Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
1-102)
DAVID
BELL AND
JON COLES
Q1 Chair: I
welcome you both. I thank David because it is the third time that
you have had to mug up on something to give evidence to us. We
are grateful to you for doing that. I hope that the reports that
are coming out reflect a lot of the good work that's going on
in the Department. On the whole, reading the NAO report, I congratulate
the Department, schools and teachers, because there are many signs
of success in encouraging more children to take science GCSEs,
in better grades and in growing the triple science curriculum
in schools. A lot has been achieved. As we pursue the questioning
today, I hope that you will understand that the tough issues that
we want to address are in the context of our recognition that
there has been a lot of improvement in this area for which you
are to be congratulated.
I want to go in on an issue that a number of us talked
about in our pre-meeting, which is the issue of what is on offer
to young people in schools, because clearly what the report tells
us is that the more you get triple science on offer, the more
likely you are to have young people going on to A-level and, therefore,
developing into the scientists and engineers that we need for
the future. You have made good improvement in that you have gone
up from 2003 to 2004 from 30% to 50%, and you will probably meet
your target, and we accept that as also being good. Then comes
the "but". The "but" is that half of local
authorities have fewer than half their schools offering triple
science. How are you going to tackle that over the coming period,
particularly in the context of more devolution and less clout
from you as a Department on what happens both within local authorities
and within schools?
David Bell: Thank
you Madam Chairman, for your welcome. It's always a pleasure
to be in front of the Committee, and I mean that. There are a
couple of ways in to that question, and perhaps I might ask Jon
to add to this. The report, as you rightly point out, highlights
that in the year up until the NAO had the data we had 50% of schools
offering triple science. The data that was just validated last
week suggests that that figure has now gone to 70% for the most
recent academic year. But there's a "but"' from us,
too, which is that that still only represents around 20% of pupils.
Q2 Chair: How
much?
David Bell: Twenty
per cent. of the pupils do triple science, although 70% of the
schools make the offer. That's our "but" on the back
of that, so there's a lot more to be done to encourage more students
to take the offer. I think you're right, however, that there's
a range of things you have to do to ensure that it becomes an
attractive offer. You have to incentivise schools to see the
value of doing triple science. You have to make sure that students
understand the benefits for them in doing triple science, if they're
going to pursue A-level courses in any of the single sciences.
You also have to make science more generally attractive to students.
One of the attractions for individual students in going for triple
science is that they see it as something worth doing, as a good
career option, something that's going to lead to interesting opportunities
in the future. I don't think there's any single factor. While
we've moved forward with more and more schools taking up the opportunity
to offer triple science, we do recognise that there are still
not enough students doing it.
Q3 Chair: I think
the issue is not the "what", but the "how".
Jon Coles: I think
that we would recognise that there are some problems with how
schools are incentivised and rewarded for what they do, and particularly
for which qualifications they offer to children and young people.
We do know, for example, that there are schools that have turned
over their entire science timetable to doing BTECs in science,
rather than doing GCSEs, let alone triple science GCSEs. We think
that is problematic and does not provide a good enough basis for
progression to A-level. Indeed, the evidence on progression from
BTECs into A-level is very clear: almost nobody does make that
progression. One of the things that we need to look at is how
schools are rewarded for what they offer and, in particular, whether
the accountability system, performance tables, Ofsted and so on
should do more to incentivise people to offer qualifications that
have a good basis for progression, rather than ones that offer
a less good basis.
Q4 Chair: We're
moving away from targets. Presumably, if we have you back in
a couple of years' time, you won't even be able to tell us how
many schools offer triple science—or will you? We're moving
away from specific funding, so quite a lot of the incentive structures
that we've had in place are going to disappear. Given the current
climate, how are you going to make sure that the improvement is
continued and that we tackle some of these very tough issues?
Jon Coles: On the
first point, we will still be collecting the data; we will still
know what is happening. That's quite important, because the biggest
way in which, over the coming period, we're going to be incentivising
schools to behave differently is by making much more data and
information available to parents and others, making it much clearer
what schools are offering and how well children are doing--not
just in the headline measures that we've got at the moment, but
in all subjects across the board--so that parents will be able
to see, in a way that they can't at the moment from the performance
tables, which schools are offering triple science, how well children
are doing in triple science and where they are progressing to
post-16—what their destinations are. Making all of that
transparent, we know, does incentivise schools and does change
behaviour.
Q5 Chair: You'll
be publishing comparative tables, will you?
Jon Coles: We will
publish data on performance.
Q6 Chair: My feeling
of the data that was published last week was it's all very well
and good, but somebody's got to make sense of it. Are you going
to be publishing as a Department, or is Ofsted going to be publishing
reports that say, "This is what is happening on take-up of
science GCSEs and A-levels, and particularly triple science, in
our schools - where it's gone up, where it's not gone up, where
it's on offer." Is there going to be somewhere where we
can pick that out? Are you going to do it?
Jon Coles: Yes,
all of that.
Q7 Chair: You
will publish reports, open to the public, saying, "This is
where we are on science." You will publish as a Department?
Jon Coles: We will
publish data on that.
Q8 Chair: Will
you publish reports that allow us to monitor, in a year's time,
what's happening to science take-up?
Jon Coles: I'm
not sure we'll publish reports, but the data will definitely be
put in the public domain.
Q9 Chair: Yes,
but who's going to make sense of that data?
Jon Coles: It will
all be intelligible, transparent and perfectly easy to understand.
Q10 Chair: I don't
think that's the point. The stuff that came out last week on
financial information is perfectly intelligible, but making sense
of a mass of data like that requires NAO interpretation or whatever.
Q11 Stella Creasy:
What is the comparable example? You said that you've used data
before to incentivise changing schools' behaviour. What's the
comparable example where you would say, "This is what we're
aiming to do around science"? Because you're saying it's
going to be up to the parents to say, "Is this school doing
x, y or z?" What's the comparable example?
David Bell: If
you want an example of where we used that in the past, moving
the performance tables at age 16 from five-plus A to C grades
to five-plus A to C grades including English and maths clearly
acted as a very powerful lever to behaviour in schools, because
schools recognised that actually the much more powerful measure
was going to be the English and maths measure, not just the five-plus
A to Cs where you could do without it. We have some evidence
of being able to use the incentives, or performance tables, so
as to change behaviour.
Can I just come back to the Chairman's point on this
specific issue of performance? I don't think it's a like-for-like
comparison. I agree with you about last week's data. In some
ways, while we all tried to do that as well as we could, it felt
a bit like a kind of data dump. There was just so much of it.
That's not quite the same when you're talking about school performance
information, where you do have like-for-like comparisons, structures
and ways of presenting data.
One issue I should perhaps touch on is that the timing
is slightly awkward today because the White Paper on schools reform
will be published tomorrow, so some of the things you might want
to ask us about we can't necessarily comment on today for the
future, but we'll certainly write to you about that. There's
a set of questions for us about how—to pick up Jon's point—you
use the tables, the performance data, to make information available.
If you're publishing information or requiring schools to publish
information in a standardised format, which would include the
data regarding triple science, you will be able to make those
sorts of comparisons, and it will be much easier than just dumping
data out in a rather random way, which I think is perhaps what
happened last week, given the nature of what was being produced.
Q12 Austin Mitchell:
I think it's a difficult task—it's s a bit like turning
around an oil tanker—but on the whole, the report indicates
that things are going reasonably well. I did some research using
the massive sample of one—my grandson, who was brilliant
at maths up to GCSE and enjoyed it. I asked why didn't he go
on to do it at A-level? He gave two reasons that aren't included
in figure 13 on page 26: first, that it became impossibly difficult
and specialised—he thought the A-level course was much tougher
and more difficult than the GCSE—and, secondly, that it
didn't lead anywhere. Those seem powerful reasons to me.
David Bell: The
second explanation I'm slightly surprised about, given that most
of the data we have about destinations for those who study A-level
maths and take it into higher education and beyond suggests that
it is a very good route into a wide range of different careers.
There may be an issue, then, which the report does touch on a
bit, about the quality of advice given to students about how applicable
their knowledge in maths, physics, chemistry and whatever will
be.
Q13 Austin Mitchell:
How about the first reason—that it's intimidatingly tough?
David Bell: There
are two ways of coming at that. Frankly, maths is a harder subject;
that's true. Secondly, then, the question arises whether the
content of the GCSE courses that were being followed was a sufficiently
good preparation for making the jump from GCSE to A-level. There
have been some changes to the content pre-16 to try to ensure
that it is a better preparation, but I don't think you can get
away from the fact that some students, perhaps including your
grandson, do find maths, physics and other subjects quite hard.
Q14 Austin Mitchell:
He decided to do law instead. I just wanted to go to a second
point. We've always been good at pure science in this country,
and pure science is the essence of what's being taught here.
I wonder if we don't need a bigger admixture of technology, which
has always been an area of weakness, ever since the Labour party
set out to mobilise the white heat of technology in 1964. Shouldn't
we be mixing science much more with technology, as a more practical
subject that leads on to jobs and to making a real impact, rather
than just concentrating on the pure science of these three science
subjects?
David Bell: I may
just ask Jon to come in on this. I think there's an important
balance to strike here. It could be argued that some of the moves
to make science more relevant have been at the expense of the
hard content, because there is absolutely no doubt that, by the
time you get to A-level, you need to be focusing on the hard content
of those subjects, particularly if you are seeing the A-level
study as a route into higher education. Some of the criticism
from universities has been that the content is not rigorous enough
to act as a good starting point into university.
Q15 Austin Mitchell:
Perhaps they would say that, wouldn't they?
David Bell: They
are an important constituent, and if they are saying that, I don't
think we can just dismiss it, and I think that's one of the reasons
why there's a concern to improve the rigour of what's being taught.
Technology is a slightly separate issue because there are routes
through qualifications to study technology in a more general sense.
But going back to the point about applicability or the guidance
or advice that students are given, if you are studying any of
those science subjects, or if you are studying maths, there are
lots of ways in which they can be seen to be useful and relevant.
That doesn't need to be at the expense of the rigour of what's
being taught. It just seems to me it's back to the students'
understanding of how what at times can seem very theoretical learning
actually does have very practical consequences in the real world.
Q16 Chair: I just
want to get a yes or no to this before Stephen comes in. At the
moment we have targets. In the new world, which I understand
you're going to publish tomorrow, is there going to be a mechanism
that will ensure that triple science becomes available to 100%
of students in 100% of schools? Is there going to be a mechanism—apart
from publishing information? It's almost a yes or no, because
clearly the mechanism, if there is one, will come tomorrow.
Jon Coles: It probably
can't be answered quite with a yes or no. It depends what you
mean by mechanism really.
Q17 Chair: Have
you got a lever?
Jon Coles: I don't
think we have, but then, to be honest, I don't think we ever have
had a lever in that way, that forces people to offer triple science
in practice.
David Bell: I think
that's right.
Q18 Stephen Barclay:
Mr Bell, you mentioned the forthcoming White Paper. Will it include
the phrase "improve careers education and guidance".
If we look at figure 2 on page 12, that phrase appears in the
paper that was produced in 2004; it appears in the paper in 2006,
in the paper in 2008 and in the paper in 2009 and yet, in 2008,
the Sutton Trust, said in their report, "Poor guidance is
preventing large numbers of able pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds
going on to higher education." You're now running a pilot,
that isn't going to report until March 2011, covering 30 schools.
I'm just trying to understand why it takes the Department seven
years to work out what careers advice should be covering.
David Bell: I think
there's a general question about careers guidance. You'll probably
be aware that the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong
Learning announced the establishment of an all-age careers service
in an announcement at the beginning of November. To be frank,
I think that illustrates -
Q19 Chair: What's
"all age"? From when to when—five to 50?
David Bell: All
ages, Madam Chairman, rather than separating out, as we have previously,
careers guidance for young people as opposed to careers guidance
for adults. I'm long enough in the tooth now to remember various
iterations of the careers service, from the 1990s onward. The
reality is that we've never quite cracked this. The Connexions
service was an attempt to combine targeted advice to young people
in difficulty with an all-age generic careers service. I don't
think that quite happened in the way we wanted it to happen and,
therefore, we're going to have another go at this. I don't think
I can dispute what you've said—that we've tried this in
a number of ways in the past. Within that, STEM careers advice,
if I can put it that way, is a small but important sub-set. We've
tried through a number of pilot programmes to think whether there
may well be specific advice that students can get regarding STEM,
but I think, to be frank—and I suspect this is what underpins
your question—this is a general question regarding the quality
of careers advice, rather than a specific question about STEM.
We hope this time, with the announcement of an all-age careers
service—more details to follow—that we will finally
crack this one, but I accept we've been at this for quite a while.
Q20 Stephen Barclay:
Are the pilots particularly targeted at deprived areas? What
concerned me, looking at the report, were the 29 local authorities
where there are no interventions whatsoever. I think paragraph
15 refers to triple science being less widely available in highly
deprived areas, and I suspect—I don't know what assessment
the Department has done—there's a correlation between that
and those deprived areas also not giving careers information and
guidance to those bright children. Could you at least reassure
us, after seven years, that those pilots are targeted on deprived
areas?
Jon Coles: Yes,
they are, but I should emphasise that that is the last Administration's
policy, so the announcement of the all-age careers service and
the next steps on that will move beyond those pilots. Those pilots
are in a range of areas, but there is some targeting on areas
of deprivation.
Q21 Stephen Barclay:
Are the 30 targeted on deprived, or are they just across the full
spectrum?
Jon Coles: They
cover a range of areas. They are disproportionately in deprived
areas. Again, I must emphasise that that those are the previous
Administration's policy and pilots, and that's not the way we're
now planning to go.
Q22 Chair: What
do they test? What have you got out of that?
Jon Coles: It's
extremely early days, as you know, for those pilots. I do not
know that we have got information out of those pilots.
Q23 Chair: But
you're going to not use it anyway, really.
Jon Coles: That
isn't really the approach any more because, as the Committee will
know, this Government has decided not to pursue the previous Government's
policy on careers education and guidance based on Connexions for
young people, but instead to move to an all-age service, so it's
a very different model of delivering implementation.
Q24 Stephen Barclay:
I guess that brings me on to the forward-looking part, and particularly
what funding is going to happen around careers information and
guidance. This objective of your study in 2004 has been renewed
at pretty much every opportunity. Can you just give us visibility
as to what is happening on funding for careers information and
guidance moving forward, and to what extent that might be squeezed
if head teachers decide that's not an essential compared to other
things within a school budget?
Jon Coles: Consistent
again with this Administration's policy, funding will overwhelmingly
be devolved to schools and it will be for schools to decide what
is the best set of things to do and they will be accountable for
the consequences of that, including in relation to the destinations
of pupils. So that is the model of reform—moving away from
the sense that there are discrete ring-fenced budgets for which
schools are held to account separately on to rather a different
model.
Q25 Stella Creasy:
Do you think that's more or less likely to pick up on the things
that we're talking about? It feels like you have quite a few
different models there for how you might crack this nut of how
you give the careers advice that you want to, which deals with
the point Stephen's raising about how we particularly target some
of those areas. You're contrasting that with perhaps a very different
approach to how funding or advice might be given.
David Bell: If
you left it entirely to devolved funding and said, "That's
it. Get on with it," without having a wide set of transparency
measures, you are in difficulty. In other words, you can devolve
funding, absolutely consistently with what the Administration
wants to do, but alongside that, it's really important to have
the right kind of data out of there. As Jon implied earlier,
that's going to be part of what's coming out over the next few
months—the nature of the data that will be published. You
might come back on that and say, "That's all very interesting
that you publish data. What are your hard levers?" The
reality is we are moving away from those very hard levers being
imposed from the centre, but there are other kinds of levers that
you can put in. "Levers" might not be the right word,
but of course you can look at the nature of the qualifications
on offer—which is obviously something we'll be saying more
about in the next day or so. You can ensure that the league tables
properly reflect the right kind of performance. You can use the
Ofsted mechanism to target in particular areas. There are lots
of ways that you can influence the system to behave in particular
ways. To be very clear, that is quite different from a model
that has lots of hard levers and targets to bring about.
Q26 Mr Bacon:
One more point specifically on careers. You've worked in education
for 25 years or more at every level, from primary school to being
a local authority director, and now your present job. You must
have thought about this issue of careers guidance and why it's
so difficult. There's one obvious answer, which is that the people
who are giving the guidance aren't people who've worked in enough
different areas, and they don't have direct experience of the
law, or running a large factory, or being an accountant or whatever
it is. But, equally, there are careers guidance services that
are more successful, and others that are less successful. In
your view, what is the X-factor that makes for a highly effective
careers service?
David Bell: I would
draw a distinction between what the school offers and then what's
offered from outside. I think you're right to say that in schools
and in careers services generally you probably won't have people
who have the widest range of work experience to be able to properly
advise students, in a very well-informed way.
Q27 Mr Bacon:
So what's the X-factor?
David Bell: In
schools, it is teachers who have gone out of their way to find
out as much as they can about all kinds of opportunities that
are available to young people, and who really have a close relationship
with the students concerned and can properly advise them.
Q28 Mr Bacon:
When you were distinguishing between the inside of the school
and outside, I thought for a minute you meant—but I don't
think you did, on reflection—the schools that bring in people
from outside to inside the school. Is that what you were saying?
David Bell: That
is exactly what the best teachers in schools will do, because
you will not assume that, in providing the most informed advice,
you are the only person who can do it. I should say one really
positive side benefit of attracting people from so many different
walks of life into teaching these days, including lots of people
who've come in from outside through the graduate teacher programme
and so on, is that you have a much better experience in many schools
now of the wider world. You're right: the best teacher, providing
the best advice, will draw upon all the best information. I would
have thought this is also connected to the kind of local employment
partnerships that you have—are you a school that goes out
there and has lots of relationships with local businesses—because
those folks coming in will be able to give students good role
models. I think it's about having as much connection in the school
to the world of work as you can. That's probably, if there is
such a thing as the X-factor in this, the most significant factor.
Q29 Stella Creasy:
That's quite a good model. I'm sure we'd all agree with bringing
people in from outside. What tools will you have to spread that
as a model for careers guidance, given that you've just said that
this is going to be devolved to the schools? You're saying you
won't be able to set a strategy from the centre that says, "This
is the kind of careers guidance that we want to see happening."
That X-factor that you've identified, how are we going to make
sure that that happens under the new model—or is that just
something we'll have to hope the schools do?
David Bell: However
imperfectly this is done at school level, I think the vast majority
of schools really do want to provide the best-informed careers
advice to students. With the funding devolved, it is going to
be part of their responsibility to do so. There will be some
unevenness there, but I think one of the transparency measures
that's going to make a difference is to be harder on destination
outcomes—in other words, providing information to parents
and more generally to say where the students have gone as a result
of what's happened in the school. There are a number of ways
that you do it, but we won't have a single prescribed blueprint
that all 3,500 secondary schools in the country must follow when
it comes to careers advice.
Jon Coles: In this
model of improving the system, the fundamental thing is that schools
learn better from other schools than they necessarily will from
a central direction. One of the things that we will be trying
to do is to identify outstanding schools with very good practices
in a whole range of areas, which will be able to lead professional
development for other schools and teachers, so that, in an area,
you would expect that schools that are struggling with particular
issues will have access to other schools that are tackling the
same issue very effectively, and so peer-to-peer learning will
become much more a part of the system.
Q30 Chair: You'll
do that? DfE will do that?
Stella Creasy: You won't,
will you, because that doesn't answer Stephen's question.
Jon Coles: What
I'm saying is that we will make sure that, nationally, there are
opportunities for schools to learn from other schools and, as
David said, that there are clear incentives for schools to improve
destinations and outcomes for children.
Q31 Chair: What
does that mean, you'll "make sure"? I'm sorry, but
that sounds like gobbledegook to me.
Jon Coles: We have
a whole range of models at the moment—for example, national
leaders of education, who are outstanding heads of outstanding
schools who commit themselves to supporting other schools in their
area through a whole range of different forms of support. It
may be about their own personal support as a head to other heads;
it may be about providing expertise from their maths department
or their careers systems, and so on. In other words, in every
area, you would expect that there are people of that sort—national
leaders of education and similar--who have committed themselves
to supporting other schools to improve.
Q32 Mrs McGuire:
The careers element is important, but I want to reflect on paragraphs
3.18, 3.19 and 3.25. It strikes me as a bit confusing that in
the modern environment, when so much of our life is predicated
on science and technology, we have some major difficulties in
encouraging children to take up science-based subjects. In many
respects, the NAO report identifies that the rot sets in long
before we're at the career choice. Paragraph 3.18 says all the
reasons for "disliking maths at primary school…related
to enjoyment" and "quality of teaching". Paragraph
3.19 says that "Seventy-seven per cent of respondents to
our survey…said that lack of enjoyment and interest was their
main barrier to continuing with science". Then, according
to the OECD average, we are "eight percentage points behind"
other countries on whether or not "pupils 'generally have
fun when learning about science topics'." Do we have a crowd
of boring science and maths teachers out there?
David Bell: You
are into a really interesting cultural question about why these
attitudes prevail so widely, and particularly oddly, I think,
in our country, if you think of the amount of technological development,
the amount of scientific research at the highest end, the calibre
of the universities when it comes to research in the sciences.
It's very interesting that, against that, we have the picture
that you describe. I don't think we've got a generation of boring
science and maths teachers. One of the things we've tried to
do—to pick up the particular points that you have raised—is
to encourage students and children to see science in a more interesting
and enjoyable way. The NAO report talks about 470 initiatives.
It's just worth pointing out that only 30 of them are directly
funded by the Department.
Q33 Chair: We're
going to come to those at the end, because I think we're all a
bit gobsmacked by that figure.
David Bell: It
is important to say that many of those initiatives promoted by
companies -
Q34 Chair: Let's
bring those in at the end.
David Bell: Okay.
I just want to make the point that many of those initiatives are
focused on trying to provide greater enthusiasm or enjoyment.
Jon Coles: Could
I add just one really important point, which isn't made?
Q35 Mrs McGuire:
All your points I'm sure are really important.
Jon Coles: Between
1995 and 2007, where the NAO correctly reports a decline in positive
effect, TIMSS found an extremely big increase in English performance
in science and maths. England was one of the most improved areas.
That is actually consistent with what they found in other countries—there
wasn't in fact a positive correlation between people feeling good
at science and people doing well at science. In point of fact,
I think it is more important that we do well at science than that
people feel good about it. I don't mean to say that I don't want
people to feel good about it; of course I do. But our performance
improved, and that is consistent with what has happened in other
countries internationally. The best-performing don't have the
most positive attitude.
Q36 Mrs McGuire:
Could I just stick with this a minute? I think science has always
had a bit of an image problem, certainly physics. Even when I
was at school, really brainy people did physics, the good people
did chemistry and the rest did botany. Biology hadn't been invented
then.
Mr Bacon: Drawing flowers.
Mrs McGuire: Don't even
go there. David went to west of Scotland schools—a few years
after me, I should say—so he might understand. Physics
has always had that image. I should say, just for the record,
that I did do science at school, but I did it alongside other
subjects, arts subjects effectively. I was going into arts.
You were allowed the opportunity to still do science, and you
were encouraged to do science as part of a wider approach to education.
Is there an issue in schools in England about the narrowness
of the curriculum, rather than expansiveness?
Jon Coles: There
probably is an issue about that. In practice, the issue is much
more about people having dropped languages and humanities. There
aren't really schools that have dropped science in any significant
way. As you can see from the exams entry data, it's held pretty
stable. What the exams entry data doesn't include are all the
people doing non-GCSE science courses, which have grown very significantly.
In fact, more people are doing science qualifications. I think
there is an issue about breadth. Again—this isn't quite
prejudging the White Paper because this is an announcement that's
already been made—this concept of the English baccalaureate,
which is to reward breadth in study post-16, is important.
Q37 Austin Mitchell:
Confirming maths is duty and history and English are pure pleasure—
Jon Coles: Maths
is pleasure.
Q38 Austin Mitchell:
I speak from my experience. Figures 14 and 15 show that positive
feelings towards science are declining, despite all this effort.
Why are they declining here and increasing in other countries?
Jon Coles: I don't
think that is the case; that isn't the case.
Q39 Austin Mitchell:
That's what it says.
Jon Coles: The
highest-performing countries in TIMSS are not the ones where people
feel most positive about science. For example, Singapore, which
is extremely high-performing in science, does not have particularly
positive feelings among its pupils about science. The correlation
between achievement and effect is not there.
Q40 Austin Mitchell:
The international average for maths was up in 2007 and down here.
The same is true of positive effect for science: down here and
up or constant elsewhere. What are they doing that we are not?
Jon Coles: Meanwhile,
our performance in TIMSS was the most improved between 1995 and
2007 of every country that took part in TIMSS over that period.
That's actually quite consistent with the international picture,
that higher-performing nations are not the ones with the most
positive attitudes to science.
Q41 Chair: Bluntly,
the international data is all over the place; you can read all
sorts of things into it. But are you saying that we should ignore
the correlation between people liking the subject and doing well
at it?
Jon Coles: I don't
think we should ignore it. I think it's a really important thing
and I think we should investigate it, but I don't think you should
necessarily conclude that a decline in enjoyment matched with
a rise in achievement is a major problem. Engaging, informative
science teaching is hugely important. Sometimes engaging well
with the difficult cognitive content of science, which challenges
students, makes their feelings about it go down, despite the great
benefits that they may be getting from it.
Amyas Morse: I
just want to understand the future of how the Department's going
to position itself. If there's going to be a lot of public information,
apart from parents looking at it, I guess there are going to be
think-tanks and other people putting it together and drawing conclusions
about the education population. Is the Department going to take
part in that debate or give its own comments? How are you going
to interact? If all that information's out there, people are
going to use it, draw conclusions and comment on your environment.
Are you going to engage in that debate or not?
David Bell: I would
have thought there would be no change. Ministers always engage.
I think Ministers would suggest that they try to lead debate
in these subjects. There's a sharp distinction to be drawn between
engaging and leading a debate, and then deciding, on the other
hand, to directly intervene and try to use directive measures
or targets to bring about change. Ministers will continue to
engage in the debate, but the tools that they will use are going
to be very different from what was the case.
Q42 Chair: What
are they going to be, or is it too early to ask you? It does
worry me a little, this sort of thing of, sticking to this one.
We know that triple science is important. We know you've done
well, but we know that half of schools don't have it and half
of LEAs don't do enough of it. You've going to shove out the
information that tells us next year maybe we've done a little
bit better but, in some of the more deprived LEAs, as Stephen
said, it's still very, very poor. What's going to happen? You're
just assuming that the pressure by the publication of data will
be sufficient?
Jon Coles: In practice
Ministers will, as they always have, want to lead that debate
and give very clear messages about that.
Q43 Chair: That
doesn't answer the question. We can all natter; we can pronounce
until the cows come home.
Jon Coles: As David
has just said, this latest data that we've just got shows that
the proportion of schools has gone up to 70%. Now, if that started
to stall, I'm sure that Ministers would want to take steps. I
think it probably is too early to know exactly how they would
respond to that.
Q44 Chair: The
policy intent would be not to respond beyond publishing the data.
David Bell: I don't
think you can say that, because I think it will always be open
to Government to determine where it does feel national intervention
is appropriate. For example, the Government has made it very
clear that there will continue to be very significant intervention
in the lowest-performing schools, and in some ways, it's going
to get tougher for those schools. You do have to make some judgments
centrally—nationally—about where you are going to
intervene. The contrast is not intervening on every aspect of
the education system. That's the contrast between what this Government's
trying to do and the previous Administration's approach.
Q45 Chris Heaton-Harris:
I'm slightly concerned with what Mr Coles said about the
importance the Department's putting on enjoying a subject. I
studied chemistry and zoology at A-level. I very much enjoyed
studying them. They were great fun. I had disastrous results
in them because I was enjoying them too much. At the end of the
day, we want to get people with good results out of this system.
I've read the report and I've tried to do some research and I
keep coming back in my mind to the fact that, a while back, the
Department on a political initiative started this specialist schools
programme. I'm just wondering whether, if you go to a specialist
science school, you are more likely to take triple science. If
you go to a specialist arts school or sports school, are you less
likely? Have we, just by putting the word in the title, taken
away the incentive for people to do triple science?
David Bell: For
the avoidance of doubt, Mr Heaton-Harris, these are not the Gradgrind
brothers you've got in front of you. We do think it matters that
students enjoy what they're doing. I think Jon was just making
the very obvious point that that doesn't necessarily mean that
results -
Q46 Chris Heaton-Harris:
I just wanted to underline that.
David Bell: It's
an important point. On the specialist schools, there are about
670 schools that broadly are in the programme that have science,
maths, computers, engineering and so on. The NAO report points
out that the results in those schools have been better, and I
don't think that should come as a great surprise, because students
are obviously, within the curriculum, more likely to be directed
to following triple science courses. I think that has been an
important initiative. Even though the discrete funding for that
will go next year, I would be very, very surprised if many of
those schools dropped the emphasis that they've given to science,
maths, computer sciences and whatever.
Q47 Chris Heaton-Harris:
I'm not so worried, to be quite honest, about looking forward.
I'm just thinking, are we, just by sticking "science"
in the title of the school that a pupil is choosing to go to,
subconsciously saying to them, "You really should be doing
triple science because you're going to a science school,"
and does that actually happen? Are there stats to back that up?
Are we saying that if you're going to an arts school or a sports
school, you're already choosing to go down that particular line,
so that you're less likely to take triple science in those schools?
Jon Coles: If you
looked at the data you would definitely find that there's a big
difference between specialist schools in the extent to which they
offer courses in their specialism. The extent to which that's
causation is much harder to determine, because obviously schools
that have a strength in languages would tend to choose to be a
language college and schools that have a strength in science would
tend to choose to be science colleges, so I don't think we can
say for sure that there's causation. That is part of the reason
why this set of Ministers have said, "We're not going to
run the specialist schools programme in the way that it has been
run in the past. Schools may wish to continue to be designated,
but we won't have a designation and re-designation process run
centrally."
The point about enjoyment that I wanted to make was
not that enjoyment doesn't matter. Of course enjoyment does matter
greatly, but it was really on the point that you made at the end:
that achievement and enjoyment matter. What we need is great
teaching that engages people with the difficult concepts, enables
them to understand them and achieve so that people are enjoying
it because they're succeeding, not enjoying it because they're
avoiding engaging with the difficult concepts.
Chris Heaton-Harris: I
had great teachers; it was just me.
Q48 Ian Swales:
Clearly we've got a shortage of science and maths teachers. By
the way, I should say I did a chemical engineering degree and
didn't enjoy it at all.
Chair: I gave up biology
because I hated the biology teacher. There you are.
Ian Swales: Clearly there's
a shortage of science and maths teachers. One initiative that's
mentioned in the report on pages 25 and 26 is the "Transition
to Teaching" programme, which was aimed at bringing people
in with relevant degrees who've perhaps gone off and done other
things. Based on the statistics in paragraph 3.16, it looks like
it's been a failure: against an investment of £5 million,
in the first year of the programme only four teachers were trained
through this route. Nationally, that's nothing. What's gone
wrong with that programme and how could it be improved, from the
point of view both of increasing the supply of teachers and of
bringing in careers advice via a subtly different route, because
people will have done other careers? How can we make that programme
more successful?
David Bell: This
is not a programme of initial teacher education. This is a programme
to encourage people to think about the possibilities of coming
in and then following a course of initial teacher training. To
that extent, if you look at the rest of paragraph 3.16, you get
a better explanation. You've got some who are now into initial
teacher training, and then you've got 174 further students who
are going to secure a place on an initial teacher training course.
Then you've got others, the 39 who have deferred entry. To that
extent, it's not just the four who happen to be trained as of
now. The point was to encourage people to think about the programme
and then get them into an initial teacher training course. Having
said that, I think it would be the case--we shouldn't really be
too surprised about it--that some people might do a "Transition
to Teaching" course and think, "You know, this isn't
really for me." This has been a fairly modest programme,
but it has encouraged people to think about teaching as a career
option, and I think the data is a bit better than that rather
stark headline of four.
Q49 Ian Swales:
What do you plan to do to attract people who've already done other
careers into teaching? What more can you do and what are you
planning to do?
Jon Coles: In a
way, the bigger programme that's been running is the graduate
teacher programme, which has been designed for graduates to come
and train on the job, and particularly targeted at people who
are career changers. Career changers now are approaching half
of people starting initial teacher training, so the balance here
has shifted very much over the last decade from people who've
just come straight from a first degree to drawing in a much wider
range of people, so it's now very significant. Not all of those
are on the graduate teacher programme by any means. The graduate
teacher programme is about 20% of all entrants to initial teacher
training. The aim is to expand that quite significantly, because
we think that is a programme that's particularly attractive to
career changers, who often don't feel they want to start at the
bottom, as it were, and want to feel they're still working and
training on the job. That's the model.
Q50 Ian Swales:
What are you actually going to do to expand that?
Jon Coles: There
are three or four things that I think we can do quite quickly.
The first is we're working with Teach First to provide a Teach
First similar route, which will be attractive to very high-achieving
graduates who've done a few years somewhere else and then come
into initial training. The second is about making it very much
easier for people to get on to that route. At the moment, unlike
the PGCE route, where everybody goes through a central registry
as their way into teaching, it's quite fragmented. We're going
to produce, we think, a single front end that people can go through
and it will be much easier to get places. We're going to try
to cut away some of the difficulties for schools in GTP places
and make that simpler for them, which should expand the supply,
and we're going to go out and market this new route in a slightly
different way.
Q51 Chair: Can
I just say that the figures on teachers are very depressing?
If you look at figure 9 on page 23, against your target you're
going in the wrong direction. If you look at figure 12, which
is graduate entrants into ITT, while accepting that there are
fewer of those coming along, in both physics and chemistry you're
not getting enough people with either a physics or chemistry specialism
to get anywhere near your target. You should be above target
to achieve the target over time, so these look bad. The question
is: what on earth are you going to do about that, particularly
when you've stopped collecting the data?
Jon Coles: I don't
think we have stopped collecting the data.
Q52 Chair: It
says somewhere there's no robust data since 2007—page 24,
paragraph 3.13.
Jon Coles: We haven't
published the data, but TDA still does have information about -
Q53 Chair: No
robust data.
Jon Coles: Well
it hasn't been published, that's true.
Q54 Chair: What
does that mean?
Mr Bacon: It says it's
not available, doesn't it?
Jon Coles: TDA
keep an internal figure.
Q55 Mr Bacon: They
didn't tell the NAO about it, you mean. The NAO has written here,
in 3.13, "Robust trend data is not available for years later
than 2007".
David Bell: That's
because the school workforce survey isn't done in that detailed
way annually. As the report goes on to say, we'll get the full
version of the school workforce survey in 2011, and it will give
us that kind of data that we need.
Jon Coles: We have
seen increases in science take-up, and this last year we've done--
Q56 Chair: Look
at figure 9 and then figure 12 for me.
Jon Coles: On figure
12, which is recruitment into initial teacher training, we have
had increases in chemistry and physics.
Q57 Chair: I'm
sorry to interrupt you but, if you look at figure 12, chemistry,
you're at about 18% doing chemistry. You want 31% of chemistry
teachers to have a chemistry specialisation. For physics, you're
at 11%, and you want 25%. If you want 25%, you ought to be at
30% or 40% in physics and the same, if not more, in chemistry.
The data demonstrates you're going in the wrong direction rather
than the right direction.
Jon Coles: Can
we start at the other end then? Clearly, we want to do much better
than this. What has happened over the last decade is that we
have succeeded in getting more chemists and physicists into teacher
training, but clearly it's not enough and I don't think any of
us would think it was.
Q58 Chair: It's
not just that it's not enough; it's that it's moving in the wrong
direction and, therefore, what are you doing about it? We all
know it's not enough. We would want 100% of people teaching chemistry
to have a chemistry specialism, so it's not enough, but all the
data here demonstrate it's going downwards, not upwards.
Jon Coles: Sorry,
I must correct that; it isn't going downwards. The proportion
coming into teacher training is going up, not down, and the graph
in figure 12 does illustrate that.
Q59 Mr Bacon:
Figure 9 says the opposite, doesn't it?
Jon Coles: Sorry,
we're talking about two different things.
Q60 Chair: Two
figures. I've got figure 9 and then figure 12.
Jon Coles: All
I would say on figure 12 is just simply that more people are coming
in to do physics now than was the case in the last however many
years. You can see back in 2002-03, we were at 8% and now we're
at 11%. All I'm saying is, while nobody suggests that's as much
as we would want to be doing, by any means, it is better than
it was. The big things that we are doing at the moment are obviously
marketing to those people, providing training bursaries and golden
hellos, so providing serious incentives to people to train and
come into the profession.
Q61 Chair: Will
you keep that on in this CSR or will that be cut?
Jon Coles: I'm
sure that we will, over this CSR period, want to have incentives
for physics and maths.
Q62 Chair: You
will keep existing incentives to encourage teachers to come into
science there?
Jon Coles: We must,
in the light of the Browne review of HE and the Government's response
to that, change the way that we do incentives. The underpinning
finances of higher education will change so much, that we are
going to have to have a different approach to incentives. It
will change, but we will still want to incentivise for physics
and maths.
Q63 Stephen Barclay:
Just on that specifically, the Times Education Supplement
was reporting in the summer that the bursaries for postgraduate
certificates in education, the golden hellos, were under review.
I think it flows from the Chair's question: can you give the
Committee reassurance today that those golden hellos are going
to continue at the current rates?
Jon Coles: No,
I can't. I can say to the Committee that, certainly over the
spending review period, there will be incentives for people to
train in physics and maths, no question about that. As to their
current level or to the form that that takes, decisions haven't
yet been taken on that and that is simply a consequence of the
fact that the review of student finance in higher education overall
means that we are having to rethink the way we support students
through teacher training.
Q64 Stephen Barclay:
You must appreciate that risks making a mockery of your own targets,
because paragraph 10 says, in what must be a fairly obvious statement,
"Teaching is of better quality where teachers hold qualifications
in the subjects they teach." It acknowledges that, for physics
and maths, you will not reach your target. It doesn't actually
give a revised date as to when you may reach your target or any
interim milestones to give a sense of the where the direction
of travel is on that. Engineering and maths degrees tend to have
a good commercial value, student fees are going to go up and at
the same time, you can't even guarantee that the current level
of golden hellos are going to be given to those entering the profession.
Jon Coles: I can't,
simply because that's where we are in the policy process. What
I can say for sure is that of course we understand that providing
financial support to those people is a very important part of
continuing to attract them into the profession. Of course we'll
want to make it more attractive, not less attractive, to people
coming in. I'm sure that we will, though, make changes to the
way in which that's done and to the nature of incentives, which
I think is the right thing to do given that the whole of student
finance will be changing.
Q65 Stephen Barclay: Related
to that, we had an interesting hearing on health inequalities,
which found that there were fewer GPs in the areas with the worst
health. You may expect the opposite—that the areas with
the worst health would have more GPs—but GPs not surprisingly
want to live in nice areas, and so there tended to be more GPs
in the nice areas where the health was better, and fewer GPs in
the deprived areas. What assessment has the Department made as
to the level of teachers with subject qualifications in these
areas—for example, maths teachers with maths qualifications—in
the most deprived areas, and to what extent will you ensure that
the resources are targeted to facilitating that looking forward?
Jon Coles: All
my experience tells me that that is the case—that there
is more of a problem in more deprived schools. There are two
major things that we're doing about that. One is very direct,
which is Teach First, which is designed to get some of the very
best graduates, particularly in shortage subjects, to train as
teachers and to work in the most deprived schools. That's grown
quite substantially over recent years. We're going to double
it over the next few years.
Q66 Stephen Barclay:
How many teachers will that be?
Jon Coles: At the
moment it has about 560 teachers in a full year. We're going
to double that over this period.
Q67 Chair: How
many of those are science teachers?
Jon Coles: Sorry,
I don't know off the top of my head. We'll have to write to you
on that.
David Bell: We'll
send you with a note with a breakdown of the subjects.
Q68 Stephen Barclay:
We're perhaps going from 150 maths teachers to 300, so it's pretty
small beer really, isn't it?
Jon Coles: I think
it's significant that they are being put in the most challenging
deprived schools in the country. These are very good graduates
in their subjects being put into some of the most challenging
schools. The second thing, just to mention it, is the pupil premium,
which will mean that there is more money following deprived children
into school and, therefore, giving those schools more capacity
to use the flexibilities they have in pay and in other ways to
attract in teachers.
Amyas Morse: Perhaps
I could help a little bit. We have some information on this subject.
We think that you have on Teach First trainees, at the start
of ITT year, as a percentage of the total, the ones doing science-related
subjects seem to be about 38%.
Jon Coles: That
would sound right.
Q69 Chair: That's
maths and science?
David Bell: That's
maths and science, is it?
Jon Coles: Yes.
Angela Hands: Yes,
that's from the TDA.
Jon Coles: 38%
of 560 would be more than 200.
Angela Hands: It's
around 38%.
Q70 Mrs McGuire:
You must be a maths graduate.
Jon Coles: Well,
I am a maths graduate, yes: 38% is just over 200.
Q71 Stephen Barclay:
The regional centres, which are there to raise standards, are
a good idea. How many teachers go through the nine regional centres
a year? Could you just take us through the funding of that?
Is the funding coming from the schools themselves to pay for their
places, and will that be under pressure?
Jon Coles: On the
numbers, I'm not sure if I know the numbers.
David Bell: We'll
get that for you.
Jon Coles: Funding
is at the moment mixed between some central funding and some school
funding.
Q72 Chair: Write
to us on the numbers, will you, please?
Jon Coles: We will
do, yes.
Q73 Austin Mitchell:
I want to commend Teach First. Now it's coming to Grimsby, it's
a marvellous institution. I wanted to ask about school laboratories,
because a lot depends on their quality. You set a target in 2004,
I think it was, of making them excellent by 2010. It seems daft
that you're not monitoring performance on that target. It just
seems like another of the crazy targets we sprayed all over the
place. Why aren't you monitoring performance? Secondly, the Royal
Society of Chemistry said in 2006 that it didn't think you'd achieve
that excellent target until 2020.
David Bell: There's
a bit of a story to tell about this one. You're right there was
a target set in 2004 in the science and innovation investment
framework. There was then a promise made during the 2005 General
Election by the then Prime Minister that £75,000 per school
would be provided for laboratories to bring about this improvement.
It was also made clear that most of this money would come from
the then DTI's Office of Science and Technology. It transpired
after the election that most of that money had already been allocated,
and there was no money for the school laboratories. Frankly,
therefore, it was an undeliverable commitment made, because the
assumption in 2004 was that there would be money to make it happen.
There was no money that made it happen. Looking back on this,
having had to explore where this all came from, I think we should
probably just be clearer that actually that target was therefore
not deliverable, because the money wasn't there to do it.
Q74 Austin Mitchell:
Which is a shame. Is there nothing you can do about it?
David Bell: Then
you're into the wider question of what you do about laboratories.
One of the reasons why it was concluded that we should be a bit
more relaxed about not having this money targeted on laboratories
was that there was then going to be the BSF programme, which over
a great number of years was going to refurbish or rebuild all
secondary schools and, as part of that, the laboratories would
be refurbished. Now of course that's not going to be the case,
because obviously there's a new approach to capital to follow.
At the moment we do not have a specific target and I can't see
us having a specific target.
Q75 Chair: Do
you have any money? Even if you don't have a target, is there
any money going to be available?
David Bell: To
be absolutely clear about this, there is not going to be the money
that I suppose was anticipated in 2004. It was all very well
anticipating it, but the money was never available at all anyway
to do it. There will be, as part of the general approach to capital—the
capital review team will report on this, I'm sure—they will
have to establish criteria for how you would allocate what capital
money there is. I doubt there'll be laboratories money.
Austin Mitchell: I thought
that was a good question. Now I'm sorry I asked it.
Q76 Mr Bacon:
I want to pursue this. I'm shocked that a Prime Minister, during
a general election should make a promise that should turn out
to be undeliverable. It really is very shocking. What is the
world coming to? In paragraph 3.10 on page 23, it says that, even
where money was spent—this was the Royal Society of Chemistry
survey—"28% of new or refurbished laboratories were
not of an excellent or good standard". It may be the reason
is there was so little money that the refurbishment was very basic—a
bit of Dulux and some new linoleum or something. But that's more
than a quarter that turned out, even after they had spent money
on them, not to be really up to the mark. Why is that?
David Bell: I don't
know the answer to that. I don't know if Jon knows. I can find
out for you. The only explanation I might have or I could speculate
is that they had a particularly high standard in mind in relation
to what they thought constituted good or excellent facilities.
I genuinely don't know, but I can find out for you.
Q77 Chair: I think
we need a note on that.
Jon Coles: I don't
know the definitive answer so we will write, but I think there
will be cases, for example, where a school has had an unexpected
expansion in numbers and has had to do something on a temporary
basis. There will be those sorts of situations, as well as possibly
the way that the criteria are defined.
Q78 Ian Swales: Just
on the same topic, there's a sentence in the report at 3.9 that
says that "In 2005, Ofsted confirmed that science accommodation
was either unsafe or unsatisfactory in around a quarter of secondary
schools." Have you dealt with the unsafe issue, to your
knowledge?
David Bell: Let's
be very clear. The responsibility for securing safe science facilities,
as with all other facilities in a school, rests with the head
teacher and the governing body. It is not the job of central
Government to micro-manage the health and safety arrangements
in each individual school in the country.
Q79 Ian Swales: It's
to do with the funding allocation. Has the funding allocation
dealt with that problem, as far as you know?
Jon Coles: On funding,
of course, what schools should do in any issue of basic health
and safety is use their devolved capital funding, and there has
been vastly more devolved capital funding over the last few years
than has ever been the case in the education system before. Schools
have had resources for dealing with those sorts of issues, and
it shouldn't have required a central Government intervention.
Q80 Ian Swales:
That was 2005. Are you sensing what the figures will be now for
"unsafe" and "unsatisfactory" in secondary
schools? A quarter is a heck of a lot of schools.
David Bell: Ofsted
are due to publish their next science review report in 2011.
I'm not sure if it covers the accommodation. I suspect it probably
will, because these subject reports tend to look at facilities,
as well as teaching and learning, but I don't know what Ofsted
are going to say in 2011.
Q81 Stephen Barclay:
Flowing from Ian's point, paragraph 8 says, "The Department
has not collected routine data to measure progress against"
your target "in 2004 to bring all school laboratories up
to a satisfactory standard." That goes to the heart of Ian's
point, which is you don't have visibility as to how many schools
have unsafe labs. You had a target in 2004, but you've not been
collecting data against your own target.
David Bell: I have
to say that at the same time as we were being set targets of this
sort, there was also a very strong political push to reduce bureaucracy
and this is not the only occasion when I've been in front of this
Committee when the same point has been raised. On the one hand,
we are perhaps criticised for not having data, yet on the other
hand, there was a very clear political imperative to reduce bureaucracy
and not collect the kind of data that was considered to be intrusive.
Q82 Chair:>
In the new world, following on from this magical White Paper
that's arriving tomorrow, will there be data that will enable
somebody out there—DfE, Ofsted or whoever—to judge
whether or not lab facilities are safe?
David Bell: I don't
think there will be, no.
Q83 Chair: So
what are you dependent on?
David Bell: If
I could push back on this, is it our responsibility sitting in
the centre of government to know in detail the state of the science
facilities? Why wouldn't we ask the same question about the state
of the language laboratory facilities or library facilities?
Q84 Chair: If
there's an unsafe situation and a child gets hurt, are you saying
that the chair of the governing body and the head teacher are
responsible, and yet they have no money to do it?
David Bell: One
can never know the particular circumstances, but it's very clear,
under health and safety legislation that the responsibility for
ensuring a safe working environment for adults and children rests
with the people running the school.
Q85 Chair: If
you say that, to be fair, then I'm doubly shocked that in 2004
we found a quarter weren't.
Ian Swales: To be fair,
it does say "unsafe or unsatisfactory".
Chair:That's a shocking
figure. It's all very well to say, "The buck doesn't stop
with me; it stops down the line." But I cannot believe,
from what you've told us this morning, that that figure has shifted
a lot since 2004 and therefore, there is a worrying issue out
there.
Ian Swales: The point
is it must have an impact on the very thing we're talking about,
if a quarter of children are having that experience.
David Bell: In
some ways, the report highlights that attitudes to science are
partly covered by the accommodation for the children. I absolutely
accept that but, to be very clear, we're moving away from a world
where we sought, if we ever were able to do it, to try to micro-manage
this kind of detail right down to the individual school level.
When it comes to the quality of accommodation and its safety,
that is the point of devolved management.
Q86 Ian Swales:
Isn't this a macro issue? The data might be micro, but we're
talking about a macro issue here, aren't we?
David Bell: I think
there is an important issue about what you do need to know and
what you don't need to know. I'm sure one of the reasons the
NAO undertook this survey was not just that it happened to be
an interesting educational issue, although it is, but that these
subjects are of important strategic significance to the country,
so we need to know about that. The danger is that we then think
the answer to everything we're doing is to collect endless reams
of data or to have 101 interventions and I'm sure, Madam Chairman,
you haven't yet got to the initiatives point.
Q87 Chair: We
are going to come to that. I would just make two points. One
is that there's a difference between 'intervention' and 'data'.
I thought the whole thrust of policy was to provide the data
that enables then judgments to be made, be it by parents, be it
by local education authorities, be it by Ofsted or indeed be it
by the Department. In an area of strategic importance, because
we care about science teaching and we know labs count, if we know
that up to a quarter are unsafe or unsatisfactory, it is odd that
you're not collecting the data.
David Bell: I do
not want to promise something that I do not think that our Ministers
are inclined to deliver. My sense is—and it's very clear—they
want to put out a lot of data about performance in schools, but
I cannot sit here and say, "And, yes, added to that list
of performance data will be—
Q88 Chair: Finally,
I want to get to initiatives. Will you give us data on teachers
who have a science qualification?
Jon Coles: Yes.
David Bell: We
will.
Q89 Chair: Moving
to these wonderful initiatives, which is the final area of questioning.
I didn't believe the figure of 478. I'm told it's yours.
David Bell: Yes,
but I think, for the sake of clarity, around 30 of those are nationally
funded by the Department.
Q90 Chair: I'm
told the figure 478 comes out of your -
David Bell: That's
fine, because the figure is a collation of all the initiatives
undertaken by very many partners, which we would not necessarily
be funding or necessarily value.
Q91 Chair: But
478?
David Bell: Lots
of people want to be involved in this. There is a serious point
behind this and, again, this is perhaps reflected in where we've
been and where we might be in the future—and I think this
morning's session has demonstrated that—which is that even
though we might agree that we want to attack this problem across
many different fronts, and we do, there is a question about whether
having 30, never mind 470, nationally funded initiatives is the
right way to do it.
Chair: It's completely
potty.
David Bell: Let's
be very clear about this, Madam Chair. This was the policy of
an administration--
Q92 Mr Bacon:
What you're saying is Ministers have breakfast, come into the
Department with a good idea, then you have to try to implement
it.
David Bell: You're
putting words in my mouth. There is a serious point about at
what point do the number of initiatives or interventions just
create a fog.
Q93 Chair: Were
these all funded? Did all these 478 things have money behind
them?
David Bell: No,
for the avoidance of doubt, 30 of them were directly funded and
evaluated by the Department. A range of other initiatives were
encompassed under our STEM governance programme, which involved
lots of people from industry, from the science community, from
all those other places, who frankly wanted to be involved and
spend their money—and that's great.
Q94 Chair: Are
you going to carry on spending money on this in the future?
David Bell: I think
the answer to that is probably not, because we won't have the
money to spend on that wide range of initiatives. Secondly, and
more importantly, the Administration is very clear that this is
not the way to do it, by having far too many nationally driven
initiatives so it's both funding than quality.
Q95 Chair: We
can all accept we think it's potty to have 478 initiatives. However,
if you look at figure 30 on page 43, it shows that, if you
spend money encouraging people to take up science, it works.
David Bell: That
is the point, isn't it? We shouldn't just dismiss initiatives
for the sake of dismissing initiatives. What we need to be clear
about is where some kind of targeted support is going to make
a difference. For example, as we were saying in the conversation
with Mr Barclay, there is an important role for incentives to
entry to the profession. You might say that's an initiative;
it's an initiative that's outside the individual school. I think
we would say that that has been of value. There may be other
initiatives, and our evaluation will tell us which initiatives
are better than others.
Q96 Stephen Barclay:
Could I just ask what was the total? You mentioned the 30 initiatives
from central Government, but what was the quantum of that as a
whole?
Jon Coles: I think
the report includes that, doesn't it? We were spending around
£40 million or so out of a total of about £100 million
being spent across government on STEM.
David Bell: The
totals, I can give you an exact figure on this. On STEM programme
spend, all the spending that was outside individual schools spending
for 2010-11, the year we're in, is £50,124,000.
Q97 Stephen Barclay:
So you're spending over £50 million and, yet, some of
our most deprived schools - in these 29 areas - at least
a quarter of the schools (in figure 33) - were not having any
initiatives or interventions at all.
David Bell: In
relation to any kind of impact of an initiative, in some ways,
as Jon said earlier, there will be, for example through the national
science centres, connections into individual schools. It would
be the case that not every school in the country would necessarily
benefit from one of the initiatives. I think that would be true.
Q98 Stephen Barclay:
In terms of the 2014 target you've got for all pupils to have
access to triple science, are we on track? At the moment I think
it's just over 50%, so what interim measures are there between
now and 2014?
Jon Coles: The
latest data we've just got is that the answer to that is now 70%
for this year, so that has moved forward again very strongly since
this report was finalised. Again, the trajectory for that is
very, very strong and we are ahead of the trajectory that we thought
we would be on at this point, on the way to 2014. That is very
positive. I think, with these initiatives and programmes, we
have some which are really strongly evaluated and which are very
successful. For example, the further maths support programme
is a programme which has had a very significant impact on the
uptake of further maths, which was on the point of dying out and
is now one of the fastest-growing A-levels. I think what we will
do, as your questioning implies, is to be more strategic and more
targeted, more focused on which of these really do work, and have
a small and limited number of those and make sure that they're
directed at the places that have the greatest need.
Q99 Mr Bacon:
This is a much more generic and general question, Mr Bell. Last
week I met Sir Ken Robinson, who came to speak in Norwich. The
first sentence of this report says, "A strong supply of people
with science, technology, engineering and maths skills is important
to promote innovation." Sir Ken would say—he's been
saying for some years; he's written several books about it—that
the central problem is that our education system systematically
destroys creativity, even though innovation of course depends
on creativity. He goes on to say that every education system
in the world puts maths and physics at the top, the other sciences
underneath, and then humanities and then the arts. Even within
the arts, there's a hierarchy with music and art at the top and
things like drama lower and dance at the bottom. He then gave
an example of Gillian Lynne, who was taken to a doctor when she
was quite young because she was underperforming at school, fidgeted
the whole time and couldn't focus. The doctor spent some time
with her and then talked to her mother outside and, as he left
the room, turned the radio on and asked Gillian Lynne's mother
to watch her. She couldn't keep still; she started moving to
the music. He pointed out that this mother's daughter, Gillian
Lynne, was a dancer. Instead of giving her drugs, he said, "You
should take her to a dance school." There are certain people,
he said, who can only function and think properly when they're
moving. This is, I know, at the risk of being thought some veggie
dangerous pinko—and he does live in California now—but
what he's basically saying is that the way in which we privilege
certain disciplines, like maths, science and physics at the top,
leaves things like dance right at the bottom. Why don't we, he
says, teach dance every day just in the same way that we teach
literacy and numeracy every day? He's not saying it's not important;
in fact, I'm sure he would say it is important. To give that
extreme example, he said there are people like Gillian Lynne who
can't think unless they are moving.
The thing that's interesting about this, which is
why I think he's potentially on to something, is innovation is
at the heart of all this. It's in the first sentence of this
report, and yet our system is systematically destroying it. He
gives another example. He has methods of measuring creativity.
He measures it among threetofiveyearolds
and he measures it among 18-year-olds and then among adults.
He shows that the creativity levels that are achieved by threetofiveyearolds
are at what for adults would be regarded as genius level. What
he's basically saying is that most of us are innately creative,
but our education system manages to destroy it. Discuss.
Jon Coles: I think
the answer to the question as to why we teach maths and English
every day but not dance is that it is extremely difficult to function
in society without decent literacy and numeracy, and it is perfectly
possible to function in society with two left feet.
Q100 Mr Bacon:
Not if you're Gillian Lynne. By the way, I forgot to finish.
The other point was that having not been pumped full of drugs
but told she must be taken to a dance school, she became one of
the world's most successful ballerinas. She became the choreographer
of Cats and became a world-renowned figure in her field.
Jon Coles: You
could argue, therefore, that she is a success story.
Q101 Mr Bacon:
And created a lot of economic value, by the way.
Jon Coles: Taking
a success story and then saying that that is an example of the
system failing her I don't think works as an argument. That's
an example of the system working rather well.
Mr Bacon: Are you talking
about the health system or the education system? It was the doctor
who identified the problem, not the school.
Mrs McGuire: It is an
argument for childcentred learning.
Mr Bacon: This is why
I said I was worried about being thought of as some sort of dangerous
pinko.
Mrs McGuire: Dovetailing
into what Jon Coles has said, it's about how an educational system
responds to the individual child, and not just the educational
system, but the individual teacher, the school, the whole infrastructure
around the child. It is very, very difficult to make our system
sensitive in the way that you described, but I think that should
be the aim of an educational system—that it is about the
child first, not about the jobs, not about the schools. It's
about the child and how you support them. This is turning into
a philosophical educational discussion.
Q102 Chair: And
I'm going to stop it.
Jon Coles: I just
want to say one thing, which is that education has a huge power
to inspire, enthuse, create opportunity, break down barriers,
enable people to discover potential and talents that they didn't
know they had, and of course it should do that across the whole
range of valuable human experience and across the whole range
of subjects, but that doesn't make it wrong to say that there
are some things that it is particularly important that everybody
should be able to do. My own view is that it's extremely hard
not to think that the most important thing that everybody must
be able to do to function at all in society is to be literate
and numerate. I don't myself see it as an either/or; I don't
think there's a choice between narrow Gradgrindian filling up
of empty vessels on the one hand and creativity on the other.
On the contrary, I think that creativity comes from an effective
exploration of cognitive development in all its forms and in giving
people the wealth of experience, understanding and education that
draws out of them all that they have and all that they can offer.
Through doing that, through learning across a broad curriculum,
you enable people to succeed. You don't become literate by never
reading a book; you become literate by reading more and more books
of all sorts. I want to just say that great education doesn't
stifle creativity. It should draw it out. Of course that's a
counsel of perfection, isn't it? We don't have perfect schools
in the country. There probably isn't a school in the country
that offers every single child everything that they could possibly
want or need, but that's what we should be trying to create in
this country.
Chair: Thank you very
much indeed. That's a good end
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