WEDNESDAY 15 JANUARY 2003

MRS JENNIFER EVANS, PROFESSOR RON GLATTER AND DR PHILIP WOODS

  320. Will you be able to analyse out of that national material the effect that is being had on those schools immediately outside the collaboration area?—the point Jeff was making earlier.
  (Mrs Evans) We would be able to do that, yes.

  321. I want to return to the question of the relationship between diversity and choice and ask if any study has been done on the impact of the diversity programme over the last few years on the exercise of parental preference; that is to say, has there been a significant increase in the number of parents exercising their right to state a preference and actively seeking and evaluating the strengths of different schools? Do we find that parents are now weighing up the pros and cons of a sports college against an arts college, or that they are more interested in a faith schools as against standard schooling?

   (Professor Glatter) We have not been finding that kind of work; as you would expect from the kinds of thing I have said, I do not know of any studies about that. The most recent fairly significant study of parents was a study commissioned by the Department which was published about two years ago and that did not address that issue at all. The main thing that came out of that, for me, was how people were a lot more dissatisfied in London than elsewhere in the country, but I have not seen anything focusing on that. That is exactly the point, actually, that I make in my submission. We have to look much more closely at that link between diversity and choice and we have not done that, the researchers have not done that and we need to do that.

  322. Just pursuing this a little, building on the remarks earlier about the noticeable shift in focus of the Specialist Schools Programme being primarily a school improvement programme and also referring to Philip's comment about the search to extend ways of good practice within the Pathfinder areas, logically would it not be the case that over time, if those two criteria are the main criteria, school improvement and extension of good practice, we could expect a reduction in the exercise of parental choice as for more parents their local school became increasingly attractive? Would that not be the logic of these two objectives?
  (Professor Glatter) Yes, it would. The only thing is that it is hard to conceive of a diversity policy which does not have choice, enhancing choice, as an objective. I have heard the discussion that really improvement is the strongest thing, but I did notice that the Secretary of State, I think, in his press release, when the Specialists School Programme was rolled out further, said that any school that wanted to and had a good application would be able to become a specialist school, and he referred both to improvement and choice. The other thing is of course that the extent to which the Specialist School Programme does lead to improvement is something that still needs to be the subject of research investigation, it seems to me. Because at the moment we can see that many schools are saying that the whole process in which they engaged, through the application period and so on, led them to question things and targets and all the rest of it, but it is not clear at the moment whether overall it is itself a mechanism for school improvement. That is something which also needs to be investigated.

  323. Finally, on the question of the categories of specialist schools, is it not paradoxical that we have a diversity policy that limits the amount of diversity there can be? Do you have a view on this question of whether there ought to be a wider range of categories of specialist schools and schools should be encouraged to define their own specialist strength rather than have it imposed from the top down?
  (Professor Glatter) I have drawn attention to something that was put in the White Paper or Green Paper two years ago, when the Government itself proposed, under the Beacon Programme, that there should nevertheless be the Beacon status for schools that were particularly effective in working with their communities or particularly effective in terms of the skills relating to the emerging economy like creativity and ICT and so on. I do hope that when the Government considers an extension to new specialisms a broader view is taken. I heard what Ron Jacobs said earlier and I understood the point he was making and I hope there is some room for manoeuvre within that general position, because I do believe that many parents would feel—and this is a personal hunch—more comfortable with the whole anxieties of the choice process that we heard about from Ray Shostak earlier, if there were some broader options available. To me, the notion of a school which is maths and computing, for example—just to take one example—seems quite daunting. Why should computing be linked specifically with maths? Why should it not be seen much more in the way that the Government themselves mention it in that Green Paper, where they say, "The skills of the emerging economy, particularly in ICT"? That is a completely different way of looking at computing and one that I think would be more popular. A lot of families would feel more comfortable with that kind of offer.

  324. In one of the evidence papers that you submitted to the committee, School Choice and Diversity in England: a Brief Overview of Research and Key Issues, you say that the current Government, elected in 1997, has retained the essential quasi-market elements of the system introduced by the 1988 Education Act: "The main structures . . . are still in place—parental choice, open enrolment . . ." etc. This is hot off the press, this is "Draft: January 2003", so it is written in the last two weeks. Were you surprised then to hear the School Diversity Division say that they do not really see a role for choice in rural areas at all and not very much in urban areas? Is that not a direct contradiction of what you were summarising in the last two weeks when you wrote this draft?

   (Professor Glatter) I was talking there about the various mechanisms, like pupil-related funding, more open enrolment, those things that were brought in by the Education Reform Act 1988. Obviously there have been changes in terms of the degree of mechanisms, fair funding and so on, but the structures which are related to competition and choice and the individual institution are to a large extent still there. It is exactly the same point that Ray Shostak was making earlier. It is interesting to explore why there is the pull-back from the notion of choice. It is hard to speculate on that, but the key point is that the structures, I think, are mostly still in place. That is where this whole issue, with pathfinding and collaboration and so on and how these things are going to mesh together, will be very important.

  325. When, on 28 November, the Secretary of State announced the roll-out of specialism, the press release still emphasised choice as being one of the key factors.
  (Professor Glatter) Yes.

  326. Do you see a difference between the evidence we have just heard and what the Secretary of State said a few weeks ago? Is there pull-back?
  (Professor Glatter) I have read the transcripts of what the ministers have said to you here and it seemed to me they were saying that the improvement objective has now become more important than the choice objective. But I still think there is an issue, because presumably there is a concern about how families will view it. I am concerned, if that is the view that is taken, that there will be a sort of "marginalisation" of families, and there is so much talk about public service delivery that surely an important part of that is how satisfied families are and how far they feel there is delivery in this area. So I do not think one can completely ignore the choice dimension of this. I think it is a very important one.

  327. If you take Paul's point, there is much more diversity of choice if you are a well-informed class of family that has, first of all, the option, if they do not like the choice, to go into independent education or to be highly mobile—not only well informed but highly mobile—in terms of travelling long distances. There is a whole sector of the population which has a great deal of diversity of choice because of the background they come from. That is true, is it not? The people who are on lower incomes, with less availability of knowledge and transport, rely very much on what is delivered close to the doorstep.
  (Professor Glatter) Absolutely.

  328. Could I just finish by asking you what is the reporting process from you to the DfES? When do you report? At what stages? When do you finish your report?
  (Dr Woods) We have to report on an annual basis. We do an annual report which is a written report. We did one in October. It was only a few months after we started, but it was our first annual report nonetheless. We will do one later this year, in October, and each year. We also attend the annual Diversity Pathfinders Conference, which involves the Department and the LEAs involved. Jennifer and I did a presentation to that conference and I anticipate we will be doing a presentation at this year's and so on. So there is reporting, written and in presentation, on a regular basis and then there will be a final full report at the end of the project. So findings will come back before the end of the project. The Department attached importance to that, and to a point we can do that.

  329. I know it is a difficult relationship for you, because you do have a lot of contracts and a lot of income from the Department commissioning the research, but if you did early on think that this was all not a very good project and it really was not worth carrying on, Jennifer, because of your great belief in research-based policy, would you recommend and expect the Department to pull the programme?
  (Mrs Evans) To be honest, I do not think we are going to be able to tell. This is something that is so attractive about this project, that it is a longitudinal thing: it is going to take two or three years for things to begin to show an impact, so I do not think we will be able to say very much about whether the impacts have been what are expected until the project is more or less coming to an end. Obviously, if at the end of three and a half years our evidence is that this has not been particularly successful in achieving the aims that it set out to achieve, then we would say so.
  (Dr Woods) Ray Shostak mentioned that the project is developmental. You are not working to a set down protocol or set of instructions or guidelines. A large part of it, on the local ground, they are developing it as they go along. Some things may work and some things may not work. Part of our research will be looking at what develops and seems to work well but also things may fall by the wayside. But it is not a monolith, it is a developmental project which is developing in different ways locally—that is part of the interest too—and we can feed back our perspective from our data on what we believe has worked well and perhaps what has worked not so well.

  Chairman: Can I thank you, Professor Glatter, Jennifer and Philip. It has been a very good session. We are grateful for your patience and your frankness and for that of previous witnesses. If, as you travel home or when you get back to your institutions, you think of something you should have said to the Committee or wonder "Why on earth did that Committee not ask this question"—and I am looking across at certain people as I say that!—do drop us a line. Thank you.