COMMITTEE FOR EDUCATION

OFFICIAL REPORT

(Hansard)

Education Bill

14 January 2009

Members present for all or part of the proceedings:
Mr Mervyn Storey (Chairperson)
Mr Dominic Bradley (Deputy Chairperson)
Mrs Mary Bradley
Mr Trevor Lunn
Mr Nelson McCausland
Mr Basil McCrea
Mr John O’Dowd
Miss Michelle McIlveen
Mr Ken Robinson

Witnesses:
Mr John McGrath )
Mr Chris Stewart ) Department of Education
Mr Joe Reynolds )

The Chairperson (Mr Storey):

The two issues that we want to discuss today are the regional and sub-regional structure of the education and skills authority (ESA) first, and the sectoral representation organisations. I welcome John McGrath, Chris Stewart and Joe Reynolds. Joe, you are very welcome, and it is nice to see you here. I will now ask John to proceed.

Mr John McGrath (Department of Education):

I am very glad to be here this morning for the continuing process of the RPA Bill. I have my trusty support Chris, and also Joe, who has joined the RPA team in the Department, and who will be a constant feature at these meetings. We have provided two papers to the Committee: the first on the regional and sub-regional structure of ESA, and the second on the role and responsibility of sectoral organisations. I will speak about the first paper and deal with any questions that Committee members may have, and then Chris will discuss the second paper

A considerable amount of work has gone in to producing both papers, by the Department, and by the education and skills authority implementation team (ESAIT), but they do not yet represent signed-off proposals, particularly with regard to structure. The Department will shortly feed back some views to ESAIT on how its existing thinking matches the criteria set out by the Department. After that process, it is envisaged that ESAIT will begin a consultation process, involving particularly the trade union side and other stakeholders. After that, the proposals will formally come to the Department for the Minister to sign off. We would, obviously, like to accelerate that process in the next couple of months, because we are working to a tight deadline to get senior posts out to the market and filled in adequate time for ESA to be up and running by the target date of 1 January 2010.

As was set out by Catríona Ruane in several speeches in the Assembly recently, ESA has a number of clear, overriding objectives: to raise standards overall, and reduce the gap between the highest and lowest achievers, and in so doing reduce the barriers faced by many in accessing education and fulfilling potential; to provide a clear and consistent model of delivery focused on equality, which is child-focused and also reflects modern professional practice; to provide locally-based and accessible frontline services to help, support and, as necessary, to challenge schools and other education providers — education providers is meant in the widest sense, encompassing everything that is in the education basket, from early years to youth; and to provide efficient and effective support services, and free up resources to be redeployed to the frontline.

ESA, led by its chairperson and members, will be accountable for its performance to the Department, the Minister and the Assembly, and, in so doing, will be, in a broader sense, open to scrutiny by this Committee. The accountability framework for ESA will be clear, transparent and rigorous, and will also reflect the guidance and good practice and the oversight of arm’s-length bodies, which are emerging from the Department of Finance and Personnel and from previous work of the Public Accounts Committee.

The two main drivers in designing the structure are to provide locally, as much as possible, the services that schools and other providers need, and, parallel to that, to centralise and derive economies of scale from regional back-up services that need not be provided locally. Schools will be the focus of the system: they will be at the centre of the system, rather than being one element in a wider command-and-control system.

The paper that the Department has provided, therefore, outlines the current development of thought with regard to the regional disposition of central functions — that is, finance and human resources — and how they will be brigaded; and, linked to that, the current thinking with regard to a network of local area offices and the frontline services that they would provide to schools and other education providers. It is envisaged that those local offices, led by senior managers, should have the flexibility to respond to specific local circumstances in line with the central policy framework. They will aim to be sensitive to, and receive input from, local committees, comprising, among others, a number of elected representatives. The Bill under consideration already contains provisions for the establishment of such committees.

As members will know, the Department set out a range of criteria against which proposals for the structure of ESA should be shaped and, eventually, judged. There has been considerable rigour in the thinking to date. The outline business case, which has been signed off in the system and has now been made available by the Minister, demonstrates the robustness of the case for the creation of ESA and the reduction of a significant number of middle-management and senior posts, which will lead to savings of some £20 million per annum by the third year of implementation.

The intention for the number of senior posts — those that attract salaries in excess of £55,000 per annum — is that they will reduce from 80-odd to fewer than 50. That alone will generate savings of £2 million per annum. As regards the Department’s response to thinking on ESA’s structure, it is currently considering the cost parameters that it will set for ESA and is finalising the structure with regard to senior management posts.

I emphasise that although those proposals are well developed and have been tested against criteria that have been set by the Department, they have not yet been formally signed off. Therefore, there is still scope for the Department to offer views to ESAIT and for those to be reflected before final decisions are made. In that context, the comments and views of the Committee will be a welcome ingredient. I look forward to discussion on that paper.

The Chairperson:

I remind members that the proceedings will be reported by Hansard. Therefore, it is important that you raise any concerns that you have, because they will be recorded.

Mr McGrath, what references are there in the Bill or in its schedules to ESA’s structure and sub-regional structure? How is that dealt with in the Bill? In addition, what staffing structure is envisaged below senior-official level for each of the six local teams? One of many concerns is that paragraph 12 of the briefing paper on the structure of ESA at regional and local levels begins with the words:

“Overall, the numbers of senior posts (equivalent to the Senior Civil Service)”.

The trick is to get the change process — that is, from the five education and library boards and the other organisations — right at the outset and managing that process over three or four years by putting in drivers that will, essentially, squeeze management costs. That is why it is important to get a figure at the start of the process — and it may be an envelope figure — whereby we say that senior management costs should not exceed X amount, and then — and I am speculating — to say that, in two years’ time, we expect that figure to be reduced by Y per cent.

It is the same issue. In five years from now, the Minister of the day from whatever party may decide that this model is not a good one. In those circumstances, legislation that stated that ESA “must” establish committees would allow no discretion. The word “may” is permissive, and that approach tends to be taken to legislation in general. If someone were to say in a couple of years’ time that those committees are not a good idea or that you want them to evolve with community planning, the Department would have to say that it was stuck with them because Bill had makes that arrangement compulsory. That would not be helpful.

The Minister’s policy direction to ESA, reflecting what is in the policy memorandum that went to the Executive, is that there shall be committees. The Minister will tell ESA that she wants it to establish local committees in line with the local area structure, and to get on with that, please.

Mr Stewart:

There is nothing Machiavellian in the wording. It is normal legislative practice for such measures to be permissive rather than prescriptive. It is also worth emphasising that the Department does not see those committees as window dressing. The important distinction is that they will not be external scrutiny committees; they will be formally part of ESA, and they will be able to carry out functions on behalf of the organisation. They are not, in any sense, external; they are intrinsic to the structure.

The Chairperson:

I want to give Members the opportunity to ask questions, because time has been set aside to deal with those two items.

Mr D Bradley:

When the Committee had its initial discussions with officials from the Department about ESA, the selling point was the savings that would be made and that those savings would be redirected back into front line services. The emphasis then shifted to the raising of standards, which now seems to be the Department’s key selling point for ESA, and the point that savings would be made is now in second place, as it were.

In your introduction, John, you said that staff who operate in local teams would be guided, supported and, where necessary, challenged by senior management in their efforts to achieve the key priority of driving up standards of educational achievement, with particular regard to closing the attainment gap. Yet, the Committee has a letter form the leader of the CCMS primary principals’ group in the Derry City Council area, who already wrote to the Department on 21 May 2008 to ask questions in relation to the raising of standards. The letter states:

“I have been requested by our group to seek specific clarification on the points raised in our initial correspondence that we do not believe were addressed by your response. Accordingly, given the generic change in educational administration that will arrive with the advent of ESA, we feel it is imperative that frontline leaders are absolutely clear in terms of the following:

Is there any empirical evidence to suggest that the development of such a large unitary authority will improve the educational outcomes of our young people?”

With regard to the Minister, the letter continues:

“In your initial response you merely stated what the current educational outcomes are and the perceived economic benefits of a huge authority.”

It is very important that education leaders in the front line at the chalk face have confidence in the ability of ESA to improve standards. That group of education leaders in Derry city from whom the letter came are not convinced that that will happen. They are asking whether there is any empirical evidence to suggest that the lofty ideals that the Department has for ESA with regard to raising standards will be realised.

Mr McGrath:

That demonstrates the problem: that there is an issue about standards at present.

Mr D Bradley:

Everyone knows that.

Mr McGrath:

Those school principals and the children are not being served well by the current system. There is an increasing understanding of that, particularly in view of the profile that Caitríona Ruane has given the issue in recent months. There are significant issues about standards and the PAC reports on literacy and numeracy. One of the main problems at present, put bluntly, is that at least five systems — if not more — are doing things in different ways. That was highlighted in the PAC report on literacy and numeracy.

In some cases there are a plethora of organisations. If one organisation is using best practice, one would expect every other organisation to adopt that. However, we have a system in which people make a virtue of doing their own thing. That does not serve children well, and it does not ensure that equity or equality is provided across the Six Counties.

Under Caitríona Ruane, the language surrounding ESA has refined to make raising standards and reducing the gap the primary objective. Achieving savings is still an objective, but it is clear where the savings have to go: to the front line in order to improve standards.

As was the case previously, and as is still the case today, schools remain the focus of the new system. Schools are not somewhere down the chain of command; they are at the absolute centre, and they are to be helped and supported, and that will be the function of the local ESA structure. They will have more of a commissioning role in what services and support — particularly with regard to professional development — that they need and want. Given that facilitation and empowerment, the wider community — and the Department and ESA, on behalf of the wider community — will expect the schools to perform better with regard to delivering standards.

If I could return to Dominic Bradley’s point. The Department is familiar with the correspondence that you mentioned, and we are engaging with that group of principals. It is very important that we do so, because, as we emphasised, all school improvement starts and finishes with school principals and school leaders. The Department very much wants to engage with them and take seriously what they have to say. It is, I believe, interesting that that concern comes from a group of CCMS principals, which is, of course, a regional organisation which covers all Catholic maintained schools throughout Northern Ireland. The schools and CCMS as a sector have been very successful in tackling underperformance and raising standards.

As John said, the evidence is there, but, sometimes, the question has the wrong emphasis.

As John said, we believe that the evidence is there. The size of the ESA is not the issue. We are not making this change because we feel that we have to achieve some kind of critical mass in order to achieve success. The issue is about the number of organisations and the number of approaches.

We have seen — and the empirical evidence is in the GCSE results — an unacceptable variation in outcome and an unacceptable inequality in the standards of attainment in different parts of the fragmented education system in Northern Ireland. Good practice is being developed by principals; however, it is not crossing sectoral and organisational boundaries.

They are not the only source of good practice; good practice is being developed in all the other sectors, including the controlled sectors, but it is not spreading. It is being trapped in the organisational boundaries of the present system. The PAC rightly criticised the Department for not doing anything about that.

Ken asked me to make the link between the two. We need carrots — I will be careful in how I phrase this because it may sound as if the carrot may involve a great deal of work — but where a principal or school leader or group of school leaders have demonstrably achieved success we should publicly recognise and celebrate that success. However — and this is part of the change — the completely different approach that the ESA will take compared to the education and library boards will be to ask what a principal has done or what new approaches have been developed in a school or a group of schools that have worked? Should the ESA be made amenable and responsible to that principal who, along with his local colleagues, may ask for money because they have developed good practice in one school which will spread, rather than the ESA’s simply offering a set of services to schools and telling them that they must take what is on offer? That good practice could spread from one school through the neighbouring area by means of co-operation, sharing of staff, and the sharing of resources.

The development of services in schools or groups of schools — and this is captured in the Every School a Good School policy — is based on their self-improvement and self-development rather than simply taking what is offered on a very restricted menu from education and library boards, as they do at present.

The two straight-forward carrots are recognition and money for the development of services and expansion of good practice in schools, which, as John said, is driven by the schools in a commissioning role and making the ESA responsive. If the ESA cannot provide the services, and the schools can provide them better, then we shall make sure that the ESA responds appropriately.

Mr K Robinson:

Gavin showed us a diagram setting that out.

Mr McGrath:

If Gavin were here, I imagine that he would say that that is one option. The Department’s view is that we need to strike a balance between having a local structure that is sensitive and coterminous with local government and also cost effective. We envisaged that each would be headed by a senior manager, as they will be doing an important job.

However, we need to strike a balance between a decentralised structure with 11 offices —which would complicate the reporting relationships in ESA — and cater for local sensitivities. Therefore a six-unit model, five of which would dual two of the new district councils and one of which would be in Belfast, is preferable. Which council areas would be paired is an issue for further discussion. Many of the deep-seated issues of school improvement and performance concern Belfast, and we need a focus on that. That is not to say that there are not significant issues about performance elsewhere. The six-unit model strikes the right balance between local sensitivities and keeping management costs sensible without over-complicating the structure of the organisation. That is within the parameters that the Department has given ESA and will limit senior management costs in future.

The Chairperson:

Where is the thinking on children’s services? Three options were given originally. How many posts will be needed to deliver children’s services?

Mr McGrath:

There should be a second-level post in charge of children’s services, which will be one of the primary posts in the system relating to quality and standard of service. We have not yet considered the structure below that post, but children’s services will fit into the role of the local offices. ESA is setting up two groups to advise it: one on education quality and another on children’s services.

Mr Stewart:

Mr Stewart:

We would welcome the Committee’s views on that; it is not set in stone. As John said, we must strike the right balance: on the one hand, this is not intended to be a federated model, and we do not intend to move from five boards to six or 11 boards. On the other hand, there is a genuine recognition that for this sort of model to work properly, those committees cannot be ignored. The representatives of local communities and locally elected representatives must have sufficient influence over what is happening at that level. Otherwise, the structure would be a waste of time.

Therefore, we want to strike the right balance, and we welcome the Committee’s views on what functions the committee have and what decisions should it make. How far beyond the role of advice ought it to go?

Mr McCausland:

Might it go beyond being merely advisory?

Mr Stewart:

The legislation allows for that; it allows for functions to be delegated to the committee. However, the key point is that the committee is not, in any sense, a separate organisation acting off its own bat; it remains functionally part of the ESA. Anything that a committee does or says, it doesan says in the name of, and as part of, the ESA.

Mr McCausland:

I am interested in the possibility that its role might be more than simply advisory, because that has not been clear until now.

Paragraph 17 mentions:

“six units (one covering greater the greater Belfast area and five others)”.

I understand that grouping 11 councils into pairs results in five units, but does “greater Belfast area” refer to the Belfast council area as it emerges, or might it not necessarily be totally coterminous with that?

Mr McGrath:

Our starting premise will be that it should be based on the new Belfast district council area.

An issue with area-based planning is that several areas will straddle the boundaries. However, we suspect that that would be the case regardless of where the boundary is cut. That is something that is facing other Departments as well as education. In the current Belfast area, there were planning issues concerning Poleglass and Newtownabbey. It would take a strong argument to convince us that we should not stick to the new Belfast district council area.

It has been an iterative process and we are still testing because, to be frank, I have been in the Department for almost 12 months and the whole issue of local presence and sensitivities has moved on significantly in that time. That issue was not on the radar as much when I joined the Department, the concerns were about the money agenda and centralising. However, the issue of local sensitivity and local support has come much more to the fore because the Minister has put it to the fore and it fits with the whole issue of standards. A lot of elements are in train currently; the issue is not signed off.

ESAIT will go out to consultation shortly and I am quite happy to return to the Committee before too long — perhaps with Gavin — to try to paint a more detailed picture of that. The scheme is on the cusp of being realised; we are simply fine-tuning a lot of the detail. We need to feed in how area-based planning will work — an issue that I know that the Committee will want to discuss; examine what skills are needed to do that locally; find the balance between local presence and engagement; and undertake core pieces of research, analysis and number crunching about how we do that.

I see area-based planning as an issue that the area offices will have a major role on and that will be very labour-intensive. It is not just education providers who will want to know about this issue — local communities will also want to know about it. It will be very time intensive so we need to factor that in to the thinking. We are developing that but will want to come back to it pretty quickly, because — as you pointed out to us previously — the more that we paint the picture and fill the gaps, the more that that will help Committee members to understand what we are about, which is something that we take very seriously.

Therefore, we want to be able to add quickly to the information that we have given today. I am not sure whether we have the precise number analysis that you would like. However, we could, perhaps, look at a hypothetical board and imagine which functions might go in which direction in the future. If the Committee wishes, we will talk to ESAIT to see whether we can do that, if the Committee thinks that that it would be helpful.

Mr McCausland:

Could that be done in the next few weeks?

Mr McGrath:

Yes, of course. The structure of ESA and the functions of the area offices should be put out for consultation soon, as Michelle McIlveen said. We need to be explaining what the area offices will do. We want to be explaining more. Although we are explaining to the Committee, we also want to be explaining and filling in the gaps much more for the wider stakeholders. That is one of the issues that Joe Reynolds is on board to help us to do in the period up to the spring.

The Chairperson:

We could table a motion for the Assembly and maybe get the information on the day before.

Mrs M Bradley:

It could be rushed through.

The Chairperson:

Not that I am not a cynic, by the way.

Mr O’Dowd:

We would have to make sure that the Irish version was available.

Mr McCausland:

Yes, for Michelle.

Mr B McCrea:

The Ulster Unionist Party has deep-seated concerns that this is a triumph of process over policy. We do not think that there is agreement on what the policies should be and that some sort of mechanism has been arranged in lieu of that agreement. It does not seem right that regions should be divided on a geographic basis. Inner cities provide a big challenge, so I wonder why the Department takes Belfast as a council area and lumps all the schools in together, because some schools are in challenging inner city areas and others, such as Grosvenor Grammar School, that straddle borders.

If you had told me that Northern Ireland has a population of only 1·8 million people and that that is why we could afford to have one regional body, and why ESA works — despite what was being said by colleagues from Londonderry — I could, perhaps, have understood the intellectual thinking behind that. I though that the essence of this process was about removing duplication. Yet, we are just going to go back in and do the same thing again. There will, effectively, still be five boards.

Mr McGrath shakes his head, but he must recognise that there is a dichotomy in the views that I am expressing. On the one hand you say that ESA will police the system, look at standards and control the problems that were highlighted in the PAC report on numeracy and literacy. On the other hand, we talk about decentralisation and about getting as many resources as possible to the school level. I view those as being inconsistent.

With regard to local involvement and political input, I do not particularly want local councillors involved in the issue. The changes that you are trying to bring about have a political — with a small ‘p’ — connotation. If you do not get on board the views of everyone, you are not going anywhere with this. I see no mechanism in the new arrangements to get those views on board; in fact, I see a mechanism to sidestep what are the widely held views of different political parties, because one particular grouping may be in the ascendancy at this time. I am looking for a mechanism that ensures these matters are not run roughshod over the views of a lot of people.

Mr McGrath:

ESA is a public body to deliver public policies, as signed off by the Assembly and the Minister. The political level and political process have to determine the policies. ESA can only take them and deliver. With regard to your point about boundaries, you are correct in saying that it is a small population, and I am not sure whether we made it clear if we can afford a model with at least five organisations all doing things differently in such a small population. If everything was being done consistently, there might have been a different debate.

One of the good things about coming from my culture is that I do not mind being in a minority of one, if that is the case, because the truth is still the truth.

When it comes to the issue, therefore, I put to you another challenge, which I am not necessarily expecting you to resolve, because there are other political aspects to it. Nevertheless, I tell you that our biggest concern is that ESA is a Trojan Horse designed to propagate other policies that do not have the agreement of a significant proportion of the population. If ESA is given all of those powers, people will fight battles by proxy, and I do not believe that rationalisation and cost saving — which the Ulster Unionist Party supported in the early stages — will be achieved. However, we are extremely unhappy that ESA is being used for purposes for which it was not originally intended.

Mr McGrath:

The political process by which policy is determined is not for me to comment on. Whether the organisational structure will be ESA, five boards or something else, it will have to deliver whatever policies come down. I cannot offer a view on the political input into that.

The Department favours the points that you made about local sensitivity with regard to the local structures. The approach to tackling issues about standards and school improvement in inner city areas and the mechanisms for that are likely to be different to the approach that is taken in a rural area where schools are not close together and issues of scale are a consideration. Therefore, a policy of school improvement will be set down and driven forward by strategy from the key post at the centre of ESA, but the precise delivery mechanisms may differ depending on the local area and the circumstances.

Particular issues relate to inner city schools in areas such as north Belfast, Shankill and west Belfast. A special push, which might not be needed elsewhere, will be needed from one of those area offices to deal with a significant problem, and school leaders will need to be directly involved in that.

Mr Stewart:

I shall answer Basil McCrea’s earlier point. John has explained why the Department sees the need for local services to be locally based. That lends itself, therefore, to a structure of delivery of services that has a strong geographical element to it, whatever that may be.

However, the legislation is flexible enough that if ESA, for example — or if the Department instructs ESA — needs to take a particular focus on youth services, early-years provision or some other aspect of education delivery, ESA can set up a committee on early-years provision, youth services or on raising standards for the length of time and with the focus that is deemed appropriate to deal with a cross-cutting or thematic issue. The legislation does not bind us to having everything squeezed through a geographical sieve; it is flexible enough to cope with the challenges that are there.

Mr McGrath:

Mr McCrea made a point about free school meals as indicators of social deprivation. The Department will introduce proposals for a longer term review of the common funding formula, and Catríona Ruane is keen to address how to recognise deprivation in the funding formula. That vehicle is available, and, when results come out of that through the political process, ESA’s job will be to distribute funding in line with that.

Not every policy aspect is covered by the legislation. As Chris said, as policies emerge and are signed off, ESA will have to cope and flex itself to deliver that with the appropriate balance between regional strategies and coherence and local flexibility. That needs to be fairly sophisticated, because this is a very complex and sophisticated business. I use that term in a generic sense, because we are trying to improve.

Mr B McCrea:

I want to ensure that you understand the key point. The Ulster Unionist Party does not see the intellectual rationale for having five or six sub-regional bodies. That appears to be an arbitrary decision. If you said that there are different challenges, one could argue that there is an inner city challenge in Belfast, that there is a Belfast travel-to-school challenge and that there is a rural challenge that is separate from those two challenges.

A regional body is required in order to achieve the real economies of scale that have been set out for ESA. The sub-divisions should focus on the challenges that schools face, such as numeracy and literacy, early years, and social deprivation and exclusion. Why has the Department arrived at five plus one as a set of bodies? That is not logical to us. John said that the travel-to-school areas are likely to be different —

Mr McGrath:

But smaller.

Mr B McCrea:

— different to those inner city areas. I personally believe that policy decisions on area-based planning need to be taken in a regional context, because people travel such large distances, and there are other areas in which two schools can be only 500ft apart and yet have completely different demographic intakes and challenges. I have set out those issues in an attempt to be helpful. Our concern is that the new structure will simply be a replication of what went before, and we do not like the look of that.

Mr McGrath:

That is helpful. The education and skills authority is designed to help to support schools. One of the issues that Ken Robinson raised was having support available locally, whether in human resources or school improvements, whereby someone can go and have a dialogue with a group of local principals and suggest that they should have something available to them.

However, it is difficult to pitch where on the spectrum an issue sits between, for example, literacy support or something that is a bit more sub-regionally significant. Basil McCrea essentially summarised that balance. The authority is not six bodies, it is six areas, and, in one sense, it is not unlike the way in which the Housing Executive is organised. It is a regional body with a number of areas. Area managers do a lot of the political connection and facing up, dealing with local councils and representatives. However, policy is set down centrally. ESA is a similar sort of model: it is not six new education and library boards; policy will be set down centrally by the Department; and the delivery of issues such as special educational needs, where there are five different approaches, which is unacceptable, will move towards more coherence.

There are different circumstances, and Basil McCrea has just produced an example of such a difference in travel-to-school. Addressing area-based planning in the Belfast area will present a different set of challenges to those in Fermanagh, which, being a larger county, will be identified as having a larger travel-to-school area, whereas Belfast has a hub-and-spoke model. The solutions may be different, but the same principles about area-based planning are needed and will come out from the centre.

I take Basil McCrea’s point, which is helpful. It is precisely on that spectrum that we all want to get it right: that ESA is a regional organisation, with central policy and guidance from the Department, a consistent approach, and equity and equality with regard to what children get, while having a sensitivity to respond to local needs and circumstances.

Mr Stewart:

That is why we were cautious in our answer to the earlier question about what might be formally delegated to local committees. On the one hand, we must avoid the situation in which a committee could be ignored by a local office. On the other hand, we do not want to bring about the thing that you fear, which is a federated model of six boards. Therefore, the Department must strike the correct balance with regard to what powers would be devolved formally to a committee.

Mr O’Dowd:

My questions have been covered, but perhaps I might comment on Basil McCrea’s previous point. Health and education almost mirror each other in the sense that where there are poor educational outcomes, there are poor health outcomes. If you advance Basil’s argument, the Health and Social Care (Reform) Bill, which was recently passed by the Assembly, would have further broken down the health structure, with a health trust for north and west Belfast, or broken it down even more for west of the Bann in order to zone in on areas of poor health outcomes. As I see it, ESA can, under its structures, be broken down in order to examine areas of poor educational achievement, just as, under the health trusts, it will, hopefully, be possible to zone in on north and west Belfast. Therefore, the ESA structures are not so rigid that they simply apply a one-size-fits-all, as Basil put it.

The other side of your argument leaves us with the prospect of having not five or six new boards, but 950 boards — one for each primary school in the North. If each primary school were allowed to set its own educational agenda, there would be 950 different outcomes instead of one centralised outcome. That can not be done for the same reason as the Health Minister does not allow doctors and nurses in each hospital or health centre to set health policy.

They implement, and are key to, the health policy, but there needs to be a centralised direction, which must also be as democratically accountable and as responsive as possible to the needs of local communities. Under ESA, that is possible, because the majority of members of the board of that authority would be political representatives. The local communities would have their political representatives. Nelson McCausland’s point about what heed senior management must take of the committee needs to be expanded and further explored.

Mr B McCrea:

I think that I have obviously not made my position sufficiently clear: I was not going down the route of having 950 individual boards; I was going in the other direction. The idea of having a regional body is an interesting one, because many of the issues, such as area-based planning, have regional implications. If a solution is provided for Downpatrick, for example, that will have an impact on the intake of schools in Belfast, because some pupils currently travel from Downpatrick to Belfast. My view is along the lines of give onto Caesar what is Caesar’s; that is, certain issues must be dealt with on a regional basis, while others must be dealt with on a topical basis, because the geography is not relevant.

Mr McGrath:

There is nothing in the structure which means that that cannot happen.

Mr B McCrea:

I just wanted to make that clear, because John O’Dowd was, perhaps, thinking that I was heading in a particular direction. My view is that the Ulster Unionist Party supported a regional body because Northern Ireland is a relatively small area with a relatively small population, and it is possible to do it on a regional basis. However, one then gets into situations in which, quite patently, that sometimes does not work due to different regional variations.

I want someone to tell me the guiding principles, in which everyone’s views are respected and worked out. A process that works properly can then be devised. In other words, we should try to get the cart behind the horse, not in front of it. My worry is that, in the absence of having worked out those guiding principles, we come up with a set of rules, which is almost like shaking dice and seeing what way things fall out. I do not believe that that is helpful.

I apologise, therefore, if I did not express myself properly at the outset. I agree with John O’Dowd that there must be a tie-in with health, because the inequalities in each sector are linked, and there is also an interesting point with regard to regional structures.

Mr McGrath:

John O’Dowd made a very good point. The other dimension in all of this is what happens when the RPA of local government occurs and community planning rolls out. Health inequalities cannot be dealt with in isolation from wider issues. Forums are required, and the Department believes that the structure of ESA offers the potential for community-level planning into which the education aspect can slot neatly. Furthermore, the structure will also allow for someone of sufficient calibre to be available to contribute to the wider process from an educational perspective, in relation to the health perspective. Whether each sector should have exactly the same boundaries is always an issue and is never right.

Basil McCrea is quite right in saying that an area-based planning exercise around Belfast would be of sufficient weight that it would not be done by the Belfast office alone, because it would have such significant knock-on implications that it would probably be centrally led within ESA and have to be signed off at a very senior level. An area-based planning exercise for somewhere such as Fermanagh or Coleraine would be much more self-contained within that area, and could probably be led locally. However, it would still have to be signed off centrally in order to ensure that it met the central principles governing area-based planning, and did not have repercussive implications that were not spotted locally.

That is how that balance would be achieved. It is not a do-it-yourself-locally thing. It is a question of balance. Whether tackling health inequalities or wider issues of deprivation, a joined-up public sector approach is required. That is not easy to do, under even the current structures, and ESA offers the potential to achieve that.

Is there any paper or emerging thinking that you could provide to the Committee to help that process? Has ESA done anything in regard to that?

Mr McGrath:

To be honest, I do not think there is a lot in stock on that issue. We are grappling with the issues that have been well articulated by Basil McCrea regarding how a balance can be achieved between local sensitivity without diluting the advantages of a regional body, and without confusing decision making or mixing up accountability, which can lead to trouble. The factors that were flagged up about the role of the committee and the delegations will need to be addressed. Today’s meeting has been helpful, because issues were raised that had not yet come into our ken. The Department will do some work on those and bring back a think-piece paper on the committees.

Mr Stewart:

We will also endeavour to supply the Committee next week with the input on employment matters for which is asked, if you wish to address that at the same or at a subsequent session. In any case, we will get it to you in time for next week’s Committee meeting.

The Chairperson:

Thank you.

We will move on. The Committee agreed at its meeting on 10 December 2008 that there would an extension motion on the Bill, which we would consider today. We have until next week at the latest to make a decision on that. We have agreed that there would be a motion to extend the time that we can spend on the consideration as a Committee. You can see the reasons why the Committee needs to take as much time as it possibly can, not to delay the process unduly, but to make sure that the Committee has satisfied itself that the issues of concern are being properly and adequately addressed.

Another reason, which we also discussed at the meeting on 10 December, is that we do not know at this stage what is in the second Bill. If the Department makes sure that that information is brought forward in a due and timely fashion, as it has said that it will be, then I think that that gives us all confidence as we work through this process. It is not about trying to have a delay tactic for the sake of delay; it is to ensure that the integrity of this Committee is maintained and kept intact, and that we have given every possible consideration to all the issues of concern.

Therefore, I ask all members, particularly, I suppose, in relation to the parties, to make sure that we will make a decision by next week. We must decide on the date, and whether it will be before the summer recess or after the summer recess. That decision must be made, because the deadline for moving the motion in the House is 13 February.

The Committee Clerk:

The Assembly must meet in plenary session and debate the motion before 13 February. Therefore, it is imperative for the Committee to put forward its motion by next week.