Secondary Education

House of Commons Education and Skills Committee

Secondary Education

Fifth Report of Session 2004?05

Report, together with formal minutes, oral and written evidence

Ordered by The House of Commons to be printed 9 March 2005

HC 86 Published on 17 March 2005 by authority of the House of Commons London: The Stationery Office Limited

?15.50

The Education and Skills Committee

The Education and Skills Committee is appointed by the House of Commons to examine the expenditure, administration and policy of the Department for Education and Skills and its associated public bodies.

Current membership

Mr Barry Sheerman MP (Labour, Huddersfield) (Chairman) Mr David Chaytor MP (Labour, Bury North) Valerie Davey MP (Labour, Bristol West) Jeff Ennis MP (Labour, Barnsley East & Mexborough) Mr Nick Gibb MP (Conservative, Bognor Regis & Littlehampton) Mr John Greenway MP (Conservative, Ryedale) Paul Holmes MP (Liberal Democrat, Chesterfield) Helen Jones MP (Labour, Warrington North) Mr Kerry Pollard MP (Labour, St Albans) Jonathan Shaw MP (Labour, Chatham and Aylesford) Mr Andrew Turner MP (Conservative, Isle of Wight)

Powers

The Committee is one of the departmental select committees, the powers of which are set out in House of Commons Standing Orders, principally in SO No 152. These are available on the Internet via parliament.uk

Publications

The Reports and evidence of the Committee are published by The Stationery Office by Order of the House. All publications of the Committee (including press notices) are on the Internet at: parliament.uk/parliamentary_committees/education_and_skills_committee.cfm

Committee staff

The current staff of the Committee are David Lloyd (Clerk), Dr Sue Griffiths (Second Clerk), Libby Aston (Committee Specialist), Nerys Roberts (Committee Specialist), Lisa Wrobel (Committee Assistant), Susan Monaghan (Committee Assistant), Catherine Jackson (Secretary) and John Kittle (Senior Office Clerk).

Contacts

All correspondence should be addressed to the Clerk of the Education and Skills Committee, House of Commons, 7 Millbank, London SW1P 3JA. The telephone number for general enquiries is 020 7219 6181; the Committee's email address is edskillscom@parliament.uk

Footnotes

In the footnotes of this Report, references to oral evidence are indicated by `Q' followed by the question number. References to written evidence are indicated in the form `Ev' followed by the page number.

Secondary Education 1

Contents

Report

Page

Summary

3

1 Introduction

7

2 Diversity of Provision

9

Specialist schools

9

Academies

13

The Rhetoric of Diversity

17

3 Pupil Achievement

18

Measuring and Raising Achievement

18

International Comparisons

20

4 School Admissions

24

Oversubscription Criteria

24

Partial selection

25

Aptitude tests

26

Structured discussions and interviews

27

Grammar school ballots

27

School Admissions Code of Practice

29

Appeals

30

Co-ordinated Admissions

31

The Rhetoric of Choice

31

5 Teacher Retention and Recruitment

32

Pupil Behaviour: Teaching in Challenging schools

32

Remodelling the Workforce: Falling Rolls and an Ageing Profession

35

6 The Government's Five Year Strategy for Children and Learners

38

Independent Specialist Schools

38

Admissions

39

Partnerships

40

Local Authorities

42

The Department for Education and Skills

43

Local Co-ordination

44

14-19 Education

44

School Expansion

46

The Five Year Strategy: A New Direction?

48

7 Conclusion

50

Conclusions and recommendations

52

2 Optional header

Formal minutes

61

Witnesses

64

List of written evidence

65

Reports from the Education and Skills Committee, Session 2004?05

66

Secondary Education 3

Summary

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.

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