NORTHERN IRELAND FORUM

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EDUCATION COMMITTEE

Wednesday 25 September 1996

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MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

on

EDUCATION ADMINISTRATION

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Witness: Mr H Park

(Ballymena Chamber of Commerce and Industry)

The Chairman: Good morning, Mr Park. May I formally welcome you to the Forum. We are delighted to have you, and we look forward to hearing your presentation. The Education Committee was formed following a debate relating to the statement of the Minister of June this year indicating thathe was going to go for three boards, instead of the original proposal for four. We asked for time so that the Committee could deliberate.

We have heard from most of the education boards, we have heard from teachers' groups and we still have to hear from other interested groups today and tomorrow. This afternoon we hear from the Department again. Your letter has five key paragraphs.

Mr Park: Thank you very much, Mr Chairman. I have a statement here for you to copy and hand out to the others in due course so that all receive it. It is not a long statement.

The Chairman: Thank you very much. Let the record note that we have received a submission from Ballymena Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Mr Park: I wish to thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you about the proposals for a three-board set up rather than a five-board set up which were announced by Michael Ancram some time ago.

I am Secretary of the Chamber of Commerce in Ballymena. I have 15 years of experience in central Government, 10 years in local government and I was very much involved in the reorganization of local government in 1973. So I think I can speak with some experience on what happened at that time and all the promises that were made to the effect that reorganization was going to save the country a lot of money. I believe that quite the contrary happened because a great administrative bureaucracy was created within central Government in Stormont and other places. In fact this swallowed up a lot of the so-called savings, and I do not think that we ever really recovered from that situation. Therefore, I have a lot of experience based on that. I also served a term of two years as President of the Northern Ireland Public Service Alliance while in central Government, so I have obviously experience of the trade union side, and I know that NIPSA has made a presentation to the Committee on Michael Ancram’s statements.

I am also aware of the other statements that have been made from the joint deputation from the district councils of Antrim, Ballymena, Ballymoney, Carrickfergus, Coleraine, Larne, Magherafelt and Newtownabbey and of the statements coming from the board itself. The Board has done a fantastic job setting out all the details, so I really want to give a broader picture from the point of view of the businessman, the man in the street and the natural concerns of people, not just in Ballymena but far beyond Ballymena.

Michael Ancram has proposed reducing the five-area board structure to a three-board one, and I am aware of the map that was released that showed where these would be. This proposal from the Minister has so far left unanswered many questions concerning the details of his reorganization proposals, and the concern expressed in my statement to the Forum in mid-August was justified. This statement briefly gave our position at that time and followed closely the legitimate fears of the staff in the North Eastern Education and Library Board, mainly based in County Hall, Ballymena, that their board was to disappear in the reorganization proposals. It also took account of the support within the Ballymena area at that time, in particular the very strong support from the staff and Ballymena Borough Council and their complete opposition to any change to the five-board system at this time and before the consultative processes had been completed.

I want to re-emphasize the point that we in the Chamber are not just trying to protect jobs in Ballymena: we see this as being totally wrong at this time. We believe that the Forum, and your Committee, should be allowed to pronounce on what you consider to be the issues and the details of the education set-up in Northern Ireland. What we are saying is this: complete your job and submit your reports, but do not exclude the Department of Education. I will come back to that point later.

I will very briefly repeat the points made in that statement and then update you on the situation. Regarding point 1, it appears to me that the Minister is setting aside his previous promises in the consultation document and now proposes, without proper consultation, to set in motion the legislation to create the new board structures. I therefore ask you as the Education Committee to do all you can to challenge him on these points and in particular to seek reasons for the Forum’s being by-passed and not being given an opportunity to report on its findings as should be the case. I interject at this point to say that my statement was sent to Rev Ian Paisley who sent me a copy of the reply from the Minister. I have to ask, Mr Chairman, whether you have seen this reply. It is very unsatisfactory. It says

“Firstly there is a concern about the potential loss of local accountability and second a preference for awaiting the creation of new local political structures before making any changes for administrative arrangements.”

So will he accept these points? But then he says

“A decision on the future of the Boards could and should not be deferred any longer.”

This is what I am taking issue with. Why does he have to impose this now when the Forum is meeting to look at the whole education set-up in Northern Ireland and not just the area boards? The Department of Education has also got to be looked at. It cannot be excluded. How can you do a cost exercise if you leave out the main constituent part?

Anyway Michael Ancram goes on to say

“Like all the parties I look forward to the establishment of new political structures which can take responsibility for decision-making in key areas such as education. In the meantime however it is my duty as the Minister responsible for education to ensure that the resources devoted to administration are used as efficiently and effectively as possible.”

Now we all agree with that but why does he press on with legislation, why does he want to do this now when the consultative process has not been properly addressed? The cost exercise that has been done is an incomplete one. It is all right to say that you can make savings of £2 million but you could probably make savings of far more than £2 million if the Department of Education were brought into the review.

In a sense you cannot make a complete assessment without knowing where the new board headquarters are going to be. What about movement of staff from the five-boards into the three-board system — has that all been costed? From my own experience, it is likely that the cost of this reorganization will be much in excess of £2 million rather than provide so-called savings. Based on my own experiences, I feel it is totally wrong at this stage to force this on the province now. It is not happening in Britain where they are actually going the other way. The set-up over there has far more boards for smaller numbers of population, so this statement from Michael Ancram to Dr Paisley is very unsatisfactory. I do not know if you have a copy of that letter or not, but if you have you will have seen for yourself what he said.

Regarding the second point of my statement, the support referred to has grown substantially, linked with the petition “United to Win”, so in a sense this petition is showing that the support is there on the ground from businesses and the public, and this is something which should be taken account of. The support referred to has grown substantially and the petition will in due course prove how solid the support for the staff in the board is, not only in Ballymena but also in other areas. The Western Board, I understand, is also totally opposed to the Minister’s proposals. We support the Western Board, and we want to make that quite clear.

We support in principle and in detail the retention of the five-board set-up, until such times as somebody proves to us that there is a better set-up and the Department of Education has been brought into the review as well. That is what we are requesting. This relates to the whole province. As far as we are concerned, the Minister’s exercise, the statements and what has come from the Department of Education are all too vague. There is no back-up and no justification for what they are proposing. They have not proved their case, in my opinion.

I refer now to the third point in my statement. All of us involved in this united stand against the proposed changes do not accept that anyone can predict savings of around £2 million when the cost exercise has not been completed to include all the relevant costs of the relocation of staff. Also, because the Minister is claiming that no decision has been made as to the location of the headquarters of the three boards, I query how anyone can undertake a major re-organizational review, such as this is, without assessing all the operational costs of the exercise. I have personal experience of the reorganization of local government in 1973 and I know how the calculated savings in practice became substantially higher costs owing to the creation of administrative bureaucracy within central Government. If a full review were done, there could be substantial savings provided that there was a delegation of some central authority powers to the present area boards and unnecessary duplication and bureaucracy were eliminated. In studying the documents that you have received from others, it is quite clear to me that there could be

substantial savings.

There is far too much authority vested in the Department of Education. Its costs are rising each year and the boards are then being asked to make savings, which they are doing. There is a lot of duplication in the administrative set-up in the province, and I believe there is a need for devolving some of that administrative power to the area boards. Cut out unnecessary bureaucracy cut out duplication — that is the only way you will ever make real savings that are based on the realities of life and take account of everything that matters, and that does not just mean the management of staff. But what is the education system addressing and what is it trying to achieve? You really have to ask this question: what is the way forward for education in Northern Ireland and how best can that be achieved at the lowest cost? To exclude the Department of Education from such a review would be totally nonsensical.

Moving on then to my fourth point, it would be totally wrong and irresponsible of the Minister to introduce new proposals at this time when the situation in the province is particularly fragile. Everybody should understand that within the education board structures at present there is great harmony among all those who serve there. If you had been at some of the meetings that I attended in Ballymena you would have seen cross-board and cross-religion representation, with everybody working in harmony. Even the Minister accepted that. In his consultative document that was launched on 17 February 1993 he stated.

“(i) that there were three objectives, in reviewing the existing system of administration: it was important to ensure that it remained fair, effective, efficient and appropriate to the changing needs of education in Northern Ireland.”

We agree with that.

“(ii) that all parts of the education service help to heal community divisions and promote co-operation and better understanding.”

We agree, and that is what is happening at the moment, so why change it?

“(iii) that we preserve and build on the co-operation which already exists and seek to extend and strengthen these links, not weaken them.”

What he is doing at the moment, in fact, is weakening links as he is introducing change for the sake of change, and not because it has been shown to be right.

Further on, it states

“The Minister in highlighting these aspects commented specifically on the success of the current arrangements for administration, particularly in relation to the role of the Education and Library Boards where he stated that there are few if any other areas of day-to-day life in Northern Ireland where churchmen and laymen work together so constructively.”

Why change that, supposedly for £2 million savings? I do not accept that, because where these savings will come from has not been shown. So, these are the important points that the Minister made, yet he wants to do something completely different now.

To summarize point 4, education is one of the successes within the province, and yet the Minister is prepared to jeopardize this for unproven theoretical savings of £2 million that will probably never materialize. Even more importantly, a great loss of confidence will occur within the education field and in the ability of the Department of Education and the Minister to be seen to act in a fair and rational manner towards the management and staff within the boards and, indeed, towards the whole community. If he were to impose this on the community and set in motion all these changes, it might be years before it settled down within the new set-up. That would then affect the whole morale and confidence of those people who are doing their best to

administer the situation at the moment.

Regarding point 5, the Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce and all the affiliated Chambers of Commerce within the province were sent copies of our statement, and this will be the subject of discussions at meetings during the whole of October. I can give you an update on that as well. However, it is clear that there is already general support for the points put and the chambers will in due course add their weight in opposition to the Minister’s proposals. This is something worth noting. This is not just Ballymena Chamber of Commerce speaking. Through our actions and what we have done we have endeavoured to give a lead to others. We have now brought in all the chambers and the Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce, which is the parent body for the whole of the Belfast area. We are getting general support from them.

The affiliated chambers are all the other chambers throughout the province that will be having a meeting during October. This matter will be on the agenda. They will probably not get a reply to you in time, but clearly this is not just Ballymena making a case. There is broad support for what we are doing throughout the province. I ask you to look at the whole situation, including the

Department, and in due course come to the proper conclusions about what should be done about education administration in Northern Ireland.

In conclusion, you may well ask why Ballymena Chamber seeks to be involved in matters outside the maintaining and improving of the businesses and the economy of the town. The answer is that any change in the present set-up would undoubtedly affect the local economy not just in Ballymena, but in other locations as well. This is a very important point and that is why we believe the whole scenario needs to be looked at. The chamber believes it has a right to speak on such matters and to support those who share our views. In so doing we also believe we are acting in the best interests of all our members and their families who will be affected by the education situation. I am thinking of the future, and the business people I represent are concerned about the situation. They want the best possible education set-up for the province and changes only if you can prove that they are justified and will bring genuine savings. We are acting in support of all those folk and the communities at large throughout the Province.

Thank you for this opportunity to put forward our views so that we can add our support to the statements of the board and the council, who share our concerns at the proposals of the Minister.

The Chairman: You mentioned a letter from Michael Ancram to Dr Paisley. Perhaps you could leave that for photocopying. We will want to look at it to see is there anything different said in it from other correspondence.

You are talking not just about the Ballymena Chamber but about the Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce. What measure of support have you had?

Mr Park: The Northern Ireland Chamber did have a meeting. This has been confirmed by John Stringer, Director of the Northern Ireland Chamber. I spoke to him a few days ago about that meeting at which this matter was tabled. It has now been referred to a sub-committee that will meet in October to consider it in more detail rather than have the whole Northern Ireland Chamber considering this very broad and important issue. Mr Stringer and the members decided it was worth having a sub-committee to look at the whole situation of education administration and its effect on the economy. The sub-committee will meet in October and present its views in due course to the full committee.

The Chairman: They are going to try to assess the impact of educational change?

Mr Park: Yes.

The Chairman: You made a point about what this reform would achieve for education. What do you think it should achieve?

Mr Park: Would you clarify the question?

The Chairman: Yes. If you were changing the models of education administration what do you think should be the priority?

Mr Park: The priority should obviously be to get the best possible administration set up here that suits our province and the size of our province. The location of a headquarters for the proposed Northern Board is very important to the administration of education for that area. Therefore, having a headquarters in Strabane to cover an area including Ballymena and Larne would not work. Nor do I think that if you had the headquarters remaining in Ballymena you could administer Strabane or Londonderry. I believe the way the five-board set-up is arranged at present best suits us in the province and ensures that schools and colleges are satisfactorily administered.

I believe the five-board set-up is the ideal. It has been in existence now since 1973 and has proved itself. If it has been asked to make savings, it has done so. The way forward is to at look what is there at the moment and to include the Department of Education. Also, look at the duplication, administration and the decisions that are being made at headquarters in the Department of Education. Look too at the board set-up, reduce the bureaucracy elements and address the whole situation with the aim of getting value for money. If you do that, you will get savings based on the present structures and the Department of Education remaining as they are, but assessing what the boards and the Department are doing.

Mr Fowler: If the new Northern Education and Library Board headquarters were to be sited in Ballymena would it change the thinking of your organization?

Mr Park: I was expecting that question. I will be very honest. Yes, it would reassure a lot of the staff in the Ballymena area, and it might reassure some other people there, that there were not going to be job losses in Ballymena. I have tried to make it quite clear that this is not the way forward. I am opposed to a change that would keep the headquarters in Ballymena if Ballymena then had to administer Strabane and Londonderry. The chamber I represent and the other chambers believe that is not the best way to administer the province. Therefore, I want to make it quite clear that we are not thinking just of Ballymena.

And I am not just talking of Ballymena. I believe I can speak reasonably well for a lot of people throughout the province. I support the Western Board’s being allowed to remain, and I believe that the five-board set-up is the best way forward. In answer to your question, I would be opposed to having Ballymena retained as a headquarters if that was part of the other major

changes in reorganization, that are proposed.

Mr Fowler: Do you think we could be running a risk of forgetting about the welfare of the school children in our fight for five boards?

Mr Park: Well, you could say that, but I believe that that issue is dealt with under the present set-up. If we really want to address their needs, how could these be looked at better and how could the work of looking after those children be done better by a three-board set up than by a five-board set-up? I am not convinced that a three-board set-up, trying to administer a very large expanse of the province taking in the whole of the northern part from Strabane to Larne, could be administered from one headquarters, wherever it was located. I have studied the papers that relate to Britain, and it appears to me that the Government are clearly saying there is a need for an area board to administer a smaller area, to reduce the population within that board set-up, so that the best decisions about schools and the children can be made. So, if the Government think it is right on the mainland, why is it wrong over here.

Rev Trevor Kirkland: You mentioned duplication between the five boards and DENI. If there is an argument about duplication it is equally valid to get the reverse.

Mr Park: You could make a case for one board for Northern Ireland. In a sense you could say let us have one board covering Northern Ireland. Some people might believe this would give the most savings of all, but is that really what you call the best answer to our problems in Northern Ireland, to try to administer education throughout the scattered areas and the deprived areas where there are great difficulties at present? I believe the answer is that a single board would not work with the Department of Education giving itself more powers. I accept there is a need for change, but this must cover the boards and the Department of Education.

I hope that the Forum when it delivers its report will conclude that there is a need to look at the whole education administration in Northern Ireland, but that that should not involve the five boards being reorganized into three. I would like to think that the Forum will decide to look at the whole scenario and call for the setting up of a proper working party comprising representatives of the Department, the boards, the councils and others. Let them look at the whole situation in Northern Ireland and produce conclusions on the matter. That is where the Forum can give a lead, so why is the Minister seeking to impose changes now? Why can he not wait any longer? I believe it is absolute nonsense that he must make these changes in October, that he cannot wait until the proper consultation reviews take place.

Mr Bolton: Can you hazard a guess as to why he might be doing it in October?

Mr Park: I could hazard a guess that this Government is probably within its last six months in office, so I do not think anybody would want to take a bet on whether Michael Ancram is going to be here in the spring. I believe he is being pressurized to get these changes through now just in case the Government have to call a snap election. It is totally wrong that a Government in its last months in office should make these changes now. Why are Ministers saying they must set the legislation in motion during October? Does it have to be now? I believe we are getting unsatisfactory answers. Therefore, in answer to your question, it is purely for political reasons -- if you really want a short answer.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr Park. We have probably exhausted this.

Mr Park: Yes.

The Chairman: I appreciate your having answered the questions forthrightly and honestly. Ballymena Chamber of Commerce has recognized the Forum Committee by sending a representative, and a very good advocate you were on its behalf.

Mr Park: Thank you very much. I wish you well in your deliberations. Indeed, I wish the Forum well in all its deliberations. I just wish there were wider representation.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

Witnesses:

Mrs Odling-Smee, Mrs McIvor, Mr Brown and Mrs Sinnott

(Association of Northern Ireland Education and Library Boards)

The Chairman: Good morning and welcome.

The Education Committee, by resolution in July, took a decision to examine the proposal by the Department of Education to create three new boards instead of five. Obviously this has been of concern, not only to the elected members but to everyone who has an interest in education.

Please proceed as you wish.

Mrs Odling-Smee: Thank you very much. I am here representing the Association of Education and Library Boards, as its first Vice President; our President is unfortunately away at a conference. We have Mrs Berna McIvor from the Western Board, Mrs Margaret Sinnott from the South Eastern Education and Library Board and Mr Ernie Brown, our Honorary Secretary, also from the South Eastern Education and Library Board.

We are part of the consultative group of the association, and it is very appropriate that we should be able to come and talk to the Forum. We think that the Forum is the body that should be discussing these issues, so it is an excellent opportunity for us to put our case. One of the points that we would like to make is that the Forum is where we think the decisions should be made. We feel at the moment that democracy in Northern Ireland is being undermined by the fact that decisions are not being made at a local level, and the people who are making the decisions are not responsible and accountable to the electorate here, and we are very disturbed about that.

Therefore, we would like to draw your attention firstly to the resolution that we passed at last year’s conference, and the one we are going to discuss at this year’s conference. These resolutions have come from consensus among the five boards. There is a lot of discussion and a great deal of detailed research being done, as my colleagues will describe to you later. The Minister, in one of his documents, said that they really could not get consensus from the five boards. It was difficult, so they needed to reduce them to three in number.

We just do not agree with that at all. We think the association does in fact have a very good and increasingly developed role as a consensual body. The analysis which the association carried out on the first set of proposals in DENI shows that 70% to 90% of the responses to the proposals indicated a cross-community response of keeping the five boards. This was based on local access and the need for a stable framework in times of change. We would say that it is even more important at the present moment to preserve local accountability and responsiveness to local needs.

We are very keen for a study to be done on ways in which co-operation between the boards could be enhanced, and this is already being developed. Already boards carry out certain functions on behalf of all and there is a good deal of co-operation between the boards when a task is suitable for that approach.

We think the boards are extremely powerful forces for partnership in the community, and at the moment that is what we need. We would also like to draw your attention to the report of the Northern Ireland Economic Council in 1995 which looked at the document from DENI 'Learning for Life', and its comment was that by far the greatest cost to Northern Ireland’s education administration comes from the fact that we have such a divided education system.

It is divided by religion, it is divided by ability and it is divided by the nature of administration. We have the maintained sector, we have the controlled sector, we have the voluntary grammar schools, and we have the integrated sector. We hold that it would be perfectly possible to administer all of those sectors through the boards with certain safeguards for people’s rights and special sensitivities, so we suggest that this idea of dealing with the boards on their own is just tinkering at the edges of the cost of Northern Ireland’s education administration and that really is not dealing with the question. This is backed up by the evidence that the Economic Council’s report gives.

I am now going to ask Mrs McIvor to continue.

The Chairman: Thank you very much. I will be coming back to you with a question on the economic appraisal of the Department.

Mrs McIvor: Thank you, Mr Chairman. You treated me well the last time, so I have come back. The last time, for the benefit of those members who were not present, I represented the Western Education and Library Board. This time I am indeed privileged to represent the Association of Education and Library Boards.

The proposal to split up the South Eastern Board last year was viewed with dismay by a wide range of people in the South Eastern area. The Minister recognized then that this proposition had not received support, so he decided not to proceed with it.

Now his intention is to split up the Western Board. I believe he has aroused even greater opposition, particularly since there was no consultation, and I stress again: no consultation. It has been presented as a fait accompli.

There were originally two consultative phases and the reaction to them took place a couple of years ago and last year, but on the present proposal for three boards there has not been a consultative process, and I stress what I stressed when I was here last week on behalf of the Western Board, indeed, Mrs Odling Smee has referred already to the unanimity of opposition to the Minister’s proposal — namely that we should focus on the consensus that there is in opposition to the proposals.

This association has close contacts with the Council of Local Education Authorities. In England and Wales the Chairman and the Vice-Chairman of CLEA, Cllr Graham Lane and Cllr Saxton Spence, cannot understand the direction the Minister is taking here in Northern Ireland when in LEAs in England, Wales and Scotland changes are going in the opposite direction. LEAs are becoming smaller, they are being split up, they are bringing services closer to the people, and they are increasing local participation in the democratic system and decision-making. Last week we brought along from the Western Board a chart showing the sizes of the LEAs in Wales and

Scotland.

One other point is the co-operation that exists between the boards. Now we do co-operate, and as an example I could mention our joint legal service and our regional training unit. There may be more areas where we could co-operate and indeed there are others that I could mention where we do co-operate, but at the same time we also believe in local responses to local needs, and there may be cases where the services should be differentiated in different places.

Mr Brown: I have got to put on a fresh hat today also from the last time I was here, the hat of Honorary Secretary to the association.

You have a fair bit of detail in our letter about some of the points backing up our resolution. I would just like to add to that very briefly because I know you want to get to the questions you wish to ask us — perhaps some four or five bullet points, if I might, on the issue.

Our association, through its links with the Council for Local Educational Authorities in Great Britain, the Society of Education Officers and the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland, has a very deep understanding of the pattern of local education administration across the water. We have day-to-day contacts and we work with education officers and with members from across the water within those associations, so we really do know what we are talking about on the particular topic of English, Scottish and Welsh LEAs.

The boards here certainly carry out a very wide range of local government functions compared with education authorities in England or Scotland, and they represent a tremendously wide range of local interests in their construction. From any analysis that I have done, my view is that the boards are economical, efficient and effective in comparison with parallel authorities in England. In particular, the managerial levels of staff in an educational and library board in Northern Ireland tend to be a good deal lower than those in local education authorities in England, as a study, for example, of

the ‘Education Year Book’ would very easily prove.

The Society of Education Officers represents the officers of LEAs in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Whilst our association has the senior officers of the board in full membership as well as the actual members of the board, it is a bridging organization that brings officers and members together at that particular level.

The Council of the Society of Education Officers — that is the national body — has already viewed the Minister’s decision here with such concern in terms of its potential to damage the education and library service here, that the President of the Society, Mr Andrew Collier, who is a former Director of Education of Lancashire County Council, thought it appropriate to write directly to the Minister expressing those concerns and asking him to change his direction. That is a very powerful voice from national level, who knows about local education authority administration, who along with the people from the elected side — the Chairs of CLEA — expressed his serious and grave doubts about the direction that this matter is taking here.

The boards are wholly unconvinced about the possibilities of making real savings by reducing their number. Our boards are now very economical in the use of headquarters administrative resources. We use between 2% and 2.5% of our recurrent budgets on administration, but if you put the capital in as well, which we have to manage, that figure comes down to between 1.5% and 2% of our budgets. In anybody’s count that is an extremely economical administration budget for the boards.

If you reorganize the boards into three, it is very unlikely that there will be any significant savings in the number of clerical, executive or administrative staff. The Minister said this himself to the Northern Ireland Select Affairs Committee when asked that question by local MPs.

Some reduction in the number of managers may be possible, but we have got to set that against the fact that we have a job evaluation scheme. If you reduce the number of managers, you make their work spans bigger and their responsibilities generally higher, and job evaluation is likely to bring about a rise in salaries in the light of that. So we cannot see how big savings would be made by staff changes — certainly nothing in the order of the figures that the Minister and his Department are talking about. If the intention is to make those savings through accommodation changes, it is very hard to know how you can reduce accommodation costs if the number of staff stays broadly the same, as we believe it will.

Indeed, it is hard to see where any of these savings are going to come from. We are also aware that there will be major transitional costs and the association has asked each of the boards to contribute to a process of endeavouring to estimate these at the moment. It is going to have to be an estimate because it is difficult to predict the outcome of the whole thing when we do not know the location of proposed headquarters or other key information factors about the proposed new boards.

The President and I were at a CLEA conference in Bristol earlier this month, on the subject of creating new LEAs, as part of our partnership with CLEA. It was revealed there that the costs of the reorganization of one English authority had totalled nearly £1 million in itself.

Even if you could save the Department’s predicted £2 million or so each year by reorganization, it is our view that it would be at least between five and seven years before the transitional costs would be recouped by those sort of savings, and, as I say, we do not believe they are likely to happen at all.

Finally, all the boards have already made very significant savings in administration over the last number of years. They have made those savings by internal restructuring and downsizing their operations to get more money out to schools. This sort of tactic is more likely to produce savings within the boards than any proposals to reorganize, but I would like to re-emphasize again our Vice-President’s point that rationalization of the whole administration system — and I include looking at the Department, looking at the other bodies that play a role in administration and the boards to avoid waste, to avoid duplication and to make it more efficient — has a much greater potential for savings than this sort of tinkering with a very successful education system.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

You mentioned the economic appraisal done by the Northern Ireland Economic Development Council. Can you give us a date, time or reference?

Mrs Odling-Smee: I am afraid I do not have the document with me. It came out in January 1995 and it was a response to the various papers on administration of education in Northern Ireland. It is a very tightly argued and packed document and the quote that I was taking was from the setting-the-scene chapters. I do not have chapter and verse with me, but I can let you have it.

The Chairman: We will want to research that.

Mrs Odling-Smee: Yes, it is a very useful document.

The Chairman: I was faxed some information about the size of LEAs in England. They are generally smaller, closer to the community, more representative. Can you give one or two examples?

Mr Brown: The South Eastern Board did an analysis of this before going to the House of Commons Select Committee last November and at that time the Northern Ireland education authorities were all in the top 30% on a table of some 100 authorities. Since then 35 new authorities have been created in England by the division of existing authorities, so we have gone up the table in that sense. For example, the authority to which I was referring in Avon was a very big authority. It has been split into Bristol City, North Somerset, Bath and North East Somerset and South Gloucestershire. So four authorities have been created out of that. Now all those 35 new authorities are smaller than any Northern Ireland education and library board, and most of them are a very great deal smaller. In Scotland 12 authorities have been sub-divided into 32, all of which are now smaller than the local educational authorities here and in Wales eight authorities have been sub-divided into 22, all of which are smaller than our boards here. The South Eastern Board was asked last week to give you an analysis of LEAs. I have that document with me to leave with you today, and you will get those figures in it.

The Chairman: In your overall submission you are suggesting that any review should be a bottom-up job.

You are saying that, taking out the capital, your administration cost is 1.5% to 2%.

Mr Brown: No, you leave out capital in the figures of 1.5% to 2%. If you take the recurrent cost only, it is between 2% and 2.5%.

The Chairman: But what I am getting at is that is the overall administration figure is 1.5% to 2%, including the capital.

Mr Brown: Yes, including the capital.

The Chairman: To compare it with other administrations, I have to get a basis.

Mrs Odling-Smee: Quite.

The Chairman: Otherwise I could be accused of not comparing like with like.

Mr Brown: The South Eastern Board is giving you those figures as well.

Mr Fowler: I believe there is already co-operation between the boards in respect of legal services. Does this point to more joint working between the boards and, consequently, a reduction in their number?

Mrs Odling-Smee: The two things actually sound as if it is a logical progression, but I do not think it is. Because of the need for local representation, because of the need for decisions and consultations to be rooted in the communities, and because of the way in which we are geographically, with mountains and valleys and rivers and things that make little hinter lands, we need to be very careful that local communities are very well represented and not too far from the centre where things happen.

That does not mean to say that there are not certain economies of scale that can arise and develop which would be shared. No, we do not think that you would therefore reduce the boards’ numbers, because it is a different thing having certain functions that can be shared and having all the functions rolled into one. With the suggested board areas the geographical spread is very vast and the locale is very different from one end of the proposed structures to the other. My colleagues may like to come in on that.

Mrs McIvor: I totally agree. I did make the point that there is certainly co-operation. I mentioned the legal service and the regional training unit, but I also talked about the needs of a local community and the differentiated needs — and we are different. I do not want to talk again about the West, because I got that opportunity last week, but I remember saying that we have a distinct ethos in the West, and the same could be said by anyone from the Belfast Board. Belfast is a large city; we are a huge rural area in the West, and there is a very wide geographical spread. I talk about democracy and bringing decisions and consultation down to the people. That does not cost money, yet it is so important in a democracy and, especially in this troubled country of ours, it is so important to consult the people. People will feel happier.

Mr Fowler: Almost everyone who has come to make representations has complained of the lack of consultation. Now it appears that there seems to have been nothing talked about in the last 12 months but education. How much more consultation do you think there should be?

Mrs McIvor: Well you said that education has been much talked about, and I believe it should be much talked about. It should be nearly at the top of everybody’s agenda and we should be discussing it. The future of our young people is so important, but how much consultation? When I talked about consultation, I was talking about consultation about this particular proposal. I mentioned the four education and library boards proposal and the dismay that caused in the South Eastern area. Now we have another proposal from the Minister, and there has been absolutely no consultation. He announced it one night at the end of June to the chairman and Chief Executives, and there had been no consultation about a three-board model. There was no consultation about splitting up the West and putting some of the area to the North and some to the South, and that is the sort of consultation I am talking about — anyway I will talk for ever about education, I spent my life in it.

Mrs Odling-Smee: I think Mr Brown might like to come in on that.

Mr Brown: There were certainly two very big consultative phases on those proposals, but there has not been any consultation about the present proposal. We did our analysis of the outcome of those consultative phases in terms of the churches, the political parties, the schools, the teachers’ unions, the boards of governors and so on. The Minister has not listened to a whit of what came out of that, and that is quite clear. He has simply made a decision and gone ahead despite our consultation. In any case, if you want to formulate good quality education policy, what you really need is to get the people together who have to deliver it, both at local authority level and in the schools, to help formulate that policy you do not formulate it on high and bring it down for consultation, the outcome of which you do not intend to listen to.

Rev Trevor Kirkland: You made reference to the council of the national body discussing all this. Would it be possible for you to forward to us a copy of the letter that they sent?

The Chairman: Just to clarify that one. The letter of Mr Collier is already in a submission.

Rev Trevor Kirkland: Reference has been made to distance — the Northern Board, and the Southern Board — would it be possible for you to give us some tabular statement about the distance in the case of LEAs in England and Scotland as compared to ours? If you are arguing that distance is such a very important factor, what about distance in the case of LEAs which are a lot smaller?

Mr Brown: The new LEAs in England were formed quite recently. I was trying to get school population figures for them but I found some difficulty in getting any central source, so I will follow that track back and see what we can get. But, obviously, in somewhere like Bristol city, for example, distances are extremely small. It is a single-city authority.

Mr Smyth: What do you think the Government are up to? We listened to your talk about the boards being a lot smaller across the United Kingdom.

The Chairman: That is the 64,000 dollar question.

Mrs Odling-Smee: How long have you got?

The Chairman: Make an inspired guess.

Mrs Odling-Smee: I think that is a very difficult question. You could hazard a guess; it might be this or it might be that, but really we do not know for sure.

Mrs McIvor: Really, we do not know.

Mr Bolton: The previous submission majored very heavily on duplication, and you, Mr Brown, touched on that subject. How do you weigh that in terms of the Department and the five boards?

Mr Brown: I raised this, maybe I should respond. If you compare the functions of the Department for Education and Employment, or the Scottish Office Education and Industry Department with the Department of Education for Northern Ireland, you will find that there is much closer involvement in day-to-day decision making here. The boards make many decisions, the Department then re-checks them and approves them. They ask for massive day-to-day approvals for them. They also retain a much higher level of services that they fund directly and by which they, therefore, control the actions of the boards. So, there is a lot of duplication between boards and the Department in areas that are properly the functions of local government. But equally there is a lot of duplication with other bodies in the world of education and administration. The Curriculum Council is one, the Catholic Council for the Maintained Schools is another. Again they are doing the same work as the boards and that could be brought together, integrated and given some sense of coherence.

Mr Bolton: It would be no problem to your association to undertake most of these tasks.

Mr Brown: We have publicly stated that it would be our wish to develop, by whatever structural changes were needed, organizations - five of them - which could deliver a whole service to meet all the educational and library needs of schools in their areas.

Mrs McIvor: In our original submission from the Western Board, those are the points we made about the education and library boards and what we are capable of doing. We talked about an integrated approach to the administration of education, and I believe the five education and library boards can do exactly that.

Mrs Odling-Smee: It would give much greater cohesion to planning, for instance, and inter-developmental work between schools.

The Chairman: You have so much duplication and the Government simply ignored it.

Mr McFarland: When the Department came here, we pressed them on the league table of LEAs in England, and where we fell. They dismissed it fairly rapidly on the basis that LEAs had many different functions. They included all sorts of other areas, or at least they were based on areas which included things other than education. You could not use that table, because it was not comparing like with like. Is that correct? Where are the areas that are different? Are they so different as to make invalid the argument?

Mr Brown: Two things, perhaps. First of all, an English local education authority is part of a county or a borough council. We have to recognize that fact. It is still the local education authority and it comprises elected members and co-opted members who represent interests within the community in a not dissimilar way, although the proportions are different from the education and library boards over here. For

example, there would be substantially more elected members and fewer co-opted members. But both categories exist. Most education authorities in England get their central treasury, personnel, establishment, architectural and corporate services from the County Council’s Chief Executive. So they do not have to provide those but all our boards, because they are stand-alone bodies, do have to provide those services. We have our own treasury, we have our own establishment and so forth. That is a clear cut difference — we do more tasks.

Look through the range of services that LEAs provide to schools and the public. We do everything that local education authorities in England do and provide more services, which only some or none of the local education authorities in England do. An example of this is the public library service which no local education authority in England provides, as far as I know, although some provide the school library service. At the moment we are still providing further and adult education. We know that is going to transfer. But at this present time, and one is looking for comparisons, that is another extra that is not done across the water. So we actually do more than a local education authority on a range of counts while performing all of their functions

Mr McFarland: They were saying "We have an area that the board had, which is based on education criteria in theory“. I think they were saying that those figures for an English LEA were often based on what the county council had as its road-sweeping area.

The reason there are X thousand children under West Sussex LEA is more geographical/administrative than educational. The criteria are different.

Mrs Odling-Smee: You could also say that that should be the case here in a sense, that we ought to be thinking about the particular geographical and community depositions here, plus transport and accessibility and the rural and the city. We have a very particular type of make-up so if you are idiosyncratic in England, you need to be idiosyncratic here.

The Chairman: What validity can we put on these figures?

Mr Brown: The only way I could answer that would be to say this. There was a very sizable debate within the body politic, that is the local body politic in England, about the nature of the organization there and the possible sizes of new local authorities, multi-functional local authorities. That debate centred round two factors. One was the fact that 60% of the budget of local authorities in England is spent on education so it is a very major service of great importance to the local authority. The second and key question was whether small authorities could provide an adequate education service for the children of their area. It was debated very extensively in the Local Government Commission that looked at that review. Again, my source for this is the Society of Education Officers Group which took a very keen interest in all of this.

The conclusion was that it was very important that education services were devolved as near to the people as they could be, and many of the smaller authorities were quite adequate vehicles for delivering education services especially, as our President has said, in a city environment. Where they were perhaps too small to provide a full range — and I am talking now about very small authorities, with a population of around 10,000, 15,000 or 20,000 — there was no reason why they should not co-operate and provide some joint services. So the principle of getting education near to the people was the dominant principle that came out of that debate.

Mr McFarland: Do we have easy access to the Great Britain equivalent? Is there someone who could say “I know these well enough to know that, although in theory they could be based on other considerations, in fact they are largely the same in most of those authorities”?

Mr Brown: Yes, interesting, Mr Hanley, when he was Minister, compared us with Yorkshire. He said that Yorkshire did not need five education authorities. We found out at that time it had nine, and now it has 11. He also said that Hampshire would be a good body to compare us with, and I believe Bedfordshire might just be in the frame at the present time as something that would be a useful comparator. It does seem to me that there are valid comparisons to be made with authorities across the water, but you need to be very careful to compare like with like.

The Chairman: I do not like to follow Ministerial or Departmental red herrings.

Mrs Odling-Smee: That was exactly my feeling, yes.

The Chairman: I regard Northern Ireland as unique, culturally different from across the water. How do you rate English, Scottish or Welsh performance? Have you a gut feeling as to how their new LEAs are working?

Mrs Odling-Smee: Is that a question we could answer when they are still finding their feet?

The Chairman: I know that it is subjective.

Mr Brown: In Scotland, a huge authority like Strathclyde was rated very poorly, yet in Bristol City, where I had a long discussion recently with the new director of education and a number of councillors, they are very pleased with the service’s being brought down to a single-city authority that can really concentrate on the problems they have in providing education in a multi-cultural environment with economic difficulties. Those are only pointers, it is probably fairly patchy at the moment.

The Chairman: There was this great idea of looking at the whole of Northern Ireland. We have equalized school meals and the deprivation factor in the calculations. We can take away all this business of differentiation. I am the sort of person who likes formulae. I am getting a bit afraid of standardization. “Rationalization” seems to be the buzz word. May we focus on that for a second.

Mrs Odling-Smee: I think your point is very well made. Any arrangement has got to be sensitive, flexible and responsive to local need. This is what we have been talking about all the time.

Mrs McIvor: Bringing this into the debate or the discussion makes no positive contribution at all. I do not think it is desirable because there are different uptakes and different areas, and we have not had a problem administering that. Each board addresses the problems in its own area as it sees fit, which is usually the best way. I have got a copy of the Department’s document. I looked at the figures and I wondered why it was bringing this into the debate. I go back again to what I mentioned earlier, differentiation

The Chairman: Am I looking at another red herring?

Mrs McIvor: Well I certainly do not believe it makes a contribution. I would say categorically that it makes no contribution to this at all.

The Chairman: I want to eradicate the red herrings — LEAs, multi-functional authorities and all the rest. We could get into all sorts of jargon and lose what we are really about.

Mr Brown: The bottom line, on this point, is that the boards believe in differentiation on two counts: one, when it is appropriate for the locality and, two, when it is fair. As long as we can satisfy these two criteria, what the system should be having is differentiation, because the needs of a small school in the Lecale area of Co Down are not the same as the needs of a school in very difficult urban area of Belfast or what have you. You need that local sensitivity to work with your head teachers, to work with your governors, to get a system of administration that suits your area.

The Chairman: Thank you very much for your presentation.

Mrs Odling-Smee: Thank you also for the way you have heard us. We are very grateful for being able to come because we think you are the people we should be talking to. We will send you all the things you need.

Witness:

Mr Andrews

(Castlereagh Borough Council)

The Chairman: Thank you very much for coming. You have submitted a 10-point document. Would you like to elaborate on that?

Mr Andrews: I will go through the different points. Firstly, we felt that the boards had been chosen out of the whole realm of education administration in Northern Ireland for this review and that if we were going to look at the administration of education in Northern Ireland, we should be looking at the Department of Education. It administers things which could be done equally well by the boards and which are done by the education authorities in England. The existing five education and library boards have provided, to our mind, an excellent service to the schools, the colleges, the libraries and the youth groups. We do not feel that there is necessarily a need for change, and we make that point. However, the Minister accepted that the boards should be more accountable in future.

Now, on the proposal to increase the number of elected representatives from 40 to 48, at a meeting at which I was not present, Castlereagh council felt that the percentage of elected representatives should be increased to 60% of the membership of the board. I was not able to give an argument against that at the council. I favour less than that because of the need to cater for transferors’ representatives and representatives from, for instance, the youth service and libraries who are on the education and library boards. I feel that somewhere around about fifty-fifty would probably be adequate, but our council decided on 60%, and that is what I must say on behalf of my council.

Now in Castlereagh we have felt rather aggrieved that we only have two members, whereas all the other areas of which the South Eastern Education and Library Board is made up have actually got at least three, and some have up to, I think, five. We find it very difficult to represent all the services provided in schools, colleges and libraries and for youth with just two elected representatives for Castlereagh. I think that three should be the minimum, to be honest.

The Chairman: Are you saying that the three-board model would be acceptable if you got enough councillors?

Mr Andrews: I will deal with that under item seven.

The Chairman: Very well.

Mr Andrews: The council cannot agree that substantial savings would be made from the proposals as they are put forward at the moment because of the restructuring that is involved. We understand that it is going cost one board alone £2 million to effect the changes, and the proposals refer to £2 million as the total amount it is hoped to save.

Now the boards, as they are constituted, have enabled all sections of the community to work together for the promotion of dialogue and understanding within the education system. The South Eastern Education and Library Board has representatives, apart from Sinn Fein, from all the different political groupings and has worked for the benefit, as far as possible, of the whole community and worked well, with very little ill feeling. The education system and the boards is one area that is best representative of the whole community. That is not only my impression but also the impression of other members of our council who have served on the board.

With regard to the restructuring, at item 7 you will see that if the restructuring of the education and library boards is absolutely essential, our council would find the three-board proposal more acceptable than the original four-board one for the reason that the South Eastern Education and Library Board would remain intact. We gave some thought to how the split up would work for the rest of the province, and it was the majority view on the council that the four-board proposal was never going to be a satisfactory arrangement. However, if it has to be split, while we prefer having the five boards, Castlereagh feels that the three-board model would be more reasonable and more acceptable. Simply to reduce the number of boards does not follow what is happening in the rest of the United Kingdom, and we have noted that in other areas of the United Kingdom, the number is increasing rather than decreasing.

With reference to the proposed incorporation of further and higher education colleges, that has gone beyond the point of no return now. The colleges all seem to be keen to progress along that line and, presumably, some form of funding will have to be set up.

Finally, while there may be a good case for a review of the system of education administration in Northern Ireland, we felt that this was something which was ideally suited to local administration — by that I mean a form of provincial Northern Ireland administration rather than by the Minister. I do not know how much one should attribute to the civil servants as the basis for some of the suggestions that were made and how much to the Minister’s ideas. I feel that some sort of Assembly would be the ideal place to look at education. This is one area where, from Castlereagh’s experience as representatives on the South Eastern Education and Library Board, people can work together very well in the field of education and if immediate action is not absolutely necessary, it should be left for such an elected Assembly.

If there are any questions that you would like to put, I will be happy to answer them.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

Mr Fowler: I am interested in point number 7 — that if restructuring of the education and library boards proves essential you would find three better than four. "You are going to be shot. Do you want us to use a cannon or a shotgun?"

Mr Andrews: To be honest, that is the way we feel about it. We would prefer to have been left with the five boards. Whenever the newspapers were given this statement the ‘Belfast Telegraph’ worked out that we were advocating a four-board proposal, which was never the intention. In fact it does not say that and it then had to publish a correction the next week, yet, we were blamed for supporting a four-board proposal. If it were possible, we would certainly like it to remain a five-board proposal until a local administration had an opportunity to look at it. That is our feeling in Castlereagh.

Rev Trevor Kirkland: It does not seem logical for the council, in number 7, to say "We like the three, but we note that everywhere else the reverse is happening". Would it not have been better for Castlereagh Council to say "We want either, or", than to be contradictory? It would seem that Castlereagh is interested only in protecting the South Eastern Education and Library Board, no matter what happens to all the other boards. "I am only interested in one board, no matter what happens the rest."

Mr Andrews: We made the argument in favour of five boards, and we now have another proposal before us which is not four boards. It does not mention five. Earlier on in our statement, under 2, we say that we are happy with the five boards and they should not be changed just for the sake of change. But we have had this document thrust on us which seems to be a final document and yet the original consultative document suggested four. We made strong representations that it should remain at five when the original consultative document was published.

Rev Trevor Kirkland: Some of these paragraphs appear to be suggesting, "At all costs keep the South Eastern, and to pot with the rest!"

Mr Andrews: The South Eastern is not being kept under the three-board proposal.

Rev Trevor Kirkland: Yes I understand that but the implication appears to be that at all costs the one that you are fighting for is just the South Eastern, that is the one you are really concerned about.

Mr Andrews: The South Eastern Board was being enlarged to include a bit of Newtownabbey and to work together with Belfast. You are reading too much into the fact that we think that something is more acceptable. We have already said that we do not want it changed at all, but we do say that something is more acceptable than something else. You have to read what we have said. We would prefer the three-board model to the original four-board proposal.

The Chairman: In other words, the five-board model should remain?

Mr Andrews: Possibly toned done slightly, that is basically what we are saying. We would be happy with that since we always wanted the five boards to stay the way they were until an Assembly could look at them. But then we were left with the position that we had a consultative document for four which was nonsensical. Look at the number of people who were being administered. In fact, in this proposal the number of people who are to be administered by one of the boards is much higher than any of the others, so we have tried to keep this down to a minimum. We could have made a very good case for anybody who wanted to go back to the five-board model if that were a choice that we had.

The Chairman: Is your point that if there is to be a review from top to bottom, and if somebody is going to force something, three is preferable to four?

Mr Andrews: We would look at that sadly, yes, but we thought that the consultative document would have listened more to what we said about the five boards, and we hoped that that would be the case.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

Mr Andrews: I did not want the case to go without our views being heard.

Witness: Rev Patrick Crilly

(representing Cardinal Cahal Daly

and The Most Rev Dr Seamus Hegarty, Bishop of Derry)

The Chairman: You are very welcome. I appreciate your attendance at the Forum Education Committee.

Fr Crilly: Thank you.

The Chairman: You are probably aware that in early July we debated the Minister’s announcement and his intention to have a legal directive placed in Parliament. The Forum thought that there had been very little consultation and that it should set up a Committee to examine these proposals in some depth. Please proceed as you wish.

Fr Crilly: Thank you very much for your welcome and for the opportunity to reflect on the questions that the Chairman has outlined. Can I clarify the point that he made about who I am and why I am here.

Cardinal Daly received an invitation from this Committee to make a presentation and he was not able to be here so, as any person in his position would do, he delegated to Bishop Hegarty, as the Bishop most affected by the proposed elimination of the Western Board,

“I think you would be best placed to address the Education Committee. If you are unable to do so, perhaps you could get someone to represent you.”

I am the one that it has fallen to. I am not normally a regular spokesperson for our Church on these matters, it is simply because I have been very involved in this particular case over the summertime that I was asked to represent our views. In the letter the Cardinal suggests that the points he made in his letter to Michael Ancram might serve as part of the case to be made. So in many ways I am basing my presentation on the outline of his letter, his personal submission to Michael Ancram. That will be my argument.

The Chairman: Do you have a copy of the Archbishop’s letter.

Fr Crilly: I am not sure whether I would be in a position to submit it or release it, but it might be worth your while contacting the Cardinal’s office and Bishop Hegarty’s office.

The Chairman: We certainly will. Obviously he has made an original response in his capacity as the Cardinal.

Fr Crilly: Yes, exactly, and Bishop Hegarty also has. I am not in a position to release them on their behalf but if you contact their offices, I am sure it will be possible for you to have them.

The Chairman: Yes. It is just that you may refer to the letters.

Fr Crilly: Yes, I appreciate that and I think it would be a good idea from your point of view. I think you would find them both useful.

I was just finishing my holidays in June when the Minister’s announcement was made suggesting a three-board structure for education in Northern Ireland. It was not the only significant publication about education this year. Just a couple of months before that UNESCO published a report called ‘Learning: the Treasure Within’. It was produced by an international commission on education for the 21st century, chaired by Jacques Delors. That report bases its ideas on four pillars - learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together and learning to be, and at an early stage it comes out in favour of one of those pillars as the foundation, and that is learning to live together. Can I quote from that report:

"Learning to live together by developing an understanding of others and their history, traditions and spiritual values and on this basis creating a new spirit which, guided by recognition of our growing inter-dependence and a common analysis of the risks and challenges of the future, would induce people to implement common projects or to manage the inevitable conflicts in an intelligent and peaceful way."

And at a further stage it says:

"The main parties contributing to the success of educational reforms are first of all the local community, including parents, school heads and teachers, second the public authorities and thirdly the international community. Many past failures have been due to insufficient involvement of one or more of these partners. Attempts to impose educational reforms from the top down or from outside have obviously failed."

These words suggest the link between education and democracy that is surely

at the heart of our present debate.

We wish our children, our young people and our adults to be well educated and we wish as parents and communities to exercise the right to be involved in that. We want them to learn all through their lives, not merely a series of facts but a system of living and working together which will bring us to a better, agreed, participative future. Therefore, we must and we do encourage in our schools and colleges various ways of participation in the running of the life of those schools and colleges. We try to show them this in family and parish life and we hope they will see it in society. For "education to live together” to be real this participation must be seen at local level and felt at local level. Small is beautiful. The distant edict delivered by fax, E-mail or courier is not always a sign of the participation into which we need to educate our children. If they are to learn about democracy it can surely be done only in the context of visible, local and accessible structures run by people they know and see in places that are at a reasonable distance from them. Efficiency alone, or even effectiveness, could be achieved by fewer people and more machines and yet be less human and less educative. A development of the class computerized administration system could reduce human contact even more unless it is used as an effective tool by real human decision-making communities.

We can see that new localized approach in the new local authorities set up this year in Britain where the smallest is a population of 19,000 in one in Scotland, 59,000 in one in Wales and 90,000 in one in England. The average size of a local education authority in Wales is 132,000; in Scotland it is 160,000. Why is it considered over-administration to have a board covering 251,000 in the West? I apologize for straying into the territory already covered by the Association of Education and Library Boards this morning, and by the submissions from individual boards. I am aware of them and I agree with them. My contribution is rather to outline the significance of where we are and where our behaviour is likely to take us.

I believe we must insist that our education be child, family and community centred. Inevitably that brings with it the question of values and I believe that it is specifically in the context of learning to live together that these values will be found, tried, exercised and communicated. Realists and financiers will say that it must come down to money. LMS has taught us to see the almighty budget as crucial to responsibility. That is true, but at the same time there will always be a price to pay for what is worthwhile. Savings should not always be the motive for the ways of educating our young, otherwise we end up short-changing and cheap-skating them. If we believe that people are the basis of our society we must be willing to invest money in them, in their education and in their future, otherwise we will be investing it at the rate of £70,000 per person per year in the Prison Service.

Having said that, I do not accept that the Minister’s proposal will save £2 million. If it could, why does he not show us why and how? Where is the financial appraisal and what are its assumptions? Previous experience of estimated savings proposed by the Department, for example in the suggested centralization of services, have proved wrong. So were many of the population figures in the proposed new board areas. These proposals do not carry a well researched ring with them. I could not agree to any generation of children being treated as guinea pigs on such an ill-informed basis.

The reason you are here today is that you value stability. Any society, any family, needs stability. Particularly now in the autumn of 1996 we need stability. This is no time to start moving the planks under our feet when we have difficulty enough in standing as it is. It is not long since the Minister promised five years of stability as a respite from all the changes since education reform in 1989. I do not recognize the value of stability in the proposal to make radical changes to the decision-making processes for education and our community. Our teachers and our overworked boards of governors are still reeling from the effects of so much change and so many new processes. It is, as everyone knows, becoming difficult to get people willing to sit on boards of governors. Very often the one thing they can hold onto is the trust they have in well known and well worn channels of advice and support in their local board. Take that away from them and they would find it difficult to cope. We have already lost a whole generation of teachers, the gathered wisdom of many years, to early retirement and a sense of no longer being useful, of being de-skilled in their richest years. We do not want this to happen again.

Schools and youth clubs have been a source of stability over the past 25 years for many young people from backgrounds where society had surrounded them with violence. Our teachers and our education system built up an account of goodwill and a debt of gratitude that they have a right to call on now. In the name of stability, at a time of upheaval, I ask you not to allow these proposals from the Minister to go through. Please recommend that they not be proceeded with.

I would like to illustrate the impact of these proposals with specific reference to the Western Board which I know best. At a time when the whole world is watching us search for a system or style of participative decision-making, there already exists in the West a body which has, sometimes painfully, developed a means of sharing decision-making that we dare not abandon. In the Western Board the Chairman and Vice-Chairman and its committees come from both communities and halfway through the life of the board they change places. There is always a Catholic and a Protestant at the head of each committee. This has allowed a consensus type of decision-making that makes voting a formal ratification of consensus rather than a basis for conflict or division.

Policy documents are prepared and worked through by groups involving officers and members. Difference of opinion is part of the challenge on the way to consensus, not a sign to stop. This atmosphere pervades the work of the board and shows all those working in it and serviced by it that working together and living together is something that can be learned. This has been highlighted by both Cardinal Daly and Bishop Hegarty and also by the leaders of the four main churches in Derry and Clogher in their submissions to Michael Ancram. It would seem strange to abandon the one group that seems to be getting to grips with local democracy for the sake of £2 million that few people believe could exist.

If I could go back to the wider community, I would also like to highlight the impact this proposal would have on the area West of the Bann. The campaign on behalf of the Western Board has come up with the term “Easternization” for the process that this illustrates. Fundamentally, Michael Ancram has admitted that the basic reason for his proposal is the need for reorganizing education in the Greater Belfast area. This should not be done at the expense of other areas. There has already been a reduction of services and infrastructure in the West, in roads, industry, health and education. The highest unemployment is in the West, the worst roads are in the West. Most of the inward investment and development in the West has come from the efforts of communities and individuals in the West rather than from Government

sources. The West notices these things and wonders why it is not wanted, and could you blame them. Marginalization is a great vogue word for a perennial problem of disaffected young people in society. The Minister has been encouraging the boards to develop ways of counteracting marginalization yet his own proposal is marginalizing yet again a section of our society in Northern Ireland that has done nothing to deserve it other than to live at a distance from Belfast, and surely there is no crime in that.

The striking thing to me is that a campaign which began as a lonely voice from the West has been taken up across the North, by councils and by all the other boards as you heard this morning. This is a real growth in the unanimity so clearly expressed in the West. Could I quote from the letter from Cardinal Daly to Michael Ancram when he said

“It is rare indeed to find unanimity in support of any single objective among all the Church leaders, all the schools - controlled, maintained, Protestant Voluntary Grammar and Catholic Voluntary Grammar, all the Chambers of Commerce, all 5 District Councils in the Western region. Within some of these bodies there is deep division and mistrust on many issues, hence the significance, the great significance, of the fact that there is unanimity among all these persons and groups in their demand for the retention of the Western Education and Library Board and in the strength of their opposition to its proposed abolition. Given the grave setback to inter-community relations ensuing from the events at Drumcree and after, this unanimity should not be ignored”

and then later on

“This sense of disparity of esteem and inequity of treatment is shared equally by Unionist and Nationalist, Protestant and Catholic, citizens and communities. The consequences of this for the prospects of reconciliation and an overall political settlement are surely very obvious.”

And Bishop Hegarty made reference to the same difficulty when he said in his

letter to the Minister

“We need to be able to show people that participation and democracy is possible, that discussion can be productive, that Government listens to serious arguments and is willing to act as a result. Otherwise how can we ever hope to wean people away from the violence that comes from frustration. In my own experience of recent times I am more convinced of the need for dialogue and mutual co-operation. Decisions taken unilaterally which may have economic or administrative validity will not serve their purpose in a comprehensive way if they do not find general acceptance among people. When opposition to such decisions reaches the level of opposition and rejection which has been apparent in recent months then prudence would demand that the original decision be reviewed.”

There will always be tensions in life and in society. How we solve and resolve those tensions is the question, not the existence of the tensions themselves. Tensions are there to be overcome. That is the process of growth. The UNESCO report that I referred to at the beginning talks of a number of tensions that will face us in the world and in education in the 21st century. Among them they list the tension between the global and the local, how to become world citizens without losing their roots and while continuing to play an active part in the life of the local community. There is also the tension between the goal and the process, the ambition and the journey, the tension between the spiritual and the material. Today we also look at the

tension between Government aims and people’s needs. As Jacques Delors put it

“ Education is at the heart of both personal and community development, its mission is to enable each of us without exception to develop all our talents to the full and to realize our creative potential, including responsibility for our own lives and achievement of our personal aims.”

This responsibility for our own lives brings out other tensions in communities. One thing is certain, we all want community involvement of a credible nature in the management of the education of a realistic number of people at a reasonable proximity. We already have that in the five boards. It is not broken. Please do not try to fix it.

I said at the beginning that I have come at the request of Bishop Hegarty of Derry to represent the views and interests of Bishop Hegarty and Cardinal Daly who was invited by the Forum to make a presentation and who unfortunately cannot be present. If I were to sum up what I was asked to do here today on behalf of our Church, I would put it simply in the words of Cardinal Daly from his letter

“For all these reasons I most strongly urge that the proposal be not proceeded with.”

The Chairman: Thank you very much. I am sure both the Cardinal and Bishop Hegarty would be extremely proud of your presentation.

Fr Crilly : Thank you.

The Chairman: Obviously what your thesis is, to quote the more simplistic quote I picked up out of it - if it’s not broken don't fix it is what your main thesis is.

Mr Fowler: Fr Crilly, our experience during this week has almost totally been a submission against any change in the five boards, almost totally. Is there some reason that would suggest to you that children’s education would suffer in a three-board set-up.

Fr Crilly: My own personal belief is, yes, I believe it would, because I believe that education is best carried on in a family type community atmosphere where there is confidence around them and resourcefulness and a sense of shared responsibility. Where there is doubt and tension in the teachers and in the parents and in the community then I believe that is bound to influence, and from that point of view I think it would suffer. The point that the Minister keeps coming back to, and I have been on two delegations to the Minister, is that the change of administrative structures would not at all impact on the services being provided, and I think that is looking on services with the machine mentality, being able to communicate instructions by fax, E-mail or courier as I said earlier, rather than through the well developed and well grown inter-personal relationships and team spirit which are necessary to build a true shoulder-to-shoulder type of support from both administration and advisory services. For that reason I personally believe that the teaching and the learning would go on, there is no doubt about that, but I believe it would be missing something which is significant in the whole education process, which is that “education in learning to live together” contributes towards a deeper understanding of what democracy means for the life of every community.

Mr Fowler: In your submission you made reference to the fact that this could precipitate the loss of teachers. Over the last 10 to 15 years there was a flow of teachers from the profession into industry and office management, some of them even going to the church. This seems to be a natural flow. This feared movement to three boards could produce a similar flow, only this time it could be different. There would not be the same availability of employment for them. Do you agree?

Fr Crilly: I would not totally agree with your initial premise that there was a flow from teaching to industry and to other jobs as a change of employment. I do believe that post-1989, when the education reform came in and the actual working processes in the classroom and the school became so different, quite a number of people who were reaching the last stage in their teaching career decided that this was more than they were going to be willing to cope with and therefore they would leave it to the younger ones and they would get out. There is still I believe a group of teachers who are just, if you like, sitting on the edge of credibility and who are surviving admirably and contributing tremendously, as did those who took early retirement post-reform. I think that wisdom in persons is more important to the education system than knowledge of structures and processes, and I would be afraid at the moment that those whom we really need to hold onto because of their wisdom and teaching experience over the years might well see the break of those personal links and known structures to be the last straw. I fear that it might lead to a loss of some very good teachers from the profession.

Rev Trevor Kirkland: So far as the maintained sector is concerned, if all the boards were abolished it would be almost irrelevant. How many boards would have no effect, or very little effect, upon the maintained sector?

Fr Crilly: I am very glad you asked that because I had intended to put that into my presentation and then, as the presentation developed, it was going. to be a little bit out of kilter with the rest of it and I thought, hopefully, that somebody will ask the question and allow me to explain it. I do not agree. I think you are assuming that the running of the maintained sector is totally in the hands of the CCMS.

Rev Trevor Kirkland: Not totally, but a fair bit of it.

Fr Crilly: CCMS deals with the administration side in terms of boards of governors and so on, but that does not take into consideration the fact that budgeting is totally through the hands of the boards, school meals are totally through the hands of the boards and the advisory service is totally through the hands of the boards. School transport is also totally through the hands of the boards. The overall policy for a board area which, if I could use the illustration of policies towards small rural schools, is a policy that can only be made by the board; it cannot be made by CCMS. The employer in the maintained sector is definitely the CCMS and therefore that has direct relevance to processes of employment and also to the workings of boards of governors, because they work under terms of reference slightly different to those of the boards of governors in the controlled sector. But all of those other areas are common to both maintained and controlled, which is not true of the other sectors of

education and is why we have the representation of the trustees on each of the boards. That very structural statement points out the fact that the boards do impact very much on the day-to-day administration. All of that is part of the normal working relationship that goes on, statutorily speaking, between both sectors and the boards.

Rev Trevor Kirkland: The point of my question is that in the CCMS review of the arrangements for the administration of education and related services in Northern Ireland you specifically state

“The CCMS would argue that the interests of the Catholic sector cannot be adequately promoted within a five-board structure”.

One of the options you have is for the total abolition of all the boards, with one leader board and regional offices. So you would not be affected at all.

Fr Crilly: Sorry I cannot speak, I am not delegated to speak, on behalf of the CCMS, but I think you are referring to a 1993 document.

Rev Trevor Kirkland: Yes, 1992.

Fr Crilly: This is 1996 and I think the situation that we are dealing with is not necessarily the same as in 1992, but the one thing I had to make sure was that I was very clear on my remit, especially since I am not normally a spokesman, and one of the things that I did have to make very clear was that, since the CCMS covers the administrative side and has a civil service of its own, I cannot speak on behalf of it. I speak on behalf of the trustees.

Rev Trevor Kirkland: As far as the chalk-face is concerned, it does not matter what happens in administration, it will not affect the pupils in the classroom. They will still get their three hours. They will still get whatever other activities they have to do. The day-to-day running of the school will be affected very little by any administrative changes.

Fr Crilly: That is the Minister’s approach, that is the Minister’s opinion. That does not tally with the letters that have come in from schools all over the Western Board and, I think, from further afield. It does not tally with the attitudes of the teachers expressed in those letters, it does not tally with the attitudes of parents.

Rev Trevor Kirkland: Yes, but you would accept that when there are any changes you can whip up a head of steam. You can get parents to sign any petition you put before them, as a general rule, if you present things as black and as bad enough. If we go back over the change that was brought in over the curriculum, there was very little effect upon the pupils themselves. There may have been some ripples of discontent, but those went past. Remember, you are only talking about a couple of years. The ones who are there may be affected, but the new ones coming into school are starting with a blank sheet.

Fr Crilly: You may be right. I do not agree with that and I do not think that simply whipping up a head of steam can explain why in the Western Board area 110,000 signatures to a petition were got during summer holidays when schools were closed and many people away. The numbers are against that interpretation: people have come out, all the voluntary organizations have come out in support, all the political parties, all the trade unions, all the chambers of commerce, all the Churches, all the schools. You know, it is simply impossible to achieve that type of unanimity by pressure. It simply does not work like that and anybody in the political world surely will agree with that.

Mr Bolton: I am very happy with your presentation. It will be of great assistance in coming up with a decision. Thank you for it. Several of the folk who have appeared in front of us here have complained that it was just the boards coming into the firing line for examination on this, and that really one of the areas that should be looked at is the Department because it has a massive budget. And not only the Department but the whole education system should have been looked at and taken into consideration here. Now this would include CCMS for example and I appreciate that you are not a spokesman for CCMS. However, what is your view on the idea that there should be a complete revamp or examination of education, including the Department and all those agencies involved in it?

Fr Crilly: When the review was going on initially, everybody in the educational world was making the recommendation that if the structures of education are to be reviewed, then let us review them and let us not be piecemeal in it. Now that situation was true then, but I do not think that the current situation would lead us to draw the same conclusion. That would rather be saying that we want to go further than the Minister is going and causing fresh upheaval, while what we are trying to do at the moment is say “Look, you know, we really have had enough.” Education cannot cope with this constant changing and we do need a time of stability. The schools need it, the pupils need it and the parents do not know where they are.

The teachers and boards of governors are at a loss. Now is not the time. We must surely, above all else when we are dealing with education, allow stability to grow at some stage. We would be inclined to believe that, and if you compare, for example, those figures that are given for the population size of the new educational units in Wales, Scotland and England with the sizes that these proposals seem to be suggesting for Northern Ireland, it would seem that there is some kind of an experimental base to suggestions like this which is running against the current Government policy in Britain, and that does not make sense. Therefore, I would say that your logic breaks down, and comments that were sensible in 1993 are not sensible at present.

Mr McFarland: Suppose we could get stability now and it was agreed that the five boards would remain in being for the moment but that there would be a review in a couple of years' time or when the situation had settled a little more. One of the other things we have heard from people coming before us is that there should be one education system and that all the different little bits of the integrated sector, the maintained sector, all these little satellites that have grown up for historic reasons, should be brought in and there should simply be a board structure for everybody. Is that something that you think would cause a great deal of angst?

Fr Crilly: I think the value of that could be developed while at the same time not removing the respect for individuality that those different sectors would wish to keep. You are aware of the tremendous reaction from the GBA sector when the suggestion was made that the funding for all schools be held and channelled on an equal level and with an equal formula through the boards. The voluntary grammar schools immediately went up in arms and said “No, we won't have that, we need our own individuality.” And it is the same with the integrated sector as well. It would wish to have its individuality respected. I was not all that happy that the voluntary grammar schools did succeed in retaining a separate type of formula for their funding. I thought it would have been a good idea to centralize the funding for all types of schools, that funding would be given on an equal formula for all. I think it is possible to develop board structures with a good knowledge of the local area without tramping on the toes of the need for individuality within the different sectors that make up the total. I think we all make up the one total of groups which are working towards the education of children and society.

The Chairman: What you are saying is that it is not just a matter of reviewing the whole of education. What you are making an appeal for is much more than “Not now, Minister”, you know, as if there were another date round the corner when maybe somebody could look at it again. You are saying that education needs a period of predicted stability.

Fr Crilly: Yes.

The Chairman: It is not just a matter of people in Northern Ireland, as somebody suggested. There is a sort of an implication that if I'm not shot at dawn you could shoot me at 6 o'clock. You favour a period of stability. Is that it?

Fr Crilly: I do, and I like your expression “predicted stability”. I think the two words go well. At the moment teachers are watching the postman more than the pupils because they do not know what is coming in next. We would need a time when we can save paper, when there is less documentation coming out to the schools, and allow the teachers to have confidence in who they are and what their work is and allow them to concentrate on the pupils and on parental relationships with the pupils and community relationships with the schools. There have been many admirable things that have been developing in education over the last while, but we do need time to allow them to be assimilated by real people and brought into real families.

The Chairman: Would you say chalk-face should not be altered and instability destabilizes?

Fr Crilly: That is right.

The Chairman: Is your concern that it does affect the chalk-face?

Fr Crilly: That would be my concern and I believe that it is inevitable that it will affect the chalk-face, or the computer face, or whatever the current word may be.

The Chairman: Thank you very much for coming and making your presentation. Please take back to your Bishop and the Cardinal our thanks for your being allowed to make an excellent presentation.

Fr Crilly: Thank you, Mr Chairman, and can I thank you and the members for making this such a pleasant occasion and making it so easy. When I was coming up the road I must admit I thought of this as a very difficult situation. You made it a very enjoyable one, and I thank you for that.

Witness:

Mr J K Gardiner

The Chairman: Good afternoon, Mr Gardiner. You are very welcome to the Northern Ireland Forum and the Education Committee. This Committee was set up in July after the Minister announced his proposals to change the administration of Northern Ireland education from five boards to three. We look forward to hearing you. I presume you would like to say something first by way of submission.

Mr Gardiner: Thank you very much for receiving me. I think it is great for a member of the public to be able to come in and speak a few words to an elected body for a change, and I would like to, at the beginning, praise the idea of the Forum and the different Committees. I hope there will always be an elected body where people can come and listen to debate, and even make submissions. The time is long overdue for an elected body to be here in Northern Ireland. There is no elected body, and that gives such an unstable feeling in the mind of the general public that it contributes to violence. I hope you will take that point and please make sure an elected body stays in Northern Ireland for good.

Now, I took a great interest in education when I retired at 65. Before that I was on the buses for 27 years and then my wife and I had a little business in Limavady for 20 years. After I finished business I took up the very important job of school patrol man outside a Catholic school. I myself am a Protestant and I stayed there for nearly three years. I have a testimony from them as to how I behaved, and I got a presentation from them. Then I also helped to organize a cross-community group in my local village, Articlave, and I made sure that the people who were helping me represented fairly the breakdown of the people.

I made sure that the Committee reflected the breakdown of the Protestant/Catholic difference in the village - it is predominantly Protestant - but I think I was very fair and for two years I was able, with the help of the Committee, to take these underprivileged children from both traditions to the zoo, to Cultra, to the Folk Park at Omagh and here and there, and I really was thrilled to see those children being together — though they found it very awkward, I know that. However, after I gave up that and handed over the torch to someone else I managed to get another grant for them — still cross-community. I felt that I would like to express something which has been in my mind since I was at school, and I am now in my seventy first year. Here is my letter which I wrote to Mr Tony Blair, President Mary Robinson and a number of other very important people, and I got letters back from most of them.

“My name is James Kennedy Gardiner. I was born in Articlave village Co Londonderry, Northern Ireland, I am 70 years of age and I do not belong to any political party. My Father and Mother were both born in Articlave and attended the village school there. They were educated with all creeds and classes. When it came to my turn to go to school, the same school, someone had decided that the Catholics should not attend the mixed school. So, I was educated with only Protestants through no fault of my own. I think that that was a bad thing. My Father and Mother had little Catholic school friends and I had not. I think that that was not fair to both the Catholics and I. This system is still in operation in Ireland today, North and South. Could something be not done to change it?”

Now, I feel very deeply about that and I will soon be leaving this old world. I am glad, after all these years that I can put that to an elected body, that is you, Gentlemen. Evidently I am against separate schools, and there is another reason. In ‘The Price of My Soul’ on pages 61-62 Bernadette Devlin writes

"St Patrick’s Academy, Dungannon was a militantly republican school, and I notice how a partisan slant was given to the Vice-Principal, Sister Benignus, whom we called Reverend Mother, and who is among the people who have influenced me, one of those I most respect. To Sister Benignus, everything English was bad. She hated the English. She didn't hate the Protestants, but her view was that you couldn't very well put up with them — they weren't Irish. We learned Irish history, people who went to State Schools learned British. We were all learning the same things, the same events, the same period of time but the interpretations we were given were very different."

Now, I got that book I suppose 20 years ago and that feeling of unfairness and injustice which I had in my mind was inflicted by the Reverend Mother that she “couldn't very well put up with” Protestants for they weren't Irish. Now I am Irish, I am North Irish. Of course, my ancestors probably came from Scotland, but where did President DeValera’s ancestors come from? And if you start to go into things like that you end up with the fact that the ancestors of everyone in Ireland came from somewhere. I suppose the Reverend Mother thought you had to be a Catholic, a Roman Catholic, or you had to give allegiance to the Dublin Government before you could be Irish, and I think that is absolutely ridiculous. I am glad that after all these years I did not go out and throw stones at Catholics just because she said that, but I have managed after all these years to be able now to redress that grievance.

Now I know that you are particularly interested in the mechanics of how you will run the education system. I have read in an article that it is a good system. I do not think it is.

If we had a good system, where people were being educated properly, we would not have had 25 years of violence from both sides. And while I am a Protestant, and I am an evangelical Protestant, that is to say I believe in a personal relationship with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, I want to be fair to both sides, to all sides. I believe that the leaders of the four main Christian churches have failed.

They have failed in their leadership of the educational experience. If children had been given the proper Christian leadership, we would not have to mourn the deaths of so many people, including the young man that is lying dead in London at this very moment.

I hope that the Committee will see to it that the four leaders will not be given this custody of the education of our young people in the future. If they are, we will be back to square one again. There need to be fresh minds brought in. People who should be able to inject the spirit of Christianity rather than the spirit of denominationalism.

I hope that you, for all you can, will push the idea of integrated schools. I know that it will not be easy. I know there are 33 going, and I am delighted about that, but if that cannot be, then will you please push for joint school meetings — where young Catholics and Protestants can be brought from school to school and educated together.

You know in this cross-community group that I organized, I found that when the mothers brought down the little catholic boys, they did not want to go with the other boys because they were strangers, and I had to work on them and tell them that we are all friends. And I taught them four things. I sent this home with the children to let the parents see what I was teaching them. Number one, everyone must respect everyone. Number two, everyone has a right to be different. Number three, everyone should think for himself, and number four everyone has responsibility to be of good behaviour.

I hope then, that before the four leaders of the four main Christian denominations are given any part in the running of the schools they will be brought before you people. This is the only elected body we have in Northern Ireland. This is the body that should be speaking for all the people, and I am sorry that there are parties today staying away. Why? They do not want to hear the likes of me.

I hope that you will make sure that there will be a common menu for education and no hidden agenda, that it will not be given a twist, a different interpretation. And I hope that you will also ask to see what kinds of religious teaching are being given. Because whether it is a Protestant school or a Catholic school, whether it is a state school or not, all religious teaching should be with the purpose of making people good, not turning them into something that is going to go out to work against the state. Also, it should not turn them into people who are going to react badly whenever something happens. I am not going to say that one side only is causing our troubles because that would not be true. The four leaders must share equal responsibility for the state that we are in today. I do not blame the politicians completely. I do not blame the paramilitaries completely. They are to blame up to a point, but the spiritual leaders are the people who should have been giving a lead to both.

Now there are seven things I would like to mention about schools, and I will go over them very quickly. Then I will be finished.

Number one: teach the children that no one has got the title deeds of Ireland in his back pocket. No one owns Ireland, or Northern Ireland. We have the loan of it.

Teach them that the only way to solve disputes or change the constitution is by meekness. The meek shall inherit the earth. Violence has failed. Violence has only produced more violence until the whole countryside, my town, my district has been affected. Coleraine was never violent, the attitude of mind was never like that, never. Violence only begets violence.

There are four components, including land. But teach them the three components: the people, the faith and the language. Teach them that these all had to be imported. They are all implants. Teach them that all denominations are faulty and teach them to love their enemies.

Gentlemen, thank you very much for hearing me. I am willing to answer any questions that you want to put to me, to the best of my ability.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr Gardiner. You submission was very refreshing and much different from many of the submissions we have had to hear. Many people were specialists in education administration, and it is very refreshing to have a different point of view.

Rev Trevor Kirkland: Are you aware of the educational system in the Netherlands?

Mr Gardiner: No, I am not.

Rev Trevor Kirkland: Well, they have three separate school systems — Protestant, Catholic and state. They have a triplicate of everything. Why is it there has been no trouble there for many years?

Mr Gardiner: Because the leaders have given their own leadership in their country. That is the point I made very strongly. Our leaders have failed.

Rev Trevor Kirkland: Yes, but my point is that separate schooling does not mean trouble. The Netherlands has separate schooling, but no trouble.

Mr Gardiner: Well, the only thing I would say about that is that you would probably find that the religious leaders in the Netherlands are much more liberal than ours.

Mr Fowler: I am a member of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, and I would like to clear up one thing with you. We have no single church leader. Our Moderator is what the title says. He moderates our general assembly for one week every year. After that he is just a PR man, going round the country, bringing greetings. The people with the power are our Government Committee of the Church, which is a big body. They are the people you have got to blame.

Mr Gardiner: I am sorry, I cannot accept that, because you see this is what is wrong with our country. Someone will always erect a barricade to defend himself. The Presbyterians must carry the same blame as the rest.

Mr Fowler: I must make it clear that our Moderator is in the office for one year, and he is a Coleraine man at the moment.

The Chairman: I think, Mr Fowler, that Mr Gardiner has taken your point.

Mr Fowler: Right.

Mr Curran: Mr Gardiner, I hope you are going to be with us for a long time. Actually I was very interested in what you were saying, and indeed I listened with quite intense interest. I think you are really saying that we need to co-operate much more in Northern Ireland.

Mr Gardiner: Yes.

Mr Curran: Not only in education, but indeed on a whole range of issues.

Mr Gardiner: Yes, indeed.

Mr Curran: It is a breath of fresh air to have a member of the public, and not somebody coming from one of our quangos, to tell us how it is going to be done.

Mr Gardiner: Thank you very much.

The Chairman: May I thank you for making the long journey down from Coleraine. For a 70-year-old you are looking an extremely fit and able man. I too wish you long life and happiness.

Mr Gardiner: Thank you very much and I may say to them that I have nothing but the best of feelings towards the Presbyterians.

The Chairman: There you are

Mr Gardiner: Well, Gentlemen, now that I am leaving, I hope you will see to it that you are in power or that some subsequent body will be in power for the rest of time. And do not let the power that you have got slip; you are the elected, you are the only people that I acknowledge in Northern Ireland because you have been elected, and I am very glad that you have given me the chance to speak. I will not waste any more of your time.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

Mr Gardiner: May I shake hands with you all?

The Chairman: You can indeed.

Witnesses:

Mr P Carvill and Mr D Hill

(Department of Education)

The Chairman: Good afternoon, Gentlemen. You are very welcome again.

Mr Carvill: Thank you

The Chairman: For the record, first of all, I want to check some details with you. The last day we were presented with a synopsis of some statistics. It said you are giving what looks like a PAFT analysis and also some form of economic appraisal. We asked for those last Friday. We received them this morning.

We forwarded you a number of questions, some of which had been asked on 19 September. We sent you some pages of questions which were really covering the four areas that had been outlined. PAFT was part of that. Some questions are still unanswered. It is important that we get continuity and succinct answers.

We have had time to distil some of the information. To assist you I have shortened the questions to about half dozen.

Perhaps you could read those out, Mr McFarland. Members have burning issues to get discussed and analyzed.

Mr Carvill: There was a list, Mr Chairman, of about 20 or 30 questions which you faxed to us.

Mr McFarland: We have reduced it to the key ones.

Mr Carvill: If I could just clarify the timetable point, the list of questions, I think, arrived with us on Monday about lunchtime.

We had taken delivery of the request from the Committee for papers on economic appraisal and on PAFT which we prepared and sent to you. I do not think that we were specifically working to a Friday deadline. The request from the Committee was that we should make those papers available as soon as possible, and we sought to do that.

The Chairman: For the record, I specifically asked for it to be with us on Friday. I have a note of that.

Mr Carvill: That was not my understanding.

Mr McFarland: You maintained at our last meeting the main reason for the restructuring of the education and library boards from five to three was not financial savings but increased administrative effectiveness. Can you give us more details on the anticipated administrative and educational improvements?

Mr Carvill: We believe that administrative effectiveness would be improved partly in the existing services for schools by reducing duplication and wasted effort between boards. It would make collaboration and co-operation between the boards easier, five separate boards being rather more difficult to co-ordinate than three. We believe, for reasons that I think we discussed with the Committee last time, that it would improve the equity of resource distribution between schools. We think also that the changes in the structure of the system would actually improve accountability at local level, and again we spent some time at the last session talking about the changes in representation and in the role of district councillors. Finally, we think the changes would also reduce the number of boundaries which are no longer as meaningful as they should be in educational terms and often create unnecessary problems, boundaries I mean between boards. I am thinking particularly of the Belfast situation and, again, I will not repeat the ground that we went over at the last session because you are asking me to be concise.

Mr Hill: Could I just add to that very briefly. Our concerns about duplication between boards are based to a large extent on reports published by the inspectorate, and I am quite happy to leave with the Committee two of those reports which, for example, make statements such as

“ the absence of clearly defined areas of responsibility results in some cases in the duplication and repetition of training provision.”

It became increasingly obvious that there was a significant duplication of effort within and between boards occasioned by the present arrangements, so the source of a lot of those concerns are concerns expressed by the inspectorate, but again I appreciate the brevity point. Those comments are not in anyway intended as a general criticism of PAFT services. PAFT services are generally very good but there are significant problems from duplications which have been recorded by the inspectorate.

The Chairman: We can now move down the rest of these questions. These questions are already partially answered or will want exploration. I would rather the Committee members started to go through their concerns or areas of worry, in other words things that they were not satisfied with the answers about.

I want to just open with one or two small points. The last day you did spend some time talking about comparators. The statistics that we have been able to get our hands on have been considerable. The consistent thing that comes out is that in Scotland they have increased the number of areas of administration and Wales and England are the same.

Mr Carvill: I have seen some of the comments that you referred to and the comparisons between trends in developments here and trends in developments in England and Wales, and I have seen the view that the proposed developments here are inconsistent with the trends in local authority developments in England and Wales.

That view is actually based on a misunderstanding of what is happening, I do not think there is any inconsistency because the two situations are entirely different. The comparisons that have been drawn are, therefore, misleading, and may I just explain why.

The Chairman: Very quickly.

Mr Carvill: Well, first of all, in Northern Ireland we are looking at the needs of the education sector alone. The education and library boards are single purpose authorities and the only function for which they are responsible is education.

The Chairman: Sorry, Mr Carvill, but we are quite aware of all that. And all the rest of it and we divined that the driving force for the areas, for the size of the areas, was 60% or more driven by education needs. Could you try to tell us why, where England is going for small, close, comfortable community relationships in administration, we are simply going in the opposite direction?

Mr Carvill: What you have to remember is that in England they are moving from a system which is a two-tier system where you have county councils responsible for some services and district councils, very small district councils responsible for very local services to a unitary system which combines those two sets of functions.

Now the question is what size of authority is appropriate for that combined range of local and regional services and they have reached a view there that is not at all what we are doing here. We are looking here at the appropriate size of authorities for education alone.

The Chairman: Thank you.

The 25 June document told us that this is not really financially driven. I want you to have regard to how paragraph 4 equates with what is actually happening. That paragraph, to me, strongly indicates that the engine behind this is purely financial.

Mr Carvill: I do not have the paragraph immediately in front of me but I think the point is clear. I think the Minister has been very consistent throughout this exercise and that his main objective is to improve the effectiveness of the system. He is also concerned with the efficiency of the system and with its cost. He believes that the changes he has proposed will make improvements in both of those directions, but it is not a question of its being either effective or economic; both are important. Effectiveness is more important, but economy is also very important.

The Chairman: Could I just take you to 8.14. Hugh Smyth said there were 64 words on his page, but I never counted them. Look down at the third bull point and your estimated savings. I did a little bit of counting on number one and on your awards system.

Mr Carvill: Yes.

The Chairman: Looking at that and at how your working party set about its task, how did you achieve the figure of £1.6 million saving?

Mr Carvill: The £1.6 million is the total estimated savings on all of the services, awards, accounts, audit et cetera which are listed there.

The Chairman: Right.

Mr Carvill: The paper which I sent to the Committee yesterday goes into rather more detail obviously than —

The Chairman: Can I just take that up? Could you tell me what year those figures are based on.

Mr Carvill: Yes, the exercise was carried out in 1994, and it was based on data which applied in 1991, 1992 or 1992/93, depending on the exact data because in some cases more up to date information was not available. That is the .......

The Chairman: In fact that would have been what the Capita report was working on.

Mr Carvill: Yes. The entire exercise was based on the same data.

The Chairman: In other words, the appraisal was carried out on the facts and figures that were in the Capita report.

Mr Carvill: I am not sure what document you are referring to.

The Chairman: You have produced the statistics and all the rest of it.

Mr Carvill: Yes, the statistics. The year to which the data related is given in the paper which was sent to the Committee yesterday. It is quite clearly set out there.

Mr Hill: Just to be clear, most of the statistics used and certainly all the figures in relation to staff numbers and costs were actually supplied by the education and library boards directly through one board, not by Capita. Capita was used to provide additional information and to look at the comparisons with England because Capita had recently completed a detailed exercise in the boards and was therefore very familiar with the staffing structure and organization.

The Chairman: I take your point. I discovered that the figures we were presented with contained an overestimation by 10% of staff, 20% on the other side, in the opposite direction, and an underestimation in the number of awards.

There is an area of genuine concern felt very strongly by every member of this Committee, and not only have we felt it, but everyone who has made representations to us has felt it. Now this is an area which will be serious to put it mildly and, therefore, this is your opportunity. It looks as though the basis of the work that has been done and the facts and figures that have been presented are not only suspect but are in error. There is a margin of error that is beyond normal tolerance. In other words, most of us work in a world where there can be margins of errors and tolerances that would be accepted. But this is something that is so inaccurate as to throw grave doubts on everything that we have been trying to base our report on.

Mr Hill: As I said before, the figures on which the grants and awards information was based were supplied by each education and library board. The key underestimation of numbers of awards was a figure supplied by the Southern Board in August 1994 and corrected in 1995. I actually looked up the file, and looked up the Southern Board Officer’s letter only this morning.

The Chairman: Surely we are beyond the stage of correcting figures that somebody else has discovered are wrong. We are at the stage of serious discussion. This is not the sort of thing that should be going on, on the morning of a meeting like this, where we are getting a letter in from one party and a letter from yourselves rubbishing it. This is not childish stuff. We are talking serious stuff.

Mr Hill: I am clarifying where the inaccuracy arose in practice. Whilst the staffing figure was subsequently changed, the actual cost of the staff did not change significantly with the result that the findings in 1994 were still relevant. But the actual Working Group report, which I am sure you have, shows quite clearly that one board spends twice as much per award on administration than another board.

The Chairman: Your basic figure was 10% on the staff, and your other basic figure was 20% out on the other side — the wrong side. We are not talking about boards giving you a wrong figure. You should have correction mechanisms between the Department and the boards. I am not blaming you as people for it. Here is the dilemma we are in. Someone is pointing out to us that there is grievous error.

Mr Hill: The point I am trying to make to you is that, yes, those figures were based on data which was subsequently corrected. The Working Group has produced a new report based on new data, updated data.

The Chairman: These results were found to be incorrect. The burning question is obviously this: has everything else been based on the same data?

Mr Hill: All the information on which the data and the costings were based was supplied by the boards, re-issued to the boards, and in a number of instances the boards corrected their own figures. Those corrections were quite significant in the case of awards, but the fact remains that the most recent assessment by the Working Group itself still confirms that there are major differentials in the administrative expenditure across the five boards, and that those differentials point clearly to potential savings.

The Chairman: I accept the points you are making. We are aware of that. I do not want to leave this until I get it cleared. This compilation of material — I am given this, and somebody starts to work on it. He finds an error, and this comes down the line. Do you not think that this does not happen in other organizations? We are all fallible. But how much other work may have brought us to results which could be off kilter?

Mr Carvill: It is perhaps, not surprising that people have been challenging and questioning these figures to the Committee, because, when people are unhappy with the conclusion that is reached on an exercise, they do tend to attack some of the premises on which the conclusion is based. I only say that all the data which was used has been released to the boards, and in some cases, as Mr Hill has said, the figures have been corrected by the boards. I have seen no correction made which is of a nature or of an order that would in any way question the reliability of the order of magnitude of the savings which we were estimating. We made it very clear to the Committee throughout the exercise that what we were estimating are orders of magnitude.

The Chairman: Is there a double audit of awards, accounts? I think that somebody has made a double audit in there.

Mr Carvill: Sorry, I do not understand the point.

The Chairman: Paragraph 1.6, is there a double audit on that?

Mr Carvill: I do not understand the double-audit point.

The Chairman: Page 14 says awards, accounts.

Mr Carvill: Audit transport, wages et cetera. That is simply a list of the executive services.

The Chairman: I am looking at the actual copy.

Mr Carvill: I cannot understand your question, I do not understand it.

The Chairman: It is probably an auditor’s question, one of these things pointed out to me very forcefully.

Mr Carvill: Perhaps the more detailed paper which we sent yesterday will help in that regard.

Mr Hussey: You refer to duplication of services. Are you implying that in your opinion the services offered by all five boards are identical?

Mr Carvill: I am saying that all five boards have the same range of responsibilities, that all five boards carry out the same functions in a number of areas. I am not saying that they all do exactly the same things in exactly the same way. But I think there is a very significant amount of overlap in some things. For example, they each have a Chief Executive, they each have a Chief Librarian, they each have an accounts section, they each have an internal audit section, and they each have an architectural services section. So I think there is a lot of overlap, yes.

Mr Hussey: Perhaps the services offered by all five boards are not identical in that they are more related to the communities that they are dealing with. Have you any comment?

Mr Carvill: Each board obviously does relate to its own community.

Mr Hussey: You are admitting that?

Mr Carvill: Well, of course it does.

Mr Hussey: Thank you.

Mr Carvill: I think that the way in which they administer similar services is very similar. We are talking here about the administration of the services.

Mr Hussey: So you are admitting also that they each have a community to service?

Mr Carvill: Well they each have an area for which they are responsible. They are the education and library ...... .

Mr Hussey: You mentioned the English boards cutting down from a two-tier system. Why is it then the intention of DENI to move towards a two-tier system? This regionalization of services will create a two-tier system.

Mr Carvill: Well, let me be clear what I meant by a two-tier system in the England and Wales context. The two-tier system there is the two separate sets of local authorities, one of which deals with regional services and the other with district council level services.

Mr Hussey: That is exactly the point I am getting at. You are talking about regionalized services and local services. And they are moving away from that, whereas, by the regionalization of services, surely DENI is going to work towards what boards in England are moving away from.

Mr Carvill: I do not think so, because what we were contemplating here on regionalization was that the education and library boards would, if you like, come together to provide a service collectively. We looked particularly at the concept of a lead board which could provide the same service to each of the five boards.

Mr Hussey: A regionalized service.

Mr Carvill: You could so describe. It was a regionalized service, yes.

Mr Hussey: I am looking at a document which I presume came from DENI. It is entitled ‘Services Proposed for Regionalization’ — I assume regionalized services. So you are moving in a direction that the English boards are moving away from?

Mr Carvill: No, I do not think so.

Mr Hussey: You do not think so, but —

Mr Carvill: Well can I illustrate what is happening in England and Wales if you will allow me to do so — it will take a minute. I can illustrate that best perhaps by looking at Wales where it has been pointed out there will in future be 22 education authorities. That is true, but it is not the whole picture. In Wales what is actually happening is that under the old system there were 45 separate local authorities, 8 of those were regional, 37 of them were districts and those 45 are being condensed into 22. So.......

Mr Hussey: What is their average size?

Mr Carvill: I cannot tell you the Welsh figure.

Mr Hussey: Just an interesting point.

Mr Carvill: The point I was making is that in Wales as here there is a process of consolidation and that is why, in answer to the Chairman’s question earlier, I was saying that I do not think there is any inconsistency between the trend of developments here and the trend of developments in England and Wales. I think the comparisons can be confusing, and it is important that we are clear about what exactly is happening in each area.

Mr Hussey: I am prepared to leave it at that point, but I would like to come back, with your permission.

Mr Fowler: In the comparison between Northern Ireland and the LEAs in England we are not comparing like with like in any shape or form. Here the boards have responsibility for the library service. They do not have that responsibility in England, Wales or Scotland.

Mr Carvill: I certainly agree with your first comment that in comparing local authorities here and education and library boards here with local authorities in England is not comparing like with like at all because the range of responsibilities is very different. I cannot actually comment on your point about responsibility for library services because I am not sure how library services are administered in England, but I agree with the general thrust of your comment that they are very different entities indeed. That is a point which I have been making to the Committee.

Mr Fowler: You made another point in your answer. You said that it would improve the training provision. Could you enlarge upon that?

Mr Carvill: Yes and I would like Mr Hill to comment as well. The basic point about training that I was referring to there is that on the in-service training for teachers and the curriculum advisory and support system for teachers, which is one of the present responsibilities of the boards, it is certainly our view — and that view is based on inspection evidence — that the effectiveness of that service could be improved and increased by greater collaboration and by boards being larger units.

Mr Hill: There are already some good examples of collaboration across the current boards, and with this sort of argument it is possible to be unduly critical. The Regional Training Unit has been established to work on a regional basis on common areas and there is some excellent work being done by the boards, for example, on the induction of teachers, and those work well. There are also, and I quoted some illustrations from the inspection reports a moment ago, a number of areas where collaboration is not working well and, given the fact that we now have a common statutory curriculum and we are embarking shortly on a common code of practice for special schools, there is an increasingly large number of areas where common needs can be addressed through a process which does not require five separate services to create their own materials, their own methodology, and organize their own training.

The inspection reports and our own experience suggest very clearly that duplication of effort is essentially a structural problem. Collaboration can work and boards try to make it work; but they are separate entities, and they do tend to do their own thing in a number of areas. The creation of three boards will not eliminate that completely, but it will go a long way to reducing it.

Mr Hussey: May I just correct a remark there?

The Chairman: Yes.

Mr Hussey: The code of practice is not for special schools; it is for special needs.

Mr Hill: I accept that

The Chairman: Mr Hill acknowledges that.

Rev Trevor Kirkland: What has been saved by the boards on administration in the last four or five years?

Mr Carvill: I find it hard to give the answer to that. There has certainly been considerable downward pressure on board running costs in the last four or five years as there has been for the Department. It is quite clear that in real terms expenditure on running costs has reduced both in the boards and in the Department. I would not like to attempt to pluck a figure out of the air and give you a percentage on it.

Rev Trevor Kirkland: Are you telling me that it is not possible to get a figure?

Mr Carvill: No. I am saying I do not have one here.

Rev Trevor Kirkland: The boards are seen to be quite keen to demonstrate that over the last four or five years. In fact, one of them gave us a quotation from the Northern Ireland Audit Office. I think it was that savings were up 8% until 1994, and they are now up to 12%. Would you agree that 8% is a fair saving?

Mr Carvill: Yes it is. It is very similar to the saving that was made in departmental running costs over that same period.

The Chairman: You made savings in DENI?

Mr Carvill: Yes.

The Chairman: I am looking at an answer to a Parliamentary Question. Unless I am reading it wrong, the expenditure has gone up.

Mr Carvill: No, I actually wrote to the Committee this morning, Mr Chairman. I suggest that you read the letter I sent to the Committee because it makes the point that the figures that are being quoted were taken — and I think the heading to the page I saw says this — from a number of Parliamentary Questions. They are not actually on the same basis, they are not comparing like with like. In one case expenditure is included which is excluded in another case. When you make those adjustments, you will find that in cash terms —

The Chairman: I am talking about what the Department itself is spending. It has gone up from 11.96% to 12.3%.

Mr Carvill: If we are talking about the same figures, and I am referring to the figures that were given to the Committee by the education board ........

The Chairman: The boards are telling us that they have made massive reductions and they are saying, maybe with a certain amount of jealousy, that this is not happening where it could be happening. Then we find from an independent source that there may be some honesty in what they are saying.

Mr Carvill: If you examine the figures carefully and if you make allowance for the things that are included in one case and not included in the other, if you put the figures on to a consistent basis you will see that in the case of the Department’s running costs, which you have referred to, the main distorting factor is that over the period which is being compared, responsibility for pensions payments was delegated to Departments, so the second figure includes the cost of pensions whereas the first figure does not. But, I have written to the Committee because I saw those comparisons. I was surprised to see those figures being used in that way because they have been used publicly before and we have written to the boards to correct them, so I am not sure why they were before the Committee.

Mr McFarland: This is actually quite an important thing. In your letter you were talking about Roy Beggs’s submission to you and the boards.

Mr Carvill: I was making my comments with reference to the paper which I understand was submitted by the North Eastern Board to the Committee a short time ago.

Mr Hill: Absolutely, and we have taken on board the fact that the figures had different elements in them.

Mr McFarland: What the Chairman is talking about here is the PQ dated 5 May 1995, which set out the Department’s costs from 94/95 to 95/96. There are no caveats here. These are straight ballpark figures. It talks about the inspectorate and the inspectorate support branch going up from £3,061,000 to £3,346,000. There are admin costs, £11,960,000 rising to £12,389,000. Those are parliamentary figures. I think you said this morning that you were quoting your own figures. You are presumably not muddled at all. You were showing us you had a decrease.

Mr Carvill: Yes.

Mr McFarland: It doesn't compute.

Mr Carvill: Right. The figures that I sent to the Committee this morning were adjusted figures to provide a like-for-like comparison, in other words, two figures on the same basis. I do not have the PQ that you refer to in front of me, I am sure I can get a copy of it. I will be very happy to look at that PQ and reconcile it with the figures for you.

The Chairman: This is what bedevils this whole process.

Mr Carvill: Yes.

The Chairman: I am never too sure whether we are living in an age when the figures come out to suit something. I was very annoyed that this letter appeared on the 25th and then another one on 23 October. It strikes me as being childish in the extreme. Surely nobody is trying to be crooked about this. All I am trying to do is just what any outside person would do. I see a figure. Last year it was 11.69%. This year it is 12.38%. Common sense tells me that that is an increase.

I am looking also at the figures from the boards, and they are going down and down and down. Now, that tells me that the boards are making savings. There is an element of truth in what the boards have been pointing out to me — that the savings are not being made in another quarter as well. I discovered inaccuracies running through this whole thing. The original data may be somewhat suspect. If someone says “I can save you £2 million” the whole argument you have presented becomes somewhat flat. We as a Committee cannot avoid those realities. We can all play with words. Some of us are more expert then others, but what we are trying to do is get the integrity of the argument. Let us get down to the integrity of this argument and see is there some substance in the Department’s presentation.

Mr Carvill: Gentlemen, I am sure you are right to be cautious about comparisons that are drawn on figures. I think you used the phrase “bedevils the exercise”, it has been very difficult throughout this exercise to get figures which are genuinely comparable because changes in classifications do take place. I am sure nobody is trying to mislead the Committee, but I did think the Committee would wish to know that figures which had been given to it were in fact misleading and that was why I sent the letter that I did today. I will certainly take delivery of the PQ figures that you have referred to and if I may I will give the Committee a note on them. Would that be helpful?

The Chairman: That would be helpful certainly. I live in a world where integrity comes very high on the list, where everything is done on trust and where people, once they distrust — that is the last time. I am trying to get everyone else into this way of going.

Rev Trevor Kirkland: I was asking about savings by boards. Could you go further and give me some indication of the percentage that is spent by boards on administration?

Mr Carvill: As a percentage of their total expenditure?

Rev Trevor Kirkland: Yes. Either by all five boards or as an average.

Mr Carvill: I think again of the Chairman’s point about the difficulties that bedevil comparisons. You have to be clear what you mean by administration as well. Most of the discussion that we have had with the Committee has been focusing on the area of headquarters administration. Now, is that the area that you particularly want to know about.

Rev Trevor Kirkland: Yes. That would do well.

Mr Carvill: Well, headquarters administration costs — I am doing some mental arithmetic — run at about £35 million.

Mr Hill: Well, they were running at £35 million on the basis of the classification of headquarters expenditure in 92/93 and 93/94, and now you are running straight into the previous discussion because for the years after that they were reclassified. A number of elements of expenditure previously classified as board headquarters was actually transferred into other parts of the accounts. But, when we were doing this exercise it was a £35 million/£36 million headquarters figure, as shown in the published accounts.

Rev Trevor Kirkland: The proposals estimate a figure of about £2 million. In the light of the overall budget, is it rational and logical to pursue a minuscule saving in the light of the totality of the budget for education? Does it seem rational and logical to pursue £2 million and create all the upheaval and the overlap in trying to change from five boards to three boards?

Mr Carvill: Well the short answer to that question has to be yes, for a number of reasons. Yes, there will be transitional costs and difficulties — there always are when you change the system — but those transitional costs are for the short term, the savings are permanent. Secondly, it is not an either or situation. It is not a question of going either for efficiency savings or for restructuring; we are actually trying to go for both.

Rev Trevor Kirkland: If you saved £5 million or £10 million you could employ extra teachers or reduce the pupil/teacher ratio. That would be efficiency; it would also be good educational practice. But £2 million will not reduce or improve the pupil/teacher ratio, it will not improve administration. It will not improve efficiency, because all the work that has to be done must still be done.

Mr Carvill: Yes, but what I am saying is that if there are efficiency savings to be made, be it £2 million, £5 million or £10 million to take your figure, they should be made, we should make those savings. If there are further savings that can be made by restructuring, they are worth having as well. In some cases the savings can only be made by restructuring. If you want to cut down on a number of headquarters administrative posts, that requires a restructuring. In some cases restructuring is a stimulus to changes in organizations which will produce savings, in other cases, of course, there are improvements and increased efficiencies which can be introduced which are independent of restructuring, and we wish to see that done. We have made it clear that the boards themselves have been doing that, that the Department has been doing it and that we will all continue to do it. It is not an either or situation. It is not either take these restructuring savings or take efficiency savings; if both are there, they should both be taken.

Rev Trevor Kirkland: You tend to say the range of responsibilities is different, yet when it comes down to your side of the fence you are trying to produce a rationale for something. It comes through your very answers. On one hand you say you want to use this benchmark, but when we ask you the same question you say, you cannot compare it. There is a lot of duplication. You tell us there is overlap, yet at the same time you tell us the range of responsibilities is different.

The Chairman: There is a terrible range across the water, and I am not unfamiliar with it. I do not go to Strathclyde or Bedfordshire or anywhere else; start with the fact that maybe it is in-house that needs to be improved, and then achieve a benchmark. Why did you not go in-house to one of the boards that you were familiar with?

Mr Carvill: Right. Well —

The Chairman: These are things the rest of us do daily. I certainly do not go to Germany to get comparison.

Mr Carvill: If I can start with that point Mr Chairman. We did in fact do what you are suggesting because in looking at and estimating the savings that result from restructuring, we looked at the different levels of administrative expenditure in each board here for each of the executive services that we have looked at, and we sought to improve the average. In other words, we made the assumption that the best practice that existed in one board could be transferred elsewhere. So we did do that.

The Chairman: “I couldn't get the information that gave me the answer I wanted, so I went somewhere else.” This is what you are really saying?

Mr Carvill: Not at all, not at all.

The Chairman: Let us get down to the integrity of the argument again. What you are really saying is “I didn't get the answer I wanted there, or the information to support the answer I wanted, so I went somewhere else.”

Mr Carvill: No, that is not what I am saying at all. I was replying to your question about why did we not compare practice between boards. The answer is that we did and I think my colleague, Mr Hill, in relation to the grants and awards which we were talking about earlier, referred to some of the discrepancies in the level of cost per unit of activity which can be found there. We do look at those comparisons, and I very much take the point that we should be seeking to transfer best practice from one board to another.

We looked to the English LEAs for benchmark comparisons. We benchmarked the expenditure relevant to the education responsibility, we obviously did not benchmark the expenditure which was relevant to the non-educational expenditure. With the aid of Capita we took the data which was published by CIPFA and others and we extracted the education relevant expenditure. We then looked at the range of, if you like, indices of efficiency and the average of costs that applied there. We then took two LEAs, and this is spelt out in the paper which we sent to you, as comparators because they approximated to the size of authorities that we were looking at. They also fitted close to the average level of expenditure of England and Wales, in other words, not the best and not the lowest — around the middle. We used that not in order to derive estimates of savings, we used it as, if you like, a cross-check or long-stop, a comparator to see whether the savings that we were deriving from our calculations looked reasonable, looked unreasonable, or looked achievable. In every case the savings that we were deriving were less than would have been derived if we had simply read across the benchmark. That was not the way we did it, it was a long-stop.

The Chairman: Using that as a benchmark, using your own information, what does it cost to deliver a scholarship in Bedfordshire?

Mr Carvill: Not a sum that I carry in my head, but it may be a sum that I could look up for you if you would allow me to do that.

The Chairman: Somebody discovered that what was costing on a regional basis £38 had already been done for £32. I would not have needed to go to Bedfordshire to discover that. This exercise goes back to the premise that this whole thing was built on. This whole exercise by Capita is beginning to worry me more and more. Where I find major discrepancies it does not matter where I go for my benchmark. The economic appraisal on the whole thing is becoming a very liquid affair.

Rev Trevor Kirkland: In regard to the duplication, three boards will not eliminate that completely. If there is concern about duplicating, and if three boards will not eliminate it completely, then remove the three boards and have one. If you are so concerned about duplication, we could all point to the duplication of the Department and the boards and eliminate the Department itself. That would be a good argument for rationalization and a great saving.

Mr Carvill: I think Mr Kirkland’s point is why stop at three, why not go to one. If the only concern were to produce the least expensive system of administration that we could devise, then that might very well be the answer.

Rev Trevor Kirkland: You could have five regional offices.

Mr Carvill: Maybe, but no one has actually proposed that we should go to one board, at least the Government have not proposed that we go to one board because there are other factors which I will not weary the Committee by repeating that have to be taken into consideration like accountability and accessibility. So the three-board proposal is, if you like, meant to try to give the best for both of those approaches.

The Chairman: But surely the counter-argument to that was very quickly proved to you. The four areas that you looked at were fairly obvious ones.

Mr Carvill: We discovered that in each of those areas there are savings to be made through regionalization.

The Chairman: Two of them proved to be worthwhile, and the others proved to be losers.

Mr Carvill: Not quite. In all cases there were savings to be made. The question was whether the savings that would be made would be that much greater than those going to result from a three-board model anyway and whether there were other factors. Take for example the internal audit report. The point was made very strongly by the Chief Executives of the boards that they regarded internal audit as a key part of their own internal accountability performance. That is, if you like, a non-quantifiable factor but it is right to take it into account and since the absolute sums involved were not large, it was not worth pursuing. In all the areas which were looked at by the regionalization working parties, even if they were not regionalized, the economies of scale that can be obtained from a three-board model would still apply.

The Chairman: Purchasing is quite obvious, and there was another one. The figures proved that it was more expensive to run it as a central issue. Because the answers do not suit, one decides to go somewhere else.

Speaker: Yes, purchasing was a winner.

Mr Hill: I refer you to page 25 of the report.

The Chairman: That was a good saving.

Mr Hill: Actually it showed, and the figures presented elsewhere to the Committee show, that on one scenario, an enhanced purchasing scenario: you could actually handle £166m of purchasing compared to £104m of purchasing at the moment with a £38,000 saving. They also showed that by expanding the purchasing section to cover the entire education service you could handle £213m worth of purchasing at an additional cost of £104,000, so what has been presented in some circles as an additional cost is actually significantly greater value for money which is neatly summarized in page 25 of the report.

The Chairman: I accept that purchasing was a winner.

Mr Hill: And to complete the picture, information systems also demonstrate —

The Chairman: They have done the same.

Mr Hill: But not now, and the decision not to proceed is a timing one. In the case of legal and insurance services and internal audit, the Minister’s decision was that the additional advantages of regionalization compared to the three-board model were not worth the difficulties of doing it, particularly on internal audit where Chief Executives would like internal audit staff ...

The Chairman: I would have thought that was an automatic thing in any system.

Mr Hill: The three areas where we are still quite convinced, after the working party’s report, that significant savings can still be achieved by regionalization are architectural and property services, awards and purchasing.

The Chairman: I don't want to follow that.

Mr Hussey: Two of the other areas of concern that you mention are acceptability and accountability. Could you explain to me to whom the three-board model is acceptable and how it is acceptable.

Mr Carvill: Well, we have spent time on accessibility and on accountability. Acceptability is a result in many cases of familiarity. I acknowledge that what we are proposing are changes and people are uncomfortable with change because they know the existing system, they relate to it, they feel comfortable with it, they are concerned about the unknown, and that is understandable.

Mr Hussey: You are admitting that there is not acceptability at this time?

Mr Carvill: I have said, I think consistently, to the Committee that the comments that have been received in response to consultations — and there has been a series of consultations — have put an emphasis on continuity and on nervousness about change.

Mr Hussey: You clearly stated that one of the aims was the obvious financial savings, but the other two that you specifically referred to within the last couple of minutes were acceptability and accountability.

Mr Carvill: Well, I think the one I referred to was accessibility, but I am not disputing it.

Mr Hussey: You say accountability. I am questioning the acceptability.

Mr Carvill: I understand, I am not dismissing acceptability.

Mr Hussey: It was obviously an area that you were concerned with, otherwise you would not have used that word.

Mr Carvill: Yes.

Mr Hussey: Will you admit that you have not achieved your target in that area?

Mr Carvill: I can only repeat what I have already said to the Committee that the great majority of the comments we have received have expressed concern and worry about these changes, rather than enthusiasm for them.

Mr Hussey: Could you give a percentage for that?

Mr Carvill: A very high percentage.

Mr Hussey: Thank you.

The Chairman: Do you accept that in the world of administration things change? Over a lifetime I have seen people acknowledge there had to be change. People welcome change.

What I am getting at is this bottom-up approach. This time last year the Minister was sitting across in Westminster. I was reading through the report, and you and your kith were there trying to defend it. Suddenly the thing reversed. You discovered that it could not be defended. Without consultation, suddenly out of the blue, like a bolt of lightening you decided on three. I picked up a brochure and saw this three-board model. The same sort of model has been lying around since 1970. I may be guilty of having produced that model originally, but I do not want to take that admission too far. So far, all this documentation has proved nothing, but it has raised a lot of serious questions about its credibility. The Church, the state, politicians all say one thing. Somebody said this morning that we want predictable stability. Can you in all honesty justify the exercise we are carrying out?

Mr Carvill: We have been over this ground many times. Is there an upsurge of demand for change, is that coming from the grass roots? No is the answer to that, that is common ground, but is there a need for change. It is the Minister’s view and the Government’s view that there is a need, and I have explained the reasons for that. These are reasons which the Committee may or may not accept but I have tried to explain them. You asked about the Minister’s appearance at the Select Committee and what had changed, you said, from his defence of a four-board model. He was explaining to that Committee why it was that he had proposed four boards. He had reasons for it which I will not burden you with

The Chairman: This defence was for four boards.

Mr Carvill: There is complete consistency in arguing that four boards is an improvement on five and three is a further improvement given certain criteria, not least the cost, but other factors as well. I do not think there is an inconsistency in arguing for each of these.

The Chairman: I take that point.

Mr Carvill: The Minister responded, he listened to the comments that were made on the four-board model and he decided to take account of those comments and to move from there.

The Chairman: If you had listened to the advice at that stage, you could not have proceeded because of the weight of public derision. That is what really stopped the whole thing — the sheer weight of political pressure. Just acknowledge where it was coming from.

Mr Carvill: The Minister has been very clear that he proposed four boards because he regarded that as a compromise between the factors for more change and the factors for less. It was not in fact a successful compromise and he has been very clear about that. That is why he has looked again at it.

Mr Hussey: The Government and the Department feel that there is a need for change. I suppose the 1993 document was the start, but they also state on the first page in the foreword “established on a basis which commands widespread acceptance throughout the community.”

Mr Carvill: That is why I said earlier that I did not dispute that acceptability was an important factor.

Mr Hussey: It is very early — on the first page.

Question: The vast majority of people I have listened to are against what the Government are doing. It is obvious you are not going to listen to what public opinion and the politicians are saying. The schools and all the people that we have listened to are completely against it. The Government are going against the advice of the people, and you are going to force something upon them. There is enough pressure on schools and boards of governors. I am a member of three of them. We are no longer running schools; we are administrators. Headmasters are no longer teachers; they are administrators. All this is destroying the education of our children and it is going to have a terrible effect in years to come. The Government are running out of time and

trying to push things quickly. Unfortunately, we are the ones who are going to suffer — the public, the teachers and the education boards who are going to have to administer these things that the Government are putting through. You need to listen to the people.

Mr Bolton: I am not one to take away from the arguments — the lack of support in the country and the constituencies and the fact that there is no real financial reason for change.

Mr Curran: In over 35 years' involvement in the public sector, where I worked for many years in the same organization that you belong to, and as a politician, I have never heard any policy generate such talk and dissension as this one. I have never seen such a united opposition to a piece of public policy from any of the Departments. Let me quote from the ‘Strategic Plan for Education 1996 to the year 2000’:

“Education is central to the Government’s wider aims in the key areas of economic development, social policy and community relations”.

Mr Carvill was speaking a moment ago about change. Change is something that we all recognize as necessary. You recognize under-achievement in education. You see so very many young people coming out of schools with no qualifications of any kind. Education is an essential foundation of a modern competitive economy. The level of qualifications in the Northern Ireland labour force is low compared with that of our competitors, and this calls for action to reduce under-achievement and low achievement.

Obviously we could all prioritize the themes for improvement in any area of social policy but in respect of education I would suggest that this is one that should be at the very top of the list. Let me quote Michael Ancram’s introduction to this document:

“The challenges which face education for the rest of the decade and beyond are formidable. The targets and objectives which have been set for the service will only be attainable if all our energies are focused on the key issues.”

I listened carefully to what the education boards had to say, and it appears to me — and I say this to you as the Permanent Secretary and Deputy Secretary in the Department of Education — that they were so completely at variance with you on such a wide range of issues as to be unbelievable. I would have thought that you would all, as professionals in the field of the education service, have been working closely together, recognizing the importance of the education service for the development of our country and the development of the individual.

When you were here last week, Mr Carvill, you said that finance was not the key factor. It was a factor, but it was not the key factor; there were other factors that had to be taken into consideration. I wonder to what extent this whole exercise is really driven not by finance but by the other factors that you mentioned: the securing of equality of opportunity and the targeting of social need. I have had great difficulty in understanding the difference in educational spend across the existing boards, and it was one of the factors that you touched upon. I wonder to what extent these factors influenced the Government’s thinking. I share the argument that the minuscule saving is not going to lead to any major improvement if we target some of the key factors in the boards.

I would like you to expand a little more on those factors that you discussed, the factors in support of your proposals, because that is extremely important. In relation to the financial appraisal, we want to consider the details in great depth before we comment to the extent that we really wish to. There are fundamental questions, particularly the one on split locations. We come back to the point that I made to you the last day you were here. I know you are not going to scrub fairly serviceable buildings. Maintaining split locations and all the implications that are involved in that — I have been involved in that exercise myself, and I know that sometimes the game is not worth the candle when you take into account the downstream costs that are involved in exercises of that nature.

You say that you have done a strategic overview, but sometimes when you get down to the nitty-gritty of administration and look at the real financial implications, you suddenly find that things cost a lot more than you had originally envisaged. From a preliminary look at the figures that you have provided, it is fairly clear to me that much more work will need to be done on this whole exercise before I will be able to judge whether, on a purely financial basis, you are going to achieve the savings that you are suggesting can be achieved.

I know there are a number of things in there, but I would like to deal especially with this whole question in relation to policy. I am not asking you to defend Government policy. I would not expect that from you as a civil servant. Nevertheless, it is a factor in this whole exercise, and we have to understand the implications of that in trying to come to a conclusion. We are not in an adversarial situation where we are challenging you. A substantial majority of people in Northern Ireland are utterly opposed to what the Minister and the Department are proposing. We have to see whether there is overwhelming evidence to support your position. That is what we are trying to tease out in our discussions here. Certainly, the evidence is not stacking up in favour of the policy that is being proposed. Change we do support, but a lot needs to be done to education but can the downstream cost of the changes you are proposing be measured?

Mr Carvill: A number of points in Mr Curran’s comments readily strike a chord, and I welcome some of his comments on the strategic plan. Mr Curran referred to the perception that the boards and the Department are at loggerheads over a range of issues. I think that perception is understandable because the Committee has been focusing on an area where there is a difference of opinion. The boards have taken one position and the Department a different one, and naturally you are getting, in a sort of adversarial way, different explanations and different statements of the position. I do not think it would be right to generalize from that into the area of board/Department relationships. I think the working-level relationships are very good. You can see a range of developments, and I think particularly of educational technology, curriculum advice and support, in-service training for teachers and the regional technology unit where you can see that initiatives are being taken forward jointly by the Department and the boards in exactly the interests of the sort of improvements that you correctly identify are needed in things like raising school standards. So I hope that is some reassurance.

You also asked whether the savings that people identify on paper are achievable in practice and I agree that it is right to ask that question and to look hard at paper calculations. I have tried to explain to the Committee the basis on which we made our estimates. I have explained that we made deliberately conservative estimates at all times and that we have tried to round down rather than round up savings because we were anxious not to overstate them. I think we have tried to do what you are saying but you will form your own view as to whether we have allowed adequately for that or not.

You referred to the non-financial benefits which we hoped to obtain from the exercise. In a sense that almost brings us right back to the beginning because I think that that was the first question Mr Chairman that you put to me, and the record will show what I tried to say there. I will not take up the time of the Committee by repeating it.

The Chairman: People see where their priorities are. The chalk-face is the major priority.

Mr McFarland: May I start by thanking you for this document. We received it this morning and have taken a minute or two to have a quick run through it. What I am really trying to do is clarify some bits of it that do not immediately make sense to me.

Mr Carvill: Is this essentially the economic appraisal paper?

Mr McFarland: Yes, the one dated 24 September. Let us take the PAFT initiative

“On 25 June the Government announced its decisions on changes to the structure for educational administration in Northern Ireland. These followed an extensive consultative process which had included not only formal consultations on three separate option papers”

All the boards that have come before us say that there was absolutely no consultation at all on the three-board option. Everyone appreciates that on the four-board option there was originally consultation in 1992. Presumably one of the three separate option papers was on a three-board option.

Mr Carvill: Consultation on the three-board model is, I think, the focus of your question. Originally a three-board model was illustrated in the document that was published in 1993 and that was the subject of consultation at that time. Formal consultation on the three-board conclusion which the Minister has now reached, in the light of all the consultations which he had, will actually be the statutory consultation which will follow from the publication of the draft proposal for a draft Order. The draft legislation will be published shortly.

Mr McFarland: So what you are saying is that the boards do not merit consultation before the decision is made, but once the legal system is gone through, and to all intents and purposes the ball has started rolling, they are allowed to run after it.

Mr Carvill No, I am not saying that. I am saying that there has been the longest, most detailed, most extensive consultation that I have had experience of in my career in the public sector, on this issue of changes in the structure of educational administration. I think all the issues that are relevant to decisions following that consultation were very fully ventilated — indeed, even a number of the boards themselves, while making it clear that they disagreed with the conclusion that the Minister reached, actually acknowledged that the consultation was very extensive. I do not think that this is an issue on which the Government can be accused of a lack of consultation.

Mr McFarland: But virtually every delegation that has appeared in front of us has brought up as one key point the fact that there has not been any consultation on these proposals. I can understand all the other reasons. They have produced various reasons for things, and we have challenged those, some of them quite rigorously. Some of them clearly have not thought things out as well as they might have done. Some of them have been slightly spurious. But in other areas they have been constant and their criticisms seem to be valid. One criticism that they have maintained absolutely is that there has been no consultation with them on the three-board model. I am confused about how you can square what you are saying to me with that view.

Mr Carvill: The view the Minister took was that after three years of consultation on the generality of this topic, including very specific consultation on a proposal for a four-board model, it was time to bring the consultation to a close. It had been impressed on him very strongly that the uncertainties which are naturally created by this sort of discussion were damaging to morale and that they ought to be brought to a conclusion, and he has sought to do that by reaching a considered view in the light of all the comments and all the consultation papers he has received on what is the right way forward. Now he has made his conclusion known and clear, and that will be the subject of consultation on the draft legislation that is to be brought forward.

Mr Bolton: The North Eastern Board did spend some time deliberating on a new strategic document and a new logo on the day before the public announcement. The Minister was asked to come and launch it, but he refused. Out of the blue we were told that the decision was to have three boards instead of five.

Mr Carvill: Advance information was given as a matter of courtesy by bringing in the people who were directly affected and telling them, before it became public knowledge, what conclusion the Minister had reached. I cannot see how anybody could object to that courtesy being extended to those who were directly affected by a decision which was going to be announced the next day.

Mr McFarland: In formulating these proposals the Government had regard to PAFT considerations. It concluded that, on the information available, there was no evidence to suggest that in overall terms this new structure would have any unjustifiable differential impact on any of the groups cited in the guidelines. This phrase “on the information available to it” is a sort of a catch-all. If you did not go and ask people, it is difficult to see how you got the information upon which to base a PAFT assessment.

The Chairman: Can you include in your answer why, as was demonstrated very forcefully, there was a total lack of information from last October? Suddenly someone went off and had a dream or something and came up with three. In other words, everyone is saying that though we might not have liked the end result, at least we should have had the courtesy of consultation.

Mr Carvill: Well the period in between was largely taken up with consultation with political parties which were on the basis of a paper which did in fact include a three-board model.

Mr Carvill: You lead me into territory where I am not sure I should follow.

The Chairman: It is imperative that we have that answer. After all, we have listened to the Church, the state and everyone else, and we want to hear what the politicians said to you.

Mr Carvill: My difficulty with that question is that the discussions with the political parties which the Minister held were private discussions. He regarded them as private and I do not think it is for me to divulge the detail of it, but I can tell you in general terms, if you wish, that the parties did not support change at this time, and I stress at this time. A number of them felt that change might well be needed, but it was a pretty general view among the parties that decisions of this sort should best be left to a local elected Assembly to deal with.

Mr Hussey: Is that a summary of all the major political parties?

The Chairman: I presume that this is a summary of all the major political parties.

Mr Carvill: It is what the Minister has authorized me to say to you about his discussions with them.

Mr Hussey: As a summary of his discussions with all of the major parties in Northern Ireland?

Mr Carvill: Let me repeat what that summary was: in general terms the parties did not support change at this time. Some of them felt that change might well be necessary but it was a general view that decisions on such matters should be deferred until a local Assembly could deal with them. That is the summary, does that help?

Mr McFarland: “The Government accepts that the detailed implementation of the new structures will have an impact on the employees of boards and that those effects will need to be assessed against the PAFT guidelines.”

That is just to confirm that there is a whole area down here that has not been looked at at all yet and the effects of it are not known because you have not done a full PAFT study.

The Chairman: What was the response of political parties?

Mr Carvill: A full PAFT study cannot be done because that sort of detail of implementation can only be addressed when you get down to the fine grain practicalities of what you are going to do in particular locations with particular groups of staff.

The Chairman: You park that whole idea until you make that point, and then you look at the realities of it.

Mr Carvill: No, we have said that as and when we come to deal with the detail of implementation of these proposals, PAFT considerations are one of the factors that will certainly be taken into account at that stage.

Mr McFarland: Let us look at Annex A.

“However with the exception of one Board, the Education and Library Boards declined to participate in discussions or consultations.”

Is this correct? They say they were never asked to consult. You have said here that they refused to consult.

Mr Carvill: This paragraph is talking about the costing exercise which was carried out in the summer of 1994, costing alternatives to the existing structure. The boards were asked to discuss those with us. It was their view then that they did not wish to do so, for reasons of principle I think, with the exception of one board which had a more relaxed view about it.

Mr McFarland: Was that because they thought you were imposing this upon them and they were not going to play ball by producing figures that would allow you to back up your case?

Mr Carvill: I am not sure that I should speak for them.

Mr McFarland: Correct me if I am wrong. One of the key questions centres round the famous Roy Beggs PQ figures. We approached this with you before. I think you said it was not comparing like with like.

Mr Carvill: I am not sure that was exactly the point I was making.

Mr McFarland: What you were saying, as I understood it, was that the local education authority areas were there for reasons that were not solely educational ones.

Mr Carvill: More or less. I was saying that the England/Wales local authorities were designed for a different purpose than just education alone, that was the point.

Mr McFarland: Throughout the rest of the submission you have quoted 1991 figures. The Bedfordshire and Northumberland figures that you quote are your two-bench marks on this.

Mr Carvill: Yes.

Mr McFarland: These, as I understand it, are 1991 figures.

Mr Carvill: Yes.

Mr McFarland: 1991-92 presumably.

Mr Carvill: Yes, I think so.

Mr McFarland: If I look at the answer to Roy Beggs’s parliamentary question, the figures from January 1992 would be half way through that year,

would they not?

Mr Carvill: Right.

Mr McFarland: For Bedfordshire you are quoting as 83,000, while Roy Beggs was told 76,781. For Northumberland you are quoting as 48,000, and in the January 1992 figures it is 43,700. So, on your figures we have somehow acquired 5,000-odd on each, yet these figures are purporting to come from the same period.

Mr Carvill: They do seem to.

Mr McFarland: This report used 1991 figures and you say that that has to be before the local education authorities changed. The local authorities in England are just changing again. If I were producing this as a consultant, I might be run out of town for trying what amounts to fudging figures and taking something that is no longer relevant for comparison.

Mr Carvill: If that was the basis on which these estimates of savings were derived, you would be right to question it, but it is not.

The Chairman: Could you explain first why there is a discrepancy of 5,000 in the numbers.

Mr Carvill: I cannot explain the different figures because I have not done the cross-check, but Mr McFarland has. I cannot be confident of the figures in question, I cannot be confident of the point of time in question. But can I remind the Committee of the purpose for which these comparators were used. They were not used in order to derive the estimates of savings that we have put before the Committee. They were used, if you like, as long stop bench-marks, a second check just to see whether the figures that emerged in the detailed calculations looked reasonable or unreasonable by comparison with the actual expenditure in an area which, whether it has 43,000 or 48,000 pupils, is not very different from, in terms of expenditure per capita, the United Kingdom average. So these comparators are not the basis for the savings that we have estimated.

Mr McFarland: Can I quote you on 1.6? When measured on a per capita basis against pupil numbers, the education and library boards were shown to spend 13% more than the average LEA — equivalent to some £3.4 million per annum. That is a statement.

Mr Carvill: Yes.

Mr McFarland: It includes all the buzz words and produces a percentage saving.

Mr Carvill: Yes, it is referenced to the average unit cost of the entire range of LEAs, but we have not in any of these papers suggested that these changes will lead to that saving of £3.4 million. What we have said is that the savings which we estimated separately — and I have set out in the paper the basis on which we made that calculation — did not look unreasonable in comparison to what the expenditure would have been if the expenditure here had been the same as the Great Britain average. That is the only purpose.

Mr McFarland: What we have here are a lot of facts and figures and it is actually quite a smoke-screen. You are saying you have done this thoroughly. It would be interesting to have more time to take this side-show out of the way and say it is a very spurious basis — 1991 figures fudged to try to compare with education and library boards. If you take that out of the way, what are we left with is the hard-rock basis for a decision. It keeps referring to this comparison with LEAs right across costings, productivity amongst headquarters staff — all such a things.

Mr Carvill: Right, well it is certainly not a smoke-screen, because I think I have, several times, as clearly as I can, explained to the Committee what it was used for, and I do not think I can add to what I have already explained. It is not a comparison that we have relied on in any way as validating or as being the source of the estimate of savings. It is, as I have said, simply a cross-check. If we had come to you and said that we had paid no regard at all to the levels of administrative expenditure elsewhere in the United Kingdom when making our estimates, you might have thought that that was an unusual thing to have done.

Mr McFarland: If comparing like with like, I would agree with you, but we have not compared like with like.

Mr Carvill: No, we made the best comparison that it was possible to make at that time and we compared the education expenditure.

The Chairman: We are comparing a different set of services to come up with a figure like this. When I glanced through this this morning, I regarded it as of no benefit. I could not see where I was going to get anything useful that would guide me towards making a honest decision. Yes, it is an exercise, and probably a very useful exercise, to cross-check what everyone else is doing as best one can. These are the things we all do somehow or other. It is just like comparing shop-window prices.

Mr Carvill: Could I just comment on something that was said because I think there may be a slight misunderstanding, given something you said. The bench-marking was not related to the totality of those authorities' expenditure which related to their relevant education expenditure. We did allow for the different range of functions.

The Chairman: But we have a much wider remit in educational terms than many LEAs over there, so we are into difficult areas.

Mr Carvill: Yes, always difficult.

Mr McFarland: May I take you to HQ core services?

Mr Carvill: Right.

Mr McFarland: To estimate potential savings, two approaches were adopted. For senior management teams new notional staff structures were assumed, so presumably you have done some planning on the staff structures at senior management, despite what you say — that no planning has been done on this. To estimate potential savings, you are telling us that you have actually designed these staff structures. Is that correct?

Mr Carvill: No, I am saying that notional staff structures were assumed for the purposes of costings. We have not attempted to read that forward into saying that in this office, this number of staff will be doing that function.

Mr McFarland: I appreciate that. What I am saying is that you have based a costing on a staff structure that you had designed, albeit a notional one. But presumably it is a fairly accurate notional one, otherwise you could not work out accurate potential savings on it.

Mr Carvill: It is a structure which is reasonably appropriate.

Mr McFarland: So we actually have that available somewhere, have we?

Mr Carvill: Yes.

Mr Hill: You will actually find the regionalization structures in the annex to each of the working party’s reports.

Mr McFarland: In 3.6 these figures take no account of regionalization. Now, we had quite an interesting discussion with the North Eastern Board, and you will recall that when we spoke to you before you agreed with us that it was going to cost £0.5 million more. But then you say “But we have actually extracted three areas from this.”

Mr Carvill: Sorry, is that architectural services?

Mr McFarland: Aah, it was architectural services. Grants and awards and purchasing were left in?

Mr Carvill: Yes.

Mr McFarland: But we said “This with the others in was about half a million” and you said “Yes, that is approximately correct, but we actually extracted internal audit, legal and information services.”

Mr Carvill: I am not at all sure that I am following the calculation or the paper that you are referring to.

Mr McFarland: This purports to be from the working party established by the Department to consider the practicalities of regionalization of management of the services. That showed that it was going to cost £0.5 million more. I think the record will show that you said that is about right.

Mr Carvill: Well.

Mr McFarland: You said “We have extracted three of these items, therefore this is no longer correct.”

Mr Carvill: There are two areas in particular where the reports from those working groups suggested higher levels of expenditure. One was on architectural services, another was on grants and awards. Maybe this is the point that you are referring to. The point that I recall making earlier was that the job remit, if you like, for the regionalization of the architectural services unit included more than simply the area boards. It was to provide a service for the education sector as a whole and therefore it was a larger unit, a more expensive one, but doing a bigger job. That was the point that I was making. On grants and awards, it is true that the working party produced a surprising conclusion on the cost estimates. We have queried some of the assumptions which the working party used there, but further work is being done on that, so it is an open question.

Mr McFarland: But my concern here is that we have had produced by the North East Board — and presumably it has produced it to you — a table which purports to be the same as this except that it says “estimated savings per working party documentation”. The figures are not a cost of £0.5 million but a cost of over £1 million.

Mr Hill: I have the table in front of me and, at the risk of repetition, a number of the figures used in this table are simply misleading. The purchasing section is shown as having an increased cost of £104,000.

The Chairman: Who did your figures?

Mr Hill: We did our figures.

The Chairman: Internally?

Mr Hill: Internally, and we also had a member on each of the working groups. The £380,000 is not for the same regionalization exercise as the Department’s figures. Again the working group’s report will actually make this quite clear.

The Chairman: When the working group first sat down it had a remit to produce an architectural service for the whole of Northern Ireland. Somebody then decided that that was not what it was asked. It was asked to do something else, so we will go back and cost that. Is that what we are really saying?

Mr Hill: The working group — I actually provided the remit for the Committee — was asked to examine the practicalities of regionalization. The members from the CCMS, the voluntary grammar school sector and the grant maintained integrated sector who sat on that working group produced a report that showed that with an additional £380,000 you could regionalize board services, introduce a new system of project management for all education projects, and take on responsibility for the work that the Department, the CCMS and the voluntary schools presently do for the voluntary sector. So the working group report is a report which deals with something completely different from an analysis of board services, only.

The Chairman: But in the long term what you are actually saying is “Let us regionalize architecture”.

Mr Hill: Yes. The estimated savings per the working group party’s documentation of £380,000 are not on the same basis as the £273,000. This table is completely misleading, and the working group report, which I am sure you have, will actually make that quite clear.

I have already covered the purchasing figures above it. The £139,000 estimated saving was in relation to existing purchasing. The £38,000 revised estimate was the cost of purchasing a much greater amount within the boards, and the £104,000 additional cost was for a purchasing service for the entire education service. Those two columns are not relevant, and therefore misleading.

Mr McFarland: The Department of Education has set up and tasked a number of working groups. You presumably wanted them to produce information for a particular purpose, which was presumably tied in with this restructuring. They have reported back to you under your guidelines. Presumably these are correct findings. You then said “Hang on a minute. This doesn't quite fit what we're trying to do here. We have our DENI document which produces figures that fit into to what we think.”

Do you understand our confusion here over why when organizations set up by you for a purpose report back to you, you do not accept their findings?

Mr Hill: But we do accept their findings.

The Chairman: You accept their findings, but you immediately set about something else.

Mr Hill: No.

The Chairman: Another exercise with a different remit and a different set of figures.

Mr Hill: They have carried out this exercise and

The Chairman: But you asked them to carry out this exercise.

Mr Hill: We did, and as part of that remit we asked them to explore specific options and a range of further options as they considered appropriate. The purchasing department, the purchasing working group, led by an officer from the Southern Board, did an excellent job and produced a report which demonstrates that an expanded purchasing service can be run for the entire education system at better value for money.

The Chairman: You used the word “expanded”.

Mr Hill: Yes, that was the recommendation —

The Chairman: I just want to pick up that word.

Mr Hill: — which we are accepting.

The Chairman: Are you accepting it because it brought in a figure which showed a decrease in the cost of the present services, or are you bringing it in because it is a more efficient service for purchasing?

Mr Hill: No, that is a recommendation of the working group.

The Chairman: Let us go back and take your original argument on architectural services. You produced a regional service, a perfectly good delivery system for the Department’s own architectural services, yet it is only going to cost £380,000 more to have this service cover the whole of Northern Ireland. If you can get an expanded service with this all-embracing remit, why do you set about doing a different exercise?

Mr Carvill: You mean, it looks good value for money?

The Chairman: I do not live in a world if there is not value for money.

Mr Carvill: Well, we think it looks good value for money too.

The Chairman: But why the persistence in going all out to come up with a different service.

Mr Carvill: I think the chronology is maybe getting us confused here. May I briefly re-cap. We started with an estimate drawn up by the Department which related to the existing board service. We said it was worth exploring. We set up a Working Group involving the boards and the Department looking at that option and arranging other options as they thought fit.

The Chairman: Yes.

Mr Carvill: The Working Group came back to us and said that it would be sensible if the exercise encompassed not just the board but other services as well, and we said that that looked attractive. Now that is the basis on which we are going forward, but there are issues which do still have to be resolved about the management of that regional service.

The Chairman: Maybe our Committee is simple-minded, but it would not have had to set up a working party to realize that economy of scale in purchasing had to be examined.

Mr Carvill: There is a distinction between unified purchasing and a unified purchasing service, and as you say there are economies of scale in purchasing larger quantities. The boards in fairness had explored those and had negotiated contracts in some cases.

The Chairman: Do you think that the boards had already co-operated on this?

Mr Carvill: Yes. But what was being addressed here was taking it a further step forward and saying that we would not negotiate central contracts only, but have a single unit to negotiate contracts for all of us. That was the distinction.

Mr Hill: To summarize in one sentence, what this table does is misleading for the reasons I have explained at this meeting. The estimated savings were £1 million but the fact that we have decided not to take the regionalization option in three of the services and other factors brought out in the exercise are likely to reduce the saving to somewhere between £0.5 million and £0.75 million. We are still convinced, and we believe the working party conclusions are clear, that those savings are achievable. Therefore, the presentation of those figures is simply misleading.

Mr McFarland: Paragraph 3.7 says that savings do not take into account any additional cost resulting from, say, increased travelling expenses. You have not looked at potentially enormous expenditures, so it is very much an unfinished exercise. It is difficult to see how you can say what is going to be saved if you have not actually followed the logical conclusion of your actions.

Mr Carvill: Again, we are clear these are gross figures not net figures. I have explained some of the assumptions that we used which we thought were conservative and would tend to offset that factor. The paper which you have in front of you includes a separate note on an exercise that we did when assessing what is likely to be the largest transitional cost, that being redundancy costs. In that separate note I have explained the conclusion we reached that the savings were robust enough potentially to offset redundancy costs. I have been clear about the basis of the figures.

Mr McFarland: OK. Now let us consider comparative costing data. Again you have used the LEAs versus education and library boards. For example, Bedfordshire is full of extremely flat countryside and has an incredible road network where you can go from A to B in no time at all. How can you compare these with library boards which have the Sperrins in between and Lough Neagh in the middle? Are costs like electricity taken into account in the comparative costing data?

Mr Carvill: No. Those are actual costs. As I said before, if you were criticizing that comparison as the sole basis of estimated savings I would agree with you — it would not be an appropriate basis for doing that. But I do not seem to be able to say this too often that that is not the basis on which the estimated savings were worked out.

Mr McFarland: But every page is talking about comparing LEAs with ELBs.

Mr Hill: It is an interesting and relevant comparison, but that is all. To do the exercise —

Mr McFarland: But it takes up an enormous amount of space in the documents you have given us as justification for your decision. You are saying it is only a tiny part of it now. For a tiny part, it is extremely pervasive.

Mr Hill: We have described it as a cross-check on the assumptions, not as a reason for doing it. Those figures and, I suspect, the population figures are all drawn from the exercise to compare with other areas which do exactly the same thing.

The Chairman: You are telling us now it is purely a snow storm.

Mr Carvill: I do not think that is at all a fair summary of what Mr Hill has been saying.

Mr McFarland: But where are the real figures? If all these pages are full of LEA versus ELB, where is the paper setting out the hard figures which are the basis of this entire operation?

Mr Carvill: I have never said that these papers are other than a summary of the conclusions of the working documentation.

Mr McFarland: You have given us all the stuff about ELBs — the nice stuff and the comparative stuff — but you have not given us the hard cost-benefit analysis that you say is the real basis for your operation.

Mr Carvill: I am saying that what this paper does is explain the methodology, explain the assumptions.

The Chairman: That is not the question you were asked. Let us get down to the walnut. He said that that is not the reality. Where is the reality you based your figures on? Obviously there is cost-benefit in all of this and an economic appraisal which is factual and gives hard evidence. Maybe you do not wish to give it. Then say so. But let us not pussy-foot around. I have seen red herrings before. Where are the hard facts?

Mr Carvill: This is a summary of very extensive working papers across a range of files. It shows the methodology, it shows the assumptions, it shows the summation of the costings, but it is not the working document and it is not the departmental files, obviously it is not.

The Chairman: We are not asking for the departmental files.

Mr McFarland: Is it possible for you to produce a synopsis from which you have removed the ELB versus local authority arguments that are in every single page here.

Mr Carvill: Well, simply put a line through them, but it does not change the conclusions.

Mr McFarland: No, I am talking about you.

Rev Trevor Kirkland: We do not want the comparative studies. We would like a summary.

Mr McFarland: You are saying to us that you are not basing your decision on this.

Mr Carvill: No, I am saying that we are not basing our estimates of savings on comparator LEAs.

The Chairman: I accept that, but you have estimated your savings on something.

Mr Carvill: Yes. We talked earlier about staffing structures and notional staffing structures that were assumed.

The Chairman: You estimated your savings on something.

Mr Carvill: Yes, of course.

Mr McFarland: There must be some hard figures somewhere, unless, of course, it is entirely a political decision. We have talked about value for money, and about cost-effectivenesses all the way through. This was one of the reasons for this cost-effectiveness item.

You have now very kindly given us this, which sets out methodology and a number of other things, except that all the way through it uses comparators between the LEAs in England and the education and library boards here. This is to do with your experience of costings. Is it possible for you to give us an A4 sheet or two A4 sheets — however much it takes — setting out the sort of basis upon which this decision was made?

Mr Carvill: It is in 3.3, 3.4 and 3.5.

Mr McFarland: These are dependent on the notional staff structures?

Mr Carvill: Yes.

Mr McFarland: Is it possible to have the notional staff structures? Obviously it will not make sense without them.

Mr Carvill: Yes, it is possible.

Mr McFarland: In 3.1 there are the words “which were adjusted to reflect the performance levels already achieved in the better performing boards”. How do you determine a performance level? Is there a whole area that we are not aware of?

Mr Carvill: We looked at the costings that were available to indicate the unit costs of particular functions in different boards.

Mr McFarland: This is from the one board which co-operated.

Mr Carvill: No, existing boards.

Mr McFarland: But you said they did not co-operate and refused to give their figures, which is why you could not do the rest of them.

Mr Carvill: I said their line was to co-operate in discussing these figures with us and that they were prepared to supply figures in correspondence. We got those figures in that way. Does that answer the question?

Mr Hussey: In what year were those figures done?

Mr Hill: They would be 1991/92 figures.

Mr Hussey: Either 1991-92 or 1992-93.

The Chairman: Would they be part of the figures in the 1992-93 document?

Mr McFarland: Do we have those board figures that we based this on. Obviously that would be useful. You talk about “adjusted to reflect performance”. Adjusted is a great word and can mean a number of things.

Mr Hill: Could I just emphasize that this exercise was carried out in 1994 which means that the most recent reliable figures that we had were ones from 91/92 and 92/93. I know it seems quite a bit away now, but they were actually the most recent.

The Chairman: Whoever it was you sent to Bedfordshire overdid it.

Mr Hill: The base data was supplied by the local boards in correspondence.

Mr McFarland: Paragraph 3.1 provides staffing structures drawn up for each service. So you have all this available?

Mr Carvill: Yes.

Mr McFarland: I am slightly confused about why you were not rushing in to help us by providing what is obviously a detailed planning document that must exist somewhere which shows what you think this is going to look like and upon which you have based your figures. There must be some detail there if you are actually quoting. You have revised staffing structures, and you have notional staff structures for management. This all must be available. I am confused about why we have taken two hours. It looks like a court case, and I do not mean it to be. We finally prised out that these things exist. One would have thought, if you were confident of the basis on which this was done, that we would have had those on day one.

Mr Carvill: They are not predictions of what the staffing structure will be in a particular board area. They are, as it says, notional staff structures, our best guess of what would be appropriate.

Mr McFarland: For each of the services.

Mr Carvill: They are not predictions, they are estimates.

Mr McFarland: You are taking serious decisions on hard figures. Of course you have to do notional figures. I understand that fully. That is the way things are done. What I am confused about is why you have been slightly reluctant — if I am not wrong — to produce these to us. Presumably, because you are basing the entire reorganization of education on them, you are confident they will stand up to any scrutiny.

Mr Carvill: What I am basing them on is an estimate of savings that would result from some structural changes. I am confident that they are adequate for that purpose.

Mr McFarland: But this has been sold on the £2 million savings.

Mr Hill: Well, to be honest, you keep telling us that it is based on £2 million savings, and we keep telling you that it is based on a number of factors including the £2 million savings.

Mr McFarland: But that was the selling point in the press releases. It was the selling point in all the documentation.

Mr Fowler: It does not just say £2 million; it says £2.564 million. That is how accurate your estimating is. You must have a basis for all this.

The Chairman: You can play with all this from now until next year. The available facts are the compendium of information that everyone was working on. Is that correct?

Mr Carvill: You have waved that document a number of times. I do not think that that is a document which we supplied.

The Chairman: I think it is a document that you would have originally supplied.

Mr Carvill: It is possible, but is it part of the Capita working papers?

The Chairman: I got somebody to assess some of the facts. One of things that we discovered was that it was inadequate, inaccurate and misleading.

There is integrity of argument somewhere, if I can get it. I am given new information every day and I depend on good faith. But if I get somebody to examine that good-faith document and am told there is an inaccuracy, I get very sceptical. I can get people who would do all sorts of figures for me, and they could make all sorts of predictions. But I live in a real world.

Mr Carvill: It is difficult for me to comment on what the Chairman said because I do not know who the commentator was, I do not know the basis on which those comments were made and I do not immediately recognize the document that is being referred to.

The Chairman: It is the Department of Education for Northern Ireland market testing.

Mr Carvill: Oh, it is the Capita Market Testing Document?

The Chairman: It speaks for itself. Maybe you have had to make corrections yourselves.

Mr Carvill: I will not go into that.

Mr McFarland: It is extremely useful to have this because it is very enlightening. Could I take you to redundancy costs? The second talks about cost of redundancy being between £1 million and £2.5 million. There is at present no valid basis for determining where the figure would lie.

At the beginning you said it was not possible to do things, but we have been stacking things up and we will, I hope, drag them all out from the various hiding places.

I understand that if you cut back on a post, and someone takes on extra responsibilities, there is immediately a salary review.

The Chairman: Job evaluation.

Mr McFarland: Job evaluation comes along. It strikes me that we based this whole exercise on a great many suppositions. I would argue that you have perhaps too many suppositions to stand up to a sceptic asking if you have really done your homework on this. Have you really done your homework here and can you put a hand on your heart and say that you know exactly what the cost-benefit analysis is in terms of the advantages and disadvantages of taking this course of action? Short of doing a detailed study of your document and having a sort of Pauline conversion, I am moving towards being slightly sceptical about the figures involved in all this.

Mr Carvill: I think the figures do stand up to scrutiny. You will form your own judgement on that. The assumptions on which they are based are modest ones, conservative in the sense that we have rounded down and pushed the target low. I think as far as it is possible to identify the transitional costs, be they travelling or redundancy, we have reason to be confident that the savings are robust against them. I do not think it is possible to improve on that given current knowledge. Now, the more fine-grain material which you have been discussing can only be produced when we come to the actual implementation stage. I accept that but that is inevitable in any exercise of reorganization.

Mr McFarland: But if you find at that stage that you have an horrendous bill and it is not going to be cost-effective, do you see the Minister throwing up his hands and saying “Oops, bit of a mistake here” and changing everything back to having five boards, which would be the obvious and logical thing to do?

Mr Carvill: Any reorganization of public services can only be done on the basis of the best estimates you can draw up at the time. There is always doubt about them, there always has to be. I am quite sure you can produce different assumptions, and perhaps some of the calculations you referred to are based on assumptions of this sort which would show horrendous costs. You ought to look very carefully at whether those assumptions are reasonable or not. We have made our assessment.

The Chairman: Have you had regard to a recent public document which made a big play on education?

Mr Carvill: Yes, and its contribution to economic development.

The Chairman: Then there is, of course, the UNESCO document. This exercise is not about education; it is not about saving money. What is the real reason?

Mr Carvill: I can only say that in my opinion the administrative, educational and financial arguments in favour of reorganization are clear.

The Chairman: I admire your faithfulness.

Mr Hussey: You make much of the map giving us the population statistics — Protestant versus Roman Catholic. I notice that the free-school-meals item was inserted there. Your map shows an inequality across the province. Would you agree?

Mr Carvill: Yes.

Mr Hussey: If that is not evidence of an attempt at social engineering —

Mr Carvill: I do not know whether that is a criticism or a compliment.

Mr Hussey: Is it evidence of social engineering?

Mr Carvill: As a result of our proposals the boards will be more homogenous than they are at present. Is that evidence of what?

Mr Hussey: Is it chance?

Mr Carvill: Well, if you are asking if we started with the percentages of free schools meals and built that up to reach some predetermined conclusion, no we did not.

Mr Hussey: Is it a chance outcome?

Mr Carvill: Do not forget that we started ......

Mr Hussey: Either it is or it is not.

Mr Carvill: Well, it is a fact.

Mr Hussey: If you did not set out to achieve that, it must be a chance outcome.

Mr Carvill: It is a factor that we were aware of; it is a factor against which we tested the boundaries that were generated in that model.

Mr Hussey: There is no evidence of that in what is presented here. These are factors that you were aware of and considered but did not mention in any of the documentation.

Mr Carvill: Not quite. I think I talked at some length about free school meals

The Chairman: To be fair, Mr Carvill did elaborate and waxed eloquently on that point. I was trying to work out why he was waxing eloquently, and then I discovered why.

The boards and the churches have made very honest attempts to explain their concerns. In all of this, they talk about savings. I am not too familiar with the financial engineering. That guarantees nothing. I have a ball-park figure for this from a consultant who has worked down South on regionalization. The figure is horrendous. What is the benefit at the chalk-face?

Mr Carvill: Better services at less cost.

Mr Hill: Mr Curran was right when he started his questions by reference to the strategic plan because it is to the fulfillment of those objectives in the strategic plan that these structural changes will make a significant contribution.

The Chairman: Are those things worth the money?

Mr Curran: But have you explored getting savings by other means? I could go into this at length. Did you explore savings within the whole of the system? I have no evidence of that. The boards showed how they could save £0.5 million in a year. I put the question specifically to every board: what is the potential for co-operation to generate further savings? I was getting vibes that there was potential there. I put the same question to DENI. What is the potential for savings within DENI? We know that there is always some fat in the system, but could you have saved £2 million - £3 million by other means without causing this massive disruption that is possibly going to militate against the priority objectives that you set out in your strategic plan?

Mr Carvill: Nobody, as I said earlier, is arguing that this is the only possible source of savings. If other savings can be made as well, they should be made.

Mr Curran: That is what I would like to have seen explored, rather than this total disruption of the system, given that the savings are minuscule at the chalk-face.

The Chairman: The education priorities are the ones that the boards have picked. This is where DENI always seems to come in somewhat lacking.

Rev Trevor Kirkland: The religious make-up of each of the three areas — why is this significant?

Mr Carvill: The reason the point is highlighted in the presentation is that a lot of people focused on in their comments at various stages of the consultation including the consultation on the four-board model. It was a point to which people attached importance, that is why it is highlighted. It is a factual statement of the known religious balance in those three areas.

The Chairman: I was interested in the point you made last time about accountability and public representation. The fifty-man board is a fairly unwieldy organization. The Minister’s 25 June statement talks about experience of English LEAs. What is the engine driving all this? I do not think it is anything we have heard about that today or on the last day.

Mr Carvill: I can only conclude that what we have said to you has failed to convince because we have said very clearly what is driving the exercise. We have explained the improvements in services that we look for, we have explained the savings in costs that we look for. I have heard it said that £2 million is not a large sum in terms of the total education budget. I have to say that it is a large enough sum to be significant in my responsibilities as Accounting Officer for the Department. I would not like to go to the PAC and say that £2 million is an insignificant figure and we have discounted it. I would be on dangerous ground there. So I am not sure that I can add to the points

that we have already made.

Mr Hussey: Would you agree that this whole procedure has been and is contentious?

Mr Carvill: Yes. It has been a controversial exercise.

Mr Hussey: Thank you.

The Chairman: I thank you. We may live in a world that is contentious, but I would hate ever to forget the proper courtesies. I admire your faithfulness in defending what you feel has to be defended and, indeed, your guarding of the ministerial prerogatives. It is an exercise which most of us have come through in different spheres of life.

Mr Carvill: Thank you.

The Chairman: We are politicians to some extent and, therefore, we have to be a bit more open than civil servants or anyone else. But we are not afraid to declare our hand. We will have to wait till Monday so this can be written up. The work the Minister gave us was impossible to do. As soon as we have a copy on the table, copies will be offered to you.

Mr Carvill: I do appreciate that. May I add just one point to what we discussed? One area was highlighted in the questions you sent to us which we have not actually got round to today and that was a specific request to list the areas where education and library boards’ responsibilities had been affected by education reform. Would it be helpful if I left with you a note on that?

The Chairman: Yes. We have asked headmasters to do the same thing. In other words, we do the same as you — we double-check.

Mr Carvill: Well I will leave a note with the Clerk.

Witnesses:

Rev Brian Kennaway, Mr G Montgomery and Mr R Whitten

(Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland)

The Chairman: Gentlemen, you are very welcome to the Northern Ireland Forum’s Education Committee. The Committee was set up in July as a result of the Minister’s directive of 25 June indicating that he intended to bring in legislation forthwith to reduce the number of education and library boards from five to three. We met early this month, we have been hearing evidence last week and this week, and we have evidence to hear tomorrow.

Please proceed as you wish.

Rev Brian Kennaway: Thank you very much, Mr Chairman, it is nice for us to be here. I am the Convener of the Education Committee of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland. I will introduce things and then my two colleagues will make particular contributions. We have submitted to you copies of two documents that we submitted to the Department, with an introduction that highlights the key features that concern us. I know you have had a long day and, I am sure you are anxious to finish.

The history of the Orange Institution’s connection with education goes back to the formation of the state when the Orange Institution, in connection with the churches, sought to maintain a reformed Protestant witness in the schools in Northern Ireland and to maintain the general Christian ethos of the schools. This was well documented over the period when many minor battles were fought over the retention of the Bible in schools and having morning assemblies. Our concern is over the matter of consultation. We have been involved in this process of consultation. We have spoken to the Minister, Michael Ancram, but we are, however, somewhat disappointed at the final outcome of this consultation process, very disappointed indeed.

The words that come to mind are “something of a sham”, and sham, of course, has its own particular connotations for us. This consultation period has been a sham and the Ministers and his friends seem totally to have ignored much of the material that was presented to them.

Having highlighted our particular concerns, I want to introduce my colleagues to address those concerns now. Richard Whitten will address the small schools and CCMS, and then Graham Montgomery will deal with political unity and DENI.

Mr Whitten: Gentlemen and ladies, one of our main concerns about the future administration of education in Northern Ireland was the setting up of the CCMS some three years ago. Now, of course, we were aware that in the maintained sector the Roman Catholic church had a perfect right to set up an institution, another layer of administration, for its own schools since it is the legal owner of those schools. Our objection, which we made very forcefully to the Minister, was that this could be being funded by taxpayers' money. Three years ago when CCMS started a consultation document showed a costing for it to be £0.7m — that has now reached £2 million. That figure shows a 100% increase in each of the last three years, and we would question whether there has been any comparable increase anywhere else in the education sector, indeed anywhere else in public administration in Northern Ireland, of 100% in each of the last three years.

As I say, our objection cannot be to the fact that the CCMS was set up. Our objection is to another layer of administration being funded by taxpayers' money. It has not escaped our notice that the CCMS actually lobbied for only one board for Northern Ireland, and we question why it feels that only one board is necessary. Obviously, from our point of view, this would further dilute the transferors' rights in the Protestant Churches' sector.

We question the imbalance and the unfairness, and indeed we say that it is extremely unfortunate that the setting up of the CCMS with taxpayers' money seems to have sectarianised Northern Ireland’s education further. We asked Michael Ancram directly why he was presiding over what could be described as the most sectarian publicly funded education system in Western Europe. Needless to say, he disagreed with that, but we really stuck to our point. It is interesting that the amount he claims will be saved by reducing from five boards to three is £2 million and that the cost of CCMS is also £2 million.

In the matter of small schools, it seems to us that in the last number of years there has been a concerted effort by DENI to close small rural schools, particularly in the border areas. Now we are under pressure from our membership to maintain the populations along the border areas. We are under pressure from lots of different quarters. We are under pressure from terrorism and under pressure economically, and the closure of a rural school has a terrible effect on a local community. It is not too long after that, with travel that is too difficult and winter nights et cetera, that families move to be nearer the larger schools, and that also dilutes the whole population along the border areas.

Now in some of the more recent quarrels about the closure of small rural primary schools, in particular, there has been cross-community support for them to be kept open, and I have a personal example quite near me of Cladymilltown Primary School near Markethill in Co Armagh. The local MP, Mr Seamus Mallon, lobbied extensively for that school to be retained. Mr Jim Nicholson, the MEP, lobbied extensively for that school to be retained, and the Southern Education and Library Board was wholeheartedly in favour of retaining it, but Michael Ancram overruled the lot and closed it. Fait accompli. End of story.

We fear that if the number of boards is reduced from five to three we will have even less concern for the future of small schools, and we are not convinced that in education big is necessarily beautiful. There is a drive to produce these large schools — one might almost call them factory schools — and we are not convinced that that policy is right in all circumstances.

Mr Montgomery: Gentlemen, a couple of the points that I am going to make have been touched on already by Mr Whitten. The first thing which is very important is the nature of the situation in Northern Ireland. While we accept that economics dictate reality in any political situation — and of course the Government are attempting to rationalize the Civil Service in many areas and, therefore, a review of education in Northern Ireland falls very logically under this — we feel, however, that there are circumstances in Northern Ireland which make our situation very different. This is not unique to education — the subvention which we have in the economy in general is largely a result of our differences from the rest of the United Kingdom.

Political agreement between the people of Northern Ireland, or the representatives of the communities in Northern Ireland, is quite important and, indeed, that is one of the reasons the Forum was created in the first place, to establish understanding and greater harmony among our people. It is rather regrettable that when the Minister has consultation, and most of the political parties and most of the interested groups in Northern Ireland representing all sections of the community reply to the effect that they wish to retain the five-board structure, he then decides to reduce the number of boards to three — now that defies logic first of all. It is not unknown for Governments to ignore advice or to ignore opinions, but we feel it is regrettable that when there is agreement, the Department of Education in this case, and perhaps the Minister more especially, appears to ignore it.

There is no point, quite simply, in having consultation if the Minister leads people to feel that he has made his mind up to begin with, that the consultation is a cosmetic exercise to allow the people to feel a sense of democracy. He allows them to do that and then he completely ignores their findings. Roughly 80%, I believe, of respondents to the consultation said that they wished the five boards to be retained, yet we find that the boards are being reduced to three. It is quite simply wrong to ignore such political union among the parties concerned. The fact that the Minister appears to have ignored the consultation leads on to the difficulty with DENI itself because many people, and certainly many of our members, are beginning to feel that the Department of Education has some sort of agenda of its own, and Mr Whitten has alluded to that already. The fact, for example — and I think it bears repetition — is that when the consultation process began CCMS was being funded to the tune of £0.78 million and the Department wanted to save £2 million; CCMS is now being funded by almost £2 million and the Department is still seeking to save £2 million, so they are increasing spending in a contentious area and, at the same time, planning to rationalize services.

I think it is important also that we should make clear that we are not opposed to rationalization. We are not Luddites. We do understand that there are certain necessities and we are not devoted to the idea of ever increasing bureaucracy. However, we do feel that these things have to be managed sensitively and in a practical and realistic way, and internal reorganization and rationalization of individual boards may well be an alternative to just reducing the number of boards to three in a way which will not be at all helpful.

Also, the Minister’s proposals, we fear, will further reduce the number of elected representatives, or the input of elected representatives, in the educational process in Northern Ireland. That would be regrettable because as we come to a time in our history, real or imagined, when we are preparing to take on greater responsibility for governing ourselves — if that is, indeed, the Government’s aim for the political process in which they have been engaged from the early 1990s — it is rather regrettable that, while having that aim, they are rationalizing boards and reducing the representation of elected representatives. That appears contradictory and again feeds the perception that we have had relayed to us by many of our members that DENI is working to some sort of agenda of its own. It is not responsive to the wishes of people and it is not paying any attention to the wishes of people. It is talking on the one hand about increasing accountability while on the other creating these large boards which will in fact reduce accountability. Those are the main points which I wished to make about DENI and the consultation process.

The consultation process in short was fatally flawed, and the one point which we would like to make on record, and which we think is absolutely essential, is that it is now time that the Department of Education for Northern Ireland made the Coopers and Lybrand Report available. Publish it and let us see what it says, let us see what the consultants suggested. If the Government’s findings, if the Department’s findings, are similar to the Coopers and Lybrand Report, we will have egg on our face; if not, well that is a matter for the Minister.

The Chairman: Thank you very much for your gravity and your succinctness.

Mr Hussey: You obviously have more concerns about education administration than the actual board reorganization. It is fair to say that one of the major elements which has come through in submissions to us has been concern about the reduction in board numbers. But you have deeper concerns about the administrative system rather than just the board structure. Is that correct?

Rev Brian Kennaway: Yes, but obviously the reduction of boards from five to three affects all those other concerns and that is why we are highlighting them.

Mr Hussey: There was concern expressed about border schools. The Department will, of course, argue that all the boards will disappear and new boards will be constituted, but the Western Education and Library Board will disappear, and that board has a considerable number of border schools within its area. That type of area would also probably be regarded as being one of a Nationalist persuasion. The new Northern Board and Southern Board structure would favour those of a more pro-Union stance, as opposed to the current situation, given the geographical and population structure of the west. Taking into account your argument about border schools, would that sort of set-up not suit your concerns better?

Mr Whitten: It may be that much larger boards favouring, if you like, those of a more Unionist opinion might actually work against the smaller schools. They are the ones that seem to be concerned most with saving the Government’s money. That is our experience and in actual fact the Western Board and the Southern Board which have, of course, large Catholic majorities have been most scrupulous in trying to keep the small schools open, both Catholic and Protestant. They seem to be more responsive to the local community. It is not the experience of our committee, expressed to us through the ordinary members of the Orange Order, that they suffered in any untoward way from being in the Western Board or the Southern Board areas. Quite the reverse, they were helped, they were given considerable assistance to try to keep many of those schools going. Our concern is that the larger the boards, the more the emphasis will be on saving money, and the more the concerns of the local community will be diluted.

Mr Hussey: Your argument is that the present board structure has greater concern about cross-community issues than the proposed three-board structure would have.

Mr Whitten: I certainly feel that. If you were living in a small village in Tyrone, you would have more chance of securing your local school’s future with the existing Western Board than you would if you were in a part of Tyrone which was going to be administered from Ballymena or if you were in Southern Tyrone and you were going to be administered from Armagh.

Mr Hussey: As someone from Castlederg, I hope that is correct.

Mr Bolton: I am very sorry to relate that I have that experience. I am a member of the North Eastern Education Board based in Ballymena. It closed a primary school known to me last year or the year before.

Mr Fowler: The point has been made that the CCMS when it was first set up cost roughly £1 million and since then it has reached the magical amount of £2 million. This suggests that it would rather balance the books. It would make them pay their own way. But is it as simple as that? The children must be educated somewhere, so they are going to have to spend roughly that amount of money under a new system.

Mr Whitten: Well the £2 million for CCMS is funding which was not available to spend on ordinary schools. Until the CCMS was funded, the Catholic schools in the maintained sector were administrated through the board areas. Now all the CCMS is doing is duplicating the efforts of the boards, and our criticism is of the duplication of effort in the administrative sphere. To give you an example, the boards have sections, each education and library board has a section dealing with planning, where architects, basically, plan new schools and extensions to existing schools. They have building control officers who go round and inspect the school buildings, they have finance officers who send teams into schools and inspect the books of the schools. They have personnel departments who look after the appointments of staff to schools. Now CCMS is duplicating all this. It has its own sections for planning, architects and everything else. If a Catholic school wants an extension, it employs obviously the architect that CCMS has and so on, so it is duplication of effort that could be saved.

Mr Fowler: So they do not employ the board’s architect?

Mr Whitten: No, they have their own in the planning section. There are up to 17 paid officers now, and they have all these different sections and largely, it seems to us — at any rate they can obviously speak for themselves — that they are simply duplicating the effort which is already available and the services which are already available through the area boards. We question whether they actually need the CCMS. Of course it puts the main Protestant Churches in an invidious position in that they do not now own schools. They handed them over many years ago, so as they do not hold legal title to the schools. They are in a difficult position. They cannot argue that they need a Protestant equivalent of the CCMS. As a matter of fact I do not think they would want a Protestant equivalent of the CCMS. If we were to go down that route we would really sectarianise the whole thing even more than it is now, and that was the line of our questioning of Michael Ancram. If he was determined to build up the CCMS, he would provoke a reaction on the Protestant side. Protestant Churches might demand something similar for themselves, and we actually do not want that. We question whether that is necessary. We question the road that this is taking us along.

Rev Brian Kennaway: Mr Fowler seems to think that if the CCMS were abolished tomorrow the maintained sector would not be administered. If it were, it would still all be administered through the board. Our fundamental problem is that it creates another tier of administration which according to these documents that come from DENI, they are trying to streamline by reducing the number of boards from five to three. Yet, they have, in fact, created another tier of administration internally themselves.

Rev Trevor Kirkland: Just two things. One is actually a rejoinder to your point that Protestant Churches do not want an equivalent to CCMS. In fact, some of the denominations do want the equivalent, and they have been asking for it over a number of years. But that is not my point. You showed a deep concern in your opening remarks about preserving the Protestant and Reformed faith in schools. All the Ministers that I have come across have rejected the Protestant and Reformed faith, so should we not have a separate school system altogether? In fact, there are no Protestant schools. There are state schools, to which we send our children.

Rev Brian Kennaway: Yes, the policy of the institution has since the 1920s been to support the state’s having a state system of education. We have thrown in our lot with that principle, the Protestant Churches threw in their lot and handed over the schools. It was, in fact, the Roman Catholic Church that declined so to do, so we would actually want to see the state system maintained and not a further divisive system.

Mr Montgomery: Our concern is not to create state Protestant schools either. Our submission says that the Order on many occasions has used its influence to ensure the retention of the principles of the Protestant reformed tradition within the curriculum of those schools known as controlled schools. Many schools have been created recently, but virtually all the older controlled schools have an independent or individual ethos because of their history, and that ethos must be maintained so what we seek to do is to ensure that there is a retention of the principles of the reformed faith in the curriculum of the schools.

Many schools which may be regarded as Protestant controlled schools now have Roman Catholic pupils, a considerable number in some cases, and it is not our desire to ensure that those Roman Catholic pupils have to adopt some form of Protestantism or have to be force-fed with Protestantism because that is inconsistent with the principles of liberty which we espouse, but we wish, as a Protestant organization with concerns for the Protestant reformed faith, to see that it is maintained within the curriculum, that it is available. Our committee originally came into being because we felt that the state sector had gone too far towards secularization, where religious education had been banished from the schools completely. We do not wish to see that either. We want to see a level of religious instruction, for our part we wish to see the reformed faith’s remaining there for pupils from that faith.

Mr McFarland: You spoke about a reduction in public representation. As you probably know, the Department is claiming an 8% increase — a princely total of three extra councillors across Northern Ireland. So I am not sure whether you were talking in proportion to particular areas.

Mr Montgomery: I'll take that point on board.

Mr Whitten: It is more our concern about the Western Board. Mr Hussey’s point is that it seems to us that it could be the loser. Local representatives might lose the influence they have at the moment with the separate Western Board, their influence may be diluted in the three-board structure.

The Chairman: You mentioned your concern over small schools in rural areas and how you have been treated by different boards in that respect. I want to move to Mr Montgomery’s point. Are you saying that you want to retain a state system and yet retain the reformed ethos in it?

Mr Montgomery: No, I said that we wished to see the ethos of individual schools retained but that, as an institution which represents a broad Protestant platform and opinion, we wished to see a retention of the reformed Protestant faith within the school curriculum, especially in those schools where the transferees are from Protestant Churches.

The Chairman: This has always intrigued me. In 1923 when this battle raged, a Church of Ireland clergyman wrote fairly extensively about it, and a Member of Parliament from somewhere in my part of the world carried this campaign on. I remember somebody saying that we won the battle but lost the war. Is that an accurate summation of the state of play at present? In the transfer to the state, we gave willingly.

Rev Brian Kennaway: Yes, in my own denomination, the Irish Presbyterian Church, Mr Corky, quite a famous minister around Belfast, fought a rearguard action and fought quite vigorously but unfortunately lost the debate in the General Assembly. If he were alive today he would be saying simply “I told you so”, because he warned, and unfortunately he was really prophetic. I think it is true, yes. Looking back at it, we have lost the war in that sense, but the other word that comes to mind is “betrayed”. I think the churches have been betrayed in the trust that they gave to the state in the 1920s.

The Chairman: Well, put not your trust in whatever it is.

Mr Hussey: Is there a case for greater representation on all boards of those whose family tradition has been in the state sector, as opposed to those whose family tradition has been in the maintained sector? I am thinking particularly of my own board area, the Western Board area.

Rev Brian Kennaway: I suppose there has to be a careful balance. But our fear about the whole new scenario that is projected is that there will be a reduction in the transferors at board level, and dear knows what is going to come out at local school level. In boards of governors at local school level there will probably be a similar reduction in transferors — every time there is a change in the structure there always seems to be a reduction in the transferors. That is just part of the continuing system of betrayal.

Mr Hussey: And would it be the case that the maintained sector could be over-represented?

Rev Brian Kennaway: Well, it is by CCMS, of course.

The Chairman: Thank you very much for coming. We appreciate your attendance.

Rev Brian Kennaway: Thank you very much.