Examination of Witnesses (Questions 320
- 323)
WEDNESDAY 24 JUNE 2009
BARONESS MORGAN
OF DREFELIN,
MARCUS BELL
AND ANDREW
SARGENT
Q320 Chairman: Minister, that's been
a very good session, but Andrew Sargent has been enormously patient
staying with us on this. We just wanted to ask you one thing.
We have been doing a short inquiry on allegations against school
staff. We found it very useful and got into the Guinness Book
of Records for the number of witnesses we had in a short session,
but we found it added a great deal of value and made a rather
good short report. Could you briefly answer this. One thing that
stood out was that so much evidence on that day suggested that
there were many allegations and many were false, because only
5% led to a successful action of any kind. The evidence from teachers'
unions and others was that an increasing number of allegations,
however they were dealt with, led to many teachers going through
great stress and long suspensions, at enormous cost to the education
sector. However, from the Department we had a written submission,
and I quote from it: "It is rare for an allegation to be
deliberately false or malicious." That seemed to run counter
to all the other written evidence and the oral evidence we had
that day. If only 5% lead to a successful prosecution, or discipline,
of any kind, surely we should check with you what you base that
statement on.
Baroness Morgan: First, on this
whole question of malicious allegations—
Chairman: Not just malicious,
just allegations—some might be malicious.
Baroness Morgan: I am aware of
the devastating effect that allegations can have on teaching and
other staff. I take very seriously the concerns that teaching
unions have. Guidance around the handling of allegations has been
in existence for some time. As you know, we recently did a review,
and as part of that we did a spot analysis—a kind of data-grab—collecting
data from local authorities, and we had about an 85% response
rate, which is quite good. We were looking at the whole of the
children's work force and the data showed malicious allegations
to be 2.8%. That is a particular definition of a malicious allegation—where
there is intent to be malicious. I think it is fair to say that
that could be described as rare. However, I also need to be clear
that the definitions that we use and the definitions that teaching
unions might use to talk about these issues are not very comparable.
It is quite difficult to pick through the figures.
Q321 Chairman: But in your written
evidence you said false and malicious were rare.
Baroness Morgan: Yes.
Q322 Chairman: But if you have false
and malicious, it seems that the 5% that end up leading to some
disciplinary or legal action doesn't square with that.
Baroness Morgan: I am not sure
that I understand the question.
Chairman: I can see that you would
like to refine the malicious. You say that it is "rare for
an allegation to be deliberately false or malicious".
Andrew Sargent: If I may, I think
that that is a fair challenge. In using the phrase "false
and malicious", we have used false—deliberately and
knowingly false—in the same category as malicious. As the
Minister says, against the criteria that allegations have been
made with deliberate intent to deceive or cause harm, the evidence,
both statistical and from feedback in the report, was that that
was rare. But there are other categories, for instance, unfounded
allegations, where after the investigation there is no evidence
that supports the allegation or there is evidence that the allegation
is untrue, but whether that is a "false" allegation
is a matter of judgment. It may not be a malicious one; it may
be a genuine misunderstanding by the person of what occurred.
Plainly, whether malicious, unfounded or simply unsubstantiated,
these allegations are exceptionally potentially or actually troubling
for the individual. I think that the figures are encouraging but
need to be better on how many of the cases are dealt with quickly—within
one month, against a target of 80%.
Q323 Paul Holmes: I just have an
observation on the definition of "malicious". It is
certainly not what the witness said to us. I was a teacher for
22 years; I was a union rep in school for five years and a teacher-governor
in two schools. From all that experience, I have observed a number
of these and I would say that malicious allegations are pretty
widespread. They are the norm rather than the 2% exception, so
I think that the definition of "malicious" needs looking
at. I left teaching before we got all the modern wave of internet
and text-organised allegations that go on now. I think you need
to look at your definitions.
Baroness Morgan: We have had feedback
following the review and we have set out our definitions in the
new guidance that has been put out for consultation, so we would
be very happy to receive feedback as part of that consultation
on this question. For me, what really matters is that we make
sure that allegations are dealt with effectively, promptly and
fairly, and part of the feedback that we had when we did our review
of the guidance told us that it seems to be working quite well,
but actually professionals are not aware enough of its existence
and that when you have these incidents—any head teacher,
for example, can have one, two or three in a career—what
really matters is to ensure that they feel equipped to deal with
those allegations promptly and fairly. So we are producing practice
guidance for the handling of allegations that will, I think, help
to raise awareness of this issue further.
Chairman: Minister, thank you for that.
I am afraid that we have to go to PMQs, which is not Peter Mandelson
Questions, as you have in your House, but Prime Minister's Questions.
We thank you for your evidence. We enjoyed it and learned a lot.
If you could give us, before we write our short report, some more
detail on the survey that you carried out on what we were just
talking about, we would be grateful.
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