Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
MR DAVID
BELL AND
MR JON
THOMPSON
11 JULY 2007
CHAIRMAN:
Good morning. Can I welcome the Permanent Secretary and Jon Thompson
to our proceedings? I think we once had a conversation, David,
about who had the longest historic memory in the Department, and
I think I am winning at the moment, but you are close behind!
Thank you very much. We always enjoy these sessions. Can I start
with congratulations that the Annual Report is a lot better than
last year? I think you have taken a lot of notice of most of the
points we made in our comments last year, so well done. You have
done it just before the dissolution.
MR
MARSDEN: It
was not cause and effect, was it?
Q1 CHAIRMAN:
It might have been. You know that we have a report on the Ofsted
session coming out tomorrow. That might be of interest to both
of you, being old lags from Ofsted. We normally give our witnesses
a chance to say a few words about where we are at the present
moment compared to where we were last year, but we cannot allow
you to go on too long given the momentous circumstances and events.
Is there anything you would like to say to get us started, David?
MR
BELL:
It was a great privilege to be the Permanent Secretary of the
Department for Education and Skills, but it is an even greater
privilege to be the first ever Permanent Secretary of the new
Department for Children, Schools and Families, and we have been
very focused on maintaining continuity on the responsibilities
that the older Department has transferred to the new Department
but at the same time trying to get off to a cracking start with
the wider responsibilities that we now have to try to make children
and families policies work across government. We like to think
that we have built upon the best of what has gone before and are
ready to go forward, but apart from that, Chairman, we are more
than happy just to begin the questioning and hopefully answer
your questions.
Q2 CHAIRMAN:
Jon is nodding enthusiastically. Let us start by asking you: the
preparation for getting this new Department and the separation
of the old Department—how long has that taken you?
MR
BELL:
I knew about the proposals about a fortnight before they were
actually announced, which gave me enough time, obviously, to think
through the consequences and the implications. The staff of the
Department for Education and Skills were told about the changes
on the afternoon of the 28th, which was the day the Cabinet announcements
were made, and I was enormously assisted by colleagues in what
was the DfES in planning for the transition, and I think it is
a tremendous tribute to them, and, might I say, the Civil Service
more generally, that we were able to effect a very smooth transition
to get the new Department up and running and, of course, hopefully
see safely across our ex-colleagues from DfES into the new Department
for Innovation, Universities and Skills.
Q3 CHAIRMAN:
So a fortnight basically. Had you anything in the wind before
that?
MR
BELL:
There is always talk about possible machinery of government changes.
There were comments and ideas and speculation in the newspapers,
but at that point that is all it was. It was speculation.
Q4 CHAIRMAN:
As the Permanent Secretary, had you been feeding through to your
political masters the view that this was a pretty unwieldy Department?
As you got more responsibilities—for children and the Children
Act and Every Child Matters— and a much greater role
in those organisations linked to you, such as Ofsted, is this
the kind of word that would have been used with your Ministers:
"Look, this is becoming an unwieldy Department"?
MR
BELL:
No, that was never a conversation that I either initiated or was
party to. From our perspective we were managing, we thought, very
effectively, the responsibilities of the DfES, but in actual fact,
with the new responsibilities, we think that allows us to focus
on the work to do with children, families, schools and colleges
up to the age of 19 at the same time as allowing the new Department
to focus on the post-19 world of adults, higher education and
skills. Looking at it in a sense from my perspective, I also think
it is a really good signal about the importance of education,
in the broadest sense, that we now have round the Cabinet table
two Secretaries of State carrying these responsibilities and two
major Departments of State responsible for these areas. Clearly
there are issues which you may wish to come on to, Chairman, about
ensuring the effective transition, ensuring effective connections
between the Departments, but we see this as very positive and
from our perspective, as the Department for Children, Schools
and Families, an opportunity to really focus down even more and
take account of the wider responsibilities for other children's
and families' issues across government.
Q5 CHAIRMAN:
Is this not a worrying time, though? Here you have got a new Department
with new responsibilities and the statement to the House yesterday
by the new Secretary of State seemed more like a manifesto than
just a statement for the next period of the existence of the Department,
at a time when expenditure is going to be levelling off in terms
of the growth that we have seen over recent years.
MR
BELL:
I said to the new Secretary of State when he arrived that we had
to retain a relentless focus on delivery at the same time as take
the opportunity, which I believe the Secretary of State did yesterday,
to lay out his agenda for the new Department. It has been getting
the balance between maintaining the things that we know we have
to continue to do at the same time as taking the opportunity that
presents itself, with a new Department, to think about things
differently. I think I would have been far more anxious about
all of this, as it were, a fortnight on, if we had not effected
that transition so smoothly and, just reflecting with some colleagues
yesterday, it was hard to believe that it is really only a fortnight
since the new Department has come into being because we feel absolutely
up for what has happened and, in a funny sort of way, we feel
as if we have been in existence forever, which I think is a good
sign because we are right on top of what it is we need to do;
and I am sure my colleagues in the Department for Innovation,
Universities and Skills would say the same thing.
Q6 CHAIRMAN:
The old sign is still up outside the Broadway offices.
MR
BELL:
The old Broadway offices. I did not realise that actually. We
will look into that, Chairman.
Q7 CHAIRMAN:
The rebadging: I walked past the very next day and I was impressed
there was a new sign outside.
MR
BELL:
It was going up at two o'clock on the day that I was announcing
to the staff that we were having two new Departments. I will check
to make sure there are no rogue signs left.
MR MARSDEN:
We do not want them appearing on Ebay!
Q8 CHAIRMAN:
You can rebadge very quickly, you can get a new sign up very quickly,
and you can get people in different offices quite quickly. I and
some of the members of the Committee were at a skills meeting
last night and we were discussing that the difficult bit is going
to be the join, the join across 14-19, the join between on the
one side Diplomas and on the other apprenticeships, and so on.
MR
BELL:
Yes.
Q9 CHAIRMAN:
How are the two Departments going to address that?
MR
BELL:
If you look at the pulling together of all the responsibilities
up to the age of 19, I think that gives us a greater opportunity
for coherence, particularly with the proposed changes to the funding
arrangements 16-19. As you rightly point out, there are important
connections to be made to the world of employment and work. For
example, apprenticeships: clearly you require employers to be
heavily engaged in offering the places at the same time as youngsters
between the ages of 16-19 are taking up opportunities. Likewise,
many youngsters who are 16-19 will be educated and trained in
colleges and workplace settings, so we do recognise that we need
to make those connections work. We have the advantage, of course,
that the people that are working on those within the new Department,
certainly at an official level, are people that we know very well
and want to work with. What we are doing is trying to work through
the practicalities of the arrangements now, but what I would be
very struck with, and certainly what the Secretary of State has
said, is that we need to make sure these arrangements work well,
that the focus that we get in creating two new Departments is
not undermined by potentially issues falling between the Departments,
and I think that is a big responsibility that falls to me as the
Permanent Secretary and my counterpart at the DIUS as well as
officials across the two Departments.
Q10 CHAIRMAN:
The track record of co-operation across Departments is not good
though, is it? Will there be any new mechanisms devised to make
that relationship a closer one?
MR
BELL:
We have got experience of that, of course, in the old DfES, for
example on issues like school sport, where we worked very closely
with DCMS and have continued to work closely; so those arrangements
can work. I think there is a big responsibility on us as the new
Department, with these wider cross-government responsibilities,
to effect working arrangements properly. I think it is interesting
that the proposals for the new Public Service Agreements, which,
of course, will be published later in the year, the detail of
the Public Service Agreements, are deliberately designed to be
cross-departmental, which reflects the reality of life outside
Whitehall and Westminster, that you need to make those connections,
and so the onus will be on all Government Departments under the
new PSA system to join up and connect.
Q11 CHAIRMAN:
Are there any major policy areas that are totally sacrosanct,
that you would not try to change, no-one would contemplate changing,
or is everything up for change, is everything up for innovation?
MR
BELL:
It will be, obviously, for the Secretary of State to determine
the policy of the new Department, but I think, as yesterday's
statement illustrated, there was a clear sense of continuity on
certain programmes with a new perspective brought by a new Secretary
of State for the Department, and that, I think, is how we will
move forward. Many things are really important to carry on with—the
expansion of children's centres, raising standards in schools,
making sure youngsters get opportunities 16-19—but, quite
properly, the new Secretary of State in a new Department will
want to have a look and develop policies. I think we saw some
of that early development of policy yesterday across a number
of areas.
Q12 CHAIRMAN:
Funding for schools. Is it going to stay on track—five per
cent for all schools across the piece for three years?
MR
BELL:
In a moment Jon may wish to say something about what has been
agreed. The previous Ministers, who happen just to be, of course,
the existing Ministers in the new Department, made an announcement
on 25 June outlining the broad shape of the school funding arrangements
for the three years to come. More detail on the specific allocations
at local authority level, and so on, will be announced in the
autumn, consistent with the normal practice, and I believe that
the Ministers also wrote to you to try to outline what those arrangements
are. I am sure Jon will say a bit more about those if you wish.
Q13 CHAIRMAN:
Let us cut to the quick on this. This Government, the new Prime
Minister and the new Secretary of State, are absolutely committed
to addressing the issues of child poverty—that is very,
very clear—and this Committee has consistently said to you
and to your colleagues that the funding formula is not sensitive
enough to tracking resources to children from more deprived backgrounds.
We have a system at the moment where you get an equal amount of
money whether you are sitting in the leafy suburbs or whether
you are sitting in the inner city, broadly. There is some little
variation, but we have consistently said to you, this is not fit
for purpose in terms of tracking particular extra resources for
poorer children.
MR
BELL:
There is a greater degree of finessing that has gone into the
new arrangements, which Jon may wish to speak about in a moment.
Perhaps I might just dispute a bit that we have not done that
up until now, because clearly there have been funding streams
allocated within the funding formula. The other point I would
make, of course, is this is not just about the funding that goes
through the Dedicated Schools Grant in addressing the issues that
you describe of child poverty and the like. The Government's policies
in relation to Early Years, the creation of children's centres,
and so on, have been very focused and targeted on addressing many
of those issues of concern. What we try to do is to give youngsters
and families the best start and then ensure that schools that
have got particular pressures of deprivation get additional funding,
and that has been the case, and will continue to be the case,
with greater finessing under the arrangements that were announced
at the end of June.
Q14 CHAIRMAN:
Jon, do you want to come in?
MR
THOMPSON:
I think it is somewhat unfair to say it is not differentiated.
It is at the national level differentiated by up to 85 %, and
the index between the lowest funded local authority and the highest
funded is anything between 100 and 185, so there is a spectrum
which takes account of deprivation. I think we are quite conscious
that more could be done about deprivation, and on 27 June I think
the Schools' Minister announced that we would switch the data
that we used to a more reliable source, the tax credit data (and
I think that was part of the consultation), so we can use a more
reliable source, and it is differentiated at the moment. There
are arguments about should it be differentiated more. I think
there is equally an argument about those at the bottom of that
scale and how do they fare in the national system.
Q15 CHAIRMAN:
My colleagues want to drill down on that in a minute, Jon, so
will you hold that for a moment. One last thing from me. Of course,
it is knowing what is happening to a child. I am going with the
delegation to see the Prime Minister at one o'clock today about
runaway children, but I was in a seminar last week where we talked
about the careers and advice service. Everywhere I go I talk to
people who say, "We actually have to know a child's record,
how you track a child and the fuller information that we have
about a child, right through the experience." What progress
are we making in the Department?
MR
BELL:
We have made very significant progress. For example, if you take
what is happening in schools, our capacity to track the attainment
of pupils and to see what progress they are making is entirely
dependent on the data sources that we have developed probably
over the last ten or 15 years, so we can actually now track the
progress that individual children make, and I think that has become
an incredibly powerful tool for teachers when they are looking
at the progress that children are making. At the same time, the
notion of Extended Schools and bringing together different services
on the school site is to enable teachers and other professionals
to work together so that we provide the right kinds of services
and support for families and children under pressure. I think
we have made very considerable progress on gathering that kind
of data and information that enable us to track progress.
CHAIRMAN:
Thank you for that. That is my warm up act, we call that. Now
I want to call on Fiona to go into the first section of questions.
Q16 FIONA
MACTAGGART:
In these days of evidence-based policy, why do we spend three
times as much on a student in higher education than we do on an
under-five year-old?
MR
BELL:
We have increased substantially the expenditure on under-fives
through a variety of means, through the investment in childcare,
through the investment in Extended Schools, through investment
in children's centres and so on. Of course, there has been a huge
additional investment over recent years in education. So, I think
it is not a case of making a choice either/or, the investment
and the increases in investment have been right across the whole
gamut of educational responsibilities in recent years.
Q17 FIONA
MACTAGGART:
I recognise that and welcome it. In the old days it was High/Scope
Perry, it was American Head Start, it was American evidence; now
Sylva's study, and other things, show very clearly that investment
in pre-school pays off more rewards in terms of overall achievement
and in terms of reducing the achievement gap between poorer children
and other children, and I have not seen a rebalancing of spending
on that. Clearly, that is a ministerial decision. You have got
a new Secretary of State. Have you discussed this issue with him?
MR
BELL:
I have not discussed the specific issue that you have raised,
because, of course, the funding responsibilities now for higher
education are with the Department for Innovation, Universities
and Skills and the responsibilities for early education are with
us. I would perhaps prefer not to characterise it as a kind of
either/or choice. There has been £2 billion expenditure in
the last decade in children's centres and the whole Sure Start
initiative, and over three-quarters of a million capital spending
to build children's centres and Sure Start facilities, and so
I think we can say very strongly that there has been huge government
commitment to investing in the early years. Equally, the higher
education system would say that it needs to be well funded and
well supported, because this country requires a very effective
higher education system, not just for meeting the needs of students
and young people and adults in this country, but also to enable
us to compete internationally. I do not think we have had to make
invidious choices about: should we fund higher education against
early years education? I think we have been able to do that, and
the general funding settlement for education that was announced
in March in the Budget continues, I think, to evidence that commitment,
2.7 % across the piece above the rate of inflation continuing
commitment to fund all aspects of education, using that term broadly,
in the coming years.
Q18 FIONA
MACTAGGART: If you
keep the bits of education which are inside your Department and
if I compare return on investment in secondary education and return
on investment in pre-school education, it is clear that the graph
is the same, that the return on investment in pre-school education
is substantially higher, and that is now backed by very powerful
studies. The Secretary of State said yesterday that the first
22 months of a child's life very much determine its future and
yet we still spend two and a half to three times as much on a
child in secondary education than we do on those earlier years.
Is that a right choice, or should we be using the opportunity
of a Department with, for the first time, the word "children"
in its title to think about whether we should make a different
choice?
MR
BELL:
These are, as you say, choices that we have made, and these arguments
and debates have been around for a number of years. For example,
if you look at the funding for a student in secondary education
as opposed to the funding for a pupil in a primary school, you
have to balance up a number of factors here, do you not? You have
to say: what are the costs and consequences of making an abrupt
shift of funding away, say, from the secondary education system
to the primary education system or rebalancing your secondary
into early years? These are difficult choices, and I think one
of the critical principles that we have tried to maintain, and
I am sure we will want to maintain in the new Department, is funding
stability. So, you are growing the budget, as I suggested, in
the Comprehensive Spending Review period ahead, but I think we
have a real responsibility as officials to advise our Ministers
to keep their eye on the stability of funding so we do not get
some of the minor tremors we have had in the past when it has
come to funding. So, there are choices to be made and you have
to weigh up the costs and benefits, but, again, I just want to
repeat the point that the general level of investment has been
very substantial over the last few years and that commitment to
education, I think, is still very evident in our Comprehensive
Spending Review settlement going forward to the next three years.
Q19 FIONA
MACTAGGART:
I think your description of the role of the civil servant in terms
of balance is a powerful one, but do you find that those bits
of spending which have big institutional players take more of
your attention than other bits? One of the things that I have
noticed as a member of this Committee, for example, is that we
are more effectively lobbied by the higher education sector than
by other sectors, partly because they have the resources and the
organisation to do so. Do you find, as a Department, that the
voice of those institutional bits of spending is perhaps louder
than other bits where the pattern is more mixed, more informal,
more complicated?
MR
BELL:
I think from where I am sitting I feel equally strongly lobbied
from all parts of the system. It is a very interesting question.
Clearly, if you look at the amount of expenditure in either the
old Department, as evidenced in this report, or the new Department
going forward, that which goes directly to schools is still a
huge chunk of what goes out; but I would try not to draw a distinction
between the institutional lobbying, as it were, and the lobbying
on the part of the individual, because what you hope is that whoever
is coming in talking to these officials or talking to Ministers
has the interest of the pupil, of the child, of the student at
heart and I work on the principle that people are there to try
to exert pressure to ensure that they are part of the system and,
I think, your description of the Civil Service is right, we have
to balance that up, and in the end Ministers have got to make
some pretty tough choices about where they put the expenditure;
absolutely.
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