Session 2009/2010

First Report

Committee for Education

Report on the Education Bill
(NIA 3/08)
Volume 2

TOGETHER WITH MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS, MINUTES OF EVIDENCE AND
WRITTEN SUBMISSIONS RELATING TO THE REPORT

Ordered by The Committee for Education to be printed 30 September 2009
Report: NIA 4/09/10R (Committee for Education)

This document is available in a range of alternative formats.
For more information please contact the
Northern Ireland Assembly, Printed Paper Office,
Parliament Buildings, Stormont, Belfast, BT4 3XX
Tel: 028 9052 1078

Membership and Powers

The Committee for Education is a Statutory Departmental Committee established in accordance with paragraphs 8 and 9 of the Belfast Agreement, section 29 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 and under Standing Order 46.

The Committee has power to:

Consider and advise on Departmental budgets and annual plans in the context of the overall budget allocation;
Consider relevant secondary legislation and take the Committee stage of primary legislation
Call for persons and papers;
Initiate inquiries and make reports; and
Consider and advise on any matters brought to the Committee by the Minister for Education.

The Committee has 11 members including a Chairperson and Deputy Chairperson and a quorum of 5.

The membership of the Committee is as follows:

Mr Mervyn Storey (Chairperson)[1]
Mr Dominic Bradley (Deputy Chairperson)
Mrs Mary Bradley
Mr Jonathan Craig[2] [3]
Mr Trevor Lunn
Mr John McCallister[4]
Mr Basil McCrea
Miss Michelle McIlveen
Mr John O’Dowd[5]
Ms Michelle O’Neill
Mr Alastair Ross[6] [7]

[1] With effect from 10 June 2008 Mr Mervyn Storey replaced Mr Sammy Wilson as Chairperson of the Committee for Education

[2] With effect from 14 September 2009 Mr Jonathan Craig replaced Mr Edwin Poots as a member of the Committee for Education

[3] With effect from 17 June 2008 Mr Edwin Poots replaced Mr Sammy Wilson as a member of the Committee for Education

[4] With effect from 22 June 2009 Mr John McCallister replaced Mr Tom Elliot as a member of the Committee for Education

[5] With effect from 20 May 2008 Mr John O’Dowd replaced Mr Paul Butler as a member of the Committee for Education

[6] With effect from 14 September 2009 Mr Alastair Ross replaces Mr Nelson McCausland as a member of the Committee for Education

[7] With effect from 31 March 2008 Mr Nelson McCausland replaced Mr Jeffery Donaldson as a member of the Committee for Education

Volume 1

Executive Summary 1

Section 1 - Introduction 5

Section 2 - Consideration of the Bill 11

Section 3 – Final Decisions on Clause by Clause Scrutiny of the Bill 75

Appendix 1

Minutes of Proceedings 87

Volume 2

Appendix 2

Minutes of Evidence 179

Volume 3

Appendix 3

Written Submissions 759

Appendix 4

Other Correspondence and Written Evidence considered by the Committee 1019

Appendix 5

List of Witnesses 1361

Appendix 2

Minutes of Evidence

Departmental Briefing on the Education Bill	10 December 2008
Departmental Briefing on the Structure of the Education and Skills Authority (ESA)	14 January 2009
Departmental Briefing on Sectoral Organisations; ESA as the Single Employing Authority and Review of Employment Opportunities for Teaching Staff	21 January 2009
Departmental Briefing on Designing Modern Education Services; and ESA Outline Business Case	28 January 2009
Departmental Briefing on Ownership of Controlled Schools’ Estate	4 February 2009
Departmental Briefing on Area Based Planning	11 February 2009
Departmental Briefing on legislation, secondary legislation powers and commencement provisions	18 February 2009
Departmental Briefing on provisions on Employment Schemes, Schemes of Management and Boards of Governors	25 February 2009
Departmental Briefing on Schedules and related Clauses	4 March 2009
Governing Bodies Association (GBA)	11 March 2009
Northern Ireland Voluntary Grammar Schools’ Bursars Association (NIVGSBA)	11 March 2009
Department of Education response to evidence from GBA and NIVGSBA	11 March 2009
Northern Ireland Commission for Catholic Education (NICCE)	18 March 2009
Council for Catholic Maintained Schools (CCMS)	18 March 2009
Ulster Teachers’ Union (UTU), Irish National Teachers Organisation (INTO), National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT)	25 March 2009
Department of Education response to evidence from UTU, INTO and NASUWT	25 March 2009
Department of Education response to evidence from NICCE and CCMS	25 March 2009
North Eastern Education and Library Board (NEELB), South Eastern Education and Library Board (SEELB), Western Education and Library Board (WELB), Southern Education and Library Board (SELB)	1 April 2009
Department of Education response to evidence from the Education and Library Boards	1 April 2009
Transferor Representatives’ Council (TRC)	22 April 2009
Department of Education response to evidence from TRC	22 April 2009
General Teaching Council for Northern Ireland (GTCNI)	29 April 2009
Northern Ireland Public Service Alliance (NIPSA)	29 April 2009
Department of Education response to evidence from GTCNI and NIPSA	29 April 2009
Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education (NICIE)	6 May 2009
Comhairle na Gaelscolaíochta (CnaG)	6 May 2009
Department of Education response to evidence from NICIE and CnaG	6 May 2009
Association for Quality Education (AQE)	13 May 2009
Association of Northern Ireland Education and Library Boards (ANIELB)	13 May 2009
Department of Education response to evidence from AQE and ANIELB	13 May 2009
Committee Stocktake on Education Bill	20 May 2009
Departmental briefing on Education Advisory Forum	20 May 2009
Clause by clause consideration of the Education Bill	27 May 2009
Departmental briefing on Area Based Planning Policy	3 June 2009
Clause by clause consideration of the Education Bill	10 June 2009
Clause by clause consideration of the Education Bill	17 June 2009
Clause by clause consideration of the Education Bill	26 June 2009
Clause by clause consideration of the Education Bill	1 July 2009
Clause by clause consideration of the Education Bill and draft Committee Report	9 September 2009
Clause by clause consideration of the Education Bill and draft Committee Report	10 September 2009
Clause by clause consideration of the Education Bill and draft Committee Report	16 September 2009
Clause by clause consideration of the Education Bill and draft Committee Report	23 September 2009
Consideration of the Education Bill and final draft Committee Report	30 September 2009

10 December 2008

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

Witnesses:

Mr Jeff Brown
Mr John McGrath
Mr Chris Stewart

Department of Education

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

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

3. The Chairperson: Yes; we value your company.

4. Mr McGrath: We are heartened to hear it.

5. The Chairperson: I am sure that you are.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

33. Mr B McCrea: You should listen and learn.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

46. Mr McGrath: Political uncertainty.

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

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

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

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

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

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

53. Mr K Robinson: Will it be more efficient?

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

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

56. Mr K Robinson: Whose fault is this?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

64. The Minister has made it clear to John and me that she expects us to work closely with the Committee in addressing its concerns; there will be no attempt at steamrolling or at paying lip-service to the Committee.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

72. Point 4 of your briefing paper states that:

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

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

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

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

76. The Chairperson: Thank you.

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

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

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

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

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

14 January 2009

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

Witnesses:

Mr John McGrath
Mr Chris Stewart
Mr Joe Reynolds

Department of Education

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

94. Are those posts equivalent to current Senior Civil Service posts in the Department of Education, or is that a generic term?

95. Mr McGrath: Those posts are benchmarked against the salary level at which the Senior Civil Service starts.

96. The Chairperson: Therefore, the number of posts will be reduced from 80 under the current arrangements to fewer than 50. I am not being a cynic, nor, in any way, suggesting that that will never happen. However, if the threshold is under 50, do we run the risk that, over a period of time, we end up in a situation in which there will be requests for more staff and resources? Five years after ESA has been established, more people will be employed than there are at present in the five education and library boards. People will ask what all that was about: you went through all of that only to have more senior-level staff and the savings that were envisaged were not realised.

97. Mr McGrath: I will deal with those questions in reverse order. A solid piece of work in the outline business case demonstrates that about 460 posts can be removed while still delivering the same functions by rationalising and centralising them.

98. The Chairperson: Are those 460 posts separate from the 80 senior posts?

99. Mr McGrath: Those 80 posts are a subset of that. You could remove 460-odd posts and deliver the same functions with that reduced number of posts. When that is fully implemented, £20 million per annum could be saved. At the senior-management core, 80-odd posts will be reduced to fewer than 50.

100. As I mentioned, the Department is considering the parameters that it will set for ESA’s senior-management costs. We must get that right at the outset so that ESA can do its job. We recognise that the public-expenditure structure and future budgets are almost certain to bring about continued expectations for efficiency savings from public bodies. Education will not be immune from that, although whether we believe that that is a good idea is a different matter. As the second biggest chunk of the block, it would have to be a contributor, and whether generating 3% or 3·5% per annum in the future one would expect to bear down on management costs. Therefore, we expect the drift to tighten up over time as ESA beds down more efficiently, not to increase.

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

102. Therefore, the driver will be intended to push down costs, and that is quite appropriate because the public will expect that, as much as possible, management costs should be what is needed but no more than that, with the maximum amount of resource going to the front line. If that answer is satisfactory, I will let Chris deal with the specific provisions in the Bill.

103. Mr Chris Stewart (Department of Education): Chairperson, you asked about how the legislation deals with the sub-regional structure of ESA as described by John McGrath. The legislation does not specify the model that John outlined but it allows for that model, or a variation of it, to be introduced if that is what is ultimately decided. The relevant provisions are in paragraphs 7 and 8 of schedule 1 to the Bill, which allow for the establishment of committees of the ESA and for any statutory function of the ESA to be delegated to those committees or to ESA employees.

104. That means that if the sort of model that John outlined is signed-off and decided as the right way forward, the legislation allows for that to be implemented from the outset. The flexibility of the approach in the legislation is also an advantage. If that model needs to evolve if we do not get it right first time, the legislation is sufficiently flexible to allow the changes to be made quickly, whereas, under the current arrangements, structures are prescribed in primary legislation and the only way to make a change is through more primary legislation.

105. Therefore, the Department feels that the approach in the legislation will allow for the introduction of a model that meets all the principles and parameters that John outlined, or a variation on that, and for that model to evolve if necessary.

106. The Chairperson: The problem is that we could end up in the same situation as with pupil profiling — that is a different issue, but the same principles apply. In that instance, the issue was debated and, months ago, organisations went to CCEA and said that it was not working but the pilot was continued. Then, in September, the Department of Education issued the revised curriculum to all schools and although pupil profiling was mentioned in that, a number of weeks later an announcement was made stating that that was a bad idea and will be scrapped. Are you going to let the matter run, talking about it until March and then with reports having to be done by June? It is a mess. My concern is that, by having a provision whereby the model can be changed, we may allow a similar situation to develop. Is that really the best way to present policy?

107. Mr McGrath: A lot of work is going into getting ESA structures right, getting the key balance between local sensitivity and support, and centralising those functions that can be centralised and making them sweat to get savings out of them. My own view is that there are no magic answer regarding perfect structure for any organisation, and circumstances will change. I would like to think, therefore, that the issue is not about getting the model wrong. It is more the case that if, over time, there are changes with regard to strategic priorities, or if, for example, there are serious issues about public expenditure and the Department and the Minister are required to take out significant efficiency savings and one way to do that is to tighten up the management structure, the approach that the Department is adopting provides the flexibility to do that.

108. Almost certainly, once ESA beds down over three or four years, and moves from having been the amalgam from day one, particularly of the five education boards and the smaller organisations, and develops its own culture, any organisation will say that, once it gets over that initial stage and gains a degree of maturity, it may well want to consider and establish whether it has the correct balance that is appropriate for it to move ahead.

109. The issue is not about getting things wrong; it is about having the scope to fine tune and refine the job that has to be done and the wider policy planning and public expenditure constraints. Therefore, it is not setting in concrete something that could be unpicked only by introducing primary legislation. I believe that that is consistent with the approach that is taken by organisations such as the Housing Executive and, perhaps, Invest NI, which are not subject in primary legislation to any degree of specificity about their detailed organisational structure.

110. The Chairperson: Following on from that, the Bill says that the substructure could include committees. A decision could be made not to have any subcommittees, because the Bill says only that “ESA may establish committees". It may not agree to establish committees.

111. Mr Stewart: The Department will not give ESA that freedom. The Minister made it clear in the policy memorandum, which was agreed by the Executive, that committees will be established. The Department has, therefore, made a decision that there will be committees, and ESA will not be given that freedom.

112. The Chairperson: If that is the case, why is that not reflected in the Bill? Why does schedule 7 to the Bill use the word “may" when you say that the Minister has made a policy direction, and the policy memorandum uses the word “shall"?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

119. With regard to the Minister, the letter continues:

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

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

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

122. Mr D Bradley: Everyone knows that.

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

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

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

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

127. The issue is about not only organisational change, it is about the empowerment of schools. In parallel with that, however, it is finding a more rigorous system of monitoring and performance management, which is articulated through ‘Every school a good school: a strategy for raising achievement in literacy and numeracy’, which is moving to final fruition, and the school improvement policy. It is that entire package. The organisation — and that policy direction and the focus on putting pupils first and schools next — is the package which, we believe, will do far more to improve standards than anything than has happened to date.

128. There is no automatic empirical evidence that one single organisation will bring about improvements; that is not the issue. The issue is that the current system is, arguably, not serving children well. There has been disparity and an unsustainable patchwork of approaches, and they have not served children well. Surely, we need to do better by establishing a single, but decentralised, organisation. We have the opportunity to sweat out the amount of savings, which the outline business case demonstrates, without reducing service. A saving of £20 million, without reducing services, is a good start: it is not the end, it is the start. Against that context, the propagated model deserves the opportunity to demonstrate that it can improve on the past.

129. Chris may wish to say something about the specific correspondence from which Dominic Bradley quoted.

130. Mr Stewart: I am sure that you are familiar with that correspondence, we are —

131. Mr K Robinson: I apologise for interrupting, Chris, but my comment may actually tie in with what he is going to say. What reward is there for schools that improve their attainment?

132. The Chairperson: Currently?

133. Mr K Robinson: No, built into this process. If this process is going to raise standards, and the whole focus has moved to money, what reward is there for a school or schools to do that?

134. Mr McGrath: I may be naïve, but I would have thought that any school would want to raise and maximise the standards of outcomes of the pupils in its charge.

135. Mr K Robinson: Yes, but they would want recognition for doing so. How will the Department do that?

136. Mr McGrath: How are we going to recognise that?

137. Mr K Robinson: How is the Department going to recognise a school which really sweats itself out, to use your term, and raises standards? We are all in this game to raise standards. If a school really puts itself through a hoop, and the teachers, the principal, the governors, everyone pulls together and the school is assessed as having raised their standards, what reward is in it for them? What carrot? There are lots of sticks, but no carrots.

138. Mr McGrath: I think that there needs to be a balance. I would expect any organisation to take pride in the fact that it is doing a good job —

139. Mr K Robinson: We do take pride —

140. Mr McGrath: In general, I do not mean a school, I mean anyone —

141. Mr K Robinson: We take pride and there’s a satisfaction. However, if we are now moving to this super-duper authority, what recognition is going to be built in to make tangible rewards to schools? Will there be extra staffing or some sort of emoluments that can make people strive to improve?

142. Mr McGrath: First of all, the enrolments of a well-performing schools are likely to increase. On the other hand, if there are schools that are performing poorly, and the Department deals with the school improvement agenda —

143. Mr K Robinson: That is the stick. What is the carrot?

144. Mr McGrath: It is both. Parents and pupils will, increasingly, go to the schools that are deemed to be performing and performing well. If there is a more rigorous approach taken with underperforming schools than there has been in the past, there will be a further issue of capacity. First of all, there is the capacity of high performing schools to grow —

145. Mr K Robinson: John, we are moving to a business model here, and in business those executives who perform well, unfortunately, receive very large salary increases in addition and all sorts of bonuses. Therefore, what is in it for the school? I do not mean the individuals in a school, but the school as a corporate body. What is in it for the school if it improves its standards?

146. Mr O’Dowd: The improved life of its pupils.

147. Mr K Robinson: That is taken as a given, and that comment is a wee bit glib, actually.

148. Mr McGrath: This is speculation, but if we are in the territory of asking whether there are ways in which there can be financial incentives for the school, as an institution, to enable it to reinvest in equipment or employ more teachers, then that may well be something that the Department needs to examine. However, I would hesitate in doing so, and I am sure that Mr Robinson is not suggesting some type of bonus system for schools where money goes —

149. Mr K Robinson: I am sure that the unions would jump on that if I were to suggest it. I am not suggesting that.

150. Mr McGrath: One of the issues that the Department has at present is that it has given more money to poorly performing schools, which had no eventual outcome, because we did not link it —

151. Mr K Robinson: The Department did not reward the successful schools. Here is an opportunity to do that.

152. Mr McGrath: No, the Department actually rewarded underperforming schools.

153. Mr K Robinson: The Department rewarded failure.

154. Mr McGrath: We need to find a way, and I agree —

155. Mr K Robinson: Schools that were successful had their added bonuses taken away for raising school standards.

156. Mr McGrath: I do not have any difficulty with encouraging and incentivising the institution to do well, but in any discussion we have with school principals they say that they want to do their best. In many cases, those principals feel — and I am sure that the Committee hear this — that they are prevented from doing so and are disempowered. In matters of professional development, they are told what they can get rather than given the scope to say what they would like. Empowerment will be a feature of the future, and principals will be able to commission what they want, and will have far more freedom with regard to professional support. There will also be accountability.

157. I agree that schools that perform well should be recognised in the broadest sense of the word, and should be celebrated. Let us face it: well-performing schools — that is, well with regard to the circumstances with which they deal, and not just the pure academic achievement — already take great pride in doing well. The Department, and, I am sure, the Minister, would want to find ways to incentivise, as you put it, in such a way that it enables the school to progress and to do better.

158. Critically, if we are going to improve standards, we must improve teaching. That is the core of it. There are issues around incentivising and creating a better approach to the workforce, including morale and absenteeism, as opposed to investing a lot. As Mr Robinson put it bluntly, there will need to be carrots and sticks. It is not linked to just ESA: if we were not changing the organisational structure, we would still need to do something about standards. ESA’s importance is not seen in just organisational structure.

159. Mr D Bradley: I will go back to my question, which I am asking on behalf of that group of teachers which wrote to the Committee and to the Department. You outlined the difficulty with standards and the long tail of underachievement, about which we have known for some time. You said that it is worth giving the model a chance, but are those sufficient grounds to make such changes? In the letter, the leader of that group of primary school principals asked whether the Department has done any research which offers empirical evidence to support the establishment of such an authority as the best way to raise standards.

160. Mr McGrath: I believe that the issue is more complex than that.

161. Mr D Bradley: When you said that it is worth giving the model a chance, that does not sound extremely complex to me.

162. Mr McGrath: There is enough evidence that standards are not high enough.

163. Mr D Bradley: I did not dispute that.

164. Mr McGrath: The current organisational structure has not helped — and has, perhaps, hindered — achievement or the pursuit of it. We have not made the best use, as PAC reports have demonstrated, of significant funds that were invested in literacy and numeracy in particular. Therefore, the status quo is simply not good enough.

165. The ‘Every school a good school’ policy is soundly based and contains mechanisms and approaches to school improvement that have far more rigour and transparency in how to deliver that. Linked to that is the need to create the organisational structure, the vehicle that will help to support schools and drive improvement.

166. Mr D Bradley: Where is the evidence that that particular model is the most effective vehicle by which to achieve that improvement?

167. Mr Stewart: The evidence is in the GCSE results.

168. The Chairperson: I would like to go back to something that John said, because it is a worry. You referred to numeracy and literacy. The problem was not the education and library boards; the problem was the Department.

169. Mr McCausland: Hear, hear.

170. The Chairperson: I do not think that any of the education and library boards will take any of the blame for the failure of the Department which introduced a numeracy and literacy strategy on which it spent £40 million, and they are now being told that there has been failure and that that failure lies with the boards, when the failure on that occasion lay fairly and squarely with the Department.

171. Mr McGrath: I think that I said the current structure.

172. The Chairperson: The rationale of your comments, however, is that the boards were responsible.

173. Mr McCausland: The point is that the only things that are being changed are the schools and the system. The Department is not changing. It is a classic example of buck passing.

174. Mr Stewart: The Department is changing very substantially.

175. Mr McCausland: Well, maybe not for the better.

176. Mr Stewart: However, the Chairperson is absolutely right on the point that he made about literacy and numeracy. The PAC put the blame squarely on the Department and said that the Department was wrong to allow to continue a system in which there were five different approaches to literacy and numeracy. The PAC rightly criticised us for not having done something about that earlier.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

185. Mr K Robinson: Thank you very much, Chris; that is quite heartening. A school that came here showed how it had changed things around, and how with added flexibility they could do so much more —

186. Mr Stewart: It could put an arm around the school down the road as well.

187. Mr K Robinson: You said something right at the end of your presentation that interested me. However, it has gone for the moment; I have lost my train of thought.

188. Mr McGrath: May I respond to what Nelson said? Reports have highlighted failures of the Department. Many of those failures, to be blunt, stemmed from the Department’s failing to performance-manage the education system — to give direction and expect people to take account of it. It has allowed a system without the necessary orchestration in which people did their own thing. That is not acceptable in a devolved context where a Department and a Minister are accountable to the Assembly, and in which the Committee would also have a role.

189. The Department is changing; it is about to change its structures radically. However, it must accept that its job is to police the policies and targets that have been endorsed and police them across the system. I referred to the accountability framework for ESA, and it will expect to be held to account by the Assembly and by the Committee that is it doing its job in overseeing and pursuing targets and holding people to account. The Department needs, culturally and structurally, to address its weaknesses, and it is doing so.

190. Miss McIlveen: In relation to the recruitment of the core structure, which you refer to in paragraph 8 of your paper on the structure of the ESA, saying that you aim at finalising the overall proposals by mid-February and at starting recruitment in early spring.

191. Paragraph 6 talks of undertaking a consultation on a proposed structure. It almost looks as if the proposed structure has been pre-empted and that that consultation has already been sorted. Drafting job descriptions for the core structures gives the impression that decisions have already been made, irrespective of the consultation.

192. You refer to the PAC recommendations and the commitment to appoint high-calibre candidates, and we would not expect you to recruit anyone less than high calibre. However, experienced people who would meet the requirements are likely to come from the existing boards. I raised that issue before when I mentioned asset-stripping and our concerns about the transition. I know that you are aiming for an operational date of 1 January 2010, but that may not be realised; there may be slippage. How will we ensure that the boards operate efficiently and that there is no asset-stripping?

193. Mr McGrath: To date, much work has been done to consider structure in ESA and in the Department, and consultation on that will begin shortly with trades unions and other sides. The timetable is very tight, and work is ongoing on various issues on which there is no disagreement: we will need a director of finance, because there is a £2 billion budget; that is almost a given. People can begin to work on the bones of a job description and have it in the tank while the consultation is under way. Indeed, it is important to remember that commitments have already been given to the PAC that high-calibre appointments would be made to the human resources post and director of finance post. Reports on job evaluation and other issues highlighted a lack of expertise in those areas.

194. As regard asset-stripping, the Minister met the chief executives of the boards on Monday morning. ESA will largely be made up of people who have moved across from the education and library boards. The boards will largely be responsible for the delivery of services until 1 January 2010. It is in nobody’s interest for ESA to “asset-strip" boards by moving people thereby leaving gaps in delivery. If people in the board structure are successful in their application for a post in ESA — whether they be second or third level — we will have to adopt a clever management approach to deal with the situation. We must first ensure that they are not removed from their day job any earlier than need be, and we must work out a sophisticated system in the autumn when staff move posts.

195. We must be very careful, because this transition is not about asset-stripping. The first step is to identify who will hold the posts in the future. The second is to figure out how to, in a sense, migrate from managing the current situation to managing future changes. However, we know that we must not suddenly pluck successful applicants out of the system on a given date, thereby leaving the boards beleaguered in the last months of transition. That is by no means our intention; such a move would not help ESA or us.

196. Business continuity, which has been flagged up, will be critical over the next 10 months. We have already said that there must be a careful balance between managing existing services and supporting schools and getting ready for ESA. We must ensure that the second does not prejudice the first. It will not be a matter of asset-stripping, Michelle. It will be about allowing people to apply for the posts — and, of course, people are free to apply — getting some certainty about who will do certain jobs and then working out how they migrate over and when.

197. Miss McIlveen: At the same time, you do not want anyone to feel that they cannot apply for those posts.

198. Mr McGrath: The matter will have to be very carefully managed, for the reasons that you have outlined. The earlier we know who will fill the posts in ESA, the better — even if those people are not actually in post. That is important.

199. Miss McIlveen: There is mention of business changes, and you talked about the seven main functions and a process that would last three to five years. Do you foresee a post being established so that someone can oversee that change?

200. Mr McGrath: Gavin Boyd is making a strong case, based on empirical evidence, that it is a significant challenge for any organisation to weld more than five organisations together, create new structures, build in the identity of the new organisation and then set strategic targets so that everyone is moving in the same direction.

201. Books have been written about managing change. In the early years, there must be someone whose job is to oversee that process of change in the organisation and to get systems built in and bedded down. There may a post that reports to the chief executive for the first three or four years of ESA, but when systems have sufficiently bedded down, that post would not be needed. Change does not end on 1 January next year: it starts then. We will have to look at how far the transformation from the boards and the organisations into a single cohesive body has progressed. That is an issue that the Committee will want to be reassured on.

202. It would be a time-limited post that will not, however, be a part of the permanent structure.

203. The Chairperson: Paragraph 17 states:

“The Department’s initial thinking is that a configuration of six units (one covering the greater Belfast area and five others)".

204. In his presentation Gavin Boyd said that ESA had envisaged 11 units.

205. Mr McGrath: I do not wish to talk behind anyone’s back. However, at that time ESA might have thought that such a structure should be compatible with 11 local authority areas.

206. The Chairperson: Gavin showed us a diagram setting that out.

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

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

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

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

211. Mr Stewart: Members will know the background and the concept of children’s services. It originated in England in response to several serious cases of child abuse, including the Victoria Climbié case. It is not a direct read-across to Northern Ireland. However, the key point about directors of children’s services in any organisation is not about the quantum but — uniquely in this case — the level of the post. He or she must be at a sufficient level in the organisation to have the clout necessary to ensure that the difficulties and deficiencies revealed by the Climbié case and similar cases do not occur here.

212. Those difficulties include issues that fall between stools, a lack of sharing of information, and a lack of co-ordination within, between and across organisations. The issue, therefore, is having someone at sufficient level in the organisation to pull the levers and ensure that that cannot happen. That is why thinking has evolved to show a particular focus on the second tier.

213. Mr McCausland: I welcome John’s assurance that the Department will act in a way that is clever and sophisticated.

214. Mr Stewart: There is nothing new in that.

215. Mr McCausland: It is a novel approach, and one that the Committee welcomes.

216. Paragraph 16 of your submission states:

“Local managers and service staff will have the flexibility to respond to specific local circumstances and need. They will be sensitive to and receive input from a committee for that area comprising, amongst others, a number of elected representatives."

217. What do you mean by:

“They will be sensitive to and receive input from"?

218. Mr McGrath: It means that a range of functions would be provided locally to the education system, including schools, statutory and non-statutory youth providers, and so forth. However, they will also act as the local front offices of the ESA, they will be expected to connect and interrelate with local representatives and other service providers.

219. Mr McCausland: What power will the local committee have?

220. Mr McGrath: The committee will be largely advisory, but it is a question of striking a balance. The model for the committee may be based on bodies such as the district policing partnerships (DPPs) — and I use that model carefully — which are there to advise the system. It is not a central decision-making body. I am trying to find a body in the pantheon of local bodies with which to draw a comparison. It will identify the challenges and the particular circumstances of a local area, of which ESA and its parent organisation must take account.

221. Mr McCausland: Staff in a local office will take decisions, and they will probably be advised by a local committee. However, they can ignore that advice, in the same way that the police often ignore the advice of a DPP.

222. Mr Stewart: Perhaps the key difference is that this committee, unlike a DPP, is part of the organisations, and I do not think that it can, therefore, be ignored. The formal power of a committee would depend on which, if any, formal functions are delegated to it from the ESA.

223. Mr McCausland: At what point would that be decided?

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

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

226. Mr McCausland: Might it go beyond being merely advisory?

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

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

229. Paragraph 17 mentions:

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

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

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

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

234. Planning work has to be done on a cross-boundary basis. Two or three of the area offices might be engaged in strategic planning; the travel-to-school patterns, for example, do not adhere to administrative boundaries.

235. Mr McCausland: Have you any indication of what percentage of the activities and expenditure that are currently dealt with by the individual board would remain at a local level? Human resources, pay systems and so on will be centralised, but hat percentage of activity will continue to be delivered at a local level?

236. Mr McGrath: I cannot give you a figure because thinking on area offices is still developing. It may well be that there will be a change in the pattern of spending within boards.

237. Mr McCausland: I am not seeking an exact figure such as 36·9%, but is it a half, a quarter or three quarters? I want you to make a guesstimate.

238. Mr McGrath: We will need to come back to you on that, Nelson. The thinking is that local area offices will have a number of functions, including dealing with standards and school improvement. Ken Robinson might comment on this point, but the view is that anyone who is talking to schools about standards must have credibility. The model might be a principal who is on secondment to ESA, and the budget for school improvement would be devolved locally to deal with that.

239. There will be an arm that deals with area-based planning. The area teams will have to undertake several area-based planning exercises because, for example, travel-to-school areas will be much smaller than some of the other areas. There will be a range of direct educational-support mechanisms, including education welfare officers, educational psychologists, help for literacy and numeracy, and child protection. The current CAS budgets will be disaggregated and reshaped to the fit the commissioning model that we talked about earlier. There will be support for a linkage with youth in early-years education.

240. There will be management support and a finance support function in the local management of schools. There will be human resources capability to help schools on local issues of recruitment and discipline. Some elements of the function area will even be available locally.

241. Mr McCausland: Consider, for example, a building on Academey Street in Belfast that has x number of staff carrying out a range of activities. What presence will remain in that building if these plans come to fruition? Will a similar number of people be employed there? We are trying to get a sense of what situation you envisage. When will it become clear how the process will work out?

242. Mr McGrath: It will be a while before that becomes clear, but there are two strands. As Gavin Boyd has explained, the education and skills authority’s thinking is that centralised functions reflect its current footprint. For example, finance could be centralised in Ballymena; human resources could be centralised in Omagh; the teachers’ payroll is already based in Derry; something else could be centralised in Armagh; and there could be a centralised function between the south-east and Belfast. Therefore, some of that would remain under the new model. There would also be an area office for Belfast, which might be —

243. Mr McCausland: It is the area offices that I am talking about.

244. Mr McGrath: We do not anticipate the area offices being big — they will have, perhaps, 50 people in them. Those offices will have budgets and will be dealing with the support for the local management of schools; that is, the services that need to be available locally. Subsidiarity is important — we must provide services locally in order to support schools, but those services that do not need to be available locally should be centralised. Doing so will produce economies of scale and will mean that the services benefit from more professional oversight and management.

245. Mr Stewart: Some services may move out of Academy Street, but they will not all necessarily move centrally — some may move more locally. I am sure that the Committee is aware of the good examples that exist of services that have been developed by particular learning communities, where groups of schools have developed services, functions, and activities that call for staff to be recruited and based in the schools. As we move beyond the Curriculum Advisory and Support Services (CASS) into school-led self-development and self-improvement, we see a lot of scope for that model. Therefore, some services that are currently based at Academy Street will end up being provided out in the schools.

246. Mr McCausland: I have no problem with that; there are services that should be moved from what are currently boards into schools.

247. Mr McGrath: What do you have in mind, Nelson? I think that we are talking the same language.

248. Mr McCausland: I agree that a conversation should be had about that, but not necessarily this morning.

249. Mr McGrath: The idea is that the services that need to be available locally to help support schools should be available locally, which is why some elements of finance and human resources will be available locally, services relating to recruitment, discipline, and absence management, for example. The big machine elements — for example, payroll and awards — can be centralised.

250. Mr McCausland: People are familiar with the current system because it has been there for some 30 years. It would be helpful is to have some indication of what a typical board will be like. That is why I am asking about percentages — I want to know what is moving up, what is moving down, and what is left sitting there. That would help us to develop a better understanding of what the system might be like and the implications of that.

251. Mr McGrath: I understand your point, but the problem is that in the case of Belfast, for example, some people are probably not based in Academy Street, which makes it difficult to calculate figures for before and after. I hope that, before too long, we will be able to provide an embryonic idea of the structures that might exist in an area office, which should help.

252. The Chairperson: You must be pretty near that stage, because you mentioned going out to consultation and having some of this in place by February —

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

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

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

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

257. Mr McCausland: Could that be done in the next few weeks?

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

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

260. Mrs M Bradley: It could be rushed through.

261. The Chairperson: Not that I am not a cynic, by the way.

262. Mr O’Dowd: We would have to make sure that the Irish version was available.

263. Mr McCausland: Yes, for Michelle.

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

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

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

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

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

269. I made the point that there are differences, and the challenge about school improvements in particular circumstances presents differently in inner city Belfast than in some rural areas. Therefore, in each area office, the profile of school improvement, as opposed to raising standards, will be different. In some areas of Belfast, it will be the major issue, elsewhere it will be a problem but not the major issue compared with the balance of staffing. However, no matter where the administrative boundary is drawn, there will always be a problem that crosses it, whether it is in health or in education.

270. Mr B McCrea: I hope that you do not mind me saying, but that is why drawing boundaries on a geographic basis seems illogical. If you had said to me that numeracy and literacy is a core issue cutting across the entire 1·8 million of the population, albeit focused on various areas, I could understand a body being set up to deal with numeracy and literacy, or if you had said that the Department understands the problems about early years and that it wants to have an early years strategy across Northern Ireland —

271. Mr McGrath: Which we are working on.

272. Mr B McCrea: Absolutely, but it is form following function. We are carving up what seems to be, and I apologise for saying this, a rehash of the old system, and that is a worry. I will not labour the point, but you need some help.

273. Mr McGrath: Yes, but essentially anything that makes this seem as if we are moving from five boards to six or 11 is not what my Minister is about, and it is not in the remit that we have given to ESA. This matter needs to be viewed in tandem with the issues that we discussed with Ken Robinson. It is about putting schools first and enabling them to have as much scope as possible regarding how they shape and go about their business. Therefore, there need to be things that are closer to them. I do not see any contradiction between delegating responsibility to schools and getting more control over their affairs but then holding them to account for delivering standards. There is no contradiction it that. You empower them to do as much as they can, and then you say that you will measure what they have done against benchmarks and expectations.

274. Mr B McCrea: I could get into a discussion with you about that, because I do not subscribe to a one-size-fits-all approach. Some schools are operating in very challenging areas and have different sets of standards. Furthermore, I reject free school meals as being a proxy for social deprivation, because many people do not take them up. I look at all those issues to find if there is a system that will help to move things forward, and my personal feeling — and I think that there is some support for this view from the public — is that devolving control to local school leaders, with appropriate financial support, appears to be the way forward. However, all the time I am worried. We will not sort out this issue today, but I am simply telling you our concerns.

275. It all comes back to the failed command and control structure of a centralised Department or a centralised ESA telling people what to do, standardisation, one-size-fits-all, what happens here will happen there. All of that seems to strip the professionalism away from the teachers and the people who can make developments.

276. You said that ESA is not really for policy — it is for implementation and that policy happens elsewhere. However, everything is connected. There is no forum for my colleagues and I to influence policy, short of winning the election and taking the position of Minister of Education.

277. The Chairperson: You have 20 years. [Laughter.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

289. Mr McGrath: But smaller.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

300. Mr McGrath: There is nothing in the structure which means that that cannot happen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

307. In my previous work in the Department for Social Development, we tried to pull the various factors together. If I may cite one example: we did work at Dunclug a couple of years ago, and, from the education sector alone, one had to get someone from the CCMS, someone from youth services and so on, and one would end up with four people in the room to deal with just the education bit. Under this model, however, the person leading the local area office is the front person in education, with, for example, the chief executive of the local trust or council. That is where you begin to get some of the advantages of the new model.

308. The Chairperson: I want to tease that out: it is vital that there are public representatives on the, for want of a better phrase, local committee. However, how do we then define the key stakeholders, who they are and how they get onto that committee? What we do not want is a local strategic partnership (LSP) Mark II, when everyone came and said: ‘That is fine, lovely, great but I am sorry, I cannot make a decision on that because that is outside the remit of my Department’, and it becomes pointless.

309. Mr McGrath: I understand exactly where you mean.

310. The Chairperson: If that local committee does not have the power to make a decision, one wonders why bother getting everyone around the table in the first place, because paragraph 5 of the document entitled ‘Structure of the education and skills authority at regional and local levels’ – which is, I suppose, directed at the board – states that::

“The Minister, through her Department, will direct the work of the ESA Board."

311. If the Minister does not give direction to the board, and if the board does not delegate power to the local committee, we will all be shaking our heads and saying that we disagree, but nothing could be changed.

312. Mr McGrath: I understand exactly. However, the LSP was, in a sense, a collection of representatives of every stakeholder. These committees will be committees of ESA. There will not necessarily be officials from other public bodies on the committee, because that would be mixing up governance issues.

313. The Chairperson: Do you understand the rationale behind my question?

314. Mr McGrath: I understand exactly.

315. The Chairperson: How will we identify who is a key stakeholder in a local area and is best suited to sit on a local committee? Taking the point that Basil McCrea and John O’Dowd made about the crossover between education and health, there is a big issue there, because we have all visited schools in which there are problems with, say, getting psychologists into schools each side of the current provision that is made by the Department.

316. Mr McGrath: I think that one has to be very careful. These are committees of ESA, and I am not sure that officials from other public bodies would sit on them, because that would put them in a difficult position. In my view, the key stakeholders begin with the community — the people that we are trying to serve — followed by schools and other bodies. Within youth and early-years services, there is a large voluntary representation. One would want to involve those who are more closely connected. The local committee must reflect the community — the pupils and the parents — rather than institutional stakeholders.

317. You are right; further work is needed, but you have highlighted some of the issues about which we need to be very careful.

318. Mr McCausland: You say ‘we need to be very careful’: I think that there are questions around who would represent the interests of parents and the community. Those matters must be teased out very carefully.

319. Mr McGrath: I know, but I just meant that, at times, stakeholders are seen as just schools and some sector representatives. In my view, the principal people that we are trying to serve are communities and children and pupils.

320. I understand the point that you make about determining who are to be the representatives of those groups, but they should not be populated with the providers, rather than the users, of the services.

321. Mr McCausland: That is fine.

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

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

324. Mr Stewart: You have given us two areas on which such work clearly needs to be done and more detail produced. One is more detail on the precise delivery functions at the local level, and the other on what those committees will do, who will be on them, and how they will get there.

325. The Chairperson: That would be very useful. I have purposely allowed the discussion on the first paper to carry on rather than moving to discuss the second paper. If members agree, and if John McGrath is happy with that, we will deal with the second paper, on the sectoral bodies, next week.

326. Mr McGrath: I am quite happy with that.

327. The Chairperson: I am conscious of the time, but I want these sessions to be focused and beneficial, and we have stuck reasonably well to dealing with the paper, for which I commend members. I know that Trevor will do the same.

328. Mr Lunn: Of course I will. I want to ask about the establishment of the organisational structure as outlined in the paper. If recruitment is to begin in early spring, does that mean that senior people will be recruited before ESA has been legally established?

329. Mr McGrath: The ideal is that we are not actually appointing people. The recruitment process can be started, but people cannot be appointed until the Bill is, ideally, on the statute book, or is in such a condition that it is clear that it will be on the statute book. There is a balance to be struck. The target date is 1 January 2009, and people will have to be appointed so that there is an organisation to pick up the reins on that date. Therefore, there are difficult judgments to be made with regard to balancing the implications of a political process, the scrutiny of this Committee and the Assembly in general, and taking some preparatory steps.

330. Advertisements will be placed, but it is only when someone is appointed that a definitive decision has been taken. In the same way, as I have mentioned, for the sake of openness we need to identify the chairperson-designate for ESA at an early stage, because the chairperson should, ideally, have a role in the appointment of senior executives, so one would want him or her to be in place. The chairperson should also be involved in the appointment process of the members of the authority, in line with the practice for commissioners. Therefore, the Department is now looking to start a process to identify a chairperson, but it could be June before that process has culminated. However, some of those processes must be started.

331. The Chairperson: Who would appoint the chairperson?

332. Mr Lunn: Presumably the Minister will appoint the chairperson. On the issue of appointing staff, I presume that we are talking about the 50 senior staff to which the paper on the structure of ESA refers. I believe that there was a suggestion earlier that they would come mostly from within the existing education and library boards. However, some will not: staff in the boards may be reluctant even to apply until they see what way the whole thing is going. It is not certain that ESA will be established, although I would like to think it will be.

333. Mr McGrath: The point is that something needs to be done, because if it is established on 1 January, everyone, including the Committee, will be exercised to ensure that it is ready to pick up the mantle. We spoke earlier of asset stripping, as Michelle McIlveen termed it. There must be a balance. We must start some processes and then make a judgement to finish them. For example, are people appointed formally or on another basis?

334. Gavin Boyd has been chief executive-designate of ESA for a significant period because he did not envisage this delay. Under a different scenario, if there was no ESA then that status would end. We would want to appoint a chairperson, or a chairperson-designate, subject to the Assembly passing the Bill. We should do everything in the proper sequence for the 1 January date. The Department has put together a fairly detailed and critical path, which is still being refined, listing everything that needs to be done in order to get ESA up and running. It is highly challenging, and slippage on one item will have a knock-on effect. For example, if there is no chairperson to participate in the recruitment of senior posts, that will be delayed, which will delay the appointment of members, and the structure will be up and running.

335. At the same time, we have serious concerns about the position in boards as a result of the uncertainty to date, which has people voting with their feet and moving to other jobs in other organisations because they did not have the certainty of ESA coming along and applying for positions there. We need, therefore, to send signals to the recruitment market. Senior posts will be advertised in line with the Public Service Commission’s guidelines on the review of public administration. There will be due process within the parameters set and the outcome will be the most appropriate that can be achieved within a proper recruitment process. The expectation is that a number of those working in the current system will be successful, but there is no automatic presumption: it will depend on the outcome of the recruitment process. In some areas, it may well be that there is not the same reservoir, because with regard to age profile, a lot of people are part of the present – they will choose not to be part of the future.

336. Mr Stewart: I will add some detail to that in order to reassure Trevor Lunn further. We do not in any way ignore the democratic process, or anticipate the will of the Assembly. As John McGrath has said, however, the practicalities demand that certain processes have to get under way now.

337. There are rules that govern this: we can take certain action at only certain points in the process. It would be entirely wrong to move on the appointment of a chairperson or members of ESA before the Bill had proceeded to Second Stage. The Department of Finance and Personnel’s rules on financial guidance and accountability state that it is legitimate for us to incur expenditure in the appointment of staff at this stage, and to take steps related to the appointments now that the Second Stage of the Bill has been reached. That does not mean that there is any guarantee that this will go ahead. Therefore, we must take steps to manage the risk involved in doing that. We cannot at present appoint senior staff to ESA, because ESA does not exist. If we appointed staff at present, it would have to be, as John McGrath said, on a designate basis and to an existing organisation — the Department or one of the existing education organisations.

338. That might provide a part of the answer to Michelle McIlveen’s question on asset-stripping. If senior appointments are made in advance of 1 January 2010, then those staff could be based, initially, in one of the existing organisations and combine their new role with a transitional role in that existing organisation.

339. A further risk-management arrangement would be to make the appointments, initially, on a secondment basis. Then, in extremis, if the Assembly decides to vote down the Bill and not to proceed with the review of public administration, the secondments would be ended and the staff would return to their original organisations. We would still have incurred expenditure, but only nugatory expenditure, and we would have managed the risk to highest possible degree.

340. Mr Lunn: If we could move on to the authority itself and the appointment of members and chairperson: if the Assembly decides to amend the requirements for members of the authority, particularly that the majority of them should be local councillors — and I believe that only the Alliance Party is absolutely certain that that is a bad thing; however, we are very important, you know —

341. Mr B McCrea: I think that you got a little support from others on that matter.

342. Mr Lunn: If we managed to persuade the Assembly that that is not a good thing, is it possible that the Minister and the Department would have already moved ahead and appointed members-designate, so to speak?

343. Mr McGrath: Given that a chairperson-designate would need to be appointed in order to participate in the process of identifying members, it is unlikely that the process to appoint members would begin until after the summer. Therefore, I imagine that if any detailed changes were made, we would know about them.

344. Appointments are appointments, as opposed to jobs. If it turned out that the nature of those appointments no longer existed, there would be scope for the Minister to terminate them. Appointments are not the same as jobs, whereby it would be too late to terminate the appointment if someone was already in post. People would be appointed on the basis that they would take up a post at ESA if the structure of the authority was as originally intended. If that structure changed, the matter would be orchestrated in such a way that the appointments would lapse or would have to be made again. It is a process that can be refined very easily. Appointments are easier: they are not jobs; they are appointments made at the Minister’s discretion.

345. Mr Stewart: They can be un-appointed.

346. Mr McGrath: They can be un-appointed.

347. Mr Lunn: I might stand down from my position as a councillor and join that.

348. Ms McIlveen: I want to return to a point that Trevor Lunn made with regard to appointments. Would the situation be similar to that of area-based planning groups, whereby the Minister simply taps someone on the shoulder, or will there be open recruitment?

349. Mr McGrath: No. The Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments has very clear guidance. Any of those appointments – for example, the chairperson – will be widely advertised publicly. People will apply and will receive a job description, et cetera. They must submit an application form. Application forms will be scrutinised in the first place with an assessor who has been identified by the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments. In that case, for each competition, an assessor is identified and chosen by the commissioner. The Department does not choose the assessor. That individual is there to ensure that the process is conducted properly.

350. From that process, those candidates who meet basic eligibility requirements will be interviewed by a panel which, again, includes an assessor from the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments. That will result in the selection of the names of those deemed fit to do the job – the key principle which the commissioner must ensure – which will go to the Minister, who can choose one of them or instruct us to start the process again. No Minister can appoint anyone who, under the commissioner’s rules, is not judged to be up to the job.

351. Ms McIlveen: Presumably, those positions will be time-bound and reviewed after certain periods? There will not be a situation in which the same board remains in post for life.

352. Mr McGrath: No. A term would normally three or four years. The commissioner’s rule is that no one should normally do more than two terms. When a board is appointed, the convention is that a stagger is built in whereby there would not be a date when all members would stand down and a completely fresh board appointed. Some people would, for example, be appointed for four years and then another two, and others for four years followed by another four, while some would stand down after four years and there would be rolling membership. That is the convention, and it is carefully orchestrated and scrutinised by the commissioner’s office.

353. Ms McIlveen: The remuneration will, presumably, not be too extensive. Will members be paid a wage? Obviously, the role will carry heavy responsibility.

354. Mr McGrath: There will be remuneration, which would take account of the role. ESA will be a major public-sector body.

355. Ms McIlveen: I would be concerned that members would, essentially, be on a wage that competes with that of the chief executive.

356. Mr McGrath: No, we are very clear on that matter: the entire process to identify chairpersons and board members is designed to test their understanding of what non-executives do on a board, as opposed to executives, and that they understand the balance of boards. Their role is to scrutinise and challenge. They are not there to run the organisation on a day-to-day basis. The critical test in any such competitions is to understand corporate governance and the role of non-executives. The principal role of a chairperson is to manage and hold to account the chief executive and other executives.

357. We can return to that issue. When the proposals come out, we will be happy to talk, but this is a well-trodden path across the public sector.

358. Mr McCausland: When do you expect to start the process of appointing a chairperson? Do you already have the job description and personnel specifications?

359. Mr McGrath: The Department is working on such material to bring to the Minister about the critical path. It would be our advice that we need to start the process soon by publishing advertisements and so on with a view that it could well be May or June at the earliest before we would be in a position to appoint someone. Even the appointment would be on a chairperson-designate basis subject to the organisation’s coming into existence. Therefore, we need to start soon because it takes time to get to the position of having a chairperson ready to step into place at the appropriate time.

360. Mr K Robinson: The Library Authority has already started that process by sending circulars to councils and so forth.

361. The Chairperson: The travel-to-school issue was raised several times by members. What work has the Department done on that, and what is its current thinking on that? Perhaps you could prepare a paper for the Committee on the issue.

362. Mr McGrath: Travel-to-school is very much in the context of area-based planning, so would that be the framework in which to put it?

363. The Chairperson: Yes, exactly. It is not included in the context of this subject, but it has emerged as an issue, and I would like some more detail on it.

364. Mr McGrath: That is an issue at which the Department is looking generally. I know that the Committee is interested in it, so we would be happy to bring something back to the Committee in the context of area-based planning.

365. The Chairperson: Thank you, John, Chris and Joe. Next week, we will look at the issue of sectoral bodies.

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

367. The Chairperson: Thank you.

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

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

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

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

21 January 2009

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

Witnesses:

Mr John McGrath
Mr Chris Stewart
Mr Joe Reynolds

Department of Education

372. The Chairperson: I welcome the witnesses from the Department. Good morning, gentlemen.

373. Mr McCausland: I understand that the embryonic education and skills authority (ESA) has been holding staff-consultation seminars with various sectoral groups. Can we get information about the nature of those meetings, who was in attendance and the contents of the presentations? I have received feedback that mixed messages were sent at one meeting in particular. For example, the impression was given that the ESA was unclear about where it was going — what a surprise. Moreover, it appeared to be asking what its role should be. I suppose that one should expect that in a consultation, but papers were tabled and PowerPoint presentations were given. Can we get copies of those presentations and papers?

374. Mr John McGrath (Department of Education): Yes, that should not be difficult. It is important to distinguish between those meetings and the workshops that the education and skills authority implementation team (ESAIT) has been involved in since the summer with staff members who fulfil various functions for the boards — transport, catering, education and children’s services — to inform them about what services might look like under the ESA. Such meetings dealt with operational matters. For example, how might catering be configured under a regional organisation? Papers were presented at the workshops and people were asked for their thoughts about how structures might be reorganised.

375. Mr McCausland: I am concerned that papers were presented about how the ESA envisages itself. The ultimate shape of the ESA depends on legislation; even last week, you spoke about flexibility.

376. Mr McGrath: Yes.

377. Mr McCausland: It is important that, rather than ESAIT simply consulting the various sectors, the political process be involved as well. We are talking about the legislation in very general terms, but its practical outworking is equally important.

378. The Committee should be updated on all the information that was given to those sectors.

379. Mr McGrath: Do you mean the representational sectors that we are about to discuss?

380. Mr McCausland: No. I mean the “services", as you would call them.

381. Mr McGrath: That is fine. The Department can obtain material for the Committee on that.

382. Nelson is correct that this is subject to legislation and to the overall framework that will eventually be agreed. The Department and the Minister will also have views, but someone must begin the preparatory work to realise what the options for delivery are, before those options are signed off. There is no assumption that the process has been taken for granted or that the political process is being ignored. For example, last week the Chairperson asked whether there would be 11 offices or six, and although ESAIT might have its own view on that issue, the Department feels that six offices would be more appropriate. There may be different strands of thought at the moment, but no decisions have been made.

383. In relation to keeping the Committee updated on all the work with the various services, ESAIT has conducted a series of workshops and presentations, so there would be a great deal of paper to present to the Committee. The alternative would be to ask Gavin Boyd to make a presentation on that process to the Committee.

384. Mr McCausland: Let us do that.

385. Mr McGrath: Would that be suitable? I am wary of drowning the Committee in 35 PowerPoint presentations.

386. Mr McCausland: Has ESAIT also conducted workshops with the various education sectors?

387. Mr McGrath: No. The sectoral organisations — as envisaged and set out in the paper that Chris will present to the Committee — do not yet exist. It is a different relationship. Gavin Boyd is talking to people who will move into the ESA as the legislation develops. For example, he is talking to those responsible for catering and asking how they would run a regional catering service. Entirely different discussions will need to be held with the embryonic sectoral organisations. Those discussions are on a different basis and require the policy context to be set before they begin.

388. The Department will lead the negotiations and will make arrangements for them. When the ESA comes into being they will have a dialogue role with it, as set out in the paper.

389. Mr McCausland: It would be useful to have a presentation from Gavin Boyd fairly soon.

390. The Chairperson: OK. We will take a note of that and see how we can fit it into the work programme.

391. Mr McGrath: I ask Chris Stewart to make his presentation on the sectoral organisations.

392. Mr Chris Stewart (Department of Education): Good morning. The Committee asked for more detailed information on the role and responsibilities of the various sectoral organisations under the review of public administration (RPA) arrangements, and I will provide that information through this presentation.

393. First, I will provide the Committee with some background information and context. The policy for those organisations is set out in policy papers 20 and 21, which the Committee has received; however, it is worth recapping the principles governing the development of the policy. I will not weary the Committee by reading all the principles out, but there are several key points that set the context for addressing the Committee’s concerns. Those are that all the sectoral-support organisations will be small; they will be non-statutory and without statutory functions; they will be modestly funded; and all sectors will be treated on the basis of equality, including what we refer to as the controlled sector.

394. On the organisations and their roles, the sectors that have indicated that they wish to be included in the arrangements are Irish-medium schools, represented by Comhairle na Gaelscolaíochta; integrated schools, represented by the Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education; voluntary grammar schools, represented by the Governing Bodies Association (GBA); and Catholic schools — both maintained and voluntary grammars — which will be represented by a new voluntary organisation to be established by the Commission for Catholic Education. As I have said, the controlled sector must also be included in those arrangements; however, a slightly different approach is required for that sector, which I will describe in a few minutes.

395. The Department has commissioned, and received, initial draft business cases from those organisations and is undertaking a robust and detailed scrutiny of those business cases.

396. We aim to complete the process within six to eight weeks. At that point, we will be able to advise the Committee in considerable detail on the proposed grant agreements with each of the organisations, including the level of funding and the detailed activities that those grants will support.

397. The Committee may find it useful to receive the details of the commissioning brief that we gave to the organisations to inform the development of their business cases, which lists the functions in the paper that we asked them to consider. I emphasise that that is the long list — not all organisations will want to engage in all the activities outlined in the paper. The potential functions are grouped under five headings.

398. The first group comes under the heading of ethos and identity, and the type of functions that we are prepared to support include: the fostering and development of the collective ethos of schools in a sector; the identification of potential foundation or community governors to serve on school boards; and the offering of advice to the ESA on the ethos and content of support and training programmes that have been provided for boards of governors.

399. The second group of functions comes under the heading of employment. The paper describes the centrality of schemes of management and schemes of employment in the legislation, which will set out, respectively, the governance arrangements for schools and the role of boards of governors in employment matters. In the paper we describe the role of the “submitting authority" in those schemes, including a potential change to the legislation that we are minded to introduce, subject to the Committee’s views.

400. In that context, the role of a sectoral body might include: the preparation of draft schemes of management and employment on behalf of submitting authorities; providing responses to any consultation by the ESA or the Department on guidance that governs the preparation of those schemes; providing assistance to trustees or owners of schools in the discharge of their role in the preparation and submission of schemes, and general liaison with the Department and the ESA on that matter.

401. The next group of functions comes under the heading of ownership, planning and procurement. The functions that we could consider are: advising trustees or owners of schools on their roles; and participating in the area-based planning arrangement that the ESA will operate, which might include assessing provision in a sector, future need, consultation with parents and communities, development and advancement of options and proposals. It is important to emphasise that we are talking about a single planning process that the ESA will operate, to which sectoral organisation will provide input — we are not talking about separate planning processes in each sector.

402. We have also stated that we will support sectoral bodies to enable owners or trustees to discharge their role in procurement arrangements. Again, those procurement arrangements will be operated by the ESA. That will provide the link between owners and the ESA. The last function under that heading is to engage with any other statutory planning processes that exist or come into being, particularly the community planning process that district councils will lead.

403. The fourth group of functions comes under the more general heading of representation and advocacy and includes liaising with schools in a particular sector; liaising with, and offering advice to, the ESA, the Department and our colleagues in the Department for Employment and Learning, including, through participation in the education advisory forum when it is established; engaging with other education sectoral interests or stakeholders; and responding to any policy consultation processes that the Department may initiate.

404. The final group of functions comes under standards and performance. I emphasise that there will be only one statutory authority with legal responsibilities for raising standards — the ESA. However, we recognise that a strength of the present arrangements is the interest that sectors and sectoral bodies take in the performance of their schools. In that context, we see the role of sectoral organisations as including: promoting high-quality education; advising and supporting owners or trustees of schools on strategic issues on performance as they arise; advising owners or trustees of schools on data, reports or information that they may receive on the performance of schools in their sector; offering advice and support to owners or trustees when consulted by the ESA on the discharge of its functions; and liaising generally with the ESA on matters related to the performance of schools in the sector.

405. That is the long list of functions in which we see a sectoral body being potentially involved. We have received business cases from the existing organisations and from the Catholic trustees on that issue.

406. The controlled sector requires slightly different treatment because the starting point is different and is, in some ways, more difficult than for the other sectors. No existing organisation is well placed to take on the sort of role that we have outlined. It must also be acknowledged that there is no real tradition in that sector of those sorts of functions or that type of interest being taken on behalf of schools.

407. We must also recognise that the controlled sector is large and serves diverse communities across Northern Ireland. The starting point is different, but we are clear that, on the basis of equality, the end point must be same for that sector as it is for all other sectors and that the timescale must be the same. By 1 January 2010, those schools must have effective sectoral representation and advocacy, and in doing so it is important that we ensure that there is a strong sense of ownership across that sector. The sector must have trust and confidence in the arrangements that are established; the arrangements cannot simply be parachuted in by the Department.

408. Therefore we have proposed the first steps of a way forward on which we welcome the views of the Committee. As a first step, we suggest the establishment of a small working group to act as interim advocates or champions for the controlled sector. That group will be charged with developing more detailed proposals for the more substantive arrangements that will be put in place. In the interests of effectiveness, we have suggested that that group should be relatively small, perhaps comprising between six and eight members. That group should include education professionals; the Transferor Representatives’ Council (TRC) would also have an important role to play.

409. In addition, an important element of the group will be representatives from the communities that are served by the controlled schools. The representatives would have a good understanding of their communities, particularly communities that face the greatest education challenges and in which the socio-economic challenges are considerable. The representatives would understand the service that education can provide and the contribution that it can make to their communities.

410. The group should be asked to undertake a short, focused exercise with the terms of reference that we have set out in the paper; it should be asked to report as quickly as possible to the Department and, through us, to the Committee. The Department will, of course, be prepared to provide support for that group, including a secretariat. I am happy to take questions from members.

411. The Chairperson: Members will wish to tease out many issues during this section. You referred to “modest" funding. You said that a sectoral body will be established for the controlled sector and that it will have a different starting point because it is a completely new organisation. Given that you referred to equality of treatment across those bodies, how will you ensure that the deficit in the controlled sector — because there is no sectoral body — will be adequately filled?

412. The deficit in the controlled sector must be given particular attention and assistance because of its diversity. The controlled sector includes controlled grammar schools, which cover a wide diversity. Can we be assured that objections will not be raised on the basis of equality? There is a disparity, and that inequality must be addressed first. All the sectoral organisations should not be lumped together and treated in the same way because that will cause one sector to lag behind.

413. Mr Stewart: That is correct. We have to address the issue that the controlled sector is lagging behind. It is difficult to comment on what the precise outcome will be, because we do not have a draft business case for the controlled sector. However, I assure you that the Department will work with the interim champions — if we can establish them — to introduce as quickly as possible a business case that is fit for purpose and that will lead to a level of grant that will allow the controlled sector representative body to discharge as many as possible of the functions that we have outlined.

414. The structure and funding for the representative body that is established for the controlled sector will have to reflect the sector’s diversity; it must be fit for purpose and must be capable of discharging its functions.

415. I assure you that even though it is starting behind other sectors, we will not leave it there. There is no question of our sorting out all the other sectors and merely seeing what is left for the controlled sector; the equality principle will be central. The controlled sector must be able to operate on the same basis as the other sectors.

416. The Chairperson: You mentioned the possibility that the TRC could be included in that. Given that the TRC’s representative constituency has changed in the years since it was brought into existence and that the Churches handed over their schools to the Government, how will equality be assured for denominations that are not covered by the TRC? Those denominations have increased in number over the past 30 or 40 years. How can we ensure that they will be adequately represented? Is that discussion ongoing with the TRC?

417. Mr Stewart: Yes, Chairman, to all those questions. This afternoon, the discussion will continue when I meet the TRC to discuss those and other points.

418. The TRC recognises that although it is a voice for the controlled sector, it is not that sector’s only voice; it would be the first to acknowledge that other denominations’ interests must be reflected. The interests of the increasingly diverse communities — ethic minority groups, for example — that are served by those schools must be recognised and considered carefully.

419. The Department’s challenge is to ensure that it recognises that, in putting together the interim champions and the more substantive organisation in due course, it can speak on behalf of all the schools in the sector and all the communities that they serve.

420. The Chairperson: I will open up the discussion, and if my questions are not covered during the discussion, I will come back to them.

421. Mr D Bradley: What protections does the Bill afford to the Catholic ethos?

422. Mr Stewart: It is the Department’s contention that the Bill offers protections to the ethos of any sector and, indeed, to any school. The Bill does not seek to challenge or interfere in any way with the ethos of any school or type of school.

423. Earlier, I referred to the provisions on the role of submitting authorities and the submitting of draft schemes of employment and draft schemes of management. The change that we are minded to suggest is to define the submitting authority of every school as the owners or trustees of that school, while recognising that, in some cases, the board of governors owns the school.

424. That is to allow the owners or trustees of every school to ensure that its ethos is lawfully and properly reflected in a school’s governance and employment arrangements. We proposed that change because we believe that we did not get the legislation entirely right in that respect. We want to ensure that there is consistency across all sectors and all types of schools.

425. Mr D Bradley: The ethos of an Irish-medium school, for example, is not necessarily protected under the Bill, as a board of governors could un-designate an Irish-medium school. Is that correct?

426. Mr Stewart: I believe that that is correct.

427. Mr D Bradley: Where, then, is the protection of the Irish-medium ethos in the Bill? Could a Catholic school do the same?

428. Mr Stewart: I do not wish to avoid your question, but I am not sure from what we would be protecting the ethos. If a school’s board of governors — presumably reflecting the wishes of the community that it serves — decided for some reason that it ought to become a different type of school, I am not certain from whom we would be protecting it.

429. Mr D Bradley: Would a maintained school be able to do the same thing?

430. Mr Stewart: Yes.

431. Mr D Bradley: Could a Catholic school become a school other than a Catholic school if it so wished? Could the board of governors decide that?

432. Mr Stewart: Yes, although there is a caveat: the ethos of a school is not prescribed in legislation, and neither would the Department seek to control or direct it in any way. The important caveat relates to a question that Nelson asked several meetings ago and to which I still owe him an answer. He asked whether it would be possible for an integrated school to “reverse-transform" or transform into a different type of school, and we agreed to check the legislation to find out. It is not possible in a straightforward way. In fact, the legislation specifically rules out either a controlled integrated school or a grant-maintained integrated school transforming into a different type of school. A further caveat is that the only means of achieving it in practice is for a school to close and reopen as a different type of school. Forgive me if that is a rather long, technical and involved answer.

433. Mr McCausland: It is a very interesting answer.

434. The Chairperson: Could it technically close and reopen?

435. Mr Stewart: Yes, as a different type of school.

436. Mr D Bradley: Would the trustees of maintained schools rather than the board of governors not have to change a school’s ethos?

437. Mr Stewart: Yes. The commonality or the consistency across all schools and sectors is that it is the owners or trustees who determine ethos. In the case of Irish-medium schools the owners are the board of governors, and in that regard there is consistency between the two sectors.

438. Mr D Bradley: Therefore there is a different system of management or ownership?

439. Mr Stewart: There are certainly differences in ownership.

440. Mr D Bradley: Is that why those differences are emerging in the Bill?

441. Mr Stewart: No, quite the opposite; we want to ensure that the effect of the legislation is the same, regardless of any differences in ownership. Part of the central thrust of the RPA is that there are differences in everything from governance arrangements, structures of boards of governors through to finance arrangements, which simply reflect historical differences and ownership. It will require the two RPA Bills to achieve that fully. However, we want, as far as possible, to enable any grant-aided school to enjoy the same relationship with the ESA and be part of the same administrative arrangements as any other type of school. The owners or trustees of a school can determine its ethos, but that will have no bearing on the administrative arrangements.

442. Mr O’Dowd: The scenarios that Dominic outlined can happen now; in a sense, the Education Bill does not change anything.

443. Mr Stewart: That is the case.

444. Mr O’Dowd: My question is about sectoral support, particularly for the controlled sector, and I will touch on the Chairperson’s comments. There is some validity in the argument that a sector starting from a standstill position may be disadvantaged; therefore it might need some further departmental or financial support. The Committee would have a role in any evidence-based argument that is developed along those lines.

445. Will the finances and role of sectors collectively be subject to review? As the ESA develops, will the role of the sectors come together without the loss of ethos or identity about which Dominic expressed concerns? Does the ESA plan hold out that hope?

446. Mr Stewart: Yes, very much so. The business cases that we are scrutinising aim at arriving at grant agreements with each sector. Normally, grant agreements would last for no more than three years. That strikes the right balance between allowing an organisation a reasonably stable base on which to plan, but it also recognises the need to review continually such arrangements to ensure that they continue to be necessary and that they represent and provide value for money for the public purse. That is what we expect to happen.

447. Over time, we envisage that the role of the sectors will evolve. However, we do not foresee a time when the diversity, ethos, character or identity of any type of school or sector will be reduced, and it is not our intention that that will happen. However, the thrust of the RPA is the need for a consistent, equality-based approach that recognises that education is a publicly funded public service from which children and young people in any community are entitled to receive the same provision. We expect and require sectors to operate in the spirit of co-operation more than they have in the past, when they were separate and, at times, antagonistic and adversarial — particularly in the planning of the schools estate and the delivery of the curriculum.

448. There is no room for sectors to pursue their own agendas in a modern education service. We must proceed on the basis of co-operation.

449. Mr McGrath: The Department will support the sectoral arrangements for three years, at least; however, the present division of schools into different sectors might begin to break down. The Chairperson referred to controlled grammar schools; perhaps they might see themselves as having more in common with voluntary grammar schools. The way in which the pie chart is divided at present may change; there may well be less differentiation. For instance, the sector-support bodies might decide that they want to migrate to a different place, because the situation might change. If that happened, we will respond to it, but we will not be driving any changes.

450. Mr Stewart: We do not want to engineer change, but, as John said, we will respond to it. That is already happening. In your papers you will have seen the proposal for a single body representing all Catholic schools. The senior trustees want a more coherent Catholic education sector in which the Catholic maintained schools and Catholic voluntary grammar schools come together closely and co-operate as a single, more coherent Catholic-managed sector.

451. Mr D Bradley: Why does the Bill contain a separate clause on Catholic maintained schools and not for other sectors?

452. Mr Stewart: There is a range of definitions of school types. A definition of Catholic maintained schools is provided in the Education Bill because at present it sits in the midst of the provision that established the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools (CCMS). That provision is being repealed because that organisation is being dissolved. Therefore, rather than leave one subsection in splendid isolation in a long provision, we will repeal the whole clause but, for the time being, leave the small part of it that is required — the provision on the definition of Catholic maintained schools.

453. The other definitions are less affected by the legislation, so they can remain in the existing Orders. However, the Committee will see that our aim in the second Bill is to reduce the number of definitions and separate school types. The only reason for having a definition of Catholic maintained schools was to identify the block of schools for which CCMS is responsible.

454. When the ESA is the only statutory authority for all schools, there will be no need to separate Catholic maintained schools from other maintained schools. It will be relatively easy to make that change in the second Bill, and, in time, the second Bill will contain a provision to remove the definition of Catholic maintained schools.

455. Mr D Bradley: Is that why it says that Catholic maintained schools are designated under a scheme “for the time being".

456. Mr Stewart: That is correct. It is a curious provision in many ways. It means that a Catholic maintained school is a school on the list of Catholic maintained schools. That is the most circular definition that I have seen in legislation; it is a technical hangover from the present legislation, and it will be taken out in the second Bill.

457. The Chairperson: I do not want to go off the subject, but there has always been an issue about controlled grammars — and they have been mentioned already. They are different from voluntary grammars in that controlled grammars are under the jurisdiction of the education and library boards.

458. In respect of function, is that the only difference?

459. Mr McGrath: In the round, yes; therefore, in future, language will be needed that does not state that it is a controlled sector support group, because the schools will no longer be controlled.

460. The Chairperson: Will that create almost the same situation as that which currently exists in the maintained sector?

461. Mr McGrath: We must think about our language around that situation. I would welcome suggestions that are better than “ex-controlled". When the schools come out of the jurisdiction of the education and library boards, there will be fundamental differences. Many schools have aspirations of autonomy, which we talked about last week. In the future, they may want to see themselves in a broad voluntary grammar sector, rather than in an ex-controlled one. The boundaries between those sectors may move in the future. In a sense, we would want that, because sector support arrangements should not act as a barrier to schools that seek more autonomy.

462. Mr Stewart: That is correct; indeed, nor should those arrangements determine the outcome. John O’Dowd raised the issue of the future of sectors. Although we do not intend to reduce sectors, we note that they may change by themselves, and we do not want the autonomy of schools to be determined by anything other than the capability of the school and its wish to have autonomy. That should not be determined by historical accident, resulting from the fact that the school happens to find itself in a particular sector. We want policy to go in that direction, and the Department does not regard that as being incompatible with the existence of sectors, or with the champion or advocacy role that those sectors may have.

463. Mr Lunn: The Department’s paper to the Committee on the functions of sectoral bodies states that their roles will be allowed to “prepare", “respond", “assist", “advise", “assess" “liaise", “engage" and “advocate". It does not state that one of their roles will be to “decide". May I take it that no decision-making powers whatsoever will be left to the sectoral organisations?

464. Mr McGrath: They can decide how they run their own business, but they are not statutory organisations. One model that is used in many other sectors is that voluntary bodies perform an advocacy role in the discharge of tasks. Age Concern is one example of that.

465. The Department is very clear that ESA will have the statutory role. That is the function that it is funded to perform. Accountability for raising standards, for example, must not be blurred by involving too many organisations. Clearly, the sectoral bodies will be non-statutory organisations, which the Department will fund to carry out a range of functions of the nature that are described in our paper. The Department will fund them for what they must do, but no more than that. That is a difficult area.

466. To pick up on the Chairperson’s point, equality is an issue in the controlled sector. However, the Department is focusing on equality in respect of the support that we give the sector. We will not take a mechanistic, “count the money in" approach, because there is no value in fostering an ex-controlled sector support body if it cannot do its job. That will not serve us in any way.

467. Mr Stewart: I have an example of school improvement that may illustrate that point. As John McGrath said, the statutory authority with responsibility for action will be ESA. However, if a performance issue arose in the controlled sector, one might expect the controlled-sector champion — its representation and advocacy body — to closely scrutinise and, if necessary, to challenge ESA. As a body that understands the schools it is serving, it might ask ESA: what is it doing to raise standards in controlled schools; what work is it doing with controlled schools; does it understand the ethos of controlled schools and the communities they serve?

468. The contribution that the controlled-sector body might make is just that — one of challenge, liaison, and of examining whether there is a sectoral ethos. However, the professional, technical, formal, legal and statutory roles are all with ESA.

469. Mr Lunn: Your presentation says that the role of sectoral organisations in the area-based planning process will be brought to the Committee in a few weeks’ time. Even at this stage, can we assume that the roles of those sectoral organisations will be reduced to the provision of advice and advocacy? Is there any possibility that they might be left with some decision-making power?

470. Mr Stewart: No. The ESA will operate a single planning process. The role of any sectoral organisation is to provide input into that process, not to decide anything.

471. The Chairperson: Will that also include development proposals?

472. Mr Stewart: Yes. In due course, we still see the legislation focusing on development proposals. At present, a development proposal can come from any source. In future, the key difference will be that, in deciding whether a development proposal should go forward, it will be scrutinised with due regard to the area plan that is in force at the time. By and large, if a development proposal does not accord with the area plan, it is unlikely to go forward. If it does accord with the area plan and has been brought forward in order to deliver the area plan, then it is likely to go forward.

473. The Chairperson: Can the sectoral bodies produce development proposals?

474. Mr Stewart: They can produce development proposals, but if a sectoral body, or, indeed, any other interest, produces a development proposal in defiance, if you like, of an area plan, it is unlikely to get very far.

475. Mr McCausland: I want to pick up on two issues, on which, in a sense, Dominic touched earlier. The first is about equality, and the other is to do with ethos. Some time ago, the Committee asked the Minister to provide information on the range of issues in the education system in which structural or other inequalities had been identified. That request has not been answered yet.

476. The Chairperson: Several issues were highlighted in that correspondence.

477. Mr McCausland: Yet we are always being told that inequality is one of the issues that must be addressed. We do not have a list of those inequalities, or what they are in the Minister’s view. Mr Stewart mentioned another inequality — that a controlled school can change to an integrated school, but it cannot transfer back. That is clearly inequitable.

478. Mr Stewart: I note your view on that.

479. Mr McCausland: Is it inequitable?

480. Mr Stewart: That is an issue of policy. I note your view on that.

481. Mr McCausland: Whether that inequality exists is a matter of policy. Whether it is an inequality is not a matter of policy; it is a matter of fact. Is it an inequality or not?

482. Mr Stewart: I contend that it is a matter of policy. It is for the Minister of the day or the Administration of the day to determine policy. The current policy is that legislation does not require a route to transform from integrated status to another type of school.

483. Mr McCausland: It is not permitted. There are many things that were not permitted in the past but are now permitted because of equality arguments. We are back to the question of whether the Department has considered, or intends to consider, the equality implications and other implications of such a course of action.

484. Mr Stewart: The Department has not considered such an option. The issue was not raised until you asked the question.

485. Mr McCausland: Now that it is on the radar —

486. Mr Stewart: Now that it is on the radar, I will, of course, convey your view to the Minister that it constitutes an inequality. I have no doubt that the Minister will consider that.

487. Mr McCausland: I will park the other equality issue. You say in your paper that:

“It will be important to ensure that sectoral support arrangements treat all sectors on an equitable basis."

488. Is that the same as saying — I contend that it is not — that all children will be treated on an equitable basis?

489. Mr McGrath: It is a different paradigm.

490. Mr McCausland: Will you be able to ensure that the new structure will treat all children equally? Will that be checked by way of an equality impact assessment (EQIA)?

491. Mr McGrath: The Minister has made it clear that her priority is to raise standards and to ensure that each child who goes into the education system has the maximum opportunity to fulfil his or her potential. Therefore, we focus on equality of outcome. If we focus on equality of inputs, we are missing the fact that there is a gross disparity in outcomes. The Minister is very clear about that. In a sense, sectoral support is a different frame of reference.

492. Mr McCausland: A policy decision is being made to create a new structure. Has an EQIA been conducted to test whether that structure will treat all children equally, or will it impact on some children differently than on others?

493. Mr Stewart: Equality impact screening has been applied, and consideration has been given, to the review of public administration programme in general, and to the first Bill in particular. I am aware that the Committee has been waiting for the results of that exercise for quite some time, but, although the results have yet to hit the streets, we expect them to come out within the next week or two. We concluded that, subject to consultation, ESA will treat all children equally.

494. The obvious answer is that the new arrangements will be based on equality. As a public authority, ESA will be subject to the statutory duties that are contained in section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998. I suspect that that is not the answer that you are looking for, or perhaps you are attempting to make a different point

495. Mr McCausland: We have already talked about the integrated/controlled issue, from which inequalities emerged that had not previously been picked up. Such things can happen, so it is important that all arrangements are checked.

496. Dominic Bradley mentioned the religious and cultural ethos in Catholic-maintained and Irish-medium schools. Who will determine the cultural and religious ethos of controlled schools?

497. Mr Stewart: An ethos will evolve and emerge from individual schools and from the sector, and a test of the effectiveness of the central body will be the extent to which it can articulate an ethos. Perhaps a multi-dimensional ethos will be required to cover such a diverse range of schools and communities. However, one cannot define, or prescribe, an ethos. The Department made a heroic attempt at doing so in an earlier policy paper, and, as a result, we managed to unite all education stakeholders in the view that we had got it entirely wrong. At that point, we recognised that any attempt on our part to define ethos is doomed to failure. An ethos comes from schools and sectors; it is not in the Department’s gift to define or create it.

498. Mr McCausland: My point is that the focus for those matters is very much on sectors; whereas, I think that it should be on the rights of individual children. Therefore, it is important that the cultural and religious rights of the child are reflected and accommodated in whatever system emerges. Britain has signed up to international commitments in that regard that are only being partially implemented in the controlled sector; whereas, those commitments are being fully implemented in the Catholic-maintained and Irish-medium sectors. There is now an opportunity to address that matter, and, if the sectoral body has a role to play in that process, it is important that it properly reflects the ethos of the community that it serves. I am sure that we will return to that point.

499. Mr Stewart: You are entirely right. Many people associate most schools in the controlled sector with a broadly Christian ethos because they serve predominately Protestant communities, and they associate schools, or parts of schools, in that sector predominantly with a Protestant Christian ethos. However, every grant-aided school must be open to children from any religious denomination or none.

500. Therefore, we will expect the sectoral body to recognise that the controlled-sector’s ethos — perhaps more than any other — must be multi-dimensional, reflecting different faiths, denominations, community backgrounds, and minority and ethnic interests. We would take a dim view of the sectoral body if it were not to recognise that when trying to advocate the ethos of the sector, if it were to attempt to do so.

501. Mr McCausland: Is it accepted that every child has the right to an education in which he or she is taught about, and given respect for, the culture and the ethos of the home from which he or she comes?

502. Mr Stewart: We are not proposing any change to the legislation in that regard.

503. Mr McCausland: There is no legislation in that regard.

504. Mr Stewart: There are references in early articles of the Education and Libraries (Northern Ireland) Order 1986. I cannot recite the full detail to you, but there are duties on us and on education authorities to respect parental wishes regarding the education that is delivered for children.

505. Mr McCausland: It needs to be taken a lot further if it is to meet international obligations. How does the current legislation meet the obligations of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child?

506. Mr Stewart: Will you draw out that question a little further?

507. Mr McCausland: The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child states the point that I have just made, which is that every child has the right to an education. That education should encourage respect for, and knowledge and awareness of, culture in the broadest sense, of the community from which he or she comes.

508. Mr Stewart: The UK does not have any specific legislative provisions to give effect to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, because, unlike the European Convention on Human Rights, it has never been directly incorporated in domestic legislation. Our contention is that our body of education legislation, and the education system that is put in place thereby, give effect to those things.

509. If the view is that the legislation somehow falls short in relation to any of those dimensions, we would want to look at that, because, although the convention has not been incorporated, it is, nevertheless, an obligation that applies to the state, and we would want to ensure that that is delivered.

510. Mr McCausland: I am merely saying that it happens in Irish-medium schools. They have a clear cultural dimension, and CCMS schools have a clear religious ethos to them. However, that does not necessarily happen in all controlled schools. We have an opportunity now to deal with the issue, while we are reshaping the system.

511. Mr Stewart: We welcome the opportunity to explore that issue and tease it out a little further. We recognise, as I think you have done, that the multi-dimensional nature of the controlled sector presents a particular challenge in that regard.

512. Mr McCausland: The point that I am making is that it is down to the children who attend a particular school. Therefore, the ethos of a school in one town may be different to the ethos of a school in another town, depending on the children who go to it.

513. Mr Stewart: That is true of all sectors, but, on several occasions, I have heard trustees of Catholic schools acknowledging that very fact. A central thread of Catholic education and ethos runs through the sector. However, there are perceived differences in ethos in individual Catholic schools, for the very reasons that you have given.

514. Miss McIlveen: We have to recognise that we probably operate in an ‘Animal Farm’ view of equality, in which all animals are created equally, and some are created more equally than others.

515. I welcome Mr O’Dowd’s comments, because he recognised that there may be a deficit in relation to representation of the controlled sector. However, I am concerned that he is looking for an evidence-based argument when the evidence is quite clear that there is nothing, and we are starting from nothing.

516. Following some of the comments that you made in response to the Chairperson, it appears that a can of worms may be opening up regarding who will sit on the group that will be created for the former controlled sector. I will return to a comment that I made last week about the ESA board. Will members of that group be chosen by simply being tapped on the shoulder, or will they have to apply for the positions? How will that process work?

517. Mr McGrath: The paper highlights the fact that it is not for the Department to create the sectoral support body for the former controlled sector, because it is not a statutory body. It is an advocacy body, but it will not be our body. Therefore, we want to foster that by getting a group of people who will be connected in that sector to begin to do some of the legwork, because it is not our job. We will do our utmost to help to create the body.

518. The deficit was mentioned, but I wish to make it clear that we will support that work by finding the secretariat. Who the initial key players will be is open for discussion, and that is why we brought the matter to the Committee. In fact, it may be a matter of persuading some people to give their time and effort in certain communities outside the normal TRC and other denominations. Indeed, it will be a broader church than that.

519. We need to identify people who have some understanding of the issues — particularly those of underachievement — and who want to make a contribution. If those elements of straw form enough of a brick that those people want to constitute themselves into an organisation with the appropriate governance structure and the right legal statutes to produce a business case for us, that is where we want to go.

520. We will not appoint people; it is not our right to do so. The group will not be a statutory organisation, and it should not be beholden to the Department. It should be as independent as the other sectoral support bodies; otherwise, the general deficit that currently exists in the controlled sector will continue.

521. Miss McIlveen: Who, other than the TRC, have you spoken to about that?

522. Mr Stewart: We have spoken to individuals in education and library boards and with the TRC, whom I am meeting again this afternoon. We have not gone particularly far beyond doing that. We would welcome suggestions from the Committee as to how we might gather the voices or identify those who might play a role in such a facility. It is difficult, but as John has said, we have to start somewhere.

523. The arrangements that we have set out regarding ESA members and the ESA board are clearly appropriate. ESA will be a statutory organisation to which public appointments will be made. There are clear procedures to follow. The sectoral support body for the former controlled sector will not be a statutory organisation, and public appointments will not be made to it. Its make-up will be defined on the basis of personal contact, persuasion and seeking views and input on an informal basis. If that is characterised as a tap on the shoulder, then yes, it is a tap on the shoulder at this stage.

524. Miss McIlveen: Has anyone indicated that they may be interested in getting involved in that group?

525. Mr Stewart: No, I am not aware of any specific approaches that have been made.

526. Mr McCausland: Is it basically a self-selecting group?

527. Mr McGrath: No, it is not a self-selecting group.

528. Mr McCausland: Whoever turns up at the first meeting —

529. Mr Stewart: Tell us which shoulders to tap.

530. Mr McGrath: In the other sectors, there are pre-determined groups or embryonic organisations that have a link and a broad sense of ownership. That does not exist at all in the controlled sector, which is quite diverse. Collectively, everyone interested in this — including Committee members — has to ensure that enough people are interested so that they can take up the mantle themselves.

531. The group may eventually be constituted as a charitable trust or a company limited by guarantee, but it will not have ministerial appointments. Its members will not be beholden to the Department, because that would put them in a different position. They will have to be as independent as members of the other sectoral support bodies, otherwise there would be inequalities.

532. We have made clear in this and in other settings that as much assistance as possible must come into that process, because it will be a matter of trying to identify the people who can give it enough momentum at the start. That does not necessarily mean that those are the people who would constitute the body in due course. It is very difficult. We have spoken about the TRC and about other denominations. Across the region, the body needs to serve a number of very diverse communities, both urban and rural. It must consider secondary schools and grammar schools and the aspirations of different schools, and that is a major challenge.

533. Mr Stewart: If we were to conclude that we must not tap any shoulders anywhere, the alternative would be that we would simply sit in the Department and wait for the appointments to be made. If they were made at all, it would take a long time. Rival approaches might come forward or rival bids might be placed in order to establish a sectoral organisation. We could allow some of those to succeed and some to fail, and perhaps, in due course, we might end up with something that is effective.

534. Given what the Committee has rightly said about the need not to let the controlled sector get left behind, we do not feel that we can do that. Although the process may be inelegant and cumbersome, we have to use it to try to hothouse the development of the body without making it an artificial construct of the Department in which people in the sector would simply have no trust or confidence. The starting point is that, yes, we have to tap a few shoulders.

535. Miss McIlveen: Do you have any idea of when the process will start?

536. Mr Stewart: It will start as soon as possible, and within weeks.

537. Miss McIlveen: The other sectors have already put forward a business case. Have you had specific discussions with those sectors about that?

538. Mr Stewart: Yes, and those discussions are ongoing.

539. Miss McIlveen: So you have had meetings with the other sectors?

540. Mr Stewart: Yes.

541. Miss McIlveen: Nelson, did you ask a question earlier in relation to sectors?

542. Mr McCausland: We were told that they were not meeting with sectors.

543. Mr McGrath: No, we have been discussing with the sectors. We said that the education and skills authority implementation team (ESAIT) has not been meeting with sectors.

544. Mr Stewart: Given the role that the organisations will have in liaising with, and perhaps occasionally challenging, ESAIT, it is very important that the sectoral support organisations are not funded from ESAIT. They will be funded by the Department, and that is to ensure that no conflict of interest in the relationships would exist.

545. The Chairperson: Let us draw a distinction here, in case there is a slight confusion. We are talking about the sectoral body, but the paper has talked about the establishment of a working group. Who has been tapped on the shoulder for that? That is; who is taking responsibility for it? There is nobody.

546. Mr Stewart: No one has yet been tapped on the shoulder.

547. Mr McGrath: It is in everyone’s interest that we make some progress on this affair — that is why the paper states that we would welcome the Committee’s views on it and on the proposals. We would like to provide some secretariat support for the process, with others taking the lead in identifying people who could become part of the working group. Time is pressing, and it will take some time to establish that working group, have some discussion, gel it together, create a constitution and articles of association for a new organisation, and do a business case. No one has been tapped on the shoulder.

548. I think that you would agree that having discussions with the TRC is a genuine, valid and appropriate action. However, when casting the net to include more than the usual suspects — if you will excuse the phrase — it would be important to capture the diversity of communities that are currently served by controlled schools. In a sense, we are open to any proposals, suggestions and ideas, and we are happy to proceed with that on a clean sheet of paper.

549. Miss McIlveen: I know that, ideally, you want between six and eight members. However, when you start to drill down to identify the number of interested bodies, you could end up with 30 or 50 people in the room.

550. Mr McGrath: We are looking for a core group that will proceed with the work. However, you are quite right — I envisage that that will mean lots of people in the room on different occasions reflecting different interests. We will need to be quite careful when establishing how that is eventually distilled down to a sector support group, which will be a legal entity but which will cover many different constituencies. However, that is not beyond the wit of man.

551. Miss McIlveen: Will the Department provide a secretariat for that group?

552. Mr Stewart: Yes, we will. The group will start off with six people; however, as John said, we always envisaged that rippling out to larger gatherings very quickly. As regards the size of the eventual governance arrangements for the body, your guess is probably as good as ours. It is likely to be larger than between six and eight people, to reflect what is a large and diverse sector. We will provide a secretariat to that working group.

553. Following on from the point that John O’Dowd made, we recognise that the Department will have to continue to do a bit of hand holding and assisting to that organisation as it comes into being and gets up to speed in order to ensure that it is not left behind by any of the other sectoral organisations. We would not have any difficulty with doing that.

554. Mr D Bradley: Will the Transferors’ Representative Council have a guaranteed place as representatives of that sector?

555. Mr Stewart: It is not for us to guarantee any particular membership of the body, but, before we would agree to fund it, we would be looking for evidence that the body is genuinely representative of the controlled sector. I would be very surprised if such a body did not include the TRC but, as we said earlier in response to the Chairperson’s questions, not only be the TRC would be there. We expect other very significant and important voices to be there as well.

556. Mr B McCrea: It is quite interesting; I have got my head around where we are now. As I understand it, the Department did not really want sectoral bodies at all, so it is now prepared to provide them with a very modest amount of funding but no statutory basis and no real input. Presumably they will wither on the vine fairly shortly?

557. Mr Stewart: I am not certain that you will ever hear me describe the policy in those terms. It is not that we do not want sectors, because we recognise the reality that sectors exist. The education system is pluralist, and schools of a particular character and ethos come together to recognise a common identity and ethos.

558. Mr B McCrea: Could a school be a member of more than one sectoral body?

559. Mr Stewart: Yes.

560. Mr B McCrea: The situation is fairly bizarre in that the situation with sectoral bodies will be similar to Prince becoming known as the Artist Formerly Known as Prince. Controlled schools will become schools formerly known as controlled.

561. Mr Stewart: We will aim to have a better descriptor for those schools in due course.

562. Mr B McCrea: I am sure that I can rely on the creativity of the Civil Service to come up with a better name.

563. Mr Stewart: It has failed to come up with a better name so far, but we welcome suggestions.

564. Mr Storey: Made in Britain?

565. Mr B McCrea: I can see commonality among schools that operate in inner cities. Could there be a sectoral body that represents inner-city schools?

566. Mr Stewart: The short answer is yes. As John said earlier, we envisage that sectors will evolve. If, at some point in the future, a proposal were to come forward from a group of schools with something in common, and those schools were to make a business case that demonstrated that that would add educational value, we would accept that proposal.

567. Mr McGrath: We are starting by providing resources that will be used to support sectors in the school system. If morphing were to take place and subsets were to emerge, we would not continue to put more money in to the existing sectors without assessing the division; you would not expect us to do anything different. For example, if we were to fund a controlled-sector sectoral body from the start and then an inner-city-school sectoral body emerged, we would revisit the funding. We do not want duplicate funding.

568. Mr B McCrea: I understand your point, and I agree with morphing. I contend that the existing sectoral bodies will effectively be made redundant. What is the difference between a grammar school and any other school in a non-selective education system? There is no difference. What is the difference between grammar schools and schools in the controlled sector? The only difference was with certain control matters, but those too will now be changed.

569. There will be no difference between grammar schools and controlled-sector schools, because they will have the same level of governance and there will be no selectivity. Therefore, those existing sectoral bodies will effectively be done away with. I appreciate that it might be useful for common interests to be brought together in a single body, and I envisage that morphing will take place.

570. The real challenge is with the tension between the Department and some sectoral bodies. The Department wants to devolve autonomy to schools, provided that the schools want it and that they work within certain policy guidelines. However, some sectoral bodies will want stronger control in order to influence the development of schools in the sectors that they represent.

571. Mr McGrath: There could be tension in some cases.

572. Mr Stewart: There could be some tension, but I do not think that the contrast is as stark as you describe. We have been talking to the various sectors about that matter for some time, as the RPA policy emerged and developed. There is a high degree of agreement between the Department and the sectors that the main focus of each sector is to foster and maintain the ethos, identity and character of the schools that it represents. However, issues such as: the curriculum; the detail of employment arrangements; the handling and stewardship of financial matters; and ensuring that there is commonality of best human resources practice are not sectoral matters. They are matters of front-line support to schools, and that is the domain of the ESA.

573. Mr B McCrea: As I said, it has been helpful to listen to you, and I understand what you are saying, but I think that there will be tension from the sector that is formally known as the Catholic maintained sector, which has a strong position. I know that you could not possibly comment, but I would imagine that you would prefer to see a reduction of influence. There will be a problem in relation to that. I am in favour of around 80% of what you have proposed.

574. Mr Stewart: That is probably the highest score that you have given us yet.

575. Mr B McCrea: The problem involves two key areas. The first is the question of who decides the policy. You have told me today what I already knew: the Minister of the day — or the Administration of the day, but probably the Minister — will decide the policy. I have already expressed concern about any multi-faceted education system that does not appear to be inclusive. I have a problem with ESA because of the control that will be exercised over that body.

576. Secondly, who decides the area plan? Presumably, that is based on the policy decisions that are taken by the same Minister. Although I understand all of the operational issues and all of the issues that you have mentioned, ESA is fundamentally flawed at the policy input stage at the top. This is a diverse society with different requirements, and that is not reflected in the overall structure.

577. I do not see why the TRC should not have its own sectoral body. I know that you have said that it should be included with the sector formally known as the controlled sector, but why should it not have its own sectoral body? The TRC has a common ethos, and the only mistake that it made was that it, rather stupidly, gave away its schools at one stage. I understand your view on the issue of the exchange; you have a clearer understanding of our objections to the course being taken. I accept that it is not in your gift to change that, but at least you know what the problem is.

578. Mr McGrath: ESA is a much more modern and appropriate vehicle to implement policies that are set down by Government. Your issue is how the policies are set down by Government.

579. Mr B McCrea: I have no absolutely no disagreement with you on that.

580. Mr McGrath: We are talking now about the policies of the day, but we must design a system that is capable of discharging the policies in the future, whether that is in 10 or 15 years from now.

581. Mr B McCrea: The Ulster Unionist Party has never been against a more streamlined, coherent and consistent educational administration system. If we felt that ESA would provide that, we would have welcomed it. However, we have fundamental problems with who controls the area planning and who controls policy, because, in the wrong hands, the efficient and effective system that you have introduced is actually a Trojan Horse, which will be used to further legitimise political positions, but not necessarily my position.

582. The Chairperson: We have dealt with that issue. We will now move on to the issue of ESA as a single employing authority, which is exercising the minds of a considerable number of people and has raised concern. Members have the Department’s briefing, in which the issue of employment arrangements is covered.

583. Mr Stewart: We have provided two papers, both of which cover the range of issues that you asked us to address. You asked for some more detail on the employment arrangements, particularly on the respective roles of the ESA and boards of governors. You also asked for information on the review that the Minister announced on teacher employment opportunities, and we have covered that in a separate related paper.

584. With your approval, Chairperson, I shall deal with the employment arrangements first, and then move on to the review. The paper on employment arrangements addresses two themes: the first is the respective roles of boards of governors and the ESA; and the second is the concerns that have been expressed to the Committee and to the Department by the Governing Bodies Association about those employment arrangements.

585. By way of background and context, the paper summarises some of the key features of the current employment arrangements. The points to emphasise there are that 86% of schools are already involved in some form of collective employment arrangements, but the remaining 14% of schools currently employ staff directly. The role of boards of governors at present varies greatly.

586. For example, in Catholic maintained schools, the boards of governors determine all teaching appointments. In the controlled sector, by contrast, some of the senior appointments are determined not by boards of governors, but by the teaching appointments committee of the relevant education and library board. Those variations are historical. They are not based on evidence of the contribution of that sort of arrangement to effective education.

587. With that in mind, our aim is to achieve greater consistency and equality across the education system, with all schools being given the opportunity to run their own day-to-day employment affairs on the basis of their desire and ability to do so, rather than of their history of ownership or of the sector in which they happen to find themselves.

588. Turning to the key features of the new arrangements, it is proposed that all staff in all grant-aided schools will be employed by the ESA. That means that formally, for the purposes of education and employment law, the ESA will be the employer, and all contracts of employment will be between the ESA and the staff. However, the role of the boards of governors, as we have said, is to take the day-to-day decisions on the running of their schools, including on employment matters. In practice, that means that the relationship between the ESA and boards of governors will one in which the boards act on behalf of the ESA and discharge employment functions that are delegated to them by the ESA.

589. Those delegation arrangements, and the detailed role of individual boards of governors, will be set out in the schemes of employment. The provisions that cover those issues are contained in clauses 3 to 12 of the Education Bill. It is proposed that those schemes will be drawn up by the schools and approved by the ESA. It is for the schools, not the ESA, to decide on the level of delegation. Clearly, some schools will want to carry out the full range of employment functions and leave only a minimal role for the ESA. However, other schools, equally legitimately, may decide that they wish to leave certain functions in the hands of the ESA. Once again, the key point is that that is a decision for the schools.

590. Our paper attempts to illustrate that in a little more detail by setting out the respective roles of boards of governors and the ESA in relation to several areas of functions. Those are: determining the staff complement of the school; recruiting staff; managing staff, including any necessary disciplinary action; dismissing staff; and managing redundancy.

591. Taking recruitment as an example, members will see that almost the entire process, from end to end, will be in the hands of the boards of governors. The role of the ESA will be one of providing support and advice, ratification of procedures and the formal action to put into effect the decision of a board of governors, which, of course, in relation to recruitment, simply means issuing the contract of employment.

592. Members may wish to ask, in such arrangements, how we will ensure that the ESA and boards of governors stick to their respective roles and that they each respect the role of the other. The answer is that clear legal duties will be placed on both, which are covered in clause 8(1) and 8(2) of the Bill. The boards of governors will be under a legal duty to comply with their own procedures, and the ESA will be under a legal duty to give effect to decisions that are made by boards of governors.

593. The ESA will not be allowed to unreasonably interfere in the day-to-day affairs of schools. Its ratification role will be limited to ensuring that the correct procedures have been followed and that a decision of a board of governors is not manifestly unreasonable. If the ESA were to feel that something had been handled incorrectly, it would be able to refer a matter back to a board of governors to be revisited. However, there is no question of the ESA second-guessing a decision or substituting its own decision for that of a board of governors. In summary, the ESA will not lawfully be able to refuse to put into effect any proper decision of a board of governors.

594. The paper also attempts to anticipate some of the questions that Committee members may have. The first of those is that if the ESA is formally the employer in law, could it initiate action without waiting for a board of governors? The answer to that is yes, but only in very serious and extreme circumstances. Those functions will be delegated to a board of governors. Therefore, it will not be for the ESA to initiate action unless a board of governors cannot, or will not, discharge its responsibilities.

595. The second key question is where the legal liability for employment matters might rest if something were to go wrong. That question is normally put to me as “who gets sued?", and the answer is potentially everybody. If a complaint were made to a court or tribunal about an employment matter, those proceedings would be likely to include any body that has played a part in the matter that is the subject of the complaint. Therefore, in practice, if something were to go wrong, both the board of governors and the ESA would be likely to be involved in legal proceedings.

596. That is no different to the current collective employment arrangements, and it would not change the fact that liability for actions on boards of governors is collective; it is on the board of governors as an entity and not on individual governors.

597. That is a summary of the arrangements that the Department has proposed in the legislation. I can either pause at this point or move on to the concerns of the GBA.

598. The Chairperson: I think that we should deal with those concerns, because they are all related. Will you deal with those issues now? Members can then raise any questions that they might have.

599. Mr Stewart: The GBA, in commenting on those arrangements, has proposed two counter-arguments to the Department. First, it said that the arrangements would, in fact, constitute a loss of autonomy for the schools that it represents, and, secondly, it said that the arrangements would dilute or interfere with the important voluntary principle that exists in those schools.

600. On the issue of autonomy, the Department recognises that there is a genuine sense of loss on the part of the GBA. However, we question whether there is any real or practical loss of autonomy. That is because the boards of governors of those schools will remain responsible for the exercise of employment functions for those schools, and they will take employment decisions that the ESA will be under a legal duty to effect. As stated, the aim of the Department is not to reduce autonomy in employment matters, but to ensure that it is available to all schools on the basis of equality, rather than to some schools on the basis of historical differences in ownership.

601. In relation to the voluntary principle as described and set out by the GBA, the Department recognises that the voluntary principle embodies many good features. However, it is not convinced that those are unique to any one sector or type of school, or that it is incompatible with the employment arrangements that we propose.

602. To begin with, the term “voluntary school" is very broad. It includes schools that are employers in their own right — the voluntary grammar schools — and those that are part of collective employment arrangements, such as Catholic maintained schools. All of those are voluntary schools in law. All grant-aided schools have governors who discharge important and significant responsibilities in a voluntary capacity and all grant-aided schools, including voluntary grammar schools, are funded by the public purse to deliver a public service. They all do so on the basis of significant voluntary input from parents and communities.

603. Undoubtedly, many voluntary grammar schools are extremely successful, but the Department does not view that success as being limited to that sector, or, indeed, to any sector or school type. The most successful schools in any sector tend to be those that embody the voluntary principle; that is those that have a strong sense of belonging and being accountable to the pupils, the parents and the communities that they serve. The Department values the voluntary principle, but we do not accept that any strong case has been made for any particular group of grant-aided schools to have separate employment arrangements.

604. The Chairperson: Thank you. Obviously, that issue continues to be of concern. We want to reach a point where locally delegated autonomy is the reality, and, rather than its being a loss to some schools and a gain to others, every school will gain and will have the sense that they can make decisions. However, there is fear and concern that, somewhere among all of that, the voluntary principle and the schools that have exercised it will have a deficit, although other schools will consider it to be a great opportunity.

605. To return to the earlier discussion on equity and ensuring that everyone is treated fairly, one matter on which the Committee wants to be absolutely clear and sure is that delegated responsibility does what it says on the tin. We want to ensure that that is what schools get and that the way that they govern themselves will not be hampered or restricted.

606. Mr McGrath: Those are fair points. We do not want to do anything else. The general mood music that we are creating is about promoting autonomy for all schools. The extent to which they want to use it — for back up, and so on — is for them to decide. That is quite appropriate. We do not want to constrain any school.

607. The issues around the employing authority will, in fact, bring little difference for voluntary grammar schools. As Chris explained articulately, no particular sector has or should have a monopoly on voluntarism. In a sense, that is what we aim to promote. Earlier, you made an analogy about controlled grammar schools. There is no reason why a controlled grammar school should not aspire to the same status and want to be in the same area of the pitch as a voluntary grammar school. We are trying to reach a point where all schools can aspire to that standard. Therefore, it aims to bring standards level, not widen them.

608. Mr Stewart: We recognise the concerns that you have expressed. They have been put to us by the GBA. That is why we have attempted in the legislation to build in safeguards and to go as far as possible towards dealing with those concerns. That is the reason for those admittedly complex and somewhat unusual arrangements. The key is that the level of delegation and the role of the board of governors are in schools’ hands, not in ESA’s hands, in order to guard against the danger of undue interference by ESA. We are aware that that issue concerns our colleagues in the voluntary grammar sector.

609. It has also been recognised that, in developing those arrangements, a one-size-fits-all approach will not do. There will be schools, perhaps, in any sector, that will want to take on the maximum level of delegation and assume all of those functions. However, equally, there may be schools in any sector — particularly smaller ones — that might want to leave much of that in ESA’s hands. It will suit them simply to get on with the delivery of teaching and learning. That is an equally legitimate choice. Importantly, it is the choice of the school, not of ESA.

610. Mr O’Dowd: Some schools in the voluntary sector take me to the fair when they talk about their autonomy and their right to be voluntary. Although they want to spend tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money, they do not want taxpayers’ representatives anywhere next or near them.

611. It has been the case previously in, for instance, the Catholic sector that a board of governors has set up an interview panel and gone through the paperwork. Does the CCMS ensure that the panel has been set up correctly and that the paperwork has been submitted? Does it ensure that all legal requirements have been fulfilled?

612. Mr Stewart: Yes.

613. Mr O’Dowd: Therefore, now that CCMS is going, will it be ESA’s function — if a board of governors decides — to ensure that the legalities of the interview panel, and so on, have been fulfilled?

614. Mr McGrath: As we said earlier, ESA would provide human resources support locally in order to help, for instance, to frame job descriptions, and, perhaps, to sit in interview rooms to ensure that due process is carried out. That is normal procedure in any public-sector body.

615. Mr Stewart: It is very much the call of the board of governors. If it happens to have among its members a human resources professional or someone from that background, it may need little help and support to operate recruitment procedures.

616. On the other hand, if it does not, it may decide that they want an HR professional from the ESA to sit with them at every stage of the process to ensure that they get it right. That is done as required and at the behest of the school.

617. Mr O’Dowd: Therefore the skills and knowledge base in a board of governors determines how much support it requires from the ESA. Given the nature of employment law, boards of governors would need to be on a pretty sure footing.

618. Mr McGrath: You are right — boards of governors will want to protect themselves. To be really sure, a board of governors would have to include a practitioner as opposed to someone who dabbled; however, it is the decision of individual boards of governors. The law of the land outlines requirements on fair employment, and every organisation wants to get its system right first time rather than have to be corrected.

619. Mr Stewart: That would be prudent. I have never been a school governor, but I have been a director of personnel. If I were a school governor, I would want an HR professional from the ESA beside me all the way.

620. Mr Poots: John’s initial comments explain a great deal. Given that he has been taken to the fair quite often, and CCMS has adopted the policy that he talked about for many years, it is no surprise that he is so critical of the voluntary sector.

621. When schools appoint head teachers, they must send three names to the education and library boards after they have completed their processes. Is that nonsense going to end? Often, a school identifies the best candidate and has to take part in a lottery and hope that the education and library board chooses the same person.

622. Mr McGrath: That will end. You are correct — that situation is complete nonsense.

623. Mr Stewart: Schools will send one name, and the ESA will issue the contract to that person.

624. Mr B McCrea: It strikes me that your issue is with the GBA because you have to reassure it that you will not take away its autonomy. If you can sort that out, the basic principles are fine.

625. Mr McGrath: We think so. In discussions about resources we have spoken about funding for classroom assistants in voluntary, grammar and grant-maintained integrated schools, because the pay award was for education and library boards, but it has not applied to those schools. The Minister has adopted the principle that those assistants are doing the same work as their counterparts in education and library board schools and, morally, should be paid the same rate. That almost reflects the spirit of a single employing authority and a single set of terms and conditions. If the GBA wanted to be different, one could argue that it should stay in a position where it pays its own rates. Therefore there is a contradiction between the arguments being put in the Committee for the workforce and the view that a different employing authority outside the system would lead to different terms and conditions. Otherwise what would be the point?

626. Mr B McCrea: The point is the perceived loss of autonomy. There is nothing more central to the ethos of a body than the staff that it recruits. We acknowledge where the problem lies, and we need to find a resolution.

627. John made sweeping statements about grammar schools —

628. Mr O’Dowd: I commented on some schools in the voluntary sector.

629. Mr B McCrea: We want schools to have governors who reflect their communities and who can select staff who are in keeping with the ethos of a school. That is one of the great strengths of the system that we want to maintain.

630. Mr O’Dowd: We want boards of governors to appoint staff who are qualified for the job and who passed an interview.

631. Mr B McCrea: There was a debate some time ago about whether we need to return to first principles. Do I need to premise my remarks with a statement that I support the Union?

632. The Chairperson: I remind Committee members that the meeting is being recorded by Hansard.

633. Mr B McCrea: I am trying to make the point that I am interested in identifying the areas in which we can move forward and those in which we cannot.

634. I support the general principle of helping schools to select teachers that they believe are in keeping with their ethos and of relieving them of the inconsistencies and burdens of associated legal matters. However, I am concerned that that principle could be perceived as a Trojan horse to allow the Administration of the day to dictate to schools whom they should employ or what they should do. We understand the issue and we must find a way of resolving it.

635. Mr McGrath: You said that there is a genuine perception that there has been a reduction in autonomy. As long as they stick to the general parameters of the law of the land and to their management scheme, there should be no less autonomy for a voluntary grammar school in appointing staff. As with all such matters, the difference between perception and reality is critical.

636. Mr B McCrea: John, I am in danger of being far too reasonable, but I agree with you.

637. Mr McGrath: Thank you. We should quit while we are ahead.

638. The Chairperson: Clause 8(3), “Effect of employment scheme", states:

“Where ESA is of the opinion that a decision of the Board of Governors on any matter which falls to be taken in accordance with such a scheme was taken otherwise than in accordance with the scheme,"

— And this is the important part:

“ESA may require the Board of Governors to reconsider that matter."

639. However, paragraph 11 of our briefing paper states that the ESA cannot lawfully refuse to put into effect any proper decision of a board of governors. Can you explain that contradiction?

640. Mr Stewart: There is no contradiction.

641. The Chairperson: It is good Civil Service speak.

642. Mr Stewart: It is a precise use of language.

643. Mr McGrath: It means that if the ESA has reason to believe, or there is evidence, that a decision has not been taken properly, it would have a duty to intervene. For example, if there was evidence of partiality or if something did not stack up, it would be appropriate for the ESA to intervene; that is entirely consistent with the provisions of the Bill and what is in the briefing paper. If proper decisions are taken in a proper manner, they will not be subject to second-guessing by the ESA.

644. Mr Stewart: Even if a board of governors were not to act properly, the ESA’s power to intervene is limited to asking it to repeat the process.

645. Mr D Bradley: On 2 May 2008, the Governing Bodies Association told the Committee that the freedom of individual schools to make local-level decisions in the interests of children will be severely constrained by the vast powers that are proposed for the ESA.

646. In addition, the association outlined four basic principles: voluntary schools’ ownership of buildings and properties; the right of boards of governors to govern schools; their right to employ and dismiss staff; their right to procure materials and equipment deemed necessary for the running of a school; and the right to determine a school’s ethos, character and activities.

647. Recently, the Committee received further correspondence from the GBA; it is still not convinced that the ESA will be a benign force in the operation of its schools. Therefore it appears that the Department of Education has yet to convince the GBA of the ESA’s benefits to its members or in general. What is your response to the points made by the GBA on 2 May 2008 and to its concerns?

648. Mr Stewart: Taking the GBA’s points seriatim, school ownership — the most straightforward one to deal with — will not change in any way. You are right that we have yet to convince its members that the arrangements will maintain boards of governors’ right to make decisions concerning the employment and dismissal of staff and everything in between. The ESA’s role will be to ratify proceedings and to do the paperwork. Forgive me, but I have forgotten the other two points.

649. Mr D Bradley: The procurement of equipment and materials necessary for the proper running of schools.

650. Mr Stewart: Procurement procedures will not change in response to the review of public administration; they will change in response to the requirements of public-procurement law, which is largely driven by EU legislation.

651. Nothing in the RPA will change that. Voluntary grammar schools will not be affected, and they will not be subject to any changes in procurement that any other publicly funded authority that delivers a public service will not also experience.

652. Mr D Bradley: My other point concerned a school’s right to determine its ethos, character and activities.

653. Mr Stewart: We have tried to ensure that ethos is properly reflected by building it into the arrangements concerning the role of the submitting authority and through the proposal that schools be responsible for developing schemes of employment and schemes of management. You are correct that we have not convinced schools. Perhaps our next move to attempt to convince them will be to say that we recognise that the GBA will want to see the detailed guidance on those schemes and what the model of the schemes might look like.

654. Perhaps the GBA could offer its suggestions for a model scheme to the Department. We would find it helpful if the GBA were to set down what it would expect from a scheme and the sorts of the protections that it would wish to underpin the role of its boards of governors. We are more than happy to continue to work with the GBA, as we are with any sector or group of schools, to ensure that we can put in place the safeguards for ethos, identity and character that it wants.

655. Mr D Bradley: The GBA also said that about 62% of the general education budget in Northern Ireland finds its way into schools whereas 80% of the education budget in England reaches schools. The GBA is of the view that it is unlikely that the establishment of the ESA will increase that figure to anywhere near the figure for England and Wales.

656. Mr McGrath: I am not sure that we agree with the figures of 62% and 80%; it depends on the currency that is used. More than 62% of the education budget is spent in the classroom, although the route by which it gets to the classroom is, in some cases, a bit more confusing. The ESA was aimed at making savings in administration, and, already, £20 million will be saved, predicated on the outline business case. We see that the ESA will make further savings, so there is a direct contradiction between the GBA’s view and the Department’s. Those savings are happening, because £20 million is predicated on the outline business case, and the budget settlement envisages that already.

657. Mr Stewart: The curriculum advice and support (CAS) service, for example, is staffed by capable and dedicated individuals who work extremely hard; nevertheless, some schools say that it does not deliver the services that they want. The CAS budget is between £30 million and £40 million a year. That is money that, at least in part, we need to move from the ESA into schools or into groups of schools.

658. In future, instead of CAS offering its services whether they are needed or not, scope must be left for schools, groups of schools or learning communities to come together to ask for some of that money to procure or deliver those services themselves. Schools or groups of schools may fund and take forward their professional development in a way that is specifically tailored to the needs at the point of development that those schools have reached. Instead of CAS being a one-size-fits-all service, a move could be made to a model in which schools commission, first and foremost, from the ESA but procure and provide professional development services themselves.

659. Mr D Bradley: The GBA might argue that the best that the ESA can offer is maximum supported autonomy. The GBA might say that since schools have that already, the ESA offers no advantage. It may ask why it should give up some of its functions when it does not gain anything from the ESA.

660. Mr Stewart: From time to time, the GBA articulates its argument in that way. The GBA does not always recognise that although it represents institutions that are privately owned, they are publicly funded and deliver a public service. When many of those institutions came into being — in some cases, hundreds of years ago — they were private institutions that delivered a private service. That is no longer the case, and they must recognise the need for equality and consistency across the delivery of the public education service.

661. Mr D Bradley: The GBA would argue that the Department has the right to send the Education and Training Inspectorate (ETI) into any of its schools at any time to carry out a full inspection. It would argue, therefore, that its schools are accountable to the Department and to the public.

662. Mr Stewart: They are accountable and amenable to ETI inspection, but there are other dimensions of accountability. They are accountable to staff across the education system; we are all accountable to staff and have a duty to staff to ensure equality, consistency and commonality of best practice in employment.

663. Mr D Bradley: Is there evidence that that is not the case at present in voluntary grammar schools?

664. Mr Stewart: There is some evidence of a lack of consistency and of an information deficit. Neither the Department nor the ESA, when it comes into being, could reassure the Committee that there is consistency because of the fragmented arrangements that we have.

665. Mr D Bradley: Are the discrepancies in equality not being addressed? Does the Department not have a right to ask voluntary grammar schools to address those discrepancies?

666. Mr Stewart: We have a right to ask them to address discrepancies, but we feel that there is a systematic issue that needs to be addressed. We need to move to effective, consistent, single-employer arrangements rather than those that obtain at present. That would be the best safeguard and the best means of addressing those issues.

667. Mr D Bradley: Are you saying that there is a lack of consistency in the arrangements for employment in voluntary schools and that that is leading to inequality for staff?

668. Mr Stewart: We have anecdotal evidence of an inconsistency of approach across education. We do not have enough information, so I cannot give you figures. I cannot give you specific examples because the current arrangements are not amenable to our having sufficient information even to know whether we have, or are moving towards, greater consistency or equality.

669. Mr D Bradley: Have you no means of getting that information?

670. Mr Stewart: Not at present.

671. Mr Lunn: Paragraph 13 deals with legal liabilities for employment matters. There seems to be some change in who is responsible or against whom action might be taken. I have read the paragraph half a dozen times and cannot get my head round it. Does it say that at the moment individual governors cannot be sued or that under the new arrangements they could not be sued individually?

672. Mr Stewart: Both; the position will not change. The liability for governors in employment matters is collective not individual. Therefore, if the decision of a board of governors is wrong according to employment law, the board of governors as an entity must answer for it. Any penalty is applied to the board of governors.

673. Mr Lunn: Therefore neither now nor in the future can individual governors be liable.

674. Mr Stewart: That is extremely important. We recognise that school governors undertake at present and in future very important tasks on a voluntary basis. From time to time, members have expressed concern about the supply of suitable, qualified people to serve as governors, and it is important that they are not put off by a fear of being individually liable for the consequences of actions that they might take in good faith as a member of a board of governors.

675. Mr B McCrea: I want to return to your response to one of Dominic’s questions. It is significant that the GBA and the schools think that they are doing pretty well under the present system, yet you are asking them to give up something for nothing. Your response was that they are publicly funded bodies and that they will just have to get used to it. That is an unhelpful approach. It is important that you win over people and convince them that there is benefit in what you are doing. My party’s opposition stems from our belief that although your words may be sweet, your attitude may alter once change has been implemented. If you allow that belief to develop, you will have a very difficult job. It is important that we find commonality and address legitimate concerns.

676. Mr Stewart: That is a fair point. In attempting to set out our position candidly, I would not want to give you the impression that we simply set our faces against the GBA and that we would not continue to engage with it to convince it of the benefits of the proposed changes. We will try to build in additional safeguards if they are required to deal with the GBA’s concerns.

677. I contend that we have already done so to a great degree. The employment arrangements that we have proposed are unusual, to say the least, which reflects the fact that we have gone a considerable distance in building in safeguards. That has resulted in a complex model and complex arrangements, but that is legitimate because of the points that the GBA has raised.

678. Mr O’Dowd: In general, Basil’s points are fair enough, but there is also an onus on the GBA to approach the matter with an open mind and not from an entrenched point of view of not wishing to be convinced. If there are genuine concerns — and I assume that there are — they must be responded to. If the GBA can develop a scheme or draft guidance of which the Department can take heed, that would be a very good, open proposal. However, there is an onus on both sides to approach the matter open-mindedly.

679. Mr B McCrea: Would you permit a response?

680. The Chairperson: Yes, briefly.

681. Mr B McCrea: Many voluntary schools will consider the effectiveness with which they run their schools and educational affairs and compare it to what they see happen in other Government-led bodies. The voluntary schools will conclude that it is they who have adopted good practice, not the other way round.

682. I will make my next comment through the Chairperson: I am not sure that people really listen to the concerns that are raised here or whether they simply bat them back and forward. I have heard some legitimate concerns that I am trying to articulate, and I am sure that any reasonable person would be prepared to listen to arguments. I cannot speak for the GBA, but I am sure that if it was reassured and if we examined matters, it would respond in the right way. The danger is, John, that people sometimes do not get to the nub of a concern and therefore focus on other issues. If reasonable proposals come forward, it behoves everybody — the GBA included — to listen attentively to them and accept them.

683. Mr Lunn: I think that there is a word missing in paragraph 14, page 61, and that is causing confusion. It says that “this does alter the position", whereas I think that it should read that it does not alter it.

684. Mr Stewart: You are quite right.

685. The Chairperson: Well spotted, Trevor. You win the prize today.

686. Mr Stewart: A very important “not" is missing.

687. Mr D Bradley: I want to follow up on a point that you made earlier that there was unequal treatment of staff in voluntary grammar schools. That is a serious allegation, which, you say, the Department has no powers to investigate. Can you give examples of that inequality?

688. Mr Stewart: To be fair, I said that there was anecdotal evidence that there is an inconsistency of approach, but I would not go so far as to say that there is unequal treatment of staff. That would be a very serious allegation indeed.

689. Mr D Bradley: I thought that you mentioned inequality.

690. Mr Stewart: I think that I said that there is an inconsistency of approach that could give rise to inequality.

691. Mr D Bradley: That was not my understanding of what you said.

692. Mr Stewart: I am grateful for the opportunity to clarify.

693. Mr D Bradley: We can check the Hansard report in any case.

694. The Chairperson: Earlier, you said that the GBA could, if it wanted, propose recommendations or suggestions regarding the employment schemes. However, the briefing paper says that detailed guidance on model schemes will be developed in the coming months and will be made available to us. Is there still time for that to happen and for an exchange of views on schemes? Is that work ongoing?

695. Mr McGrath: Yes, it is ongoing, but it is not set in concrete. The guidance on a model scheme might suggest what its key components might be, but one would still have to decide what the model scheme would be. Nothing is precluded.

696. There is still scope for iteration and dialogue. Further to Basil’s helpful points, we have to address the real problems and the existing perceptions.

697. Education has a significant workforce that requires strategic planning, but that is not available to date. A single employing authority will address that shortfall by, for instance, balancing recruitment and supply and demand. One way in which the Minister wants to raise standards is to improve the quality of teaching. That will require strategic drivers for all the workforces that are involved, and that could be planned.

698. It is critical not to miss the strategic dimension when dealing with the issues at local employment level. Workforce planning, establishing a balance between what teachers and classroom assistants do and deciding whether there is scope to change the barriers or adopt new approaches need to be addressed strategically. If actions are to be taken on those issues, everyone must move at the one time. It is important to keep that dimension. That is one of the pluses of the single employer system, and it needs to be fed into the equation.

699. Mr Stewart: The door will not close on employment schemes. Model schemes will be produced, but schools will not be obliged to take them. They can take them off the peg and adopt or adapt them or they can come up with their own schemes — if they wish — provided that they are in accordance with the policy.

700. The Chairperson: Chris, you can speak on the opportunities for teaching staff and the review.

701. Mr Stewart: I will be as brief as I can, as I am conscious of the pressure on your time. On several occasions, members expressed concern about the exemption of teacher recruitment from the provisions of the Fair Employment and Treatment (Northern Ireland) Order 1998 and about the related issue of the requirement to possess a certificate in religious studies as an eligibility criterion for some posts in Catholic schools.

702. It is worth emphasising two important points. Any changes to the Fair Employment and Treatment (Northern Ireland) Order 1998 will be a matter for OFMDFM to consider. Before any decisions are taken on that matter, the Minister of Education has said that there should be a thorough public consultation and that the matter should be considered by the Executive and advice sought from the Equality Commission.

703. It is also worth reminding members that even if that exemption were removed and if teacher recruitment were brought fully within the parameters of the Fair Employment and Treatment (Northern Ireland) Order 1998, it is likely that the requirement to possess a certificate could continue to be lawfully applied in relation to some posts where it is a genuine occupational requirement of the post.

704. Nevertheless, the Minister has recognised — and takes seriously — the concern expressed by members about the potential for inequality. Therefore she has decided that there will be a review of teaching opportunities for teaching staff, for which the terms of reference have been suggested, and we welcome the Committee’s views on them. They are set out in the paper. Departmental officials will forecast the number of teaching vacancies that are likely to arise over the next three years. They should be analysed by school-type and sector so that we have good, reliable and robust information about the future.

705. Officials will also have to estimate the proportion of those vacancies for which a certificate in religious studies is likely to be an eligibility criterion and identify the routes by which teachers might obtain a certificate — either as part of their teacher education or subsequently. Furthermore, officials will identify any barriers to obtaining a certificate that could give rise to inequality and make recommendations, as appropriate, on measures to promote equality of opportunities for teachers.

706. Members will see that the approach suggested and the terms of reference take as their starting point the recognition of the reality that the requirement for certificates is likely to continue, at least for some posts. Therefore we feel that the best way to address the Committee’s concerns is to examine and ensure that there are no barriers to any teacher obtaining the necessary certificate if they wish and, therefore, being eligible to apply and take up a post in any school.

707. On completion of the review, the Minister will advise the Committee of the outcome.

708. The Chairperson: Are we back to the same argument that we discussed earlier? This is not about the potential for inequality; it is about an inequality that has to be addressed. It is not about removing barriers to obtaining the certificate — nobody is saying that anyone is ineligible to obtain a certificate. It is the use of that certificate, in the generic sense, that could be used to discriminate against people of a different religion who do not have it. For instance, the certificate in religious studies is not specific to anyone who wants to teach geography or mathematics.

709. An argument could be made that the certificate is necessary for the teaching of religious education, which is a sensitive issue. You referred to the Minister talking about the potential for inequality, but the problem is not the potential for inequality; it is about addressing an existing inequality.

710. Mr Stewart: Before we draw any firm conclusions on that, we would like to have much better information to present to the Committee about which posts have such a requirement attached to them, because we simply do not have definitive information. I am sure that, as part of the review, the Committee expects us to present a clear picture of where that requirement is, or might be, applied.

711. Mr McCausland: We are told that the certificate is a requirement for some teaching posts in Catholic schools. My understanding is that it is also a requirement for some posts in integrated schools, where children are being prepared for first communion. Why is that not included in the briefing paper?

712. Mr Stewart: That is an omission that I am happy to correct.

713. Mr McCaulsand: People have come to my office and told me that they had been unable to apply for teaching posts in integrated schools. Of all the things, it seems most bizarre that they were excluded from an integrated school.

714. I notice that the review will take a year. In the meantime, is it possible for you to supply the Committee with some simple, easily accessible information? For example, information on how the certificates are obtained — the teacher who came to me was able to explain that in about five minutes. We would also appreciate information from CCMS, for example, regarding its estimate of the percentage of teaching posts in Roman Catholic schools for which the certificate is required.

715. Mr Stewart: We should be able to bring that information to the Committee very soon and will not dither in doing so. In relation to the routes for obtaining a certificate, I understand that student teachers at Stranmillis can obtain a certificate by distance learning, which is provided, I believe, by Glasgow University. However, it seems that there is a route for teachers in initial teacher education going through Stranmillis.

716. However, it is not clear whether an already qualified and practicing teacher who, for whatever reason, did not obtain a certificate, has an easy and straightforward route to getting one now. If that is not the case, there would be a barrier for qualified and practicing teachers, and we must consider how that barrier might be overcome.

717. Mr McCausland: I was led to understand that the distance-learning route was not as simple as might first appear.

718. Mr Stewart: That is why, rather than offering the Committee a bland reassurance that a route exists, we want to get detailed information about how that opportunity is provided, how is it funded, to whom it is available, and whether it is a real opportunity or whether it merely appears to be one. We must discover whether a barrier exists.

719. There is information that we can get to the Committee quickly. We recognise the seriousness of your concern and that is why we want to get to the bottom of the issue.

720. Mr McCausland: It would be useful to have that information soon rather than wait to the end of the year.

721. Mr Stewart: I do not envisage the review taking a year — the paper says that it would be complete before 1 January 2010, but we expect it to be completed long before then.

722. Mr McCausland: Will the information that we request be available within a couple of weeks?

723. Mr Stewart: Yes.

724. Mr B McCrea: Has the Minister agreed that there will be a significant change on this matter? Whereas a certificate was once required for a wide range of posts, it will now be required only for posts for which it is relevant.

725. Mr Stewart: I do not think that that is in the Minister’s power to agree. While teacher recruitment remains outside the Fair Employment and Treatment (Northern Ireland) Order 1998, that requirement can be applied in — if I may use the phrase — a blanket fashion. If the exemption were removed and teacher recruitment brought under the 1998 Order , it would be incumbent on individual schools to justify the need for such a requirement in relation to every post to which they wish to apply it as an eligibility criterion.

726. I do not think that we can say how much difference that would make without researching where the requirement applies and where it might apply in future.

727. Mr B McCrea: We have spoken anecdotally. There is potential for structural inequality in the requirement to have a certificate in religious education, even if it does not relate directly to a subject.

728. Mr Stewart: In order for there to be a structural inequality, two conditions would have to obtain: one, that the requirement was being applied in the way that you have described; and two, that a group of teachers was denied the opportunity to meet that requirement. We do not look at either/or of those things; we look at them both. We need to provide the Committee with information on how and where the requirement is applied and how and where teachers can satisfy it.

729. Mr B McCrea: I agree with your analysis that both conditions must be met. From what I have gathered, is the Minister’s position that if that was found to be the case, it would not be acceptable and a way would have to be found of dealing with it?

730. Mr Stewart: I think that that is a reasonable description. I do not think that we would have agreed to such a review were not a clear intention to remedy any deficiencies or problems that it uncovered.

731. The Chairperson: That brings us to a conclusion of our discussion. I thank Chris, John and Joe for their attendance.

732. Mr B McCrea: Chairman, do you not think that Joe gets a very easy ride?

733. Mr Stewart: He does not; he works me by remote control.

734. Mr Joe Reynolds (Department of Education): A swan only glides because of what happens under the surface.

735. The Chairperson: I would like to deal the motion to extend. Members will remember that the 30 days’ referral stage of the Bill to the Committee that began on 8 December 2008 ends on 15 February 2009. Therefore the Committee must agree an end date for the Committee Stage today so that the Bill can go as a Committee motion for debate in the Assembly on 2 February or 3 February. The end date for Committee Stage is the last date that the Committee must report to the Assembly on its scrutiny of the Bill.

736. I remind members that the Committee sought a single-Bill approach. We have the unique situation of having two Bills as part of one legislative programme. As the Committee heard from officials on 10 December, they must earn the Committee’s confidence on the first Bill and on the development of the second Bill, which will not be introduced into the Assembly until just before the summer recess.

737. I also remind members that when I raised with senior officials the need to have the first Bill on the statute books by the summer recess, it was recognised that that date was an aim and that it is a matter for the Committee to decide. This is a significant and complex Bill to be enacted by the summer recess. In light of that, I propose that we extend Consideration Stage until Wednesday 30 September.

738. The Committee would does not wish to delay the Bill unduly — I reiterate what I said in the Hansard report of 10 December 2008 — this is not a delaying tactic. We will continue to work. Over the past weeks we have seen the magnitude of what is before us, but we must ensure that we have allayed all the concerns that have been expressed and that the integrity of the Committee — as its legislative requirements are to scrutinise a Bill — is maintained and upheld.

739. Therefore I make that proposal. Is everyone content?

740. Mr O’Dowd: In effect, by delaying Committee Stage until September — whatever the Committee’s intention may be — the Bill will be delayed. Are you suggesting that the Committee’s approach is to have one Bill?

741. The Chairperson: The Committee has expressed a concern. It would have preferred one Bill, although there will be two; but we have not seen the second Bill. However, the Department has given a commitment that it will present us with that information. I am reiterating the Committee’s concern about having two Bills. I am not saying that we must have one Bill; we are on course for two Bills.

742. Mr O’Dowd: I appreciate that clarification. Given the many months — if not years — of discussions on the Education Bill, we feel that there is no need for a lengthy extension, such as the Chairperson has proposed, and we are concerned that an extension to September will cause delay. If the Committee were to set itself a course of all-day meetings instead of half-day meetings — which many other Committees have to do when scrutinising Bills — it could complete its legislative scrutiny much sooner than September.

743. The Chairperson: That is not precluded by a date of the end of September.

744. Mr D Bradley: Extending to the end of September — all things being well — would not preclude the establishment of the ESA by January 2010.

745. The Chairperson: It would not. If we did what was recorded in the Hansard report of 10 December, that would not be the case. I refer members to Chris Stewart’s comments of 10 December.

746. Mr D Bradley: Getting the work done before that will entail close co-operation between the Department and the Committee; papers would have to arrive with us in good time to be considered.

747. The Chairperson: Yes.

748. Mr Lunn: Two aspects are involved: one is that we carry out a proper scrutiny of the Bill; the other is that we get a chance to see the second Bill before we agree the first one. I do not know how long it takes to scrutinise a Bill — this will be the first Bill that I have ever scrutinised. We received a copy of the first Bill in draft form in June 2008, and we did not see the final Bill until December 2008. I wonder when we will see a draft of the second Bill, never mind the final Bill. That could have a significant effect on our thinking and how long scrutiny will take. From now until the end of September seems a long time to scrutinise a Bill. If there were no second Bill, how long would it take us to scrutinise a Bill? Would it take nine months? I doubt it.

749. The Chairperson: The Committee for Health, Social Services and Public Safety took five months to scrutinise a Bill.

750. Mr McGrath: It is the Department’s intention to have a draft Bill available as soon as possible. John wrote to say that you want us to talk about area-based planning and the ownership of the controlled estate. There will be a dialogue about components of the Bill and we will paint a picture of the issues in a matter of weeks, so there will be early transparency about the provisions envisaged in the Bill and how they will work. That is what the Committee wants to know. That work will start soon.

751. The legislative timetable for getting the Bill on the books must be taken into account. There is also the operational timetable, involving issues such as the appointment of staff, which could not be delayed too late in the year.

752. As Dominic said, if there were to be prolonged scrutiny, some of the preparatory work, such as appointing a chairperson, establishing structures and creating second-tier posts should commence over the summer. Otherwise, although the ESA could legally come into existence on 1 January it would be unable to operate.

753. Mr McCausland: Our choice of date is prudent. The onus is on the Department to respond promptly. The quicker the Department provides information, the sooner we will achieve our goals. The Committee is not in control of that matter.

754. Mr B McCrea: It is a complex situation. The Education Bill, unlike the Health and Social Care (Reform) Bill, is particularly contentious, and there are strong views on its provisions. Today’s session was helpful in identifying issues. If issues such as area-based planning can be resolved to our satisfaction, it is more likely that the Bill will receive a proper passage in the Chamber. We should not underestimate the difficulties, and therefore we need as much time as possible to hear other bodies’ opinions because folk need reassurances. The sooner we complete that process, the sooner we can finalise a report.

755. I have stated the Ulster Unionist Party position, which Michelle McIlveen usually refers to as a party-political speech. We oppose the Bill because we fear that unidentified issues might arise; however, if those issues are resolved, progress can be made. A process of engagement provides the best way forward. Therefore we support the Chairperson’s proposal.

756. The Chairperson: I want to clarify the position. Issues of area planning and the controlled estate are not included in the first Bill but are in the second Bill; they are tabled for 4 and 11 February. As John McGrath said, I included those issues in the work programme to ensure that the Committee will have commenced that dialogue before 20 February, which is the closing date for consultations on the first Bill.

757. As Chairperson, I want to ensure that the necessary preparatory work and the scrutiny of the provisions of the second Bill are not delayed until an unknown end date and that the Committee examines the two Bills coherently and holistically. That provides a safeguard. It is not a signal to the Department or anybody else that we intend to drag our feet. The Committee will work hard to address the issues, raise concerns and achieve resolutions. It will be useful if the spirit shown in the past two weeks continues. Do members agree with my proposal?

758. Mr O’Dowd: No. Sinn Féin counter-proposes 1 June as the date for extension.

759. Mrs O’Neill: John O’Dowd’s suggestion demonstrates an intention to extend to 1 June; however, there is nothing to preclude the Committee from asking for a further extension at that stage.

760. Mr McCausland: It is not possible to ask for a second extension.

761. The Chairperson: Under Standing Orders, I can request an extension in the House only once. Therefore if the Committee identified problems at a later date, it could not request a further extension.

762. An extension to the end September will give us all in the Committee a safeguard. We do not envisage that anything will arise, but if it does we have given ourselves that protection. I have only one opportunity, as Chairperson of the Committee, to ask for an extension of the Committee Stage. The protocol is to take a vote on the latter proposal first.

Question put, That the Committee ask the Assembly that the Committee Stage of the Education Bill be extended until 1 June 2009.

The Committee divided: Ayes 2; Noes 7.

AYES

Mr O’Dowd, Mrs O’Neill.

NOES

Mr D Bradley, Mr Lunn, Mr McCausland, Mr B McCrea, Miss McIlveen, Mr Poots, Mr Storey.

Question accordingly negatived.

Question put, That the Committee ask the Assembly that the Committee Stage of the Education Bill be extended until 30 September 2009.

The Committee divided: Ayes 7; Noes 2.

AYES

Mr D Bradley, Mr Lunn, Mr McCausland, Mr B McCrea, Miss McIlveen, Mr Poots, Mr Storey.

NOES

Mr O’Dowd, Mrs O’Neill.

Question accordingly agreed to.

Resolved:

That the Committee ask the Assembly that the Committee Stage of the Education Bill be extended until 30 September 2009.

28 January 2009

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

Witnesses:
Mr Gavin Boyd (chief executive officer designate of the education and skills authority)
Dr Mark Browne (education and skills authority implementation team)
Ms Catherine Daly (Department of Education)
Mr John McGrath (Department of Education)

763. The Chairperson (Mr Storey): I welcome the chief executive officer designate of the education and skills authority (ESA), Gavin Boyd; John McGrath from the Department of Education; and Mark Browne, who is the programme director of the education and skills authority implementation team (ESAIT). The two issues for discussion today are designing modern education services; and the outline business case.

764. Mr Gavin Boyd (chief executive officer designate of the education and skills authority): Good morning, and thank you for the opportunity to speak to the Committee. The first part of the presentation is to update you on what we have been doing on the design of the education and skills authority.

765. Members will be aware that this is the first major reorganisation of the administration of education in 35 years. Over that period, significant change has taken place. For example, political change has taken place, so the new structures of corporate governance need to reflect the political reality of devolution, as opposed to that which was set up, to some extent, to offset the perceived democratic deficit of the 1970s. On the other hand, local understanding and insight are important in informing decisions; that was one of the great strengths of the system.

766. There has been huge technological change, and there is an opportunity to reflect the impact of technology in the design of the new organisation and in designing services. The existing system is over-engineered; there is significant duplication of effort, particularly in management. As we create the new organisation, we will move quickly to deal with that. As I will touch on later, the outline business case indicates that initial savings of £20 million a year will be generated. We are happy to work through the latest thinking on those savings.

767. However, apart from the issue of modernisation — and the review of public administration (RPA) was a primary plank in modernisation, simplification and generating savings — it has become clear that the performance of the system from an educational perspective is very variable. I do not have to rehearse the issues. Quite simply, too many young people do not achieve the educational outcomes or have the personal development opportunities that they should. That is a personal tragedy for the individual, but it is also a disaster for our economy and our society.

768. This is a huge change programme. To be successful, we must have a thorough process that takes into account international best practice and the detailed knowledge of those involved in the system. We have designed a process that is inclusive, involving hundreds of staff and trades union representatives. It is open and methodical, and we report regularly to the widest possible group through the use of our website, which gets a great many hits.

769. We hold ourselves open to account and to good ideas; this side of the table does not have a monopoly on good ideas. We are wary of jumping to quick solutions that have not been fully thought through. We make no apology for taking a methodical approach as we work our way through such a huge change process.

770. I will hand over to Mark Browne, who will take you through the detail of what we have been doing for the past six months or so.

771. Dr Mark Browne (education and skills authority implementation team): As Gavin said, this is a massive change programme. In working with the Department, the implementation team has been keen to set out for the staff in the organisations, and others with an interest in the change, how it can be managed successfully. To assist with that, we have developed a model of change, which we have called transfer, transform and innovate. For all the various services that will be coming into the new authority, that model of change sets out the risks associated with change, the benefits associated with the change and the pace at which change might be delivered.

772. We have identified 20 key services that will be delivered by the ESA and classified them into those three areas. The first area involves those services that have direct contact with users and are vital in ensuring that there is continuity from day one; for example, transport and school meals. In the early stages, the bulk of those services will transfer largely as they stand, with delivery at local level remaining much the same. However, there will be change to ensure that we bring the five or six different management structures into one regional structure.

773. The second category involves those services that need to transform. Those are typically back-office services, which are critical to the success of the organisation but which are largely unseen by those who use them. In those areas, there is real opportunity to eliminate the duplication that Gavin referred to. For example, the six financial systems will be brought into one system, and, in doing so, we will improve the quality and the timeliness of information and we will release resources to be used in other parts of the education system closer to the front line.

774. The third area involves those services where innovation is required, which include the parts of the education service that parents and children, and others involved in the education system, look at to see improvement: educational quality; school improvement; services to help children and young people to overcome barriers to learning; and the education estate, which includes the quality of the schools, their size and location.

775. Those are the key areas in which educational benefits will flow in the chain from the ESA and key areas in which innovation is needed. That is the broad model that we have set out for staff so that they can see how we will manage the change and the risk at the same time.

776. To drill down into a little more detail, we must look at each of the 20 service areas to decide what we want to achieve and how best we can design the organisation to accomplish that. We set out a four-stage process, beginning with a clarification of what we are trying to achieve, and the vision aims and objectives of the area, and we moved into the service-delivery model required to deliver that. We then moved into the number of people and the skills and resources that they require, the organisational structure and location. That is based on the form-follows-function approach.

777. We have done that through an extensive programme of engagement with staff in the sector. It began with a launch in April 2008, where we had several hundred managers together in one room. We were told that that was the first time that managers from all organisations had come together to discuss such educational issues.

778. We took that forward through a series of workshops last May and June, when we looked at stage 1 — the visions, aims and objectives for each area. We have moved into stage 2, where we have drawn out the detail of how services are operated, and we made proposals on how we think they should operate under the ESA. We finished that process just before Christmas, when we engaged with 450 senior- and middle-management staff and trades unions — which were represented at all the workshops — to look at all those service areas and to consider and test our proposals.

779. We want to refine those proposals and move into stages 3 and 4: sizing the functions, identifying the skills, and moving into the organisational design and location aspect. The key to those service-delivery models is looking at a regional/local approach. We need to look at what services are best delivered regionally to bring consistency to ensure that standards are met, to ensure that there are efficiencies and to release resources; and what is best delivered locally.

780. In each of the service-delivery models we have set out regional and local functions and have tested that with the staff who are delivering the services. What came out of the workshops, along with a great deal of detailed comment, was a strong endorsement that a regional/local approach made sense and could work. That is what we are working on to develop in more detail.

781. A key feature is the local area teams. We want to have multi-disciplinary, integrated teams that will be delivering key services close to schools and providing the support that schools need. That would include school-improvement practitioners, behavioural support, educational psychologists, youth co-ordinators and early-years co-ordinators; all will be in local teams close to the schools, youth-work settings and early-years settings, providing the support that they need. They would be headed up by a local team leader, who would represent them and be the point of contact for those who have questions or queries about the service delivery and the services available in an area. We are working through a bit more of the detail on that.

782. We are finishing the second stage of a four-stage process. We are moving from the future service-delivery models into sizing the functions and looking at the skills and resources. We will then move into the detailed organisational structure below the top level to consider where those functions should best be located and organised. That is the process to date.

783. It has been an extensive process of engagement, which has been welcomed by the staff who have been engaged in it. One interesting point was that the first round of workshops attracted some 350 staff; in the second, that increased to 450. We had to work hard to contain the numbers so that we could manage. There is interest in the organisations and a willingness to engage, and we have been heartened by the expertise that we have been able to draw on. We will continue to draw on that throughout the process.

784. Mr Boyd: We will stop at this stage and let members take over.

785. The Chairperson: Thank you. Do we now have any sense of the draft cost of the organisational structure showing the local and regional staff allocations?

786. Mr Boyd: I will answer that from a slightly different angle. As we have worked through the exercise to date, we have affirmed the work that was done in the outline business case. We will talk more about that later on. It has made us very confident in the figures that were originally generated by the business case, which is, by definition, an outline.

787. Now that we have entered into more detailed work, we are more confident. We have not yet sought to cost — in detail — the split between local and regional services; we simply have not got to that part of the exercise.

788. Take, for example, the payroll function. There is no argument against changing the 30-odd payrolls to two payrolls; that is a sensible approach. The most important payroll issue for staff is that they are paid the correct amount of money on time. That process can be completed quickly. Some 240 people are involved in paying staff; it is a large and complex exercise that is spread across many areas. We have made some modest assumptions about how moving to a single function will affect those numbers. That exercise has yet to be completely scythed and, as Mark said, it is the next stage of our work. That is one example of a regional service that will, in time, operate from a single location.

789. As Mark said, on the other side of the coin, we have been considering which services should be delivered locally. We have been discussing our views on school support, educational psychologists, behavioural welfare and the Youth Service with the Department; the music service alone involves 450 staff. We need to plan carefully. We have not yet completed the detail exercise, but we will work through it during the next few months.

790. The Chairperson: You tested approximately 20 draft future service-delivery models through 11 workshops in November and December. Have you agreed the regional/local functional split in services? What feedback have you received?

791. Mr Boyd: For each of the workshops we produced our view of what the regional/local split should be, and in every case it was affirmed. During the past year, we learned that although it is clear that everyone accepts the logic behind a single finance department, a strong case was made that local support must be immediately available to schools to allow them to manage their own budgets. That work is being carried out by the local management of schools (LMS) officers in the boards. The model that we have developed allows for a single finance function and allows finance personnel to be dispersed to ensure that they are immediately and readily available to schools. They will be included in local teams.

792. During the past year, we have received feedback from governors’ conferences and school principals to the effect that they need locally and immediately available human resources advice. Schools that were experiencing problems wanted to talk to an expert rather than a faceless person whom they did not know; they wanted somebody to come to the school and discuss the matter. That finding is built into our plans for local areas.

793. We have built and tested a model from talking to people. In fact, some groups have been ahead of us. Those involved in the cleaning service presented a plan of how to organise a regional cleaning service. That is an example of people who are responsible for existing services grabbing the bouncing ball and solving that problem on our behalf. Several other services have replicated that approach.

794. The Chairperson: It is one thing for such groups to present ideas on how to progress, and I appreciate that you cannot give a blank cheque on those issues. However, one concern and criticism of the process has been that you could outline a proposed model, but because there is a predetermined plan for the regional or subregional functions, proposals will not receive the courtesy and consideration that they ought.

795. Mr Boyd: From our perspective, that is not the case. In my opening remarks, I said that people on this side of the table do not have a monopoly on good ideas. However, we measure all proposals against examples of best practice. For example, between 50 and 60 staff are involved in the procurement of goods and services.

796. We measured the procurement budget of £130 million and the size of our staff against the number typically involved in the procurement of goods and services according to international best practice. We found that the number is considerably less than 60. We must therefore match our best thoughts with what we can aspire to on the basis of international best practice.

797. Mr D Bradley: The Chairperson asked one of my questions, but sure.

798. The Chairperson: How sad. I apologise.

799. Mr D Bradley: How local is local? How many local area teams will there be?

800. Mr Boyd: There is still discussion about that. From our perspective, the principle is that services should be delivered at the closest possible point to schools and pupils.

801. Even in our existing services we have some sub-regional teams. We want educational psychologists located and working with small clusters of schools so that they are immediately available. We foresee circumstances in which educational psychologists are based in local communities of high need. That does not mean that that local team will operate on its own: it might be a subgroup of a slightly bigger team, but it should be determined by need and the importance of providing immediate access to services to make a difference to children.

802. Mr D Bradley: That does not really answer my question.

803. How can you produce a credible business plan if you do not know how many local area teams there will be?

804. Mr Boyd: There are two aspects to that. First, how we group services for management purposes is different from how we plan to deliver them.

805. Mr D Bradley: Generally, management will be grouped, as far as possible, regionally. Is that what you are saying?

806. Mr Boyd: No. The strategy should be regional and should be followed consistently across the region.

807. We have some 150 educational psychologists in the service, and we must ensure that they are as close as they can be to the need of the community. Over the next few months, we will decide how to cluster those psychologists for management purposes, taking into account not just the management of the organisation, but the need to interface with communities. That is something that the Department will want to examine. I am sure that it will be the subject of further discussions.

808. Mr D Bradley: When will we know the extent of the local area teams?

809. Mr Boyd: We will work hard on that over the next few months. We will pass it to the Department, which will want to consider and discuss it with various parties.

810. Mr D Bradley: Surely, that is one of the most pressing matters for schools. Schools will ask whether the ESA is like an elephant somewhere in the distance or will it be near hand and accessible when schools need it?

811. Mr Boyd: The model is designed to ensure that services that need to be close to the school and the pupil will be accessible. We are absolutely committed to that.

812. Mr John McGrath (Department of Education): We touched on that several weeks ago when we discussed the new organisation’s structure. We made it clear, in line with what Gavin said, that the Minister’s view is that services should be available as locally as possible. The Department’s view is that the number of local area teams should be grouped, perhaps, in six areas; however the service — human resources, finance, educational welfare officers or educational psychologists — should be as close to the school as is managerially possible. We have rehearsed this issue before. It will depend on circumstances, but the general theme of our work is subsidiarity. As much as possible will be available locally, and if back-office services can be centralised, they will be.

813. The Chairperson: Can I tease that out a little? What consideration has been given by the implementation team and the Department to the pressures that schools are experiencing with regard to educational psychologists?

814. As Gavin said, there are some 150 educational psychologists in the system. However, demand and need are huge, with many people on waiting lists. Will those 150 educational psychologists merely be spread out and instructed to work with the schools to which they are closest?

815. In your workshops you are bound to have been told about the structures and the associated problems. What cognisance is being taken of the problems involved in developing the delivery of the system? We could end up with a far worse situation than the present one.

816. Mr Boyd: I will comment from the point of view of the implementation team, and John will give the Department’s perspective. Some months ago, I spent several hours talking to the east Belfast primary principals’ group; our conversation was dominated almost entirely by access to special support for children. Those principals asked me: what is the point of providing psychology services three years after a need has been identified? The child will have left the school and there is nothing more that the school can do.

817. The principals became quite emotional; they are doing their best for their kids, but the services are not available. From a planning perspective, my first question is whether we have the right number of educational psychologists. How do we know whether 150 is the right number? The answer is not available to me in the system.

818. Mr D Bradley: If they cannot deliver the service needed, surely that is a good indication that there are not enough educational psychologists.

819. Mr Boyd: That is one possibility. Another possibility, however, is that we have not organised services or allocated priorities correctly. Most of us around the table went through the education system at a time when there were very few educational psychologists. Some people in the system argue that we now ask someone to come in to help with issues that used to be dealt with by primary school teachers in class. That is the sort of issue that the Department is considering from a policy perspective.

820. We are setting out to check various issues. Is the number of educational psychologists right? Is the organisation of the service right, or do educational psychologists spend too much time writing reports and having meetings rather than dealing with children? That issue has had a huge impact on me personally, and it is something that we have to consider. If more educational psychologists were required, funding would have to come from savings made elsewhere in the system. I could talk about this for the rest of the morning, Chairperson, but you would not want me to do that. I will hand over to John to provide the Department’s perspective.

821. Mr McGrath: I will make the same points in reverse. There are two strands to the issue. The first is: how many educational psychologists are needed? Perhaps more are needed, but the resources need to be found, and that is a priority issue. The second strand is developing the best managerial and professional way of deploying skilled and specialised staff such as educational psychologists; Gavin has rehearsed that point.

822. There is a coincidence of two issues. Gavin’s job is to create an organisation that makes the best use of the available resources and, as far as possible, frees up resources from support services that can be directed to front-line services such as educational psychologists. Ultimately, it will be up to the Department and the Minister, through the budgetary process, to maximise the amount of resources going to education. Gavin cannot come up with an optimum level of staffing that exceeds the amount of resources that are available to him, but he will seek to come up with the most effective deployment of those resources.

823. Mr Lunn: You will deserve an award if you successfully convert 30 IT systems into one or two. It seems that every other Department or organisation that has attempted to make such a change has either experienced major teething problems or made a complete Horlicks of it. Will that be in the Hansard report? [Laughter.] Millions of pounds have been spent, but systems have not been in place.

824. The Child Support Agency comes to mind, but there are many others. In the Public Accounts Committee, we have heard about so many disasters. How confident are you that, from day one, your systems will be robust enough to do the job?

825. Mr Boyd: I thought that that was an IT term.

826. Let me make an observation, since I have had the opportunity to examine existing systems in some detail. I used to work for a private-sector company that invested heavily in IT systems to do the drudgery of everyday work, which I call the “heavy lifting". The organisation also invested heavily in IT because it allowed the company to operate at — what I considered — a reasonable level.

827. My observation is that, educational technologies aside, investment in ordinary IT services to support human resources and finance has simply not been adequate. As a result, we have found that people are working incredibly hard under very stressful conditions to do jobs that in many other organisations are done by technology.

828. There is a huge frustration that human-resources systems cannot provide sufficient details about staff — such as where they live — to plan for the future. Therefore, we simply must invest significantly in IT to develop a modern organisation. That will drive some of the savings. I am aware of the track record in public investment in the technology to which you referred, and I am also aware that Hansard is recording this session. There are ways in which those issues can be delivered on.

829. I am conscious of the fact that there are people in this room who know more about technology than I do, but it is not difficult, in the twenty-first century, to have a single payroll system. It is not difficult to have a human-resources record system. Those are the challenges that we must face.

830. Mr Lunn: As regards other organisations, the problem seems to have been that the specification was not set out properly at the start. No matter whose fault it is, it is the commissioning body, which you represent, that must pay for and mop up the extra costs, even though, in some cases, an outside agency provided the systems that spelt out the specifications. Are you totally confident about this system?

831. Mr Boyd: You identified the vital importance of being what we call “the intelligent customer". A company cannot subcontract to another company the job of telling the first company what it needs. A company must be able to define its needs and to hold the supplier to account if it fails to make payments.

832. Mr Lunn: If people do not get paid in a year’s time, we will talk again. I am glad that you are confident.

833. Mr Elliott: Thank you for your presentation. I know that the issue of educational psychologists was used by way of example only, but surely that is, or should be, part of an ongoing review by the Department. I am surprised that there may be such a discrepancy now.

834. You spoke about wanting to reduce duplication, and I do not think that anyone would disagree with that. My concern is that when issues such as this have arisen before they have been addressed the wrong way round — front-line services, which are desperately needed, have not been retained and improved. Front-line services such as teachers, teachers’ support services and transport have been reduced at a local level, whereas administration has been built up, despite there being no cost savings in it. Therefore I remain to be convinced on that matter.

835. Being from the west of the Province, when I hear that something is being centralised I assume that it will be based in Belfast, while the rest of us lose out. I am keen to hear your comments on that.

836. Mr Boyd: The goal has been set: a greater proportion of the budget must be allocated to the classroom and to those who support children and young people directly. I cannot tell the Department how to do its job, but I expect it to make clear what percentage has been allocated to the classroom this year, next year, and the year after — as crudely as that. I expect such measures to be put in place.

837. Part of that has already happened. You have heard this before, but the savings projected for the first three years of the ESA have already been built into the Department’s financial plans for the future. That money has already been taken out of administration and is planned for allocation to the front line. Missing the targets is not an option; we simply must meet them to balance the books.

838. I will deal with the point about psychologists quickly. Such issues should be kept under constant review. I do not know — and no one has been able to tell me — what the appropriate caseload is for a psychologist. I do not know whether 150 psychologists is enough, too many, or too few, and I have no way of measuring it. It is not an insurmountable challenge, because it is done elsewhere in the world. That is the sort of thing that we will have to deal with.

839. It has been made clear in papers that we have submitted to the Department, on our website and in a presentation to the Committee that the centralisation model that we have been working towards and which we have presented to the Department respects the footprint of existing jobs. In other words, there are jobs in the west, and we anticipate that under the new model there will continue to be jobs in the west; not the same jobs, but there will be jobs. The different functions, such as finance and human resources, will be centralised, but not all in the one place. Those, of course, are ultimately decisions for the Department, but that is the model that we have been developing.

840. Mr McGrath: The Minister’s view is that as many resources as possible should be reallocated from back office to front office — into the classroom; that should be the objective. Equally, it is clear that in this budgetary period the Department is facing 3% per annum cuts or efficiency savings. Judging by the tenor of the Finance Minister’s statement on the strategic stocktake, it is clear that the Department will face at least that level of cuts during the next budgetary period. We must therefore consider the support services as they quarry to achieve those savings so that we do not have to take money out of front-line services. That will be our direction. I suspect that the Department will be looking keenly at Gavin to identify how he can sweat savings out of back-office services through rationalisation and centralisation to allow us to invest in front-line services and, equally, not to disinvest in those services.

841. The education and skills authority implementation team has outlined its thinking on how it would centralise functions and where it would do so. The Minister will wish to look sensitively at the location of public-sector jobs, but I think that I can speak for her when I say that she is sensitive of the need to avoid being Belfast-centric. The education service is a local service insofar as schools are concerned. The administrative arrangements involving five local boards and the other bodies are not Belfast-centric, and it is the Minister’s ambition to make those less Belfast-centric, not more. That will be a ministerial judgement rather than an administrative judgement by ESAIT.

842. Mr D Bradley: We examined the strategic stocktake with John and his colleagues last week. The Department is bidding for £60 million in 2009-2010 and £140 million plus in the following year. Will those savings not be consumed by deficiencies in the Department’s budget and never see front-line services?

843. Mr McGrath: As I said last week, the Department drew attention to pressures in the strategic stocktake. That is important. Now that we know that resources are not available to meet those pressures, the Minister will have to make a judgement about which of those pressures can be met from the outset next year, which can be deferred until next year’s end-year monitoring rounds, and whether some will have to be accommodated at the expense of other areas. That is still in flux.

844. All the arrangements for the administration of the ESA are designed to provide a tighter ship that will manage what will be a very constrained resource position. We can control the supply of resources. In many cases, particularly in the past year, we have no levers on the demand of those resources in the shape of inflation and other pressures. The administrative arrangements will undoubtedly be very constrained over the next two or three years; that much is clear from the Minister of Finance and Personnel’s statement.

845. There will be efficiency savings in the future; perhaps many of the savings that we will be looking for, above and beyond those cited in the outline business case, will be what we will have to lever out in order to meet efficiency savings targets, as opposed to being channelled into front-line services. We may not have the luxury of huge further investments unless the Budget decrees that. Things will be very difficult in the time ahead; if we did not have the Education Bill or a change in administrative arrangements, things would be even tighter.

846. The Chairperson: We will return to that matter, but I want to move on. I do not want to be sidetracked on the Budget; we will try to stay on issues concerning the education and skills authority.

847. Mr McCausland: I wish to make a couple of points, followed by one or two questions. No one questions for a moment the need for modernisation and simplification as an argument for change. However, Mr Boyd over-egged the pudding when he talked about educational performance; I thought that the real cause of educational underachievement was selection. That was the reason given for going against selection; now the blame is being directed at educational organisation. That cannot be used as the argument for everything; it does not stack up. Mr Boyd should refine that argument if he is to have any credibility.

848. How many workshops have been held, what was the participants’ level of satisfaction, and how much information from those workshops is available? I have to admit that I only found the website recently, but having found it, I will pursue it relentlessly.

849. Mr Elliott: Were you responsible for all those hits? [Laughter.]

850. Mr McCausland: Unless someone was very sad like me, they would not have bothered; there is nothing much on it.

851. Mr Boyd: In the most recent series of engagements, we held 11 workshops, three of which were what we called quality-assurance workshops. The first three workshops involved the most senior managers in each of the organisations that were responsible for a cluster of services. We called them quality-assurance workshops because we trialled all our thoughts and our presentations in front of the most senior managers to see if we had missed something obvious. The other eight workshops dealt with the 20 broad service areas that we had identified; they are set out in the members’ information pack.

852. We gathered a huge amount of information; we could have filled a couple of lever-arch files with the feedback from the workshops. We decided not to bring that information to the Committee on this occasion, but we are happy to make it available.

853. Mr McCausland: What was the level of satisfaction?

854. Mr Boyd: Judging by the feedback, it was very high.

855. Dr M Browne: The feedback from the workshops about the model was very positive. We have since received e-mails from the various organisations; I have one here that emphasises how valuable the staff found the workshops. We have had feedback meetings at which the organisations told us that staff had responded positively to the engagement.

856. Mr McCausland: I spoke to someone who attended a workshop — someone in whose assessment I have confidence — and who has experience of one of the sectors. That person was surprised that the workshop did not present a more developed and well-thought out view of the way forward. I know that the aim of consultation is to obtain feedback.

857. Mr Boyd: There is always a tension, Nelson, between providing a fait accompli and encouraging people to express their thoughts.

858. Mr McCausland: I understand that. However, I am talking more about people’s assessment of the quality of what was presented to them. People are always reluctant to say anything nasty or difficult because, ultimately, the Department is their paymaster. I will leave that aside for a moment.

859. How will the procurement of services such as transport and services to schools — who cuts the grass and paints the school — be managed?

860. Mr Boyd: There is a great deal of detail in that question. Many services are made available by the boards to schools, which have the right to opt in or out of those services, and there is no plan to change those rights. In fact, one principle that underpins the ESA is the desire to increase the autonomy of schools and to increase the budget that they have to exercise that autonomy.

861. The intention is to set up a centralised contract-procurement unit for the general procurement of services. That will mean that high-level draw-down contracts and procurement contracts are organised centrally.

862. Mr McCausland: I am concerned that you do not end up with a system that discriminates against small businesses. Belfast City Council ran into that difficulty over minibus provision, and I have other examples.

863. Mr Boyd: Are you talking about the purchase of minibuses or the buying-in of transport?

864. Mr McCausland: I was using that as an example. Belfast City Council had difficulty with that; I was not referring to schools.

865. If contracts are awarded — and we are in uncharted waters — will there be an assurance that it will not be one big contract on the grounds of efficiency, which means that only big service providers can apply and that small, local businesses will lose out?

866. Mr Boyd: We touched on that issue before. I may appear to be arguing against myself, but I have seen enough examples of centralised procurement not working to be fully aware of the potential pitfalls. On the other hand, the only sensible way of managing large procurement contracts is centrally.

867. For example, there is no intention to have a centralised contract for paper clips or pencils. However, there is a clear requirement for a centralised negotiation with Translink on the £37 million per year that it is paid for school transport. In honesty, the full detail of that has not yet been worked out.

868. Mr McCausland: My final point relates to local delivery. I understand that what is delivered locally will be influenced by an advisory committee at local level. I am concerned about the decisions or recommendations of such a local committee being ignored. For instance, if it were planned to open a music school in the north-east, will the decision on whether it is placed in Aghadowey or Dervock be made by the ESA board — and most people will not have a clue where Dervock is in relation to Aghadowey — or will more authority be granted to the local advisory committee to make that decision? The same question might be posed in relation to Belfast — do you put the school in south Belfast or in north Belfast, for example?

869. Mr McGrath: We talked about that several weeks ago.

870. Mr McCausland: The problem is that I cannot get an answer.

871. Mr McGrath: We are talking about a reasonable organisation with clear policies that govern all its units and local teams that will have the flexibility to respond to local service needs and circumstances. Decisions and investments will be determined through the use of agreed delegations between the centre and the local teams.

872. If the case in point involves the provision of a music school, there may be issues concerning the scale of capital investment that is required for a particular location. That, and the running costs, may have to be considered by the central ESA board or, indeed, by the Department.

873. The decision about whether it should built be in Aghadowey may be taken locally, but the sign-off on the investment package must go —

874. Mr McCausland: Excuse me, but I must stop you there. You said that the final decision would be taken locally, but would that decision be taken by a local official or by a local advisory committee?

875. Mr McGrath: As we discussed several weeks ago, we have not worked out the detail of the role of local committees. They will be ESA committees, and their primary role will be advisory rather than to take executive decisions; otherwise we would create mini boards, and that would dilute the central body’s authority. Therefore we must give — and we are giving — further consideration to that matter.

876. Mr McCausland: I am concerned that decisions will be taken by people who know nothing about local geography.

877. Mr McGrath: Several regional organisations here — such as the Housing Executive and Invest NI — could act as models that balance locally sensitive units with centralised polices issued by a centralised board. It is not beyond the wit of man to square that circle. The matter for consideration is the scale of investment, which will be determined by how much responsibility is delegated to local teams, and the Committee will have an input into that decision.

878. Mr McCausland: Consider, for example, housing. Ultimately, housing decisions are made by local-level Housing Executive officials, under the authority of centralised officials. Every council has a housing-liaison committee, which tells people what to do and ignores what they say, and that brings us back to the observations about the DPP. It is important that we deal with questions about the structure for delivery; however, we must also consider the structure for decision making, and I am concerned about local input. One model might incorporate a central ESA, but it could also include localised decision making in that centralised framework. Decisions made in that way are often better. For example, a decision about where to locate a youth club would be better made locally.

879. Mr McGrath: I do not disagree; however, at the heart of such arrangements is the question of who takes such local decisions. No one would argue that decisions about the pattern of local service provision should be taken locally. However, if investments are involved, decisions may have to be referred up the line in order to consider investment priorities. The question is: who should take such decisions?

880. Mr McCausland: In the Housing Executive, district managers ask to do things, and their bosses overrule them. I cannot see any way round the problem of authorising local people — who are accountable and understand the community — to take decisions.

881. Mr McGrath: The regional organisation that we are discussing will be governed by the ESA, and the members appointed to it will be accountable to the Department and to the Minister. A model that advocated splintered authority would not be a good one, and, given the amount of funding that the ESA will have, I suspect that the Committee would not consider such a model to be good at any time. We must strike a balance. The committees will be ESA committees, not local ESA boards.

882. Mr McCausland: I accept that point entirely. However, you must find a model that allows decisions of that nature to be taken by local people who know the area well and who have some affinity with it rather than by an employee of the system. An appropriate model must be produced, because there is a lack of clarity about where we are going. Local influence in decision making — not just local delivery — is vital.

883. Mr Boyd: Considering that from a slightly different angle, the peripatetic music service is an interesting case in point, because different philosophies underpin various regional music services. In Belfast, there is an emphasis on excellence, resulting in organisations such as the City of Belfast Youth Orchestra and the City of Belfast Youth Concert Band. In Belfast, although inclusion is important and there is a great deal of activity, there is a clear focus on excellence. Other areas have their own approaches. Therefore, music provision demands a clear policy and a strategy that can be applied across the board.

884. After that, we will work out precisely how we will provide schools with support for the music service. Some of that service will, inevitably, be provided at the weekend or in the evening at a location that makes it available to all children, thereby not excluding some children because of where they live. I anticipate that some of the thinking behind that will refer to the area-planning process, which aims at considering the need for an educational service in an area and how it can be met.

885. We consider the provision of youth services in the same way: we examine the existing services and the demand for youth services in an area, and the community also has a major input into such decisions. Decisions on investment must, as always, be signed off by the Minister. I will take your points on board and will return to the Committee with more detail as the work progresses.

886. Mrs M Bradley: Gavin, you talked about transport and you also mentioned the change in the provision of school meals to a regional service. What consideration was given to that change? Given that the existing service is excellent and that we cannot afford to let the quality deteriorate, can school meals be improved? I would like to hear more of the thinking that led to that change.

887. Mr Boyd: First, Mary, there is not a single school meals service at present; there are at least five. Until recently, pupils paid a different amount of money for a school meal depending on where they live, and the content of the school meals was different, although that situation is being addressed. I make no comment about that, other than that there were differences and, therefore, not everyone was getting it right.

888. The proposition is to have a single regional school meals service and, therefore, a strategy: a single price; a single approach to the nutritional value of school meals; and decisions on what should and should not be provided. That strategic approach should be applied across the board. However, we recognise that most people who provide meals and who provide a wonderful service work in schools, and we will continue to support them in doing so. The supervision of their work will be organised locally.

889. As far as the school meals service is concerned, phase 1 simply involves the reorganisation of its management. We will streamline the management of the service, but we recognise that the service will continue to be delivered as it is at present for the time being. We should not lose sight of the fact that the total turnover of the service is £65 million, and, through one means or another, it is subsidised by approximately £35 million.

890. We have not considered, in any way, shape or form, efficiencies or better ways of delivering a service that is worth £65 million; our only consideration is its management. However, I would be very surprised if we do not learn lessons down the line. A great deal of money is tied up in the service, and thousands of great people provide those meals.

891. Mr B McCrea: I remain concerned that you changed the frame of reference and that you are now concentrating more on educational outcomes than on savings and efficiencies. My biggest concern is the number of redundancies that you estimate will result, as my guess is that they will account for most of the savings. How confident are you that you will achieve those savings through redundancies?

892. Mr Boyd: Lest there be any doubt, I am absolutely confident.

893. Mr B McCrea: You say that you are sure about that, but your outline business case states that somewhere between £24 million and £45 million can be saved through redundancies. Which of those figures is correct?

894. Mr Boyd: The cost depends on exactly who takes a voluntary severance package, because the model must be based on some assumptions. It is, therefore, based on an individual in his or her mid-50s with approximately 30 years’ service. The higher figure is based on someone whose removal from the system would be relatively expensive.

895. The lower figure can be based on a different set of assumptions. The final figure will not be known until we get to the date that each individual leaves the system and we become aware of their length of service and salary, among other things.

896. Mr B McCrea: Therefore you cannot tell me whether there will be savings of £25 million or £45 million in a £50 million cost budget.

897. Mr Boyd: That is not right.

898. Mr B McCrea: When I asked the question — [Interruption.]

899. The Chairperson: That relates to the business case, so we will return to that issue when we are discussing the business case. I want to keep to the question of modernisation.

900. Mr B McCrea: I appreciate that, Chairman. However, we are talking about letting people go. We have talked about our experiences in other organisations. As a member of the Policing Board, I know that there are not enough detectives in the PSNI, for instance. Part of the reason is that people who were doing important work were let go, and that problem might arise in this case.

901. I share Mr Lunn’s concern about IT; I have never known an IT system to come in on budget, and that is due to emergent requirements. I assume that you are going to tell me that savings will be made because all the people who are doing manual work will not be required as the computer can do it.

902. Mr Boyd: No; that is not what I am going to tell you.

903. Mr B McCrea: What do those people do?

904. Mr Boyd: That will take us to the outline business case.

905. The Chairperson: I want to stay on the issue of modernisation, but I am happy to let Mr Boyd answer those questions if he wishes.

906. Mr Boyd: I always find it helpful if members answer their questions as well as ask them. We are absolutely clear on the projected £20 million savings; that is in the outline business case. I have made it clear that as we worked through the last year we became more confident about the figures. The savings figure is clear.

907. We provided a range on the cost of achieving those savings. I cannot remember the figures that we provided for range in costs to achieving the savings, but it was between £22 million and £45 million. Savings are clear, but the costs depend on the individuals who leave at any given time.

908. The outline business case states that 463 positions are to go, and, in the paper that we provided for the outline business case, we set out the analysis of what posts are to go at different levels. Members will see that there is a disproportionate percentage of posts at higher levels, because the first phase is about reorganising management and the supervision of staff. It makes no big assumptions about losing large numbers of staff further down the organisation; it is about management.

909. We also recognise that a significant proportion of the target group is over 55; in fact, they are over 60. I am not making a point about ages, but there is a recognition of that fact. All the feedback that we receive states that a significant number of people will see this as an opportunity to leave the service and to move on to the next phase of their lives.

910. Mr B McCrea: I am glad that you found my attempt at giving you an answer helpful, because experience tells us that when we ask questions we do not always get an answer.

911. I do not think that you will hit your targets within your cost budgets. As the deputy permanent secretary said, we are entering a difficult financial period. The problem with such projects is that they start off with lofty ideals, which everyone thinks are great, but massive cost overruns appear. I want to ask whether we can be sure that the costs come in, but I am sure that we will talk about that in future.

912. The summary of the outline business case says:

“The group most affected by this change will be senior management … where 44% of posts will go."

913. However, data in the outline business case shows that senior management accounts for only £1·8 million of the annual savings, whereas middle-management professions account for £10 million and supervisory management comprises £6 million. Therefore, the totals are £16 million compared with £1·8 million. The real cuts will be to middle and supervisory management, who are the real workhorses, heroes and Trojans. If you cannot make your systems work better, I am concerned that no people will be left to run the organisation and chaos could ensue.

914. Mr Boyd: I accept Mr McCrea’s comments and genuine concerns. In percentage terms, senior management will receive the biggest hit. When we move from six finance departments to a single finance department and from 34 or 35 payrolls to two payrolls, the need for supervision and middle management will disappear.

915. Mr B McCrea: I do not want to labour the point, as the Chairperson has been indulging me, but you are trying to make changes in two to three years, yet determining how to amalgamate those systems properly is a heroic challenge. If you do not get it right, Mr McGrath will have problems with his budgets.

916. Mr McGrath: The outline business case is a robust piece of work. Basil mentioned implementation and change, and we discussed IT. Examples have shown that assumptions do not necessarily guarantee delivery. That is the test. In my experience, there is more investment in the front end of this case than during other organisational changes. The rigour of the outline business case will be applied, and elements of it operate on a worst-possible-cost scenario rather than one of best possible costs. Therefore, some of figures on top-end costs are based on the assumption that everyone who leaves will be in the most highly paid category, which would generate the required level of net savings. We can tackle that issue during discussion of the outline business case.

917. Mr Poots: Unlike my colleague Mr McCrea, I do not think that the proposals go far enough, and I support greater rationalisation. Children are, ultimately, most important to education, and it is teachers and classroom assistants who have the most contact with children. Teachers constantly tell me that the implementation of changes and new initiatives is absorbing more and more time and that they spend too much time writing reports for administrators to check. When will teachers be allowed to concentrate on teaching children? The initiatives make changes that do not necessarily significantly and demonstrably improve teaching. Change is well and good, but it must be change for the better. We are not against change. When will teachers be allowed to stay in the classrooms and educate children? If that were the case, significantly less administration would, perhaps, be required.

918. Mr McGrath: Nelson raised the issue of underachievement. The Department believes that the key to tackling that issue is improving the quality of teaching and, therefore, investing in the teaching workforce. Teachers should spend more time teaching; we do not disagree on that. As Gavin said, the model for the future will give schools more freedom on issues of professional development and will enable them to decide what sources to use to invest in their workforce. Again, we agree on that point. However, we undoubtedly expect future efficiency savings from the £2 billion education budget, which is a significant amount of money.

919. Ideally, that should come out of the non-school element. However, that means taking a fair chunk of savings out of £600 million or £700 million rather than £2 billion. That will be the challenge. We made the point that we start with the outline business case. We see the ESA as a vehicle to get the rationalisation of support services and to generate efficiencies, either to meet efficiency savings requirements in the centre — as agreed by the Executive — or, ideally, to go into the front line. That is the agenda. Twenty million pounds a year is there for the taking — it is almost in the bank. Mr Poots’s points are well made with us.

920. Mr Poots: To take the matter a little further, many of those who are employed have to justify the work that they do and that is where much of this change comes from. Teachers are not opposed to many of the proposals and ideas, but they get swamped with the numbers that come forward at the same time. Ten years ago, teachers had nothing like this to contend with. Now, however, they are being dragged out of the classrooms, the children are not getting the best out of their teachers and principals, and, ultimately, we are paying for that as it requires more administration. That is why I feel that further cuts are needed.

921. Mr Boyd: That is exactly the sort of feedback that we have received from teachers, school principals and teachers’ unions. The underlying premise is that school improvement can be achieved only in the classroom; that can be done only if there is reliance on the expertise of the classroom teacher and the principal of the school. That leads to the inevitable conclusion that we must free up their time to allow them to get on with teaching.

922. I will give another reflection on how we have managed to introduce some technology into the classroom. The Committee will be aware of the integrated and administration control system (IACS) technology that we are using for literacy and numeracy. One of the attractions of the technology is that records become available automatically. The teacher does not have to mark or write up on the work: the records are held and we can measure a child’s performance year on year. We managed to get some 20,000 children through that assessment in the autumn. It was a huge technical achievement, and we will have 50,000 children going through the assessment next year. The use of such technology can greatly ease the burden on teachers. Quite apart from the administrative and initiative issues that have been highlighted, that is an area where we can ease the burden on teachers.

923. The Chairperson: Can we move on to the outline business case? I appreciate members’ indulgence. We have done reasonably well over the past few weeks in managing presentations.

924. Mr D Bradley: May I ask a question about the previous topic? The message that we were given at the beginning was that the ESA would provided savings that would be an added bonus to the education system. However, from what Mr McGrath said earlier, ESA savings will end up subsidising shortfalls in the budget. Therefore we will not see much benefit at all.

925. Mr McGrath: There is no such thing as a snapshot that gives us the fixed pressures and the fixed budget, and that if one gets savings out of the budget — which would be ideal — they can be invested in front-line services.

926. If inflation rises faster than the provision made in the Budget, if pay awards are given that are higher than expected, if there are job evaluations, those have to be dealt with from the quantum of money that is made available to us by the Executive. That can mean that the ideal of where you would like to invest your savings is overtaken by the urgency of where you have to put them.

927. Many of the pressures that we flag up with the Committee in our discussions on monitoring rounds are beyond our control; few of them are generated by the Department. However, they must be dealt with; people have to be paid, inflation has to be met, job evaluations and health-and-safety issues have to be dealt with. That may mean that the “must" issues consume resources rather than the “desirable" issues.

928. Those issues enhance the need to introduce a more efficient administrative system that can squeeze savings out in the overall management structure from day one, and will provide a vehicle to challenge the support services over time to generate more savings. Everything that the Finance Minister said the other day suggests that efficiency savings of at least 3% — the First Minister recently mentioned a level of 3·5% — are here to stay. The education budget is the second largest chunk of the Northern Ireland block. Although it is desirable that it should be excused some level of efficiency savings, it is unlikely.

929. Therefore we need mechanisms to meet most of that 3% or 3·5% over time by way of genuine back-office support service efficiencies; we should not make efficiencies from front-line services. The fact that the resource position is becoming more challenging strengthens the case for administrative reform and efficiencies.

930. The Chairperson: I would like to move on to the outline business case.

931. Mr McGrath: The outline business case was submitted to the Department of Finance and Personnel late last year and was duly approved by it in December. It was made available when the Minister introduced the Education Bill, and it has been available on the Department’s website.

932. It is a robust piece of work that validates the case for the ESA as an organisation and which provides a vehicle to improve schools and to reduce the gap in attainment levels. It also provides a benchmark against which the work that Gavin and the Department will be doing can be measured. That will be to the particular benefit of the Committee and the wider community in future.

933. The outline business case evidences that from the outset there are significant savings of approximately £20 million a year to be garnered against an investment of up to £45 million. It would therefore pay for itself in three years — possibly sooner — depending on the initial costs. One of the advantages of having a prolonged period before the ESA is established is that more preparatory work has been done on organisational changes and how they could be achieved. That should avoid some of the other organisational mistakes to which Basil referred.

934. We will use the outline business case as a benchmark against which we will measure Gavin’s performance in the early years of the ESA. It is likely that the Department will look for further savings in senior staffing structures above those set out in the outline business case as the organisation beds down.

935. The Chairperson: This is an outline business case. When is the full business case likely to be finalised? The outline business case was finalised in April 2008, so it did not reflect the regional/local functional split. Could the outcomes of your work on that split radically change the number and level of staff projected in the outline business case as possible reductions?

936. Mr McGrath: First, we want the full business case to be available by the summer. It will underpin and validate the level of savings that are predicated in the outline business case, although some fine-tuning is necessary to develop the precise organisational structure. However, the overall envelope of senior posts around which this was based can accommodate the types of structures that we spoke of putting in place at local level and the degree of senior staffing associated with that. We do not believe that such thinking will undermine the fundamentals of the outline business case.

937. Mr Boyd: I cannot add to that. I simply reinforce the point that all our work to date has been within the envelope of the outline business case. Since April, nothing that we have done or turned up has made us reconsider whether we can achieve the targets set out in the outline business case.

938. I recognise that additional pressures might arise down the line, and I am conscious of Edwin’s comments about such possibilities. However, nothing that we have done in the intervening period has undermined any aspect of the outline business case.

939. The Chairperson: Earlier, we heard about the three levels of the transfer services. You said that transfer services will be subject to a medium-term review and that the innovative service will be subject to radical change. In giving evidence to the Committee, representatives and chief executives of the education and library boards said that the transform services are already subject to a three-board or five-board shared delivery and, in some of those service arrangements, a lead board. Where will the savings come from in the outline business case?

940. Mr Boyd: The number of shared services is relatively small; one example is the board of legal service, which is a single service housed in one board. Most of the big services — finance, human resources, and other support services — are on each board. Therefore savings will be driven out of that. The big savings will come from back-office services such as finance and human resources and other big services.

941. The Chairperson: That is outside the in-scope costs. The Department has identified approximately £1·3 billion that is out of scope of the RPA. Therefore we are talking about —

942. Mr Boyd: We are talking about £135 million, which relates specifically to costs involving 4,150 staff. We focused our efficiency modelling on a fairly narrow sliver.

943. Mr McCausland: Reducing the number of initiatives is a key area in which savings in the educational sector can be made. Rationalisation and the further mainstreaming of services would benefit schools and remove a huge amount of administration. Major savings can be made in that area. A key element of the outline business case is saving money.

944. What would be the difference in the savings made through the rationalisation of administration and those made through the rationalisation of educational initiatives? Have you done any work to see how those differences would stack up against each other?

945. Mr McGrath: You are quite right, as was Edwin when he made the point about teachers and new initiatives. Initiatives, even if money is granted, still distract from the core task. The key issue is the standard of teaching: we must let teachers teach. To a certain extent, we must keep it simple and not distract teachers with a plethora of initiatives, although many of them are important.

946. We are examining the number of earmarked budgets that we have. There are two issues. First, do we need so many initiatives? Initiatives complicate the position throughout the system and complicate the situation with teachers.

947. Earmarked budgets also add to the Department’s administration costs. We are also asking whether some of the earmarked budgets are past their sell-by date. We are questioning whether we need an earmarked budget for certain things or whether the money could be redeployed into the common funding formula. We will come back to the Committee on that.

948. We have not quite been able to do the de-sizing that you talked about, although we regard the savings as one slice of that. It is an interesting debate. On the one hand, there is a view that further savings may be gained beyond those outlined in the business case, and that may happen over time. There is another, equally merited, view that asks how we know that we will get those savings — other exercises have not demonstrated such savings in the past.

949. We are taking a robust but measured approach. Over the two or three years at the start of the ESA, that level of saving can be taken out of the £135 million. That is the starting point for savings; it is not where we are ending.

950. Mr Boyd: I have made the point before that bureaucracies breed bureaucracy. Bureaucrats, like me, think of more and more things to do. That is why we must refocus on the model every so often. In this case, the model is about schools, teachers, children and school principals.

951. There is an argument that once the focus is kept on the model, it challenges an organisation to consider — every day, every week and every year — why any money at all is being spent at the centre and whether it absolutely must be spent. That is not a criticism of what has gone before; it is a challenge that, in my experience, an organisation must set itself every year to make sure that it does not just grow and grow. It is important to keep thinking of the next good idea.

952. Mr McCausland: Is there a point when you will get a figure for the potential saving that can be made by rationalising all those initiatives?

953. Mr McGrath: The Department will consider that, simply because we face severe resource constraints to allow it to do what it needs to do in the future. The combination of reducing some earmarked budgets at the same time as we move into the ESA might make it difficult to determine cause and effect from savings.

954. Mr Boyd: The Department has developed the Every School a Good School policy, which sets outs what is expected from schools, and everything follows from that. It makes schools’ objectives and focus clearer and, in itself, will lead to a rationalisation of initiatives.

955. Mr McCausland: I was really asking whether you know how many people are employed in administering all those initiatives and how much teacher time they involve. That should be fairly easy to work out — for example, there may be 49 secretaries and administrators working on them.

956. Mr McGrath: I do not know that because there are not many people in the Department whose sole job is to work on such initiatives; nor am I clear how many people work on them in the education boards. I agree that we should consider simplifying initiatives, redirecting funding into mainstream funding and taking out as many savings from that as we can. That will lead to a simpler world, which we are already reaching, in which the agenda is to raise standards and reduce the gap in attainment. To reach that, we must invest in the wider education workforce, improve the infrastructure and streamline the management of the education service.

957. Mr Boyd: We got the detailed analysis of the current situation. Between the Curriculum Advisory and Support Services, C2K, the curriculum part of the Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment, the Regional Training Unit, and the advisory part of the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools, we have 750 staff at the centre. That is 750 people who you might otherwise call professional staff, which is a significant number in anybody’s book.

958. Mr Poots: I note the £20 million savings and the £700 million budget. That coincides with the 3% administration saving that we are supposed to be making. However, a 3% efficiency saving is required from all Departments. Therefore if the £20 million equals the 3% saving from the £700 million, a 3% saving must still be made on the remaining £1·3 million.

959. I do not accept John’s views that that is the beginning of savings, because ultimately £60 million of efficiency savings must be made from the Department of Education’s budget. If only £20 million is being saved from administration, the other £40 million has to be saved from front-line services. That is unacceptable. We have to sharpen the knife and return to consider cuts in administration. Rather than make the savings in five or 10 years’ time, those efficiency savings must be made over the next two or three years. It is fair enough as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough.

960. Mr McGrath: I think that we agree on that. The point was made earlier that the ESA is seen as a vehicle to further challenge the basic infrastructure in order to make the savings that the centre will expect from us and, as far as possible, to protect front-line services. If that is not done, some of the efficiency-savings targets will affect the front line because of the sheer scale of the budget. That is the challenge.

961. The point was made last week that the current level of efficiency savings has meant that some money had to be taken from the schools’ budget, because there was nowhere else to take it from. We need a vehicle that will allow us, over time, in the next three to five or 10 years to challenge the system and to squeeze it further and further. If savings are not made from the support structure, they will have to be made from front-line services. That will mean that difficult issues may arise down the line, involving how services are to be provided, the balance between central and local contracts, the centralisation of back-office functions, and perhaps even outsourcing. To take Edwin’s point, we must test every option in order to protect funding for the front line.

962. Mr Poots: If I was in the witnesses’ position, I would ask: where do we start from? I do not think that they would be starting from the present position; they would scale even further back. Where would the Department start from if it had a clean sheet? That is where it could make significant savings. It is not good enough that for every £1 of the £2 billion budget spent in the classroom, £1 is spent on administrative support.

963. Mr Boyd: At a previous meeting with the Committee I got into a little bit of bother by identifying some systems that we have considered elsewhere in the world, where 80% of the budget is allocated to the school or the classroom. For the avoidance of doubt, I am not saying that we can do that overnight, but we have looked at systems where that has been achieved. The counterbalance is that there is a fairly healthy scepticism around the table about whether we can deliver the savings that we are talking about. I recognise that.

964. Mr Poots: That is just Basil; do not worry.

965. Mr Boyd: I have to be careful not to over-commit, either to the Committee, to the Minister or to the Department, because this is an important issue. I have to manage in the context that we find ourselves in. The education system is part of the public sector, and we operate within the existing contracts of employment. I understand precisely your points and am keen to hear directions from the Committee on the general line that should be taken; however, I must balance that with what I believe is possible in the short term. We are only talking about the first three years.

966. Mr McGrath: It is important that £1·3 billion of the £2 billion budget goes directly to schools. The balance includes the capital budget — which is another £200 million to £300 million — and there is also funding for the youth services and special education. However, the balance between spending on the front line and spending on administration is not 2:1.

967. Mr Poots: The entire budget for a school is not all for teaching; it also covers administration.

968. Mr McGrath: I am aware of that. On the other hand, some of the earmarked budgets are not part of that budget, but they go to schools. It might be useful, if, in a financial discussion at the Committee, we were to try to get a clearer picture about how much of the budget goes to the front line, directly or indirectly, and how much goes to administration. I do not think that the ratio is 2:1, which would mean that a third of the budget is spent on administration. However, it could be that the ratio is 80:20; it is important to analyse that and pin it down.

969. Mr Boyd: To give a simple example, the Department spends £85 million a year on transport; our kids travel 1·5 million miles a day going to school. That figure is reached as the result of various policy decisions. In addition, the Department is locked into allocating between £37 million and £38 million to Translink, on which there is very little negotiation — Translink has to make a return. With a different policy perspective different outcomes might be possible, but those are big issues that require serious consideration, as serious amounts of money are involved.

970. The Chairperson: John, when you are back next week, we may talk about financial matters. I wonder how many pupils use their Translink bus pass every day in comparison with the cost to the Department of covering it. There is no way of monitoring use of bus passes for a set period. For example, my daughter does not use her bus pass every day because she sometimes has other ways of getting to school. Such issues are practical realities, and money can be saved in that area. A huge amount of money is spent on travelling to school.

971. Mr Boyd: The Department has targeted £135 million from which to save £20 million. There are several big issues — you have just mentioned one — that we have not considered seriously because we have not had the opportunity to do so. I imagine that you will encourage us to do that quickly.

972. Mr McCausland: If children are to be bussed in future in order to get the socio-economic mix that the Minister wants in the secondary sector, the bill for buses will go through the roof. I mention that now by saying that it will not happen.

973. Mr Lunn: Before he left, Basil talked about the severance costs and the rules for early retirement. Will the ESA take over responsibility for the operation of all pension schemes, ideally on 1 April 2009?

974. Mr Boyd: The single employing authority will take responsibility for all staff. The vast majority of staff are members of the Northern Ireland Local Government Officers’ Scheme (NILGOS); a small number will be members of the Civil Service scheme and other schemes. The ESA will not take over the operation of the scheme, but it will take over the responsibilities.

975. Mr Lunn: Who will decide whether to continue to apply the early retirement factors, for instance? I note that three dates are set out for the reduction in the enhanced pension arrangements. Will that be the ESA’s responsibility?

976. Mr Boyd: That is a matter of policy. First, the pension scheme rules decide people’s entitlement. Secondly, the reference to that in the outline business case reflected the fact that the scheme’s rules had been changed to take account of the age-related discrimination legislation. Previously, people in the scheme who were over 50 were treated differently from people under 50. The scheme had to be changed, and it was to be wound out over a period of three years. That is now a matter for the Department of Education to clear with the Department of Finance and Personnel.

977. Mr McGrath: I can provide an update on that in the context of the wider RPA changes. The trades unions agreed a principle in the area of health.

978. The terms available to people who leave at the end of the process will be the same terms available to those who leave at the start; it should not change the package over a two- or three-year period. That principle should apply no less in the education sector, and colleagues in DCAL and in the Northern Ireland Library Authority are pursing the same changes there. We are dealing with DFP to ensure that the drop-down highlighted in the outline business case is drawn out longer and that it does not happen against that timescale in order to allow the review of public administration changes in education. Therefore, people who leave at the end of the process will be eligible to the same terms as those who leave earlier. Again, because of the robustness of the business case, it does not make any difference to the costs because we have assumed the highest level of cost anyway.

979. Mr Lunn: Have you noticed any disillusionment in the profession? Has there been an increase in requests for voluntary severance under what would appear to be slightly more advantageous terms at the moment than what they will get in a few months’ time?

980. Mr Boyd: No; we have not noticed an increase. I am not aware of any data on that, but the pension scheme has noticed a significant increase in the number of people inquiring about what their pension entitlements would be.

981. Furthermore, we have made it clear that any voluntary severance scheme would be targeted; in other words, it would depend on whether there was a continuing need for the job to be done. There is a need for educational psychologists and, if anything, that need is not being fully met. Therefore it is highly unlikely in those circumstances that a voluntary severance scheme would be available for educational psychologists. That is different from people who are working in positions that are at risk, so it will be a targeted scheme.

982. Mr Lunn: Will there be any difference in the treatment of those who are made compulsorily redundant and those who volunteer for redundancy?

983. Mr Boyd: It is a significant priority for us to avoid any element of compulsory redundancy. There is no requirement for compulsory redundancy, but the terms in the voluntary scheme are contractually binding; therefore they would also apply in a compulsory redundancy.

984. Mr O’Dowd: I have a comment rather than a question. I am concerned that Edwin is advocating that hundreds, if not thousands, of administrative posts should be dismissed from the education system. For various reasons, the economy cannot afford to lose hundreds or thousands of public-sector jobs.

985. Mr McCausland: Rubbish.

986. Mr O’Dowd: The economy cannot afford to lose them. The private sector is on its knees, and if we start dismantling the public sector, the economy will collapse.

987. Mr Poots: The money would be better spent in the classroom.

988. Mr O’Dowd: I will come to that point.

989. A £2 billion budget needs to be administered, no matter how it is done. If we divert a significant percentage of money into schools, it must be administered, which means that our principals and vice-principals will turn into accountants.

990. Mrs M Bradley: They have already turned into accountants.

991. Mr O’Dowd: They will need an administrative team around them. Therefore the money will not go directly into the classrooms; you are only fooling yourself by saying that. All you are doing is sacking thousands of workers to achieve a goal.

992. All services need to be examined closely. Thirty-five million pounds is spent on transport. I cannot let your comment go, Nelson, about the Minister looking to bus pupils to create a social mix. Every day, 4,000 pupils are bussed from north Down to various grammar schools. If those children attended local schools rather than being bussed from north Down, how much money would we save?

993. Mr McCausland: The Minister has no power to stop that.

994. Mr O’Dowd: As the days and weeks evolve we will see what happens, but I will not get into that argument now.

995. There is a £63 million budget for school meals. Perhaps that service could be provided more efficiently. We need to look at each area of our education system to consider whether the service is being delivered efficiently before sacking thousands of people simply because it looks good on a spreadsheet.

996. Mr D Bradley: Several costs are excluded, including the huge cost of rationalising the schools estate; five other cost areas are also excluded. Do those exclusions not invalidate the business case to some extent?

997. Mr Boyd: I go back to the point that I made earlier: we focused on what could and should be done quickly and on what was logical to do quickly. That process led us to the cost figure of between £135 million and £140 million and to the 4,100 staff that we anticipate reducing to about 3,600.

998. Other huge change programmes need to run in parallel with the business case, but this exercise did not consider those.

999. Mr D Bradley: Is this just a snapshot?

1000. Mr Boyd: It studied a very specific area of activity that we believe can be influenced very quickly, covering a three-year period.

1001. Mr D Bradley: How can you ensure that the model is dependable?

1002. Mr Boyd: I will address the issue from a slightly different perspective. John McGrath recently told the Committee that the change-management process is huge and will go on for many years. We must manage that process from an organisational perspective.

1003. I fully expect the Department to drive change from a policy perspective and from a perspective of controlling the budget. The Department will continue to drive us and pressurise the organisation to deliver the flip-round in the budget — in a planned way — that we are trying to achieve.

1004. Mr McGrath: We are trying to create an ESA that will provide leadership, raise standards and close the gap; it will also deliver efficiencies. The outline business case demonstrates that the organisation has an unfulfilled potential to demonstrate efficiencies. During the initial years, the preparatory work demonstrates that £20 million of savings is already in the bank. Further savings will be made as the organisation beds in.

1005. Not every public-sector organisational change has guaranteed savings from the very start — they are mostly aspirational, but the £20 million is guaranteed in a robust review. It can identify posts that could be removed without affecting the quality of service delivery. As time passes and the organisation beds down, it will tighten up and meet the challenges in relation to the support and back-office functions, which will generate the level of efficiency savings that may be needed simply to meet budgetary pressures. If those savings go to the front line, so much the better, but Gavin highlighted that money is tied up in various professional development areas. Those funds could be loosened up and made more available for school principals so that they can meet what they regard as the development needs of their teachers.

1006. Some efficiency savings go to the front line, but they do so in a very prescribed model. However, school principals should have a greater say in identifying the funds that they need to drive forward professional development in their schools. The role of the ESA is to help to support that. All our conversations with school principals have produced very positive responses to that model.

1007. Mr D Bradley: Are those six areas covered in the full business case?

1008. Mr McGrath: This cannot be a business case for the level of efficiency savings in the education sector for the next five years. It is a business case to justify the move from the present organisational model to the single organisation, and demonstrating that in so doing £20 million has already been saved and that a vehicle has been created to drive out further efficiencies.

1009. Mr D Bradley: There are other areas in which you do not yet know the costs or the possible benefits. Surely you should take those into account.

1010. Mr McGrath: There is a limit to which we can forecast the future. As we said, many pressures arose in the education budget of which we were not aware 12 or 15 months ago. We need a more efficient, tighter management-focus vehicle to cope with those challenges.

1011. Mr D Bradley: This document states that more detailed work needs to be done.

1012. Mr Boyd: We identify a major change programme and we identify a major price tag to go along with it; we then make a business case that sets out the benefits against the price tag. It is for the Minister to make a judgement against that.

1013. If there is a significant price tag when we move into other change programmes, departmental approval will be required; a business case will be required and it will have to go through DFP. That will be delivered when we get round to doing it. That is probably not a very satisfactory response, but it is the best that I can give you at this time.

1014. Mr Lunn: I hope that I get away with this question, Chairman: is the cost of the top management board of the ESA included?

1015. Mr Boyd: We are confident that the figures include everything that is associated with running the board.

1016. Mr Lunn: In an ideal world, if you were putting the board together, would you like to see the majority made up of local councillors?

1017. Mr McCausland: Perhaps you would prefer experts.

1018. Mr McGrath: As Gavin does not have that responsibility, it is invidious to ask him.

1019. The Chairperson: Page 41 of the business case concerns middle management and professions; however, we need a breakdown. The status quo is 762 staff, but option 4 is 579 staff; what is the breakdown in reductions between what we deem to be middle management and professionals?

1020. Mr Boyd: Typically, we use salary grades to identify staff; however, I cannot remember the particular classification of salaries. There are groups of professionals who, because of their professional qualifications and status, are paid at the equivalent level of middle management, which might be responsible for significant numbers of staff. I can get you more detail, but I do not have that information to hand.

1021. Mr McGrath: Do you mean how are the predicated reductions split between those two groups of staff?

1022. The Chairperson: Yes.

1023. Mr Boyd: I can get you that information.

1024. Mr McCausland: I think that John O’Dowd is being somewhat disingenuous — I use the word “disingenuous" because I am not allowed to use language any stronger than that. It is inappropriate and disingenuous to suggest that savings can be made in education without reducing the number of people employed. Salaries are the biggest cost. If we want to put the maximum amount of money into front-line services, that is where cuts have to be made. That may not go down well with some of John O’Dowd’s friends in the trades unions; however, that is the reality, and any attempt to evade that is window dressing to save face.

1025. Could we ask the Department to produce an assessment of how much money is spent — it may only be a guesstimate — on the administering, monitoring and servicing of all funding initiatives. We need to get some idea of the cost, not just for the Department but for schools. How much principals’ time is spent on that? A rough estimate would be helpful, as that is a major saving that could be made. I am keen to see that done. A guesstimate would give us some idea as to whether we should be putting more pressure on the Department to move in that regard.

1026. Over the years, the funding system has not been right. However, instead of fundamentally reviewing it, extra bits have been stuck on to deal with this and that, and we have ended up with a mishmash. An assessment is needed to establish how much the Department should be prioritising that. Principals want to see that, and that is how to get more money to them.

1027. The Chairperson: I realise now that you are referring to John O’Dowd; I thought, at first, that you meant John McGrath.

1028. Mr O’Dowd: Nelson is right; I am not saying that there should be no job losses in the education system. The ESA is about the delivery of an efficient education system, and that will involve job losses. My concern is his colleague’s comment:

“We have to sharpen the knife and return to consider cuts in administration". That should not always be the first port of call.

1029. Let us ensure that the £2 billion budget is spent efficiently. I have no doubt that, in future, Nelson will stand with the trades union movement, campaigning on their behalf against the Education Minister as he has in the past.

1030. The Chairperson: Both sides have aired their views on that.

1031. Mr D Bradley: Can we have some information additional to that on page 48 of the outline business case, which relates to the six areas that have been excluded? I want to know more about the indications of costs and benefits that might accrue from those areas.

1032. Mr Boyd: We will send you that.

1033. Mr McCausland: Please send us a guesstimate for the costs of initiatives.

1034. Mr McGrath: I am cautious. The member is asking us to trawl 1,250 schools and ask each principal to calculate the time that he spends dealing with certain initiatives, having to specify which initiative. That would add to the administrative burden on schools. I seriously doubt whether, when we add up the responses, we will obtain a meaningful figure.

1035. Mr McCausland: I admire John’s simplified view. As a civil servant, he can always find reasons why we should not do something; it must be a part of their training. One does not need to trouble 1,250 schools, as he well knows. We are asking for a guesstimate; we are not asking for a figure to the precise penny. How many people in his Department are administering initiatives?

1036. Mr McGrath: The Department is separate; I am nearly sure that the member said “each school". If you want to take three or four typical schools in each sector, we can do that.

1037. The Chairperson: The example that was brought to the PAC was the £40 million that was spent on numeracy and literacy. Teachers told us consistently that if the money that had been allocated for numeracy and literacy had been put into front-line services — teachers — there would have been a better outcome and the report that went to the PAC would not have been so critical. That is the kind of issue that Edwin and Nelson were driving at.

1038. We set aside a huge amount of money on a project that we hope will change the world. However, to achieve that we may use 80% of the money on administration but not change the outcome. Forty million pounds was spent on improving numeracy and literacy, but there was no change. Will we spend £12 million only to see no change?

1039. Mr McGrath: In future, as far as possible, we want to give unlabelled funding to schools and specify the standards that outcomes must meet. The more small pockets we have — and we have discussed this before — the more time is spent monitoring them than is spent on monitoring the vast bulk of the money. That is not conducive to positive outcomes. We want to take that direction in future. However, as I told the Committee previously, if we were to stop some of those earmarked budgets, there would be some interests arguing that we need a special fund for X or for Y. The largest chunk in the earmarked budget is the C2K budget, which we regard as important. Were we to do that, the Committee would have to recognise that certain narrow initiatives would be abandoned that some interests regard as important. Whereas a strategic approach that put all the money in, asked schools to deliver, and monitored them against outcomes would reduce the number of special initiatives. That is an approach that I would support; however, it is swings and roundabouts.

1040. Mrs M Bradley: Principals may be accountants, but they are also teachers, particularly in the primary sector. That must be taken into account.

1041. Mr D Bradley: My question is addressed to John and Catherine. What is the position of teachers who have applied for redundancy?

1042. Mr McGrath: The issue of teacher redundancies is difficult. Changes mean that the cost cannot fall on the scheme itself but must be met by employers. We flagged it up in the strategic stocktake — it was almost the biggest bid. However, that bid was linked with whether we wanted to pursue the rationalisation of schools through teacher redundancies. It is almost a question of investing to save.

1043. One of the major challenges that emerged from last week’s stocktake statement is that a lack of provision for premature retirement and redundancies next year may create significant problems. The question is how to strike a balance. We may return to the Committee before too long to tell it that the Minister proposes to carve out some money for redundancies and early retirements. It may be argued that that is not the most important or front-line need. Rationalisation is an important and a difficult issue.

1044. Ms Catherine Daly (Department of Education): John has covered the points well. The key issue is value for money, which is fundamental to any public expenditure decision. Early redundancy decisions must be taken in the context of value for money in individual cases, and that would be in the wider context of rationalisation or how redundancies benefit the system as a whole.

1045. Mr D Bradley: Is there a time frame for those plans?

1046. Mr McGrath: We want the resource proposals for next year; that is one of the proposals in the strategic stocktake. There is no funding available for it now, and it is one of the issues that we will discuss with the Minister.

1047. Mr D Bradley: What is the position of those who applied before the deadline in November 2008?

1048. Mr McGrath: I am not sure of their technical position. There may be issues if their applications fall into next year.

1049. Ms Daly: I do not know the exact timing of cases that are in train, Dominic; may we come back to the Committee on that?

1050. Mr D Bradley: Will you provide the Committee with a detailed update on the situation?

1051. Mr McGrath: Yes.

1052. The Chairperson: John and Catherine, thank you very much. That concludes the evidence session on the Education Bill.

4 February 2009

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

Witnesses:

Mr John McGrath
Mr Chris Stewart

Department of Education

1053. The Chairperson (Mr Storey): I welcome again honorary members of the Committee for Education, John McGrath and Chris Stewart. Their presentation will be on the controlled estate.

1054. Mr Chris Stewart (Department of Education): Good morning, Chairperson and members. We are glad to be back. I am sure that the privilege of honorary membership does not extend to voting, so we will content ourselves with making presentations.

1055. Mr John McGrath (Department of Education): We are here for the tea and scones.

1056. The Chairperson: You are welcome to them.

1057. Mr Stewart: I am trying to give them up, so I will forego that pleasure. My presentation, which will be relatively brief, follows on from the previous session in which members discussed the proposals for representation and advocacy for the controlled sector.

1058. Today we propose to deal with the related issue of the ownership of the controlled estate. Members will be familiar with the underlying drivers and the rationale for the proposal in paper 20. It stems from concerns that were expressed by some members of the Committee and by other stakeholders about a perceived conflict of interest if the education and skills authority (ESA) were to own a group of schools.

1059. The paper sets out proposals for a separate body to take ownership of what are known as controlled schools. Members may ask in response to that proposal why there is a need for two bodies; why not simply combine the representative body and the ownership body in a single organisation? The answer lies in the policy decisions and requirements under which we must work. It is the Department’s view that ownership of the controlled estate must be on a statutory basis. It involves the stewardship of public assets worth some £2·3 billion; therefore we feel that the appropriate solution is for a statutory body to take ownership.

1060. However, the Department’s policy is also that all the representative bodies must be non-statutory and have no statutory functions in order to ensure equality for all sectors and all types of school. Thus the Department’s policy is that statutory and non-statutory functions cannot be combined in a single body and that there is a need for two organisations.

1061. However, as signalled in the paper, the Department recognises the need for close links between the representational body and the ownership body in the controlled sector; perhaps through joint chairmanship or some overlap of membership or perhaps through a statutory duty on the ownership body to consult the representative body about the discharge of its functions.

1062. Central to the role and functions of the ownership body is the ownership and stewardship of the assets in the controlled sector. The paper contains several potential additional functions that may be added to that body. Owners of schools tend to have a role in appointing governors, so it may be appropriate to consider whether the ownership body should have some role in appointing or suggesting some governors for controlled schools. However, I assure the Committee that that is quite separate from the ongoing role of the Transferor Representatives’ Council (TRC) in appointing governors and would not be at the expense of that role.

1063. The ownership body may also have a role in making development proposals, particularly in what I have termed a safety-net capacity. If there is an identified need for a school development in an area but for some reason there are no proposals to meet that need, the ownership body might be charged with making a proposal to plug the gap. That would be a last resort or safety-net function.

1064. The paper also sets out a possible longer-term vision for the controlled sector. That stems from the policy on accountable autonomy for schools. In future, some boards of governors of controlled schools may be able to take ownership of the physical assets of the school and thus achieve greater autonomy and provide a closer link between the school and the community that it serves. It should be stressed that that is a long-term vision, and no board of governors would be compelled to take on that role. Part of the role of the controlled schools ownership body might be to work with and support boards of governors to prepare them for taking on that responsibility if they wished to do so.

1065. The paper sets out options for the nature of the body and its accountability arrangements and identifies the Department’s preferred option: a statutory public authority. As I say, the Department’s view is that that is the only option that provides sufficient accountability and safeguards for this vital public asset base.

1066. The paper also deals with other important technical matters, mainly financial, notably the potential treatment of value added tax (VAT), stamp duty and land registry fees. I assure the Committee that we are talking to our colleagues in the Department of Finance and Personnel and the Treasury to minimise the potential effect of the transfer of assets on the Department’s budget and on the public purse.

1067. Ideally, if the first and second review of public administration Bills could be implemented at the same time, there could be a single transfer of assets from the education and library boards to the new controlled schools ownership body rather than two transfers of assets. However, that would involve extremely challenging timescales and could in no way be guaranteed.

1068. In previous sessions members asked us to return to the subject of the disposal of assets and the potential for inequality between sectors stemming from the rules on those disposals. Those rules are determined, and occasionally changed, by DFP and are based on the central principle that resources — the proceeds of the disposal of assets — are returned to the centre for reallocation according to assessed need and determined priority. The minor exception to that at present is that education and library boards are permitted to retain a small proportion in order to encourage them to dispose of surplus assets. Most proceeds are returned for reallocation. It is through that principle that equality will be ensured because resources will be reallocated according to objectively assessed need. The same will apply to other sectors for which there are clawback arrangements that are applied when assets that are funded by capital grants are disposed of.

1069. From time to time, members have suggested that the proceeds of asset disposal ought to be hypothecated or ring-fenced to the sectors or areas where the disposal occurred. However, that would be extremely problematic. It must be borne in mind that the proceeds of an asset disposal do not in any way constitute extra moneys for the Department of Education; they are netted off its capital allocation. Therefore hypothecation or ring-fencing would lock a significant proportion of the Department’s resources into historical patterns of provision when the assessment of need may in fact suggest the need for a different pattern of resource allocation. Ring-fencing might thus make it more difficult to achieve equality.

1070. The Department is particularly concerned that ring-fencing could seriously distort the area-planning process. Area planning will be based on the objective assessment of need and determination of priorities and the allocation of resources accordingly. In the current financial climate, that will inevitably involve making difficult choices between competing demands. It is difficult to see how that process could operate fairly and effectively if it were to be constrained by historical patterns of distribution of resources. For those reasons, we do not propose the ring-fencing of the disposal of assets.

1071. That is a brief summary of what is quite a technical section of the paper. We welcome the views of the Committee because the paper is out for consultation. We will, of course, bring it back to the Committee when the consultation finishes, and we will be happy to answer members’ questions.

1072. The Chairperson: Several issues arise from the paper and its reference to the controlled estate. You referred to one of them — the Committee has had a concern for a considerable time about the equity in how assets are disposed of and the money distributed. Legislation on capital grants was enacted in 1974 or 1977. My understanding was that a non-controlled or maintained school that applied for capital works raised the money, did the work, and then applied for a capital grant, which was paid back to the trustees. State money is given to a privately owned organisation.

1073. If, due to having become surplus to requirements or demographic decline, that estate is sold, not all the money returns to the Department. In fact, only a small percentage goes to the Department; most goes to the owners and trustees. How is that fair and equitable?

1074. The capital grant covers all the costs, yet the money recouped from the disposal of a controlled-sector asset goes to the board. You said earlier that money is distributed on an analysis of need in any sector, but there is no equality in how that is done. The Minister claims to want to ensure equality, so how will we address that glaring inequality?

1075. I read nothing in the paper that deals with that problem; indeed, I see that no work has been done to establish the group. January 2010 is still talked about as the date for the establishment of that group, but not everything is in place for that to be possible.

1076. I am also concerned by the paper’s reference to the ESA initially having ownership of the estate in 2010. That is unacceptable. Chris, you have said many times that the ESA cannot be the body that owns the estate. Nevertheless, this paper states that if the body is not established, the ESA will own the controlled-schools estate for a time.

1077. Mr Stewart: I will deal with your first concern and then return to your point about the timescale.

1078. The arrangements are as you describe with one important exception, which contains the reassurance that you seek. Clawback arrangements are included in the grant agreement for an asset funded by a capital grant. A proportion of the resources come back to the Department, and that proportion of resources would not be small, as you fear. The Department will get back what it put in, and that is why it is not flagged up significantly in the paper.

1079. We are satisfied that the continuation of the existing arrangements will ensure the equality that you seek. The Department would receive a significant proportion of the grant. The clawback arrangements for 100% publicly funded assets mean that the Department recoups what it puts in.

1080. The Chairperson: I want to tease out some further information. Does the Department have an analysis of how the disposal of assets in the maintained and controlled sectors has worked in practice in recent years? Is that the desired aim of the new arrangements or is that how it has been since the change to the capital-grants system?

1081. Mr Stewart: Both. There are some longstanding grant agreements, and, if we delve deep enough, I am sure that differences could be found in the precise clawback arrangements over time. Practices and the requirements of DFP have developed over the years; a grant agreement that is drawn up now may not be exactly the same as a grant agreement that was drawn up in 1974. Our clawback arrangements will be applied to all grants at present, whatever DFP’s requirements may be.

1082. Mr McGrath: In a sense, the proposals for the body do not affect the funding arrangements; they are separate. However, there is a view that the ESA should not own any of the estate because it would be the determinate of area planning. Eugene Rooney will be here later, and he can provide further insight into the operation of the capital grant and clawback arrangements that apply to voluntary grammars. In essence, however, we get back pro rata what we put in.

1083. The policy on disposals is governed from the centre, and, in the past couple of years, the CART report brought added impetus to that. As Chris said, the centre counts in expected receipts, which are included in our baseline figures. However, this year, we thought that we would get £30 million of receipts; our budget settlement envisaged that £15 million of that would go back to the centre, and we would keep £15 million. Our capital plans included the expectation that £15 million of disposals would come in and we would recycle them. As Chris said, disposals are not extra — they are built from at the beginning. The drop in the market over the past 24 months has had a significant effect on capital resources.

1084. If you begin to hypothecate, you might maintain investment only to the level of disposals, which would not be a fair way of meeting need. Eugene Rooney will expand on the capital grant and clawback arrangements later. If necessary, we can provide a paper on that specific arrangement, which is unaffected by the body for the controlled estate.

1085. The Chairperson: That would be useful. Will you speak about the timetable?

1086. Mr Stewart: Ideally, we would all like the controlled schools ownership body to be established by 1 January 2010, as it would mean a single transfer of assets rather than two. However, the RPA programme is based on the need for two Bills and the recognition that the timescale is extremely challenging for us. As we indicated in our policy memorandum papers, the target for the implementation of the second Bill is 1 January 2010, or 1 April 2010 if we need a fallback position. It may be 1 April, perhaps even later, before we can bring the controlled schools ownership body into being. However, we would like that period to be as short as possible.

1087. The ESA would be the owner of a group of schools. We recognise the difficulty and the concern in that, so it is in everyone’s interest to ensure that that period is as short as possible. However, we cannot guarantee the Committee that we could reduce it to zero.

1088. The Chairperson: Do we not run the risk of having the same concerns as the voluntary grammars in relation to the single employing authority? Do we not run the risk of the controlled sector saying exactly the same? If the estate is under the control and ownership of the ESA, the ESA will have the power to appoint boards of governors, and the functions that you outlined in the paper would be part of the body, which would be responsible for the controlled sector and under the control of the ESA. Therefore all the concerns that people have about the ESA will be realised in two sectors, that is, the voluntary grammar and the controlled sector, and that makes it even more difficult.

1089. Mr Stewart: There are two separate points. First, the ESA will appoint the bulk of governors in controlled schools because the community governors would be the largest category by far. Therefore, I do not think that that issue would change, no matter how things turn out.

1090. On the more fundamental concern, the issue is one of a perceived conflict of interests; we recognise and accept that. The issue is about the most robust and effective measure that we can take to reduce or manage that risk. If we can minimise the period in which the ESA owns those schools to a matter of months, the risk becomes extremely small.

1091. It still exists, and stakeholders may continue to have a negative perception of it. However, I am not certain that it is practicable for us to go any further than that.

1092. Mr McGrath: The critical issue will be the perception that the ESA might somehow be more partial in determining decisions on capital expenditure.

1093. The Chairperson: From others?

1094. Mr McGrath: Yes. The period of ownership would be as limited as possible. First, there will be a spotlight on the ESA to demonstrate that it was doing nothing that might reflect partiality. Secondly, it is unlikely that significant capital decisions would be taken in that period unless they were already in the pipeline. In those circumstances, the scope for something going awry in that limited period is very limited.

1095. Mr O’Dowd: Can you clarify DFP’s involvement or guidelines on the matter? Who will own the voluntary grammar-school sector estate? If it is owned by a group of trustees or individual schools, what mechanism will ensure that public money is secured for capital expenditure?

1096. Mr Stewart: The second question is perhaps more easily answered than the first. With the exception of controlled schools, nothing in the RPA will change the ownership of schools of any type. In the voluntary-grammar sector, schools will continue to be owned by the trustees or, in some cases, by the boards of governors. In every case in which a school is funded through a capital grant, there is a formal grant agreement that is signed by the Department and by the owners of the school. That includes the clawback arrangements that ensure that in the event of the asset being disposed of if it is no longer required, the Department gets back what it put in.

1097. Perhaps the most important point about the DFP rules is that not all the proceeds of asset disposal come to the Department of Education; some are retained at the centre by DFP for allocation to Departments according to a central assessment of priorities. Those rules change from time to time, but the core principle remains the same: assets are returned to the centre and reallocated on the basis of objective and assessed need.

1098. Mr B McCrea: Following on from that point, there is concern among voluntary grammar schools and others that the ESA will take control of their estate in some way.

1099. Mr McGrath: As Chris said, there is nothing in the proposals that affects voluntary grammar schools’ ownership of their estate.

1100. Mr B McCrea: That is OK; I just wanted to hear you say it twice. However, the nub of the concern is the failure to recognise the blatant inequality — the inequity — that, some time ago, the transferors gave up their schools for the public good and now feel that they are being disadvantaged. The issue appears similar to land that was vested for public use and which is no longer required; therefore, under vesting regulations, it was offered to the people who originally owned it. I think that you are going headlong down the path of centralised ownership, which means that the voluntary grammar sector and the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools have a perceived advantage over the controlled sector. I do not think that that has been tackled.

1101. Mr McGrath: There is an important difference between the transferors handing over their assets for what, at the time, they regarded as good reasons and a vesting process whereby the state decides, for the greater good, to take ownership of a property, notwithstanding the owner’s views. Therefore it is appropriate that if that public need ceases, the previous owners should, in certain cases, have first refusal on getting the property back.

1102. There are differences between the two cases.

1103. Mr Stewart: There is another important technical consideration. The rules come from the Crichel Down case: where there has been compulsory acquisition of an asset that is subsequently disposed of, that asset is offered to the original owners for sale. I am not certain that the Churches have expressed an interest in buying back the schools that they handed over to the state.

1104. Mr B McCrea: I am not suggesting that they have; it is I who am suggesting it. It is a basic inequality that some sectors are perceived as retaining estate control. Your paper states that there are advantages and disadvantages. However, a significant sector has, I have been told, been raped and pillaged over the years. I do not suppose that there is much point in going on about it other than to impress upon you that I do not think that your paper or your proposals address that perceived hurt and inequality. You have not made the necessary inroads. After the Committee’s last meeting, I spoke to representatives of the TRC, who said that they are still not happy.

1105. Mr McGrath: In a guarded way, may I ask for a definition of rape and pillage?

1106. Mr B McCrea: There was a perception that the controlled sector took the brunt of school closures because that was easier. I do not know whether that is right or not, but it is a perception. One of the reasons for building up a representative sectoral body is to address that issue. There is a perception that the controlled sector is the poor relation.

1107. Mr McGrath: There is that perception, which is outwith the ownership of schools. There are issues of achievement in some areas. There is an equal perception that CCMS has done more to drive forward closure and rationalisation than the controlled sector has. In other areas, there may be a perception that the controlled sector has not driven forward rationalisation linked to quality, and indeed has resisted that. However, those perceptions are important and must be dealt with.

1108. This body has been set up because there is a perception that it would be inappropriate for the ESA to own the estate. That does not solve the issue of how one would demonstrate that future investment and rationalisational proposals are dealt with equitably. It may be a necessity, but it is not a sufficiency. The ESA will still face the issue that we have now. There are perceptions that one sector does better than another, that investment is not fairly targeted, and that disposals are not recycled properly. Those issues will simply not disappear, which is why we need a process built round area-based planning to take a proper, more deterministic way to meet need and to channel investment. Those are building blocks, but they do not deal with the core issue. The issues of whether there is a controlled estate body, whether the ESA owns it, where future investment goes, and what the pattern of schools will be, still need to be determined. That is why we are looking to area-based planning as the keystone to deal with those issues. There are perceptions, Basil, but they work both ways.

1109. Mr B McCrea: In my attempt to be helpful and to show you where my representations come from, I must state that there is a hierarchy of needs. The process and the mechanism for deciding how to manage capital, for example, is two or three levels down; whereas the need to be treated fairly and equally — and the perception that one is being treated fairly — is at the highest level. If those levels are not right, all else fails. It does not matter how good the rules and processes are, if people think that they are working agin them, we have a problem.

1110. I am sorry if I am being unhelpful, but your paper does not address the perceived inequality and sense of hurt of the TRC and others about how their estate is being handled compared to other estates. It is a serious issue. I am sorry to be the harbinger of bad news.

1111. Mr Stewart: It is not at all unhelpful. We continue to talk to the TRC and others, and we register their concern. We want to continue to engage with them, and we are happy to consider suggestions or ideas. This is a paper for consultation to which they may wish to contribute in order to attempt to address those issues.

1112. We are conscious of the various perceptions and we take them seriously. Common to them all is that we have had an adversarial and competitive approach to the planning and delivery of the educational estate. In the case of winners or losers — or perceived winners or losers — the pattern of perception varies from time to time. The core of our policy is that we absolutely must move away from that. No sector or group of schools must perceive itself to be part of anything other than a fair, open and transparent process that is based on need. That is why we continue to place area-based planning at the centre.

1113. Mr McGrath: To reflect on previous discussions, we recognise that many controlled schools — perhaps controlled grammar schools — feel that the current arrangements have them operating in a command-and-control system when compared to their peers in other sectors. The arrangement that we propose is precisely to enable them to be more liberated and to have greater control of their destiny.

1114. We spoke previously about the aspirations of Ballyclare grammar or any other school — we must find another example, because it is unfair to keep singling out Ballyclare.

1115. The Chairperson: I am sure that you will have no difficulty there.

1116. Mr McGrath: Absolutely. You have referred to the aspirations of schools to move to greater autonomy, and Chris talked about the long-term vision. We want to create the capacity in these provisions for some of those controlled schools to migrate along a path where they might eventually own their own estate akin to the status of voluntary grammar schools. It would be a move towards greater autonomy. We recognise that, and Basil’s points are well made. We can deal with facts, but dealing with perceptions is more complex. That is one of the issues that we have to deal with.

1117. Mr B McCrea: There may be some mileage in fleshing out a route map for how the long-term vision might happen.

1118. Mr McGrath: Part of our thinking about autonomy was how schools could take ownership of their assets.

1119. Mr B McCrea: That is worth exploring.

1120. Mr Stewart: We may have undersold that notion in the paper and tried to sound cautious about it. I hope that we did not give the impression that we are reluctant to go down that path; it was simply an attempt to reflect the fact that, particularly in the controlled sector, one size does not fit all. Many schools in the controlled sector would be glad to go down that route as quickly as possible; others are unwilling to do that, as they quite happy with the present arrangements. Both positions are legitimate, and we want to allow space for both approaches in the policy that we develop.

1121. The Chairperson: We may return to that. Do you have a question, Michelle?

1122. Miss McIlveen: Oh, thank you. I did not think that I was going to be called so quickly.

1123. The Chairperson: Pay attention, please. Thank you. [Laughter.]

1124. Miss McIlveen: A couple of weeks ago, you discussed appointments to the working group. However, I do not remember your outlining the education and library boards’ role of nominating members.

1125. Mr McGrath: Are you referring to appointments to the working group that will conduct some initial work on the controlled sector support group?

1126. Miss McIlveen: Yes.

1127. Mr McGrath: The Department is seeking a group of interested individuals. That does not necessarily exclude board members of education and library boards or officials, given that many people may be making a career move and may not be interested in membership of that group. It is not a representation, because it will not be a statutory body; we are seeking volunteerism as opposed to statutory representation.

1128. Miss McIlveen: If you are appointing, nominating or, in this instance, shoulder-tapping to appoint members, I am concerned that when that body is established, its membership will decide who is on the board. Furthermore, there is a possibility of appointing joint chairpersons to the ownership board.

1129. Point 26 states:

“DE should have the right to appoint the members of the ownership organisation in accordance with OCPANI principles;"

1130. Can you expand on that?

1131. Mr Stewart: In the interest of creating a coherent approach for the controlled sector, it is desirable at least to explore the scope for linking a few bodies. We will have to explore the extent to which the law and guidelines from the Commissioner for Public Appointments allow us to link those bodies. The ownership body must be a statutory non-departmental public body whose membership is appointed according to OCPANI rules with uppermost regard to the principle of merit.

1132. By contrast, the representative body will be a non-statutory body that will essentially determine its own governance and appointment arrangements, although the Department will have to agree to those arrangements. At the moment, I cannot explain in detail to what extent we can legitimately ensure an overlap or commonality of membership; however, the concept is worth exploring and would be beneficial. However, we will be constrained by the law.

1133. Miss McIlveen: I am concerned that the Department might use a heavy hand. We will have to consider that matter.

1134. Mr Stewart: The Department’s hand will be supporting.

1135. Miss McIlveen: That remains to be seen. Point 29 refers to VAT exemptions. When will you have that information? There is a huge cost of up to £700,000 a year to a school that has been built under PPP arrangements over the 25-year life of the contract.

1136. Mr Stewart: I will check that and come back to you. My colleague in the finance directorate Catherine Daly is actively pursuing that matter with the Department of Finance and Personnel. I do not know when we will receive an answer. We recognise the urgency of getting a response, and the outcome will be significant. We know the answer that we want, and we are emphasising to our colleagues the need to give us that answer.

1137. Miss McIlveen: We need that information. If we are conducting a spend-to-save for the ESA, there is another cost of which we have not been made aware.

1138. The Chairperson: Does DFP have the power to authorise VAT exemptions?

1139. Mr Stewart: No; DFP will take that issue up with the Treasury.

1140. The Chairperson: It is a Treasury issue. What if the Treasury says no? We have had difficulties in the past with VAT, and the controlled sector now faces an additional cost of £700,000 a year; that would be huge. Is that matter being pursued?

1141. Mr Stewart: Yes. If it became a reality, its effect would be profound. However, at this stage, our assessment of the likelihood of the risk is low. We hope to convince our colleagues in the Treasury — through DFP — that it constitutes, essentially, a technical transfer of assets among public authorities. That should not attract VAT or significant land registry fees; it would not be a sensible approach.

1142. The Chairperson: Has a business case been prepared?

1143. Mr Stewart: I am sure that that issue will be included in the development of the full business case for the RPA.

1144. Mr McGrath: The Treasury or, specifically, HM Revenue and Customs will rule on that matter. As the paper states, we sought confirmation that the ESA will have VAT exemption in the same way that education and library boards do.

1145. The test is pointing out to HMRC that it classifies those bodies according to a GB model. We have to point out that whereas local authorities run education in GB, the ESA and the education and library boards are the Northern Ireland equivalents and should be treated in the same way. The process is one of articulation and explanation. It is not necessarily swift, but we hope that it will be resolved satisfactorily; if not, significant issues will arise: we will have to ask whether the benefits of the body are sufficient to justify the significant cost that will fall on the education budget. I do not think that that cost would penalise controlled schools; the education budget would have to bear it on a broad back, and that is unpalatable. When we get the numbers sorted out and some progress made, we will inform the Committee. The issue will have a bearing on whether we want to follow this through to a conclusion.

1146. The Chairperson: Do we know whether DFP accepts the merits of the case? Has the Department of Education to convince DFP or draw up a business case for an exemption; or is the Department seeking VAT exemption for the ESA? Has the Department asked DFP for exemption, putting the onus on DFP to put the case in conjunction with it? DFP would then negotiate with HMRC and explain to it why the VAT exemption is necessary.

1147. Mr McGrath: That is the process. When such issues arise, and they often do, DFP tends to support the Department. The decisions are not in DFP’s gift; it is the conduit.

1148. Catherine will be here shortly, and she will give the Committee an update.

1149. Mr D Bradley: The situation that you outline in the paper is one where a school’s ownership body may be little more than a repository of the deeds; at other end of the scale, new voluntary schools could emerge. Point 20 reads:

“A possible long-term vision for the sector is one where the capacity of the staff and the governors of the majority of schools is developed to the point where the Board of Governors in each school is able and willing to become the legal owner of the school, thereby increasing the vested interest in the school."

1150. You said that that would lead to truly locally owned schools. Is that not a recipe for the break-up or fragmentation of the controlled sector? Would it not become more difficult to area-plan for that sector? Does that not defeat the point of having a unified organisation?

1151. Mr McGrath: The controlled sector is very diverse; in a sense, the only common theme that links those schools is that they are controlled; they include inner-city, rural, grammar and non-grammar schools. Previously in the Committee, we discussed the different aspirations of schools in the sector. I am not sure that trying to maintain rigidity about the sector formerly known as controlled is an objective.

1152. We want to promote as much autonomy as possible among schools in future. Some schools might see greater autonomy as a migration route towards control over their own affairs and ownership of their own estate. That would be a critical test, not just something that we would hand over willy-nilly. However, we would not regard it as inimical. Area-based planning will still be about determining the educational needs of an area and planning to meet them. Sector support groups will have an input to that, but they will not have a monopoly of wisdom or input to the process.

1153. The ESA will therefore be set up largely to deal with an element of the perceptions that exist. Neither my Minister nor I would regard it as a problem if the controlled sector shrank over time. If some schools took ownership of their own estate, it would gradually become redundant — rather like the “Carlsberg complaints department." I would regard that as a positive rather than a negative.

1154. I am not sure that preserving the controlled sector in aspic is a positive aspiration. Instead, we should encourage the various sectors to migrate to different places in future so that boundaries break down. Over time, the mix of sector-support groups may need to be redefined because schools have repositioned themselves.

1155. Mr D Bradley: I was going to make that point. If that sector becomes so fragmented, it will be very difficult for a sector-support body to represent the sector’s interests.

1156. Mr McGrath: That is a fair point, Dominic.

1157. Mr D Bradley: One could go one step further and question the point of the ESA.

1158. Mr McGrath: We have to work from where we are. We are talking about long-term migration — it may take some time for schools to move. We need a sector-support group because of the others that are in place. Not having a group will add to the sense of prejudice and inequality that Basil articulated.

1159. Over time, the sector could break down into different sub-sectors, such as an inner-city sector, a rural sector or even a geographical span. We would not have a fundamental issue with that; neither, however, would we want over-fragmentation. In addition, we would not want to take any more money from the front line for sector support.

1160. Mr Stewart: As John said, Dominic correctly identified the risk; at the same time, however, if the only thing that links or binds those schools is shared details of their ownership, I am not certain that it would be a terribly coherent sector anyway. As Dominic rightly said, the real challenge is for the controlled schools’ representative body because it will play a significant role in the area-planning process; not the ownership body, which will have little or no role.

1161. Interestingly, one of the early responses that we received to the consultation on the paper was from a principal of a controlled integrated school, which has a very close association with the Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education (NICIE). The principal asked whether the school will belong to the controlled sector or the integrated sector in future. Our response is that that school can belong to the sector of its choice, to both sectors or to neither.

1162. Mr D Bradley: OK.

1163. Mr McCausland: Equality is a key issue; we want to ensure that there is equality across the sectors and equality for all children. I am sure that nobody would want to enshrine or embed anything inequitable in the new proposal.

1164. Will you confirm that the proposals will ensure full equality among all the sectoral bodies, including the ownership body and the support body? In other words, will the ownership body have the same rights, role and authority as the trustees of Catholic schools?

1165. Mr Stewart: That is our aim. However, the phrasing of your question leads me to believe that you are about to point to some aspect that you think is sub-optimal.

1166. Mr McCausland: I just want to put this matter on the record. Are you assuring us that there is equality of role, status and powers?

1167. Mr Stewart: Yes.

1168. Mr McCausland: OK. That is reassuring.

1169. Returning to an issue that Michelle McIlveen raised, point 26 states that

“DE should have the right to appoint the members of the ownership organisation in accordance with OCPANI principles;"

1170. Do those principles apply to the membership of the trustees’ body?

1171. Mr McGrath: No; they do not.

1172. Mr McCausland: Therefore there is not equality.

1173. Mr McGrath: Those assets are owned by the state, and the ownership organisation will be a statutory body.

1174. Mr McCausland: I know that. However, there are two sectors; in one, the Church appoints the trustees; in the other, the Department appoints the trustees. Is that correct?

1175. Mr McGrath: Yes. Voluntary grammar schools will have their own arrangements for appointing the members of their boards of governors.

1176. Mr McCausland: I might address voluntary grammar schools later, but I am more concerned about controlled schools at the moment. The OCPANI principles generally apply to public bodies that cater for the entire community in Northern Ireland.

1177. Mr Stewart: As do all public bodies.

1178. Mr McCausland: Yes, but that body will deal with schools that cater for nearly the entire unionist community and small numbers from other communities — it does not cater for all of Northern Ireland.

1179. Mr McGrath: The body will own the estate of a number of schools that cater for the community that you described.

1180. Mr McCausland: Yes, it will deal with a sector that caters for those communities.

1181. Mr McGrath: It will own the estate.

1182. Mr McCausland: Yes, I know that. Therefore in one case the Catholic Church appoints trustees; in the other, there is a system of appointment to create an ownership body that could not be representative or reflective of the community that those schools serve.

1183. Mr McGrath: There is a difference in ownership status: controlled schools are owned by the state, so even as we speak —

1184. Mr McCausland: I know that there is inequality, but we want to get away from that.

1185. Mr McGrath: There is a difference in ownership — assets in public ownership are subject to certain standards of governance and accountability that do not necessarily apply to the assets of other bodies that, despite operating in the public sphere, are essentially private organisations. The Committee would not expect us to dilute those principles. We are saying that we will create an ownership body that will own substantive public assets.

1186. Mr McCausland: How will you get a body whose membership represents or reflects the community that is educated in those schools?

1187. Mr McGrath: That is a fair point. We have work to do to define the criteria for membership of the body. Some of those criteria will have to include technical skills, because the body will own a great deal of property. Criteria will have to be drawn up so that the membership of the body understands the ethos and background of the controlled sector and the communities that the controlled sector serves. Those criteria will have to be built in.

1188. The way to get an overlap of membership is for people to apply. Despite Michelle McIlveen’s remarks, people have to apply for public appointments — we do not just tap people on the shoulder. The criteria for membership of the body will have to have guidelines woven in that cater for the point that you make.

1189. Mr McCausland: The document is going out for consultation without such criteria.

1190. Mr McGrath: That is a fair point.

1191. Mr McCausland: That is unfortunate, because it is a fundamental issue. Will the powers and authorities of the new body be the same as those of the trustees in the Catholic-maintained sector?

1192. Mr McGrath: Yes.

1193. Mr McCausland: I am also interested in pathways for the future; it is a pity that the issue was not dealt with more fully in the document. Before we go too far down that road, I can think of areas in which there are schools that might want the establishment of a smaller trust.

1194. For instance, some schools might want to be part of a smaller system for reasons of ethos or religion; I would like to see much more about that, because I am concerned about the situation. As I said before, a controlled school can transform itself into an integrated school, but an integrated school cannot transform itself into a controlled school. Those issues are of significant concern to the unionist community, and they must be tied down before any Bills come before the Assembly and before decisions are made.

1195. Mr McGrath: That is a good idea. It is a fair point, and I will come back to it. This paper covers a great deal, and perhaps we should have delved more into the process of appointing members of the body. We might come back to that. However, I accept that it might have been useful to make some reference to it in the public consultation.

1196. The pathways are an emergent policy. There is a view that there should be accountable autonomy: schools should have as much autonomy as possible to determine how they will meet improving standards of outcomes for children. They may wish to do different things with regard to employing staff, and previously we talked about giving schools more scope over securing professional development. Another strand that is highlighted is that, over time, we should create the potential for a pathway for some schools in the controlled sector that might aspire to owning their own estate eventually.

1197. That would be a long-term plan, because a school’s board of governors would have to be of a sufficient calibre to take that step. There are issues about the calibre of boards of governors across the board; it is an evolution. We want to explain how we see that emerging and happening over time, and we must ensure that the provisions that we put in place will create the potential for those developments as opposed to closing off potential. We think that those issues will materialise in the next five to 10 years rather than in the next two or three. It is evolution rather than revolution.

1198. Mr McCausland: The legislation relating to the Equality Commission or the Human Rights Commission — or both — states that their membership must be reflective or representative of the community that they serve.

1199. Mr Stewart: It is the Human Rights Commission. It is an extremely problematic piece of legislation.

1200. Mr McCausland: That may be so, but there is a precedent.

1201. Mr Stewart: There is a precedent, but one must remember that it is Westminster legislation.

1202. Mr McCausland: It is good practice for a public body to reflect the community that it serves. In the case of the Human Rights Commission, it reflects the whole of Northern Ireland. In the case that I have identified, the community that the school is serving should be reflected in the membership.

1203. Mr Stewart: It is an issue that could be explored. My reference to its being Westminster legislation was to draw your attention to section 6 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998, which determines the legislative competence of the Assembly. We would have to make sure that any formulation of words was capable of getting through that.

1204. Careful thought needs to be given to the extent to which we would want such a body to reflect the composition of the community served by schools or reflect the composition of the community of Northern Ireland that will, potentially, be served by all those schools. Do we want to reinforce or underpin the existing composition of the controlled-schools sector or not? I offer that as a question.

1205. John Mr McGrath said that that is not the only, or most important, factor, to be considered in arriving at the criteria for the membership of the ESA. Its role will be different from that of the representative body; its role, as Dominic said, is narrow and technical and centres on the stewardship of public assets that are worth £2·3 billion.

1206. The skills and competencies required for the stewardship of public assets worth £2·3 billion will be high on the list of criteria.

1207. Mr McCausland: I entirely agree with you regarding the competencies. However, on your previous question about a or b, I know which one I expect; that is an equality issue that you simply cannot avoid.

1208. Mr McGrath: It is an important point and, as Chris said, we must explore the extent to which certain things should be specified. It would also be appropriate to look for people who have an understanding of issues concerning the controlled sector, such as perception, which Basil mentioned. Those people do not necessarily have to be from a particular religious group; they could simply have the required knowledge and experience.

1209. It may be someone who has a good understanding that the controlled sector’s perceptions are real; however, it should not be a question of representation over understanding, experience and talent. Merit is central to all public appointments, and those appointed must be capable of doing the job that they are charged to do.

1210. Mr McCausland: My point, which I will not labour any further, is simply that people with skills of the highest calibre who can do the job should be appointed. It would be madness to give an insufficiently skilled body ownership of a stock of such high-value buildings. I have no doubt that there will be plenty of people with the necessary skills to choose from.

1211. However, in order to gain the confidence of the broad unionist community, and other communities whose children attend controlled schools, it is important that membership of the body is reflective and representative; and I emphasise those words. I may be able to understand many of the relevant issues, but it would be extremely impertinent for me to say that I could be representative.

1212. Mr Stewart: Nelson and other members expressed an interest in hearing more about the potential pathway for development. We have touched on several aspects in recent weeks that come under the broad umbrella of accountable autonomy. If the Committee would find it helpful, we will produce a paper to draw together some of those strands, including ownership, governance, our role in employment arrangements, and where we see the potential for greater autonomy.

1213. The Chairperson: The problem is that a paper has gone out for public consultation that alludes to but which does not address the issues that the Committee flagged up to the Department in January. It is not perceived inequality; it is inequality. I appreciate why someone in your position will say that it is perceived inequality, but it is inequality, and there will be serious implications if it is not addressed. The paper you suggest providing for the Committee, and the paper before us now, will be useful in teasing that out.

1214. Mrs O’Neill: The question that I was going to ask has, in effect, been answered. There needs to be a balance between stakeholders’ legitimate concerns and the associated costs. There seems to be a grey area concerning VAT, stamp duty and land-registry fees. At a time when budgets are stretched, we need know where we are going on this issue; I hope that we can get that information as soon as possible.

1215. The two-step transfer process is a massive upheaval for staff, who will have to move from education and library boards to the ESA and then to a new body.

1216. Mr McGrath

1217. A small number of staff will be affected; it will not be huge.

1218. Mr Stewart: The VAT issue is important. There is a further important point to make in order that we do not inadvertently mislead the Committee. The issue of VAT exemption first arose when the intention to establish the ESA was announced. The Treasury and HMRC will decide whether the VAT exemption that applies to the education and library boards will be carried forward to the ESA. It is inconceivable that its decision on any new body that takes ownership of controlled schools would differ from its decision on the ESA. In that sense, therefore, that part of the policy decision will not be affected. The decision of the Treasury and HMRC on VAT exemption will be good or bad, regardless of whether controlled schools are under separate ownership or under the ownership of the ESA.

1219. The land registry fees are a different matter that could, of course, be affected by the number of transfers that will have to take place.

1220. Mrs O’Neill: What about stamp duty?

1221. Mr Stewart: The same applies to stamp duty.

1222. The Chairperson: I would like clarification on the use of the word “pluralist" in paragraph 8:

“It is recognised that the education sector here remains pluralist."

1223. Are you referring to the controlled sector or to education in general as pluralist? Exactly what is meant by that?

1224. Mr Stewart: In the context of the sentence, pluralist refers to education generally and the fact that we continue to have sectors and schools of differing ethos and character. It is also true, although it is not implied in the sentence, that the controlled sector is perhaps more pluralist than the other sectors.

1225. The Chairperson: It is interesting to compare how the outlined purpose of the ESA stacks up with the Bill, which defines the general duties of the ESA in clause 2(2)(a):

“to contribute towards the spiritual, moral, cultural, social, intellectual and physical development".

1226. If every sector is pluralist, how can that be done?

1227. Mr Stewart: I am not sure that I understand the tension between the two.

1228. The Chairperson: Perhaps there is no tension; we will come back to that at another stage. I think that there is a contradiction between the two.

1229. Mr Stewart: You will have to assist me, Chairperson; I am afraid that I cannot see any contradiction.

1230. The Chairperson: I will return to that issue.

1231. Mr McCausland: It is unfortunate that the consultation process is under way without there being any clarity on those issues. In a sense, you are asking questions of people who do not have the necessary information to be able to answer them. That devalues the consultation, and it perhaps suggests to some people that the Department has not picked up on the public’s basic concerns. The issues that we are articulating today mirror the concerns of many in our community.

1232. Mr Stewart: I take your point. The consultation process is similar to dipping a toe in the water, and it is important to do that. A tension always exists between early consultation to ascertain the views of stakeholders and a later consultation when the proposals have been progressed to such an extent that the opportunity to influence them may have gone.

1233. The current consultation is not a question of take it or leave it; the Department wants to hear, reflect on and respond to stakeholders’ views. After reflection and drawing conclusions from the points that are raised during consultation, that response may be in the form of a more definitive policy proposal. I assure the Committee that the concerns raised during the consultation process will not be overlooked.

1234. The Chairperson: What is the next stage of the process? Will there be further consultation on finalised or emerging proposals?

1235. Mr Stewart: We will reflect on that in light of the available timescales. I am conscious of the fact that, from a pragmatic perspective, the Committee wants to see detailed proposals as quickly as possible. We will certainly bring back to the Committee and make available to stakeholders an analysis of the consultation responses received and what we propose to do with them.

1236. Miss McIlveen: Does that mean that none of those working groups will be set up until after the consultation has been completed?

1237. Mr McGrath: No; we want to proceed apace with that.

1238. Miss McIlveen: It says so in the consultation paper.

1239. Mr McGrath: No; this is a consultation with the ownership body — the sector support. There is an urgent need to make progress on that, and we want to get on with it.

1240. Mr Stewart: We are consulting on the paper. However, given the urgency, there are steps that we can take now without prejudicing the outcome of the consultation — we can gather ideas and suggestions as to which shoulders we might tap for the initial group without constraining what that group might do. However, that might change as a result of what comes back from the consultation.

1241. The Chairperson: Thank you very much, John and Chris.

11 February 2009

Members present for all or part of the proceedings:
Mr Mervyn Storey (Chairperson)
Mr Dominic Bradley (Deputy Chairperson)
Mrs Mary Bradley
Mr Tom Elliott
Mr Trevor Lunn
Miss Michelle McIlveen
Mr John O’Dowd
Mr Edwin Poots

Witnesses:

Mr Tom Flynn
Mr John McGrath
Mr Eugene Rooney
Mr Chris Stewart

Department of Education

1242. The Chairperson (Mr Storey): I welcome John McGrath, Chris Stewart, Eugene Rooney and Tom Flynn. Good morning, gentlemen. I remind members that this session is being covered by Hansard because it forms part of the scrutiny of the Education Bill.

1243. Today we will consider area-based planning, on which I am sure that members will have concerns and questions. I will ask John to speak to the Committee first.

1244. Mr John McGrath (Department of Education): Thank you, Chairman. We are grateful for the opportunity to be here on a Wednesday morning yet again to discuss area-based planning and to deal with the Committee’s queries. We have distributed papers to the Committee on the recent public consultation exercise on the draft policy paper on area-based planning; the paper identifies issues that were raised in the consultation. We have also distributed responses to the issues that Committee members raised on the draft policy as set out in the letter from the Committee Clerk dated 16 January. I propose to outline the key points in the papers before we take any questions.

1245. The rationale for area-based planning is set out in the policy paper. Fundamentally, it is about introducing a much more strategic planning process into the education service to ensure that children and young people can access and benefit from provision that best meets their needs and which makes the best use of resources. The objective is to bring better cohesion, consistency and co-ordination into planning in order to address the weaknesses that are increasingly evident in the current bottom-up system. The aim is to have much better alignment of provision to overall integrated needs.

1246. The policy paper went out to consultation last year. We received 34 written submissions, and colleagues met key stakeholders in the education sector.

1247. The list of respondents is included in the paper that was made available to the Committee. The consultation responses were broadly positive towards our approach, particularly the education and skills authority’s (ESA) having the lead responsibility for producing area plans, and also for the concept that area plans should, over time, cover a wide range of provision, including pre-school, primary, post-primary and youth provision.

1248. Some of the issues that were raised during the consultation are identified in the Committee’s briefing, and some relate to matters that the Committee raised previously. I will briefly deal with those in the order that is set out in appendix 3 of the briefing. The comments will be considered by the Minister, and our intention is that a revised draft policy paper that reflects her views will subsequently be issued to the Committee.

1249. A recurring theme in the responses was the roles and responsibilities of key stakeholders, and the Committee raised that issue in previous discussions. The consultation responses mainly concerned the respective roles of the ESA and the various sectoral interests of the schools. Some of the sectoral interests argued that they should have a more elevated role, while others sought further clarification on the policy statement. In addition, some felt that there should be no erosion of the envisaged role of the ESA, and others simply sought clarification of their involvement in the process.

1250. In consideration with the Minister, we aim to clarify roles in the review when we update and revise the policy paper. The review will stick to the core principle that the ESA will have the lead and the statutory role in producing draft area plans, including how the various interests can bring their influence to bear on the ESA in the production of those plans so that the process is as inclusive as possible.

1251. As well as setting policy and overall budgets, the Department will have a challenge-and-approve role in the area-planning process, including area plans and strategic investment plans. Under the review of public administration (RPA) changes, the ESA will have the statutory duty to produce area plans, and, as far as possible, it should seek agreement from stakeholders about the proposals in the plans. When the ESA cannot achieve such consensus, it should detail those issues in its submission to the Department. A lack of overall consensus is not necessarily a veto on the planning process.

1252. The Committee and some of the respondents raised the issue of community planning and its links with area-based planning. The Minister is keen that area-based planning links in with community planning as it develops under the RPA and local government; that will be reflected in the revised policy paper. That will clarify that the processes should link in with the proposed community planning model for the 11 new councils and that the ESA will have a duty to participate in the community planning process. Indeed, the Bain Report recommended that education planning should be related to planning in other areas; the advent of community planning is a mechanism to ensure that that happens.

1253. The Committee raised concerns about school sectoral consultations and development proposals in the period before area plans will be in place. As I said, under the RPA changes the ESA will have the statutory responsibility for putting in place area plans. In the interim, sector bodies may continue to undertake planning and consultation exercises within their own remits, but those will be superseded by the area plans. The existence of such proposals or plans in individual sectors will not be allowed to hamper the overall area-based planning process.

1254. Under existing legislation, the Department cannot prevent bodies and groups submitting development proposals. However, in advising on proposals, it takes into account the consistency of the proposal with the anticipated need for provision in an area. When area plans are in place, the draft policy paper points out that only those proposals that are consistent with the plan will be taken forward, and that there will be opportunities for sectors and groups to raise their proposals with the ESA as area plans are developed and reviewed.

1255. The Committee also raised the issue of club bank and area-based planning.

1256. When area plans are in place throughout the region, club-bank style arrangements should not be required because all schemes that have been approved as part of the planning process should have been appropriately funded from the outset. Some legacy schemes may still be operating at the beginning of the process, but the need for loans should diminish and become redundant as each of those schemes is completed.

1257. The Committee asked for an update on the post-primary exercise, concentrating on the entitlement framework. The framework is detailed in the briefing paper, and the exercise has a dedicated website, so I shall only select some of the highlights.

1258. The exercise sought submissions from interested parties, and 76 submissions, which are now being considered by the area groups, were received by the closing date at the end of last month. The central group has met on four occasions; it is due to meet again on 19 February 2009. Each area group has met several times, and all the groups meet in a forum.

1259. On 27 October 2008, the central group submitted an interim report to the Minister that highlighted all instances of positive engagement by sectors. A progress report from the central group is due to be with the Minister at the end of this month, and the group’s initial regional review report is due in May.

1260. Those are the substantive issues with respect to the current position. The next step will be to complete responses to all the matters that were raised during the consultation process and, in consultation with the Minister, to complete the revised policy paper. At that stage, we will bring the revised policy paper to the Committee.

1261. Although the drafting of the second Bill will be based on that agreed policy, we are keen to hear the Committee’s opinions and answer questions about the present state of work. Therefore, we stand ready to deal with any queries that members might wish to raise.

1262. The Chairperson: Thank you, John. The timescale of events concerning this matter and the way in which announcements were made are bewildering. In March and December 2008 the Minister made statements in the House setting out the work of the central group; we then had to wait to get the terms of reference. Eventually, the central group and the subgroups were up and running. How does that series of events fit in with implementing a final, full area plan, and, given that the entitlement framework is supposed to come together in 2013, is the Department planning to introduce any interim arrangements from 2010?

1263. I worry to hear you talk about a report coming out in May, as the central group has sent work back to the Department. What is the present situation, and, in light of the new statistics that have been gathered, how does the work on the area plan sit with the development proposals, about which we have been haranguing Eugene for weeks and months? We want to see progress on new builds; we want to see schools in place. What work is being done to bring all those factors together so that we do not end up in the same position as we did in the past on other matters? The process has been like a patchwork quilt with no joined-up approach.

1264. Mr McGrath: I was afraid that you would begin with such a complex question.

1265. The Chairperson: I am glad to fulfil your expectations.

1266. Mr McGrath: I said that I was afraid. [Laughter.] There are several strands involved. The post-primary entitlement framework is, in a sense, being taken forward as a non-statutory exercise, reflecting several matters that must be dealt with. Furthermore, that work will prepare the ground in the education service for the various sectors, informing them about the types of approach, behaviours and expectations that area-based planning will involve. Consequently, the work has taken longer than expected to reach this stage.

1267. This is the first time that such work has been undertaken in the education sector, and during the process significant lessons have been learned about what the various sectors can expect and about whether and on what basis they will participate. It has taken some time to get the process to where it is now, but much has been learned that will be relevant for the future. Any process can be technocratic and mechanistic; however, the behaviour and motives of the players in the process are equally important.

1268. It is a valuable introduction to the discipline and behaviour that a more strategic approach to planning will bring to the education sector; whereas, to date, there has been a locally based, bottom-up micro-system with no overview. That work is continuing and will provide a valuable back-drop.

1269. However, it is not a statutory basis for area-based planning; that will be in the second Bill, and the ESA will have the responsibility of putting in place a series of area-based plans that should, over time, cover the entire region. However, it will, undoubtedly, take time for a full set of area plans, covering not only school services but early-years and youth services, because we are moving from one spectrum to another. There will be a migration from where we are now, and we will have to work carefully to fine-tune the process of moving to the implementation of area-based plans.

1270. The determination of which plans should be initiated in the early days, as opposed to later, depends on various factors. Judgements will have to be made on whether there is stability of provision and whether there is consensus on that provision and whether there is a balance between provision and need. If the answer is yes, the judgement may be that a full area-based plan would not be needed until later.

1271. In some areas, and I am sure that we can think of some, there may be pressing issues about the state of investment or the imbalance between provision and need, or perhaps several proposals or issues about rationalisation need to be dealt with. The ESA should immediately identify those areas that require early work on area-based plans. The process of migration means that it will be some time after 2010 before the full pattern of area-based plans is complete.

1272. The Chairperson: The difficulty, John, is that the patchwork quilt will grow over coming years because if we allow sectors and organisations to continue to do what they have always done, which is to work within the parameters of their own legally defined silos, will we ever reach the point of completion?

1273. Some of us may question the need for the ESA. The probable rationale of the Department is that the ESA is required precisely because, to date, everyone has worked within their own legislative frameworks. Those frameworks have defined what they have been able to do, and that has not always reflected what is happening in other sectors. Realistically, however, that behaviour will continue for several years to come.

1274. Mr McGrath: It is recognised that a much more strategic approach to planning is required in the education sector. Even if the ESA were not to provide that, the consensus is that discipline must be introduced. Given that we are moving from a localised, bottom-up approach, which, in many cases, is based on provision rather than need and in which the providers are the drivers, it will be a long migration.

1275. However, we do not want a free for all to apply until there is almost a complete set of area plans; we want to prioritise where area plans should be put in place at an early date. That would put a stop to the diverse range of thoughts and proposals and provide a context in which to bring all of them together in one framework.

1276. We have an idea of the direction that we want to take in the various areas. There will, therefore, be a much heightened scrutiny of any proposals, and they will be set against the overall strategic context. At present, we cannot stop development proposals being made, and they must be considered and approved — or not; however, there is no automatic assumption that a development proposal must be agreed. Eugene may wish to add a few words because, to date, he has more scars on his back from development proposals than I have.

1277. We will want to look at that in context in order to address the perception that various interests may try to bring forward proposals in order to get them over the line before area-based planning is introduced. We must be very careful about that, because those plans will trigger decisions about capital investment for the next 25 to 30 years. Strategic decisions must be made in the right context; we cannot be bounced into making misguided decisions after a bit of strategic reflection.

1278. Mr Eugene Rooney (Department of Education): John has covered the points that are central to the ESA’s role in planning. The ESA will be taking over completed and partly completed work; it will be aware of investment proposals; it will take forward investment projects; it will have information, not least from the central planning group, whose work on how areas might be configured is due to be completed this year; and it will provide advice and analysis on development proposals. It will be two to three years before the ESA starts to make a significant contribution to putting all that together and in challenging plans that do not fit. From day one, areas that need to be looked at, proposals, and the existing investment programme that it will inherit, will be a priority for the ESA.

1279. The central planning group is unique in bringing together the different sectors to look at issues on an area level, and the five area groups are doing that at the moment. Valuable information will come out of those groups that can inform the process that the ESA is required to take up and deliver on. That material will be used to help to ensure that the planning process is as effective as it can be. It focuses primarily on post-primary schools, although, as John outlined, area planning covers primary, pre-primary and post-primary schools. That exercise will have an important input; however, the ESA will be expected to do much more.

1280. The Chairperson: John, you explained the issues that arose from the consultation. The Department anticipates that the revised policy paper will be available from the second week in March; it would be valuable for the Committee to see that. We would appreciate if you could come back then; this is an important area that must be resolved.

1281. Mr McGrath: Absolutely.

1282. The Chairperson: The Committee wants to understand exactly where the thinking is as we develop the details of the second Bill. On 4 March 2008, in her statement to the House about the timescale of post-primary area-based planning, the Minister of Education said that:

“This will be used to identify the structural change required for the delivery to every young person of election at 14 and the entitlement framework from 2013." — [Official Report, Vol 28, No 4, p186, col 1].

1283. Will area-based planning focus only on a young person’s election at 14; or, as many people would prefer, will it look at transfer at age 11 through to 19? It is not specific, and the concern is that area-based planning may be used for reasons other than considering the provision of need; the worry is that it may be used to change the debate around the transfer issue.

1284. Mr McGrath: The primary focus is on the entitlement framework. Some people think that area-based planning concerns only the physical estate, but the physical estate must reflect how the curriculum entitlement framework will be delivered. Area-based planning is not just about buildings, and that has been reflected in our language.

1285. The buildings flow from the pattern of services and the issues of critical mass and quality, not just bricks and mortar. We are likely to reflect that broader dimension to area-based planning in the revisions to the policy paper.

1286. Mr Tom Flynn (Department of Education): The exercise focuses on the 14 to 19 entitlement framework. Given the timescale, it also focuses on provision in the existing and planned estate; that is to say the projects that you have had details of from the investment delivery plan. We are talking about a short time.

1287. The post-primary exercise is submissions-based in that it elicits submissions from organisations and individuals. In that respect, it is not as broad or as pro-active an exercise as we would expect under full area-based planning with the ESA.

1288. The Chairperson: Is there any indication as to what the key elements in the Department’s revised policy paper would be following the consultation? Do you have any idea, at this stage, what would be put in place that would be different from the policy paper?

1289. Mr McGrath: First, we identified the issues that people raised; some people asked for clarification, so perhaps the paper is not entirely clear. One issue that we will emphasise is the relative roles of the ESA in area planning, and the various sectoral interests and sectoral support bodies. The latter represent their sector and provide their input, but the statutory responsibility — the responsibility for taking forward area planning — will rest with the ESA.

1290. The stakeholders, as in any public consultation exercise, will be the public at large, including, but not exclusively, sectoral interests. There are various issues that we want to clarify. Issues arise from area-based planning’s being about meeting overall education needs, and, through that, what the investment needs are, although it is not just about investment.

1291. There are issues about the mechanics of area planning groups in that we may have to examine who the key stakeholders are. At official level, we want to ensure that the advice that we submit reflects where we are now and some of the discussions that we have had with the Committee about how area-based planning fits with the role of sector groups.

1292. We spoke last week of the controlled estate body. There may be issues over whether it should have a role in the development proposals in future if no one else brings such proposals forward. There is an updating of thinking, but primarily it will concern the issues raised in the consultation paper. However, the discussion that we have started today is about where we will be on 1 January 2010 if we roll out area plans. The Committee will be interested in that. That may not be so much of an issue in the policy paper, but there is a query over how we move to the implementation of policy. I hope that when we come back to the Committee in March 2009, we will be able to fill in some of the gaps.

1293. Mr D Bradley: Good morning. Area-based planning will be an ongoing process because communities’ needs will evolve and change.

1294. A key element in that will be the sustainable schools policy. At the moment, there are six criteria by which the viability of schools is judged, and since no weighting is given any individual criterion, to all intents and purposes they are of equal value. How can you ensure that one area group does not value one criterion more highly than the rest, while another area group will value a different criterion more highly? How can you ensure even application of the policy across all areas?

1295. At the moment, we face an unregulated system. There will still be open enrolment at post-primary level, but we will not follow the policy envisaged by the Minister whereby most pupils will travel to their nearest local school. In order to area-plan, you must be able to contain pupils in an area; however, that will not be possible in an unregulated system. How can area-based planning operate in an unregulated system?

1296. We have already discussed my next point. The enrolment statistics of schools in Northern Ireland show that a huge number of small rural primary schools fail to meet the sustainability criterion of 105 pupils — some are well below it. Is that not a challenge? Should it not be included in your revised policy paper?

1297. A further point that I want to raise is related to the amalgamation of schools, although that may be Eugene Rooney’s area of expertise. Are there guidelines for amalgamation? Must amalgamating schools be of roughly similar size, give or take, say, 50 or 80 pupils? Will the sustainable schools policy be incorporated into your revised policy paper?

1298. Mr McGrath: The sustainable schools policy has been published. In area-based planning, we expect it to set some of the parameters. It does not need to be reflected; it is part of the context.

1299. Mr D Bradley: Will it take into consideration my point about how the six criteria can be interpreted differently by each area?

1300. Mr McGrath: I was coming to that. In future, under the changes envisaged, the ESA will have a statutory role in area-based planning. It will have guidance from the Department and will be expected to adopt a common approach, guided by the entitlement framework, school improvement and the sustainable schools policy.

1301. Mr D Bradley: Does that mean that the ESA will give a certain weighting to each of the six criteria?

1302. Mr McGrath: We expect each area plan to take account of the various policy parameters, of which the sustainable schools policy is one. Each area will be expected to make judgements on the relative importance of the sustainable schools criteria and explain why, for example, the judgement in one case showed a greater bias towards size or quality than the judgement in another.

1303. Area-based planning will not be so mechanistic as to allow one to stick the numbers in at one end and collect an answer at the other. Judgements will have to be made about the size of schools. You mentioned small schools and the different criteria but, at the end of the day, the quality of the learning experience for children will be very high. The enrolment of a school may be below the figure set for a sustainable school, but the test of a school’s worth will be whether it can address the challenges — either through amalgamation or federation — that were raised about the quality of the learning experience.

1304. If it can meet the challenges, an ESA plan could envisage that a school could function below the threshold; if a school cannot, it might not be allowed to do so. Judgements will have to be made in different places. There will be a common policy approach, and when proposing an area plan, the ESA will be expected to explain the judgements that it makes in different circumstances. That is no different from any other major strategic-planning exercise.

1305. Mr D Bradley: Will that not be rather confusing for the public? A school with a low enrolment might remain open while one with a higher enrolment might close.

1306. Mr McGrath: Those things happen. Hypothetically, a school with a smaller enrolment could work in collaboration with nearby schools to deliver the entitlement framework and quality of learning; equally, a school with a higher enrolment might be geographically isolated or unwilling to work in collaboration and have poor results.

1307. My experience in the Health Service, in which there are always issues about viability and facilities, taught me that different solutions apply to different places because circumstances are different. Geography means that there are differences in what happens in Downpatrick, Omagh and Coleraine because one can factor in different solutions. There is no one-size-fits-all solution; however, issues of critical mass and quality must be examined.

1308. Mr D Bradley: I thought that one of the points of the ESA was to stop the irregularity of application of policy across the board.

1309. Mr McGrath: It is about how policy is applied. It is certainly not envisaged that we will have an almost entirely mechanistic system. The exact primary and post-primary configuration around Omagh will not be the same as that in Coleraine or Downpatrick. However, it is consistency of approach and rigour, and about explaining how the issues balance.

1310. Mr D Bradley: Do you not agree that the sustainable schools policy is such a key element in area-based planning that there should be at least some reference to it in your revised policy paper?

1311. Mr McGrath: It is a clear policy. We may set out in the guidance that area-based planning should include sustainable schools among the key policy parameters of which it must take account. Do not read this as a dilution of the proposal. Issues of critical mass in education — as in other sectors — will become sharper as time progresses. Therefore many messages about the sustainable schools policy will bite much more sharply in future than they do now.

1312. Schools may find solutions through collaboration between sectors; they should at least be given the opportunity to do so.

1313. Mr Rooney: Sustainable schools will be central to area-based planning. Before sustainable schools existed, sectors planned according to their own factors and criteria; there was no common approach. The sustainable-schools policy has set out six criteria that everyone can consider.

1314. They must be interpreted by considering local circumstances. There cannot be a mechanistic approach that states that every school in a rural area must be reviewed if its enrolment falls below the threshold of 105. The policy clarifies that the key objective is to ensure that the educational experience of children is paramount when considering the provision of the estate in an area and how the facilities that are provided meet the educational needs of children. That is a key element of the policy, and it will be a key element of area-based planning to ensure that children’s education is of the right standard and that they have access to the broad curriculum to which they are entitled.

1315. The individual criteria were not weighted. We considered that, but the Minister decided that the criteria should be applied with regard to local circumstances. One criterion was not put above another — they had to be considered together. The indicators are intended to help the education sector to identify where action is needed in areas to address issues that might arise in schools.

1316. The ESA will have a key role in ensuring consistency of application across the region, because it will draw up the draft area plans and consider issues of sustainability across the schools estate. That is a key element of the ESA’s work on area-based planning.

1317. The key issue with amalgamations is that when the options of how best to ensure an area’s educational needs are considered, it requires two or more schools to amalgamate to provide a viable solution. As a broad guide, we expect that the schools involved in an amalgamation would be broadly equal in size; that would be one of the initial factors to consider. That is not necessarily an absolute requirement for an amalgamation; there can be many different types of amalgamation.

1318. We consider whether an amalgamation will deliver an effective solution in an area, whether it will provide a sustainable solution and whether the educational needs of children will be met. There is no hard-and-fast rule on when an amalgamation should or should not apply, but we will consider whether it is viable.

1319. Mr D Bradley: My other question was whether area-based planning can operate in an unregulated system, given that children can leave their own area to attend schools in other areas.

1320. Mr McGrath: When running a sector such as education, which has a pivotal role and a large budget, it is a no-brainer that a strategic-planning discipline is needed. I do not wish to get into the detail of transfer to post-primary school, because that is not my forte; however, the taxpayer would expect a system of strategic planning no matter what arrangements are in place. Strategic planning is not in place, and not having it creates more challenges.

1321. At its heart, area-based planning is not based around particular policy considerations; it is designed to take a strategic look at the education estate in the light of the policies of the day. Some may make it more complicated; some may make it easier. What is needed is a strategic planning process that better shapes the nature and delivery of the service, reflects investment needs and gives confidence that the right investments are being made in the right places. It is a puzzle to me how the education sector has gone for so long without it.

1322. Mr D Bradley: I agree that area-based planning is needed, but it will be difficult —

1323. Mr McGrath: It will be challenging, and it is early days. It will take some time for area-based planning to bed in completely.

1324. Mr D Bradley: I question whether that is where the process should start. My other question was about small schools. Do you not agree that such a challenging issue should be incorporated into your revised policy paper with specific guidance?

1325. Mr McGrath: The policy paper is for area-based planning, which will govern the legislation; it will not get down to the detail of individual or perhaps local guidance, depending on the circumstance. For example, it may be more relevant to rural than to urban areas, although not exclusively so. It is an important issue, but it may be further down the implementation path when it features in guidance.

1326. Mr Flynn: There are two sides to the issue. In a sense, area-based planning is about identifying a need and the solutions to it; that is where the solution of sustainable schools comes in on the supply side. If the issues are considered from an area basis rather than from a facility basis, some of the risk of local enrolment is being pooled. If an area is large enough, more of the movements will be internalised and more of the flows of pupils will be captured.

1327. Area-based planning is about delivering policies, a key one of which is sustainable schools. There is a balancing act, as planning challenges are thrown up by some of the policies. It is not meant to be a centralised, autocratic system of supply provision; it must allow policies to interact. My preference is to avoid singling out an individual strand in the policy paper for area-based planning, because it is about the delivery of a range of policies.

1328. The issue of thresholds and enrolments is a subset of one criterion of sustainable schools, but it is something that people pick up on; however, as John said, it was never intended to apply the policy mechanistically. The fact that it is about the range of policies as well as sustainable schools means that there must be flexibility in application at the facility level. The key point of area-based planning is its focus on determining need at an area level.

1329. I do not know whether that answers your questions, but it is an attempt to do so.

1330. Mr D Bradley: Thank you.

1331. Mr Elliott: My point relates to a question that Dominic asked about smaller schools. It concerns me that area-based planning will be forced by capital spend and capital budget, particularly in rural areas of Northern Ireland, without having a more designed plan. Ultimately, pupil numbers will drive that process. I think that Eugene said that the sustainable schools policy is central to area-based planning. I see that tied in to a policy that is driven more by those two aspects than being a feasible plan, particularly in rural areas.

1332. Mr McGrath: Small rural schools will face challenges in the future, and we must take those challenges into account when formulating a plan for them. In a sense, that confirms the point made by Dominic, and it will be an issue to address. Finding solutions in certain cases through greater co-operation or collaboration will be a challenge. With or without area-based planning, some small schools will face challenges; how those challenges are dealt with is the issue.

1333. Mr Rooney: When looking at small schools in an area-based planning context, one can plan so that they are viable and supported to deliver the education that is needed in an area; that will ensure that they are needed in the future. That is because the area-planning process should allow a complete view of how best to address the needs of an area, which may include a review of some schools and a decision that they are required in the long term and should be supported to maintain delivery.

1334. The present process is different — pupil numbers often dwindle, which increases pressure on schools, but there is no plan for whether the school is needed in the long term. As pupil numbers fall year on year, the school gets smaller, the pressures on teachers grow, but no proactive action is taken. That is what the area-planning process must change. It should identify all an area’s schools, its projected needs, and how those needs can best be addressed in the prevailing circumstances.

1335. It is a process of planning and management rather than of reacting to situations in which small schools face the challenges that they always have and always will. The question is how best to address those challenges once the circumstances of an area involved have been fully assessed.

1336. Mr Elliott: How will smaller schools be protected if their plans are not accepted by the ESA or the Department? That will cause friction. You may argue that smaller schools face challenges; however, the challenge for the Department of Education and the ESA is to work with them, and to date, the Department has, in many instances, not met that challenge. I would like the Department to adopt a much more open approach, which is a challenge that also faces the ESA.

1337. Mr McGrath: Tom makes some good points. Usually, events dictate what happens: small schools dwindle and may close, and the resulting pattern is dictated by happenstance. We always talk about particular primary schools, but, in area planning the approach is based on how to meet the needs of primary-school children in a specific area for the next 25 years. Tom is right that the Department must come up with a plan that is more strategic and proactive than simply waiting to see what happens and devil take the hindmost, or, as may happen in many cases, only the strongest will survive. That will present a challenge to the ESA, but all those involved must acknowledge that since the present pattern will not survive, a new one must be determined — as opposed to the winner being the last one standing. The ESA’s challenge is to ensure that it meets, rather than ducks out of meeting, educational need.

1338. Mr Elliott: To return to Dominic’s point, I know that the Department cannot permit too many inconsistencies, but one size does not fit all in the Province. I am keen to receive an assurance that guidance will be provided to ensure that that will not happen and that there will be flexibility.

1339. Mr McGrath: There will be local flexibility. The challenges will be to deliver choice and equality of learning. A solution that works in Fermanagh may not work elsewhere, but there must be scope for devising a local solution. If there is a diversity of approach, the test for the ESA will be to explain why something that worked in place X would not work in place Y; local communities deserve to know why that should be the case. Collaboration and the sharing of resources may result in a local solution being successful in one area. However, it may not work elsewhere because such arrangements were not possible, people were not willing to collaborate or the distances between schools were too great. One solution does not fit all, particularly for very localised issues.

1340. The Chairperson: John, at this stage, the devil is in the detail. To follow on from the points made by Tom and Dominic, several factors will determine the decision that is ultimately taken on a school. First, there is an issue about the trustees and ownership, and there is a long way to go on that in the controlled sector. The trustees have no statutory responsibility for development proposals.

1341. Take into account all that you and Eugene said about flexibility and consider the longstanding viability of a particular school. What happens if, in an area context, the ESA makes a determination and submits a development proposal stating that it can provide for the needs in the area by closing that school? As everything is set in the context of sustainable schools and, particularly in the case of post-primary schools, the entitlement framework, ultimately the ESA would have the power to close that school. Neither the school’s board of governors nor the trustees could do anything about it.

1342. That differs slightly from the present situation. Members know of schools that have amalgamated and are still not viable but which continue to existence; yet the Department cannot get some sectors to acknowledge that, ultimately, a particular school should close.

1343. Is that the key difference between where we are and where we will be?

1344. Mr McGrath: I hesitate to link that to a specific sector.

1345. The Chairperson: I did not name the sector, so you cannot accuse me of doing so. I did not cite a school or sector; I spoke in generic terms, so you can use the same protection.

1346. Mr McGrath: I defer to your wisdom. You will want the education and skills authority to have a role; it will consult on and debate an area plan before bringing its proposals to the Department. If those proposals are approved, the ESA envisages our investment proposals being guided by a decision to change the pattern for a particular provision, such as the primary-school sector, for example.

1347. As you said, rationalisation is not unknown in certain sectors at different paces in different places; the issue is about the quality of learning and the viability of critical mass. The Department or the ESA will not invent those: they already exist. We will want the force of a plan that has statutory effect to provide more of a catalyst to make changes.

1348. The Chairperson: Will an unregulated system be open to litigation? We hear various assertions about what could happen in the post-11-plus era. Is the argument the same for area plans? Could a school’s trustees legally challenge an area plan or development proposal if they did not agree with the closure of their school?

1349. Mr McGrath: Anyone has a right to go to court on any matter. Ultimately, schools rely on taxpayers’ money. If a rational piece of work suggests that a school should not have a future and should not be provided for, we would expect that to bite.

1350. Mr Chris Stewart (Department of Education): As John said, area-based planning will work best if it works on consensus. I reassure you that differences in ownership will not be an impediment. As the legislation stands, any grant-aided school can be closed by means of a development proposal, and the owners of that school cannot block it.

1351. The Chairperson: I appreciate that clarification.

1352. Mr O’Dowd: Who speaks on behalf of the nursery-school sector in the area-based planning groups? I am thinking specifically of standalone units.

1353. Mr McGrath: The current work relates only to post-primary schools.

1354. Mr O’Dowd: The review of public administration says that area plans should relate to areas covering the provision of, among others, nursery schools.

1355. Mr Flynn: That will be the case. Representation will need to be found for the nursery and pre-school sector in the area groups for area planning.

1356. The Chairperson: Therefore the focus is on post-primary schools at present.

1357. Mr McGrath: The non-statutory exercise is focused on the post-primary sector at present. In future, we want area planning to cover the spectrum of the services for which we are responsible.

1358. The Chairperson: Will that include youth services?

1359. Mr McGrath: Yes; we want area planning to cover everything from the early-years sector to youth services. In the early-years sector, there is a mix of nursery and pre-school provision and a mix of statutory and voluntary and community provision. That presents its challenges, as it is a much more diverse sector than the normal education sector. We will need the means to allow people to be represented. In that sector, there are issues about the differences in quality between pre-school provision and nursery provision, which the chief inspector highlighted in his recent report. An inclusive approach will be needed.

1360. In youth services there is also a mix of statutory and voluntary and community provision, and the number of providers is much broader and more diverse.

1361. The Chairperson: There are 11 organisations on the central group: the education and library boards; CCMS; the Irish-language lobby; the GBA; the Council for Integrated Education; trades unions; DETI; DEL; the Association of Northern Ireland Colleges; a representative from the Republic; and a representative from the ESA. One of the criticisms was that the make-up of groups — not just the central group, but the five subgroups too — was biased against the controlled sector, and I notice that that was picked up on in some of the other issues that arose from the consultation. Will that issue be addressed in the Department’s revised paper?

1362. Mr McGrath: The current exercise is non-statutory; the groups that are doing the work are made up of the providers of education. Under the RPA changes, the ESA will take the lead and do the work in consultation with the education providers; however, the ESA will be the executive body. The nature of area planning groups will be different from the present ones, and we will have to make sure that we get the right diversity. There must be a community input as distinct from the input of the education providers; it is important that the views of those who receive education are not lost. That is an issue that we will look at throughout our work, and to which we will return in light of the Minister’s views.

1363. Mr Poots: Paragraph 2 of the central group’s terms of reference states that:

“While the issues around transfer at 11 are not within the remit of this exercise, it will be important that the group’s proposals are consistent with any resolution reached."

1364. I am not sure whether a resolution has been reached. However, at least we are being realistic, as the Minister has recognised — in deeds if not in words — that academic selection will continue to be used by some schools and that there is nothing she can do about it. In that context, I assume that the work of the central group will be based on reality and not the Minister’s hopes?

1365. Mr McGrath: Those are the terms of reference for the groups and within them it is up to the groups to decide what they will do and how they will come back to us; there is no diktat on them.

1366. Mr Poots: The Minister has made many suggestions about what will happen and what she would like to see happen. There has been much talk about election at 14, but that has not been elaborated on. It appears to me that transfer at age 11 will continue; the only difference will be the privatisation of the test. Will the groups be guided by reality or by what the Minister wants?

1367. Mr McGrath: I cannot speak for the groups; they have their terms of reference, and they are made up of bodies that may have differing views on the issue. It is up to them how they address that, what they come back to the Minister with, and, as you say, whether or not that is deemed a resolution.

1368. Mr Poots: What advice are they getting, for example, on transferring to an alternative school at age 14? At present, that is not on the radar; there is little debate about pupils not in the Dickson Plan transferring again at age 14.

1369. Mr Flynn: The post-primary exercise is submissions-based; it elicits submissions from groups and individuals.

1370. The exercise will collate those submissions. We are not close to this exercise, because the central group will report to the Minister when it has brought all the submissions together. I cannot give detail on what it is doing at present; we have not seen it.

1371. Mr Poots: Is that linked to the estate?

1372. Mr Flynn: Their terms of reference focus on the delivery of the curriculum in the estate or on planned developments in the estate — those that have already been announced — given the time frame for the delivery of the entitlement framework.

1373. Mr Poots: If we move to election at 14, a huge rationalisation of the estate — and huge changes — will be required. If that is a reality — as opposed to a hope — the context in which the group operates will change. However, why should the group go down this route if it is only a hope? How would you operate now if you were a member of that group?

1374. Mr Flynn: I cannot speak for the sectors represented on the group; I will wait to see what they come up with.

1375. Mr Poots: These are confusing times.

1376. The Chairperson: We have been there before; no doubt, we will be there again. People are concerned that area-based planning will be used to get to a different point from where we are at present. We will be paying close attention to that. We will see whether it is used to drive through a policy on which there is not consensus. For instance, I see the arrangement regarding schools setting their own transfer tests as an interim measure, as, ultimately, everyone will have to agree on a proper transfer system into which everyone can buy. We are where we are until that is achieved.

1377. However, we must be careful that other measures of area planning are not used as a mechanism to try to get to the same destination.

1378. Miss McIlveen: Perhaps my question follows on from what Edwin said, but it relates to something that Mr McGrath said in his opening presentation. I got the impression that there might have been reluctance on the part of some sectors at the beginning of the process or that some people had difficulties with it. Have all sectors engaged fully? Were difficulties identified from the outset? If so, have they been resolved?

1379. Mr McGrath: As the current exercise is new, some sectors or interests required more clarification on what the opportunities were, and they wanted information on areas that they might have seen as threats before they signed up. It took some time before all participants came on board. Why, however, they felt like that is up to them, Michelle.

1380. Miss McIlveen: I will leave it at that.

1381. The Chairperson: The Committee raised concerns about club banks. Your paper states:

“Therefore, the need for Club bank loans should diminish and become redundant in time as existing schemes are completed."

1382. What progress has been made in getting to the stage where club banks become redundant?

1383. Mr McGrath: Previously, club-bank arrangements related to schools that had received approval but into which public capital investment could not be injected until they reached viability. Some schools bridged the interim period by club-bank arrangements. In future, greater rigour should be applied to ensure that schools are viable following an area plan; therefore public investment should be assured from the start. That is why I do not see a need for ad hoc arrangements in future. Some schools may be linked to such arrangements at present, but we do not envisage any further schools requiring recourse to the club-bank arrangements once the present ones have ended.

1384. Miss McIlveen: Does that mean that certain sectors will be unable to set up a Portakabin, put a sign outside it and call it a school? Will they have to go through a different process?

1385. Mr McGrath: At present, a school may be approved and receive revenue funding; however, no capital will be put in until it reaches certain viability thresholds. They have recourse to arrangements such as a club bank to expand the number of Portakabins and achieve those viability criteria. In future, planning arrangements will be more robust, and the Department will approve a school when it forms a judgement, on the basis of an ESA plan, that the school will meet those viability criteria. In those cases, we will inject public funds from the start, which could, in the early years, be used for Portakabins until a school achieves enough critical mass.

1386. Mr Rooney: That is the planned approach, and it does not prevent someone from setting up a Portakabin and creating a school that is not funded by the Department; a parents’ group can establish an independent school in a Portakabin. The role of the club bank is where a school has been approved and, in the early years, until it demonstrates long-term viability, recurrent funding is provided but not capital. The sector uses the club bank to provide capital for accommodation until a school has demonstrated long-term viability.

1387. How does the ESA link with the area-planning process? If a proposal for a new school has been analysed and approved at local level, the ESA will, in the early stages, be involved in accommodation matters. As John said, temporary accommodation could be provided until a school proves its viability. However, if an assessment is approved at the outset that a school is needed, it will be supported to ensure that a sector does not need to use a bank loan to obtain the capital for a school that has been approved. The ESA will work with the sector to provide the accommodation that is required in such a school’s early years. That approach applies to all sectors.

1388. Mr Lunn: Will that make it easier or more difficult for integrated and Irish-medium schools to establish themselves?

1389. Mr McGrath: A bit of both. In future, it will be more of a challenge to demonstrate the need for a school, and the test will be more difficult to pass; more will be involved than submitting an aspirational proposal. If a proposal is approved, public funding should be available from the start, and providing capital from hand to mouth would cease. In future, we need clearer and more robust planning to replace the “set-off-and-see" approach that sometimes occurs. Although that approach has worked in many cases, it has caused problems in others.

1390. The Chairperson: That affects development proposals. The Committee raised the issue that development proposals that are submitted before the establishment of area planning could lead to school blighting. In the past, a few individuals have been able to submit a development proposal that has ultimately changed a school’s nature or designation. I will not start a debate on the merits of integrated education — and I am sure that Trevor will be delighted to hear that — but there is sense of hurt in some areas when schools have been forced to take a road that has not been based on the merits of a case. Schools have been forced down that road because they are afraid of losing pupils — it has been a numbers exercise. How can we stop that happening in future?

1391. Every sector has a right to exist, but we need fairness if we want to achieve equity or, to employ a well-used phrase, to see a level playing field. I would love to see that: I do not think that it exists; I do not think that even Wembley Stadium is a level playing field. I hope that the playing field is level for Northern Ireland’s game tonight.

1392. People argue that there has not been fairness to date because of issues such as club banking that provides an advantage, or the ability to present a development proposal. That forces a sector or school to go down a road for reasons not based on merit.

1393. Mr McGrath: There will be challenges before area plans are in place. Area plans are about getting an overall assessment of need and responding to it. Neither the Department nor the ESA would be happy with proposals being brought forward in isolation, as in some of the circumstances that the Chairperson described.

1394. First, because a development proposal is made does not mean that it must be accepted. There is no assumption one way or the other: it must be considered on its merits. The likely strategic needs of an area would have to be taken into account, as would any relevant issues, and how far off an area planning exercise is likely to be. We would look at those issues through a much more critical lens.

1395. The Department and the ESA would also dialogue locally with all the sectors to tell them that we need to change. Simply submitting proposals to get them in before the tighter disciplines are in place is not the way to apply.

1396. Mr Rooney: Proposals for transformations have been turned down because they were perceived not to be about long-term viability but about falling roll numbers. Proposals can be turned down once all the factors have been taken into account. The Minister has done that on several occasions. The area-planning disciplines will consider those issues and other factors in an area and what is right in an individual case. Suggestions, ideas and comments on plans from various stakeholders are taken into account. However, it must ultimately be asked whether that is the right solution in that area, given the educational needs that must be addressed.

1397. The Chairperson: The subgroup of the central group is working on the basis of the five education and library boards. There was reference in the Minister’s statement, as well as in some of the papers, to working on the new model for 11 local councils for area planning. Is that still the basis on which the work is predicated? Is there any other thinking on whether it should be an amalgamation of the 11 areas? Do you know the group’s thinking?

1398. Mr McGrath: The exercise should be concluded before the ESA comes into being. Organisationally, the statutory role of the ESA will be based around six local area offices, covering two of the new local government boundaries and one based in Belfast. The areas for area-based planning are likely to be much smaller and reflect travel-to-school-areas. They could incorporate Coleraine and its surrounding area or an area in Fermanagh. It would depend on the travel-to-school patterns, for example. Some would be bigger and some smaller — we will have to take account of local circumstances. We do not propose a one-size-fits-all definition for area-based planning, as that would not be sensitive to local circumstances.

1399. The Chairperson: Thank you, John, Tom, Eugene and Chris. I will soon know your names off by heart without having to consult my papers.

18 February 2009

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

Witnesses:

Mr Jeff Brown
Mr Chris Stewart
Mrs Eve Stewart

Department of Education

1400. The Chairperson (Mr Storey): John is unable to be here today, and you are welcome, Chris. The Committee is beginning to wear the officials down, with one down and four to go. Today’s meeting must end at approximately 11.45 am because of a science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) event taking place in the Long Gallery. That will curtail members’ questions, but as I always say, the Committee is free to return to any issue that it considers has not been adequately covered.

1401. Chris, perhaps we can divide the discussion into three areas and consider those in the following order: the commencement arrangements; the powers to make subordinate legislation; and the links to existing primary legislation.

1402. Mr Chris Stewart (Department of Education): I am happy to do that. I apologise in advance for what will be a dry, technical presentation on a dry, technical paper.

1403. Mr B McCrea: No change there then.

1404. Mr C Stewart: That is the nature of the subject matter.

1405. The paper describes the two ways in which primary legislation can be brought into operation: automatically on the date of Royal Assent, or at a later date by means of commencement Orders. The commencement arrangements for the Education Bill are set out in clause 54. As with most Bills, they include both mechanisms, so there is nothing unusual about that.

1406. However, the proportion of the provisions that are covered by each mechanism is unusual. In this case, all the substantive provisions — including those to establish and assign functions to the education and skills authority (ESA), and to dissolve the existing organisations — will be initiated by means of commencement Orders. As Members will recall, that is to reflect the decision of the Minister and the Executive that the review of public administration (RPA) should be regarded as a single legislative programme and that the two required Bills must remain synchronised. Therefore, the commencement arrangements are designed to ensure that the timing of the implementation of the first Act can be adjusted, if necessary, to maintain that synchronisation.

1407. The very few provisions that will commence on Royal Assent are set out in table 1 of annexe A to the paper. Those particular provisions will be commenced in that way either for technical reasons or because they provide for actions that the Department will have to take in advance of the implementation date of 1 January 2010.

1408. The technical issues are self-explanatory: both the clause giving the short title of the Bill and the clause that allows for the making of the commencement Orders must commence on Royal Assent.

1409. The remaining provisions, significantly those that deal with staff transfer, relate to what the Department must do in advance of implementation. Although staff transfer will not take place until 1 January 2010, when the new organisation comes into operation, it will be affected by means of a series of transfer schemes that the Department hopes to prepare well in advance of that date.

1410. Therefore, we need an early commencement of the provisions that allows us to draw up the transfer schemes. I assure the Committee once again that there is no suggestion that transfer will take place prior to 1 January 2010.

1411. The Chairperson: Clause 50, which will be commenced by Royal Assent, states in subsection 1:

“The Department may by order make"

1412. (a) and (b). Are those departmental Orders? If so, why are they not among the regulations set out in clause 51, which are subject to negative resolution procedure and laying before the Assembly?

1413. Mr C Stewart: I was going to explain that in the second part of the presentation. The answer is that it is standard practice. Commencement Orders are, as you say, orders made by the Department; they are not normally subject to Assembly control. The reason for that is that the Assembly, in passing the Bill, will have made its will clear and expressed its agreement to the legislation coming into operation. It is then regarded as a technical matter for the Department to do so at the earliest possible date.

1414. The Chairperson: Do members have any other questions about the commencement arrangements? Will the Department consult with the Committee on the timing of the other provisions coming into operation as set out in clause 54?

1415. Mr C Stewart: Yes. We will keep the Committee apprised of everything that we propose to do. We will bring all the commencement Orders to the Committee in due course.

1416. Mr B McCrea: Are the clause 54 commencement Orders also technical issues that do not require Assembly consent, or will they come before the Assembly by way of negative resolution procedure?

1417. Mr C Stewart: Commencement Orders are not subject to Assembly control, but all the other Orders — except for those that modify primary legislation — are subject to negative resolution control procedure. The clause that gives us power to modify primary legislation is the other exception. Due to the significance of that power, it allows the Department to make or to modify primary legislation. That is an extremely significant power, and one that ought to be — and will be — subject to Assembly control.

1418. Mr B McCrea: I understand why, in the past, negative resolution procedure was useful. It saved a lot of work, unless an issue arose. However, given the voting arrangements that we have and the sensitivity of these issues, is there any provision to make them subject to positive resolution?

1419. Mr C Stewart: Yes — if the Assembly passed an amendment to that effect.

1420. Mr B McCrea: That is a useful point.

1421. The Chairperson: Do members have any other questions on the commencement arrangements for the Bill?

1422. Mr McCausland: It is good to see that the Minister will be seeking Royal Assent for this legislation. That warms my heart.

1423. The Chairperson: I thought that that would please you.

1424. Mr B McCrea: Every dark cloud has a silver lining.

1425. Mr O’Dowd: It makes you feel all warm inside.

1426. The Chairperson: We move on to the powers to make subordinate legislation.

1427. Mr C Stewart: We have already touched on these issues in answering members’ questions.

1428. The range of enabling powers contained in the Bill is set out in table 2 of annexe B of the paper. Those broad powers provide for the making of subordinate legislation of three types: regulations, which are substantive law made by the Department to regulate or govern the exercise of functions on an ongoing basis; orders, which are of a one-off nature, and are made by the Department to exercise executive power or to make decisions in particular instances; and by-laws, which will be made by ESA to govern a range of local matters. As I have said, the arrangements for Assembly control of the various types of subordinate legislation are set out in clause 51.

1429. All the regulations and most of the Orders are subject, as the Bill is currently drafted, to the negative resolution procedure. Exceptions to that are the modifying Orders that I referred to under clause 51, the commencement Orders themselves, made under clause 54, and Orders to transfer assets, made under paragraph 2(1) of schedule 4. As I have said, the modifying Orders are subject to the stronger Assembly control procedure of affirmative resolution, simply because of the significance of the power involved. Commencement Orders and operational matters, such as asset transfer Orders, as would be normal practice, are not subject to Assembly control.

1430. The Chairperson: Paragraph 7 on page 132 of the briefing paper states:

“Clause 51 of the Bill sets out the arrangements for Assembly control of the subordinate legislation. All regulations and most orders made under the Act will be subject to the negative resolution control procedure."

1431. Most Orders, but not all?

1432. Mr C Stewart: No; the exceptions are the modifying Orders under clause 50(1), the commencement Orders and the asset transfer Orders.

1433. The Chairperson: Other than asset transfer, what other operational matters would not be subject to Assembly control?

1434. Mr C Stewart: Those are the only matters.

1435. The Chairperson: So, those matters covered by clauses 51 and 54 and paragraph 2(1)?

1436. Mr C Stewart: Yes; clauses 51 and 54 and paragraph 2(1) of schedule 4.

1437. Mr B McCrea: Are those the only matters?

1438. Mr C Stewart: Yes; there is nothing unusual in that pattern — it is standard practice that legislative counsel follows when drafting such provisions.

1439. Mr B McCrea: When will it be appropriate for us to debate the issues that we have with the Bill? Should we raise them in the Committee, the Assembly or should we just come and have a word with you? When will we be able to get to grips with the issues that we have with the Bill’s provisions?

1440. Mr C Stewart: Any or all of those processes would be appropriate. If the Committee feels that the commencement arrangements in the Bill are not to its liking, it could table an amendment at the Consideration Stage.

1441. The Chairperson: We have set a deadline of 20 February for the return of submissions from people who want to comment on the Bill. A couple of organisations have told us this morning that they will not be able to meet that deadline. We said that that is fine and that we will accept their replies at some stage. When we begin clause-by-clause scrutiny of the Bill, we will group the clauses as 1 to 5, 5 to 10, and so on. When it is time to scrutinise clauses 51 and 54, there will be an opportunity for Committee members to recommend changes if they are not happy. Am I correct, Chris?

1442. Mr C Stewart: Yes; if there is a consensus in the Committee about amendments, we will take them to the Minister and return to the Committee with her views on them. We want to share with the Committee, at an early stage, a small number of amendments that the Department wants to table at Consideration Stage, to ascertain whether there is consensus from the Committee on them. It will be good if there is complete consensus between the Committee and the Minister on amendments. However, if there is not, we will await the will of the Assembly on the amendments.

1443. The Chairperson: That would be useful. The Committee Clerk and I have not decided on a structure for how to address the clauses. That is something that we must consider; the way that we address the clauses should be done in a way that both helps the Department and reflects the Committee’s view. That should be done so that no issues arise three months down the road. There is an onus on all of us to do that, which is why I have endeavoured, maybe not very successfully, to work methodically through the Bill. That is why we will address the underlying policies in the Bill until 20 February, after which we will start to work our way through its clauses. Chris, it may be useful to have a conversation with you about that.

1444. Mr C Stewart: That is very helpful, and we would appreciate such an approach from the Committee. To facilitate the Committee’s work, we intend to let you see the amendments that we will be proposing, or at least the areas that those amendments address, in the next couple of weeks.

1445. The Chairperson: Which of the Orders contained in annexe B of your paper are not subject to the Assembly control proceedings?

1446. Mr C Stewart: The exceptions are the modifying Orders under clause 50(1), commencement Orders under clause 54 and the Order to transfer assets under paragraph 2(1) of schedule 4.

1447. The Chairperson: Clause 50(1) refers to clause 12, ‘Modification of employment law’. Is that correct?

1448. Mr C Stewart: Yes.

1449. The Chairperson: Members should make a note of clause 50(1). Are members clear that clause 12, ‘Modification of employment law’, clause 54, ‘Commencement’, and paragraph 2(1) of schedule 4 are not subject to Assembly control proceedings?

1450. Mr B McCrea: Is the “50" on your paper the same as clause 50(1)?

1451. Mr C Stewart: That is a fairly standard provision that legislative counsel includes in most Bills.

1452. The Chairperson: Is it subject to Assembly control?

1453. Mr C Stewart: Apologies, Chairman. I think that I left that one out when I was giving you the list. It is clause 50, and allows us to make supplementary, incidental or transitional provision. It is included so as to provide grace, in case we discover that we got something wrong in the drafting of the Bill. It allows us to put it right quickly.

1454. The Chairperson: Eleven years later, Chris.

1455. Mr C Stewart: Perhaps not as quickly as that.

1456. Mr B McCrea: For clarity, I have clause 12, clause 50(1), clause 54 and paragraph 2(1) of schedule 4.

1457. Mr C Stewart: We will double-check the table for any inaccuracies.

1458. The Chairperson: Which Orders and regulations in annexe B are subject to affirmative resolution?

1459. Mr C Stewart: The only one that is subject to affirmative resolution is clause 12. The power that it relates to is the power in clause 12.

1460. The Chairperson: That is OK.

1461. Mr B McCrea: What is that about clause 12?

1462. The Chairperson: Basil, we want to establish what clause is subject to affirmative resolution. There is only one clause.

1463. Mr B McCrea: Clause 12 is affirmative, but I have noted clause 12 in the same category as clause 50(1); that is what I thought that you had told me.

1464. Mr C Stewart: That is correct.

1465. Mr B McCrea: Are you positive?

1466. The Chairperson: That is correct, is it not?

1467. Mr C Stewart: That is correct, Chairperson. Only one power is subject to affirmative resolution procedure — the power in clause 12.

1468. The Chairperson: Will you explain the powers in clause 12 that enable employment law to be modified, and provide an example of how they would be used?

1469. Mr C Stewart: Upon reading, those powers may appear draconian. I assure the Committee that they are not. They are there to be used if needed to facilitate the operation of the employment model that we have described to the Committee. In other words, they provide the power — if needed — to slightly change employment law in order to assign a particular responsibility to the ESA or to a board of governors.

1470. The powers do not enable fundamental changes to be made to employment law. Therefore, we cannot change or dilute the responsibilities of the ESA as an employer; nor can we remove the fundamental rights of any member of staff under employment law. I assure the Committee that that is neither our intention nor is it within the scope of the provision.

1471. Mr B McCrea: That is a serious issue for many people. Mr Stewart has given the Committee assurances, but can anything be done to include those provisos in the legislation? People may consider such matters and surmise that the Department is assuming the power to do whatever it likes.

1472. Mr C Stewart: That may be possible, but if the Committee is minded to bring forward, and sought legal advice on, such an amendment, I believe that that legal advice would be that the move is unnecessary, because the powers do not allow the Department to misbehave in the manner that is feared.

1473. That provision is not new or unique. A similar one that uses exactly the same wording is included in the 1989 Order. It is a fairly standard clause that counsel would use in situations in which the Department wants to implement part of a policy that would otherwise be difficult because of an aspect of employment law. In that case, the power can then be used to remove whatever the minor issue is.

1474. Mr B McCrea: The point is that the Department is given the power to do things that it forgot about or to rectify mistakes, of which everybody is capable. The other side of the coin is that people are worried about those powers being misinterpreted. I have no wish for duplication, but surely legislation must be explicit and make clear what is fully intended. I believe that a form of words can be found that will help both sides.

1475. Nobody is saying that the Department should not have the power to fix things if they do not work out right. However, in their darkest moments, people must be reassured that legislation is not being used in a way that is contrary to that originally envisaged. Can a form of words be found that will counter those complaints and help the Committee?

1476. Mr C Stewart: I am sure that that is possible. At this stage, my advice is that that form of words may be better employed in the description, perhaps even in the explanatory and financial memorandum that accompany the Bill, rather than in the Bill itself.

1477. Mr B McCrea: Is that binding? I am seeking guidance because I have not done this before. How binding is that explanation and guidance?

1478. Mr C Stewart: It is not binding, in the sense that the explanatory and financial memorandum does not have the effect of law. However, the content of the explanatory and financial memorandum would be taken into account if there were a dispute and a court was required to make a ruling. In itself, it is not binding.

1479. The Chairperson: How different is what is proposed in the management of this process to what happened in the administration and governance of health services? How different are the clauses in the Bill that effected those changes from those that the Committee is currently considering?

1480. Mr C Stewart: Many aspects are similar. Many clauses in health RPA legislation and, indeed, in the legislation that set up the library authority are almost word-for-word identical to similar clauses in the Education Bill. That is because legislative counsel always likes to follow best practice when taking such matters forward.

1481. For example, schedule 1 to the Bill sets out a range of issues on the composition, governance and operation of the education and skills authority. There is a similar schedule in the Libraries Act and in the Health and Social Care (Reform) Act. Standard provision is used.

1482. The biggest difference between the Bill and those other pieces of legislation is the commencement Order. It is unusual — in fact, it is unique in my experience — for that proportion of a Bill to be actioned by means of commencement Order.

1483. Mr O’Dowd: I was going to raise the matter of the Health and Social Care (Reform) Act as it relates to how this RPA process is being managed. I imagine that no piece of legislation can be used to subvert or undermine employment legislation or any other kind. In that sense, therefore, you should not be looking for reds under the bed.

1484. If there are genuine concerns, they could, perhaps, be covered in the explanatory notes that explain the Bill’s purpose in order to reassure people.

1485. Mr C Stewart: It is right that a further, even slight, degree of reassurance should be offered. We did not ask for that clause: legislative counsel advised us that it ought to be included in the Bill because it is a standard clause that would normally be included in provisions of that nature.

1486. The Chairperson: If there are no further questions on that matter, we will move on to consider the links to existing primary legislation. That is where we will enter an absolute minefield. Perhaps, members, we may have to examine that again. I am well aware that the matter is extremely technical. Sometimes, questions are raised in everyone’s mind about why there are schedules, commencement Orders, and all of that. We may need to give that consideration. This is the first time that the current Committee has taken on such a task. An understanding of the matter would be extremely useful; even if that means that we must return to it again and again. Eleven other pieces of legislation are affected as a result of the Education Bill. Do you want to jump into the water, Chris?

1487. Mr C Stewart: I will jump into the water where only civil servants are comfortable, and even they are not terribly comfortable.

1488. Chairman, your warning is timely. I wrote the paper with what you have just said in mind. It would probably have taken me at least a year to try to write a paper that covers every aspect of every existing Order, and taken the Committee at least a year to read. Therefore, I have not endeavoured to do so. However, I recognise that the Committee will, undoubtedly, want to come back to particular aspects of the Bill. We are more than happy to do so at your request.

1489. In the paper, I have tried to illustrate the process that we have followed to link existing legislation to the Education Bill, and some of the principles that we have tried to reflect in doing so. As the paper explains, education legislation is some of the most complex and voluminous on the statute book. I spent much of the early part of my career in health, where, I can tell you, the volume of legislation is about 20% of that which exists in education. Therefore, to get through it is a challenge for any reader.

1490. The paper lists the 11 education Orders that exist at present. In many ways, the most significant is the earliest one, the Education and Libraries (Northern Ireland) Order 1986, which is, sometimes, known as the principal Order. It is the main piece of legislation. Seven of the other Orders are explicitly linked to it, because they contain provisions that state that they are to be construed together with 1986 Order.

1491. That means that any definitions or interpretations in the principal Order apply equally to the later Orders. The net effect is that those eight linked Orders and, indeed, the new Education Bill should be read and interpreted as if they were a single piece of legislation.

1492. I am afraid that this is when the fun starts, because it is not as easy as that. Each time a new Order was brought forward, not only did it add significant new provisions to the body of the legislation, but it amended significant chunks of the existing Order. Therefore, each time another layer went on the onion, the position became more complex and more difficult to follow.

1493. Further complications arise from the fact that there are a series of provisions on the statue book that have not yet been commenced for a variety of reasons, be those policy reasons — because it was not felt necessary or timely to do so — or because, as we said earlier, errors were made, from time to time, in taking forward commencement Orders.

1494. It was against that complex and difficult background that we sat down to examine the existing legislation and to create the necessary linkages with the Education Bill.

1495. We scrutinised all the Orders in detail by examining carefully every word and every line. The idea was to re-orientate all that legislation so that it linked to the RPA arrangements. To use an analogy, it was like using a magnet to pull iron filings in the same direction. Specifically, we examined the transferring of functions from existing organisations to the ESA, eliminating any redundant functions that were no longer needed, resolving any duplication of functions —, for example, both the CCMS and the education and library boards have some functions that are the same, and we did not need to transfer both sets — transforming some functions that needed to be changed, and a range of consequential amendments.

1496. A great deal of other legislation that is outside the field of education has references to education and library boards, and, of course, we needed to change all those. All that added up to more than 1,200 repeals and amendments. Many of those were straightforward, but others required complex changes and careful consideration. Most of the simple amendments involved changing a reference from “education and library board" to “education and skills authority". Legislative counsel, Mr George Gray, has taken a particular approach to doing that. He has drafted a catch-all provision in sub-paragraph 1 of schedule 7.

1497. The effect of that provision is that after 1 January 2010, any reference in any of the education Orders to “education and library board" should be taken to read “education and skills authority". That catch-all provision makes hundreds of changes to education law. Such references automatically change law, unless they are subject to a more bespoke amendment given explicitly in the Education Bill. The remainder of schedule 7 deals with other amendments, and schedule 8 deals with the repeals. As I said, I have not attempted to list all those changes in the briefing paper; however, I have picked out a number of examples to illustrate what we tried to do and how we tried to do it.

1498. I provided examples of the effects of the RPA legislation on the education Orders. Those include the transfer of functions, the proposal to eliminate a redundant function, the overlap of functions, or minor amendments to a function. I will not read those out now; however, we are happy to take questions on any particular aspect that members want covered.

1499. I draw the Committee’s attention to annex D of the briefing paper — schedule 5 to the Education and Libraries (Northern Ireland) Order 1986 showing the effect of amendments in the Education Bill — as that provides a picture of what the legislation will look like. By including both the highlighted and the struck-out text, we tried to show the totality of the effects of the various amendments and repeals on that particular schedule.

1500. The schedule deals with the appointment of governors to schools. That is quite a simple set of amendments; however, as members can see, unless one has the fully amended text in front of oneself, it is difficult to envisage the totality of the effect. We provided that example because a number of stakeholders read the Education Bill without reading the schedules of repeals and amendments in great detail — and, let us face it, why would they unless they had to — or the earlier education Orders and came to the wrong conclusion that we had removed the requirement to consult trustees of Catholic schools before the appointment of governors.

1501. It is only when one sees the amended schedule in its entirety that it becomes clear that that requirement is still there. However, it has changed from a requirement to consult the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools to a requirement to consult trustees. It is no longer the Departments or boards that will carry out the consultation; it will be the ESA. It is actually quite a simple set of amendments, but it illustrates the complexity and the challenges for any reader of the legislation.

1502. We have also provided a very brief summary in tabular form of the main groups of provisions in each of the eight linked Orders, to try to provide the Committee with a map of education legislation. It is far from a straightforward map; it is not as neat and tidy as anyone would like it to be. If one were to ask, for example, where the finance provisions are, the answer is that they are all over the place, but mainly in the 1989 and 1998 Orders. If one were to ask where the main provisions for education and library boards are, they are mainly in the 1986 Order, but there are a few others scattered throughout the other Orders. It is a very complex map indeed.

1503. We have not provided tables for three of the Orders. The Youth Service (Northern Ireland) Order 1989 will be repealed in its entirety, so that table would be superfluous. The other two Orders — The Education (Northern Ireland) Order 1987 and The Special Educational Needs and Disability (Northern Ireland) Order 2005 — will only be subject to a small range of amendments; therefore, we did not burden the Committee with two more tables that were not needed.

1504. I am genuinely unsure whether that has been of any use to the Committee whatsoever. I hope that it has. If to any extent it has not, we are happy to take members’ questions.

1505. Mrs M Bradley: You could come back a thousand times to discuss this issue.

1506. The Chairperson: I have said to the Committee a number of times that these are very technical issues. We all have a duty to ensure that we deal with them, but there is a limitation to what we can actually take on board. It is similar to issues involving finance; if one is not an accountant, one will have difficulty understanding all the issues.

1507. In relation to paragraph 23 on page 136 of the briefing paper, will you explain the need for the insertion of a new article — 18A — into the 2003 Order, giving the ESA powers to direct boards of governors? I would assume that articles 17 and 18 of the 2003 Order provide relatively up-to-date and strong powers in that area.

1508. The Committee Clerk: That paragraph of the briefing paper relates to clause 47 of the Bill.

1509. Mr C Stewart: That refers to a transformed function. The Department has identified what it thinks is quite a significant weakness in the legislation. In relation to child protection, the desired end result is that there should be clear responsibilities on each person or body that has a role to play in education. It should be perfectly clear what their responsibilities are and what they are expected to do. There should also be measures to ensure that those responsibilities are fulfilled — that is where a gap was identified.

1510. The existing provisions in articles 17 and 18 of the 2003 Order place clear responsibilities on boards of governors of grant-aided schools, but there seemed to be no effective means in the legislation for ensuring that they discharged those responsibilities. That is why the Department has suggested the additional clause, which would give the ESA the power to direct boards of governors of grant-aided schools if there is something that they are not doing, or are not doing correctly in relation to child protection. That is a significant provision.

1511. The Department is sometimes told by stakeholders that it has given the ESA draconian powers to do all sorts of things — that is not the Department’s view. The one area where it has, very explicitly and quite deliberately, proposed that the ESA should have significant powers is on the issue of child protection. It is felt that if an issue of child protection arises, it would not be sufficient for the Department to be able to explain to the Committee afterwards exactly who got it wrong, and where the responsibility lies. The Committee would also expect the Department to have done something about that to ensure that it did not go wrong in the first place. That is why that power has been included.

1512. The Chairperson: Is there a deficiency there, as the law stands?

1513. Mr C Stewart: Yes, I believe that there is. At the moment, the Department is in a position, if something goes wrong, to come along afterwards and apportion blame. It is not in a position to make sure that it does not go wrong in the first place.

1514. The Chairperson: Does that relate only to the ESA’s power to intervene and to direct boards of governors in relation to child protection?

1515. Mr C Stewart: Yes. That is the only subject matter —

1516. The Chairperson: It is only in relation to that issue?

1517. Mr C Stewart: Yes; it is the only subject matter on which the ESA can direct boards of governors. It has no role in directing them otherwise.

1518. The Chairperson: If a board of governors decided to go down a particular road and do something else — subject to the board of governors meeting all other legal provisions — does the ESA not have the power to prevent the board of governors from taking a decision?

1519. Mr C Stewart: That is correct, with the exception of child protection. That reflects the role and the ethos of the ESA that we intend. It is not intended to be a command-and-control body; it is there to challenge schools when necessary — particularly around raising standards — but primarily to provide advice, support and assistance. It is not a command-and-control organisation. The policy is ‘Every School a Good School’, not ‘Every School a Controlled School’. That is our aim.

1520. Mr McCausland: Under the new regime, will the general duties of boards of governors be altered? Perhaps I missed it, but is there a list of the 10 duties?

1521. Mr C Stewart: That is in next week’s paper, which the Committee has not yet received.

1522. The Chairperson: Next week, we will deal with the specific issue of boards of governors.

1523. Mr C Stewart: I will make sure that we list all the duties of boards of governors in next week’s paper. The significant additional duty that is contained in the Bill is about raising standards. There are parallels to the issue of child protection: we want to ensure that everyone who has a role to play in education is absolutely clear about their responsibilities. Nowhere in current legislation does it state that a board of governors is responsible for the standards of attainment in its school.

1524. That is a deficiency that was highlighted very clearly in the ‘Every School a Good School’ policy. We want to put that right, but we have not given the ESA the power to direct boards of governors in relation to attainment standards. We have proposed that a duty should be placed on boards of governors to co-operate with the ESA and the exercise of its functions. I am sure that the Committee agrees that that is not as draconian as a power to direct.

1525. Mr McCausland: Currently, the training for governors that is provided by the education and library boards is of indeterminate quality. How will that training be delivered in future?

1526. Mr C Stewart: It will be delivered in a variety of ways. There will be a statutory duty on the ESA to provide that training and support, or to procure it. In policy terms, if boards of governors in individual schools — or in groups of schools — feel that there are sound and credible alternatives to the training services that the ESA provides, we are certainly amenable to the idea of them procuring training services themselves. We would expect the ESA to support them in doing so.

1527. As John McGrath and Gavin Boyd said in a previous session, it is very much about changing the nature of the relationship between the ESA and boards of governors from that which currently pertains with education and library boards. We want to move away from the current position — in which education and library boards offer services and boards of governors can, essentially, take them or leave them — to a situation in which the ESA is sensitive and responsive to what boards of governors seek. It is a commissioning type of relationship: we want the services that the ESA provides to be driven by what governors tell it are necessary, rather than the other way round.

1528. Mrs M Bradley: What Chris said more or less answers my question. In other words, the training that was provided for boards of governors was voluntary, whereas this time around, it will be compulsory. Is that correct?

1529. Mr C Stewart: No, it will not be compulsory for —

1530. Mrs M Bradley: Should it not be?

1531. Mr C Stewart: There is an argument for that. It is certainly advisable. We are asking governors to take on a significant set of responsibilities. I do not think that any governor should do so without being adequately trained and prepared.

1532. Mrs M Bradley: Are those responsibilities in relation to child protection?

1533. Mr C Stewart: Absolutely.

1534. Mr B McCrea: That gets back to the nub of the issue. I understood John McGrath to say in evidence to the Committee that the change in the ESA, as it is proposed now compared with it where it might have been before, was that it was to have a significant role in raising standards. I will look at the Hansard report to clarify what was said earlier.

1535. Mr C Stewart: So will I.

1536. Mr B McCrea: It is an important point. I understand that that change came from determinations by the Public Accounts Committee on literacy and numeracy failure and that the Department said that it had a great strategy but that it was unable to implement it. I understood that the ESA was to be able to direct schools to ensure that standards in all schools were raised, particularly in the key areas of numeracy and literacy. If I heard you correctly earlier, you said that that was not your intention and that all that you were going to do was point out to people that they might do better.

1537. Mr C Stewart: The position is somewhere in between the two ends of the spectrum that you have described. We do not take a laissez-faire approach and simply point out to schools where they could improve and wash our hands of them. Equally, we do not give command-and-control direction. The ‘Every School a Good School’ policy is predicated on self-improvement and self-development by schools, so it is a schools-led process. The role of the ESA will be one of challenge and support.

1538. Intervention powers exist in current legislation and are not being introduced in the Education Bill. Those are not powers to direct; they are what we describe as the graduated response. Help can be offered where it is required. If necessary, boards of governors can be supplemented with additional governors if there is a need to increase the competence or ability.

1539. In extreme cases, such as a failing school, the composition of a board of governors can be changed or completely replaced. In the most extreme of all circumstances, a school can be closed. Those are the exception, and we do not envisage or want to be in that sort of position. Our role for schools that can do better is, primarily, to point out where they can do better and to immediately offer the help, support, advice and services that they need to lead themselves into a better position.

1540. Mr B McCrea: I will not detain you, because there are other issues to discuss, but that gets to the nub of our concerns. I am still not sure whether the ESA is a friendly uncle or some sort of draconian policeman. Most of the governors value their independence and want to get involved, and I think that you have to come forward with clarity about what the ESA will be able to do. It is not enough to hide it in legislation that fudges issues or is clear only to legislative counsel. We need legislation that the people who are being asked to run schools can clearly understand.

1541. Mr C Stewart: That is entirely correct. The ESA is a friendly uncle or a critical friend, not a draconian policeman. When stakeholders say, as they do from time to time, that they do not like the legislation because it is full of draconian powers, I usually ask them to show those to me. They cannot, because those draconian powers are not there.

1542. Mr B McCrea: I can. For a start, there is rule 101, the ability to add governors, the ability to change governors, and the ability, ultimately, to close schools.

1543. Mr C Stewart: All that is covered by existing legislation.

1544. Mr B McCrea: Absolutely, but according to some, we have a failing education system. The schools inspectorate says that 30% of schools might do better, so you might argue that you should have used those powers. The issue comes back to the fact that with the existing uncertainty, people want clarity. I am sure that we agree that we want clarity on who will do what and the powers that they will have. We do not want any surprises coming out of the woodwork.

1545. Mr C Stewart: That is a fair point. I am sure that the Committee will want to hold the Department and the ESA to account for their use — or lack of use — of the powers in due course. Stakeholders often suggest that the Education Bill will introduce a new range of draconian powers — that is not true. Although people might think that the powers are draconian, they already exist in legislation. As you said, we are criticised for not using those powers as often as we are criticised for using them.

1546. The Chairperson: The Committee will discuss the issue of boards of governors at next week’s meeting. Chris will circulate that paper on the basis of the Minister’s letter to the Committee. Members will receive that paper in good time in order to ensure that they are able to read it and digest the issues therein before next Wednesday’s meeting. Is that OK, Chris?

1547. Mr C Stewart: I know what I will be doing this afternoon.

1548. The Chairperson: Although I do not want to curtail members, I remind them that the meeting should conclude in the next few minutes.

1549. Mr Elliott: I want to ask a brief question about a technical issue, because I have only become a member of the Committee recently. Can some of the 11 existing Orders not be subsumed into the new legislation in order to restrict the amount of cross-referencing? Is it possible to streamline the legislation?

1550. Mr C Stewart: Yes, that is possible, and it is one of the Department’s objectives. However, it will probably take some years to do so. This Bill will remove one of the Orders and will remove significant chunks from the Education and Libraries (Northern Ireland) Order 1986 and the Education Reform (Northern Ireland) Order 1989. I expect the second Bill to shear more off the 1986 Order to the point that very little of that legislation will remain. At that point, we might ask legislative counsel whether we can insert the remaining bits into different legislation in order to remove one Order entirely.

Session 2009/2010

First Report

Committee for Education

Report on the Education Bill
(NIA 3/08)
Volume 2

Membership and Powers

Table of Contents

Volume 1

Appendix 1

Volume 2

Appendix 2

Volume 3

Appendix 3

Appendix 4

Appendix 5

Appendix 2

Minutes of Evidence

Table of Contents

10 December 2008

14 January 2009

21 January 2009

28 January 2009

4 February 2009

11 February 2009

18 February 2009

Session 2009/2010

First Report

Committee for Education

Report on the Education Bill (NIA 3/08) Volume 2

Membership and Powers

Table of Contents

Volume 1

Appendix 1

Volume 2

Appendix 2

Volume 3

Appendix 3

Appendix 4

Appendix 5

Appendix 2

Minutes of Evidence

Table of Contents

10 December 2008

14 January 2009

21 January 2009

28 January 2009

4 February 2009

11 February 2009

18 February 2009

Report on the Education Bill
(NIA 3/08)
Volume 2