Monthly Archives: July 2016

Can we afford 2,000 MATs?

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Earlier today the Regional School Commissioner (RSC) for the area that covers Oxfordshire appeared in front of the county’s Education Scrutiny Committee. This was his second annual visit since taking up the post of RSC. He brought along his new deputy to listen to the exchanges.  The discussion was robust at times. The RSC revealed that he now has a staff of around 50 people in his office and has established three sub-regional boards because the area he covers is so large. However, he didn’t know what his total budget for the office of RSC was, but promised to write to the Committee with the figure.

Two other interesting facts that came out during the discussion were, first, that the chairs a committee that includes civil servants from other bodies such as the EFA and Ofsted so that he can co-ordinate ‘soft intelligence’ about schools. Chairing such a committee places an RSC in a very important position with regard to all the academies in his area. He also revealed that he thought multi-academy trusts should probably normally range from 1-15 schools depending upon location. He also wasn’t seemingly in favour of clusters of secondary schools in the same MAT, as in the ARK and Harris models. This is despite his view that the reinvention of advisory teachers for those that want to stay in their subject and not more into general leadership seem an attractive idea to him. Without some degree of local groupings of secondary schools the travel involved, apart from being wasteful of resources, might also dissuade some good candidates from applying for such a post.

Taking the point about wasting of resources in a time of austerity and tax cuts for business further, an average size of a MAT of ten schools might require around 2,000 extra schools leaders if replaced across the county, once the post of CEO of a MAT replaced the former Executive Head role. With on-costs this might cost around £200 million a year, as this blog has pointed out before. Even an average size of 20 schools in a MAT might cost upwards of £100 million. That figure would cost the equivalent of more than 3,000 classroom teachers across the sector. That seems a high price to pay for ditching local democracy and imposing an NHS style direct rule system on the school sector.

The RSC agreed that local authorities have the duty to provide education for pupils in academies where the plug is pulled for either financial reasons or persistent poor performance, if a transfer to another MAT cannot be organised. Why would a MAT want to take on a school with a financial deficit even if the MAT was prepared to try to overcome a long-standing period of under-performance against expectations?

In answer to a question the RSC seemed to accept announcing a school closure for September any time after Easter would place a burden on a local authority with regard to finding alternative school places. With reduced resources in local government, such a burden could probably only be met by taking staff off of other work. The Committee didn’t ask about the effects of closing a school in a rural area if it meant increased transport cost to local council Tax payers.

All in all the RSC must have felt the session was good preparation in case he is ever asked to appear in front of a parliamentary Select Committee, but it left this member of the Committee wondering whether the benefits of the system really outweigh the costs?

Funding formula delay?

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The DfE have written to the Chair of the Education Select Committee saying that they are not now in a position to comment on the development of a new national Funding formula when the Minister appears in front of the Committee next week. The reason given is that there were over 6,000 responses to the first stage consultation and officials haven’t finished analysing them yet. Ho hum, so what were they all doing during the period of purdah?

The response for the chairman of the Committee reflected anxiety that the timetable for introduction may now slip, even if there isn’t a general election in the autumn. After all, any changes for 2017 that affected maintained schools would need to be approved by Schools Forums across the county in the autumn term, ready for introduction in April. Such a timetable is looking unrealistic now and impossible if it needs the approval of a new Prime Minister if one isn’t in post until September and even then such a timetable assumes that the current ministerial team remain in place.

However, even more urgent, is the publication of the 26th STRB Report and the DfE’s response that has now taken over two months to formulate since they received the report at the end of April. Schools need to know how much they will have to pay staff from September. Even where schools have freedom to pay what they like, the churn that could result from some schools, with more cash, paying more than others won’t help create the stability that the system needs at the present time.

The government’s whole education strategy as outlined in the March White Paper now looks as it could suffer the same fate as the contents of Mrs Thatcher’s famous White Paper, ‘Education: framework for expansion’ that was scuppered by the economic crisis of 1973 onwards. It is not clear whether or not there will be an economic crisis now, but a political one there certainly is across both of the two traditional ruling parties.

Whether the news of the easing of the fiscal rules so as not to need to eradicate the deficit by the end of this parliament will be good news for education it is too early to say. However, if capital projects get the nod for expansion, school buildings have the advantage that they can be built in any part of the country. Even where pupil numbers aren’t increasing as fast as in the south of England, there are always old buildings to replace. After all, it was in 1969 that a Labour government first announced a plan to re-build all pre-1906 schools. A revival of such an idea in order to help unemployed builders in the regions might go down better than, say, pushing ahead with HST2, however desirable that project is in the long-run.

Unless there are a rush of announcements over the next few weeks, schools will start their summer break facing an unprecedented level of uncertainty. Not a good place to be.