Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
RT HON
ED BALLS
MP, VERNON COAKER
MP AND JON
COLES
21 OCTOBER 2009
Q1 Chairman: We all know why we
are a bit pushed. Let us get straight into the second session.
This is mainly a discussion of the White Paper. I want to open
it up by saying that some of us on the Committee—certainly
myself—were a bit disturbed last week. I spoke at the launch
of the Cambridge Review of primary education and I think that
I put a very balanced case. Some of the language in that primary
review was a little unfortunate. There were references to Stalinism
and a couple of other things, and I reprimanded the authors about
that. Given all that, however, it is an enormously substantial
review. It has taken three years. It has a tremendous amount of
depth and breadth. Secretary of State, we are all trying to take
your White Paper seriously, but an awful lot of work and expertise
from some of the leading experts in the country went into that
three-year review, and all of you more or less dismissed it. It
is very disappointing that you seemed so hostile to it.
Ed Balls: I wasn't hostile. It
was difficult—
Chairman: I can give you the quotes.
It seemed hostile.
Ed Balls: It wasn't intended to
be hostile. I and, I think, the Schools Minister, when he saw
the report the day before—
Q2 Chairman: The chief executive
travelled all the way to Huddersfield to brief me the Friday before,
and said he had offered both of you an in-depth pre-briefing,
which you did not take up.
Ed Balls: We did. Jo-anne Daniels,
who is my education adviser, had a meeting with him in the days
before.[1],
[2]There
were some issues that were frustrating in the report, but it also
said some positive things. There were also some misconceptions,
which get in the way of understanding. For example, the focus
on play in early years is completely right. The early years foundation
stage—what we are doing in reception—is all about
play-based learning. The impression that this meant children should
not start school until six has got in the way of the truth. I
do not think there was a big disagreement there between us. The
focus on more support for children with special educational needs
or, another example, the focus on improving teaching maths in
primary school were completely right. The thing that is frustrating
from our point of view is that Brian Lamb has been doing a review
for the past year, which will report in the next month, on special
educational needs. That review and a number of quite radical things
that we have said, about independence in statementing, Ofsted
inspection and SEN provision, were not even mentioned in the report.[3]
Similarly with the Williams review and the focus on improving
specialist maths teaching—one in every school. There was
a call for this to be done in the report, but there was no reflection
of the fact that Professor Williams did a report, which has been
published and that we are now implementing, on the issue of testing.
There are differences of views here—we know that there are
some people who do not want there to be tests at the age of 11—but
we had an expert group that reported and to which we responded
in the spring. There is no mention of the expert group in the
report. There was three years of work, but you did not always
feel that the authors of the report had been fully abreast of
all the things that had been happening during the three years
while they were doing the work. However, at the same time it says
some very important things about primary education, I think—in
many ways, things that are fully consistent with the work Jim
Rose has done for his primary curriculum review.
Q3 Chairman: I was with Jane Davidson,
the former Education Minister for Wales, who is now the Environment
Minister, and she said, "I do hope that the Secretary of
State will take note of the fact that many of the things in the
Cambridge review we have introduced in Wales and they are working
very successfully indeed." So, there are people out there
who see. This Committee, in terms of testing, assessment and a
number of areas, agrees with some of the recommendations of the
review, particularly if you remember an early recommendation,
that we are worried that children are coming into school and getting
into formal learning too early. That has been a consistent worry,
that they are getting into formal learning too early. We have
looked at this in depth. It is not good for children to get into
formal learning too early, and there are many schools that I go
to where they are still sitting there in little schools learning
to read and write at four. Many of us think that is too early.
Ed Balls: I always study your
reports in detail. Because I studied in detail your report last
year—it was a contributor—we abolished Key Stage 3
tests last autumn. The report that you published last year also
said that we should not remove Key Stage 2 tests and that we should
continue with objective assessment. So, in that sense, that is
clearly in sharp contrast to one of the fundamental points of
the primary review, which wants to abolish those Key Stage 2 tests.
You say in your report that we must make sure that teaching and
accountability are not narrow and teaching to the test. The argument
that I have always made, which I am hoping to persuade you of,
is that the report card and that fundamental reform to accountability
achieves that objective. You and I both agree, unlike Williams,
that keeping Key Stage 2 tests is important. On the issue of four,
five and six-year-olds, I have had direct experience of this,
and am doing so now as a parent as well as a Secretary of State.
Of course you want school learning to be fun and of course you
want there to be a lot of play-based activity. One of the jarring
things as a parent these days is to see in November and December
your children being asked to bring in their hats, coats and scarves
because they play outside—not just at break time. In the
'70s, when I was at school, if it was cold we stayed inside. These
days if it is cold, children still play outside, not just in break
time but as part of the school day, because play-based learning
is a vital part of the early years foundation stage. What we are
doing through reading recovery and Every Child a Reader is that
if you can identify obstacles to children's learning—issues
around dyslexia or wider learning difficulties—at age five
and six, and get specialist one-to-one support in there before
they get to seven, then that can get them on the right track.
The idea that you would not start with that kind of engagement
until after they were six and identify later, I don't think—personally—that
would be the right think to do. So, I would rather have children
enjoy school—learning and playing—but with more of
a focus on early intervention. I don't think, really, that that
was reflected in the review. I think it is a rather more modern
way of thinking than the review has said.
Q4 Chairman: None of us would
agree with all of it, but it is important to take it seriously.
As long as we have that commitment.
Ed Balls: Vernon was the person
responding on the day. Did you take it seriously?
Vernon Coaker: We did take it
seriously and we will take it seriously, because it made some
important recommendations. It would be arrogant just to dismiss
something that people have spent a lot of time doing. As the Secretary
of State said, one of the things that didn't help was that all
of that huge 600 pages was distilled into "children shouldn't
start formal school until six". Just one aspect of it dominated
and I think the debate was that we kept trying to say, "There's
a balance here". None of us wants this idea of rows of children
drilled in maths and English without being allowed to do anything
that is playful, fun or enjoyable. That was a caricature of the
reality. The balance between those two is what we are all searching
for.
Chairman: David wants a quick word on
that.
Q5 Mr Chaytor: On the question
of the starting age, what the review actually says is that the
foundation stage could continue until the age of six. Do you object
to that?
Ed Balls: No. I heard Professor
Williams on the "Today" programme last Friday. I thought
it was a very good interview and I agreed with lots of things
he said. The problem was that he spent quite a lot of the interview
correcting things that were in the papers. So I'm afraid, as Vernon
says, the perception of the review was rather at odds with the
reality in many cases. What we have said is—and this was
from Jim Rose's work—that I know how frustrating it can
be for some parents whose children are summer born and are told
that they cannot start reception until later in the school year.
We are saying that we want every child—and we are saying
to local authorities, "You will have to deliver a reception
place, from September, for every child who is four in that year".
But we are also saying that some parents will judge, talking to
the teachers, that it would be better for their child to stay
in nursery care for the autumn term, or even the spring term,
if they are a summer born child. Therefore, we are also saying
to local authorities, some of which say, "You have to start
in January", that they actually ought to be providing a nursery
place, if parents want it, all the way through to spring. So,
we are not mandating September, we are saying, "Give parents
a proper and full choice between September, or all the way through
to April, and either primary full or part-time in reception, or
nursery part-time right through—give parents a choice."
Jim says, educationally, it is better for summer born kids to
start early, but children starting at four in reception should
be having a pretty similar education experience to a child in
nursery, aged four. I think early years foundation stage should
be seamless through those years, and of course it should be much
less structured than it would be once you get beyond the foundation
stage. I am happy for that to keep running through until six.
Chairman: Just for Hansard, can
I put it on record that it is Professor Alexander, not Professor
Williams?
Ed Balls: Did I say Williams?
Chairman: Yes.
Q6 Annette Brooke: Could you guarantee
that if we have an over-subscribed first school, and parents choose
for their child to go, say, in the spring term or summer term,
they would definitely have that place reserved and that there
won't be any funding issues for the school?
Ed Balls: We are saying to local
authorities that when they do the applications for school places,
which would normally be in the spring for the following school
year, they will have to make sure that they allocate and fund
places to meet the needs and the choices of parents. Therefore,
if you, as a parent, apply for that school—you're within
the catchment and you're coming later—then the authority
has to make sure that the funding can allow that to be a real
choice. Absolutely. That will have some financial implications
and they are going to have to deal with that. This is not cost-free.
We think this will cost around £80 million more across the
country to deliver, but it is the right thing to do for parents
and for kids.
Q7 Derek Twigg: I can quite understand
the way you reacted after hearing Professor Alexander's interview
on the radio, in which he spent most of his time correcting the
press. Therefore, I suspect that your comments are directed more
at the press than at his report. I can quite understand why you
said what you did. To say that Victorian education was better
than today's, was nonsense. You will not be surprised that my
first question is about the funding of the White Paper. You have
clearly placed a lot of emphasis on existing budgets. Can you
tell us what work has progressed since then, in terms of identifying
how much of existing budgets might be used and how much new money
might be needed, particularly in the context of the future financial
difficulties?
Ed Balls: We think that the schools
White Paper and the commitments here are funded right through
until 2010-11. We didn't see the White Paper as making new or
additional commitments that would require additions to budgets.
We thought that it was a statement of what schools were doing
and should be doing, and we wanted to make sure that this was
understood by parents and pupils through the guarantees in the
spending review. In a sense, going back to the discussion we had
before, there is no doubt that in the next spending review it
is going to be more challenging. For example, a big theme in the
White Paper is partnership and schools collaborating. We think
that that is primarily, or first, about making great leadership
work across the school system in raising standards, but we also
think that this is an area in which we will be able to make economies
and release resources, and therefore continue to fund the front
line. When I look at the pupil guarantee or the parents guarantee,
I think that that is the front line, and we need to make sure
that we are more efficient so that we can continue to deliver
those guarantees. We think we can.
Q8 Derek Twigg: But is there any
source of new money that you need to identify at this stage? I
understand what you are saying. You think that it can all be found
within existing budgets. That is assuming that existing budgets
remain as they are and as forecast. How would it fare, for instance,
based on cutting budgets pretty early, which some people are suggesting,
as opposed to your approach?
Ed Balls: I think that after 2010-11
we can continue to deliver the White Paper and our front-line
commitments, so long as we have a good budget settlement and can
make these efficiency savings. If we were to cut the education
budget after 2011, and in particular if we were to cut it in 2010-11,
there is no way you could deliver this White Paper; you couldn't
deliver these commitments. You would have to cut teacher numbers
or one-to-one tuition. You couldn't deliver these guarantees if
you were reducing the budget in 2010-11.
Q9 Derek Twigg: What feedback
have you had from head teachers about the proposals, in terms
of their ability to implement them?
Ed Balls: I think it is quite
tough to be honest, because we are saying that we are going to
set out in legislation what every parent and every pupil can expect
from the school in terms of behaviour, and also in terms of one-to-one
tuition if the child is falling behind. I think that many heads
look at that and think, on the one hand, "This is what we
are already doing. This is what we want to do—it reflects
our ambition", but, on the other hand, that "This move
from expectations to guarantees to pupils and parents is quite
a challenge". They will have to know that they can meet these
guarantees for every child and every parent. Clear processes will
be followed if that is not being done. On one level, heads look
at this and think, "This is quite demanding". John Dunford
of the Association of School and College Leaders says that he
is concerned about the guarantees and whether they can be delivered,
because they are ambitious. But at the same time, I think that
heads know that this is the right thing to do, and they also know
that you've got to be ambitious and relate that to every parent
and every child. I would say that the vision pretty much squares
with the view of most people in the school world of how they would
like the school system to proceed, most of whom would not be members
of new school networks being set up by other parties. But in terms
of the challenge of delivering it, it is quite tough.
Q10 Derek Twigg: This is my final
question on this. You have made it clear that this is within existing
budgets. For those local education authorities that haven't got
as much funding as they would like because of the disparity that
we have, is there a special issue around how we help them—about
the 40 before they are 40? There are burdens on authorities that
have pretty good funding overall and others have less in comparison
and that can obviously have a different impact. I don't know whether
you have thought that through. Overall, as you know, budgets have
gone up.
Ed Balls: The truthful answer
is that, as we look at the funding review, a lot of the focus
is on delivering for pupils with special educational needs, giving
extra one-to-one support and ensuring that we tackle some of the
wider barriers that pupils face if they are from more deprived
backgrounds or from communities where there is less of a tradition
of high expectations. We need to ensure that the funding for that
going to schools and children's services is properly reflected
in the reform of the funding formula. I think that the two things
are linked, as you say.
Chairman: Let us move on to the parent
and pupil guarantees.
Q11 Paul Holmes: In the period
1997-2001, I was still a teacher; I was head of years 12 and 13.
Shortly after the new Government were elected, I spent a lot of
time, along with all the other teachers, chasing every pupil to
bring back a signed home-school contract or charter. It was, frankly,
a worthless piece of paper after all the hours that we spent on
it. What is the key difference between that and the home-school
agreements—the parent and pupil guarantees—mentioned
in the White Paper?
Ed Balls: As you say, every school
has been required to have an agreement, but most parents do not
know that they have signed up to one. The key difference is twofold.
First, every parent will explicitly have to say, as part of the
admissions process when their child applies to a school, that
they are signing up to the expectations on them as a parent. They
will also have to confirm that during the life of their child
at the school. Secondly, if a parent does not then deliver their
part of the package in terms of supporting good behaviour, that
will be explicitly taken into account—ultimately by the
courts—in enforcing parenting contracts or orders. That
gives schools the teeth they need to say to parents, "You
have to play a part." Also, if parents feel that their child's
learning is being disrupted by one or two kids in the class and
that the school is not doing something about it, they will have
the explicit right to appeal, ultimately to the local government
ombudsman and beyond, and say that the school is not enforcing
the proper discipline code and that they want it sorted out. So
it gives teeth to the school and to parents who feel that the
school is not delivering good behaviour. It also puts pressure
on parents who are not pulling their weight. I think that it is
tougher.
Q12 Paul Holmes: The difference
is that it is compulsory and legally enforceable both ways: parent
against school and school against parent. The White Paper seems
a bit contradictory on the first point about the compulsory element.
It states: "It would be wrong to make signing the Home School
Agreement a condition of admission," but that "parents
will be expected to sign" it each year. Is it compulsory
or not?
Ed Balls: We have to be careful
that we don't have a separate and extra hurdle to admission that
could be used by schools effectively as a sift. The point therefore
is that every parent applying and signing the admission form is
signing up to a behaviour contract. They will then have to repeat
that in future years. If we said, "You have to fill in the
admission form and also send a separate behaviour form,"
we might find that some pupils who deserve a good chance ended
up being disadvantaged in the admissions process because of a
separate, extra thing that some parents might not do. That would
not be fair. Do you see what I mean? Is that a fair distinction?
Q13 Paul Holmes: So it is compulsory
on the day that school starts in September, but it is not compulsory
when you apply in the preceding year?
Ed Balls: At the point that you
apply to a school, the application will make it clear that you
are signing up to its behaviour agreement. In legal terms, you
have, "sign on the dotted line." We are not asking you
to sign to apply to the school and separately sign the home-school
agreement. Applying to the school is part of what you as a parent
take on board.
Q14 Paul Holmes: John Dunford
from the Association of School and College Leaders has said that
the whole legal process that is going to be introduced is a sledgehammer
to crack a nut. Chris Keates from the NASUWT—
Chairman: Who is with us today.
Paul Holmes:— said that the guarantee
was welcome, but that it has to be watertight and clear otherwise
there will be a lot of vexatious legal processes going on. How
do you respond to those two different views?
Ed Balls: If you make a guarantee,
it has to be able to be enforced. As I said to Mr Twigg, for many
schools that will be straightforward because they are doing it
already. For some schools, it will be challenging, but I think
that it is right to keep challenging the system, so I will not
shy away from doing that. If, for example, a parent thinks that
the behaviour contract is not being enforced; that they have not
got a written statement of what their child is getting if they
are gifted or talented; that in year 7, their child has not been
given the extra 10 hours a week one-to-one or small group tuition
that they should have had if they did not make level 4, and they
are getting that year 7 catch-up testing; or that one of the other
deliverables in the guarantee has not been enforced, you want
them, in the first instance, to have a conversation with the personal
tutor and then to speak to the head teacher. In the large majority
of cases, the school will have its own procedure or formal process
for making a complaint, if the complaint is not being heard by
the head teacher. Obviously, in the vast majority of cases, John
Dunford and his members will hopefully have sorted out the issue.
However, if it has not been sorted out, there has to be a next
step. The next step will be that every parent will have the right
to go independently to the local government ombudsman to set out
why, in their judgement, the school or the local authority is
not delivering the guarantee. The local government ombudsman does
not have the power to make a school do so, although we know the
way in which the local government ombudsman works. The publishing
of its report is, even of itself, quite a powerful statement,
and that, in many cases, sorts things out. I know that John Dunford
will think that the local government ombudsman's report is a sledgehammer
and he would have liked to have cracked the nut at an earlier
stage. So there will be a small number of cases. When it happens,
a school should do it. If a school ignores the local government
ombudsman and does not deliver the guarantee, I have statutory
intervention powers. Obviously, they can go even further than
that. Unless you have that backstop, you cannot really say that
it is an enforced guarantee. John Dunford is right. In the vast
majority of cases, parents and teachers will have wanted to sort
this out at a much earlier stage.
Q15 Paul Holmes: What about the
two-way problem? On the one hand, the school might well be reluctant
to go to law to enforce this against parents. We are seeing a
bit of that. Today, we have seen the announcement of a big rise
in truancy, a lot of which is down to parents taking the kids
on holiday, which would not have counted as truancy in the past
but now is. Some schools are really trying to crack down and enforce
that because they say that Ofsted will penalise them if they do
not. Others, in the interests of good school-parent relationships,
do not want to. So there is the school's reluctance to go down
a legal path. On the other side, an SEN kid—I am thinking
of kids I have taught in mainstream classes with autism, attention
deficit hyperactivity disorder or Down's syndrome—will have
particular behavioural problems and other parents might start
saying, "I am going to take the school to court because they
are not meeting the behaviour agreement." So by introducing
the law into this, problems will be caused both ways.
Ed Balls: I am talking about the
school complaints procedure if you have not sorted out the problem
between the head teacher and the teacher, and then the local government
ombudsman if you still have not managed to sort it out. Even at
that point, we have not got down a legal route. We only go down
the legal route if we go further than that and go for judicial
review. On the home-school agreement, you are right that we are
saying that the school should have the power to enforce against
the parent, and other parents on the parent. We already have 6,861
parenting contracts for attendance and 222 parenting orders for
attendance, so the court is already involved in these issues,
although mainly on the attendance side. Up to now, schools have
been reluctant to use those kind of legal routes around behaviour
because they did not think that they had the legal powers. What
the home-school agreement and the change in the law associated
with it do is to make it clear that the magistrates court will
be expected to take into account the home-school agreement and
whether or not the parent has complied as part of their decision-making
on the parenting contract order or enforcement. We will substantially
strengthen the school's hand vis-a"-vis the parent if it
is a parent who is being recalcitrant and not engaging. Obviously,
when you talk about special educational needs, there is a separate
process for statementing, which we are also discussing. I cannot
see that any school or ombudsman will be enforcing behaviour in
respect of a special educational needs child.
Q16 Paul Holmes: Some parents
might change the school by legal action because the provision
is not there.
Ed Balls: If a school feels under
more pressure to make sure that special educational needs children
are being properly supported, that is a good thing. Making sure
that you can do that in a way that does not disrupt learning for
other children is probably quite a good thing as well.
Q17 Paul Holmes: But they might
be under pressure in various ways. We know that academies take
far fewer children with SEN than the figures in their neighbourhood
say they should, for example.
Ed Balls: Part of the problem
is that the correlation between children who get excluded and
children with SEN is much too high, and that is why intervening
earlier and having early expectations is the right way to address
the issue. But we need to make sure that it does not happen. If
that is happening now, it will make it clearer and more open.
Q18 Chairman: We cooked up a worrying
statistic for Graham Badman in respect of the inquiry into home
schooling, which is the number of children out there who we don't
know much about. A Director of Children's Services told me only
this week that when he had arrived at an authority, a number of
schools were easing out 10 to 20 pupils who were disruptive and
just letting them go off the rope. Will there not be more pressure
to get the awkward squad out and let them disappear off the premises
and off the school roll?
Ed Balls: The extra research that
Graham Badman produced for your Committee focuses our mind. A
very small number of children are home educated and on child protection
plans, but the number is considerably higher than the average.
Q19 Chairman: There are up to
130,000 children who we don't know about out there.
Ed Balls: We need to make sure
that we do, especially if they have a special need for which they
must receive support. Part of the guarantees is to make sure that
children with special educational needs are getting the support
that they need from schools. As I said at the beginning, some
people just want as a matter of principle to home educate, but
others have ended up in that position because they did not feel
that the local authority and the school gave them proper information
and support. In the end, they felt forced into that position and
that should not be happening.
Chairman: Sorry, I should not have intervened
then. Edward, you want to ask about one-to-one tuition.
1 Witness correction: The meeting was with
Dame Gillian Pugh Back
2
See letter from Professor Robin Alexander: Ev 12 Back
3
See letter from Professor Robin Alexander: Ev 12 Back
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