Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140-153)
MR DAVID
BELL AND
MR JON
THOMPSON
11 JULY 2007
Q140 CHAIRMAN:
But, David, you know as well as I do that, however happy you are
with the CSR settlement, if you are going through a leaner period
compared to the golden days that you have had in the past five
years, given that and given what you know about the difference
between what I always call `hardware' and `software', building
new schools and what you put in them, the quality of the teaching
and all that stuff, is it really sensible to carry on a commitment
to rebuild and renew every secondary school in England, costing
£45 billion, if you are going to be short of software money?
Should it not be evaluated and reviewed?
MR
BELL:
My view is that Building Schools for the Future should be continued
because we must not forget in many ways the dreadful legacy of
school buildings and it is hard now perhaps to recall just what
a poor state many of our schools were in, so that kind of investment
seems to me to be the infrastructure you require. Now, it is not
the be-all and end-all because, as you rightly say, Chairman,
you need the teachers, you need the non-teaching support staff,
you need the books and equipment, but, as the Secretary of State
said in the opening part of his statement yesterday, there has
been a massive expansion in precisely the sorts of things that
you have described as software, the teachers, the non-teaching
members of staff, and yes, we have had significant periods of
growth recently. This is still, it is worth pointing out, real
growth above inflation and we have to be very clear, and I think
the system accepts, that we have to use our funding even more
efficiently, but, and I am sure it will not happen, I am sure
it would be a dreadful mistake if we said, "Well, let's stop
the school building programme".
Q141 CHAIRMAN:
I am not saying that, but this Committee looks at the expenditure
over a long period of time.
MR
BELL:
Absolutely.
Q142 CHAIRMAN:
A lot of the other areas that we have tackled, like early years,
Sure Start, children's centres, it starts with the poorest wards
in the country, gets those sorted and evaluates them and rolls
out programmes very often at a less cost per unit later on.
MR
BELL:
Yes.
Q143 CHAIRMAN:
That is true, is it not?
MR
BELL:
Yes.
Q144 CHAIRMAN:
So what I am saying to you very directly is, given that you are
going to be in leaner times for software, for the current expenditure,
does it make sense to carry on rebuilding every secondary school?
I have to say, a lot of the secondary schools that I visit now
which are going to be refurbed look pretty good to me, so you
are going to endlessly spend money, yet the research is not very
convincing that `new build' means improving standards. All the
research shows is that there is a closer relationship between
what you invest in the software, not the hardware.
MR
BELL:
There are a number of points there, Chairman, and the first thing
to say is that, even under the Building Schools for the Future
arrangements, we are driving the costs down, but maintaining the
quality. In fact, part of the contribution to the Efficiency Programme
that Mr Williams described is actually ensuring that we get better
value, so we are not just saying, "Well, there's all this
money been spent on capital. Let's just spend it without thinking
how we get best value", so we are doing that, and that is
the first thing. Secondly, in terms of the state of school buildings,
when local authorities bring forward their plans and then will
go into the different waves of Building Schools for the Future,
they will clearly prioritise within that the scale of rebuild
required in different institutions, depending on what is already
there, so it is not again, I think, just a splodge of money irrespective
of need. However, having said that, I would not underestimate
the extent to which even schools that look quite good have had
very little investment. If you look at the school building stock,
say, of the 1960s or 1970s, that might on the surface look very
nice, but actually that requires a lot of investment. The third
point about the connection between buildings and outcomes, you
are right, you cannot point to a straight causal connection of
a better school building equals a better classroom, but my experience,
and I am sure it is yours, talking to teachers and headteachers
up and down the country is that they say, "First of all,
you're given a very powerful message about the importance of education
if you educate children and young people in decent surroundings
and, secondly, with the way in which the curriculum is changing,
greater use of ICT, better use of drama, music, all of those sorts
of facilities that are enriching a child's education, you need
new buildings to do it". I accept the point that you cannot
just build a building and say that education will get better,
but I really do think that in improving buildings, you create
the conditions in which it is more likely that learning and teaching
will improve.
Q145 CHAIRMAN:
David, you and I would agree that we like the investment in new
buildings. However, does there come a time when, if we want to
catch up the investment in the child's education in the state
sector with the independent sector, there is a view out there
that at a certain stage the real difference will be investment
in what I call the `software' rather than the `hardware'?
MR
BELL:
I think we can do both and I think we are demonstrating that we
can do both, not least because of the figures that you quoted
earlier.
CHAIRMAN:
Not on your CSR settlement, but we will come back to that.
Q146 STEPHEN
WILLIAMS: With the
CSR settlement you got, were there any strings attached by the
Treasury or was it a case of, "Here's the money. Go out and
spend it"?
MR
BELL:
There was a proper discussion about the spending priorities and
what is expected to fall from them, and I do not think of those
as strings; those are the conditions around which the CSR has
been agreed. For example, money that is agreed for personalisation
or for progression that pupils are making in schools, we have
got that money within our CSR and we have to be able to demonstrate
that there are things we are going to do as a result of that.
That is not strings; that is the proper conditions of getting
public funding allocated to the Department.
Q147 STEPHEN
WILLIAMS: Over the
period of the CSR, would policy priorities have changed over those
four years and, therefore, the amounts attached to them changed
and how does that impact on the disaggregation of your two budgets
or into two budgets?
MR
BELL:
In a funny sort of way, probably the timing of the disaggregation
is better than it might have been if we had been, say, 18 months
through the CSR period because, in a sense, we have not started
the expenditure for this CSR which starts in 2008, so we need
to do the disaggregation, and Jon might wish to say something
about that at the moment. The way the funding is laid out is for
the three-year period, so the sums of money which are allocated
are allocated for year one, year two, year three and so on, and
that is the deal, if I can put it that way, under the CSR. The
Secretary of State, coming new to the Department, recognises that
is the CSR, but, quite properly, has asked for an explanation
about what has been agreed under the CSR, but this is a three-year
programme that has been agreed with the Treasury. It may be that
Jon can say something about the disaggregation.
MR
THOMPSON:
I think the straightforward answer to your question is yes, policy
may well change over the CSR period. There is some limited flexibility
for the Secretary of State to move within that three-year period.
At the moment, the indicative disaggregation of £51.4 billion
would fall to DCSF and £13.3 billion would fall, in terms
of baseline spending, to DIUS.
Q148 STEPHEN
WILLIAMS: Those
are current-year figures?
MR
THOMPSON:
Those are current-year figures. Once you split that, and there
are still some undecided amounts, as David referred to earlier,
then what we will do is split what we saw as being our commitments
under the CSR, so we will split the envelope all the way to 2010/11.
Once it is split, then essentially the Departments are separate
and then you can only move within your own envelope.
Q149 STEPHEN
WILLIAMS: In
terms of how policy priorities might change, and John Denham was
first out of the traps, if you like, in announcing an initiative
of raising the threshold at which graduates pay back their loans
from a £15,000 to a £25,000 income which I think, from
memory, is going to cost the new Department £400 million,
was that factored into this and are there going to be more examples
of that, of each Department coming up with new initiatives, and
are you clear that you have got the resources to meet them between
you?
MR
THOMPSON:
Well, you are asking me to give you an answer as to how is the
DIUS to fund an initiative that was announced after the Department
was split—
Q150 STEPHEN
WILLIAMS: Well,
they might have more now.
MR
THOMPSON:
It rather puts me in an unusual position.
Q151 CHAIRMAN:
You are going to have to get someone in your Department who knows
how the Treasury works!
MR
THOMPSON:
I think we have cracked that one!
CHAIRMAN:
That was a joke, Permanent Secretary!
Q152 STEPHEN
WILLIAMS: But
there are going to be some areas in the future where you have
got common responsibilities with a foot in both camps, so who
is going to be managing that?
MR
BELL:
I think in some ways that perhaps reflects back on the question
that Mr Marsden asked. We need to be very clear about where responsibility
lies because it will just be a mess if you are not clear about
who has got the funding lead, and we are very clear under this
separation. There will be policy overlaps, as we have described,
say, for example, in relation to 14-19 Diplomas and we are very
clearly in the lead, but we have to work with the other Department.
So far, in the conversations we have had, everyone realises that
and recognises that, so this is not a huge argument about who
does what and most of this is clear and most of this we are debating
and discussing. I acknowledged earlier that there are one or two
areas that have not yet been confirmed, but we will get those
sorted pretty quickly.
Q153 CHAIRMAN:
Well, that is, I think, the last public session of the Select
Committee on Education and Skills. Permanent Secretary and Jon
Thompson, we have enjoyed this session, but we have always enjoyed
these sessions with you both in your former incarnation and this
one. It is quite a sad moment that we will not sit again as the
full DfES Select Committee, but it has not been abolished yet
and we shall continue writing up a couple of reports that you
might like or you might not.
MR
BELL:
We will enjoy reading them, Chairman.
CHAIRMAN:
There is one on Ofsted tomorrow and we have Sustainable Schools
coming down the line hopefully before the Committee ceases to
exist and we hope that we will be meeting you again in your new
roles. Thank you very much. Can I also thank all of our staff
who have worked so hard to make the Committee a great success
and I hope that most of you will stay with us.
|
