Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
DEPARTMENT FOR
EDUCATION AND
SKILLS
28 FEBRUARY 2005
Q1 Chairman: Good afternoon, ladies and
gentlemen, welcome to the Committee of Public Accounts, where
today we are looking at improving school attendance in England.
We are joined once again by Sir David Normington, who is the Permanent
Secretary at the Department for Education and Skills. You are
very welcome. Would you like to introduce your colleague, please?
Sir David Normington: Yes; Peter
Housden, who is the Director General for Schools in the Department.
Q2 Chairman: Could you start by looking
at page 13 of the Comptroller and Auditor General's Report, paragraph
1.3, where we see that total absence from school has declined
by only one percentage point in nine years. Why has so little
been achieved?
Sir David Normington: I think
actually that is quite a considerable achievement over the period.
Because overall attendance is running at well over 90%, it is
quite hard to squeeze the remaining number of people who are absent.
The overall attendance is improving quite sharply. Unauthorised
absence, which you will no doubt come on to, is very static.
Q3 Chairman: Let us look at unauthorised
absence straightaway and page 18, paragraph 1.17. You have the
two targets there. Why did you not make any progress towards meeting
either of your targets?
Sir David Normington: It is quite
a complicated story. It is clear that we did not make progress.
What has been going on with unauthorised absence is that although
the number of pupils with very short periods of unauthorised absence
has been going up, the average amount of time that people are
absent has been coming down overall. What we think is actually
happening—and this is borne out by our discussions with
the people out there, the teachers and so on—is that heads
are being much tougher in whether they authorise absence or not.
That is driving some of the figures up, but they are also being
much tougher on persistent absentees and that is pushing the amount
of time they are absent down. So we have two effects going on
and it has left the overall figure pretty much as it was over
10 years. We are dealing with something really difficult here,
make no bones about that. It is very, very difficult to get unauthorised
absence down significantly.
Q4 Chairman: Even given your answer I
presume the figure here is right, that the equivalent of around
60,000 more pupils are back in school each day. Is that right?
Sir David Normington: Yes, that
is right.
Q5 Chairman: What are we going to do
about it then? Heads are absolutely crucial in this, but if you
look at paragraph 4.6 on page 42 you will see there that some
heads apparently are not giving sufficient priority to this matter.
At the bottom of the paragraph it says ". . . some schools
see attendance as an issue that they do not need to deal with,
but as something that the local authority will sort out for them".
Why are some heads not giving sufficient attention to this?
Sir David Normington: It is a
small number. Most schools now have attendance policies in place
and are being very tough in enforcing measures against absence
and picking up people who are absent. There are some head teachers
who are not doing that. If we could get all head teachers very
focused on this, we would get the results improving much faster.
I do not just blame heads: it has to be a combined effort between
heads, it has to involve a lot of parental support for the school,
the local authority has resources and it is very important that
they come in behind, particularly through their education welfare
service. It has to be a joint effort.
Q6 Chairman: Let us look at different
types of school then, because clearly the schools are crucial
to this. I know from my experience with my own children that it
is the ethos of the school, how the head treats parents when they
arrive on the open day and all those other factors which are vital.
If we look at Figure 17 on page 27, we see there obviously that
selective schools have very low absence rates. One would perhaps
accept that as axiomatic. Why do you think voluntary aided schools
have a much lower absence rate?
Sir David Normington: You have
probably put your finger on it. This is something to do with the
ethos of the school and something to do with the type of children
who go there, something to do with the parental support which
those schools get. You have to be a bit careful in generalising,
but it is going to be all those things. Many voluntary aided schools,
which are effectively the faith schools, have a very strong ethos,
very strong parental support for those schools. I am sure it is
going to be something to do with that.
Q7 Chairman: That is certainly my experience,
but there is no point labouring the point as it is an obvious
point. There it is.
Sir David Normington: Yes, it
is.
Q8 Chairman: You are very difficult to
interview, Sir David, because you always put your hand up and
accept all the points we make.
Sir David Normington: I shall
try to disagree at some point.
Q9 Chairman: Let us look at this behaviour
improvement programme. If we look at Figure 18 on page 31, I do
not know whether you were briefed on this but I did ask the Prime
Minister at the Liaison Committee about this matter. I put to
him in broad terms that he had spent £1 billion on this over
the last ten years and precious little had been achieved. We can
probably agree that in terms of unauthorised absence that is right.
He said that they had not spent anything like £1 billion
on truancy; he said most of the money had been spent on behaviour,
so presumably, if I asked you the same question, you would give
me the same answer. You would not disagree with your own Prime
Minister, would you?
Sir David Normington: I would
not.
Q10 Chairman: However, it says here in
the Comptroller and Auditor General's Report that little more
than half the surveyed head teachers think that the behaviour
improvement programme is effective. It does not look to me as
though they are very impressed with this programme either. Of
course if you cannot get the children to school in the first place,
behaviour improvement programmes will make very little difference,
will they?
Sir David Normington: We think
that the behaviour improvement programme is one of our successes.
It has been very highly targeted in its initial phases on about
1,500 schools and it has provided extra resources to those schools
to improve behaviour, which of course has an indirect effect on
attendance. It has actually improved attendance in those 1,500
schools at twice the rate for all schools and it has also bucked
the trend on unauthorised absence in that unauthorised absence
in those schools has gone down. We think that means that we have
evidence that that is money which is well spent. It is not the
whole of the £885 million, but it is quite a substantial
proportion of it and it looks as though it is having a significant
effect. That is why, and this is shown in Figure 18, we are extending
it to other schools and other local authorities. It is very targeted
on those schools which have the worst attendance records.
Q11 Chairman: I should have mentioned
Figure 18 in my initial questions and that quote from the Report
about the attitude of head teachers is in Figure 20 on page 33.
They were asked how effective the behaviour improvement programme
had been. It is true that a very small minority say that it is
ineffective, but I am just surprised, given all this money spent,
if you look at the last line, that only 56% say it has been effective.
Sir David Normington: It is surprising.
Q12 Chairman: It is obviously right,
it is agreed with you and this is a lot of money.
Sir David Normington: As you say,
there is a great chunk of heads there who are undecided about
it. It is important to judge the programme on what it is delivering
and it is delivering faster improvements in attendance and also
reductions in unauthorised absence. It is right on the button
in terms of what we are trying to do.
Q13 Chairman: Following my question to
the Prime Minister, I should say that I have written back to him
after his answer to me and I am sure he was trying to answer me
honestly. In my letter to him I said that I found it difficult
to accept his assertion that "the vast bulk of that money
goes for excluded pupils in the pupil referral units". I
therefore said to him that the inference is that little has been
spent on tackling absence. I said to him that the National Audit
Office's Report says that all of the initiatives which combine
to form the £885 million of spending are intended at least
in part to reduce absence and that attendance and behaviour are
closely related. I am sure you accept that point, do you not?
Sir David Normington: Yes, I do
accept that. It is very difficult to disentangle behaviour from
attendance, but most of the initiatives which are included in
the £885 million have been spent either on improving behaviour
or reducing exclusion. Both those things are related to whether
people attend school or not.
Q14 Chairman: When I said to the Prime
Minister that he had spent the better part of £1 billion—£885
million—on dealing with truancy, I was right, was I not?
Sir David Normington: With respect,
no you were not. The £885 million is spent on improving behaviour
and reducing exclusions which affect absence, not just unauthorised
absence, but overall absence. Some of it is spent on unauthorised
absence.
Q15 Chairman: I do not think we are going
to get any further on that.
Sir David Normington: No.
Q16 Chairman: Obviously it is very important
when we deal with truancy to have a quick response. These electronic
registration schemes are mentioned in paragraph 3.13 and 3.15
on page 34, but very little funding has been provided for them.
It seems to me to be absolutely key that you can track down pupils
very quickly early on in the day through an electronic registration
scheme. Are we going to have more government or departmental resources
spent on these electronic registration schemes?
Sir David Normington: Probably
not. I can explain why. We have spent £11 million on helping
530 secondary schools to introduce electronic registration schemes.
We are evaluating that to see what is the best type of system
and what is its best effect. We will then encourage schools to
use their substantial amount of devolved capital to invest in
those registration schemes. We are trying to get away from providing
one-off slugs of money for particular purposes and actually giving
schools some choice as to what they spend their money on. We have
increased the amount of devolved capital they have and therefore
we think if they have the evidence, they will be keen to spend
the money on it. I think 60% of secondary schools already have
these systems, so it is quite a high proportion.
Q17 Chairman: Let us look now at how
we can try to force parents to take more of an interest. If we
look at paragraph 3.24 on page 36, do you really think that a
fine of £100 in the event of a successful prosecution, which
rarely happens anyway, will really change parental attitudes?
Sir David Normington: It flags
up for them that this is an important issue and for some parents
£100 will be a lot of money. If they do not pay it, they
have the threat lying behind that of prosecution. It is just one
issue in the armoury of persuading parents of persistent truants
to get their children to school, but it is one important thing
in the armoury.
Q18 Chairman: Do you accept this whole
programme is around targets? Certainly in terms of unauthorised
absence, which is the most serious part of this, you are not meeting
those targets, are you? Is your whole approach fundamentally flawed?
Sir David Normington: It is important
to reduce all absence because absence is very much correlated
with poor performance at school. It is very important within that
to try to reduce unauthorised absence and I accept that the figures
are very disappointing in that regard. If we can get persistent
truancy down, it will have great benefits to communities, to cities,
to those pupils themselves and we are having a struggle doing
that.
Chairman: I now pass on to a former head
teacher who can question you further.
Q19 Mr Steinberg: I would prefer to meet
in—where was it?—the Cinnamon Club where we last met.
Sir David Normington: We did.
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