Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-99)
DEPARTMENT FOR
EDUCATION AND
SKILLS AND
OFSTED
27 FEBRUARY 2006
Q80 Mr Bacon: Mr Smith, you said
that colleagues in your Department have been working for two years
on an initiative to reduce bureaucracy—
Mr Smith: Colleagues in my colleague's
Department.
Q81 Mr Bacon: Yes, I am sorry, the
DfES. In that case, Mr Bell, it is probably a question for you.
How many of them and how much has been spent on this initiative?
Mr Bell: This is not made up of
staff from the Department, this is a group of headteachers called
the Implementation Review Unit who have been looking at all aspects
of the Department's work. In relation to your specific questions,
I do not know the answers but I will certainly write to you.[2]
Can I just say that the Implementation Review Unit published a
report reflecting on the progress that has been made and have
said they do think the Department is doing much to try to reduce
the unnecessary bureaucracy on schools.
Q82 Mr Bacon: May I ask you about page
53. There is a reference in paragraph 3.22 to three-year budgets:
"The Department is to introduce three-year budgets for schools
from the 2006-07 financial year to give them more certainty about
their funding. To take advantage of the new arrangements, schools
will need to develop their capacity for financial management and
planning. Those schools that fail to do so may face new risks
and are very likely to miss opportunities." What is the Department
doing to ensure that schools have the skills they need to take
advantage of those opportunities and not to miss opportunities?
Mr Bell: I mentioned earlier that
we are putting out information to schools on financial benchmarking,
in other words to be able to look at how well a school is doing
in terms of expenditure compared to other schools, so you give
them basic information in relation to benchmarking. We are also
encouraging schools to consider getting effective procurement
arrangements in place because if you procure sensibly you free
up funding. We are encouraging schools to make use of ICT and
so on. We are trying to give schools an efficiency consciousness,
if I can put it that way, so they are able to make better use
of the financial stability that longer term budgeting provides.
The Committee suspended from 5.37pm to
5.46pm for a division in the House.
Q83 Mr Bacon: Mr Bell, we were talking
about three-year budgets. You said you were doing benchmarking
to help schools. What are you doing to help LEAs in terms of providing
effective advice? Are you confident that all LEAs are capable
of providing effective advice?
Mr Bell: This is providing effective
advice to schools?
Q84 Mr Bacon: Yes. Financial advice
in particular. When it says in paragraph 3.22: " . . . may
face new risks and are very likely to miss opportunities",
the idea surely would be if they have effective advice, particularly
from LEAs, they will not miss those opportunities?
Mr Bell: That is true. Historically,
since the beginning of local management of schools, LEAs have
had a range of roles in financial terms to particular schools
and that has included the provision of advice. You have got to
get the balance right, have you not, because on the one hand we
want schools to be autonomous and to make all of those decisions
for themselves and, on the other hand, they need to have access
to good advice, for example on procurement, so that schools have
got access to information to get the best buy. We know that local
authorities generally provide that kind of advice but one of the
bits of what the Department is doing with local authorities is
looking at collective procurement arrangements to help the schools.
Q85 Mr Bacon: It is not really procurement
I am interested in, it is the quality of the advice by LEAs more
specifically and the missing of opportunities. This is what I
want to talk about. I am not sure if you are aware of what happened
in Norfolk last summer but in July many headteachers filling in
their forms—in relation to school balances—were given
very specific advice by the local education authority which turned
out to be completely duff advice and in September suddenly, having
planned ahead and having taken the advice of the finance officers
in the local education authority, were told, "By the way,
we are clawing back", in one case, "£120,000",
which was more than the entire effect of that school having specialist
status. In the case of primary schools they were still large amounts
of £10,000 or £20,000. In the end the thing caused such
a scandal they had to re-run the entire exercise which was an
effective way of undoing it and the notional transfers were tiny
afterwards. It was all because the LEA was not competent to give
effective advice.
Mr Bell: There are two ways of
looking at it. Firstly, in relation to the division of responsibilities,
we would suggest that the financial advice and the quality of
that advice and the quality of the local authority's financial
systems is subject to audit by the Audit Commission or its party,
so in a sense there is a local responsibility to do that. However,
there is the national dimension to this through inspection and
accountability, for example, of how well does the local authority
discharge its financial responsibilities to ensure that services
are provided appropriately.
Mr Bacon: In paragraph 1.34 on page 30
it talks about: " . . . over-complex arrangements run the
risk of undue bureaucracy and there is a lack of transparency
of funding because it is so complex". Several years ago in
the last school finance crisis but three, I think it was—it
was when my neighbour, Charles Clarke, was Secretary of State—there
was a big row and, in fact, I remember writing to Sir John about
this, about whether the schools had passported through all of
the money the DfES had given them and it took a long time to come
up with anything like a sensible answer. The LEAs were saying,
"We have done more than we should have done" and the
DfES were saying, "No, we have done the right thing".
The money went from DfES to ODPM and then as part of the block
grant to schools at which point it was outside Sir John's purview
and became part of the responsibility of the Audit Commission,
as you said earlier. I remember talking to an NAO officer at the
time—I think I can mention this because he is retired—I
was trying to get clear answers and he was unable to give them
and one of the things he said about your Department—this
was several years ago, I hope it has changed—was, "The
truth is they cannot give me clear answers. The truth is they
are in meltdown". What are you doing about this complexity,
because essentially the problem we faced in Norfolk last summer
was a direct result of the hideous complexity in these different
pots of money that they have to apply for? I can tell you, Mr
Bell, that two headteachers in my constituency have resigned early
as a direct consequence, one of them in one of the best infant
schools in the country.
Mr Bell: One of the immediate
responses to the situation a couple of years ago was the creation
of the dedicated schools grant from this April, which is a sum
of money that comes under my responsibility as the Accounting
Officer rather than that of the ODPM, and that is to ensure that
that money goes directly to schools. We have been talking to the
NAO and the Audit Commission about how we properly account for
that and the arrangements that we have put in place, and we will
have to see how all that goes but we are confident that those
will work. That is one answer. The second answer is that there
has been historically a multiplicity of funding streams outside
the money that goes directly to schools in relation to the grants
that have been funded from the DfES. Under what has been called
the new relationship with schools the idea is to simplify those
grants so that you do not have schools having to bid for and account
for a much smaller package of funding.[3]
Q86 Mr Bacon: Would you agree that the
best way to improve the quality of advice that LEAs give to schools
on these matters is to make the whole subject that much simpler?
Mr Bell: Yes.
Q87 Mr Bacon: Good; I am glad for
that. I would like to ask about city academies. The Unity City
Academy in Middlesbrough and the Bexley City Academy are both
failing, are they not?
Mr Bell: The Unity City Academy,
and again the Chief Inspector will confirm this, is subject to
Special Measures. I understand that the Business Academy at Bexley
is subject to a Notice to Improve.
Q88 Mr Bacon: How much money have
they had spent on them?
Mr Bell: Those individual schools?
Q89 Mr Bacon: What I would like to
know is two things: how much money, since the inception of the
notion that they were going to become city academies, have they
had spent on them, over the last however long it is, two or three
years, and how many pupils do they have?
Mr Bell: I do not have that information
at my fingertips, Mr Bacon, but I am happy to write to you about
that.[4]
Mr Bacon: I would be very grateful; thanks.
The Committee suspended from 5.53 pm to
6.02 pm for a division in the House.
Q90 Mr Bacon: If you could write to the
Committee about the academies and how much money was spent on
them in those two cases, Mr Bell, that would be very interesting.
Mr Bell: Sure.
Q91 Mr Bacon: Sir John, there was
some discussion around the time we were setting up the city academies
that the NAO might not have full access rights for auditing purposes
because the academies involved high risk companies. Are you now
satisfied that that has been dealt with satisfactorily and that
you have all the access rights you need?
Sir John Bourn: Yes, I do have
access rights.
Q92 Mr Bacon: Ms Rosen, I would like
to go back to the question of pupils getting five GCSE passes
because you gave what was to me a surprising answer to the question
about whether we could expect all pupils to get five GCSE passes
when you said it was a very difficult question to answer. Plainly,
in the case of children who have some form of mental handicap,
for example, it is not necessarily going to be possible. I have
a school in my constituency which is a comprehensive school which
is non-selective; it is just a normal comprehensive school, a
very good one indeed, and they have 100%. I noticed in one of
the academies that were doing much better, the Greig City Academy,
it was only 25% a year ago and now it is 52%. Are you not being
rather unambitious about this? Ought it not to be the norm that
all the students are expected to get this benchmark of five GCSEs
at pass level?
Ms Rosen: Sorry; I was referring
to pupils with particular special needs. I agree that all pupils
without particular needs should be able to get there and that
is what we are aiming for.
Q93 Mr Bacon: And we are still a
long way off that?
Ms Rosen: There is still a way
to go but we have seen gradual improvement. Of course. These things
do not turn round overnight.
Q94 Mr Bacon: No, of course they
do not. What target do you have for when you would expect all
schools to be achieving five GCSE passes?
Ms Rosen: I really could not answer
that. I do not think we have got a target for that. We want to
make incremental improvements and it needs steady effort.
Q95 Mr Davidson: Can I ask about
inspections? As I understand it there is a rolling programme.
Why not target your inspections according to risk?
Mr Smith: We do to a degree but
I do not think that we do enough.
Q96 Mr Davidson: Why do you not do
enough?
Mr Smith: Because in the past
and up until very recently we have not had the data available
to us to make those early decisions as to how much to do that.
Q97 Mr Davidson: So you do not target
according to risk because you do not have the data to tell you
which schools are at risk? Is that what you are saying to me?
Mr Smith: We have improving data
all the time.
Q98 Mr Davidson: A yes or no would
suffice.
Mr Smith: I am sorry; would you
repeat that?
Q99 Mr Davidson: You are saying to
me, I think, that you are not targeting schools according to risk
because you do not have the data to identify which schools might
be at risk. Is that correct?
Mr Smith: We have to inspect all
schools as it stands at present. That external scrutiny is demanded
in statute. The weight of inspection is a matter for Ofsted. To
determine that weight of inspection requires good quality data.
That data is improving all the time and as it has become more
improved we are better able to adjust the weight.
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