Vernon Coaker MP, Minister of State for Schools and Learners

Vernon Coaker’s principal policy areas include behaviour and attendance, school funding and capital, including Building Schools for the Future, academies, the support scheme National Challenge, schools workforce issues, and raising school standards (including public examinations), Youth Crime and Youth Justice. Previously, Vernon Coaker has been Minister of State for Policing, Security and Crime and Under-Secretary of State in the Home Office. Before these, he held the positions of Government Whip, Parliamentary Private Secretary to Tessa Jowell, Secretary of State in the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, and Parliamentary Private Secretary to Estelle Morris when she was Secretary of State for Education. Vernon Coaker has been MP for Gedling in Nottinghamshire since 1997. Before becoming an MP, he was Deputy Headteacher at Bigwood School in Nottingham.

Your questions answered

The new Schools White Paper, Your child, your schools, our future: building a 21st century schools system, outlines the challenges and changes that schools now face, and describes reforms that have been made to meet these. These reforms build on the progress of the last decade. The Paper then sets out the Pupil Guarantee, which involves new entitlements to personalised support for every child, and the Parent Guarantee, for every parent. Plans are outlined for securing those guarantees across the country, outlining changes to the curriculum, school partnerships, leadership and responsibilities.

The White Paper emphasises the importance of schools working in partnerships to take responsibility for all children and young people in their areas, as well as the role of local authorities as commissioners of schools and school places. These are just two aspects of the White Paper that are of particular relevance to commissioners and commissioning.

Unitil 24 July, people had the chance to submit their commissioning-related questions about the White Paper to Vernon Coaker MP. The first half of the questions and answers are published below. We will be consolidating the resulting questions and answers into a resource on the Schools White Paper.

Download the Schools White Paper here.

Sign up and join the Commissioning Support Community's discussion on the Schools White Paper.

Question 1, from Simon Bishop, Commissioning & Contracts Manager, Children's Services Department, Darlington Borough Council

I would like to ask Vernon whether he perceives that as the C21 Schools agenda progresses there will be additional support given or recommendations for schools to employ commissioners? I am currently developing a cluster based support programme for schools in our Borough in response to schools becoming statutory Trust partners to harmonise the approach, but I feel if they are not advised correctly, schools could fall foul of non-evidence based service commissioning leading to mistakes or errors.

We do expect to see more schools playing a commissioning role and we want to support Children’s Trusts to enable this to happen so that schools are effective in this role where it can be of benefit to children and young people. We also want to see schools being commissioned to support improvement in performance in other schools through Accredited Schools Groups, and to commission services from other schools to aid this, as appropriate.

There are a range of mechanisms to support this happening across the country. The Commissioning Support Programme, alongside the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust and other support organisations, has a key role to play in identifying what is working well and helping Children’s Trusts, at a strategic level, to build the capacity of schools to operate effectively as commissioners of children and young people’s services. In addition, financial support will be available for schools that are commissioned by LAs to support the improvement of underperforming schools, through Accredited Schools Groups, National Challenge Trusts and Academies.

With regard to schools employing commissioners, our focus is more on helping Children’s Trusts create the right framework and environment for schools to develop a commissioning role, where it makes sense for them to do so, rather than offering prescriptive solutions. Indeed, there are already some good examples of schools, often working in clusters, commissioning services such as Plymouth’s Locality commissioning model which was exemplified in the White Paper. Our job now is to support local authorities and their Children’s Trust partners so that these examples become much more widespread

Question 2, from Tim Vaughan,Principal Manager Parent, Family and Community Children & Young People's Services, Cheshire West and Chester Council

What information can you tell us about the role envisaged for the local authority in commissioning and supporting high quality Early Years provision in the future?

The Early Years Outcome Duty requires local authorities to improve outcomes and narrow the achievement gap, and we know that high quality early years provision makes a really positive difference to young children’s outcomes.

LAs are able to have a big impact on the quality of their provision through their Early Years Consultants, using tools like the Quality Improvement Support Programme – a set of materials to help drive more specific and targeted support to settings according to need – and working together in targeted programmes such as Making A Big Difference or Every Child a Talker.  They are supported by the Early Years National Strategies to maximise their impact on quality and young children’s outcomes.

LAs, working with their Children’s Trust partners, will continue to play a crucial role in driving up quality in the early years sector.  Looking to the future it is important to recognise that the early years sector is relatively young and that the Government and LAs will need to continue to play a role in supporting better quality as well as developing leadership within the sector. It is also important to make sure that our approach to improving early learning and care is well aligned with our approach to improving provision in schools as well as the range of other services that young children and their families are using such as Children’s Centres and health services.

Question 3, from Alison Jackson, Senior Commissioner - Children's Services & CAMHS,Bolton PCT

When can PCTs and local authorities expect to see schools taking responsibility for providing the care needs of children with complex needs?  It is widely recognized within the health economy that this care, which is provided by parents in the home – should be provided by school staff and not NHS staff.  The Draft Continuing Care Policy for Children indicates this as good practice.

We are seeing more children presenting with complex needs and undoubtedly it is a challenge for everyone working with children to ensure that we meet those needs in the most effective way possible – in every instance. Children’s Trusts must be at the heart of putting in place effective care arrangements for these children and young people.

The Department of Health has been consulting on a Continuing Care Framework for children with complex health needs, however these arise. The framework recognises that in many cases the needs of the children cannot be effectively met by existing local health services because of the child’s developmental and educational needs and their dependency on parents as carers.

In these cases families will require support from schools, education and social care that is coherent with the local health services that a child requires. Each agency would meet the cost of its respective contribution to the whole care package for that child.

While the Framework is still the subject of consultation it envisages that the Primary Care Trust (PCT) should take reasonable steps to ensure that an assessment for children’s continuing care happens when it becomes clear that there is a need for this type of joined up care and/or where there is a need to review the care already provided to an individual. This assessment would be undertaken by a multi-disciplinary team and will use a dedicated tool to reach a decision on a child’s continuing care needs.

The consultative framework also sets out requirements to notify parents of the decision of this assessment and, how the local authorities should support PCTs in reaching a decision on whether a continuing care is required. Where an assessment deems that continuing care is appropriate both the PCT and local authority will be required under the framework to state what part of the care package they will provide.

Question 4, from Silvia Guglielmi - Public Policy Researcher, Demos

What would help policy maker’s access, appraise and adopt recommendations made by the research community?  In other words, how will politicians use the evidence base on successful commissioned services with the aim of rolling them out to schools?

It is clearly important for policy makers, at the national level, to develop policy that is well grounded in the available evidence base and to this end, my Department has recently published its Analysis and Evidence Strategy for 2009-10 which sets out how it will deliver evidence based policy. And with reference to the Schools White Paper in particular, specific initiatives such as one-to-one tuition and closer partnership working between schools are well supported by the available research evidence.

But while central government certainly has a role to play in identifying and disseminating examples of effective practice, that are supported by the evidence, it is not our intention to uniformly roll out policies across all schools. Instead we are facilitating, including through the measures in the White Paper, an environment where schools, and their partners, are supported to learn from each other, collaborating where possible on a whole range of issues including the commissioning of services.

Encouraging this is a key responsibility of the Commissioning Support Programme which is currently working with all Children’s Trusts to help them become more effective commissioners of services for children, young people and families so that outcomes are continually improved.

Question 5, from Feargal Hogan [No organization given]

How will you define/identify the 'strong governing bodies' whose powers you intend to extend to allow them to directly sponsor Academies?

High performing maintained schools are already able to sponsor Academies, and a number are already doing this – through the Academy Federations pathfinder, and outside of this. These schools have high standard of achievement, a track record in school improvement, and the capacity to undertake this work.

Currently, a high performing school cannot directly sponsor an Academy, but through a school’s company or trust. We want to simplify this process to give powers to the governing body’s of strong schools to be able to directly sponsor an Academy.

Question 6, from Ken Morris, Hamstead Hall School Birmingham

As a school with an outstanding success rate at working with African-Caribbean students, how might we be able to become an Accredited Provider in this bespoke area of work?

At the heart of our vision is the goal of seeing schools with proven expertise in specific areas, whether that be working with pupils of a certain background or in a particular area of the curriculum, encouraged to work with other schools. This is one of the very important ways in which we can share and embed innovation, spread success and create a culture of improvement across all schools.

As you will have read in the White Paper, we have committed £20m over the next two years to support accredited providers in increasing their capacity so that they are in the best possible position to spread the good work they are already doing. Alongside this, we have given local authorities new powers to intervene in cases where schools are underperforming and require those schools to become part of Accredited Groups.

The proposals for nationally accredited providers will build on the success of the National Challenge Trust and the Academies programmes, but widen this to cover not only low attaining schools but also schools that are performing less well than they should be given their intake and context and schools where the gap in attainment between children from more deprived backgrounds and other children is too wide. We also hope to broaden the current market of providers. We will be producing further guidance on the process of seeking accreditation as well as the support available to accredited providers in the coming months. In the meantime I am delighted to hear of your interest in taking up this opportunity to improve outcomes for an even wider group of children and young people.

Question 7, from Ken Morris, Hamstead Hall School Birmingham

We already have a large community sports project and extended schools work in the local area with many partners, how might we be able to get access to funding for these partnership activities to promote cluster commissioning of additional services?

The development of extended services over the last few years has been a real success story and one that schools themselves deserve all the credit for. Schools have come together with other schools, other agencies and community clubs to make a real difference to how families can access services in and the school building and the school day.

We know that a great way to provide access to high-quality, sustainable extended services is schools working together in clusters and with partners from the public, private and voluntary sectors. This is why we are supporting the employment of cluster coordinators with £296m over the period 2008-9 to 2010-11. In particular, clusters of schools, when well supported by the LA or the Children’s Trust, can take the lead in commissioning and providing activities which meet the needs of their local communities. Extended services funding can support this, both though coordinators to manage the commissioning, but also where LAs or Children’s Trusts make extended services funding available to clusters of schools to support joint commissioning. In particular, the extended services disadvantage pathfinder has developed some examples of highly effective cluster working and commissioning, and as funding is rolled out nationally to support access to extended services by economically disadvantaged children and young people, LAs and schools are being supported and encouraged to adopt the cluster way of working to deliver this. Successful models for managing funding at a cluster level have been disseminated by the TDA as part of their spreading effective practice and learning from the pathfinder.

Children’s Trusts’ strategic commissioning arrangements will be central to ensuring that the resources available across partners is made available to support what is working will and making the most positive contribution to achieving better outcomes. The Commissioning Support Programme will have central role in working with Children’s Trusts to ensure that the put in the right strategic framework to ensure that funding is used most effectively and that innovative and effective partnerships like those you describe are supported.

Question 8, from Danni Manzi - Development Manager (Service Development), The Princess Royal Trust for Carers

What commissioning strategies will the government encourage local authorities to undertake in order to ensure that schools and the services they provide are delivered for the whole family? 

The government expects, and will therefore support, local authorities, along with their Children's Trust partners, to perform a strategic commissioning role for all children, young people and families in their area. In order to do this, and thus ensure that schools-based services meet the needs of families, local authorities would be expected to follow commissioning strategies that place a premium on continual engagement with these families. As an example, the White Paper sets out the intention to place a new requirement on local authorities to gather parents’ views on the school places available in the area, and to publish a local plan for improvement where a sufficient proportion of parents are dissatisfied.

We know that the best schools are already providing services that address the needs of the whole family and by 2010, through extended services, we aim for all schools to work in partnership with other schools and local providers to offer access to services such as parenting support, adult and family learning and childcare. And in order for schools to increasingly perform this commissioning role, I expect local authorities to support them by creating a healthy commissioning framework and environment, and facilitating the spread of effective practice with help from organisations such as the Commissioning Support Programme.

Second batch of questions.

Question 9, from Silvia Guglielmi, Policy Researcher, Demos

If we know what works in improving children's soft skills in the school setting, how will this be translated into practice?  Also, how will best practice be evenly distributed geographically?  The UK has pockets of good practice in children's social/emotional health, yet this is not spread evenly in all areas - it seems some Local Authorities are more committed to this agenda than others which is to the detriment of some children. 

It is absolutely a core part of a school’s role to be interested in the whole picture of a child’s development. This includes ensuring that where children face particular challenge they have swift and easy access to the support they require to help them succeed.

In their commissioning role, Children’s Trusts need to ensure that they are learning from excellent practice within their local area and across the country. We believe that the strengthening of the statutory arrangements for Children’s Trusts, alongside a comprehensive network of support including the Commissioning Support Programme and C4EO will make it far easier for schools and their partners to identify and implement best practice in this area. However, it is important to recognise that local services should be tailored to meet local needs and priorities and that this may well lead to a non-uniformed geographical distribution across the country.

In addition the Department has funded the implementation, by our partners, the National Strategies, of the Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL) programme. 

SEAL is a comprehensive programme to develop the social and emotional skills of all pupils through a whole-school approach across all elements of the curriculum. The skills are in five groupings: self-awareness; managing feelings; empathy; motivation and social skills. 

These skills underpin positive behaviour, full attendance, learning, employability and wellbeing and have the potential to improve social mobility.

The skills SEAL seeks to promote are essential for children and young people to achieve all five ECM outcomes. SEAL helps schools to create a safe and emotionally healthy school environment, which encourages effective learning. The skills are an important component of PSHE and helps pupils to be responsible citizens.

National Strategies are undertaking focused developmental work in a number of local authorities, and evaluating specific outcomes in a number of individual schools to develop a picture of the regional and national impact of SEAL.  Findings from these projects will feed into National Strategies and Departmental policies.

Question 10 from Claire Dorer,CEO National Association of Special Schools

The White Paper sets out the vision for schools maintained by Local Authorities. Non-maintained and independent special schools are funded through Local Authority placements and cater for some of the most vulnerable children in the country. We are the group of schools which has had the greatest experience of Local Authority commissioning to date. How is it envisaged that Non-maintained and independent special schools will play a meaningful part in the vision set out in 21^st Century schools?

The White Paper said that “we want to see 21st century special schools developing partnerships, sharing their expertise and facilities with other schools and providing children with the skills and confidence needed for greater independence in adult life.”  I am sure that independent and non-maintained special schools will agree with this vision. 

Local authorities should be looking at commissioning the best providers of services – whether they are from the public or third sectors – and so I see a continuing role for a diverse range of providers in the system as long as they can demonstrate they are delivering the best outcomes for children. 

In the White Paper, we also said “we will commission work on developing special schools as leaders in teaching and learning practice for children with the most complex learning difficulties …”  We would expect this work to include both the maintained and non-maintained and independent special school sectors

Question 11 from Keith Sorrell, Windsor High School, Dudley

How do you see, the very welcome suggestion of Governors taking responsibility for all children in their area, working in practice?

School governors are an extraordinarily dedicated group of individuals who make sure that our schools remain rooted in the communities they serve and support the work of all the professionals working in schools to improve outcomes for children and young people. By formalising governing bodies’ duties to children, young people in their wider area and not just pupils of the school, we are recognising that schools sit at the heart of their communities and can be an enormous force for good within those communities. We know that very many schools and governing bodies have recognised and embraced these wider responsibilities for a long time.

We also recognise that, historically, governors have not always been given all the support that they might have in order to carry out their crucial role. That is why we are putting in place improved governor training (including an expectation that all Chairs of governing bodies will undertake specific training) to allow them to carry out their duties more effectively.

By introducing increased flexibility to the rules on the composition of governing bodies we also want to ensure that the right skills and representation are present on governing bodies to meet the challenges of these extended duties. Well trained and supported governing bodies are ideally placed to help facilitate appropriate partnerships between their school and others schools, other agencies and organisations from all sectors in the community. This strategic oversight will help schools and their partners in identifying common and mutually supportive goals and making sure that practical partnership arrangements can deliver the intended benefits.

Governing Bodies should also continue to actively consider Trust status as a means of securing additional expertise and skills.

Question 12 from Ken Morris, Hamstead Hall School, Birmingham

As a member of the DCSF Headteachers Reference Group for Community Cohesion we are faced with the challenge of finding qualitative indicators which measure how well schools promote community cohesion. Clearly pupil, parents, staff and community voice will play a key part. Do you think it would be worth commissioning a small group of schools/Accredited Schools group to explore the coming together of these stakeholder voices? This will serve so many purpose and produce a myriad of outcomes which could be used to measure progress in other areas of 21st Century School development. Eg Pupils - statements 5,6,8,10,12; Parents - statements 7, 10, 31; Staff (Teachers and support staff) - statements 33, 35,36.

As you say, the views of stakeholders are important both in ensuring schools understand their needs, and as an indicator of the success of schools in meeting those needs. DCSF and Ofsted have consulted on proposals to develop indicators that schools and Ofsted can use in assessing how well a school is contributing to its pupils' wellbeing across all five ECM outcomes. The response to that consultation, issued in June this year, committed us to develop the practical details of implementing these indicators, some of which go to the heart of community cohesion such as views on the extent to which parents and pupils feel schools promote equality and counteract discrimination and the extent to which schools help pupils of different backgrounds get on well. 

Question 13 from Ken Morris, Hamstead Hall School, Birmingham

Currently the NCSL and the SSAT work with schools in isolation. Is the time right in terms of a first class education system for more joined up work so that there is a clear triangular bond of the NCSL, SSAT and schools working together?

NCSL and SSAT have been working together on some aspects of their offer to schools. For the future we certainly would not want to see duplication of effort.  However, we also regard the role of central and local government to centre upon commissioning and not to overly interfere in the arrangements of our best providers, including those commissioned by us develop specific areas of leadership work.  Overall, we want a flexible system where system leaders such as outstanding Headteachers are central and within that context we want to see coherence yes, but without overtly sanctioning particular arrangements. 

Question 14 from Danni Manzi | Development Manager (Service Development) | The Princess Royal Trust for Carers

We know that concerns about young carers are only picked up by services when their caring role has caused sufficient damage to their well being and that early intervention is severely lacking for this group of pupils.  What does the government have in mind for a service model of early intervention/ prevention that would meet this particular group of pupils’ needs?

Question 15 from Danni Manzi | Development Manager (Service Development) | The Princess Royal Trust for Carers

What plans are there for commissioning young carers services to work in schools in order to effectively identify and support young carers, thereby helping schools meet targets (as set out in the White Paper and other plans) such as NEET, attainment and attendance?

We know that many young carers who do need support remain unidentified or are reluctant to come forward for the help they may need and so opportunities for early intervention are being missed.

Our new National Carers Strategy set out our plans to address this. A main priority is to ensure, right from the outset, that services working with the ill or disabled person in the family also consider the potential support needs of children who may be their carers and work with other agencies to ensure those needs are addressed.  The aim, through this “whole family” approach, is to ensure that support offered to the family as a whole is both effective and sufficient to ensure that children do not have to take on heavy caring roles. Under our Pathfinder for young carer programme, selected local authorities are currently modelling how this better integrated support can be achieved. Learning from the Pathfinders will be shared across all local authorities and will be backed with an expanded programme of training in whole family working for key front-line services.

Our schools and targeted services for young people also have a role to play and we are lending support to that – new guidance, resources and support on young carers for schools is currently being developed as part of the National Healthy Schools Programme while further action will be set in train later this year to capture and disseminate best practice in more targeted forms of support for young carers.

Our aim is to ensure that local service commissioners can take proper account of young carers’ needs and build a system of local support based on what works best. We would encourage all Children's Trusts to prioritise this group of young people as many already are, looking at the particular specific needs of those individual families and the context of the local authority.  

Question 16 from Danni Manzi | Development Manager (Service Development) | The Princess Royal Trust for Carers

There is mention of partnership working and multi agency teams to support schools and pupils but there is little mention of the third sector’s role in this.  Could there be clearer direction from central government on their involvement?

The DCSF is committed to working in partnership with third sector organisations to improve outcomes for children and young people.  In its Third sector strategy and action plan published on 30 July, the department outlined principles, pledges and commitments for continued working with the third sector.  In particular, the strategy describes our plans to improve commissioning and ensure clarity and transparency to enable the third sector to play a full and active part. 

Question 17 from a headteacher

How will the changes envisaged in the white paper support schools in meeting their duty to promote community cohesion?

The formal extension of governing bodies’ responsibilities to cover children and young people in the wider community and the additional support that we will provide to governing bodies will really help to build on and spread the excellent work that schools are doing to promote community cohesion.

The importance that Your Child, Your Schools, Our Future places on partnership is also crucial to achieving that goal of contributing to lively, supportive and safe communities. By working with other schools and other agencies and organisations in their areas schools can bring communities together.

From a commissioning point of view Children’s Trusts have a key responsibility to put in place a strategic framework that promotes and facilitates schools partnerships and recognises what is having the most beneficial impact on community cohesion. In turn, the Commissioning Support Programme and other support initiatives that Government has put in place need to support Children’s Trusts in making sure that this vision of strategic commissioning becomes a reality.

We have also agreed with C4EO that they will focus on community cohesion within their Schools and Communities theme.  Over coming months C4EO will work to identify and share 'what works' to strengthen community cohesion through the crucial role of schools and extended services, based on a robust and thorough analysis of existing data, research and actual practice.

Download the Schools White Paper here.

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