Taylor (1977)

Notes on the text
Preliminary pages Membership, Preface, Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 Present arrangements for school government
Chapter 3 A new approach to school government
Chapter 4 Membership of the new governing bodies
Chapter 5 Communication and cooperation
Chapter 6 Curriculum
Chapter 7 Finance
Chapter 8 Appointments
Chapter 9 Other functions
Chapter 10 Training the new governors
Chapter 11 Procedural arrangements
Chapter 12 The government of voluntary schools
Chapter 13 Recommendations and implementation
Summary of recommendations

Notes of extension and dissent, minority report

Appendix A Evidence
Appendix B History of school managers and governors
Appendix C Visits
Appendix D Education Act 1944: selected extracts
Appendix E Administrative Memorandum No 25 (1945)
Appendix F Letter to parents
Appendix G Aims into practice

Index

Report of the Committee of Enquiry appointed jointly by the Secretary of State for Education and Science and the Secretary of State for Wales under the chairmanship of Mr Tom Taylor CBE

London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1977
© Crown copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland.

Chapter 9 Other functions
[pages 77 - 88]

9.1 We have dealt in the previous chapters with some of the most important responsibilities of the governing body. In this chapter we turn to other functions in relation to which the model articles provided for some involvement on the part of the governing body and which merit separate consideration here if the future role of these bodies is to be properly defined.

Admissions

9.2 Article 10 of the model dealt with the admission of children to a county school as follows:

'The admission of pupils to the school shall be in accordance with arrangements made by the local education authority, which will take into account the wishes of the parents, any school records and other information which may be available, the general type of education most suitable for the particular child and the views of the governors and headmaster as to the admission of the child to the school.'

'The admission of pupils to the school shall be in accordance with arrangements made by the local education authority, in consultation with the governors.'

9.5 It appears to us that the present arrangements for determining the responsibility for admissions to school have worked well. We accordingly RECOMMEND that they should continue. We also RECOMMEND that when the local education authority has settled its admissions policy, it should make public the principles and criteria upon which school places are to be allocated in order to avoid any uncertainty about the local position among parents and governing bodies.

Suspension and expulsion

9.6 We begin this section by acknowledging that many schools in England and Wales are run without the need for frequent recourse to suspension and expulsion. However, we think it important to devote careful attention to this subject since cases of suspension and expulsion have often caused genuine difficulties for those concerned.

9.7 A registered pupil of compulsory school age is required to attend school regularly and his parents are under a statutory duty to see that he does so. In certain circumstances he may be debarred from attendance, temporarily or permanently. A number of serious problems have arisen through uncertainty about the meaning of the terms that are used and about the objectives being pursued and the procedures to be employed.

Use of terms

9.8 'Exclusion' is a term that is commonly used in this connection. Those who use it do not always agree on its meaning. It is used, without definition, in regulation 4 of the Pupils' Registration Regulations 1956 and in regulation 7(1) of the Schools Regulations 1959, in contexts where it appears to cover a variety of situations in which pupils might be barred from school. It is possible to distinguish three main situations in which the term 'exclusion' is used:

a. permanent debarment, commonly known as expulsion. We discuss this in paragraph 17.

b. temporary debarment on medical grounds under section 54(7) of the Education Act 1944 (which expressly uses the term 'exclusion') or under section 150(1) of the Public Health Act 1936.

c. temporary debarment for other reasons, commonly thought of as 'suspension' but in practice not always based on the use of the power of suspension conferred by articles of government. (1)

Other problems

9.10 The practice of suspension is widespread. Articles of government commonly confer on the head teacher power to suspend a pupil from attendance for any cause that he considers adequate. We have heard of instances in which this power appears to have been used in connection with minor infringements of school discipline or of school rules. We have recommended in paragraph 33 of chapter 6 that responsibility for deciding on the measures to be taken generally to promote good discipline in the school, and making the rules necessary to maintain it, should be placed on the governing body, which will include the head. This will, we think, help to ensure adequate protection and guidance both for the head and for the pupil and his parents; it should permit disciplinary action to be taken, when necessary, within a clearly defined framework sanctioned by the governing body.

9.11 There has been public concern about suspended pupils remaining out of school, often with no provision for the continuation of their education or indeed for any supervision outside their homes, in some cases for as long as a year or more. The implications for juvenile delinquency have been a matter of special anxiety. It is not for us to express any view as to the responsibility for this state of affairs in any particular case. We recognise that the educational interests of a suspended pupil have to be weighed carefully against other factors. However, it seems to us that the present arrangements in general lack any provision to ensure that everybody concerned will feel a proper sense of urgency and will press forward vigorously to put an end to a suspension, in one way or another, as quickly as possible. In our view there should be a strict limit on the time for which a pupil may remain debarred from attendance at school without a systematic review of his case by the local education authority in consultation with all those concerned, including representatives of the governors and social agencies, with a view to finding an acceptable solution.

The objectives of suspension

9.12 These problems seem to be accompanied by - and perhaps to stem from - a general uncertainty about the objectives of suspension. Since 1944 the Education Departments have consistently taken the view that debarment from attendance, in whatever circumstances and for whatever period, should not be used as a punishment. We agree. Suspension should be seen as providing a breathing space to allow rational consideration, discussion and accommodation between the parties concerned or, depending on the seriousness of the problem, a search for more fundamental solutions, including, in an extreme case, the possibility of education elsewhere. The objectives of the procedure should be:

a. to allow the school to function satisfactorily while problems are solved;

b. to allow the head teacher reasonable discretion to take very short term action in an emergency without excessive formality but with suitable safeguards;

c. to avoid unnecessary interruption to the child's education and to keep the period of non-attendance as short as possible;

d. to bring all relevant considerations and all interested parties quickly together to this end.

9.13 It also seems to us that these problems are aggravated by the lack of reasonably uniform, comprehensive and well understood procedures relating to suspension. Articles of government commonly require the head to report any suspension forthwith to the governors. The articles often have nothing to say about what the governors can or should do when the head teacher reports to them, except to require them to consult the authority. They say nothing whatsoever about what the authority can or should do when consulted. As a result, procedures differ widely in different areas. In some a suspension is reported to the governors immediately, in others only at the next formal meeting of the governors. The articles of some county schools provide for an appeal, but seldom specify a time within which governors have to be informed or have to hear appeals.

9.14 Parents are often given little information either about the procedures which are being followed or about the grounds on which the procedures have been set in motion. There is no assurance, except in a very few areas where the local education authority regulations specify it, that they will have been consulted even if their child's behaviour has been giving cause for concern over a period. In some cases their first notification that it has had serious consequences may be a notification of suspension conveyed by the child himself (which is clearly undesirable), expressed in terms which they may not understand and without any indication of the action which may be open to them to remedy the situation.

The need for properly prescribed procedures

9.15 We think it unsatisfactory that there are wide differences from area to area in the procedures for suspension. There are stringent and carefully defined suspension procedures for students at further education institutions, although they are outside the age limits of compulsory education. We consider that the corresponding procedures for school pupils should be prescribed more carefully. We do not think it necessary to lay down detailed procedures for local education authorities to follow. At the very least, local education authorities should be required to establish clear rules of procedure and to ensure that heads, teachers, governors, parents and pupils are familiar with them. Given the objectives in paragraph 9.12, one local education authority might, for example, lay down a flexible procedure which allowed a head teacher, on his own responsibility, to send a pupil home (2) for up to three days while those concerned 'cool off', subject only to informing parents of the reasons for the suspensions and making a written record in the school in a register kept specifically for the purpose and available to the governing body. This will enable the latter to review constructively the problems which have given rise to such action. The local education authority might prescribe a different procedure for longer suspensions (up to five days, for instance), and in exceptional cases for suspensions up to a maximum of, say, four weeks with provision, in the latter cases, for appeal by the parents against the suspension. The local education authority might require that any suspension longer than the prescribed 'cooling-off time' should be the subject of immediate consultation with all those concerned, on lines laid down by the authority. Another local education authority might of course consider these time limits excessive. We have given them simply for illustrative purposes.

9.16 The school needs to be protected against threats to its orderly running and the pupils against excessive resort to suspension. The guiding principle in making these procedural arrangements should be, in our view, to strike a balance between the provision of elaborate safeguards intended to protect the individual from any possibility of injustice and the desirability, in his own interest and that of the school, of solving the problem promptly.

9.17 Clearly the governing body, with its concern for the welfare of the school and the pupils, will be the obvious agency to undertake this task and it should be their responsibility to bring together the interested parties, in an effort to find an acceptable solution; in particular the education welfare officer has a key role to play in these cases. If agreement cannot be reached and recourse to appeal procedure is necessary, we think the governing body should continue to work towards a solution. Because of its wide responsibilities for the general interests of the school, however, the parent concerned might not feel confident of its impartiality in his particular case. In our view therefore the governing body should not itself determine the appeal. It should be the function of the local education authority to decide, finally, whether the pupil should be allowed to resume attendance or should be debarred for a further period, or permanently, from the school at which he has been a pupil. The local education authority is responsible for the control of admissions to the school, has a continuing duty to provide for the education of the child and will need, taking account of the parent's statutory duty to secure the education of his child and his moral duty to help in the maintenance of discipline, to make arrangements for the resumption of his education either at another school or in some other way. For these reasons we think it is undesirable that the power to expel a pupil should rest with the governing body, as by implication it has been assumed to do at present in the absence of any provision to other effect in articles of government. In our view no final decision on expulsion, in any circumstances, ought to be taken except by the local education authority after taking into account the views expressed by the governing body.

Recommendations

9.18 Accordingly we RECOMMEND that:

1. the terms exclusion, suspension and expulsion, wherever they are used in statutory regulations or in local education authorities' regulations or instructions, should be authoritatively defined and differentiated in the way we have suggested;

2. every local education authority should be required to make and publish arrangements for the procedures to be followed in its area with regard to the suspension of pupils from attendance at school which satisfy the following general requirements:

i. when a pupil's behaviour over a period gives rise to a real possibility that he will have to be suspended from attendance if it continues, opportunity for consultation and discussion should be accorded to his parents;

ii. it should be clearly known by all concerned who has the power to decide that a pupil should be suspended from attendance, or should remain suspended after a specified period;

iii. a time limit of not more than three days should be fixed for the duration of any suspension by the head teacher;

iv. provision should be made to avoid danger to the pupil concerned, or to others, as a result of his suspension;

v. when a decision is made to suspend a particular pupil the parents should be informed by a quick and reliable means, should be told how long the suspension is to last and should be given full particulars of the reason for it. A record should be made in a register kept specifically for the purpose within the school and available to the governing body,.

vi. the governing body should be empowered to extend the suspension for a strictly limited period, specified by the local education authority for all cases, during which the interested parties should be brought together to seek an acceptable solution;

vii. if no satisfactory solution is found within this period the case should be referred to the local education authority;

viii. there should be provision for appeal by the parents to the local education authority, to be heard within a specified period, against the continuation of a suspension beyond a specified period or against any other action proposed as an alternative to the child's resumption of attendance at the school. Parents should be told how, and to whom they should appeal, when the appeal will be heard and what procedure will be followed;

i. no registered pupil is debarred from attendance at his school, except on medical grounds, otherwise than in compliance with the suspension procedures arranged by the local education authority;

ii. no registered pupil is expelled from a school except by the decision of the local education authority responsible for maintaining the school, who should inform the governing body.

9.19 The model articles dealt with the responsibilities of the governing body in relation to the condition and state of repair of the premises and also with regard to their use out of school hours.

Care and maintenance

9.20 As regards the condition and state of repair of the premises, the model provides that:

'The Governors shall from time to time inspect, and keep the Local Education Authority informed as to, the condition and state of repair of the school premises, and, where the Local Education Authority so permit, the Governors shall have power to carry out urgent repairs up to such an amount as may be approved by the Local Education Authority.'

9.22 In considering who should be responsible for undertaking minor repairs of a kind which can be dealt with from the authority's revenue account, we have been concerned to balance the need for local education authority control of expenditure on school buildings (which we have already discussed in chapter 7) against the need for urgency in keeping school premises in sound condition. Prompt repairs are desirable not only for the convenience and safety of those who use the school but also, in certain cases, as a means of containing the spread of damage through vandalism (3). We believe that prompt action often provides considerable savings in the long term. We therefore RECOMMEND that the local education authority should authorise the governing body to have urgent minor repairs carried out up to a limit set by the authority. In view of the importance of speedy action we would expect the head teacher to be given discretion to put in hand any necessary work and to report his action at the next meeting of the governing body.

Use of premises out of school hours

9.23 The model also provides that:

'The Governors shall, subject to any direction of the Local Education Authority, determine the use to which school premises, or any part thereof may be put out of school hours.'

9.25 The study of current practice carried out by Baron and Howell indicated that most authorities made provision on the lines of the model. The exceptions were a few county boroughs who either omitted it altogether or made themselves responsible for determining lettings.

9.26 School premises are a public resource and we think that it is generally accepted that they should continue to be used as widely as possible by the whole community, provided that such use does not reduce the facilities available to the children whose education must remain the school's primary purpose. Not surprisingly, this view was confirmed in our evidence by those associations which are concerned with the encouragement of sports and physical activities. A point they made was that in relatively sparsely populated areas, school premises often provide the only means by which adult participation in sport is possible. In such an area the school may be the main focal point for local community activities, whereas in a large urban district the community interest might well come from a wider area than that served by the school.

9.27 A survey of the use of school premises outside school hours conducted in 1976 by the Advisory Centre for Education (ACE) (4) revealed that not all local education authorities conformed with the model; a substantial number gave responsibility for lettings wholly to the local education authority. It appears that with very few exceptions local education authorities set the scale of charges for the use of county school premises. The uses identified by most local education authorities included activities which were school-linked, recreational, or organised for youth, adult or further education purposes; Sunday schools; meetings of community, political and industrial groups; and hirings to private individuals. The actual sums charged and the ways in which they were compiled varied very widely.

9.28 The task of dealing with applications can be a considerable administrative burden and in many cases governors simply do not have the resources to cope with it. In areas where there is a large community demand for the use of school premises the task is either delegated to the head teacher or sometimes handled by a team in the education office. Centralised arrangements are less likely to be found in rural areas where small village schools are used informally by wide sections of the community.

9.29 On the whole our evidence revealed a wish for governing bodies to decide on the use of premises out of school hours. Witnesses tended, however, to take little account of the problems caused by community use. As well as giving rise to additional costs - for example, for lighting, heating, cleaning and other maintenance - community use can put caretakers under pressure to work excessive overtime and cause administrative and managerial difficulties by blurring lines of control and responsibility. The National Union of Teachers drew attention to some of these problems and suggested that the head teacher and his staff should have the power to veto certain types of use.

9.30 In any assessment of the cost of the community use of school premises it is appropriate to take into account the fact that savings can be achieved through a reduction in damage by vandalism. The Home Office Working Party which looked into this question in 1975 (5) took the view that 'playgrounds should be open as often as possible out of school hours, at weekends and on public holidays'. They urged 'the greater use of school premises for such purposes in order that young children can identify more readily with the schools as their property and not as places which, when not used for school work proper, are bolted and barred by "them" and as such present a challenge for assault and destruction'.

The Committee's views

9.31 It seems to us essential that a public body should have control of the use to which school premises are put out of school hours. The local education authority is in a position to assess the merits of competing demands throughout its area and to determine any legal questions which might arise. We therefore RECOMMEND that it should, after consultation with the governing bodies of all county schools in its area, formulate an overall policy on the letting of those schools. This overall policy would be implemented in the schools by the governing bodies. In practice we would not expect them to concern themselves with every application to use the school. In our view this task is best left to the head teacher as the person most accessible to applicants. It is important that the head teacher should operate from a firm basis in exercising this responsibility. We RECOMMEND, therefore, that the governing body should provide the head teacher with a set of guidelines for the consideration of applications to use the school premises. It would then be for the head to refer to the governing body in any case where a decision could not be reached within the guidelines.

9.32 We RECOMMEND that in any dispute between the governing body and an outside organisation about the use of the premises, the final decision should rest with the local education authority.

9.33 The role of the governing body in relation to the problems of school use can be illustrated by reference to those occasions when the premises are required for electoral purposes. Their use for these purposes is within the control not of the governing body but of the Returning Officer. He can direct that schools which are used as polling stations should be closed on the day of the election and that no part of the premises should be used for any other purpose. If the Returning Officer were not to make such an all-embracing direction it would, in our view, be important for the governing body to consider, in consultation with the staff, the possibility of avoiding the complete closure of the school for education, by making use of any part of the premises not required for the electoral purposes. The governing body could also suggest for the consideration of the Returning Officer the possibility of other premises being used as the polling station as an alternative to the complete or partial closure of the school.

9.34 We have given some thought to the difficult question of charges for school lettings. There seems little doubt that these charges, which have risen considerably in recent years, place financial barriers in the way of many potential users. We are aware of the financial difficulties that confront local education authorities at the present time and we do not therefore make any specific recommendations in relation to the level of hire charges. Nevertheless we remain convinced of the need for local education authorities to ensure that school premises, including playing fields and sports facilities, are as widely available for community use as is practically possible. In our view it is of primary importance that school premises should be accessible to parents for purposes related to the welfare of the school. (We discussed the parents' needs in this respect and made a recommendation in chapter 5). In the longer term, as and when the economic climate improves, we hope that local education authorities will consider ways in which the community use of schools can be expanded.

Community schools

9.35 Under this heading we are concerned with those schools, possibly purpose-built, which cater not only for pupils of primary or secondary school age but provide in addition a variety of educational and other facilities (eg libraries, social service provision etc). In the remainder of this section we refer to them as 'community schools'.

9.36 The concept of community schools goes back more than fifty years to the ideas pioneered by Cambridgeshire's Henry Morris but interest in this kind of development has increased noticeably over the past decade. This is due to the increased interest in the development of links between the school and the community as well as to economic pressures (since pooled resources allow more economical and extensive provision).

9.37 Community schools exist in a wide variety of forms and cannot be described in precise terms. Several community schools were visited by members of the Committee and we were interested to learn that the Department of Education and Science are sponsoring a five year research project, under the direction of Professor MDS Stephens of Nottingham University, which is designed to investigate, in cooperation with the local authority, the impact of a community centre at Sutton on the life of the town.

9.38 It has not been possible to include a detailed examination of all the management implications of community schools within the scope of our review. Further experience of the operation of these institutions is likely to throw up a variety of management problems. Some of these may be identified in the report of a Working Party set up by HM Inspectorate which carried out a detailed survey of community school provisions in 1975-76. We understand that, in addition to this general survey, the Department of Education and Science has recently carried out a study of the Abraham Moss Centre in Manchester and that this is likely to include reference to aspects of the management structure. We were also interested to learn that the Department is sponsoring an evaluation of the development of Coventry's Community Colleges. This project, which was begun in October 1975 under the direction of Dr AH Halsey of the Department of Social and Administrative Studies at the University of Oxford, and is expected to last three years, includes studies of the organisation and management of the colleges, and of the extent to which they promote involvement and participation of local people and groups.

9.39 Further consideration may well need to be given to the functions of community school governing bodies in the light of the further information which will become available when the reports on these projects have been published. We see no reason, however, why the various proposals we have put forward with regard to the functions of school governing bodies in general should not apply in principle to the governing bodies of community schools, at least in relation to the activities of their 'school' sides.

Holidays

9.40 The model articles include the following provision:

'Holidays for the school shall be fixed by the local education authority, but the governors shall have power to grant mid-term or other occasional holidays not exceeding 10 days in any year'.

9.42 Decisions on school holidays can have far reaching effects. When they are being considered, the following factors, obviously, need to be taken into account:

i. the problems caused for working parents and parents with children at other schools where the occasional holidays do not coincide;

ii. the consequential difficulties for any local industry employing mothers of school children if a substantial proportion of the labour force has to absent itself; and the possible serious economic effect of reduced production;

iii. the effects on school bus services, school meals and arrangements for linked school facilities;

iv. the dates of industrial holidays.

9.44 Occasional days are now commonly used to provide a full week's holiday at mid-term on dates fixed by the local education authority for all the maintained schools in its area. In our view this should be the universal practice. Since there can be no question of any reduction in the statutory school year it follows that the scope for granting other occasional holidays is limited. Even so, the power to grant a limited number of holidays for special reasons still seems to us to be of some value. We accordingly RECOMMEND that governing bodies should continue to have the power to grant occasional school holidays other than the mid-term holidays, subject to the agreement of the local education authority in each case. This should ensure that a uniform policy is applied throughout an area. We would expect local education authorities to adopt a fairly flexible approach when formulating their general policy, so as not to rule out reasons that might genuinely be regarded by schools as 'special', and to bear in mind local factors of the kind mentioned above when specific applications are being considered.

Footnotes

(1) The courts have distinguished between the exercise by a head teacher of the power of suspension conferred on him by articles of government and the action of a head teacher in refusing to allow a child to attend school until certain conditions have been met. Cf. Spiers v Warrington Corporation (1953] 2 All ER 1052; (1954] 1 QB 61.

(2) Especial care should be taken to avoid the possibility of a young child being suspended and arriving home unexpectedly at a time when he cannot gain admission.

(3) Home Office Standing Committee on Crime Prevention; Protection Against Vandalism. Home Office 1975.

(4) Stone Judith and Taylor Felicity, Who Can Use Your School. Where, No. 118 July 1976, pages 190-194.

(5) See paragraph 9.22 (footnote).