Examination of Witnesses (Questions 400-419)
LINDA DOYLE,
JOHN CLEMENCE,
PHIL NEAL,
PROFESSOR RON
RITCHIE, JOHN
HAYWARD AND
KEN TONGE
12 NOVEMBER 2008
Q400 Mr Stuart: Were those streams
available before the trust model? Have they made any difference
to that?
Professor Ritchie: Yes, they were
available before. Trust has not changed that, but the decisions
about how we allocate the funds in particular schools are significant.
Q401 Mr Stuart: So, you are effectively
paid for your involvement in schools.
Professor Ritchie: No. There is
a serious question about how universities can be properly resourced
for the role that I think we could take.
Q402 Chairman: It seems that you
are focusing money that you would already have for different programmes
in a slightly different way.
Professor Ritchie: That is because
we see those opportunities as being more efficient, and as perhaps
giving greater benefits than came from the way in which the funds
were previously used. So we have become smarter about how we use,
for example, funding that we have for widening participation.
We have become more strategic in how we use it. But what I wanted
to suggest was that a challenge for us is that since as a university
we have chosen to work with schools such as national challenge
schools, there is a reputational risk for us associated with that.
We really are putting our money where our mouth is, by saying
that if we are going to recruit future university students from
low participation areas and make that work, we have to make an
investment in those areas. With that comes the risk of their not
being successful. We have been in this for a long time now; we
started in 2001 with sponsorship of the city academy. The academy's
results have shown considerable increases, but more importantly
we have seen, for example, the number of applicants to university
from that inner-city school go from one in 10 to one in four,
over the period. It does not matter to us whether they come to
just the university of the West of England; what we have are increased
numbers of young people taking the opportunity that higher education
offers.
Q403 Mr Stuart: That is what it is
all about, and you are quite right to bring us back to it. I was
trying to scratch away at weaknesses, doubts and fears about this
particular model. We have had "systemise", "legalise"
and "formalise", but "fossilise" comes into
my head.
Chairman: Are you talking about the Conservative
party?
Mr Stuart: Certainly not, but we do see
that in Government, sadly. Is there any risk on that front, because
of the formalised system? You say that it is no longer about individuals,
but if you formalise certain relationships with certain companies
or institutions you prevent enthusiastic individuals from other
institutions or companies from coming on board. If people send
a representative because they are formally obliged to under the
memorandum of agreement, in the early years you get the enthusiasm
and the input, but you end up later on with people being sent
because someone has to go, and you get the wrong guy sitting on
the thing. Is there a risk of that?
Ken Tonge: I wanted to add another
"ise"—energise. Just the opposite idea, really.
I have been in this business of education for 33 years, and the
last two years have been such a wonderful, energetic journey,
reinvigorating the staff, governors and partners of all the schools.
It has been an exciting process, and the stimulus has been the
formation of the trust. Fossilise is the last word that I would
use in connection with that.
Mr Stuart: You are all enthusiastic.
That is nice to hear.
Chairman: Are you done?
Q404 Mr Stuart: Just to check again,
apart from formalising, does the trust model give you any powers
or abilities that you did not have under the Education Act 2002?
Chairman: Phil, you are looking energetic.
Phil Neal: I thought that that
was an interesting question.
Chairman: Who wants to take it? John?
John Clemence: I do not think
that it does, other than giving strength through collaboration.
We heard earlier about the efficiencies gained through the use
of the budget. There are particular gains there, but no particular
powers. It is what you make of them and how you use them with
your partners. Going back to the fossilisation element, one of
the weaknesses could be the frustration there might be if you
do not make the pace that you look for. It is about how you would
then re-engineer the trust to enable that to happen. I would see
our trust having other partners joining at different times, for
particular projects, to bring forward and take advantage of particular
changes in legislation, education or development, so that you
avoid fossilisation. You make it alive—energise it—and
keep that going. Another interesting dimension—it happens
to be the case in Bedfordshire that a number of trusts are forming,
and almost the whole of the authority will probably get there—is
the interrelationship between trusts and how they work together.
The final element—I am interested in Ken's position up in
Ashington—is that it is possible that the trust may lead
to a point where schools want to get even closer together, forming
some kind of harder federation or arrangement. That is possible
through that closer working.
Q405 Mr Stuart: Just scratching away
at this, you have trusts, the governing bodies, local authorities—John
said, I am glad to say, that there are local authorities in every
single one of them, so no relaxation there—and head teachers,
especially those of a small "p" political bent, who
like this kind of involvement and working with others. From the
classroom perspective, is there a danger with this apparatus?
I know, from my experience on a governing body, that it seems
like a vast, complex apparatus over a simple set of classrooms,
which need supported teachers able to concentrate on their job.
Is there any danger that the apparatus is a distraction for those
who should be focusing on the day job?
Chairman: He is scratching away this
morning.
Mr Stuart: We have the wrong set of witnesses
to get anyone to give us a negative view.
Ken Tonge: One of the dangers
of getting involved in a major project like this is that the system
is the focus, and a lot of the operational stuff does not benefit
from it. That is where the question is coming from. I alluded
to some wins that we have had already. We work in a three-tier
system, which means that we have had transition for many years,
part way through Key Stage 2 and part way through Key Stage 3.
The schools, which were supposedly in partnership, were never
really in partnership—we did a lot of good work about the
social transfer between schools, but very little about the transfer
of good-quality data and information. As a result of being in
a trust, we have got beyond just agreeing assessment and moderation
protocols, so that we are all reading the same knowledge about
the children. We have also reorganised our curriculum structures.
We looked at what we were doing and realised that we had certain
skills shortfalls, so we shared across all the schools. We ought
to put those into the context of what we were teaching already.
I have brought us an example, which I shall be happy to leave
as evidence. We formed a skills matrix which addresses, key stage
by key stage, what we want to achieve in skills that support learning,
personal and social development, and so on. That is the result
of a working party involving 30 or 40 classroom teachers over
the course of last year. Now it is being implemented for every
teacher and every child across the trust. It is already beginning
to show results, in terms of not just access to learning, but
the quality of autonomous learning that we are creating from our
pupils.
Chairman: Ken, what you have just done
usually totally confuses Hansard—you are waving a
pamphlet, so we shall put that on the record. Andy?
Mr Slaughter: Graham has already dealt
with one of my lines of questions.
Mr Stuart: Sorry.
Mr Slaughter: No, but it worries me when
I think in the same way as you. Do we have another party from
Latymer in the Committee room?
Chairman: Latymer also—this is
the second party. No, do not speak. Andy went to Latymer—that
is why he wants to know.
Q406 Mr Slaughter: Even though it
is much more of a fee-paying school than when I went there, I
am glad to see that the sixth form is still as scruffy 30 years
on as it always was. There is a bureaucracy point, and a point
about the language, which Graham has already picked up on. You
will probably say that civil servants and politicians are responsible
for all this terminology, which we now do not understand fully.
However, do parents understand it? Does it matter to them? Do
you think that there is understanding there—do they know
that they are sending their children to a trust school, does that
matter to them and what does it mean to them?
Chairman: Linda, you have been neglected
for a while.
Linda Doyle: There is a formal
process that schools have to go through, which starts with an
informal consultation, covering all the groups you are talking
about—staff obviously, pupils, parents, the local authority
and everyone you could think of who might be involved. It includes
MPs as well, for that matter. All of those groups are consulted.
What is happening is laid out very clearly, the foundation status
aspect of it, issues of admissions, staff employment and land
ownership are one side of it.
The other side would be the trust. Who will
be invited to be on it? The consultation will not take place until
that has been fully discussed because it must show who the partners
will be. The school receives feedback on that. The school offers
to meet any of those groups. They may hold large meetings or surgeries
and they receive reaction and responses to the consultation, which
they have to consider formally at one of the governing body meetings.
Following that, they will provide a response to anybody who has
brought up any issues, and if they decide to continue they will
then publish formal statutory proposals, again setting out what
they are going to do.
Q407 Mr Slaughter: You are going
into the process.
Linda Doyle: Which is talking
to parents.
Q408 Mr Slaughter: I am sure that
there are some parents, the same ones who read all the Ofsted
reports, who will do that assiduously. But if I am a parent who
happens to live in your catchment area, why would I want to send
my child to a trust school? What would I think I was getting out
of that?
Chairman: Ron Ritchie wants to answer
that.
Professor Ritchie: I have in front
of me, for example—
Chairman: No, he is doing it again. This
class is incorrigible.
Professor Ritchie: I was going
to say that I have in front of me the trust prospectus for the
Bridge Learning Campus, which is one of the ways in which we seek
to communicate with the community, parents and guardians on what
the trust is about. That prospectus explains something about the
nature of trust schools but, much more crucially, it talks about
the vision of the trust, why there is a trust and what the various
partners bring. It also makes it very transparent who the trustees
are, what their backgrounds are, what they bring to it and what
are the contact points. We have presented at parent evenings.
We have had open sessions where parents can come and talk. Crucially,
there is a vehicle here for reassuring parents who might have
concerns—it is also available to staff and other interested
parties—and it ensures that we put at the centre of the
process the fact that there is a vision in why we are doing this.
It is about inclusivity. It is about all-through learning. It
is about pathways to progression, etcetera, etcetera. We make
that as transparent as we can.
Chairman: That is more consultation than
you get about the third runway at Heathrow.
Q409 Mr Slaughter: A sore point,
as you know.
Let me try out my other suspicion. I will
use my little and dangerous knowledge here and direct this at
John Clemence. You have the Pilgrim Trust in Bedfordshire, which
is an accumulation of private schools.
John Clemence: The Harpur Trust.
Chairman: You are getting a little bit
intimate, you two. Could you speak a little louder so that the
rest of us can hear.
Q410 Mr Slaughter: What tends to
happen, where you have a big body of private schools is that the
state sector starts to segregate as well and you get people bidding
for the middle ground. I know that people move near your school
to be in your catchment area. Are you setting yourselves up as
a sort of halfway house, as academies are sometimes accused of
doing, between bog standard comprehensives and the private schools
for those parents who choose to or can afford to pay?
John Clemence: Absolutely not.
The Harpur Trust has four major independent sector schools. It
is in Bedford just down the road from my school. The trust was
set up to support the 19 schools and to enrich the opportunities
within those schools. We did not give much thought to the Harpur
Trust at the time. Having said that, we have a good relationship
and some joint working. There is a joint project with the University
of Bristol and one of the schools there. The relationship between
the two is friendly, but the trust was not set up in competitive
mode.
Q411 Mr Slaughter: I do not know
whether anyone else wants to deal with that question. It may not
be exactly the same situation, but I am sure you would say that
you do not aim to do this, but it is nevertheless quite easy to
give off these signals. You are effectively saying, "We are
something a little apart from the state sector. We can offer you
something more." If we make more of this when we deal with
admissions, you are sending out dog-whistle signals to more ambitious
parents.
Q412 Chairman: I think what Andy
is saying relates to what a witness said to this Committee a long
time ago—that the British have a genius for turning diversity
into hierarchy. Is that what you are doing, positioning yourself
as not quite a grammar school? Is that what you are trying to
do, Ken?
Ken Tonge: The school at which
I was formerly head, Ashington High School sports college, which
is now a member of that partnership, was a high-performing specialist
school when we went for trust status, and had 421 expressions
of preference for admission for 270 available places. So it was
not necessary to reposition the school as a result of being in
a trust to make it more attractive. What we wanted—because
we are part of this imperative to raise standards—was to
look at a new way of structuring ourselves so that we could raise
standards. It was not about being in competition with others,
it was about making ourselves better.
Q413 Chairman: Phil, you have been
a bit neglected. Is that what it is all about?
Phil Neal: I certainly see no
evidence of using it as a status-raising vehicle. It is very much
to do with getting the schools in the trust to co-operate. A question
was asked earlier about what difference is made in the classroom.
It does make a difference.
Chairman: It is still a good question.
Now, another good question, Fiona.
Q414 Fiona Mactaggart: Ken, you described
this as a new way of structuring yourselves, and that is quite
impressive. What I hear are the benefits of innovation. You have
a new system, you look at yourselves afresh, you do things differently
and they improve. My honest concern is whether this is going to
last. I have a feeling that this is like the Henry Ford experiment:
when he turned up the lights, production improved and then a couple
of years later he turned them down and production improved. Change
helps. I want you to respond to that.
Chairman: Ken and then John.
Ken Tonge: I take your question
to mean, is the impetus of change creating short-term results
that will not be sustainable? Our job is to put the operational
systems in place to make sure it is sustainable, so we have implemented
new models of leadership and governance that will be the vehicles
for carrying out the sustainability of the change we want. The
vision does not move. We have the vision—that is what we
are aiming. As long as the vision is there, until we achieve it
and establish a new vision, I see no reason why that impetus should
not continue.
Chairman: You sound a bit like Gordon
Brown.
Ken Tonge: Did I really? As dull
as that?
Chairman: Ron, would you like to come
in on this?
Professor Ritchie: I think it
is a good question. We are learning, and have been for the last
few years, about how we can establish more effective partnerships
with external organisations, with schools. People are testing
out ideas and understanding what the benefits might be. For example—wearing
my higher education hat—I think we are at a crucial stage
of understanding new ways in which universities and colleges of
further education may engage in effective, sustained partnerships
with schools. A risk we at the university have identified is being
associated with something that may not deliver in the way that
we hoped at the time. We are monitoring that and looking for robust
ways to evaluate. We are undertaking systematic evaluation of
some of these projects and crucially trying to ensure that we
learn. We would argue that we have cumulatively built up the different
partnerships we have formed, some of which are outside any trust
arrangement although they are still enhanced partnerships. We
are looking at the particular benefits, challenges and opportunities
that the different kinds of partnerships offer. This is something
we need to continue to evaluate and ensure it is sustained over
time, as we suggest it might be.
Chairman: John is keen to come in.
John Hayward: Yes. In terms of
the five Coventry schools, however the conversation originally
started, I am convinced that the enthusiasm of the five head teachers,
together with their governing bodies and the independent judgments
that they made, will carry the trusts forward, certainly over
the medium term. There is a lot of commitment from the heads,
their chairs of governors, and their trustees. Where your question
and Graham's question about fossilisation may be of concern to
me personally is in the circumstances where, as a local authority,
we impose the trust. For example, under the national challenge,
if we imposed the trust on a school I wonder whether that same
enthusiasm and energy would carry things forward, and whether
the relationships in those circumstances would sustain themselves
beyond a couple of years. The circumstances would be very different
from the sort of buy-in that I have seen in the five Coventry
schools, so that is a major caveat for me personally, in terms
of the trust landscape. I may be wrong, but I am not yet convinced
that that is the same scenario as the one we are describing here.
Q415 Fiona Mactaggart: One of the
things that I am quite concerned about is whether it is really
true that these relationships are more sustainable than other
kinds of relationships. In a period of economic stress, will we
see companies who signed up enthusiastically at a time when they
obviously had the capacity to deal with it finding it harder later
on? What are the prospects of that?
Linda Doyle: That is a point well
made, but we try to focus schools' minds on that when they are
setting up their trust. It is worth pointing out that, as with
the examples represented here, it is normal to have several different
partner organisations—four or five, something like that,
not counting the representatives of the head teacher and the chair
of governors. That is something that needs to be thought about
and always has needed to be thought about in partnerships. If
you partner with a local small business, they could go out of
business, so you need to think about that and continually discuss
with the organisation the amount of time that they can give.
It tends to be different people at different
levels. There will be the trustee from the organisation, if it
is providing one, and it may nominate governors. I have to say
that every live trust that exists at the moment has chosen the
minimum of two trust governors to go on the governing body.[4]
It does not have to be someone from that organisation, as Ron
has already illustrated—it could be a nominated governor.
The other level is often some of the people
from the organisation who are doing hands-on work with the school.
If that has to be pulled back, hopefully there are other things
that the school can do. It may wish to invite other partners to
become involved. The original set-up is not set in stone; schools
can modify as they go along and try not to lose that contact.
These are difficult times. One assumes that they will get better
again, but the schools may need to think about different partners
or reining back the involvement.
Q416 Fiona Mactaggart: Are partners
readily available? Is this an easy thing to recruit to? Is it
something that people are queuing up for?
Linda Doyle: That will vary enormously.
Not all partners provide governors, for example. Some partners
do not wish to. If you have four or five partners and you are
providing just two governors, obviously, not all of those partners
will provide governors. Some do not choose to. They do not think
that that is their strength or what they want to do with the school.
They want to do more hands-on work at a different level. But it
will be flexible as time goes on. You asked whether people are
queuing up. We have had examples where, after a trust has been
set up, partners have been asking to join and then the trust has
had to consider whether that is a good idea, or whether it does
not chime with the aims and focus that it was hoping to work on.
Q417 Fiona Mactaggart: Are there
any organisations that you think would be unsuitable to be part
of a trust?
Chairman: Who will take that? No one?
Nobody else thinks that there is anyone who is unsuitable?
Professor Ritchie: The criteria
that the university has for engaging with its trust include decisions
about the appropriateness of other trust partners, so we are very
conscious of that and we have not gone with every trust that we
have been invited to join. Part of our thinking is, crucially,
that the values that bring us into this business are values that
must be shared by other partners. So we would look at processes
to ensure that that is the case in respect of those we would be
associated with, formally, in these arrangements.
Linda Doyle: I am sure that I
could think of lots of organisations or individuals who might
be unsuitable partners, but one would hope that they would not
be selected by the governing body in question. The basic minimum
is that any business involved should be undertaking legal activities
and, after that, it is down to governing body common sense, community
sensitivities and all those issues. For example, a business might
be doing business that did not chime with the ethos of the school.
That early stage of discussions at the school, which takes a while,
is absolutely vital. The more schools that are involved, the longer
it would take, possibly. But that situation needs to be clear
so that everybody is happy with who they are working with and
how they are going to work together. For there to be success,
that is vital.
Chairman: Have you finished?
Fiona Mactaggart: Yes.
Chairman: Paul first, then Graham, briefly,
because this is Paul's question and I do not want his section
to be stolen.
Q418 Paul Holmes: Linda has just
said that we need to be absolutely clear, but I am not clear.
It is rather like the situation with academies, where we repeatedly
asked Ministers certain questions. Do schools have a list from
the Department for Children, Schools and Families, circulated
through you, showing who is acceptable or not? Is a company that
legally publishes pornography acceptable or not? Is a gambling
company acceptable or not? Is a millionaire who wants to promote
creationist Christian fundamentalism acceptable—clearly,
he is, because he runs three academies in the north of England—or
not? Is there any list or any guidance? Is there any clarity whatsoever?
Linda Doyle: There is certainly
not a list. There is a pool of partners that the Office of the
Schools Commissioner has helped to find, which comprises organisations
that have expressed an interest in joining schools. Obviously,
at the first sort, they are considered to be reasonably suitable.
One of the roles within the contract that I am working on is to
broker partnerships between those organisations and schools. Some
will be a suitable match and some will not. We do not carry out
due diligence checks on all these partners—it would just
not be practical to do so—but the governors have the final
choice and within the Act—
Q419 Fiona Mactaggart: So who does?
Sorry to interrupt you.
Linda Doyle: It is the same system
as with specialist schools—the governors choose who they
have. Should they regret their choice, the Act will help them.
There are provisions to remove a trustee, and to remove the entire
trust, should they wish to do so, even if it is a majority on
the governing body. As a final resort, the Secretary of State
has a reserve power to remove a trustee.
Ken Tonge: We must not forget
the consultation process that goes into acquiring a trust, or
the fact that the local authority can refer the proposal to the
schools' adjudicator if it disagrees with that. So there is some
opportunity for local authorities to intervene if they feel that
a trust is inappropriate.
Chairman: We do not want to confuse this
with the academies.
4 Note by witness: Since the meeting, I have
been informed that there is now one operational collaborative
trust project that has majority trust governance. Back
| 
