The Committee for Children, Schools and Families recommends major changes to the nature and management of the national curriculum. In its current form the national curriculum essentially accounts for all the available teaching time, and the Committee would like to see a cap placed so that less than half that time is prescribed centrally. A slimmed-down national curriculum designed much more from the learner's perspective, setting out the learning that they have a right to access, is recommended. Parents should be provided with a copy of the national curriculum so that they can take on a greater role in overseeing the curriculum that their child experiences. The Committee is not convinced by the proposed Programmes of Study for the primary curriculum put forward in the interim report of the Rose Review (available at http://publications.teachernet.gov.uk), which seem unnecessarily complex, takes a similar view on the new secondary curriculum and is concerned at some of the Early Learning Goals specified in the Early Years Foundation Stage (there should be more emphasis at this stage on developing speaking, listening and social skills). All schools should have the freedoms in curriculum matters enjoyed by Academies, and should not be pressured to follow the non-statutory National Strategies guidance. The report also stresses the importance of empowering professional teachers rather than the current approach of prescription and direction. The coherence and continuity in the curriculum is another concern, with a history of piecemeal creation and amendment to frameworks from 0 to 19. The Committee recommends an independent curriculum authority be established to review and then keep the curriculum refreshed.
This second report, entitled "The Department for Children, Schools and Families and the Children's Plan", (HCP 213, session 2007-08, ISBN 9780215514691) from the Children, Schools and Families Committee examines the creation of the new Department for Children, Schools and Families. The Department has sole responsibility for early years education and the schooling of children between 5 and 13, but in other areas, such as education for 14-19 year olds, it operates jointly with other Government departments, in partcular the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills. The Committee welcomes the Departmental focus on children, but expresses some reservations in regard of joint responsibility which it sees as leading to a lack of clarity in regard of responsibility and a dilution in decision making. The Committee believes clarity on which Department has specific responsibility is important, particularly with the introduction of the new Diploma system for 14-19 year olds. Also the Departments' Children's Plan does not at present have a timetable of action or a clear set of priorities and that the Department needs to be explicit on how it intends to drive improvements in services for children and familes. In total the Committee has set out 14 conclusions and recommendations covering: the new Department; the Children's Plan; Public Service Agreements; schools' funding; efficiency and productivity.
This report considers the roles of a variety of different agents for accountability in the English school system. The first part examines self-evaluation, self-improvement partners and local authorities. Schools have increasingly been encouraged to formalise the self-evaluation process as part of their improvement strategy. They are assisted in their self-evaluation and improvement processes by School Improvement Partners (SIPs) who are appointed by the local authority. School provision is commissioned by local authorities, who also have a remit to monitor local schools' performance. The report then focuses on the work of Ofsted. School inspection reports are a major source of information about a school's performance, and inspection is often the trigger for a school to address its performance issues. The report then looks at the Achievement and Attainment Tables, formerly known as performance tables. The tables have been the subject of controversy for many years because, although they do not actually rank schools according to their performance in national examinations, they permit others, especially the media, to do so. Critics argue that they give only a partial view of a school's overall performance, and the proposed School Report Card is an attempt to address this issue by providing more information on a wider range of performance indicators. The school accountability process has become very complex with new programmes and policies emerging piecemeal from central government. There are concerns about the consistency of approach in such a complex system. And are schools really free to drive their own improvement given that they are still subject to programmes devised and applied by central government?
The Committee warns that rushing to judge the worth of Sure Start Children's Centres would be catastrophic and could jeopardise one of the most innovative and ambitious initiatives of the last two decades. The report says Children's Centres are designed to address some of the most entrenched aspects of disadvantage, but the majority have been in place for less than four years. Evaluations of their impact will therefore only be meaningful over the long term. Yielding to short term financial pressure by reducing the number of Centres or pruning the range of services offered would be a mistake, the Committee says. A universal service can ensure that all vulnerable children get the access they need, and the wide range of support and activities provided to families is a vital feature of the programme. Stable funding is also essential. The scale of the programme means important challenges remain. With a national network of Centres in place, there must now be a constant focus on raising the quality of staffing and services, and on improving the performance of Centres in reaching the most vulnerable families. Partnership working with health services, in particular GPs, is patchy across the country and Children's Centres must not be an optional extra for health agencies. The Government should re-establish ministerial responsibility for the Sure Start programme in the Department of Health as well as the Department for Children, Schools and Families.Information about value for money in Children's Centres is still unacceptably difficult to come by, the committee adds. More must be done to determine the total resources being put into the initiative from all Government departments.
The Care Matters White Paper (Cm. 7137, 2007, ISBN 9780101713726) and the resultant Children and Young Persons Act 2008 (ISBN 9780105423089) showed the priority the Government has put on improving outcomes for looked-after children. But the Committee cautions that success will not flow automatically from new legislation or guidance. Previous programmes of substantial reform and investment have left outcomes for looked-after children still lagging unacceptably far behind those for other children. Inconsistency in practice and underperformance against current standards show that there are significant underlying challenges to implementation of the new raft of measures. The report examines the crucial elements of: relationships - stable reliable bonds with key individuals are fundamental to children's security and development; placements - are in short supply and local authorities need more support to increase availability; the performance framework - the quality of decision-making, of relationships, and of children's experiences of care. Three themes run through the Committee's conclusions. First is the importance of a well-trained, fairly paid, well-supported workforce in delivering the care. Secondly is how local authorities can come to approximate more closely the care of birth parents. Thirdly, there is the voice of the child and more independent support is needed for children to express their views. The care system should not be seen as a sanction against failing parents, nor blight children's future prospects. Care must be an integral part of a continuum of effective family support services for families under stress and not functioning well. Parents should expect that children in care will have stability and personalised attention rather than a life ruled by uncertainty and bureaucracy and will have access to all the health and therapeutic care that they need to enjoy life and develop into independent adults.
The Early Years Single Funding Formula is intended to replace the different methods currently used to fund early years settings in the maintained sector and in the private, voluntary and independent (PVI) sector. Each local authority will in future use the same criteria for every setting in its area when allocating funds for education and care provided under the free entitlement for three and four year olds. But the Formula has resulted in winners and losers, and the greatest losers will be maintained nursery schools, which provide a quality of education and care which is very high and sets the standard for others to follow. Overall the difficulties encountered so far with the Single Funding Formula have arisen because of the way in which it has been implemented, rather than because of the concept. Local authorities were encouraged to offer settings a supplement to the basic hourly rate of funding to recognise high quality provision, but many have not done so. A quality supplement should be made mandatory. The Government was correct in deciding to defer full implementation until April 2011 and the year's delay must be used to restore stability and to rework funding formulae where necessary. Sir Jim Rose's proposals to encourage entry to primary school in the September following a child's fourth birthday will have far-reaching consequences for early years funding, but blur the distinction between early years and primary education. The Government should examine whether a unified funding system should be introduced for all children aged from 2 to 11 years old.
Apprenticeships have a long history and are widely recognised as a powerful form of learning. Not all young people thrive in a school or college environment: some find the world of work more stimulating and a better place to learn. The Committee welcomes much of the Government's policy in seeking to raise the standards of apprenticeships, including some of the measures contained within the Draft Apprenticeships Bill. They are not convinced, however, that legislation is strictly necessary to achieve this. The real bite in the Draft Bill lies in the duty to be placed on the Learning and Skills Council (and, in due course, successor bodies), to secure the availability of apprenticeship places for anyone above compulsory school age but under 19, and who holds the necessary entry level requirements. Given the economic downturn, they have grave doubts about whether such a statutory duty can be met. Even if it can, it is feared that the pressure of that duty could lead to the quality of apprenticeships being compromised. The Government's aspiration for a greater supply of apprenticeships and greater diversity of entry to apprenticeships is very much dependent for success on the ability of the public sector to take up the apprenticeship challenge. The Committee also strongly supports group apprenticeship schemes, in which an organisation would have links to smaller firms which, singly, would find it difficult to offer the breadth of experience or continuity of work required for an apprenticeship. Concerns about the impact of the challenging economic circumstances extend beyond apprenticeships. The Government plans to introduce legislation in the 2008-09 Parliamentary Session to transfer responsibility for funding and delivering education and training for 16 to 18-year-olds from the Learning and Skills Council to local authorities. This will be a dramatic change and, caution is strongly urged
In its annual examination of the Department for Children, Schools and Families' (DCSF) spending, the Children, Schools and Families Committee predicts that future funding will be much tighter than at present and the rate of spending growth will be minimal come the next Spending Review. The Committee is pleased that the Government has reaffirmed its commitment to capital investment in education, but there is concern that the review of Building Schools for the Future will lead to the programme being curtailed. To avoid doubt, the Department should make a clear statement about the programme's future. The Committee identifies key problems with the presentation of expenditure figures in the report, including confusion about which expenditure streams or grants deliver which objectives, and calls on the Department to rectify these problems in its next Annual Report. To ensure real accountability, staging points must be included for long term Public Service Agreement (PSA) targets. In order to assess whether these targets have been met, it is imperative that DCSF does not revise them at every three-yearly spending review. The Committee is disappointed that details on how DCSF achieved its efficiency savings are vague and it expects much more of the promised detail in the 2009 Departmental Annual Report.
A certain amount of national testing at key points in a child's school career is necessary in order to provide a standardised means of measuring educational attainment. But in recent years the Government has emphasised central control of the education system through testing and associated targets and performance tables, placing test results in a new and more complex context with wide-ranging consequences. National test results are used for a wide variety of purposes across many different levels-national, local, institutional and individual. Is the current national testing system a valid means by which to achieve these purposes. The Committee concludes that, in some cases, it is not. In particular, the use of national test results for the purpose of school accountability has resulted in some schools emphasising the maximisation of test results at the expense of a more rounded education for their pupils. A variety of classroom practices aimed at improving test results has distorted the education of some children, which may leave them unprepared for higher education and employment. 'Teaching to the test' and narrowing of the taught curriculum are widespread phenomena in schools, resulting in a disproportionate focus on the 'core' subjects of English, mathematics and science. The Government's proposals for the new single-level tests and the new emphasis on the personalised approach to learning may have some positive effects. But there is a need for structural modification of the current approach. The Committee concludes that the national testing system should be reformed to decouple these multiple purposes in such a way as to remove from schools the imperative to pursue test results at all costs. On the 14-19 diplomas, the Committee notes that teachers feel unprepared for the new qualifications and there is anxiety about the limited amount of training they are due to receive.
The question of if and how home education should be regulated has been the subject of a series of consultations and research studies commissioned by the Department, which culminated in the Badman review. Debate has centred on the one hand, the absence of prescription in relation to home education and the ability of home educating families to refuse contact with their local authority, and, on the other, the duty on local authorities to ensure that every child in their area is receiving a suitable education. There is much concern over the Badman report recommendation that registration and monitoring be introduced for home educating families which has been taken forward through the Children, Schools and Families Bill. The Committee supports the proposals to introduce annual registration for home educating families but suggests that registration should, at least initially, be voluntary. Any registration system should be accompanied by better information sharing between local authorities, HM Revenue and Customs and other agencies. The Committee also suggests that home educating families should provide some form of statement of their intended approach to their child's education. They believe that ultimately the effectiveness of more robust arrangements for monitoring home education provision will rest on the knowledge and skills of local authority officers. A separate difficulty seen with the Badman report is in its merging education and safeguarding matters. The Committee suggests that existing safeguarding legislation is the appropriate mechanism for the purpose of safeguarding home-educated children
This second report, entitled "The Department for Children, Schools and Families and the Children's Plan", (HCP 213, session 2007-08, ISBN 9780215514691) from the Children, Schools and Families Committee examines the creation of the new Department for Children, Schools and Families. The Department has sole responsibility for early years education and the schooling of children between 5 and 13, but in other areas, such as education for 14-19 year olds, it operates jointly with other Government departments, in partcular the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills. The Committee welcomes the Departmental focus on children, but expresses some reservations in regard of joint responsibility which it sees as leading to a lack of clarity in regard of responsibility and a dilution in decision making. The Committee believes clarity on which Department has specific responsibility is important, particularly with the introduction of the new Diploma system for 14-19 year olds. Also the Departments' Children's Plan does not at present have a timetable of action or a clear set of priorities and that the Department needs to be explicit on how it intends to drive improvements in services for children and familes. In total the Committee has set out 14 conclusions and recommendations covering: the new Department; the Children's Plan; Public Service Agreements; schools' funding; efficiency and productivity.
The Committee warns that rushing to judge the worth of Sure Start Children's Centres would be catastrophic and could jeopardise one of the most innovative and ambitious initiatives of the last two decades. The report says Children's Centres are designed to address some of the most entrenched aspects of disadvantage, but the majority have been in place for less than four years. Evaluations of their impact will therefore only be meaningful over the long term. Yielding to short term financial pressure by reducing the number of Centres or pruning the range of services offered would be a mistake, the Committee says. A universal service can ensure that all vulnerable children get the access they need, and the wide range of support and activities provided to families is a vital feature of the programme. Stable funding is also essential. The scale of the programme means important challenges remain. With a national network of Centres in place, there must now be a constant focus on raising the quality of staffing and services, and on improving the performance of Centres in reaching the most vulnerable families. Partnership working with health services, in particular GPs, is patchy across the country and Children's Centres must not be an optional extra for health agencies. The Government should re-establish ministerial responsibility for the Sure Start programme in the Department of Health as well as the Department for Children, Schools and Families.Information about value for money in Children's Centres is still unacceptably difficult to come by, the committee adds. More must be done to determine the total resources being put into the initiative from all Government departments.
The Early Years Single Funding Formula is intended to replace the different methods currently used to fund early years settings in the maintained sector and in the private, voluntary and independent (PVI) sector. Each local authority will in future use the same criteria for every setting in its area when allocating funds for education and care provided under the free entitlement for three and four year olds. But the Formula has resulted in winners and losers, and the greatest losers will be maintained nursery schools, which provide a quality of education and care which is very high and sets the standard for others to follow. Overall the difficulties encountered so far with the Single Funding Formula have arisen because of the way in which it has been implemented, rather than because of the concept. Local authorities were encouraged to offer settings a supplement to the basic hourly rate of funding to recognise high quality provision, but many have not done so. A quality supplement should be made mandatory. The Government was correct in deciding to defer full implementation until April 2011 and the year's delay must be used to restore stability and to rework funding formulae where necessary. Sir Jim Rose's proposals to encourage entry to primary school in the September following a child's fourth birthday will have far-reaching consequences for early years funding, but blur the distinction between early years and primary education. The Government should examine whether a unified funding system should be introduced for all children aged from 2 to 11 years old.
Radical change is needed if the Government's latest initiative to increase young people's participation in education, employment or training is to be more successful than past interventions. Whilst some progress has been made towards developing a strategy for 16-24 year olds, the Committee urges the Government to move more quickly to establish a seamless, overarching strategy for this age group. Young people make progress at different rates and many require tailored provision well beyond the age of 18. The Committee recommends extending current policies to a wider range of young people. In the Netherlands, the equivalent of the Jobseeker's Allowance is dependent on compulsory participation in education, employment or training. This may be the way forward for the UK. Many young people looking for work or training need better access to advice on claiming benefits, housing support, or health matters. Providing all these services in a 'one-stop shop' could well meet this need and prove more cost-effective. The Committee was deeply impressed by the work done by some local authorities to increase participation rates among 16-18 year olds. However, existing rewards and incentives offered by the Government are not sufficient to drive widespread improvement. The Government should consider strengthening the incentives offered to local authorities who are successful in raising rates of participation
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