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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 633-iv House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE EDUCATION AND SKILLS COMMITTEE
Wednesday 7 December 2005 DR MARY BOUSTEAD, MS JEAN GEMMELL, MR CHRIS KEATES MR MICK BROOKES, MR KERRY
GEORGE, MR JOHN DUNFORD, Evidence heard in Public Questions 246 - 341
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Education and Skills Committee on Wednesday 7 December 2005 Members present Mr Barry Sheerman, in the Chair Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods Mr David Chaytor Mrs Nadine Dorries Jeff Ennis Tim Farron Helen Jones Mr Gordon Marsden ________________ Memoranda submitted by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers,
NASUWT
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Dr Mary Boustead, General Secretary, Association of Teachers and Lecturers, Ms Jean Gemmell, General Secretary, Professional Association of Head Teachers, Ms Chris Keates, General Secretary, NASUWT, and Mr Steve Sinnott, National Union of Teachers, gave evidence. Q246 Chairman: Good morning. May I welcome our witnesses today to the Committee. We have tried to be as accommodating as possible to get as many representative unions as possible in on this session. You know we are all under pressure to get this inquiry properly conducted and written up in time to have some influence on the Bill that will come out of this White Paper. I hope you will understand that we would otherwise have given you more time. I would ask everyone, both our team who will be asking the questions and you who will be answering the questions, to be reasonably short today, just to give everyone a chance and not for all four of you to answer each question. I also bear in mind that we have had very full and very useful written submissions from all of you as well. We are looking today for the added value of looking you in the eye and asking you the questions. I am not going to ask you to make an opening statement today but suggest that we go straight into questions. We can accommodate in your answers to the first questions a lengthier answer because of that. Let us get started. If you were going to mark this White Paper out of ten - to go back to your teaching days - how many marks would you give it? Mr Sinnott: I would have to split it into two and I would give five for one part and something a lot lower than five for another part. Quite clearly we have a whole range of really positive measures in the White Paper dealing with issues to do with behaviour in schools and there are some very supportive measures in relation to parents within the White Paper, but the second part, on issues to do with admissions and issues to do with choice, I would give a very low mark to indeed. We believe that they will be detrimental to community cohesion, detrimental to the interests of some of the youngsters from some of the most disadvantaged backgrounds. We would have to give a very low mark to that indeed. I would give a very low mark because the way in which I operated as a teacher was that I always wanted to encourage my youngsters to base anything they said upon an argument that could be sustained and on a good evidential basis. This White Paper or certainly one half of it has little evidential basis for some of these very radical proposals it puts forward. Ms Gemmell: I have to go along with that answer, inasmuch as the members and council of my association are wholly sympathetic to the intentions of the White Paper but are extremely concerned as to how the proposals outlined in it will achieve those intentions. Ms Keates: I think I would give it a higher mark than that simply because for us we have tried to look past the rhetoric of the headlines and look at what is actually in it. Quite a lot of the White Paper is about strategies that have already been announced. They are already in progress, they build on agreements we have had with the Government, and we are already in discussions about a lot of the areas and they are very positive areas. The areas where I have my concerns are probably similar to those of my colleagues: the issue of the impact of more autonomy for schools, the introduction of the trusts, and the whole issue of admissions and how you get a fair and equitable system of admissions, and also, as a trade union leader, how we can build in greater potential for the school workforce. Because we have an enormous evidence base about the impact of autonomy and greater freedoms for schools and in terms of impact on the school workforce and their terms and conditions. Dr Boustead: I would agree with a lot of that. ATL welcomes the strong commitment in the White Paper to social justice and to the best education for children from all abilities and all backgrounds; we welcome the proposals on discipline; we welcome the proposals for strengthening the grading and terms and conditions for support staff; and we welcome a lot of the chapter on personalisation and ensuring that young people get a curriculum which is fit for them and fit for their learning needs. But we ask the question: What mechanisms in the White Paper will secure the Government's ambitions towards social justice in education? and we remain utterly unconvinced that greater market forces in education - when education is not a real market, where pupils and parents are not going to pay - will simply result in schools, as many currently do, choosing pupils rather than pupils choosing schools. Q247 Chairman: Thanks for those introductory answers. One more question from me before we share the questioning around. One of the intentions that the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister announced when this White Paper was launched was to help the schools in the most deprived areas of our community. People talk about 30 per cent of pupils/students underachieving. How far do you think this White Paper will help that sort of underachievement in those schools with the most deprived communities? Perhaps we could reverse the order now and start with Jean Gemmell. Ms Gemmell: My worry is that I do not know how that will be achieved. My members' concerns are that, where parental choice is something that you have chosen in the White Paper to highlight, the pupils who achieve least in the worst communities are for the most part pupils whose parents are not used to articulating the sort of choice we are talking about, and in some cases they would either not know how or their attitude to education would be such that they would not take part in or would not get engaged in the sort of activities that the paper describes as desirable. I am very cynical about that personally and my cynicism comes from my experience of teaching in an authority where there were many children who come into the very category you are talking about. I am embarrassed to have to say that because the solution has to be found. But I do not feel that my union or I am in a position to say what would work, and therefore I am loathe to say "Do not try what you are recommending" but I am very concerned that inadequate parents will not actually be in a position to do the job that the paper describes. Dr Boustead: I think there are many proposals in this White Paper which will help the 30 per cent most deprived communities. I think local authorities targeting their dedicated schools grant on the most challenging schools is a very important initiative. We also believe the proposals on extended schools are very, very important, particularly to support the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children, so that they do not fall through the net through having a one-stop shop for their range of complex needs. We also think the proposals on school discipline will enable teachers and the school community to create much more orderly communities, and that is bound to be of help to the most disadvantaged children. But we have real concerns. We think their proposal for trust schools and the idea that trusts will spread good practice is Government doing what it said it would not do in 1997, which is becoming too interested in structures rather than standards. We cannot answer the question how trust schools are going to affect the learning opportunities for pupils. We cannot answer the question how trusts are going to deliver a better 14-19 curriculum for pupils. And we are concerned that many of the very, very supportive and strong commitment to social justice, the ideas in the White Paper, are undermined by the belief that a quasi-market will improve delivery of education. Ms Keates: I think the intentions in the White Paper are absolutely clear, and of course they build on the Government's focus ever since it came into Government in 1997 to focus on disadvantage which is something that we support. Mary has touched on most of the main issues: personalisation, parental engagement. All of those are crucially important. The extended schools, on a very simple level, can help to address inequalities around children's access to resource, for example, to support them with coursework or to help them with homework - because clearly those are areas where children from disadvantaged backgrounds do struggle against the better-off pupils. Our concern around this would be that there is a thrust that independence of schools somehow helps disadvantage. If you combine that with the admissions policy, that is where we believe that the Government, unless we can have detailed discussions and address some of these issues, is likely to miss the mark on children who will fall through the net because of school admission policies. Take, for example, the very laudable proposed change in terms of free transport. It ignores two basic things: one that in many rural areas there is not that choice of schools, and, secondly, if that cannot override a school's individual admission policy, however much it is in the fair code of practice, those parents are not going to have access. I think we have to move away from an idea that somehow in a disadvantaged area you cannot have a good school, because there are plenty of examples demonstrating that you can. The focus really needs to be in the local community. We would hope to persuade the Government to use the very good issues in here to focus on those local disadvantaged communities. Mr Sinnott: The issue of dealing with youngsters from the most disadvantaged backgrounds runs to the heart, indeed the soul, of what the National Union of Teachers is about. Indeed, those issues are highlighted in the three documents that we have published in the last year on educational matters: Bringing Down the Barriers to Educational Achievement; Learning to Behave; and our 14-19 Proposals. You will not find a more committed supporter of the Every Child Matters agenda and extended schools than the National Union of Teachers. We are wholeheartedly supportive of that. You will not find a stronger supporter of personalised learning than the National Union of Teachers - indeed, I have spoken in previous select committees about building in entitlements for children to a variety of educational provision, including personal tutors for youngsters at different stages of their career. We are wholeheartedly committed to all of those proposals. But we have evidence of the impact of a choice and admissions proposal similar to that which the Government is proposing, and it comes from Sweden. We know the impact of these proposals in Sweden and they are detrimental to some areas of our community and they are supportive of some areas of our community. Who does best out of the Choice agenda? We know it is the children of those parents who are most educated. It is those who are in cities. We do know that in Sweden parallel education systems have been created: an education system for the articulate and the educated, and an education system for the others. We believe that the Government's proposals will result in exactly that type of provision in England. I believe that the Select Committee should look very, very clearly indeed at the evidence from Sweden. Chairman: We will be doing that. We are already in with that process. Thank you for that, all of you. Now Jeff Ennis would like to continue with the questioning. Jeff Ennis: We have already had a brief evidence session with the Secretary of State. She underlined to this Committee that there is very little difference between the trust school concept and the already existing concepts of foundation and self-governing schools. She said that the only reason we are bringing in the concept of a trust school is "to make it much easier for a school to acquire a trust that wants to acquire a trust." So there is very little difference as far as the Secretary of State is concerned between what already exists and what the new trust school concept is about. Do you agree with that? Q248 Chairman: Who would like to take that? If you get first crack at this, you will not get first crack at the next question. Dr Boustead: I will take it. At first sight, that would seem absolutely right. In fact trust schools would acquire less freedom because foundation schools have a governing body which is more diverse. In trust schools the governing body would be largely appointed by the trust. At first sight: What are the levers in the system? It is a point that John Dunford made: Why would a head teacher want to go to a trust, because they would have less authority and they would be more accountable to a larger section of a governing body over which they would have little influence? On first reading the answer would seem to be: Yes, why would you go to a trust school? But then of course you look at the office of the Schools' Commissioner and we believe that that is the lever in the system to lever in trusts. We have real concerns about this office. The first concern we have is that we think it is inadequately accountable to local democracies, to local authorities. In the Office of the Schools' Commissioner, the officer will be accountable to the Secretary of State and to Parliament, so there is no accountability back to the local communities. The Office for the Schools' Commissioner will be a champion for trusts, doing links between trusts and schools, but what if a local authority in its coordinating plans for schools says, "There is no evidence here that parents want a trust and we think the schools can be organised in different ways. We want schools to remain within the family of the local authorities"? Our experience of academies - and we have independent evidence of this - is that there are huge pressures on local authorities to put academies into their LEAs. We have independent evidence that authorities have been told, "If you don't have an academy in your plans, then you will not get your Building Schools for the Future money and you will be put back on that agenda." It seems to us that the Office for the Schools' Commissioner is the one real big worry we have in this. If schools really said, "We want a trust to come in. We think there would be better governance" and it was a fair playing field, that might be one thing, but we are very concerned about this Office for the Schools' Commissioner - someone who is unelected, unaccountable to local democracies, and who knows yet what powers they will have, because they are inadequately outlined in this White Paper. That is where NTL has its real concerns. Q249 Jeff Ennis: One of the main reasons that the trust school concept is being put forward is that we want to see more collaborative working between schools. They say that you get more groups of schools wanting to become part of a joint trust under these proposals - and better working between schools is something that I personally support. What is there within the White Paper that acts as an incentive for schools to go for that particular joint-working? Mr Sinnott: I think it is the opposite. It is the opposite. The White Paper is not about collaboration but about competition. I am going to emphasise the evidence in Sweden again. You really do need to look at the evidence from Sweden, from the national agency that looks at education and looks at what they did in terms of the Choice agenda. It is very clear in the evidence from Sweden that the Choice agenda has resulted in less collaboration between schools. It cannot be more starkly put than it has been put in the Swedish evidence. The competition that is engendered by the type of choice and the market that is engendered by choice result in less collaboration between schools. It takes me back to what I was saying at the beginning: this is two White Papers and they are contradictory. They are contradictory. Q250 Jeff Ennis: We have already looked at schools in disadvantaged areas. Another initiative that they feel this particular White Paper will solve is the concept of the coasting school. We have obviously targeted schools in deprived areas quite significantly previously but we have not targeted what we call the coasting schools, the ones that are in the middle, in the "doing all right Jack" type of situation. Will the White Paper target the coasting schools more effectively? Ms Keates: First of all, there is the issue about what the coasting school is and how you are going to identify the coasting school. I have to say that it is not a comfortable option for any school in terms of the accountability structures that are currently in place. I think it is too easy to categorise schools as coasting or failing and not look at the circumstances in which those schools are working. I think you have to look at the accountability structure, and clearly part of the White Paper is bringing in the new relationship with schools, which is about getting in school improvement partners who are there to challenge schools. Those have already been piloted. Schools seem to have welcomed the approach of people coming externally and looking at what they are doing. I think there are strategies that are there to help schools and to help them move towards improvements, but I also think that expectations of schools have to be realistic. There are schools in extremely challenging circumstances which do exceptionally well, but external indicators - and for us the biggest inhibitors to collaboration are the performance league tables: we think there is enough accountability in the system without those - do not recognise what some of those schools are doing and so they can then be categorised as coasting or not improving rapidly enough - and the inspection system of course is raising the bar and the barrier all of the time. I think the issues are in there. I think I would challenge probably the definition of schools being coasting and the fact that not enough attention is paid to some of the struggles that teachers and other members of the school workforce have in those areas. Q251 Jeff Ennis: Are our witnesses concerned about the transfer of assets to trust schools? Ms Gemmell: When I look at the paper, I am puzzled as to why schools will want to seek chartered status. It seems to me that chartered status as indicated in the White Paper poses more questions than it does answers. I can understand why schools might want to seek foundation status but chartered status seems to me to be one which is not going to be encouraging to schools, particularly the different bodies to which the school becomes accountable. You have talked about Ofsted and we know about governing bodies, and if there are going to be parent councils as well ... We already have casework from establishments that are already largely funded by charities where there are issues between the charities board and the school governors and the LEA and Ofsted. My concern about the whole of the chartered schools programme is that, although we acknowledge intention, we do not see why schools would wish to seek it. On the other hand, it is possible to see why bodies might seek to charter a school. If that were the case, my perception is that it is likely that they would seek to charter schools that were currently deemed to be achieving, innovative and successful, and less likely to wish to charter schools which are the very ones the White Paper seeks to help. Q252 Jeff Ennis: I have one final question, and I would like quick responses from all of you if possible. If the Government drop the concept of a trust school from this White Paper, we have already heard what your scores would be in terms of out of ten, would that raise the score of this White Paper in your eyes? Would it make the White Paper more effective, given all the other positive measures that are in there? Mr Sinnott: Marginally. Ms Keates: Yes, it would. Dr Boustead: Yes, it would. Ms Gemmell: Yes, it would. Jeff Ennis: I rest my case, m'Lud! Q253 Mr Marsden: I want to take you on to the discipline aspect of the White Paper, because I think that is the aspect to which you have given a gold star so far, but I want to press you a bit on what the implications of some of that are. Discipline is related, as we have heard in other sessions, and the outcomes of discipline are related sometimes to decisions about pupils being based either in learning support units in schools or in pupil referral units outside of schools. Are you concerned or unclear about what the impact of the White Paper's proposals in other areas would be for LSUs and PRUs? Mr Sinnott: I think I am concerned about a range of aspects of the White Paper. Gordon is correct in saying that the issues to do with discipline are ones that I think will be well supported by the teaching profession. I think the issues to do with the new statutory authority for teachers to be able to discipline are very, very important indeed. They are important both in the symbolic nature of that but important in terms of its impact. The rest of the proposals in the White Paper will, in my view, result in increased resources needing to be spent on aspects of our education system that are about dealing with people who are dropping through the system, people who are not getting the best out of the system. That, again, is the experience of other countries. At the same time the evidence shows that there is increased segregation both socially (that is, class issues) but also in terms of ethnicity. It is argued that the impact of the White Paper will be detrimental to the other positive areas of the White Paper that are to be dealing with discipline. It is exactly in the areas which are the most socially disadvantaged that you are more likely to get issues to do with discipline. You are more likely to get the challenging behaviour from those areas, and this White Paper does nothing at all to address properly those issues. Dr Boustead: Are you talking about the fact that after five days the local authority then has to take responsibility for excluded pupils. Q254 Mr Marsden: Yes, and what is going to happen under these new proposals. Dr Boustead: I think local authorities under these proposals really have to gear up to making sure they have the facilities and the personnel to accomplish that responsibility. The one thing we know about children who are excluded from school is that the longer they are excluded, the more they are likely to become victims of real and profound social exclusion. We fully support the measures that after five days exclusion they go into a pupil referral unit or a learning support unit. I also believe that the sooner those children's profound and complex needs - because often the pupils who are excluded are some of the most disadvantaged in our society, disadvantaged for a whole range of reasons - are looked at and dealt with in a more secure and supportive environment, where there are fewer of them, in a higher adult-to-young person/child ratio, the more chance there is that they can be reintegrated into the school community. The longer they are away from school, at home, perhaps having one or two hours' tuition a day or a week, the more dislocated they become from their community. We think five days, and then, if they are not going to be reintegrated into school, they go to a learning support unit or a pupil referral unit. That is really important and we are fully supportive of that. Q255 Mr Marsden: Could I come back to this issue if the Schools' Commissioner. This may be one on which Chris and Jean may want to comment, because obviously you have commented extensively already Mary. There is in many people's minds, leaving aside the concept of trust schools, a profound concern about the duality of the role that the Schools' Commissioner has outlined. You could even say that the Schools' Commissioner is expected to be poacher and gamekeeper at the same time. But, from a practical point of view, assuming you accept the concept, do you have concerns about the fact that the Schools' Commissioner does not appear to be an independent author or actor on his or her own behalf? Ms Keates: I do not think that is the aspect that concerns me particularly. As we have said in our evidence to you, we have really gone back to basics on this, in that we cannot see the rationale for the role. I think that is why we have real deep concerns, because, as you say, there is a duality about the champion parents' issue, the trust issue. For us, the key thing is going to be: What is the regulatory interface between the Schools' Commissioner and local authorities? That will be the test of what that role is. As a union that sees one of the benefits of the White Paper as an opportunity at long last to have a look at the role of local authorities and to get some clarity and transparency; as a union that is very much in favour of that local democratic process, for us the key concern is: How will the Schools' Commissioner interface with local authorities who on the face of it are being given the opportunity to plan how many schools, what type, what size, where they are? How is that going to fit with the School Commissioner? Is the School Commissioner going to say, "You may think, as a democratically elected body, that is the way it goes, but actually we think you should have more trusts, more schools on parental demand" or whatever. So we do have real concern around that. Q256 Mr Marsden: Jean, would you like to come in and perhaps comment also, assuming we have trust schools, on why the regulatory aspects could not be dealt with by Ofsted? Ms Gemmell: I have some difficulty with some of the answering because my own PAT union council are meeting on Saturday morning and they are meeting in part to debate the White Paper. The relationship between the Schools' Commissioner and the LEA responsibilities is one that I know concerns them considerably because they are not clear about it and they are certainly not clear about how one can adequately be both a champion and ----- Q257 Chairman: Would you communicate with us after your Saturday morning meeting? Ms Gemmell: Yes, we will. We will send to you in writing the outcome of that meeting on Saturday morning. But the duality of that role, as you put it: gamekeeper and poacher, is one that is bothering us. Particularly our council is worried about the LEAs role in a good many things in relation to the White Paper: special needs provision, transport provision, partnerships with independent schools, faith schools, and the whole responsibility for excluded pupils. Q258 Mr Marsden: I would like to pick up the special educational needs aspect and refer it to the question of trust schools again. Trust schools, we are told, indeed schools generally, the Government is pushing to have an expansion in numbers if they wish them - although we have already heard Alan Steer say here in the Select Committee on Monday that he is quite happy with the size of his school and he would not want it particularly to be expanded. This is perhaps a question for Mary. Do you have a concern as to what the implications would be for admission of special educational needs pupils if we had a trust school concept? Dr Boustead: Yes, we do. Also, more widely than that, we have concern that at present schools are more likely to choose the children than the children the schools. We do not believe, as Chris has said previously, that the admissions arrangements are secure or robust enough to ensure that schools do take their fair share of the hardest to educate children, including those with special needs. We would like to see admissions codes being mandatory rather than schools having regard to them. In the White Paper you get a whole interesting section on banding and schools which operate banding processes, and this is seen as a good thing, obviously - it is in the White Paper because it is seen to be a good thing - and then that is left. That is a good example and then it is left. It is not endemic, but we know that certain schools operate practices such as interviewing parents for the depth of their moral commitment, which means that working class parents and parents who are less secure to approach schools will not put their child down for that school because they are afraid of going through what for them is a very, very scary process of an interview on their moral commitment. We are very concerned that the hardest to educate children, including those with special educational needs, will find they are concentrated in schools which are seen by the middle class parents as "less special" - special in a different way. Mr Sinnott: Look at the evidence. The evidence is there in the CTCs. The CTCs have a significant smaller proportion of children with special education needs than do other maintained schools. Q259 Mr Marsden: A final brief question to you, Steve. You have made great play of the NUT's commitment to personalised learning. There is a lot talked about personalised learning in the White Paper. It is easy perhaps to criticise. How would you ensure that the personalised learning, which the White Paper and the Secretary of State puts its emphasis on, ends up in delivering an egalitarian outcome rather than a biased outcome in the way you have expressed concerns? How would you do it, in other words? Mr Sinnott: There is a whole range of ways. I would not mind submitting a separate paper on how we would do that. It is one of the most positive parts of the White Paper and one that we wholeheartedly support. I want to underline that. I think you have to identify it as an entitlement to all children. It is an entitlement. It should be there as a right. It should be able to be claimed by youngsters and their parents at different stages, at some of the key points in a child's educational career. That is the way I think we would ensure it. At the same time, schools really do need to ensure that they have the skills within the schools to be able to deliver it. Q260 Mr Marsden: You are saying it is a wish-list aspiration which is not going to mean anything unless it is backed up by resources. Mr Sinnott: I think it has to be backed up by resources and there are some specified resources in the White Paper. We would like to see those extended and we would also like to see a range of pilots. Q261 Mr Marsden: You would support a pilot approach. Mr Sinnott: Essential. Essential. Chairman: I think we have to move on, because Nadine, I know, is under time pressure this morning. Q262 Mrs Dorries: On Friday I spent the morning with a headmaster of a school, a guy called Steve Morrow - a brilliant headmaster, not just because he got down at floor level and spoke to children eye-to-eye when he was communicating with them, but because I was there to present an award because the school has done so well over the last few years. He was deeply concerned about the effect that parental choice is going to have on the professionalism of teachers. He said he welcomes any parent into his office and will take any input from a parent, but, at the end of the day, the education that is delivered to the children, how it is delivered, in what format it is delivered and in what setting is down to his choice as a professional. What effect do you think the emphasis of putting choice on to parents will have on schools in the future? Ms Keates: First of all, I would agree with the head teacher who said the professional decision-making must be left to the head teacher, the teachers and, indeed, the whole education team - because of course the delivery of education now has focus on having that team because that is creating capacity but it is also able to meet more individualised needs. I think the Parental Choice agenda is more in terms of what that intake will look like rather than how it will impact on what takes place in the school. I think the very unfortunate term "parent power" is something schools are very concerned about because they want to see how that will translate in practice. I think every school and every teacher in our union will say that the more parents are engaged, the better and easier it is for the school to work with parents and to work with those children. I am not sure it is so much a choice issue; it is the way in which schools are going to engage parents and what parents' expectations of the school are in terms of that engagement. That is why we have put in our evidence to you a number of issues around the whole issue of parent councils and the potential they may have for not being supportive to the school but of going back to the days of the old annual parents meeting where they became vehicles for the disaffected. We feel it needs a national protocol. I think there is a lot of potential for schools to get more support, but, at the end of the day, how a child is taught, what they are taught, the strategies which are used must be down to the professionals in the classroom who are working with those children, in, obviously, any statutory context in which they have to work. Dr Boustead: I think there is a lot of rhetoric in the White Paper about parent choice but when you read the proposals they are very limited. Parents will have the right to demand new provision. They will have the right to demand; not to get it. Local authorities are going to have to say, "Yes, we have taken your views into account" but parents do not have the right to get what they demand. In trust schools, parents will have less power because the majority of the governing body will be appointed by a trust. What the role of parent councils would be and whether they would get onto anything more serious than discussing school uniform and whether girls should be allowed to wear skirts or trousers or whether the stripes on the ties are too large, I have some cynicism about. I think the right for Ofsted to take more account of parents' views, if parents complain about aspects of the schools, is a significant power. That will be a significant lever upon those very few schools who at the moment do not work very hard to engage with parents to do so more effectively. We think that the whole drive of parental choice and influence and power is overplayed in this White Paper. The proposals do not always amount to the rhetoric which precedes them. Q263 Mrs Dorries: Why would the Government go so heavy on the rhetoric if it meant nothing? Why do you think there is more rhetoric than substance in the White Paper? Ms Keates: Because we think this White Paper is written in two places. We think the sensible aspects of this White Paper are written with the DfES and the rhetoric is written by Number 10. Mr Sinnott: I think the Parental Choice agenda and emphasis places the teacher with professional dilemmas, one of them being: How do you respond to this group of parents who really can attempt to muster significant support for their short-term individual interests? Do the teachers and the head teacher match that? Do the teachers and the head teacher, in terms of properly identifying a range of youngsters who have specific but expensive needs, try to meet them? Even though those youngsters may be the people who, because of high stakes testing and league tables, may be the ones who will depress your test results, do you welcome them into the school? Or do you devise particular mechanisms or, as head teachers often say, play hanky-panky with admissions to try to encourage some to come to your school and put in measures to discourage others from coming to your school? It does place schools - and currently schools are placed - in those professional dilemmas. Some of them make the wrong choices, in my view, and I think that situation will get worse as a result of the White Paper. Q264 Mrs Dorries: I think Chris made the point, talking about power in education of the various types of parents, that it would be about the skirts and the trousers. I am not sure it would, because, as a pushy parent, I would make sure that I was in there playing my role, maxing it to the nth degree, along with other parents. But I am educated ... Actually, I am not, I am from a working-class background, but I would be perceived as being from a different type of background now. I would be maxing it; I would be putting maximum pressure on the headmaster of that school to do what I, as a parent, felt were my rights in the White Paper. But I would think that in different types of schools, perhaps in schools of the type I come from, parents do not engage with the school but are intimidated by it and are intimidated by just the language and the educational ability of the teachers and the headmaster there. Chairman: Could we have the question now. Q265 Mrs Dorries: I am sorry. I do not see that you are right. I think that parents who are able would be right in there and using their powers to the full. Ms Keates: I think you have put the finger on exactly the issue. It is about creating structures around the schools and about how you canvass the views of parents and the appropriate way for them to have a say in the way schools are organised and the way schools are run and the education of their children. Clearly, the principle of that everyone would support, but it is the vehicles for doing it. If this White Paper is targeting disadvantage, however, I do not think the issue of parent councils or anything that is a structure actually gets to the disengaged parents. The disengaged parents I think need the elements in the White Paper that may not go far enough: the issues of the choice advisors, the personal face-to-face meetings - and even then some people will find that quite an intimidating thing to do. I think the reason we had concerns about the whole rhetoric of parent power and then the structures around parent councils was to do with the issue of how those are going to be in a way that is meaningful and constructive. We think the whole thing is underpinned by a totally unnecessary duty, an additional duty, being placed on Ofsted to investigate and inspect parental complaints. We think that is a detrimental step. Ofsted have sufficient powers to get the views of parents; they do not need additional ones. Ms Gemmell: I think it would be an interesting position for the Schools' Commissioner, if they exist, and Ofsted to be put in, if Parental Choice lobbyists are suggesting that the curriculum or the way in which a school is run should be changed, when, in the light of the professional bodies considering it, the school is delivering the goods. It certainly is not going to be advantageous to any child to be put between a rock and a hard place of a head teacher and a teacher who professionally deem that a curriculum is appropriate and the child is not working hard enough at it, and a parent who thinks that it is not and the child is. Chairman: Time is ticking on. Helen. Q266 Helen Jones: The White Paper envisages, as we said earlier, parents being able to apply to set up their own schools. It is not clear, either from the White Paper or from the parliamentary questions I have asked, who a local authority would have to consult on those occasions. In your view, who should they consult? Who might take advantage of this opportunity? I must admit, I do not know many parents who want to run their own schools. What are the consequences for educational planning? Mr Sinnott: I am going to bore you to death again. Q267 Chairman: Bore us briefly! Mr Sinnott: I am going to say: look at what happens in Sweden. The Swedish study emphasises the way in which the Choice agenda has detrimentally affected use of resources and value for money. Who should they consult? We believe in and we emphasise in the NUT's documentation Bringing Down the Barriers positive alternatives to what the Government is proposing. We believe that there should be admissions forums. We believe too that there should be local authority children's services forums. We do believe that the wider community should be able to have a proper influence over which schools are to be built and which schools are not to be. You have to have significant community involvement in these things and not just allow a minority of parents to have influence. Dr Boustead: I think the question is really well put. It is a very, very good one because there are all sorts of debates which we are not having, which are not in the White Paper, which go behind the White Paper. Say you have, for example, an Exclusive Brethren set of parents who apply to set up a school. That sect means that those children do not eat with other people, that women are subservient, that they must leave school at 16, cannot use commuters, and no television. Where are the checks and balances in the system? The whole debate about the expansion of faith schools within Fair Admissions and Fair Funding is something on which the White Paper does not expand. Who are these parents? Where do they come from? What checks are there that they are representative of the local community? What would the setting up of an extreme faith school within a trust do to the curriculum? We have already had two years ago the big issue about the Vardy Academy and the teaching of creationism as an alternative. Q268 Chairman: I think that was hotly denied by the ---- Dr Boustead: I went on their website and saw their teaching materials, which were taken down two days later. Q269 Chairman: Please do not get into that. Dr Boustead: Okay, we will not get into it, but it is an interesting topic. So: Who are they? How is the consultation going to take place? The final point I would like to make is that there is really no evidence whatsoever, I agree with you, that parents are banging down the doors of local authorities to set up schools. What is happening in Lambeth is wholly extraordinary to that area. Ms Keates: This is not a new power under the White Paper. This is a power that already exists and parents have not been queuing up to do this. Q270 Helen Jones: The difference is that the presumption is with the parents in the White Paper. Ms Keates: That is right. The key issue to the point you made, which is a very fair one in terms of who to consult with, is that there is such a lot in this White Paper that I think will test the reality of the new role for local authorities The powers that they are apparently going to be given and the power of veto they have over this parental demand and then what happens with the school's adjudicator and what alternative provision can be done, all of those regulatory interfaces I think are going to be really important. Q271 Helen Jones: We have a situation where a lot of authorities are now coping with falling roles as well. In this situation that the White Paper envisages, where each school will be its own admissions authority, we have already touched upon the consequences of that in other areas. What are the consequences in trying to deal with falling roles? What do you think will happen to those schools in the most deprived areas? Since most money is now passported to schools, and local authorities do not have the powers to prop them up financially (which they used to have, so that if you were losing a teacher or something your local authority could intervene), what is going to happen in practice if that is implemented? Ms Gemmell: If you link your two questions together, you have an interesting dilemma: a falling roll situation in a local authority, particularly where schools in deprived areas are getting less resources because their rolls are falling and therefore their delivery is even further impaired, and parents of a particular group in that same area wanting to establish a new school. The dilemma there is that the parents may well have an argument for the need for a new school, whether it is to do with faith or whether it is to do with gifted and talented or whether it is to do with a particular aspect of children's ability, in an area where rolls are falling and the resources going into the most deprived schools are getting less and so the provision is getting less. You are not then meeting the needs of the very children that the needs of the White Paper directed to support most. Q272 Helen Jones: Someone said earlier that they thought the code for admission should be mandatory and done on a statutory basis. I agree with that. But would you like to see changes to the code? As well as putting it on a statutory basis, is there anything that you would like to see changed in what currently exists? Mr Sinnott: I do not believe we can teach the Select Committee anything on admissions. You have a fantastic report on admissions. One of the things we say very clearly in our evidence is that there is no holy grail. I think this is what you came up with. There is no holy grail there which is going to be about a fair admissions procedure, but one of the things we do have to build into anything to do with fair admissions is to ensure that schools do not create their own admission criteria. When you do that, you will be building in mechanisms that will be discriminatory, mechanisms that will ensure that they will not be supportive of some of the youngsters from some of the most challenging areas. Q273 Chairman: That exists now, Steve, but you have not been making much of a fuss about it as a union, have you? Mr Sinnott: We always make a fuss. I am an expert in making a fuss. Q274 Chairman: But it does exist now. Mr Sinnott: It does exist. We are not satisfied with the admission procedures as they stand but we believe that they will get worse as a result of this White Paper. Could I raise another issue which is a very important, key issue for us. One of the criticisms of the White Paper is that it has an urban bias to it. It does. One of the key criticisms I wish to make, based upon the evidence from OECD research and also from the Swedish study, is that there will be increased segregation in our communities as a result of the Parental Choice agenda. That is the evidence that leads to it. The Select Committee really does need to consider, given all the pressures that there are in our communities at the moment, whether our urban areas need more segregation. That is a key question that you have to answer. Q275 Chairman: I assure you we are looking at that. Dr Boustead: There is one bit of the White Paper that I think supports Fair Admissions. No newly set up school will be able to change its admissions protocol for three years, and, if the school is taken to the adjudicator, they cannot the following year simply renege and go back to the practice which was prohibited, they have to keep the judgment for three years. The Government does make tentative moves in this White Paper to address some of the balance. But the contradictions then overtake it once again. Q276 Helen Jones: Given all that and given that I think everyone here agrees that the key is in how you improve some of the schools that are currently operating in deprived areas and failing - and I take Chris's point that there are some schools in deprived areas that do very well - let us get away from these recommendations for a minute. Could you tell us briefly how you would do improve those failing schools in the most deprived areas? If the White Paper does not do it, what would? Dr Boustead: The schools which may be failing under established indicators may simply be a reflection of the socio-economic intake because a huge amount of what a school can achieve depends on how well the children come to school readily. Q277 Helen Jones: That is true, but there are differences between schools with similar intakes and some do it better than others. Dr Boustead: They do, indeed. We believe that there are already very, very important levers in the system, particularly the new relationship with schools, school improvement advisors, the better use of data, the better use of tracking. I think one of the things that the White Paper says here is key: the schools in the most challenging circumstances need more secure staffing; more targeted resources; better facilities; to engage with parents more, and targeted help - like the London Challenge did. For those schools in the most challenging areas in London we have advisors coming in: "What do you need? Oh, you need a new head of maths because you cannot get maths teachers." Rather than trusts taking over, those schools need targeted, supported help and resources to overcome the challenges they face. Ms Keates: I think I would start at the other end as well. I think that what is missing are more rigorous early intervention indicators and strategies rather than letting a school get to the point where someone describes it as a failure - be that Ofsted or whoever. Again I would come back to the intervention powers that are going to be given to local authorities. I do not think there should be intervention at the point of failure; there should be intervention in terms of indicators of underperformance at a much earlier stage, so that schools are supported. The reasons why schools get into difficulties can be very different. Schools in the more advantaged areas can get into difficulties and there are all sorts of reasons for that. I think it is the criteria that are going to be used by local authorities to spot that and support them before it gets to the point where people are talking about closure, failure, moving them to trusts, putting in an academy or whatever other strategy there might be. Q278 Tim Farron: You have already said that you feel that choice, though much trumpeted in the White Paper, is relatively limited. In particular, there is no real provision, no intention to force schools to expand seriously. I represent a rural seat. Colleagues here will be bored of hearing me use the same anecdote, but if you live in Coniston your second school is a ferry ride and a 15-mile drive away. There is no choice. But, given that the expectations of choice have been raised, what do you think are the consequences of having raised expectations and then really not being able to meet them? Ms Gemmell: Greater parent dissatisfaction from the very parents who are likely to be the first to exercise choice if it does exist. I think dissatisfaction with the situation for their own child leads to dissatisfaction with the education system which leads to children who become disenchanted as well. I think that is something very worrying. Dr Boustead: I think that is an interesting tension in the White Paper. I think there are two parts of choice in the White Paper. One is choice within schools: parents' councils, parents having more opportunities to exercise choice, to make demands within schools; and then choice between schools. We do know that 45 per cent of secondary school students go to their nearest local school and there is no evidence that that is concentrated in the disadvantaged or the disadvantaged parents who lack proper information. Largely, if your local school is good, you want to go there. I have a 15-year old; she goes to her local school. Why would she not? She can walk around the corner. There is a tension in this White Paper. Choice is a contested term in this White Paper. I think the DfES want choice within schools; Number 10 wants choice between. I think that lies at the heart of a lot of the problems we are facing with this White Paper. Q279 Tim Farron: I will not ask you, because I think you have all answered really, whether you think the emphasis should be more on quality than on choice. To put the onus on you and your organisations really, with regard to choice between schools, choice is a "hurray" word so far as the Government is concerned but how do you ensure that the emphasis goes on to quality and fair access instead? They are not such "hurray" words, are they? Ms Keates: From our point of view, what we would want to do is continue to do what we are doing at the moment, and that is working in partnership with the Government to look at making every school a good school, and we believe that we are engaged in strategies that will help to do that and that good strides forward are being made. We are very pleased that the Government has accepted that there is an inextricable link between raising standards and issues around the school workforce, and going into the next phase it is about making sure teachers have an entitlement to proper professional development so that they can meet the challenges of what is needed in the more personalised agenda, but also the issue of enhancing the roles of support staff, making sure that their pay and grading is right and making sure that you have got these sound and robust teams that can support the needs of children, which nowadays are highly complex, particularly in terms of the accountability structure schools have to meet; so from our point of view, we would want to strive to do that. Clearly, the whole framework in which schools work, the funding that they have and the resourcing, making sure that any funding system cuts down as far as possible winners and losers and also is able to target the money at the disadvantaged: because one of the issues in the system at the moment is that you do, in the factors for getting more funding into school, get an allowance for disadvantage, but if you go into a school you cannot often see that some creative structures need to be used to actually ensure that additional resource is going to the disadvantaged. I think there is a lot of work to be done, but I think we are making progress, and that is why my union would prefer to focus on every school a good school and work in that context. Q280 Tim Farron: A change of focus entirely, and a quick one. Certainly in terms of the after-shocks of the White Paper there has been some discussion, more discussion than there is in the White Paper, to support special educational needs and for children with behavioural, emotional and social difficulties, and the Government obviously has begun to focus on the role of school clusters in order to provide support for both these categories, if you like. I would be interested in your views in this area? Mr Sinnott: Very supportive. Those are the aspects of the White Paper that I think would be supported by all schools. Creating a situation in which youngsters who are not doing well because they have behavioural difficulties in one school and finding a mechanism whereby, perhaps at a crunch point, because that youngster has done something, finding an acceptable mechanism for them to be in another school without any break in the educational provision for that youngster has to be something we all want to aim for, but when you create the type of competition in the market, it really does run counter to that key area, the key way in which we want schools to cooperate. Q281 Chairman: Looking at Number 10, would not the Prime Minister feel disillusioned with some of the things you are saying, Steve. His government has poured money into education, it has been enormously generous in increasing teachers' bill pay and here you are having a good old grunge about this. Would it not be more positive if all of the teaching unions got together, all the people who are giving evidence this morning, and wrote your White Paper and perhaps that would be more helpful to the Prime Minister. Mr Sinnott: One day we will do that, I think, Barry. We will all get together and present evidence. Q282 Chairman: But is it possible for you all to get together and write an alternative White Paper? Mr Sinnott: I would love to do that, and I have even said that to the Prime Minister. Chairman: Perhaps we will send you away to do that. Thank for your attendance. It has been a very good session. Thank you. Memoranda submitted by The National Association of Head Teachers, Secondary Heads Association and Unison
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Mr Mick Brookes, General Secretary, and Ms Kerry George, Deputy General Secretary, National Association of Head Teachers, Mr John Dunford, General Secretary, and Ms Sue Kirkham, Secondary Heads Association, and Ms Christina McAnea, National Secretary for Education Staff, Unison, gave evidence.
Chairman: Can I welcome Sue Kirkham, John Dunford, Christina McAnea, Mick Brookes and Kerry George to our proceedings. You have seen the brisk way in which we have to operate in order to make things work. I think we had a very good session, you will agree, and partly it was a good session because people did stick to short answers to questions and did not sulk too much if they were not called on every question. If we can have that same spirit of co-operation I would be very grateful. I want to get started straight into questions and the answer to the first question can be a little bit longer. Roberta, would you like to move the questioning forward? Q283 Dr Blackman-Woods: I think you will all be aware that a lot of the controversy about the White Paper has been about the role of local authorities. Can you tell us what practical difference you think the White Paper will make to the role of local authorities? Mr Dunford: I think some of the spin that we heard before hand suggested that the role of local authorities was practically going to disappear. In fact the White Paper, if anything, increases the role of local authorities, and it does that in some quite proper ways in the sense that as we move into a broader children's agenda it is entirely appropriate that the local authority should be a strategic leader of those children's services in an area, and that requires some joined-up thinking, some joined-up services, and that is entirely proper. Where we part company with the White Paper is in the rather the simplistic view of the local authority's role in school improvement where I think at page 36 it is of the White Paper it says, "Where a school has had a bad Ofsted report the local authority shall consider the following: (1) sack the head teacher." That really is a very clever approach, and it suggests to me that the Government has failed to use the opportunity of this White Paper to get the balance on pressure and support on schools right and we hear far too much of our pressure. I do not think governments, in the plural, over the last 20 years have really made any attempt to get in place a sensible system of support for schools that are in difficulties. Mr Brookes: I would second that, and, indeed, we need to look at the role of the local authority where schools do not have capacity to provide that infrastructure themselves, and there are a large number of extremely good local authorities and we do not want to see that provision threatened. I would second what John is saying, because that particular page does not just say, "Sack the head", of course, it says, "Sack the senior management team and also the governing body", and we do need to look at where the support for schools is coming from. There is an awful lot of challenge but we do not see an awful lot of support. Q284 Chairman: You have also historically had some pretty awful local authorities, have you not? Local authorities could not appoint a director of education for two years. The standards across all the schools were appalling. You had to send in a private company to run them. It is not all a wonderful story, is it? Mr Brookes: In my school I had some disobedient children; it does not mean to say all of them were disobedient. You make a rule that covers everything; it is not just the misprints. Q285 Dr Blackman-Woods: Following on from what the Chairman was saying, is there an argument that local authorities have been too complacent in terms of dealing with failing schools or accepting coasting schools? Is there an argument that the whole system does need to be shaken up? Ms McAnea: I think we probably take a slightly different view of the role of local authorities, because we are very concerned about the local authority's role and that whole range of services to children and the extended schools and the core services, et cetera. Obviously, local authorities have an absolutely pivotal role in coordinating and providing and commissioning and providing and making sure that these services are actually available, and yet, at the same time I think there is a contradiction in the White Paper. On the one hand it recognises that local authorities have that role, but at the same time it is pushing schools more and more down the independence route, and I think there is a contradiction of attention there in trying to square the circle of ensuring that local authorities have that strategic role but at the same time do not really have any mechanisms for making sure that schools, if you like, buy into some of these as their regular agenda. I mention one other thing, which is a crucial thing for us in terms of the role of local authorities, which is that removing the local authority's right to have any more community schools means, inevitably, the end of community schools, although it may take some time for that to happen. That has a crucial impact on the support staff in schools, because it means, in effect, that they are no longer employed by the local authority, and we have no mechanism there at the moment for ensuring any kind of national structures, national frameworks, national good practice, whatever you want to call it, not just on pay and conditions but a whole range of other things, including training and staff development, which we think are essential if you are trying to deliver a coordinated service that will raise standards in schools, and to do that when at the same time you are fragmenting the support staff in schools, at a time when their role is even more important in schools, we do not think makes any sense. Ms George: Can I come in very quickly on that same point. One of the things that the White Paper totally ignores is that the local authority is not just a commissioner of services, it is a provider of services to schools and a very important provider of services. The great majority of schools in this country are, relatively speaking, small. If we are going to end up with tiny little units, independent little units, trying to seek all the kinds of services that local authorities currently provide, and I grant you, Chairman, patchily, but nonetheless that is a different question. The question of challenge to local authorities to operate properly is something that needs to be grappled with, and I would not dispute that for one second, but how small units will then resource themselves seems to me critical, and nobody, as far as I can see, has answered the question: what happens to those schools, currently relatively small ones, community schools, who do not want to go down the foundation, do not want to go down the trust route? Where do their support services come from? Who is the employer? How far are they going to be pushed? Q286 Chairman: How does that square with what John Dunford has just said that he sees this as an expanded role for local authorities? He is not worried about the same thing, is he? Ms George: But John represents secondary schools. Q287 Chairman: John. Mr Dunford: I did not catch what you said, Chairman. Q288 Chairman: What Kerry George has just said about "very concerned" does not seem to square with your thought that there is an expanded role. In fact, we had the NGA in last week who said that they seemed reasonably complacent. Mr Dunford: This reads like a White Paper for secondary schools. There is really very little in it for or about primary schools and nothing about colleges, and I think secondary schools are very much up for a commissioning relationship with local authorities. I think they require much less direct support than obviously would be the case in many of the very small primary schools. Q289 Dr Blackman-Woods: Can we move on. I would like to hear your opinions about trust schools. Do you think they are different from foundation schools? What do you think about bringing in external sponsors? Ms Kirkham: We believe, and our members are so far indicating that they will not be very likely to take up the opportunity for a number of reasons, and principally that we do not see that there are additional freedoms to be gained by taking on trust status. I think there is also the issue that in many parts of the country it would actually be very difficult to find either charitable or business sponsorship, which is required for trust status, and, therefore, the opportunities to do that would be limited. I think also many schools feel that as they are beginning and are successfully now working collaboratively between groups of schools that taking trust status, which might limit actually your ability to operate collaboratively with the schools outside the trust, would hinder that relationship. Mr Brookes: There seems to be evidence at the moment there is a paucity of companies wanting to support schools, and I am just concerned that this is going to place the school leadership team and possibly the governing body with another raft of things to do in having to go out hunting for sponsors. Clearly the focus of these teams needs to be on teaching and learning and promoting the ethos of the school. Mr Dunford: Can I say in one sentence, if the proposal for trust schools does not appear in the Bill, there will be no tears shed in secondary schools amongst secondary school leaders. Q290 Dr Blackman-Woods: That is interesting. I was going to ask was there likely to be a difference in take-up between secondary and primary? Mr Dunford: No. Dr Blackman-Woods: You think not. Q291 Chairman: Was there a question? Mr Dunford: I am sorry the answer is no, there is no interest in secondary. Chairman: You got the answer. Dr Blackman-Woods: Yes. Q292 Mr Wilson: I want to add some supplementary points to what Roberta has said. Your answer to why your members are not keen on taking up trust status is that there are no addition freedoms, or one of the answers. What additional freedoms would your members like if they had a choice? Ms Kirkham: As we wrote in our paper, the freedom that our members would like at the moment would be freedom from repeated initiatives and the freedom to concentrate on leading teaching and learning in the school and to concentrate on school improvement within the structures that we already have. Q293 Chairman: Does anybody else want to come back on that one? Ms George: I think we have learnt from that one. I do not think there is a school in the country that feels any differently. Mr Wilson: That is a negative rather than a positive reason, though, is it not. Q294 Chairman: Are there any positives you want to come back with? Mr Dunford: There are lots of negatives. We do not particularly want freedom on pay and conditions. Schools were able to have that. Only two schools ever took it up. We do want curriculum freedoms in terms of detail but within a national curriculum framework. There are some areas where, yes, we do want freedom, but Sue is quite right, the main thing is freedom to be able to concentrate on the teaching and learning, which is our top priority, and to get away from this. Q295 Chairman: That is a pretty unanimous feeling? Mr Brookes: Yes. Q296 Mr Wilson: The third reason, moving the sponsorship to one side, was you said there were limits to collaboration if you went down the trust status route. I do not understand why that would stop you collaborating whether other schools had more independence than yourself. Surely, if you wanted it to, it could lead to more collaboration if you had more independence. Ms Kirkham: Where you are working in a collaborative you have to set up some governance arrangements between a group of schools. As I understand it, if you become a trust school you might be working with a group of schools within that trust led by the trust and you would have different governance arrangements. I just worry that that actually might impede working with your closest local schools who might not be members of the trust. I have to be honest, I think at the moment, from reading the White Paper, it is quite difficult to see how those arrangements would operate, but I have some fears around that. Q297 Dr Blackman-Woods: Can I ask a question about federation? I thank we have not got quite clear from you why it is more difficult for schools to federate under the proposals in the White Paper when, indeed, trusts could bring a range of schools together. Mr Dunford: I think there is already a considerable move towards greater schools working together. We have seen hard federations in some places; we have seen soft federations in other places; we have seen consortia. Sue Kirkham here is head of a school that is part of a 14-19 consortium - there is a lot of collaboration work taking place - and we fear the White Paper proposals which drive schools towards greater independence, although I think there are some questions over whether the White Paper actually does that, in fact creates a climate in which collaboration is less likely. We want to see collaboration being incentivised more by the Government. They have produced a paper called "Education Improvement Partnerships" encouraging collaboration, but it is not really being incentivised, and that is what we want to see and we do not see any of that in the White Paper, and I think that is a lost opportunity. Ms George: Similarly, there are two problems for us. One is that federation itself may acquire a rather poor reputation if one of the things that does happen is that schools that are failing are required to federate. I am not sure quite how that is going to work. We have seen what is happening at the moment is a variety of arrangements between schools which we do think are generally positive, and to allow that to continue is one thing, to begin to require it to push those things is another matter altogether. It is not clear to us either that there will be collaboration between collaborations, and, quite honestly, that actually is also needed. Mr Brookes: Yes, just the difference between collaboration, and we should celebrate what is happening in the country at the moment and many schools do collaborate around the country. In terms of federation, I am very concerned about what may be lurking behind some of the words in this White Paper, which is the future role of the head teacher, particularly at primary, and I am concerned that proper consideration should be given to that key role in raising standards. Jeff Ennis: On this specific point, we have had organisations like the United Learning Trust, for example, who have already established an academy in a particular area, said, "We are very interested in taking over all the primary schools in the pyramid so that we have got one unique unit." Is that not an initiative we should be welcoming in terms of collaboration? Q298 Chairman: You are smiling, Kerry. Ms George: It almost sounds like a local education programme. The reason I am smiling is exactly that, and indeed, some of the discussions that we have had with people. I think all this is possible, and allowing schools to do the things that are best for the children they serve and best for the communities they serve seems to me to be an incredibly potent way forward. I am not convinced that what we have got here is actually doing that. Ms McAnea: I do not think that trust schools in themselves will lead to any greater federation. One of the concerns we have, I suppose, is when we look at examples like the United Learning Trust, because we have just negotiated a new national agreement with the United Learning Trust, so in our eyes they are probably one of the better of the groups who are running academies and they at least recognise unions. Even so, having said that, one great example, John said secondary head do not want freedom over pay and conditions and hardly any of them have taken it up, but what he means, of course, is teachers, because for support staff who are outside of community schools that is exactly what has happened. A number of schools, foundation schools, do buy into and do adhere to whatever is agreed at national and local level for support staff, but large numbers of them do not, and the United Learning Trust is an example of that where we have agreed a national set of terms and conditions with them which will apply in their schools which by and large are reasonably okay, but they have cut downs. They have cut annual leave and set pay schemes, et cetera, for school support staff - they have increased the hours - so it has not been a totally happy experience as far as we are concerned having to go down the road and negotiate with individual companies or trusts who are doing these things, and they are making savings at the expense of support staff. Q299 Tim Farron: Going back to something you were talking about a moment or two ago about trust schools and the amount of flexibility they all have, you acknowledged the fact that there is flexibility built in on pay and conditions. I just wonder what you think the impact of that would be on teacher recruitment, for example. Mr Dunford: I do not think schools will use it. The essential freedoms around funding and admissions are exactly the same for trusts schools as they are for foundation schools. We do not see any real advantage to schools that want those kinds of freedoms in becoming trust schools, and that, I think, is why there is so little interest in them. On pay and conditions, I do not see any change. Ms George: Can I add to that, the power to innovate does now allow schools to apply for disapplication or relaxation, whatever that means, of elements of pay. People have not tried to do that. Pay should be, in an ideal world, a neutral. In fact it is a huge problem for schools in all sorts of ways, and I do not think anybody wants to make it more complicated or difficult than it already is. However, in reality, I think if there were greater freedom you would get that the sort of thing that I think you were suggesting, which is that a better off school is able to make different sorts of arrangements and to pay more. Q300 Tim Farron: Again following up on something that you were talking about earlier on, we all seem to be agreed that there is not a lot in the White Paper relating to primary schools, but surely at least in a second-hand way there is going to be an impact upon primary schools. I just wonder if you have any thoughts about what impact that might be? Mr Brookes: Could I ask what the second-hand way is? Q301 Tim Farron: If we start emphasising the role of choice in secondary education, surely there is then going to be movement, for example, young people moving into catchment areas, and so on, as happens already with regard to primary schools. If the emphasis is on choice at the secondary level, even if we are not making any structural changes at the primary level, will it not change parental behaviour or schools' behaviour perhaps? Mr Brookes: I think there is already a lot of pressure from some parents to get into particular primary schools because they then will feed the secondary school, and, indeed, changing the nature of schools may well exacerbate those problems, and so, yes, you are quite right, the knock-on effect would be down to the primary sector. Ms George: There are some primary schools that have their own admissions arrangements now, of course. Again, I think the essence of the concern comes back to some of the things that were said in the earlier session about what are the consequences for communities and how communities work and how communities function if what you are able to do is to take what Nadine described as the pushy parent trying to get everything best for their individual children rather than that overriding concern for the community, which is the business of education. Ms McAnea: I think the drive towards greater independence, if you like, greater freedoms for primary schools, would have an impact on things like the ability of schools to have proper training and staff development. Because so many primary schools are relatively small, they do rely, I think more than secondary schools, on local authorities in terms of getting training delivered and buying in the services from the local community, and a lot of the changes around reading the modelling agenda in schools have a bigger impact in primary schools than they have had in secondary schools. I think we have all been aware of that, but it has had medium impact and will potentially go on to have a medium impact on primary schools and the areas of difficulty have been more likely to have been in the primary sector than in the secondary sector, and that is a drive towards, if you like, loosening the link between primary schools and the local authority. It will only exacerbate that. Q302 Tim Farron: A different matter entirely, the White Paper and in the White Paper the Government omits to legislate to protect teachers' rights to discipline. What do you think that might be and do you welcome it? Mr Dunford: I think the Steer Report on behaviour in schools was excellent. It was written by an expert practitioner group, who were very pleased with the recommendations, and we are delighted that the White Paper in probably its best section welcomes that report and says that it will legislate on it. Mick Brookes and I are currently on a ministerial group which is engaged in designing the legislation that you are asking about. We have not yet seen a draft of what the right to discipline is going to look like which will replace the traditional in loco parentis on which school discipline has previously been based. Clearly defining anything in law can make an awful lot of money for lawyers if you get it wrong. Q303 Chairman: Could you move one of those bottles, because I think it is stopping your microphone working. We cannot hear you or see you. Ms George: Normally bottles do not cause problems of that nature! Q304 Mr Marsden: The White Paper says relatively little about the role of governors, but teachers can be governors, of course, and others can be governors. What effect do you think the White Paper's proposals, particularly perhaps looking at the trust schools issue, is going to have on the ability or otherwise of schools to recruit governors? Ms Kirkham: I am not sure that the White Paper would make any difference to the ability to recruit governors. The area in which we have the most difficulty recruiting governors at present is, unfortunately, recruiting parent governors, and I think that is an interesting statement on the desire of parents to be involved, but most schools do work very hard to try and overcome that. I think we are disappointed to see that, if we are to have trust schools, one of the biggest differences in trust schools seems to be that they will only have one parent governor. Although it is difficult to recruit parent governors to school governing bodies, we do generally believe that it is very good thing to have them there. The other point about governing bodies at the moment, which the White Paper does not quite seem to recognise, is that through our new Ofsted arrangements, for example, we are already obliged to seek the views of parents, of pupils at our schools, we are obliged to report through our self-evaluation form on how we do that, and so our parent governors at the other governors really do take account of those views already; and because, as you have mentioned, the governing body represents both the local business community and other areas of the community and the staff at the school, it is the best way of getting a broad view of people to assist and to support the leadership of the school? Mr Brookes: What I think will adversely affect recruitment of governing bodies will be the setting up of parent councils, and I am not quite sure how governing bodies will feel about this group operating, I guess, in between themselves and the school. It is difficult recruiting governing bodies, and I think sometimes people forget that these people are volunteers. Q305 Mr Marsden: John Dunford, you talked about the White Paper increasing the role of local authorities, but we have heard other concerns here this morning about how people are actually going to cooperate. I would like to ask you, what are the specific mechanisms that you see in the White Paper that will promote the sort of sharing of good practice and what is the role of local authorities in that? Mr Dunford: I do not really see the White Paper as taking this collaboration and federation agenda further forward. I think we saw in the policy paper on Education Improvement Partnerships last year, and to a certain extent in the five year strategy that the DfES produced last year, a clear revision of a collaborative way forward for schools. In my school improvement model, as it were, you have schools getting together mutually supporting each other and the local authority joining in, and there are models in local authorities such as Noseley, for example, where you have got real commissioning of school improvement from the local authority to the schools and then the local authority engaging with the schools and supporting them. Some kind of vision of that level and type of support and mutual support for schools and collaboration, I think, is missing from the White Paper. Q306 Chairman: John, just to tease you out on that a little, you have had a lot of resources and you have had a lot of encouragement to tackle this. You talked about a model, but surely you understand the Government wants the 30 per cent of under-performing schools, including students who do not get a really good deal out of the education service at the moment, they want to push on to make sure those 30 per cent do, but your members are not delivering? Why have you not been doing it? Mr Dunford: First of all, I reject your assertion that our Members are not delivering. Q307 Chairman: Well, someone is not delivering. Whatever the model, someone is not delivering. Mr Dunford: You are interpreting the chief inspector's report in a rather different way than I am, because I think the secondary schools are delivering and I think part of the problem is that people continue to assert, without adequate evidence, that we are not delivering. I just do not think that is fair. Q308 Chairman: The drop out of kids at 16 who we know succeed with no qualifications and little interest in education seems to be quite a condemnation of what is happening some schools. Mr Dunford: I do not think there is anything in the White Paper that will help us with that. Q309 Chairman: That is what I want to get at. Mr Dunford: Exactly. Q310 Mr Marsden: Can we come back to the question of cooperation, John, and can I ask you a quick supplementary on that? You say you do not think there is anything in the White Paper that is going to promote it. Do you have any concerns that the role of the schools commissioner, which we have discussed previously in this session, may inhibit it? Mr Dunford: In the part of schools commissioner role, which is supposed encourage schools to become trust schools and become more independent from other schools, I actually think he or she is going to have rather a difficult job because the people just are not looking for that opportunity. In the part of the schools commissioner role which is about getting local authorities get into a more commissioning role with schools, if they are talking mainly about extended school services and so on, that is one area. If they get into school improvement, which is what there talking about here, then I think there is a real role for local authorities to play in school improvement partnerships, but certainly in the secondary sector those partnerships are likely to be led by the local group of schools, and that is actually happening in some parts of the country already. Q311 Mr Marsden: Kerry George, would the role of the school commissioner in the way John has described it be easier to fulfil if that person was not a career DfES civil servant? Ms George: Most things are easier to fulfil if you are not a career DfES civil servant, I suspect, judging by some of those that I have spoken to at various times. The difficulty with the commissioner role is the conflict within it, and I think everybody has identified that, on the one hand the promotion of a particular form of schooling and on the other hand some of the issues around parental power and so on. If it is going to be delivered and if it is going to be delivered in terms of the kind of respect that the role will have to have if it is going to challenge local authorities to do all the things that we hope they could do, then I think it is going to have to be someone who has enormous respect from the profession, and, with the greatest of respect to civil servants, I am not 100 per cent sure that that would necessarily be the right place to draw from. Q312 Mr Marsden: Would the role best be fulfilled by Ofsted? Ms George: I think that is one I might defer to my general secretary. Mr Brookes: I think Ofsted have a wide enough role already, I would have thought, but Kerry is absolutely right. If there is to be such a person then this person does need to command respect from the whole school community not just the school itself. Q313 Chairman: So you would like someone who is a bit of a push over rather than someone who would annoy you? Mr Brookes: I think the key thing, Chairman, is having somebody who understands how schools and communities work - it is that resonance that we need in schools - and if this person is going to be a champion of those school communities, particularly the school communities you are referring to that really do struggle to raise high educational standards, there may well role here. Q314 Chairman: Is not the reason the Government is inserting role is where was pushing John Dunford earlier: you have had money swishing around in the education sector for the last eight years, you have been given much better paid teachers in the system and yet, you can see the view from Number 10, you still have not delivered for 30 per cent of the kids who go to school in the morning. Surely that is the reason that this White Paper has been introduced, and what I am trying to get out of you is, firstly, what you would put in its place and how you would improve the White Paper? Mr Brookes: If I could take up the specific point about funding, and there is no doubt that people do appreciate that more people are working in schools, there is better ICT provision and school buildings are in a better condition, but in the paper itself, in chapter one, it talks about a 29 per cent increase in per pupil funding over the past eight years, which is about 3.6 per cent a year, if my maths is right, which is just above the teacher pay levels. It also talks about the increase from 35 billion to 51 billion between 1997 and 2004, which is 45.7 per cent. There is a big difference between the money that has gone per pupil and the money that has been spent on education, and we think that more money needs to get into the classroom. In this White Paper more money will be going outside the classroom and into a super-structure, and that, I believe, is wrong. For looking at how you raise standards in the toughest communities, there are two things that need to be taken on board, and, indeed, the community that I was working in until last year, one is low expectation of parents and the phenomenal progress that pupils have made in the primary sector, as well as the secondary sector, so that many children at nine and ten have better skills at literacy and numeracy than their parents, and it is raising that expectation within the community, and getting at that will not happen by some of the rhetoric that is in this document. Q315 Chairman: Choice advisors are rhetoric, are they? They are an offer of having a particular group of people helping the people you have described with their school choice. That is not rhetoric. Ms George: I think the difficulty with choice advisors is, first of all, how real is the choice in any event? Secondly, will those choice advisers get to the parents that people have talked about before who are the ones who are the least likely to engage with the system? In terms of how all of these things might ultimately be achieved, I think one of the recognitions of the Every Child Matters agenda is that schools alone cannot do it, and it would be crazy to imagine that they could. One of the concerns we have with the White Paper is the lack of clarity between the White Paper and the ECM agenda and where those things might cut across each other rather than supporting each other. Having spent a bit of time with an extended school which came, as it were, out of nowhere long before they were popular or fashionable, the first thing that a head actually said to me was that there is no point being an extended school and there is no point in delivering services unless, first of all, you have got good parents and you have found it what it is that they want, what it is they want from you and what it is they actually need from you; and, interestingly enough, to the surprise of all the heads sitting in the room, when the parents were asked the first thing they wanted was classes in cookery, which is quite interesting, but it got them in the school and it got things starting to happen. That ECM agenda and this agenda must work in parallel. They cannot cut across each other. Ms McAnea: I think there is a missing link somewhere in the White Paper, which is that there is an assumption that somehow the commissioner or the choice advisers will tackle that 30 per cent of under achievers. There is no evidence to support either of those people or those categories of people will actually be able to do that. It just seems to be, as I think somebody said in one of the earlier sessions, there is some really good stuff in it about more personalised learning, more support for parents, et cetera, the Every Child Matters agenda, and then, if you like, the next step as to how you do that, because there is something missing in there somewhere. Chairman: Funnily, the person that said that actually said the sensible bit had been written in the Department for Education and Skills. Q316 Helen Jones: That is exactly the issue I wanted to take up with you. The White Paper envisages no new community schools, and yet at the same time the Government's agenda is the Every Child Matters agenda, Extension of Schools, and so on. What in your view would be the effect on the whole of that agenda if schools each become their own admissions authority, move towards becoming independent, and so on? Christina, you have got a lot of people working across all these areas. Ms McAnea: I think there is a complete contradiction in the White Paper, but there are tensions, if you like, in the White Paper, which is that on the one hand the Government wants to have this wider agenda on what they want to do on that. Getting back to something that was said earlier about how would you tackle some of these things, the evidence is that one of the key ways that you tackle disadvantage is to get to children and their families as early as possible and not wait until they are in secondary school before you try and tackle these things. Q317 Chairman: Surely the Government has been doing that with SureStart and pre primary schools. Ms McAnea: They have been, but SureStart is still relatively new and it is still not being rolled out everywhere across the country. It is still a fairly limited programme and I am in order sure it has actually tackled----. The comparison that has been used in some of the recent evidence that has come out I am not sure is actually apples and oranges rather than comparing like with like. I fully support what the Government have been doing, and that is trying to put resources into that, and I think that is one of the key things that has to be done, and I think just simply bringing in structural changes as is in the White Paper will not do. We do have a major concern that the thinking around Every Child Matters and how you deliver that still feels very woolly to me, even though I have been to lots of meetings with ministers to discuss this, because, as Helen said, Unison, we cover social care of staff, health of staff, so we have a very big interest in this and there are a lot of people who are active in our union who are very concerned about this, and the thinking still seems incredibly woolly. If you are looking at the drive towards making schools more and more independent and separate from local authorities and from that community involvement, the example I would refer to is to look at what happened in FE after incorporation in 1993, or whenever it was, and that is five to ten years after incorporation when the FE sector, I think, went slightly mad in that lots of colleges were all competing with each other and it did not do anything to improve standards, it did not do anything to improve the chances of those people entering FE, and that is my worry about this drive towards independence. Ms George: I am grateful that FE has been mentioned, because one of the things that we mention towards the end of our written submission to you is the Foster Report, and certainly one of the things that fascinated me is that clearly Foster had had the benefit of the White Paper thinking, but it did not look to me much as if the White Paper had had the benefit of the Roster Report. The learning curves that we ought to be able to get from looking at our experience in all sorts of sectors again appear to me in some senses not to be being joined-up. So, Foster, yes, huge problems for colleges actually when they incorporated they suddenly had massive increases in overheads, they had all sorts of difficulties, they were putting money into the back office rather that the front-line - I think that is the kind of correct Gershon terminology - and there are risks here for that as well. But to come back to the Every Child Matters issue and the joining up of all these things, one of the things that I do not think the Government has succeeded in doing is getting many schools to understand very clearly what that joined up big picture us. As Christina says, people like us have been attending meetings about this for the last couple of years or more, and if we are still, at the end of it, not as clear as we might be as to how all these things are going to work, how on earth do you get schools to understand that? If you want to look at some of these things working properly, the Lorraine Mansford School in Hammersmith has got speech therapists on site, has got a nursery on site, it has got everything imaginable on site. It is a real community centre. As far as we are concerned, that has to be the future and it has got to be the way that you tackle that 30 per cent under-achievement to get in there. Chairman: We will await an invitation. Q318 Helen Jones: I want to ask what I asked earlier about the White Paper's plan to allow parents to set up schools where the presumption is with the parent. I think that is the important bit in the White Paper. Who, in your view, should a local authority have to consult before it happens? The White Paper says and the answers I have had say the local authority must decide if there is support for such a proposal. Who should be consulted to measure that support, and do you have a view on who might take up that opportunity? Which parents, in other words, would be likely to want to set up schools? Mr Dunford: I think there would be very few parents in a position to take up this opportunity, and I do not think we shall see very many of these schools at all. Ms McAnea: I think it is a bit of a chance for middle-class parents, to he honest. I agree with John; I do not think there will be a mad rush to do it, but, if it does, that is exactly what it will be: it will be in areas where it is predominantly middle-class parents who push for these things. Mr Brookes: The only incentive that I can see is that it may attract parents wishing to set up faith schools. Q319 Helen Jones: What about the consultation? Who do that you think should be consulted on such a proposal? Mr Dunford: The school organisation committees are being disbanded and those powers, quite rightly, given to the local authorities. That is fine because the local authority should be the strategic body that decides on the need for local school places. Therefore, the answer to your question has to be everybody who is affected by local school places: the local authority should consult local district councils, should consult all other local schools in the area - that is obviously crucial - governing bodies of other schools should be able to take a view, and so on, the widest possible consultation. Q320 Helen Jones: A different topic. I want to ask you about personalised learning. We have heard a lot about support for personalised learning, but I would like to ask, firstly, what do you consider needs to be set up in terms of continuing professional development to deliver that both for teachers and for support staff, and how do you stop personalised learning becoming a way of, if you like, sending the most challenging children into the least academic options? The assumption is that because they are challenging sometimes they are not right. We all know that is not the case. Would you like to comment on that? Mr Brookes: Personalised learning, of course, is already happening, and every child that has not just a statement of special needs but has special educational needs has an individual education plan, which is what personalised learning is, and that concept is already in there, but widening it to another group of pupils is interesting. Of course, with the individual pupil tracking that there is now available to schools, in a sense every child has a personalised learning agenda because you are able to predict where children should get to. In a sense this is something that is already happening and is embedded in schools, but perhaps it needs to be expanded, and I do not know whether that would be at secondary level. Q321 Helen Jones: I would be interested to hear from the secondary heads particularly about what training they think is needed for teachers in secondary schools. I keep saying this, but as an ex head of English I am not very good at deciding why a child cannot read because I work with a secondary school and that is not my skill? Ms Kirkham: I was going to say something very similar to Mick. Personalised learning really is about every teacher having an individual plan for each child in the classroom. It is very, very hard. In an ideal world a teacher goes into every lesson, and you have to remember that in most comprehensive schools a teacher will be meeting 30 different children every hour during the day: they need to be aware of the child's prior attainment, their preferred learning styles, their special needs, everything about that child, and then they have to plan their lesson so that every single child in the room will be able to learn, and, at the end of the lesson, they have to be aware of how much learning has taken place. That is a huge order, I think. That is the ideal, and it is helpful sometimes to take out small groups and to give children individualised learning, but real personalised learning will only take place when that is happening in every classroom; and as well as professional development, for which the agenda is huge, it is also a huge question of time. I think we are moving towards that with teachers having planning and preparation time, but, to be honest, I think teachers still need more time, they also need the time to work with the support staff who are now working with them and assisting them in that agenda to be able to plan. Ms George: The School Teacher Review Body Report has just made recommendations about a CPD for teachers. The issues around training and development for support staff and teachers, everybody who works in the school, are huge: because if you are not actually involved in that understanding of how children learn and so on - I never taught reading either, so I have got huge sympathy---- Q322 Helen Jones: No, the way I can go and teach James Joyce to sixth-formers without batting an eyelid, but if you ask me about child distribution I do not know. Ms George: That is right, but if it is going to work - and I do not have any illusions about this - it has got huge resource implications because it is not simply about providing extra bodies it is about providing time, and, as far as support staff training is concerned, forgive me, Christina, if I am saying the wrong thing here, but there are too many fingers in too many pies. The clarity as to where any of that sits in the focus that, for example, TDA needs to have and other bodies need to have that are involved is huge. At the moment that area is very messy indeed, because I think what was said earlier is right: there has been far too much----. No, there has not. There has been focus on teachers and not looking at the whole school community until relatively recently, and it is that whole school approach that has got to be looked at. Ms McAnea: I think all schools require a decent range of adults in the class, in schools, and a wider range of staff other than teachers are going to be involved in developing their own personalised learning. One of the key problems we have got, notwithstanding the comments Kerry has just made, is that there is still not a culture of a whole school approach towards CPD in schools, and the studies that we have done have shown that the teaching assistants who get the best training and the most training in schools, that is up now to 20 hours per year, so we are not talking huge amounts of training here being available to teaching assistants, who are the ones who are often involved in a lot of the stuff that Sue has referred to about more personalised learning, take children out, one to ones, et cetera, the discipline and behaviour issues, and for other staff other than teaching assistants it is far less than that. Over 50 per cent of the staff other than teaching assistants do not have any kind of training discussion with their managers, over a third of teaching assistants have no discussions with their managers about their training needs or do not have a training plan. Q323 Chairman: Who is that down to, Christina? That sounds appalling, but who is it down to? I would have thought if you had a decent head, if you had leadership in a school, you would have those needs looked at on a regular basis. What is at the heart of that? Is it the responsibility of the people you represent, the heads, not doing their job? We had a famous head on Monday tell us that he thought it was a disgrace that once you were a head you did not have to do any more training for the rest of your career. Is that the problem? Why on earth does not someone running a school talk to every member of staff in that school about their training needs? Ms McAnea: I agree with you. I do not want to cast blame or not on other organisations, but it is very much a cultural thing. I go to meetings where you say to people, and the head teacher is in the room, "How many staff do you employ?", and they say, "Twenty", and you say, "What, in a school your size?", and they say, "Oh, I have got 18 support staff", but when you say, "How many staff do you employ?", they say, "Twenty", because they mean twenty teachers, and it is still very much cultural thing. We have been trying get schools to think about the whole school staff team. Some schools are doing it very, very well, but there is still a huge chunk that do not. Mr Dunford: I think on the professional development front we are seeing a process by which performance management gets tied more clearly in with the professional development agenda, and I think that is very important, particularly in the context of personalised learning; and I am not just talking about teachers, I am talking about support staff, because I think most secondary schools have made the change in culture that Christina has just referred to, because if I ask people how many staff you have got, I am more likely to get an answer, "112" or "250" or whatever instead of "30" or "40" teachers. But I want to distinguish between personalising learning and individualising learning, and I think when government ministers first began to talk about personalising learning they deliberately said to the profession, "We are not going to define what we mean by that. We want the education public service to be more personalised for the youngsters who receive it and for their parents", and as an organisation, the Secondary Heads Association has worked with the specialist schools trust in developing that concept of personalising learning; and by that we are not talking about one to one tuition, individualised learning, we are talking about different styles of learning; we are talking about assessment for learning, we are talking about teaching children how to learn to learn, giving them more empowerment over their own learning, we are talking about schools listening more to the student voice and therefore students being able to have more of a say in the way in which schools are organised as well as using the new technologies, reforming the curriculum, workforce reforming, mentoring and coaching, again predominantly using support staff rather than qualified teachers, is another way in which you can personalise learning. We have run training programmes for head teachers, and they have been very well taken up. Mr Brookes: That sounds very much like a primary model of education happening in secondary schools, so that is. Helpful can I say, one of the things we might look at across the piece is the number of schools that have Investors in People. Of course, you do not get Investors in People unless you do consider your whole staff. My reckoning is that a large number of schools get Investors in People status and do not actually touch the sides. I am not sure how valid some of those things are. Q324 Chairman: You question the value of the IIP's badge on the front? Mr Brookes: Yes, but it is the process that counts, of course, not the badge. Q325 Mr Wilson: In our previous session we had some very interesting questions about choice and quality, and I would like to return to that. One of the people giving evidence said, "Government should concentrate on making every school a good school." Do you agree with that statement? Do you think that is the way forward? Mr Dunford: Yes, I do, but I think that, first of all, there is not parental choice, there is parental preference, and I think we should stop talking about choice. Choice is not wholly politically good, in fact. If you look at the way in which choice has made it very much more difficult for secondary schools and primary schools to work together to create a continuous curriculum for a group of students in a particular area, then choice has not helped in that respect. If you look at the way in which we are going to have to develop as extended schools, that is going to require much stronger links with your local community. What community do you serve if you have got children from 20, 30, 40 different primary schools? Q326 Mr Wilson: Following on from that, should there be any choice at all between schools and areas or should parents be forced to send their child to the local school? Mr Dunford: I think there should be the capacity for parents to express a preference, but I think if you go along the "every school a good school" model, which I very much support, a higher proportion of those will choose their local school. Q327 Mr Wilson: So that is not much of a choice at all? Mr Dunford: It is plenty of choice, but you exercise the preference for the school you believe to be right for your child, which is that school that serves your local community. Q328 Chairman: The frustration is that more middle-class well-heeled families travel a long way, and they do exert a great deal of choice: because they are more mobile, they have their own vehicles, they have greater knowledge. Is not part of this White Paper trying to redress that balance? Mr Dunford: The White Paper does not change the role of the commission forums, it does not change the role of the schools adjudicator, it does not change the freedoms that foundation schools have, which will be the same as trust schools, nor of community schools. I do not actually see any real change on admissions coming through this White Paper. Q329 Mr Wilson: I think we are going to deal with admissions in a minute. One of the other statements this morning was that they believed that money should be targeted at disadvantaged schools rather than driving the choice agenda forward. Do you agree with that as the way forward? Mr Dunford: That is, in fact, happening with the way in which school funding is being targeted, and the 335 million and the 60 million which is referred to in the White Paper as a support for personalised education is actually going to be targeted on schools that need it most. Q330 Mr Wilson: Is that a better solution than choice to the problems that schools are facing? Ms George: Can I come in. I do not think that this business of choice is anything much more than a chimera for an awful lot of people. It is an urban result. It is a London thing. I know parents in London who bus their kids, tube their kids across London. I can take you to places in the country where everybody comes in from 15, 20 miles distance because it is the only secondary school there is. It is an illusory thing, this idea of choice, and I think that one of the things that was said earlier is the risk of disappointing people who think that they are going to get access to choice that is not real is quite considerable. I do not think in a sense at the end of it you are saying that the two things are completely in conflict with each other. I would not say to any parent, "You must send your child to X school." I want the great majority of parents not to think it was a big issue, because the great majority of schools were providing an education that was perfectly good enough, and I am not using "perfectly good" enough in any sense to suggest coasting - a risky term - but it really should not be that kind of an issue. It is almost akin to saying would I rather have my middle looked at in Brighton or somewhere else. Q331 Chairman: What do you say to the parents that know from all the ways you can know that the school they are likely to send their child is to an under performing schools, a school that may not deliver a good education to them? What do you say to that person? Do you say, "Under the White Paper which may become the Bill, the other school down the road, which is a better school, is going to be allowed to expand"? Is that not a way to look at it? Ms George: It might be a way to look at it, and the federations and the collaborators that we have talked about might also be a way to look at it. It has always seemed to me that one of the best places to find good practice is within the system and what has not been too brilliant is spreading the good practice in the past; but if you go back to some of the reasons why, if you go back to the early days of the nineties and the whole business is schools being competitive establishments who were supposed to be battling with each other. The solution has got to be about collaborative working and it has got to be about the spreading of good practice. Q332 Mr Wilson: I think we have got as far as we can with that. Can we move it slightly along? What evidence have you seen, any of you, which suggests that parental choice actually helps to improve standards in schools? Mr Dunford: I think one of the problems with the White Paper is that it is not based in evidence, and I think that we have heard a lot of rhetoric about parent power, which I think is very disappointing. We want to see a more serious engagement of parents with the learning of their children. We accept that schools need to, in many cases, improve the information flow to parents. That is not about parent power, and I do not actually think parents want parent power either. Mr Brookes: In order to help parents make those choices, they need information which is accurate and clear, and this notion that there can be no schools with poor results that are good schools, which is being put about recently, is an incorrect one. There are schools that really strive to raise standards of education in communities and Ofsted says are good schools with poor results. Unfortunately, parents tend to look at results first and the detail second, and I think that is wrong. Q333 Mr Wilson: So you think parents need more information. No more power. Mr Dunford: I think that parents need the assurance, if the local school is not doing well, that proper support systems are being put in place to help the school. That is why I said what I said earlier about a better balance of pressure and support on schools that are not doing well. Q334 Mr Wilson: Who is currently not providing the information that parents need. You are saying parents need more information? Ms McAnea: At the moment, as somebody has said, most of them go on league tables, they do not go really on anything else. Although there has been this attempt to do the value-added bit and the league tables, it is still a very narrow definition of what a good school is as opposed to giving them information about some of the wider things that go on in the school community. It has been said, the whole choice thing is a bit of a myth in a sense in that in any of the surveys that have been done, and there have been lots of surveys done, and we have done, if you like, attitude surveys among the public to show that what people want is a decent and local school. They do not want to choose to send or want to send their kids miles across London. Q335 Chairman: Lots of parents do. Lots of parents choose to send their children to Eton. Mr Dunford: Not a lot. Ms McAnea: Seven per cent of the population choose to send their children to private schools. Q336 Chairman: We picked up people who were going to Slough to school from Tottenham. Ms McAnea: I am not saying it does not happen. It is very much a London South East problem, I think. Q337 Chairman: No, there are plenty of us in Leeds and Huddersfield and other places who know that children basically choose go up the valley away from the town centre. It is a phenomenon right across the UK. You cannot deny that surely. Mr Dunford: And on the table they get their choice. The vast majority of parents who exercise a preference get that first preference. Q338 Mr Marsden: On the back of the your comments, can I ask John and Sue, do you agree that this White Paper is too driven by a London centric and a middle-class London centric approach? Ms Kirkham: Yes. I am a head teacher of a comprehensive school in Stafford in Staffordshire and I have to say that I and my colleagues locally would not recognise the sort of discussion that you have just been having. We find that most parents actually want their child to go to their local community school; they have really welcomed the Extended School agenda, lots more family activities going on. My school, for example, is already open from 8.00 a.m. until 10.00 p.m. I will go back to the point about collaboration and give you an example. Within Stafford we are working very collaboratively. We now have a collaborative 14-9 curriculum, so all the parents know that if their child goes to any one of the secondary schools at eleven, in the sixth-form, for example, they will be able to access any courses in any of the schools. Schools have different specialisms, and so they are making that choice, I think, quite deliberately that they want the local community school and they want to have access to that wider curriculum as the child becomes older, and they are aware that they can get that within the current system of community schools. Q339 Mr Wilson: Coming back to Christina, you did say that choice at the moment is largely a myth. To a large extent I would agree with you, at the moment it is largely a myth, and that is because local education authorities have been filling surplus places. If we could create surplus places, additional capacity, then choice could become a reality but it would involve additional cost. Do you feel that would be appropriate to take on board that extra cost so that we could have additional choice in local education areas? Mr Dunford: No, I think that is an extremely bad way of spending the education budget. Ms McAnea: I said before, if all you are doing is just expanding good schools - and there is the definition of what is a good school as opposed to other types of schools - who will manage that process to make sure that there are enough places out there to meet, not just the choice but the preference of individual parents and make sure that their children are actually being able to go to a school that can deliver what they need as opposed to somebody just picking a school based on how well they do on GCSEs, et cetera. Q340 Chairman: The last little bit now right across the piece very briefly, what would you put into the White Paper and what would you definitely take out? Ms Kirkham: I would take out trust schools and I would put in more emphasis on collaboration and follow on from the education improvement partnerships with more incentives to collaborate. Mr Dunford: Those would be exactly my two. Ms McAnea: I would take out trust schools and I would put in some sort of national structure for school support staff, which at the moment they do not have. Mr Brookes: I would take out the derogatory language and I would put in ways to direct funding into the classroom. Q341 Chairman: What derogatory language? Mr Brookes: "No longer will it be possible for any school to hide its low or mediocre standards or to argue that parents should not play a fundamental role in their child's education." That is a complete travesty. Ms George: I think trust schools are obviously the favourite for being removed, so I am happy to go along with trust schools as well. What I would like to see in there is a complete look at education, a look across the piece. I would like to see not just a sector approach but actually looking wider. I mentioned the Foster Report earlier. I think if we were to exploit all the resources we have throughout the education system in a collaborative fashion we might have some decent chances? Chairman: In the spirit of cooperation you are going to go away and write your alternative White Paper! Thank you very much for your attendance. I am sorry we have rattled through it but I thought we had a good session. Thank you. |