UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be
published as HC633-i
House of COMMONS
MINUTES OF EVIDENCE
TAKEN BEFORE
EDUCATION AND SKILLS COMMITTEE
THE SCHOOLS WHITE PAPER
Wednesday 2 November 2005
RT HON RUTH
KELLY MP
Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 -
82
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Oral Evidence
Taken before the Education and Skills Committee
on Wednesday 2 November 2005
Members present
Mr Barry Sheerman, in the Chair
Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods
Mr David Chaytor
Jeff Ennis
Tim Farron
Helen Jones
Mr Gordon Marsden
Stephen Williams
Mr Rob Wilson
________________
Witness: Rt Hon Ruth Kelly, a Member of the
House of Commons, Secretary of State for Education and Skills, Department for
Education and Skills, examined.
Q1 Helen Jones: I want to explore with you some of the
evidence underlying the policies set out in the White Paper and in particular
the government lays great stress in the White Paper on the success of its
academy programme and argues that they have raised standards amongst the
poorest children but the figures from your own department show that a number of
academies have far fewer children on free school meals than their predecessor
schools. In Walsall, for instance, it
dropped from over 50 per cent to 15.9 per cent; in Bexley, it dropped from 45.9
to 37.9; Kings, if I have worked out
the average of its two predecessor schools right, dropped from just over 43 per
cent to 31.5 per cent. How can you
argue that these academies are dealing with the poorest children when the
evidence shows that a number of academies are dealing with fewer poorer
children than they did in the first place?
Ruth Kelly: I know that is what the media has been saying
but it is not right.
Q2 Helen Jones: They are the figures from your own
department.
Ruth Kelly: I am extremely pleased that this point has been
raised. If you look at the figures on
free school meals in predecessor schools, there were 980. If you look at the number of pupils on free
school meals in academies now, it is 1,100.
Academies have improved their performance. They are attracting more children to the school on free school
meals and more children whose parents otherwise would not have looked at those
schools at all. The result has been
that not only are they catering for pupils at predecessor schools; they are
also catering for other pupils. The
proportion of children on free school meals has therefore fallen. The total numbers have risen. This must be a very good testament to the
success of academies in raising standards and attracting pupils.
Q3 Helen Jones: Grieg City Academy has 320 pupils eligible
for free school meals out of 710. Its
predecessor school had 338. I could go
through the whole list but I am not sure the numbers stack up. Can I also draw your attention to the answer
you gave me on where the pupils are coming from? These schools were set up to deal with the poorest pupils in the
inner cities; yet some city academies are now taking very few pupils from the
ward in which they are situated. For
example, Bexley takes 27.8 per cent of its pupils from outside the LEA. Grieg takes 25 per cent from outside the
LEA. There are others in that position
too. The question that follows is that,
if these academies are dealing with a different cohort of pupils from their
predecessor schools, is not any argument about the results rather meaningless
because you are not comparing like with like?
The argument that they have improved results underlines a lot of what is
in the White Paper but you are not dealing with the same cohort of pupils.
Ruth Kelly: That is not right. To take the 14 academies that were looked at in The Guardian, there were 13,670 pupils
in those 14 academies compared to 11,840 in their predecessor schools. They are attracting more pupils. They replaced predecessor sink schools but nobody
wanted to send their pupils to them.
They are now serving not only those pupils but also drawing in pupils
from further away because they are good schools. The net result has been that not only are they serving the
disadvantaged pupils; they are also serving others as well. You quote one academy and I am not sure
which it is. I do not have the
individual figures here but across the board the number of children on free
school meals being educated in academies compared with predecessor schools has
risen. They are also serving other
children. That is a sign of success.
Q4 Helen Jones: I do not doubt they are attracting other
children but my question was if you are not dealing with the same cohort of
pupils the government's argument about the results is a very difficult one to make
a case for because you are not comparing like with like, are you? The whole argument is that they have
improved results for poorer pupils but the cohort of pupils that they are
dealing with in many academies is a different one from their predecessor schools. That is correct, is it not? You have just said that.
Ruth Kelly: They are very popular and they are drawing in
more pupils as a result. You have to
ask yourself why are they popular. It
is probably because they are teaching children well. They are providing well for pupil wellbeing in general. They have a good ethos. They work well with
parents and they are improving standards.
It is probably a combination of all those things.
Helen Jones: I think the evidence on the results is very
variable. It is very patchy between
academies.
Chairman: Is that the case?
Q5 Helen Jones: Results are variable between academies, are
they not? Some have improved their GCSE
results; some have become worse and some have stayed the same.
Ruth Kelly: That is right but on average they have
improved their results at three times the national average.
Q6 Helen Jones: The results are patchy. They are not all performing at the same
level.
Ruth Kelly: Of course.
You would not expect any specific school to perform exactly the same as
any other specific school.
Helen Jones: The government is drawing inferences from
this for its future programme. What I
am trying to draw out from you is that the evidence is very variable.
Chairman: You are saying that
the academies are improving three times faster than other schools?
Q7 Helen Jones: Overall, but not all academies.
Ruth Kelly: Last year they improved at three times the
rate of the national average. They are
increasingly over-subscribed and they are drawing in children from other
catchment areas but they are also serving exactly the same disadvantaged pupils
that were previously at a sink school.
Q8 Helen Jones: The government says it wants to increase
choice for parents in order to improve the opportunities for pupils from poorer
backgrounds. The academy programme
shows them drawing in pupils from elsewhere and the research from Bristol
University recently has indicated that the more choice there is in the school
system the more socially segregated schools become. It is not improving things for that bottom 25 per cent that this
Committee has been most concerned with in various inquiries. Do you accept that research?
Ruth Kelly: Let us take the academies programme. We have made the academy schools more
inclusive and integrated than their predecessor schools because their
predecessor schools had such an overwhelming proportion of children on free
school meals that they were not representative of the local intake. They have become more socially
representative as a result of the movement to academies, the improvement in
leadership at the schools and the different ethos that they are committed to
and so forth. If we can have the same
mission and ethos in other schools that there are currently in academies, we
have the prospect of driving up standards throughout the system and creating a
more inclusive system. The reason that
research in the past has pointed to choice producing social segregation is that
choice has traditionally worked only for those who can afford it, those who can
move near to a school that is performing well or indeed those who can afford to
buy private education. What we want to
do in the White Paper is move away from that and move to a system where choice
works for the disadvantaged. That is
the whole thrust and rationale behind the White Paper, that we want to offer
that choice of really high performing, good schools with strong ethoses to
everybody.
Q9 Helen Jones: In that case, why has your department refused
to accept the conclusion that this Committee came up with that the code of
practice on admission should have statutory force rather than be something that
schools merely have to have regard to?
Surely, unless that has statutory force, we will still be in the
situation where schools choose parents rather than parents choosing schools.
Ruth Kelly: The adjudicator system is on a statutory
basis. You are absolutely right. The code of admissions is a code of good and
fair practice that schools should have regard to but if another school or the
local authority complains about a school's practice, they refer it to the
adjudicator and the adjudicator can take a binding decision on the basis of
whether that procedure is fair or not.
There is a specific instance on faith schools where they are referred
directly to the Secretary of State but for all other schools the adjudicator
takes the decision on a statutory basis.
Q10 Helen Jones: Why then should someone disadvantaged by the
system have to wait for a complaint to be made? This Committee said in its report that fairness in public policy
ought not to be a matter of luck but a matter of course. If we believe that that should apply
throughout the country, why do we not have a statutory system rather than
leaving the admissions system to complaints from different local authorities
who may or may not choose to make them?
Ruth Kelly: What I think will happen under the new
framework in the Schools White Paper is that local authorities will have a much
clearer remit to act as the champion of parents and pupils. If they take that duty seriously -- and they
will have to because it is a new legislative duty that we are proposing -- they
should act as champions of all pupils who are not being fairly served by the
system, particularly those who are disadvantaged. For example, if a local authority sees that a school has a biased
catchment area or is not giving sufficient priority to particular groups of
children that you would expect under the code, they can refer that school or
indeed groups of schools to the adjudicator.
The adjudicator takes a common sense view on the basis of the admissions
code about what is right for children in that area and it is on a statutory
basis. I think that is quite a firm way
of determining admissions and it will work better in the new arrangements than
it has done under the old system.
Q11 Helen Jones: Then why not just make the code of practice
have statutory force? Why are we
jumping through all these hoops?
Ruth Kelly: Because it works pretty well at the moment.
Q12 Helen Jones: The report from this Committee decided that
it did not work particularly well. Have
you looked at that evidence?
Ruth Kelly: We are constantly improving. We are consulting on a revised code of
practice at the moment and we want to see how that works. This gives us a flexible way of
incorporating changes into the code of practice, but the adjudicator is on a
statutory footing and can take decisions.
Q13 Mr Wilson: I would like to explore the issue of trusts
but I would like a little background information. How many have applied for foundation status over the past 12
months?
Ruth Kelly: I do not have that figure but we have just
introduced a fast tracked foundation status which will make it much easier for
schools to become foundations or self-governing schools. In the past it used to be quite difficult
for schools to become foundation schools because they had to publish statutory
proposals and go through quite a bureaucratic procedure. Not that many have been able to go through
the old system.
Q14 Mr Wilson: Correct me if I am wrong: there was also this
earned autonomy status within schools as well.
How many have gone through that process and been successful?
Ruth Kelly: Earned autonomy has never been used and was
overtaken by the power to innovate which is a much simpler, less bureaucratic
mechanism for achieving the same thing.
Q15 Mr Wilson: How many schools made it through that
process, the new process that replaced earned autonomy?
Ruth Kelly: Lots of schools used the power to
innovate. It was very widely used on
the ground.
Q16 Mr Wilson: You have been pursuing this towards trust
status for a while now. What is the
difference therefore between a foundation status school and a trust
school? What are going to be the
different freedoms?
Ruth Kelly: A foundation school I prefer to call a
self-governing school. They are
essentially the same thing but I think self-governing is a much clearer way of
describing what happens. They are self-governing
rather than being community schools.
They will have exactly the same freedoms as foundation schools currently
have. They will own their own assets,
employ their own staff and have their own admissions authority within the code
of practice.
Q17 Mr Wilson: There is not much difference?
Ruth Kelly: We have said that self-governing schools will
then be able to acquire a trust and that is where the difference comes in. Self-governing schools use governing body
opt to draw in an external partner and will be able to do that and the external
partner will be able to appoint the majority of the governing bodies to provide
specific ethos for schools.
Q18 Mr Wilson: You are also saying that you want to allow a
much wider variety of providers into the sector: charities, parents and
companies to set up schools. The
government has introduced clauses in 1998, 2002 and 2005 Education Acts to
allow new providers into the system but, as far as I understand it, only one
school has come into the system as a result of those Acts. The problem has been local education
authorities, school organisational committees.
Are you going to sweep these away so that the bureaucracy is removed and
these organisations can come into the sector with a great deal of ease?
Ruth Kelly: We are abolishing school organisational
committees. Their powers will be
assumed by the local authority. The
idea is that the local authority takes the strategic role in the system. This is a very coherent way of looking at
how school improvement and diversity in choice and access ought to be delivered
at the local level. It is by giving
that role to the local authority rather than the school organisational
committee which currently is a representative of vested interests already on
the ground. That is what we are trying
to do in the White Paper.
Q19 Mr Wilson: Under the legislation, for example, if a
school in my constituency wanted to expand and was supported by teachers,
parents and the local community, would it be a very simple process now for them
to do so?
Ruth Kelly: The presumption will be in favour.
Q20 Mr Wilson: Will it be a simple process?
Ruth Kelly: It will.
We are trying to change the presumption because at the moment schools do
not want to come forward with plans for expansion because they are concerned
about what the impact will be on the views of interests represented in the
schools organisational committee. In
future, because there will be a strategic role in the local authority, which
does not represent a vested interest but represents the pupils and the parents,
it will be much simpler and more straightforward for the schools to be able to
put forward proposals for expansion and for them to be approved.
Q21 Mr Wilson: At the moment there is a large number of
obstacles for schools that wish to expand.
Are you going to sweep those away?
Ruth Kelly: That is the purpose of the change.
Q22 Mr Wilson: In my constituency during the summer months
this year I wrote to you about this.
There was a local school, Evergreen Primary, that had the support of
teachers, parents and the local community and wanted to expand but was refused
on the basis of surplus places. At the
time the government was denying the existence of surplus places. I believe now that the Prime Minister is
saying that there was a surplus places policy and it is now going to be swept
away. Is that a correct interpretation?
Ruth Kelly: There is not a surplus places rule and there
was not. The point behind the reforms
was to make it easier for good proposals which came forward to be approved
quickly and easily. The presumption
will be in favour. Where a school wants
to expand, it should be able to.
However, personally, I think it is much more likely that a very
successful school -- to take a secondary, for example -- with an inspiring head
teacher, rather than wanting to expand the provision at their school, which
they may want to do but it will depend upon the size of the school, may choose
to set up a trust and take over the running of an under-performing school
locally and help that to improve. That
will be how the school leadership team is challenged, rather than just
admitting new pupils into the existing building.
Q23 Mr Wilson: My local authority misinterpreted the
assisted places rules?
Ruth Kelly: There is no surplus place rule. I do not know what your local authority did,
by the way, but I am very happy to look at it.
Q24 Mr Wilson: They turned it down. I did ask you to intervene but you refused.
Ruth Kelly: Local authorities can use all sorts of
excuses and reasons for not allowing a school to expand. I do not know the details of that particular
case. I apologise for that. It will be
much easier for a school that wishes to expand to do so in future, although I
do not think that will be the primary route through which a school creates more
good school places. More likely is the
fact that a head teacher of a very successful school may become an executive
principal through a federation of two schools.
Q25 Mr Wilson: I can go back to my constituency and urge
that school to take advantage of these rules and expand?
Ruth Kelly: I am very happy to set out the surplus places
rule, or not, for your local authority to consider. There is no surplus places rule.
There may be other legitimate reasons why that proposal is not going
ahead.
Q26 Jeff Ennis: There is no doubt that there are some really
good measures in the White Paper which I fully endorse. I have grave personal concerns around the
whole concept of the trust school. It
appears to me that many of the good measures contained in the White Paper could
be implemented anyway without going through the rigmarole of allowing schools
to become trust schools. Is that not
the case?
Ruth Kelly: It is absolutely the case that a school can
become a foundation or self-governing school now. What we want to do is to make it much easier for schools to
acquire a trust that wants to acquire a trust.
You are absolutely right to say that this is not some proposal dreamed
up in Whitehall or in the Department for Education. We are learning from the experience of foundations that currently
attach themselves to schools, work with schools and help drive up standards in
schools. We want to make it easy for
schools to acquire that sort of external support where they want to do so and
where parents want them to do so. We
have proposed setting out enabling schools to acquire a trust. The trust could negotiate under the power to
innovate directly with the department any freedoms and flexibilities it needs,
both for that school and for other schools under its care.
Q27 Jeff Ennis: You will be aware that the top 200 performing
state schools at present have two common features. They have the lowest number of children on free school meals and
the lowest percentage of children with special needs. What sort of measures are we going to introduce? Are we going to introduce a minimum quota,
for example, for these schools in the trust for having, say, within three per
cent of a local authority's average of children on free school meals or
children who have special educational needs?
Ruth Kelly: I well understand your motivations for
suggesting that. Of the 200 top
performing schools, 161 are grammar or partially selective schools. It is not surprising they are top performing
schools because they select according to ability. It is also not particularly surprising that, as a result, they
have far too few kids on free school meals.
I would like to see our top performing schools in the future having far
more comprehensives figuring in that total.
How are we going to do that? Our
proposals for trust schools will enable them to develop the ethos and drive up
standards to do that.
Q28 Jeff Ennis: There is a rough correlation between academic
achievement and the number of students in a school on free school meals and
with special educational needs.
Ruth Kelly: Too strong a correlation and that is the correlation
that we are trying to break down. From
1998 onwards, schools have had to have regard to the code of practice which has
said that children with special educational needs need to be treated fairly. They cannot discriminate against children
with special educational needs. Under
the system that we have with the code of admissions, including the
self-governing schools, if a school does not admit a fair proportion of
students with special educational needs, it could be referred by the local
authority or indeed others to the schools adjudicator who could rule against
them. I think this is quite a powerful
tool for making sure that schools do admit a fair selection of pupils.
Q29 Jeff Ennis: Can I raise a school that will achieve, shall
we say, trust status in the future?
Presumably they will be responsible for their buildings and the land
that the school is built on. That will
be their total autonomy to decide. They
could sell a school playing field if they wanted to and build a residential
development on it if they got the planning permission etc?
Ruth Kelly: The playing fields legislation will still
apply to trust schools. They will not
be able to sell playing fields.
Q30 Jeff Ennis: They will be in full control of the buildings
and the land?
Ruth Kelly: Apart from playing fields. They are not just able to dispose of assets
willy-nilly. It has to serve an
educational purpose and be reinvested in the education of the pupils in that
site. Trusts will be charitable bodies
with specific educational objectives and will be bound by charity law as well.
Q31 Jeff Ennis: Can I quote a specific example? We had a primary school in Barnsley where
they had massive problems with methane emissions getting into the school
building so the school had to be closed for a very long period of time. It involved a lot of expense in carrying out
remedial works etc., to resolve the problems.
The kids had to be bussed to other schools in the area and so on. What would happen with a trust school if it
was faced with that scenario? How would
it deal with that? If it is a totally
autonomous school, what would happen?
Ruth Kelly: As I understand it, although I will write and
correct this point if I am wrong, the local authority would still have exactly
the same intervention powers in those extreme cases as it does at the moment.
Q32 Jeff Ennis: Where would they get the money from?
Ruth Kelly: The school.
Q33 Jeff Ennis: The local authority to deal with it?
Ruth Kelly: In the same way as it does at the
moment. Forgive me that I am not
familiar with the particular case, but the powers that applied in that case
would presumably still apply under the new system. I am very happy to look into that.
Q34 Jeff Ennis: Barnsley is currently going through an
extensive public consultation exercise to close all its 14 secondary schools,
merge them and reopen them as eight advance learning centres. I am pleased to say that we have funding
from the department to achieve that. It
is very innovative and it is all about getting more kids to stay on et cetera,
and to have life long learning within a school environment. What happens if some of these secondary
schools decide that they are going to be trusts and they are not going to play
ball; they are going to maintain their own particular fiefdom? They are not happy with the proposals. What implications would trust schools have
for adventurous, innovative plans that local education authorities have to
improve school standards in their area?
Ruth Kelly: Local authorities will still have all the
same powers that they have at the moment for school reorganisation
proposals. They will not be diminished
by the advent of trust schools. Local
authorities currently have to work with foundation schools which have the same
degree of autonomy as trust schools, albeit on an individual basis rather than
the trust having it.
Q35 Jeff Ennis: If we had an individual head, say, in one of
those 14 schools who wanted to protect his or her own fiefdom and got the
parents to go along the trust school route, would they be able to do that?
Ruth Kelly: It does not mean to say that they are somehow
cut loose of the local authority in that sense. The local authority in some senses, as strategic leader in the
system, will have more power than it does at the moment. To take the example of an under-performing
school, the local authority under the new system will be able to issue a
warning notice and if nothing is done after a year that school will move into
special measures. It is in existence at
the moment but it is an incredibly difficult tool for the local authority to
use. Under the new system it will
become very simple for the local authority to tackle under-performance in
schools. Then, they can issue special
measures to close if improvement does not happen rapidly. That will be added to its repertoire of
tools at its disposal to carry out these sorts of reorganisations. All the same powers will still exist for
local authorities in those areas of reorganisation which currently exist.
Chairman: Barnsley is obviously
very favoured.
Q36 Stephen Williams: This question arises from your statement on
trust schools. You were pleased to
announce a range of outstanding organisations which included Microsoft and KPMG
coming together to work with you, bringing extensive educational and school
management experience together with strong links to communities. I have never worked for KPMG but I have
worked for PWC, a very similar organisation.
I do not recall us ever being involved in the management of schools or
having particularly strong links to communities, let alone Microsoft. Microsoft I do not think is particularly
well known in that field. Can you tell
us what exactly you expect these outstanding organisations to bring to the
party, because if it is different from academies I assume it is not money.
Ruth Kelly: Microsoft in particular has proposals to work
with the Open University, to link up and provide support to schools. It is an extremely exciting model. They have some proposals that they are
looking at very closely at the moment.
They intend to provide management expertise to raise aspirations, to
provide specific ICT support to schools which they may not otherwise have
had. As I understand it, they are quite
interested in developing this model more widely. They will have to be involved in the next stages so that we make
sure in the legislation that the trust schools are set up in such a way that
they are able to do this, but I cannot think of a better example of the sort of
projects that we would like to see schools being able to benefit from, where
they think they could benefit from it. That is why it will be voluntary for the
school's governing body to take on a trust if they want to, but if there are
very clear advantages for their pupils in adopting a trust I think many of them
will want to do that.
Q37 Stephen Williams: Will every trust have to have an external
trustee, effectively?
Ruth Kelly: It could be generated within the school. For example, if you have an outstanding
school with an outstanding teacher, I think it highly likely that that head
teacher might want to set up their own trust so that they could set the ethos
for their own school but also perhaps for a second or third under-performing
school. The trust would make it
extremely easy to transfer their model of education, negotiating with the
department, to others very quickly and easily and spread that expertise and
leadership quickly throughout the system.
Q38 Stephen Williams: Apart from the advice that you mentioned,
will these external bodies have a role in the governance of the schools? The academy model gives extraordinary powers
to the person who contributes from outside.
Will that be the same here?
Ruth Kelly: They could.
They will certainly have a right to some governors on the governing body
and they could decide to appoint a majority on the governing bodies, but that
would be clear to the school and they would have to opt for that for it to
happen.
Q39 Stephen Williams: KPMG could provide a majority of trustees at
a trust school?
Ruth Kelly: It is not KPMG as KPMG. This is a charity that might be set up by
KPMG for school improvement. They have
corporate, social responsibility requirements.
They might choose to do that.
They are interested in working with us on that. The trust would need to be vetted and we
would need to be absolutely clear that the charity was intending to raise
outcomes and could do so in schools and then the schools would want to have
it. There are all sorts of safeguards
in the system.
Q40 Chairman:
You are aware of my view, shared by some on this Committee, that the more
innovative partnerships where you have a university with someone like KPMG are
for many people preferable. It gives an
assurance that that blend of educational background and experience with
commercial experience seems to work better and provide some safeguards for the
educational ethos and content.
Ruth Kelly: Universities are a prime example of the sort
of external partner we would like to see working with schools that choose to go
down that route. We have already had
expressions of interest from a number of universities. I spoke at a dinner last night where many
people round the table said they were interested in getting involved in trusts
as well. The more we can link it to
raising aspirations, the easier it is for people to understand how this might
drive skill improvement. Where you, for
example, have a university linking up with a commercial organisation like
Microsoft, which also has a direct input in terms of ICT and raising capacity
in the school, I think people will see that it has the potential to make quite
a marked difference to outcomes for the school.
Q41 Mr Marsden: I would like to probe what the White Paper
has to say about the new roles envisaged for local authorities and also in
particular the Schools Commissioner.
The White Paper says on page 103 that local authorities are to be given
the role of championing parents and pupils in their areas. You have given numerous examples today of
how that might work and it talks about them having more of a commissioning role
rather than providing education. What
is the need for a Schools Commissioner?
Ruth Kelly: The Schools Commissioner is to work with
external partners who might want to set up trusts, to make it as easy as
possible for them to do so -- the local authority will have some responsibility
for developing proposals at a local level as well -- and to try to point those
potential trusts in the direction of schools in particular disadvantaged areas
or schools that particularly need help to improve.
Q42 Mr Marsden: The wording on page 28 is: "We will establish
a new office to act as a national champion for the development of trust schools
and to work with potential trusts", which is what you have outlined. Will the Commissioner have a regulation role
for these trusts as well?
Ruth Kelly: We are developing the detailed proposals and
the vetting requirements for trusts and we are considering the role of the
Schools Commissioner in that respect and indeed of the local authority. We will set out proposals in the run-up to
the legislation on how precisely that might work.
Q43 Mr Marsden: You have not decided yet whether the Schools
Commissioner should have a regulation role?
Ruth Kelly: The Schools Commissioner will have some
regulation role and will also advise the Secretary of State on the exercise of
the Secretary of State's power if a local authority is under-performing.
Q44 Mr Marsden: I accept that obviously details will be laid
out in advance of legislation but is there not an inherent contradiction in
having an official, a Schools Commissioner, who has a job both to promote and
to champion a new idea -- in this case, trust schools -- and also one to
regulate it? This is not a model which,
so far as I am aware, is currently in the education sector, is it? It is certainly not one you would use for Ofsted.
Ruth Kelly: The trusts will be charitable bodies and they
will be governed by charity law. They
will have the same duty, for example, to promote race relations as currently
exists and to promote social cohesion as currently exists under charity
law. They will also have a duty to
promote educational outcomes. What we
are thinking about is a much more arm's length role for the Schools
Commissioner.
Q45 Mr Marsden: I referred to Ofsted and the regulatory powers
of Ofsted at the moment. Ofsted have an
inspection role; they do not have an improvement role. Other organisations such as the Adult
Learning Inspectorate, who we had before us earlier in the week, do currently
have that role, whatever role they may have under new proposals that are coming
forward. If you gave inspection powers
to a Schools Commissioner, would that Schools Commissioner have a pure
inspection role or would he or she in his or her office have an improvement
role as well?
Ruth Kelly: We are not talking about that sort of
inspection role at all for a Schools Commissioner. We are thinking about how the trustees might be vetted, for
example, when a trust is set up.
Q46 Mr Marsden: Who is going to monitor then?
Ruth Kelly: The trusts would be monitored by Ofsted but
the governing bodies would be the ones responsible. Ofsted would monitor the performance of the school at the level
of the governing body because they would be the ones who would be accountable for
the performance of the school.
Q47 Mr Marsden: Are you concerned that, whatever the final
role for the Schools Commissioner is defined in legislation as, there may be a
danger of ambiguities? You are talking
about the Schools Commissioner having a promotional and championing role; you
are talking about local authorities having a promotional and championing role
and at one point in the White Paper you talk about the Schools Commissioner
challenging local authorities.
Obviously there is an audit role for anybody in some of these things but
are you not in danger of setting up some sort of perpetual conflict zone
between the Schools Commissioner and local authorities?
Ruth Kelly: I do not think so. The Schools Commissioner is going to be a high level Department
of Education official.
Q48 Mr Marsden: That will not necessarily stop him
conflicting with local authorities.
Ruth Kelly: The department already monitors what is going
on in local authorities and expects them to be carrying out their job
effectively. The Secretary of State can
take powers in relation to that. What
we are talking about is bringing that together.
Q49 Mr Marsden: He or she will be an adjunct to DfES. It will not be a separate, stand alone
organisation?
Ruth Kelly: An employee.
Q50 Mr Marsden: Can I move to one of the other parts of the
White Paper that most of us welcome and that is the emphasis placed on improved
discipline, particularly as someone coming from a local authority where we make
particular efforts to tackle absenteeism and with the new targets in terms of attendance,
that will put considerable pressures on the very excellent pupil referral units
that we currently have. Where do you
envisage the additional support and funding for those pupil referral units
coming from?
Ruth Kelly: You are right to point to the fact that we
have to improve quality at pupil referral units. It is not necessarily the case that more pressure will be put on
them if we get this policy right.
Pupils can be temporarily excluded from schools at the moment for up to
15 days before alternative provision is required. I think that is too long and that alternative provision ought to
be required earlier. If you get
discipline right in schools there ought to be fewer temporary exclusions and
you create a virtual circle. This is
about pre-emptive action.
Q51 Mr Marsden: You do not envisage this new regulation
having an unintended consequence of increasing substantially the cohort of
people who would have to attend pupil referral units?
Ruth Kelly: Schools may choose to educate some children
off site and they may choose, in collaboration and partnership with each other,
what provision is needed. Some of that
may be on school premises, maybe in a learning support unit or in a separate
unit. Some of it may be off the school
site. It may be in a pupil referral
unit or in parallel to a pupil referral unit.
If schools work together and plan provision between them, what I think
will happen is that the quality will improve as well as the approach to
discipline within schools.
Q52 Mr Marsden: What you are talking about is a more
graduated system, rather than just being straightforwardly in schools?
Ruth Kelly: Absolutely.
Q53 Mr Marsden: One of the other things in the White Paper
that will be widely supported, which you recommend, is to improve the position
for disadvantaged pupils in terms of school transport. You have talked about legislation to entitle
them to that. You have also talked
about some of the innovative schemes like customised yellow buses that are
being piloted at the moment. You say in
the White Paper: "We will also expect local authorities to consider all home to
school and other travel as part of their new duty to support choice, diversity
and fair access." I do not think anyone
would quarrel with that but what are the budget implications on local
authorities for that? Are you going to
give them extra funding to assist them in that process?
Ruth Kelly: Yes.
We have allocated some of our departmental resource towards that end.
Q54 Mr Marsden: Have you any figures on that?
Ruth Kelly: I do.
I can certainly write to the Committee with the precise figures.
Q55 Mr Marsden: That would be very useful.
Ruth Kelly: You are talking tens of millions of pounds in
the long run.
Q56 Chairman:
That is much more refreshing than your former school transport initiative but
that was before your time. I have been
doodling here in terms of here is the Treasury attempting to reduce
regulation. At the top of the pyramid
there is the Department for Education and Skills. Then you have the Commissioner, then Ofsted, then the Audit
Commission and the local authority. It
does not look as though much regulation has disappeared.
Ruth Kelly: It is becoming much more light touch, more
proportionate and less bureaucratic so the Department of Education is becoming
more strategic and the relationship is becoming much more informed.
Q57 Tim Farron: If we could go back to the issue of parental
choice, the White Paper talks about choice particularly with regard to
expansion. Section 2.4 of the Paper
says, "Often parents are less interested in a brand new school for their child
than in having the opportunity to get their child into an existing good
school. Schools that are popular with
local parents but are oversubscribed should have an easy route to
expansion." That is the headline quote
that people -- parents in particular -- will latch on to but I think you have
said and certainly Lord Adonis has said over the last week that schools are not
going to be forced into expansion and the evidence is so far that very few opt
to do so. What exactly is going to
change?
Ruth Kelly: Very few opt to do so for a variety of
reasons, partly because of the way the school organisational committee is set
up. It represents other schools in the
area and so forth which have a direct interest in protecting their own interest
rather than seeing a successful school expand.
Some schools go through that process and expand and are widely accepted
because everyone accepts that it is in the interests of the local area. Other schools do not even put forward
proposals at the moment because they think they might get blocked and that
other people might think it is not such a good idea at a local level. We want to change the presumption so that,
where a school has a sensible proposal for expansion and there is clear
parental demand for that, they do not need to go through that process and it is
determined by the local authority in the interests of the local area. I would expect to see schools more willing
to come forward with proposals under the new system. What I am not suggesting is that somehow every secondary school
in the country will be saying, "We are doing quite well. Let's expand" because not all schools will
think that way. Some think that the
size they have at the moment is right to preserve their individual ethos and
the parents do not want to see that school expand either. There will be some schools however that do
want to go down that route.
Q58 Tim Farron: I cannot see many head teachers with so much
on their plate already wanting to embark upon an aggressive funding policy.
Ruth Kelly: I do not think that is right either. I think there are a lot of fairly ambitious,
talented head teachers in the system who want to make more of an impact on
education. One of the proposals in the
White Paper was to create a new breed of national education leaders, people
that we would talk to directly in the department, who would get involved in
policy, who are very successful head teachers in their own right and who might
well want to take on more of a leading role in their local area. That may
include setting up a trust and therefore sharing their expertise with less high
performing schools or under-performing or failing schools in their local
area. It may mean helping out in some
less formal way. I would like to see
that capacity for good leadership in the system to grow and be shared more
widely across the system.
Q59 Tim Farron: The evidence is that it is not going to be a
majority; it is not even going to be a vast minority of schools that do
this. Are we not raising expectations
of parents about the likelihood of getting their child into their first choice
school only to disappoint them?
Ruth Kelly: I am not raising expectations about every
school wanting to expand at all. Some
schools will want to and where they want to and they have a good case we should
make it as easy as possible for them to do so.
Q60 Chairman:
Is the likely scenario that there will be hundreds of portable buildings? Do you have nightmares about this?
Ruth Kelly: Absolutely not. I do not dream about every head teacher suddenly waking up in the
morning saying, "I want to expand the provision in my school." I do not think that is likely to happen to
the majority of schools. There are some
schools that will want to go down that route who feel blocked from going down
that route at the moment. It is highly
likely that some exceptional head teachers in the system will want new
challenges and want to take over two, three, four or even five schools if they
have the ability and talent to do that and people want their expertise in their
school. They can do that through the
new trust mechanism. I would like to
see leadership capacity grow. I would
like to see more good school places but I do not think the only way of getting
more good school places is by expanding existing successful schools although
they might have a role to play.
Q61 Tim Farron: I suppose the main movement towards
additional parental choice will be something that has nothing to do with you, which
is the fall in school rolls over the coming years.
Ruth Kelly: No, I do not think that is the case. You would not expect to see uniformity in
how falling school rolls hit schools anyway.
It would not necessarily be the case that falling school rolls hit
particularly successful and popular schools that parents wanted to get their
children into. There might be an impact
but that is certainly not the key route by which school improvement is going to
take place. The new vehicles of trust
schools is going to be hugely important in driving up standards, particularly
of under-performing schools in disadvantaged parts of the country.
Q62 Tim Farron: In my constituency, if you live in Coniston,
your second nearest school is 15 miles drive and a ferry journey away. How does choice work there?
Ruth Kelly: There is an issue about rural schools. I cannot remember the exact figure but it is
something like 85 per cent of all pupils live within three miles of three
secondary schools. I will send the
Committee the precise numbers. The vast
majority of pupils live within easy travelling distance of a number of
secondary schools. There are particular
issues about rural areas and how this works in rural areas. It may be that partnerships between a school
and a university or a local employer are particularly important in providing
diversity and access in rural areas because the more links you can make with
external partners the greater the opportunities that are there for those
children. Choice will work in a different
way.
Q63 Tim Farron: Last year, I understand that 11 admissions
cases ended up being referred to yourself as Secretary of State. The year before there were four and the year
before there was none. Is not what we
are doing in terms of handing admissions over to trust schools likely to lead to
a mass increase in the number of admissions cases referred?
Ruth Kelly: It is not an entirely relevant point to
make. Admissions do not get referred to
the Secretary of State; they get determined by the schools adjudicator.
Q64 Tim Farron: I am talking about the numbers that will be
referred.
Ruth Kelly: School admissions only get referred to the
Secretary of State if they involve questions of faith.
Q65 Tim Farron: You will know -- you can correct me if this
is an incorrect report -- that at the adjudication of the case against the
London Oratory School you ruled that the school was permitted to interview
parents as part of its interview admissions procedure and that the Gunnersbury
School was not permitted to interview parents as part of its admissions procedure. How do you defend this apparent
inconsistency?
Ruth Kelly: Both schools were referred to me after a
complaint about their admissions arrangements.
I took the advice of the schools adjudicator who is best placed to
determine whether their admissions policies are in line with the code of
practice or not. The London Oratory
submitted extensive evidence. I was
only asked to determine, not on the criteria that they were using but only on
how it was applied in practice. The
criterion they were using was faith commitment. They provided extensive evidence which suggested that
interviewing was necessary to determine the level of faith commitment. That was the only point that I could
consider, whether the evidence they produced was sufficient to show that it was
necessary to determine faith commitment.
We looked very extensively at this on the basis of the evidence,
including, for example, whether there was evidence of a difference in ability
intake between those who passed the interview and those who did not. They showed very clearly that there was no
difference in ability or indeed in the numbers on free school meals between
those who passed their interview and those who did not. They provided extensive evidence to support
their case that interviewing was necessary to determine faith commitment. I could not rule on whether that was an
appropriate selection criterion because the objection had not been made on that
basis. In the case of Gunnersbury, they
had a different criterion to judge against and they did not submit significant
evidence in support of their application.
Therefore in each case the decision to be made was absolutely clear cut.
Q66 Mr Chaytor: For every school that expands, one or more
schools must contract. Given that the
presumption is in favour of expansion but the local authority has a
responsibility for the wider interests of parents and children, what happens if
a school's bid to expand is deemed by the local authority not to be in the
interests of the wider group of parents and children? Who resolves that dilemma?
Ruth Kelly: They can turn it down.
Q67 Mr Chaytor: Is there a right of appeal?
Ruth Kelly: There would be a right of appeal through the
usual channels. The presumption has
changed so the local authority would be expected to look at it on its merits
and, if it was a good proposal, to accept that.
Q68 Mr Chaytor: You said earlier that the Schools
Commissioner would have the responsibility to point trusts in the right
direction to the disadvantaged areas.
That is not in the White Paper itself.
Is this going to be a specific responsibility of the Schools
Commissioner or is this just a general matter?
Ruth Kelly: The specific responsibility of the Schools
Commissioner is to help create and develop trusts.
Q69 Mr Chaytor: But not to allocate them to particular
schools or neighbourhoods?
Ruth Kelly: Absolutely.
Q70 Mr Chaytor: Absolutely yes?
Ruth Kelly: Yes.
The schools need to want it. The
Schools Commissioner would be expected to have knowledge of those schools that
were looking for trusts. Where there
were trusts in disadvantaged areas, where the school was under-performing, that
would be part of their responsibility.
Q71 Mr Chaytor: How are you going to ensure that all the
trusts do not go to the leafy suburbs?
Will there be a positive policy to ensure that the trusts are directed
to where they are most needed, not to where the schools have the best contacts?
Ruth Kelly: Yes.
Can I point you to page 28 of the Schools White Paper which says that
the Commissioner will work with both national organisations and local community
and parent organisations, particularly those in disadvantaged areas.
Q72 Mr Chaytor: Is the system of admissions based on banding
compatible with the principles of parental choice?
Ruth Kelly: It could have a role to play and we should be
as flexible as possible in allowing local authorities and schools to take those
decisions that are appropriate to their local area.
Q73 Mr Chaytor: For eight years the government has
prioritised keeping ambitious, middle class parents within the state
system. Now we are proposing a banding
system that is going to reduce the number of places in certain schools for
those very parents. Is this not a recipe
for riots in the outer suburbs?
Ruth Kelly: A school would need to choose to go down that
route.
Q74 Mr Chaytor: What incentives will there be for schools to
choose to go down that route?
Ruth Kelly: In the case of a new school the local
authority would set the admissions criteria it is looking for through the
schools competition. Schools would need
to bid on the basis that they could meet those admissions criteria. If you had a group of three or four
specialist schools that were very strong in their individual speciality and
they served a particular local area, they might decide between them -- and
parents might welcome this -- that they had an admission system which served
all four schools and they took a proportion of children on the basis of ability
and shared them out on that basis as well as their aptitude for the specialism. Those sorts of decisions are best taken
locally and I would not want to force this on any school.
Q75 Mr Chaytor: In a period of record low unemployment, is
not the working families tax credit a better indicator of social deprivation
than free school meals?
Ruth Kelly: It is a good indicator and we are using the
working families tax credit entitlement alongside the free school meals
indicator as the new entitlement for the free school transport provision that
we are going to make. We have only just
recently been able to use the individual pupil level data and match that to
free school meals entitlement to show what is happening to the attainment gap
between those children on free school meals and those without. This suggests that is a significant advance
from where we have been in the past. We
are now able to look at this. It is not
a perfect measure of the attainment but it is progress.
Q76 Helen Jones: Trust schools will be charities and the White
Paper says that they can only apply money to charitable purposes. Are you envisaging that will be charitable
purposes connected with the school or any other charitable purposes that the
trusts might have?
Ruth Kelly: Connected with the school.
Q77 Helen Jones: The charity can change its objects under
charity law. What is going to be the
interaction between the rules you set for trust schools and charity law? What safeguards can you build in to stop the
charity changing its objects?
Ruth Kelly: The trust will have to hold the land and
assets in trust for the benefit of the school.
That will be clear in how it is set up and they will not be able to
change the terms.
Q78 Helen Jones: I understand that but the charity can still
change its objects and therefore a charity can apply its income to different
objects. I am asking what you intend to
do to stop that happening with a trust.
Ruth Kelly: Trusts will need to preserve the original
charitable objectives of raising standards in that school. All their income will need to be devoted to
that purpose.
Q79 Helen Jones: What are the department's criteria for
deciding who would be unsuitable to run a trust school?
Ruth Kelly: We would regulate to prevent some groups of
people from being involved with trusts or indeed with trusts that supported
schools. Similar regulations already
surround, for example, the membership of a school company which disqualifies
people who would not be allowed to become a company director and also people
who have previously been removed as charity trustees and so forth or people who
have been disqualified from working with children and young people. Local authorities would be able to refer a
trust to a schools adjudicator if they thought the majority of parents would
not be happy with the proposed trust or the consultation did not take account
of the majority view of parents or if they were concerned about the influence
that the trust might have on school standards.
There are a number of safeguards built into the system. We will be outlining them in specific detail
during the run-up to legislation but it is a package which very clearly
preserves the charitable focus of the trust on school improvement and indeed of
that particular school.
Q80 Dr Blackman-Woods: One of the interesting aspects of the White
Paper is the greater emphasis being placed on personalised and tailored
learning. Does this imply a need for a
reduced pupil/teacher ratio? If so, is
that going to be achieved if we continue to reduce the numbers of teachers
training at secondary level?
Ruth Kelly: It is very tied up with better use of the
entire school workforce. What has been
happening on school remodelling is that teachers have increasingly been able to
concentrate on preparing lessons and teaching to the best of their ability,
focusing on teaching rather than other objectives of the school. Increasingly, as we move towards a
personalised system, schools will be able to supplement teachers with
experts. Those may, if you take a
foreign language for example, be mother tongue speakers or they may, if you are
talking about a vocational subject, be someone who works part time in the
field. They do not necessarily have to
be qualified teachers. They could be
high level teaching assistants with particular expertise or they could be other
forms of support staff. As you move
down a route towards personalised learning in which you have small group
tuition, even one to one tuition in certain circumstances, I think it is
important that the right expertise is there rather than that this is
necessarily, in each and every case, a fully qualified teacher. That is about using the whole workforce to
its best effect rather than about any prescription as to who does what. Those decisions are better decided at the
level of the individual school.
Q81 Dr Blackman-Woods: Does that mean you are not going to take this
as an opportunity to reduce the teacher/pupil ratio in the system generally as
we move towards personalised learning?
Ruth Kelly: Lots of pupils will experience a dramatic
reduction in the teacher/pupil ratio because they will be taken out of classes
to have small group or one to one tuition or indeed they will have support
within the classroom which is relevant to them. That is a slight variant on saying that everybody should be
taught in a slightly smaller group. It
is just getting the balance right and making sure that everyone has the
individual attention they need within the whole workforce brief.
Q82 Stephen Williams: This Committee is going to look at special
educational needs. Baroness Warnock was
here on Monday. She disagreed with the
statement in the White Paper that there is not a need for a fresh look at
SENs. Do you agree with her? She also said that statementing, she felt,
was now a complete waste of money and a disaster. Do you agree with that?
She was worried that trust schools would effectively marginalise SEN
pupils. Do you think there is a
worry? What safeguards are you building
into the trust model to make sure that SEN pupils will have a fair deal?
Ruth Kelly: Let me take the point about SEN pupils having
a fair deal. Trust schools will be
subject to the admissions code. Rulings
on a statutory basis will be made by the adjudicator, just as the adjudicator
does now for schools which comply with the admissions code. One of the elements of the admissions code
is that they have to treat special educational needs pupils fairly. That could be one reason, if a school
clearly sets its catchment area, for example, in order to exclude particular
categories of pupils or has a particular system which excludes SEN pupils, potentially
for referring them to the adjudicator, who could then rule against that
admissions policy. On statementing, the
answer is not that statementing is a disaster but that we need to be much
better at early preventative work with special needs pupils to make
statementing a question of last resort.
We are increasingly moving in that direction although I think there is
further to go. Getting good action at
the level of the school, getting expert support in early when pupils' needs are
first identified, making sure they are identified as early as possible, is in
the SEN community considered the best way forward. Getting that right will take a lot of pressure off the
statementing process. Some local
authority areas have been fantastic at early intervention. That has reduced public dissatisfaction with
the statementing process enormously. It
is just not used as much. It is not a
sign of the local authority not wanting to statement; it is a sign of the local
authority taking special needs much more seriously, more early on in the
process and making a real difference to outcomes. The last question was about taking a fresh look at special
educational needs. We do and in the White
Paper we propose new measures for special schools, for example, saying for the
first time that special schools could develop a particular curriculum
specialism, perhaps in a mainstream subject; or they might develop a special
educational needs specialism which they could share their expertise on with
other schools and create links with other schools. What is most important in all of this debate is putting the needs
of the pupil first, not the institution in which they are based. There will always be a need for special
schools, particularly for those children with complex needs. There are other children who are best served
within a special unit within a mainstream school. Other pupils are best supported in the classroom. The most important thing is that pupils get
the support which is appropriate to their needs and we will never cease taking
a good look at anything we can do to help that process along.
Chairman: Secretary of State, it
has been an excellent session. I wish
more people had been able to listen to the questions and the answers. I am very disturbed. You are the third Secretary of State in the
last few days that the broadcasting authorities have not televised. I believe the broadcasting authorities are
really losing the plot. If my colleagues
agree, I intend to bring the broadcasting people in here to ask why on earth
they are not serving Parliament better because it would have been a lot better
if this had been a televised session.
Thank you very much.
