Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-31)
RT HON
MR ALAN
MILBURN MP, LEE
ELLIOT MAJOR
AND JAMES
TURNER
8 JUNE 2009
Q20 Mr Stuart: Where there is
sustained disadvantage that is going from generation to generation,
how far would you be prepared to go to tackle it? I am mindful
that the Committee went to New York, where they went to an extraordinary
school with an extraordinary leader, where they would do an extraordinary
number of hours a day in the worst district of Harlem. It felt
as if the school was almost blocking out the local community—it
was not working with them. The legend up in every single room
was, "Work hard, go to college, change the world." It
felt like a hothouse centre. It was prepared to make people come
in at weekends or the middle of the holidays. It was determined
to turn those kids' lives around, and their educational performance
thus far was transformational. Is that something that you are
comfortable with?
Mr Milburn: A variety of policy
interventions work. I haven't seen that particular one, but we
have lots of evidence about a variety of schemes and initiatives
that really make a big difference if you can get the right intervention
at the right time. But surely the optimal intervention is one
that manages—this goes back to John's point—to garner
parental aspiration and that works with parents as well as statutory
interventions, which goes back to Douglas's point. It is not just
about what the state does; it is about what families and communities
are capable of doing. The sort of intervention that you talk about
might, of course, in extremis, be necessary to create a separation
in the way that you suggested, but that would not be the optimum
solution as an objective for public policy: not for our kids,
and therefore probably not for other people's kids.
Q21 Mr Timpson: I have a quick
question to finish off on early years. You mentioned health visitors.
Can you say what enhanced role health visitors should have in
trying to combat the serious problem of social mobility, whether
through children's centres or community outreach work? What are
you envisaging? Are you envisaging many more health visitors or
a full health visitor service connected to children's centres?
What is your vision for health visitors?
James Turner: To be frank, it
is not an issue we have looked at in detail, but generally, going
back to the issue of targeting, Sure Start has had some difficulties
reaching the hard to reach. There is something to be said for
taking professionals into the home, and if we are to do that effectively
and reach all the people we would like to reach, there would need
to be an increase in the number of health visitors, for example,
because the numbers have dropped. There are schemes like the nurse-family
partnership, which would also require more staff on the ground
in order to deliver those. In terms of reaching the right people,
it inevitably will require larger numbers of people in those professions.
Chairman: We want to move on. Let us
talk a little about school choice. Andy will start.
Q22 Mr Slaughter: I apologise
for my voice; I shall do my best. The Sutton Trust has done a
lot of work on independent schools, and that makes fairly depressing
reading. There doesn't seem to have been much change over 20 or
30 years. What are we supposed to draw from that? It doesn't seem
there is much likelihood of any government taking a more aggressive
approach to independent schooling, so is the conclusion simply
that state schools need to get better or need to be more orientated
towards educating people for the professions?
Lee Elliot Major: We have done
those studies over a number of years and, as you say, they still
show that there is a dominance in most professions of people from
independent schools, although there was a slight decline over
a number of years. There is a slight opening up of the professions,
we would say, reading these surveys overall, although we are concerned
that there are indications that for the latest cohorts of people
going to the top of these professions, it is reversing again.
We looked at young lawyers, for example; we looked at the magic
circle firms and the top lawyers. When we looked at those under
40, I think that something like 70% were from independent schools
in 2004, compared with something like 50% 15 years earlier, so
even though there seemed to be a widening of those around 50 or
55—that is, there was a more balanced state:independent
intake—with those from slightly younger backgrounds, it
seemed to be going into reverse again. We were very interested
in that. I have seen a report about possible new MPs in 2010.
It is not our study; it is by a public affairs company.[1]
Apparently, if you look at all those candidates who are likely
to get in—I don't know all the assumptions—about 40%
of the new intake will be from independent schools, compared with
1997, when it was about 14% [Interruption.] I'm sorry?
There are lots of reasons for that, but I thought it was quite
interesting. When we did the study on journalism, we interviewed
news editors and editors, and they feared that the world of journalism
was going to become more privileged—with the exception,
maybe, of Guido Fawkes. As Alan was saying, one of the reasons
was postgraduate degrees, increasingly, in journalism as in many
other professions. Also, there is the fact that it is London-centric.
If you are a young reporter from, say, the north-east, what are
your chances of coming to London and doing poorly paid work experience
for a number of years without family who can keep you going? No
one is saying that anyone is directly discriminating against these
children—it's just that the system works to militate against
their chances, on average.
Q23 Mr Slaughter: Nobody seems
to be doing very much about that, so let us look at something
more practical in terms of state schools and mechanisms for ensuring
greater fairness within the state school system. I shall mention
two examples. One is balloting, which now seems to have been relegated
to simply determining ties and things of that nature. The other
is academies, which were envisaged as giving an additional advantage
to children in socially deprived areas. But some of your research
has shown that that is now reversing as well. Does that give you
concern? What, therefore, do you think are the mechanisms that
are available just simply within the state sector, ignoring the
in-built advantages in the independent sector, to ensure that
there is greater equality of opportunity for kids going down that
route?
James Turner: We think admissions
is absolutely critical in all of this. We are big advocates of
school lotteries or ballots as the fairest way of deciding who
gets into oversubscribed schools, because there are problems with
every other way. Using proximity or religion has its own problems,
and there is evidence that it tends to favour those from better-off
backgrounds. We can never ignore the issue of school admissions;
it is absolutely critical, because intake is one of the biggest
factors affecting school performance. As for academies, some of
them have undoubtedly had a good impact on raising aspirations
and achievement in some of the poorest communities. In others,
that effect is not as clear. With almost 150 academies now, to
talk about them as a cohesive programme is a bit more difficult.
There was some analysis from the London School of Economics last
week that showed that academies had improved their results, but
at the same rate as their neighbouring schools. So I don't think
we necessarily know what it is about academies in particular that
may be effective, compared with other high-performing schools.
Having said that, we are all in favour of schools having more
freedoms over teaching, over ethos, and over the curriculum, but
we think it has to be exercised within an admissions framework
that ensures fairness and doesn't result in the sort of social
segregation you often see in the state sector.
Q24 Mr Slaughter: Could it be
as simple as this? Academies tend to be new schools—certainly
with a lot of investment in them and a lot of high expectations—and
they simply attract more aspirational parents. It could even be
simpler than that. I have a new £35 million academy, for
which the local authority simply drew the catchment area to exclude
the most socially deprived areas, because they effectively saw
it as a new school for aspirational parents. Those parents would
create the fuss about wanting their children to go there, so why
not accommodate them by drawing the catchment area to include
them? Is that something you have come across?
James Turner: Yes. Overall, the
proportion of children on free school meals in academies is falling,
and that is a matter of concern. Having said that, if the academies
are attracting middle-class parents into schools in poor areas
in the state sector, then that is not a bad thing in itself—as
long as those displaced children from poor backgrounds are going
to other good schools. That is the big question; it is the impact
of academies on the neighbouring schools that we need to be mindful
of.
Mr Milburn: May I throw one pebble
into the pond on this issue? There is reasonably good evidence
that a variety of mechanisms introduced over recent years have
had the overall effect of raising educational standards. This
ballot issue is a pretty crude response to a very basic problem,
a law of supply and demand problem. There is an under-supply of
really good schools and an over-demand for them, so how do you
fix that problem? It seems to me that much of what this Government
have done is perfectly reasonable to attempt, with two additions
in my view. First, there is a very strong case, in those areas
where there is consistent under-performance or failure, for expanding
the supply of good schools, including new entrants, as they do
in many other countries in Europe, most notably in Scandinavia.
Chairman: You mean like charter schools?
Mr Milburn: Yes. I am interested
in both the concept of charter schools and some of the Danish
and Swedish models, as far as education is concerned. Then there
is the second thing we need to look at. I cannot remember the
numbers, but I think there are something like 25,000 schools in
this country. From memory, in 2007, 600 secondary schools, containing
about half a million kids, were failing to achieve 30% of their
pupils getting five good GCSEs. Those schools tend to be—not
always—in areas of disadvantage. They tend to be schools
that have consistently under-performed. There are a variety of
structural mechanisms that can potentially deal with that, whether
it be city academies or other models. I personally think that
if we are going to break out of that cycle of educational disadvantage,
we have to give parents in those areas what parents in richer
areas take as the norm, which is more than preference. I think
we should give them a direct choice, and introduce into our education
system what has been introduced into our health system, which
is a form of redress. In the end, since these are taxpayer-funded
organisations, taxpayers surely do have to have some form of direct
redress. I know this is difficult and controversial territory,
but my own view is that we kid ourselves—although academic
selection might largely have disappeared from our school system—if
we think that somehow or other selection by social position has
disappeared, because it hasn't. Affluence still buys attainment
in this country, whether it is the ability that wealthier parents
have to opt their kids out of the state system, or to buy private
tuition or to move home to get proximity to good schools. I don't
decry any of those things, and I wouldn't want them to be taken
away from anyone, but my point is that if it is good enough for
some people it should be good enough for others, and particularly
for the most disadvantaged. I believe that we have to think very
hard and very radically about how we directly empower the most
disadvantaged parents to get a direct choice over a good school.
I have my own proposal for doing that, which is in the form of
what some people would call a voucher and what I would call an
education credit. It doesn't matter what it's called, it's what
it does that counts, and that is to ensure that kids who have
some aptitude and who have some ability and who have aspirational
parents—that their parents can exercise some influence over
where the kids go to school. Right now, if we are honest, they
don't.
Q25 Paul Holmes: I shall return
to that point in a moment. The Sutton Trust has done some fantastic
research over the past few years, highlighting some of the problems.
One criticism of the trust is that all too often it says that
the solution is to take a small number of kids from deprived areas
and send them to public schools, perhaps on the assisted places
scheme, or to a few academies or whatever. That doesn't really
tackle the fundamental problems of deprived areas, of working-class
culture and of certain ethnic groups. All it does is rescue a
few; it is a ladder of success for a few. Is that a fair criticism?
Lee Elliot Major: No, we don't
think it's a fair criticism. We do a huge amount for the non-selective
state sector. We have many schemes, and we do lots of reports,
but they don't tend to get as much publicity as the other schemes
that we have for opening up independent schools or for working
with the remaining grammar schools. We take a very pragmatic stance,
which is that there shouldn't be social selection in any part
of the education system. I know it's controversial in some circles,
but we believe that that should be the case in independent schools
and grammar schools as well as in comprehensive schools. We are
very pragmatic; we don't adopt any idealistic views on the system.
We believe that if you don't challenge these élite areas
of the system, then it will stay the same. If we don't try to
be pragmatic, it will always be like that. I would vouch for the
fact that the current group of grammar schools, for example, will
be here in 50 years' time. We believe that they should be as open
to a wider spectrum of children from a range of social backgrounds
as possible. We do a lot of work across the sector, basically,
but it doesn't tend to get as much publicity.
Chairman: We are running out of time,
so may we have short questions and shorter answers, please.
Q26 Paul Holmes: On the question
of educational vouchers, academies and so on, I have visited one
of the free schools in Stockholm, and with the Committee I recently
visited two charter schools in New York, and various academies,
including one in London. Every one of them told us that they don't
select. The two charter schools in New York, the free school in
Stockholm and the academy in London all said when asked, "Well,
before the kids can put their names down to come to this school,
because we are oversubscribed they and their parents have to attend
a number of meetings in the evenings or on a Saturday before they
can even put their names down." Of course they are selective.
They are not doing it through an entrance exam, but they are selecting
like mad. Is not the big danger of educational vouchers and so
on that just a few élite schools select like mad, based
on the support of parents, and they get the best kids? Even if
they qualify for free school meals, they are selecting the best
kids.
Mr Milburn: I think that there
are dangers, of course, and you have to build in some safeguards.
That is why having some form of selection criteria and a framework
is so important. All too often, it is a reductionist debate on
the question of whether you are pro-choice or anti-choice. The
truth is that choice is one lever that has to be applied alongside
a whole host of other levers, including structural change in the
way that schools are governed, precisely to give them more autonomy
and to ensure that there are decent standards in place. If you
are going to have choice, you have to have some surplus places.
If you are going to have choice, you have to have decent transport
and support. If you are going to have choice, parents have to
be able to make an informed decision; they therefore need support,
information, advice and guidance, just as the kids do when making
career choices. I remain pretty convinced that for all the initiatives
and schemes that have been tried over the past 40 or 50 years—heaven
knows, there have been a lot of them—and for all the progress
that might have been made over recent years to narrow educational
disadvantage, we none the less continue to tolerate a system in
which too many disadvantaged kids, who could do far better, are
not allowed to do so. Therefore, in the end, you have to supplement
what is being done with new levers that give parents greater direct
control.
Q27 Paul Holmes: But the evidence
from government research in Sweden, for example, shows that the
free schools were mainly set up in middle-class areas, that they
increased social and racial segregation and that they did the
exact opposite of what we aim to achieve.
Mr Milburn: I know, but we are
now talking about two different things. You are talking about
the supply of new schools, which is one vehicle—there should,
of course, be a supply of new schools, although you risk, precisely,
exacerbating the social divide—but I am talking about an
entirely different thing. I am talking about how you ensure, on
the demand side, that individual parents can exercise more than
preference. I am talking about how parents in areas where there
is consistent failure, which tend to be correlated with areas
of extreme disadvantage—parents in the 600 schools—should
be given the opportunity to take their children somewhere else.
With respect, that is a different thing.
Q28 Paul Holmes: But as you said
yourself, unless there is a clear surplus of school places, that
choice is meaningless, because it is the schools that exercise
the choice through the screening process that I mentioned earlier.
Mr Milburn: I agree, and as you
know, the position is fairly mixed on surplus places—some
areas have them and some don't. Without prejudging any recommendations
that we will or will not make in our report, it would be interesting
mapping if the Department correlated areas of educational failure
with areas of educational over-supply of school places. Let us
see what that map looks like.
Q29 Paul Holmes: Just let me put
on record some of the Sutton Trust research. Your 2008 report
on academies contained clear evidence showing that in general—not
always—academies took fewer children on free school meals.
Similar research shows that they take fewer children with special
educational needs. PricewaterhouseCoopers research for the Government
has shown that two thirds of the academies that replaced an existing
school took fewer children on free school meals. So we are back
into selection in a hidden way.
Chairman: May we have a very quick answer
to that. James?
James Turner: Ideally, we would
want an even social mix in all state schools. Again, if pupils
who are displaced from the academies go to a high-performing school,
that is the ideal. If they are displaced from high-performing
schools to make room for middle-class children, that is an issue,
but we haven't done enough research on that to comment.
Paul Holmes: So are we back to balloting
and banding, in the way that Andy spelled out.
Chairman: Annette, Paul is taking your
time away.
Q30 Annette Brooke: I will be
brief. I want to pick up on the point about mobility between different
schools and the lack of real choice. Recent research from the
Sutton Trust, which was published in May 2009, showed that potentially
very able children and young people end up in schools in disadvantaged
areas. Your research showed that they do not get the opportunities
because they are channelled through less academic routes in those
schools. What policy implications have you drawn from your research
to show how we could tackle that? Rather than blocking young people
out, what can we do to affect a school's reaction? Is that inevitably
a centrist intervention?
Lee Elliot Major: One of the key
issues goes back to advice and guidance. Again, we are not saying
that an academic route is any better than a vocational route.
All we are saying is that the school you go to shouldn't determine
what options you have. Because a lot of the schools in disadvantaged
areas want to come high in the league table rankings, they tend
to urge their children to do the vocational courses, which have
a certain value in those tables, and that happens irrespective
of whether that is the right choice for the child. So I come back
to the issue of informed consent. We believe that the advice and
guidance that children are getting in their schools is not adequate.
James, I think you have a few other things to say.
James Turner: The only thing I
would add is that once you have that advice and guidance in place,
you need to make sure that the pathways are there for young people
to follow. If they are advised to follow the diploma route, there
should be a diploma available in their area; if they are advised
to take academic GCSEs and A-levels, that route should exist.
At present, there is a theory of choice, with people being able
to pick from an array of qualifications, but I doubt whether a
young person in an inner-city area has all those choices available
to them in reality. So there is a question of the opportunities.
Chairman: Alan, the last word is yours,
before we close the session.
Mr Milburn: The final point follows
the one James made. Providing a vocational route isn't a closed
road, provided it isn't a cul-de-sac, there is nothing wrong with
that. We have seen a big increase in the number of apprenticeships
over recent years—a very good thing, in my view—and
the Government have plans to make them more widely available in
the public as well as the private sector, but I was horrified
to learn that only 0.2% of apprentices go on to pursue further
or higher education. That suggests that for all the efforts that
have been made to rid our education and training system of its
silo-based approach, there is still some way to go.
Q31 Chairman: That is a good way
to end our deliberations today. Thank you Alan, Lee and James
for your attendance. I particularly ask all of you to remain in
contact with us on this question. When is your publication date,
Alan?
Mr Milburn: I hope, mid-July.
Chairman: We look forward with interest
to that. Thank you very much.
1 Note by Witness: Madano is the name of the
public affairs company who conducted the study. Back
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