Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
MR DAVID
BELL AND
MR JON
THOMPSON
11 JULY 2007
Q20 FIONA
MACTAGGART: Jon, you
looked as though you recognised my description.
MR
THOMPSON:
Absolutely, and I agree with David. I think it is fair to say
that there is a very healthy conversation with all the lobbyists.
We are not in a position to say exactly how the CSR will be spent,
but I think there will be further announcements about increasing
early years provision in due course, but that needs to be seen
in the broader context of where we are with the CSR, which for
us has to be put on hold while we change Secretary of State, and
we just need to check that the announcements which would have
been made in due course can still be made. There certainly was
a very helpful conversation with the previous Secretary of State
around early years and specific children's initiatives.
Q21 FIONA
MACTAGGART:
I notice that of the three working parties that the Secretary
of State set up, two deal with five years of a child's life and
the other one deals with seven years of a child's life.
MR
BELL:
Yes. Talking of lively debates, we had quite an interesting debate,
but the Secretary of State was very keen, in a sense, with the
new Department, not to say, "Well, let us cut up these working
groups according to institutions", because it would have
been quite tempting to have said, "Let us have a group looking
at schools; let us have a group looking at the pre-school."
His argument was that we need to be thinking across those years
and deliberately choosing important points of transition. You
could have cut that different ways. You could have said it should
be zero to five and five to 11, but, again, deliberately not trying
to just absolutely mirror the way in which institutions are organised,
trying to think about the child or the young person's experience.
I think that is a very good sign about the Department and the
Secretary of State wanting the Department to think differently
about how it does its business.
Q22 FIONA
MACTAGGART:
I do too. One of the things that the new Department will have
is some interesting responsibilities in terms of, for example,
youth crime, which will be new to you.
MR
BELL:
Yes.
Q23 FIONA
MACTAGGART:
I am wondering how that is going to impact on your organisation.
For example, the information that I was talking about earlier
in relation to early years spending, some of that American research
suggests very powerfully that one of the consequences of good
quality pre-school education is a reduction in crime 20 years
later. Are you going to be better at making those kinds of choices
than government traditionally has when these things are done in
different Departments, or do you think it is going to be as hard
as it always was?
MR
BELL:
That kind of analysis is tough to do, but I think this is where
the new arrangements that have been proposed are more than just
a sort of tokenistic connection between Departments. The Machinery
of Government papers that were published a couple of weeks ago
have made it very clear that there will be joint responsibility
on a number of key issues that affect children and young people,
whether that is to do with health, youth justice and the like,
and that does not just mean, at very last minute, being presented
with a paper from another Department and being asked to sign it
off; this actually means working together to establish the policies
and to take that forward. The Secretary of State has asked the
officials to work up these arrangements so that he can present
them and discuss them with his Cabinet colleagues about making
them work; but this is not tokenistic; this is about making a
reality of the sorts of connections that the Chairman touched
on where perhaps government has not been very good at this in
the past. It is interesting to note that actually, as far as the
new Department for Children, Schools and Families is concerned,
we are only importing a very small number of staff from the Home
Office; so this has not involved us importing very large numbers
of staff from across Whitehall. I think that is very sensible,
because the danger of doing that is that you end up with all the
discontinuities, people get very anxious about their jobs, they
do not know where they are going to sit, and so on. The arrangements
as they are now just need to be made to work in a much sharper,
clearer and more efficient way. I think the sort of question that
you raise about the investment impact, say, on youth justice and
how you relate that to preventative activities for young people
is likely to be a sharper conversation now than it has ever been
previously.
Q24 FIONA
MACTAGGART:
I certainly hope so. Finally, on this point about the new machinery
of government shared responsibilities, in his statement the Prime
Minister said that working with the Department for Work and Pensions,
the Treasury, the Department for Children, Schools and Families
will take forward the Government's strategy for ending child poverty.
That seems quite a rich mix of Departments.
MR
BELL:
Yes.
Q25 FIONA
MACTAGGART:
There clearly needs to be someone in the lead. My experience of
government is when you do not, things fall through the gaps and
do not work very well. Who is going to be the lead, and how are
you going to make sure that it works?
MR
BELL:
The final decisions about those are pending the agreement of the
Public Service Agreements for the autumn, but the idea is that
certainly there will be a Cabinet Committee structured to oversee
it at a ministerial level with a series of boards to ensure that
we drive forward the priorities. So, in some of those boards under
PSAs it is very likely that the DCSF will be directly in the lead,
in others potentially other Departments will be in the lead, but
we will be sharing that policy-making responsibility, decision-making,
allocation of resources and the like but the actual details are
to be worked through. But, it is very, very important in a sense,
to pick up your point, that this not merely a bureaucratic exercise
but that there is joint decision-making on issues that really
will make a difference.
Q26 FIONA
MACTAGGART:
Will it be more transparent for people like us? We find it a bit
frustrating sometimes to read in your Annual Report, on Public
Service Agreements, that there is something called slippage but
it is not explained, not described in numbers, not made transparent.
In future PSAs will it be clearer what the slippage is, what it
is caused by, how the plan is to remedy it?
MR
BELL:
Yes, I think there is always a choice, if you are making a Departmental
Report, so it does not become a massive tome that explains every
part of it, but certainly part of the discussions at the moment
with the Treasury across government are not just what should the
PSAs consist of but what are the delivery plans that they will
fall under, how do you make these things happen and what are the
ways of assessing progress? What are the numbers that will demonstrate
whether you have made progress or not? I hope we can make those
as clear as we can. There have been some comments across government
about the current suite of PSAs made by the National Audit Office
and about their clarity, and I think the new arrangements give
us a chance to get those right. Given the conversations we had
about this Departmental Report, I am sure there will be a conversation
to have with the successor Committee about how we get the right
information captured here that meets the needs of the Committee
and, importantly, provides continuity, because that was one of
your questions last year: how can you make comparisons between
the past and the present going forward? That is an issue that
we will have to discuss in the context of a new Departmental Report.
Q27 CHAIRMAN:
Before we move on, can I come back quickly to something Fiona
was probing on, and that is whether this nought to seven and seven
to thirteen, and so on, is going to be a helpful aid to understanding
the work of the Department and particularly the objectives of
the Department. What I find frustrating about this is it may be
a perfectly good mechanism, but if you do a longitudinal study
about what happens to children in our society, we know that under-achievement
of mainly kids from poorer backgrounds, under-achievement up to
the ages of 20 and 22 months, as we heard yesterday and as this
Committee knows well, then at five and then right through the
system, not carrying on in education, dropping out before 16,
all that is so related to poverty, is it not? That is the truth.
If you look at the expenditure on a child from a poorer background
that probably drops out of education— between 14 and 16
very often and certainly at 16—they get less spent on them
in their lifetime than anyone else in the population. The people
from solid backgrounds, they get the expenditure right through
to undergraduate, postgraduate; many of them do not get into earning,
as some of my children, until they are in their mid-twenties.
Will that structure help, looking at how the resources flow, following
those people that actually need it? The frustration sitting here
as Chairman of this Committee for six years is that, whatever
departmental mechanism we have, it does not seem to identify how
do we do that as early as possible and then continuously attract
those resources to the kids that need it as opposed to the kids
that do not need it?
MR
BELL:
It may be something that we could write back to you about with
evidence, the various interventions on youngsters that are in
the categories that you describe: because I think I could describe
a whole set of different interventions at different stages in
children's lives.[1]
For example, some of what has been announced about catch-up classes
for youngsters, making that transition from primary to secondary
education and additional support for youngsters who have dropped
out of education and employment at the training age of 16, and
so on and so forth. So there are lots of interventions at different
points in a child or young person's life. I think what we have
to take with these new departmental arrangements, and certainly
the new Public Service Agreement arrangements, is the opportunity
to corral all that government does to enable us to have the most
impact on those young people, those children, those families who
are at the greatest risk of slipping; and that is not just: does
this Department link well with the new Department for Innovation,
Universities and Skills, but does this Department work sensibly
with the Department for Work and Pensions in ensuring that there
is good advice given to people who are in children's centres and
who are looking at job opportunities? Does this Department work
well with the Department of Health to make sure that the right
kinds of interventions are available on the health front? I think
we have an opportunity now, and I think the very fact that these
Public Service Agreements have been described as cross-government
places the onus right back on us to make even more a reality that
attack on child poverty and giving every person the best opportunity
in life. That is our big responsibility here.
Q28 CHAIRMAN:
I am not so interested about whether universities get more money
than schools, though that is important, I am more interested in
what group of children get the resources over lifetimes. That
is what I think the Department is weak on, and that is where we
have got to concentrate. Child poverty goes through there. Very
often, in the discussions that we have, child poverty is a little
thing there, it is over there, and too many civil servants have
been in front of this Committee seeing it as a discrete kind of
subject, not something that suffuses exactly what we are all about.
MR
BELL:
I certainly do not see it that way at all. I think if you look
at all the various interventions at different stages of our Department's
responsibilities and our predecessor's responsibility, it was
about tackling precisely the problems that you have described.
Yes, you want to intervene as early as you can, but you also have
to look at the opportunities that, say, 11 and 12 year-olds have
got and say: how can you improve the schooling for some of those
youngsters? If it is helpful to you, Chairman, I think we could
do you a note on some of that targeted funding that we have for
particular groups of youngsters going through the system. I think
you would see that there has been fairly substantial investment,
but you have to keep making it, do you not, at different points?
Q29 CHAIRMAN:
There has been a lot of good work and good resources, but if you
look at the targets where we have failed most spectacularly: under-age
conception rates, a dramatic failure to meet targets, social communications
skills for kids from poorer backgrounds—they are some of
the areas where we have quite spectacularly failed to achieve—in
this Committee we are trying to learn from experience, not to
say, "Have you not been awful?", as you have been very
good in many ways. What we are trying to urge you to do is to
look at the problem with your new ministerial team in a slightly
different way, or a dramatically different way.
MR
BELL:
I think, Chairman, that is one of the reasons why you will hear
no talk from officials or Ministers saying, "Oh well, let
us just readjust the targets", because they have been demanding
and these targets really matter, and it is really important that
we keep as our aspiration that children are well prepared before
they come into school, that actually we do have a very high expectation
of what children will achieve by age 11, that we do have an expectation
that less young people will fall out of the system. We are absolutely
clear that these targets, demanding though some of them are, require
us to redouble our efforts. For example, if you look at early
intervention, the recent review on reading, ensuring that we really
bear down on the quality of teaching of reading in early stages,
and, of course the announcement yesterday about looking at early
numeracy and children's grasp of mathematics. We have not given
up on all of these; we realise how important they are.
CHAIRMAN:
It is just that the whole theme of this Committee has been, very
often, why do the kids with the most advantages get the most money
spent on them and the kids with the least advantages get the least
money spent on them? But we will leave that hanging there. Gordon.
Q30 MR
MARSDEN: Thank
you, Chairman. David, I would like to probe further on one of
the key areas where your description of joint working is going
to be essential, and that is the area of 14-19 education. In the
statement, the Department for Children, Schools and Families,
it was said, would take on the responsibility for pre-19 education
policy, and you confirmed that again this morning. It also said
that you would work closely with DIUS to ensure successful delivery
of the 14-19 reforms. That inevitably begs the question, in view
of not least what the Chairman has just said, who is in the driving
seat? Who is the lead Department on the successful delivery of
14-19 reforms?
MR
BELL:
We are.
Q31 MR
MARSDEN: You
are. Right; that is absolutely clear. In which case the question
that I want to put to you is: as you know, this Committee has
expressed strong concern about the delivery of 14-19 Diplomas
and one of the issues that was raised with us was the lack of
detailed involvement from business in that process and the lack,
or the felt lack, by teachers of the detailed involvement of them
in the preparation stage. The latter one you would say probably
is fairly and squarely your responsibility, but in terms of keeping
business on board with these Diplomas, are you going to be the
best Department to do that or is DIUS going to be the best Department
to do that?
MR
BELL:
I think we, consistent with my first answer, have the lead responsibility
for ensuring that businesses are well briefed, are engaged in
the development of Diplomas. In fact, I was with the e-skills
Sector Skills Council last week, the Sector Skills Council responsible
for Information Technology, and they have been absolutely involved
in the creation of the curriculum, if I can put it that way, for
the new Diploma. I was there with my Permanent Secretary colleague
from DIUS, and it did not seem at all like an awkward join. I
was there to talk about what they were doing with 14-19 Diplomas
and what they were doing to contribute to that, and that was my
responsibility clearly; my counterpart in DIUS was obviously there
too. So, it is very clearly our responsibility to—
Q32 MR
MARSDEN: I accept
that, and that is a very good start. For what it is worth, my
judgment is that the chemistry between some of the key personnel
in both Departments (and that is political as well as civil servants)
is potentially very good, but the practicality of the matter is
that at the end of the day driving these things through, you and
your colleague, Ian Watmore, I do not know, you might have once
a week or once a fortnight catch up sessions, but the actual delivery
of some of the detail of this is going to be carried on lower
down the food chain (forgive the analogy) and what I want to know
is how soon are you going to have the machinery there to make
sure that what you do together as Permanent Secretaries is actually
carried out on a joint basis lower down?
MR
BELL:
The machinery to deliver the first five Diplomas in September
2008 is now in place, because we have two or three months ago
announced the 145 Pathfinder areas which will offer some or all
of the new Diplomas from September 2008 and, do not forget, those
Pathfinder areas had to evidence to be approved the involvement
of the schools, obviously, the local further education colleges,
employers and the like, and in fact we actually rejected more
coming through the first stage to be offering those Diplomas than
we allowed through because we realised that people had to be able
to demonstrate robust partnerships. So, that machinery is already
in place, as is the machinery to carry forward staff development
and training out in these areas. We have involved other national
agencies like the Training and Development Agency for Schools
and the National College of School Leadership. All of those are
there, so none of that machinery is affected at all by the machinery
of government changes and there is no lack of clarity about who
is responsible for delivery, and that is my responsibility as
the Permanent Secretary, the ministerial responsibility, with
our Ministers, to enable the system, as you describe it, all the
way through to deliver these Diplomas. We have to involve our
DIUS colleagues, of course we do, because of their involvement
and their leadership with universities, but equally with universities,
we have been talking a lot about how they can be involved.
MR
MARSDEN: Indeed.
MR
BELL:
It is very clearly our responsibility.
Q33 MR
MARSDEN: Could
I then just say that that is helpful and, although clearly, if
there is going to be successor committees to this, what you say
now cannot bind them, I think it would be helpful if, as that
process develops, those successor committees to this Committee
were given chapter and verse on a relatively regular basis how
as to how that is bedding down. I think that would be really useful.
You mentioned FE colleges (and this is a concern out there in
the sector) and the Chairman has referred to conversations that
were taking place last night and one or two people have mentioned
it to me, wondering how this is going to work out. Again, I want
to focus on the Diplomas and, again, I want to ask you the leading
question: given that Diplomas are going to be studied across the
board in FE colleges as well as in schools, do you feel that at
the moment you have sufficient expertise in your Department to
carry that through, or (and this is not a professional weakness,
I am just trying to find out) is that going to be a case where
you are going to have to work with, amalgamate with, colleagues
from DIUS?
MR
BELL:
It is both, in the sense that we have the staffing responsibilities
with people who are expert in working with further education colleges
in the delivery of the Diplomas but, equally, with the sponsorship
role for further education colleges residing in DIUS, we will
have to draw upon them. Almost in a sense reflecting back on a
question the Chairman asked me earlier, we are just thinking through
with DIUS what those formal mechanisms are. We do not want to
over-bureaucratise it, but we need to make it work effectively
and, of course, likewise, our relationship not just with schools
and colleges but the intermediary bodies like the Learning and
Skills Council has to continue as we go forward.
Q34 MR
MARSDEN: Some,
of course, wonder how long the Learning and Skills Council will
have the will to live given that it has had two-thirds of its
budget stripped away from it.
MR
BELL:
Obviously, as you know from the announcement, there were the proposed
changes with the funding for 16-19-year-olds coming into the local
authority route. We ought to be consulting on that because that
is a technically quite complex subject and there may well be legislative
changes required.
Q35 MR
MARSDEN: I do
not want to tease you down that process. You referred initially
to apprenticeships, and again it is in this same area of how do
we ensure a proper fit across the two Departments.
MR
BELL:
Yes.
Q36 MR
MARSDEN: Can
you very briefly outline to us again who you see as being in the
driving seat on apprenticeships? Who is going to sponsor the delivery
of it?
MR
BELL:
That one is not resolved yet.
Q37 MR
MARSDEN: So
that is still up for grabs.
MR
BELL:
That one is still in discussion between ourselves and DIUS involving
the Treasury as well. That is one of the few areas that has not
yet been absolutely clarified, because you can see the arguments
both ways and that one has not been resolved.
Q38 MR
MARSDEN: Have
you any idea when it might be?
MR
BELL:
Hopefully fairly soon, because we need to get on with it.
Q39 CHAIRMAN:
The implementation of Leitch Statement comes out when?
MR
BELL:
This is now the responsibility of DIUS. I think that is planned
for next week. I hesitate.
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