COMMITTEE FOR EDUCATION

OFFICIAL REPORT

(Hansard)

Education Bill

10 December 2008

Members present for all or part of the proceedings:
Mr Mervyn Storey (Chairperson)
Mrs Mary Bradley
Mr Trevor Lunn
Mr Nelson McCausland
Mr Basil McCrea
Miss Michelle McIlveen

Witnesses:
Mr Jeff Brown ) Department of Education
Mr John McGrath ) Department of Education
Mr Chris Stewart ) Department of Education

The Chairperson (Mr Storey):
I welcome John McGrath, Chris Stewart and Jeff Brown. Gentlemen, I am glad to see you again; no doubt, you will be here regularly in 2009. I ask John to make a few opening remarks.

Mr John McGrath (Department of Education):
Chairperson, I am glad that you want to extend the time that we will spend with you.

The Chairperson:
Yes; we value your company.

Mr McGrath:
We are heartened to hear it.

The Chairperson:
I am sure that you are.

Mr McGrath:
We look forward to that. We will have much to learn from bringing this first major Education Bill through the Committee. It will be useful because we will be able to share our experience with colleagues who are involved in drafting future legislation. Therefore, when I said that we look forward to working more closely with the Committee, I did not say it lightly. We have provided the Committee with a briefing paper and a timetable of events. If the Committee thinks that it will help, Chris can speak about the briefing paper for a few minutes.

The Chairperson:
That will be useful. I wanted to hold this meeting so that members can inform themselves of the process so that relevant questions and concerns can be raised now. That way, when the Committee reconvenes after Christmas recess, it can get to down to hard work.

Mr Chris Stewart (Department of Education):
Thank you, Chairperson; and good morning, members. This paper follows on from the stocktake paper that we provided to the Committee a couple of weeks ago. It focuses on the two-Bill nature of the Department’s legislative programme, its timetabling and arrangements. We take members’ concerns about the two-Bill process seriously, as does the Executive.

That is reflected in the Executive’s decision that the Department of Education take forward the entire programme; cherry-picking is not an option. We will do that by means of two Bills in a way and to a timescale that addresses the Committee’s and other stakeholders’ need for clarity about the whole programme. The timescale and implementation arrangements outlined in our paper are intended to do that and to ensure that the two Bills remain synchronized.

The timescale is a significant challenge for us; a year of very hard work lies before us to meet it. However, our aim is that the First Stage of the second Bill should be given in the Assembly as the first Bill is being given its Final Stage. If possible, both Bills will become law at the same time in January 2010.

The fallback position is that the second Bill should come into operation no more than three months after the first. However, in either case, it is extremely important that the Committee be clear on the content and purpose of the second Bill before the first Bill has passed the point of no return.

We recognise that to achieve that and to earn the Committee’s confidence we must have an open and transparent process and that we must work closely with the Committee in developing the policy and the legislation of the second Bill so that there are no surprises. That is what we intend to do. We look forward to working closely with the Committee on the first Bill in the months ahead and on the development of the second.

We recognise that, despite what I have just said, many members will continue to have concerns about the two-Bill approach and would have preferred that the Department had presented a single Bill. However, as I have attempted to illustrate in our written submission, a single-Bill approach would cause another significant delay to the review of public administration (RPA) reforms in education. Worse, it would have prolonged uncertainty for staff throughout the education system; it would have reduced morale, which has been low until recently; hastened the recent exodus of mobile staff; and threatened the continuity in delivery of services in the coming year.

Monday’s debate and decision in the Assembly on the Education Bill’s Second Stage has already changed the outlook significantly. It has ended uncertainty and has reassured people throughout the education sector who, until recently, continued to doubt whether the RPA would ever happen. However, as the Chairperson correctly emphasised, it has also brought home to the Department the fact that it has a great deal of work to do. Committee and other Members raised significant concerns at Second Stage, and the Department recognises that it must work hard to address them. We look forward to working with the Committee in the months ahead with a view to doing just that.

The Chairperson:
Paragraph 3 of your written submission on the legislation timetable says:

“This was reflected in the Executive’s decision that the programme in its entirety should be taken forward.”

Am I right in drawing a distinction between the programme — that is the establishment of an education and skills authority (ESA) — and the details of the regulations? It is not saying that the Committee will not be able to make changes to the Bill during its scrutiny.

Mr McGrath:
That is correct. Changes are subject to the will of the Assembly and the Committee. The paper simply says that the integrity of the programme must be preserved rather than, for example, deciding to stop halfway through.

The Chairperson:
Paragraph 4 gives details of the intended timescale. You will have heard the Committee say earlier that it will seek an extension to the Consideration Stage. That extension is not to allow us to drag our feet but to ensure that we have appropriate time to consider the Bill. An exchange between the Committee and the Department on amendments, which would have to go to the legislative draftsman, would take time. There is an intended timescale, and we will endeavour to make it work.

I want the Committee to be clear that it has the power to scrutinise the Bill, express its concerns about it and suggest changes that will mould the authority into what it should be.

Mr McGrath:
We fully recognise that. The outcome is subject to the decisions of the Committee and, ultimately, the Assembly. Members will recognise that we are becoming increasingly concerned about the state of play in the boards, for instance. I need not go into that; Members will know what I mean. Everyone agrees that it is critical that we get to the end point as quickly as possibly.

Mr McCausland:
Mr McGrath said that everyone wants to get to the end point as quickly as possible. However, that will depend on the Committee’s receiving clear information from the Department on contentious issues such as the controlled sector and input into the sub-regional structures as soon as possible. The quicker you provide us with information on those, the quicker the process will be; the longer it takes to provide that information, the slower the process will be.

Mr McGrath:
Those are fair points. Some areas might be regarded as contentious or unclear, and the Department must quickly paint a clearer picture of them. That is one of the matters that we are considering. Now that the timetable has been set, we are addressing parallel work strands that need to be accelerated; we also need to paint a picture of how we see the ESA operating. I accept your comments, Mr McCausland: it is our responsibility to fill those gaps.

Mr B McCrea:
You will be aware from the discussions on the Bill’s Second Stage that the Ulster Unionist Party is suspicious of the ESA, and we think that we reflect a widespread concern throughout the education establishment. Although we understand that there are benefits in centralising certain functions — and we would like to see those pursued — we are worried that a £50 million invest-to-save fund is being made available to realise a potential £20 million per annum at a time when life is tough. From the information that we received from the chief executive designate, it seems that the savings are coming from a narrow band, and we are not sure that those savings can be trapped.

We are concerned about democratic accountability. If the Bill becomes a vehicle for the Minister of Education to bypass the Assembly, we will resist it line by line; I do not know whether I can make it any clearer. We are not happy with how the Minister of Education has engaged with the Committee, the Assembly or the people whom we represent. Our biggest concern is that everything else will become superfluous. Therefore you will need to help us in the process if you want our support.

We support the desire to devolve responsibility and resources to schools, but we must ensure that it is more than mere words. We hear all the nice stuff, but there is an old saying in the Civil Service that “he who drafts wins”. It is imperative that in the drafting of the Bill the power and resources go to the authority because the voluntary principles that allow the schools the freedom for action — with appropriate resources and good leadership — are fundamental to good schools. That is what we want to see from the Bill.

Without that, it will simply be another layer of bureaucracy.

Mr McGrath:
The Minister’s recent statements outlined that the Bill is designed to deliver a proposition that differs from the original ESA, which aimed at making savings and centralising functions and which might have been regarded as a sort of regional monolith.

Caitríona Ruane’s new proposition aims to maintain high standards at the top end and to raise standards elsewhere in order to reduce the gap between them. Furthermore, it will enable the ESA to help and support schools and, as we told the Committee previously, will leave schools in a commissioning model with the ESA and allow them the freedom to deliver the outcomes. Schools will be accountable to the boards of governors and local communities, to the Education and Training Inspectorate, the ESA and, ultimately, the Committee and the Assembly, which will assess the use of taxpayers’ money.

More work needs to be done to flesh out the important issues of local accountability and delivery; indeed, we discussed some examples of supporting schools with Ken Robinson at the last meeting. Although the ESA will be a single authority, that will not dilute accountability to the Minister, the Assembly and the Committee. The Northern Ireland Housing Executive and Invest NI are single authorities; a single model is only ineffective if it is unaccountable.

We accept those points, and we need to provide more detail about how the new body will operate, some of which will extend beyond dry words and drafting. It is not necessarily a case of he who drafts wins but of he who creates the first draft having more influence than whoever creates the final draft.

Mr B McCrea:
That is where I have gone wrong.

Miss McIlveen:
I am unsure how to follow the Ulster Unionists’ party-political broadcast.

Mr B McCrea:
You should listen and learn.

The Chairperson:
It is different from the party’s manifesto.

Miss McIlveen:
Although we want John and Chris to brief the Committee as often as possible, has the Minister indicated that she will, if required, attend the Committee to provide clarification?

Mr McGrath:
I am sure that the Minister would give that appropriate consideration.

Mr B McCrea:
We do not want party-political broadcasts.

Mr K Robinson:
I am sorry that I had to nip out; I thought that we were going to discuss the Bill, and I did not want to go through a brand new copy again.

John and his colleagues must realise the historic background — there is not much trust between most Committee members and the various forms of the Department of Education. The legislation was a twinkle in the eye of a direct rule Minister or a direct rule regime. Over the years, those Ministers patted us on the head, gave us tea and a bun and sent on our way; that was “consultation”. The Committee is not prepared to endure that again.

We have some grave reservations, particularly about the role of controlled schools, which, we always felt, have received the short end of the stick; they are not even getting a stick this time. Moreover, we are concerned about delivery. You said that the ESA will not be a monolith, and you used the Housing Executive as an example. I am dealing with the retrenchment of that body, which is vacating its offices. Regional education offices could gradually be centralised.

You talked about unease in the education and library boards. That unease is due to the job uncertainty that affects all grades. We sometimes forget that the lower- ranked people make the daily bread-and-butter decisions on which schools rely. Are those people in the loop? A newspaper headline last night mentioned the loss of 460 jobs in the education sector. There is a scare story doing the rounds before we have even begun our scrutiny of the Bill.

Mr McGrath:
The jobs that will go are in senior and middle management.

Mr K Robinson:
What about the people who have kept the system going? They will become uneasy too.

Mr McGrath:
I agree entirely. The continued uncertainty has not been helpful to anybody, particularly staff.

Mr K Robinson:
How did we get into such uncertainty? The Committee did not cause it.

Mr McGrath:
Political uncertainty.

Mr K Robinson:
There was a rush to bulldoze the legislation through before anybody understood its implications.

Mr McGrath:
The ESA and the date of 1 April 2009 were included in the Programme for Government, for which there was political support; however, difficulties arose that created uncertainty. The problem was that it created uncertainty about whether, rather than when, the RPA changes that emerged in the Assembly were to take effect. That has caused difficulties. Some people were briefing against the very notion of the ESA until recently. However, the mood music has changed significantly in the past week or two; particularly since Second Stage when people realised that, subject to the will of the Assembly, there would be an education and skills authority.

There are issues about boards’ capacity to continue to provide a service to schools in the meantime. There are worries across the piece; no doubt the Committee has heard that from school principals. The status quo does not hold. The model that we offer is a single but decentralised organisation, the main focus of which is to help and support schools. It will centralise the back-office functions because that is where efficiencies can be made; and the outline business case makes it clear that the 460 jobs are in senior/middle management. I do not think that anyone would have difficulties in shrinking such posts.

Mr K Robinson:
How do replace that loss of expertise? Will those people be put out of a job only to come back again next week as consultants at a higher salary?

Mr McGrath:
If we centralise functions, we will be able to run the same single-functioning finance, human-resources and transport services without those posts. However, it is almost certain that there will be no compulsory redundancies. We will reduce posts, shrink the organisation and decentralise the back-office functions as a starter.

There is scope to make further savings as we centralise functions such as transport and operate them on a single regional basis; those savings will be made simply through efficiencies. The education transport budget is about half that of Translink — it is a big operation. I cannot believe that in moving from five organisations to one and introducing better logistical management, savings cannot be made that could go back into the schoolroom.

Mr K Robinson:
Will it be more efficient?

Mr McGrath:
It should be. I am talking about delivering a proper service more efficiently; I am not talking about simple cuts.

Mr Stewart:
We cannot afford to lose expertise that is required for service continuity. However, such a risk already exists and has been exacerbated by the uncertainty that has pervaded the system until now. Vital mobile staff left educational organisations because they were not sure what the future of the RPA in education was. We hope that that pattern will now stop.

Mr K Robinson:
Whose fault is this?

Mr Stewart:
It is not a function of civil servants to apportion blame. Nevertheless, uncertainty has damaged staff morale and has impaired organisations’ ability to deliver the services for which they are responsible. It is incumbent on the Department to move matters forward as quickly as we can, recognising, as has been said, the role of the Assembly and the Committee, and to be satisfied that we have the right model and the right legislation.

Mr K Robinson:
Some of us were on the Committee for Culture, Arts and Leisure when it scrutinised the Libraries Bill. We saw the difficulties ahead, so we dug our heels in, and, after a long struggle, eventually other people recognised that we were not being obstructive; we merely wanted to ensure that the Bill would be more efficient.

I am glad that the Minister has at least recognised democratic accountability, although I know that Trevor has reservations about that. There must be democratic accountability of the kind that has been built into the Libraries Bill. Ensuring accountability is one the functions of a Committee.

However, the Committee feels that this Bill is being steamrollered through. This Bill will effect such a massive change in the education system that we cannot afford to miss anything in it.

Mr Stewart:
We do not want to give the Committee the impression that the Department will attempt to steamroller it.

The Bill is not immutable. The Department would not be surprised if significant amendments were proposed by the Committee and other MLAs; neither would we be surprised by a request for a significant extension to Committee Stage. Indeed, we bore that in mind when considering the timetable.

The Bill is the most important piece of education legislation in a generation. Therefore it is important that we get it right and that the Bill commands the broadest possible consensus.

The Minister has made it clear to John and me that she expects us to work closely with the

Committee in addressing its concerns; there will be no attempt at steamrolling or at paying lip-service to the Committee.

Mr McCausland:
In answer to Michelle’s question, John said that the Minister would give consideration to requests to appear before the Committee. The nature of that consideration is one of the factors that will influence how people view the Minister’s role and whether she is acting in good faith. Delighted though we are to see John, we are reminded constantly by the Minister that she is the Minister; therefore it would be appropriate for her to speak to the Committee. Not that we do not want to see you, John —

Mr McGrath:
It is not my job to commit the Minister —

Mr McCausland:
Yes, but will you convey that point to her?

Mr McGrath:
I will convey your sentiments and the wish of the Committee that the Minister should appear before it on occasion to help explain the objectives of the Bill.

Mr K Robinson:
In which context do you intend or not intend to commit the Minister?

Mr McGrath:
I never commit Ministers unless I fully know their minds.

The Chairperson:
You say that there is no intention to steamroller the Committee. This Committee will not allow itself to get into the same position as the Committee for Culture, Arts and Leisure with the proposed libraries authority. The Committee has raised several issues concerning the Bill, and we all believe that changes and amendments must be made.

Point 4 of your briefing paper states that:

“The first Bill will be introduced to the Assembly as soon as possible, with the aim that it would be on the statute books before the 2009 summer recess.”

Why must it be on the statute book by the summer of 2009 if we have commencement orders for 2010? The Committee will seek an extension of Committee Stage; therefore it could be on the statute books by the end of 2009, but it does not have to be on the statute books by the summer recess.

Mr Stewart:
You are absolutely right. The timetable in the briefing paper was a compromise that was agreed by the Executive. That compromise balanced the desire of the Minister and the Department to establish and maintain momentum and demonstrate clearly to the education system that we are making progress with the concerns expressed by the Executive and the Committee on the need for clarity on the entire programme before there was an irrevocable commitment to any of it. That is why the briefing paper is carefully worded and why we have recorded that date as an “aim”.

If the Committee decides to extend Committee Stage significantly — and this is a significant and complex Bill — the Bill may not be enacted by the summer recess. We recognise that possibility, and it is a matter for the Committee to decide how long the Committee Stage will take.

The Chairperson:
Thank you.

Mr Lunn:
If the Bill had been presented a year ago, the Committee might have tried to extend its deliberations in order to stymie it. However, as John said, the mood music has changed and the Committee will examine the Bill in a constructive manner. We may need some extra time, but that extra time will be taken with a view to getting it right.

Ken Robinson is right that even the Alliance Party has reservations about aspects of the Bill. However, there has been a sea change and the Committee wants to see the Bill progressed. Some members still need to be converted, but as the months go on we will see how things progress.

I am looking forward to the next few months; it is nice to have substantive legislation to get our teeth into at last.

Mr Stewart:
I assure the Committee that when the Second Stage of the Bill was passed on Monday, no one in the Department interpreted that as ticking a box. The first thing that I said to my team afterwards was that the work starts now. The Department has considerable work to do.

The Chairperson:
John, Jeff and Chris, thank you very much for appearing before the Committee today.