Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
SIR CYRIL
TAYLOR GBE AND
MS ELIZABETH
REID
23 MAY 2007
Q1 Chairman: Good morning. Sir Cyril,
Elizabeth Reid, welcome to our proceedings. Although Sir Cyril
has been in front of this Committee helping us with inquiries,
I do not think he has ever been here talking about the work of
the Trust. We are very interested to talk to you because it is
obvious that in your 20th year in business as a charity you have
an enormous amount of knowledge about the educational sector and
the educational scene. In fact, you say on your website that you
have advised 10 Secretaries of State, Sir Cyril. I thought I had
seen a few but you have seen four or five more than me, although
the pace has quickened more recently. You have enormous experience
of working both in the Trust and also with the Department so we
hope today to tap into your knowledge. Elizabeth, you run a very
large educational charity, that reaches out to, from what I can
see, about 90% of secondary schools in the country, and you do
lots of other things as well. You have 300 staff. That is a big
organisation. Again, we would like to know something about where
you think we are going. Would you like to say anything to start
or would you look like to go straight into questions?
Sir Cyril Taylor: I did write
a letter and I would be happy to repeat a very quick overview
about the history of the Trust, if that is what you would like.
Q2 Chairman: Most of that I would
like to take it we have all read.
Sir Cyril Taylor: Our role is
to try to help raise standards in schools and that is what we
want to focus on. Liz came up with this wonderful mantra, "For
schools, by schools" and we basically eventually foresee
that we should not be offering services that schools do not value
and are not willing to pay for.
Q3 Chairman: Sir Cyril, what do you
and Liz Reid say when you read a leading parliamentarian saying
only this week: "It is a failure to open up the supply side
in education, which is the reason why, despite years of ambitious
attempts at education reform, Britain now lags behind so many
other advanced Western countries." Does that not depress
you after 20 years?
Sir Cyril Taylor: But I do not
agree with that. I think there has been enormous progress made
in schools and I think it is very sad that some aspects of the
media—I know we have some distinguished members here—criticise
grade inflation and things like that, but in 20 years I think
the standards of education in our schools have increased dramatically.
We still have the issue of 400 low-attaining schools and that,
I think, is a very important problem that we must resolve. I think
it would be fantastic if we had an announced goal that within
five years we want no more failing schools, full stop. I spent
quite a lot of time in America working with some New York City
schools and the standards of some of their urban schools are nothing
like the standards that we achieve here.
Q4 Chairman: David Willetts is one
of the most thoughtful people speaking and writing about education,
is he not, yet he comes out with a very pessimistic analysis of
what we have achieved over the last 20 years?
Sir Cyril Taylor: There are some
particular issues in areas of social disadvantage. The reason
why I support the academy initiative so strongly is that there
are some schools in very, very challenging areas—buildings
are run down, they cannot attract the best staff, they have vacancies,
excluded children with behaviour problems from other schools are
put into those schools—and it is very difficult for those
schools and that is why some of them, I think, do need to be closed
and re-established as academies with a fresh start. The case study
of the Haberdashers' in Hatcham supporting the former Malory School:
it is quite an extraordinary, moving experience to visit the school,
which has only been an academy for two years now, I think, and
it has been transformed. That is not the only example; there are
many other examples of progress like that.
Q5 Chairman: Liz, can you tell us
a bit more about the charity itself? Where do you get your funding
from? I know it says where you get your funding from, but in proportion.
I know that specialist schools do pay a fee once they become specialist
schools and I know you get a departmental grant. What is the proportion
between the departmental grant and any other income you get?
Ms Reid: The organisation's grant,
the Specialist Schools Programme grant, is about one third of
our income. Then there is a further third that derives from other
DfES grants, principally to support the academies programme, to
support Raising Achievement and to support the development of
applied learning and the implementation of the 14-19 reforms.
Q6 Chairman: So two-thirds DfES and
a third other?
Ms Reid: That is correct.
Sir Cyril Taylor: It is slightly
less than that now. I think the trend is going down. I think it
is 55% or something like that.
Ms Reid: That is, of course, 2005-2006
and we are now in 2007-2008.
Q7 Chairman: Is it a flat fee that
a school pays to be a member?
Sir Cyril Taylor: One pound per
pupil per year, basically.
Ms Reid: The final third is a
mix of affiliation fees paid by schools, charges for services
to schools, and we have a small amount of sponsorship.
Q8 Chairman: What is quite interesting—and
I do not want to be mysterious, Sir Cyril—is the number
of addresses you seem to have.
Sir Cyril Taylor: We only have
two.
Q9 Chairman: I thought you had an
office near Bruce Liddington in the Department.
Sir Cyril Taylor: No, no. When
I started out in 1987, when the Department was over Waterloo station,
I was shown into a rather pokey little office and I survived about
two hours there; I said I could be more effective working out
of my own office. This document has been shared—and I have
extra copies if Members would like to look at it—a brief
on specialist schools and a brief on academies[1],
and this is quite useful when talking to sponsors, for example,
and I am able to use the Department's stationery because every
word of this has been checked by officials to make sure it is
absolutely ...
Q10 Chairman: Which address is on that
letter?
Sir Cyril Taylor: That gives my
personal office address in Queen's Gate. That is where I work
from. This is voluntary work. I have paid employment somewhere
else. Liz's office is in Millbank but I do not have an office
within the Department.
Q11 Chairman: So you perch on a desk
when you are in Sanctuary House?
Sir Cyril Taylor: I basically
only come in to talk to people.
Q12 Chairman: I see. It is just that
I often bump into you in Sanctuary House. I assumed you had an
office.
Sir Cyril Taylor: I do have a
pass to get into the building.
Q13 Chairman: Liz, in terms of the
work that you achieve, some people would say that when you are
assessing your effectiveness, it becomes less and less relevant
in a way, and indeed, a little misleading if you keep comparing
the performance in GCSE in the specialist schools area as more
schools become specialist schools. I think you say in your document
that 90% of schools are now specialist schools and so you are
really comparing yourself with the rump, are you not, of 10%?
Is there a better way to evaluate how you are doing and what change
you have brought about in standards in schools?
Ms Reid: I think there are different
ways to do that and there will be different ways going forward.
There are a number of things to be said about this though. The
Trust itself is not responsible for the achievement of these results;
schools are, and then behind schools local authorities have the
statutory responsibility for the standards in the schools which
they maintain. We published this document simply in order to demonstrate
to the wider world that this policy which we support and the schools
which we support have been making progress but I think going forward
it is plainly absurd to go on with a set of comparisons when we
are on the eve of a specialist system. Going forward, we need
to focus on the achievement, for example, within specialist subjects.
We have significant groupings of schools with specialisms, so
are the language colleges adding value to the system as a whole
as centres of excellence besides other specialist colleges, and
so on? That is the kind of question that in the future we will
want to explore, and perhaps explore rather more fully achievement
post-16, staying on rates in specialist areas, for example. Those
are the kinds of questions.
Sir Cyril Taylor: If I could just
add to that, I think the principle of accountability is extremely
important but it has to be fair and transparent accountability.
Concentrating on just raw five A-Cs, especially if it does not
include Maths or English; although that is a useful snapshot,
much more interesting is the value added calculation of Professor
David Jesson at York University, where he compares the intake
ability at age 11 looking at raw scores in the key stage two and
can then project what a school should get, and he could include
Maths and English five A-Cs, and you compare them with their actual
outcomes. More and more of our schools are accepting that as a
fair measure. I think there are some other accountability measures,
for example, the number of children who actually turn up. There
are arguments about authorised absence and unauthorised absence.
Q14 Chairman: You said accountability.
There are two sorts of accountability, are there not? This Committee
has a responsibility in the sense that quite a lot of DfES money
flows through the charity so in a sense we think we should be
able to ask you questions and find out what you are spending the
money on. That is one sort of accountability. The other is a kind
of accountability for what you and organisations like yours are
achieving. I was recently with the Sutton Trust, who after only
10 years had the Boston Consulting Group really quite ruthlessly
and radically evaluate the "bang for the buck" of all
the different programmes that they do. It is a much smaller organisation
than yours but they went to an organisation that they thought
would be rigorously independent. I am a great admirer of Professor
Jesson's work but he is quite bound into your Trust. He is on
the Board, is he not?
Ms Reid: No.
Q15 Chairman: Is he on the Advisory
Board?
Sir Cyril Taylor: No.
Q16 Chairman: We have been misinformed
about that. Apologies for that. There are two professors at York.
One seems to give you a pretty fair run but Professor Stephen
Gorard is more critical of your claims of achievement, is he not?
Ms Reid: Chairman, first of all,
Professor Jesson has in the past been a member of the Trust's
Council but he has not been a member of the Trust's Council for
some years now, so we need to be clear about that. The relationship
is a straightforward relationship, of the kind that we have with
a number of academics. It is absolutely the case that there is
terrific academic debate about the causal relationship between
a variety of factors and young people's achievement.
Q17 Chairman: What I am getting at,
Liz, is this: is there a time, a regular time, where you get someone
who is totally independent and say, "Look, evaluate our performance"?
You have been at it for 20 years. How do you know you are doing
good stuff if you do not get that sort of independent evaluation?
Ms Reid: If I may, Chairman, the
question is, what are we to be evaluated on? There are many different
factors that produce success in schools. We need to be clear about
that. Those who are most responsible for what happens in schools
are the governors and the managers of individual schools. As I
say, behind them stands the statutory authority of the local authority
in relation to the schools that they maintain. What we do, as
a third sector organisation, I hope, is add value by offering
a range of activities which schools participate in generally on
a voluntary basis. How we are evaluated is very much in terms,
I think, of whether schools value what they do, whether they affiliate
each year, whether they re-affiliate each year, whether they continue
to use our services, whether our services develop and grow. We
are very much a membership organisation and I think that point
is sometimes missed. So if I may say that we organise a network;
we have networks in each region of the country and each region
has its own head teacher steering group determining the nature
of the activities that will be put on for schools. Each specialism
has a specialism steering group and those head teachers determine
what they would like by way of activities and continuing professional
development. Each of the programmes we run otherwise; we run a
large-scale community programme, leadership programme and so on.
They are all overseen by head teacher groups and head teachers
and their staff often design and deliver the programmes. In a
way, that is the test of our effectiveness. Do schools think that
we add value? Do they value working in the network? But we take
many steps. For example, we are at the second level of European
Foundation for Quality Management standards, we have "Investors
in People", we have a range of external accreditations, ISO
standards and so on.
Q18 Chairman: I am not trying to
be critical here. I am merely saying that if you had some sort
of external, regular evaluation of performance, it would guard
you against people like David Willetts saying nothing really has
been achieved. In a sense, I am saying have you thought about
it as something that you might want to do in the future?
Ms Reid: That is absolutely something
that the Council of the Trust, I am sure, would wish to consider.
I think the Chairman said in his letter to you that the Council
holds me and my colleagues to account and they do that in very
many ways. What I do want to be clear about is that the Trust
as an organisation is not responsible for school standards in
secondary schools in England.
Q19 Chairman: But if you have two-thirds
of your money coming from the Department, how do they monitor
how you spend the money?
Ms Reid: They monitor very frequently,
Chairman. In fact, I think there is a point here that I ought
to draw to your attention. The Trust has a financial memorandum
with the Department. Until three years ago that financial memorandum
was in respect of grant and aid and I was the accounting officer
for the Trust. Three years ago we reviewed the financial memorandum,
put in place a new memorandum and we moved from grant and aid
to grant and I became the accountable officer. So in fact, I do
have a direct line to you personally. Within the financial memorandum
there is a series of arrangements for very regular meetings and
reports. I sit down with my colleagues in the Department on a
quarterly basis and for all the main areas of our work where we
are supported by the Department with grant there are regular meetings,
generally of six-weekly frequency. So there is a very thorough
and regular scrutiny undertaken of our work by the Department.
It might also be helpful to say that I think increasingly, as
National Audit Office and Treasury guidance and government procurement
arrangements develop and sharpen within a wider framework of European
regulatory change in relation to competition, we are increasingly
competing for contracts that the Department may wish to let and
I think that is a large part of our future. That, of course, puts
another discipline into the situation for us; competition is itself
a sharp tool.
Chairman: Shall we hold that there and
dip into some particular topics. Thank you for those opening questions
and answers.
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