Oral evidence: Evidence check: Starting school, HC 1039Wednesday 4 March 2015

Oral evidence, 4 March 2015.

Witness

Nick Gibb MP, Minister for School Reform, Department for Education, gave evidence.

Chair

Good morning, Minister, and welcome. Thank you for sitting through the first session, which you will have found interesting. This is the first time the Committee has gone through the evidence-check procedure. Rather than just asking for evidence from the Department alongside everyone else on a topic, we thought we would get the Department’s evidence first, and subject it to everyone else’s scrutiny. After a not entirely uninterrupted period as a Minister in the past five years, what do you think are the strengths and weaknesses of the Department’s use of evidence?

Mr Gibb

We are an evidence-based Department; we base our policy making on evidence. That is the approach the Government are taking across Whitehall. Do you want further?

Chair

That is the top line, the gloss, the advertising copy. What are the strengths? What are the weaknesses? You invite me to start providing stuff on the academies, but the submission we had on academies was a paean to academies. Whatever our thoughts on that, it did not come over as a balanced submission. It was an unusually partisan submission in an area that has been highly politicised perhaps and become ideological. That is an issue, I would suggest: that when you are in a battle against people who oppose you on ideological grounds, perhaps you start to respond in like fashion. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the Department when it comes to ensuring that you have an evidence-based policy and do not start just digging in to agreed positions regardless of emerging evidence?

Mr Gibb

We take evidence very seriously. For example, with the national curriculum review, we scanned the international evidence. We produced a document that showed what other countries, the higher performing jurisdictions around the world, were doing; we published that evidence and based our curriculum review on it. The primary maths curriculum is based very strongly on the Singapore approach to teaching maths. The phonics policy is based on the Clackmannanshire study and the United States national reading panel study, so that is very evidence based. The academies programme is based on the success of the charter approach in the United States and the success of the free school programme in Sweden. In every area of what has been a very radical reforming Department for Education you will see that it is based on evidence. We are determined as a Department to close the attainment gap between those from poorer and wealthy backgrounds. That has been the driving force behind all our policies, and we want it to be right.

Chair

What could the Department do to strengthen that righteous pursuit of being an evidence-based Department?

Mr Gibb

I think it has been very strong. Of course, we can all do better at all times in what we do. I think we have the right approach. Perhaps we could contract out some of the research, use think-tanks more than we do, but I think the development of policy we have had over the past five years has been very rigorous and evidence based.

Chair

That sounds like a proposal—that more of the evidence assessment could be done out of house, so it is less likely to be influenced by the opinions of Ministers. One of the aims of the Department has been—I forget the exact phrase—to focus more ruthlessly on ministerial priorities and made sure that anything that is not a ministerial priority is not prioritised. That was commendable to make it a more responsive Department, but might make it less likely that you get a balanced, objective view of the best course ahead if it conflicts with what Ministers have so far said are their priorities.

Mr Gibb

In a democracy, where Ministers are held strongly to account for the outcomes of our state education system, it is important that ultimately those decisions are taken by Ministers who are accountable to this Committee and to Parliament. That is very important.

Chair

I was not disputing that. It was more on the lines of peer review in academia. The point is to make sure you get as balanced a view of the evidence as possible and it is not just held. You suggested the Department could perhaps do more by putting research out. Is that something you think a Conservative Government would seek to do more of in the next Parliament?

Mr Gibb

There is a general view in the Conservative party that using external research is important, together with what happens in a Department. We have a very high-quality civil service in this country, so I have no complaints about the quality of the research carried out in the Department for Education, but we can always expand that. We have a huge number of stakeholder groups and we consult enormously on all policy developments. Within the Department, we have regular meetings of almost randomly selected groups of head teachers and other stakeholders who look at policies before they are announced and give us honest feedback. As you know, our civil service in this country are very high-calibre people and they give Ministers full and frank advice about the consequences of the decisions they are about to take.

Chair

Moving to the specific focus of today’s session, do you think you were advantaged at school as a result of your birth date?

Mr Gibb

I was born on 3 September, so for the first few years I was the oldest in the class, but when we moved to—

Chair

Ministerial office, academic success—from the earliest age, you were destined for this.

Mr Gibb

It all looked very promising at that point, except we then emigrated to Ontario in Canada, where they would move you up and down the years. I was accelerated a year and was then the youngest in the class. We came back to England in 1968, and—as Michelle was talking about—we had this very rigid age cohort basis, so I was back to being the oldest. Because of being a year ahead, I was ahead of everyone in the class. I then moved to the independent sector for a couple of years in junior school. We then moved—this is really boring, I’m sorry; it’s my life story, but you asked—to Maidstone, which at that stage was introducing the three-tier system and had eliminated the first year seniors from Maidstone grammar school. So I went straight from the fourth year juniors into the second year of a grammar school, and that was a big jump. I was the youngest from then on and had to catch up with that extra year. It was a difficult year for me.

Chair

So you kept moving from being horribly stretched to being bored out of your mind.

Mr Gibb

I was the youngest then, so I was stretched from then on.

Chair

One hopes that being Minister has been like the latter experience.

Mr Gibb

Indeed.

Neil Carmichael

That is a fascinating story. I will not bore you with mine. Evidence is important, as you just said. Have you been influenced by the PISA comparisons in terms of decision making on entry into school?

Mr Gibb

Yes, PISA has played an enormous role in all our policy making. We have been concerned about the drift down the international league tables over the past 10 years. That is a key driver behind many of our education reforms.

Neil Carmichael

It is not just about the processes and entry points, is it? It is also about outcomes. We were reminded this morning about our productivity gap with some of the countries we are competing with, which have a better productivity record. Do you think that there is any correlation between what we are discussing and that particular problem?

Mr Gibb

Are you referring to late entry in some of the Scandinavian countries?

Neil Carmichael

In answer to the Chair’s question, you slipped in a point about how we are slipping or had slipped down the tables. The Government are absolutely right to address that. Do you think that the early schooling issue we have been discussing generally has affected that movement in the tables and therefore our productivity?

Mr Gibb

No, the evidence I have seen is that there is no link. Even Tammy from the Institute of Education said, on starting school later that we do not have robust direct evidence that it would work. The NFER study says: “The practices of deferring entry for children not considered to be ‘ready’ for school or requiring children to repeat a year are not recommended for addressing relative age effects.” I do not think there is any evidence that having a later compulsory school starting age would address any of the very real concerns raised by the previous witnesses. I worry that if there were an increase in the compulsory school starting age, it would widen the attainment gap between children from poor backgrounds and those from wealthy backgrounds, because they would be getting less time in formal, high-quality education than some of their peers, who may well, if they did raise the age to six, spend that year or two at home or in very high-quality pre-school settings, or may have a very good education from their home life.

Neil Carmichael

So no planned changes there then, but in that answer, you also referred to whether it was formal. What is your definition of formal for a five-year-old entry class?

Mr Gibb

If you are talking about reception, this is the tail-end of the early years foundation stage. If you look at the revised early years foundation stage, which came after the Clare Tickell review, it makes it very clear that each area of learning—this is throughout the whole EYFS—should be a mix of adult-led and child-initiated activity. It also says: “As children grow older, and as their development allows, it is expected that the balance will gradually shift towards more activities led by adults, to help children prepare for more formal learning, ready for Year 1.” That is the current statutory position. As children reach reception, you would expect to see far more adult-led, teacher-led teaching happening in that reception, compared with what you might see in the pre-school parts.

Neil Carmichael

I asked the other panel about research into the difference between formal and informal and the age range 4,5,6 and 7. The answer was that there was not much research in that field, but if there was and that was going to give some useful indications to you, would you be interested in it?

Mr Gibb

Very much, yes. There is an issue about reception. What is beginning to happen now in reception classes around the country is a greater emphasis on phonics. They are getting 20 minutes a day of formal phonics teaching and that is very important. Children are ready to learn to read at that age, they want to learn to read and they need to learn to read. In the three years since we introduced the phonic check, we saw 58% passing that check in 2012, and now we are seeing 74% passing the check, which means 102,000 six-year-olds are today reading more effectively than they would have done if we had not introduced this policy; but I am not happy with 74%. I would like to see that figure rise still further. To be able to become competent in reading by the end of year 1, you need to have started that process in reception.

Pat Glass

Forgive me, Minister, but I had to resist the urge to laugh out loud at the statement that we have been through five years of evidence-based policy. Have you read this Committee’s report on academies and free schools?

Mr Gibb

Yes.

Pat Glass

And you still maintain that we have gone through a renaissance of evidence-based policy?

Mr Gibb

Yes. In your report, you said that it was still too early to judge the effectiveness of the academies programme, but you also say that the pressures—the competitive systemic approach to the academies programme is resulting in higher standards. I can point you to sponsored academies open for four years, for example. They are improving their GCSE results significantly more swiftly than schools that are not academies—5 percentage points compared with 0.5 percentage points in the same period. The primary schools that have become academies—the sponsored primary schools—are improving at twice the rate of local authority maintained primary schools, so there is evidence that this system is working. I could take you to schools—for example, last week I visited a school in east London where, in 2007, 29% of the pupils were getting five or more good GCSEs; it is now an academy and 80% are getting five good GCSEs. The same children go to that school now as did in 2007. This is a phenomenally successful approach to the structural reforms and I am a huge supporter of it.

Pat Glass

We look forward to the Government’s response to that report. On summer-born children, the Department’s definition of summer-born children is from 1 April to 31 August, which is five months—would that summer in this country lasted for five months. Do you think that is a helpful definition, or does it distort the statistics? Would we be better looking at children born in June, July and August?

Mr Gibb

It is an interesting point. When I was looking at this issue, it occurred to me that it is a very large period, but you can see the reasons why. Compulsory school age starts at the prescribed date after you turn five and those prescribed dates are 31 March, 31 August and 31 December, because that is just before the beginning of the next term, so if you were born on 2 April, your next designated date would not be until 31 August, therefore you are required by law to start school in September.

Pat Glass

But you can see the issue: if we want to look at what the problem is, by not including two months of children who we would reasonably assume were not born in summer, we would be making the problem less acute, or identifying it.

Mr Gibb

Yes, that is something that you might consider as a recommendation—whether to redefine summer-born children as those born in June, July and August.

Pat Glass

The DfE report on month of birth identified that the August-September gap at key stage 4 is slightly larger than the gender gap, but that the free school meals gap is twice as large and the SEN gap four times as large. At key stage 2, the August-September gap is a little larger than the gender gap and a little smaller than the free school meals gap, but the SEN gap is seven times wider. Is there an issue here, or are we sweating over the inconsequential? Is it a real problem? If we look at it in comparison to these other things, such as the free school meals gap, is it something that the Government should have a policy on, or are there much greater things that we need to concentrate on?

Mr Gibb

You can do both. Just because there are bigger problems to address elsewhere, that does not mean that this is not a very serious problem.

Pat Glass

So is there the political will to concentrate on it?

Mr Gibb

There is and there has been, which is why we revised the admissions code and the guidance that came out as a consequence of that code. The key thing is flexibility. Admission authorities and head teachers need to do what is in the best interests of the child, and I am sympathetic to the points that Michelle Melson was making. If a child is clearly very immature for their age and they were born in the summer months, and it is the very strongly held view of the parents that that child should start school the following September, which is when the law says they should start, admission authorities should be flexible and do what is in the best interests of the child. That is why we had to reissue that guidance both in July 2013 and again in December 2014, making it very clear, for example, that there is no rule that says that you have to be in the cohort of your age, and that there are no funding issues that would prevent a local admission authority—

Pat Glass

The funding issues are interesting, because it is not an area I have a great deal of experience in, but I had always been told, “Oh, it costs more.” Is there something that the Department could do to say to local authorities and schools, “Actually, you’re not going to lose funding over this. Admitting a child at compulsory school age into reception is not going to cost the school and the local authority a huge amount of money”?

Mr Gibb

We said three things in July 2013: that there is no statutory barrier to children being admitted out of their normal age group; that schools will not lose out on funding as a result of admitting a child out of their normal age group; and that children are assessed when they reach the end of their key stage, not when they reach a particular age. We made those three points very clear in the guidance.

Pat Glass

Yet the Summer Born Campaign has said that it is getting worse for parents, so what options can the Department now take to try to accommodate summer-born children better?

Chair

It doesn’t sound like it’s worked, does it, if the Summer Born Campaign is saying that? It sounds like you have manfully gone out again and again to try to get schools to change their behaviour, but the evidence to us today is that it has got worse.

Mr Gibb

I was concerned about Michelle Melson’s comments about that, and I turned to officials during that session and asked what evidence there was for that. We are not sure that there is any evidence for that, but I will none the less take what she has said very seriously, and we will look at it. It is not the thrust of policy—our policy is that admission authorities should do what is in the best interests of the child. They should take the parents’ views into account and include the parents in the discussions, and they should also include the head teacher in those discussions, but ultimately they need to make the decision in the best interests of the child.

Pat Glass

I know I am putting you on the spot, and I am making up policy as I go along, so it is not evidence based, but what did you think about the suggestion that parents should have a right of appeal not just against not getting the school of their preference, but against the year group, if there are good, sound reasons such as the child having been premature or the impact of summer birth on maturity?

Mr Gibb

I was struck by that point, because of course you can’t appeal on that. You can appeal against not getting your child into a particular school—

Pat Glass

That’s right, but not against the year group.

Mr Gibb

The only redress available to a parent at the moment is to go through the complaints procedure, which is a long drawn out process and may not result in the decision being changed, so I will read your report with great interest to see what you recommend.

Mr Ward

Reference was made earlier to good teaching and what good teaching could do to compensate for these differences, so we would expect that for free school meals children and for SEN children; we would look for good teaching to take account of those differences. What would good teaching look like, how could it compensate for age differences within a cohort and is that or should it be something included in teacher training?

Mr Gibb

I was also struck by that piece of evidence this morning. One issue, if you are talking about the relative age within a school year issue, is that even if all the April to August children were moved into the earlier year, you would still have a 12-month issue; it would just be different children who were younger than the rest of the group. One issue is behaviour: if a school has exemplary behaviour, you should not get this bigger child versus smaller child, almost bullying-type issue, so I think behaviour is very important. If you have an absolutely rigorous and strict behaviour policy in the school, that should, I hope, mitigate that to some extent. It doesn’t change—

Chair

We did not ask the first panel this question and perhaps we should have done. Is there any evidence that certain schools manage to eradicate this linear age gap? When you are looking at closing the gap between rich and poor, you see that certain schools somehow manage to have high standards and a small gap, and of course they are the ones we would most like to see imitated. Do you know whether there is any evidence that some schools do this through policy, through good discipline? As this is an evidence-based session and you aspire to lead an evidence-based Department, if there is no evidence to suggest that great discipline does make any difference, we should not say so.

Mr Gibb

There is evidence that good behaviour in schools raises academic attainment overall and improves progress of children.

Chair

Nothing about narrowing the gap necessarily.

Mr Gibb

I am sure it also narrows the gap, because you do get an attainment increase for all backgrounds when you have good behaviour in schools. The other issue is differentiation, which I think was touched on. The thrust of policy at the moment, in terms of primary education, is to move to a mastery model, which goes away from differentiation within a classroom, to getting all children to quite a high level of attainment, particularly in mathematics. That is the approach they are taking in the far east and the approach we want to move our primary schools to in this country.

Chair

I should say that in this process we are going through, the evidence check, we are not producing a report.

Mr Gibb

That is most disappointing.

Chair

This is going on the public record: we are being broadcast, and all the evidence submitted to us will be made publicly available for policy makers such as yourself. But we will not be pronouncing in our normal fashion on this particular occasion. Tammy said that, developmentally, some four-year-olds are not capable of doing phonics—they cannot pronounce the words and are basically set up to fail, so there could be a link between inappropriate use of phonics and this age issue. Have you any thoughts on that?

Mr Gibb

I thought it was a reprise of the reading wars coming from the academic from the Institute of Education. I do not accept that view. I could take you to a number of schools around the country where 100% of the children pass the check. Some of these schools are in very deprived areas; I don’t know what proportion of the children in those schools are summer-born—I will go and find out, I think—but if those schools are managing to get 100% of their children passing the phonic check by the end of year 1, I don’t see why that cannot be achieved by all schools across the country.

Chair

We have received an e-mail saying that, in 2014, 36% of the youngest boys failed to reach the pass mark in the phonics test compared with 19% of the oldest boys.

Mr Gibb

That may well be the case, but I can tell you that in those schools where 100% passed, 100% of the young boys passed and 100% of the young girls passed. If those schools can achieve that, I don’t see why—

Chair

We are back to that old saw: if one school can do it, they can all do it. I remember saying to you earlier in the Parliament that we should both get fit and then kick a ball around with Wayne Rooney—remember, if Wayne can do it, we can do it! You thought that that was not a fair parallel, and I insist on saying that it precisely is. If you run education policy on the basis of the rare superheroes you meet, you will not make the right policy, because most of us are not superheroes. You and I can’t play football like Wayne Rooney, and if you make policy for the Wayne Rooneys of the world and not for the average person, you end up making bad policy.

Mr Gibb

Except that there are 250 Wayne Rooneys when it comes to schools achieving 100%, and there are 600 schools where 95% or more are passing the check. These are not isolated examples; they are examples of schools that are using methods that can be replicated up and down the country.

Pat Glass

Is it worth, Minister, getting your Department, or whoever, to look at those schools that are getting 100% or close to 100%? We know that for many of our children who come from disadvantaged families, the issue is around early years language and the richness of language that they are not used to. Is it worth having a look at that and seeing whether there is an issue that is related to the gap?

Mr Gibb

It is, and we need to do as much research as we can to identify why some schools are achieving these results and others are not.

Pat Glass

If these children all come from very well-heeled families where they talk a lot, and those children have access to a really rich vocabulary, there is an explanation for that, isn’t there?

Mr Gibb

Yes, but they do not. These schools are not all in those areas—I can tell you that now. Some of these schools are in areas of very high levels of deprivation. Some of the ARK primary schools are in such areas, and four of their schools are achieving 100%. I accept that we need to look at how they are doing it in those schools and whether we can replicate that.

Chair

It is supposed to be a developmental tool anyway, so I suppose that if they have been so identified, it is not necessarily a sign of failure on the part of the school; it simply should be used to target resource and effort in order to lift the vocabulary and linguistic skills of those children precisely so they can engage with education.

Mr Gibb

Yes, that is what we want. We want that to happen in primary schools and we want that to happen in the pre-school setting. A language-rich environment is what children, particularly from poorer families, need.

Chair

It goes back to the earlier debate that we had about SEN and whether being labelled led to lower expectations and actually damaged children, or whether being identified as having additional need led to greater resource and support, which led to their progressing. There was a rather negative outcome from the last panel, who sounded like they thought that the labelling and the lower expectations outweighed any additional support that went in.

Mr Gibb

Yes, I was struck by that, but there are other ways of delivering that extra support—through the pupil premium, for example—and there is also the fact that if children are not getting through the phonic check, you are identifying children who need extra support. We expect primary schools to give that extra support, ready for the retake of that test at the end of year 2.

Chair

Do we have any evidence yet that that is happening?

Mr Gibb

The pass rate at the end of year 2 is higher than the pass rate at the end of year 1, so we are getting up to 88% passing the check overall after the end of year 2. My concern is about those 12%. Over the next few years, as phonics is becoming increasingly embedded in primary schools, I am sure that that 12% will diminish further, but we need it to be eliminated altogether. It may be that we need extra measures to help those particular children.

Caroline Nokes

Can I take you back to the issue of evidence? What evidence does the Department have on the effect on both the academic achievement and the well-being of children who start school in year 1 as opposed to in reception?

Mr Gibb

There is evidence that it can be damaging, because they are missing out. The IFS, for example, has said that delaying school entry is harmful in terms of attainment, and that “deferred entry is not in the interests of summer-born children” because it does not close the attainment gap. That is mainly because they are missing out on the reception year curriculum. I think that that is the point that Michelle Melson was making—that if you defer, she would prefer the deferral to happen by starting in reception the following year, not going straight into year 1. There is also some Warwick University research that said that delayed school entry could mean that children miss out on learning opportunities during the critical early years. There is evidence that backs up the point that you are making.

Caroline Nokes

What difficulties are there for schools when five-year-olds enter reception rather than year 1?

Mr Gibb

I don’t have any evidence on that issue. I don’t know whether those behind me have any evidence. Given that the age range will not be significantly different from the other children in that class, particularly if we went along with the Pat Glass view of narrowing the definition of summer-born children—but even taking the four to five months age range—it will not be that different, in terms of the cohort of the reception class that they will be entering.

Caroline Nokes

Do you think there are any disadvantages for the children, to enter into reception rather than year 1 at CSA?

Mr Gibb

This is why our policy is that we have to do what is in the best interest of the child, so that the head teacher, the parents, the admission authority take all those views into account when assessing whether or not it is right for the child to delay and to start in reception the following year. If there is no evidence that the child is immature for their age—or, indeed, they might be mature for their age—then it would not be in the interest of that child to be with children who are significantly younger than they are, emotionally; and that really is why our policy is that we have to look at what is in the best interest of the child, and not have some formulaic approach to this.

Caroline Nokes

While looking at what is in the best interest of the child, why is it that the decision on which year group a child starts school in will rest with the admission authority rather than the parents?

Mr Gibb

It is a good point. The admission authority is the body responsible for admissions, ultimately, and they have to balance all the competing pressures on them about allocating school places; but our advice is very clear—and you may advise that we need to strengthen it further—that they have to take the parents’ views into account when making a decision. They also have to take into account the professionals’ view—the head teacher’s opinion of the child.

Chair

Is it the admission authority or the school? I think it is the school, actually. I might be wrong.

Mr Gibb

I thought it was the admission authority that made those decisions—it is the admission authority.

Chair

It decides on the year as well as the institution.

Mr Gibb

Yes.

Chair

I stand corrected.

Caroline Nokes

How is the Department monitoring the impact of its guidance on the summer-born, particularly in terms of the data that might be collected on the admissions decisions that are made?

Mr Gibb

We do have a stakeholder group—the admissions group—that looks at how the revised admissions code is being implemented; so those issues would, I think, come up in those discussions, and that group is made up of head teachers and governors around the country, who look to see what the impact of the new admissions code is.

Caroline Nokes

So, for example, do you have data collected on how many parents request that their child is admitted to reception rather than year 1?

Mr Gibb

Yes, we do—well, we have data on the number of complaints that we are dealing with, in terms of parents who are not happy with the decision that has been reached. It is, I recall, in the hundreds rather than the thousands—so it is not a significant issue in terms of numbers, but it is very significant in terms of the individuals concerned.

Caroline Nokes

Are you aware of how many of those parents who are successful in getting a child admitted to reception rather than year 1 at CSA then run into difficulties later on in the child’s school career—for example when they apply for secondary schools?

Mr Gibb

I do not have evidence on that. I was struck by Michelle Melson’s comments about problems encountered later on, particularly on the transition to secondary—that they may encounter this view that of course it is the age cohort that determines your entry. I think that is going back to pre-admissions code revision—pre-the July 2013 non-statutory advice that the Department issued that is trying to make it clear to admission authorities that there is no rule against children being in a year group outside their own chronological age. I think that is a messaging point to admission authorities that maybe we need to do more to emphasise. It is very clear in the guidance that there is no rule against children being outside their age group.

Chair

You are reluctant, rightly, to write endlessly to schools, but if, on reflection, on this evidence, you find it necessary, it might be one of your final missives before the election, Minister.

Mr Gibb

Perhaps—but it is so clear. It says on page 4 of the December 2014 non-statutory guidance on summer-born children, “There is no statutory barrier to children being admitted outside their normal age group, but parents do not have the right to insist that their child is admitted to a particular age group”—but there is no statutory barrier to it.

Caroline Nokes

Do you have any evidence that requests for children to be educated outside of their age group are more likely to made by particular socio-economic groups or more likely to be successful? To paraphrase: is this a problem that middle-class parents are pushing on?

Mr Gibb

I do not have any evidence to suggest that. I can see why there might be an incentive to do that, if I am talking just between the two of us.

Caroline Nokes

Broadcast to the nation.

Mr Gibb

Yes. If there were a high stakes test at some point in the future, being slightly older might be beneficial, but most of the tests taken by primary school children in this country are not high stakes for the individuals concerned. They are high stakes for the school, but not for the child.

Caroline Nokes

Finally, should parents be actively encouraged in some circumstances to delay their child starting school rather than just legally allowed? Can you see any circumstances in which parents should be encouraged to delay the start?

Mr Gibb

No. Everybody should be encouraged to do what is in the best interests of the child. I was very interested in the premature-born children and evidence on that issue about whether the due date is the key date. Of course, that would only really apply if they are born in those summer months. If they are born nine weeks early and they were born in December, they would still be in the same year group. In all this, all the authorities and the parents need to be flexible and reasonable, and take into account what is in the interests of the child.

Alex Cunningham

You have been at pains to emphasise that there is no statutory barrier to a child being educated outside their age group, but you also said that there is no right for parents. Should parents have the right?

Mr Gibb

If you gave parents that right, you would have to circumscribe it very carefully because you cannot have a nine-year-old going into a reception class. Whatever the circumstances were, that would not work. They certainly have the right to request, and we want to ensure that there is transparency. Let me just read the other bullet point. It says, “To improve clarity and transparency for parents, admission authorities are now required to make clear in their admission arrangements the process for requesting admission out of the normal year group. They must also set out clearly for the parents concerned the reasons for their decision in each case.”

Alex Cunningham

Is there any way that you could strengthen the guidance to make it clearer to the parent and the admission authority that a particular child is one of the exceptions and admitted differently?

Mr Gibb

The danger of doing that is that you then start producing an exhaustive list of the criteria that should be applied. I do not think that that would be helpful, because some children who ought to have their entry into formal education delayed will not appear in that list.

Pat Glass

I absolutely agree with you for once. You cannot define exceptions. When I have had these conversations with head teachers, as I have over the years, they always tell me that children need to be educated emotionally with children of a similar age and that there is all kinds of damage in many cases. The ones that I was usually talking about was when parents thought that their child was so bright and wanted them to be in the year above. Are those the kinds of things that your Department is including in the guidance—that it is about not just the child’s intellectual abilities, but their emotional development?

Mr Gibb

It does say in the guidance that, in general, children should be educated in their normal age group. That is the norm.

Pat Glass

As understood, rather than explicitly explained.

Mr Gibb

Yes.

Pat Glass

I don’t think that parents always understand, particularly when they want their child educated in the year group ahead, that there is the issue of emotional development as well.

Chair

There is not much in your submission about that either. There is a bit of a lack of emotional intelligence in the Department.

Mr Gibb

These really are issues for the professionals. We have tried to avoid—despite what you might think—in the past five years, being too prescriptive about every detail.

Pat Glass

I get that—I really do.

Mr Gibb

I thought you might. We have tried to avoid being too prescriptive for the professionals, the way they conduct their professional life and the way these things operate. I think that those are matters for the profession.

Craig Whittaker

What we do know is that summer-born babies are more likely to be SEN children. In fact, we know that August-born babies are 90% more likely to fall into SEN than September-born children. What assessment has the Department done on the additional cost of that?

Mr Gibb

I am not terribly clear what you mean. There is a big focus on helping children with special educational needs. We have tried, as a consequence of the Ofsted report that came out a few years ago, to ensure that there is a proper approach to the diagnosis of special educational needs, so that it is not just children who are behind in their mathematics.

Craig Whittaker

I understand that, but the evidence shows that an August-born baby is 90% more likely to be SEN than a child born in September at key stage 1. Surely there is a cost associated with that. Has the Department done any analysis of that cost?

Mr Gibb

I will send the Committee a note on that.

Craig Whittaker

You may have to do the same on my second question, which is on admission flexibility. If there were more flexibility in the admissions process, would that save the Department money?

Mr Gibb

Flexibility in admissions is not a resource-driven policy; it is about ensuring that parents’ concerns about the maturity of their child are taken into account when starting school. The law says that you become of compulsory school age on the prescribed date after the child turns five. Those prescribed dates are 31 December, 31 March and 31 August.

Chair

Craig is particularly talking about special educational needs. There is a 90% increase—nearly 100%—in August compared with September. You said that it should not be about developmental age but about genuine, underlying need. Clearly, it is not working at the moment. We are trying to explore whether flexibilities could contribute in some way to more accurate diagnoses and a reduction of money being spent where it needs to be spent. If there is sometimes a negative element to labelling, we could avoid children suffering from that downside of being identified as having an SEN when, if they had been born a month later and gone to school a bit later, no one would have ever thought to stick it on them.

Mr Gibb

Yes, and we are keen that special educational needs are properly diagnosed and it is not just that children have not learned to count or cannot read basic words. That could be because they have special educational needs, but it could also be because they have not been taught properly or have not learned properly. That is a different issue from special educational needs.

Craig Whittaker

But some of the special educational needs listed in that cohort of children are things like moderate learning difficulties or specific learning difficulties with speech, language and communication. There is a whole variety of SEN within that cohort.

Mr Gibb

Yes, and if a child has genuine learning difficulties, that is a separate issue from whether they have learned to read or are slightly delayed compared with September-born children because they are 11 months younger. That should not be a reason for diagnosing those children as having a special educational need. It might be that they genuinely have language delay issues, in which case they need to be diagnosed so that they can receive special help.

Craig Whittaker

Are you saying that there is an increased likelihood of misidentifying SEN?

Mr Gibb

We will come back to you on that, but prima facie, on the basis of this correlation, it would appear—there is no reason why children born in a particular month are more or less likely to have genuine underlying special educational needs than those born in any other month. If there is a greater degree of diagnosis in August-born children than other children, it would indicate a diagnosis issue and not a genuine, special educational needs issue.

Chair

Should schools show more flexibility about entry? We are mostly talking about delaying a year and then whether you get to do reception and year 1, but what about schools showing more flexibility in terms of delayed starts or part-time hours, or flexibility about seeing how the child gets on and maybe reducing down from the part-time hours to three days a week instead of five days a week—that sort of thing? What evidence do we have that that is going on? Is there more or less of it over time? Do you encourage schools to develop that kind of flexible approach to meet the needs of a child, so that we are less likely to end up with this near doubling of the diagnosis just because of the month in which someone is born, with, as you rightly say, no underlying evidence to suggest that there is anything about being born in August that makes you more likely to have an SEN?

Mr Gibb

The Rose review of the primary curriculum a few years ago, before the last election, recommended that the starting date was September for all children. The reason for that is that if you do stagger the entry the child misses out on the curriculum that is taught in the autumn term, and there is some evidence that missing those months can have a damaging effect long-term on the child’s attainment. It is a difficult issue. I would say that over the last few years we have seen less staggered entry into reception than might have been the case before the Rose review.

Chair

There is a danger in anecdote, but certainly for my nine-weeks-early August-born child we chose a school precisely because they would allow part-time and a slow build-up, so I hope it has not had any negative impact on her.

Alex Cunningham

I am sure it hasn’t, Chair. Minister, I think you said that you were particularly struck by some of the evidence we have heard today about premature children. I wonder whether you accept that they are a particular cohort—it is not a case of the summer-born thing, but they are a particular cohort in their own right and may need particular support in education.

Mr Gibb

There are two points: whether being born premature has other developmental issues for that child, and whether, because they were born before their due date, they are just a few weeks less mature than they would have been if their birth date was the same as their due date. The key is again flexibility, because there may be some children who are born premature who don’t really have any issues, and it is perfectly fine for that child to be in the year group in which their birth date falls. Again, I think it depends on the child. I am sorry to sound like an overwound gramophone record, but what we are trying to ensure is that there is flexibility for children, whether they are summer-born children or children who were premature, to enable them to start school when they are ready.

Alex Cunningham

The evidence from Bliss suggests that that flexibility may exist in some places, but not universally. They are saying that the Department is letting down premature children. What would you say to that?

Mr Gibb

We need to look at ourselves to see whether that is the case, and whether there is more we can do. We have revised the non-statutory guidance twice, in July and again in December 2014. We will look again. I was struck by what Michelle Melson had to say about summer-born children—that the situation is getting worse, not better, since the new admissions code was published. That concerns me, and I was concerned by Helen’s comments about the lack of flexibility, in some instances, for premature-born children. We will look at both those issues to see whether this is a problem and whether we need to take action to address it.

Alex Cunningham

So you will actually conduct some analysis directly as a result of today’s session, to see if there is more that can be done?

Mr Gibb

Yes. We will consider this issue as a consequence of today’s session.

Alex Cunningham

I know that the guidance, as you said, has been updated twice, but have you considered very specifically different admission arrangements for premature-born children?

Mr Gibb

It depends what you had in mind. You could say, “Let’s use the due date as their date,” or you could have an option. As Pat Glass said, it would complicate the admissions procedure, which is complicated enough, even further. For me, it is about whether or not admission authorities are properly understanding that they do not need to always fit children into their age group cohort—that the desire for bureaucratic neatness should not be their overriding concern. Their overriding concern should be flexibility and taking into account the parents’ genuine concerns about the maturity of their child. That should be their overarching objective, not cohort neatness. That is a mindset we have to change, I think. July 2013 is a relatively recent point in time from which to start to change the hearts and minds of admission authorities across the country.

Alex Cunningham

Helen suggested that there is an issue about pre-school provision for premature children, particularly if they delay going—[Interruption.] That was a particularly long bell—I almost forgot my point. Helen was saying that, in some areas perhaps, there is a lack of provision, and that if premature children go into school later, they may lose some of their time in school or not get extra time in school, because there is a delay pre-school. Is that your understanding? Could you clarify that?

Mr Gibb

I am not sure I totally understood that point. I understood Michelle’s point that if you delay entry, you end up having to go into year 1. That is something her group is totally opposed to, and I understand that point, but I do not understand why a premature-born child who does not attend school could not attend a pre-school setting instead.

Alex Cunningham

So if it was necessary, they might have an extra year in pre-school if they delay entry to school, and that would be entirely in line with what should happen?

Mr Gibb

Yes. I can see no reason why that should not be the case. That’s helpful.

Chair

But you will write to us if it turns out there is an issue?

Mr Gibb

Yes, if I have misunderstood something, I will certainly write to you to correct the record.

Siobhain McDonagh

How has the new guidance on summer-born admissions been communicated to admission authorities, including academies?

Mr Gibb

That is an interesting point—and for some reason, the officials managed to write the answer to that question before you had even delivered it. There was a public consultation on the guidance before it was issued, so that is one way in which it will have been communicated; of course, it is also on the Department for Education website. We are not really, as the Chairman hinted earlier, in the mode any more of sending out missives every two minutes, because you find they are not opened or read if you do that too frequently, but you are right: the point underlying your question is that we need to ensure that this new approach is conveyed to admission authorities. What we are hearing from Michelle Melson and others is that perhaps some authorities are less cognisant of this advice than others.

Siobhain McDonagh

You are anticipating my next question. Does the Department have any evidence on the consistency with which school admission authorities across the country make their decisions? Are some areas particularly reluctant to allow a summer-born child to start in reception rather than year 1? Have any authorities refused all requests for admission of five-year-olds to reception?

Mr Gibb

Yes, there is certainly inconsistency among admission authorities, and that is something we are trying to address.

Siobhain McDonagh

How do you know that?

Mr Gibb

We know that from the evidence that comes into the Department. From what we hear in complaints, for example—from the hundreds, not the thousands, of cases we have been dealing with—we can see that there is inconsistency between different admission authorities.

Siobhain McDonagh

How would you seek to ensure some consistency of approach?

Mr Gibb

That is about winning hearts and minds. The Department does not really act in isolation from the rest of the education system; there are links through the Education Funding Agency, for example, and through the academies. The majority of admission authorities now are the academies themselves, rather than the 150 local authorities, so there is a lot of to-ing and fro-ing between the academies groups and the Department. Through those communication channels, we have to try to get this message across.

Craig Whittaker

Why are parents not allowed to appeal if their summer-born child is refused entry into reception and has to start in year 1?

Mr Gibb

Because the appeals process is about the school, not the child’s whereabouts in the school. It is an historical issue: the appeals process was developed to tackle problems where a parent has not been able to get their child into a school. This is not about getting a child into a school—they have got their child into a school. The issue here is getting the child into the right year group in the school.

Craig Whittaker

So why are they not allowed to appeal? I understand that the appeals process is about getting into a school and is generally against over-subscription criteria, but why can they not appeal about a year group?

Mr Gibb

It is an interesting point. I know you are not going to make recommendations, but if it had been a recommendation of this Committee, that would be something we would consider. It is something we could consider in any case. This flexibility is a relatively new approach. In the past there has been very little flexibility about which year group a child goes into, as I found when I returned from Canada. Now that there is more flexibility and parents are able to request a different year group for their child, it leads to decisions being taken that parents will not agree with. At the moment, the only route of appeal is through the complaints procedure, but that will only be a complaint about the process, and if the process has been adhered to correctly, there is no redress. So you have made a good point and it is something that this Committee and others should think about further.

Craig Whittaker

I know you said earlier that it was hundreds rather than thousands of parents who physically complained, but do you know how much it costs parents to assemble evidence if, for example, they need to request deferred or delayed entry to school—evidence from ed psychs and others? Does the Department have that kind of information to hand?

Mr Gibb

There should not really be a cost to parents, because they should just be conveying information that they already have.

Craig Whittaker

So they do not have to assemble any evidence then—they do not have to go to educational psychologists or all those types of things?

Mr Gibb

It is not the same as the first-tier tribunal on a special educational needs assessment.

Craig Whittaker

So no cost—we can happily tell parents that it is absolutely fine because there is no cost involved.

Mr Gibb

There should not be. I hope this route does not become that kind of formal, legal approach.

Chair

We have had evidence that it has—that is the problem. That is the point of us doing this evidence check. I said at the beginning that we are grateful to all the parents who have submitted evidence to us. They have been batted away by the LEA again and again and been told, “Sorry, evidence from your own child’s nursery? No, not important enough. We need professional evidence from doctors and psychologists,” and they just give up at that point. Our evidence suggests that that is happening now. Is there more that you could do to try to find out how prevalent that situation is? If the guidance—issued more than a year and a half ago and supplemented since—is not having an effect and, in effect, those kinds of barriers are being put in parents’ way, that is not the situation you want. There is no point in us sitting here talking about the situation as it should be if on the ground there is an entirely different experience for parents.

Mr Gibb

We will look at your evidence when you publish it. Again, it is this time issue. It is a relatively recent flexibility that has come into the system and some admission authorities are still conducting themselves on the basis of how it used to be. Perhaps there is more we need to do, as Siobhain McDonagh was saying, to try to convey the new approach to the admission authorities. Perhaps there is more that we can do, but we will look at your evidence and take a view after that.

Craig Whittaker

Do you think perhaps an easier solution would be for the DfE to produce advice for parents on how to present the case for deferment or delay? That way there is no ambiguity between parents and the local education authorities.

Mr Gibb

There may well be. Perhaps we can do that. There is a section on page seven of the advice about the submission of evidence by parents, which sets out what they need to do. It says: “It is reasonable for admission authorities to expect parents to provide them with information…since without it they are unlikely to be able to make a decision…This should demonstrate why it would be in the child’s interests to be admitted to reception rather than year one. In some cases parents may have professional evidence that it would be appropriate for them to submit… However, there should be no expectation that parents will obtain professional evidence that they do not already have.” It also says that admission authorities should consider requests even if there is no evidence accompanying them. That is two paragraphs in the advice so far.

Craig Whittaker

That is absolutely fine to say, but we all know from experience that the more evidence you submit to any form of appeal or whatever, it strengthens your case. If, as we know, that is the case, does that not disadvantage the more disadvantaged families who do not have the wherewithal or indeed the finances to pay for a doctor’s report perhaps, an educational psychologist’s report or what have you?

Mr Gibb

You make an important point. We are trying to say that they should not be disadvantaged if they do not have a well presented case. At the end of the paragraph, it states: “In such cases the supporting information might simply be the parent’s statement as to why they have made their request.” Admission authorities should take those requests as seriously as the request that is accompanied by a lever arch file full of professional opinions.

Chair

Is there any other way of weighting it, without making it an absolutely fixed right for the parent to decide? Should weighting be made so that the parent’s preference should be assumed to be correct unless—to turn it around a little—the local authority can provide evidence to say why the parents are wrong? If the authority wants to do that and to make the case, at least that is available and can be looked at. The authority would still be making the final determination, but we could turn things around like that and say, “Look, unless you have strong evidence that the parents’ understanding of the child they have brought up for the past four years is weaker than yours, we go with the parents’ preference.”

Mr Gibb

I am not unsympathetic to that viewpoint. I think that is something we can consider once your evidence is published and if we decide that we want to have a revision of this statutory guidance. Parents are the people who know their children best and sometimes admission authorities have other issues they are concerned about that are not about the child, such as the number of places available in the following year in that particular reception class and so on. But again it goes back to our messaging to admission authorities that the best interests of a child must be prevalent and if that means that we have to tweak the onus of proof then maybe that is something we should think about.

Chair

Minister, your last answer was in line with many of your constructive answers to this Committee over the past five years, so on behalf of everyone here I thank you for that. This will probably be the last time you appear in front of us. There appears now to be a higher bar and 1 million fewer children being served by schools that are less than good or outstanding, which is good news. There is progress, though perhaps insufficient progress, on closing the gap between rich and poor, which this Committee has tried to make a theme. Whatever the controversies, and there are certainly plenty of those, I think that the objective evidence is that children are being better served now than they were being. Let us hope that that progress can be maintained and accelerated, particularly for those at the bottom, who are too easily left behind. Thank you very much indeed for giving evidence to us today.

Mr Gibb

My pleasure. Oral evidence: Evidence check: Starting school, HC 1039 21