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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 1044
HOUSE OF COMMONS
MINUTES OF EVIDENCE
TAKEN BEFORE THE
CHILDREN, SCHOOLS AND FAMILIES COMMITTEE
21ST CENTURY SCHOOLS WHITE PAPER
WEDNESDAY 21 OCTOBER 2009
ED BALLS, VERNON COAKER and JON COLES
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Evidence heard in Public
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Questions 1 - 41
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USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
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Oral Evidence
Taken before the Children, Schools and Families Committee
on Wednesday 21 October 2009
Members present:
Mr. Barry Sheerman (Chairman)
Annette Brooke
Mr. David Chaytor
Paul Holmes
Mr. Andrew Pelling
Helen Southworth
Mr. Graham Stuart
Mr. Edward Timpson
Derek Twigg
Lynda Waltho
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses:
Rt hon. Ed
Balls MP, Secretary of State for Children, Schools
and Families, Vernon Coaker, Minister
for Schools and Learners, DCSF, and Jon
Coles, Director General, Schools Directorate, DCSF, gave evidence.
Q1 Chairman: We all know why
we are a bit pushed. Let us get straight into the second session. This is
mainly a discussion of the White Paper. I want to open it up by saying that
some of us on the Committee-certainly myself-were a bit disturbed last week. I
spoke at the launch of the Cambridge review of primary education and I think
that I put a very balanced case. Some of the language in that primary review
was a little unfortunate. There were references to Stalinism and a couple of
other things, and I reprimanded the authors about that. Given all that,
however, it is an enormously substantial review. It has taken three years. It
has a tremendous amount of depth and breadth. Secretary of State, we are all
trying to take your White Paper seriously, but an awful lot of work and
expertise from some of the leading experts in the country went into that
three-year review, and all of you more or less dismissed it. It is very
disappointing that you seemed so hostile to it.
Ed Balls:
I wasn't hostile. It was difficult-
Chairman: I can give you
the quotes. It seemed hostile.
Ed Balls:
It wasn't intended to be hostile. I and, I think, the Schools Minister, when he
saw the report the day before-
Q2 Chairman: The chief
executive travelled all the way to Huddersfield
to brief me the Friday before, and said he had offered both of you an in-depth
pre-briefing, which you did not take up.
Ed Balls:
We did. Jo-anne Daniels, who is my education adviser, had a meeting with him in
the days before.
There were some issues that were
frustrating in the report, but it also said some positive things. There were
also some misconceptions, which get in the way of understanding. For example,
the focus on play in early years is completely right. The early years
foundation stage-what we are doing in reception-is all about play-based
learning. The impression that this meant children should not start school until
six has got in the way of the truth. I do not think there was a big
disagreement there between us. The focus on more support for children with special
educational needs or, another example, the focus on improving teaching maths in
primary school were completely right.
The thing that is frustrating from our
point of view is that Brian Lamb has been doing a review for the past year,
which will report in the next month, on special educational needs. That review
and a number of quite radical things that we have said, about independence in
statementing, Ofsted inspection and SEN provision, were not even mentioned in
the report. Similarly with the Williams review and the focus on improving
specialist maths teaching-one in every school. There was a call for this to be
done in the report, but there was no reflection of the fact that Professor
Williams did a report, which has been published and that we are now
implementing, on the issue of testing. There are differences of views here-we
know that there are some people who do not want there to be tests at the age of
11-but we had an expert group that reported and to which we responded in the
spring. There is no mention of the expert group in the report.
There was three years of work, but you
did not always feel that the authors of the report had been fully abreast of
all the things that had been happening during the three years while they were
doing the work. However, at the same time it says some very important things
about primary education, I think-in many ways, things that are fully consistent
with the work Jim Rose has done for his primary curriculum review.
Q3 Chairman: I was with Jane
Davidson, the former Education Minister for Wales, who is now the Environment
Minister, and she said, "I do hope that the Secretary of State will take note
of the fact that many of the things in the Cambridge review we have introduced
in Wales and they are working very successfully indeed." So, there are people
out there who see. This Committee, in terms of testing, assessment and a number
of areas, agrees with some of the recommendations of the review, particularly
if you remember an early recommendation, that we are worried that children are
coming into school and getting into formal learning too early. That has been a
consistent worry, that they are getting into formal learning too early. We have
looked at this in depth. It is not good for children to get into formal learning
too early, and there are many schools that I go to where they are still sitting
there in little schools learning to read and write at four. Many of us think
that is too early.
Ed Balls:
I always study your reports in detail. Because I studied in detail your report
last year-it was a contributor-we abolished Key Stage 3 tests last autumn. The
report that you published last year also said that we should not remove Key
Stage 2 tests and that we should continue with objective assessment. So, in
that sense, that is clearly in sharp contrast to one of the fundamental points
of the primary review, which wants to abolish those Key Stage 2 tests. You say
in your report that we must make sure that teaching and accountability are not
narrow and teaching to the test. The argument that I have always made, which I
am hoping to persuade you of, is that the report card and that fundamental
reform to accountability achieves that objective. You and I both agree, unlike
Williams, that keeping Key Stage 2 tests is important.
On the issue of four, five and
six-year-olds, I have had direct experience of this, and am doing so now as a
parent as well as a Secretary of State. Of course you want school learning to
be fun and of course you want there to be a lot of play-based activity. One of
the jarring things as a parent these days is to see in November and December
your children being asked to bring in their hats, coats and scarves because
they play outside-not just at break time. In the '70s, when I was at school, if
it was cold we stayed inside. These days if it is cold, children still play
outside, not just in break time but as part of the school day, because
play-based learning is a vital part of the early years foundation stage. What
we are doing through reading recovery and Every Child a Reader is that if you
can identify obstacles to children's learning-issues around dyslexia or wider
learning difficulties-at age five and six, and get specialist one-to-one
support in there before they get to seven, then that can get them on the right
track. The idea that you would not start with that kind of engagement until
after they were six and identify later, I don't think-personally-that would be
the right think to do. So, I would rather have children enjoy school-learning
and playing-but with more of a focus on early intervention. I don't think,
really, that that was reflected in the review. I think it is a rather more
modern way of thinking than the review has said.
Q4 Chairman: None of us
would agree with all of it, but it is important to take it seriously. As long
as we have that commitment.
Ed Balls:
Vernon was the person responding on the day. Did you take it seriously?
Vernon Coaker:
We did take it seriously and we will take it seriously, because it made some important
recommendations. It would be arrogant just to dismiss something that people
have spent a lot of time doing. As the Secretary of State said, one of the
things that didn't help was that all of that huge 600 pages was distilled into
"children shouldn't start formal school until six". Just one aspect of it
dominated and I think the debate was that we kept trying to say, "There's a
balance here". None of us wants this idea of rows of children drilled in maths
and English without being allowed to do anything that is playful, fun or
enjoyable. That was a caricature of the reality. The balance between those two
is what we are all searching for.
Chairman: David wants a
quick word on that.
Q5 Mr. Chaytor: On the question of the starting age,
what the review actually says is that the foundation stage could continue until
the age of six. Do you object to that?
Ed Balls:
No. I heard Professor Williams on the "Today" programme last Friday. I thought
it was a very good interview and I agreed with lots of things he said. The
problem was that he spent quite a lot of the interview correcting things that
were in the papers. So I'm afraid, as Vernon says, the perception of the review
was rather at odds with the reality in many cases.
What we have said is-and this was from
Jim Rose's work-that I know how frustrating it can be for some parents whose
children are summer born and are told that they cannot start reception until
later in the school year. We are saying that we want every child-and we are
saying to local authorities, "You will have to deliver a reception place, from
September, for every child who is four in that year". But we are also saying
that some parents will judge, talking to the teachers, that it would be better
for their child to stay in nursery care for the autumn term, or even the spring
term, if they are a summer born child. Therefore, we are also saying to local
authorities, some of which say, "You have to start in January", that they
actually ought to be providing a nursery place, if parents want it, all the way
through to spring. So, we are not mandating September, we are saying, "Give
parents a proper and full choice between September, or all the way through to
April, and either primary full or part-time in reception, or nursery part-time
right through-give parents a choice." Jim says, educationally, it is better for
summer born kids to start early, but children starting at four in reception
should be having a pretty similar education experience to a child in nursery,
aged four. I think early years foundation stage should be seamless through
those years, and of course it should be much less structured than it would be
once you get beyond the foundation stage. I am happy for that to keep running
through until six.
Chairman: Just for Hansard, can I put it on record that it
is Professor Alexander, not Professor Williams?
Ed Balls:
Did I say Williams?
Chairman: Yes.
Q6 Annette Brooke: Could you guarantee that if we have
an over-subscribed first school, and parents choose for their child to go, say,
in the spring term or summer term, they would definitely have that place
reserved and that there won't be any funding issues for the school?
Ed Balls:
We are saying to local authorities that when they do the applications for school
places, which would normally be in the spring for the following school year,
they will have to make sure that they allocate and fund places to meet the
needs and the choices of parents. Therefore, if you, as a parent, apply for
that school-you're within the catchment and you're coming later-then the
authority has to make sure that the funding can allow that to be a real choice.
Absolutely. That will have some financial implications and they are going to
have to deal with that. This is not cost-free. We think this will cost around
£80 million more across the country to deliver, but it is the right thing to do
for parents and for kids.
Q7 Derek Twigg: I can quite understand the way you
reacted after hearing Professor Alexander's interview on the radio, in which he
spent most of his time correcting the press. Therefore, I suspect that your
comments are directed more at the press than at his report. I can quite
understand why you said what you did. To say that Victorian education was
better than today's, was nonsense.
You will not be surprised that my
first question is about the funding of the White Paper. You have clearly placed
a lot of emphasis on existing budgets. Can you tell us what work has progressed
since then, in terms of identifying how much of existing budgets might be used
and how much new money might be needed, particularly in the context of the
future financial difficulties?
Ed Balls:
We think that the schools White Paper and the commitments here are funded right
through until 2010-11. We didn't see the White Paper as making new or
additional commitments that would require additions to budgets. We thought that
it was a statement of what schools were doing and should be doing, and we
wanted to make sure that this was understood by parents and pupils through the
guarantees in the spending review. In a sense, going back to the discussion we
had before, there is no doubt that in the next spending review it is going to
be more challenging. For example, a big theme in the White Paper is partnership
and schools collaborating. We think that that is primarily, or first, about
making great leadership work across the school system in raising standards, but
we also think that this is an area in which we will be able to make economies
and release resources, and therefore continue to fund the front line. When I
look at the pupil guarantee or the parents guarantee, I think that that is the
front line, and we need to make sure that we are more efficient so that we can
continue to deliver those guarantees. We think we can.
Q8 Derek Twigg: But is there any source of new money
that you need to identify at this stage? I understand what you are saying. You
think that it can all be found within existing budgets. That is assuming that
existing budgets remain as they are and as forecast. How would it fare, for
instance, based on cutting budgets pretty early, which some people are
suggesting, as opposed to your approach?
Ed Balls:
I think that after 2010-11 we can continue to deliver the White Paper and our
front-line commitments, so long as we have a good budget settlement and can
make these efficiency savings. If we were to cut the education budget after
2011, and in particular if we were to cut it in 2010-11, there is no way you
could deliver this White Paper; you couldn't deliver these commitments. You
would have to cut teacher numbers or one-to-one tuition. You couldn't deliver
these guarantees if you were reducing the budget in 2010-11.
Q9 Derek Twigg: What
feedback have you had from head teachers about the proposals, in terms of their
ability to implement them?
Ed Balls:
I think it is quite tough to be honest, because we are saying that we are going
to set out in legislation what every parent and every pupil can expect from the
school in terms of behaviour, and also in terms of one-to-one tuition if the
child is falling behind. I think that many heads look at that and think, on the
one hand, "This is what we are already doing. This is what we want to do-it
reflects our ambition", but, on the other hand, that "This move from
expectations to guarantees to pupils and parents is quite a challenge". They
will have to know that they can meet these guarantees for every child and every
parent. Clear processes will be followed if that is not being done.
On one level, heads look at this and
think, "This is quite demanding". John Dunford of the Association of School and
College Leaders says that he is concerned about the guarantees and whether they
can be delivered, because they are ambitious. But at the same time, I think
that heads know that this is the right thing to do, and they also know that
you've got to be ambitious and relate that to every parent and every child. I
would say that the vision pretty much squares with the view of most people in
the school world of how they would like the school system to proceed, most of
whom would not be members of new school networks being set up by other parties.
But in terms of the challenge of delivering it, it is quite tough.
Q10 Derek Twigg: This is my final question on this. You
have made it clear that this is within existing budgets. For those local
education authorities that haven't got as much funding as they would like
because of the disparity that we have, is there a special issue around how we
help them-about the 40 before they are 40? There are burdens on authorities
that have pretty good funding overall and others have less in comparison and
that can obviously have a different impact. I don't know whether you have
thought that through. Overall, as you know, budgets have gone up.
Ed Balls:
The truthful answer is that, as we look at the funding review, a lot of the
focus is on delivering for pupils with special educational needs, giving extra
one-to-one support and ensuring that we tackle some of the wider barriers that
pupils face if they are from more deprived backgrounds or from communities
where there is less of a tradition of high expectations. We need to ensure that
the funding for that going to schools and children's services is properly
reflected in the reform of the funding formula. I think that the two things are
linked, as you say.
Chairman: Let us move on
to the parent and pupil guarantees.
Q11 Paul Holmes: In the period 1997 to 2001, I was still
a teacher; I was head of years 12 and 13. Shortly after the new Government were
elected, I spent a lot of time, along with all the other teachers, chasing
every pupil to bring back a signed home-school contract or charter. It was,
frankly, a worthless piece of paper after all the hours that we spent on it.
What is the key difference between that and the home-school agreements-the
parent and pupil guarantees-mentioned in the White Paper?
Ed Balls:
As you say, every school has been required to have an agreement, but most
parents do not know that they have signed up to one. The key difference is
twofold. First, every parent will explicitly have to say, as part of the
admissions process when their child applies to a school, that they are signing
up to the expectations on them as a parent. They will also have to confirm that
during the life of their child at the school. Secondly, if a parent does not
then deliver their part of the package in terms of supporting good behaviour,
that will be explicitly taken into account-ultimately by the courts-in enforcing
parenting contracts or orders. That gives schools the teeth they need to say to
parents, "You have to play a part."
Also, if parents feel that their
child's learning is being disrupted by one or two kids in the class and that
the school is not doing something about it, they will have the explicit right
to appeal, ultimately to the local government ombudsman and beyond, and say
that the school is not enforcing the proper discipline code and that they want
it sorted out. So it gives teeth to the school and to parents who feel that the
school is not delivering good behaviour. It also puts pressure on parents who
are not pulling their weight. I think that it is tougher.
Q12 Paul Holmes: The difference is that it is compulsory
and legally enforceable both ways: parent against school and school against
parent. The White Paper seems a bit contradictory on the first point about the
compulsory element. It states: "It would be wrong to make signing the Home
School Agreement a condition of admission," but that "parents will be expected
to sign" it each year. Is it compulsory or not?
Ed Balls:
We have to be careful that we don't have a separate and extra hurdle to
admission that could be used by schools effectively as a sift. The point
therefore is that every parent applying and signing the admission form is
signing up to a behaviour contract. They will then have to repeat that in
future years. If we said, "You have to fill in the admission form and also send
a separate behaviour form," we might find that some pupils who deserve a good
chance ended up being disadvantaged in the admissions process because of a
separate, extra thing that some parents might not do. That would not be fair.
Do you see what I mean? Is that a fair distinction?
Q13 Paul Holmes: So it is compulsory on the day that
school starts in September, but it is not compulsory when you apply in the
preceding year?
Ed Balls:
At the point that you apply to a school, the application will make it clear
that you are signing up to its behaviour agreement. In legal terms, you have,
"Sign on the dotted line." We are not asking you to sign to apply to the school
and separately sign the home-school agreement. Applying to the school is part
of what you as a parent take on board.
Q14 Paul Holmes: John Dunford from the Association of
School and College Leaders has said that the whole legal process that is going
to be introduced is a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Chris Keates from the
NASUWT-
Chairman: Who is with us
today.
Paul Holmes:-said that the guarantee was welcome, but
that it has to be watertight and clear otherwise there will be a lot of
vexatious legal processes going on. How do you respond to those two different
views?
Ed Balls:
If you make a guarantee, it has to be able to be reinforced. As I said to Mr.
Twigg, for many schools that will be straightforward because they are doing it
already. For some schools, it will be challenging, but I think that it is right
to keep challenging the system, so I will not shy away from doing that. If, for
example, a parent thinks that the behaviour contract is not being enforced;
that they have not got a written statement of what their child is getting if
they are gifted or talented; that in year 7, their child has not been given the
extra 10 hours a week one-to-one or small group tuition that they should have
had if they did not make level 4, and they are getting that year 7 catch-up
testing; or that one of the other deliverables in the guarantee has not been
enforced, you want them, in the first instance, to have a conversation with the
personal tutor and then to speak to the head teacher.
In the large majority of cases, the
school will have its own procedure or formal process for making a complaint, if
the complaint is not being heard by the head teacher. Obviously, in the vast
majority of cases, John Dunford and his members will hopefully have sorted out
the issue. However, if it has not been sorted out, there has to be a next step.
The next step will be that every
parent will have the right to go independently to the local government
ombudsman to set out why, in their judgment, the school or the local authority
is not delivering the guarantee. The local government ombudsman does not have
the power to make a school do so, although we know the way in which the local
government ombudsman works. The publishing of its report is, even of itself,
quite a powerful statement, and that, in many cases, sorts things out.
I know that John Dunford will think
that the local government's report is a sledgehammer and he would have liked to
have cracked the nut at an earlier stage. So there will be a small number of
cases. When it happens, a school should do it. If a school ignores the local
government ombudsman and does not deliver the guarantee, I have statutory
intervention powers. Obviously, they can go even further than that. Unless you
have that backstop, you cannot really say that it is an enforced guarantee.
John Dunford is right. In the vast majority of cases, parents and teachers will
have wanted to sort this out at a much earlier stage.
Q15 Paul Holmes: What about the two-way problem? On the
one hand, the school might well be reluctant to go to law to enforce this
against parents. We are seeing a bit of that. Today, we have seen the announcement
of a big rise in truancy, a lot of which is down to parents taking the kids on
holiday, which would not have counted as truancy in the past but now is. Some
schools are really trying to crack down and enforce that because they say that
Ofsted will penalise them if they do not. Others, in the interests of good
school-parent relationships, do not want to. So there is the school's
reluctance to go down a legal path.
On the other side, an SEN kid-I am
thinking of kids I have taught in mainstream classes with autism, attention
deficit hyperactivity disorder or Down's syndrome-will have particular
behavioural problems and other parents might start saying, "I am going to take
the school to court because they are not meeting the behaviour agreement." So by
introducing the law into this, problems will be caused both ways.
Ed Balls:
I am talking about the school complaints procedure if you have not sorted out
the problem between the head teacher and the teacher, and then the local
government ombudsman if you still have not managed to sort it out. Even at that
point, we have not got down a legal route. We only go down the legal route if
we go further than that and go for judicial review.
On the home-school agreement, you are
right that we are saying that the school should have the power to enforce
against the parent, and other parents on the parent. We already have 6,861
parenting contracts for attendance and 222 parenting orders for attendance, so
the court is already involved in these issues, although mainly on the
attendance side. Up to now, schools have been reluctant to use those kind of
legal routes around behaviour because they did not think that they had the
legal powers.
What the home-school agreement and the
change in the law associated with it do is to make it clear that the
magistrates court will be expected to take into account the home-school
agreement and whether or not the parent has complied as part of their
decision-making on the parenting contract order or enforcement. We will
substantially strengthen the school's hand vis-à-vis the parent if it is a
parent who is being recalcitrant and not engaging. Obviously, when you talk
about special educational needs, there is a separate process for statementing,
which we are also discussing. I cannot
see that any school or ombudsman will be enforcing behaviour in respect of a
special educational needs child.
Q16 Paul Holmes: Some parents might change the school by
legal action because the provision is not there.
Ed Balls:
If a school feels under more pressure to make sure that special educational
needs children are being properly supported, that is a good thing. Making sure that you can do that in a way
that does not disrupt learning for other children is probably quite a good
thing as well.
Q17 Paul Holmes: But they might be under pressure in
various ways. We know that academies
take far fewer children with SEN than the figures in their neighbourhood say
they should, for example.
Ed Balls:
Part of the problem is that the correlation between children who get excluded
and children with SEN is much too high, and that is why intervening earlier and
having early expectations is the right way to address the issue. But we need to make sure that it does not
happen. If that is happening now, it
will make it clearer and more open.
Q18 Chairman: We cooked up a
worrying statistic for Graham Badman in respect of the inquiry into home
schooling, which is the number of children out there who we don't know much
about. A Director of Children's Services
told me only this week that when he had arrived at an authority, a number of
schools were easing out 10 to 20 pupils who were disruptive and just letting
them go off the rope. Will there not be more pressure to get the awkward squad
out and let them disappear off the premises and off the school roll?
Ed Balls:
The extra research that Graham Badman produced for your Committee focuses our
mind. A very small number of children
are home educated and on child protection plans, but the number is considerably
higher than the average.
Q19 Chairman: There are up to
130,000 children who we don't know about out there.
Ed Balls:
We need to make sure that we do, especially if they have a special need for
which they must receive support. Part of
the guarantees is to make sure that children with special educational needs are
getting the support that they need from schools. As I said at the beginning,
some people just want as a matter of principle to home educate, but others have
ended up in that position because they did not feel that the local authority
and the school gave them proper information and support. In the end, they felt forced into that
position and that should not be happening.
Chairman: Sorry, I should
not have intervened then. Edward, you want to ask about one-to-one tuition.
Q20 Mr. Timpson: Secretary of State, can I take us back
to the guarantees in the White Paper?
You said earlier that it will be a tough challenge to deliver on
them. I am looking at one in particular:
in 2009, the provisional data showed that, of the 578,000 pupils who took Key
Stage 2 tests, 20% failed to achieve expected standard level 4 in English and
21% in maths. The pupil guarantee on
one-to-one tuition for seven to 11-year-olds in English and maths, and also for
secondary pupils in English and maths, has already started with a pilot, and it
is part of the Making Good Progress programme in 450 schools.
As for looking at the delivery of that
guarantee on the basis of the pilot, it is going to look difficult to achieve
on the basis that just under 7,000 pupils received tuition, 3% of the cohorts
instead of the planned 10%. Based on
that pilot and the difficulty that has been experienced in trying to recruit tutors
to take on the role of one-to-one tuition, how confident are you that you are
going to be able to deliver the pupil guarantee on one-to-one tuition?
Ed Balls:
That obviously depends on whether we stick with our budgets in 2010-11 or cut
them. If we cut our budgets, we can
deliver-a point that I made to Mr. Twigg.
You are completely right that 20% of children are not getting to level 4
in English and maths on the basis of this year's results. It was 30% 10 years ago, so we have reduced
it by a third, which is great. But there
is more to do. Of that 20%, two thirds
have a special educational need so early identification of special educational
needs and support, such as the 4,000 extra dyslexia teachers who we are now
putting into schools following Jim Rose's review, is vital.
If we do not address those special
needs early, pupils do not get to the level we want at the end of primary
school. The guarantee of one-to-one tuition in Key Stage 2 is a vital part,
although it is not the only part because we have other programmes as well, such
as "Every Child A Reader" and "Every Child Counts" in Key Stage 1. An important part is making sure that you
then sustain support for those children through Key Stage 2.
The answer to your question is that I
am confident that we will be able to do this.
It took us some time to get recruitment for the tutors in the
pilots. We had to increase the rate of
pay for tutors following the feedback from the pilots. The reason for pilots is to find out what you
need to do to make it work, and that is what we did. We now have 25,000
one-to-one tuition teachers registered and in the system, and we are aiming to
get another 100,000 by next year. We now have a paid hourly rate of £25 to £29,
out of school hours. If we can get 25,000 one-to-one tuition teachers registered
in only 10 weeks at those pay rates, then I think that we can get the numbers
that we need by next year. Our plan is to have 600,000 pupils in the next
financial year, 2010-11, getting one-to-one tuition.
Pay might have been an obstacle, but
we have addressed that. Recruitment might have been an obstacle, but we are
addressing that now. Funding is not an obstacle because we are not going to cut
the budget in 2010-11, but there isn't cross-party consensus on that. That is
probably where the biggest risk to the programme lies.
Q21 Mr. Timpson: There is still an issue about whether
this is going to deliver value for money, regardless of where the money is
coming from. The evaluators at PricewaterhouseCoopers reported that some
interviewees were concerned about the scalability of this strand and the value
for money that it presents, given the limited number of pupils it has reached
to date. Bearing that in mind, what consideration have you given to the value
for money of doing the pupil guarantee in this way? What assessment have you
made of alternative methods of trying to make sure that children reach the
expected standards?
Ed Balls:
I am not going to use questions over value for money on this programme to
justify budget cuts in 2010-11.
Q22 Mr. Timpson: That was not what I asked. I wanted to
know what consideration you have given to other ways of trying to reach the
standards that children should be expecting.
Ed Balls:
As I said, I am not going to use value for money questions as a way of
justifying cuts in the 2010-11 budget. I think that the 600,000 places are
really important. All the evidence we have suggests that getting that early
intervention, that one-to-one support for children, is actually vital in terms
of them making progress. The evaluation that we have done and seen so far
supports the idea that this kind of one-to-one tuition works. In private
schools they do it, so why shouldn't we have it in the state schools too?
Q23 Mr. Timpson: If you do not manage to recruit the
number of tutors that are going to be needed to deliver on this guarantee, have
you got a plan B?
Chairman: Jon Coles is
uncharacteristically silent. Does he want to say something?
Ed Balls:
I will bring him in. The answer is that the biggest obstacle to delivering this
in 2010-11 would be a budget cut. I can make a commitment today that I am not
going to cut the budget. That is not a commitment that can be made by other
parties. That is the biggest obstacle. I think that we will get the recruitment
done because we have raised the pay; we have shown that we can get 25,000
tutors in 10 weeks. I am making a clear set of guarantees to parents in a White
Paper. If their child falls behind, I guarantee that we will fund the extra
one-to-one tuition for what they need in Key Stage 2, so that their child
catches up. I am going to make sure that we get the teachers recruited to
deliver it. I could not do that if I cut the budget.
Q24 Mr. Timpson: May I just ask about one other guarantee
and its deliverability? It is the guarantee of the choice of apprenticeship for
14 to 19-year-olds. Bearing in mind that the demand for those apprenticeships
outstrips the supply by about three times, how confident are you that you will
be able to deliver it?
Ed Balls:
I am grateful to you for raising that issue because I think that this is a
challenge for us. We know that this year, on the basis of the LSC returns,
there were more young people than we were planning for who wanted to stay in
full-time school or full-time college, or get an apprenticeship. We had to fund
55,000 extra places for this September to deliver that guarantee for school
leavers. We did that by finding £650 million of spending.
As I explained to Mr. Stuart, I have
written to Michael Gove somewhere between eight and 11 times, asking him to
match that guarantee, but he won't because he is going to cut the budgets in
2010-11 if he gets the chance. Within that, I am working hard to expand the
number of public sector apprenticeships. We want to see a greater number for 16
and 17-year-olds. We are also looking hard at what we can do to get an
apprenticeship place for 16 and 17-year-olds, but this year I cannot guarantee
that every young person who wants an apprenticeship will get an apprenticeship.
That is something that we are aiming to do and is in the legislation, but I
can't guarantee it this September.
What I can do is guarantee a choice of
school, college or an apprenticeship for every young person. That is the school
leavers guarantee; that's the 55,000 places. To be honest, I find it really,
really surprising that we've not got a cross-party consensus on this. That is
really, really surprising.
Q25 Mr. Timpson: That sounds like a different guarantee
from the one that you gave earlier.
Ed Balls:
No. I said that there would be a guarantee this September and next. Every
school leaver of 16 and 17 would be guaranteed a school, college or
apprenticeship place. I can't guarantee every young person that they can have
the school place that they choose, that they can go on any course they want and
that they'll get the particular apprenticeship they want. Obviously, sometimes
courses are over-subscribed, sometimes schools are full and sometimes there
aren't as many particular kinds of apprenticeships as people are asking for.
I can't make a guarantee, place by
place, that everybody will get their first choice. However, I can guarantee a
school, college or apprenticeship place for every young person this September.
I can do that only because I'm funding 55,000 more places this September. As
Mr. Stuart noted earlier, I have written to Michael Gove countless times-I
can't remember the number; I lost count at eight-asking him whether he would
match that guarantee, and he won't reply to me. He won't reply because he's
been told he's got to cut the budget. That's why he can't guarantee the
one-to-one tuition either.
Chairman: Andrew wants to
come in on these very points.
Q26 Mr. Pelling: I think that the Conservative Members of
Parliament here are being very restrained in not being drawn into a party
political game. It's just getting to be a little too much.
You talk about provision in different
sectors for people. The Government have been very generous in allowing a lot of
extra sixth forms to be created, and that is very popular. However, it is also
very expensive compared to college provision. Bearing in mind that there will,
obviously, be some budgetary constraints coming, do you think that going
forward, it would be more reasonable to put a greater emphasis on the
efficiency of the college sector compared to sixth forms? I know I am going to
be very popular in my locality for saying that.
Ed Balls:
I apologise to Mr. Pelling, and in particular to Mr. Stuart and Mr. Timpson, if
I'm being drawn into discussions about differences of parties in 2010-11. The
reason was that Mr. Timpson was asking whether I could deliver the guarantee
and what the biggest obstacle was. I said that the biggest obstacle was a
Conservative Government. That was really why I was answering it in that way,
but I apologise if I was drawn too far down that road.
I am grateful for the support for the
expansion of provision that you are talking about for 16 and 17-year-olds. I
think what we are trying to do-this is why the change in funding for 16 to 19s
is very important-is make sure that across an area, we are properly ensuring
we've got the schools and colleges we need. As I said, it's also our policy to
narrow the gap and, in the end, eliminate the gap between pupil funding for
school and college places, but we won't get there quickly.
I think the expansion of sixth forms
has been very important. Where possible, I always would support that, but I do
think it's important that that isn't done in a way which undermines the local
college. You do need to have a discussion about how to do this. What the YPLA
will ensure is that, consistent with colleges' independence, there is a proper
commissioning discussion about future 16-to-19 provision.
Vernon Coaker:
I think that it'll be particularly important to be raising the participation
age to 17 by 2013 and then 18 by 2015. It's the collaboration between all those
different providers in whatever setting that is, including the work setting,
that will be extremely important.
Q27 Annette Brooke: I have a quick question. It's clearly
very important to provide additional support for year 7 pupils who haven't
achieved what we might regard as very important levels, but I understand that
you're actually going to have some sample testing of their progress. Seeing
that that will be sampling of a small number, why isn't sample testing
appropriate for key stage 2?
Ed Balls:
We are actually not quite doing that; we are doing a sample for Key Stage 3,
but for year 7, we won't be sampling. We will be saying to schools that they
must do, for every child who didn't make level 4 in English or maths, a test at
the end of the year, having delivered that extra one-to-one tuition, in order
to show that the child's made progress. What we won't be doing is expecting
schools to publish that information or provide it to us. This isn't information
for school accountability purposes. What they will be required to do is ensure
that the child has done a test and that the information is provided to parents.
This is much more about parents knowing their child has been catching up in
year 7 and getting the extra support. It's not a sample. But it is not for
accountability purposes, and therefore we won't be publishing it. I presume it
will be teacher-assessed with some moderation.
Jon
Coles: Either there will be a test instrument provided
that teachers can use, or it will be straightforward teacher assessment, using
the APP material.
Ed Balls:
So when people ask, "Are we inflexible on these things?", we are actually
talking here about some moderated teacher assessment, not for accountability
purposes but to inform parents.
Chairman: On
partnerships-
Q28 Mr. Stuart: If I may,
Chairman, before we do that. You laid out why it wasn't possible to give much
in the way of guarantees over specific places in, say, apprenticeships, this
year, yet the legislation in the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning
Bill suggests that, by 2013, every young person between 16 and 18 will have a
choice of two apprenticeships within a reasonable travel-to-work area. It's not
deliverable now. How will it be deliverable then?
Ed Balls:
Because it's in 2013, not now, and we've got four years to prepare. The reason
why we legislated education to 17 and then to 18, not now-as happened in the
early 1970s-but in 2013 for 17-year-olds and 2015 for 18-year-olds was
precisely so that we could gear ourselves up to deliver this. We will need
50,000 more apprenticeship places, I think, for 16 to 18-year-olds in 2015 and
that will mean we will need to do more to encourage employers and expect the
public sector to do its part. The guarantee for education to 17 doesn't start
till 2013-that's when the apprenticeship guarantee comes in-but the right thing
for us to do is make progress towards that goal. That's why, as I've said, we
are funding 55,000 more places this year-
Q29 Mr. Stuart: How
precisely, Secretary of State, will you encourage employers? Without any form
of enforcement, how can you guarantee that there will be those genuine
apprenticeship places and that we don't end up with some sort of faint, fudged
apprenticeships-programme apprenticeships and that sort of thing-instead of the
real thing?
Ed Balls:
It won't surprise you if I say, first of all, not by sending the opposite
signal to employers and providers around the country by cutting the budget in
2010-11. That would be a disastrous signal to send. Instead, to make sure that
we deliver the provisions of the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning
Bill, we've got a National Apprenticeships Service that is now up and running.
We have set clear expectations for the public sector to pull its weight. The
public sector is woefully under-represented in respect of 16 to 18-year-old
apprenticeships.
Q30 Mr. Stuart: Despite years
of being asked to do more. I don't understand what powers you are going to
bring in. Successive Governments have tried to encourage apprenticeships, but
they have failed to do so. Successive Governments have controlled the public
sector and have failed to get the public sector to provide apprenticeships.
You're unable to explain how, precisely-what mechanisms-will be in any
Government's hands to ensure that they are actually delivered and that we don't
have another false promise. So many targets are promised, legislated for and
then missed, as we've seen with climate change and everything else. How can the
young people given this solemn promise by Parliament-this Government-actually
believe it's going to be delivered?
Ed Balls:
I'm happy to have a discussion about the record of successive Governments on
apprenticeships, because I know what the numbers of apprenticeships were before
1997-
Mr. Stuart:
Just answer the question.
Chairman: Through the
Chair.
Ed Balls:
Sorry? Well, you just talked to me about politicians breaking promises and how
to deliver, and I said that we've gone from some tens of thousands of
apprenticeships in 1997 to now over 230,000 apprenticeships-a huge
increase-because of the focus we've put on delivering those apprenticeships
over that time. [Interruption.] Am I
right or wrong on that point? [Interruption.]
I'm right anyway. So we've delivered a big increase.
Q31 Mr. Stuart: I want to
know how they will be delivered, Secretary of State. We know that the number of
level 3 apprenticeships has actually reduced since this Government came to
power. I wasn't trying to make any political points; I was trying to understand
how we can deliver on that promise. You are making this Committee meeting
tedious by your endless repetition of political sloganeering. None of us is
trying to do that. What we're trying to do is get at how we can deliver a
better education system for our young people-an education system, which, under
successive Governments, has failed, but which under this Government has led to
more NEETS than there were 12 years ago. That's what we're trying to get at,
and that's what we want an answer from you on.
Ed Balls:
As I said, not by cutting the school budget in 2010-11 and by delivering the
school-leavers guarantee this September.
Mr. Stuart: What a waste
of time.
Ed Balls:
Why are we wasting time? We're having a discussion about the different choices
we make and the different priorities we have for the future. If we cannot be
willing, in Parliament, to have those discussions about those choices and
scrutinise them through our different objectives, we are not doing our job.
On the issue that you raised, we have
seen a substantial rise in the number of apprenticeships. We need to go
further. We have the National Apprenticeships Service. We have just passed a
Bill. We set out clearly at the beginning of this year our target for 20,000
more public sector apprenticeships by the end of the year. We have a drive
going on right across Whitehall to get the public sector to deliver. We have
had a national advertising campaign for employers. And we have a national
matching service. A huge amount is going on. There is more to do.
Q32 Mr. Stuart: Let me move
on to Partnerships for Schools. What is the evidence base for the effectiveness
of accredited schools groups as a tool for school improvement?
Ed Balls:
I think that you also missed me saying at the beginning of the session that the
National College is publishing studies today showing the ways in which
federations around the country have been raising standards. That is part of the
evidence base. We believe that the academies programme, which is, in a way, an
important part of the case for accredited schools groups, has clearly
delivered. If you look at the Harris or the ARK academies, which are all groups
of schools, they have clearly been driving up standards.
Q33 Mr. Stuart: Does the
Department plan to use funding cuts as a lever to make local authorities go in
for "hard edged partnerships"-I think you euphemistically call them that in the
White Paper.
Ed Balls:
The point where we will apply pressure on local authorities is where there has
been persistent under-performance by individual schools, and that is what we
have been doing through the National Challenge. The National Challenge has
shone the spotlight on some local authorities that, I think, have put up for
too long with a number of schools that are not performing as well as they
should. We have been using our new National Challenge trusts-an example of a
hard federation-or academies to drive up standards in those schools with great
effect, I think. We have now gone from half of schools to less than one in 10
schools being below that threshold, but there is still more to do.
We want to make it easier for local
authorities that are thinking not just about underperformance, but also about
schools that may be coasting-primary schools as well-to bring in the
leadership, expertise and track record that can make a difference. The accredited
schools groups will be a clear kitemark that will say to local authorities,
"These are people with experience and a track record who know what they are
doing". We will then challenge local authorities, where we think that there is
underperformance, to take up those opportunities. The broader point about
federations and partnerships is that it is not about imposing them; it is
actually about individual schools embracing them.
Q34 Mr. Stuart: That is what
I was looking for reassurance of. Again, historically, whenever there is
something that appears to offer some benefit, and it would appear that there is
some evidence that federations or accredited schools groups or chains-whatever
you want to call them-offer that, the tendency is for the new tool to be
imposed everywhere and sometimes stifle locally inspired solutions and
innovations. I am trying to tease that out to check that we will not have that.
You get a fad; it seems to be working; and Ministers clutch at it gratefully
and impose it on everybody, even where it is not appropriate.
Ed Balls:
I fear that we are, again, repeating the conversation that we had with Mr.
Pelling and Mr. Holmes earlier. We discussed this when we had the efficiency
discussion, and I said that this is absolutely not about imposing a particular
form of school organisation on individual schools. This is for individual
schools and school leaders to embrace. Clearly, the fact that they will be
looking to do things more efficiently will be a factor in their minds as well
as school improvement. The right time to be tougher and more hard-edged about
it is when we have exposed underperformance in schools. At that point, there is
a responsibility on the commissioner to require change, and we think that, in
those cases, accredited schools groups will make it easier.
Q35 Mr. Stuart: The school
report cards, league tables and so on tend to lead to a competitive environment
among schools. Do you think that there are any difficulties and issues with
schools that see themselves as being in competition and expected to
collaborate? Are there barriers to collaboration that need to be looked at?
Ed Balls:
The answer is, yes, sometimes there are barriers. Different areas have
different ways of doing things. I think that, in some areas, there is much more
of a culture of collaboration. In other areas, because of history, the nature
of travelling and the nature of the schools' diversity, there is more
competition among schools for places. I think that we can support this and also
reform school accountability through the report card, so that we recognise that
there are benefits from and rewards to collaboration.
I was up in North Yorkshire a few
weeks ago, talking to a head teacher there, whose school is part of a four
schools federation, which is collaborating in quite a hard way to have common
sixth-form provision across the four schools. He said that there was no doing
this because each individual school could not do it on their own in terms of
the offer, and one school did not even have a sixth form until that started. He
also said to me, "We are also doing this because we know we can do it more
efficiently. But our main driver is the education offer." He also said to me
explicitly, "Yes, for us it is a partnership, but we are also four schools, to
some extent competing, to get pupils to come in at 11." Of course there is a
little bit of tension, but if you are big enough, you can get over that, and
that is what they are doing.
Chairman: I want to go on
briefly to partnerships beyond schools.
Q36 Paul Holmes: Whoever wins the next election, school
budgets, like every other budget, are going to be under more pressure in the
next 10 years than the last 10 years. Precisely at that point, the White Paper
is saying that you will legislate to make it clear that schools have a
responsibility and the ability to spend part of their school budget on things
beyond the school community. What percentage of a school budget do you think
they ought to be spending on things other than their actual pupils?
Ed Balls:
It will not surprise you that I am not going to mandate a percentage, but I
think that it is important-to be honest, I do not think that they can deliver
the guarantees without it. You cannot deliver the guarantee for sports without
collaboration between schools. However, you cannot ensure that every child
makes progress without addressing some of the barriers to learning that happen
outside the school gates. In many cases, those will be budgets that are in the
hands of other authorities-it may be the housing budget or children's mental
health.
One of the things that we said in the
White Paper, which I hope people will be interested in, is that we are going to
look at how we can have more devolution so that schools, or groups of schools,
take over the budgets and the responsibility for commissioning those wider
services themselves, rather than simply receiving the services from other
providers. It may be that in that kind of model, there will be some schools
that will choose to use some of their budgets themselves for some of those
outside services. I meet many schools that already use some of their school
budget for some camps provision or safety schools partnerships.
I am not going to mandate a
percentage, but I think the best schools are already using some of their
budgets, because they know that that is the only way to deliver for the
children and the school. I think the idea of wider school commissioning of
wider services is quite an exciting one.
Q37 Paul Holmes: The Local Government Association has
pointed out that the White Paper on the one hand says that schools will be
legally obliged to work with, for example, the Children's Trust and the local
authority on wider local community perspectives. But, on the other hand, it
says that you will accelerate what the Government have done in terms of setting
up academies and accredited school groups, which do not have a local focus. A
faith school may draw pupils from a 30-mile radius, not from an immediate local
community.
Ed Balls:
It might, and there are times when you have to take those kinds of things into
account. I have been clear, and have sometimes been criticised for being clear:
I support academies and their freedom to innovate, but academies are part of
the local family schools, as are faith schools and voluntary aided schools.
Therefore, academies, and all schools, have a duty to co-operate with each
other and with the Children's Trust. There will not be academies that are outside
the Children's Trust arrangements, and there will not be academies or faith
schools that are outside behaviour partnerships.
You cannot have a school that, on its
own, has an exclusion policy that just dumps certain pupils in other schools in
an unfair way. You cannot have schools that are going to deliver for every
child but are not, for example, pulling their weight in terms of special needs
provision or working with the CAMHS. So they are not outside, but part of, the
local family schools, but within that, they have some independence and power to
innovate, which is powerful.
Q38 Paul Holmes: But we go back to the LGA pointing out
two conflicting things: you are creating more power for schools to be
completely separate from the local community and the local authority, but
saying that they must be involved.
Ed Balls:
No. I think that that is based on a misconception that academies do not have a
duty to co-operate-they do. Therefore, I am not putting them outside the local
family of schools. I think that they are an important part of the local family
of schools, and they have obligations as well as extra powers and
opportunities. It is important that they use the extra powers, but it is also
important that they accept their obligations. The same is true for faith
schools.
To be honest, when you move away from
the type of ideological Westminster
politics that Mr. Stuart does not like, I find in the wider academies world
that academies accept that they are part of the family of schools and that you
need to work together on behaviour and alternative provision. So I actually do
not find this to be such a contradiction. The local authority is the
commissioner, and that is about commissioning all places and all provision and
worrying about all schools, which includes academies.
Chairman: This is the
latest that this Committee has ever sat on a Wednesday morning. Lynda has been
really pushed at the end of both sessions. Lynda.
Q39 Lynda Waltho: Very quickly-this is about the school
improvement services. What is your assessment of the readiness of providers at
the moment to constitute an effective market of school improvement services?
Are you confident about that?
Ed Balls:
If you don't mind, Chairman, I might ask Jon to say a word about this, because
this is his area of expertise. The answer is that this is quite a big challenge
and quite a big change. There are lots of schools that have told me over the
last year or two that, sometimes, they are frustrated by the inflexibility of
national strategies, as they see it, but also people have got rather used to
the idea that national strategies do things in a particular way. We have now
said that, at the end of 18 months, there will be a big handing-over of power,
resource and responsibility to schools for commissioning and a stronger role
for school improvement partners.
To be honest, Chairman, in the
education world, I think that you will recognise the point that I am about to
make. There is always a bit of tension between, on the one hand, schools
wanting more flexibility and more power and, on the other hand, feeling the
burden of the extra power and the extra responsibility. It is quite a big deal
to run your own budget. It will be a challenge to ensure that schools can also
commission school improvement and that we will have the quality of SIPs that
schools will need. However, I think that it is definitely the right next step.
It is a bit like the White Paper. I think that there is widespread support in
the schools world for what we are doing on SIPs and school improvement, but
there is also a sense of trepidation that this is quite a radical step. Is that
fair, Jon?
Jon Coles:
Yes, I think so. I think that it is true to say that we need to do some
significant work to build the school improvement market over the next 18
months, so that we are ready to bring this in. We set out in the White Paper
proposals to have a quality assurance process, so that we nationally accredit
some school improvement providers for particular types of service that we know
are important and that are particularly needed in schools. We hope that that
will give schools a great deal of assurance that, if they draw on those people,
they will get the quality of service that they need. However, there is no doubt
that we need to do some work with the market to develop it, to be effective in
meeting all the needs that are there. We have 18 months to do that, but that is
obviously an important piece of work to do in that time.
Q40 Lynda Waltho: Just to continue, do you think that
there is a risk that schools will lose out in terms of what they are able to
get from the advisory aspect of local authorities' help? Also, is there a risk
that local authorities could lose out in terms of the information that they
gain through that process?
Jon Coles:
This is where we need to have the SIPs process working in the way that we
describe in the White Paper, which is in many ways how it works at its best at
the moment, but it is much too variable at the moment. We have a situation
where some local authorities are not relying on their SIPs as their key source
of information but sort of going round the SIPs, through having a parallel
advisory service and structure. We need to work with local authorities to
design the system better, so that we have a single interface between schools
and local authorities. I think that that is potentially better from the
schools' point of view, in having one key interface with all the external
agencies, as it were.
I think that it is potentially better
for the local authority as well that SIPs will be spending more time in schools
and understanding schools rather better, which would be a good quality source
of information to the local authority and a better source, I think, than they
have at the moment. So that is what we are expecting. The SIP is then able to
draw on a much wider range of improvement services and not just on the local
authority's own advisory service, which in some cases is strong but in other
cases is not strong. The SIP will be able to draw on other schools, on the
nationally accredited resources and on a whole range of other improvement
services in the market, which should give the SIP access to a better source and
a better range of targeted support for the things that are really needed.
Ed Balls:
Just one other thing to say, Chairman. We were talking about accredited school
groups as providers of school services. The consultation that we are launching
today will be about accrediting people to run more than one school, two schools
or groups of schools. But, those providers will also provide school improvement
services, so therefore we'll have groups of schools that are not just running a
family of schools, but potentially providing school improvement services to a
much wider range of schools than those that are actually running or are part of
their family.
So, there is, for example, the Outwood
Grange family of schools in my constituency, with maybe six schools as part of
the federation. But, the Outwood Grange family of schools also give school
improvement support to a number of other schools in the region. So that is why
this associated schools group idea is a good one, because it will give schools
the confidence that these are the kind of people who know what they are talking
about.
Q41 Chairman: Secretary of
State-just to finish because we've had a long session-what do you say to the
people who read the White Paper and say, "Yeah, lots of good stuff in this.
But, what is the vision of the Secretary of State for Education here?" There
are some parts that look as though you are maintaining command and control and
that there is a quite centralised education system, but in other parts, you
move towards more localism. What is the overall shift and vision? If someone
said to you, "Come on, what's this Ed Balls' real vision," what would you say
to them?
Ed Balls:
I would say that, first of all, it is not good enough to have a school system
in which some children excel; every child must have the chance to succeed, and
that means really focusing on guarantees to children and the extra barriers
that they sometimes face because they have a problem with learning, reading,
stammering or whatever. We focus on every child's barriers to progress, and we
are only satisfied when every child succeeds. Secondly, you can only have a
school system that delivers that if it is working with parents and the other
experts in tackling those barriers.
Thirdly, the leadership and drive for
every child to succeed must come from schools themselves, and therefore the
teachers and the head teachers will make the biggest difference in terms of
success or failure. However, they cannot do it on their own, and therefore
there will be increased collaboration between schools and within groups of
schools-primary and secondary-to make sure that they can share their expertise
and leadership, and spread their offer in terms of curricula. That will mean
you can really deliver for every child, which is very hard for one school to
do.
Finally, I don't believe in a free
market in relation to schools, so, in the end, where there is persistent
underperformance in a local area, the local authority as the commissioner and,
ultimately, the Secretary of State must have the ability to step in and say,
"Look, this isn't good enough. These schools have got to get better. What are
you going to do about it?" They should challenge the school and the local
authority, so that in the end they are able to say, "We aren't going to put up
with low expectations and poor performance in that school." I see my role-or
our role-as setting the framework, supporting that local leadership and
innovation, and only when necessary and as a last resort, stepping in when
there is underperformance. I think that the alternative of having a more market-based
schools system, where schools compete and you don't have proper support from
children's services and it's the market that decides which schools succeed or
fail, is a system that can only deliver excellence for some school
children-probably a minority. In the 21st century, we should be about every
child and not just a few.
Chairman: It has been a
long session. Thank you very much Secretary of State, Schools Minister and Jon
Coles.
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