[Mr. Christopher Chope in the Chair]

AS 12 Local Government Employers and Foundation & Aided Schools National Association

Sir Alan Steer: I am Sir Alan Steer. I was a head teacher until I retired last July and I am currently adviser at the Department for Children, Schools and Families.

Q250 1Mr. Nick Gibb (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con): Thank you for coming today. We all share your ambition to raise standards of behaviour in our schools. We believe, as you do, that that is paramount if we are to raise standards of education.

This morning, some of the teaching unions came along and said that they wanted a more general search power than the one in the Bill, which specifically extends the power of teachers to search for certain illegal items, drugs and so on. They wanted a more general power to enable them to search for any item that might cause harm, either to pupils or to staff in the school. Do you agree with that view?

Sir Alan Steer: Yes. The search power came about when I chaired the practitioners group in 2005. One of our concerns was that the legal position of teachers was not as clear as everybody thought it was. It was based on case law going back to the 19th century. One of our recommendations was that the right of teachers to discipline pupils should be put into statute. You need to see things in that context. Under what became the 2006 right to discipline is the right to require children to empty their pockets and produce goods. What was rather more specific was the power—not a duty—to search against consent for items of a really serious nature. Weapons were the most obvious items and so went in first. In conducting this review, I came to the view that weapons are rarely found in schools. It is far more common to find stolen property or alcohol. If teachers did search for those items without consent, they had to be protected the following morning from a subsequent litigious parent or awkward family saying that they had exceeded their powers.

I would have been happy with a more general power, and I included that in my report, although I did highlight alcohol, drugs and stolen property. However, I was advised—and accepted that advice because it was not my decision—that there would be legal issues with a totally open right of search. I cannot comment on that. That was the advice which was, in a sense, subsequent to my report, which said that there ought to be search powers focused on those three items. I understand there would legal concerns and possible difficulties with totally open search powers.

Q 2

Sir Alan Steer: Personally, I would not see it like that. The things that I would be most concerned about are those that are now covered in the power to search without consent. I would assume that under nearly all circumstances one could cover things like cigarettes in the power of discipline in the Education and Inspections Act 2006. I do not want to repeat my earlier comment. I am advised that it would be unwise to have too broad a definition of what to search, because there would be difficulties.

Q 3

Sir Alan Steer: I would not agree with that. It is worth reminding everyone that the report to a parent need not come directly from the school. In the case you outlined, perhaps it could come through social services. You could bring in other agencies if you were really concerned about a child protection issue. In fact it would be your duty to take certain steps to activate the child protection procedures. I was a head teacher for 23 years, so I see things very much with a head teacher’s eyes. I was also a parent. If there has been an incident involving my child which has required restraint to be used, I would be fairly militant about the fact that I, as a parent, needed to know that. I accept that the example you gave could occur on rare occasions, but there are ways around that. The need for parents to be engaged in their children’s education, discipline and upbringing overrides that.

Q 4

Sir Alan Steer: That is a difficult one to speculate on. The thrust of the work in which I have been engaged since 2005—I came to it as an experienced head teacher rather than someone with huge expertise, although possibly one has acquired a bit subsequently—is to try to move the handling of behaviour in schools into a more intelligent way to produce a good result. In other words, you change that child’s behaviour and help that child to overcome their problems and become a good citizen. What concerns me is using strategies that clearly do not work. If a child is repeatedly given fixed-term exclusions, a reasonable assumption would be that what you are doing is not working. You might need to look at other strategies. A permanent exclusion might be appropriate. It is hard to speculate. Perhaps the schools should be permanently excluding the child, but they are not doing so. It may be that the child has other issues that are not being addressed such as special needs issues or social issues relating to home circumstances. It could, perish the thought, be that the school needs to look at its practices, which are not working with that child. We need to be just as concerned about fixed-term exclusions as we quite rightly are about permanent exclusions. They are both of equal significance.

Q 5

Sir Alan Steer: I addressed this back in May in my second report when we looked at alternative provision. I think that this is a major area for development. I was very pleased when the “Back on Track” paper was produced. One could say that children who fall through the net often really do fall through the net. The case of a child in Sussex hit the headlines this week. Such children lack champions. They are difficult children to deal with and there are no easy solutions. I would hate to sit before the Committee as the man who has easy solutions. There are no easy solutions in such circumstances, but there are pointers that can improve the situation.

We need a range of provisions. One of the problems is that we sometimes have a one-size-fits-all provision when a range is needed. We might be talking about children with mental health problems. The quality of support services for children and adolescents with mental health problems is of serious concern to me and to head teachers nationally. There is a range of things with which we have to deal: it might be pregnant schoolgirls, or it might be scar-faced Harry. We must broaden what we do. Pilots were launched in the autumn that will be very interesting. It pleased me that a range of provisions were included in those pilots. I hope that we will look at them and learn from them.

One concern over pupil referral units is that they can get blocked. If the basis is that it is possible for some children to turn their behaviour around and reintegrate, there is obviously an appropriate time for such children to receive in-depth intervention before going back into the mainstream. Other children may have such severe behavioural problems that they will never go back into  the mainstream. That would not be fair on the mainstream, nor on the child, because they simply would not cope. Too many PRUs keep children for too long, particularly in the younger age range. They do not act as remedial units that support local schools by helping children to cope with their problems before putting them back into the mainstream. Children are getting stuck, and when that happens, there is no capacity for new children to come in and get the support. The long-winded answer to your question is that we need a range of provision. Provision must be more geared to the needs of the individual child than it is at the moment.

Q 6

Sir Alan Steer: I think that I will have to pass on that. An evaluation has taken place, and I understand that to date no child has been searched for a weapon against consent. I am afraid I cannot say how far beyond that the evaluation has gone.

Q 7

Sir Alan Steer: I understand the point, and it needs to be thought about. A lot of what is recommended is a form of protection for teachers. I will not avoid the question, but on the reporting issue, I see reporting to parents as a huge protection for teachers. As a teacher, I would not have wanted to restrain a child without making a proper record of the occasion. If an accusation was made against me two or three weeks or two or three months later, I would not have had anything to put forward.

The same is true of the point you raised. When searching a child, which might require some form of bodily contact, you would be unwise not to have another person present because of the danger of a subsequent complaint. I take your point and recognise the difficulty. The only answer I can give is that there are so many things in school life that require you to adjust according to the circumstances. Some things may not be possible that would be possible under other circumstances. That is a slightly woolly answer, but I think that it is close to the truth.

Q 8

Sir Alan Steer: I think that the development of partnerships in schools is one of the most exciting possibilities. It is something we have been searching for  in the system for a good number of years, and it is certainly very much in line with the thinking behind the children’s plan. My concern is that we can approve of the concept of partnership—it is a word to which we can give nothing but approval—but when we scratch it we sometimes find that it does not actually exist.

In my opinion, schools need to work in partnership. I was an autonomous head teacher for 23 years and loved it—well, I was an autonomous head teacher for 18 of those years and loved it, but for the first five years I was not. I would never want to take that autonomy away from schools, as it has been beneficial for them and for children. Autonomy, in my book, has to exist within certain parameters, and we should tell schools that we expect a certain minimum element of co-operation, because that not only meets the needs of children in the wider community, but is helpful for schools.

I am interested in the concept of schools creating the capacity to be able to pick up problems through joint appointments between them, as suggested in the children’s plan. As a head teacher, I could have used a psychiatric social worker but would not have been able to keep them in full-time occupation. However, if I had been in partnership with three or four schools and had easy access to someone who could pick up problems and then perhaps help the child or school through the system, the benefits would have been enormous. I think that it is right and proper to say to schools, “Yes, you ought to work in partnership.” I do not think they should do that at too high a level, because the autonomy of schools is very important, but they have to work inside a community. They are not just separate items but are responsible to the community and to each other.

Q 9

Sir Alan Steer: No. However, I gather that PIUs will be included—this is where I will flail a bit—through subsequent guidance.

Q 10

Sir Alan Steer: I agree with you, as that is a danger. I noted that the document, “21st Century Schools”, which came out before Christmas, referred to the involvement of the local authority in helping to guide the formation of partnerships. That might be necessary in time, because the last thing you want is a partnership with all those who, in a sense, did not need to be in partnership with all the ones that needed to be on the outside of that. That needs to be looked at to ensure that it does not happen.

Q 11

Sir Alan Steer: I did consider the issue of primary schools and behaviour partnerships but concluded that, unless one was careful, they would become such large and unwieldy organisations. I have described the concept of partnerships as exciting, and my fantasy—it will not be me who is engaged in this in five or 10 years’ time—is that you will have groups of schools working much more closely together, and I very much want that to be cross phased. The example of efficiency resource use shows that it is often the small primary school that can least afford to get the specialist services. I have worked in partnerships, and in my experience we worked in closest partnership with our primary school. However, with regard to the initial development, one should get one’s behaviour partnerships going in a manageable number without making them so large that they would possibly be unwieldy. That was the thinking.

Q 12

Sir Alan Steer: I saw some outstanding practice. I saw a practice in Leeds and one in Waltham Forest—I think it was in the report—that actually made me quite emotional. The quality of what was being done for some really quite troubled children between schools was exemplary. As I said, it was quite an emotional experience. I think that there is a very fine balance between the Government setting the parameters for things to happen and getting too much into micro-management. I might be accused of too much micro-management with the recommendation on the compulsory element of schools in partnerships, although I do not accept that. We need to create a situation for schools and then enable and encourage them to run with it. You will find outstanding examples of such practice. This is something that we always need to remember.

In our system, we have outstanding examples of good practice. Our problem is that we have variation; we do not have consistency, which is a word that I go on and on about in relation to all sorts of issues. That is one of the things we need to put a driver on. However, we need to create the baseline, parameters and expectations. It seems legitimate for the Government to say, “These are our expectations for a state service”, but then hopefully we can let the schools develop and learn. I have found that some people are not only doing what I have recommended in this review, but going much further than I ever thought of. That is one of the joys of being in the educational world.

Q 13

Sir Alan Steer: It could have a role to play, but that is a difficult one to answer, because of course that is very much embryonic. When we consider the role of children’s trust boards and the representation of head teachers it is looking into the future. If children’s trusts meet our  aspirations for pulling together all the services around the child, it would certainly be good, but that is very much speculating on a desired outcome, rather than evidence that one can see at the moment.

Q 14

Sir Alan Steer: It is important that all schools are included in partnerships. If some are not included, it will have a devastating effect on everybody else and will be harmful to those schools. Schools cannot be islands. The most dangerous situation for a school is when it looks into itself all the time without outside influence and support. In my view, if academies are to meet our aspirations for them, which includes changing what are often very difficult circumstances, they must also have things to teach. If they meet that aspiration, which we hope they will, they will have expertise and contributions to make to people in the community, too. Absolutely, I think that all schools in an area need to be engaged with each other, without removing their autonomy—as I said, I was an autonomous head teacher. I think that that is perfectly possible to do.

Q 15

Sir Alan Steer: They are educational institutions. They are about children learning, not about putting them somewhere because we do not know what else to do with them, which has sometimes been the situation. Any child of school age ought to be in a school and the concept ought to be of them learning. Why do we assume that because a child goes to a PRU they are not capable of passing exams or doing well? One of my closest educational friends, and the head of an extremely able and high-performing school for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties, went to an emotional and behavioural difficulties school and, according to him, was illiterate until the age of 15. We lose that concept. Right back in 2005, we called our report “Learning Behaviour”. The whole concept is that the vast majority of children are capable of learning, improving and removing their problems. We have always got to hang on to that. PRUs ought to be seen as schools; they are learning institutions.

Q 16

Sir Alan Steer: It is not a new problem. As a head teacher, a situation would occasionally occur where one was aware of a problem family and an issue would arise, which you jolly well knew that the parents should know about. You would approach that situation with, hopefully, skill and expertise. You would, perhaps, see the parent, or make sure that it was presented in a certain way. As I said earlier, if you were really concerned that that child was at physical risk, you would be duty bound to have  taken certain steps already, under specific child protection procedures, possibly involving social services or the educational welfare service.

However, I do not think that you should remove the—in my eyes—absolute guiding right of parents to know whether their child has been physically restrained. If my child had been physically restrained because they needed to be, and I did not know about it, I would be furious. It is an absolute right of parents to know what is happening to their children in school. In those extreme cases, we have to be skilful and clever in order to deal with them, but the absolute right of parents to know what is happening to their children at school seems to me unanswerable.

Q 17

Sir Alan Steer: The key things about improving the system are sometimes the simple things which, because they are so simple, do not excite us. I used the word “consistency” earlier and I always use it when I do presentations to groups on behaviour. I often say to them that the trouble is that it does not sound sexy. Our task is to make the word “consistency” sexy. You say that to people and they nod wisely, but they instantly move on and I feel that, in their minds, they think that that is a bit boring. It is not boring, it is hugely significant. There is so much research about the impact of good quality teaching on children, especially the most vulnerable. It is one of the most significant equal-opportunities issues that you can think of—who gains most from good quality teaching?

I am going around the houses to answer your question, but my answer is that our task is to implement what we have got and do it well. As I said earlier, we have got outstanding practice—outstanding practice—but I understand that the variation in these schools, not only between but within them, is one of the highest in OECD countries. If we could only close that variation and lift the weakest up to the standard of even the average, we would probably meet—and exceed—all our targets. I actually think that it can be—I do not know if this is parliamentary language—a cop-out always to search for the big solution. We have the solutions; we just have to get on and implement them.

Q 18

Sir Alan Steer: No, I have not.

Q 19

Sir Alan Steer: The Bill does not preclude them, does it? It makes a requirement of secondary schools to be in a partnership, so in a sense there is flexibility in areas such as Plymouth.

Q 20

Sir Alan Steer: Part of my thinking is that schools are in partnerships, but our problem is that they are in a huge number of them, in all directions. My school was a specialist school in technology and languages and also a training school; I was the leader of the Redbridge network, which contained 56 schools, and there were other links, too. The danger, as Estelle Morris said a few years ago, is that too many relationships are a bit like bigamy: you cannot get a deep relationship with anybody. Real partnership depends so much on trust between people.

My image is one of fewer schools working in partnership, but there is no earthly reason why combinations could not be put together. I cannot imagine a successful system that does not engage with, and link the different phases of primary or further education. If we want genuinely close partnership, we need to think about the optimum number of relationships that a school can have and meaningfully carry them forward.

Q 21

Sir Alan Steer: I agree that that would be ludicrous. We want to build on what is working well and not impede it in any way. As I said earlier, a problem with writing reports and making recommendations is that you can find somebody who is many miles beyond you before your pen even hits the paper. One has to accept that degree of humility as well.

Q 22

Sir Alan Steer: No I cannot, and it would be misleading for me to suggest that I could. All I can give you is my judgment that there are far more significant mental health problems among children with behavioural difficulties than we recognised in the past. Some of that has been cultural; as a head teacher 15 to 20 years ago, it was extremely difficult to get the medical profession even to recognise mental health issues among the young. I understood why—they did not want to label the child  too early, but the other side of that coin is that needs were not met. The issue that receives the most vociferous reaction from head teachers up and down the country is their disappointment at the interaction between schools and children’s and adolescents’ mental health services, particularly the length of time before a child is seen. It can take nine or 12 months to get an appointment.

Q 23

Sir Alan Steer: It is an extremely serious issue.

Q 24

Sir Alan Steer: I think that there may be another issue—this is pure speculation so it need not be given any added value: if a service is unresponsive and you do not get a reaction for nine months or a year, it does not encourage a school to make recommendations. Another point, which links to a key element of the 2005 recommendations, is that these children need—I always use this term—champions, somebody who will help them through the system. As a head teacher, it was often extremely depressing to see coming across my desk papers relating to a child for whom an appointment with CAMHS had not been kept by the family. The child therefore got struck off the list and you were back at the ludicrous mad hatter’s tea party for another 12 months. The role of people such as parent support advisers is really important in schools. Those people have the capacity to assist the family and the child through what is often a complicated and hostile world. I want to avoid typecasting, but we are talking about families and children who find life difficult and need that bit of extra support, which can often come from schools if they have the capacity.

Q 25

Sir Alan Steer: There clearly is a link between poor teaching and poor behaviour. That can be taken as a given, in a sense. The Ofsted chief inspector, Christine Gilbert, said that in January, I think. My view is that standards of teaching are generally good. However, I do not think that we get the benefits of the sum of our parts and there are major development possibilities there. The culture in English education is too disparate. I am not preaching a Stalinist policy, but it is really important in a school that a group of professionals get together and identify their common practices so that they can support each other and make much more of an impact through their individual efforts. That is of huge benefit to teachers and children. I told you that I go on and on about consistency, and at the press of the button I will come back to that.

So, there has to be a link between poor teaching and bad behaviour. However, it needs to be said—I want to say it loud and clear—that schools are rarely the cause of problems. They are pickers-up of problems and they generally do that well. I am a bit defensive of schools. You might think that I would be because of my background and I accept that, as I accept that I am defensive of young people. The outside world has a very harsh and sometimes unkind attitude towards schools. You can find schools that are the author of their problems—absolutely—but that is not common. Generally schools pick up problems in society and they usually do that well. We need to ensure that that message goes out.

Q 26

Sir Alan Steer: I think that it is a strong link if teaching is substandard. That was as true for me 40 years ago—my wife tells me it is 45 years ago—in my grammar school in Oxford as it is now. If a teacher is not capable of teaching to a reasonably high level, children will misbehave.

Q 27

Sir Alan Steer: I will try not to duck anything. Tell me if I have and I will come back to you on it.

There is clearly a link between poor behaviour and poor teaching. That is not the same as saying that the cause of poor behaviour is poor teaching. As I said earlier, in the large majority of cases, schools are less the authors of the problem and more the people dealing with it. I have absolutely no problem with removing poor teachers—none whatsoever. If people are not doing the job, they need to be moved out or, and—I think that one has to accept this before one gets too knee-jerk—helped to become better, which has to be a possibility. If we are talking about children being helped to improve their performance, we must say the same about teachers.

I would say, and I hope that I put it correctly, that we must be extraordinarily careful about seizing on poor teachers as a big headline solution. If we want to improve and transform our system, helping the average to become good is far more significant. We do not have that debate. I suggest, though I have no experience in a company or any other organisation, that, sure, you want to deal with the few who are not very good—and  it is very few—but to transform your school, organisation or company you need to take the people who are okay and make them good. I hope that I have answered the question.

Q 28

Sir Alan Steer: I will do my best, but to pick up on your point, I was not criticising the Government; if I was criticising anybody, it was schools. Where you develop people is in the workplace. Government can do huge things, but they cannot walk on water. It is for the schools and organisations to do that and to accept responsibility for it.

Are we doing enough to get rid of incompetent teachers? That is a difficult question to answer. So much of it is not in the power of central control; it is in the power of the local organisations and how they think about it. In other words, you may find that the procedures are there, but, as in many other cases, the question is whether they are being operated. I have touched on that a little before.

Sir Alan Steer: I have said to people at the National College for School Leadership that they need to look at their leadership training to see why we have so much variation inside our schools, and I think that they are open to doing that. It is a huge leadership issue. If performance in your school varies hugely, you have to ask yourself, “Why is that. What does that say about the leadership? What does it say about my leadership?” I find it difficult to answer your question specifically because it is a difficult area. There is work to be done on creating awareness in schools that they have powers to deal with poor-quality teaching, when it occurs. I do not think that can be done on high from central Government; it has to be about getting the climate right in our schools.

We have more rigour and accountability than we have ever had. I will not waste your time with anecdotes, but when I started in 1985 there was absolutely nothing about accountability and there was no interest in results. There was none of that in the mid-‘80s. We have a very accountable system now, If we have incompetents, we want to get rid of them, but we also want to ask ourselves: when will we be satisfied? What accountability system will ever make us relaxed and happy? You could go on ratcheting up the accountability and never reach the point where you are happy.

Q 29

Sir Alan Steer: You are getting into areas of opinion. I would not claim expertise in answering that question. There are problems. I shall probably be drummed out of my professional associations for giving you this answer, but it struck me as a nonsense that I could become a head teacher at the age of 30 and that there was no requirement for me to undergo any further professional training until the day I retired at the age of 65. That seems a very odd way to run a professional service. If I were writing a report on that area, I would probably include recommendation on the subject.

We are infinitely better than we have ever been at preparing people for headship, but there is still work to be done in schools on the continuing development of teachers at the senior and middle-ranking levels. Leadership is not only at the top, but in the middle, as well. When talking about teacher training, we all have a tendency to head instantly to initial teacher training. That is a mistake. My judgment is that, although one or two tweaks might help, initial teacher training is pretty good, as is the standard of teachers coming into schools. What worries me is the training for people who are four, five, 10 or 15 years in. I hope that that touches on your question.

More head teachers are removed from post than ever were before. Whether that is enough is a matter of judgment. You are right that sometimes what is needed in a school is not a magic wand, but the ability to see things differently. It is possible in any organisation for the leadership to be overwhelmed by the circumstances and to become unable to step back and see what needs to be done.

Q 30

Sir Alan Steer: That is an interesting point. I draw a slight distinction in that that is perhaps more applicable to primary schools than to secondary schools. A good secondary leader would conduct an audit of skills and, if they had any sense, they would appoint other staff to the leadership team who had expertise in the areas that they lacked. That is standard practice in any leadership team. That is rather more difficult in a small organisation  such as a primary school because the leadership team is so much smaller. Primary schools are therefore more vulnerable.

The school improvement partner is a relatively recent development—it must have been brought in about five, six or seven years ago. That provides support. My view is that there is still a place for head teachers to have the support of somebody outside the inspectorial world, such as a peer professional. There is a lot of research to show that if you want to change people’s habits, you should put them together with a peer professional whom they respect.

For failing heads, you cannot have a poor head teacher in an organisation and they have to be removed. Nobody would deny that. However, the immediate response to a bad set of results should not be, “Out you go.” The same goes for children. Football management gives us lessons to avoid rather than to copy.

Q 31

Sir Alan Steer: The clauses here are outside that. I think the answer is probably no. If we accept—it is hard to argue against—that early intervention is the most effective way to remove problems, we need to look at structures and ask whether they support that concept. I am not sure that they do. You are listening to someone who was a secondary head teacher. I think we may need to look at whether our resources are pinpointed in all the places where they would be most effective. One reason for my enthusiasm for behaviour partnerships is that pooling expertise and resources makes early intervention so much more possible. I am not convinced that we currently have sufficient strength in early intervention. What I am saying is very much on the lines of what the children’s plan says: it is an area to be developed. I hope it will be.

Q 32

Sir Alan Steer: LEAs have done a lot to encourage people to sign up to the fair access protocol, which most schools do. I would be somewhat sceptical about whether the fair access protocol means much in reality in terms of behaviour partnerships, which is why I made the recommendations I did. In many areas it is more a paper provision than a reality, which is why in my view we need to go a step further to make it real.

Q 33

Sir Alan Steer: I am going to have to pass on that one. That was not an area of my report and is not within what I consider my expertise. You might need to ask another witness that question. I do not wish to give opinions that are a bit flaky.

Sir Alan Steer: We have to look at the organs we have and see how they develop. Ofsted is particularly in my mind as I make that comment. Ofsted has to be a developing organisation; it must be there to inspect a changing world. If we are establishing behaviour partnerships we must expect some form of inspection accountability for them. One would want to make that at an appropriate level. Like everybody else, one shudders at unnecessary bureaucracy, but if we are setting up those structures because we believe they are really important, accountability systems have to go with them.

Q 34

Sir Alan Steer: That is difficult to respond to. I love the teaching profession, I loved being a head teacher. If I could wave a magic wand, I would go back to doing it instantly and be 10 years younger. However, ours is a jolly conservative profession and I think there is sometimes a natural reluctance to do that.

I cannot see why a behaviour partnership would be a bureaucratic nightmare, and so on; I really cannot see it. If it did end up becoming a bureaucratic nightmare—I suppose that this is me dodging the issue—I would say that we are doing it badly. The whole purpose of being in partnership is to solve problems and to reduce pressures and stresses, not to increase them. If you are sitting in a meeting that is a waste of time and a talking shop, I would leave if I were you and do something different. I can see the fears and I understand them and where they are coming from, but I would be bitterly disappointed if what you said turned out to be the truth. I would actually think that the partnerships had gone wrong and gone off the rails somewhere, because the whole purpose of working together is to remove problems.

Dealing with major behaviour problems in a school is enormously time-consuming. I can remember once working out that a permanent exclusion took me something like 21 or 24 hours of clerical work preparing it, and about another 10 hours in appearing before various committees, and that was all within a very short period of time. It was an enormous burden. We want to balance such burdens against what you are trying to achieve. If we can reduce other problems, which obviously benefits  children, we also reduce the problems for ourselves. In answer to your point, I can only say, “I hope not”. I cannot see why it should be a problem.

Q 35

Sir Alan Steer: You may be interested to know that Peter Hyman was a history teacher for a year at my school, so I know him very well and I have enjoyed reading his book and articles.

I think that what you say is absolutely true: struggling with reading is a contributory factor. I do not want to avoid the question, but perhaps I can broaden it slightly to encompass special needs, which I mentioned a lot in that last report. There can be a clear link between behaviour problems and unmet special needs. There can be a straight special needs child who has emotional and behavioural difficulties; that is obvious. However, there can be a wider spectre. If a child cannot access a lesson it will impact on their behaviour. One can see that in one’s own life.

When people visited my school—we got a lot of visitors and they were very complimentary—and they asked me what I would pick out as key factors, I always picked out the special educational needs department. I was worried that people might think that I was just giving them a nice answer, because they would think that that was good, but it is the truth. If you can deal positively with the children in your school who have most difficulties, you make such an enormous impact on the school culture. You reduce the amount of problems and the other key thing is that, if you get the expectations right in the school for the least able, you can sure as anything get them right for everybody else. Seeing it the other way round, the “What do you expect with children like that?” attitude is a cancer. That is not what you asked me, but it is the point that I wanted to make.

My answer to you is yes, absolutely. If children cannot access their learning, why are you surprised when you get that sort of behaviour? We can probably remember sitting in boring lessons in our youth, occasionally, and not behaving quite as we would wish to have done.

Sir Alan Steer: Thank you.

Q 36

Clem Henricson: I am Clem Henricson, director of research and policy and deputy chief executive at the Family and Parenting Institute.

Anne Longfield: I am Anne Longfield, the chief executive of 4Children, a national children’s charity working across the 0 to 19 age range.

Clare Tickell: I am Clare Tickell, the chief executive of Action for Children, which is another national charity working with children and young people between the ages of 0 and 19 across the UK.

Q 37

Clem Henricson: A major thing I would do is specify consultation with parents more clearly. Although it is generally implied that that will happen, it is not specified in the Bill. During our research on the development of parenting strategies we have found a reluctance to consult with the users and a tendency to focus on the providers when developing needs assessments. Often there is the will to consult with parents, but there is a need for guidance on the different methods that can be used to do that when developing services. Having said that, there have been huge moves in that direction. Sure Start has pioneered many ways of doing that. My advice is that we should develop good guidance for developing the various strategies.

Anne Longfield: The first thing to say is that the Bill contains much that is helpful. We have always firmly supported early intervention and integration. The further work on children’s trusts and co-operation is enormously helpful. Children’s centres are, of course, what we do and great work is being done. There is a question over whether we should do things differently or ensure that what is done is factored in and strengthened. We must ensure that we are talking about the development of the child rather than the needs of the professional service around the child.

We have been working in a fast-moving environment, but it has moved in an evolutionary way. We have to get to a stage where some of the difficulties created by the piecemeal system are cleared up. We must enshrine something that is fit for purpose for the future. The work on children’s centres starts to do that. There should be a broader link to services across the age range and we should link better with services for over-fives. There must be continuing support across the age range linked to early intervention.

Q 38

Anne Longfield: We think that children’s centres are very positive, deliver the sort of support that people need and are effective, so we suggest that enshrining them in a legal framework would help. However, we would be really concerned to ensure that that was an enabling framework. We believe that they need to be community based, whoever runs them. Many third sector organisations find it difficult to run such organisations, but they are important entities that have an important role to play alongside statutory agencies. Sometimes there is a bit of a pecking order involved. We would not want to put something in place that only local authorities could deliver. The majority of provision is currently delivered by local authorities, and that might be a phase issue, but we want to strengthen the requirement for local authorities to look more widely for providers who are able to deliver. Certainly, we also wish to strengthen community ownership and governance to ensure that the responsibility and power do not lie only within the realm of the local authority, but that some of that starts to be relayed much more through communities.

Q 39

Anne Longfield: There should certainly be strengthened links between the work in the Bill about children’s centres and how that relates to work with children over the age of five, not only to ensure a good transition, but to really play through the integrated vision.

Clare Tickell: The trouble about speaking after Anne is that she says it all. This is a big Bill, and there is an awful lot in it. Returning to your question, I echo the point about consultation with parents but also think that it is important to ensure that there are mechanisms to include children and young people in consultation. I believe we should run a slide rule over the Bill to ensure that it meets the needs of the most vulnerable children and young people, because my organisation is essentially concerned with providing services for the most vulnerable children and young people. They can be the children who are missed because they have very low visibility and can behave unpredictably, so there has to be a way of finding some coherence and capturing those aspects

Someone mentioned outcomes a moment ago. It is hugely important to ensure that in everything to do with children and young people, particularly because of the current shortage of money, we remember about commissioning for outcomes within the context of early intervention, as Anne said. We will not do that within the context of the Bill unless there is coherence, simplicity and transparency in how measurement will take place with children’s trust boards.

Q 40

Clare Tickell: Local authorities have to have a responsibility for doing that. I agree with much of what Anne has said and think that who provides that is a secondary consideration. Meeting the needs of the most  vulnerable children and young people in a particular locality has to be determined by what the locality throws up. The core offer needs to be there, and we support the core offer as expressed, but the flex that Anne described has to be there, because communities are very different. As I have said, the most vulnerable children are often very much under the parapet, so you have to look hard for them and work quite assertively to find them and bring them into the provision.

Anne Longfield: Community provision is not a soft option—it is not about leaving it all to make its own way. It is a way of best determining how to provide a service that responds to local community needs, but within that you have to have leadership and a duty on the local authority to take those services forward strategically.

Q 41

Clare Tickell: We run some very good children’s centres. Who should provide children’s centres is the wrong question. For my money, the important things are the ingredients of a good children’s centre: it is genuinely at the heart of the community, it reflects the community, it involves the citizens of the community, and it demonstrably puts the needs of children and their families first in its arrangements. That means that different people are best at providing services in different places. Prescription is not helpful.

Anne Longfield: And local authorities do not always necessarily do it best. Some may find themselves as the predominant provider by happenstance or because of the phase of the roll-out. Some need to get running quickly, and local authorities are often able to do that better than others, but we have to look at the next phase, which is about opening up services and encouraging and supporting others to become involved. Some small third sector organisations just cannot go through lengthy commissioning processes, so there may be issues there, too.

Q 42

Clem Henricson: We did some research into children’s centres for the Department and found that several work fairly effectively attached to schools, but there are obviously reservations because of parents’ experience of schools. However, the same anxiety was raised before we trialled another project, which was on parent information sessions in schools. We trialled the sessions in community centres as well, but it was the schools that parents went to. Perhaps we can be a bit over-anxious about that connection. That is all I have to say.

Anne Longfield: Many centres are based in schools, and naturally so. Often there is space—premises and so on—and often the impetus is there to do that. Whether centres are based at schools or not, they have to have  firm links and good relationships with schools. This goes back to some of the questions in the earlier evidence session about how to build relationships with the wider community, but also how schools provide a strategic link. When you are looking at how best to respond to individuals’ needs, you need to take into consideration not only the children’s centre but also the school.

The other point is that if you are looking at ongoing support for parents while their children are in school, if you can pull out some of the support from children’s centres—parent support, specialist support and so on—you can get to a situation where you have much more ongoing family support system than you would if the children’s centre were separate. There is a big opportunity there that we need to capitalise on.

Q 43

Anne Longfield: Yes, and some are run by health, are they not?

Clare Tickell: Yes, some are run by heath. Again, the key is not to be prescriptive. We have children’s centres that are bang next door to primary schools. Actually, we have one that is in an undersubscribed primary school. Half the building is now used for the children’s centre. It is what actually happens, the relationships that develop between professionals and what the locality needs that are the pre-eminent considerations.

Q 44

Clare Tickell: Absolutely.

Anne Longfield: Yes, and the relationships need to be in place. Sometimes you get a children’s centre on a school site but the relationships are not fantastic. Just because a centre is plonked beside a school does not mean that everything is working fantastically. There have to be strategic and operational relationships.

Q 45

Clem Henricson: I think that it is regrettable that it is not in the Bill. Several things are not specified clearly enough in the Bill, such as what co-operation means in relation to children’s trusts and how that would be effective, and what the definition of need is in relation to children’s centres. While one would of course say that a local response was needed to address local issues or preferences, there has to be some definition of the need if you are asking the local authority to provide children’s centres to meet that need. Our research showed that outreach was viewed as one of the most critical things that children’s centres were doing. The providers found it absolutely essential and were developing it a lot.

Clare Tickell: We feel that it is critical to think about outreach in the context of children’s centres. We run about 85 centres, and it troubled us that we were not sure whether we were attracting the most disadvantaged  families into them. We have commissioned a national study to look at the delivery of intensive family support services through our Sure Start children’s centres, and although we do not yet have the final report our initial findings suggest very strongly that intensive support can make a very positive difference to the lives of children and their families in even the most challenging circumstances. We have employed people explicitly to go and find the parents who are not coming into the children’s centres. The anecdotal evidence from talking to parents and professionals—health visitors and so on—was that people who already felt stigmatised in their communities sometimes felt they could not go into the “lovely building”—that they would be unwelcome and excluded from it. If we send staff to work closely with those people and develop the relationship, they do come in. They realise that their perception that they will be stigmatised is false. They quickly develop very good relationships with members of the community who hitherto were not there, and tremendous support develops between families. Some of the most marginalised families engage very well once they are in, and that is incredibly encouraging.

Anne Longfield: I agree absolutely that the outreach function is very important and needs to be embodied in children’s centres. There are a couple of opportunities to pick up on. First, there is the status of outreach workers. I am less worried about the name they have been given than about their status. They should be expected to work alongside multidisciplinary teams and take their place alongside social workers and other specialist professionals in identifying need and responding to it. Secondly, because this provision has evolved organically, we have a mass of people who deliver on a huge area of common ground but who have different names. There are parent support advisers, outreach workers, family support workers, and even health visitors and social workers. There is a job to be done there in looking at how we can bring that together in a much more coherent package of support workers for families. Whether that is the job of the Bill is a different matter.

Q 46

Clem Henricson: There are some children’s trust advisory boards or children’s trusts that already have parents and children on them. Whether you would want to extend that and look at how well it is working is an issue to at least be considered.

Clare Tickell: Certainly, in terms of the consultation that I am pulling together on the children and young person’s plan, it is curious that they are not involved in that process. That would be a relatively straightforward thing to drop into the Bill.

Anne Longfield: It is now commonplace for local authorities to have well-developed systems to consult children and young people from an early age, and there are also some quite formal mechanisms in place to allow them to feed into decision making. There is again an opportunity to enshrine this in some of the language around children’s trusts and the children’s plan.

Q 47

Anne Longfield: My starting point would be a relationship and culture of respect that goes two ways within the school environment. If asked, children and young people would probably say that it is fine to search them because a lot of them suffer from the difficult behaviour of others, and children are usually quite strident in those situations. Clearly, it has to be done within a culture of positive behaviour and respect and one that bears that in mind throughout.

Clare Tickell: It is incredibly difficult and I would agree. When we did our “Step Inside Our Shoes” consultation about the use of guns and knives, we were surprised by the extent to which young people felt the importance of their role as victims and how little that was understood and thought about. Equally, we learned how important it was not to patronise them but to explain properly the reasons for doing things—and to do it in a way that was upfront and honest—and to listen to what they had to say and to do it with respect in the way that Anne described.

Q 48

Clem Henricson: It should be one of the primary considerations, but other aspects of well-being for a child of that age clearly are critical. The proposal to have an educational expert is sensible and there probably does need to be more of a link with the education sector, certainly in relation to the advisory boards that are considered for the children’s centres. I would not say it was the primary purpose. There is a big health function, after all.

Anne Longfield: There is a lot of evidence showing that an early years teacher is helpful in reaching outcomes but, as has been said, there are much wider outcomes within this. It would be a mistake to place children’s centres entirely within an educational framework. An issue in the amendments concerns governing bodies. We need to keep an eye on that. We are not thinking of school governing bodies, we are talking about governance mechanisms that reflect communities. We are not just throwing this in within the governing body of a school. Educational outcomes are important as part of this, but it goes much broader. I see children’s centres as a vanguard movement within the wider children’s services. If we can get a culture of seeing things in the round rather than in professional boxes when children are very young, maybe we can start transforming schools with a much more rounded approach.

Clare Tickell: As Anne says, one of the great strengths of good children’s centres is that they are genuinely working with the child at the centre of what happens. A lot of kids in our Sure Start children’s centres in some of the most deprived communities have an awful long way  to go before they can even engage with some of the more traditional approaches, even on early years education, because the issues involved are resilience, well-being and building up their ability to receive, if you like. Therefore, it seems to me to be a mistake to over-emphasise health, education or any other discipline, because that loses the sense of what children’s centres are about.

Having said that, we have a lot of early years provision involving qualified staff in our children’s centres, and, if you are going to do that, you certainly need to do it well, professionally, get the best possible people involved and not do it on the cheap.

Q 49

Clare Tickell: I go back to my opening comments about trying to find a way to run a slide rule over the issue and how we manage to capture the most vulnerable people. I am delighted that you have raised the point, because if there is any area in which we fail young people, it is in getting them in and out of youth justice. That is particularly true of young people with special educational needs who have an unequivocal statement that gets lost as they move in and out of the criminal justice system.

We all do ourselves a disservice in terms of the huge achievements or attainments that could have been made by individual young people in the face of enormous adversity. Nobody intends for that to happen because of a short period in custody, but it does because of a disconnect in terms of where the young people have gone, so everything is disproportionately lost. There has to be some scrutiny of how we maintain some continuity for a young person who is still a child. Actually, this week, newspapers have reported the extent to which prison governors and staff are not necessarily aware that SEN statements still apply because children are involved.

Anne Longfield: That is right. Again, this goes back to the core threads around the Bill in terms of ensuring that early intervention is in place and that all areas of children’s services work strategically, including those that focus on youth offending, which are often not involved in partnership discussions of the mainstream kind that we are talking about, nor are they often active partners in wider discussions. I therefore think that the Bill is helpful in terms of support for the individual.

Clem Henricson: I support what the others say from the same perspective.

Q 50

Anne Longfield: We probably always say that you have not gone far enough out of instinct. There could be some form of ambition towards ensuring that, but practical circumstances clearly get in the way of a lot of things, so you cannot have complete consistency across  the piste. The recognition that we are talking about children and the principle of entitlement to support, whatever the circumstances, is useful. Again, I stress the need to build partnerships and links. There might be ways to ensure that and a wider, ongoing strategic plan, rather than just when a child is in custody.

Q 51

Clem Henricson: I think that it is too early to make a decision about that. It was unlikely that we would see an impact on outcomes so soon after they had been introduced. They were not introduced uniformly, or properly specified, and that is how we see this provision now—to put trusts on a clearer footing. I am not sure that it will put it on a sufficiently clear footing, which is the issue that I just raised.

For example, on the notion of bringing in schools, there clearly needs to be guidance on how that would operate with so many schools, whether you would have them in bundles and how they would co-operate. It is specified in the Bill that the partners would adhere to the plan, but it does not say how they would input into the plan. That is an area that needs to be thought through. In the Audit Commission’s report, there needs to be thought about joint commissioning, accountability lines and how it would tap into mainstream resources. My own view is that it would be a shame to draw back from the tool of co-operation at this stage. It is worth pursuing to see how it evolves, but it does need more definition and you certainly want to maintain individual service responsibility and accountability lines.

Q 52

Clem Henricson: I would say that a significant contribution to them not working is that they have not been implemented in some areas. That was because they were not put on a statutory footing in the first place.

Anne Longfield: Part of their failure is that they have been quite conceptual. They have not even had capital letters at the beginning of their names until recently, so it has been a concept rather than a thing. I think that we would all support the notion that services and people with responsibilities work together and that this is a means to an end. It is a means to an end and it is not an end in itself. I welcome the fact that they are being put on a firmer footing. That should give greater direction and leadership to people who may, or may not, think it is a good thing, or who may have their own ideas about how it is done. I think that it can only help. I would want to see them as enabling: they are there to make things happen and to work more effectively.

They are hugely inconsistent at the moment and there is a lot to be done to get them up to speed. What we should all bear in mind is the fact that the scale of the change required to make them work is absolutely immense, which is why it was no surprise that the report found that things were not happening, or that things were not working fully effectively everywhere. It is an enormous change—a change of culture and practice in every way. So yes, it is a big step to put them on a statutory basis, but actually that is good and it needs to be followed up by much bigger steps to make them work.

Q 53

Anne Longfield: My last comments were about needing that scale of change to follow it through. If it were down to me, the answer would probably be yes. However, it is not down to me. We also recognise that there are lots of sensitivities. You cannot take people to the end game instantly. They need time to put things together and each area will be different. I will probably have to live in a pragmatic world where things are taken a stage at a time. Absolutely, drastic steps are needed to make this work. Pooling budget resources is a way to do that. In the commissioning, there is some kind of thread about third sector involvement and the involvement of children and young people. If you start to create large entities with lots of structure and jargon, the third sector just gets further away because it does not understand that world. That thread must be built in, in whatever way is necessary, so that there is an effective route in which the third sector can live and flourish.

Clare Tickell: But then, we would say that.

Q 54

Clare Tickell: You could argue that there are 10 different creatures that fit that description at the moment. At least there will be only one in future.

Clem Henricson: If there was nothing to turn up to, they would not have any influence at all.

Clare Tickell: I support colleagues in saying that we should front-foot what they are about and make it clear that this is about improved outcomes for children. There  is an awful lot of evidence to suggest that unless you involve the third sector, particularly in finding the hardest to reach, you will not be able to deliver on your outcomes.

Q 55

Clare Tickell: Are we sufficiently reminded of the needs of disabled children by the Bill? No, I do not think that we are. I thought that you were going to go on to talk about Sure Start children’s centres. Children’s centres went up very quickly and they are insufficiently accessible for disabled children in terms of the physical plant. More importantly, there are issues to do with how inclusive they are of disabled children in how they are expected to work.

The short answer is no because reminding us of those needs does not run through as a golden thread. Unfortunately, we still need to be reminded collectively of the importance of ensuring that there is inclusivity for disabled children.

Anne Longfield: That is absolutely right. We have to err on the side of inclusion and still need to be reminded. The starting point for access to services has been very low. We are only just starting to look at catching up. Until we catch up, there should be special accommodation in the Bill to ensure that this issue is looked after. It does not have that yet. It needs to be looked at again from that viewpoint.

Clare Tickell: At the risk of making a really obvious point, that includes disabled parents under a broad definition of disability. There is an issue with accessibility for disabled parents.

Q 56

Clem Henricson: Yes, I did. It is about the link with adult services and how there is no mention of that in relation to the children’s trusts. If you are a disabled parent, issues such as that and how they would dovetail need to be considered. You had another question.

Q 57

Clem Henricson: My response is personal. On the whole, all parents want it. They would be concerned if they were not informed, unless it was frivolous. I cannot conceive that they would not want to know.

Q 58

Clare Tickell: The Bill could be more explicit. I am going to sound like a broken record, but we would always like explicit recognition of how difficult it is for the most vulnerable children and young people to get a toehold. That opinion is based on our experience of trying to get young people in. They almost always respond far better to the kind of opportunities that we can offer if they are the right opportunities and they are tailored. It needs to be explicit because, in terms of the quantum, it is a relatively small proportion of young people, and unless it is explicit and up front, it tends to get lost—not deliberately, but that is what happens with universal versus targeted truths. What was your second question?

Q 59

Clare Tickell: I am old enough to remember youth training way back in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s when we had A and B schemes. The B schemes tended to be for the less able and more challenging young people, and the As had the fast-tracked schemes that were relatively straightforward for people to get into. The trouble with the B schemes, and with anything that tries to enshrine As and Bs, is that you lose the ability to think about what an individual young person needs, what he or she is bringing and how you harness, then release, that young person’s potential.

All our experience in turning around the most difficult and challenging young people—getting them proper employment, not just a Mickey Mouse qualification, so that they follow the same sort of career pathways as most other people—shows that doing so is absolutely based on how much time, effort and energy you put into the initial assessment and initial understanding of where a particular young person is and what attainment and achievement means to them. It may not be GCSEs at all, it may be relatively straightforward and simple things that, disproportionately, elevate that young person’s ambitions. That needs to be understood. The fragility, if you like, of that needs to be understood. “Fragility” is the wrong word—apologies. The right word will probably come to me as I leave the room.

Q 60

Clare Tickell: Yes.

Q 61

Clare Tickell: Yes. I would agree with that. “Flexibility” is a far better word to use than “fragility”, which I used.

Q 62

Anne Longfield: I suppose that the starting point is to say that I think that a common framework, which makes leadership and responsibility clear, is a good one. I think that, yes, there are concerns about abilities to deliver. A lot of those concerns are about inefficient systems that are already in place and a lot of them are about lack of co-ordination, and a lack of professional co-ordination within that. If you are going to go to a brave new world that embodies and embraces all these different services, there is absolutely no room for manoeuvre in making all those systems work. You have to get a simple system that is clear about accountability, delivery and co-operation throughout, which goes back to my former point. That point was that if you are going to go for children’s trusts, you have the scale of what you have to follow through. To make all of this work is an immense task. This is not just tinkering; it is really an immense change. It is a change for the better, I think, but one that requires quite a dramatic response to make it work.

Q 63

Clem Henricson: Is this for the parents’ complaints about schools?

Clem Henricson: I am disappointed that your witnesses this morning were against this, because we are fully supportive of an independent complaints authority, basically the local government ombudsman, and of making it a point of entry for parents and as accessible as possible. Again, we have some issues about clarity and tightening up. I also have a concern about the time frame, which is 12 months from the incident. If you are going through a process of the complaint going to the school, the governor and then to the complaints authority, or LGO, I think that there would be many occasions when it will not hit that 12-month mark.

I think that you would have to recognise the expense of the enterprise. Obviously you want to get information to parents in the most accessible way, and to children, but you also might want to consider the need for an advocate function. If you are introducing mediation and reconciliation facilities too, they all cost.

So it is an aspiration that we certainly favour and it would be very useful in easing parents’ concerns in many ways, particularly with a graduated approach and the use of mediation. However, I just have some anxiety as to whether you can implement it, because of its cost.

I have just one other thought on this subject. There is something about the collection of the data and I would have thought that one of the useful points of collection or analysis would be to establish what complaints consist of, and not just establishing whether or not the system is cost-effective.

Q 64

Clem Henricson: I do not, so it would be wrong of me to say. That is not an area that we have worked in. It might be a future piece of work.

Anne Longfield: My response would be that no complaints process is a good thing. I can imagine that some would say that it would not be, but they might be working within the system where it might make things more difficult. It is part of a wider opening up of schools and the education system to parents who often, as their children go through school find themselves increasingly estranged from the system. When you collect small children from a nursery you are told what greens they had during the day, when they slept, what they laughed at and every thing. That goes completely over the school time. When children get to secondary school by year 10 or 11 there is little communication for many. That is a shame. Children do not benefit as a result.

This is part of wider system of communication with parents, be it e-mails, parent meetings with teachers and the like. It is also important because it is an overt and visible message that the education system needs to be outward facing. It is there to serve children and parents. I know that that is what most teachers, hand on heart, would say they are there for. But sometimes the system takes over and it feels very difficult for parents to get a way in. Turning it very overtly out in that way gives a strong message that it has to be outward facing.

Q 65

Clare Tickell: I completely support that. I just raise the point of making sure that there is clarity for children in local authority care, who may have the complex relationship of a corporate parent and could potentially have a complaint investigated by the body about which they are complaining. There needs to be a way getting that sorted.

Q 66

Clem Henricson: Yes. I have read other responses to the consultation as well and there seems to be a general endorsement of the LGO as an appropriate body. It is sufficiently independent. It is certainly preferable, we thought, to the local authority doing it. Clearly this is a step forward from expecting people to go to the Secretary of State. It is a very good move. As with other aspects of the Bill, there needs to be a bit more clarity about the systems that you require a complainant to go through before getting there. That is not specified. It is in other documentation, but it is not in the Bill. Something would be useful there.

Q 67

Clem Henricson: Yes, I think you have to have something for pupils, but you need an awful lot of support for them and an acceptance that you take out what is frivolous.

Anne Longfield: It has to be pupils, but you have to manage what gets to what stage. You have to acknowledge that an awful lot could be dealt with within a school  system. Again this is an overt way of putting that sort of emphasis into the culture of the school. It has to be pupils within the wider system as well.

Clare Tickell: I agree with the local government ombudsmen. It is not sufficiently different or special. If we are doing what Anne is describing, which is to make this as normal and accountable as everything else, it makes complete sense. Why would you make a special case? But we need the sensitivity.

Q 68

Anne Longfield: First, the basic principle is that it is good. It needs to be high quality and that needs to be embraced. The children’s centre is a new entity so it does not fit neatly within the inspection regimes that are in place, but there are inspection regimes in place that are quite cumbersome and quite detailed, particularly in early years and child care. I am not clear how it would work. That is an area for clarity. We would not want to see it duplicating others and just becoming a third or a fourth inspection. Nor would we want to get to the stage where it replaced all of those and diluted what was in, for instance, early years and child care, where there is a very distinct and detailed inspection. We would not want to see that replaced by a cover-all that does not put in the same safeguards on quality. So, there is a lot there to work through. Discussions are underway, but they are not very far advanced or widespread to my knowledge. We need to ensure the highest quality across the piece. That needs to be the aim.

Clare Tickell: I completely agree, and I suggest that it is quite possible that Ofsted does not understand this properly. We have not been terribly involved—4Children has as far as I am aware—and so it would be good if Ofsted came to talk to us to develop its understanding of exactly what a good children’s centre looks like and how it safeguards that.

Q 69

Clem Henricson: On the ground, we have been strong advocates for developing the health visitor service. That has potential—ensuring that it is represented in children’s centres rather than just health centres. Regarding the children’s trusts, we have certainly highlighted the difficulties that have been experienced because they appear alienated and are not being involved in the same way. We would advocate inclusion of the mental health service on the children’s trust board because of the particular issues that arise for young people and mental health services. I am afraid that placing an obligation on the health service to be an active partner and to co-operate will  probably help. Looking at some higher representation might give it a bit of emphasis. You are taking from the local authority what would be the commensurate level in the health service. The other reservation that I have about the children’s trusts is that there should be more locally elected representation. It is fairly limited. Something to look at might be how far you can get high up in the accountability structure of the health service.

Q 70

Anne Longfield: We do. A lot of the relationships that are in place are there because of long developments and partnerships on the ground—operational rather than strategic partnerships. It is a case of rocketing children and young people up the strategic health agenda and ensuring that that is plumbed into the system at the appropriate high level, that health promotion, public health and children are also plumbed in, that the budgets for health follow, and that the status and requirements of children and young people are mirrored in the health strategy. Until that strategic emphasis and the ability and requirement for budgets to follow are there, that remains something that has to be reinvented 100 times on the ground. That would be my step forward.

Clare Tickell: We are teetering on the brink of a very deep recession and the most important thing to remember is that early intervention will be absolutely critical and key. It talks to health in a way that some of the conversations thus far have not. I agree with Anne that there is something about getting the language sufficiently understood by both partners so that they can each see the relevance of the other. That is about being clear about the outcomes that go behind what we are seeking to do here and ensuring that people are signed up to them. It then begins to fall into place.

Q 71

Christina McAnea: I am Christina McAnea, the head of the education work force unit at Unison, which is the largest union for school support staff.

Brian Strutton: I am Brian Strutton, the GMB national secretary for public services.

Peter Allenson: I am Peter Allenson, the national organiser for public services at Unite.

Joan Binder: I am Joan Binder, the vice-chairman of the Foundation and Aided Schools National Association. I am an elected governor member of the national committee. One of my key remits on that committee is to undertake employer function issues on behalf of schools where the governing body is the employer.

David Algie: I am David Algie from Local Government Employers.

Q 72

Brian Strutton: I am afraid that you have caught us on an area that is not our expertise and which we have not prepared for. I do not have an answer on that point. If you want a view, I am sure that we could go away and consider it, but we do not know about that area.

Q 73

Christina McAnea: We are certainly very supportive of the proposals on apprenticeships and provision for 16 to 19-year-olds. We are happy that local government is being given a greater role in co-ordinating the process. What we would like to see is tied up with other provisions in the Bill, such as the right to train. We would like a clearer right for people in employment to access training. Many members of the unions represented here are those in local government with the fewest formal qualifications. When you look at what happens across employers—it is the same in local government and in schools—only 1 per cent. of the money spent goes to those staff who do not have a degree level qualification or equivalent. Almost all the money is spent on staff who already have some formal qualification. We would want a clearer right to train and a greater focus on how to upskill people who are coming in or are not in the workforce at the moment, with a level 2 or above qualification.

Joan Binder: May I just come in on the schools perspective? I apologise if I am not au fait with all the clauses in the Bill. I came back from six weeks’ holiday at the weekend and I have been trying to get my head round those clauses I particularly want to focus on.

From the school perspective, we have welcomed the introduction of the new vocational diploma as a means of encouraging participation in learning, particularly learning focused on the next stage of employment or training.

I do not know whether there is anything on this point in the Bill—it might be inappropriate to mention and it is anecdotal—but we often find in school that not enough credence is given to those vocational qualifications in terms of presenting data about schools.

Q 74

Brian Strutton: From the wider local government perspective, Mr. Allenson and I are joint secretaries of the national joint council for local government. We have just come from a Cabinet Office meeting between the trade unions and public sector departments where the ability of public services—local government in particular—to help the economy through the recession was talked about in some depth. The capacity to cope with that now as well as all the needs you are outlining is quite frankly not there. Our members report back to us constantly. You will probably have seen a report in the past couple of weeks from the Local Government Association outlining what it saw as the problems it would be facing. From a union member’s point of view and the reports that we get, bear in mind that we in local government have had on the books since 2004 a national training agreement whereby every local government employee should have had a personal development and training plan. Virtually no local authorities have carried that out. The point we are starting from with these initiatives is a long way back. Funding in local government generally is extremely tight, as you know, so the capacity to ramp up from an already low platform leaves us quite concerned.

Peter Allenson: To add to that, it is well recognised that local government has achieved significant efficiency savings over the past few years. Indeed, that has trimmed away a considerable amount of what might be called fat, and to be honest, it is now really difficult to find the resource necessary to take on additional responsibilities in the way you indicate. The difficulty is that sometimes it is one initiative too far, in terms of being able to cover the new responsibilities that might come their way.

Q 75

Christina McAnea: May I mention a particular point that is of interest to my union? There are concerns about the early years provision and the role of local authorities as the commissioning agents, and the issue  of commissioning runs through many of the Bill’s proposals and is a key point relating to what the strategic role of local authorities will be. We are a bit concerned that the public sector provision of some services, particularly children’s and early years services, produces better results and standards than is currently possible in the private and voluntary sector, and there is hard evidence to support that in Ofsted’s own information. One of the things we are concerned about is the impact some of the proposed changes will have on the funding of early years provision, for example, because it will all depend on the funding formula.

Public sector provision is usually more expensive than that provided by the private and voluntary sector because the staff tend to be better trained and slightly better paid. If the funding formula is to be cost driven during an economic recession in which you will be saying, “We want you to go out there and get the cheapest possible provision you can find.”, our concern is that that will have a downward push on standards because you will not be able to attract people who are suitably trained and qualified for some of those key roles.

We are concerned that the thrust will be for local authorities to become merely commissioning agents for most of the services, whether apprenticeships or early years, and they will be seen as such. Even if that is the case, surely there is an argument for saying that local authorities, in their role as commissioners, ought to be building in much tighter requirements for the companies and organisations that will be willing to do that work. They should be saying, “This is how you will train your staff, and these are the minimum standards they will have to meet.”

Further work is needed on how that commissioning role will be used. Brian has mentioned that we have just come from a meeting with public sector departments, and one of the issues we discussed was how to use the commissioning role to ensure that providers in the private and voluntary sector are actually delivering on some of those key objectives.

Joan Binder: May I add something to that from the school perspective? Often individual schools in a locality can respond to local issues very quickly because of their contacts. What sometimes holds them up is unnecessary bureaucracy and a lack of funding. One think I will put in front of you to carry forward is the proposal that, if some of those things need to be expedited quickly, maybe some thought should be given to how funding can be devolved to individual schools or groups of schools.

Q 76

Brian Strutton: One of the key reasons that we have worked so long to set up such a body is the so-called term-time pay formula, which we have always regarded as an abuse of school support staff in their employment.  Under the formula, support staff have to be aligned with all other local authority staff, so their pay is determined in relation to another full-time equivalent employee, and, for the local authority, “full-time equivalent” means working all year round. Under that classification, school support staff are part time because they only work term-time weeks, which means that their salary is reduced pro rata, and, of course, as nearly all school support staff are part time, it is further reduced pro rata.

Every local authority does it differently, and many schools within authorities do it differently again. We stopped counting when we got to 50 different ways of calculating school support staff pay, which is one of the nonsenses that we have been trying to correct by setting up a national body. We tried to correct it through the existing local government negotiating machinery, but were unable to do so. One of the raison d’êtres for trying to separate school support staff from the rest of local authority staff was so that their particular terms and conditions could be addressed. That is one of the key points for us.

Q 77

Christina McAnea: This is a key issue for us. We are hoping that it will achieve national role profiles, which are not quite like job descriptions, but will delineate between different levels of responsibility and will have some sort of recommended pay spine attached. One of our big problems at present centres on part of the remodelling agreement in 2003 or 2004—I forget when we signed it. The agreement guaranteed teachers planning, preparation and assessment time, so we have introduced things such as higher level assistants and cover supervisors. The big problem is that there has been such a large amount of flexibility that things are being run very differently in different schools.

I should say that we have a paper to give you—we are a bit late—but one of the things that we have raised as a trade union is our concern about the reform agenda’s sustainability in schools. We have to get it right for support staff because, in our view, they are critical not only to the delivery of the things that our members do, but also to maintaining the things that teachers do and the kind of reforms that they have seen. By and large, where teachers have been given additional time, it is our members who have been asking to take on responsibilities.

We have worked hard with the Training and Development Agency for Schools to try to develop good training packages, so we now have, for example, a higher level teaching assistant standard. One of our problems is that loads of schools have just plucked bits of it and said, “We are going to employ you as a teaching assistant level 2, but for four hours a week we are going to put you in charge of a whole class, for which you might get an extra £5 an hour.” In some schools, they are not even using higher level teaching assistants for that; they are using teaching assistants who, in the head teacher’s judgment, are capable of doing it. That happens  predominantly in the primary rather than secondary sector, and is a huge problem for us. We think that it will mean that the sustainability of what has happened in schools—the fact that teachers have access to 10 per cent. PPA time—will not go on for ever.

On the protections that we will get, we hope that, by having national role profiles lent to a grading structure, all the employer organisations will sign up as well through time, because we are doing this in partnership with them. A much stronger message will go out to schools to say that this is the way that you will employ and, crucially, deploy your support staff. The reason why it is important that we get this body set up is because that it would give us a mechanism to deliver some sort of statutory enforcement to an extent, even if it is only of core conditions of employment. That is what we need. To deliver national consistency, we need some sort of national statutory body, a bit like the teachers’ pay and conditions document, so that head teachers can lift the book off the shelf, open it and say, “Alright, if I want someone to do this job, this is the job description and this is what I pay them”.

Joan Binder: I cannot wholeheartedly support everything that Christina has said; she would be falling off her chair if I could. I would like to assure you, Annette, that the work that teaching assistants do in schools is very much appreciated. Their numbers are increasing, because of the very good work that they do.

The reason for the inconsistency, if you want to use that word, of their deployment between schools is because schools are individual institutions. They have their own individual response to their circumstances. They have their own priorities, strategies and strategic direction. The way that they deploy their staff, particularly their support staff, underlines and underpins their priorities and strategic direction. That is the reason for some of the inconsistency in the jobs that people do and the names that those jobs are given.

If we look at the question that Christina raised directly, of the HLTA status, if you like, we have a difficulty here with the concept that somebody is paid according to their status or qualification, no matter what sort of job they are doing and whether or not the job requires those skills. I will just give you one example. It is not uncommon now for teachers, as they get towards the end of their career, to downsize and to come back to do part-time work, perhaps coming back into school and taking a support staff role of some sort. Following the logic through, they should be paid at the rate that they are paid as a teacher, rather than the rate that should be paid for the job that they are doing as a teaching assistant.

So there is a sort of conundrum there, really. I am just putting the opposite case, if you like. What we agree on is that there needs to be some framework for schools to use when it comes to the employment terms and conditions of their support staff.

Q 78

Joan Binder: I suppose that currently it is reconciled because the support staff in community and voluntary aided schools are subject to the NJC. The flexibility comes in with the local flexibility that is offered to foundation and VA schools by virtue of the governing body being the employer.

Q 79

Joan Binder: We would like to see the possibility for employer-level flexibility as one of the outcomes of the discussions that we are having and the framework that we are now trying to set up.

Brian Strutton: We would argue that currently national consistency and local flexibility are not reconciled and that that is precisely the reason why, for the past four years, we have been, with FASNA’s assistance and local government employers, jointly working through the proposal to establish a nationally consistent framework that can be applied flexibly at local level. It is because the current system is broke that we need to fix it. What should be done is exactly what we are trying to do, which is establish a national body that can give effect to nationally consistent pay and conditions arrangements that can be applied in all schools. Our job is to ensure that the application of that still leaves room for flexibility at local level, which I hope would satisfy Joan’s point on the matter.

It is a fine line to tread and a difficult balance to strike between how proscriptive to be nationally and what has happened with school support staff, which is that they have grown in terms of responsibilities and numbers because they can be deployed flexibly. It is not in our interest to get in the way of flexible deployment, but, once deployed, we want to see them treated fairly and consistently across the country. That is the happy medium that we want to strike.

Q 80

David Algie: I agree, I think that it is important that we have a national framework for school support staff. I understand that it is difficult to achieve national consistency and local flexibility, but we should pursue it. The negotiating body, if constructed in the right way, can do that.

Q 81

Brian Strutton: Yes. Other colleagues will disagree, but we are all of one mind about this: it would be a satisfactory route. We would have preferred recognition to be enshrined in primary legislation, but we understand the reasons why it is not possible. We would be content for our recognition to be tied up in secondary legislation, but we have been at this point for several weeks now. We  saw this issue coming many months ago. When the Bill was published, our immediate reaction was how is trade union recognition going to be dealt with. We are still at the point where we know the route for resolving the issue—secondary legislation—but we are not at the point of doing it. Our dilemma is that the Bill is going through Parliament and will arrive with statutory force later this year, if it is all plain sailing, so where does that leave our recognition? It would be unprofessional of us simply to rely on assurances and trust, however high our trust is in you, Jim, and your team.

Q 82

Joan Binder: Can I clarify that you are talking about clause 215, not 216?

Joan Binder: It is clause 216, I am sorry.

David Algie: We would like to see—

David Algie: We welcome clause 215(1), but have concerns about clause 215(3).

David Algie: We feel that having to seek consent from the Secretary of State will inhibit the body. Perhaps Brian would like to add to that.

Brian Strutton: What has been explained to us as the process that lies behind clause 215 is that the Secretary of State cannot give ratified orders on anything that he has not referred to the body in a formal letter. Unions and employers have found it hard to reconcile that with our understanding of how negotiations work.

As you can see, we are all long-in-the-tooth negotiators, ladies excepted, and we know the way in which negotiating bodies have to operate. Things happen very quickly. The ability to strike a deal while parties are ready is crucial. The idea that having reached the point of agreement, we have to seek permission from the Government machine to strike the deal seems to us to be a barrier to the proper operation of a negotiating body. Given that the negotiating body has the Department sitting in as observers and that it has an independent chair who is a conduit to Ministers, we fail to understand why in addition we must seek permission to reach agreements. The independent chair and the Department are in the room to ensure that we are told if we are doing anything inappropriate. Therefore the requirement to seek permission in clause 215(3) should simply be deleted.

Peter Allenson: May I add to that the concern about having to refer to the Secretary of State before something is referred to the School Support Staff Negotiating Body? As democratic organisations, we have to consult members. One way in which we do that to start with is  to bring a claim together in a normal negotiating situation. As Brian has indicated, we try to get our understanding clear from the start on how we can do that. Unless we have a mandate from our members, we are not able to operate in the normal way. That is important to us. The question of recognition is also an emotive subject for us. Both are things that our lay representatives will have to be consulted about in a detailed way shortly. We will be looking out to see if the right things happen at the right times.

Q 83

Christina McAnea: We certainly see it as a way of delivering equal pay for the future. This continues to be a live issue. We would like to have some sort of job evaluation scheme, or a method to analyse what jobs are worth, with which we and employers feel comfortable. It should be written and developed specifically for schools, or at least take schools into consideration. There has not always been success in using the local government structures to deliver and analyse jobs in schools because they can be quite different. The context is different. The working hours and the working year are different. It has been quite difficult to do that.

There are comparators. At the moment, if you are in a community school there is nothing to stop people taking an equal pay claim across to someone who works in the local authority, particularly if you have been evaluated under the same job evaluation scheme. There is an issue about whether that will continue to be the case. We will probably need to get some updated legal advice, given that the situation in equal pay changes weekly, if not daily, about what happens once the body is up and running and staff in schools are then paid from a different source and there is a different set of negotiations. What would be the impact on their ability to take equal pay claims then?

Q 84

Brian Strutton: Just to make one thing clear. Currently, school support staff do have comparators. Between our three unions we are running about 70,000 equal pay claims in local government. A lot of those are school support staff. All school support staff have the opportunity to raise those issues with us. Half of local authorities have implemented equal pay structures now and the rest have got plans to do so. As Christina rightly said, part of what we are doing is designed to resolve those types of issues. It will do so by building a bespoke system for school support staff.

Joan Binder: Currently, for foundation and VA schools, where the governing body is the employer, the equal pay issue is just across the individual school. You cannot have comparators from outside a foundation or a VA school.

Q 85

Brian Strutton: What do you mean by scheme?

Q 86

Brian Strutton: I can think of some.

Joan Binder: There can be a range. Are we talking about pay? Are we talking about terms and conditions?

Q 87

Joan Binder: I was fairly broad because within the support staff working group we have used the word “flexibility” without going into any particular definition of what our individual understanding of that is. If we are looking at what might be up to a school or a local authority to determine, there may be elements of something like sick pay where there would be a common basis—am I talking totally off the top of my head here Brian? He is going to drop me in it later.I do not have a professional background in this. In terms of deciding things at local level, it is more to do with responding.

Q 88

Joan Binder: I mean the local employer. For me, local means employer, whether it is the school or the local authority. That for me is the “local” in the “local level”. The question about the flexibility that you might need has just gone out of my head. There might be issues such as how much you pay your cleaners. The going rate, depending on the area, might be x. However, the framework that we are setting out might suggest that you pay your cleaners within a range that x does not fall into. The school would need flexibility to be able to say, “In order to attract and keep cleaners, we have got to match that level.”

Brian Strutton: Christina will come back at you on that one, Joan.

Christina McAnea: We feel that flexibility can be built into it. We might say to schools that we do not envisage a situation where they will be told, “This is exactly what your structure will be.” Schools will be able to determine what their staffing structure is, what level of staff they want and what jobs they want the staff to do. That can all be determined at school level. All that we are saying is that once you have done that, here are national frameworks that will help you to decide: these are the levels of responsibility; this is the level of work I want them to do; this is what the pay range should be and it will be a range of pay. Issues such as the ability to recruit and retain staff in an area where you have to pay more can all be built into it. We have done that in other sectors. In the higher education sector we have a specific framework agreement that has recruitment and retention built into it. All of that is entirely possible and we  believe that it still leaves sufficient flexibility for schools to be able to have whatever staffing structure they want and whatever level of staff they want.

Q 89

Joan Binder: It is very difficult to give a definite answer at this stage, because we are still in the early stages of trying to describe what is going to be in the eventual framework. Provided that we are still talking about flexibility and, using Christina and Brian’s analogy, that we are still envisaging that flexibility being built into the framework, then I am hopeful that it will be possible for schools to be able to do what they are doing now in terms of employment and deploying their support staff.

Q 90

Joan Binder: It could be inflexible if the job description for, say, a site manager was fixed, and if schools did not have a site manager who did exactly that, then they would have to find one who could do that, if you see what I mean. I do not think that any of us want that. We all want something whereby a school—because the term “site manager” can cover a whole range of jobs in different schools—would be able to say, “Oh yes, my site manager does this bit, this bit and this bit. Therefore, that is his job description and contract and therefore that equates to this pay range.” A bigger school might say, “My site manager does all of those and a few extra bits from here. This is his contract and his pay range is therefore something else.” That is a description of what we are trying to aim at. If we can produce that then I am hopeful that, provided there is employer-level flexibility, schools can manage.

Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned.—(Ms Butler.)

Adjourned till Tuesday 10 March at half-past Ten o’clock.