Examination of Witnesses (Questions 440-459)
LINDA DOYLE,
JOHN CLEMENCE,
PHIL NEAL,
PROFESSOR RON
RITCHIE, JOHN
HAYWARD AND
KEN TONGE
12 NOVEMBER 2008
Q440 Mr Chaytor: For schools that
had made an initial application, if they were within a local authority
that published proposals for reorganisation, would you continue
to act as a broker for those schools, or would you put that application
on ice until the reorganisation plan had been agreed?
Linda Doyle: We have a process
that we go through when schools apply to be supported on this.
They have to submit an expression of interest and all of our list—we
have just put a new one together—will be forwarded to the
DCSF, which makes some inquiries in the wider DCSF about what
is happening in the areas of all of those schools. We are not
allowed to continue to work with those schools where discussions
are going on that might change the situation in the near future.
Chairman: Annette, were you going to
talk about admissions?
Q441 Annette Brooke: Yes. I direct
my first question to Ken and John. What is in it for you to be
able to set your admissions policy?
Ken Tonge: It is an important
feature of our partnership. In an all-through school, you want
to be able to manage the education provision from age 3 to 19,
and in our case through to adult education as well, so it makes
absolute sense that the cohort of pupils you are working with
remains stable. There are many purportedly all-through schools
in this country that actually represent one primary school co-located
with a secondary school, but many other primary schools feed into
that. Our two large first schools feed into two large middle schools,
but we have had situations when we have lost people from the middle
school because others were able to get into the high school because
of the fairly standard oversubscription criteria, such as the
need to give places to siblings or to those living closer. As
a result of being in charge of our own admissions, we have put
as the highest oversubscription criteria on the list, behind the
statutory requirement to take children in care, attendance at
another school in the trust. Therefore, if you go to one of the
first schools, you have the best possible route into the middle
school and high school, so that makes for continuity. The second
advantage is that, as part of the admissions process, which we
found to be a bit invisible when managed at a distance, we eventually
receive after a long process lists of pupils who are coming to
us and numbers of those who are not. We now have full visibility
of who is applying to us, what they represent and how they meet
the criteria. We are able to manage that process and the appeals
process afterwards.
Q442 Annette Brooke: So once the
children are in, they are in.
Ken Tonge: That is the notion.
Q443 Annette Brooke: The initial
admissions policy and how it is operated is obviously quite important.
John Clemence: We have a similar
process, although that is not a result of the trust, because we
had it before. The students are identified with our admissions
policy for each of the schools in the catchment areas. That is
the next stage, but that was in place before the trust. None of
the schools has changed their admissions policy as a result of
the trust, but the vision is similar to Ken's. The trust has enabled
us to ensure more strategically that the numbers match up, because
there was sometimes a mismatch. The number of places available
in one of the phases was insufficient. We also have three phases.
In the first and third phases in my school we are able to meet
the capacity, but not in the middle phase, so we have been working
in partnership with the local authority to address that lack of
capacity in the middle schools. We have become more strategically
involved, although the trust has not led to a direct change in
our admissions policy. There has been some increase in the admission
numbers in two or three middle schools. All of the schools have
decided to retain the admissions services provided by the local
authority even though they could have taken it on themselves.
They were confident in the service provided by the local authority
and felt that it was an administrative burden that they no longer
wished to have. Another element was the genuine desire to be seen
as neutral in that respect and part of the local authority system,
rather than separate from it. That was a definite decision.
Q444 Annette Brooke: That is very
interesting, because a point we discussed during the passage of
the Bill was that perhaps one would feel more comfortable with
an independent admissions policy if it were operated by the local
authority. Ken, you indicated that it was a disadvantage to have
your admissions policy operated by the local authority. I am not
too clear on that, because we have just heard that there are advantages
and disadvantages, but will access not be fairer if you do not
have knowledge of the individual children at that point in the
operation of the admissions policy?
Ken Tonge: We did not manage the
process at all, so if someone moved out of the area after our
admission limit was reached—270 at the high school, for
example—and a place became available, there was no process
in place to give the next person on the list access to it. It
was just left empty until perhaps a pupil excluded from another
school was given the place by the local authority. We did not
serve those people who had expressed a preference to come to us
in the first place, and now we will be able to. That is an example
of an advantage to us.
Q445 Annette Brooke: So there was
a disadvantage in a local authority not being speedy in response?
Ken Tonge: I think so. We are
closer to the process. Let me add that the appeals process is
still independent, because we are required to appoint an independent
appeals panel for those people who consider over-subscription.
Q446 Annette Brooke: I will come
back to that point in a moment. I would like to ask John Hayward
a question. Have you been working with the Office of the Schools
Commissioner in terms of the encouragement that you have been
giving to schools becoming trusts?
John Hayward: Yes.
Q447 Annette Brooke: Can you give
us some indication of what the process was with your engagement
with the schools commissioner?
John Hayward: This is a sensitive
area. Obviously, I meet a lot of representatives of local authorities
and talk with them about these things, and I think it would be
fair to say that the Local Government Association and colleagues
would probably feel that the recent exchanges between the Office
of the Schools Commissioner and local authorities have changed
the relationship between local government and central Government
unhelpfully.
Q448 Chairman: In what sense?
John Hayward: I am not necessarily
just speaking about the dialogue in Coventry, but I do not think
the exchanges have been conducted in a way which local authorities
have felt has recognised their long-standing role in trying to
raise standards in their communities and representing local democracy.
Q449 Annette Brooke: Those are very
interesting comments. What emphasis was placed by the schools
commissioner on fair access to any schools that became trust schools?
John Hayward: That did not arise
in our conversations.
Q450 Annette Brooke: Can you tell
us in what way the schools commissioner was promoting the trust
model?
John Hayward: I think it would
be fair to say that the schools commissioner and their representatives
feel very strongly about the value of diversity and choice, understandably
perhaps; I am not seeking to complain about that. They have made
their strength of feeling clear to us as a local authority and,
I think, to other local authorities they have met.
Q451 Chairman: Reading between the
lines, you are suggesting—this is not about Coventry, but
across local authority opinion generally in England—that
the commissioner has been leaning quite heavily on you.
John Hayward: I am not talking
about Coventry. I am here also as a representative of local authorities
by proxy, I suppose. I would prefer to stick to my original words.
The relationship between central and local government has not
been enhanced by the recent exchanges, as I talk to my colleagues—
Q452 Chairman: What recent exchanges
are you talking about?
John Hayward: Well, as conversations
have gone on between the Office of the Schools Commissioner and
local authorities.
Q453 Chairman: Are those on the record?
John Hayward: No, mostly not,
I would say.
Q454 Chairman: We would like you
to be a little more enlightening on this, because the commissioner
reports to Parliament through this Committee and it is our role
to talk to the commissioner on a regular basis. If there is that
unhappiness in the local government world, we ought to know about
it.
John Hayward: Yes, there has been
unhappiness in local government about some of those exchanges.
I do not want to talk about that in terms of individuals or Coventry's
local authority, but you asked the question and I am telling you
what my belief is in terms of how local—
Q455 Chairman: But you are here talking
about trusts and what you are not telling us is this. Is Sir Bruce
Liddington leaning on local authorities to push them in the direction
of forming trusts, in a way that they otherwise would not want
to go?
John Hayward: You talked about
being politicians earlier and you will understand, I guess, that
any—
Chairman: Now you are moving into being
a diplomat.
John Hayward: I would not want
to use the words that you have used, but there is unhappiness
about the relationship among local authorities. That is a reasonable
way of describing it.
Q456 Chairman: Linda, do you think
Sir Bruce is leaning on local authorities to move in a trust direction
they do not really want to move in?
Linda Doyle: I do not think that
I can bear witness to the conversations that the Office of the
Schools Commissioner has been having with local authorities. I
presume when John talks about recent discussions, he is putting
them in the context of the national challenge. Is that correct,
John?
John Hayward: No, I would not
want necessarily to suggest that they are in that context. I have
been talking to other local authorities for the past 12 months
or so about such things.
Q457 Chairman: But John, if trusts
are so great, as you have more or less said, it comes as a surprise
to us when you suddenly say that Bruce Liddington is pushing them
a bit hard. That is what you are saying, is it not? Or is he saying
that if you do not do this you will not get an academy, or if
you do not do that you will not get school buildings quickly in
future? Is that the sort of dialogue?
John Hayward: I do not think I
want to talk about it in those terms. I just think that local
authorities would want me to say that they would value a more
productive relationship with the Office of the Schools Commissioner
in connection with such questions. That is probably as far as
I feel I can go.
Q458 Annette Brooke: I am going to
move on to the other person—I confess that I mix them up.
The Office of the Schools Adjudicator produced a surprising report
when he found that admissions policies were not being implemented
fairly. I want to return to the earlier point about trust schools
setting their own admissions policies. I shall ask Linda to start.
Are there likely to be more breaches as you create more and more
trust schools?
Linda Doyle: I do not think it
fair immediately to link trust schools with the findings of Sir
Philip Hunter's report. We have moved from the Bill to a statutory
admissions code, and that was not the case when the White Paper
was being discussed. It is obvious that schools must obey the
law. I believe that Sir Philip's results show that a tremendous
number of problems are caused by very small issues. The two greatest,
I gather, are the definition of a sibling, and how to measure
the distance that a child lives from the school. Those issues
were involved in 2,000 breaches. I attended one of Sir Philip's
conferences in London on the recent admissions consultation that
closed in October. He is working on some fall-back definitions.
The statutory safeguards are in place now, and presumably there
will be moves to ensure that schools obey them. He said that many
breaches were misunderstandings, and presumably they will be sorted
out.
Q459 Annette Brooke: Do you think
that there is a case for the local authority to administer the
admissions codes, that we might then feel more secure, and that
anonymity should be introduced so that children are known only
by their initials and judged on criteria?
Linda Doyle: I think some of the
issues were in the consultation, including whether local authorities
should have a strong role. Certainly, at the conference that I
went to, opinions between local authorities differed on whether
they wanted that role. The important thing is the change—there
is a statutory code and it must be obeyed by all schools—and
the checks and balances. On the whole, as John described, trust
schools are discussing their admissions criteria with their local
authorities on the admissions forum. They have representation
on the forum, as do all foundation schools. That does not mean
that they can have a completely different set of rules, but they
can discuss their own opinions. They cannot become selective,
although some trust schools become trust schools as selective
schools, and then the status quo is maintained.
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