Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
40-59)
RT HON
ED BALLS
MP AND RT
HON JIM
KNIGHT MP
4 FEBRUARY 2009
Q40 Mr Chaytor: But you would
accept that academies have evolved into something quite different
from the definition of academies that was originally proposed?
Ed Balls: When I arrived in the
Department I asked Andrew Adonis, "What do you see academies
achieving?" He said that they would show, in the toughest
areas, where school performance had been least effective, that
with an injection of new leadership and external challenge, things
could be turned round. Historically—and this is something
that I have mentioned over the last few weeks—there have
been times when people have talked about the link between poverty
and attainment as if it was a given. Academies show that with
the right kind of aspiration and injection of leadership and resources,
we can break that link and raise results much faster in schools
that have disproportionately more children from low-income families.
I have always seen academies—and I think Andrew Adonis always
saw them—as being our battering ram to break the assumption
that certain communities would always have low aspirations and
low results, as if that was pre-ordained because of deprivation.
The reason that there is consistency in the academies programme
is that, as we expand it, we deliver that original impetus.
Q41 Mr Chaytor: Did William Hulme's
grammar school in Manchester have a high proportion of children
from low-income families?
Jim Knight: Look at Bristol, for
example, where Colston Girls' School and the cathedral school
have come into the academies programme. Historically, the performance
of schools in Bristol has been one of the lowest in the country,
but I am happy to say that it is now improving. After four years,
Heather Tomlinson, the director of children's services, has moved
on, but what she has turned around with the authorities has been
remarkable in the secondary area. Bringing in those two independent
schools has meant that we have been able to extend the number
of high-quality places to people from all backgrounds, at no charge
to them. That is a good thing in turning around an education system
that was not working well enough in that city, and extending high-quality
education to people who need it. That is what the academies programmes
is fundamentally about.
Q42 Mr Chaytor: On the wider question
of diversity, when are we going to get a new Schools Commissioner?
Ed Balls: There was a change in
the autumn because the previous Schools Commissioner is moving
on. I spoke with the Chairman of the Select Committee at his farewell
drinks a few weeks ago. The view of our permanent secretary, and
the acting director of schools, Jon Coles, was that we should
think very hard about how we internally organise school improvement
work for the future. We are announcing in the legislation published
on Thursday that responsibility for managing existing open academies
on our behalf will go to the new Young People's Learning Agency,
the new 16 to 19 funding organisation. We also now have a very
strong National Challenge team in our Department, working very
closely with local authorities and schools. Picking up the recommendation
of Cyril Taylor, the former chair of the Specialist Schools and
Academies Trust, who was writing about these matters on Sunday,
we are very much focusing our work in the academies division on
National Challenge schools, in the next period as we expand. The
view of Jon Coles and David Bell was that they did not want simply
to replace the existing Schools Commissioner: we should think
hard about the way in which we organised our Department around
National Challenge and school improvement for the future. I was
happy to agree with them. The answer is that we have not made
a decision on that.
Q43 Mr Chaytor: You have not?
Jim Knight: No.
Q44 Mr Chaytor: Can I just ask
about the Commissioner's report; will the former Schools Commissioner's
report be published? It was intended it should be used as the
annual report.
Ed Balls: We did publish his annual
report before Christmas, did we not? We definitely published a
report quite recently.[2]
If he has another report—
Q45 Mr Chaytor: Was that the Schools
Commissioner's annual report?
Ed Balls: My memory is that we
published it, and if there is another report to publish before
he leaves we will do that. I think many of the things that you
want published are things that our Department should definitely
publish. Whether we publish them in the report of the Schools
Commissioner, or through another route, is something we would
be very happy to discuss with you. I think actually there is a
set of issues that you are concerned about—not just the
academies programme, and schools commissioning, but also around
admissions—which go broader than the role the previous Schools
Commissioner played; so that is something we would be very happy
to discuss.
Q46 Mr Chaytor: Finally, the Schools
Commissioner, I understand, has gone, or is going, to work for
Edutrust. The Department is carrying out an investigation into
Edutrust's sponsorship of academies. Could you give us a progress
report on the investigation?
Ed Balls: Yes. There were allegations
made by the ex-chief executive. When those kind of allegations
are made it is obviously very important that they are taken seriously,
so there is an initial investigation happening within our Department,
which will report to our permanent secretary. The report, I believe,
will arrive with him in a matter of days. He will then consider
its implications and report to me, and we will then decide what
the proper next steps are. We will obviously make public any conclusions
or steps we reach, but in the appropriate way.[3]
Q47 Mr Slaughter: This discussion
we were just having on academies makes me think you do need to
restate the purpose of them. What you just said, Secretary of
State, a moment ago, is what I understood was the original purpose:
they were to address, principally, failing schools, principally
in low-income areas of social deprivation, and the controversy
around them was that part of that was removing the LEA, which
is clearly seen as a problem, and putting in the private sector,
or, we would now say, the external partner. That is what has happened.
What now seems to be the case is that there is the opportunity
at least for them to be colonised by the middle classes, so that
what you thought was a humorous contradiction may actually be
quite near the truth; because if they are actually sitting somewhere
between the independent sector and the voluntary-aided sector
in the hierarchy of schools, so that they are a secular alternative,
perhaps, for parents who cannot get their kids into voluntary-aided
schools, or a cheaper alternative, for parents who cannot pay
or will not pay, their ethos, which was supposed to be the positive
thing about them, may actually be taking them out of the ambit
that they should have been in. Do you see what I am saying?
Ed Balls: I do. There have been,
as Jim referred to, particular private schools, often with an
educational ethos from their foundation about the promotion of
education for disadvantaged children, which they did not feel
could be properly pursued as a private and fee-charging school,
who actually wanted to move into the state system so that they
could substantially widen their catchments and focus on extending
educational opportunity. We have only, and will only, allow private
schools to become academies if there is, first, a need for places,
and second, a desire on their part to change their intake to become
more comprehensive and tackle disadvantage. These have been very
much the exception, but where it makes sense—as Jim said,
in Bristol and Liverpool—we are happy to do that. There
is no ideological opposition to private schools wanting to become
state schools. These are schools that have a particular legal
form—very similar in substance to voluntary-aided schools,
but not exactly the same. They have more flexibility to innovate,
increasingly with private, public and university sponsors. Since
before I arrived, academies were proposed and supported by local
authorities, who sign off the funding agreement at the key stage
to move forward. The change that has happened is that local authorities
are banging on our doors saying, "We would like to have academies,"
rather than the other way around. Their focus now, and from the
beginning, is to ensure that lower-performing schools—which
are often schools with greater disadvantage, and which need that
sort of aspirational change involving new leadership and investment—get
that opportunity. There will be, from time to time, exceptions
at the margins for particular reasons, but that is absolutely
the focus of the programme. Did that answer your question?
Q48 Mr Slaughter: Obviously, one
of the objectives is, if there are schools that have become sink
schools over the years—to use that pejorative term—to
widen the social mix, as well as all the other improvements. Are
you going to monitor not just the academic outcome, but also the
social mix in academies?
Ed Balls: Look, part of the reason
why some academies with a disproportionate number of free-school-meal
pupils have seen a fall in the percentage of those pupils, is
because other children and parents in the local area suddenly
decide that that is a school they would like to go to. That is
a good thing, not a bad thing—and fully consistent with
those schools delivering better education for more disadvantaged
children and young people. We will absolutely monitor it, and
we expect local authorities, with us and as part of the National
Challenge, to be looking at this closely. I have already said
to Mr Chaytor that we would be happy to discuss with you the kind
of annual reporting you would like, across a slightly broader
set of issues than the Schools Commissioner addressed in the past,
if monitoring these kinds of things is something you would benefit
from. We would be happy to make that part of the report, because
it is absolutely central to our thinking about the purpose of
this programme.
Jim Knight: The middle classes
deserve a good education as well. The snow prevented me from visiting
the academy in Midhurst that is being developed. Midhurst has
pockets of disadvantage and need, but that academy will serve
the whole community of Midhurst, and that is the result of turning
around a failing school that was serving a slightly less deprived
community than some of the ones in other parts of the country
such as north Liverpool, which I referred to—
Q49 Chairman: Let me tell you
why this causes me some concern about the demise of the Schools
Commissioner, or whether or not it is going to exist as an office.
The previous Education and Skills Committee provided a critique
of the original White Paper that the Schools Commissioner came
out of.
Jim Knight: A very influential
document it was, too.
Chairman: It was. What we said was that,
on the one side, we would like the schools adjudicator to have
his job back with much more power, with an admissions code that
really had teeth—
Jim Knight: Which has happened.
Chairman: It has happened; we are fine
with that. And balanced by a Schools Commissioner. We wanted added
to the Schools Commissioner role of helping trusts and partnerships
to form—all that stuff with trusts and academies—the
making of a regular report on the social composition of schools.
That speaks directly to Andy Slaughter's point.
Ed Balls: It does.
Q50 Chairman: If the Schools Commissioner
is to disappear, we would like to know who will fulfil that role.
Ed Balls: That was at a time when
there was some concern about what role a Schools Commissioner
would play.
Chairman: Absolutely.
Ed Balls: I think the change that
has happened—we will set this out in the White Paper in
the spring—is that the promotion of academies, and I would
say the promotion of trusts in collaboration, has moved from being
part of what the Department did to being at the core of what we
do in schools improvement. The promotion of academies or national
challenge trusts is not being done by one office separate from
the rest of the Department, but is central to the National Challenge
programme. The question we are asking ourselves as part of the
21st Century Schools White Paper is, would this be best done by
a separate office or is it integral to what the whole Department
is about and what is happening on the ground through our delivery
chain and through local authorities? That is purely an organisational
question about the best way to pursue the expansion of academies
and trusts in a system where, rather than standing back in a passive
way and seeing what requests you get, you actively go out and
say, "Area by area, we need to know what your plan is for
every school in your area, which is underperforming." As
Jim says, when we look at academies—Jim and I look at every
academy proposal that comes forward—we look to see whether
the school has been persistently below 30%. We look at whether
there is the support for the community and whether the sponsor
is strong. We never look at the degree of disadvantage in that
school because schools that are underperforming are disadvantaging
all children, whatever their degree of deprivation. However, we
also note, across the piece, that in respect of disadvantaged
communities academies are taking a disproportionately disadvantaged
intake. Academies are about making sure that underperforming schools
are turned round, which has a disproportionate impact on disadvantage,
although not exclusively so. The White Paper is about improving
school accountability for the well-being of all children, not
just some, but in particular making sure that we do not allow
disadvantage to be a barrier. If also, as part of that White Paper,
you are asking us, "What is the best way in which we as a
Department should be accountable for those objectives?" we
are very happy to have that discussion. I am very happy to discuss
with you what information we should regularly produce for you
so that we are accountable for how our school system and school
improvement deliver. I do not think that it helps me for that
to be only a report of the Schools Commissioner and only the responsibility
of one team. I want those objectives around fair admissions, tackling
disadvantage and school improvement to be integral to the work
of every part of my Department, here and round the country. I
would probably rather that the report we produced were the report
not of the Commissioner, but of Ministers in the Department. That
is necessarily separate from the school adjudicator's report,
because he must act independently of Ministers. The Schools Commissioner
does not and should not act independently of Ministers, but works
for us. So will his successors.
Q51 Chairman: The Committee is
more interested in the roles that are performed than the names.
At the crucial time when the Schools Commissioner concept was
highly unpopular in some quarters, the Committee—or rather,
its predecessor Committee—was, I thought, very helpful in
suggesting that the Commissioner have an expanded role, which
many people have approved of.
Jim Knight: I will make an extremely
brief but helpful point. I am sure the Committee will agree that
the office of the Schools Commissioner is a really important part
of the director general for schools directorate. It is right to
wait until the permanent appointment of the director general is
made so that that person can influence the decision around how
that function is headed up within the Department. That, in part,
is why there is a delay, which some people might find frustrating.
Chairman: Minister, that makes sense.
We must move on to children's social care. Annette was very kind
to allow Douglas to ask his question.
Q52 Annette Brooke: There are
quite a few questions, so if we could work through them fairly
crisply that would be to the benefit of us all. The Unison report
published last week described the situation in child protection
services as a ticking time bomb. It covered 369 responses from
social workers. How did you react to that report? Is the situation
a ticking time bomb? Is that description false or is the report
sending us some strong warning messages?
Ed Balls: I did not agree with
the language—a ticking time bomb—at all. I place more
weight as an assessment of the whole system on the views of the
National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children or
of Lord Laming, who said, as we discussed in last night's debate,
that the system has improved substantially. Every Child Matters
is the right framework. The idea of local accountability for safeguarding
across agencies is the right approach and putting the interests
of the child first, which is at the heart of Every Child Matters,
is the right system. However, there is still a long way to go
to make sure that the system is working effectively in every part
of the country. That is why we have asked Lord Laming for a progress
report, and I do not want to reach a conclusion until I have seen
that report. Having said that, when I look at the details of the
Unison report and survey, much strikes a chord with my understanding
of some of the challenges that we face in the system. It is no
accident that the senior Unison officer—an acknowledged
expert in those matters—is also a member of the Social Work
Taskforce. Many issues have been raised around inadequacy of training.
A statistic that is shocking to me—I am not sure whether
it is in the Unison report, although it reflects it—was
in work done by the Children's Workforce Development Council.
It shows that more than one third of social workers do not believe
that their training prepares them in any way for the job that
they do. Compared with other services, too many social workers
in the early stages of their career do front-line work without
proper support and challenge from middle management. Often, case
loads put those individuals under pressure, and the case load
has risen substantially during the past two months or so during
which the survey was compiled. Furthermore, universally, there
is no proper engagement from other public services in case conferences.
We saw that clearly in the Haringey example. In some parts of
the country, social workers do not have the training and the understanding—and
sometimes the IT systems—to make the integrated children's
system work in the way that it does in other countries. So, individual
elements of the Unison report encourage me to believe that what
we are doing through Lord Laming and the Social Work Taskforce
is urgent and important, but I do not accept the ticking time
bomb description.
Chairman: This Committee will be looking
at the training of social workers very soon.
Ed Balls: That is very important.
Q53 Annette Brooke: I wish to
pick up on the Integrated Children's System. The Committee has
received a letter from Professor Sue White who does not accept
the Department's analysis that it is just a matter of social workers
not being trained well enough in IT, but thinks that there was
not enough engagement with social workers in the design of the
project. I understand that the issue is to be looked at by the
Social Work Taskforce, but not by the Laming review. Would it
not be rather useful for it to be examined in both contexts?
Ed Balls: Lord Laming can look
at anything he wants to look at, and he will. My view is that
he will range widely, and in some cases he will set down what
he thinks needs to be done by others. The Social Work Taskforce
is centrally looking at the training of social workers, but Lord
Laming will, I think, have some pretty strong views about what
the taskforce should do. My guess is that he will have views on
the ICS as well, although I have already asked the taskforce to
take a hard look at how the ICS works in practice. I hope that
Lord Laming will take the same view. As for the letter from Professor
Sue White at Lancaster University, I have also read the summary
of her paper, Error, Blame and Responsibility in Child Welfare.
She is a member of the Social Work Taskforce, so we shall ensure
that her expertise is absolutely central to this. My sense on
the ICS, although I am not an expert in the detail, is that there
is a procurement issue here, because individual authorities around
the country have individually procured the computer systems to
deliver the social work casework manager ICS. Sometimes that procurement
has not worked as well as it should. We have some experience in
government that individual, local procurement for such things
may not be the best way to go, so there is a procurement issue
to look at. Secondly, it is difficult to have change. Some social
workers have probably worked in a culture where there was considerably
less systematic recording than there should have been. For them,
there will be an issue about being brought up to best practice.
Some experts worry that, in some areas, how ICS is being run,
or management are expecting it to be run, requires too much recording,
but that is something we need to look at. However, as I said in
the debate last night, what if you jump to the conclusion that
the ICS is a flawed system and that we should return to the position
pre-ICS? Make that your headline and you may get the support of
some social workers who preferred things as they were, but that
is a very unwise presumption to jump to if what you care about
is the safety of children.
Q54 Annette Brooke: Can I be assured
that the question raised about basic design failings will be properly
addressed? Will you, in turn, be responding formally to all the
recommendations of the Social Work Taskforce?
Chairman: This Committee is not in the
business of a headline, Secretary of State. Sue White is a respected
professor—at Huddersfield University in a previous incarnation—and
we are putting her point.
Ed Balls: And she is on the Taskforce.
Chairman: She is.
Ed Balls: We will respond in detail
to everything that Lord Laming and the Taskforce say. I want them
to tell us how we can make sure that the practice of those councils
that say that ICS is transforming our social work practice positively
can be the common practice in every area of the country, rather
than just in some. If there were design issues, around time scales
or the amount of time being taken in some areas, we absolutely
should address that. All I am saying is—I know you are not
saying this, nor will Professor White—some people say that
we should rip it up and go back to how things were, as if there
were some halcyon bygone age where no one wrote anything down,
because they were too busy looking after children.
Chairman: Let us talk about diplomas.
Q55 Mr Heppell: We have more than
12,000 children taking diplomas, in the first five lines of learning.
There are 12 more lines of learning coming in over the next few
years, which is going to increase the number dramatically. However,
there still seems to be a little confusion about what diplomas
are. When we had the chief executive of UK Skills in, he described
them as academic qualifications that teach subjects in an applied
manner. Your own definition, Jim, I thought was quite good—neither
academic nor vocational but a rich mix of the two. The DCSF website
emphasises the flexibility of diplomas—that you can move
on to an apprenticeship, university or other qualifications. Last
week a Sutton Trust survey, which interviewed just under 13,000
teachers, showed that only a quarter of them thought that diplomas
were for the academically able, and only one in five that they
were suitable for those going on to university; 83% thought that
diplomas were suitable for people who want to assume a vocational
role, and three quarters of them said that they were suitable
for schools in poorer areas. If that is the perception of teachers,
are you satisfied that young people, people from universities
and employers have a proper understanding of what diplomas actually
are? It seems that teachers are still seeing them as vocational
qualifications and probably as a second-tier qualification.
Chairman: Can I have a quick response?
Jim Knight: I will be as quick
as I can. The reality of diplomas for those who are teaching them
and learning through them is as described in the various quotations
that you cited at the beginning, but clearly we have more work
to do with the perception of those who are not involved. I have
encouraged some members of the Committee to visit diploma learning
to see it in action. My first experience of it was at a school
in Macclesfield that had creative and media learning. There was
an art teacher who was taking some of the styles of teaching she
has developed for the diploma to use at A-level because she sees
that the relationship between the real world of work and academic
learning can be extremely positive in bringing out the academic
best in young people. That is the reality. We have more work to
do on the message.
Q56 Derek Twigg: The proposed operation
of the Learning and Skills Council is seen by some to be more
administrative than improving skills and training. How would the
Skills Funding Agency prove to be better at ensuring a demand-driven
improvement in skills and training?
Ed Balls: The Learning and Skills
Council was playing two separate but overlapping functions, a
bit like the previous Department for Education and Skills. One
was to manage funding for 16-to-19 education, the input of colleges
plus sixth forms but also, separately from that, adult skills.
The Government decided that we would have a better focus on 14-to-19
reforms and 16-to-19 funding on the one hand and adult skills
on the other and could manage the interface between the two if
we did that through two different departments. The logical next
step is for the Learning and Skills Council to be split into two
separate functions: one, the Young People's Learning Agency, which
takes on a wider set of responsibilities but is locally based
to manage the funding of school, college and wider education up
to the age of 19; the other, the Skills Funding Agency which will
be organised differently from the LSC but takes on the management
of adult skills. I think that is a much better way to achieve
proper integration of 16-to-19 funding in a managed way, and separately,
to make sure that adult skills get the priority they need in the
way FE colleges, companies and private organisations think about
delivering and funding training. We need to manage the interface
between the two because there is an overlap—FE colleges
will be providing both. The LSC has always managed the interface
internally and we think two agencies will give us a better focus
on the crossover.
Q57 Derek Twigg: It is interesting.
You made the point that FE colleges will still be doing both,
the 16-to-19 and the post-19. You recognised obviously that local
authorities have a much bigger part to play post-19. There are
of course local strategic partnerships in place in every local
authority area, which are often chaired by business people and
have a great involvement with business people. The argument is:
why not go the whole hog and give responsibility for commissioning
and funding of those services to the local authority? Basically,
that is how it used to be before incorporation, obviously excluding
higher education, so why not do that? It might not be the most
intellectual comparison, but if you take the example of primary
care trusts in the health service, you will see that they commission
across a whole variety of areas and services for health, so what
is the difference?
Ed Balls: You will know from your
experience on the skills side that it was always a struggle to
get the education system to give the right priority to post-19
skills and education training. We think that the Skills Funding
Agency (SFA), with that absolutely as its remit and delivered
from a different Department, will give a greater profile and share
of the funding. On the 16-to-19 side, local authorities are absolutely
the key to commissioning, because they are the centre of the delivery
partnerships for diplomas and for ensuring that schools and colleges
are working together closely to get the integration that we want
and need to be able to deliver the kind of reforms to the curriculum
that Mr Heppell referred to a moment ago. But a lot of colleges
serve more than one local authority area and sometimes will serve
a multiple number of local authority areas. There is a lot more
cross-border travel by young people using the college system than
by those using the school system, so the legislation hands over
responsibility for commissioning to local authorities, but it
hands it over to consortia of local authorities, which have to
come together to plan commissioning and delivery across the area,
rather than to individual local authorities. The YPLA's (Young
People's Learning Agency) job, we hope, is to be light touch and
to ensure that, where there are difficulties, they can be sorted
out and that there is quality and proper monitoring, but there
will be times when local authorities cannot agree, and in those
times, it is important that we have powers to step in and sort
out problems. There is also an issue where you have cross-border
flows. The FE colleges were very anxious that we should not have
a much more complicated system and, as far as you can, to have
a common tariff that could apply across areas, so we are trying
to strike a balance between devolution and simplicity, where you
have cross-border local authority moves, and that is what the
Bill tries to achieve.
Q58 Derek Twigg: I understand
the point you are making, and that is why I used the PCT analogy,
because they go cross-border considerably in terms of commissioning
services from different hospitals and local authority areas. Intellectually,
it might not be the best comparison, but, administratively, that
is a road we have gone down. I was involved in local authorities
for many years, so I accept that that was not a priority in some
of them, but has the world not really moved on since then, following
the experience of the '80s? The local strategic partnerships now
have a much closer relationship with local authorities, businesses
and FE colleges. Are we not really planning that based on what
used to happen and failing to take account of what is happening
today on the ground—the fact that residents will give local
authorities a bit more responsibility?
Ed Balls: There are players in
the education world who worry that the legislation will give local
authorities too much responsibility for commissioning and would
actually prefer a rather more centralised system, and we think
that that is not right. The legislation allows for a very substantial
local authority commissioning role, and the large bulk of the
under-19 staff on the Learning and Skills Council will be transferring
not to the YPLA, but to individual local authorities. We are trying
to find a way in which you can expect, encourage and require effective
local authority collaboration, and when you do not have accountability—we
do not have regional government or sub-regional political structures—it
is not always easy to achieve that. On the basis that that is
what local authorities are able to agree together, the Bill enables
substantial devolution to the local authority, but it holds back
its powers so that, if that is failing, there are powers through
the YPLA for us to step in.
Jim Knight: I want local authorities
to focus and build their capacity to deliver on raising the participation
age and ensure that there is a quality set of choices for every
single young person in their areas. If they can focus on nought
to 19, we will get the FSA dealing with the adult world. The Bill
also extends responsibilities for the education of young offenders
below the age of 19 to local authorities. We are instilling a
huge responsibility on councils and giving them the tools to do
it by raising the participation age, and we need to do one thing
at a time.
Q59 Chairman: Is there the capacity
to do it, Minister? Some of us who visit lots of local authorities
worry because we see them struggling with the responsibilities
that come from right across the children's services—the
social services remit and the schools remit. You can physically
see them struggling. In some high-profile cases, you can see that
the management task is too much for them, especially if you have
a person with a background in social services who does not understand
the schools sector, or vice versa. I have seen real problems there.
I look at the capacity of many local authorities and wonder where
they will find the capacity and the quality of management to undertake
these new tasks.
Jim Knight: There are two aspects
to capacity. We have to ensure that we do not lose the expertise
of the staff within the LSC and that the staff want to migrate
to local authorities to perform the functions that will be moved
over to those authorities. I am meeting Ruth Serwotka from the
Public and Commercial Services Union today to discuss some of
those issues. That is a really important aspect of capacity. At
the same time, in terms of leadership capacity, one of the important
things that the Secretary of State has taken forward has been
the link between the Association of Directors of Children's Services
and the National College for School Leadership in order to develop
stronger leadership training for not just directors of children's
services, but those in management positions just below DCSs, so
that we can address the problem that you are talking about.
Ed Balls: But there is a broader
issue here, Chairman. In some ways, this is where the most acute
political debates are at the present time. If you do not believe
in the proper role of the local authority and the local tier of
government in delivering school improvement, child safety or effective
economic development, you either have a very centralised system
or you end up with something of a lottery, where you see who rises
and who falls. There will be some areas in which schools will
succeed. Some individual schools will succeed and some will fail.
Pupils in the failing school will sit back and suffer failure
for years before something changes. Personally, I do not think
that the lottery is fair. But, in the end, if you start down that
decentralised and market-based model in education, you quickly
see the need systematically to tackle underperformance. Without
a proper local authority tier, you end up with massive centralisation.
I do not think that it is possible for Whitehall to run school
improvements systematically in every part of the country and to
give that guarantee to parents. Without the guarantee, you entrench
disadvantage. That is why the local authority tier is vital and
why it is vital that we should think about leadership and capacity,
which takes me back to the conversation that we had earlier about
Children's Trusts.
2 Note by witness: A copy of the first report
on the work of the Office of the School Commissioner covering
the period from September 2006 to March 2008 was sent to the Committee
on 14 July 2008. DCSF placed a copy of the report in both Libraries
of the House. This reflects the position as recorded in Q104 of
the Committee's Public Expenditure report published 7 January
2009 (First Report, Session 2008-09, HC 46). Back
3
See Ev 21 and 22. Back
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