MTFP Addition - Minister for Education - Transcript - 19 July 2016

STATES OF JERSEY

Education and Home Affairs Scrutiny Panel Medium Term Financial Plan

Education

TUESDAY, 19th JULY 2016

Panel:

Deputy J.M. Maçon of St. Saviour (Vice Chairman) Deputy T.A. Vallois of St. John

Witnesses:

The Minister for Education

Chief Education Officer

Director, Resources and School Support Director, Inclusion and Family Support Economic Adviser

Head of Financial Planning

[14:04]

Deputy J.M. Maçon of St. Saviour (Vice Chairman):

Good afternoon, everyone. To begin with, apologies from the Chairman, who unfortunately has had to go home this afternoon as she is not feeling particularly well, and also apologies from Deputy Mézec who is off Island. Bear with us, because we have had to, at the last minute, readjust our question plan so we will try and sort that out as we go and also we will have a few questions from the Treasury perspective and from an economic analysis perspective. We will try and do them first to allow those officers to get away. There are other things that they can do today and hopefully grab some sunshine. In which case, just for the record, I will ask everyone to introduce themselves, so I

will go first. Also, just the usual protocols for members of the public and members of the media about what is expected and also to turn off mobile phones if you have them. Facilities are outside. Should you need them, please make your way quietly to them. Thank you very much. For the record then, I will ask everyone to introduce themselves and I will go first. So, Vice Chairman of the panel, Deputy Jeremy Maçon of St. Saviour , District Petite Longueville.

Deputy T.A. Vallois of St. John :

Deputy Tracey Vallois of St. John , member of the panel.

Scrutiny Officer:

Mick Robbins, Scrutiny Officer.

The Minister for Education:

Deputy Rod Bryans, St. Helier No. 2, Education Minister.

Chief Education Officer:

Justin Donovan, Chief Education Officer.

Economic Adviser:

Dougie Peedle, States Economic Adviser.

Head of Financial Planning:

Chris Haws, Head of Financial Planning.

Director, Inclusion and Family Support:

Cliff Chipperfield, Director, Inclusion and Family Support.

Director, Resources and School Support:

Christine Walwyn, Director of Resources and School Support.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you very much for attending today. We have got a lot of questions to get through. We would appreciate brief and concise answers as much as possible today, and Deputy Vallois will launch with the first questions.

The Deputy of St. John :

As we are aware, the Economic Adviser and a member of Treasury are with us, so if I direct those particular questions so that we get that out of the way and we can get on to asking ...

The Minister for Education:

That is absolutely fine. If I can just put on record the reason for bringing the individual members along was really to give you a full over-picture, particularly to do with Treasury and particularly to do with the impact assessment and the queries you had previously. So, just to flesh that out. Thank you.

The Deputy of St. John :

I think it is appropriate to get a general overview or understanding of this paper that was produced, the distributional analysis. There is a particular area that talks about education but in the actual addition it refers to regressive and progressive in terms of education. Would you be able to explain how you came to that particular figure or conclusion?

Deputy J.M. Maçon: Conclusion, page 118.

Economic Adviser:

Yes, I will try and keep it brief, but do ask further questions if I am not covering the issues that you want. We adopted the same approach across all the States departments in terms of looking at the distributional impact of the key proposals in the M.T.F.P. (Medium Term Financial Plan). We drew on research from elsewhere, some of which was particularly relevant for the stuff we did on education spending. We had to recognise upfront that when you are trying to compare the distributional impact of expenditure and revenue raising measures and changes in benefits, changes in expenditure are particularly hard to measure the distributional impact. It is not just as simple as looking at you are reducing or increasing expenditure by a certain value and that, if you divide it by the number of households, is the impact on each individual household. So we were very conscious that when we were looking at changes in expenditure that we drew on research from elsewhere. We tried to understand the nature of the proposals in Jersey and give an objective view as to what the distributional impact was. We had that overall approach across the board. In terms of what we looked at for education, clearly a significant part of the M.T.F.P. is investment in education. We looked at the changes in expenditure over the course of the M.T.F.P. period. We looked at savings and we looked at efficiencies and throughout the whole of the distributional analysis we took the view that if efficiencies were truly efficiencies and were not impacting on service delivery then there was no direct distributional impact from those efficiencies, so we looked at the net increase in education spending. We looked at research from a number of independent institutions in the U.K. (United Kingdom) and elsewhere, which gave us some comfort that particularly investment in secondary education, which is obviously relevant to the M.T.F.P., that type of investment was seen to be progressive. For certain elements of other education expenditure it was less clear and you needed more consideration to arrive at a conclusion. But in terms of the spending side, given the fact that the net increase was driven not totally but largely by secondary education spending and the pupil premium, we were fairly confident in arriving at the conclusion that the net impact of the investment in education was going to be progressive and we feel reasonably comfortable with that. We then also, on the flipside, looked at areas where there was a direct impact in one way or another on services or in terms of people paying more and we arrived at 2 separate conclusions there. In terms of measures which were targeting people at the higher end of the income spectrum, the Nursery Education Foundation being an obvious one, also in terms of reduced subsidies to fee- paying schools, looking at the spending on fee-paying schools across the household distribution in Jersey, again we were reasonably comfortable in thinking that those types of measures were going to be progressive as well. Then on the flipside of that looking at a couple of measures which impacted probably in a more regressive way, so we were thinking there of the Jersey Music Service and also reduction in grants for on-Island degrees. I think that is probably it in a nutshell. Feel free to ask any other questions if I have not covered what you want.

The Deputy of St. John :

I think it is important to try and explain, as an economic adviser as you are, in extremely layman terms what the progressive and regressive means and what that means for the man on the street so that people can understand that in educational terms with this particular analysis.

Economic Adviser:

Sure. On the revenue raising side, if it is seen as a progressive measure that means that people on higher incomes pay a higher proportion of their income in terms of the contribution that is made. Obviously the flipside of that, if it is an increase in expenditure, then it is progressive if those on lower incomes benefit more from that expenditure.

The Deputy of St. John :

When you talk about higher and lower incomes, what are the incomes that you are looking at?

Economic Adviser:

We used the Statistics Unit's income distribution survey and broke it down into quintiles. I think there is a table in there showing the income ranges for the various quintiles. So we based it very much on the income distribution survey from the Stats Unit.

The Deputy of St. John :

The rest of the questions I think we have got are directed more to the Minister. Thank you very much.

Economic Adviser: Does that mean I can go?

The Deputy of St. John :

Yes. You are excused. I believe we have only got one overall question for the Treasury directly. Within the Medium Term Financial Plan, there is talk about non-staff budget efficiencies, not cuts or savings but efficiencies. Can you explain what inflationary figure has been used for that particular non-staff budget?

Head of Financial Planning: During the course of the plan?

The Deputy of St. John : Yes, during the next 3 years.

Head of Financial Planning:

For the course of the 3 years of the addition, 2 per cent per year was the original planned allocation and it is that target that departments then had to identify efficiencies against. So that money has been set aside, allocated to the department. The department can choose to use that money for non- staff inflation but if they do that they will need to find the equivalent efficiencies elsewhere.

The Deputy of St. John :

Okay. Can I ask why it was 2 per cent?

Head of Financial Planning:

When we did the initial analysis it was seen as the average level of the R.P.I. (Retail Price Index) over the period.

The Deputy of St. John :

The average level, but it is not the forecasted level?

Head of Financial Planning:

No, just an average level that non-staff inflation might be expected to cost. For example, not directly relevant to this hearing but we recognise that in health there are additional pressures, drugs and other services that will require more than 2 per cent, and a separate provision is made for those. With a department like Education, there will be some areas where the inflation may be higher and other areas within the non-staff inflation where it may be lower, so it is a balance that we are trying to get across.

The Deputy of St. John :

When you say the money is set aside, what do you mean by that?

Head of Financial Planning:

If you look at the reconciliation for education you will see the allocation of the non-staff inflation is given to the department. It is down to the department then to decide how to manage that within their savings target.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Are there other general points working with education you would like to flag up to the panel?

Head of Financial Planning:

I think the key with education has been that education was identified, as I am sure the Minister will rehearse with you, as a strategic priority within the States. The difficulty that the Council of Ministers has is that even though it was looking to allocate additional funding to health, education and the other areas of St. Helier and economic growth, it has also got to identify a large level of savings.

[14:15]

So Education has contributed significantly, over £7 million, to the savings provision over the period but at the same time it has had growth for those areas within its own services that it has identified as a priority associated with those strategic aims. It has been a good working relationship with the department where they have come forward with the savings proposals. Those have been considered by the Council of Ministers and a package has been agreed, which is a balance between the growth and the savings over that period.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Thank you. Tracey, anything further?

The Deputy of St. John : No.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Thank you very much for your contribution today.

The Deputy of St. John :

You are allowed to be excused if you need to be. We are going to concentrate purely on education now, so we will leave it to the Minister to try and answer all the questions.

Head of Financial Planning:

If there are any more questions either for Dougie or myself that it would help to be answered then just ...

The Deputy of St. John :

Do not worry, we will, if there is anything. We are not shy.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

So, if we can launch in then, looking in particular at one of the growth bids that has come forward, which is the Jersey pupil premium. We would like to understand how it breaks down per pupil because we understand that in the U.K. it breaks down roughly at about £1,000 per pupil and we think in Jersey it is about £400 per pupil. We wonder if you could explain how you reached that decision.

The Minister for Education: I think it is higher than £400.

Chief Education Officer:

The actual final figure is yet to be determined because we are in a pilot year. The other thing to bear in mind is in England the figure started at about £400 and it grew over a period of time and it grew because of the impact it was having on behaviour, attendance and standards. We have taken the view here that we need to adopt a similar approach, that is to start with sufficient money to make an impact, but make absolutely sure it is working before we then request further funding towards it. We are in the process of consulting. Literally a few weeks ago we had a whole-day conference where we brought all the schools together that had been involved in the pilot, and anybody else who was interested, to learn lessons. Our current thinking is to put about two-thirds of the money into primary and a third into secondary because what we have come to in terms of the research and also a pilot is that the sooner we get in there and make an impact the better, so we are focusing more of the resource on primary schools per pupil than secondary. That is our current thinking, but the full scheme does not kick off until January so we have got a little bit of time in early autumn to finalise the details.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Thank you. Can you just explain the mechanism that should that funding not be needed what would happen to it?

Chief Education Officer:

If we discover the funding is not needed, we will give it back to the Treasury. You will be aware that we had a growth bid for the N.E.F. (Nursery Education Fund) for example; the numbers dipped slightly and so we returned that growth pot. The line we are taking is that growth money is for a particular purpose. We are confident, though, that the money will make an impact and we will be asking for more in the future.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

As it goes along, I think again looking at the U.K., is pupil premium spending published per school?

Chief Education Officer: Yes.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Is it anticipated for that to happen here?

Chief Education Officer:

Yes. Very, very close scrutiny of how it is spent through the professional partner visits and through our self-evaluation framework.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

On the criteria for how a child is chosen to be part of this funding, I know you have told us before that you have been working with Social Security to try to identify those particular individuals. Can you tell us, again will that be published and how will people know what it is?

Chief Education Officer:

What we did was write to all the families who met the criteria in terms of in receipt of benefits. We also wrote to those families who had not been here for long enough to benefit from those payments but the data showed they would have benefited if they had been here for 5 years. So we wrote to 2,500 families, I think, Christine, something of that kind, saying: "We have looked at the data with Social Security and we think your child is eligible. Please tick this box to let us know you are happy to work with us" and all but I think about 40 parents responded positively. So it is purely based on if people are eligible for social security benefits then they will benefit from the pupil premium.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

By that you mean income support?

Chief Education Officer: Sorry, yes.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Thank you. What mechanisms are going to be employed or used in order to measure the impact of the pupil premium?

Chief Education Officer:

We are already doing that in the pilot. We have benchmark data for the children. It is good timing really. We are looking to develop a data system in Jersey that has literally come on stream in the last 3 or 4 months where we have at long last got some very accurate data, so we have set benchmarks for the children. Then we are measuring things like reading ages, attendance, a whole range of issues. It is a little complicated because the support is based on the individual needs of each particular child. Therefore, when the money is made available to the school, the school suggests how they are going to report progress and we agree that and log it. It varies from school to school but the main indicators are academic progress they are making and whether the gap in attainment has been closed.

The Minister for Education:  

Can I amplify it a little bit? The chap who has written this particular book, which is the pupil premium almost like a little bible from the U.K., has been overseeing what we have been doing. He was part of the conference the other day and was really pleased with the progress we have made over the short space of time we have done it. The pilot itself, there are some really profound bits of information we had not considered at first and that will be part of what we do moving forward.

Chief Education Officer:

There are some issues we are hoping to crack here in Jersey that England has not managed to crack. For example, there are children who qualify for this payment but their learning needs do not require the whole amount of the money. They might need just a little bit of help and they do not need the full payment. There are other children whose needs are so significant they need more than the payment. In England the money has been allocated so precisely to individual children for all sorts of reasons because of the size of England and so on. One of the things we are learning from the pilot is how we could be a bit more flexible so that if we allocate the funding to the school, all the children who benefit gain and make progress. We would like to give schools a little bit more flexibility in the way they use the funding. We think that we will get more progress with the same funding in that way and we have been in touch with colleagues in England and they are quite interested to see if we can make some progress there.

The Deputy of St. John :

You mentioned that if the growth money is not spent the money would go back to Treasury. Can I ask at what point will that be determined? Is that at the end of every year? Will it be the end of the 3 years? How will they challenge yourselves in terms of identifying whether you need that money or not?

Chief Education Officer:

We are not clear on that point at the moment. We will work with our colleagues in the Treasury, but what we are doing is tracking the progress of the children right now and some of the feedback at the conference was showing some of that data. Some of it is quite recent. We have, for example, a case study from Haute Vallée where they have been working with young people on the mentoring scheme for about 8 or 9 weeks but were already able to point to progression routes, stay-on rates at 16, attendance, a whole range of issues which were problematic before pupil premium. We play with a very straight bat with the Treasury. If we draw down money and we find that we do not need it, we give it back. We think this is public money, we cannot play fast and loose with it. We have a track record of doing that. We try and distinguish between underspends and carry forwards. It is particularly important for us in Education because we run on an academic year rather than a finance year, but where there is a genuine underspend or the need is not there we will give the funding back. We have done that in the past and we will do it in future. The early signs of the pilot is that it is having a huge impact on a lot of children already, so I do not think we will be giving this money back.

The Minister for Education:

I think it also worth saying again, amplifying, that although it is designated by the particular children for a particular school, all children benefit, so all boats rise with the tide. In particular the Haute Vallée, which we are quite willing to do ... I will be doing a presentation on pupil premium to all States Members to show them that everybody benefits across the way and not just a few children but all the children.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

If we move on now to extending professional partners, which is one of the growth bids. We understand that the professional partners in Jersey have been working to Ofsted criteria. My first question is: is this Ofsted by another name?

Chief Education Officer:

No. I will be careful here because of my background. As you know, I was an Ofsted inspector and trained hundreds of inspectors myself. In fact, I was one of the group that wrote some of the original handbooks, so Ofsted is in my blood. It has got many strengths but it has also got some key weaknesses which would be problematic here in Jersey. Its key strength above all is the criteria that Ofsted use have been honed over the last 10 to 15 years. They are precise, they are very clear, they are judgmental and they are common currency. So when you talk to people outside of Jersey in terms of raising standards and what teaching and learning looks like, the Ofsted criteria are challenging because they are very ambitious but they are common currency. It would be silly for us not to adopt the Ofsted criteria. What we did was put a group of senior managers together, dominated it with heads and deputies rather than officers, took them through the Ofsted framework and went through each of the individual criteria one after the other. The community of schools here came to the same view, that we would be crazy not to use the Ofsted criteria because they are very helpful and there are benchmarks against which we can test ourselves. We tweaked one or 2 that just did not make sense in Jersey because of our size and the way the schools are organised, but broadly speaking it is there. The second bit of Ofsted that we are using is the experience of Ofsted inspectors. I am a bit biased because I trained some of them, but I would argue they are the best trained in the world. It is a huge resource we have and, therefore, we are bringing some Ofsted experience on to the Island to train and work alongside our colleagues here to make sure they have really good observational skills, writing skills, writing judgmentally and not descriptively otherwise there is no point. So we are doing that. What we are not bringing to Jersey is the machinery of Ofsted and the bureaucracy of Ofsted, which can be very challenging and has caused a lot of damage in England. So, we are cherry picking. We are using the criteria and the experience and then we are having our own evaluation framework which we have just piloted. Again, we are about 3 or 4 months ahead of schedule. We have piloted in 3 schools. We have got 2 more pilots in the autumn and then it will be run properly and we will have a cycle of every school being evaluated on a 3-yearly cycle. We are using Ofsted criteria but I can assure you, and I keep assuring the heads, that it will not feel like an Ofsted inspection. Some of them say: "Well, this is Ofsted" and I say: "Go and visit a school when Ofsted arrive. It will be different."

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Could you then tell us what the impact of this particular system has been on, firstly, teachers and then pupils?

Chief Education Officer: In England or here?

Deputy J.M. Maçon: In Jersey.

Chief Education Officer:

We have not started yet other than we have piloted in 3 schools, at Samarès, Janvrin and Springfield, and we simply looked at one subject in those 3 schools, just to test the system and the processes. There were lots of offers to be piloted. I do not know if that was because they were keen or they think if they have done the pilot, they will not have the real thing for 3 years. I do not know. Hopefully it is through wanting to get involved. The feedback from the 3 heads was it was the best professional development they had had. They found it difficult and challenging, they were nervous about it, but the heads found it to be very helpful. The feedback from their teachers was similarly positive in the sense of having their teaching observed and evaluated in some detail. Children on the whole, even if you go into the more brutal approaches of Ofsted in England, enjoy inspections. It is something different; it is a new face in the room; somebody else is asking the questions. It is more of an impact on the teachers and their heads. Kids like a bit of action. They like things that are slightly different. But it is very early days yet. We have just had the pilot, as I say, in 3 schools in one subject.

The Minister for Education:

It is also worth saying that we have had professional partners in the schools for some time. I was a chair of governors at Haute Vallée when professional partners first arrived, which sent out the message you are amplifying now, that this was an Ofsted by any other name. There was a lot of fear around at the time but, as the Director has already said, once people realised it was a developmental thing and it was about challenge, the heads themselves did not feel they were alone.

[14:30]

They had some resource to work with on that, so it has been very effective.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

With this criteria and what the professional partners do, is there anything published so that there is that openness and transparency and being able to evaluate how effective the professional partner system is?

Chief Education Officer:

Yes. All reports will be made public word for word. They will be put on school websites and they will be put on the ... we want to be open and transparent. Whether they are highly complimentary or highly critical, they will be made public very quickly. What we will do is publish them but we will also publish alongside them at the same time the action plan. Even our very best schools on the Island are going to have criticisms because that is the nature of the beast. I would be very worried if we had an evaluation of a school and there were no recommendations. So what we will do is publish the report and alongside it publish the plan. Those reports will start going online about February of next year. The last thing to say on Ofsted is that we now have 4 (5 if you include me) Ofsted-trained and very experienced inspectors in Jersey as part of the professional partner team. We have recruited and we now have the full team and between them they have a lot of experience. They are here living on Jersey so we do not need to buy in too much support.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Thank you. Shall we move on to question 3?

The Deputy of St. John :

Within the M.T.F.P. Addition under the efficiency savings programme there is a line about non-staff inflation efficiencies, which I have already asked Treasury a specific question about. But I would like to understand what impact that will have on the schools' ability to function?

Director, Resources and School Support:

The schools budgets are made up of staff and non-staff costs. At the moment it is about 90 per cent staff and 10 per cent non-staff so the non-staff inflation is a very small amount of a school's budget anyway. It is only going to be 2 per cent of that. In addition, when we look at cutting the budgets we take out the utilities and things like that and we look at past spends and future spends to cover that. It will have a minimum impact on schools' budgets.

The Deputy of St. John :

Can you explain what the non-staff budget is used for in schools?

Director, Resources and School Support:

It is used for buying school books, postage, stationery, premises costs, cleaning costs, maintenance, gardening, that kind of stuff.

The Deputy of St. John :

It is just to get an idea. When you have these lines in the M.T.F.P. it does not necessarily fall through into what it actually means.

Director, Resources and School Support: So it is establishment costs and general costs.

The Deputy of St. John :

Have there been any concerns raised by teachers or head teachers about the lack of resources that they may have to carry out the job effectively over the next 3 years?

Chief Education Officer:  

No. Feedback from the heads is constantly: "We need more resources" and I would be terribly disappointed if heads were not doing that. It is interesting, I am more vocal about it than they are because one of the issues we had in moving the schools forwardit is not part of this M.T.F.P. but I think in the long term we need to look at, and I have mentioned it beforeis the very small headroom that our head teachers have here. By that I mean after fixed costs are paid, all the build stuff and the rest of it, how much really is left to spend on staff training, books, materials, the kind of things we were talking about early. At best here our heads get about half of what is available in England and some have less than that, which is why we have done all we can to protect our schools from the cuts as best we can. In the long term I would like to see that headroom increase, partly possibly because in some of our schools, particularly our secondary schools, the staffing structures have evolved and have not kept up to date with the curriculum and it may well be we need to do some reorganisation there. But there is that lack of headroom and it is problematic if heads want to be imaginative and bold and do things differently and experiment and do some interesting things for the kids. They do not quite have the financial flexibilities that their colleagues do in England. We have other advantages that people in England do not have.

The Deputy of St. John :

Does that not mean, though, that possibly heads will find alternative or creative ways of identifying funding to assist them?

Chief Education Officer:

Yes, and they do that all the time. I would say our heads are more efficient often in the way they spend money because it is a little tighter. I would like to see ... I would like to give our heads more wriggle room financially if I could. I know this is the wrong time to argue for that because of all the cuts we are making and everybody will say: "We are special" but I think at a point when the economy begins to move forward and if there is further funding available, I would be arguing to top up school budgets, be given what we ...

The Deputy of St. John :

How much would you look at topping them up?

Chief Education Officer:

Well, in order to bring them in line with England, typically our secondary schools would need an extra £200,000 or £300,000 for spend and typically our primary schools £50,000, £60,000, something of that ... and that would bring them roughly in line with the headroom available to their English counterparts.

The Deputy of St. John :

When you say £50,000, £60,000, is that for each school or is that ...?

Chief Education Officer: Yes.

The Deputy of St. John : For each primary school?

Chief Education Officer: It is a lot of money, yes.

The Deputy of St. John :

How much for each secondary school?

Chief Education Officer:

I would say it is more like ... oh, it is more like £400,000 or £500,000, something of that kind. It is a lot of money. So I am not suggesting we will get to that point, but I think as funding becomes available our priority will be to put it in the hands of heads. As I say, we have other advantages. Here our heads have much better buildings, much better learning environments, very supportive parents, engaged with children, hard-working teachers. There is a whole range of things that we have at our disposal that the system in England does not have. It has a very good Education Department, a spectacular Minister - I could continue - but what it does not have ...

The Deputy of St. John :

Okay. [Laughter] Getting ahead of yourself now.

The Minister for Education:

If I can just illustrate, it is a really good point about the resources. I was being shadowed last week by a girl from Beaulieu and we had gone to Samares School. I was introduced to - I am sure you could meet her and have a chat with her - a new girl who had just come back. She was Jersey born and had come back after 3 years. We raised the issue about the N.Q.T. (newly-qualified teacher) situation and we raised the issue about resources. She said: "You cannot be serious. Your resources here are fantastic." She was telling the story that as a teacher in the U.K. by November in one year she had run out of glue. She said to the head: "What do I do?" and he said: "You have to source it from somewhere. You have to either buy it yourself or whatever, you just do not use it. You have to come up with some other idea." So I think in terms of just the resources that the Director has been talking about we are very well accommodated.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:  

Yes. As we have got on to the subject of headroom, one question just on this. How would the non- inflation efficiency be applied? Will it be pro rata across every school?

Chief Education Officer:

Yes. As Christine said, it is a very small amount of money because it is non-staff, so it is a small proportion of their budget. It will be 2 per cent off, so it is 2 per cent off 10 per cent rather than ... so it is a very small amount. It will just be put across the board.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

So the plan is to pro rata it?

Chief Education Officer:

Yes, including in the department, yes.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Because we know with some of our 11 to 16 schools, some of that wriggle room we know is only 3 per cent, so 2 per cent of that 3 per cent is obviously a bigger impact on a school than 2 per cent of 10 per cent.

Chief Education Officer:

Yes. On the other side, though, of the coin is we have put in additional funding this year to make sure if there was an overspend it was covered, and we will look to do the same next year. So, it is a two-way street, basically.

Director, Resources and School Support:

That 2 per cent is not just for schools, it is across the whole of the Education spend. So that figure is not what is coming off schools, it is coming off the whole of the Education Department, including likely some staff services.

The Deputy of St. John :

So it is 2 per cent of non-staff budget right across Education?

Chief Education Officer: Yes.

The Deputy of St. John : Okay, just to clear that up.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Looking at the ... I think we have covered that. The panel has heard evidence that in some situations with the new curriculum some children are having to share textbooks in the classrooms. Some teachers have not been able to get textbooks in order to cover the new curriculum. Have those concerns been aired to you?

Chief Education Officer:

Yes. The issue is a bigger problem at secondary than primary because as the G.C.S.E.s (General Certificate of Secondary Education) are being reworked, in some areas the textbooks have not even been written or are not available yet. Interestingly, though, with the new G.C.S.E.s there is less reliance upon textbooks. There is a lot more reliance on other sources. Nevertheless, it is an issue. Schools are replacing their textbooks all the time - they have a rolling budget for doing that - but the changes taking place in England, which, of course, are out of our control, it is problematic and some of these textbooks are going to be available after the children have started the courses. It is a problem right across England. We just have to hold our nerve and be patient. It is out of our hands. One of the advantages of the new G.C.S.E.s, though, which makes it a little less problematic, is unlike the old suite of G.C.S.E.s these are very, very similar. There is very little to choose between the different examination boards. So materials can be much more ... used much more flexibly across and, therefore, can be shared across schools. But it is a problem, yes, and schools have raised it with us. We are doing everything we can but, like them, we are going to have to wait.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Okay, thank you. Is there anything else you wanted to tackle here?

The Deputy of St. John : No.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Thank you. Yes, so in part of your efficiency savings is closer working within secondary schools. Can you just explain to us on the record what will that look like? What does that mean?

Chief Education Officer:

Very early stages of having the conversation with the schools at the moment. So, the present position is that in each year group we have around about 1,000 children spread out across a number of schools. Because, quite rightly, our schools want to give these children a wide choice of G.C.S.E.s, we have some G.C.S.E. groups with very small numbers, single figures. That is unhelpful for 2 reasons. Firstly, you have to pay the cost of a teacher and sometimes teacher assistants, so

it can be per head 2 or 3 times more expensive than other G.C.S.E.s. But also it is not a good learning environment for the children. When you are delivering a G.C.S.E., you get a better atmosphere with 20-odd children there. You can share work. You can ask kids to work in groups. There are certain teaching techniques you cannot use when you only have 5 or 6 kids in the class. So the idea is to bring the timetables closer together so that we can share expertise and raise the numbers in our G.C.S.E. groups and save ... we expect to save a lot more than £200,000 and any additional savings we can make in schools will be reinvested back into the schools along the lines we were talking about earlier in terms of headroom.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Yes. So one of our questions, of course, is going to be are you looking towards getting closer to universal timetabling?

Chief Education Officer: Yes.

Deputy J.M. Maçon: In which case ...

Chief Education Officer:

We do not have agreement for that yet, so we have literally had 2 meetings with the ... particularly 11 to 16 heads and in principle they think these are the kind of things we should be discussing and working on. There is already a course collaboration between them and we have left this until quite late in the M.T.F.P. to give us time to get it right because timetables, of course, have already been written for next year. So we are going to give ourselves the whole of next academic year to talk it through, to develop some service level agreements, so that if heads come and go the courses will continue. We have quite a bit of work to do but we are looking forward to it. There are lots of other advantages of heads of departments working closer together. You can share training. You can share teacher materials. If one maths department is struggling because you have a couple of teachers down, you have 2 or 3 other maths departments to support the G.C.S.E. groups. So it is not just about efficiency savings. This is something we were planning to do anyway and it is in our business plan, but it will generate some savings.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

On some of the practicalities about shifting students round then from one campus to another, first of all is there enough resource to be able to do that?

Chief Education Officer:

Yes, it is not a problem.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Okay. Then what impact is that going to have on the children? Presumably, they will lose their breaks or they will lose part of their lunch period in order to facilitate that?

Chief Education Officer:

It all depends on the timetable. They will timetable it and the way ... this is not rocket science. Lots of schools do this elsewhere on much bigger geographical areas. What you need to do is timetable in blocks so that you will do humanities blocks rather than history, geography and R.E. (religious education). Then you get much more flexibility in terms of movement. It may well be not all 4 schools come into one. It may be 2 schools working in pairs. It does not take long to get from one secondary school to the other here. We have plenty of minibuses which often lie idle during the day. They are busy in the mornings and the evenings but they are sitting there idle during the day. So the transport ... there are other issues, but transport is not a problem.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

That was going to be my next ... what are the key risks? What are the key risks to this proposal?

[14:45]

Chief Education Officer:

Well, there comes a point where you think it is easier to move the staff than the kids. So when you look at the numbers, you might think, well ... so, for example, if you are a drama teacher in one of our schools and there is not enough time on the timetable for you to teach drama, you could find yourself teaching P.S.H.E. (personal, social, health and economic education) or maths or something else. What this would mean is that you would be just teaching drama but a couple of times in every week you may well be teaching drama in a different school. Now, most teachers see that as a great experience because they just like teaching their subjects at secondary. Only speaking from my own experience, that is the case. But teachers live and die on their relationships and so if you go in ... if you are teaching at Le Rocquier and then you suddenly go into Haute Vallée to teach, you do not know the kids so well. You do not have your reputation, so it is a bit more of a challenge, but our children are great and welcoming so that should not be a problem. So, there are issues but the problems are problems for us, not for the kids. This way our students will get a broader range of G.C.S.E.s. They are more likely to have experts in front of them. They are more likely to be in a class where there is a good atmosphere, where there is plenty of people around to share ideas. The practical arrangements of making it work needs to be our problem, not the kids'.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Anything you would like to add? No, okay. We will move on. Shall I take this one?

The Deputy of St. John :

I can take this one. On page 64 of the Addition, it shows the growth bids or the growth proposals for primary and secondary school demographics. Is a growth bid for demographics really a new bid?

Chief Education Officer:

Do you want me to take that? My answer for that is yes. I know there is an argument to say - and it is a fair argument to say - if you have more children in the system then if we were not to put demographics in it is tantamount to a cut because we would have to put teachers in front of them. So there is an argument to say this is not really growth at all. I would say it is for 2 reasons. Firstly, we have a target pupil/teacher ratio here of 26 rather than 30 and we could have taken the decision as the demographics grow we will let the class size grow, as they have done elsewhere. It would be problematic in one or 2 schools because some of our classrooms are quite small, but on the whole we could have allowed our classes to grow to 30. The problem with doing that is you end up then with 30 plus because we have 26 plus. So, we decided not to do that. We made a bid here to expand the teaching profession and there is money here to buy new teachers, new T.A.s (teaching assistants). So, I would argue that is growth because we did not have to put that in. Secondly ... or we might have needed a little bit of growth but nowhere near the 4.3 million which I think it totals in the end. The other bit of the ... the other reason it is growth is because by saying no, we are going to stick where we can to 26 in a class - even though we go over slightly that is our target number - we have had to build 14 new classrooms in the primary sector. So, that is additional investment. We have increased the size of D'Auvergne, put new classrooms at Springfield. We are redeveloping Trinity . There is a whole range of developments we have put in place. So, I would say I understand the argument to say it is not really growth because the extra kids are coming, we need to fund them, but we could have accommodated them in larger classrooms, larger classes, and we have not done that. So, I think this is growth not just in revenue, which is here, but it is growth in terms of our capital because that capital could have been spent on other things.

The Deputy of St. John :

How would you have fitted everybody in if you did not put the classrooms in, the 14 new classes?

Chief Education Officer:

Because what we would do is have classes of ... we would have an extra 3 or 4 kids in all the classes. So you would have ...

The Deputy of St. John :

You just stated yourself that some of the classrooms are not even big enough.

Chief Education Officer:

Not many. There are one or 2. St. Luke's, for example, would be a problem because they are funny shapes and sizes, but most of our classes are built on BB99, which is the same as England and they are set out for 30.

The Deputy of St. John : That means ...?

Chief Education Officer:

Sorry, it is guidance used for building schools.

The Deputy of St. John : Thank you.

Chief Education Officer:

So, no, we could have squashed them in, frankly, or brought ourselves in line with England, but one of our strengths is the slightly smaller class, particularly in primary, so we decided to ... so in that sense I think it is growth. We might have had to build one or 2 more classrooms and put a little bit of growth in, but nowhere near this amount of money.

The Deputy of St. John :

So a proportion of it was more for need rather than ...?

Chief Education Officer:

A very small proportion. We could have squashed kids in. Secondary it is less problematic in terms of capacity. I can tell you that the forecasts we have at the moment for the years 2020 to 2022, all our secondary schools ... because of the bulge going through the primary and those 14 classrooms, those kids are heading to the secondary sector. All of our schools will be full, very little wriggle room, so we will be right up tight on capacity. That is including the extra places that are being built into Les Quennevais. So, the assumption is Les Quennevais will open on time and even with those extra places and ... yes, I raised my eyebrows, too. So, schools like Haute Vallée will fill and ...

The Minister for Education: Grainville will increase.

Chief Education Officer:

Grainville will fill and Haute Vallée will fill, so that bulge is heading their way. So we have not had to put a lot of additional building into the secondary schools. The building we have put in place is for the primaries.

The Deputy of St. John :

So why was asking for this growth bid better than doing what you suggested just now?

Chief Education Officer: What, squashing them in?

The Deputy of St. John : Yes.

Chief Education Officer:

Because of standards. We think by having ... especially in some of our town schools, having 3 or 4 kids less means teachers' attention can be focused more. It changes the atmosphere in the classroom. So, basically, on standards grounds we argued for this growth.

The Deputy of St. John : Okay.

The Minister for Education:

It creates a brand new dynamic. As soon as you have bigger classes, you have a different dynamic within the class itself.

The Deputy of St. John :

I just needed to understand the argument that you possibly would have made to the likes of Treasury or someone like that for the growth.

The Minister for Education:

If you look at fee paying ... sorry, if you look at fee paying, that is generally what the ... that is the first thing they are looking for is to reduce the class size. That is what they are paying for.

The Deputy of St. John : Okay.

Chief Education Officer:

We have also built in a little demographic growth there. We are working on the assumption that over the next few years, so in next summer of 2017, our G.C.S.E. results should start to shift. That will mean there will be more young people who are qualified for level 3 study. So we have built in some ... some of that demographic secondary later on in the timescale is designed for those students, so additional level 3 funding, particularly at Highlands but also at the other 6th form providers.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

I think you have provided us with some of the numbers about the trends of population size in Jersey. It is just to ask given that Jersey has a stated interim population policy that works to a certain trend of figures, we know that certainly in Jersey that has always been overreached every time. Can I just ask when you have been doing your demographic figures what figures have you been using?

Chief Education Officer:

I would have to go to Keith to get the detail, but we have been using the States figures. We have always suspected there will be slightly more kids than have been forecast. So when I have looked at the forecast from the department before I arrived, I was pretty impressed. You would normally expect over a population from bigger educational ... from a population of a quarter of a million children, for example, you would expect your forecast to be plus or minus 1 per cent. A population of this size, so 1,000 kids in a cohort, to get it plus or minus 1 or 2 per cent is pretty good going. So the team for some years here have been really quite good at ... might have been lucky, of course, but I suspect it is skill, quite good at getting the figures right. What they do ... what the team does here very well is listen to the soft intelligence, heads talking about young families moving in and those kinds of things. They take that into account, so the predicted figures here are pretty accurate.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Okay, thank you. Just looking at the adjustment to the subsidy for fee-paying schools, the grants to fee-paying schools, however you want to term it, the change to the money going to fee-paying schools, can I ask why the figure selected was reached?

Chief Education Officer:

We wanted to make sure we could spread the savings programme as well as we could. We wanted to keep those figures as low as we could for 2 reasons, really. Firstly, for ethical reasons in the sense that I think the fee-paying schools provide a very, very good education and we would like as many children as possible to benefit from it. Take the progress data, for example, at J.C.G. (Jersey College for Girls). It would be in the top 5 per cent in England, which is pretty good. So, we would want to make it so that as many people as possible can afford to send their children there for educational reasons. The second is a bit more Machiavellian than that. I think there comes a point when if you raise ... if you reduce the subsidy and raise the fees too much, there will be families who will say: "Do you know what, we are going to stick to our free education" and suddenly we are paying the full whack rather than half. So I have to admit there is a little bit of mercenary in terms of getting that balance right, especially as our other schools start improving and results start shifting. You might be sitting there thinking an extra 3, 5, okay, is it around ... something like £150 a year, which is not much, but if it was an extra £600 or an extra £1,000 you might think: "Do you know what, we are going to stay where we are for that extra money." So there is a tipping point. So those are the 2 reasons, really. One is we want as many kids to go as possible. We have demonstrated that by taking the cap off the 2 colleges. There was an artificial cap placed on them in terms of the number of children allowed to enter in year 7 and the schools have always had capacity to take more than that. We have taken that cap off. Then secondly, as I say, to get that balance right. I tried and I was not quick enough to get the word "subsidy" taken out of there, because if I was a parent actually paying for my children to go to one of the fee-paying schools, I would argue that it is me subsidising the education system, not the other way round.

The Minister for Education: As they did last time.

Chief Education Officer:

As they did last time, and we just were not quick enough to have the wording changed, so I winced when I saw it, I have to admit.

The Deputy of St. John :

I am starting to wonder whether you have been reading all the reports from last time.

Chief Education Officer: Yes. [Laughter]

The Minister for Education: I do read your reports.

The Deputy of St. John :

It was not my report, it was Education's report.

Chief Education Officer:

So I would rather that word was not in there, I think, because parents are paying their taxes so they are entitled to free education, but they are choosing to pay an extra lump on top of that. So when they say they are subsidising the system, there is ... it is a partnership. Nobody is subsidising anybody. It is a partnership.

The Deputy of St. John :

Whether you reduce the grant from the Education Department to these fee-paying schools or not, they can increase their fees.

Chief Education Officer:

They can but over a certain amount they have to get ministerial agreement.

The Minister for Education:

They have to sit in with myself, which they have done several times, and we give them an advanced warning of what we are doing.

The Deputy of St. John :

As I understand it, annually for the last 5 years they have increased their fees well above what is expected by the States anyway. So have parents been leaving?

Chief Education Officer: No.

The Deputy of St. John : Okay, just to understand.

Chief Education Officer:

But I think there will be a tipping ... I do not know what that is and it would be interesting once we get things like our parent forum up and running, some of the questions we can test.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Okay. Is there anything else you want to ask that we have not covered?

The Deputy of St. John :

Can I ask whether you will see a difference in the actual increase in the fees going forward with this change that you are suggesting in the M.T.F.P. Addition?

The Minister for Education: For schools?

Chief Education Officer:

Well, yes, we made a point to the schools they do not have to pass this on to the parents.

Okay.

The Minister for Education:

So the answer is we do not expect them to.

Chief Education Officer: Well, yes.

The Minister for Education:

Well, it is our consideration in all the discussions that we have had, I mean, it is entirely down to the schools at their discretion but we have flagged this for some time.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Shall we move on? Okay, looking at teachers, the growth bid is looking at the provision of a data team. Can I just ask will this assist teachers' workload and, if so, how?

Chief Education Officer:

It will in the medium term. Interestingly, we had our teacher survey. We surveyed our staff and about half of them responded, which I am told by stats people is very high. It was really helpful information, but there were 4 big issues that arose. Lots and lots of positive stuff, which we are delighted about, particularly over standards and how important it is to raise them. One of them was workload, and what was interesting we have not yet won over the teaching profession here over the importance of data. The heads understand it, the senior management understand it, as do department heads and year group, but teachers in the classroom are not yet seeing the importance of data on their children. That is down to us, not them. We need to (a) give them data which is of use to them on a day to day basis, which we are not doing yet; and (b) demonstrate to them how powerful that is. We are well ahead of where we were due to be, though, so we are out to procure, we have our preferred bidder to replace our system, and that will be replaced by September of 2017. We are bang on schedule for that. In the meantime, we have introduced a short-term measure, a bit of software called Tableau, which takes the information that we get from schools and converts it into graphics, which we can then use to have a discussion and debate.

[15:00]

The idea is that the system we are introducing will make assessment much, much easier for teachers. At the moment, if you are a teacher in Jersey, you would have to work to the kids, get

your mark book out, write down your comments, then when you get home you will type it into your system. Then you have to transfer it to the school system. The school system transfers it to us. So, we are quadruple handling this information. The new system the teachers will be using iPads in the classroom or computers or their phones, whatever they want to use, and as they are assessing the children they will just be tapping it in and that is it. That then goes on to the school system. It goes on to their records. It goes into ours. So we will have live data and teachers will only have to do it once. What we know from teachers is they are a funny old profession in the sense that if you give them less work to do they will work the same amount of hours. They do not go ... they will not go home early. So the time that you take back from them in terms of unnecessary bureaucracy they will spend on that extra time to prepare a lesson or to mark the children's work. That I can say. It is important issue because of the wellbeing of our teachers, but also in terms of making sure they spend their time focusing on the kids because they will not go home early. Sometimes you have to turf them out.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

So this growth bid which is looking at the data team, if all that work needs to be done is there a training budget anywhere there for teachers?

Chief Education Officer:

It is all part of that bid. So the team is now in place. The training programme will roll out with the new I.T. (information technology) system. That is all part of the package. We think even though we will have the system in place by September it will take a few months for it to settle in. It is a really comprehensive training programme.

The Minister for Education:

It is also worth saying that we had a meeting last week with the N.A.S.U.W.T. (National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers). So their senior exec came over, Chris Keates, to talk to us, to re-establish the partnership that we have put together. It is on both our agendas to look at that particular as an item but they were quite respectful of what we have achieved so far.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Okay, thank you. Anything else you want to add? No, okay. Looking at another efficiency saving, this is looking at the newly-qualified teachers. So, I wonder if the department could confirm that teaching posts in the Island have been turned down due to living costs.

Chief Education Officer:

I cannot think of any, actually.

The Minister for Education: I am not aware of any.

Director, Inclusion and Family Support:

Does that mean that people have withdrawn from applications because ...?

Deputy J.M. Maçon: Mm hmm.

Director, Inclusion and Family Support: That happens frequently.

The Minister for Education: Does it?

Director, Inclusion and Family Support:

Yes, especially in our secondary schools. Teachers apply for jobs in Jersey, understand the true cost of coming here, especially if they have a family, and they back out of the application process.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Is that at every level, not just newly qualified but all through the system?

Director, Inclusion and Family Support: In the secondary sector across the piece.

Chief Education Officer:

Of course, most newly-qualified teachers are young and do not have families. There are some mature entrants, but most are young, straight out of university, keen, eager.

The Deputy of St. John :

What does this particular proposal have in common with the work surrounding workforce modernisation? Is that a part of it?

Chief Education Officer:

Yes. We will have a much broader look at the workforce modernisation programme. I have a meeting tomorrow to start beginning to look at that, but that will take us several years. When we look at this, we took ... I think there are 2 separate issues here. There is primary and secondary. So, in the primary sector we are fully staffed. We have a number of very good, Jersey-born, trained teachers who are on our supply lists who cannot get a job in Jersey. So we do not need to be paying over the odds, if you like, to recruit. To give you some idea, in the last 4 years newly-qualified teachers arriving in Jersey were being paid £38,000. Although the scale starts at £33,000, because of their qualifications they were starting at £38,000. If they were in England they would be starting on £23,000. It is a huge difference. If they were in London, they would be starting on about £25,000, £25,500, so there is an enormous gap, a big difference between them. When you have newly- qualified teachers starting on that amount, that is really helpful for recruitment but at the moment we do not need to recruit primary teachers. That might change in the years to come but not at the moment.

The Minister for Education:

Can I just bring in Cliff? One of the reasons I wanted to bring Cliff in here was when we went through the process of identifying where we could find some of these savings, Cliff was instrumental in bringing this to people's attention. One of the reasons I wanted to bring him here is this shows that when you have somebody that has got the qualifications and the background and the professionalism of somebody like that who has got the history, he is able to call upon those sort of resources quite quickly. Do you want to explain?

Director, Inclusion and Family Support:

I think to add to what Justin was just saying, about 10 or 15 years ago we were not in the same financial position we are today. We had that same challenge 10 or 15 years ago we have today and that is around the application and appointment of specialist secondary school teachers across physics, chemistry, maths, those types of areas. When we looked to recruitment and the challenge of recruitment around those posts, we had enough money to raise the bottom line of our salary scale for all teachers, primary and secondary. What Justin just explained is as long as I have been in the profession we have had a large number of locally-trained primary school teachers, so supply has always exceeded demand. You always have a handful of young people every year who cannot get a job because the jobs are not there but we were able to ramp up our starting salary to around £37,000/£38,000. At the moment the challenge our secondary school head teachers face is competing in the U.K. with this ever-diminishing resource, which are physics teachers, maths teachers, chemistry teachers because authorities across on the mainland are offering golden hellos, they are enhancing their starting salary. The way we are currently structured we have no flexibility within our salary at all. What we have is what we spend. One of the major advantages of moving in this direction is by reducing the starting salary. We have flexibility within to be able to recruit specialised teachers that we could beat in the mainland. Does that make sense?

Chief Education Officer:

Yes, and they respond to the market.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

One of the points that was raised with us is possibly looking at one of our biggest competitors, which is Guernsey and attracting teachers because, presumably, if you want to leave this system you are looking for something a bit different and possibly our sister island. How does Jersey compare with Guernsey and what is offered to newly-qualified teachers?

Director, Inclusion and Family Support: In terms of starting salary?

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Salary or anything else approved they might get. Possibly, I think, they were mentioning assistance of rent rebate component. I wonder whether the department has looked at that.

Director, Inclusion and Family Support:

The one major disadvantage in Guernsey is they still have fixed-term contracts and when they get to that point they do leave. They have this constant turnover, whereas within Jersey if someone is recruited and it is essential, they can go through that process and remain in the Island. Everything we invest in them to push development and all other aspects, that investment remains. I am afraid I cannot answer accurately the salary position with Guernsey, I am unaware of it.

Director, Resources and School Support:

We have done a piece of work on it but I do not have it with me, so I could not answer.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Okay. If we could have that in due course, that would be great.

Director, Inclusion and Family Support:

I did it about 5 years ago and we were above inner London and Guernsey and the Isle of Man in terms of starting salary.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Okay, thank you. Is there anything you want to add?

The Deputy of St. John :

Yes, I have just so many questions I am trying to fit them in.

Chief Education Officer:

Just for the record, just on the N.Q.T, we are aware of the fact that these are proposals that we need to talk through with the unions because although, in a sense, it is not relevant to the union because these are not their members, they do not exist yet, they are not on the Island. These proposals affect nobody on the Island or nobody has been recruited for this year, we are talking about a year's time. What it does do is change the pay scales, the lowest starting point, so we know that we need to work closely with the unions to negotiate that. The point that some of the heads made, which is interesting, was that if you start them at £38,000 there is very little incentive for promotion because you will take on the responsibility for the whole school, for example, in English for an extra couple of thousand pounds. The gap at the moment between starting and taking on some responsibility is minute. It is very difficult to get people to take on those extras responsibilities, that is the other point we made. But I just want to make sure on the record that we have not agreed this with the unions yet. We need to negotiate with them in 2 or 3 months and I have told them we will do that.

The Deputy of St. John :

Can I ask where this would place newly-qualified teachers against other areas within the public sector?

Chief Education Officer:

Here in Jersey other areas of public sector do still pay very high starting salaries. It would be not in line, necessarily, with all areas of the public sector, not primary schools. Secondary schools, as I say, will continue to pay the market rate if we have to.

The Minister for Education:

Just a couple of points I think I made in the Assembly but just worth making again. The U.K. average wage for a new graduate in the U.K. is £25,000. A newly-qualified doctor in the U.K. currently gets £23,000. A Jersey graduate in finance currently gets anywhere between £22,000 and £27,000.

The Deputy of St. John :

But would you not concede though that we are not the U.K., we are Jersey? Our cost of living is different and in the U.K. you can live in one part of England and travel to that place of work, unlike you can in Jersey. How can you compare?

Chief Education Officer:

Because the salary that we are looking to bring in, as an automatic starting point, is the same as London.

The Deputy of St. John :

But you can travel into London from somewhere else, you cannot do that in Jersey.

Chief Education Officer:

You can but then the cost of travelling and I understand the travel, it is hugely expensive. That is an extra cost of many thousands to commute in and out of London. Also, we have done quite a bit of work on if you take into account the tax regimes here and other possibilities, I think it is comparable to London here. But, as I say, if we do need to recruit in our shortage subjects and get the same, then we will pay what the market needs. At the moment got this automatic starting salary that is very difficult to justify at a time when we do not need to really.

Director, Inclusion and Family Support:

Also, I have worked with our N.Q.T.s for the last 15 years and the vast majority of our primary N.Q.T.s have come back for that first period with their family and they come back, return to the Island and they then move in with family before they start and rent their own flat and buy their own house.

The Deputy of St. John :

There is an interesting piece of work that has been done, I think it is called the Efficiency Index, that looks at the outcomes for pupils. They say that the 2 most prominent outcomes for children is teachers' pay and classroom size. How would this proposal affect outcomes for children?

Chief Education Officer:

I do not think it would, I really do not. I think we will still have and primary will still have exactly the same teachers we have at the moment and secondary, we will have the flexibility to recruit the best teachers. For example, we have just recruited 4 science teachers straight out of Newcastle University. What we are doing is developing links with the flight hubs we have. Newcastle produces superb secondary teachers, particularly in maths and science. We had Newcastle University over here last week or week before last and I spent some time there a month or so ago. We will be recruiting them there, mathematicians to the Island next September. We know we will have to pay the premium to get them here and that is what we will do. If we thought this was going to have any effect on standards we would not be proposing it.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

You do not think that this will affect in any way the quality of the teachers we recruit then.

Chief Education Officer: No, I do not, no.

The Deputy of St. John :

Can I just quickly ask, it may not be directly relevant, there are still issues with regards to recruiting specialist teachers?

Chief Education Officer: There are.

The Minister for Education: In secondary.

The Deputy of St. John :

Are you addressing that within this M.T.F.P. and, if so, where?

Chief Education Officer:

Yes, we are addressing it anyway. In here what we are saying is we are going to retain the flexibility, so if we need to recruit we will. But we are adopting other approaches that are not in there. For example, directors and managing directors of the 2 universities, we have a television advert going on national television in a few weeks' time. The timing, it follows the U.K. The U.K. have an advert out saying become a teacher. Jersey's advert will follow a few adverts later, if you are going to be a teacher come to Jersey, Plémont I think is on there with a bit of luck.

Director, Inclusion and Family Support:

We also have our own graduate teacher-training programme. There are 60 teachers in secondary schools who went through the Jersey-based programme and it focuses on those specialist areas as well. It prioritises teachers in those shortage areas.

Chief Education Officer:

It is a very good track record. When you watch those teachers operate they are some of our very best when you recruit them out of commerce industries, so they bring something else to the school.

The Deputy of St. John :

Sorry, it was just a quick question. It is not relating to this. I am not going to carry on because I am aware of the time and we have lots of questions. Okay, shall we

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Yes, but I do not understand how it works. We have changed our question plan, so some of it is a bit out of sync. If you could just give us a moment.

The Minister for Education:

All right. I might just take a quick comfort break.

Deputy J.M. Maçon: Yes, yes.

The Minister for Education: Thank you.

Chief Education Officer:

While Rod is not here, your point about the biggest impact on children and outcomes is with the quality of teacher, not how much they get paid but the 2 biggest things really is the quality of teaching and the level of parental support, those 2

The Deputy of St. John :

I will forward you the Efficiency Index paper, that has looked at all the different education systems around the world and used by the O.E. C.D . (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), which Jersey loves so much.

Chief Education Officer:

Yes, I know. I am always a bit suspicious of those papers because I used to write them when I was at the National Institute, I used to write them.

The Deputy of St. John :

Should we be suspicious of you then?

Chief Education Officer: Yes.

The Deputy of St. John : Okay.

Chief Education Officer:

The answer to that was some of the research I was involved with, when you tend to run out of money towards the end

[15:15]

The Deputy of St. John :

I think it is probably best if we wait until

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Yes, I think so. If we continue, again, listed on your growth bids, higher education has received, by 2019, an extra £2 million. Can you just confirm where that has come from?

Chief Education Officer:

Where the money has come from?

Deputy J.M. Maçon: Yes.

Chief Education Officer:

I did not ask, I am assuming out of contingency. It is not coming from us anyway, we did not have to find it in extra savings.

The Minister for Education:

No. I think the expression used is a robust discussion between ourselves, Treasury and the Chief Minister because we have appreciated the difficulty the parents have found themselves under and thought: "This is something we could address at this point in time." In fact, to some degree, your own proposition helped I think.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

I put it in a set way, yes.

The Minister for Education:

Act as a bit of a catalyst for this sort of focused thinking but I think he is right, I think it has come from contingency at this point. It is not anything that we have to worry about.

Deputy J.M. Maçon: Okay, thank you.

The Deputy of St. John :

Sorry, what the underspend for higher education last year?

The Minister for Education: The underspend

Director, Resources and School Support:

Yes, we had a small underspend, I think it was about £0.5 million, off the top of my head.

The Deputy of St. John : For higher education.

Director, Resources and School Support: Yes.

The Deputy of St. John :

I thought there was an underspend of approximately £1.5 million or something like that at some point in the grants

Director, Resources and School Support:

There was a saving nearer that £1.5 million that was due to the fact that the fees were going to go up and they did not go up at that time, so we gave it back.

The Deputy of St. John :

That was it. Okay, so this is just putting the savings back in then really and rejigging the system.

Director, Resources and School Support:

No, that was when the fees did not happen and this is additional growth instead. That is going back to when we said: "We do not need the money, we give it back."

The Deputy of St. John :

Yes. Sorry, can you explain what the threshold is again? I know you said it in the States but what is the threshold going to be under this proposal?

The Minister for Education: Okay, let me just

The Deputy of St. John :

Sorry, I know you said it in the States.

The Minister for Education:

No, that is all right. Tuition fees and full grant, we can send you all this information, all right, but just saying it for the record.

The Deputy of St. John : Yes. No, I appreciate that.

The Minister for Education:

Up from £26,750 to £34,500 tuition fees but no grants up from £53,100 to approximately £62,000 and upper earnings threshold up from £90,950 to approximately £99,000. Because we were trying to make sure that we encompassed everybody and caught as many people as we could in terms of giving people a bit of an uplift, we have increased the full maintenance grant from £5,500 to £6,000 and the students still have that £1,500 loan.

The Deputy of St. John :

Okay. Can I ask then because obviously this £2 million is going to be during the next 3 years and there is going to be different cohorts of students able to get in or not get into university and may need to access that? What does this mean to families? What type of families are we looking at assisting here? Is this the be-all end-all approach or are you bringing something else forward?

The Minister for Education:

No, it is not the be-all end-all approach. I think the other figures that we gave out were 94 ex- students will receive a full grant and it generally will affect 609, I think was the figure we said, will be getting more in some sort of way, whether partial or whatever. I think you have heard that we have been working very closely with Highlands to increase the degree offering up there. In fact I mentioned and let us put it again, it is worth stating for the record, that the proportion of students this year receiving an honours degree from Highlands was 83 per cent, which is in comparison to 70 per cent in the U.K. and 20 per cent of students achieved first class honours, which is really a fantastic result in a very short space of time and is full credit to the guys at University College Jersey. We are looking to increase that. I think you have heard about what we are trying to do at Campus Jersey, which is to increase it all around and not just through Highlands but through Jersey International Business School and the nursing degree and all of those sorts of things. As is quite often discussed in the press, we are still having those conversations about student loans but, as we have often stated, the banks do not seem to have an appetite at it for the moment. That may have changed just recently when we spoke to a senior bank official who has taken on a very senior role across all banks and said he would make it a priority to talk to them. We are always looking. We are always in hope that we can change the situation that we find ourselves in.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

I think we can get 12 in writing back to us, 13, shall we ask?

The Deputy of St. John :

Following on from the increase of the growth with regards to the higher education, there is a user- pays element that is coming in in terms of the reduction in the maintenance grants for on-Island degrees. How much exactly will that reduction be and why was that figure chosen?

The Minister for Education:

Is it £3,000? It is and there is a sort of parity there between the differences you get with U.K. degrees and on-Island degrees. On-Island degrees tend to be £2,000 to £3,000 cheaper in terms of cost. Equally, they are not having to pay for travel and they are not having to pay for residence generally in those situations.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Where does that come out of? Is it they do not get as much maintenance grant or how does it work?

The Minister for Education: Yes.

Chief Education Officer:

Yes. The maintenance grant would go down from £5,500 to £3,000. They get broadly in line with what they would have got if they were on income support.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Then if you never qualified for it this could not affect you then, is that correct?

The Minister for Education:

No, it would not affect you if you are not going to get it, no.

Chief Education Officer:

It affects, we think, about 45 students.

Deputy J.M. Maçon: Out of a cohort of

Chief Education Officer:

In any year we send something like 300 or 400 away to do a degree, so it is a relatively small sample. Of course, as each year goes by it will be 45 plus 45 over a period of time.

The Deputy of St. John :

You stated that it is similar to the amount they would receive through income support.

Chief Education Officer:

Yes, because that is why we kept to that line.

The Minister for Education: Yes.

The Deputy of St. John :

Income support supplied you with those figures.

Chief Education Officer:

£92.96 a week or £2,975 a year for the 32-week course, so with £25 more generous would round it up to £3,000.

The Deputy of St. John :

Okay. Just trying to work out where all the figures are coming from and who is using what.

The Minister for Education:

We have a very good close relationship with Social Security, obviously through the people premium more than anything else.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Okay. Has there been any consultation with, for example, existing students? How does life affect them being able to carry on with their course? Is there any conversation like

Chief Education Officer:

This would be for new students.

The Minister for Education:

This is new students, this is not existing.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Yes, but it is still those people then being able to take that on that course initially because if they thought: "Brilliant, I could do this course because this is what I will be entitled to." Has any

The Minister for Education:

We are not affecting any student that is doing a course at the moment.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

No, but a lot of Jersey students take

The Minister for Education:

You are talking about who are contemplating it for the future.

Deputy J.M. Maçon: Yes, yes.

The Minister for Education:

I am sorry, okay. Yes, we have had discussions with students all along and in fact I had a fairly recent discussion with J.C.G. students, which prompted a big discussion about the N.Q.T. situation. Yes, we ought to take those sort of things into account but that is not reflected in terms of what we have done here.

Deputy J.M. Maçon: Okay, thank you.

The Deputy of St. John :

When you say to students this maintenance grant paid out on Island degrees, just so I am absolutely clear, this is for newly-qualified students who are able to get a degree or this is any age range that can claim this maintenance.

Chief Education Officer:

It does not include mature students, they would still receive a full increase.

The Deputy of St. John :

Mature students is classed over

Director, Resources and School Support:

Over 25, yes. But this is your undergraduate students who might go to Highlands, might go to the U.K. All their fees are still under the same system and if they are entitled to it all their fees will be paid, subject to the first £1,500, which is the same as the U.K. But what we recognise is the cost of undertaking a degree on Jersey is less than the cost of going to the U.K. There are no flights; there is probably very little accommodation costs. What we are finding is that people on Jersey are fairly content with the money and not needing it to contribute to their studies.

The Deputy of St. John :

Okay. All I am trying to understand is the cohorts of the people that would be accessing the maintenance, so if it is not mature students ...

Director, Resources and School Support: Yes, your 18 to 23 year-olds.

Chief Education Officer:

18 to 25, so mainly young people leaving 6th form. Some will take a gap year but in Jersey most go straight to university.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Okay, move on. Yes, this is a growth bid, it is your I.T.C. (information technology and communication) skills aspect and we were just wondering in the revenue consequences of the capital scheme, if you could just explain what the £750,000 will be applied to, to give us a breakdown about how that works.

Director, Resources and School Support:

The £750,000 is 2013 to 2015 we created the Thinking Differently strategy when we were given £1 million over 3 years to do this. This is the continuation of that strategy. It is ensuring that the infrastructure for the schools' I.T. systems are resilient and reliable. It then also provides for training the teachers to increase their I.T. skills. It is a continuation of that. It is a continuation of investment in I.T. across all the schools.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Okay. Then there is a portion of that on inter-training as well.

Director, Resources and School Support: Yes.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Okay, thank you. Anything else from this section?

The Minister for Education:

It is also worth just noting, the Director and I have just literally come from a meeting with Digital Jersey to help cement some of this

The Deputy of St. John :

Just very, very quickly on that, you have mentioned the thinking-differently strategy.

Director, Resources and School Support: Yes.

The Deputy of St. John :

But it is not referred to in there, so there is no kind of number or anything like that that we could refer to and say, okay, understand

Director, Resources and School Support:

That is why it is described as revenue constants of capital because the thinking-differently money came in as capital last year, so this is a continuation of that capital but it is the revenue side of it.

The Deputy of St. John :

But understanding where I am coming from, I will probably direct the question to the Minister because it is not so much a numbers question, for a change from me but it is more the case of linking that money to an outcome and understanding where it leads to. As a States Member, when I am asked to vote for something, if there is a reference to a particular strategy, then I know what I am being asked to support.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

You know what you are talking about but how do we know what you are talking about?

The Minister for Education:

Yes, yes, okay. No, I appreciate that position.

Chief Education Officer: Fair point.

Director, Resources and School Support:

I think it links in to the extension of our skills strategy work and also the digital policy framework, which was all about improving the digital economy of the Island that has just been produced and that has got a lot of non-sectional skills and education in that, so we would be looking to link it to that as well.

The Minister for Education:

Going back to your point, which is a really good one but it is not relevant just to one thing. It is not relevant just to thinking-differently.

The Deputy of St. John :

No. No, but it would have been just quite simple just to refer

The Minister for Education: Okay, a reference point, okay.

Chief Education Officer:

We talk about this stuff all the time and we assume everybody knows about it and, of course, they do not.

The Deputy of St. John :

You can only be in one place at a time. Okay. No, it is just to clear that up for me, thank you.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

What multiagency work has been done? Is that the S.E.N. (special educational needs) stuff? That is the one, yes, okay.

Director, Inclusion and Family Support: Is that the special needs?

Deputy J.M. Maçon: Yes, yes.

The Deputy of St. John :

This was one of our Chairman's question, so we just

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

We are trying to piece it together.

Director, Inclusion and Family Support:

Sorry, just on that, I am not clear what you are asking.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Okay, yes. In the paragraph on page 69 of the M.T.F.P. Addition under the S.E.N. thing it says: "Multiagency work has clearly identified all under-5 special educational needs in nursery and preschools." We just wanted to know what has been identified and then how is that going to progress forward?

Director, Inclusion and Family Support:

Okay. We have a structured early-years forum that meets every half term, about 3-weekly that we Chair and it involves all other professionals across the Island that work with families and children, where their children have special educational needs.

[15:30]

From birth to the age of 3 and a half we are given very clear details around about the range of needs of that as plan. What this growth that allows us to do though is to place educational specialists alongside the other health specialists and work with those families to help prepare those children for nursery and then primary education.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Okay, thank you. In which case there will be a cross-subsidy. As you say, it is working alongside health professionals.

Director, Inclusion and Family Support:

Yes. We were becoming more and more aware that there would be a huge benefit to those young boys and girls and their families if we were able to earlier intervene in their learning, to support their parents in how they develop the learning of those young boys and girls before they come into our system, rather than waiting. The others, so the occupational therapists, the family knows them, they are supporting those boys and girls in other ways. They are specifically around the learning where we have become involved. There is an educational psychologist linked to that team and a behavioural specialist, a special needs specialist as well. That team is fully appointed now and starts in September.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Okay, thank you very much. Tracey, is there anything else?

The Deputy of St. John :

Just to understand for me, a parent's point of view I suppose, is accessing that and knowing when that is coming in and how it is going to be applied for them.

Director, Inclusion and Family Support:

Yes. We produce every year now a booklet around special educational needs and what we offer to support and alongside the very thick booklet we produce pamphlets for parents. As these professionals go into the home through either the G.P. (general practitioner) surgery or through the other agencies that work with these children, they can be informed of what we are offering. But because that forum exists we are aware of all the children from birth who have special needs, so we do not have to wait for them to come to us.

The Deputy of St. John :

Okay. It is just to know, the people coming on Island or things like that and they are not aware of these types of things.

The Minister for Education:

It is a very good question and in fact it is part of the 1,001 Days that I am part of the group, although the group has been established the actual work has not commenced in certain areas. Part of it is that very thing, communicating to people so they know how to access these things when appropriate, so that is part of the work to be done.

Director, Inclusion and Family Support:

I think it is also appropriate to mention because your Chair often asked us where we are at with our parents' forum and the special educational needs. We have now been successful in appointing an independent Chair that will be meeting with our Minister in the next 2 weeks to get to the finishing point there. We will then be writing to all our parents with children of special educational needs and those who had actual special educational needs to recruit to a forum. Those parents then will be trained and provided with information to be able to support other parents or new parents, as you just mentioned, Deputy Vallois, that are new to the Island or have new-born children with those needs. They do not have to come to us as officers, they can talk to parents as well and seek advice and get support from them. It is a commitment we have made in this business plan to put that in place.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Just for the record then, looking, again, in efficiency saving and changes happening at the library, I wonder if you can just explain what that is.

Chief Education Officer:

Do you want me to take this one?

The Minister for Education: Yes.

Chief Education Officer:

We have left this saving very late in the programme, so I think it is 2019 and that would be a natural turnover of staff. What we have done is introduce self-service machinery there, so we do not know how many staff stamp books and while 2 members of staff leave we will not replace them or so

The Minister for Education:

No, that is exactly right. In fact, with the amount that has been identified for saving, the chief librarian is confident by 2019 it will be through improving technology and then natural wastage of current staff.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Next to that there is no full-time equivalent post. It sounds to me that if you are basically not replacing staff there is a cost saving there.

Director, Inclusion and Family Support:

With the library service, as you realise, there is the mobile function, the function at Les Quennevais that will move ... am I allowed to say will move to the new school?

The Minister for Education: Yes.

Director, Inclusion and Family Support:

It is in the plans to move it to the new school. But the chief librarian has been improving efficiency and the efficiency has been a new I.T. system. I do not know if you have been able to access this but the electronic book system, so you can go on to the library now online and you can download eBooks. Every month, yes, every time I meet with him he comes up with at least 20 new ideas. But the point of my saying that is that there are so many different ways now that the library can interact with the public, that by 2019 he is saying: "I will not have to re-appoint all the positions I have now."

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Okay. I am just trying to understand because if you are saying it is by a reduction of staff, next to that there is no I am just trying to understand that.

Chief Education Officer:

There will not be any need to make people redundant because it will be

The Minister for Education:

Yes, natural reduction as people retire.

Chief Education Officer:

You are right, there will be a lower F.T.E. (full-time equivalent) at the end of it but we do not need to put any procedures in place.

Deputy J.M. Maçon: Okay, thank you.

Chief Education Officer:

Without listing everybody's ages but

The Minister for Education:

I think you are visiting the library soon, are you not, or something?

Deputy J.M. Maçon: It is on the cards.

The Minister for Education: Okay.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

We are just waiting for everyone to be back in full health.

The Deputy of St. John :

I know after today we are visiting the fire station, the prison. We will just get through the hearing, I think.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Right, shall we do the next one then?

The Deputy of St. John : The vacancy management.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

You have talked about this at length, we just want to just confirm for the record that the vacancy management will not be applying to schools.

Chief Education Officer:

It will not be applied to schools.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Okay, that is brilliant, thank you.

The Deputy of St. John : Where will it be applying to?

Chief Education Officer: Just the centre.

The Deputy of St. John : Just the centre.

Chief Education Officer:

There are 2 facets to it, if we lose a member of staff, if a member of staff goes 2 things will happen. One is that the manager will have to get agreement from us that that person needs to be replaced. We have deleted some posts, people are not so happy or to the point, there is often a gap between when somebody leaves by the time you recruit somebody there is sometimes 2 or 3 months of a gap before the new person arrives. In the past that salary has remained in that budget but we will be stripping that out from now on.

The Deputy of St. John :

Okay. How many do you have in the centre then?

Chief Education Officer:

What is the latest staff of I.T. at the centre?

The Minister for Education: I do not know.

Chief Education Officer:

It probably would have been reducing in numbers.

The Deputy of St. John :

Can you just send us that figure?

Chief Education Officer:

We will give you those numbers. It depends on if you count youth workers, S.E.N.

The Deputy of St. John :

Whatever you are counting within this vacancy management it would be much appreciated.

Chief Education Officer: Okay, we will do that.

Deputy J.M. Maçon: Whatever it applies to.

The Deputy of St. John :

You just said centre, so whatever that means. If you could explain it and give me the numbers, that would be great.

The Minister for Education: Okay.

Chief Education Officer:

Elsewhere it is just the standard line in the budget. In the U.K. it will be 5 per cent but here it will be cheap because of we have been too hard on ourselves.

Director, Inclusion and Family Support: But we will give you those figures.

The Deputy of St. John :

That would be great, I am grateful for that. Thank you.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Yes. Looking at another one your efficiencies, the new model for cleaning and gardening services. Within this process, first of all, what does this mean?

Chief Education Officer:

Okay. I think if we can split it 2 ways really. The gardening, that is a service that is provided to us by the Department for Infrastructure and they are reviewing that part of their business. In a sense, education are caught up in that review because it is a service we would get from them. If you like, we are on the coat tails of a field map. The cleaners, although D.f.E. (Department for Education) and the Department for Infrastructure are looking at reviewing their cleaners, we are doing that ourselves here. We are using the same process. We have used the same criteria the police use in terms of their review. Rachel and I have met with Nick Corbel to talk through our procedure and our terms of reference. We have agreed that we will involve the unions at all stages when we are carrying out the review. I have met with most of the cleaners. We brought them all into the department. Well, not all of them; about, 30 or 40 turned up, something like that, out of about 45 or 50. There was a very good turn out and we explained what it is we are doing, took them through the review process and why we are doing it. People were nervous, they were unhappy but I thought they asked very sensible, very polite questions. As I go around the schools now I am buttonholed by cleaners and been told it has been quite interesting talking to them. It is a wee bit difficult because we do not know yet how the review will turn out and already the cleaners are saying: "We could do this differently and we could provide these savings", it has already started the conversation. But if we were to outsource the cleaning, if that is the outcome of the review and we will know that around about October. It will be difficult because these are members of the team. They live nearby, sometimes they live opposite the school. Their kids have gone there, there might be midday assistance. We are treading carefully and we are fronting it ourselves, rather than asking the heads to do it because I think it is an emotional, if you like, and difficult thing to do.

The Deputy of St. John :

So I understand it absolutely, in terms of the cleaning staff regarding services, all of the cleaning staff within the schools employed by D.f.I. (Department for Infrastructure) were employed by Education.

Chief Education Officer:

Right. The gardeners are employed by D.f.I., so it is a service that we buy back from them, so because they are reviewing that we are tied up into that review. The cleaners, about two-thirds are employed by Education direct from the schools and they are our employees. Around about a third, roughly speaking, are already outsourced in the sense they already have cleaning contracts with our schools. We have a mixed model at the moment. We have people working for D.f.I. We have people working for Education. We have people working for the private sector. But each time a cleaner has left we have reviewed it but what we are trying to do is bring some consistency and efficiency to the whole thing. At the moment we have a mixed market.

The Deputy of St. John :

I am not going to assume so I will just ask you direct about the guarantee of sufficient safeguarding checks being in place for any outsourcing for cleaning or gardening services.

Chief Education Officer:

Yes, that is absolutely built in for the criteria. We would not have people in our schools working, especially if they are not supervised. They would have to be going through the normal safeguarding checks and C.B.S. (complete background screening) checks. Certainly, of all the contract cleaners we have in our schools, even if they are there in the evenings, they are all C.B.S. checked.

The Deputy of St. John :

In some schools the cleaners, or even gardeners in some schools, are a part of the fabric, they are part of the community and they do that little bit more than what is expected of them in terms of just cleaning or just gardening. How do you think that is going to be affected if the plan is to outsource?

Chief Education Officer:

It is not the plan yet. The plan is to look at it and review it.

The Deputy of St. John : If the plan is to outsource.

Chief Education Officer:

Yes. Certainly, that is one of things we have to take into account. For example, at St. Lawrence the cleaner has explained to me how she feeds the fish. Some of the kids forget to put their chairs up but if there was a contract cleaner they would not have to clean because they do not have to put the chairs up, whereas she will just put them up. They know the children. We will take that into account. We would have to make this is quite a significant saving. If, when we carry the review out, we are not going to make anywhere near this and we will have to take on board the fact that if it is slightly more expensive to own our own cleaners than to outsource them but we get all that back, we would have to be sure that we are making significant savings to make it worth our while to do this.

The Deputy of St. John :

I take it from that particular answer you will be counting the cost of losing people like that as well.

Chief Education Officer: Yes, we will, yes.

The Minister for Education:

Yes. I have been quoted quite often and the notion that the department is not just, I think, a bunch of the highest professional people I have ever met but they are hugely empathetic and deeply compassionate and I think that is knitted into the very fabric of what we do, so all of that is in there.

Chief Education Officer:

The officer leading on this piece of work that is spending time with cleaners, has been last week and this week, actually in the last week stopped. He has been with the cleaners in Hautlieu. He has been to 2 or 3 other schools, just to talk to cleaners face-to-face. I have even had notes left on my car and they are very polite, a nicely written note from a cleaner saying: "Have you thought of this and have you thought of that?" I make sure I have replied equally as politely.

The Deputy of St. John :

But not worrying that they may have applied or

The Minister for Education: It is just that it is dirty I think.

Director, Inclusion and Family Support: You cannot miss his car.

The Minister for Education: Yes.

The Deputy of St. John :

Okay. I know that there is a review, you say there is a review for this, but just in terms of when looking at that review, will you be taking into consideration that should the plan be to outsource, that things like local businesses and the zero hours issues and all those types of things will be taken into account?

Chief Education Officer:

Yes. We are going to adopt the same criteria the D.f.I. do in terms of what councils have got to apply, like pension schemes and that kind of stuff.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Social responsibility and those type of things. Yes, okay. Shall we concentrate on 21?

[15:45]

The Deputy of St. John : Right, okay.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Shall I go? Okay. Yes, so this again is looking, just because it is a piece of work that we have been working on, following the department, talking about the Nursery Education Fund, how that is going to change, For the record, could you say what the policy of the department is at the moment?

The Minister for Education:

Well, I think the policy has not changed since we last discussed it between us all. We have shifted our position from the original 75,000 which you now know, so it is now 85,000 with a sliding scale behind it. So just to reiterate for the record, 85,000 and below would receive 20 hours, 85,000 to 90,000 15 hours, 90,000 to 95,000 10 hours, and 95,000 to 100,000 5 hours. So we listened to all the various people who had an interest in this area, in particular the E.Y.C.P. (Early Years and Childcare Partnership), and the private nurseries; both the Director and I visited nurseries. In particular, I had listened to a group of nurses who had an issue with it all. So that was the reason behind the changes. We still keep to the situation that we would not means test the States nurseries at this point and I think that is just a summary of where we are.

Deputy J.M. Maçon: Thank you.

The Deputy of St. John :

We were able to ask the Economic Adviser at the beginning, but in the actual distributional analysis report it still talks about the 75,000 criteria.

Director, Resources and School Support:

The distributional analysis report was done before this was finalised.

The Minister for Education: Yes. The 75,000 is gone.

The Deputy of St. John :

Okay. The Nursery Education Fund that was discussed before, the 75,000 side of things and now that it has changed, would you be seeking further analysis by the Economic Adviser about it or are you just going to basically say it is more progressive now?

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Not wanting to put words in your mouth.

The Minister for Education:

No, not at all. We do not do individual impact assessments. I think that was a statement we made at some point ago and I think his reasoning behind it is still it sits behind the 85,000 as opposed to the 75,000 so I would not be looking to go back to him on that.

Chief Education Officer:

The only thing I would say from what Chris Haws was saying in terms ... he described the balance between savings and growth. Overall, we have got more growth than savings. This is a good example of a saving here and growth elsewhere. So, for every child that you do not fund through this because their families earn over £100,000 we can fund 4 children on income support through the pupil premium process. So, in terms of moving resources to where it is most needed and most likely to have an impact and change lives, this is a good example of shifting our funding, and I think that is quite important. We are trying to shift our funding, our focus, our attention, our scrutiny, on to those children that need it most and we would argue that the children on lower income getting additional help through the Jersey premium is a better way to spend some of this money.

The Minister for Education:

I think you, Deputy , have also had the other side of it where people are denigrating us for moving our position from the 75. I think you had a conversation with one particular individual, which shows that people are still conflicted about this no matter which direction you look from.

The Deputy of St. John :

Well, I am not going to talk politics in a scrutiny hearing ...

The Minister for Education: No, no, no, that is fine.

The Deputy of St. John :

... because I am just trying to understand how you come to what you have in your M.T.F.P.

The Minister for Education: Okay.

The Deputy of St. John :

But I will ask the fairness of it and I think that is one of the biggest issues and you have just stated that you are not going to apply this to the States nurseries, but surely it cannot be the right way to move when there has been, for so many years, what is being labelled as a good partnership between education and private sector to assist parents with nursery education.

Chief Education Officer:

To be honest, I think this is a red herring for a number of reasons really but we need to bear in mind the commercial sector; it is a money-making operation. It is very important ...

The Deputy of St. John :

Well, we know that.

Chief Education Officer:

It is an important part but we do not change our policy to suit St. Michael's or St. Christopher's. We just do not and I do not think we should do the same in nursery. The other point I would make is that the nursery provision that we are setting up reflects the rest of the education system. In Jersey, if you are a parent you can choose if you want to spend in terms of education, you can pay for the whole of your child's education. You can send them to Beaulieu or you can send them to St. Christopher's or ...

Deputy J.M. Maçon: If you have the money.

Chief Education Officer:

Yes, if you have got the money. If you have got the money you can choose a private education fully funded by yourself or you can choose to part-fund it. You can send your kids to J.C.G. and part- fund it, or you could send them to a free school. You have that choice. The same is true for the nursery provision here. If you are earning £105,000, £110,000, £120,000, you could send your kids to a private nursery or you can have it part-funded. If you are lower than that, you can part-fund it or you can have a free education, a free nursery. Now, the argument at the moment is, that there is not enough nursery places to be free to everybody but during the period of the Medium Term Financial Plan that goes away because Springfield Nursery opens this September and then between now and 2019 we will open a nursery in St. Luke's in St. Mary 's and Trinity . The only school on the Island that will not have a nursery in 2019 will be Les Landes and that is because we have to make a new building but we will be arguing to put that into the capital programme. So, wherever you are on the Island you can have free access. Even if you are out in St. Ouen , you can still have free nursery education but it means you will have to travel. People travel all the way across the Island to pay for education.

The Minister for Education:

We also said that we would work in the private sector to help them in the areas where you have a States free nursery. Obviously, it is attributed just to a period of time when schools are open and we said: "Look, we would welcome in the private sector to look at that area to fill that gap" and they are welcome back as a concept.

The Deputy of St. John :

I am trying to get a clear understanding of your thought process here because the nursery education is not a statutory obligation. Nursery education can be provided by the private sector. So, if I was to turn it on its head and ask you, well, why bother having any nursery education funding at all and asking the private sector to fund it, was that considered?

Chief Education Officer:

No, because ... it is exactly the same as 6th form. That is not statutory either, right, so why ...

The Deputy of St. John :

No, but we are on nursery education funding.

Chief Education Officer:

Yes, but it is the same principle and I think it is important. My own view on this is that primary schools are not complete until they have a nursery because early years practitioners bring something to a staff room that nobody else brings. They are understanding how children develop early on: how they acquire certain motor skills, mix with families. There is a whole range of skills sets that early years providers have but no other teacher has. One of the reasons our key stage one results are slightly below England by about 2 or 3 percentage points, I think is not to do with the quality of our teaching key stage one. It is looking good, in fact better than most I have seen. It is that in England all children have had a year in nursery. Many certainly vulnerable children, almost all of them have had 2 years. In Jersey, you are only ever going to have one and some of our children do not go to a nursery, and you can still spot those children in our primary schools until they are about 9 or 10. Good quality nursery provision is hugely important to get kids looking to learn. We can have lots of discussion about what we should be doing in early years, it is a very interesting debate. I have not got time for that, but I am convinced that good early years provision where children learn how to listen, how to share, how to respond, how to sit still, all sorts of social skills, is hugely important in terms of eventual education outcomes.

The Minister for Education:

I have got a document here, which I will pass on you before we leave, which relates to the, I think, 42 suggestions that were made as the comparisons of what we could possibly do before we got to the point of the ones that you now know about.

The Deputy of St. John :

We are grateful for that. Thank you.  

Chief Education Officer:

Bearing in mind, we do not take some of them. Some of them might look a look a bit harsh.

The Deputy of St. John :

Okay. I think we have pretty much covered this, but just in case there is anything that we have not, is the savings as they are shown on page 153 of the M.T.F.P. Addition, if they cannot be met, what will happen?

The Minister for Education:

Well, we would have to go back and have that discussion with Treasury. I think every department would be in the same position. I think we would have to look for contingences or different ways to achieve it. I think we have already made the case that we are pretty much down to the wire in terms of what we can look at and I think that is the point Chris was making. We have had a really good discussion to get to this point now so we would have to just go back. I think your Chairman asked this question last time.

The Deputy of St. John :

More precisely though, will not making the savings affect your ability to access the growth for all the things that are on the other page over here?

The Minister for Education:

I think there is a possibility of that, certainly with regard to ... our biggest concern is surrounding pupil premium.

Chief Education Officer:

The bottom line or the worst case scenario is if we did not make our savings and we are short of half a million and we are told by Treasury we have to go back and find the extra money, we would struggle to find any more savings than we have got here without doing serious damage, so the only place we could go would be to our growth really. We had a really good look at savings. We do not ...

The Deputy of St. John :

You could make an argument, though, if you needed that money, you started a project like pupil premium or anything like that and you needed that funding to continue that policy, that you would be able to access central contingency.

Chief Education Officer:

Yes, but the thing is with projects like pupil premium you have to have certainty. You cannot set children off on a path and say: "Over the next 11 years you are going to get this kind of support" and then cut it off halfway through.

The Deputy of St. John :

That is what I was asking about. You know, that is what I am saying. If you cannot make the savings in one area, instead of cutting pupil premium and you have got nowhere else to save that money from, can you access the central contingency?

Chief Education Officer:

That is the first place we would ask.

The Deputy of St. John : Okay.

Chief Education Officer:

But we are conscious of the fact it is a relatively small contingency.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Just the final question from us then, Minister, is: on 1st January 2020 what will the service from the department ... after all the implementations of the various proposals, what will our education system look like?

The Minister for Education:

That is a good question. I think it will look considerably leaner and much more efficient than we have at present. I think some of this thinking ... I know the Chairman was not particularly keen on me using this phrase, but this sort of constraint that we have been given by having to consider finding savings and putting in the growth has created a great atmospheric creativity, so we have had to look at areas. Just taking the example that Mr. Chipperfield gave us with the N.Q.T.s, that sort of thing, has really focused our attention and I think we will come out of this much leaner and fitter by that point. I think we would still have probably one of the best education systems that you would see across the U.K. and I think there is already indications from wherever we look, whether it is with regard to the findings of the pupil premium, the conference that was the other day, or the results from Highlands College or all the stuff that you are beginning to see, that the effect that the Deputy particularly has had on the team that I represent has been fantastic.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Anything you would like to ask? Nothing. In that case, in drawing this hearing to a close I would just give you and your team the opportunity ... if there anything you felt we have not quite understood or anything you would like to draw to our attention, we would just like to give you that opportunity now.

Chief Education Officer:

You have been pretty thorough.

The Minister for Education:

I think you have been thorough. I think you have done exceptionally well considering there is only 2 of you, so well done to you 2 and I am sorry that the Chairman is unwell.

The Deputy of St. John :

It is our wonderful education system.

The Minister for Education:

I think it has been said already by the Director but it is worth saying again that these are proposals. We will still have to negotiate certain areas with unions. We keep them abreast of what is going on. The meeting last week was to do just that. They will be back in September to discuss how far we have got and, no, that is it. Thank you very much.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Thank you very much and in that case I bring this session of the Education and Home Affairs Panel to a close.

[16:00]