| This report marks the conclusion of a two year inquiry into secondary education conducted by the Education and Skills Committee. During this time, we have investigated what we consider to be central elements of secondary education, publishing reports on Diversity of Provision, Pupil Achievement, School Admissions and Teacher Retention and Recruitment. This report brings together what we have learnt from these inquiries.
Our in depth inquiry into secondary education has given us a unique insight into the sector. We have scrutinised the Government's evidence base, the implementation of its policy and its future plans.
We acknowledge and welcome the improvements that have been brought about as a result of this Government's policies. We consider that the recent and planned increases in public expenditure on education are proving broadly effective. Some of its proposals for change are also welcome, such as the introduction of three-year budgets for schools, which will allow schools to plan and deploy their resources more efficiently.
In contrast, we are concerned that some of the Government's flagship policies are based on unexamined assumptions and are not accompanied by measures to test the relationship between cost and effectiveness. The Government hopes that its commitment to diversity and choice will raise standards in secondary education. This cannot be achieved without a rigorous assessment of what works and what does not. Many of these initiatives are expensive (for example, the projected £5 billion that will be spent on 200 Academy schools), yet the evidence that emerges from these programmes is not always properly evaluated and lessons learned before further public funds are committed.
Diversity of Provision: The Specialist Schools programme, and more recently the City Academy initiative, have added new school types to an already diverse system of secondary education. The Government asserts that this policy will lead to a rise in standards, but it has failed to produce the evidence to support the expansion of its diversity initiatives. We acknowledge and welcome the rise in standards achieved by many specialist schools and some Academies, but we caution that the reasons for success must be fully understood in order to be replicated elsewhere. Despite the Government's attachment to evidence-based policy, expensive schemes are rolled out before being adequately tested and evaluated compared to other less expensive alternatives.
Pupil Achievement: We welcome the more widespread use of value-added performance measures, but we continue to be concerned about the Government's focus on national targets as a school improvement tool. National targets have their place, but do not of themselves produce improvements. Practical measures are needed to generate the rise in standards that the Government desires. It should therefore be wary of imposing blanket "one size fits all" targets that some schools find harder to achieve due to the nature of their intake.
School Admissions: We are concerned that the Government seems complacent about the implementation of its objectives for the admissions system. The evidence we took during our inquiry indicates a troubling slide away from parents choosing schools for their children and towards schools choosing the pupils they wish to admit. The Government refuses to acknowledge this trend, let alone to take action to reverse it. Indeed, its proposals for the future of secondary education look likely to compound the situation. In this context, it is doubtful whether Ministers' claims that the admissions system serves to extend parental choice can be justified. We reiterate our recommendations, first expressed in our report on School Admissions, that the main elements of the Admissions Code of Practice should be given statutory force and that the Schools Adjudicator be given powers to investigate. We further recommend that the Government fundamentally reconsider the current arrangements for local ballots to end selection.
Teacher Retention and Recruitment: Further work is necessary to address challenging behaviour in schools. Poor behaviour holds down standards, causes some parents to choose schools outside their locality and causes good teachers to leave the profession. The present Secretary of State for Education has stated publicly that this issue is now a high priority for the DfES. We look forward to seeing actual improvements resulting from these words. In some cases, teachers can be helped to cope with challenging behaviour by means of specialised training programmes, similar to those we have seen in operation on Committee visits, and we urge the DfES to learn from models abroad. In other cases, poor behaviour is so acute that teachers face an impossible task and a more fundamental solution is needed. The Government's proposal that schools should share hard-to-teach pupils more evenly is one possibility, but we are not convinced that it intends to establish robust systems to encourage or ensure this form of collaboration.
The Five Year Strategy for Children and Learners: The Five Year Strategy sets out the Government's proposals for education over the next Parliament. Whilst some of the measures in this document are welcome, such as guaranteed three-year budgets for schools, others give rise to serious reservations. We detect a tension between the proposed structure of independent specialist schools and the Government's desire for schools to work more co-operatively in 'partnerships'. The idea of schools working together to share expertise and disruptive pupils is appealing, but we consider that the Secretary of State may be underestimating the challenges involved in realising this vision. Partnerships may not appear equally attractive to all schools and it is hard to see what pressures will be brought to bear in order to persuade all schools of the value of collaboration.
The reshaping of local government's role also gives rise to questions. The Five Year Strategy proposes that Local Authorities should provide strategic leadership. In a system where all schools are functioning independently, what levers will be available to Local Authorities to persuade schools to act differently? Additionally, the Government wishes to establish a "strong presumption" that popular schools will be able to create sixth forms and to expand. It is unclear where this leaves existing local planning system, and, indeed the new 'strategic' Local Authorities. It appears that local bodies will only be able to perform their function effectively for as long as their actions accord with the Government's wishes.
We find it difficult to detect a coherent overarching strategy in the Government's proposals for education. The evidence provided to show that the large sums of money to be spent on the new arrangements will produce significant educational benefits is not convincing enough. Whilst the Strategy offers some welcome changes, it also contains much that has not been properly thought through.
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