Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-119)
LESLEY KING
AND MARGARET
TULLOCH
25 FEBRUARY 2008
Q100 Lynda Waltho: I disagree, because
the evidence is slightly different, but I take your point. Margaret,
would you like to comment on any of that?
Margaret Tulloch: I do not think
that I would. You are making the points that I would have made.
I am not sure that we will get anywhere arguing about the changes
in intake. Of course, when Michael Barber promoted such specialist-type
schools in the '80s, it was partly because they were worried about
the so-called middle classes deserting the state sector. In a
way, the balance of intake might have changed anyway. As I said
at the beginning, PricewaterhouseCoopers said that the DCSF should
look at admissions and banding. That was in July last year and
I do not know whether they have. Your point about SEN and children
with English as an additional language would be covered by looking
at the admissions process. As you might remember, my point was
that if you band by asking children to take a test in school on
a Saturday morning, you will band across only those whose parents
can take them into school on a Saturday morning. I hope that I
made the point at the beginning strongly enough about how admissions
are very important and should be looked at.
Q101 Lynda Waltho: Following on from
your earlier point about how we tackle individual issues with
pupils, there is a school of thought that says that rather than
have an institutionally-based answer, such as Academies, we perhaps
should be targeting individuals wherever they are and whichever
route they take.
Margaret Tulloch: Are you talking
about personalised learning?
Q102 Lynda Waltho: Indeed. Is that
your point?
Margaret Tulloch: As I said, a
lot of other things are happening within Government policy that
are to do not with changing institutions, but with going into
them and targeting help and support. I think that that is the
way forward.
Q103 Lynda Waltho: So not only would
it be a less expensive option, but it would be a more powerful
one.
Margaret Tulloch: Yes.
Lynda Waltho: I wonder whether I could
come in on collaboration between schools.
Chairman: Lynda, could you hold on please.
Andy, do you want to come in on the last point, or do you want
to hold on until Lynda has finished?
Mr Slaughter: I have a question on the
previous point about whether Academies tackle disadvantage, but
I can wait if necessary.
Chairman: Go on.
Q104 Mr Slaughter: I thought that
a couple of comments made were a bit complacent—on the points
about what there is not to like and how there is no evidence.
I hold no brief against Academies. I am very happy that one voluntary-aided
school in my area has become an Academy and that another is planned.
However, my experience so far has been that they do not target
areas with the greatest number of free school meals. On the contrary
they cover takeover schools or catchment areas where there is
likely to be a much lower percentage of children on free school
meals. There is no clear co-operation with existing schools, on
which they could have a detrimental effect. Furthermore, the procurement
process means that it is very unclear to residents and potential
school users—parents and children—exactly what they
are getting. There is a kind of pig in a poke element. That adds
up to some serious concerns not about the objectives of Academies
but about whether their implementation is fulfilling those.
Lesley King: It is certainly true
that schools in an area worry about just that when an Academy
is due to open. Often the worried schools are affiliated with
the trust in the same way as the Academy will be. However, we
have no hard evidence that schools have suffered because of an
Academy coming into the area. Sometimes we have found that results
have gone up in those schools. Unfortunately, sometimes, if a
school is very much under-performing in an area, other schools
feel complacent—to use your word—because at least
they are not at the bottom of the heap. Change sometimes galvanises
all schools in an area. We have certainly seen that happen. That
can only be a good thing. It is a system of sort of oblique leadership,
rather than an active one.
Q105 Mr Slaughter: I do not think
you are taking my point. I have no objection in principle to Academies
trying to do a distinct job. In fact, that is to be lauded. However,
the net effect of putting something slightly alien or different
into the local education market is that not enough concern is
then paid to what is happening across the board in that local
education authority area. If that works, you may take an existing
school that has done badly after other things have been tried
and turn it round. There are examples of that. But if that is
not working, you may be effectively creating an island of privilege
within an LA area. There is also the possibility of selection.
If Academies are sited in areas that are not the most deprived,
but in the better ones—that is, picking easy targets—not
only can you be complacent and say, "Look, aren't we doing
a good job?", but you could also say, "Clearly, the
other schools in the area are not doing so well." I do not
think there is enough analysis of that.
Chairman: That was a long question.
Lesley King: The local authority
would have some responsibility to speculate on the future of education
in its area, if another school came in, and plan accordingly.
That is part of its role. Many local authorities now see Academies
as part of a bigger strategy to raise achievement. That is how
it should be.
Q106 Chairman: Is not one of the
problems that Andy is pointing out that with Building Schools
for the Future a local authority gets the chance of visioning
what secondary provision should be over the next 20 or 30 years?
In a sense, if an Academy is already there and it is not part
of Building Schools for the Future no one does the visioning process,
do they? If you do not have the BSF process, when you do get the
chance, as a local authority, to say, "This is what we want
secondary education in this area to look like over the next 20
or 30 years"?
Lesley King: I would have thought
that that was your responsibility, anyway. Academies are now under
the BSF, aren't they, in terms of new build.
Q107 Mr Slaughter: I cannot see it
working quite like that. It may work like that, but the danger
is that it works in the opposite way, with the Academy being isolated,
self-contained and in some senses elitist. I am afraid that a
lot of the comments that you made when mentioning the expertise,
moral values and things of that kind imply a certain type of elitism.
The LA might say, "Well, we don't have to worry about that.
They can take care of themselves. We'll worry about picking up
the pieces." There are analogies with the grammar school
and secondary modern system.
Lesley King: It implies that Academies
do not want to play a full part in the education system in their
area. I do not think that there is evidence that that is true.
I think that at the beginning, when an Academy first opens it
has to look internally, because its first task is to provide a
satisfactory education for the children whom it is directly responsible
for. However, there are many examples of Academies playing a strong
role in their community as part of the system. I could give you
examples that might make you more optimistic.
Chairman: Let's hold on to that.
Q108 Lynda Waltho: I should like
to expand the point about collaboration. From what you said, you
believe, as do I, that collaboration is vital for the neighbouring
schools.
Lesley King: Absolutely.
Q109 Lynda Waltho: In that case,
should not Academies be made to join with particular partnerships,
for instance, with a behavioural partnership, which generally
they have the choice not to do? It is, effectively, up to the
governors what they opt in to. What is your view on that? It is
possible that collaboration could fly out of the window at that
point, so why do they have that option?
Chairman: Who are you asking?
Lynda Waltho: I am sorry to zero in on
you, Lesley. Perhaps Margaret has a view on that as well.
Margaret Tulloch: I have views
on most things.
Lesley King: I suppose, philosophically,
voluntary collaboration is better than forced collaboration, whatever
happens. You can bring schools together but you cannot necessarily
force them to work together. As an ex-head, whichever school I
was in, I would bristle if my local authority told me that I had
to collaborate. It should be the job of the local authority to
make it worth the while of schools to collaborate, so that they
can see mutual benefit. Our experience of collaboration is that
voluntary collaboration is better. There are certainly lots of
examples of that. I do not know of any Academies that have refused
to collaborate, but you may be able to tell me that there are
lots of examples of that. I do not have evidence that that is
the case.
Q110 Lynda Waltho: The particular
example I was looking at was a local behavioural partnership in
Manchester—
Lesley King: In Manchester?
Lynda Waltho: Yes; a school decided not
to opt in to the partnership. I wonder how useful that is to the
neighbouring schools and why that option needs to be there.
Lesley King: Ideally, schools
and Academies need to collaborate. I would need to know the reasons
for that.
Chairman: A quick question from John.
Q111 Mr Heppell: Following up on
Andrew's point, is there any evidence of Academies being sited
in areas that are not deprived? In my area, as far as I am concerned,
the more extra help the Academy gets, the better, because it has
always had failing schools in the past, and now, suddenly, everything
seems to be rosy compared with how it was, which is great. But
the implication seems to be that Academies are being sited in
better-off areas. Is there any evidence that local authorities
are siting Academies in better-off areas to make them into elitist
schools?
Lesley King: I do not have the
entire Academy programme at my fingertips, and my job is not to
make policy, but to work in Academies. One or two Academies have
been developed with a particular innovative mission in mind. For
example, a Steiner Academy is being developed in Herefordshire,
which I would not have said is an area of extreme deprivation.
However, there are particular reasons for that related to innovation
and providing more state school places in an area that needs it.
In general, though, I would not say that is the case.
Q112 Paul Holmes: I am told that
I should declare an interest because I am on the steering committee
of "Comprehensive Future". I was intrigued by something
that you said, Lesley, about there being no evidence to show any
sort of change in the profile of pupils who go into Academies.
Professor Stephen Gorard looked at three Academies that opened
in 2002, and found that in those schools the share of pupils eligible
for free school meals dropped by 11 percentage points to 15% In
its fourth annual report, PricewaterhouseCoopers looked at 24
Academies and found that the percentage of pupils from deprived
backgrounds in those Academies fell from 42% to 36% over a four-year
period. It also found a trend towards higher attainment levels
among year 7 pupils coming into the Academies as the years went
by, and that permanent exclusions within those Academies were
four times—400%—higher than in comparable schools.
So, there seems to be fairly convincing evidence. I taught in
state schools for 22 years. If any of the schools I worked in
had expelled four times as many disruptive kids, and cut the number
of kids coming in who qualified for free school meals or had special
educational needs, results would have gone up. All three of them
were good schools, but results would have gone up anyway. It is
not rocket science, is it?
Lesley King: There are two issues
there. On exclusions, it is certainly true that Academies have
been seen to exclude more students overall than other schools
generally, but that percentage and number is going down rapidly
as they establish. That could be partly because some schools,
particularly some Academies—I shall not name them because
they are developing—received more than their fair share
of excluded students before they became Academies, because they
were the only schools around that were not full. They therefore
become almost a dumping ground for excluded students. In some
ways, that explains it. Research by the National Foundation for
Educational Research, which I have considered closely, shows that
Academies admit higher proportions of pupils who are eligible
for free school meals than the proportion living in their districts.
There may be Academy principals in the room who can confirm this:
some schools that were half empty are now full, and therefore
the proportion, but not the number, of students with free school
meals has gone down. That is an important thing. I would not wish
to support an Academy that was just a ghetto for poor and disadvantaged
students but one that had a mixed profile, that everybody wanted
to come to, as long as students with free school meals were not
barred from coming.
Q113 Paul Holmes: I do not dispute
the points that you made. The Academy deals with the situation
faced by failing sink schools that had to take all the problems,
by reducing the number of kids with special educational needs
and from poor backgrounds, by expelling kids and so on.
Lesley King: No. It is the percentage,
not the numbers.
Q114 Paul Holmes: Those kids then
go somewhere else—to the neighbouring schools—and
we are back to the point that Andy Slaughter was making about
moving the problems elsewhere.
Lesley King: Sometimes in the
statistics there is confusion between percentage and numbers.
I would worry if Academies were turning away students who receive
free school meals or students with special educational needs,
but I would be very pleased if more people come who are more representative.
I would be pleased with a more balanced intake, as long as others
are not debarred. I would have to look at your statistics more
carefully.
Q115 Chairman: We are coming to the
end of our time. Margaret, you have been a bit neglected, so can
I ask you a last question? Comprehensive Future sounds like a
deeply conservative organisation to me. You do not really want
anything to change, do you? Some of us feel that you have deserted
us. Those of us who might have believed in something called comprehensive
education do not quite understand these days what it means. It
is a title that most schools rapidly deserted. We worked out in
the last Committee, in a previous incarnation, that none of the
schools in our constituencies had "comprehensive" in
their title. Has there been any thought about what comprehensives
actually mean, or should mean, for the future of our children?
Margaret Tulloch: How long have
we got?
Chairman: About two minutes.
Margaret Tulloch: Comprehensive
Future—I have been confused with Conservative Future when
standing outside a party conference—campaigns on admissions
and ending selection. In terms of comprehensive intake, we are
talking about ending selection. We have a long way to go on that,
as I tried to say at the beginning of my contribution. When we
talk about what is meant by a comprehensive school and the comprehensive
ideal, far better educationists than I have put it well. Richard
Pring and Margaret Maden have spoken about what is gained from
having children from all backgrounds working together. That is
obviously broader. It is what I, as a comprehensive school governor
and as somebody who sent both her children to the local comprehensive,
have always supported. There is an important ideal there, and
it is to do with social cohesion. In respect of Comprehensive
Future, yes, we want a non-selective future, but one has to be
positive rather than negative.
Q116 Chairman: But are you not a
rather conservative organisation? If anybody changes anything,
you say that it is not truly comprehensive.
Margaret Tulloch: No, I am trying
to make the point that my organisation is talking about ending
selection. There is now all-party agreement that selection at
11 is a bad thing.
Q117 Chairman: Do you want to get
rid of independent schools as well?
Margaret Tulloch: No. I personally
might want all kinds of things, but Comprehensive Future is not
into talking about private education.
Q118 Chairman: It is a rather stateist
solution, is it not? Everything has to be decided according to
one model.
Margaret Tulloch: You believe
the John Patten idea that these are monoliths and all teaching
is the same. My experience of comprehensive schools is that they
are often very different. The idea of forcing schools to appear
specialist ignores the fact that many schools are very different.
Where they could, parents were able to work out the ethos of various
schools.
Q119 Chairman: But if an Academy
truly represents the community in which it sits, as many of them
do, can it not be a better comprehensive than some of the comprehensives
that you stand up for?
Margaret Tulloch: I am not standing
up for many—I am talking about selection. The point is that
it will be difficult to talk about Academies. Some will be very
different sorts of places, but some will be—already are—indistinguishable
from the local community comprehensive. My point is about this
being, in essence, a centralising move that will create difficulties.
Yes, many will be almost indistinguishable. There are questions
about accountability, governance and probably funding, which we
have not touched on much. One has to go to Companies House to
find out how much is really being spent. Those issues will return
and will be a problem.
Chairman: Margaret and Lesley, thank
you very much. I hope that you do not feel so neglected now, Margaret.
You have both made excellent contributions and I thank you for
sparing the time to appear before the Committee.
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