Q
152Alison
Seabeck: And to local
discretion? Frankie
Sulke: And to local
discretion. Daniel
Moynihan: For me the issue of school behaviour
partnerships remains about voluntarism for academies. It is true that
most schools are part of behaviour partnerships, but the kind they are
in are quite different to the kind Sir Alan Steer mentions in his
report. The behaviour partnerships that most schools are in are about
sharing out hard to place pupils and managing moves for
exclusions.
In this case,
however, we are talking about much broader partnerships in which groups
have the power to employ specialist staff together, have common
behaviour management training, take on services in managing attendance,
offer staff training and work with primary schools, so we could be
looking at a bigger and potentially more bureaucratic process. That is
fine for academies because we go in and make a rapid assessment: what
is the situation? Attendance is 70 per cent; what is the local
authority doing? It has good services and we want to work in
partnership with it. In other cases we have had 70 per cent. attendance
while the local authority was deploying its support services, so we
would not want to get into a hard partnership in such cases. We really
feel that it is important that we have the choice of which schools we
partner with, because partnerships per say will not improve anything:
quality improves
things.
Q
153Alison
Seabeck: Are you suggesting that academies should be able
to pick and choose whether they opt in or out of
partnerships? Daniel
Moynihan: Yes, I am, but if we do not get that,
academies and other schools should at least be able to determine who
they partner with. I do not think that central or local government
should say, “Here is your partnership and this is how you should
partner.” I do not think that they are in the best position to
do that. Schools need to determine their partnerships because they are
at the point of
use.
Q
154Alison
Seabeck: Are there any other views on
that? Les
Lawrence: I will have to disagree slightly with that
because he is implying that he wants one rule for academies and another
for everyone else, which is in the
interests of neither partnerships nor, dare I say it, young people. Many
local authorities not only have behaviour partnerships and sharing
panels as embedded arrangements, including those with academies and
grammar schools, but are developing pupil referral units and links with
colleges, because for many youngsters, especially around the age of 14
and 15, a school is not the right environment emotionally. They often
find that a college placement offers a far better environment, given
the nature of their individual development. The partnership is
therefore flexible, depending on the individual needs of the young
person.
Also, you are
able on a collective basis to provide a range of support services to
assist young people and their families to address many of the problems
that might not necessarily be school-based and that originate outside
the school. That might be the most successful way of addressing the
needs and encouraging the young person to develop. On a slightly wider
basis, sometimes it is a locality’s whole set of aspirations
that needs to be addressed, and that needs to be understood, and often
a behaviour partnership can begin to address that on a wider
basis. Daniel
Moynihan: May I clarify a point that I made? I do not
think I am saying one rule for academies and one rule for everybody
else. I am saying schools should determine what their partnerships are
and should not have that determined for them, because they are
accountable for what they
deliver.
Q
155Mr.
Hayes: On the issue of support services and moving to
advice and guidance, clause 35 relates directly to careers advice and
suggests that apprenticeships should be offered to young people if the
provider thinks that is appropriate. Has the Bill gone far enough on
strengthening the mechanism by which quality independent advice can be
offered to young
people? Kieran
Gordon: I do not think it has. It rightly indicates
that schools, which currently have a statutory responsibility to
provide careers education, should reference the provision of
apprenticeships in the careers education programmes and advice offered
through the school and its partners. It refers to a situation where the
school believes it would be in the “best interests” of
pupils. My concern with that is there are schools, particularly schools
with sixth forms, that might consider the best interests of the pupil
to be in returning to the sixth form, for the purposes of the
school’s particular interest, rather than the individual young
person’s. The Bill goes some way in recognising that schools
have responsibility to promote and make young people aware of
apprenticeships. It does not go far enough in giving that clause teeth,
although I think statutory guidance will be coming as a consequence of
the Education and Skills Act. That might make it more
assertive.
Q
156Mr.
Hayes: Indeed. The explanatory note to clause 35 says
that “the
governing body of a secondary school, or its proprietor...or the
local education
authority” is
to ensure what careers advice is to be given to a student. Would not a
better system, based on your last answer, be to have some independent
careers service, perhaps located in the school but separate from the
school to avoid the conflict of interest that you describe?
Kieran
Gordon: The whole process of making career decisions
has to be a fusion of different processes, starting with the careers
education in the school. It is rightly and properly the responsibility
of the school to make sure there is a careers education programme in
place and that careers education programme covers a range of issues in
terms of young people’s awareness of themselves, the world of
work and their awareness of their own skill needs and skill
development, but yes, you are right that there needs to be independence
and impartial expert advice provided by a body—Connexions
currently does it—where there are trained career guidance
experts working in partnership in the school as part of a school team,
providing that impartial advice and
guidance. The
issue we might have with apprenticeships—referencing back to
those schools with sixth forms—is that the young people entering
apprenticeships tend to be the same cadre of young people that the
school wants to attract back in to do A-levels or the 16-to-19 elements
of the diploma. It is where there is a conflict of interest if the
school tries to confuse that choice for the young person. It may
believe that it is in the best interests of the young person to go back
to school, but if it does not present, and allow young people to
explore, the range of other options, including apprenticeships, it may
well stifle that choice for young
people.
Q
157Mr.
Hayes: From what I hear from careers advisers, the system
described would have the added benefit of re-professionalising careers
advice as a separate professional discipline, would it
not? Kieran
Gordon: It would. We need greater emphasis on the
provision of careers information, advice and guidance as part of the
wider information, advice and guidance offered to young people. There
are signs that that is starting to happen, but there was a feeling that
the careers profession had been overlooked and the word
“career” seemed to disappear from the curriculum and the
agenda.
Q
158Liz
Blackman (Erewash) (Lab): Frankie, is transferring
responsibility back to the local authorities potentially a better model
for delivering RPA—raising the participation
age? Frankie
Sulke: The commissioning—I presume that is
what you are talking about—is relevant to the discussion we have
just had on information, advice and guidance. The local authority
having the role of looking strategically at its provision to make sure
that progression routes are in place and that there is a
coherent offer, including all the diversity we have talked
about, is absolutely key to delivering RPA. To be honest, I am not sure
how we would do it without that. There is the knowledge that we have
built up of those young people between nought and 16, but also the
local authority’s strategic leadership role post-19 on
the economic agenda and the worklessness agenda, which they can plan
coherently—not on their own, but in conjunction with other local
authorities, including neighbouring local authorities. That
is absolutely key.
Perhaps I can
be a bit cheeky and come in on the information, advice and guidance
debate. We have strived for and talked about having provider-neutral
information, advice and guidance for as long as I can remember and
probably for as long as anybody in this room can
remember. It is very difficult to legislate for that. The new climate,
in which local authorities have a strategic leadership role in terms of
commissioning 16 to 19 provision, gives us an opportunity that we have
not had before to get all the providers around the table and to get an
agreement about what is on offer in a locality and across localities.
That might help to get the commitment to getting provider-neutral
information, advice and guidance in schools. Even if you have the
strongest careers professionals, what an individual teacher says in the
classroom will have an enormous impact on what a young person does. We
need to build a consensus around the shape of that provision in
localities. Q
159Liz
Blackman: And you definitely see the potential for better
integrated services right across the piece from nought to 19?
Frankie
Sulke: Yes. If we do not achieve that, there will
have been no point in introducing the reforms. But that is not a role
that local authorities can or would want to play on their own; they
have to do that in conjunction with their providers and they have to
recognise all the things that have been said today about cherishing and
protecting the autonomy of providers. It is not a matter just of the
autonomy of academies, but of all schools, as well as general FE
colleges and sixth-form colleges. This is not about local authorities
controlling matters; it is about planning together the diversity that
will lead to stronger learner choice, as well as meeting employer need,
which will be critical as we positively go into an upturn coming out of
the recession.
Kieran
Gordon: I want to make a comment on Frankie’s
earlier point about neutral information, advice and guidance. Impartial
does not mean neutral. Neutral would suggest to me some form of passive
guidance. Actually, if it is done well, impartial information, advice
and guidance should be a challenging process; it should be about
encouraging young people to raise their aspirations and to look at the
range of options, and it should sometimes be about putting them in
uncomfortable positions by looking at the range of things that they
could do. Impartiality is not, therefore, neutral, but very much about
playing an active and challenging support role for young
people.
Frankie
Sulke: Can I just apologise for using the word
“neutral”? I completely agree with my colleague on my
right.
The
Chairman: As a neutral Chairman, I will call the Minister
next.
Q
160Jim
Knight: I have a supplementary point to what Liz was
asking Frankie, and I would like to bring Les in as well. This morning,
we heard that there were concerns from sixth-form colleges and, to some
extent, from FE colleges about independence and the extent to which
commissioning would be impartial. I want to probe that to see whether
that is the progressive view coming from the leadership of the ADCS or
whether it is a universal view across the local government
sector.
Frankie
Sulke: I can use the word “neutral”
here, I think, but I am worried about it now. On provider-neutral
commissioning, the principle that we are looking at the best-quality
provision whoever provides it—obviously, it will provided in the
place that it is best able to provide
it—must be fundamental as we go into this new world. Keeping
focused on the learner and on making sure that what we commission is
learner led, while taking account of employer need, is also critical.
However, it is fundamental that we look at this across providers. The
provision in the Bill to require local authorities to, one, secure
learner choice and diversity and, two, work across local authorities,
ought to give some measure of reassurance to providers. I agree that
they are understandably nervous and those of us who are engaged in what
we are rather pompously calling “dry runs”, sitting with
the Learning and Skills Council going forward, are learning a
considerable amount about how we build trust. Relationships between
local authorities and providers are generally very strong—we
have talked about academies, but also for general FE
colleges—but there is still
nervousness.
Q
161Jim
Knight: That is the professional view. Are there not
circumstances in which politicians will, perhaps understandably, worry
about the fragility of a school or college in their patch and will,
therefore, look to channel commissioning locally, rather than follow
the learners needs?
Les
Lawrence: If elected Members began to influence
things to that extent, the whole veracity of the commissioning process
would be seriously undermined and would not allow for planning, in the
sense of concentrating on the learner. That becomes particularly
important with vulnerable young people and at what I call the
“age of transfer”, which is now 19, in terms of the
support that a young person has up to that age. In the adult arena that
support is a lot less, therefore, we need to have a very strong
commissioning framework that allows all partners to join with the local
authorities to ensure that there is a consistency in transfer and
support such that learners can continue, especially if we are talking
about apprenticeships. They do not suddenly stop at 18 or 19, they go
on into adult learning arrangements. With our responsibilities to those
with learning difficulties up to 25, it is absolutely important that we
have the depth of those relationships right and have the right
commission framework, based around quality and meeting the needs of the
young person first and foremost.
Q
162Jim
Knight: Can I check that Kieran has the same confidence
that that will happen on impartial commissioning?
Kieran
Gordon: I think that it will happen where local
authorities are encouraged to work actively in a collegiate way with
the local authorities covering a travel-to-work or travel-to-learn area
and where providers within a local authority patch are not protected
out of loyalty or whatever. It is very important that we understand
that when we talk about commissioning, we are not just talking about
procurement. Very often, people actually mean procurement.
Commissioning must start with the learners’ needs. It must be
based on a robust assessment of learner need, which is informed by what
young people themselves and advocates, such as guidance workers, say.
Understand that, look at the trend analysis, and look at the
performance of providers in situ and of those that could be brought in,
because good commissioning, at times, involves decommissioning
provision. It is a big task for local authorities to undertake and they
cannot do it in isolation.
Frankie
Sulke: May I be very cheeky and come back in with a
point?
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