the department and find how well on course we are with foundation degrees. I think you are absolutely right. The linking up of apprenticeships, foundation degrees, how you go through NVQ levels and take your choice about whether you choose to add another year onto a foundation degree, for instance, and do an honours degree we have not quite achieved yet. Q109 Chairman: Is that not another area you should be championing? You have come up the hard way without going through conventional higher education and you have achieved a great deal. The other thing you could surely put your mark on is getting back to the stage where you do not have to go to university to be successful, to be an entrepreneur, to be a valued member of our society. Could we persuade you to start a bit of a campaign on this? Alan Johnson: You do not have to persuade me. Again, it is not me; it is part of that 14-19 agenda and lots of the other things we are doing to get rid of this curious snobbery about vocational qualifications. You cannot lumber the Scots, the Irish and the Welsh with this. It is an English snobbery about vocational degrees and qualifications being inferior to academic qualifications. It is something we really have to change. It is a culture issue as well. It is holding us back as a nation. I would certainly hope I am already championing that cause but I will make sure I champion it even more. Q110 Mr Chaytor: The first five 14-19 vocational diplomas will come on stream in 2008. Now that we are moving to a unified 14-19 curriculum, do you think you can sustain that without a unified 14-19 funding system? Alan Johnson: I do not know because in terms of this new agenda of 14-19 I do not think we are yet at the point where we can say that the current funding system is going to be okay because we are still feeling our way through. The first five are going to be very important and we have the other nine to come on stream. There is an awful lot of thought to go into this and the funding mechanisms. The carry over here where you have local authority funding, learning and skills funding and HEFCE funding becomes messy at that level. We did a bit of work a couple of years ago on that but I do not think we are at the level yet where we can say we are at a final position. Q111 Mr Chaytor: In terms of your previous point about parity between vocational and academic courses, how can you justify the differential between student funding in schools, 16-19, as against student funding in colleges, 16-19? Alan Johnson: We cannot, which is why the funding gap has to close. It will have come down by eight per cent next year which will still leave a five per cent funding gap and we are committed to closing it. My predecessor announced that when we had the Foster Report and I re-emphasised that. Q112 Mr Chaytor: Will this be a specific priority in the department's CSR bid? Alan Johnson: I am not going to talk about the CSR bid. It is a priority to close that funding gap. Q113 Mr Chaytor: Could I move back to the opening questions about the presentation of information because the department and the Committee is now agreed that standardisation of information, particularly over the share of the budget to different sectors, is important. In the tables that the department has presented and the tables that appear in previous annual reports, we have the total budget divided into schools, HE, admin, FE and adult and community learning. Is there not a case for separating out the FE budget from the adult and community learning budget, because that would give us a better understanding of how the trend is progressing? We can see year on year that schools funding is going up significantly. We can see year on year the changes to HE funding, but we cannot disaggregate the trend in FE from the trend in adult and community. Is this something that you could go away and think about, to see if there is an advantage in separating these two budget lines? Alan Johnson: Let me have a look at that in relation to the whole debate about how we can make sure that you get adequate statistics and that you can be confident that they match up with previous years. Q114 Mr Chaytor: When you do that could you look at footnote nine to table B that the department has presented because it does say there that adult and community learning has been removed from the FE line, but it still seems to be there. Alan Johnson: Okay. Q115 Chairman: Before we lose focus on the new 14-19 vocational diplomas, this Committee has had a lot of discussion around this because of the FE report that we have just concluded. It is absolutely crucial that this starts right. Start it wrong and it will give it a reputation that will take a long time to retrieve. We do hope that you will really put your personal reputation into making it right because 14-19 will do exactly what we were discussing earlier, but raising not only the profile but the status of vocational training in this country and also the ability to mix vocational and academic learning. That will need resource and training of staff. Alan Johnson: I agree. It is absolutely essential to get it right. It is something that will be at the top of my priority list. Q116 Chairman: If you talk to the most senior people in the skills area, they have concerns and I do urge you to canvas them quickly. Alan Johnson: Sure. Q117 Mrs Dorries: Can I ask about the three tier/two tier system of education that we have in this country? In my particular area we have three tier which I am very supportive of because socially deprived children benefit from it, from small, secure schools that you tend to have in the three tier system, as well as the rural villages. Does the government ever see a position where, with initiatives like the 14-19 agenda coming on board, the funding would not be able to support the three tier system? Alan Johnson: I have not seen anything which suggests that there is any move not to support the three tier system where it exists. I know where it exists it is very much appreciated. Whilst I would not like to say there will never be a time when we will look at that under the 14-19 or whatever, there is nothing I have seen that has crossed my desk that suggests anything other than we would continue to support it. Q118 Mrs Dorries: The government does support the three tier system? You do see the benefits of the three tier system? It is a difficult situation for you to answer. It looks as though you are contradicting the other. However, I suppose what I am looking for is your support for the three tier system really. Alan Johnson: I am not trying to prevaricate. I am not aware of any part of the DfES anywhere that is looking at this with a view other than to support it. I will be able to give you a categoric answer when I am absolutely clear that there is no piece of work going on somewhere. Q119 Mrs Dorries: How do you think the 14-19 agenda will fit within that system? This is a question I am being asked at the moment by councillors and local people. I think it will fit fine and be okay because the three breaks as they are moving to upper school at 13-18, I do not see any reason why it cannot come in there the same way as it does because it starts at 14 anyway, but do you see any reasons why there would be a problem? Alan Johnson: No, I cannot see a problem with it. I think it would lend itself very well to 14-19, but we are in this area doing a lot of work with ministerial colleagues, with Jim Knight and Phil Hope about these first five. It is making us concentrate wonderfully on how it will operate in practice rather than in theory, which is terrific. I will be in a better position to answer both of those questions more fully when we have done a bit more work. Q120 Mrs Dorries: Just in case there is not anything on your desk about three tier, I will just pass you this piece of information. There was a slight threat locally to the three tier system in my county just recently. I had 3,000 e-mails in four days from constituents who wanted to keep the three tier system. Perhaps just as a useful piece of information you might take that away. Where three tier exists, it is very much valued by local people. Alan Johnson: Okay. Q121 Paul Holmes: Returning to the 14-19 vocational diplomas, when I made my maiden speech in Parliament in June 2001 one of the things I referred to was the disaster of the introduction of Curriculum 2000 for the first year of AS level teachers. We started teaching the course without the text books because they had not been written yet. We were two-thirds of the way through the course. Kids had done two-thirds of their exams and course work because I went on an exam board course that told us how they were going to assess these things. The way it was introduced was an absolute disaster. It was so rushed. The Association of Colleges have pointed out that the first five vocational diplomas start teaching in 2008. Schools and colleges that want to deliver those have to register interest by the end of June and yet there are absolutely no details so far about what will be involved, how will it be taught, will there be available training for staff. Can you assure us that we are not going to repeat the disaster of the introduction of AS levels? Alan Johnson: I am hardly likely to say we intend to repeat the disaster of Curriculum 2000. Of course we do not want to. You are quite right. That was not our finest hour. We will have to make sure that this is. Q122 Paul Holmes: You said you were not aware of any criticism or feeling that schools had some kids who were on the border line, going from a three to a four or a D to a C at GCSE and focused their attention on those at the cost of other people, very bright children or very weak children, because they wanted to get those test results. I am quite staggered that you are not aware of that. You have only been in post a couple of months but this is a major thing that people throughout all levels of education talk about. There was an article in The Guardian on 4 July which I will let you have my copy of when you leave, if you wish, which gave some very good examples of this from a head who resigned in Nottinghamshire. It says that Jim Green wasn't prepared to do the things that would have helped him get a good Ofsted result. He knew the tactics. He could boost test scores by abandoning a broad and balanced curriculum and teaching to the test, withdrawing special needs staff from the vulnerable pupils to use for border line level four pupils instead. He could run booster classes and revision sessions. He was not prepared to do it. This is something you hear, as I say, at every level of education, so I suppose the question is that you have already said that you are going to go away and look at this, so if, in the first two months of the job, your Department is not giving you a briefing on the concerns about this, can you guarantee that you are going to make this a number one reading priority of all the commitments that you have given that you are going to read up on? Alan Johnson: Maybe there has been. I have read so much in such a short period of time. All I said to Fiona is that it has not really registered with me and that is probably my fault. It is a big issue that is knocking around. Chairman: We like it when people recognise that they have faults. Q123 Fiona Mactaggart: I welcomed your initial commitment to closing the social class gap, but I wondered what you were doing about other chronic gaps like, for example, the under-achievement at most skill levels of people within certain ethnic communities and so on. Alan Johnson: Well, there are an awful lot of initiatives going on here. I am going to have a meeting in terms of Afro-Caribbean boys with the family of Stephen Lawrence because Jack Straw has asked me to and also with Valerie Amos who has got some ideas, but there is an awful lot going on here, and with Bangladeshi communities. There is an initiative, I forget the name of it, but it is one that Valerie Amos was talking to me about particularly focusing on black boys, looking for our support, so yes, that is one of the areas we need to look at. Chairman: This Committee has looked at under-achievement fairly recently. It is still an interesting report if you would like to have a look at it. Q124 Mr Wilson: Secretary of State, I would be very interested in that information you have on the Bangladeshi communities, by the way, so if you could let me have anything, I would be extremely interested. I am very keen to pursue this targeting of individual disadvantaged children to improve their life chances, and you suggested you are sympathetic to the Velcroing of money on to the back of poor children. Has your Department done any work on this or analysed this in any way? Have you got any trials in mind? Alan Johnson: They have done some work to try and get this factor, this figure of how we could better discern where disadvantaged children are. It has not been tremendously successful yet because it is very difficult to do, and that was the inference of my answer earlier on. Q125 Mr Wilson: But it is something you are obviously looking at and, if you are able to do it, would you let the parents of those poor children choose any school to spend their money on, whether it be a public or a private school? Alan Johnson: I see an education vouchers question looming. No, we would not. Q126 Mr Wilson: So independent schools would not be able to benefit disadvantaged children? Alan Johnson: There is a very good report by Peter Lampl - I am his greatest fan - and the Sutton Trust, but this is an area where I do not agree with the Sutton Trust. Indeed Belvedere College which they mention is becoming an academy, so it will be in the state sector, but I do not agree with taking state money to give to state pupils to go off into the private sector. There are the areas I talked about earlier on about the Charities Bill, how the independent sector, if they have charitable status, can actually help the state sector with their facilities, et cetera, but we are not going back to assisted places. Q127 Mr Wilson: Even though doing that might be of massive benefit to those disadvantaged children and to the parents of those disadvantaged children? Alan Johnson: Well, I think it is questionable whether it would be, really questionable whether it would be. Q128 Stephen Williams: I want to follow up what David Chaytor was asking you earlier about the split between 16- to 19-year-olds and then adult education because in fact your Department gave us that breakdown. We might be able to see why it was skewed because 16 to 18 FE expenditure from 2001 to 2008 projected has gone from £1.7 billion to £3 billion, whereas post-19 has gone from £1.6 billion to £1.8 billion, so there is a £1.3 billion increase for 16 to 19, but only a £200 million increase for 19 plus and for adult education skills separately it is actually a fall from £241 million to £207 million. Now, you did not like the quote I put to you earlier about variable fees, but I did read yesterday that you want more plumbing and less Pilates. Does that sum up your attitude to adult education? Alan Johnson: There is a lot in there. No, what sums up my attitude to adult education is that our priority must be those 15 million adults who are functionally illiterate and 17 million who are functionally innumerate because of education failures of the past, to give them an NVQ Level 2 entitlement and to introduce a Level 3 entitlement for 19- to 24-year-olds which we will introduce from, I think, 2010. That is where we have to go. Pilates is fine and learning conversational Italian and the Spanish guitar is great, but there needs to be a contribution, not pay for all of it, but a contribution to it because we need to focus taxpayers' money on where we believe the priority is. Q129 Chairman: There is a big difference, Secretary of State, between that, Pilates, all those things you have just mentioned and the ones that we have been particularly worried about, the kind of community education which gives that first step on the ladder. Alan Johnson: I agree and you raised this point very rightly at Questions and I agree that is why the new foundation tier is very important. There was always a presumption that they would charge 25 per cent of the fee and that was very rarely used. The presumption is that it is going to go up to 50 per cent and it is a very important way of ensuring that FE is really brought out of the Cinderella stage and ---- Q130 Chairman: You really are hooked on the Dearing principles? Alan Johnson: I am, I am indeed. Q131 Mr Chaytor: On the 14 to 19 diplomas, do we have a date for their publication yet? Alan Johnson: I am not sure, but I will let you know. Q132 Mr Chaytor: Last year we had the Higher Education Bill and this year we have had the Education and Inspections Bill. Do you envisage another education bill next year? Alan Johnson: Yes. Q133 Mr Chaytor: What will be the main thrust of it? Alan Johnson: We would be very keen, if we could, to get an FE bill. Q134 Chairman: Would we be able to do a pre-legislative inquiry into it? Alan Johnson: I am going for a stage to see whether we can get one and I think once I get to that stage, it is a good idea. Q135 Mr Marsden: Transience in schools, pupil mobility, Secretary of State, is a big issue in some of the inner-city areas, as Fiona was talking about, and a big issue in seaside coastal towns, Blackpool included, with a 50 per cent turnover. We have had two big reports by Sally Dobson in the Department in the last five years emphasising it. When are we going to see some financial support to address the issue? Alan Johnson: I saw your questions on that to my colleagues and the very interesting answer that they gave, which I forget, but I will stick by that. It is an important issue, particularly looked-after children where the Education and Inspections Bill had an element that said even if schools were full, they had to take in looked-after children to stop them being dumped in the worst-performing schools, so it is an issue with us. I cannot give you an immediate answer, but perhaps I will write to you. Q136 Chairman: We are going to pull stumps except for one thing from me. Is the Caribbean programme on course? Alan Johnson: Yes, absolutely on course and yesterday in Nottingham I sat in a room with headteachers, the local authority, a major employer/entrepreneur, the University of Nottingham, a Royal Society and a charity, all of them keen to put money into the three new academies that are going to come in to Nottingham and also very keen to get involved in trust schools. Q137 Chairman: So there is no shortage of sponsors? Alan Johnson: No. If anything, it has increased. Q138 Chairman: How does that fit with what seems to be coming out from Sir Cyril Taylor, this early identification of bright pupils and following them right through? What is that all about? Is that you or is that Sir Cyril or who is it? Where is that coming from? Alan Johnson: Is that in relation to academies? Q139 Chairman: I am asking you, how does this all fit together? What is this programme to identify the brightest children from whatever background and then follow them through? Where is that coming from? Alan Johnson: The gifted and talented? Q140 Chairman: Well, I do not know. Is it? Alan Johnson: I do not know which. Sir Cyril is a marvellous man and I ----- Q141 Chairman: And you pay his salary and he keeps on about tracking every gifted child in this country through to see what happens to them and to give them special educational help. Is that something that you are fully involved in? Alan Johnson: I think we ought to recognise that there is a problem with gifted and talented children who are not being stretched enough and we need to ensure that we recognise their needs. Just in this personalised learning issue, they have got different needs from the disadvantaged child's needs, but the disadvantaged child could be a gifted and talented child. I think Sir Cyril is on to something, but how we actually map it through, I am not sure. Q142 Chairman: Secretary of State, it has been a good session. Welcome back to the Department and welcome back to the Committee and we hope to see you for quite a long time. Alan Johnson: Thank you, Chairman.
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