Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60
- 79)
MONDAY 28 NOVEMBER 2005
MR DONAL
FLANAGAN, MR
JIM CLARKE
AND MS
MARGARET MARTIN
Q60 Meg Hillier: I want to pick up
on the issue of leadership. Margaret Martin has obviously had
15 years as Principal. In Britain now, certainly in England in
my experience, head teachers in London in deprived areas with
challenging schools are being paid a great deal now. Are head
teachers' salaries comparable here?
Mr Flanagan: Jim was one of those
people.
Mr Clarke: I was Principal of
a school in north Belfast that you might be visiting today. It
was what was called a Group One school—the Group One Initiative
was something that was inspired by CCMS with the Department of
Education—which, incidentally, has just over 79% free school
meals, and I think that should be taken alongside the view that
the average in the grammar sector is around 7%. What Group One
was about was recognising that there were structural impediments
to schools making improvements. One of those was the curriculum.
We need to go back to the curriculum issue. In 1989 Northern Ireland
followed the model of England, much against the advice of many
educationalists here in Northern Ireland, because we had been
pursuing a programme of schools examining themselves and setting
in place their own structures for renewal through an initiative
called The 11 and 16 Programme. The Northern Ireland curriculum
from 1989, which mirrored the English model, was an academic curriculum
which diminished many of the vocational areas which were being
developed, so we started out with a process to raise standards
but which in many cases diminished standards in areas of schools
where there was a significant enrolment from a disadvantaged background.
There are several of these Group One schools, four of them in
Belfast. In north Belfast there are three, in west Belfast one
and there is one in Derry. Open enrolment, selection, the LMS
formula based on pupil numbers, meant that these schools were
at the mercy of demographic downturn. They also were at the mercy
of the vagaries of the transfer system, so the numbers transferring
each year could not be planned. There was no potential for future
planning in many of these schools and this initiative was introduced
with a financial resource but also a series of Member of Parliament
initiatives through the Education and Library Boards which they
supported. All of the schools have shown improvement but in very
differential ways. One of the things that we led the way on was
the disapplication of the absolute straitjacket of the Northern
Ireland curriculum to allow much more flexibility and to allow
involvement with further education and with training organisations
as part of what those children experienced. We have raised standards
in those schools but it is against a backdrop of continuing demographic
downturn. There is no history in Northern Ireland of secondary
principals being paid more than principals in other schools, which
was your original question.
Q61 Chairman: It was, yes!
Mr Clarke: I am glad I was able
to elaborate!
Q62 Chairman: We have discovered
that elaboration is a gift of those who live in Northern Ireland.
Ms Martin: Can I come in on that
because Jim has raised an important point: we need to focus on
the curriculum and we need to see the link between the curriculum
and the economy.
Meg Hillier: I do not want to stop you
but I was particularly asking about the leadership. We are attracting
very high calibre head teachers. I am not saying people in Northern
Ireland are not high calibre but the pay issue has been quite
instrumental in that.
Q63 Chairman: Do you need a financial
inducement to have people of your quality leading schools, is
really the nub of the question.
Ms Martin: Do you want my honest
answer?
Q64 Chairman: Yes we do.
Ms Martin: My honest answer is
that we are fortunate here in the calibre of our teachers and
their commitment to our young people, that education still is
a vocation and that people see the challenge and the opportunity
to make life better for our young people as sufficient. There
is no financial inducement. We do it because we believe—
Q65 Meg Hillier: How will it compare
with a head teacher in a big comprehensive in England?
Ms Martin: It would possibly be
£30,000 or £40,000 less, but it is about commitment,
it is about what drives us, and what drives us is the vision of
making a difference to the lives of the young people who are entrusted
to our care. That is a very significant statement to make but
it is one that I passionately believe.
Chairman: Thank you very much for that.
As a former schoolmaster I am delighted to hear somebody use the
word "vocation".
Q66 Meg Hillier: Could I just pick
up on the school support programme and the fact that it has not
worked in all schools? I wondered if you could make any brief
comments about why that may be. If you are an organisation that
has set yourselves up as a standards board, as you said, Mr Flanagan,
where are the problems? Perhaps you could also touch on the issue
about rigorous standards when you have this differential system
that you have across the board.
Mr Clarke: We have got to acknowledge
that standards are improving generally but one of the things we
have to look at is the gap between the highest and lowest achieving.
PISA identified as characteristics of good and poor education
systems that those where the differential is less tend to be good
systems and those where the differential is wide tend to be poorer
systems. Northern Ireland has one of the widest differentials.
Within that there have been a number of schools taking part in
the Raising School Standards initiative and then the Schools Support
Programme dating back to the paper which we sent to the department
in 1993. There were about ten schools from each Education and
Library Board invited each year to participate in those initiatives.
The number of schools invited has significantly declined over
the last number of years, which is what you would expect when
you go through a programme. There were a number of characteristics.
Donald made the point that schools from the Catholic sector have
tended to be more successful in those initiatives and have sustained
their improvement longer. One of the reasons was the fact that
we used three strategies and in some others perhaps only one strategy
was used. Because these initiatives were managed by a board consisting
of the Education and Library Board and CCMS personnel, and that
CCMS do not have a training role in schools, the Education and
Library Boards have that role, the Catholic maintained schools
in the initiatives had the benefit of what might be called the
support dimension from the Education and Library Boards and the
challenge function from within CCMS which dealt with issues like
leadership and the management of the school. The tendency in the
controlled sector, and I say "the tendency" because
it was not the case everywhere, was that one individual supported
and challenged the school and invariably they failed more on the
side of support rather than challenge. The third element was intervention.
CCMS has never sacked a principal but we have encouraged people
to look at their contribution and their career profile and we
have created circumstances where we have been able to engage and
change management at leadership level. That has been very important
in securing a change of direction for schools and maintaining
that change.
Q67 Chairman: Could I ask you a couple
of questions about selection? You heard this morning a very eloquent
defence of academic selection. You also heard the grammar schools
and you have yourself gone out of your way to say you do not want
to threaten them. You have heard them say that without that selection
the system could not survive with the qualities that it presently
encapsulates, and you also heard a very eloquent description of
a new form of computer modelled profiling, Dr Morrison outlining
it. Would you like to comment on those points, and I address you
particularly, if I may, Ms Martin?
Ms Martin: I am happy to respond.
I think you only got one side of the picture this morning, and
obviously that is why we are here. Can I just quote you something
that I think is very important? This comes from Costello: "Students
tend to perform better in schools characterised by high expectations,
the enjoyment of learning, a strong disciplinary culture and good
teacher/student relationships". I think that is at the heart
of what we should be debating. The structures and what is there
have to be based around that and not the other way round. Secondly,
we need to see that the way forward envisages a common curriculum
to 14 and that choice only becomes operative at 14. That is something
which again I do not think was addressed this morning. We have
also got to look at the whole notion of partnership with parents.
We do not have transfer in Armagh, in St Catherine's College.
Our pupils come to us. They self-select. They are not selected
by the school, so they choose to come to us.
Q68 Chairman: Do you stream within
the school?
Ms Martin: No, we do not stream;
we band. We have three bands in each year group. We have an above
average, an average and special needs.
Q69 Chairman: Based on academic selection?
Ms Martin: No. We do not have
academic selection.
Q70 Chairman: But how do you band?
Ms Martin: Based on the Pupil
Profile which comes to us from our primary colleagues.
Q71 Chairman: How is that profile
done? Is it done along the way that Costello would advocate or
along the lines that Dr Morrison outlined?
Ms Martin: It would be done similar
to what is proposed by Costello. In fact, we are already well
down the road to being a model for a future possibility of a school
along the Costello model.
Q72 Lady Hermon: Are you over-subscribed?
Ms Martin: Yes, we are.
Q73 Lady Hermon: How do you say no
to those who self-select and want to come to St Catherine's?
Ms Martin: We have to use the
admissions criteria which are drawn up for every school and I
know at the moment the Department of Education are working very
hard on drawing up admissions criteria which can be used in every
school.
Q74 Sammy Wilson: What are your admissions
criteria?
Ms Martin: Currently we look at
siblings. We look at the children of members of staff who are
parents, and then we begin to look at the eldest female child
and then we look in a geographical way at our hinterland.
Q75 Chairman: How over-subscribed
are you?
Ms Martin: We are over-subscribed
somewhere in the region of 10 pupils per year. We currently have
an intake of 150 and into our Irish-medium that is a more flexible
figure. We have about 30 coming into our Irish-medium so we would
have a total intake of 180 per year.
Q76 Chairman: And for that intake
you would have about 200 applications?
Ms Martin: Yes, we would.
Q77 Chairman: It is not vast over-subscription?
Ms Martin: No, because the demographic
downturns that have been spoken of are already a reality for many
of our schools.
Q78 Chairman: Having got them there,
you talk about the banding. You were very fierce with me when
I suggested there might be some form of academic selection within
that but how do you determine what is above average and what is
special need? Presumably you take ability, however you define
it, as some form of criterion.
Ms Martin: It is one of the elements.
It is not the sole determinant but it is one of the elements,
obviously based on their performance over seven years in the primary
sector, looking at their literacy skills and their numeracy skills.
The one that perhaps we focus most on is literacy because it is
my view, and I know it is a view which would be shared around
this table, that if you teach a child to read you are opening
up all kinds of possibilities for them. Can I just give you a
figure and it is a very important figure? 93% of our intake at
the end of Key Stage 3 have reached at least Level 5 in English.
Given the all-ability nature of our intake, that is a startling
figure. That does not fit comfortably any of the statistics you
have been given. That will out-perform the majority of our grammar
schools but that is based on our belief that literacy is at the
heart of what we do in schools. That is one of the key components
that we look at when we are transferring from the primary to the
post-primary. Secondly, we have a cross-phase committee. We are
one of the very few schools in the north which has a cross-phase
committee, where we sit down with our primary colleagues, look
at how they give us information, look at how we use that information,
and we feed back twice a year to them on the placing of their
former pupils.
Q79 Chairman: This all seems to me
exemplary but can I touch on another point that you raised? There
was almost an implicit rebuke of those who gave evidence this
morning for not talking about selection at 14 rather than at 11.
Would you like to say a little bit about that? Do you believe
that it is necessary at 14 to have some form of academic selection?
Ms Martin: I believe it is important
at 14 to have the element of choice begin to play a part in the
dialogue that happens between the students and their tutors, their
year heads and the parents. That triangle really begins to play
a significant part at 14. In terms of that choice, it has to be
much more informed than it currently is, and it has to be real
choice. Therefore, our schools, in order to provide the kind of
choice that I am talking about, have to expand the options that
they currently offer post-14.
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