Examination of Witnesses (Questions 660-679)
MS SALLY
BROOKS, MR
MARTIN LIPSON
AND MR
TIM BYLES
6 DECEMBER 2006
Q660 Chairman: When was it written?
Mr Lipson: I think it was submitted
in June or July.
Q661 Chairman: So it is fairly recent.
Mr Byles: Yes, but what I am trying
to describe to you is I have seen a very significant move in local
authorities, some of whom took a very particular view about the
utility of Academies when they were first announced, and Martin
has reflected some of that feeling. I am engaged every week in
discussing with local authorities, with ministers in the Department,
the squaring of this circle between the strategic approach for
an area and the utility of an Academy.
Q662 Mr Marsden: I will move you
on from being Mr Motivator to Mr Conciliator. You are there to
try and smooth out some of the sharp edges between DfES and local
authorities, are you?
Mr Byles: I think these are great
titles. I look forward to reading them later! What I am trying
to do is to get a process which does deliver an outcome that is
coherent across a whole area but also allows for a targeted intervention
where that is appropriate. The issue of governance is a much more
complex one as it relates to local authorities' relationships
with schools. This is not a command and control relationship,
and it has not been for many years. The whole way of establishing
a strategy which is owned locally depends on influence, persuasion,
encouragement and leadership, and that is delivered through different
skills than historical, control mechanisms, but it is a much more
powerful set of arrangements when it works effectively, and we
are seeing that increasingly across the country and I do see that
as a contribution we can help in, yes.
Q663 Mr Marsden: Can I come back,
finally, to you, Sally. You are trying to say to us that there
were tensions but they have been smoothed out. That is to be seen.
More specifically perhaps, given that some of the local authorities
who you have got in the future waves of BSF, and certainly some
of the schools, will share some of the forebodings that they have
expressed to us in the Select Committee visits about how they
are going to do this, how are you going to keep the people who
are going to come on stream informed of the progress that you
have made in waves one to three? If you have got local authorities,
for example, who are particularly exercised about the Academies
and how that fits into Building Schools for the Future, how are
you going to sell this to them and reduce some of the tensions?
We have not seen at the moment much evidence that the Department
is informing those people who are going to come into the programme
of the progress that you have made so far?
Ms Brooks: We have a lot of information
on our progress so far, like putting things on our websites and
producing reports, but we tend to work mostly with the local authorities
who are coming into the next couple of waves, because those are
the ones who are starting to focus on where they are going to
be in Building Schools for the Future. The Department as a whole
has six-monthly meets with almost every local authority's capital
investment teams in the country, and conferences, which keep them
up to date in terms of our general progress, but really it is
only the local authorities that are coming in, in the next two
or three years, that really become focused on what that means.
We are shortly announcing wave four. Six months ago we had a day
long conference for all those local authorities that are in wave
four, five and six to talk through with them, in a great deal
of detail, exactly what we expected them to do, and, as Tim mentioned
earlier, we are prioritising in wave four in terms of ability
to deliver. Nonetheless, waves four, five and six are all thinking
about BSF now. So, we talked through with them what it meant,
we talked through with them what we mean by educational transformation
and we talked through with them, in a lot of detail, what we saw
from our early learning in waves one, two and three, what the
key issues were that they had to demonstrate they were dealing
with and they had a process for dealing with, and we then asked
those local authorities themselves to assess whether they should
be in waves four, five or six in terms of how complex it was.
Q664 Mr Marsden: So there is some
choice in the process?
Ms Brooks: There is some choice
in the process and actually good, high performing local authorities
came back to us and said they wanted to be in wave five because
they had new schools that they wanted to build on land they had
not yet acquired, they were thinking of having Academies or they
knew they had to have a competition and they were taking responsibility
for programming that into their BSF project.
Mr Marsden: I hope that the extended
school and particularly the co-operation with the PFE sector will
be key ingredients in what you talk about in the future.
Q665 Mr Chaytor: Where does Ofsted
fit into the process of approval of local authority bids? Is there
any formal role?
Ms Brooks: No, there is no formal
role. Interestingly, we have been discussing recently whether
or not, when Ofsted are going to local authorities to evaluate
their performance, their ability to deliver should be part of
that evaluation, but we are in early discussions with them about
that. In general, Ofsted goes down a parallel track rather than
being involved in the evaluation of their bids.
Q666 Mr Chaytor: More widely, in
terms of teaching and learning strategies and development of the
curriculum, how prominently does that feature in the bids that
local authorities are required to submit? What value, what weighting
is given to the teaching and learning strategies as against other
things such as the potential for extended schools and liaison
with the local authority?
Ms Brooks: In fact, local authorities
do not bid because we more or less tell them where they are in
the process in terms that they are prioritised in terms of deprivation
and exam results. With waves four to six we ask them where they
think they should be, but, in fact, it is not a bidding process.
The evaluation takes place when the local authorities produce
their strategy for change, and the strategy for change has to
cover all those things. The way it works is that you have to know
what you want to deliver in educational terms first, you then
have to link that with your buildings strategy. To put the history
on how we have changed things, in the first two waves of BSF we
said, "We want your education vision, we will improve your
education vision and then you can go on and sort out your building
strategy." So we got some very good education visions which
covered personalised learning, curriculum, science teaching, extended
schools, sports, everything. They have to cover almost every single
policy which we have in their vision, but what we found was that
we had almost two separate documents. We had the educationalists
in local government doing the education vision and then we had
the property people, who may well have been in a different bid,
doing the property bit. We have now brought them together, and
we have said we need an integrated strategy for change which takes
all those education issues, cut curriculum, everything. It gives
their plan and then shows how they will use BSF to implement those
strategies.
Q667 Mr Chaytor: But what happens
in the strategy? What happens when the educational vision is at
odds with the amount of capital available, and do they know what
the capital available is before they draw up their strategy?
Ms Brooks: I think Tim might be
better placed to answer the bit about how much money they know
about and when.
Mr Byles: We are not just told
there is this amount of money, but the process does tend to come
from our indicative figures available, but it is a function of
the number of schools and what they want to achieve through them.
It becomes a discussion. It is not an entirely formulaic approach,
but neither is it a blank sheet of paper. That is as much as I
can help you with today, I am afraid.
Q668 Mr Chaytor: The ultimate allocation
to each local authority's programme is absolutely dependent on
the quality of the strategy they have produced?
Mr Byles: And what is contained
within it. What makes sense, as Sally mentioned—. Take the
Kent example, for example. There were three waves of activity,
very large waves, each £500 million at a time with large
numbers of schools contained within them, but there are others
that are areas simply dealing with two or three schools and are
coming back to other parts of the estate through time, and part
of that is to do with capacity in the authority, with where the
whole investment strategy sits with other things that they are
trying to achieve in the education world and across the community
as a whole. That is why I was trying to make the point earlier
on. It has to be coherent in terms of what they are trying to
achieve locally. There is not some centrally driven answer that
they must fit this to.
Q669 Mr Chaytor: In the process that
you are describing is there not a risk that the local authority
may produce a strategy that is completely out of line with any
realistic concept of what this is meant to be about?
Mr Byles: That is the reason for
the facilitation, for the educational planning team, Partnerships
for Schools sitting alongside them working out what is the aspiration,
what is practical and deliverable and how can that be matched
with the likely resources available, whether that is from PFI
or from conventional funding.
Q670 Mr Chaytor: Where a local authority
comes at the end of the line (i.e. they are not going to be fully
involved in the programme until 2015), they are now given an element
of specific capital for one school. Is there a danger that the
focus on the single school approach as a kind of consolation prize
is not going to be fully integrated into what the eventual strategy
might be, or are there processes in place to ensure that what
is done in terms of the redevelopment of one school is consistent
with what is likely to be the redevelopment of another school?
Ms Brooks: Yes. We were very clear
that the one school offer, as we call it, is a down payment on
BSF, if you like, it is not separate. So local authorities have
been required to tell us how it fits into their overall strategy.
Obviously, a local authority that is going to be in wave 14 will
not have fully worked out a strategic plan for its whole school
estate in 10 years' time, but they should have an overview of
what they intend to do and they need to demonstrate to us, if
they are rebuilding a new school in that area, that they have
their pupil place planning which says it is going to be needed,
that they have integrated it into where they want to put the new
school when they do get BSF, that, for example, if they are focusing
a certain specialism on that school, the facilities are going
to be available to the other schools in the area. That is absolutely
part of what they have got to tell us before they get the money.
Mr Byles: Can I add a point to
that. You could imagine that everyone would be rushing to have
the maximum investment as soon as possible. I can think of one
very good example where a one-school investment is going to be
the centre-piece of a major regeneration, and that requires land
assembly, it requires the planning process to be put in place,
and for that whole very long-term rejuvenation of an area to take
effect it actually makes sense to deliver the school down the
track rather than right up here and now. So one of the challenges
we need to manage is the long-term benefit for whole communities
alongside large-scale investment and the timing of that investment.
That is one of the interesting parts of this programme.
Q671 Mr Chaytor: Finally, Chairman,
in terms of the use of other streams of capital, if the local
authority strategy had linked the redevelopment of secondary schools
with primary schools or with FE, are they completely free to use
the other capital funding streams relevant to FE in primary, or
not?
Ms Brooks: We are working towards
it.
Q672 Mr Chaytor: Can you aggregate
the use of devolved capital for primary schools into the whole
pot?
Ms Brooks: Yes, we are working
towards it. It is where we want to get to.
Q673 Mr Chaytor: It does not apply
now.
Ms Brooks: It applies with a lot
of it, yes, because most of it goes into the single capital pot,
and once it is in the single capital pot they can use it in accordance
with their local priorities, so they can actually take money that
is given them for other things and put it into education and vice
versa. We have not completely got there yet, but it is a very
high priority for us. Whenever I go out to local authorities with
Martin (and I am sure we will say the same thing), it is one of
the things they say to us over and over again: "Please, help
us join up our funding more and be more flexible."
Mr Lipson: The issue is not whether
authorities want to do that, but whether they are able to in terms
of timing. The difficulty sometimes is that funding does not come
on stream at the right moment to incorporate into the complex
contract which they are entering into, and so sometimes they have
to be added on later or procured in some other way.
Q674 Mr Chaytor: But in terms of
the further education sector, for example, the way in which their
capital projects are developed, there is considerably more freedom
for individual colleges to use capital creatively than perhaps
there is with primary and secondary schools. Given, the emergence
of the 14-19 curriculum and the links between schools and colleges,
are you confident that the various forms of capital available
to the further education sector is fully integrated into the BSF
strategy?
Ms Brooks: I think there is still
more work to do. I think FE colleges have more freedom because
they have the freedom to borrow, and that is a big advantage for
them. That freedom is not something that is available to the rest
of the school sector.
Q675 Mr Chaytor: The borrowing approvals
can be part of the future BSF strategy?
Ms Brooks: Yes. Local authorities
have freedom to borrow; individual schools do not in the sort
of way that individual FE colleges do.
Q676 Mr Chaytor: If the local authority
wanted to put forward a BSF strategy that involved redevelopment
of its further education strategy as well, the further education
college's capacity or freedom to borrow would not be inhibited
in any way, that could be part of the overall package.
Mr Byles: Yes, that is right.
Sally is describing a process that could become more structured
and we are working towards that.
Q677 Fiona Mactaggart: We talked
about future waves, but let us for the moment think of the first
three waves of BSF. The DfEs has identified "lack of capacity
or experience in delivering large projects in local authorities"
and "insufficient corporate support and leadership"
amongst the common factors in those delays. Could you not have
written that before it happened? Was that not absolutely predictable?
Ms Brooks: I think it was partially
predictable. The size of it and the transformational nature of
it together were much more of a challenge than we may necessarily
have predicted. We could have predicted that the size of it was
something that local authorities would find some difficulties
in getting to grips with; we could not necessarily have predicted
the fact that it would be so transformational and the fact that
it involves rethinking the whole school estate, with all those
individual conversations with schools and local communities and
so on, was going to make it even more of an issue. But, yes, I
think we could. It still surprises me that the size and complexity
of it was not fully grasped. We could have predicted it. When
we had all our meetings and we introduced the new local authorities
to BSF, we said over and over again: this is high priority; it
should be dealt with at chief executive level and your members
need to be closely involved with it. To be honest, it surprised
me how long it took some local authorities to accept that. One
of the biggest issues that slowed down the programme was that
some local authorities did not see it as central to their corporate
direction. They saw it either as an education programme or as
a building programme and therefore that it should have been dealt
with either by the education people or the building people. In
fact, I do not think there is any local authority in the country
for which BSF is not a hugely significant element of their corporate
strategy. It has taken some time in some local authorities to
accept that.
Q678 Fiona Mactaggart: What is each
of your organisations doing about this problem? Having said that
it was a highly predictable problem, what are you doing about
it?
Mr Lipson: The DfES gives us funding
to run a team supporting local authorities in the BSF programme.
Our remit is to provide training to the project team in the local
authority, to help them get best practice into the way they run
the whole procurement exercise. Do not let us underestimate this:
it is two years of extremely hard work by a large team which requires
a good understanding of the governance of the project, the accountability
processes for within the local authorities for how the project
will report and be monitored, really good management skills for
a large team, good leadership and so on. We give training and
support in all these things. We are starting to do that in advance
of authorities entering the programme, so we are now helping to
try to get the authorities fit so they can say, "We're ready."
I think that makes a big difference. In the first three waves,
there was not really much of a chance to do that. We did not start
giving the support until the first wave was already well under
way. We have seen difficulties as a result, especially, as has
already been pointed out, by definition the most needy authorities
have often been the ones that have most difficulty with the capacity
and skills. That is certainly something we have all acknowledged,
if you like. I think we are now heading that problem off in the
next few waves that are coming because we have done lots of work
in advance and the authorities have been given the choice to say
whether they are ready or not. That makes a big difference.
Mr Byles: We have Readiness
to Deliver, so we have that assessment taking place. We are
signing a memorandum of understanding with each local authority,
which I was describing earlier on, which makes it clear what is
expected on both sides, and we are using conferences and seminars/workshops
to share experience, with those local authorities who have learned
from this process telling their colleagues exactly how best to
link to it. I am visiting a number of authorities and having conversations
at leader and chief executive level. In a large local authority,
there is a great deal to do, and this is not always going to be
at the top of the pile, but it is capable of disrupting the budgeting
and resource planning process very significantly if the centre
of the authority is not well tuned to the demands of this process.
That is an adjustment we want to make sure everyone fully understands
and we are doing that at a personal as well as a more general
level.
Q679 Fiona Mactaggart: Sally, I suppose
you have partly answered me at the beginning.
Ms Brooks: I asked these two people
to do those things they have just described. Apart from, absolutely,
from wave 4 onwards, prioritising those local authorities that
are ready to deliver and not making it easy for them to demonstrate
they are ready, we are evaluating wave 4 at the moment and who
should be in it. We are ringing up people who the local authorities
are putting forward to us, saying, "This is the member who
is leading on this, who knows exactly what is happening in BSF
now." For waves 1 and 2 we would have said, "Jolly good,
there is a lead member with responsibility for it." We are
now ringing them up and saying, "Okay, what do you know about
it?" to check that they really have that corporate leadership.
We are looking at making more things mandatory. 4ps very much
gives the early support to local authorities at the corporate
level before they are in BSF. Once they become active, PfS to
some extent takes over that relationship, although 4ps are still
involved. Before they are in a wave, all that capacity building,
all that knowledge and awareness at officer, chief officer and
member level is from 4ps. At the moment, it is not mandatory that
local authorities talk to 4ps. Most of them do but, sadly, some
of those which need the most do not talk to them. The ones which
I know are very, very good competent local authorities, were in
there years ago talking to them, and the ones that need them were
not. I think it is certainly reasonable to make it mandatory that
local authorities do engage early on and we require them to get
that. Rather than just recommending that they get support and
help on capacity building and understanding, we require it.
|
