WEDNESDAY 15 JANUARY 2003

MRS MARGARET-ANNE BARNETT, MR RON JACOBS AND MR RAY SHOSTAK

  240. Is it the case, from Hertfordshire's point of view, that this was driven by you? You believed that there was a relationship between diversity and raising standards and, as soon as you heard that there was a possibility of making a bid for this money, you saw that this was an opportunity to further the work in the diversity position.
  (Mr Shostak) You will have seen some details about Hertfordshire. Hertfordshire, as an authority, has for some time been looking at how we can focus on, the needs of our users; in my case, children. What we have been looking at is the extent to which, by identifying the needs of the youngsters within the county, what is the best response and provision. My own service, for example, is the first integrated children service which cuts across both the social care and education boundaries. We felt that, if you started from the child, would you end up with a separate education department and a separate social services department? The answer was "no". That direction of travel within the authority is similarly asked in terms of diversity pathfinder. If you start from the child, the needs of a child in the secondary sector, do you believe that any individual school is going to be able to meet those needs and the needs of that community on their own. The answer from the work we have done in post-16, because we have been working on collaborative approaches post-16, is that they cannot. There are actually advantages in stronger collaborative networks of schools for serving individual youngsters and serving communities. So, the answer to the question, "Is it driven by us?" is that there is a set of principles to which we have been working which, as I say, is aligned to the direction of travel. Post the White Paper, the interest in specialist schools grew. First of all it was going to be 40-50% of secondary schools that were going to have the opportunity for specialism and now it is a completely different climate. We had an existing policy which we put in place in 1998 of supporting, in partnership our schools, moving towards specialism and we felt that we needed to look again at all of that. As Mr Jacobs indicated, subsequently that has developed to where, very recently, it looks as if all schools will be able to have that opportunity. That is where we start in terms of the diversity. Part of the motivation for Hertfordshire to become involved in the diversity pathfinder was aspects of the chaos that was beginning to develop because of the various interests of individual schools in terms of looking at the additional resource and the additional opportunity that was available for them through the new opportunity of expansion.

  241. In some of the pathfinder projects, like with the Hertfordshire one for example, there is a broad brush approach across the LEA whereas with some of the other ones, like Birmingham, it is more cluster-specific. In the more cluster specific pathfinder areas, how is the impact and the evaluation on neighbouring schools being carried out and are there any early conclusions to the schools outside the cluster areas?
  (Mrs Barnett) It is not part of our current evaluation to look at the impact of the Oaks Academy on neighbouring schools in Birmingham. However, the project was established through Tim Brighouse's work and it was really his idea and I believe that the Oaks Academy was not established in isolation of its surrounding schools. It was part of a look at how best to develop a system of education in that part of Birmingham that would be congruent and coherent. So, I guess the answer to your question is, no, we are not evaluating it specifically but we do not believe that there will be negative impacts and, in particular, I did visit the Oaks Academy in late December and talked to the head teachers and to their project co-ordinator about this very point and the Oaks Academy, although it is a very close collaborative exercise, if you like, as a project, does work with its neighbouring secondary school, so it does have those links even though those secondary schools are not tightly involved in the project.

  242. Do you think that it ought to include the impact on neighbouring schools? Do you think that ought to be included in the evaluation to make it as objective as possible?
  (Mrs Barnett) Yes. I think you have raised an interesting point and I think it is something that is worth us looking at.

  243. I think we have already hit upon the fact that, in the diversity projects, there seems to be a more enhanced role for co-ordination by the local education authorities in terms of trying to steer schools towards a variety of specialisms that all balance up within the LEA. How important is that development in terms of increasing the effectiveness of specialist schools on LEA areas? Is it a force for good or is a force for central interference basically?
  (Mrs Barnett) I would suggest that it is a force for good. One of the underlying principles of the pathfinder project was that if you are going to increase diversity, if you are going to have more specialist schools and you want them to genuinely benefit as many students as possible, then it seems logical to have a good spread of different specialisms in local areas and to have schools working together in order that every child attending his or her local school can benefit not just from the specialism in their own school and subjects in their own school but the specialist expertise in schools around them. That was the underlying principle and it remains the underlying principle and is one that head teachers were really eager to embrace.

  244. When did it become the underlying principle? It was not from the very beginning.
  (Mrs Barnett) It developed in the course of the project as the LEAs worked with their head teachers. It was something that I had a personal belief about and it was one of the reasons why, as we put together this project, we were keen to involve the LEAs because we felt that they had a role in this.

  245. Ron Jacobs has been around a long time and I have to ask when in terms of the history. One of the interesting parallels with New Zealand when we were there is that, in New Zealand, the real problem is getting systemic change: allowing every school to become independent and do its own thing, a dog eat dog, absolute competition, and they have almost re-invented an education department and massively increased it because of that problem. That is what we found. In the UK, it seems to us, or it certainly seems to me, that we started off specialist schools saying that every school should do its own thing. What I am trying to nail down for the record is, when did we start saying, "Really, we should be looking at how schools work together?" and you could see the change? When we talked to Tim Brighouse in Birmingham, the collegiate system of working together. When, if you like, in the Department did it stop being, "Every school can do its own thing and it adds up to the greatest good for the greatest number" to when someone said, "Come on, this actually does not really deliver systemic change"? When was that, Mr Jacobs?
  (Mr Jacobs) Certainly in terms of an action we took, it started to change in 1999 with the announcement of the Excellence in Cities programme which included, as one of its strands, the specialist schools in those areas. That is where we started to give a role to LEAs, the LEAs in the first of the EiC areas, in talking with the secondary heads in that area about what the most sensible approach was to specialist schools both in terms of which schools would apply for which specialism and at what date they would apply.

  246. Moving to a related issue, the last Ofsted report on specialist schools criticised those specialist schools apart from sports specialist schools for not broadening their community role as widely as they should have done. Are we seeing any evidence within the pathfinder projects that this failing that was occurring previously is being addressed in the new pathfinder areas?
  (Mrs Barnett) Yes, I think we are. The basis for the project was a collaborative approach to diversity, a strategic collaborative approach to diversity, and I think that we are seeing it. For example, in Portsmouth, the head teachers have agreed that they will work together and they will see the child as being at the centre with the schools around the child there to support every individual child. So, in a sense, they are saying that we are going to take collectively the responsibility to meet the needs of students, and we see that with their response to disaffected children and how they are, as a group, managing to meet the needs of those children. I think that philosophy, if you like, is most certainly being embraced by head teachers and LEAs in the project.

  247. So it is in fact not just the inter-relationship between schools but the impact within the wider schools communities, shall we say?
  (Mrs Barnett) Yes.
  (Mr Jacobs) If I may just add to that. One of the difficulties that schools were finding at the stage of the Ofsted report's field work was in getting non-specialist schools to engage with them and that was in a situation very much of competition where those schools that were being asked to engage, for example, thought, if we partner this school, that might disadvantage us in relation to becoming a specialist school because we will be thought of as being in a subsidiary position. That is the sort of thinking that has changed dramatically with the recognition that all the schools will have the opportunity to become specialist schools and we have also removed the requirement, in the light of that, for all schools that are becoming specialist to have a non-specialist partner. We have opened it up that the school's partner can be specialist already or be about to become specialist or schools can be applying together naming each other partner, that sort of co-operative arrangement.

  248. It sounds like a rather expensive way of re-inventing a good LEA! What else have you done?
  (Mrs Barnett) I am not quite sure . . .

  249. I am sorry, perhaps your background in LEAs in this country is not the same as mine! The collaborative idea where the child is the centre and all schools within an area are responsible for seeing the development of the individual child says to me a good LEA that I was in 20 years ago. Perhaps our Hertfordshire contact might like to comment.
  (Mr Shostak) Whether or not it is re-inventing good LEAs or just building upon good LEAs, I do not know. I think what you have in front of you in terms of the investigation into diversity are two issues. It seems to me that you have the whole issue of systemic change and what is the best way of actually supporting that systemic change at local level. I think that is about good LEAs working in partnership with their schools, in their communities. You also have the issue of specialist schools and the question really is, how can you turn the specialist school component of diversity, into that programme of systemic change at LEA or local level? Yes, in good LEAs, as you are saying, that is what LEAs have been doing for some time against a culture which was, picking up some of the comments earlier, for many, many years questioning the contribution of LEAs. Indeed, encouraging what somebody was describing earlier on as the "dog eat dog, we are out on our own" climate and culture. I guess that within Hertfordshire, we are looking to ensure that the learning across institutions and at local level is secure and the diversity pathfinder is just one way to actually support that process.

  250. Do we have enough evidence already—and I know pathfinders have not been running that long—now to say, "The individual specialist school system that we had earlier should not now be encouraged" because it does not deliver what you are seeing in the pathfinder collaborative method?
  (Mr Shostak) I do not think you can separate it out in that way bearing in mind that the specialist schools within the diversity culture is very, very new. The diversity pathfinder's first steering group meeting was around this time last year. The first group of schools which were approved started since that time; they started in September of last year, so they have been specialist schools a term. What we had prior to that was specialist schools that date back some period of time. So, what you have is that culture change happening. What I am describing as the "direction of travel" and then the development of specialist schools within that.

  251. Does it not stress the importance of evaluation to determine what the DfES ought to be advising for the future, that there must be a format for the evaluation which does enable the DfES to indicate which is the preferred method in order that those individual children, not the whole grouping or the individual schools but the individual children, do get the best out of what we are putting a considerable amount of money into for the future?
  (Mr Shostak) Yes although it is not rocket science. We know very clearly that what makes the difference in terms of raised standards is primarily what teachers do, much more so than anybody else. Followed by what school leaders do. If you have a climate where sharing across those institutions is regarded as some sort of industrial espionage then development is hindered. What you want to create is an opportunity for science teachers to learn from science teachers and maths teachers to learn from maths teachers and school leaders to learn from school leaders. You do wonder why we are in a climate where that somehow was difficult and I would not have thought that you need to spend a great deal of money to come to understand that that the alternative makes sense.

  252. I want to explore a little further into this whole issue of collaboration versus competition. I understand that the early evaluation has said that the projects seem to work best and seem to be doing well where schools are not competing for students and, given the way our systems work at the moment, is that something that you feel is the case in terms of how the whole situation is operating?
  (Mrs Barnett) I think it is fairly obvious why that would be the case, why it would be harder to collaborate in a more competitive environment. I think there is a tension here, is there not, between the benefits of collaboration which we are seeing through the pathfinder project and the fact that some competition is quite healthy and, in finding that balance, I think that the pendulum swings a little from end to end on that. I think the outcome of the project evaluation will be interesting in terms of looking at how, in different parts of the country, and indeed just in a single county such as in Hertfordshire, there are areas that are more competitive between schools than others. The evaluation of what impact that has will be very interesting for us.

  253. Certainly when the Minister, David Miliband, came, he was very clear that a specialist school programme is a school improvement programme. That is what it is about. It is not about specialism, it is about improving standards within schools. I would like to have your comments on the different mechanisms that are being used to try and do that. Specialisation is one; competition, as you have just mentioned, is one in terms of the assumption being that parents are going to choose schools which appear to be doing well and therefore it is a lever to drive up standards within schools. Do you see these things conflicting or working together?
  (Mrs Barnett) It is a hard question to answer.

  254. Good!
  (Mrs Barnett) Mr Jacobs?
  (Mr Jacobs) As I suppose we have already said—and we did not use the word "tension" but it is a favourite word these days—there is a tension between competition and collaboration. The point Mrs Barnett was making is that both can contribute towards raising standards. I think that evidence for that is axiomatic. What we are trying to do with the specialist schools programme in having gone, as it were, nation wide, is to overcome that tension in relation to this particular programme. I attended several of the autumn conferences that ministers held for secondary heads and it was noticeable in this particular respect that the amount of concern and criticism about the programme being not compatible with the competitive situation had diminished greatly and I think that most heads I spoke with—and I spoke to a number at those conferences—were very positive about the specialist school programme now in terms of seeing that it was a genuine opportunity for their school to take advantage of and was not a matter of having to worry about whether school X down the road was going to get there first or was already there and therefore they could not get involved. So, I think that whilst that tension will always be there and it will always have more influence in some areas than others because of the history, there is a great improvement on that and I think we have generally established an acceptance that the programme is open to all and is not going to make matters worse, as it were.

  255. One of the things that I want to finish on—and it is a debate to which we keep coming back in the Committee and I think there was a level of that in some of the questions that Valerie Davey was just asking—is, if all this money had just been given out to all the schools, would we have had the same outcomes or is there in fact a possibility that actually diversity is a way of achieving equality of outcomes in a way that we have not just by giving money across the board to schools?
  (Mr Jacobs) We certainly see it as a challenge programme that has value as a challenge programme. It is a difficult area to touch on, I suppose, when we do both: we give moneys to schools without strings attached and moneys to schools with strings attached. I think that all the measurement that has taken place in relation to specialist schools, and that has varying outcomes, is positive rather than negative. Sometimes it is quite significantly positive and sometimes it is only slightly positive, but it is all positive and that is specifically work carried out in relation to specialist schools who are the beneficiaries also obviously of all the other money that is going into schools in like circumstances. So, there certainly does seem to be value in the challenge programme in those quantitative terms although we also do value the qualitative and I was struck by something you said to David Miliband about a child that had said that their mother was now wanting to go into the school because it was an arts college and that, I think, small though it is in one sense, is actually quite typical of the kind of spirit that can grow around a successful specialist school application.
  (Mr Shostak) Can I come in there because I think there are some important points to be made reflecting on some of the comments made by Mrs Barnett and Mr Jacobs. There is a balance, of course, in terms of the importance of competition within the system and the importance of collaboration within the system. There has been serious development and improvement in standards as a consequence of many of the government reforms. However, I think it will be the case that, as the diversity programme begins to unfold—and I welcome the fact that it is not a 'done deal' and that the Department is working with local authorities and is being responsive to the messages that local authorities and schools are giving the Department in terms of the developing policy—they will need to respond if the evidence is clear that there are barriers in the way in terms of raising standards. It would certainly be the case that a lot of the current drivers in the system do not support collaboration. The funding regime at the minute is very much an individual school-based regime; the accountability regime within the system is very much a school based regime which actually creates and further supports the independence and the competition between schools. If, in fact, the Government are looking to support collaboration as a mechanism of improvement, then they will need to look at those and a variety of other drivers within the system which very often have a much stronger pull than the push of collaboration, school improvement and development. So, there are very real tensions that this policy or this development is throwing up which will need to be responded to if in fact it is going to continue.

  256. It seems to me that you do not need an LEA to deliver systemic change, you need a system. Is that not correct?
  (Mr Shostak) No, I do not think that it is correct. The reality is that what change is about is people. Our education service is delivered by people. People, in terms of the work that they do, are bounded within their institutions and within their communities. They are, from my experience, very, very positive about improvement and change, but actually get caught within the culture within which they are working. The fact is that they are just people, and actually what change is about is changing behaviours. From what we have seen in the work we are doing, is that it is finding the balance between the drivers, the important elements within a system, that leads to one direction or another. What we have found is that in supporting schools, and I come back to what I said earlier on—it is about those people, it is about individual teachers changing the behaviour in the classrooms and it is about individual school leaders changing the behaviours in terms of the climates they are creating within schools. Actually that needs some sort of facilitating, that needs some sort of support. It does not need control, it does not need managing, but does actually need somebody at local level who knows the people and can support the people because there are serious tensions within the system, as you will well know, that need to be overcome.

  257. You used the words "based at local level". The Oaks is such a system based at local level, it is not an LEA. It is bigger than my LEA as it happens. Why is it not an LEA?
  (Mr Shostak) We are getting into two debates here: one is whether or not you need support at local level and the second is whether or not that support should be publically accountable to its local communities, which is what the LEA is. It is certainly my view that, when you are dealing with contentious decisions—which is about school opening, which is about school closing, which is about admissions and which is about special educational needs and I could go on, it is right and proper that local people should be able to eyeball the people who are making those local decisions in their local supermarkets and in local streets and be able to say what it is they think and hold them publically accountable to do so. So, from that point of view, I do think that it ought to be at an LEA level.

  Mr Turner: What we have had is a swing of the pendulum, Mrs Barnett is quite right, and it swung in the direction of individual institutions. Now it is swinging back. Do people really need diversity or do they just not need quality? Take the analogy of the supermarket which you have just mentioned. Supermarkets are all actually pretty much of a muchness—you know what you are buying because you know the label of the supermarket. Far more people go to supermarkets than go to corner shops. Schools are much more, it seems to me, analogous with corner shops than with supermarket chains and yet the diversity in the corner shop is rejected by the population in favour of a measured uniformity, if you like, but with quality of varying degrees, perhaps under different labels—Aldi and Sainsbury are a little different—but do they really need the diversity of individual institutions in the way that your pathfinder seems to be delivering?

  258. I think I follow that! If you want to ask for clearer definition of the question, you are very welcome.
  (Mr Shostak) I will not ask for a clearer definition but I will avoid the supermarket, if you will forgive me! In my view, there is a difference between supermarkets and public services. What Hertfordshire parents say to me is that what they want is a high quality local school. So, the question we ask ourselves is, what is the best way to ensure that the people of Hertfordshire are getting a high quality local school? Once you begin to ask that question, you then begin to get into the debate that we were having earlier on and about how is it you can support the development of the people, the teachers and the school leaders. Because it is public service and people have a right to get to a high quality local school and not have to, as it were, shop around for it. They go to their local schools which is right and proper and we have a responsibility to ensure that they are of a high quality and to support the development and the continuous improvement of those schools. Now, when you then get to diversity, the question is, does the diversity programme, actually support the raising of standards, ie the development of the people within those schools, and offer broader opportunities for youngsters than would be available within their one individual school because they have available within their local community because one school happens to have developed a specialism in the arts and another within science and so on? Just because I send my youngster to the art school does not mean that my youngster is not interested in science and, if my youngster is also interested in science, as a parent, I would want them to be able to be attending master classes and extracurricular activities and I would also want the science teachers in my youngster's school to be able to learn from those other science specialisms who are particularly focusing on that in another school. So, what you are creating is an environment where youngsters have enhanced opportunities in terms of what provision is available for them but also that teachers and school leaders do.

  259. I was hoping to translate Mr Turner's question but I think that he has perhaps answered it! My translation would have been that, from the point of view of Hertfordshire parents, if the choice were in any given neighbourhood a single school with a proven track record of high levels of achievement or a variety of schools each with its own niche of variable quality, which model do you think the majority of Hertfordshire parents would choose? I think that is really what Mr Turner was getting at.
  (Mr Shostak) There is a third alternative there which is a variety of schools within a community each with its own interests or specialisms or expertise, as logically is the same, and they are all of a high quality.