Examination of Witnesses (Questions 199
- 219)
WEDNESDAY 31 JANUARY 2007
RT HON
JIM KNIGHT
MP AND MR
JON COLES
Q199 Chairman: Minister, can I welcome
you. We have just had a very good session with your colleague,
Bill Rammell.
Jim Knight: Excellent.
Q200 Chairman: And it is nice to
see Jon Coles here as well; he is always welcome. We want to get
into pretty rapid-fire questions and answers because we know we
have an hour and that is how long we are going to take. Could
I very quickly say to you that I think it would be remiss of this
Committee not to say to you this morning that we have just heard
in the Ofsted report that there has been quite a sharp increase
in the number of schools in special measures, and the figures
I have is a 70% rise of schools in special measures, 25% increase
if you look at primary, and that has gone from, overall, 208 to
243 schools. That looks quite surprising on the face of it. What
is your reaction?
Jim Knight: My reaction is, again,
that Ofsted have raised the bar in respect of the standard that
has to be gone through; that these figures compare August to December,
and it is normal for the numbers in special measures that Ofsted
report to be low in the summer and higher at the end of the autumn
term. So there are some statistical niceties there. But it is
still the case that the number of schools in special measures
has halved over the last ten years; that it represents about 1%
of schools; and that it is right that the standards in our schools
is right and that we should continue to raise the bar as we did
with the GCSE results, including English and maths, earlier on
this year; that created the headlines of record GCSE increase
crisis, and we are now hearing yet more hyperbole from our friends
in the media. But the basic message is that the number of failing
schools is continuing to reduce in secondary schools—we
have a slight increase in primary in percentage terms, and that
is something that we will continue to address, as we continue
to address the numbers of failing schools.
Q201 Chairman: We always give the
Minister a chance for two minutes if he wants it, but you tend
to want to go straight into questions, do you not, Jim?
Jim Knight: Yes. We have very
limited time. All I would say in respect of the Diplomas is that
it would be easy to lose sight of the genuine excitement that
there is out there to make this new set of qualifications work,
responding to a very important need, both from employers and from
universities, to charter a middle course between traditional academic
and traditional vocational qualifications. It is an ambitious
programme but we are hitting all of our major milestones and I
am delighted that you want to question the two of us on how it
is going.
Chairman: Fiona very much wants to ask
her question because she has to go to the hospital, so I will
ask her to open the questioning.
Q202 Fiona Mactaggart: Thank you,
Chairman. I wanted to start with a broad question. Is it more
important for the success of this programme to have a significant
tranche of students in place in 2008, or to have a quality product
available at that point? And is there any tension between those
two ambitions?
Jim Knight: The most important
thing is quality; we place an absolute premium on that. The vision
behind the Diplomas is very much in response to a number of things.
To the numbers who are not staying on—and we need to create
an attractive set of qualifications to encourage people to want
to stay on—it is a pre-condition—and this is what
the Chancellor is talking about today—that we make the qualifications
attractive to learners as well as the learning environment. It
is that demand from employers for more employability skills and
the use of functional skills and, to some extent, it is demand
from universities as well. If it is going to be credible with
learners, their parents, with employers, with the universities
it has to start from day one on the basis of quality. I do not
see a tension because there is quite a lot of quality out there
already, and when we look at the early assessments that we are
making of those that have applied to go through the Gateway—and
361 consortia applied to go through the Gateway in England—we
can see that we do have the quality out there to be able to offer
to a significant number of learners the first five Diplomas in
September 2008.
Q203 Fiona Mactaggart: Is that going
to be a pilot or is it going to be an implementation?
Jim Knight: I am cautious about
using the word "pilot" because people think then that
we might mean a prototype and we are experimenting on a cohort
of learners, and I do not want people to think that at all because
we are investing a large amount of resource, both human resource
and financial resource. We have this huge enthusiasm coming through
from the various institutions that have applied as partnerships
to go through the Gateway, and we will start on the basis of quality
and credible qualifications from September 2008. Those early years
will just be years when it will not be a universal entitlement,
and when we will make sure that we have a very active feedback
loop to ensure that we are maintaining quality and learning any
lessons as we go along. But we can be absolutely confident through
the Gateway process that those very first learners have an important
and credible qualification.
Fiona Mactaggart: Thank you.
Q204 Helen Jones: Whether you call
it a pilot or not, Minister, there are clearly going to be lessons
that have to be learnt from the first tranche of Diplomas. What
procedures does the Department have in place for doing that? How
are you going to assess, monitor the quality, learn any lessons
that need to be learned and make sure that those lessons are then
transferred to other people as further Diplomas come on stream?
Jim Knight: We are already making
sure that we have a process that is not only strongly programme-managed
with very strong talents in the Department, such as Jon, working
on the project and leading the project, but also that we are learning
lessons as we go along, and we are using some independent analysis
from outside, Cap Gemini, for example, and we are going to ask
the OGC (Office of Government Commerce) to give us a gate zero
review over the spring, so that we can be sure that the project
management continues to be working well. Then as it implements
from 2008 and the teaching stance in 2008 we will ensure that
there is feedback through into the programme board; and we are
looking at what intelligence we can get from the ground from all
the various agencies and bodies that are involved in the partnership
and represented on the programme board so that we are learning,
as you say, the lessons as we go along.
Q205 Helen Jones: You still have
Cap Gemini in place?
Jim Knight: Cap Gemini is still
working with us, yes.
Q206 Chairman: The information that
the Committee had is that the contract had been terminated.
Mr Coles: No, the contract has
not been terminated, we have Cap Gemini working in QCA and working
in the Department for us under contract.
Q207 Helen Jones: Can we look at
what will happen in September 2008 because there is some confusion
about the numbers that are expected to take up Diplomas? We first
heard about 50,000 as a target and then when Ken Boston came to
us he said 50,000 is not the target, he said it is the figure
that the Department has come up with, looking at the scope of
the resources that are believed to be available out there and
the scope of the funding which is available to the Department
to deliver. Do you have a target for the number of students that
you want to take Diplomas when they are introduced in September
2008? And if you have what is the evidence to show that that is
a reasonable and achievable number to settle on?
Jim Knight: No, we do not have
a target.
Q208 Helen Jones: You do not have
a target at all?
Jim Knight: It goes back to Fiona's
question around quality. If we had a target then people would
believe that we were sacrificing quality in order to hit a target.
The 50,000 was an indication of the sort of numbers because people
always ask us how many people might be involved, so we give a
ballpark figure, understanding, obviously, that as soon as you
use a figure everyone thinks it is then a target; but it is not
a target.
Mr Coles: Could I just add to
that? In the Implementation Plan, paragraph 3.31, we first quoted
the 50,000 figure and the precise words we used were, "In
2008 our modelling suggests that we need to prepare for up to
50,000 young people taking specialised Diplomas, which suggests
that we will need to train in the region of 5,000 teaching staff."
On the question of what level of interest we have, the 361 consortia
and 143 authorities who have come forward saying that they want
to do Diplomas in year one, if all of those were to go through
the Gateway then we would be looking at in the region of 160,000
young people doing it. So the level of interest is certainly there
because, as the Minister says, the point of the Gateway is to
ensure that only where Diplomas are going to be delivered at the
right quality will they be allowed to go forward.
Q209 Helen Jones: Can we have a look
at the Gateway because I think that is rather important? One of
our witnesses, Paul Hafren, who is from my own college, asked
for a greater transparency about the criteria in which the proposals
in the Gateway process are being measured. Are you satisfied that
those criteria are transparent and that they are understood by
those partnerships that are trying to go through the Gateway?
Jim Knight: Obviously I would
hope so and through the stakeholder group and through others we
continue to try and get feedback as to how people interpret them
on the ground, but the self-evaluation form that all of the partnerships
had to complete works in five sections, with a local authority
statement at the end, and they cover the basic criteria in which
we want to see quality—collaboration, workforce development,
facilities, information, advice and guidance and employer engagement.
It ought to be clear, given that they all fill out this form and
it is separated into sections on that basis with, I think, three
questions under each of those headings, that those will be the
criteria against which we will be judging them on a regional basis.
Q210 Helen Jones: Are you satisfied
that the regional panels that judge these proposals have the right
make-up to make effective judgments?
Jim Knight: Yes.
Q211 Helen Jones: For instance, who
will represent the government offices in the regions and will
they have the right qualifications to make the judgments on the
new Diplomas?
Mr Coles: If I might respond to
that? The panels are chaired by the Directors of Children and
Learners in the region, so the lead government office educational
specialist. They will all include representatives of the Diploma
Development Partnerships and they will all include the Learning
and Skills Council and a range of people who do understand what
is happening in those particular local areas. So, for example,
children services advisers in the government office, so they will
have both local and national in there.
Q212 Helen Jones: It depends how
you define local, does it not, Mr Coles? We are talking about
a government office for the northwest. I am not convinced from
my dealings with government office northwest that if they told
me today was Wednesday I would not want a second opinion!
Jim Knight: It is Wednesday!
Helen Jones: We can confirm that, can
we! That is a very wide area to cover, and I just use that as
one example, the huge variations within the region. Are you really
confident that you have the people there who are going to be knowledgeable
about what is happening on the ground, who are going to be able
to judge, for instance, what is happening in Cumbria, as opposed
to what is happening in Manchester?
Q213 Chairman: Blackpool! Particularly
Blackpool; we seem to have lost Blackpool!
Jim Knight: Obviously we are judging
this on the basis of quality and we need to ensure that the assessment
is on the basis of quality and not on some form of lottery, if
I dare mention that in the context of Blackpool!
Q214 Helen Jones: It is a gamble!
Jim Knight: As I have gone around
the country making the various visits to schools and colleges
I try and meet up with those Directors of Children and Learning
from the government office, and I have always been very happy
with their knowledge in terms of how they are briefing me and
their understanding of what is going on in each local authority
area. It may be that they have become briefed in order to brief
me, but equally they would ensure that they are briefed in order
to oversee the process of assessing the Gateway. I have that confidence,
in direct answer to that question. Jon?
Mr Coles: The one other thing
to say is that we have run through the government offices the
progress check process, through which we have actually examined
area-by-area performance in each local authority in relation to
14-19 against a range of very specific indicators. So they have
that evidence base to draw on and that is based on a dialogue
between the government office and the local authority in question,
so they do have quite a strong evidence base on which to draw.
Q215 Helen Jones: That is interesting
but I think some people would remain to be convinced following
our own dealings with government offices, but we shall see how
it rolls out. Can I move on to something else? The DfES has suggested
that some partnerships would be allowed through the Gateway with
additional support, even if they have significant work to do to
make their partnerships viable. How does that fit in with your
determination to make these Diplomas a quality product? Are we
not then risking quality for quantity?
Jim Knight: Basically there will
be three possible responses that will be communicated with those
who have applied to go through the Gateway. There is unconditional
approval—and these are done on line by line, Diploma by
Diploma; it would not necessarily be that the partnership would
get approval for all of the Diplomas they have applied to do,
it will be one by one. So you could have unconditional approval.
You could have conditional approval, so as long as they satisfy
these various areas where we say they need improvement, but we
have made an assessment which says that it is possible for them
to do the work to get the quality that we want, they can get that
conditional approval and that approval can be withdrawn if they
do not meet the conditions. Then there are those who have not
managed to pass through the Gateway but that we will work with
so that they can get through the Gateway in 2009 or subsequent
years. They have more significant areas of weakness but we do
not want to leave them high and dry believing that they are failures;
we want to work with them to ensure that they are a success in
the near future.
Q216 Helen Jones: The ultimate test
would be, would it not, if there were only very few partnerships
that passed through the Gateway, would you be—I will not
use the word "happy"—satisfied with that knowing
that that was at least an indicator of quality, or would you be
rather concerned about it?
Jim Knight: I had a discussion
this morning about minimum numbers because I had a feeling that
we would get into numbers!
Q217 Helen Jones: Surely not!
Jim Knight: I am very happy to
tell the Committee that of the assessments going around region-by-region
we are getting a feel now for the level of quality, and the question
of a minimum does not really arise. Equally, the question of not
being able to get to September 2008 on the basis of quality I
do not think arises. We have much more confidence of that now
that we have seen and been able to assess applications. But if
it ended up with only half a dozen getting through—and,
as I say, we know that is not going to be the case—then
it would be half a dozen on the basis of quality, and that is
the right judgment.
Helen Jones: Thank you very much.
Q218 Chairman: Minister, we have
to move on now but can I ask you briefly about the forensics of
where these Diplomas came from? We all know where the original
inspiration came from, do we not?
Jim Knight: From last week's questioning
I should have genned up on the history again because we had some
discussion about the history of these, did we not? It began with
the White Paper and then it was added to with the Implementation
Plan a year later. As I said before, I am very clear about what
the motivation was for this and the thinking around the need to
respond to poor staying on rates in this country. The learning
that we have had is from the increased flexibility programme and
from the high quality that apprenticeships are now bringing that
there is a bunch of learners out there that are much more engaged
with work related learning and enterprise education equally, and
people of all abilities, with some of them more motivated, but
the history I am less clear on.
Q219 Chairman: What about the "T"
word, Minister?
Jim Knight: Him!
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