Examination of Witnesses (Questions 580-599)
LORD ADONIS
6 NOVEMBER 2006
Q580 Chairman: No, it is not, Lord
Adonis, but the reasons we were given this morning were not the
reasons you would normally be given for single sex education.
We were given the reason that it is undesirable for young boys
and girls after the age of 11 to be together in an educational
institution. I have never heard that from faith schools, Catholic
or Anglican or Jewish.
Lord Adonis: It certainly is the
case, is it not, Chairman, that quite a number of parents who
choose single sex schools for their children do so because they
want them to be educated in a single sex environment?
Q581 Chairman: You would be happy
to see what this Committee saw in Birmingham replicated, an enormous
demand from certain sections of the population in Birmingham for
single sex education for girls. Not only is the school, as you
must know, the largest girls school in Europe but there is the
inability to have gender-balanced education in any other school.
Is that not a problem?
Lord Adonis: That is a perfectly
relevant issue which local decision-makers should take account
of when they decide. For example, as they will no doubt have told
you, if the Al Risalah Trust is keen for their secondary school
at some point to receive state funding, which they see as a logical
development for their primary school which has state funding at
the moment, that will be subject to decisions by the local decision-makers
which, before the current Education and Inspections Bill takes
effect, is the School Organisation Committee and after the Education
and Inspections Bill takes effect it will be the relevant local
authority. Those are issues which the local authority will itself
have to make a judgment upon when and if there is any proposal
by the trust to bring a secondary school into the state system.
Q582 Chairman: On the one hand you
want to put a duty on schools to promote social cohesion and on
the other you are going to wash your hands of what is potentially
a very large increase in the number of single sex Muslim schools?
Lord Adonis: I am absolutely not
washing my hands of it, I am saying there are established and
proper democratic procedures for taking these decisions, and the
body that will take these decisions after the Education and Inspections
Bill becomes law is the local authority. Local authorities are
elected, and one of the criteria that they must assess when proposals
come to them is the commitment of promoters, both in respect of
trust schools and other promoters coming into the state system,
in respect of community cohesion. We absolutely do not wash our
hands of it, but it is not me who will take those judgments school
by school, it will be the relevant elected local authority. Precisely
the issues you refer to, Chairman, the desirability of more single
sex education in a community and what this means to both sexes
in terms of the quality of education, those and many other issues
are ones which councils will have to grapple with.
Chairman: Lord Adonis, we have one last
section on policy coherence and most of the questions will be
about that.
Q583 Stephen Williams: Can I start
by picking up on an answer you gave to Jeff Ennis. In passing
you mentioned the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust and how
citizenship may be a specialism in some schools. The advice we
were given is that at the moment you need to have history, geography
or English as a key subject in order to get this specialist arts
college, humanities, whatever status. Are you saying that citizenship
can now rank in parallel esteem with those subjects?
Lord Adonis: You are completely
right, part citizenship can be a subsidiary subject within that
and schools can then seek to develop links with other schools
in the way I was describing to Jeff.
Q584 Stephen Williams: We know that
citizenship has only been going for four years, but do you think
there will come a time when citizenship will sit alongside history,
English and geography as a key subject?
Lord Adonis: Quite frankly, I
have had this debate with my officials because the citizenship
community would like the schools to be able to specialise just
in citizenship in the same way they can specialise just in science
or maths, whereas, at the moment, as you rightly say, they have
to do it in conjunction with other humanity subjects. They take
on a humanities specialism and citizenship can be part of that,
but they must also have a specialism in another area. The rationale
for that is specialisms should be in areas where you can set effective
targets because of performance in National Curriculum subjects.
For example, in respect of history and geography, you can set
targets for performance in those subjects because they are sat
widely at GCSE. In respect of citizenship, you cannot do so yet
because all that is available is the half GCSE. I have debated
that criterion. It may be that your Committee may want to make
a case for saying that is too narrow a view of what constitutes
the capacity of a school to demonstrate year-on-year improvement
in a particular area and there are other ways that you could demonstrate
year-on-year improvement of citizenship that are not directly
related just to a GCSE. That is a debate we are having inside
the Department at the moment and with the Specialist Schools and
Academies Trust, and we would welcome your view on it because
it is very important.
Q585 Chairman: There are dual-specialisms?
Lord Adonis: There are, which
is one of the reasons why you could take a view that it is perfectly
reasonable to have citizenship now as a free-standing first or
second specialism in its own right.
Q586 Stephen Williams: Can I move
on to Every Child Matters. I have had a look at the list
of ministerial responsibilities, I do not think it is directly
one of yours but it possibly lies with your colleagues. One of
the five outcomes of Every Child Matters is making a positive
contribution. Are you confident that your ministerial colleagues,
both within the DfES and other government departments who have
responsibility for children, are aware of the role that citizenship
can play in making a positive outcome for a community?
Lord Adonis: Both Beverley Hughes,
who is directly responsible for the Every Child Matters
agenda, and Bill Rammel, who does further and higher education,
are very much aware of this. Bill has been crucial in developing
the new post-16 programmes of support I have described, and both
Beverley and I, because I had to take the Childcare Bill through
the House of Lords, gave a lot of attention to the issue of the
child's voice in the development of the new foundation stage curriculum
which does place a premium on foundation stage settings seeking
to engage even with young children on matters of concern to them
in developing provision in their area. I have had similar discussions
with Beverley in respect of primary schools also and she has strongly
endorsed, for example, the work we are doing in respect of schools
councils at primary level. This is a matter of interest to my
ministerial colleagues across the Department.
Q587 Stephen Williams: Is there also
discussion that your ministerial colleagues mentioned to you that
they are exploring how the children's voice can be heard in other
fields of children's policy as well, not just directly in the
school?
Lord Adonis: Absolutely. If I
take another area in schools, for example a very topical area
of behaviour management and bullying policy, this was an ongoing
debate during the passage of the Education and Inspections Bill
in the decision-making process leading to a school adopting a
behaviour policy. As the Bill left the Commons, schools were simply
required to consult a sample of pupils in developing those policies
in behaviour management plans and so on. We changed the Bill in
the Lords in response to cross-party discussion on this issue
to a requirement on schools to consult all pupils in a school
before developing policies in this area precisely for the reason
you were giving, Mr Williams, about having pupils more widely
engaged in discussion and the setting of policies in such an important
area as behaviour management, would be likely to get much stronger
support on the part of all pupils in the schools if they have
been engaged in making the policy in the first place.
Q588 Stephen Williams: Picking up
on another answer that was mentioned in passing, my colleague,
Paul Holmes, mentioned today's report by the Institute of Public
Policy Research. One of the key findings of that report was that
social mobility is affected now by pupils from some backgrounds
not having what they call the "soft skills", articulation,
negotiation, persuasion and so on, which enables them to make
the step-change within a generation to a higher income level or
get into a better university. Are you disappointed that they did
not identify citizenship as one of the ways that could be improved?
Lord Adonis: I would put it the
other way around and say I think citizenship is an important way
that students can develop these "soft skills", and all
of the applied areas of citizenship which we have talked about
this afternoon are ways that schools can develop. There are other
ways too, there is all the education outside the classroom agenda
which is dear to the heart of the Chairman, and that plays a vital
role in developing "soft skills", leadership skills,
team working, awareness of communities, besides your own, and
so on, which are vital in developing well-rounded and confident
young people. That is important. Debating is important, for example,
and I would like to see a lot more debating in state schools.
I always try to give strong encouragement to initiatives in this
area since I personally played a part in judging a London-wide
debating competition recently specifically to encourage state
schools to become more engaged. Outward-bound club activities
are important. The report this morning mentioned cadet forces.
A large number of state schools do provide opportunities for students
in cadet forces and we think that is a thoroughly worthwhile activity
also. There is a whole range of activities, including citizenship
but extending well beyond, which we need to see developed further
in our state schools so that those soft skills can be developed
more strongly.
Q589 Stephen Williams: Have you seen
The History Boys?
Lord Adonis: I saw the play; I
have not seen the film.
Q590 Stephen Williams: I went to
see it on Saturday with a history teacher friend and he said to
me afterwards, "Of course, there is no room for that sort
of teaching in British schools anymore". Is that something
you would agree with?
Lord Adonis: I simply do not accept
that.
Chairman: I am not sure whether to welcome
this or deplore it!
Q591 Stephen Williams: It is not
the incident on the motorbike!
Lord Adonis: I shall answer this
very carefully as I saw Mr Chaytor's reaction! There are some
practices in The History Boys that we would not want to
encourage more in our schools.
Q592 Stephen Williams: It was the
debating I was thinking about.
Lord Adonis: In terms of debating,
a well-run school has good opportunities to be able to develop
these aspects, and of course we are seeking to develop the concept
of the extended school across the state system which has a full
programme of after-school activities as well in areas like debating,
volunteering, the Duke of Edinburgh's Award, all these sorts of
things we want to see more widely developed across the state system.
Q593 Mr Wilson: Can I take you back
briefly to the conversation you had some moments ago with the
Chairman about the requirements being placed upon governing bodies,
this amendment you are bringing, the Education and Inspections
Bill. Why has that come so late into the process?
Lord Adonis: Because we are a
listening government.
Q594 Chairman: You are a listening
government?
Lord Adonis: Yes, we are.
Q595 Chairman: That is a new one!
Lord Adonis: Around my fifty-fifth
speech on the Education Bill—
Q596 Chairman: Who were you listening
to?
Lord Adonis: In that particular
respect we were listening to Baroness Walmsley who moved an amendment
on similar lines on behalf of the Liberal Democrats in the Lords
which, as I recall, was strongly supported by your spokesman in
the House of Lords, Lady Buscombe, and one or two cross-benchers
also. On the basis of that, the argument that we should look more
widely at the views of children and the voice of the child, not
simply samples of pupils in developing behaviour policies, we
said we would consider this issue more widely and we came back
with a government amendment which met that concern.
Q597 Mr Wilson: I am not sure but
you might be confused; you are talking about Every Child Matters
still, are you not?
Lord Adonis: I was talking about
behaviour management plans in that respect.
Q598 Mr Wilson: I was asking you
about putting the duty to promote community cohesion.
Lord Adonis: I am sorry, that
is a different amendment.
Q599 Mr Wilson: Yes.
Lord Adonis: We were a listening
government there too. That amendment was promoted by Lord Sutherland,
who is a former chief inspector of schools, who was engaged in
discussions with myself, both other political parties, and the
churches which led to that amendment coming forward.
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