Mr Bell: Again, I would just enter the caveat I entered earlier that there are different definitions because a school where some students are under-performing may not be poorly performing.

Q29 Mr Khan: We have all read the paperwork.

Mr Bell: Not surprised insofar as that data was available.

Q30 Mr Khan: Primary and secondary, you were not surprised?

Mr Bell: Not surprised because we know from the data I have just referred to where those schools that are not performing well need to improve. What you do then is what matters. It is not your reaction to the data, it is ----

Q31 Mr Khan: The question is what do we do about it. Presumably you welcome the proposals in the White Paper as summarised on page four of the report as dealing with the concerns that have been raised.

Mr Bell: I think the White Paper offers a whole range of policies that are designed to bring about greater improvement in schools.

Q32 Mr Khan: Which you welcome?

Mr Bell: Yes, I do, everything from ensuring that schools have the opportunity to work with other schools to improving pupil discipline and the like. The White Paper was entirely focused on bringing about improvement in our schools, because this report suggests that despite all the improvements we have seen in recent years we cannot afford to be complacent.

Q33 Mr Khan: One of the things it touches upon is something highlighted by the report which is some local authorities give insufficient support to schools which are at risk, some local authorities do not prevent school decline. You will be aware from paragraph 1.29 on page 27 and figure 20 of the effects of poor inspection results on local authority support for schools. How does the White Paper address those concerns?

Mr Bell: Certainly there is a very clear expectation that local authorities are going to become even more the champions of standards to ensure that the right range of schools is available, the diversity of schools is available, right down to the very practical intervention powers that I described earlier that where a local authority is concerned that a school is not performing as well as it might it can then intervene. We would also expect local authorities to find ways of identifying external support for a school. That might be the local authority's own staff coming in to support a school, it might be using school improvement partners, which is a recent initiative, and it might be by identifying other bodies and organisations, universities, businesses and the like, that can support the school to improve.

Q34 Mr Khan: That brings me on to my next point which is on page 5, paragraph 12, you will see that there are 242 schools in Special Measures and of those schools Outer London has the highest proportion of schools in Special Measures and the North-East of England has the lowest. Is it speculation or is it the case - you can tell me - that one of the reasons why the North-East has such a large proportion of schools which are strongly performing is because of them having very good local authorities as opposed to the situation in Outer London? What do you think about that?

Mr Bell: When you look at the regional break down of the data it changes slightly over time, so I think it is quite hard to take a snapshot that says this tells you definitively that you have a particular set of circumstances in one area as opposed to another. Certainly we know, for example, in the North-East that the local authorities there have generally been graded by Ofsted as doing a good job in relation to intervention in schools that are in difficulty. Equally, there are local authorities in the Outer London ring that you have described that have done likewise. I am pretty cautious about drawing conclusions.

Q35 Mr Khan: So you dismiss that paragraph?

Mr Bell: No, I do not dismiss it, but what I am saying is I think it is very difficult to draw a conclusion from a particular moment in time and say that tells you, "All the local authorities in this area are providing good support and those authorities are not". What I would say is both the Ofsted arrangements previously for inspection of local authorities as well as the new style arrangements for inspecting of local authorities does continue to put an emphasis on the quality of support being given, so we will continue to focus on this both at the Department and through the Ofsted inspection.

Q36 Mr Khan: One of the things that both the Chairman and Ms McCarthy-Fry touched upon was the change in the White Paper where if a school does not make significant progress within 12 months it will lead to it being closed down. The report tells us that two-thirds of schools made at least reasonable progress over the first 12 months and 85% of schools in Special Measures emerged successfully, which would lead me to believe there might be 19%(sic) of schools after 12 months who might not have been able to show a significant improvement who were then able to emerge successfully who may be caught by the new provisions. Can you allay the concerns of the Committee that those will not be caught?

Mr Bell: We would say very strongly that if a school is not making sufficient progress within 12 months we need to consider what possible action could be taken because the evidence would suggest very strongly that if a school is not improving sufficiently in 12 months, and that does not necessarily mean its academic results because a year is a very short time in terms of the conditions for learning in the school, the school is likely to be in Special Measures for longer. Those are the average times.

Q37 Mr Khan: I will give you some stats. The stats are 66% have made "at least reasonable progress" in the first 12 months and 85% eventually emerged successfully. Are you saying that there is a percentage above 66 which would show ---- What are you saying?

Mr Bell: I would say that all schools should be showing significant progress in 12 months. As we are setting a higher standard in every sense for our education system, including what we have asked Ofsted to do through the inspection arrangements, I think it is right that schools should start to improve more rapidly because if they do not for that period of time when they are not making significant progress the students are not getting a good education. I think it is right to say it might have been the case that schools took longer to come out of Special Measures but now we should be saying if they are not showing significant progress the option is at least available to consider more radical action.

Q38 Mr Khan: Thank you. Figure 25 of the report shows that around half of the recovered schools benefited from strengthened links with other, I assume, good schools.

Mr Bell: Yes.

Q39 Mr Khan: How can we persuade more good schools to help schools that need their help? How can we incentivise them?

Mr Bell: There is a lot of activity emerging where schools are supported in all sorts of different ways: federations that are hard federations in the sense there is a formal link with another school through to softer federations where you have got particular teachers and departments helping. I think the vast majority of schools that are in a strong position do take their responsibilities to other schools seriously and the local authority can often play a very helpful role here in introducing, if I can use that word, a successful school to a less successful school. I think there is quite a lot of strong goodwill to sharing expertise and helping poor schools to improve. We are starting from a strong baseline there. The arrangements at the moment do tend to be rather ad hoc and what is proposed in the future is the opportunity for those relationships to be firmer, stronger and more long-term.

Q40 Mr Khan: My final question is this: the spin of the report is there are 980,000 pupils in failing schools. Bearing in mind we have seen an improvement, although it is not fast enough, would you say that is the least number of pupils that have ever been in poorly performing schools?