Examination of Witnesses (Questions 200-211)
RT HON.
ED BALLS
MP, DAVID BELL
AND JON
THOMPSON
16 JULY 2008
Q200 Paul Holmes: It is not just
those issues. If you have more nurses on a geriatric ward, productivity
falls, but the quality goes up. I taught top sets of 36, and they
did very well, but if they had been of 26, they would have done
even better. It is not just about special-needs kids or statins;
it is about the overall quality of what you are providing. Will
the Treasury argue more forcefully that falling productivity in
education and health is a good thing if it means better quality?
Ed Balls: I have always been inclined
to believe in the Treasury's rationality, so I am sure that it
will take a rational view of these matters.
Chairman: You were brainwashed from a
very early age, Minister.
Ed Balls: At all stages, we should
be demanding in our desire for more productivity and for using
inputs more effectively. One example that I have given is that
we are encouraging primary schools to pool resources and to have
one person providing a range of support services for a group of
primary schools because that is much more cost-effective. We should
always be thinking about how we can be more productive. At the
same time, however, in education, there is not the same degree
of potential for transformatory technological advances and change,
because pedagogy is, on the one hand, about the teacher and the
child learning. On the other hand, personalisation and one-to-one
teaching is more expensive, as is having smaller class sizes,
but it is what works for children who otherwise would not do well.
In a sense, cost-benefit analysis captures those benefits through
time—having fewer children coming out without qualifications—better
than a simple measure of productivity that says, "My qualification
today, per number of teachers or inputs in the classroom."
If you take a proper, long-term approach to cost-benefit analysis,
it probably suggests that, as a society, we become much more productive
by having more teaching assistants and smaller class sizes.
Chairman: Secretary of State, we are
in the home straight. Two colleagues have been extremely patient,
and they are going to lead—first Annette and then Sharon—on
Building Schools for the Future and the National Challenge.
Q201 Annette Brooke: I shall be rather
brief. I should like to ask you about the National Challenge,
in which I have an interest, as part of my constituency has a
grammar school system. First, on the secondary modern schools
that appear on the list, you have said that they can expect to
receive more financial support than other schools. I hope that
that is a positive side of the list. Why have those schools been
neglected for so long?
Ed Balls: It is true that in the
638 schools, secondary moderns are disproportionately represented.
Of the top five local authorities, judged by number of National
Challenge schools, they would be disproportionately in areas that
have grammar schools and selection. On the other hand, 60% of
secondary moderns are above the 30% threshold of five grades A
to C, including English and maths. Most secondary moderns are
not National Challenge schools. From my point of view, the National
Challenge is a positive for all the schools in the list, because
they, the pupils and the parents are going to get the extra support
that they need—£400 million. However, that must be
tailored, school by school, to the particular needs of the school.
If you are a high value-added school with great leadership and
are on track, we will let you get on with it, but if you need
more intensive support in English and maths, we shall be supporting
that. That is what we are looking to do with the money. Some schools
will need transformation, though. We discussed the Academies programme
earlier. Recognising the particular characteristics of individual
schools means taking it into account that, for some schools, selection
makes the challenge greater. What we have said in the National
Challenge—I made a commitment to provide more detail about
our toolkit in the coming weeks—is what more help and support
we should give to secondary moderns, recognising the extra challenges
that they face. One way in which we have said we will give extra
funding is through a new concept of a trust—a National Challenge
trust—where you have a National Challenge school that will
link up with another school in that area that is higher performing,
so that the two schools can work together to raise standards overall.
We have said that, in general across the country, we would put
£700,000 into a National Challenge trust but we would go
up to £1 million for a secondary modern. As I have said before,
in the main that scheme will have secondary moderns partnering
up with other higher performing secondary moderns where the leadership
team already has experience of the extra challenge of raising
standards in a non-selective school in a selective area. What
will that money be for? It could be used for more intensive one-to-one
personalised support in years 7 and 8; it could be used to help
attract more teachers for smaller class sizes; or, if it is difficult
to attract English and maths specialists, it could be used to
encourage some of the wider aspiration programmes, which we know
from experience work. It is all about understanding that these
are schools that can raise results but the pupils may need more
personalised support, and there is a challenge of aspiration that
needs to be addressed.
Chairman: Can we make the questions and
answers quite quick now, because we are running out of time?
Ed Balls: Sorry. Does that answer
your question?
Q202 Annette Brooke: Yes, it does.
I hope that the local authority will be aspirational enough when
it agrees the plan. Also, as an aside, I would just like to say
that the members of staff were very demoralised and I think that
the Department needs to take that on board. As it is making the
positive investment, it must lift the morale of staff, because
the way that this came out it was very demotivating.
Ed Balls: May I say just one thing
on that, Mr Chairman? I have said this in Parliament too. Many
of these schools are high-performing schools with great leadership
and are on track, and they should be celebrated and supported.
Many of them will go through the threshold this August. This is
not a group of 638 failing schools. What I am saying is that there
is £400 million and we are systematically—school by
school—going to do what it takes. For some schools, it will
mean big change. I am advised by officials that when London challenge,
which is now pretty much universally popular among schools in
London because it has raised standards for all and been very supportive,
was launched back in 2002-03, the local newspaper headline on
launch day was "50 failing London schools set to close".
The reality is that that is the starting point of these debates,
and you need to get over that difficult and, from my point of
view, unhelpful first focus on the idea that these schools must
all be failures, and focus on the positives and start giving these
schools support. I hope that, over time, people will see that
National Challenge is about support, but it is also about setting
a challenge for schools that have not been doing well enough and
where there has been a culture of low expectations, or setting
a challenge for local authorities that have not been taking school
improvement seriously for all schools and for all pupils, and
that will include your local authority.
Q203 Annette Brooke: I am outside
my geographical area on this. I do not criticise the provision,
but I would like to talk about provision for children who are
aged 16-18. When we had evidence from the FE sector, the witnesses
suggested that National Challenge should be extended to 16-18
provision. Hopefully, if you are going to raise standards in secondary
modern schools, more children will stay on at school, but some
schools are unlikely to have a full sixth form so those children
will need to move on to quality provision. Why, therefore, are
you not including provision for those aged 16-18 in FE colleges
and sixth form colleges in National Challenge, to ensure that
the next step is guaranteed to be of good quality?
Ed Balls: I guess that the moment
you move from people feeling demoralised to people asking, "Can't
more of us be involved?", that is a sign that you are starting
to win the argument that this is an opportunity and a positive,
rather than a negative, move. National Challenge is a challenge
to local authorities to focus on school improvements, school by
school. We are also challenging local authorities to deliver effective
collaboration for 14-19-year-olds. I very much hope that local
authorities, with their schools community, will see this as being
all of a piece and that part of supporting secondary moderns is
ensuring that they are part of collaborative arrangements that
go from 14-18 or 19. It may be that the combination of National
Challenge, what we are doing on 14-19 and Building Schools for
the Future will lead to more sixth-form collaboration between
secondary moderns or between secondary moderns and grammar schools.
Q204 Annette Brooke: Thank you. Collaboration
is important. May I as an aside—
Chairman: Asides are still questions,
Annette.
Annette Brooke: Yes, well ever so quickly,
may I put Parkstone Grammar School into the same pot? It has also
had a challenge on numbers from our local learning and skills
council. It seems to be exactly the same situation. I am quite
concerned that, as we are raising standards and most secondary
modern schools are sending more pupils on to sixth form, those
numbers are not taken on board by learning and skills councils.
Chairman: You can add that to your letter.
Ed Balls: I will do a proper response.[4]
Q205 Annette Brooke: I am trying to be
quick because I have to go to Questions in the House, apart from
anything else. We have had criticisms in our evidence that the
National Challenge funding is targeted too much at school structures.
You gave me some good examples where it was not targeted at school
structures. But because there is pressure to take the Academy
route or a trust school route, that is an argument that can be
made. What would you say to that?
Ed Balls: I would say that even
when you are going down the structural route, we are talking about
revenue funding that is essentially about teachers teaching and
learning. Of the £400 million, the structural solutions are
all about what happens in the classroom. As well as the money
for extra Academies and National Challenge trusts, which is slightly
over half of the funding, there is also £100 million for
targeted personalised learning, teaching and support for heads
in classroom practice and pupil tracking. There is also money
for more National Challenge and more school improvement partner
support, school by school. I would expect all of that money to
go on teaching and learning, even in structural solutions, but
where you are talking about Academies and trusts, it is about
half of it.
Chairman: Thank you Annette. Sharon,
you deserve some sort of medal today. Building Schools for the
Future—it is only £45 billion, and we have five minutes
for it.
Mrs Hodgson: You probably noticed, Secretary
of State, that I have been uncharacteristically quiet this morning.
I was saving myself for my session. There have been some strange
efficiency savings going on in respect of my contribution. It
will have to be fairly short. Perhaps if we had made efficiency
savings earlier, I might have had a longer contribution.
Chairman: That was a test.
Mrs Hodgson: All right.
Ed Balls: It sounds like the Chairman
is in special measures.
Chairman: Thank you, Secretary of State.
Mrs Hodgson: No. The Chairman might think
that I talk too much. It might be a deliberate ploy. I would hate
to think that that was the case.
Chairman: Not at all.
Q206 Mrs Hodgson: I should like to
play devil's advocate and follow on from Annette's National Challenge
questions. I was tasked by one of my councillors and you have
already answered this question, so a one-line response will suffice.
He said, "Is this not kicking schools when they are down,
instead of giving them a helping hand?"
Ed Balls: No, I do not think it
is. It is about challenge. We want every local school to be a
good school. Schools where there are low expectations and low
performance, and the culture is about excusing poor performance,
need to change. It is not good enough. But that is not what is
happening in most schools in my experience, including most of
the National Challenge schools. I have spoken to a number of heads
with high added value and strong leadership, and close to 30%
are on track. I have also spoken to a number of heads who are
at an earlier stage, who know what is needed, but know that they
cannot do it on their own. They can only do it with extra support.
For those heads, National Challenge is an opportunity. It is important
to present it that way.
Q207 Mrs Hodgson: Wonderful. BSF
now. I can be smug about this because Sunderland was one of the
first to go through the BSF programme. I think Oxclose Community
School in Washington was one of the first secondary schools, if
not the first, that was fully renovated under BSF. Jim Knight
came to open it. From that position of smugness, I know that in
April the Government announced that authorities with four or five
schools that are ready can join in a rolling programme instead
of waves. Is that because you want the BSF process speeded up,
or are you satisfied with the rate of progress? Have you set any
targets for the number of additional authorities entering the
programme over the next year?
Ed Balls: We announced a couple
of weeks ago a group of authorities that will come in more quickly.
We now have half the local authorities—72—in the process,
about 1,000 schools in planning or in construction and 13 already
opened. There will be considerably more BSF schools. Is it well
over 30?
Jon Thompson: Thirty-five.
Ed Balls: Thirty-five in September,
so the process is definitely accelerating. My judgment, from talking
to advisers and to the Schools Minister, was that we were right,
at the beginning, not to go more quickly than authorities could
deliver the programme, because school-wide system reform is big,
challenging and often locally difficult, so we decided to go first
to areas where there were some real challenges and more deprivation.
It was right to take time, so the process has been slower than
we would have liked, but it was right to go more slowly. We have
a lot of experience now, and BSF is picking up the pace, things
are accelerating and we do not feel as if we are off track. But
if, within the programme, it is possible to create some space
to bring some authorities or individual schools forward, of course
we should, and that is what we have been doing.
Q208 Mrs Hodgson: In the Children's
Plan, you talk about a vision for 21st century schools, and I
know that you are doing a review of what they should look like,
but what impact do the forthcoming views have on BSF schools that
are already in the process or that have already gone through?
Ed Balls: In the Children's Plan,
we said that we were in discussion with Building Schools for the
Future to ensure that the idea of collocation of services was
at the centre of our BSF planning. We have a process in Whitehall
involving other Departments and BSF to look at how the procurement
process, not just of schools but of other public services locally,
can be brought together more effectively. If you like, I will
send a note to the Committee in the next few days about how we
are using BSF to drive that collocation of services in the 21st
century school. That will encourage us to ensure that we can give
you a good report.[5]
Q209 Mrs Hodgson: We must recognise that
BSF was launched in March 2004 and you became Secretary of State
only in July 2007, so it was well under way before you headed
up the Department and were able to impact your vision on what
was happening. It would be unfair to level any criticism at your
door for what went before, and I am not trying to do that, but
can you add catering facilities to the vision of what a 21st century
school should look like? I am sure you are, as I was, thrilled
when Kevin Brennan came out and supported the stay on site policies,
but the reason I ask—you will know straight away—is
that secondary schools often do not have the right facilities,
the schools were not designed for 1,000-plus children on site
at any one time, and the catering facilities are not designed
to feed that number of children. So, if you are looking at 21st
century schools and the BSF programme is still ongoing, should
we not design those schools bearing in mind, perhaps, my vision
for 21st century schools, where there are universal free school
meals and all children are kept on site and given a healthy, hot
meal?
Ed Balls: I know that you are
a very good campaigner on these matters, and Alan Johnson and
I had a meeting recently with researchers from Hull University
to look at what has happened with the Hull experiment. Was it
Hull University?
Mrs Hodgson: Yes, that's right.
Ed Balls: We looked at what has
happened with the experiment on the free school meals project
and at what the evidence shows. Two days ago I visited Sir Alan
Steer's school, Seven Kings, in east London, where he has chosen
to use his devolved capital—about one third of a million
pounds—to completely rebuild the dining room facilities,
because that for him was necessary to deliver healthy eating and
to have an on-site schools policy. It is possible for schools,
if they choose, to do that, if they have devolved capital that
they can use. He did that. Over the last year we have also allocated
well over £100 million for the next couple of years, which
is not just for kitchens, but dining facilities. That is crucial
to the effective take-up of school meals. In our note to you,
on BSF, the collocation of services and the 21st century school,
we will include the way in which BSF will make dining provision
central to its thinking.
Mrs Hodgson: That is just about it from
me.[6]
Q210 Chairman: One last thing on BSF.
We can see why you want to get on with it, and why you might want
three, four or five schools to be allowed to be part of BSF innovation.
One of the most interesting and stimulating bits of BSF has been
that, for the first time in anyone's memory, local authorities
have been told to look at their vision for education over the
next 20 to 50 years. Are you going to lose that with a more pragmatic,
bitty way of delivering BSF?
Ed Balls: That is not our intention,
and I very much hope not. Where authorities are on the case on
school improvement and thinking hard about 14-to-19 collaboration,
and are ready to go, if we can make it possible for them to move
more quickly, we should do so, but only if they pass that vision
test. We will ensure that we do not lose the huge gains that we
can get out of BSF by allowing it to become piecemeal and short-termist.
That will not happen.
Q211 Chairman: What about incentivising?
You spoke about productivity earlier. All of the research outside
and inside education suggests that what people do in buildings
is as important as their design. Sometimes when I visit a school,
I feel that it is about the way that children learn how to behave.
I am thinking of the Blue school in Wells. It has halved its energy
bill because it has taught children about the importance of minimising
energy usage. It is about how teachers, staff, heads and students
operate within a building. Is there a way of incentivising staff
and children to be more productive, particularly in that BSF-related
way?
Ed Balls: Having a great building
helps, but as you say, it is what happens inside that that really
matters. The advantage of new school building—there has
not been the kind of school building programme that we now have
for decades.
Chairman: I think that the word is a
"magnificent" scale. Even I would say that.
Ed Balls: It is huge. The scale
of new schools opening in September is unprecedented for decades.
However, it only works if heads and leadership teams take the
opportunity of the new schools to do what really matters, which,
as you said, is to use technology, have great teachers and focus
on what actually happens in the classroom. A great building with
poor teaching is of no use to anyone.
Chairman: Secretary of State, because
of the Committee's desire to ask questions about the testing system
at the moment, we have overrun a little. Thank you for you patience.
We have had a good session, and look forward to our next encounter.
Ed Balls: I do not know about
your scheduling and timetabling, but if you are to carry out an
inquiry into children's trusts, it would be very welcome indeed.
It would provide an opportunity to look not only at schools policy,
but at how it links to the child and adolescent mental health
services, youth offending teams, social services and housing—many
of the things in the Children's Plan, which are very important
in raising standards and promoting children's well-being, would
be addressed in such an inquiry. However, obviously, that is a
matter for you.
Chairman: Secretary of State, that is
unusual. We tend to design inquiries into areas where the Secretary
of State does not want us to go, but we will keep that in mind.
Thank you.
Ed Balls: Thank you.
4 See Ev 50 Back
5
See Ev 51 Back
6
See Ev 51 Back
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