Q
435Mrs.
Miller: Will the Minister look favourably on those local
authorities that try to ensure that the PVI sector, which is already
undergoing quite a lot of difficulty in this economic recession, is not
unfairly penalised in the
meantime? Sarah
McCarthy-Fry: A local authority’s
responsibility is to ensure that there is quality provision of early
years settings for the children for whom they are responsible. I would
not expect a local authority to discriminate against, or for, any
particular sector, but to ensure quality of provision.
Jim
Knight: Important changes were made in either the
last Act or the one before—I think it was in the Education and
Skills Act 2008—to the membership of the schools forum, so that
the PVI sector was represented on the schools forum and its voice could
be heard in making some of those funding
decisions.
Q
436Mrs.
Miller: Staying with funding for a final question to
Sarah, according to the Department’s impact assessment, funding
could be transferred away from maintained nurseries. Given the current
economic uncertainty that all early years providers face, will she seek
to safeguard the surpluses that, at present, are potentially under
threat from her colleague? Some 71 per cent. of maintained
nurseries have what I think her colleague described as
“excessive surpluses”. Unfortunately, in response to my
question yesterday, Jim implied that those surpluses are by no means
safe. Should maintained nurseries be feeling a little nervous given
that they might see money clawed back at a time when the amount of
money that they receive will drop as
well? Sarah
McCarthy-Fry: Maintained settings that are full will
not see any change in funding, but I do not think that that is quite
the point that the hon. Lady is making. We are trying to make sure that
the funding is transparent across settings. I come back to the point
that I made before that we are looking for real quality across the
settings. For the first time, we will ask local authorities to base
funding in the maintained sector on participation, rather than on
places, but we are not being prescriptive about where our early years
settings should be. We want quality and transparency in the funding, so
that all participants in that sector feel that there is equity in the
process.
Q
437Mrs.
Miller: Do you, like me, want to see a level playing
field, as soon as possible from
today? Sarah
McCarthy-Fry: Presuming that the legislation goes
through, the regulations will not be in place until 2010-11, which is
when the single funding formula will come into
effect.
Q
438Mrs.
Miller: Quickly moving on perhaps to progress the
discussions on children’s trust boards, there is a lot of
emphasis in the Bill on structural changes at a time when perhaps
Ofsted and the National Audit Office might have been expecting more
emphasis on the nature of the workings of children’s services,
rather than seeing yet more change. Do you share my concern that, when
the sector has seen so much change over the past 10 years, further
change in the form of making children’s trust boards statutory,
introducing children’s centre advisory boards and putting Sure
Start children’s centres on to a statutory footing, may take
those organisations’ eyes off the ball, when they should be
focused on improving the quality of the services provided and
particularly on getting those services to vulnerable
families? Sarah
McCarthy-Fry: This is exactly about improving
services to vulnerable families and all families. A lot of what we are
putting into legislation happens in practice anyway, but it is not
happening across the country. The point of putting it on a statutory
footing is to ensure consistency, so that we are able to deliver the
services that the majority of children, but not all, are getting on a
consistent basis across the whole country. That is why we are doing
it.
Q
439Mrs.
Miller: Okay. So if you are really focused on structural
changes, how will you ensure that the new structures know how to work
together and how to organise local services in a constructive way? You
have not only the organisations that I talked about, but the local
strategic partnerships and local safeguarding boards. We have a lot of
organisations at the moment. When will the Minister make it clear how
all those organisations work together? The evidence that we have had so
far suggests that many of those organisations are not as clear as they
need to
be. Sarah
McCarthy-Fry: The requirement for the
children’s trust boards to prepare and implement the children
and young people’s plan will mean that those organisations will
have to work together. The accountability of having to produce the
annual report that I spoke about earlier will focus the mind, and we
will issue guidance that includes best practice around the country to
help those children’s trusts that have not been operating as
well as they might to see what is happening in other parts of the
country.
Q
440Mrs.
Miller: So, to use a colloquial expression, the pecking
order will be determined locally?
Sarah
McCarthy-Fry: I hope that there is not a pecking
order. The point is for those organisations and agencies to work in
partnership and to share information and work together. They are all
accountable for agreeing and implementing the plan; each one of them is
separately accountable for the delivery of its part of
it.
Q
441Mrs.
Miller: Of course, you run the risk of people not knowing
who is responsible if you do not have a pecking order in
place. Sarah
McCarthy-Fry: That may be your
opinion.
Q
442Mrs.
Miller: Moving on, children’s centres were set up
in a way that could respond to local needs. Every community that we
represent differs in family and local children’s needs, but two
provisions in the Bill could limit the ability to be responsive to
local needs in the future. I am thinking of the duty to consider
supplying services through a children’s centre by local partners
and the very tight definition of early years services. Are you happy
that the duty to consider providing services through children’s
centres will not lead to those partners dictating what the community
needs, rather than the community being in control of that important
decision-making
process? Sarah
McCarthy-Fry: That is why we want to put the advisory
boards on to a statutory footing. Many Sure Start centres do have
advisory boards. This is about ensuring that the advisory board
represents parents in the wider community, so that we can ensure that
the children’s centre provides the services that are
particularly needed in that local
community.
Q
443Mrs.
Miller: But if the duty is on the local partners, such as
the local primary care trust, to consider providing services through
Sure Start in the first instance, surely that will override any
thoughts from an advisory board. That seems to be taking away from the
important local nature of children’s
centres. Sarah
McCarthy-Fry: I would argue that providing health
services in a Sure Start children’s centre is an integral part
of the service provided, certainly in the ones that I have
visited.
Q
444Mrs.
Miller: That is not the point that I am making.
Children’s centres, not the primary care trust, should determine
which services are provided.
Sarah
McCarthy-Fry: But the primary care trust is a
partner—we come back to the children’s trust board and
the children and young people’s plan, which says that those
involved must have regard to the number of children’s centres
that they need to meet the statutory requirement. The whole purpose of
what we are doing with Sure Start children’s centres,
children’s trust boards and the children and young
people’s plan is to join up services to ensure that we achieve
locally what you are referring
to.
Q
445Mrs.
Miller: Moving on to my other point on the tight
definition of early years, do you share the concern I felt on hearing
that 4Children and Action for Children were worried that the Bill could
limit service delivery in some of their communities? Certainly the Sure
Start children’s centres I have visited that have extended
support for families are very effective. I am sure that the Minister
would not want that to change.
Sarah
McCarthy-Fry: I do not think that the legislation
changes that. I am sure that when we consider the clauses in detail, we
will enjoy exploring it further. The intention is not to restrict what
happens in children’s centres; the point is to put them on a
statutory footing to ensure that all children have access to the very
good services, which we have both spoken about, that children’s
centres
provide.
Q
446Mrs. Miller: On
inspection and the provisions in the Bill for inspecting
children’s centres, I was somewhat surprised that neither of the
third sector organisations that came to give evidence seems to have
been involved in any discussions about inspection. Given that both
organisations run children’s centres, and given the very limited
number of third sector organisations that provide Sure Start centres in
our communities, I would have thought that such wide-ranging changes to
how the centres are inspected would have been discussed with them. Why
was that not the case?
Sarah
McCarthy-Fry: We are working with Ofsted on how the
inspection regime will develop. I do not know whether Ofsted has
consulted other providers. I can look into
that.
Q
447Mrs.
Miller: Will the Minister paint a picture of how she
expects the new inspection service to work? As I am sure she is aware,
there are already two different routes through which Ofsted can go into
children’s centres to inspect them: through the child care
facilities or through the early years learning facilities. How does she
expect the new inspection service to work? Obviously, I do not expect
details. Presumably it is in the Bill because a change is needed, but I
am not sure what that change is.
Sarah
McCarthy-Fry: We are still working with Ofsted on how
that is going to work. We certainly want to involve parents in how it
works. We will undertake a pilot of children’s centre
inspections so we that do not duplicate and do not go into two
different areas and conduct multiple inspections. That is the sort of
thing that we will be working with Ofsted on and, hopefully, the answer
will come out of the pilots.
Q
448Mrs.
Miller: So we are legislating for something, but we are
not yet clear about how it is going to
work. Sarah
McCarthy-Fry: We are legislating for the power to
inspect. We will then issue further guidance on how the inspections are
to be carried out.
Q
449Mr.
Gibb: May I ask about the recording of the use of force in
clause 233? I do not know which Minister will answer this question. The
current guidance on use of force requires detailed records to be kept
for 10 years. Why 10 years? Is that not excessive? Does it not make
this very burdensome and bureaucratic for teachers?
Sarah
McCarthy-Fry: I suppose that the question is, if not
10 years, for how long should we say records should be kept? We have to
find a point at which we say, “This is how long we think these
records should be kept in this school.” There are two issues
here. It is a matter of the school keeping records to monitor trends
over time and of getting the balance right on what that length of time
should
be.
Q
450Mr.
Gibb: I suspect that the balance is not quite on the side
of anti-bureaucracy.
Today’s
White Paper “Working Together, Public Services on your
side”, talks about the new fast-track scheme. I bring it in here
because it is about not disincentivising teachers with the burden of
bureaucracy and so keeping them in the profession. When does the
Minister anticipate the new fast-track teachers starting to work in
schools? Which September will it
be? Jim
Knight: Those members of the Committee who were up
earlier enough to watch GMTV at 6.45 am, will have seen Andy Buck, the
head teacher at Jo Richardson academy in Barking, say that one of the
advantages of the six-month scheme is that teachers could start around
March or April. At that time, quite a few teachers leave in order to
start positions elsewhere and the schools are left struggling to
recruit until the following September. We are not tied to September
starts. We want to be able to implement scheme over the next 12 months
or
so.
Q
451Mr.
Gibb: Thank you. Going back to the powers of
search, the wording on what is proportionate in the Education and
Inspections Act 2006 is another disincentive for teachers to use the
powers given by that Act and the Bill. They do not know whether their
action is proportionate. It becomes a minefield that lawyers make lots
of money in, but it is a concern for teachers. Why does the Bill not
redefine that to make it clearer to teachers when they can use the
power, and therefore put the onus not on the teacher to prove that
their action is legal, but on those who claim it is not to prove it?
Why is the burden not shifted away from the
teacher? Sarah
McCarthy-Fry: We plan to issue guidance on how the
power should be used, which could cover that point, as well as other
instances. I take the power to search as a power of last resort. I hope
that in many cases teachers and head teachers would not have to resort
to using the power, but could resolve problems using other means at
their disposal.
Q
452Mr.
Gibb: So will you issue new guidance on the use of
force? Sarah
McCarthy-Fry: On the use of force or the power to
search?
Q
453Mr.
Gibb: No, the use of force. This is what I am
talking about. Teachers have to prove or show that they acted lawfully
and to do that they have to show that what they did was proportionate.
That phrasing in section 91(6) of the 2006 Act inhibits teachers from
using force, hence the playground discussion we had in earlier evidence
sessions. That is set out in the use of force guidance.
Sarah
McCarthy-Fry: That is inevitable. If we are
introducing changes to the legislation we would normally introduce new
guidance too.
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