Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-119)
SIR CYRIL
TAYLOR GBE AND
MS ELIZABETH
REID
23 MAY 2007
Q100 Paul Holmes: There are no good
heads in the state sector then?
Sir Cyril Taylor: Nobody is saying
that but the 400 low-attaining schools ... I think Ofsted would
agree, if you look at their inspection reports, that leadership
is often the primary concern.
Q101 Paul Holmes: You seem to be
saying that the only way to get a good head into these schools
to turn them round is for it to be independent, charitably sponsored
and all the rest of it, that there is no evidence from Excellence
in Cities, no evidence from Phoenix School that good heads within
the state school system have turned failing schools round?
Sir Cyril Taylor: Obviously, many
local authorities have taken low-attaining schools and helped
to turn them round. I am not saying this is the only solution
but it appears to be a very effective solution. These 400 schools
have been low-attaining for not just a few years; it goes back
20, 30, 40 years.
Q102 Paul Holmes: Last question:
you mentioned CTCs as being the longer-running example of academies.
Where they have been around for quite some years now, have there
been any systematic studies done of why they have succeeded? For
example, do they still take children from the same geographical
area as the original school they replaced? For example, is there
any evidence of covert social selection taking place at all? Are
there any hard studies that look at this?
Sir Cyril Taylor: They are comprehensive
schools, and if you look at their intake of ability, they are
not covert selective schools.
Q103 Paul Holmes: The evidence I
have seen suggests that you do see the number of children who
qualify for free school meals, for example, falling compared to
the schools that they replaced. That would indicate there is some
form of selection, whether it is by aspirational parents or whether
it is by the school, taking place.
Sir Cyril Taylor: If you become
a highly successful school, you get many more applications than
you have places, and that is why I am a strong supporter of fair
banding ...
Q104 Paul Holmes: So the intake of
the school changes and therefore one of the reasons it is a failing
school goes.
Sir Cyril Taylor: I am not saying
the intake, but the applications change. I think fair banding
and random allocation is the future of the admissions process.
Q105 Paul Holmes: That would be for
the future. The evidence on why CTCs have succeeded would so far
show that they change their intake.
Sir Cyril Taylor: They have the
highest value added of our groups of specialist schools.
Paul Holmes: But they have changed their
intake.
Chairman: Other people have questions
on academies. I think you have had not a bad run of questions.
Q106 Mr Pelling: Can I very briefly
create a link, as it were, into my questions from what Paul has
been asking? Sir Cyril, the Chairman mentioned Sylvan High School
and the transformation that has taken place there, and I guess
also the BRIT School in Croydon, and people like Leona Lewis have
come through it, are a very good example of the benefits that
the CTC schools have had. How different do you feel academies
are, bearing in mind this all started with the CTCs? I am sorry
to go down memory lane.
Sir Cyril Taylor: It is difficult
generalising because there are many more of these academies than
15 CTCs, although we could have had 100 CTCs but the events of
'92 ...
Q107 Chairman: Sir Cyril, you could
not get the money. Even with the backing of the Prime Minister,
CTCs could not get beyond 15.
Sir Cyril Taylor: Not true. When
the '92 financial crisis occurred, and the pound went down the
chute and we had 15% interest rates, they cut off the capital
flow and that is why we had to go for specialist schools instead.
Q108 Chairman: Let us get this straight.
Yes, the ambition was 100 but the then Government got to 15 and
then changed the policy.
Sir Cyril Taylor: They never set
a target. I have been involved since 1987.
Q109 Chairman: I can remember the
200 businesses you had in London that pledged the 200—everyone
at the time thought it was going to be 200 CTCs but you could
not raise more than the 15, could you? It was all the capital
cost.
Sir Cyril Taylor: You ask Angela
Rumbold, as the Minister at the time, and I have forgotten whether
it was John Patten who was there. They called me in and said,
"The Chancellor's said we're not having any more money for
this."
Q110 Chairman: That is exactly the
point I am making.
Sir Cyril Taylor: Yes.
Q111 Chairman: So we are agreeing.
I thought you said something rather different.
Sir Cyril Taylor: No, I am saying
we could have raised the private sector sponsorship but the Government
cut off the flow of capital money. It is very interesting, is
it not, that a Conservative initiative started on a CTC has been
taken on so enthusiastically by the Labour Government?
Q112 Mr Pelling: I thought that was
a very good point that Sir Cyril made. Obviously, with the development
of the academies now, it is very much part of the Building Schools
for the Future project. Is that something that you welcome? It
seems to be a project very flushed with money, perhaps compared
to ...
Sir Cyril Taylor: I annoyed some
of the early sponsors of academies by making perhaps derogatory
remarks about glass houses. I actually think that schools need
to be highly functional and glass is not a very good building
material. It is hot in the summer, cold in the winter and nasty
boys can throw bricks at it. I think moving to standard, functional
designs is the answer. The Mercers built a fantastic academy in
Walsall on time, within budget, for £17 million and it is
a wonderful school. Let us have 400 schools like that. The idea
now that, because an academy is getting the £25 million,
some other school is not getting that—it is all part of
Building Schools for the Future now. Some of our sponsors are
saying, "Hey, how long is it going to be before our school
is built?" and we are saying that it ought to be a maximum
delay of three years.
Q113 Mr Pelling: What could be done,
do you think, to make BSF more efficient and more timely?
Sir Cyril Taylor: I think the
officials work very hard. I think continuity is very important
here and I think Partnership for Schools could play a very valuable
role in that, and national tendering could produce very substantial
savings.
Q114 Mr Pelling: What role does the
Trust itself play in giving advice on the BSF programme? I do
not really understand it. Is there a formal role?
Sir Cyril Taylor: Chairman, are
you going to ask about my advisor role?
Q115 Chairman: You can mention the
advisor role.
Sir Cyril Taylor: People say "You
have been around 20 years." It is a voluntary, unpaid role.
I have no office in the Department. I have no power to take decisions.
Ten successive Secretaries of State, in their wisdom, have decided
to reappoint me as their advisor on the specialist schools and
academies since 2005. I meet a lot of head teachers and they tell
me what the real problems are on the ground and on the academy
programme people like Phil Harris really know what they are doing.
They are backing ten academies, the Mercers, the Haberdashers.
These people are experts in running fantastic schools, and what
we want to ensure is that we learn those lessons and do not reinvent
the wheel each time.
Q116 Chairman: Phil Harris is Lord
Harris, not the musician?
Sir Cyril Taylor: That is right.
We have had a bit of an argument about whether the focus should
be on the really low-attaining schools or maybe some different
schools and I personally suggested it should be focused on the
400 very low-attaining schools but that is my opinion.
Q117 Mr Wilson: Why limit academies
to just 400?
Sir Cyril Taylor: Good question.
I think, going back to Paul Holmes's concerns, certainly extra
resources are being put into academies. I think it is a question
of priorities. Let us get every low-attaining school to a reasonable
status first. There is the trust initiative and that has many
of the advantages of the academy project. This could be a sleeping
giant. We were at a dinner last night and I think if the Reading
school and the Kendrick School set up a trust of a highly selective
grammar school working with an under-performing school, what a
wonderful model that would be. I think the trust structure could
be a very interesting alternative to the academy.
Chairman: Can we be very careful about
not straying into trusts because it is the next section and I
do not want civil war to break out.
Q118 Mr Wilson: I am not going to
stray into trusts. I want to stick with academies. Just to clarify,
you see 400 as an artificial limit and you personally would like
to see more?
Sir Cyril Taylor: Four hundred
academies at £2 million each is £800 million. That is
a fairly significant fund-raising goal. We have raised the money
for 220 academies. I think the financial contribution of a sponsor
academy is really important. First of all, it demonstrates commitment
to that project, and although many of the sponsors do not get
involved in the details of running an academy, they are giving
that drive and encouragement to improvement. Phil Harris visits
his schools the whole time and certainly the Mercers, when they
sponsor an academy with the Mercers' name on it, an institution
that was founded in 1200, that school is going to be a good school.
Q119 Mr Wilson: I do not have any
doubts about the success of the academies and future success.
What I am trying to get at is why there needs to be this artificial
limit on them. If they are such a good thing for disadvantaged
children, particularly in inner city areas, why are we saying
there should only be 400 of them?
Sir Cyril Taylor: It takes a lot
of time to do every academy. It is a huge amount of work. I think
that would be a good question to ask in three or four years' time,
when we have achieved the target of 400.
| 
