Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-99)
22 JANUARY 2007
DEPARTMENT FOR
EDUCATION AND
SKILLS AND
DEPARTMENT OF
HEALTH
Q80 Mr Bacon: So you do not know
how much money has been spent so far.
David Bell: I do not have that
figure in my head, no.
Q81 Mr Bacon: Can you give me a rough
idea?
David Bell: I am sorry, I cannot.
Q82 Mr Bacon: I find that pretty
surprising. This Report by the National Audit Office is about
a programme called Sure Start. You come to this Committee to give
evidence on it, but you do not have a figure for even roughly
how much money has been spent. This goes to a fear that I have—that
the programme is so self-evidently a good thing that there has
been a lot of sloppiness. Who could be against a Sure Start for
children? Who is going to stand on a public platform and say that
it is a bad thing? No one. I heard the figure of £3.2 billion
mentioned somewhere. Does that ring a bell? Is that money spent
so far or money allocated?
David Bell: That is money allocated
ahead for the next couple of years.
Q83 Mr Bacon: But obviously that
is for a larger number of centres.
Paula Diggle: Let me help. My
briefing says that the Government have spent more than £20
billion on early years and child care services since 1997.
Q84 Mr Bacon: How much of that £20
billion goes into primary schools?
Paula Diggle: That is not purely
Sure Start.
Q85 Mr Bacon: I would have been surprised
if it had been, because £20 billion is quite a lot of money.
Mr Bell, roughly how much of that do you think has gone into Sure
Start, going back to 1998?
David Bell: I do not have that
information to hand because the focus of the Report, and its title,
is on children's centres and I have come with the data relating
to the programme of children's centres.
Q86 Mr Bacon: The title of the Report
is Sure Start Children's Centres.
David Bell: But the actual children's
centres programme essentially rolls from 2004, so I have come
with that data. I will certainly provide the other data—
Q87 Mr Bacon: How much has been spent
since 2004 on children's centres?
David Bell: The amount of expenditure
planned for the next couple of years—from 2004-08—is
about £3.2 billion.
Q88 Mr Bacon: How much of that has
been spent between 2004 and now?
David Bell: Again, I shall just—
Q89 Mr Bacon: This is staggering.
I go back to my point about sloppiness.
Can you explain why a programme that has been
going for some years, on which a significant amount of money has
already been spent and for which several thousand million pounds
of spending is planned, still does not have clear governance principles
that local people at centres can read and understand? Why has
it taken so long to provide guidance? Paragraph 2.26 states that
the Department "intends to issue guidance early in 2007 on
possible models of governance". When will that be issued?
David Bell: As I indicated, the
children's centres come from a variety of different programmes—
Q90 Mr Bacon: I know that; paragraph
2.26 states: "There are many different models of governance
. . . because they have developed structures to suit their local
priorities, so can be based on partnership boards, steering groups,
school governing bodies" and so on. But when is the Department
planning to issue guidance on the governance and management of
the children's centres themselves?
David Bell: By April 2007. We
are consulting on that guidance at the moment.
Q91 Mr Bacon: No guidance is available
for the centres at the moment. As a consequence, as Mr Wright
said earlier, the majority of managers feel that the governors
had difficulty understanding the key issues or did not understand
them at all. Not only that, but local authorities are uncertain
about how they should measure performance: more than half the
local authorities that the NAO examined were not carrying out
any active performance monitoring at all. Furthermore, paragraph
2.3 states: "Most local authorities have not yet developed
a firm basis for allocating funds to centres." Paragraph
2 on page 8 states: "Centres and local authorities need to
establish the costs of centres' various activities and how well
they are being used, so that they can take informed decisions
to move resources on the basis of priority and cost-effectiveness."
That would be applied to any Government programme, but not only,
apparently, has that not yet happened in this case, but local
authorities are not doing performance monitoring. They do not
know how to allocate the funds and do not have a clear model to
follow. The people who are supposed to do the governance in the
centres do not have clear guidance on the governance principles
that they are supposed to be following. It sounds as though there
are such an awful lot of good intentions, because it is such a
good idea, that no one has bothered. How could you start a big
programme that involves spending a lot of money and not issue
strong governance principles beforehand?
David Bell: There are a number
of points to make. The first thing to say about local authorities
is that from the beginning of April 2006 they have taken on the
responsibilities. As I said earlier, the report and fieldwork
was done at that transitional point, when they took over the lead
responsibility for the children's centre programme. As we said,
we recently—in November—published guidance outlining
the performance management framework and, as I said, we are also
consulting on the governance arrangements.
Q92 Mr Bacon: Hang on a second. You
mentioned that earlier in answer to Annette Brooke. You mentioned
primary care trusts as an example of one of the recipients of
the guidance. The guidance that you are talking about is guidance
to local authorities, is it?
David Bell: The local authorities,
but also local authorities in acting with other partners to provide
appropriate guidance.
Q93 Mr Bacon: You are issuing guidance
on how to provide guidance.
David Bell: No, I am not.
I am saying that we are providing guidance on the kind of governance
arrangements that people would want to think about locally. We
are not prescribing a single model of governance to every centre.
Q94 Mr Bacon: I do not suggest that
you should do so, nor does the Report. The Report states that
"The Department is discussing key issues relating to the
governance and management of children's centres with centres themselves,
local authorities, schools and other stakeholders. It intends
to issue guidance early in 2007 on possible models"—plural—"of
governance and management that children's centres may adopt."
It is extraordinary that you should have gone
this far down the road—the programme has been going for
several years—spent so much money and still have not promulgated
guidance to the centres so that the managers and those running
the centres, who look to their governors or the governing body
to do a good job, will know that they are equipped with the information
on how to do so. Again, the same applies to the financial management.
At paragraph 2.7, the report says that half the administrative
staff wanted more training in financial management.
David Bell: And we have responded
to those concerns. We are not responding to them only now; programmes
of financial management training have been running for some years.
We have been providing advice and guidance, and local authorities
and the other bodies leading children's centres or Sure Start
programmes before that were also doing so. It is fair to say that
many of the people who are running the programmes at local level
are not used to doing it, and we accept that. It is also fair
to say that managing a range of services in a single institution
is relatively new territory. We are having to respond to training
needs that are emerging as people take on new and different responsibilities,
and all those programmes are now rolling out.
Q95 Mr Bacon: The people who are
taking on those roles are presumably the same types of people
who would become school governors.
David Bell: Not necessarily. In
some cases they are, but you may have other people who want a
place. The school governance model may be appropriate for schools;
they have a list of statutory responsibilities and the governors
are responsible for running the school. An advisory body working
with a children's centre does not have the same power in statute
as the school governing body, so the local authority is ultimately
responsible.
Q96 Mr Bacon: I am really talking
about the governors of the children's centres. You said that the
people in question are not used to doing this—that they
do not necessarily have the background that would automatically
give them such skills. That is what you are saying, is it not?
David Bell: Some of those people
would be parents and others who provide local community services,
some of whom may have been school governors before.
Q97 Mr Bacon: Does not that add weight
to the notion that they must have the right kind of training?
The report says that only nine of the 30 centres that the NAO
visited "considered that their governors or steering group
members understood the key issues. Only five of the centres' steering
bodies had received training on governance specific to their role."
That is only 16% of those that the NAO visited; 84% had not received
training on governance specific to their role.
David Bell: It is important to
draw a distinction between the governance responsibilities of
those who are in schools, where you have statutory responsibilities—
Q98 Mr Bacon: Hang on. We are not
talk about schools; we are talking about children's centres.
David Bell: I am saying that we
should draw a distinction between that kind of governance and
the advisory bodies that support children's centres not attached
to schools, because the governance responsibilities will in the
end sit with the local authorities; they will be the responsible
bodies. Advisory bodies are usually made up of those who have
a particular interest—parents and others who provide services.
Although they have responsibilities, they do not have the governance
responsibilities in the sense that school governors would have
if they had a children's centre on their site.
Q99 Mr Bacon: Given that a lot of
growth is planned and that you will have many more centres, how
will you keep up the supply of skilled people to take on those
supervisory roles?
David Bell: We have a national
qualification on centre leadership, which has been devised in
consultation with the National College for School Leadership,
and about 800 people have either got the qualification or are
currently going through the course for it, and many others of
course as the programmes go forward into schools. Head teachers
and the like will already have had that training and development.
At the same time, we are also looking at training programmes for
the Children's Workforce Development Council staff who are working
in these centres, in order to give them the sorts of skills that
they will require. Earlier, I mentioned the Together for Children
group, the umbrella body that has been commissioned to help take
the expansion forward. That body also has a role in working with
all those involved to provide appropriate training and development.
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