Category Archives: education

Are heads salaries on the rise: What are the consequences for taxpayers?

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How come secondary heads cannot fill in forms about their salary correctly? Figures issued yesterday by the DfE show around 300 misreported leadership salaries in the primary sector, but some 400 misreported salaries in the numerically much smaller secondary sector where the misreported figures were split evenly between academies and other maintained secondary schools. According to a footnote in the government tables the misreporting includes any salary above £200,000 per annum.

Now it may be that the census form that collects data on teachers and school leaders and their salaries does not deal well with issues such as executive heads and those head teachers leading federations of schools where others have the courtesy title of head when in fact they are just a head of a school site. If this is the case, then the form needs revision after three years in use. However, if it is heads, and they are responsible for their schools return of the form, fudging their salary and those of others on the leadership team then the schools should be identified and required to provide a correct return.

At the start of this parliament the Prime Minister was keen than no public servants should earn more in salary than he does, but of course he has a rent free house in London and a large country mansion for the weekends in addition to his salary. Nevertheless, one side effect of Michael Gove’s freeing up of teachers’ salary regulations could be that the salaries of heads rise even further and faster in the coming years while those of classroom teachers are held down because of their relative bargaining power.

After more than a quarter of a century of studying the pay of heads, I am aware that the job is a challenging one, and with Ofsted breathing down their necks it can be very like that of a football manager seeking either a place in Europe for their team or striving to avoid relegation. Either way, their job is at risk if they fail to perform well. The tragic case of the Worcestershire primary head reported at her inquest earlier this week shows just how much pressure Ofsted can exert of school leaders. As a result a risk premium is increasingly necessary for many headships. How large that premium should be must be determined by governing bodies, and they need guidelines for what is appropriate.

However, letting the market be responsible for the calculation of salaries in education has another and wider impact on taxpayers in general. At present, many heads are still retiring on a final salary pension, although this will be replaced by an average salary pension for those who retire in the future. As the Teachers’ Pension Fund doesn’t actually exist, and any pension is paid out of  taxation, the burden of the large pensions of up to half the final salary falls onto general taxation. A pension of £50,000 would require the contributions from around 20 NQTs, so if there are now more than say 500 pensioners in the Teachers’ Pension Scheme with pensions of over £50,000 they might require the contributions of 10,000 Newly Qualified Teachers just to cover their pensions. As this number increases so will its share of the income from the Pension Fund necessary to cover the payout even if it is offset by the higher pension payments from those receiving the high salaries.

Teacher compensation regimes are complicated affairs, and the government should be wary of tackling some areas of pay without considering the consequences as a whole. At present governing bodies have the power to set salaries, but without the responsibilities for all the consequences. That said I quite understand why heads want to achieve the highest salary possible in an environment where the ethos of public service seems to reside solely with a Prime Minister who can afford to take such a stance.

Wasting money in a time of austerity is unforgivable

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In September 2010 I seconded a motion about Free Schools and Academies at the Lib Dem Conference in Liverpool. Peter Downes from Cambridgeshire drafted the motion and proposed it to Conference where it was accepted after a lively debate. I have reproduced part of my speech winding up the motion because the Public Accounts Committee have today published a report on the managing of the expansion of the academies programme that makes sobering reading and reflects some of my concerns in 2010.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmpubacc/787/78704.htm

I have also included some of the PAC’s remarks after the quotes from my speech.

This motion was carefully crafted to recognise that being in coalition should not require us to abandon our basic principles: 

As Lib Dems we believe in

  • good local schools for all, that are
  • supported and coordinated by democratically elected local bodies; and a
  • a system based upon fairness, that protects the most vulnerable.

What we don’t believe in is an expensive and wasteful free-for-all.

Many of you in this hall joined the Lib Dems because of our education campaigns,

‘a penny on income tax’,

better early years education,

and a Pupil Premium championed as long ago as 2001.

Education has always been important to Liberal Democrats.

As you know, the Coalition’s programme for government is based upon, Freedom, Fairness and Responsibility- that’s what it said in the Coalition Agreement. 

If you pass this motion, you send a message to the government that Lib Dem activists understand the challenge of government, but are not prepared to abandon all our principles. 

We believe that government, an especially a coalition government, is for the many, and not just the few; for the future, as well as the present, and founded upon real principles. 

But Lib Dems know it is to work with schools, to inspire staff and pupils, to demand high standards in return for investment in teaching and learning, to have an appropriate curriculum, and to manage provision locally, not from Whitehall, and above all not to waste money we cannot afford pandering to the demands of the few whilst ignoring the needs of the many.

I don’t care who runs schools, but I do care that those who do so recognise that public money is for the good of all, not the benefit of the few.

Extracts from the PAC Report published 23rd April 2013.

10.  Despite some improvements, academies’ governance is still not sufficiently transparent for parents to scrutinise how their child’s school is spending its money, and for communities to hold their local school to account. There are gaps in the availability of key information such as academy funding agreements and governing body minutes, with less than 20% of academies surveyed by the National Audit Office publishing this information on their websites.

21.  When schools become academies, responsibility for their academic and financial performance passes from the local authority to the Department and the EFA respectively. However, local authorities retain some overall statutory responsibilities for young people in their area. The Department suggested that, in addition to these specific responsibilities, it would expect local authorities to retain some detailed knowledge of all educational provision in their area, including academies. At the same time, the Department and other witnesses suggested that academy trusts, particularly multi-academy chains, should also play a key performance-monitoring and intervention role in between academies and the Department and EFA.

22.  We heard conflicting views about whether inconsistency or uncertainty in the roles of these various players had created an accountability gap.  We are not convinced it is clear who is accountable for performance monitoring and intervention in academies, nor how the Department can know whether the system is operating consistently, effectively and with minimum bureaucracy across different localities and academy structures. We expressed concern that interventions in failing academies may be delayed if roles and responsibilities are not clear, or if central oversight is too distant to identify school-level problems before young people’s futures are put at risk.

In reading the PAC Report I wonder why such a waste of money was allowed to happen in a time of grave austerity. To take just one example, the DfE spent an extra £92 million on insurance premiums for academies, monies that should have been available to spend on educational outcomes. A simple national scheme administered from Sanctuary Buildings would surely have released most of that money to be spent where parliament intended, on education not on insurance premiums. Then there is the £350 million paid to academies and not recovered from local authorities, presumably over-funding schools in areas with more academies compared with the parts of the country where there are fewer academies. And, as the PAC remarked, ‘some of the budgets the Department drew upon to fund the expansion had been previously earmarked for other purposes – most notably £95 million originally intended for improving underperforming schools. There is a risk that the Department’s decision to solely use this money to create academies—many of which were already high-performing—may have been at the expense of weaker non-academy schools which could potentially have benefitted from it more. This is a particular risk in the primary sector.’

With local government being forced to cut important services, and other government departments having taken a heavy hit on their budgets, this cavalier approach to department spending at the DfE on a flagship programme is exactly the sought of concerns that were voiced in the Liverpool Conference motion. One might have expected better from Conservative majority partners in a coalition, and maybe it is time for the Secretary of State to take responsibility for his actions. At the very least he should explain what steps he is taking to prevent the waste continuing while he considers the overall funding formula for schools of all types.

Youth numbers in custody halve in a decade

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One of the more impressive statistics of the past few years has been the reduction in the number of young people held in custody. For much of the first decade of this century the average number of children and young people held in custody (including 18 year-olds) averaged around the 3,000 mark for England and Wales. The peak year was 2002/03 when the average was 3,451. With a month to go in the 2012/13 financial year the latest figures show that the average number in custody is now down to 1,755 almost exactly half the average in the peak year a decade ago.

Even more impressive is the decline in the 10-14 age group held in custody, down from a peak of 236 in July 2005 to 54 in February 2013. The decline in the 14-17 age-groups in custody has been from a peak of 2,885 in June 2008 to 1,266 this February. These figures can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/youth-custody-data along with other useful data for those interested in the topic of youth custody. For instance, only 52 of those held in secure institutions are females compared with 1,268 young males. Some 765 of the young population are classified as ‘White’ compared with 506 from the BME and ‘other’ classifications. The reduction in the ‘White’ population in youth custody from a peak of over 2,000 has been much steeper than for the BME and ’other’ group where the peak was less than 800. There are clearly questions to be asked about the differential rate of decline in the custody population by ethnic group. One explanation may be geographic since 389 of the custody population come from London, the most racially mixed part of the country with the other urban areas outside of the North East also over-represented. One disappointing statistics is that 281 of the young people in custody were on remand. However, if the census was taken on a Friday it may be a proportion of these were on ‘warrants’ awaiting an appearance at a Saturday remand court. However, even this number is well down on the peak of almost 700 recorded in June 2008.

Hopefully, keeping these young people out of custody will also reduce the revolving door where one custodial sentence invariably leads on to another, especially for those handed down sentences of six months or less where support after custody is often insufficient if not non-existent.

Schools have a part to play in reducing exclusions since a large proportion of those in custody were as some point excluded from school. It may be no accident that youth custody rates were at their highest when secondary schools in urban areas were struggling to recruit sufficient numbers of teachers. If there is a relationship between sufficient teachers and a reduction in youth crime then the DfE would do well to ensure we don’t slide towards another teacher supply crisis in the next couple of years.

Do entrepreneurs go to state schools?

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I ask this question on the basis of a BBC magazine story that successful app creators have tended to be ex-public school pupils. (Public in the sense of fee-paying schools for those not from the UK). Now the BBC article didn’t have any real research data, just a few observations on the part of the writer . It is certainly true that some recent high profile success stories of young men in the IT world, and it often seems to be men – Baroness Lane-Fox apart – that have sold apps for mobile phones for a healthy profit were educated at such schools.

It is also true that the one app company where I have an investment stake was started by three young men who all went to public schools, so many be there is something in the idea that such schools are the breeding grounds for risk-taking business tycoons. May be it is also that to start a business of this type needs time funded by someone, and parents who can afford school fees may be able to subsidise the business needs of their creative offspring. Those who have a more pressing need for money to support the family have always encouraged their children to ‘get a job and start earning’. Indeed, one of the reasons the school leaving age was raised twice after world War II was to ensure working-class children stayed at school long enough to gain qualifications. Even in the 1950s some pupils at the grammar school I attended left at 15 because the family could or wouldn’t continue to support their education.

Innovators, and entrepreneurs who are often also innovators in new fields such as mobile phone apps, are often non-conformists; school sometimes don’t like those who won’t conform because it makes the task of running the establishment that much harder.  Indeed, some schools are also often anti-risk, despite the fact that an appreciation of risk is an essential requirement for any budding entrepreneur. Occasionally, I think that working in state schools offers a job in an environment where risk has essentially be almost completely removed despite the ever-looming presence of Ofsted. One of the good things to come out of the drive for higher standards in schools is an acceptance of trying new ideas, although paradoxically that notion clashes with the opposing view of enforcing uniformity, whether in curriculum or teaching style. Nowhere is this better articulated in the debate about whether each generation should discover its own heroes and heroines or accept the choice handed down by their ancestors. I wrote in an earlier piece how this particular circle might be closed to the satisfaction of all through the sensible use of new technology, and the encouragement of public-speaking that would boast self-confidence, something else of use to entrepreneurs, and also something some state schools have not always been good at encouraging.

If our economy is to thrive again, it needs entrepreneurs, and they need to come from all walks of society, and that means all schools must play their part in encouraging entrepreneurship for the sake of the common good. In the 1980s film ‘Gregory’s Girl two cameos have remained with me; the penguins on the way to nowhere, and the boy who is forever selling things to his school mates. There is no doubt that he was a budding entrepreneur. As this was a Scottish film it seems apt to remember the travail of Robert the Brue who motto might have been ‘the only failure is to give up trying’, an apt encouragement for everyone, and especially entrepreneurs not all of whom will have the initial success of our recent young mobile phone app developers.

Excluded should not mean forgotten

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Just before Easter the DfE published a research brief about a trial programme into dealing with school exclusions entitled: Evaluation of the School Exclusion Trial: Responsibility for Alternative Provision for Permanently Excluded Children – First Interim Report Brief. The report can be found at: https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/standard/publicationDetail/Page1/DFE-RB284

Reducing the number of exclusions could have an impact on both schools and society in general since many of the young people who fall into criminal behaviour as teenagers were excluded from school at some point in their education: often during the last few years of formal education when exclusions are at their highest in relation to the school population.

Although the trial is relatively small scale and still in the early stages it has produced some interesting findings. However, the authors of the report suggest that most of the issues raised during the baseline research phase were not directly related to the trial but concerned issues related to Alternative Provision (AP) that is often used with pupils at risk of exclusion.

The issues included:

-the shrinking of the AP market currently underway;

– problems in rural areas where the possibilities for managed moves and AP were limited

because of geographical location;

-managing changes in demand and requests for increased flexibility when AP providers may

have limited capacity;

-providing AP providers with regular income, particularly when they are not operating in

highly populated urban areas, to ensure stability of provision and high quality staff;

-the current lack of AP at Key Stage 3; and

-the availability of AP at Level 2.

Some issues, which may impact on the trial, but are not directly related to it, concerned schools.

These included:

-the difficulty of engaging some parents;

-the need to improve intervention in primary schools to address underlying serious

behavioural problems early on; and

-ensuring that schools have sufficient accommodation to be able to provide a range of in school provision on and off-site.

Two issues were identified which directly relate to the implementation of the trial. These are:

-ensuring that schools have the capacity and expertise to commission, manage and monitor AP;

and

-increasing the extent of early intervention at the first sign of difficulties.

At their heart, many of these issues relate to the extent that the schools are separate entities or part of a system of schooling responsible for the education of all children whose parents want to trust the State with the education of their children. In the muddle that is our school system at present this issue is important to deal with if schools are to be able to feel confident about helping challenging pupils. One solution is to commission the market to provide AP services over a wide area, or even nationally, and leave the contractors to identify how to allocate resources and still make a profit while meeting service levels. Cash could be recouped from schools that made use of the service.

However, this doesn’t deal with the issue of prevention at the in-school level, especially at the primary school where these problems often first manifest themselves. As the research report identifies, finding a way of providing early intervention is important. Such early investment may be a good investment, but will require co-ordination and support for schools. Ministers might want to start thinking this through in time to have some policies ready when the final report appears around the time of the general election. One policy might be to ensure better professional development for primary teachers whose initial training is so crowded that at present it leaves scant room for more than basic behaviour management techniques. There is also the issue of how far parents can exploit their child’s rights to avoid facing up to difficulties when they arise in a school

This trial is an important look at an area too often neglected by policy-makers and it is to be hoped it will attract the attention of Ministers since behaviour is too often quoted as a reason teachers feel demoralised and want to leave the profession.