WEDNESDAY 15 JANUARY 2003

MRS JENNIFER EVANS, PROFESSOR RON GLATTER AND DR PHILIP WOODS

  300. Reflecting on that deep resonance, which policies would you point to in recent years that you feel have had the most impact, whether that is good or bad?
  (Professor Glatter) Where does one start?

  Jonathan Shaw: We are trying to focus on what works in terms of the diversity agenda. You have told us that there is a range of things that we think are big milestones for education but which in fact have limited effect in terms of improvement. Help us focus. Your colleagues are welcome to join in.

  301. I did tell you this was more or less a seminar situation.
  (Professor Glatter) Every policy, in my view, is by way of being an experiment. They are often put forward as being something different from that.

  302. The dawning of new eras.
  (Professor Glatter) Yes, the dawning of new eras and so on, and that is the real excitement about them. But it is only through looking carefully at lots of data on the policy of parental choice and so on, very complex data, that you can start to say, "Well, there is something odd happening here. Could it be that the policy is less significant?" and so on. In this one, one of the things which is coming up here is this whole notion of partnership. In various different ways, a number of projects, funded both by the Department and by other bodies, are starting to look at these various types of partnership arrangements. One of the exciting things is we are starting to learn about this last issue, about the whole business of the accountability measures focused on particular schools. I heard of a case recently of a situation in Victoria, Australia, where they had a very successful network of schools going for a number of years and then that particular issue arose and there were major problems in terms of getting agreement and so on. The whole issue of understanding how partnerships work, what are the problems, what are the barriers, is something we are going to all learn about, and all these policies, at least for me, are experiments. The key thing is: Is there proper evaluation built in so that we and future generations can learn how to do it better? It is not a direct answer to your question because it was too tough a question.

  303. And we do not have a fortnight, but the answer is the quality of the evaluation and the seriousness with which politicians respond to that evaluation. That evaluation needs to be done over a long period of time.
  (Professor Glatter) There is a lot of talk, as you know, about the idea of the learning organisation. I think we also need learning systems, and I think we are starting to get them actually. We are starting to get more in the way of feedback and evaluation mechanisms to learn about what is being effective and what are the problems in challenging the processes, like doing partnerships and collaboration.
  (Dr Woods) One of the effects of the accumulation of policies over the years is that it has focused attention on certain indicators, in particular the headline indicator of five A-Cs. In research that we have done, quite major research, one of the themes that is coming through is that relentless focus on five A-C GCSEs. That is coming through, that it is there in schools. That does not mean that schools ignore other things but it is a tension that often is there in schools, but I would relate it to the fact that one of the aims of the Diversity Pathfinder project is not just to attend to the headline indicators but to make sure that the policy of diversification and collaboration benefits all students, and particularly disadvantaged students as well as advantaged students. We are specifically looking at that within our research. That will be an important test of the success of the Diversity Pathfinders project.

  304. An important part of the evaluation will be the distribution of pupils from disadvantaged sectors and circumstances, the mix of all pupils in terms of their socio-economic make up. Is that right?
  (Dr Woods) It will be how much the changes brought about by the Diversity Pathfinders benefit those who come from more disadvantaged backgrounds compared with those from more advantaged backgrounds. Where they exactly are in the cluster may or may not be important; it is how much it benefits those as well as the advantaged. That is built into the contract we are working to and so is a specific thing at which we must look.

  305. We will be able to understand the impact of diversity for students from disadvantaged backgrounds and how that enables one child compared to another child in terms of their educational opportunity. Is that right?
  (Dr Woods) Yes, the effect of the Diversity Pathfinders projects.
  (Professor Glatter) Not just diversity generally.
  (Dr Woods) Collaboration is the key thing, is it not?
  (Professor Glatter) Collaboration with diversity.

  306. It might then provide us with a set of solutions to the point you make, Professor Glatter, about the PISA study saying that for a kid from England the impact of their educational opportunities differs from—
  (Professor Glatter) I know.

  307.—is at a considerable disadvantage compared to other countries. The most important thing is going to the right school in that area, and that is more important in England than it is in many of the other OECD countries. Is that right? You made that point. What you are saying may provide us with the solutions how to change that and provide it not being quite so important.
  (Professor Glatter) Yes, that is the radical part, it seems to me, and the objective behind this particular Diversity Pathfinder set of pilots.

  308. That is something on which you would suggest we need to focus.
  (Professor Glatter) Yes.

  309. In terms of all these policies.
  (Professor Glatter) I think that is important.

  310. It An important part of your evaluation so that they could be an important part of policy development in the future. Is that right?
  (Mrs Evans) Could I just say something? You are talking about the role of research and research evidence and research evaluation informing policy. It is my experience that actually it is not, it does not, and policy makers have other considerations as well as what research evidence can say when they are formulating their policies. I am currently involved with a new movement, the Evidence-Based Policy and Practice Movement, which is looking at research on particular questions within education and drawing together lots of research that has been done over the last 20 to 30 years to try to find solutions to policy problems. My colleague Sue Hallam has done a very thorough look at the impact of streaming on educational attainment. Her research shows that mixed-ability teaching has no adverse impacts on the more able pupils but setting and streaming has very marked adverse impacts on less able pupils. Nevertheless, the current Government's advice and policy is that setting and streaming is a good thing and that schools should be adopting it and it is being adopted even at the primary level. The impact of that policy is, in a sense, going against what research evidence is saying about what is effective and what works.

  311. Surely if you listen to—and I know you have—the evidence that we have had, just taking this area, the conflicting policy advice that we have had from a range of academics, some of who sit exactly where you are, the one on the left absolutely saying that there is this new policy, this new fashion about diversity, it is unproven, the research shows that it makes very little difference, it is a waste of money, if you like, and then the person sitting on the right saying the exact opposite. Then a whole group of new academics come in the next week and say, "It is all right talking about research-driven policy over a period of time. If you can look at it over 30 years, then I think that could be very valuable." The one thing that is quite interesting is that we live in an age, do we not, where the ideological fights and disagreements over educational policy really are much less polarised then they used to be? Many politicians are just looking pragmatically and asking, "What works?" You would think it is a climate in which, if you as academics would give us evidence on which to build good, pragmatic policy, people would say they would be open to that. This is your perfect time, is it not? Politicians are basically saying, "Give us the research-based evidence and we will follow it."
  (Mrs Evans) But then when it is given . . .

  312. There is lots of research, is there not? As the Chairman says, if someone—
  (Mrs Evans) But if someone draws together a body of research on a particular issue and looks at 20, 30, 40 different research evaluations and comes to a conclusion based on that evidence, then that is a stronger evidence base then I saying one thing and my colleague saying another.

  313. In terms of this whole notion of diversity and specialist schools, we have had a period—I think a previous witnesses said seven years—of this experimentation—if not a little longer. In seven years there has been quite a lot of research done, tell us, as politicians, should we continue with this diversity agenda because it is driving up standards and it is helping to improve schools or should we abandon it?
  (Professor Glatter) There is a very brief summary of some of the work on that in the supporting paper I gave. This goes back to your first question, I think, about the link between diversity and performance—and it is difficult to talk about diversity generally because the specialist school part of it is such a dominating part, although there is some work on faith schools. It does appear that in terms of performance there is a very small (and I think the authors tend to use—you have heard this before in your sessions—very "slight") performance advantage but the cause of that is unknown. It may not at all be that it is because of that particular feature of the schools, but it might be because with specialist schools, as you have heard before, the schools which were stronger in a number of respects were the ones which bid and so on and the performance advantage is so slight that you could not with confidence attribute it.

  314. This is absolutely at the centre of our inquiries and our interest. When we talk about higher education—and we are going to be talking about it a great deal more next week, I predict—we constantly talk about: On the one hand the Government has the objective of 50% inclusion in education for people under 30—we have 40% and we think it might go up—but there is another objective; that is, broadening the social base, getting people from less advantaged backgrounds to come into education. We have a history of failure of all parties, very plainly, of getting people from less privileged backgrounds into higher education; in other words, as our growth goes on we are getting more of the same. If you take the LSE research that I mentioned earlier that says social mobility, rather than increasing with increased higher education, is actually slowing down, that to us as politicians will be very, very worrying. If we then take it down, a lot of the work we have done in this Committee actually points to the fact that much of the difficulty of getting people into higher education from the lower socio-economic backgrounds is what happens in schools: by the time they are 14, perhaps it is too late or by the time they are 16 it is too late. So very early on. What is the policy that we can base on research that says we have an endemic problem of getting less privileged children to stay on in education and then go on to higher education? I do not see policies that have been identified on the research base that would help politicians.
  (Mrs Evans) I think the Government is doing a lot in early years education but this is going to take a long time to filter through. You have your Sure-Start Programme and your early years programmes and a lot, it seems to me, of very effective work going on at that level, but that is going to take some time—

  315. We had an academic sitting in your seat exactly who said that if you look at similar sure-start programmes in the United States they have a short-term effect and they do not last very long.
  (Mrs Evans) I think there is conflicting evidence there.

  316. Exactly!

   (Professor Glatter) Surely the PISA results flag up a number of worrying issues for us, but overall I think we could take a certain amount of comfort from those results, in terms of the policies so far in our practice and everything that teachers have done and so on. But the expectation surely was going to be: this is going to be a disaster for us. But it was not a disaster for us. There were things we needed to attend to, but the results were: "You are doing quite well but you have problems in terms of a class divide and things like that." But look at the Germans: they have had a year of fretting and turmoil and concern, and other countries that we thought we were definitely below in the league. So I do not think it is all bad news.
  (Dr Woods) The general point which Jennifer was pointing to that has applicability, is that where you have differentiation in a hierarchy—we were talking about streaming and setting—and the same can be said between schools, then that acts as a barrier to overcoming the inequality gap between advantaged and disadvantaged. Further, I think we can say that the Specialist School Programme, the creation of specialist schools in themselves, does not shift that inequality gap, and the Diversity Pathfinders challenge is to develop a form of diversity and working together that does not keep going or create differentiation by hierarchy but has a creative diversity. I think I would further say that that takes you to think about diversity—Ron has pointed to that in part in his memorandum—that what we mean by diversity, what we are talking about by diversity, shifts sometimes. Often it is about specialist schools but that is a rather rigid idea of diversity. There is a lot of diversity between schools which can be described maybe, instead of as a formalised or designated diversity, as a dynamic diversity. In one school they have developed, over many years, a very good maths department, for a number of reasons. One of the things in the Oaks Collegiate Academy in Birmingham is that they are trying to unlock that expertise. It is not a maths specialist school, it is just that they are doing well in it. But what other schools are doing well in other departments or in other ways? It could be linking the community and so on and so forth. That idea of diversity is rather a dynamic thing which will change over time or there will be innovations which we can unlock from one particular school to spread around and develop. I think we are pointing to something which is not a rigid specialist diversity schools system but something which is more dynamic and I think the research helps to point in that direction.

  317. A tremendous number of school initiatives exist between 11 and 16 at the moment: specialist schools, extended schools, advanced schools, Key Stage 3, 14-19, voluntary training schools, excellence in cities, schools facing challenging circumstances, leadership incentive. How is your analysis of the Diversity Pathfinder process going to evaluate all those? How are you going to measure the impact of those individual policy initiatives on the success or failure of the Diversity Pathfinder process?
  (Dr Woods) A very good question. It is one we asked ourselves before putting forward our proposal which was eventually successful. This is a key thing and part of the answer to that is we have to be very careful in concluding from it. But one of the reasons I emphasised the qualitative evidence that we are getting is that that allows us to get some insight into the specific effects of initiatives that come under the Diversity Pathfinder heading. We can try to trace through, if it has encouraged more shared professional development between schools, for example, in what ways people see that as affecting the classroom. We can try to follow things through and distinguish them. It will not be a complete answer, we will be able to make an informed judgment at the end of the project but you cannot so easily just do statistical tests and say that on this variable the Diversity Pathfinder has had this effect.

  318. If there is an increase in educational standards where the Diversity Pathfinder policy has been put in place, how are you going to know that it is down to the Diversity Pathfinder agenda? It could be Key Stage 3, for example.
  (Professor Glatter) That is where, as Phil has said, it is important not to see the thing as just a mechanistic type of study where you just simply look at the exam results but it has to be a depth study and that has become more difficult over the last few years with more and more government initiatives and local authority initiatives as well, and then, when you focus on a particular thing, you have to disentangle that and the only way is to do an in-depth piece of research with a lot of interviewing of the people involved to get as close as you can to a link in cause and effect.

  319. It would be a subjective analysis rather than an objective one.
  (Professor Glatter) Not subjective really, because it will be based on a lot of data generated and systematically gathered during individual interviews, group interviews and so on.
  (Mrs Evans) I think there is also a statistical element where it will be comparing the results from Diversity Pathfinder LEAs with a national results. We might be able to say, "Okay, from the results in the Diversity Pathfinder LEAs for particular groups of children" because we will be getting the PLASC data for individual pupils—"they are doing better than children in comparable local authorities nationally." We are not gathering that material ourselves but that material is routinely gathered by the DfES statistics, so we have access to that material.