Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-99)
MR DAVID
BELL AND
MR JON
THOMPSON
11 JULY 2007
Q80 MR
WILSON: So there
are no school education initiatives from your Department to help,
say, single parent families?
MR
BELL:
There are initiatives in the school curriculum, for example, to
talk about relationships and family life and so on, youngsters
are given that sort of advice through their personal, social and
health education. Youngsters and parents are advised on maintaining
relationships and building relationships in children's centres.
Again, these are not about making judgments and saying, "We
will support single parents" or "We will support families",
people come into schools or children's centres with the family
structures that they have. I think the responsibility of those
who are supporting those families is to help those families to
be strong and to have the best opportunities for their children,
that is what we are in the business doing. I think there is a
slight implication in the question perhaps that somehow we are
not doing enough to support family life. All we are doing is to
enable parents and families to get the best opportunities for
their children, that is what the system is there to do.
Q81 MR
WILSON: There
is absolutely no implication in the question, it is merely to
get to the truth, that is what we are here to do. How much of
the DfES budget goes to LAs as sort of top-up money for deprivation?
Have you got an actual figure? I have tried many times to decipher
how the money is spent and it is very, very difficult to find
that information broken down.
MR
BELL:
We can break it down at the national level in terms of large headlines
of how the particular blocks of funding—
MR
WILSON: I would
just like to know, for example, what that total block of funding
on deprivation is.
Q82 CHAIRMAN:
Jon will tell you.
MR
THOMPSON:
Well, thank you very much, Chairman. I am afraid I was going to
say I could not give you that number off the top of my head. You
want to know specifically what is for deprivation but the question
there is about what is not.
Q83 MR
WILSON: There
is a block in the pupil sum that is an amount for deprivation,
is there not?
MR
THOMPSON:
I honestly could not sit here and give you an answer.
Q84 MR
WILSON: It differs
from authority to authority.
MR
BELL:
In a sense this goes back to the questions Mr Chaytor was asking
us about how you allocate blocks of funding using mechanisms,
previously free school meals or tax credits. The point I would
want to make, however, is whilst you identify that funding for
the particular needs I hope that all the funding we spend on children
and young people is about tackling those who are suffering from
disadvantage and deprivation because by giving young people and
children a decent education we are doing what really matters to
them in the school setting, which is to get a good education and
progress.
Q85 MR
WILSON: We need
to know how that money is spent and how much of it is spent on
deprivation so that we can come to broad conclusions.
MR
BELL:
We can certainly give you the block figures[4]
but, as I am sure you will know from your own experience in your
own constituency, what schools do not do is then say, "I
have got this very small sum of money" or "this very
large sum of money for deprivation and I am going to just target
the deprived children". What they do is use the decisions
that they make about how best to support youngsters who are in
deprived circumstances, for example catch-up classes for kids
who are struggling.
Q86 MR
WILSON: It is
the local authority that decides how that deprivation money is
spent.
MR
BELL:
No, it is what is called the schools forum arrangements which,
as you will know, are made up with headteachers and other local
representatives working against a set of guidelines given from
national government, but the key decisions about how you allocate
the funding rests at school level and are made by governors and
headteachers, and it is for them to decide how best to allocate
the funding they have got to meet the particular needs of their
pupils and students, and that is the way it should be.
Q87 MR
WILSON: I suppose
the point I am getting at is that it is not disadvantaged parents
who get some say over how that money is spent.
MR
BELL:
We have this system of school governance where, of course, parents
have good representation on school governing bodies.
Q88 MR
WILSON: Of course,
those parents are least likely to be represented on those bodies,
as you know.
MR
BELL:
There is no hiding the fact that schools in more deprived areas
do find it more difficult to attract governors but, equally, I
think we could all cite examples of very actively engaged and
involved parent governors who are asking these questions all the
time. I would have thought these are not just questions that should
be asked by parents who happen to come from a particular background,
I would like to think that every governing body is asking the
question, "How are we making the best of the money we have
got to support the interests of all children", the high performing
children as well as those youngsters who are really struggling
because of deprived circumstances.
Q89 MR
WILSON: Have
you thought that there might be a better way of using this funding
and attaching it to the disadvantaged child and letting the parent
make a decision about how they select a school based on that funding,
because it is extra funding, after all, for those children, maybe
in a credit system of some description, so they have a much greater
choice within the school system that at the moment is very limited?
MR
BELL:
Ministers have been very clear that they will not advocate a credit
or voucher system, which I think in a sense is what you are describing,
on the grounds that it is better that the funding is down to the
school level and schools, with governing bodies that represent
the parent group and the communities, making those decisions collectively
about what is in the best interests of the children that they
serve. That has been the very clear statement of policy from Ministers.
Q90 MR
WILSON: So the
idea of disadvantaged parents having a say in the spending of
money that is targeted at their children has been completely ruled
out?
MR
BELL:
But all parents have a say in the spending of the money that is
made available for their children via the arrangements we have
got for school governors. Every parent has the right to contribute
and participate in the elections for school governors and parents
have got increasing rights to engage and be involved in the education
of their children.
Q91 MR
WILSON: How
many parents of children on free school meals are governors of
schools, have you got that figure?
MR
BELL:
I do not and I do not think we would have that information because
we do not ask parents to declare their interests when they come
to stand for a governing body.
Q92 MR
WILSON: Have
you got any idea of how many parents in the disadvantaged category
are school governors?
MR
BELL:
I think the straight answer to that is no. What we do have is
simply the number of parents who are governors in schools that
serve more deprived areas but, of course, that does not answer
the question you are asking, which is what the background of those
parents is. Personally I would not think it is appropriate for
us or for individual schools to be asking that sort of question.
What schools are trying to do is encourage the parents in that
school to participate in their children's education, which might
be by becoming a school governor but is it not equally important,
if not more important, that every parent is encouraged to participate
in their child's education by taking an interest in what they
are learning, by supporting them at school, by reading to them
and so on.
Q93 MR
WILSON: Do you
not think it is important that your Department knows whether disadvantaged
parents are properly represented in the school system?
MR
BELL:
The system of school governance enables the governing body to
represent, particularly through the parental elections but not
exclusively, the composition of the community in that school.
We have got to be very careful that we do not end up trying to
put very, very onerous bureaucratic burdens on schools. Also,
we have got to be careful that in asking those sorts of questions,
for whatever good motives, we do not end up making people less
likely to participate because they feel they have got to somehow
declare their background.
MR
WILSON: You
do not need to ask anything of the parents?
MR
PELLING: You
do with ethnicity.
Q94 MR
WILSON: As my
colleague says, you already ask questions about ethnicity in terms
of governing bodies, why is this any different?
MR
BELL:
My view is that parents would say, "Even if my child is receiving
free school meals or I'm in receipt of tax credits, that is not
a relevant factor about how appropriate it is for me to stand
as a governor". I just do not see that as relevant information.
CHAIRMAN:
Can I be helpful here? I can see the sense of the questions you
are answering but I think a halfway house between the two of you
might be that you commission a lot of research within the Department,
and there is nothing wrong with doing a bit of research to find
out how many people from impoverished backgrounds or less well-off
backgrounds come into school governorship; I think it is a perfectly
legitimate question to ask, is it not, although personally I would
be against a survey asking parents what their income was if they
were a school governor. There is a halfway house and a bit of
research could find that out.
MR WILSON:
I would confirm that I would be against that as well, alongside
you. I think it is important to know generally that they are represented.
Q95 CHAIRMAN:
I want research on how much money is spent on children and he
wants to know the background of the governors.
MR
BELL:
I am almost certain that we do not have that research at the moment,
but I will check that.[5]
I certainly take what you said, Chairman, in relation to our research
programme going forward.
Q96 CHAIRMAN:
Our specialist adviser, who knows a thing or two about these things,
says there is no way you can give us a figure on the deprivation
money because, as far as he is concerned, it is not ascertainable.
MR
THOMPSON:
I am glad I gave the answer I did then.
Q97 CHAIRMAN:
He has been around a lot longer than both of us!
MR
BELL:
That is my point, that all expenditure should be for all children
whatever their circumstances and their background.
CHAIRMAN:
It is one of the advantages of having an historic memory even
longer than ours. Can we move on to efficiency savings and the
Capability Review. We have given you a very easy ride so far,
Permanent Secretary, we are going into tough territory now.
Q98 STEPHEN
WILLIAMS: Thank you,
Chairman. I do not have a big clunking fist so you do not have
to worry! Can I ask you some questions, starting with the Permanent
Secretary, about the performance management of your former Department.
Effectively last summer the Department was given four areas where
it needed to improve as a result of the Capability Review, if
I can just focus on some of those. One of them was performance
management delivery. When the Secretary of State tells you to
press a lever, how can you be sure that something happens at the
other end of the system? Can you give an example of an improvement
that has been made in performance management in the last 12 months?
MR
BELL:
Indeed. We have a lot of our work on school improvement done through
the National Strategies, which is an arm's length private sector
body providing that. We were concerned that we were not getting
the right kind of bite in the schools system on the back of what
the National Strategies were doing and we had probably not had
a close enough relationship with the National Strategies in determining
what was happening. In the last year we now have a much closer
working relationship between Ministers' officials, on the one
hand, and the National Strategies' senior staff on the other,
we get far better information back from them about performance
of particular schools which links to better and faster interventions
where there are difficulties. On the back of that, where there
are very substantial difficulties we are now moving more quickly
to work on alternatives, whether that is a trust school arrangement
or an Academy arrangement. That is a very practical example of
tightening up the arrangements in the performance management system.
Q99 STEPHEN
WILLIAMS: So
you are getting better information back, is that what you are
saying?
MR
BELL:
It is not just information, it is actually the information leading
to action. It is all very well having the information but it is
what you do with the information to bring about improvements.
For example, not just at the whole school level, we were targeting
those primary schools that had less than 65% of their children
achieving the appropriate level at the age of 11 and through the
National Strategies, working with them to direct support to those
schools, we have become much better at getting (a) faster information
and (b) acting on that faster information.
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