COMMITTEE FOR EDUCATION

OFFICIAL REPORT

(Hansard)

Education Bill

13 May 2009

Members present for all or part of the proceedings:

Mr Mervyn Storey (Chairperson)
Mrs Mary Bradley
Mr Trevor Lunn
Mr Nelson McCausland
Miss Michelle McIlveen
Mr John O’Dowd
Ms Michelle O’Neill
Mr Edwin Poots
Mr Tom Elliott

Witnesses:

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield )
Mr Roy Lilley ) Association for Quality Education
Mr William Young )

Mr Roy Beggs Snr )
Mr Peter Duffy ) Association of Northern Ireland Education and Library Boards
Mr Gary Haire )
Mrs Hilary Sloan )

Mr Chris Stewart ) Department of Education

The Chairperson (Mr Storey):

Good morning. I welcome to the Committee for Education Sir Ken Bloomfield, Mr Roy Lilley and Mr William Young from the Association for Quality Education (AQE). We have received your written correspondence on the Education Bill. Sir Ken, I ask you to make your presentation, after which members will be free to ask questions.

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield (Association for Quality Education):

Thank you for inviting us to give evidence to the Committee. We welcome the opportunity.

I will begin by explaining why the association has decided to submit evidence. Many of our members are members of the Governing Bodies Association (GBA) — although not all of them, because controlled schools are among our members. As you know, the GBA has given extensive evidence to the Committee. Indeed, it has suggested amendments to the Bill that it believes are required to deal with its fears and reservations, which, I hope, have been useful to the Committee. We support the GBA line. We believe that the Committee ought to give its suggested amendments serious attention.

In addition, as you well know, individual schools have responded to the Bill; not just to the Committee, but directly to the Minister. For instance, my school sent observations to the Minister, and I received quite a detailed reply from her. Therefore, you might ask why we are here. Are we simply here to repeat what you have heard already from other interests? It is no secret whatsoever that we have been campaigning, essentially, on the issue of post-primary selection. I am sure that you do not want to go over all that again — as we have, numerous times. The reason that we fight that campaign is because we believe that it is necessary to preserve the essential ethos of our schools.

Frankly, through the work of the AQE and others on the issue of selection, we hope that we will still win that battle. However, on the other hand, the ethos of our schools, which we value and are trying desperately to protect, could be in real danger if boards of governors lose that degree of control, particularly over voluntary schools. Controlled schools will speak for themselves. To deprive the boards of governors of voluntary schools of the responsibility that they have always had for running their own schools, we believe will be both counterproductive and a threat to the ethos that we are trying to protect through the selection mechanism.

I want to comment on the ESA and on the wider issue of the review of public administration. As most of you will be aware, I spent a fair number of years toiling in the trenches of public administration here in Northern Ireland. It would be an idiot who would contest the notion that Northern Ireland would benefit from a rationalisation of its public sector. On an earlier occasion, I said that the mechanisms that operate here are those of a great nation state. Therefore, on the education front, the notion of amalgamating the pre-existing education boards and certain other bodies into a single organisation seems to us to be eminently sensible in many ways. It should result in financial savings. Unfortunately, it will probably result in the shedding of manpower. However, we are in no way antipathetic to that proposal.

On the other hand, we do not see how concentrating the powers that were previously exercised mainly, but not exclusively, by education and library boards in a single body should mean that the relationship of that single body to individual schools should be radically different in kind to the relationship that the several education boards have, until now, enjoyed with those schools.

Like many other people, and I am sure that my colleagues at the table have had the same experience, I have gone to conferences about the forthcoming legislation at which people such as the chief executive designate of the ESA — a man for whom I have the greatest respect and regard — have been present. Interestingly, when people at those conferences expressed their reservations about the legislation, they were told that the ESA will be there to support, help and advise them. The words “direct”, “control” and “own” never occurred in that dialogue.

Schools, the AQE and the GBA have expressed concerns about some aspects of the legislation since it was first presented. However, the Minister has given personal assurances that the powers given to the ESA are only default powers, and that, in practice, the schools will be able to run themselves in much the same way in which they are run at the moment.

I am chairman of the Royal Belfast Academical Institution (RBAI) board of governors, and we provided the buildings. I pointed out to the Minister that the school does not get capital moneys, and that it is therefore a bit thick to get someone to go to the school in order to tell us in tremendous detail how we should run it. She responded by saying that there is no intention whatsoever to take over or nationalise schools. Imagine that a company runs an industry and owns the buildings, but all the people who work in the buildings are not its employees but the employees of some other organisation. It is, therefore, rather ridiculous to suggest that the system has not altered in some radical way.

We did not want to give the Committee an inordinately long briefing paper, so I hope that we have made our thoughts fairly clear.

One particular concern is the employment issue. We have had all sorts of assurances about the way in which the legislation is intended to operate. However, I am what American jurists would call a strict constructionist, in that I like to look at what the law actually says. If this Bill is passed into law, every person employed in every school in Northern Ireland, from the headmaster to the groundsman, will be an employee of the education and skills authority, rather than of the schools. That is a very radical change.

The Department seems to be saying that although we can devolve powers, in most practical respects, schools will be able to continue doing what they have been doing up until now. That does not reassure us. Assurances given at one time can be cancelled at another. People must look at what the law actually says about the matter. In this respect, the law unambiguously says that all teachers and other staff in schools will be employees of the education and skills authority. That is a big issue.

The other issue is schemes of governance. We represent a wide range of schools, some of which have ancient schemes of governance that occasionally have been found in Acts of Parliament. The legislation, as currently drafted, seems to be saying that the education and skills authority is entitled to tell a school to change its scheme of governance if it thinks that it is not good enough. On the one hand, we are trying to preserve the ethos, tradition and character of our schools. On the other hand, it seems that the decision on a school’s scheme of governance ultimately rests with the ESA.

We touched on other issues in the briefing paper, but the ones that I outlined today are the main concerns. I do not see much point in repeating what the GBA has already said about the need for the legislation to be amended to reflect its concerns; we basically share those concerns. We are not reassured by the Department’s big guarantees that everything will be all right.

Mr William Young (Association for Quality Education):

I have only a few comments to add. I agree with Sir Kenneth: one of the two main issues is governance. The policy paper uses words such as “maximized supported autonomy”. However, the law runs totally against that sort of thing. Control, governance and the change in employment of staff are all major issues, and the transfer of powers is a crucial aspect of the legislation. They say that things will be the same again, but I wonder. Elsewhere, in some of the policy papers, one reads about making redeployment and area planning easier. The fact that the ESA will employ staff means that it can do it likes with them. With respect to area planning and redeployment, as is stated in the policy papers, it can do as it wishes. Those are two very serious issues.

Sir Kenneth mentioned the two Education Bills. It makes no sense for one Bill to be passed and then a second Bill to be introduced containing details that we do not really know at present, one of which is probably area planning. If people are to agree to something, they must know what the consequences will be down the line. However, we do not know that. We are supposed to be living in a democracy and it is our right to see that.

The review of public administration refers to streamlining, realising economies of scale, delivering services and shifting resources to the front line. However, we are talking only about a chief executive and a board. We know no details beyond that. Is there a plan? How much money will be saved? Who will the intermediate officers be?

There are two other issues. I am uncomfortable with the whole idea of centralisation: centralisation does not bring freedom. The bottom line is that the voluntary principle works out as teachers giving up their spare time for nothing on Saturdays because they are committed to a school and to the children in it. If centralisation is introduced, whereby staff are not loyal to one school but are employed by someone out there in the ether, the voluntary principle is eroded. The voluntary principle comes right down to the ordinary teacher. It is a very serious issue. I have seen it at work: I have watched staff give up acres of their time, Saturday after Saturday, for nothing because they are committed to the school.

Another thing that annoys me is duplicity in expression. As Sir Kenneth pointed out, on the one hand, the Bill says one thing, and on the other hand, the policy papers tell us: not to worry, we will look after it when the time comes. As the chairman of the AQE said, with what is down in print, we could well have a Minister who will not listen to what people say, and who will decide what he or she wants to do, and he or she may decide to stick to the letter of the law. Where will we be then? We will certainly not be in a democracy.

The two main issues are governance and employment. The others are important, but those are the main two.

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

I will add a tiny footnote to that. It is interesting to look outside Northern Ireland to what is happening elsewhere. In England, there has been a growing sense that the education system has not been working well. An initiative taken some time ago set up the academies, which enjoy a good deal of autonomy in the education system. Recently, a letter appeared in a newspaper — I think it was published in ‘The Times’ — signed by people associated with umpteen of those academies, which said that all the time they were subject to a creeping process of control.

I entered education from the other end, in a sense. I chaired the Northern Ireland Higher Education Council for a number of years, which is the body that deals with the universities. Think of the uproar that there would be if the state were to decree that all university lecturers are essentially employees of a state organ. There would be outrage. Now we are saying, in effect, that all teaching staff throughout Northern Ireland will be the employees of a state organ. Voluntarism is a very important principle in a free society.

Mr Roy Lilley (Association for Quality Education):

I will enlarge on one point that Sir Kenneth made in his opening remarks. One of our difficulties may be described as an issue of credibility.

That is where we contrast statements that have been made, in the public record, by the Minister and officials with the text of the draft Bill.

I will give an example. The Minister, in a letter to the chairman of the GBA, emphasised that it was important that the powers of governors would continue to touch on staff recruitment, staff complements and dismissals. At the end of the day, however, the individual’s contract of employment will not be with the board of governors but with the ESA. It is, therefore, difficult to rationalise how the power of dismissal will rest with the board of governors when the contract will be with the ESA.

The Department, as I understand it, in setting out the justification for creating the ESA mentions that a single employer will raise standards. The bases for that claim are that it would be easier for staff to be seconded between schools, professional development would be facilitated by the ability to give teachers placements in different schools, and better workforce planning would be easier to implement. All of those indicate a centralisation of control rather than a spread of authority. For all those reasons, the actuality seems to run contrary to the assertion.

The Chairperson:

The more that those issues have been discussed in recent weeks and months, the more even members of the Committee become embroiled in what seems to be a legal minefield with regard to interpretation. We take the point that what is being said about the proposed outcome of the Bill does not seem to be reflected in the detail of the Bill. Therefore, people from a variety of education stakeholder groups are very concerned that the letter of the law does not represent how it will work in practice.

Let us relate that to the current legislation that governs schools. The scheme of management that is operated in voluntary grammar schools has to be submitted to the Department. Does the Department currently have the power to intervene and to amend that scheme of management?

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

I have been chairman of the board of governors of the Royal Belfast Academical Institution for a number of years, and I cannot recall that occurring. I, too, would need legal advice to appreciate what powers the Department has. In practice, there has never been any attempt in my experience — and I have been a governor at my school for more years than I can remember — to alter, criticise or amend our scheme of management.

Mr Young:

That is a legal issue, and it is hard to pin down. I do not have a particularly legal mind, but the terms of the Bill seem to suggest an earlier intervention than exists at present. Instead of working with people a bit longer to sort out a problem, the Bill seems to suggest that the authority will come in at a much earlier stage than should be the case. Like Sir Kenneth, I do not remember any intervention under the present system.

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

I want to make a general point. I rest here on the letter that the Minister herself addressed to me on 10 March. It was, I may say, a very civil and helpful letter. However, it includes one revealing sentence. The Minister says that:

“I understand that the detail of how these arrangements will work in practice has still to be developed and articulated fully”.

We are talking about arrangements that could have a profound impact on the way in which our schools are run. However, we are being asked to give a blank cheque in a situation in which the Minister herself says:

“the detail of how these arrangements will work in practice has still to be developed and articulated fully”.

Needless to say, we would like it to be articulated fully before anybody makes a final judgement.

The Chairperson:

We would be happy if that correspondence could be copied to the Committee. That would be helpful. Later in today’s Committee meeting, we will begin a stocktake of all that has been said about the Education Bill up until now by people who have come before the Committee and by the Department. We will try to crystallise some of that today, because we are at a stage when we need to see the amendments that have been proposed by the Department and the Minister. Those amendments have been alluded to, but we have not seen them. The duty of the Committee is to scrutinise the Department, not to make policy on its behalf.

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

The cardinal issue is the distinction between assurances of how the process will work in practice and what the law says. What will the law allow in a hypothetical circumstance in which one Minister may take a different view to another Minister? The law is the ultimate guideline. We are given temporary assurances about how the Department and the Minister foresee or do not foresee the process operating, and departmental officials tell us that the aim is maximum autonomy. However, on the face of it, the legislation is saying that the control of this, that and the other will, ultimately, rest with the ESA. That is not reassuring. The details of how the process will work are not available to us, and we are supposed to accept that and tell the Minister to go ahead with her plans.

The Chairperson:

In your submission, you refer to the public schools in Edmonton in Canada as an example of good practice. How would the system of governance that exists there benefit the system in Northern Ireland?

Mr Young:

I can speak about it generally. As I understand it, they go a bit further than we might want to go. They free up the curriculum considerably and leave the individual institutions with a choice to tailor and measure the curriculum according to their needs. Canada is a big country, and its problems are different to ours. We may not want to free up the curriculum totally, but that system gives schools more freedom. It seems that they have widened out what the voluntary grammar schools experience — they are given that wee bit more freedom. That is the sort of thing that we would not want to keep to ourselves; we would prefer it if that were shared with other schools.

I know that some small, rural primary schools may say that they do not have the governors and so on to take on board greater freedom such as that provided in Edmonton, but many schools would benefit from it. I have reservations about freeing up the curriculum completely, but freedom to act as voluntary schools do here is, in practice, existing in a much wider way.

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

In all fairness, one must say that education and library boards are supportive and helpful to schools in areas in which they have expertise that is not always available in schools. For instance, particular expertise is required for difficult disciplinary cases. However, there is a distinction between a school opting in and availing itself of a body that says that it is on hand to provide help and advice if required, and having to accept decisions from a body when the school is perfectly capable of making those decisions itself.

Mr Young:

Another concern that follows on from what Sir Kenneth said is what the education and library boards are delivering at present. The Bill does not say all that much about it, but I want to know the detail of what will happen at the levels below those of the chief executive and the board. What will happen there? How will services be delivered to rural areas? How far will centralisation be taken? What will people way beyond the centre get from the changes? Will support be close at hand for them, or must they rely on delivery from the centre? We all know that centralising or unifying of power in one area can disadvantage those who are at more of a distance. That sort of nitty-gritty detail must be worked out.

The Chairperson:

The Department has given the Committee a response to your submission, and that will be made available to you.

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

It is a pity that we do not have it now, is it not?

The Chairperson:

Yes, some other stakeholders have expressed concern about that. However, the association will have the Department’s response today, which states:

“The Department emphasises that the ESA will be a single organisation, but with a strong and significant local presence.”

We still do not know what that presence involves; the Committee has been making representations and asking questions on that.

In its submission, the association states that it should be possible to change or amend the appropriate clauses in order to allow schools to assume responsibility for their own employment matters, should they wish to do so. If amended, could the Bill provide for an organisation to act as paymaster general for Northern Ireland’s education service yet at the same time allow schools to have maximised supported local autonomy? Is that possible?

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

The wording of the present Bill does not provide for that. In order to move in that direction, the Bill must be amended.

Of course, it is sensible to have authorities that give general guidance on such issues. It is important to be able to consult specialised organisations that have an expertise that may be lacking elsewhere. I am very conscious that schools’ boards of governors vary a great deal. Our school is lucky to have a board made up, mainly but not entirely, of former pupils. We have successful lawyers, businessmen and so on; I hesitate to say successful bankers, because that is a term that is no longer used. We have extraordinarily competent individuals on our board.

On the other hand, my wife sat on the board of an integrated primary school in Bangor for a spell, and, frankly, that board was not made up of a group of great experts. They struggled a bit with some of the issues with which they were confronted. Therefore, I am in favour of letting schools get on and do the things that they are competent to do, although it is a thoroughly good idea for them to have access to a genuinely supportive advisory organisation. The system needs that.

Mr Young:

An example of one element of the freedom that voluntary grammars have that controlled schools do not is over the appointment of staff. The process is so much shorter in a voluntary grammar school; an interview is held and a decision is taken. I understand that with controlled or maintained schools, names are suggested and sent to the board and then, perhaps a month or six weeks later, a decision might be made, and possibly even changed. In times like these when high-quality staff are being sought, that puts some schools at a great disadvantage. Voluntary grammar schools have that freedom, and I would like to see it enjoyed elsewhere. A judgement by a board of governors should be accepted without having to be confirmed by anybody else.

If voluntary grammar schools can currently exist within the control of the paymaster — and if that approach seems to work well and the schools are accountable, and so on — why can that arrangement not work on a wider basis? In answer to your question, I think that it can be done. However, the Department’s policy paper seven states that:

“For voluntary grammar and grant-maintained integrated schools, the decision to separate the employing authority and the employer means, in effect, the transfer of the employing authority functions from Boards of Governors to the ESA.”

That is what the Bill proposes to do. If that happens, there will not be the sort of arrangement that I described.

Mr Elliott:

Thank you very much for your presentation. I want to pick up on something that the Chairperson said. I was going to leave it until the end but I will raise it now because he touched on it. He mentioned that the Department’s response to the AQE paper — and I am sorry that the witnesses do not have a copy — states that:

“The Department emphasises that the ESA will be a single organisation, but with a strong and significant local presence.”

It also states that front-line support services:

“will continue to be provided locally, and this will be the major factor in determining the structure of the organisation at local level.”

I have difficulty with the fact that that is not written into the Bill. If we could come up with some sort of arrangement, how would you see that written into the Bill? If that provision is to exist, it is vital that it is included in the Bill.

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

I come back to the wording that the Minister used in her letter to me, and I will quote again:

“the detail of how these arrangements will work in practice has still to be developed and articulated fully.”

In a longish life, one inevitably makes parallels between one situation and another. I was around when the Housing Executive was first set up. As the Committee will know, there had been numerous housing authorities, but the Housing Executive was established as Northern Ireland’s single housing authority. The idea was to have a functional organisation with a director of development, a director of finance, and so on. As time went by, it became clear that there was not enough stress on localism. A matrix organisation had to develop, in which there were regional lines of responsibility as well as functional lines.

The Committee should consider — not just in relation to this Bill, but more generally — the different situations in which schools are placed. Even in the grammar sector, for instance, the situation that schools in greater Belfast face is completely different from the situation that grammar schools in provincial areas face.

The answer is that one would need to know a great deal more about the issue. It is almost as if one goes to an art gallery and El Greco has just given the outline but has not put in any of the pigment. It is very difficult to judge the picture until one has all the details. I am not suggesting that El Greco wrote this paper.

Mr Young:

I do not have a legal mind, but the issue is how the matter is included in the Bill. The Bill refers to the chief executive, and so on. It may be possible to include something in that clause about the other layers.

Mr Elliott:

Employment issues have been mentioned quite a bit by a number of delegations. Would it be useful if some local autonomy was given to some sort of regional board that operates outside of the ESA?

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

We would find the idea of surrendering our powers to a regional board no more appealing than surrendering them to a provincial board.

Mr Elliott:

I was talking about a regional board for areas but also in other spheres. For example, the CCMS could have a regional board of its own, as could the voluntary grammar schools.

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

I come back to the fundamental point. The CCMS has a certain sort of relationship with its schools, and the education and library boards have a certain sort of relationship with their schools. A question arises as to whether, after amalgamation, the new single body will need to have a radically different relationship with its schools than the separate bodies had with them. Our answer is that it will not. Rationalising the system does not necessarily mean that power must be centralised. In fact, one must be even more careful when centralising authority. As a democrat, I am always worried about powerful centralised bodies. I do not like them very much.

Mr Elliott:

The Department’s response to the AQE paper states that:

“the Association appears to have misunderstood the nature of the relationship between the ESA and boards of governors”.

Personally, I do not think that that is the case. The Department must separate those matters in order to make them absolutely clear. I suppose that I am looking for suggestions from you that might help us in our deliberations on how to resolve the problem.

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

Again, I beg you to look carefully at the specific amendments that were suggested by the GBA. The GBA represents a wide range of schools, and I know that it has taken serious, heavyweight legal advice, as, I might say, has the AQE, unsurprisingly. The GBA has made specific suggestions about how the Bill might be clarified in order to dismiss some of its fears. We support what it is saying, and that is why we have not brought forward our own amendments — there is no point in having two sets of lawyers suggesting various bits of wording. We are quite happy with the GBA’s suggested wording.

Mr Young:

We are also concerned about the emphasis that is being placed on having community-based governors who must live and work in the area. We consider that to be a very restrictive requirement. If a school wants to be blessed with a board of governors that has a variety of expertise, the board should not just be linked to the local community — its membership should be widened out. For example, a past pupil who is committed to a school might live a distance away from it but be prepared to give up their time to travel to that school to share their expertise. Therefore, we have some concerns about the community aspect.

Mr Lunn:

Before asking about your concerns about the employing authority provision, I would like to find out a bit more about the system in Edmonton. I am not aware of the specific system there; is it different to the one in Toronto, Montreal or Buffalo? Why did you point out Edmonton?

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

Because it provides grounds for a visit by the Committee to the Dominion of Canada. [Laughter.]

Mr Young:

The key difference is that schools there are given greater freedom.

Mr Lunn:

Does that apply to the whole of Canada?

Mr Young:

No, it is specific to that area.

Mr Lunn:

Are you saying that the rest of Canada, about 95%, is wrong?

Mr Young:

No, not at all; we think that that extra freedom is a good thing, and it seems to be working well. People respond to and enjoy it. Again, it comes down to the notion of the voluntary principle and to loyalty.

Mr Lunn:

I understand why you advocate it — that is what you are about, and I respect that — but I wonder why the rest of Canada and the wider world have not adopted the same attitude.

Mr Young:

It is working quite well there.

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

The wider UK does not do all the sensible things that we in Northern Ireland do.

Mr Lunn:

Your organisation is not the first to express concerns about the employer role, and some of those organisations would not necessarily agree with you on other matters. So, fair enough, it is a concern. However, the advice that we get from the Department is at odds with your view. When discussing clause 8(2), the Department always points out that:

“The ESA may not lawfully refuse to put into effect any proper decision of a board of governors on employment matters.”

To me, that is pretty clear. The Department emphasises that it will be entirely for the boards of governors to make decisions on staff complement, discipline, suspension and dismissal. Decision-making authority will be delegated to the boards of governors. What is your problem with that?

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

Delegation is a quite an interesting word, because what is delegated can be “undelegated”. That emphasises the wisdom of what I understand the Chairman to be saying, which is that the Committee will seek its own legal advice on some of those issues. You can explain the wording to your heart’s content, but it must be established what, in the last resort, the wording in the Bill means. Setting aside the questions of what is intended or what will be delegated, what does the Bill actually say?

Mr Lilley:

If the powers of the boards of governors are to be prescribed in the scheme of management, decisions would only be able to be taken in accordance with that scheme, which would be approved by the ESA. Why, therefore, would the ESA, in any event, fail to agree to something that had been done within the rules that it prescribed?

Mr Lunn:

That brings me back to the Department’s line that:

“The ESA may not lawfully refuse to put into effect any proper decision of a board of governors”.

To me, that seems explicit.

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

Who will decide whether the decision is proper?

Mr Lunn:

I presume that it means “proper” in a legal sense.

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

The ESA will decide on whether the decision is proper.

Mr Lunn:

I do not think that that is the case.

I do have some problems with the Education Bill. One of those is that it constantly harks back to previous Orders, which I am not old enough to remember. However, the Department would say that the existing law, the Education ( Northern Ireland) Order 1998, demonstrates that those principles are already part of education law and that nothing is being changed in that regard.

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

All I can say is that many well-advised schools do not believe that to be the case. We are at an impasse. It would help all of us to have definitive legal advice on what the law says. It would be helpful if the lacunae in the detail of how the arrangements are to operate in practice were to be filled in and if we could be reassured that the legislation, including the further legislation that is not yet before us, represents a coherent scheme for education in Northern Ireland. We are not in that position.

The Chairperson:

Over the past weeks and months, we have sought legal advice on the definition of the employer and of the employing authority. We also have the submission on the legal representation that was made when the GBA came before the Committee. There is always a risk of having different legal interpretations, and one can get into a legal minefield. We have endeavoured to ensure that the Committee has the information. Ultimately, we will reach the stage at which the Committee has to make decisions and agree on those issues.

We have taken legal opinion from the GBA, and we have sought and received our own legal advice. Today, we will put to the Department the gaps and the issues that were raised and ask about the amendments that it is considering. We will see whether, if all of that were brought together, it would marry up whether it would be capable of bridging the current gap that exists between the Department’s view of there being a misunderstanding and the view that there is a misinterpretation.

You can see the minefield in which we are. That is why the Committee took what I believe was the right decision not to rush our consideration of the Bill, as even the Department has proposed amendments to it. We cannot be more definitive, as we are still working our way through the process.

Mr Lunn:

You expressed serious concerns about the Bill’s provisions for the appointment of governors, although the Department tells the Committee that your concerns are unfounded and that the Bill will result in little if any change. You will, as the Chairperson said, get the Department’s response shortly. Sir Ken spoke about an impasse, and there is a clear difference of opinion.

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

We look forward to the Department’s response with eager anticipation, but with a degree of scepticism.

Mr Young:

Clarity is important. We have a wonderful opportunity to move into the future by taking advice from places whose systems work well and by introducing those systems here. Mr Lunn mentioned the phrase “the voluntary principle”, but compare that phrase against so much else in the Bill. It is double language, and, as the Chairperson said, we do not know what it means. The thrust of the Bill seems to be to tighten and constrict, which is different from the Department’s response.

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

I want to echo what Billy said about the nature of boards of governors, because it reflects something about which I feel strongly: a school is an organism rather than a mechanism. Human relationships are very important — a family may have links with a school going back many years. Although a senior member of a family may live some miles from a school, he may feel that he owes much to it and may want to make a contribution to it. He may have professional skills that he could bring to the management of that school, and it would be a tragedy if we said to him: “We are terribly sorry, but you are not as aware of the area as some others.” Schools are organisms that have adjusted over a heck of a long time, and most have stood the test of time pretty well.

Mr Lunn:

Let me give you a flavour of what you will hear from the Department. It says that there are no powers in the Bill for the ESA to remove or restrain a board of governors. That is the direct opposite of what you are alleging.

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

Except that ultimate authority over the scheme of governance seems to rest with the ESA; therefore, it can create boards of governors that will, ultimately, bow to what it wants them to do.

Mr Lunn:

The Department also says that the composition of boards of governors will not change and that the proportion of appointments made by the ESA will be the same as those made by the education and library boards at present.

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

It would be much easier for us in preparing our evidence if we were aware before we arrived what the Department had to say in response to our submission. It seems extraordinary that the Committee has advice from the Department before we appear and that after we appear departmental officials appear again and shoot down what we say. That is slightly rum.

Mr Lunn:

I am giving you an opportunity to expand on what is in your submission paper and to refute what the Department says. The issue is about more than differences of emphasis.

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

When we see the Department’s paper we will scrutinise it with our usual care, and we will say what we feel we ought to say about it.

The Chairperson:

May I clarify the issue, Sir Ken? The procedure has been that the Department’s paper is not made available to other organisations until the Department has submitted it to the Committee and its officials have appeared before the Committee; it is then made available to those organisations, and, at that stage, you will have every right to respond. We used to call them rebuttals from the Department; however, we have since given them the courtesy of calling them responses.

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

Friendly rebuttals.

The Chairperson:

You can use your own discretion. You will be fully entitled to come back to the Committee with a written response on the issues that are raised in the paper that will be given to you.

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

It is conceivable that may do that, Chairman.

Mrs M Bradley:

In your submission you state that

“We believe that the principles underpinning the ESA are not based upon education but upon control. Rural areas may particularly suffer from this centralisation.”

Would you elaborate on what you mean by control and on how rural areas will be worse off?

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

Whatever one’s reading of the Bill, it gives to a centralised and centralising authority more power over the whole system than has previously been exercised by the pre-existing bodies. It is a bad thing if government in any country has too fine and ultimate a grasp on the whole system of education. In principle, I am antipathetic to that.

There are guidelines, rules and procedures, and all of us must follow the law. The ESA will be the employer; however, school governors who deal with employment practices in their school must have regard to all the provisions of the law relating to employment. There is no sense in which we are independent of the law; we all operate within it.

Our organisation is irritated to hear itself described as “breakaway schools”: we do not want to break away from anything. We are part of the state system, and we think that Northern Ireland has a great advantage over England, where far too many schools are not part of the state system. We will conform to the law, whatever the law may be.

Mr Young:

The Chairman quoted a phrase to the effect that the ESA, as a regional organisation, will have a strong local presence and will be able to focus on local delivery. If that were true, it would be a very good thing; however, it must be clearly defined. We are not talking just about rural areas; we also mean disadvantaged areas in the city. If the ESA is to be a regional organisation with a strong local presence and a focus on local delivery — and perhaps exactly what that means will be explained to us in detail — it would be good for rural schools that feel that no one cares about what happens to them. It would be tremendous if they had a mechanism to draw on advice from some source in their area.

Moreover, it would be good if schools in disadvantaged city areas — where, as you know, there are problems with standards of literacy and numeracy — were aware of something being done, of a local presence and local delivery, with smaller class sizes, greater support and more teachers. That is the sort of thing that we envisage; however, we would like to see the details written down somewhere so that we know exactly what is involved.

This is supposed to be streamlining by replacing five organisations with one. How will it be planned? Will it save money? Will it deliver a better local service? We have a glorious opportunity, and we do not want to be nailed to the past.

Mrs M Bradley:

Have you confidence in the ESA to deliver an enhanced service?

Mr Young:

I would need to see the details. I worry about centralisation. Centralising education has not worked in other places; it is usually more expensive and less efficient. It could deliver an enhanced service, but experience shows that it must be approached very carefully.

Mr McCausland:

Thank you for your presentation. I want to make a general observation, followed by a specific question. You made the point that we need to know a good deal more. That is why we said that scrutiny of the first Bill would continue until September so that if the other Bill appears in June there will be an overlap of several months. We would be buying a pig in a poke if we bought into the first Bill without knowing what is in the second.

It is a bad way of proceeding; nevertheless, we are lumbered with it. The best that we can do is to ensure that there is substantial overlap so that we know exactly what the second Bill contains before we make any decision on the first one.

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

That is reassuring.

Mr McCausland:

My question is on a specific matter about which I am not sure. Do education authorities in England employ the staff of city academies?

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

The letter in the press said that local education authorities exert more and more control over city academies, which were set up with the understanding that they would be relatively free of such control.

There is obviously a political struggle in the Labour Party between new Labour — Blairite Labour — which wants to move in that direction, and the more traditional, union-powered Labour, which favours more control and is reluctant to see anything escape the power and control of the local education authority.

We are contemplating the creation of, arguably, the largest and most powerful single education body in western Europe; therefore, we must be extremely careful about its scope and functions.

Mr Young:

A crucial aspect of its work will be to turn out high-quality teachers, and, across the board, Northern Ireland is doing much better than elsewhere in that regard. However, although, we are not doing too badly compared with elsewhere, physics is down yet again and chemistry is struggling.

When parents consider the future of their children they must see an education system that allows their children to develop. That is the crux of the matter. Northern Ireland’s future depends on good teachers — particularly of the sciences. We must produce outstanding teachers in order to lift the Province from where it sits on the edge of Europe. Will we produce a system for the future about which people can be excited because of the freedom that being part of it gives them? That is the foundation of the voluntary principle.

The Chairperson:

Are some elements that you want to retain not an administrative burden on the schools that you govern? Would a central organisation that took on much of the administration not leave you with more freedom to get on with providing education? Do you envisage any administrative arrangements that are undertaken by voluntary grammar schools being shelved off to the ESA?

Mr Young:

I do not envisage schools’ administrative arrangements being taken over by the ESA; I believe that voluntary grammar schools are happy to continue with what they do at present.

I was thinking more about the freedom of teachers who want to get on with teaching and be rid form-filling and such. Teaching should be an area in which teachers can express themselves and in which they can take their subject to the highest level. It is about a physics graduate who has a first-class or 2:1 honours degree going into a form-one classroom and being able to grab the children’s attention and enthuse them.

I witnessed that in my previous life as a headmaster when I observed the school’s head of maths teaching a form-one class. He had the children’s wrapt attention. In order to teach them the basic elements of calculus, he had taken the lesson beyond the curriculum, and the children were captivated.

The future of education will be in having a system that will attract top-class graduates who will grab young people. It is not about grabbing the sixth form, particularly; it is about capturing young people’s attention and exciting them from form one. That is what is required for the education system of the future; teachers should have the freedom to say, “Och, let the curriculum go; let me go out there and tell them what science is all about.”

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

The idea of opting in rather than opting out is appealing. I come back to the rubric that was regularly presented to us at conferences by Gavin Boyd and others like him who said that they were there to help. There is no objection to a school’s representatives saying that the new process is a chore. They might say that, due to modest resources and an inexperienced board of governors that is not very skilled, they would like someone else to run the school for them. We are saying that there are people who are perfectly capable of doing it and that therefore they should be allowed to get on with it.

The Chairperson:

If the Bill were amended to allow that to happen — which, if I remember correctly, was what the GBA wanted — would you see room for manoeuvre?

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

That makes a great deal of sense. We talk about schools as if one school was like another; however, they are terrifically different. All schools, from the wee primary school in the countryside to a big city-centre voluntary grammar school, are different. Some are perfectly capable of looking after themselves. Individuals and societies should look after themselves wherever possible; if they cannot, however, there should be a safety net or a state mechanism to take away the burden when they want to shed it.

Mrs O’Neill:

I want to return to employment arrangements and schemes and the points that Trevor Lunn raised. Clause 8(2) and 8(3) do not give the ESA the power to reject any properly taken decision of a board of governors. Their purpose is to permit the ESA to ask the board of governors to reconsider a matter if — and only if — the board of governors has not followed its own procedures. That is clear.

One cannot take the Education Bill in isolation; it must be considered alongside existing law. Trevor referred to the powers that schedule 2 of the Education Order 1998 gives boards of governors in relation to staff complement, discipline, suspension and dismissal. They are all set out in that schedule.

William said that the Bill suggested an earlier intervention than before. Where do you see that in the Bill? I do not see that.

Mr Young:

I do not have the Bill before me. I cannot remember the relevant clauses, but, when reading the Bill, I got the impression that the controlling authority would intervene earlier than it does now. I will try to find the relevant clause, but that was the tone of it.

I agree with you. It is worrying that, on one hand, the phrase that Mrs O’Neill mentioned suggests that schools will be allowed to opt out if they disagree with the ESA; other clauses suggest the opposite. One of the worrying aspects of the Bill is its duplicity of terms. That duplicity is evident not only when one compares the Bill with the policy papers, but when one reads the Bill. It is not quite doublespeak, but on one the hand it talks about control, and on the other it contains the phrase that you mentioned. Where does the truth lie? That is my worry.

I know that the Committee has struggled with the legal issues; I found them complex. I am giving you a honest answer. When I read that phrase against other phrases, I am not sure which will win the debate — the ESA or the board of governors. There is a duplicity of intent in the Bill. I cannot put my finger on it, but that is why it needs to be defined and made clearer.

Mrs O’Neill:

I can only go on what I have read, and what I have read is clear. I do not think that clause 8(2) and 8(3) gives the ESA the powers that you feel it does.

Mr O’Dowd:

I apologise for being late and for missing the first part of your presentation. I have read the briefing paper, and I will read the Hansard report of this session to catch up on any comments that I missed.

First, what exactly is the “voluntary principle”?

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

It means that individuals and corporate bodies should look after themselves, in so far as that is possible without harming other people or being contrary to the public good; it is almost like the notion of subsidiarity in the European Community. If someone can do something that does not impinge on the public interest, he or she should be allowed to get on with it and not be subject to the governing authority of an organisation at a higher level.

Mr O’Dowd:

I have no difficulty with that interpretation; however, when the principle has been debated in this context it has sounded more like independence. A group of schools wishes to have complete independence from the Department of Education and any overview body, and yet withal they are prepared to accept £250,000 a year in funds.

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

I am sorry that that is your impression. Before you arrived, I said that I regret very much people describing us as rebel or breakaway schools: we are part of the state system, and most of our schools receive capital and current support. As it happens, the Royal Belfast Academical Institution receives only current support to see that children are educated. We must respond to the requirements of the curriculum as prescribed by the state, and we must also follow the salary-negotiating arrangements that apply to all schools.

The notion that we are independent of the state is not true. Nevertheless, there is a place in society for organisations that have a long history and a profound ethos of a different character that have contributed enormously to society over the years. We are antipathetic to the excessive centralisation of state power that governs every aspect of our lives. I find that objectionable.

Mr O’Dowd:

I would not take offence at being called a rebel. [Laughter.]

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

We will have to be very careful about the terms that we use.

Mr O’Dowd:

Surely no board of governors could implement a ruling that was profoundly illegal.

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

Absolutely not.

Mr O’Dowd:

The Bill says that the ESA will take on the role of the CCMS in the maintained sector and the role of the boards in the controlled sector and that it will be duty-bound to inform a board if it goes outside the remit of the law.

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

Consider employment: every teacher, groundsman, janitor and dinner lady in the Province will be employed by this extraordinarily powerful state-sponsored organisation. Political parties, above all, are keen to do their own thing and preserve their ethos, whatever that may be, and so are schools.

As I said earlier, this is rather a rum state of affairs, given that everyone who works for a school, such as the Royal Belfast Academical Institution, which still owns its buildings, will not be an employee of the school but of the education and skills authority. That is what the Bill will mean. That is not necessary and will not advance the public interest.

Mr O’Dowd:

Is it not a case of he who pays the piper calling the tune?

Sir Ken Bloomfield:

Are you arguing that everything that the state supports should be run by the state? Where would that end? Will the state nationalise the universities? Will all university lecturers and professors be employees of a state body? You would face a fair old hurroosh if you went that far.

Mr O’Dowd:

There have been instances in which staff in the education sector have not been treated equitably with regard to their pay and conditions; that was highlighted most dramatically by the long and heated classroom assistants’ dispute, after which a resolution was reached. Some people, particularly those in the grammar-school sector, were left outside that resolution. Several million pounds had to be taken from the public purse to ensure that staff in the grammar-school sector were correctly paid. A single employing authority would protect the employment terms and conditions of staff.

Sir Ken Bloomfield:

I wish that I had some members of our staff with me. Staff terms and conditions are negotiated at the level above that of an individual school, and our school observes those negotiated agreements. The notion that we all go off into the wild blue yonder is very wide of the mark. We are caught up in negotiating arrangements, and we adhere to the state’s prescription of curricular responsibilities, and our schools are inspected by the schools inspectorate. That is as it should be.

Of course we are conscious that our activities are largely funded by the state. The question is whether what we do with that funding is in the public interest, and we think that it is. Since China and India are turning out PhDs by the thousand, it is vital to have schools in whose ethos academic excellence features as a criterion. We are not talking about having a homogenous group of schools; we are talking about schools that are very different. Difference is a good thing. Let us not go for uniformity, for state control of everything and for everything being identical. That is the antithesis of freedom in society.

Mr Young:

Earlier, I talked about how the voluntary principle goes right down to the individual member of staff and about loyalty to an institution. The voluntary principle gets so much more out of staff. For 37 years, I took games every Saturday morning, and I was not paid for it. During the cricket season, I was involved from 10.00 am until 4.00 pm or 5.00 pm on Saturdays. I did that for the love of the game, the love of the young people, and because of my love and loyalty to the school. I am no martyr for doing that; I enjoyed it. Many staff volunteer; they simply give of their time. That is what one gets from staff as a result of the voluntary principle.

Mrs O’Neill talked about clause 8(2), and it is true that that provision is in the Bill. However, clause 5(5) states that:

“An employment scheme for a school submitted to ESA under subsection (1)(b) shall not come into force until it has been approved by ESA or until such date as ESA may, in giving its approval, specify.”

On the one hand, the ESA is to give effect to what a school will do in accordance with such an employment scheme; on the other, it will control what the scheme is. That is an illustration of how one part of the Bill looks OK while another part does not. I am sorry, Mr O’Dowd; I did not mean to cut across you.

Mr O’Dowd:

No, it is fine.

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

I wish to pursue the idea of the voluntary principle a bit further. I have been reading books that are set in the old Soviet Union, about which I am very interested. After the Bolshevik revolution, the Soviets decided that individual farms were a thoroughly bad idea and should be replaced with collective farms. It was decided that the state would run agriculture.

Production fell to the lowest imaginable level. People on state farms had no sense of belonging, no real identity and that approach eventually had to be abandoned. The loyalty of people in an understandable organisation of understandable dimensions is not to be underrated.

The people in my school work their guts out, not just to deliver the prescribed curriculum, but to give the kids the richest possible experience in all sorts of ways. Would they feel the same if they were the employees of some great amorphous organisation up there in the stratosphere? I do not know. That is a big risk to contemplate.

Mr O’Dowd:

That issue has been teased out at previous Committee meetings. In my area, I am aware of schools under CCMS control in which staff spend their weekends and evenings, without pay, organising all sorts of activities with children. Those teachers’ loyalty is, first and foremost, to their vocation, which is education, and they are loyal to their pupils and schools. That loyalty is not determined by whether they work for the voluntary sector. I have no doubt that similar work is going on in voluntary grammars. Whether in the voluntary, controlled or maintained sectors, teachers are loyal to their vocations. Therefore, I am not convinced by Sir Kenneth’s argument.

I have read and re-read the reference in the association’s presentation to governors’ appointments — sometimes even politicians put themselves in other people’s shoes to see where they are coming from. The submission states:

“The schools which AQE represents, have for years been “melting-pots”, attracting pupils from wide areas, often across frontiers of division. Governors drawn from a local community will provide too parochial and narrow a view.”

I may be narrow-minded, but that tells me that the AQE does not want governors from the New Lodge or the Shankill in its schools.

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

That is your interpretation. We have rehearsed that issue. In my faltering way, I tried to say that good schools are organisms, not mechanisms. They rely very heavily on certain qualities. For instance, if four generations of a family have been involved with a school, it is an important part of their life. The senior member of that family may now live 20 or 30 miles away from the school. He has expertise that he could, and wants to, bring to the board. Are we to say to that man or woman, “Sorry, we do not want you because you are from outside the area.”?

The Committee probably knows that I speak for a school that draws its pupils from an incredibly wide area over greater Belfast and beyond. That enriches the school and society, because the more that we rub up against people other than those who live in our immediate area, the better we are in many respects. Therefore, I make no apology for that.

Mr Young:

We are saying, yes, by all means support community governors, but do not limit us. As Sir Kenneth said, give the school the option to pick somebody a bit further afield if they have a gift that is needed on the board.

Mr O’Dowd:

I have no objections to that in principle. However, I am concerned that a family living at the front gates of your school would not be able to belong to your board of governors.

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

We are getting into the debate that we have been having for quite a long time about another issue. The notion that our school would not welcome people from, say, Sandy Row, is absolutely —

Mr O’Dowd:

Is anybody on your board of governors from Sandy Row?

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

Not as far as I know; however, there is nothing to bar somebody from Sandy Row becoming a member of the board of governors.

Mr O’Dowd:

I have no objection to a board of governors being drawn from a wider geographical area, but I believe that the success of any school is based on the community with which it deals and in which it works. For a school to become part of a community, it must represent that community, both through its pupil intake and its board of governors.

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

What is being advocated is a neighbourhood school. We are antipathetic to the idea of a neighbourhood school. We think that Northern Ireland is the last place in the world that should say, “This is your area; there you are and there you stay”.

Mr O’Dowd:

I know, perhaps, where you are coming from in that we should have an involvement in our community but not at the expense of turning our backs to surrounding communities. They may be from a different community. I am not arguing —

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

Saying that we turned our back is a wonderful argument, but —

Mr O’Dowd:

I am not saying that you did, but Mr Young was arguing that your school is inclusive because it is diverse and draws governors from a broad area. There is an argument that society is breaking down; people close their front doors and their wider family and the community outside are no longer important. I am arguing that including people in every function of society, including in schools, will help to rebuild society and give people back their community spirit.

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

Let me tell you about the sort of people who sit on our board, and Billy may wish to say a few words about those who sit on his board. They largely went to public elementary schools, as they were called then, from all over Belfast, whether in the west or east. I would never have attended a grammar school if I had not been awarded a scholarship; my parents could not have afforded to send me to one. Those people went on to gather life experiences, which are useful to bring to the board table. Therefore, categorising people as elitist snobs simply because they have had a good education and done something with their lives seems a ridiculous view of the world. We are looking for people who are capable of running, in many cases, a big enterprise and who will be responsible for a multi-million-pound budget.

Mr O’Dowd:

Someone who manages a family budget of £70 a week is as important to society as someone who manages a budget of £20 million a week. In fact, single parents who have a family budget of £70 a week can bring the sort of understanding to education that is, perhaps, currently required.

The Chairperson:

I ask members to stick to asking questions rather than making statements, please, because what is being said about the voluntary principle can also be applied to the maintained sector. Bear in mind the presentations to the Committee from that sector, which said that it wants to act independently and to employ its own staff.

Mr O’Dowd:

I was trying to tease the issue out.

The Chairperson:

We must be fair and ensure that we do not pick on just one education sector.

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

We do not in the least mind being picked on; we are well used to it by now.

Mr Young:

The idea of community is interesting. The important issue is for schools to have governors who care about it. They do not have to live in the area, but they must care and have the required expertise to appreciate what is going on.

I am immensely proud of the fact that the school in which I taught for 40 years was to the fore in having both sides of the community living and working together. When I left, between 25% and 30% of the school were from the Catholic tradition. Young people who come to school together leave aside questions of whether they are from a Protestant or a Catholic background. Some of those children were from the local area and some were from a much wider area. Presently, two form 2 children travel from Glenarm — one is Protestant and one is Catholic — because they see a community of which they want to be a part. That stems from the school’s staff and the voluntary principle, and our school is not alone in that respect.

Do not get me wrong, I am not saying that that is what every school should be aiming for. I am saying that my experience was of a community that cared; pupils put on their blazers and left aside everything else from outside. Many of those pupils had to cross interfaces. I remember people crossing interfaces during very troubled times because of what the school community could offer.

Let us widen the matter beyond the idea of a community governor. We certainly need governors from the community, but they need not be from the local community. Give schools the chance to get people from a wider area than that. If they want to take people from the local community that is well and good, but let us not limit them to that. I agree that community involvement is important. However, I also agree with Sir Kenneth; the last thing Northern Ireland wants is a whole system of local schools. We want people to cross the barriers of the past and head into the future.

Mr O’Dowd:

I have one more question. What is the difference between the AQE and the GBA? I ask because we have received several submissions from different societies and groups, and I read them to try to establish what weight to put on them. Is the AQE a constituted body?

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

Initially, the AQE was a voluntary pressure group that represented governors, teachers and former pupils of schools. When 34 schools signed up to the idea of establishing a co-operative examination, we decided that we needed to create a corporate entity. AQE Limited is a company, of which I am chairman. It will be responsible for providing the examination. Of course, the examination is all that we will provide. The question of how the examination is used in relation to the admissions criteria will be a matter for the board of governors of each individual school.

Mr O’Dowd:

Are you a separate entity from the GBA?

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

At the start of the meeting I said that you may ask why we are here, given that many of our member schools are members of the GBA. I am on the executive committee of the GBA; I am aware of the evidence that the GBA submitted to the Committee, and I support it. The GBA recommended a number of amendments that it thinks will improve the Bill. We support the view that it expressed in those amendments.

Again, you may ask why we are here, particularly given that, like many others, our school submitted its own evidence. The answer is simply that the main campaign that we have been fighting to retain academic selection is, in our minds, an attempt to preserve the ethos of our schools and the voluntary principle. Any ground that we gained in that particular struggle will be forfeited if, at the end of the day, all schools become just the creatures of a Government body. That is why we are here.

Mr Lunn:

I have some sympathy with the idea that the definition of a community governor as somebody who lives or works in the local community is too restrictive. If the definition made reference to catchment area, would it go some way towards satisfying you?

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

No, I would be antipathetic to that. You are talking about neighbourhood schools, and I do not like the idea of neighbourhood schools at all — they are a thoroughly bad idea. Schools should be entitled to take in people who want to attend the school for whatever reason, and who have shown that they have what it takes to flourish and be happy in the school.

Mr Lunn:

What is the local community in a place the size of Northern Ireland? Where does local community stop?

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

The idea of the community as a ghetto with a fence around it is quite unreal. Let me be totally frank: Lisburn is very lucky because it has some excellent grammar schools of the highest-possible quality. In many ways, it is very convenient for Protestant parents to get their child into Wallace High School or Friends’ School. However, they are not always able to do that, so another option could be our school. What is wrong with that? I think that there is nothing at all wrong with that. We are part of a melting pot of people who come from all sorts of different areas and circumstances. The last thing that we want to do is ghettoise Northern Ireland and pin people down to their locality and the schools there. That is a bad idea.

Mr Lunn:

I went to Billy’s school from Finaghy.

Mr McCausland:

That school has a lot to answer for.

The Chairperson:

OK, we do not want to start bringing out the school blazers.

Mr Poots:

I support what Sir Kenneth has just said about diversity. I was in that exact position. Two of my children attend grammar schools in Lisburn. One of my children had the option of going to the school of which Sir Kenneth is the chairman of the board of governors, and we took the option of sending him to a local secondary school. Those options were available to us as parents. For our family, we had the best choices and options available under the education system that we had.

The Chairperson:

We do not want a restrictive process that closes down every option, but a process that provides options and variety, whether in the choice of governors or parental choice of school. Ken, Billy and Roy, thank you very much.

Mr Young:

We have had a real sense that the Committee has been working very hard on this matter, and that you are doing your level best to find the right way ahead out of a very difficult situation. That has been obvious to people from the outside, and I am very grateful to you all for what you have been doing.

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield:

I, too, would like to thank the Committee.

The Chairperson:

I can assure you that the Committee will continue with that hard work.

Mr Lilley:

In the context of this morning’s discussion, my point is perhaps minor, but it is one that has, I understand, exercised the Committee. I am not a lawyer, but one of my legal friends told me that if the Bill is enacted on its present terms with the ESA as the employer, in the event of a dispute arising that has its genesis on the school campus, the school would not have an automatic right of appearing before any subsequent tribunal.

If that interpretation is legally correct — and under the specific industrial tribunals Act, I think that that is indeed the case — would it not improve the legislation if it was made perfectly clear that in such circumstances the school would automatically have a right of representation? One cannot conceivably envisage all the potential circumstances on which a dispute that ends up before a tribunal would be based. I think, therefore, it would be preferable for there to be clarity from the outset.

The Chairperson:

Chris Stewart is here to represent the Department, and I think that he will answer that question. You are welcome to remain for that witness session.

Mr Lilley:

Unfortunately, I have an appointment and am unable to stay. However, I will read the response in due course.

The Chairperson:

The report will be in Hansard. Once again, thank you all for coming.

Members, I must leave as I have another appointment that I must keep, but I will return afterwards. As you know, the Deputy Chairperson in unable to be here because of a family bereavement. Members, with your indulgence, can I suggest that, as has happened in the past, Nelson takes the Chair until I return. Are members agreed?

Members indicated assent.

(The Acting Chairperson [Mr McCausland] in the Chair)

The Acting Chairperson (Mr McCausland):

I welcome the representatives of the Association of Northern Ireland Education and Library Boards (ANIELB): Alderman Roy Beggs, chairperson of the North Eastern Education and Library Board; Peter Duffy, chairperson of the Western Education and Library Board; Gary Haire, chairperson of the South Eastern Education and Library Board; and Hilary Sloan, chairperson of the education committee of the Belfast Education and Library Board.

The association’s written submission on the Education Bill and summary of key points are included in members’ packs. It has also provided a response to the Department’s policy paper 20, which deals with ownership and representation of publicly owned schools.

I invite the representatives of the association to give a short presentation outlining their key comments on the Education Bill. The Committee would appreciate it if you could keep that to 10 minutes. Members may then ask questions.

Mr Gary Haire (Association of Northern Ireland Education and Library Boards):

We are delighted to join the Committee and to make our presentation. As you said, we have already submitted written evidence, so I will summarise our general views. My colleagues will respond on specific issues that cause the association some concern.

When the then Secretary of State, Peter Hain, announced in November 2005 that there would be a review of public administration, the association wrote to express, in broad, general terms, its support for the proposals to ensure better public service for local people through modern, accountable systems of administration that provide greater efficiency and effectiveness. Today, we find ourselves considering an Education Bill that has moved on and that bears little resemblance in character or substance to what was originally proposed or envisaged in the association’s perspective and understanding.

Our support was based around the concept of an all-inclusive authority that could provide a world-class service for the benefit of the children and young people whom each of our respective boards serve on a daily basis. Through the comments we have read reported in Hansard, the association is aware that the Committee has been carefully scrutinising the Bill. We believe that there must be a more open debate on proper area-based, democratic and accountable structures that deliver real efficiencies in the system and target resources on the basis of objectively measured need.

The association does not advocate maintenance of the status quo, but feels that any meaningful change should be predicated upon a rationale that is based on clear, concise and compelling evidence on educational best practice and economic robustness.

The association recognises that our children and young people need to have an education system that will enhance their capability of developing into adults and forming a society renowned for its world-class knowledge economy and a workforce that is well-trained, educated and motivated, thereby providing economic growth to drive stability in the future.

Already the system has seen significant improvement in educational outcomes over the years; those are not just due to our good education system, hard work and high-quality staff, but to external factors, too, not least what has happened in this House. Any proposed reform must not only continue to improve our educational outcomes but ensure a more coherent and holistic approach in the provision of children’s services. We believe that those should not be arbitrarily subject to departmental boundaries; rather we should offer a fully resourced and integrated service provision to our children and young people so that they can gain the best educational experience that we can offer.

In considering the way forward, the association is of the view that it is important to understand any new structures in the context of the needs of the Northern Ireland community. We note that the Assembly has already committed to the overarching principles contained in the Bill by giving it a Second Stage, but we believe that the Committee can and must ensure that any new authority is all-inclusive and incorporates all sectors. That is not the situation at present, and the association has concerns that it appears that a number of the current bodies will be subsumed under the ESA while others will continue to exist, and, indeed, additional bodies are to be created. Hilary will respond to the Committee on that issue in a moment.

The prolonged time frame since the commencement of the RPA process has placed immeasurable stress and strain on staff employed in the current system. That, coupled with the ongoing uncertainty as to when or whether the new authority will come into being, is having an increasingly detrimental effect on staff morale. Peter will expand on that point.

We stress that it is vital to ensure that any proposed changes are right and proper, or, to quote the much-repeated phrase, “fit for purpose for the twenty-first century”. Ultimately, they must be beneficial to the children and young people whom we serve and the staff for whom we are responsible.

As we mentioned in our paper to the Committee, many of the clauses in the Bill are aspirational in nature and many questions still require clarification. Roy will speak of our concerns about boards of governors.

Mr Roy Beggs Snr (Association of Northern Ireland Education and Library Boards):

The association feels that there is a need for clarity from the Assembly and the Department of Education regarding local governance arrangements for the future. At present, boards of governors are composed of members who represent the education and library boards, transferors or trustees, parents, teachers and the school principal. The boards of some schools also contain representatives from the Department of Education. The responsibilities of a board of governors include: finances; public funds; private funds raised by parents and friends of the school; delivery of the curriculum; setting targets; admissions to the school; suspension and expulsion of pupils; employment of teaching and non-teaching staff; and employers’ functions, including staff discipline.

The board of governors of a controlled school can invite an officer from the relevant education and library board to give guidance, and a board of governors in a maintained school can invite an officer from the CCMS to give guidance. However, any guidance offered to boards of governors may not be followed because of the close relationship between members of the board of governors and employees.

Some members of a board of governors, through lack of confidence, insufficient knowledge of education and inadequate training, are reluctant to contribute in committee meetings. As a consequence, either a small number of members takes the lead in school management or the principal has the lead role. The association has concerns about how suitably qualified and skilled people will be recruited, retained and trained for the proposed new structures and responsibilities. Given that those positions are currently being advertised for the 2009-2013 period, will the people due to be appointed have been given a clear insight into what will be expected of them under any new authority in light of the legislation? Who will provide the necessary training and when?

We have heard an unconfirmed report that only about 200 governors have reapplied to serve on boards. That would be extremely serious, because tens of thousands of governors are needed to cover all the schools in Northern Ireland. We are concerned about what training and support will be given to governors to enable them to discharge their responsibility for raising standards in their schools. Will the Department of Education, the Minister and the ESA endeavour to ensure that each board of governors contains the required mix of skills to perform its functions, take on its responsibilities and be accountable? Will the ESA provide model schemes of management prior to boards of governors assuming responsibility on 1 January 2010?

Recently, I discovered that the Department wanted a board member on an audit committee to have accountancy skills or financial expertise. However, as the Minister had not nominated anyone with that expertise, the board could not appoint such a member to either its audit or finance committees. If people with specific expertise are not appointed to boards of governors of schools, that same problem could arise.

Consideration must be given to remunerating people who serve as members on boards of governors, because we may not be able to continue to depend on volunteers. I trust that the Committee will be able to address some of those issues.

Mr Haire:

We all recognise that today’s economic climate is totally different to that which prevailed when the Bill commenced its passage. That is bound to have an effect on the proposals before the Assembly, particularly in light of the new Budget announcement from Westminster of a potential £122 million reduction in funding for the Northern Ireland economy.

If that amount is correct, how will the ESA make the substantial savings that have been outlined already, never mind the additional savings that will be required in this contracting market? Has the Committee seen evidence of how those savings will be made and how effective efficiencies will be realised?

Peter Duffy will speak to you about the governance of the ESA and the boards of governors and about the relationship between the employer and employing authority, which is a concern to us.

Mr Peter Duffy (Association of Northern Ireland Education and Library Boards):

In a paper that was prepared in 2008 and sent to all MLAs, the association made specific reference to the size of the new education and skills authority. It compared the size of the new body with similar bodies in England, Scotland, Wales and the Republic of Ireland. The average populations covered by the education bodies are 327,000 in England; 158,000 in Scotland; 134,000 in Wales; and, for each vocational educational committee in the Republic of Ireland, 140,000.

The existing average population in board areas in the North is 348,000. The new ESA will cover a population of approximately 1·8 million. That will be a massive education board; in fact, it will be the largest in these islands. Senior staff will spend a lot of their time criss-crossing Northern Ireland as they try to meet deadlines and, in the process, cause stress and anxiety to themselves and others. If decisions have to be made in Fermanagh about the proper and adequate provision of education, senior staff will be required to be in Fermanagh to advise and direct boards of governors. Such meetings can be complex and time-consuming. It will not be acceptable for the ESA to issue a diktat from some central location. Local accountability will demand a local presence. As yet, no one knows where local offices will be located; we have been told that politicians have not yet decided where they will be.

To proceed with the recruitment of staff without confirmation of the location of posts would be unfair. Staff may find that the base for those posts could change to a location that is more accessible for them, and the reverse could also be true. A member of staff may secure a post in a particular location only to be based in a less accessible location at a later date.

It is important to identify the location of offices as a matter of urgency. For instance, what will be in Omagh, Armagh, Belfast or elsewhere? It seems that common sense has disappeared. Furthermore, staff morale in the offices of existing boards is going down, because of the perception of how the ESA jobs will be recruited and the difficulties entailed.

I can envisage a future with one super-board dealing with all of Northern Ireland, and senior staff criss-crossing the Province as they try to deal with urgent problems. One must remember that the problems of all schools, large or small, must be dealt with fairly and properly, and there are currently 1,250 schools and approximately 330,000 pupils.

Closing a school is not like closing a shop at a street corner or closing a branch of a bank that is not making money. As members know, schools are part of a community. The community considers that it owns the schools. In the maintained sector, that is partially true, because the community has contributed to the schools. Therefore, they feel a sense of ownership. Closing the schools will not be an easy matter, especially if local people are not talking to the boards of governors and dealing with parents.

The association has problems with the governance arrangements for the ESA. It is proposed that there will be a chairperson and between seven and 11 members, most of whom will need to have an educational background. The current arrangement allows for 35 members in each board area, comprising councillors and other stakeholders who have considerable expertise and experience in the education sector. The association is concerned that the skills and knowledge base of current boards will be lost, diminished or eroded. What about the democratic function and accountability of the new body in a situation in which the number of staff and pupils for whom the ESA will be responsible is increasing dramatically, but in which governance and accountability seem to be significantly reduced?

The ANIELB welcomes the establishment of local committees to provide important regional governance within the ESA, but cannot find any mention of that in the Education Bill. Clarification is required on the composition and function of local committees. Will they be boards under another name?

Another matter that is related to local governance and that is giving us grave concern is the relationship between the employer, as the ESA sees itself — as alluded to in clause 3(1) — and the employing authority, as, it seems, the boards of governors will become in the new dispensation. Boards of governors are to have maximised supported autonomy, but, in the matter of employment of staff, they may become a subcommittee of the ESA. That issue has not been clarified in the Bill, and I can envisage some boards of governors disputing the authority of the ESA in matters involving employment legislation.

The Bill should, and must, clarify the relationship between the employer and the employing authority. Obviously, some boards of governors, especially boards of voluntary grammar schools, which have had maximised autonomy for a long time and appear to want to maintain it, will be loath to give up their traditional stance. In my experience, grammar school boards of governors have no difficulty in recruiting members of the legal profession to give advice and guidance. That is not the case with small schools. We all need clarity about the employer/employing authority relationship.

Mr Haire:

Perhaps Hilary wishes to pick up on what I said about the concerns in the controlled sector.

Mrs Hilary Sloan (The Association of Northern Ireland Education and Library Boards):

That has to do with the Department’s policy paper 20. Chairman, would you like to discuss that paper after we have discussed the Education Bill?

The Acting Chairperson:

It would be better to discuss it now.

Mrs Sloan:

I am happy to do that. The Committee has our response to policy paper 20. The association believes that it is very important to establish a definition of the controlled sector. What do we mean when we talk about the controlled sector? We endorsed the definition that was given by the Southern Education and Library Board, which is set out in our response to policy paper 20.

That definition highlights four distinguishing points of the controlled sector. First, it has a community focus in that it is open to all in the community. Secondly, it has encompassing characteristics, excluding no one who could benefit from it. Thirdly, the sector is egalitarian in nature, promoting equality among pupils and among staff. Fourthly, over the years, the controlled sector has been shaped by liberal thinking.

The association believes that the statutory right that the Protestant Churches have had since they transferred their schools in the 1950s and 1960s will now become an influence only, not a right. However, I will leave discussion on that to the Transferor Representatives’ Council, from which the Committee may have heard or will hear in the future.

I reiterate what has already been said by other members of the association and by other people who have appeared before the Committee. There now appears to be a proliferation of bodies, but, the ESA to which we, as members of the education and library boards, originally signed up was to be one authority. That is certainly what I agreed to in the first instance. The different bodies appear not even to have the same or similar functions; some will be subsumed under the ESA, others will stay as they are and new bodies will be created. Policy paper 20 looks at the two new bodies that will be brought into being to represent the controlled sector: one to have an advocacy role and one to create an ownership structure for the sector.

The association worries that the ESA often appears to be more concerned with structures and buildings than with the education of children, important as structures and buildings are. However, because of the fact that there are bodies that represent all other sectors of education, we accept that the controlled sector needs an appropriate advocacy body to protect the interests of the sector in a manner that ensures parity of treatment with all other sectoral interests. As an association, we welcome the creation of such a body.

However, the education and library boards’ members and staff wanted responsibility for the body concerned with ownership to pass to the ESA and to be discharged by the ESA, not by a distinct body. We gather that a statutory body will be artificially created to hold ownership rights. We wonder why arrangements in other parts of the UK should not apply to Northern Ireland. There have been suggestions that the ESA may show partiality to the controlled sector. The association believes that those comments show a lack of judgement.

The association is also concerned that, apart from the bureaucratic being that policy paper 20 presents as the ownership solution, there could be a financial drain in an already-strained economic climate leading to less funding for front-line services. Our paper concludes with a comment from the Western Education and Library Board, which we thought was apt: it says that paper 20 is confusing, contradictory and lacking in clarity regarding a range of issues pertaining to the future of the controlled sector.

Mr Haire:

In conclusion, we in the association have a keen interest in children, young people and staff, and we bring a breadth of knowledge of the education system that has been garnered over a number of years. Our collective insight suggests that the creation of a regional authority could be commended; however, our eyes are still focused on the Strathclyde experience and what happened there. There are many complex legal issues, but the governance arrangements for the new authority need to be clarified.

If we may be so bold, we suggest that the Committee may want to pause to reflect on all the evidence that it has heard to date from a variety of witnesses, and, perhaps, be prepared to reconsider the path that has been embarked upon. At times, it feels as though a large tanker was launched around 2005 as part of the RPA and that it is moving in a direction in which we are not really convinced our education system needs to go. I suppose that this Committee is the only body that can alter its direction.

In light of the proposals before us, can we categorically guarantee that the new system of education being proposed will improve our children and young people’s educational outcomes, or will our embarkation on this process cause yet another generation to experience the turmoil that change will inevitably bring, without ensuring any better educational outcome for them or our community?

The theory that has been presented in the Bill has many facts, and those facts need to be clarified. Let us not do what Einstein suggested when he said:

“If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts.”

Thank you very much for hearing our presentations today.

The Acting Chairperson:

Thank you for your presentations. Can you elaborate on the nature of any potential conflict of interest that might arise from the ESA assuming the responsibilities of the Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment (CCEA) and the need to ensure public confidence in the independence and rigour of public examinations? That issue has been raised.

Mr Haire:

The concern expressed was that the central body will have an awarding body function as regards awarding qualifications. That does not seem to happen with any other authority in the rest of the United Kingdom. If that were to be the case, would there be a possibility of that being open to challenge from the Monopolies and Mergers Commission? That was our thinking on that point.

The Acting Chairperson:

Is there a concern that the ESA would have a duty to promote high standards and yet be responsible for setting the examinations to determine whether high standards have been achieved?

Mr Haire:

Yes.

Mrs Sloan:

The association feels strongly, as do some boards — although some feel more strongly than others — that there could be a conflict of interest when a body tries to do two things at one time. It is concerned that there would be no body that sits outside that authority that could play a more independent role in both the setting and examining of standards.

Mr O’Dowd:

Peter mentioned that he was deeply concerned that because the ESA will be a single body, its staff will have to travel back and forth across the North, which will cause all kinds of difficulties. That is understandable. However, Hilary, you then said that the association originally signed up to having a single body, and that you are now concerned that there are various layers underneath that. Is there not a contradiction there?

Mrs Sloan:

No, I do not think so. The authority is, in some way, the body that will be in charge of education. We signed up to the establishment of one body. Part of Peter’s concerns is how that will work itself out, and whether it will have local committees. We signed up to there being one education authority, but that now seems to be dividing into a lot of other bodies. I do not think that there was a contradiction in what we said. Following on from Peter’s question, we need to work out what regional shape that one authority will have in providing education in different areas of Northern Ireland. We have not yet seen any evidence of that. However, we did not envisage a proliferation of sectoral bodies as part of that education provision.

Mr Duffy:

My problem was with the operational side of the ESA. A small body in the centre would, obviously, determine policy. However, how will the operation of that policy happen at local level? Would local committees be subject to the ESA, perhaps subcommittees of the ESA? Leaving sectoral influence aside — because that is a different argument that Hilary is putting forward — as a unified body, the ESA will need local committees, if only to operate the system on even a human resources level.

If the ESA is to be the employer, and the employing authority is, perhaps, the school, how will the ESA ratify appointments and deal with all the paperwork that appointments generate? It will need a record of them, which might come through electronically. Nevertheless, if a board of governors is to appoint someone to a particular post, its members need the application forms in front of them, and they must ensure that the information in the forms meets the advertised criteria for the post.

Who will check whether that is done correctly, if not a local office or a central office? It would be a mammoth task to direct all that paperwork to Belfast and would multiply human resources exponentially. Furthermore, employment litigation is increasing by the day and is quite a serious business. Therefore, those matters must be handled properly. That is my concern.

Mr O’Dowd:

I appreciate the clarification. I think that the Department has told the Committee that there will be local support offices. I have not read anywhere that the headquarters will be in Belfast.

Mr Duffy:

I am not saying that; if the headquarters were in Derry, there would be the same sorts of pressures.

Mr O’Dowd:

I agree with you. There has to be some form of local support network.

Mr Duffy:

This is a huge operation. We are creating one mammoth education body to deal with 1·8 million people, and it is increasing the problems.

Mr O’Dowd:

There is no representative here from the Southern Education and Library Board. Is that significant?

Mr Duffy:

Marie Donnell was not able to come, and she was quite happy that I represented the Southern Education and Library Board.

Mr O’Dowd:

OK. Grand job.

Mr Duffy:

Our boards are similar in nature, and we co-operate on the curriculum.

Mrs Sloan:

We were told that we could have only four representatives.

Mr O’Dowd:

That is OK.

The Chairperson:

I will put five into four.

Mr Elliott:

Thank you for your presentation. It might have been Roy who spoke about possible difficulties in attracting new boards of governors. What is the real problem in the ESA with regard to that, and what will be the difficulty?

Mr Beggs Snr:

There are real concerns about the new and additional responsibilities that members of boards of governors will have, and how they will be held accountable. People will be reluctant to become governors unless there is an assurance that adequate training will be given to enable them to carry out their duties and responsibilities. Those matters are unconfirmed, but that is what I have heard.

Mr Elliott:

The difficulty with additional training is that it requires additional time, and governors act very much in a voluntary capacity. Would that in itself not lead to problems?

Mr Beggs Snr:

Undoubtedly, it will. It will also bring about additional costs. However, people will not be confident about taking up responsibility unless they have had adequate training.

Mr Elliott:

And adequate safeguards as well, I would have thought, with regard to legal responsibility.

It has been mentioned a couple of times that the original perception of the ESA has changed. In which areas do you believe that it has changed most? I noticed that your submission states that the association understood that employment would come under one structure. Now, you say that it seems that different moves have been made on that issue. What do you consider to be the main changes to the ESA as it was originally envisaged?

Mr Duffy:

My understanding is that the ESA will be the employer, but I am not sure that that would work out operationally as it is envisaged. There is a lack of proper distinction between the employer and the employing authority. When we get down to the nitty-gritty, I do not believe that boards of governors will give up their authority.

The concept has been around since the 1989 Order and, subsequently, I think, the Education and Libraries ( Northern Ireland) Order 1993. It was operational under CCMS and worked reasonably well because of goodwill. Boards of governors of grammar schools, which, traditionally, have many lawyers, are not going to give up authority too easily to a central body under the new arrangements.

Mr Elliott:

To clarify, Chairman, the association’s submission states:

“The association welcomes the fact that ESA is to be the single employing authority for all grant-aided schools. It was on this understanding that the association supported the establishment of ESA. However, the current vision of ESA is far removed from what the association originally envisaged.”

Mrs Sloan:

When we looked at the ESA when it was set up, we did not realise that all those other sectoral bodies would become major bodies in it. We knew that there would be an advisory forum and other parts of the ESA. We understood, and we hoped, that there would be local committees. That is the operational structure of the ESA.

However, at that time, we did not realise that various other sectoral interests would be represented by more concrete bodies. In many ways, the only part of the education sector that was left out initially was the controlled sector, which is why those two new bodies are to be set up.

Mrs M Bradley:

You are all welcome. My concern, which I have raised in the Committee several times, is about the situation with the boards of governors. I also believe that the loss of the education and library boards will be damaging to schools. Schools’ boards of governors were drawn mainly from the education and library boards. It worked well.

At present, I sit on one board of governors. I know that there are big concerns, and they must be given serious attention. People have been scared off; they have great concerns about legalities and about the size of the ESA. They are not well enough informed to allow them to make up their minds. I can tell you that, for some time, governors have been talking about and considering stepping down altogether from boards. A school cannot operate without a good board of governors. It is the heart of a school. Therefore, it is right that we are concerned about the matter.

Mr Poots:

I hear what has been said about training for boards of governors. I sit on three boards of governors. Usually, when training is mentioned, people roll their eyes. They are not particularly convinced about the training that is currently on offer. Therefore, if there is to be more of the same training, I would not recommend it.

What is the ethos of the schools that you represent?

Mr Haire:

That is a good question. We all have our own, individual perspectives on ethos. The association does not necessarily have a theory that it has talked through. We represent children and people in the education authority.

Mr Duffy:

I am from the Catholic sector. Therefore, I have a particular view on maintained schools. I am a trustee representative of the board and have a particular view on the ethos of Catholic schools. I cannot speak for other schools, but I know that some Protestant schools have a very definite ethos. I taught for seven years in a controlled school. That was many years ago, but I am sure that it has not changed. That school had a definite ethos, and I had absolute respect for it. Every school has its ethos, perhaps some more than others, but ethos is very important for a school. It is the underlying thread that holds the whole school together.

Mr Poots:

Therein lies the Committee’s problem, and perhaps even the Minister’s problem. Within the CCMS and the Catholic sector in general, there is a very clear ethos. I am a Protestant. I come from the Reformed faith, and I would like the ethos in the schools to which I send my children to be equally strong, but it is not. You boast of your diversity. Where I come from, that is not what we want. We do not want that degree of diversity to the point where everything is watered down. We want to be included and to bring in others, but there are many in the Protestant community who look enviously upon the Catholic sector because it has that strong ethos. When Catholics send their children to a Catholic school, they know the ethos is strong there. However, that strong ethos does not exist in the Protestant sector. That is something that will have to be dealt with, and I note what you say about the transferor representatives, and so on.

There has been a major change in the Protestant churches over the past 30 or 40 years. You speak of three main Protestant churches; however, the Baptist Church is probably equal in size to the Methodist Church, for example, and that is not taken into account in any of this. We cannot continue to look at this matter in the way that we do now and expect to find a ready solution to what the public want.

The Acting Chairperson:

That issue is one of the most difficult in all of this. It is simple to deconstruct what is there, but when we start to deconstruct all the issues that have been buried for years suddenly come out into the open. It will take time for those to be resolved. There is a strong view from many members that we must consider equality across the sectors. In my view, there was some institutionalised inequality in the past.

Mr Lunn:

With respect to the recruitment of governors, Roy said that, anecdotally, there were only about 200 applications. However, am I right in saying that that process has only just begun? Have not invitations just been issued, or are they not about to be issued? It may be early days yet.

Mr Beggs Snr:

The invitations have been issued and it is expected that the process will be completed by June. You are right: it is early days. However, my experience of speaking with governors in the schools in which I serve is that there is some apprehension about signing up again.

Mr Lunn:

I am not surprised, and I share their apprehension. Fear of the unknown is a big factor, especially when the job is supposed to be voluntary. I have some sympathy with the view that there should be some remuneration.

In your paper, you discuss the make-up of the ESA and the proposal to have between seven and 11 members. Chris Stewart is laughing behind you. It is stipulated that a majority of those members must be local councillors. I think that 11 is nowhere near enough members, but without going into the question of the optimum number, do you consider it desirable that local councillors should dominate the body?

Mr Beggs Snr:

As a local councillor with 25 years’ teaching experience and considerable experience as a board member, I think that councillors who are selected to serve should have considerable educational experience.

Mr Lunn:

That is not what I am asking.

Mr Duffy:

Experience has shown that councillors find it hard to make up their minds on difficult questions. When it comes to closing a school or passing a budget, councillors generally do not want to know, especially if it means making cuts. The Western Education and Library Board had that problem, as did the South Eastern Education and Library Board. How can boards make difficult decisions if councillors are the majority? For that reason, some boards restricted their councillor membership to 40%, with the remainder comprising other stakeholders. Nevertheless, councillors continue to have a big say.

When councillors take the floor, they can speak for as long as they like and get the press to cover it. There is no way that that would be encouraged at every board meeting. That said, councillors are placed in a difficult position when hard decisions have to be made; that is the nature of their profession. I am not saying that they are not important; local accountability is vital. In my submission I mentioned Fermanagh, where councillors take a keen interest. Tom Elliott has attended many meetings in Fermanagh on how schools are delivering the curriculum and on the need for proper decisions to be made. It is difficult for councillors.

Mr Lunn:

Of course it is. Conflicts of interest often arise; it is a question of preserving a council seat versus a proper decision. There is plenty of room for representation by local councillors, but not a majority. I am encouraged by what Mr Duffy said, because the chief executives of the boards were a bit more reticent when we asked them the same question.

Mr Duffy:

The vocational committees that were set up in the South of Ireland in the 1930s gave councillors the authority to make decisions, but that had to be withdrawn from them and given to the county manager or the chief executive, who could overrule the councillors in some instances, because of the nature of the difficulties in which they found themselves.

Mr Beggs Snr:

I reiterate that 11 members is totally inadequate to provide proper representation for Northern Ireland. I agree with Peter: there is a need for significant elected representative membership in order to protect the democratic process. At the same time, the widest possible decision-making capability is also required.

Mrs Sloan:

I wondered what number of councillors Mr Lunn was thinking of. Like my colleague, I think that the proposed number of members of the ESA is too small to represent the whole of Northern Ireland adequately, and I wonder how the ESA will do that. A majority of councillors may not be the best way of achieving the wide representation that the ESA board will need. On the other hand, a much larger board can have its problems as well. There is a happy medium to be struck between the proposed 11 members of the ESA and the 35 members that we may have on education and library boards now. I believe in democratic accountability, but not necessarily in having elected representatives form a majority on the proposed ESA board.

The Acting Chairperson:

I was going to observe that in some instances local elected representatives are more ready to challenge the Department; that is sometimes overlooked. However, I can see that there are two views on the matter.

Mrs Sloan:

Do you mean that elected representatives are more ready to challenge the Department than independent members might be?

The Acting Chairperson:

I think so. I am just making a personal observation.

Mrs M Bradley:

Moreover, there is no way of controlling who will be elected by the general public or of knowing whether those representatives will have any interest or background in education.

Mr Haire:

That is a key factor. A guide to good governance was introduced in the UK in 2006 and was reissued in 2008. It outlined how committee structures should be built and how they should incorporate a skills mix, which is necessary for councillors and for independent members. By using that guidance we should get the best deal.

The Acting Chairperson:

Roy Beggs made the point that the library boards would be looking for experience.

Mrs M Bradley:

That is what I said.

Mr O’Dowd:

The Department informed the Committee that councillors and other members will be appointed through a public appointments process. Therefore, they will require the skills that Roy Beggs Snr outlined.

The Acting Chairperson:

The submission highlighted that there was no mention in the Bill of local committees. Would the library boards be happier if local committees’ roles, representations and any appointments process adopted were made explicit?

Mr Haire:

The association has considered that and believes that it would probably be better if it was in the legislation, as it would provide greater clarity for those in the system. From a statutory point of view, we would be able to judge whether we were measuring up to the outcomes expected from each board.

The Acting Chairperson:

Has the association any views on the strength of the ESA’s role, remit and representation?

Mr Haire:

The association has not yet considered that; however, our members may have personal views that will be taken on board.

Mrs Sloan:

Of course, we have not seen the second education Bill.

The Acting Chairperson:

That is why the Committee is inviting comment.

Mr Elliott:

That would really confuse matters.

The Acting Chairperson:

Apparently, at present, that will not even be in the second Bill. Perhaps there is a third one that we do not know about coming down the road.

Mr Haire:

That is part of the difficulty of looking at the first Education Bill in isolation; we do not know what the second one will hold. To some extent we, like the Committee, are feeling our way.

The Acting Chairperson:

I thank the witnesses for their helpful and informative presentation; they are welcome to remain while the departmental representative is questioned. If, after that, the association has any comments, the Committee will be happy to receive them.

I thank Mr Chris Stewart for attending. Having heard and read the submissions, may the Committee have the Department’s comments?

Mr Chris Stewart (Department of Education):

Thank you, Mr Chairman, and good afternoon members. After the AQE presentation, I wonder whether my nameplate this afternoon should read “El Greco” or “Lenin”. However, I am happy to go under my usual nom de plume.

I am conscious that the Committee has had a long meeting and still has a busy agenda. As ever, I will attempt to be brief and to leave time for members’ questions. I will begin by picking up on the major points raised by the AQE and then move on to the points raised by the boards.

The Department welcomes the AQE’s support for the overall reform of education administration, although, of course, we note and take very seriously its many concerns about specific proposals. Today, and on previous occasions, members have heard concerns that the ESA will be an overly centralised body. I assure you that that is not the case. It will be a single organisation, but with a strong and significant local presence. Back-office functions will be centralised in the interests of efficiency and effectiveness. However, the main role of the ESA is not back-office functions; it is to provide front-line support services to schools and other education providers. Those services will continue to be provided locally, and that will be the major factor in determining the structure of the organisation.

The initial local footprint of the ESA is unlikely to differ significantly from that of the current organisations. In the time available to us between now and 2010, it would not be practical for it to be otherwise.

The AQE has significant concerns about whether the employment arrangements would provide a proper autonomous decision-making role for boards of governors. However, we note that even if we satisfied that concern, the AQE objects to the arrangements on principle, and we understand that.

We have covered the issue extensively in evidence to the Committee, but it is worth re-emphasising some key points. The Education Bill makes it clear that boards of governors will make decisions, and the effect of the relevant clauses is that the ESA may not lawfully refuse to put into effect any proper decision of a board of governors on employment matters. As was mentioned earlier, the ESA can ask a board of governors to reconsider a matter if — and only if — a board of governors has not followed its own procedures. The idea that the ESA will somehow have a charter or licence to interfere gratuitously in the day-to-day business of a board of governors is simply not borne out by scrutiny of the Bill.

We have also said before that the review of public administration employment arrangements closely resemble those that apply in Catholic maintained schools. I agree with Sir Kenneth that it is important to look at what the legislation says. It is worth looking at what the current legislation says about those arrangements, which we propose to apply to all schools. The legislation says that the determination of staff complement is a matter solely for boards of governors and that the employer does not have a role. The legislation also states that it is the boards of governors who draw up and implement the disciplinary rules and procedures and that the role of employer is limited to that of consultee.

Suspension is a matter for boards of governors and principals — not the employer. Most crucially of all, dismissal is a matter for boards of governors only.

Those are not aspirations; they are concrete features of the current legislation and of the arrangements that we propose to apply. They demonstrate clearly that boards of governors can, and do, have an autonomous decision-making role under such arrangements.

The Department notes the concerns that were raised about the requirement for all grant-aided schools to draw up schemes of management. We emphasise that grant-aided schools are publicly funded institutions that provide a public service, as was acknowledged by AQE. The boards of governors of grant-aided schools manage those organisations, which educate some 400,000 of our children and spend almost one quarter of the Northern Ireland public expenditure block. We do not think it unreasonable to ask organisations that have such significant responsibilities to have effective governance arrangements in place and to stick to them. That is the effect of the provisions of the Bill.

Those are not new requirements. Similar provisions have been in statute since 1989, and the only significant change proposed now is that the schemes of management will be approved by the ESA rather than by the Department.

Many of the concerns that were expressed about the appointment of governors might be resolved by a fuller explanation of the relevant provisions of the Bill, which, like many provisions, need to be read in conjunction with existing legislation. As I said before, there is a great deal of existing legislation.

It is important to emphasise that there are no powers in the Education Bill for the ESA to remove or restrain a board of governors; the power to remove governors is already in legislation. Only the Department can remove an entire board of governors. The ESA, like education and library boards at present, could be given the power to remove some governors but only those whom it appoints. That does not include the principal, staff governors, parent governors or foundation governors who are appointed by the school itself.

Another concern was that community governors might outvote foundation governors, thereby significantly changing the character or ethos of a school. That concern, I have to say, is unfounded and perhaps reflects a misunderstanding of the detailed effect of the provisions. The Education Bill makes relatively minor changes to the governance of schools. The key change is that appointments currently made by education and library boards or by the Department will in future be made by the ESA.

The composition of boards of governors will not change, and the proportion of appointments made by the ESA will be the same as that currently made by the Department and by education and library boards. That means that, with the exception of controlled grammar schools, the ESA-appointed, or community, governors will be in a minority. There is, therefore, little prospect of foundation governors being outvoted by community governors, as is the case at present.

The Department heard significant concerns about the definition of community governor as someone “living or working in the local community”. The association felt that that definition may be overly restrictive, and we take that concern seriously. We regard a reasonable definition of the local community as being the community served, or potentially served, by a school. Given the broad catchment areas served by post-primary schools, and we heard evidence of that today, the Department does not regard that definition as overly restrictive.

I emphasise that the Department’s view is that having a minority proportion of governors drawn from the community served by a school could only strengthen the links between a school and that community. Such strong links are often the hallmark of a successful school, and we regard that as entirely consistent with the voluntary principle.

If members wish, I can pause or move on to the points raised by colleagues from the education and library boards.

The Acting Chairperson:

Do members have any questions on the issues that Chris raised? I have a question about local committees, but I will leave it for now.

Mr Stewart:

You are anticipating my response to a question that you have not yet asked.

The Acting Chairperson:

You are a prophet. Let us move on.

Mr Elliott:

I have a question. Chris, are you saying that if a school in Belfast accepted pupils from Bangor and Donaghadee that that catchment area could also apply to governors?

Mr Stewart:

I consider that entirely reasonable. The intention of the provision was never to restrict the potential pool of governors, as that would be unwise; its intention is to strengthen the links between schools and the communities that they serve. We must recognise that the community served by schools does not stop at the end of a street or the boundary of a town. As successful schools have broad catchment areas, it is logical for the composition of their boards of governors to reflect that. If it is felt that the clause does not support that definition or that it is unduly restrictive, the Minister will want to consider the Committee’s view on whether an amendment is required.

Mr Lunn:

On the question of employment, have you any sympathy with the Association for Quality Education’s interpretation of the Queen’s English? As you say, the definition seems straightforward, yet the AQE managed to interpret it as having a darker intent.

Mr Stewart:

I am struggling with the notion of a civil servant having sympathy with anyone about anything; I am not sure that we are allowed to be sympathetic.

We understand the concerns of the AQE and of other stakeholders. We understand the fundamental nature of their objections to the proposals in principle because they argued cogently and with great sincerity. Nevertheless, the Department must operate within the confines of the policy set by the Minister. Therefore, we recognise the concerns but consider that they are outweighed by the benefits that will be provided by the arrangements proposed in the Bill.

Mr Lunn:

I do not understand when you say that you understand. They offer a different legal interpretation of what appears to be — although a Bill is never simple — fairly guidelines, rules, and legalities. Their view continues to differ from that of the Department. Is the Department re-scrutinising the wording of the Bill to consider whether the other interpretation has merit? By that I mean legal interpretation rather than their opposition to change.

Mr Stewart:

We have not reconsidered the Bill on that basis. You are right; many legal minds have considered the matter — and I will utter my usual caveat that I am not one of them — and although I am not privy to the legal advice that the Committee has received, I have seen the GBA’s legal advice and that of others who have given evidence to the Committee. To date, no lawyer has been able to disagree with the statement that the ESA cannot lawfully refuse to put into effect any proper decision that is taken by a board of governors.

Mr Lunn:

That is the key sentence.

The Acting Chairperson:

Is it solely in the ESA’s power to decide whether a board of governors has followed its own procedures or employment scheme? How is a dispute between the ESA and a board of governors resolved?

Mr Stewart:

The short answer to your first question is yes. However, the burden of proof — which is, perhaps, an unwise phrase to use — would be on the ESA. Unless there is good reason to doubt that a board has followed its own procedures, the ESA ought not to interfere. The ESA should not second-guess every action of a board of governors. That is not the intention of the provisions, and even if the ESA sought to do so, it would not be a practicable proposition. The ESA will not have the resources to crawl over every administrative action of a board of governors, and there is no need for it to do so.

Mr O’Dowd:

At the extreme of an argument over a fine point of law, I assume that a board of governors has the right to a judicial review of the ESA.

Mr Stewart:

Yes.

Mr O’Dowd:

Therefore, the ESA is not a legal entity that nobody can touch.

Mr Stewart:

That is correct. The recourse to judicial review is available. However, who pays the cost of such legal action might be an interesting question, and whether it is desirable for one part of the education system to take legal action against another is another question. However, the Education Bill does not seek to restrict any party’s recourse to law.

The Acting Chairperson:

We should, perhaps, move to the second part of the session.

Mr Stewart:

I will address several points that were made this morning. We welcome ANIELB’s support for the RPA’s general principles and direction. We note and take seriously its significant concerns, including its support for a single inclusive authority. However, the representatives suggested that, since the original proposals, we had somehow departed from that principle because some bodies would continue to exist or be brought into existence. The point is well made and understandable in relation to the ownership body for controlled schools, which did not feature in the original RPA proposals. Members are aware of the thinking behind and the reasons for that proposal.

It is worth clarifying the position of several other bodies, particularly some sectoral bodies such as the Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education and Comhairle na Gaelscolaíochata. Under the current or previous administration, it was never proposed to dissolve either of those bodies. Indeed, the original RPA proposals did not include a decision to dissolve CCMS; that was added later by the current Minister. A recognition of the need for sectoral bodies has been a feature of the RPA from the outset and was underlined in the Bain Report, which emphasised the need for sectors to have the capacity to represent their needs.

The association correctly pointed out that the Department’s earlier thinking had not given enough consideration or placed enough emphasis on the needs of the controlled sector in that environment. The Committee knows that we are working on proposals to catch up on that issue. However, we recognise that deficit, and we need to work hard to ensure that the controlled sector is in an equal position. I must emphasise that it was never proposed, at any stage in the RPA, to dissolve sectoral bodies.

Mr Beggs correctly drew attention to the weaknesses of some boards of governors and expressed concern about the need to ensure that boards of governors are adequately prepared, trained and supported to do a difficult and challenging job that we ask people to undertake in a voluntary capacity. We take training and support for boards of governors very seriously, which is why we proposed in the legislation to make it a statutory duty of the ESA to provide such training and support. Of course, putting something in legislation and making it happen are two different things, and we recognise that the Committee and other interested parties will be looking for clear evidence that the ESA is addressing the issue. With regard to the legislation, the Department feels that it has gone as far as it can in placing a statutory duty on the ESA to provide such advice, training and support.

Mr Beggs asked whether model schemes of management would be available for January 2010; they will. He also suggested that we might need to consider the remuneration of school governors, and I understand the arguments behind that. However, that is not a realistic prospect in the current financial climate, and we must continue to ask boards of governors to discharge their responsibilities in a voluntary capacity.

Reference was also made to the need for efficiency savings, and Committee members do not need me to tell them the difficulty of the financial climate in which we are operating. The Department and the ESA, like any other Department or public organisation, must respond to the requirements that the Budget places on us. The issue is whether we can find the necessary efficiency savings more easily under the new arrangements. It is essential that we move to the new structures as quickly as possible to give ourselves the scope to make our education system as effective and efficient as possible.

Much concern was expressed about the size of the ESA, but there are examples to demonstrate that it is possible to have effective regional organisations that deliver local services. For example, the Housing Executive, to which Sir Kenneth referred, the CCMS in the education sector, and the Police Service are all regional organisations that deliver local services.

It was asked where local offices will be located. It will not surprise members that initially they will be in Belfast, Omagh, Dundonald, Armagh and Ballymena, because, as I said, the initial footprint of the ESA will reflect that of the existing organisations. We were asked what will be in those offices, and the answer is: what is in them at present. There is no intention to centralise front-line support to schools; it would make no sense to centralise youth-service provision or the provision of educational psychology. If anything, we need to look for scope to move those services closer to schools and to other education providers.

Size is not, and never has been, a key criterion or reason for establishing the ESA. We are not taking this direction because we think that there is some critical mass that is necessary for us to achieve; it is not the size of the organisation that is the driver, but the number of organisations. We have separate, autonomous organisations that pursue their own policies and practice, and that has led to different outcomes and to inequality. That is the reason for having a single education and skills authority.

I smiled earlier because I was worried that the Acting Chairman might not ask the question that he has asked every week until now about the number of members on the ESA. I was relieved that he did ask it. Committee members are familiar with the Department’s position on that, and I will not go over the same ground again today.

The response to the question from my colleagues from the Association of Northern Ireland Education and Library Boards about where committees would feature in the Bill is schedule 1(7) and 1(8).

Finally, I will address the issues of the employing authority and the respective roles of the ESA and boards of governors. We accept entirely the point made by stakeholders today, and by Committee members on other occasions, that there is a need for greater clarity: people need to see the detail of their respective roles in black and white. We recognise that the Department has a job to do on that issue, which we will address as quickly as possible.

Comments were made on paper 20 and on the ownership and representation of controlled schools. My colleagues from the association outlined what they saw as four key features of the controlled sector: its community focus, its inclusivity, its egalitarianism and its liberalism. Those strike me as necessary components of the ethos of the controlled sector, and we feel that they should be reflected even more explicitly in that ethos.

We understand the association’s concern about the proliferation of bodies. However, members are aware of the reasons for the proposal from the controlled schools’ ownership body. Indeed, it is something that members encouraged us to do and argued was necessary because of the concerns that members expressed about the potential conflict of interest of the ESA, were it to own controlled schools. We welcome the support of association colleagues for a representative body for the controlled sector.

The Acting Chairperson:

The ESA will have responsibility for setting and improving standards; however, it will also set the examinations that assess those standards. How do you address that conflict of interest?

Mr Stewart:

That potential conflict of interest is addressed by the fact that the role of accrediting qualifications rests with the Department, not with the ESA; the Department decides whether a qualification meets the required standards.

The Acting Chairperson:

Who will prepare the examination?

Mr Stewart:

The ESA, but it is for the Department to decide, for example, whether the ESA’s GCSEs or A levels are of the required standard. The Department will formally accredit the qualifications that are offered by the ESA.

The Acting Chairperson:

There is a great deal of dispute about examinations, and even universities have expressed a lack of confidence in some of them; people want more rigour. Is confidence not undermined by the same organisation both setting and marking examinations? That may be a question of perceptions or confidence rather than anything else, but is that not a potential issue?

Mr Stewart:

With respect, those are two separate issues. From time to time, higher-education establishments and employers express concern about the standard of qualifications that are provided by authorities here and in other jurisdictions. There are two safeguards, one of which is the fact that the Department has the formal accreditation role, and it will be very sensitive to any concerns that universities or employers may raise with us.

There are also liaison arrangements in place among all the examinations authorities and bodies in all the jurisdictions to ensure that there is consistency of standard among them and to ensure that there is portability of qualifications for our students and young people. If there is a concern being expressed by universities, it is not a particular concern about Northern Ireland qualifications; it is a concern about qualifications in general, which is a different issue.

The Acting Chairperson:

What would be the downside to separating the examinations body and the ESA? Is there not a possibility of having two separate entities that share some background resources and so save money?

Mr Stewart:

In fact, the proposal in the original RPA consultation document was that there would be two bodies: one would be responsible for curriculum and examination matters and the other for the remainder of the functions. The view that the Minister of the day took, and which the current Minister shares, is that there would be no real benefit in such an arrangement and some additional cost, stemming from the fact that yet another public-sector body would be in existence.

The Acting Chairperson:

I am sure that we will come back to that issue. Schedule 1(7)(1) states that the “ESA may establish committees.” We have talked about local committees, but when will there be more substance to that?

Mr Stewart:

I have emphasised to colleagues in the Department and ESAIT, who are working on the matter, that it is the Committee’s desire to see some detail on local committees as quickly as possible. I cannot remember the timescale that I gave in last week’s letter. We certainly need to bring something to the Committee within the next two or three weeks.

Mrs M Bradley:

Did you say that there would be four support offices?

Mr Stewart:

No formal decision has yet been taken on the number of local offices that will eventually be in place.

In the material that the Committee has seen previously, the Department had suggested that our initial thinking is perhaps six local offices in order to be as coterminous with local councils as possible. The local offices that exist on 1 January 2010 will be those that exist today. Even if we wished to do so, there is simply not the prospect of making wholesale change to the organisation of front-line services in the few months that are available to us.

Mrs M Bradley:

Who will take the final decision on the number of local offices, Chris?

Mr Stewart:

As the ESA reconfigures and transforms its services, we expect it to bring forward proposals. However, it would be the Department — taking account of the views expressed by the Committee, of course — and the Minister who would make the decision.

The Acting Chairperson:

I see that there are no further questions. You got off lightly today.

Mr Stewart:

Extremely lightly, Chairman, and I am very grateful for that.

The Acting Chairperson:

You have three or four weeks, apparently, to prepare the response to the question that we asked.

Mr Stewart:

We will try to do better than that, Chairman.