Education Select Committee

This morning I will be attending the Education Select Committee - as part of my long term study in the development of that committee. Today's witnesses will be Glenys Stacey, Chief Regulator & Chief Executive, Ofqual Amanda Spielman, Chair, Ofqual.  This will be a one-off evidence session on the work of Ofqual, focussing on its work in regulating examinations, including reform of GCSEs and A levels.

More information about the work of Ofqual can be found on its website - https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ofqual

The video recordings of the first two evidence sessions undertaken by the committee can be accessed by clicking on the links below

Session with Nicky Morgan, Secretary of State.

Session with Michael Wilshaw, Chief Inspector of Education (Ofsted)

Representing their constituents

We elect MPs to Parliament to legislate on our behalf and ask the questions we would want asked of those who take the decisions which affect our lives. Select Committees are increasingly reaching out to the public to put questions forward.

The Education Select Committee (and others) now regularly announce in advance what issues they are holding inquiries into, and invite anyone to respond to their call for evidence. It's worth looking at the Committees' websites - and responding where you have expertise or opinions which could inform those inquiries.

In addition many Committtees are keen for members of the public to submit questions through social media. Nicky Morgan faced such questions (through Twitter) when she appeared before the Education Committee this week.

A guide for witnesses is available at http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/witnessguide.pdf

Education Select Committee

The Education Select Committee held its first evidence session yesterday. The Secretary of State for Education, Nicky Morgan, faced questions which ranged across the breadth of her responsibilities. The session lasted for over 90 minutes.



These days, Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs) gain much of the coverage on TV news. Sadly this can give a misleading impression of the work done in Parliament to hold the Government to account. Each Government department has to live with a cross-party select committee which has the power to hold enquiries and to question Ministers and others at length. The "clever" answer which can disarm the House in PMQ's, can lead a minister into deep trouble - and Government backbenchers can be brutal in dealing with a Minister who is evasive.

Today's session will be followed next Wednesday by a session with the Head of Ofsted, Sir Michael Wilshaw. Already enquiries are being undertaken into

- The work of Ofsted
- The work of Ofqual
- The role of Regional Schools Commissioners

Select Committees play an important role in scrutiny - and the evidence they receive and reports they publish are increasingly important in the work MP's do to get answers that previous generations of Ministers could have avoided answering. A little more light is being shed.

Parliament Returns

Both Houses of Parliament return today.

The House of Commons Calendar for the week can be found here and the House of Lords here.
Expect it to be a fiery week - as MP's get their first chance to question the Government about the events of the summer. First major item of business in the Commons is the 3rd Reading of the European Union Referendum Bill.

I'm looking forward to the first public meeting of the Education Select Committee - which I am continuing to follow for research. Earlier this year I presented papers to the Political Studies Association on the committee in the final year of the 2010 Parliament and to the 12th Workshop of Parliamentary Scholars and Parliamentarians, on the scrutiny in the House of Commons of Education. I hope to present further academic papers, focusing on the Education Select Committee, in future months. Secretary of State, Nicky Morgan (no relation), is appearing before the committee on Wednesday.

As noted in earlier posts, the Festival of Freedoms takes place - and I hope to attend a number of events.

On Saturday the announcement of the result of the Leadership elections for the Labour Party is announced. sadly I won't be at the special conference for that announcement - but I'm sure it will dominate my conversations at Westminster this week.

Scrutiny

The paper I presented at Wroxton was called, ""Battles on Many Fronts: Education Scrutiny and Debate in the Twenty-First Century House of Commons". It was presented during a panel on "Westminster in Context" which also discussed papers by Meg Russell & Ruxandra Serban; Mark Shephard;  and Louise Thompson & Cristina Leston-Bandeira.

The paper describes the various opportunities open for parliamentary scrutiny of Education - and includes a table listing and giving examples of these. It looked in more detail at the scrutiny in the Education Select Committee and at the Public Bill Committee which undertook the committee stage of the Education and Adoption Bill. A further table was produced showing who had participated in Education Questions (which are held at 2.30pm on the Monday of every 5th Parliamentary week.

I'm happy to supply a copy of the paper, just email me.

Health Select Committee

Over the last year I have been attending sessions of the Education Select Committee - and for the last few weeks the Public Bill Committee for the Education & Adoption Bill. Yesterday I attended a Hansard Society event on select committee (which I will post about later this week).

Today, I hope to watch another committee in action - the health Select Committee. Here are the details -


The House of Commons Health Committee will be hearing oral evidence from Simon Stevens, Chief Executive of NHS England, from 9.30 am.

The Committee is expected to question Mr Stevens on a variety of matters affecting the NHS, including the financial performance of the NHS, prevention and public health, the NHS workforce and staffing, urgent and emergency care, mental health services, and the post-Francis Review progress on changing culture in the NHS.

Ahead of the session, the Committee has received a brief statement from NHS England on progress with the NHS Five Year Forward View, published last October. The text of that statement can be found below.

Overview of progress on the Five Year Forward View

When the NHS came together to produce the Five Year Forward View our ambition was to reframe the terms of debate: to set out a shared view of the challenges ahead and the choices we face about the kind of health and care service we want in 2020. Working with patient groups, clinicians, local government and national partners, we tapped into a widespread consensus on the need for change, and a shared ambition for the future.

It’s a future that empowers patients, their families and carers to take more control over their own care and treatment: a future that dissolves the artificial divide between family doctors and hospitals, between physical and mental health and between health and social care. One that no longer locks expertise into outdated buildings, with services fragmented, patients having to visit multiple professionals for multiple appointments; one organised to support people with multiple conditions not just a single disease.
W
e now have a consensus about the challenges ahead, a commitment to at least £8bn of additional funding and support for the changes needed to shape the future NHS. Our shared challenge is to close three gaps in health care: the health and wellbeing gap, the care and quality gap, and the funding and efficiency gap. In the months since the Forward View’s publication, we have made progress in all three areas.

Closing the care and quality gap

As a catalyst to create new ways of delivering care that are better suited to modern health needs, we have initiated a ‘Vanguard’ programme to develop, implement and learn how to replicate the new care models outlined in the Forward View. 269 localities came forward with their ideas on how to design new models of care, and following a period of peer assessment, 29 were selected to form the initial cohort. We have since initiated two further Vanguard groups.  The first invites expressions of interest from hospitals across England to develop new ways of collaborating and sharing resources.  The second seeks areas covering five million people to become Urgent and Emergency Care Vanguards. The successful areas will be announced shortly.

Our aim is not just to improve services in the Vanguard areas, but to develop models that can be replicated elsewhere, so that all patients can benefit in the future. However, there are a number of local health and care systems where the conditions for transformation do not yet exist. In these challenged areas, we will implement a ‘Success Regime’. The first cohort includes North Cumbria, Essex and Northern, Eastern and Western Devon. These areas will benefit from short-term improvement in current performance, support for medium and longer term transformation, and a greater focus on leadership capacity and capability.
We have also established independent taskforces on Cancer, Mental Health and Maternity services, to identify further opportunities for improving these specific services.

Closing the health and well-being gap

To meet the needs of patients in a sustainable way, the NHS can no longer simply respond to the forecasts of ill health and increased costs; the NHS must become a pro-active agent of change, taking bold action in partnership with individuals, local government and third sector bodies to ‘bend the curve’ on predicted trends. To drive this increased emphasis on prevention, we have established a national prevention board, chaired by Public Health England, and with an early focus on diabetes prevention.

The Diabetes Prevention Programme, together with Diabetes UK, aims to halt the predicted rise in this disease, by delivering at scale lifestyle interventions that have been shown to help individuals at high risk of developing Type 2 diabetes. Seven local demonstrator sites have been developing the early stages of the programme and over the next few years we roll out the programme out across England.

Closing the funding and efficiency gap

The Forward View highlighted that if we continue with the current model of care and historic trends continue, it is likely we will face a substantial funding gap between projected health spending requirements and available resource. So the NHS needs a combination of new investment and new efficiency to create the headroom to manage increased demand and continue to improve care. To achieve these savings there are three main areas where the NHS is taking action:

Preventing and managing demand – reducing, wherever possible, the need for health care in the first place by supporting people to keep healthy, through actions like the Diabetes Programme.
Maximising the value of our £115bn spend – driving up productivity and reducing inefficiencies so that more of our budget is spent on patients who need our care, with early action to reduce agency spend and consultancy services.

Redesigning services – investing in new ways of providing joined up care in a more clinical and cost-effective way for patients and their carers through the development of New Care Models.

Delivering together

We have established an NHS Five Year Forward View Board to bring together the CEOs of the national NHS bodies to ensure oversight and delivery of the vision. Because the scale of the required changes cannot be driven by the centre nor delivered by the NHS alone, we have also launched a programme of engagement, led by the NHS Confederation, NHS Providers and other partners such as the LGA, National Voices, the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges and the Royal College of GPs. The results of our engagement and the Spending Review process will inform the service’s national and local planning processes in autumn, providing the foundation for the next phase of delivery.

Further information

The oral evidence session will be open to the public and will take place in the Thatcher Room, Portcullis House. The session will also be broadcast live on www.parliamentlive.tv and on BBC Parliament.

A Select Committee in action

This week I attended a hearing by the Education Select Committee. The Secretary of State (the senior minister in a Government Department - and usually a member of the Cabinet) for Education, Nicky Morgan (no relation!) answered questions about the "Trojan Horse Affair" - an attempt to take over some schools in Birmingham.

The Chair is a Conservative MP, but he presses the Conservative Minister at particular points and is quite critical. There are two other Conservative MPs present; one Liberal Democrat and Four Labour MPs.

Further information about the committee can be found at http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/education-committee/

The recording can be viewed here - http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=16059
(warning - you can see my arrival as the public are admitted, just after the DfE officials have entered - wearing my red tie!)

Education Select Committee

Yesterday I attended the evidence session of the Education Select Committee which is looking into the GCSE fiasco. I often watch select committees (either in person or via the parliamentlive website), but I’ve rarely felt as angry as I did after hearing from some of the Heads about the impact of the injustice done to some young people.


The witnesses were

Brian Lightman, General Secretary, Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), Mike Griffiths, Headmaster, Northampton school for boys, and ASCL President, Russell Hobby, General Secretary, National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT), and Kenny Fredericks, Principal, George Green's School, Isle of dogs, and member of NAHT executive.

In the second session – key individuals from Ofqual including Glenys Stacey gave evidence.