Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
240-259)
MATT ATKINSON,
JOHN FAIRHURST,
MAGGIE GALLIERS
AND JOHN
MORGAN
24 FEBRUARY 2010
Q240 Chairman: But how many
are in the NEETs category? We know that there is a significant
percentage of children with severe special educational needs.
I expect that NEETs have a significant proportion of those children.
Maggie Galliers: They certainly
do. In our analysis at Leicester, those who are NEET often have
a disability or difficulty, particularly at 16. Not that we don't
try to integrate them, but that will be an additional barrier
for them.
Chairman: What percentage?
Maggie Galliers: I am sorry. I
shall have to submit that in writing.[9]
I don't have the figure with me.
John Fairhurst: From experience
of my community, which is very different from Leicester, almost
all of the children whom we identify as potentially NEET are one
way or the other on the SEN register. It is not necessarily an
intellectual issue; it is often emotional and social. Those youngsters
are finding it difficult to relate not just to school, but to
lots of other things in their lives. That brings me back to the
importance of extended school support outside school that we can
access swiftly and readily for the children who have been identified.
However, it does cost money.
Q241 Mr Stuart: I was just
about to agree with Maggie on the cut-off point. The Dutch were
showing how they can bring 16 to 20-year-olds on a four-year course
up to the level that most people reach at 16—but they were
on the course. They were building their confidence, and they were
then able to move on to join the work force at whatever point.
That is important. We said at the beginning that NEETs are not
homogenous. I certainly know epileptics or those on the autistic
spectrum; all sorts of segmented groups are more likely to end
up as NEET for one reason or another. Do the policies with which
you have to work and funding streams sufficiently allow tailored
provision for particular groups, such as epileptics? I accept
that they are a fairly small group, but apparently the chance
of being a NEET as an epileptic is much higher than the national
average. It is one of those groups that is perhaps missed.
Maggie Galliers: We have access
to additional learning support funds, which allow us to spend
some money on additional support of a very specialist nature.
For example, if someone has an attention deficit disorder, I have
a specialist who can deal with that. My college is unusual in
so far as I have a very specialist unit for students with profound
and multiple learning difficulties. Some of them are paraplegic.
Some of them are in wheelchairs. They have quite extreme specialist
needs. Currently, I cannot access the higher bands of funding
for those students because those bands go to the students in residential
care. I contend that, by keeping those students local and coming
to a college with a very high level of skill in such areas, I
am saving the taxpayer money. Actually, I worked out only recently
that I cross-subsidise that unit to the tune of £230,000
a year.
Q242 Mr Stuart: We talked
about the fact that schools can identify people ahead of time.
Does that need to be more systematic? Are there some schools in
which that is not happening? If it were more systematic, would
that make it better able to do the early intervention that we
are all hoping for?
John Morgan: I think that it is
pretty systematic. There is local co-ordination of the need to
identify. You will find a local record, not just a school-based
record. Yes, it happens more at 15 or 16 than it does at 11, 12
or 13. The majority of schools, guided by the local partnerships
and local authorities, are spotting people and recording them,
and access to a common record is becoming available for all the
professionals.
Q243 Mr Stuart: You are confident
that hasn't just stopped and that it is happening?
John Morgan: All I can say is
that we are on that journey. Please don't quote me as saying that
Stockton is the bee's knees—I don't think it is—but
we are on that journey at different points across the nation.
We are not there yet; it is a complicated thing to do. As John
Fairhurst would say, the bigger the authority the more difficult
it is, particularly if an authority has another problem on its
plate at the time.
John Fairhurst: I have a great
frustration: Essex is one of the shamed nine. The special needs
provision for vulnerable children in the county has been deemed
inadequate. So, schools can identify where the problems are and
bring together some institutional plan, but they find it quite
hard to access the specialist support—educational psychiatry
support or whatever—to bring to bear and to crack the problem.
I don't have a solution to that. It's something that we have to
grapple with in my part of the world.
Q244 Chairman: But John Morgan,
in this Committee it is fascinating in a sense for us to be given
a wealth of information, but sometimes we want to break down the
nature of these young people. If Maggie's authority has 1,000
NEETs—I don't know what the figure is; it could be 500,
but let's say we have an authority with 1,000 NEETs—how
much careful analysis is done of the composition of the NEETs
in terms of how many have special educational needs and so on?
It seems to me that the reason we are always talking about NEETs
is that there is no deeper analysis of what this cohort looks
like.
Mr Stuart: Mental health problems can
be involved.
Chairman: Mental health problems, special
educational needs, lack of the English language and so on.
John Morgan: I think you would
find that locally there will be that analysis. I think you ought
to be quite pleased that we aren't—
Q245 Chairman: We haven't
been able to find anyone to give us that. Where would we get that
information, John?
John Morgan: I think that each
local authority should have a NEETs strategy and there will be
somebody managing that strategy. At one level of—
Chairman: And they would have that analysis.
John Morgan: They should do. I
can certainly submit it to you from Stockton.[10]
Chairman: I've been into Jobcentre Plus
and have said, "Tell me what these people look like. What
are their major characteristics? How many are there of these?
How many of those?" They can't give you that information.
John Morgan: Because it's not
always as simple as that, Chair. That's the trouble. We are a
very diverse population, and not just in respect of NEETs—look
at the—
Q246 Chairman: The old social
scientist in me suggests that you can take 1,000 people and do
a piece of research that shows what the nature of this cohort
is. It may change; next year there may be fewer SEN and more of
something else, but you could find out how many people. In Leicester
for example, one of the real characteristics is a lack of facility
in the English language. That's not impossible is it? That is
what we are trying to get at in this Committee.
Matt Atkinson: In our locality,
Connexions is the body that can provide you with those data. It
is the body that co-ordinates the work around NEETs. I recently
challenged our local Connexions manager at our 14-19 board, by
setting a target of 0% NEETs—we are at 4% currently. She
said, "We can't do that, because of the 200, 50 have these
particular issues". So in our locality, Connexions is very
well placed to do that, but there may be some variation up and
down the country.
Maggie Galliers: I would endorse
that. Certainly our Connexions service knows by name everybody
who is NEET and could tell you about their characteristics. I
believe some research was done for the NEET strategy for DCSF
because there has been some attempt there to categorise the NEETs,
as you discussed, I think, in an earlier Committee session.
Q247 Chairman: So we should
be able to get that out of the Minister on Monday, should we?
Maggie Galliers: I would have
thought so, because clearly analysis has gone into categorisation.
Q248 Mr Stuart: Should more
young people transfer to colleges at 14? For those for whom school
isn't working, are colleges at 14 a better option, and more likely
to engage their enthusiasm and interest?
John Fairhurst: I think it needs
to be a judgment made as part of an individual education plan
for each individual, because what was going through my mind during
the conversation we have just been having is that you are looking
for a pattern that isn't necessarily there. This is quite a heterogeneous
group; there are quite different reasons for people ending up
in the situation. We can identify what the problems are in the
schools. We look for some solutions. Personalising the curriculum,
which we have perhaps not dwelt on enough, is a strategy that
can make a big difference and is happening in particular with
the freeing up of Key Stage 4 prescriptions. So it's got to be
personalised. It's got to be based on that individual.
Q249 Mr Stuart: But if colleges
can do a better job in some cases, personalised or otherwise,
then that pathway needs to be there. The signposting needs to
be there. The parents, the pupil, the teacher perhaps—somebody
needs to know that you can go there.
John Fairhurst: There will be
some individuals who are quite mature but disaffected from school
life who would be highly appropriate for transfer to college.
There would be other quite immature individuals—this goes
in part with their vulnerability—for whom that would be
quite an inappropriate move. It would depend on the individual.
Mr Stuart: And over to the college sector?
Matt Atkinson: On the one hand,
I agree with what John has said. It is about a specific individual
learning plan for that young person. In Bath we have the Bath
Panel where we look at cases individually and decide on the best
course of action for that young person. When they come to college
their programme is tailored towards their specific needs. We do
not simply have a programme with a one-size-fits-all approach.
It is very personalised.
Q250 Mr Stuart: When we were
in Holland, we saw this enormous, wonderful, modern building—it
was very inspiring. We thought it was great, and the people there
told us it was great, but not for everybody. They were looking
at creating more micro-sites with a scale that better suited some
of the more vulnerable people—they would be closer to home
and so on. Should you be doing more to get out of your big campus
site, if you've got a big campus site, and into the community?
Matt Atkinson: Possibly, but I
would say that we take a very deliberate approach at our college
not to ghettoise this provision and make it a quasi-pupil referral
unit. Walking round my college, you would not be able to spot
the 70 or so 14 or 15-year-olds because they are fully integrated
into our college. They are in lessons with 16 and 17-year-olds.
But, of course, we do have students with very specific needs as
well. We are not just dealing with the switched-off but very bright;
we are dealing with students with very specific needs, so we ensure
that the support is there for them. What I should say about our
locality is that there is other provision. We have a specialist
behaviour unit for other young people to go to. We need to start
looking at the make-up of education provision locally and making
sure that something can be done—whether that is the college
going out to and having provision in schools, for instance. There
is another model there. Something in which I am particularly interested
at the moment is the notion of what Lord Baker has been doing
through the Baker Dearing Trust around university technical colleges
that begin at the age of 14. The first one will open in Derby—the
JCB Academy—in September, so there is another model there.
Now is the time to start looking at a whole range of models.
Chairman: We have to move on.
Q251 Paul Holmes: Lots of
witnesses have said to us that we should provide more work-based
learning, especially for people who are below Level 2. From your
perspective in schools and colleges, is that possible? Do employers
co-operate to provide enough of these places?
Maggie Galliers: Clearly, it is
more difficult to attract employer interest to that age group.
If they are not work ready, that will be a toll on the employer.
I think colleges are very well placed, because of their enormous
links with employers, to ensure that students are getting an experience
that will make them work ready and allow work experience of that
type to happen, and also to ensure that the curriculum is properly
informed by what the employer is looking for. If you take my college
as an example, we work with 3,000 employers every year through
Train to Gain programmes and other linkages. One of the reasons
why I went for a model of organisation in my college where that
work is fully embedded into my curriculum was because I wanted
that cross-transference into the mainstream curriculum, which
is about preparing people for employment. We can find work experience
for some of the young people, but a very good preparation for
that work experience is what I was talking about earlier, which
is having realistic working environments within colleges where
there are real customers but there is an additional layer of safety,
and we are paying the people who are supervising those young people,
whereas to the employer it is a straight cost.
Q252 Paul Holmes: We've all
visited training restaurants and beauty salons. Can you extend
things beyond that? I've seen some tourism in colleges.
Maggie Galliers: We have a floristry
shop and a travel shop. We've been involved in some very real
work in the Highcross shopping development in Leicester. Working
collaboratively with the local authority and other agencies, we
saw that there would be jobs there, particularly for the NEETs,
and we set up a programme called routeways into employment. We
went out into some of the most disadvantaged areas, took out good-quality
information, advice and guidance, and got people on to programmes
that were all about preparing them for the jobs in Highcross.
We had enormously successful outcomes from that project; in fact,
we won a Jobcentre Plus award for it. I know that 141 of the people
who got jobs in those shops were in the sustained NEETs category.
Q253 Paul Holmes: In general,
is there the capacity to do this?
Matt Atkinson: There is a significant
problem, of course, with engaging employers in this kind of activity.
Once again, it depends on where you are. If you're in an area
that's made up predominantly of small and medium-sized enterprises,
it is difficult to get SMEs to engage. From an employer's perspective,
providing work placements to 14 and 15-year-olds is a huge risk
in many cases. The young apprenticeship model, of course, is very
interesting. It has a requirement for 50 days' high-quality work
experience. We run a young apprenticeship in catering, and the
young people work in prestigious restaurants and hotels locally.
The young apprenticeship model is a great way of doing those things
and engaging employers, but I think that all of us would agree
that it is a struggle to get employers to engage in this way.
John Morgan: None of us thinks
it is going to get better, realistically; whatever fine words
anyone comes out with, it's unlikely to get any better or any
easier. That's not really to complain, but it is a short-sighted
employer who doesn't see the importance of engaging locally. Maggie's
point is very important, and that is where the positivity of local
solutions comes in. What you've described might be completely
erroneous in Stockton, Essex or Bath, and an understanding of
these issues is important. That's where it is important to have
the one group—Connexions working with the local authority,
or whoever it might be, although it happens to be the local authority.
The funding is there with them. The partnership is overseen by
them. The children's trust is there. There is one group that can
have a real focus on everything and can engage employers in the
locality as well.
Q254 Paul Holmes: Maggie talked
about colleges providing a lot of this in-house. I have visited
schools around the country and in my constituency that have started
to do this. Should schools be trying to do this? Have they really
got the capacity and the economies of scale?
John Morgan: They can, in some
places, although not to the extent that the colleges can. A school
within 10 miles of where I live has a fantastic hair and beauty
salon. It's a rural school, so it would need to have done something
special. It's made a focus. It's identified a local need. It's
seen that there will be potential employment. It's worked at a
distance with a very willing employer, who has won awards herself.
And, lo and behold, the scheme is working well. The school has
got the funding and it has something that is very realistic, but
it cannot do things on the same scale as colleges—obviously,
schools can't. However, for students in the area, who are very
parochial and wouldn't want to move away from their rural area,
the scheme is working well. You'd probably never get them to shift
to a large college that might be 30 or 40 miles away, because
they just wouldn't catch the bus.
Q255 Paul Holmes: Diplomas
are suggested as one of the answers to the problem of a lot of
the people who fall into the NEETs category. On the other hand,
lots of people have told us that diplomas have been pushed towards
being too academic and are not providing the practical skills
and the hands-on work that are the attraction for a lot of people
in the NEETs group.
John Fairhurst: I feel strongly
that the diplomas are quite confused about their target audience.
In fact, that audience has probably changed as the conceptualisation
of the diplomas has evolved. Arguably, the Level 1 diploma is
a confusion that is not actually required. Foundation learning
tries to bring myriad different qualifications together into some
kind of coherent package, and that is an excellent move. Level
1 diplomas are quite regularly being found to be simply too difficult
for the sort of youngsters who want Level 1 qualifications, not
least because of the academic element within. I can understand
at Levels 2 and 3 that there are very good arguments for applied
learning that requires quite rigorous understanding and extension,
but I am not sure that hard skills—hair and beauty have
been mentioned—require the sort of "vocademic",
halfway, applied-learning thrust of the diploma. Structuring any
learning at the lowest levels of entry and level 1 into a way
that youngsters can access some success has to be a sensible move,
and you find it in the foundation learning.
Maggie Galliers: I referred earlier
to a climbing frame of opportunity. I am sure that diplomas have
a place within that, but I would thoroughly endorse the notion
that they really aren't practical enough for some of these learners.
If we look at something like hairdressing, given that we have
been using that as an example, salons want to employ people who
can cut hair, who can colour hair, who can sweep up and who have
learned customer service. Although the diploma perhaps engages
some learners who would not be engaged through traditional routes,
it doesn't give them that level of vocational competence that
helps them to be employable. In the past, vocational qualifications
have been criticised in the sense that they perhaps have not done
enough around those very important skills of literacy, numeracy
and functional skills in general. It would be perfectly possible
to construct packages where functional skills were a really strong
spine going through any offer to a young person, but personalised
within that to go down either a vocationally competent route or
a more traditional academic route, albeit flavoured by a particular
subject area, be it construction, hairdressing, engineering or
whatever.
Q256 Paul Holmes: But, at
the other end of the scale, advanced diplomas especially are sold
as a vocational route that is equivalent to A-levels and will
get you into university, just as advanced GNVQs were when I was
a head of sixth form. Can diplomas, or GNVQs previously, actually
deliver both things—the vocational and the academic equivalent?
Maggie Galliers: It is about the
balance between the practical and the more academic. If I compare
the diplomas with the BTEC National Diplomas, which have been
a tool that colleges have employed successfully over many years
to advance people into higher education—I can provide you
with the statistics of how many of mine on those programmes go
into higher education, and it is many—the balance is slightly
different. On a BTEC National, it is one third classroom-based
and two thirds practical. I think you could reverse that if you
looked at the diplomas, and there is certainly not enough time
for the students to become vocationally competent.
Q257 Chairman: A lot of the
witnesses have not needed pushing at all to talk about the value
of the apprenticeship route, but you have to push them quite hard
to extol the virtues of the diploma route for this category of
young person. Matt?
Matt Atkinson: One issue is that
diplomas exist in a crowded qualifications framework at the moment.
There is probably not as much practical learning as young people
perceive with diplomas. There is also a huge issue of whether
the teachers involved have the skills and creativity to make the
learning practical. Actually, as someone who taught until fairly
recently, I had the ability to take something quite bland and
academic and do it in a practical way. So, actually, while there
has been some investment in teacher development around diplomas,
there probably hasn't been enough. This is a point about whether
they are suitable for young people in this category that we are
talking about—the NEETs. The key thing with provision for
these people is flexibility in curriculum design. These people
who we are talking about would certainly need more practical learning
opportunities in the diplomas and forward.
Q258 Paul Holmes: Earlier,
John Fairhurst and Maggie were both talking about the problem
that, because schools face this high-stakes drop at 16, with the
league tables, they focus on that and do not look at 17, 18 or
19. It was suggested that report cards might be one way around
that, but we have to move away from it. We have got league tables,
and schools are being judged in such a harsh way, but will report
cards make a difference to that? Will we now say that you've got
to be in some sort of training or employment to 17 and then to
18? Will that really make a difference if schools are still going
to be pilloried or praised for what happens at 16 with academic
qualifications?
Chairman: I can only take one of you
on this one. John?
John Fairhurst: The short answer
is no. The harsh focus is on 16, so schools will plainly focus
on that. When they have dropped out and are no longer part of
the school, they are not part of that school—as a single
institution—in a measure of success or failure.
Chairman: I am afraid that we have to
move on.
Q259 Annette Brooke: I apologise
if I duplicate anything that was asked earlier. I wanted to start
by asking about the effectiveness of the services of Connexions.
Maggie has already given us quite a glowing report on that. Perhaps
I might tempt you to think that when they're good they're very
good, but perhaps the service is rather patchy. I would be interested
to hear your views on Connexions.
Maggie Galliers: Our local experience
is that Connexions is becoming more effective. I am sorry that
we have lost some of the original inspiration about the formation
of Connexions when personal advisers were going beyond the brief
of information, advice and guidance, and actually getting into
the territory of tearing down barriers that were preventing people
from getting into learning. That has been a little bit lost in
translation. I am aware that you will have considered various
reports that have looked at whether there should be a free-standing
Connexions service or whether the money might be better used within
schools and colleges directly. My answer is that a hybrid model
is probably best. With the best will in the world, although my
school colleagues might disagree with me, if a school is 11-18,
it will understandably want to offer its sixth-form provision
as a first option—not necessarily the only one, but the
first. The danger with delegating all that to schools and colleges
is that, with human nature being what it is, it might be less
impartial. Having said that, I think there is a strong role in
both schools and colleges for some staff employed by those institutions,
who can work through tutorials and so on, regarding real broad
careers education and applications to higher education and so
on, when people need a lot of detailed careers advice.
Matt Atkinson: When we talk about
Connexions, we tend to assume that there is a national way of
working and doing things. Ms Brooke used the word "patchy"
and I think that is a fair assessment. We are talking about different
contractual relationships and localities, and different ways of
doing things. In fairness to the Connexions service, we should
remember that it has delivered essentially what the Government
have asked it to deliver. It has not provided a service that has
impacted on the lives of all young people but it has not been
tasked with doing that. The key to the provision of high-quality
information, advice and guidance is impartiality—I stress
the word "impartiality". I am interested in the statutory
IAG entitlement. The key thing with the statutory entitlement
is how is it going to be checked? How can we ensure that young
people are receiving high-quality and impartial advice and guidance?
Is there a role for Ofsted, for instance, in doing that checking?
Should that be an element of the Ofsted framework? With information,
advice and guidance, I do not think that there is a national standard.
There is a range of standards that institutions can go for, with
Matrix being one of them. How do we ensure that there is consistency
in the information and advice that young people are receiving?
That is a concern of mine.
Q260 Annette Brooke: That
is rather interesting. Is there a model that we need to be looking
at, now that Connexions is based within local authorities, that
gives formal links, although not in a prescriptive way, so that
there is a true partnership among colleges, schools and Connexions?
John Morgan: The key model starts
with the individual. The trouble is that, in the past, we have
had too many models and the people providing the support forgetting
that you start with the person who needs the support. The last
thing that a potential NEET student needs is 15 different willing
adults telling him or her the best way forward. There should certainly
be independence, but it should be someone they can trust. It would
not necessarily be their form or personal tutor; it could be a
sports teacher who has inspired them, or it could be someone who
lives next door. There will be one person they can trust and there
must be a framework and structure within any institution or locality
to ensure that that person can get the specialist advice, independently
given, whenever necessary, and that they can bring in the support.
Too fixed a structure cannot recognise the individual nature of
the needs of these people. The key thing is whether they have
one or two adults or slightly older peers whom they can trust.
Q261 Annette Brooke: May I
push you on that? That sounds like what we all probably believe,
but I don't see how that stops people falling through holes. We
need to be looking at that. What can you do in your position to
provide advice, guidance and support to those who have already
disengaged?
John Morgan: As a school leader,
we are very much about stopping them from disengaging. We need
to know that there is somebody beyond the confines of our normal
staff to whom we can turn. There has to be a structure where there
is a specialist personal adviser or a specialist youth worker
who can give the intense time at the home site or wherever they
are going to meet this young person of whatever age who is disengaged
from school. We have to know where to turn, so you need that local
structure. What you don't want is three or four different people
being given the same opportunity to provide that advice. It is
a waste of money in these times of efficiency to find that someone
from the Connexions staff is giving a young person roughly the
same thing as somebody from social services and as their pastoral
leader from school. You want somebody to work efficiently with
that young person.
Q262 Chairman: In a few weeks,
local government will be in charge of all of this.
John Morgan: I'm not saying that
local government will be in charge.
Chairman: Local government is going to
be in charge of the whole shebang within a few weeks. That will
be nice and joined up for you, won't it?
John Morgan: No. The schools don't
start from who is in charge of it, they start from the young people.
Somebody has to make sure that there is that range of support
for us to access. If you want to give me one thing that a children's
trust should do, it is to make sure that the front-line support
is available for the front line to access and so that there can
be a decision on what is the best need. You do not need somebody
saying, "This is the best need for your NEETs brigade."
What you do need is to know that somebody has got an overview
to ensure that the front-line support is there, whether it be
social services, medical support for epileptics, mental health
care or whatever. The people closest to the individuals in schools
and colleges see them from day to day. We see a tendency to disengage.
We might think, "We've lost this one." The question
is who can we get to go and visit them. We can't send out one
of our teachers or our year manager. When you ask if the support
is there, you need to turn and find that it is there. You need
to be sure that there is someone to whom you can turn to provide
a high-quality range of support with different skills so that
you can pick the right one and get them working with the individual.
Q263 Chairman: Okay, we've
run out of time, I'm afraid, so we will have to draw a line there.
John, I think you are in the interesting position of being back
with us next week, aren't you?
John Morgan: I believe I am.
Chairman: You are a glutton for punishment.
Can I say to all of you that this has been a very good session?
We have had to cram an awful lot into a brief session—we
have another one now. Will you remain in communication with us?
If you think of questions that we didn't ask you or things you
wish you'd said, please contact us because we want to make this
short report a rather good one.
John Morgan: Would you like analyses
from our areas?
Chairman: Absolutely, we would love that.
Tell us what the needs really look like in your area.
9 See Ev 107-08. Back
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