Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-99)
DEPARTMENT FOR
EDUCATION AND
SKILLS
28 FEBRUARY 2005
Q80 Mr Jenkins: At the moment we pay
them; we call it child benefit.
Sir David Normington: We support
families in various ways, but we are not linking that to whether
their children attend school or not.
Q81 Mr Jenkins: It is a socialising exercise,
is it not?
Sir David Normington: I entirely
agree with you. We need children to be in schools. The Report
says that attendance at school is one of the few things which
is compulsory in this world; the Report picks that up. The law
says you have to be at school between 5 and 16 and if you are
not then you are breaking the law and your parents are.[3]
Q82 Mr Jenkins: Lots of laws get broken
every day in this country.
Sir David Normington: They do
and that is why we have to keep on working at it. For children
to be out of school is damaging their education and those who
are most disadvantaged are already behind and for them to be out
of school is a double disadvantage.
Q83 Mr Jenkins: There are many strategies
and I have one at the present time. In my constituency we are
trying to knit together enough staff in September for a skills
academy where 14-year-olds will be brought in and hopefully, before
they get to 14 even, we shall start to introduce them to the world
of work, so they can see what vocational aspects they want to
concentrate on and maybe improve their attendance because they
can see the relevance. I understand that is the important part
of the roll-out we are going to do with regard to education and
hopefully keep people on board.
Sir David Normington: It is. We
have not talked very much about part of this actually being to
make education interesting and relevant to people. If you are
going to get them back in school, you then have to engage their
interest. What you have just described for people in their teens
will sometimes mean thinking in different ways of engaging their
interest through vocational options and so on. I think that is
right.
Q84 Mr Simon: Sir David, as today there
seems to have been a vogue for congratulations on your knighthood
to be qualified, my qualification is that it is a shame to leave
behind the reassuring solidity of Mr Normington.
Sir David Normington: Some of
my family think that.
Q85 Mr Simon: Lady Violet Bonham-Carter
always used to refer to Mr Roy Jenkins, even in the vocative case,
Mr Roy Jenkins; never Roy and never Mr Jenkins, but Mr Roy Jenkins.
Sir David Normington: I do not
mind how I am referred to.
Q86 Mr Simon: You said earlier, very
sincerely and almost passionately—and it is rare for us
to have passion from your desk there other than in defence of
self—that we cannot give up on any children, we cannot just
let them go. Clearly as a society, in respect of those individuals,
that is true. Nevertheless, it could be the case that as a department
strategically having spent however much it is—I am not interested
in the exact number—a large amount of money, a great deal
of energy, resource and effort over a long time attempting to
change this small but significant percentage of hardcore truants,
to keep the term simple, it could be the case that the department
says "Perhaps the best use of our resources in future will
not be simply to continue to aim to get those children to go to
school". Is that the Department's view? Has the Department
thought that? It must have thought that but what has it concluded?
Sir David Normington: No, it is
not the Department's view, but all through education, there is
an issue as to whether you are dealing with the 98% or whether
you are dealing with the 2%.
Q87 Mr Simon: That is all through everything;
that is politics.
Sir David Normington: That is
the precise issue you are highlighting, as to where you put your
resources.
Q88 Mr Simon: No, I am not. Please do
not misunderstand me. That is why I started by referring to your
admirable and accurate statement that you cannot give up on everybody
and also with reference to what Mr Jenkins said about the cost
of truancy throughout the truant's later life of crime and dysfunction.
I am not saying that there is any question that we give up on
those individuals. I am saying that perhaps the Department takes
a strategic and positive decision that it is simply not, never
mind cost effective, but it does not even look to be possible
to vary that percentage and that therefore, perhaps the Department,
but certainly the Government more broadly, take a different approach
to dealing with those children, not to try to put them into school,
but to try to do something else. For instance, an illiberal person
might say "String 'em up. Lock 'em up". I am not saying
that, but that would be an example of taking a different approach
to the problem. "Fine 'em and chain 'em to lamp posts".
I am not suggesting that would be the approach you would come
up with, but you might have come up with some other approach than
simply saying you have to incentivise, educate, find them and
get them back into any school.
Sir David Normington: What is
true about this is that it is what then happens to them when they
are back in school. We were just touching on that when addressing
Mr Jenkins' last question, which is that, particularly from 14
onwards, we are looking now at what alternative provision there
is to what you might think of as a normal education. In other
words thinking about whether there are different things, not just
vocational; sometimes we equate vocational with this problem,
but sometimes it is. It is actually looking for different ways
of engaging those teenagers' interest, which might be more work
experience, might be more vocational options. In a sense we have
reached that view for 14-year-olds upwards. We have not reached
that view in other respects.
Q89 Mr Simon: That is a relatively unequivocal
note then. The intention is still by whatever new means to try
to get this miscreant percentage into school.
Sir David Normington: It is among
younger children and young teenagers, yes. We need to keep on
trying because if they do not get the basics, their chances in
life are going to be poor. The cost equation here, by the way,
is very significant. As you know, as the Report says, if they
go on truanting the cost to society in terms of crime is long
term and therefore is a lot of cost and therefore it is worth
going on trying to get them back into school and dealing with
that. However, with one qualification: what you do with them when
they are back in school will vary. It is important that you do
not just stick them back in the class and expect them to cope.
You have to provide them with support to help them back in. It
might be quite personalised support, it might be special treatment
and support while they are in school. It is wrong to think of
them being stuck back in a class and just coping with the rest.
Q90 Mr Simon: You have had a series over
the last few years of apparently relatively random and fairly
outlandish looking targets for unauthorised absence: reduce it
by one third, then reduce it by 10%, then reduce total absence
by 0.55 percentage points between 2003 and 2008. As I understand
it, the plan from here on is not to have a target.
Sir David Normington: No, we do
now have a 2004 target. Let me explain.
Q91 Mr Simon: I am talking about an unauthorised
absence target, not an attendance target.
Sir David Normington: We have
a total absence target now not an unauthorised absence target.
The previous two targets were unauthorised.
Q92 Mr Simon: I do not suspect any ill
intent on your Department's part, but I do suggest that it does
give the impression, when you had this series of outlandish targets,
none of which has been hit, and now, even though you say you intend
to continue to address the deficit with the same vigour as before,
you no longer identify this problem in a target as a discrete
problem. I do not think you even need to answer that because you
have already explained why you are now talking about absences.
Just for the record I would suggest that although I am not suggesting
it is fishy, I do suggest that it perhaps looks a bit fishy. One
of the things which concerns me beyond that is whether you have
plans in place to collect sufficiently high quality data in sufficient
detail. It strikes me that you need not only to know numbers,
but qualitative detail about exactly who is truanting and exactly
what lessons they are missing and exactly in what patterns and
exactly the details of a distinction we have not touched on much
today between condoned unauthorised absence and uncondoned unauthorised
absence. I think probably that one of the hardest nuts to crack
is that problem of parentally condoned unauthorised absence. I
suspect that is actually quite a big part numerically of the total
number. I do not have any sense, not just that this data exists
historically, but any sense that the new systems, the electronic
registration, are intended to be able to collect data in a sufficiently
detailed and qualitative way for the kind of step change needed
if you are going to crack a problem which has got nowhere.
Mr Housden: First of all, the
target which is now set about total attendance is entirely appropriate
for a PSA target regime. It focuses every school on all the reasons
which can cause pupils' absence and on the need to take action
across that spectrum. I think that is right. The second point
is that you are absolutely right also to say—
Q93 Mr Simon: May I just interrupt as
you chose to make that point when I said you did not have to?
In which case, why do you have at least three recent outlandishly
different targets which all focused specifically and discretely
on unauthorised absence? You cannot just say that you think the
target, as it is, is definitely right and it is definitely completely
different to all the previous targets.
Mr Housden: I was going to go
on to say that your second point was powerful as well. By setting
that target on total attendance, it would be wrong to take the
eye off the ball of unauthorised absence and including within
that truancy. Under the data system we now have in place, we have
an annual collection of data which we will split between unauthorised
and authorised. It will give us school by school and from 2007
related to individual pupil characteristics exactly that fine
weave of data you are talking about. Through the new inspection
and accountability system, we shall have the opportunity to talk
specifically with the schools which have significant problems.
We shall be able to use the same type of analysis that this Report
uses to see what type of absence levels you might expect from
a school which had a given pupil population and how an individual
school is varying. It could be doing particularly well or particularly
poorly, in relation to those median figures. We think we shall
be able to use that data very powerfully. We are also collecting
the data on a termly basis to give local authorities and schools
a regular ongoing picture of how things are moving forward in
that way. It is interesting that that termly collection of data
and a range of other strategies which the Report speaks about
together seem to me to have had the effect of lifting the profile
that school attendance has within the service as a whole.
Q94 Mr Simon: Thank you for that. Just
one micro question, because I should be interested in your view.
Birmingham, where I come from, does quite well in its numbers.
I know that I have been out in my local area with wardens who
quite simply patrol the streets looking for truants. When they
find them, they grab them and drag them back to school. Anecdotally,
at the local level, as a smallish part, but a part of a mix of
everything which is in this Report and everything which you have
been talking about, the most important part is what they find
when they get back into school, obviously. I ought to say that
I am often amazed, not at the number of kids who do not go to
school, but the number of kids who do, a kid whose parents are
both drug addicts and alcoholics, his mother is a prostitute,
his father has not been seen for five years, who effectively lives
in a multi-storey car park but still goes to school. I am amazed
by the number of kids there are like that, for whom school is
actually the only bit of normality in their lives. I should just
like to know about wardens before we close. Is it that simple?
If it is not an annual thing, but a consistent thing, send them
out, find them, drag them back to school and if what they find
when they get to school is the right thing, then maybe that helps
to start.
Mr Housden: In relation to truancy
sweeps, the issue you are talking about, they have played a part
in lifting the whole community sense of attendance as an important
issue. They have a symbolic value, visible, as well as the individual
cases. You must be right to say that a lot of this will be about
the school system and the experience that they have returned to.
You would not regard truancy sweeps on their own as a sufficient
strategy, but they are seeming to make a difference as part of
an overall programme.
Sir David Normington: May I say
that Birmingham has been using fixed penalty notices very actively
and very, very successfully. It is one of the best examples and
it has hardly actually had to prosecute anyone. It has actually
just put people on notice that they need to get their children
back to school and it has worked in 776 out of 800 cases. That
is a really good measure and Birmingham has a very concerted approach.
It is not just about that, it is then about what happens when
they get back in school. Birmingham has really been tackling this
and I congratulate them on it.
Q95 Chairman: Will you look at page 15,
Figure 8, "Reasons for absence from school"? I believe
that this question of parents taking children away on holidays
is absolutely key to this. The fact is that I asked the NAO what
proportion of this truancy is actually accounted for by parents
taking their children away on family holidays and they do not
know. This information is only known at the school level. So we
asked head teachers what they considered the most significant
causes of pupil absence from school: illness, first of all, fair
enough, then family holidays, very high indeed. To me this is
the absolutely key point. I know your powers are limited in terms
of ordering schools what to do and what not to do, but can you
not have a policy of zero tolerance of parents taking their children
away on holiday during term time issued through the head teachers?
Sir David Normington: By the way,
we think it is about 15% of absence is accounted for by holidays.
We do not have a full survey, but we think it is about 15%.
Q96 Chairman: Which is completely unnecessary.
Sir David Normington: We do discourage
parents from taking their children out of school.
Q97 Chairman: I do not like that phrase
"We do discourage". In the good schools I know, the
head teacher says "I will not tolerate this".
Sir David Normington: As you know,
the present position is that the law says that heads may authorise
up to ten days of absence for holidays in the school year.
Q98 Chairman: But why? There is no need
for this. There are perfectly adequate school holidays. Parents
do not need to take their children away on holiday during term
time and good heads absolutely say "No, I will not have it
and if you come to me, I will put it down as an unauthorised absence.
If you persist, you will be liable to prosecution."
Sir David Normington: We are quite
clear about this. We prefer people to be in school during the
school term, but we have not gone as far as—
Q99 Chairman: Do you not think you should
consider it?
Sir David Normington: It has been
considered at various points but the position is the same as it
was in 1995, which is as I have described. We have not changed
that position because you have to leave some discretion for the
head teachers. There will be circumstances when it may be necessary
to authorise that absence. This is very difficult. We are sometimes
criticised for telling the schools precisely what to do. You have
to leave the head teacher to take that decision.
3 Note by witness: My note answer relates to
registered pupils. Parents may fulfil their legal duty by arranging
for their child to receive education other than at school. Back
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