Keep Primary Schools Local

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Now is the time for all those that believe primary schools are best kept under local democratic control to take action.

Please email or write to your MP asking them to defend the present position and to stop the government forcing all schools to become nationally controlled academies.

If you go to church this weekend, lobby your priest, vicar, minister or other faith leader, since the Churches, and to a much lesser extent other faiths, have a large interest in primary schools. Contact your local councillor and find out their views.

This is not a new campaign on my part to keep primary schools under local democratic control. Before the budget announcement I wrote on this blog about the BBC announcement foreshadowing the nationalisation of all schools that:

The interesting question is whether there is enough unity in the Conservative Party at Westminster to agree to ditch their chums in local government and fully nationalise the school system. Local government won’t enjoy being left with schools places, annual admissions and transport plus, presumably, special needs.

As I have pointed out in previous posts it is difficult to see how a fully academy structure built around MATs can save the government money to spend on the front-line. It is also an open question whether there is enough leadership capacity to staff such a system. I predicted this outcome way back in a post in February 2013https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2013/02/ when I wrote that:

“a National School Service is quietly emerging, with Whitehall connecting directly to schools. Localism it may be, but not democratically elected localism. A national funding formula, administered by schools where the Secretary of State determines who will be able to be a governor, and whether or not new schools are needed, and who will operate them, seems more like a NHS model than a local school system.”

So, I welcome the support of a number of Tory local cabinet members from across the country for the view that local authorities should still to decide how local education works and retain a general oversight of education, rather than transferring such powers to Westminster; especially for primary schools.

I heard Melinda Tilley, the Tory cabinet member for Education in Oxfordshire, where I have been a Lib Dem county councillor since May 2103, calling the government’s move to academisation a ‘diktat’. This contrast sharply with the silence from Labour on the issue, but then it was Labour that invented the academy programme.

Primary schools are an essential part of local communities, some face immense challenges in serving those communities, and not all may achieve their best every year for a whole host of reasons. There will always be a need for a school improvement service, and primary schools have worked in partnerships for years before governments at Westminster decided a free for all market approach was better than cooperation. The fact that the market approach failed wasn’t the fault of local authorities; nationalisation isn’t the answer.

 

Regional recruitment patterns are still largely an unknown quantity

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Easter is early this year, so, although the teacher conference season will undoubtedly discuss the issue of teacher recruitment and retention, the full implications for September 2016 won’t be known. This is because the main recruitment period for September vacancies is during April, and that is the period immediately after Easter this year.

No doubt, when the government has its free recruitment site up and running, as foreshadowed in the White Paper, they will be able to tell schools what the current position is regarding the state of play in the recruitment cycle.

Until then, schools and journalists may have to rely upon the data from TeachVac. One of the drawbacks with the current version of TeachVac is that the government has continually refused to provide data on a sub-national basis for the ITT census. As a result, TeachVac has only been able to provide a national figure for the rate of decline in the trainee pool. This lack of regional data in all but a few subjects has continued in the recently DfE’s published methodology document that accompanied the White Paper.

However, there was some ITT data at a regional level for mathematics in the methodology document. However, the data was only in the form of overall regional totals, so it hasn’t been possible to remove either Teach First numbers or School Direct Salaried trainees as TeachVac does in its other modelling processes. As a result, the data is less than helpful in respect of some regions, especially London, where the bulk of Teach First trainees are still located. Nevertheless, the rankings are interesting

MATHEMATICS  % LEFT
Yorkshire & The Humber 82
London 77
North West 75
West Midlands 72
ALL ENGLAND 69
South West 67
South East 63
East Midlands 59
North East 59
East of England 22

The 77% remaining in the pool figure in London is obviously an over-estimate, it might be closer to a percentage in the high 50% range once Teach First and School Direct Salaried trainees have been removed.

However the dramatic figure in the table is the fact that the trainee pool in the East of England might be down as low as 22%. This is even before a figure for School Direct Salaried and non-completers has been factored in to the dataset. The 22% might be an over-estimate because, in a few cases, a school uses the terms mathematics and maths in the same vacancy advert and where the school hasn’t directly entered the vacancy there is a small risk of double counting these vacancies. This just illustrates how complicated the government will find it to create their own version of TeachVac.

Since the publication of the White Paper, TeachVac has seen an increase in registrations from both schools, trainees and teachers. The more directly entered vacancies there are, the more accurate TeachVac becomes.

If you read this and know anyone that is either responsible for teacher recruitment or interested in the topic please do draw their attention to TeachVac. www.teachvac.co.uk There are helpful videos of how to register and, yes, it really is as simple as it sounds.

 

 

Try TeachVac: don’t waste money reinventing the wheel

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For me, the most interesting paragraph in the White Paper issued today by the Secretary of State at

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/508501/430653_WL_GOVT_Educational_Excellence_Everywhere_-_print_ready.PDF

is paragraph 1.36 that I have reproduced below

Recruitment: we will reform the National College for Teaching and Leadership, ensuring that in addition to delivering our leadership remit, we are better able to design and deliver well-targeted incentives, teacher recruitment campaigns and opportunities that attract sufficient, high quality new entrants to the profession, including those who are looking to return to the classroom. To reduce the costs of recruitment for schools in a more challenging labour market, we will create simple web tools that enable schools to advertise vacancies for free and a new national teacher vacancy website so that aspiring and current teachers can find posts quickly and easily

The text in bold has been highlighted by me. This is because, as many readers know, I helped establish TeachVac last year to do this very thing.

Indeed, on the 7th March, during a visit to the DfE, I handed a civil servant a letter for the Secretary of State drawing her attention to TeachVac and asking that it be passed to Mrs Morgan’s via her Private Office. I have heard nothing since, presumably because to have replied might have compromised the White Paper. However, the fact that previous letters on this subject also went unanswered suggests the DfE wants to develop its own scheme. It is worth remembering that the last time they tried, it didn’t last very long.

As Chairman of TeachVac, I am happy to discuss saving the government money by demonstrating TeachVac to the DfE, NCTL, College of Teachers or indeed any other body that is to be charged with meeting the DfE’s aim in the White Paper. There really is no need to re-invent the wheel or waste money on something that already exists.

TeachVac has been growing rapidly this year and secondary schools using the system already receive information on the state of the market; this can be expanded to cover all schools very easily.

Our latest assessment of the trainee pool depletion rates for 2016 are reproduced below.

ITT pool numbers as of 17/03/16

Group ITT Number left % left
Art 503 404 80.32
Science 2604 1158 44.49
English 1940 913 47.09
Mathematics 2197 1205 54.87
Languages 1226 826 67.41
IT 498 316 63.45
Design & Technology 518 273 52.80
Business 174 61 35.34
RE 386 217 56.35
PE 1230 1004 81.63
Music 358 224 62.71
Geography 580 309 53.36
History 847 580 68.48

Now is the time for the remaining schools to sign up to TeachVac for nothing and show the government that this isn’t something that they need to re-invent from scratch.

As I have been monitoring trends in vacancies in schools at all levels since I started counting headships in 1983, I would be delighted to see schools able to save substantial sums of money on recruitment. After all, that was the aim of TeachVac and why is was free to use from Day 1.

 

 

Education in the budget

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Never mind what the Chancellor said, pasted below is what the Treasury are really saying about education in the budget.

Here are my thoughts:

How will the 10% of schools that could gain under the National Funding Formula, but won’t receive the full amount, be identified?

Where is the funding for the extra pupils to come from? Some 700,000 extra pupils at £4,000 would generate a need for 32.8 billion extra funding by early in the next parliament. There isn’t anything about this in the budget.

This sort of basic need funding makes the extra money from the sugar tax look less than generous, even if it is a job creation scheme funded by the drinks industry for art, PE and drama teachers. I also note that while the figure for primary schools is clear; an extra £160 million per year, the figure for secondary of £285 million is only expressed as ‘up to’ – so no guarantee there.

If all 1,600 schools take up the £10 million for breakfast clubs they will receive £32.89 per day based upon a 190 day school-year. Helpful, but not a huge amount.

What happens as the industry cuts out sugar and reduces the amount the levy will raise isn’t, of course, clear.

Interestingly, there was no comment on the costs associated with the big gamble to make all schools academies. This isn’t a cost free exercise, as one of my earlier posts has shown.

The 2016 budget

Education

1.89 This Budget accelerates the government’s schools reforms and takes steps to create a gold standard education throughout England. The government will:

  • drive forward the radical devolution of power to school leaders, expecting all schools to become academies by 2020, or to have an academy order in place to convert by 2022. The academies programme is transforming education for thousands of pupils, helping to turn around struggling schools while offering our best schools the freedom to excel even further
  • accelerate the move to fairer funding for schools. The arbitrary and unfair system for allocating school funding will be replaced by the first National Funding Formula for schools from 2017-18. Subject to consultation, the government’s aim is for 90% of schools who gain additional funding to receive the full amount they are due by 2020. To enable this the government will provide around £500 million of additional core funding to schools over the course of this Spending Review, on top of the commitment to maintain per pupil funding in cash terms. The government will retain a minimum funding guarantee
  • ask Professor Sir Adrian Smith to review the case for how to improve the study of maths from 16 to 18, to ensure the future workforce is skilled and competitive, including looking at the case and feasibility for more or all students continuing to study maths to 18, in the longer-term. The review will report during 2016
  • invest £20 million a year of new funding in a Northern Powerhouse Schools Strategy. This new funding will ensure rapid action is taken to tackle the unacceptable divides that have seen educational progress in some parts of the North lag behind the rest of the country. In support of this, Sir Nick Weller will lead a report into transforming education across the Northern Powerhouse

Soft drinks industry levy to pay for school sport

1.90 Childhood obesity is a national problem.

The UK currently has one of the highest overall obesity rates amongst developed countries In England 1 in 10 children are obese when they start primary school, and this rises to 2 in 10 by the time they leave.

1.91 The evidence shows that 80% of children who are obese between the ages of 10 and 14 will go on to become obese adults, and this has widespread costs to society, including through lost productivity and the direct costs of treating obesity-related illness. The estimated cost to the UK economy today from obesity is approximately £27 billion, with the NHS currently spending over £5 billion on obesity-related costs.

1.92 Sugar consumption is a major factor in childhood obesity, and sugar-sweetened soft drinks are now the single biggest source of dietary sugar for children and teenagers. A single 330ml can of cola can contain more than a child’s daily recommended intake of added sugar. Public health experts have identified sugar-sweetened soft drinks of this kind as a major factor in the prevalence of childhood obesity.

1.93 Budget 2016 announces a new soft drinks industry levy targeted at producers and importers of soft drinks that contain added sugar. The levy will be designed to encourage companies to reformulate by reducing the amount of added sugar in the drinks they sell, moving consumers towards lower sugar alternatives, and reducing portion sizes.

1.94 Under this levy, if producers change their behaviour, they will pay less tax. The levy is expected to raise £520 million in the first year. The OBR expect that this number will fall over time as the total consumption of soft drinks in scope of the levy drops, in part as a result of producers changing their behaviour and helping consumers to make healthier choices.

1.95 In England, revenue from the soft drinks industry levy over the scorecard period will be used to:

  • double the primary school PE and sport premium from £160 million per year to £320 million per year from September 2017 to help schools support healthier, more active lifestyles. This funding will enable primary schools to make further improvements to the quality and breadth of PE and sport they offer, such as by introducing new activities and after school clubs and making greater use of coaches
  • provide up to £285 million a year to give 25% of secondary schools increased opportunity to extend their school day to offer a wider range of activities for pupils, including more sport
  • provide £10 million funding a year to expand breakfast clubs in up to 1,600 schools starting from September 2017, to ensure more children have a nutritious breakfast as a healthy start to their school day

There are also some regional developments associated with the northern Powerhouse developments.

Finally, Gordon Brown meddled in education as Chancellor; one result was the 2002 staffing crisis after schools were handed cash, but the extra teachers they tried to recruit with the money hadn’t been trained. Will this Chancellor fare better with his announcements on academies and will Tory backbenchers go along with making their local primary schools all academies?

The risk to selective schools in the Chancellor’s announcement

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The Chancellor is putting in place an education system that will make it easier for a future government to end selective state secondary schools. By making all schools academies the government is ending the historic partnership between local authorities and the government at Westminster over the direction of education policy that has lasted for more than a century.

Now this may or may not be the right time to take this step – I personally think primary schools should be a local service supported nationally – but one consequence is that policy, including the rules on admissions and selection, will be firmly set out by Westminster.

Supporters of the academisation, or nationalisation, of schooling will no doubt suggest that Westminster already has the power to act over selection. However, as a weak Labour government found, after it passed the 1976 Education Act requiring all local authorities to provide schemes of non-selective education, the barrier to action presented by dilatory local authorities meant that supporters of selective schools just sat on their hands. For anyone interested in this period of education history, a read of the North Yorkshire court case over re-organisation in Ripon, would be very informative. Not for nothing was the first action of the Thatcher government to pass a short Bill through parliament to repeal the 1976 Act.

With all schools financed and managed from London, a future government with a majority at Westminster that was so minded could either direct Regional Commissioners to create selective forms of education across all areas or alternatively remove all existing selective schools. I am sure that neither option is in the Chancellor’s mind as he makes his announcement today.

His other announcement of what seems like a job creation scheme for unemployed art, PE and drama teachers is small beer in the £40 billion spent on schooling. However, £500 million a year is a sizeable amount if divided among 1,000 secondary schools, but decreases rapidly if the number of schools able to benefit increases significantly. Whether the money might have been better used to fund the overall growth in pupil numbers won’t be known until the second part of the consultation on the national funding formula takes place, when winners and losers will become clear. Indeed, the announcement already calls into question the national formula approach.

One consequence of this new fund might be that those school that have relied on PE teachers to teach Key Stage 3 science may now need to start looking for a new source of science teachers if they will now all running after school activities. But, until the details are made clear we won’t know whether it is possible for them to do both.

Will the Chancellor say anything about the National Teaching Service? One wonder what is happening on that front.

Finally, I am always suspicious when Chancellors start announcing plans for spending departments. History tells us it is often because they want to draw attention away from the Treasury side of the budget. This year, it may be the effects of the slowdown since the enthusiastic Autumn Statement. Still, the slowdown in the wider economy may help recruitment into teaching so it’s an ill wind …

Farewell to local authorities

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The BBC is now reporting that the government wants every school to become an academy. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-35814215  This has been an open secret for some time. The only real surprise is that they didn’t amend the recent legislation on its passage through parliament to remove the word ‘coasting’ and replace it will ‘all schools not currently an academy’.

The interesting question is whether there is enough unity in the Conservative Party at Westminster to agree to ditch their chums in local government and fully nationalise the school system. Local government won’t enjoy being left with schools places, annual admissions and transport plus, presumably, special needs.

As I have pointed out in previous posts it is difficult to see how a fully academy structure built around MATs can save the government money to spend on the front-line. It is also an open question whether there is enough leadership capacity to staff such a system. I predicted this outcome way back in a post in February 2013 https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2013/02/ when I wrote that:

“a National School Service is quietly emerging, with Whitehall connecting directly to schools. Localism it may be, but not democratically elected localism. A national funding formula, administered by schools where the Secretary of State determines who will be able to be a governor, and whether or not new schools are needed, and who will operate them, seems more like a NHS model than a local school system.”

Now it seems it is to finally emerge. Will the Chancellor say something in the budget tomorrow or will the announcement be left to the Secretary of State for Education?

I am old enough to mourn the passing of the local government involvement in education policy. After all, my second ever academic article was about local authority variations in funding on education.

Politically, the issue is should education remain a local service accountable to locally elected councillors or, like health, a national service run from Whitehall – or more likely Coventry – with the aim of creating uniform outcomes across the country? You decide. I certainly think primary schools and pre-schools are a local function as most children go to a school close to where they live and if councils must still provide the places then they should also manage the way schools operate.

With a national school system can come saving on issues like recruitment. May be the National Teaching Service will arise to become more than a press release and blossom into reality.

However, after the Sunday trading defeat and with, post June, disgruntled Tory MPs of one or other view on Europe it will be interesting to see whether the government can command a majority in parliament for the nationalisation move.

What it will mean is that the old phrases of a ‘partnership’ or a ‘national service locally administered’ will finally be confined to the history books or websites and future commentators will have to see whether the Education Secretary has learnt anything from the actions of successive politicians that have run the Health Service.

Experience matters

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Experienced teachers are more effective than those who are in the first few years of their careers and teachers in the most advantaged fifth of schools have an average of nearly one and a half years more experience than those in the least advantaged, according to initial findings from a research project by the University of Cambridge, presented to a Sutton Trust conference in London recently. http://www.suttontrust.com/newsarchive/best-in-class-summit/

Now, there’s a surprise: experience matters as much in teaching as in any other walk of life. Actually, it is good to have this fact confirmed from time to time. What matters with this research is if inexperienced teachers end up in more challenging schools as a result of market forces. Such an outcome leaves a Conservative government with a dilemma. If they really want to improve outcomes for pupils in challenging schools they need to address the percentage of inexperienced teachers in such schools. I saw this first hand in the 1970s in Tottenham where the most challenging schools had high staff turnover and large numbers of inexperienced new entrants that included myself among them.  In the Highgate end of the borough this was far less of an issue.

The research highlighted a the start of this post pinpoints the differences in behaviour between challenging schools and those less difficult to teach in as a factor in and this may well be why so many new entrants to the classroom cite behaviour managements as their greatest challenge. Any teacher preparation course must cover a wide range of topics and probably would find it a real challenge to impart the skills necessary to teach in the most challenging schools. However, once teachers have found a teaching post in such a school the extra support ought to be channelled in their direction, as I suspect tis the case in the best of the Academy Trusts, but is not yet the norm.

For a government wedded to the market, it is the market that will need to solve the problem. This usually means money, as supply and demand are governed by price. The alternative is to use a Corbynite Labour solution and direct teachers where they need to work.

The research mentioned above highlighted that teachers recognise success in a school isn’t an individual effort, but a collective response. As a result, team bonuses were favoured by those asked over individual payments. However, this still leaves the issue that if payment only comes after results how do you incentivise the teachers to work in challenging schools in the first place? In the 1970s it was through the Schools of Exceptional Difficulty payments that were added to basic salary for working in schools identified as challenging.

Of course, you could take another tack and try and hide the issue by creating a fuss about something else, such as the role of teacher associations, as the Education lead at one of the conservative think tanks has done ahead of the teacher conferences this Easter. It might keep the right-wing Tory press happy, but my guess is most other members of the 4th estate will still be focussing on issues such as teacher supply that are likely to be to the fore during the conference season.

What is a CEO worth?

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Are salaries paid to the heads of some multi-academy trusts too high, as Sir Michael Wilshaw might seem to think  from the tone of his letter to the Secretary of State or perhaps actually too low for the level of responsibility that they have to undertake. What is clear is that executive heads and chief executives of MATS do seem to think they deserve to earn more than those they manage. This seems like a sound business principle, but is it really?

There is another principle that relates pay to the nature of the work. Is taking the strategic lead in an organisation more important than running an operating unit such as a school? This is a moot point. Perhaps, the justification is that you need good talent and such individuals won’t be prepared to step up from headship without a pay rise. I would have some sympathy if the job had been offered at a lower salary first, but all too often it isn’t: in some cases it isn’t even put out to open competition just decided internally within the MAT. Can that ever be the right thing to do with public money?

With head teachers often subject to dismissal if a school fails an Ofsted inspection, does the same happen to executive heads and CEOs of MATs? If not, why not? We shall no doubt see what happens in response to this Ofsted Report.

Now the alternative view is that in London, at least, middle managers in businesses not much larger than the average primary school in staffing terms can earn six figure salaries and their CEOs even higher amounts and both groups can have bonus payments and share options on top that will pay out handsomely if the company does well. Should schools be competing with these salary levels?

I note that in response to Sir Michaels’ letter to the Secretary of State he pulls no punches. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/506718/HMCI__advice__note_MAT_inspections____10_March_2016.pdf The letter to Mrs Morgan says:

“This poor use of public money is compounded by some trusts holding very large cash reserves that are not being spent on raising standards.

“For example, at the end of August 2015, these seven trusts had total cash in the bank of £111m.

“Furthermore, some of these trusts are spending money on expensive consultants or advisers to compensate for deficits in leadership. Put together, these seven trusts spent at least £8.5m on education consultancy in 2014-15 alone.”

Now, this blog has complained in the past about schools holding large cash reserves that should be spent on teaching and learning. One might also ask, what the Regional School Commissioners have been doing in holding academies to account.

Finally, there are currently 151 local authorities in England with a Director responsible for education. In most cases they have other responsibilities as well. If each were paid £200,000 – more than they actually are – the bill would be just over £30 million before overheads. If 18,000 schools were formed into MATs of 20 schools that would be 900 CEOs. If they were paid only £100,000 each the bill would be £90 million. You can do the maths if there are more MATs and higher salaries.

Personally, I thought we were in an age of austerity and I set up TeachVac to offer a low cost option for recruitment to allow more money to be spent on teaching and learning. Frankly, this Report is disappointing news and I hope that there is an urgent review of salaries in education outside of those set by the STRB for teachers and school leaders. We need some clarity of purpose in the use of public funds.

 

Ebacc and ‘well-being’

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Country Life isn’t a magazine that receives many mentions in this blog, indeed, this may be the first time it has appeared here. However, I did note that it has increased its sales over the past four years and that their Christmas 2015 issue recorded bumper sales. The BBC are also running a three part series about the editor and life in the countryside. Last week’s episode had a moving story of the farmer facing bovine TB in his herd of milking cows.

Anyway, this blog isn’t here to sell magazines, but to note that Country Life recently ran an interview with the newly appointed head teacher of one of the country’s private schools; Wellington College. In the course of that interview the new head teacher talked about what are coming to be known as ‘well-being’ lessons. He clearly saw them as an important part of a rounded curriculum. I also recently heard a presentation by a head of department at Dulwich College – another private school – with responsibility for well-being in the curriculum. At that school they also regard well-being as important for the staff members as well as their students.

This set me to wondering whether the DfE sees well-being as an important part of the curriculum in schools funded by the government. My guess is, with the current emphasis on the EBacc subjects, Ministers haven’t really grasped the wider responsibilities of schools in helping young people take key steps along life’s increasingly complicated journey. You cannot train to be a teacher of ‘well-being’, and government has steadfastly refused to make PSHE a compulsory part of the curriculum.

Now, it may be that government thinks this is entirely the role of parents and, while those either with enough cash to pay for private education or able to win scholarships can ask for this as part of the package they are paying for, it isn’t the duty of the State to provide it as part of their education offering. Such a position flies in the face of an education system where pastoral care has always been seen as an important part of education, at least for as long as I have been involved with education.

If government isn’t interested in the well-being of those it educates, it should be interested and involved in the well-being of those that deliver education. Among the many statistics the government doesn’t collect is, I suspect, is one about the trends in occupational health of the school workforce and especially of trends in mental health referrals, as opposed to just days lost through absence. Surely, any good employer ought to know what is happening, at least in the academies and free schools it directly funds.

The obvious starting place for action is the teachers’ workload and especially the twin areas of marking and preparation. An understanding of what is necessary and what is just fear of Ofsted might be a useful place for Ministers to start, rather than concentrating civil servant time and energy on deciding when and where it is appropriate to use an exclamation mark.

Funding and equality

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In the good old days Cabinet office guidelines recommended 13 weeks for a public consultation by a government department. The stage one consultation on the ‘Schools national funding formula’ was published on the 7th March and closes on the 17th April. This is but five weeks including Easter. The closing day is a Sunday. (There might have been an exclamation mark here, but I am trying to conform to the new DfE guidelines).

The interesting feature for me of the proposals centres on the attempt by the government to marry together two different notions of equality. The first of these is the notion that everyone should have the same funding. In essence it is the argument of the F40 Group of authorities that felt they were short-changed when the current rules were introduced. The second notion is that of equal outcomes. If every child is to achieve the maximum possible from their education some will need more resources than others. This principle has long been accepted in relation to SEN and with the Pupil Premium the issue of the need for other forms of additional support was formalised at a national rate. The Pupil Premium will remain for the lifetime of this parliament, but no guarantee has been given for after 2020. The consultation identifies three categories of additional needs.

Without fully worked examples, it is difficult to do more than comment on the building blocks of the new formula. I suspect the one that will worry schools that might be potential losers under a new formula is the area cost adjustment. The level this is set at will need to be able to compensate for areas where salaries are higher because of high cost of living and working in the area. However, if it doesn’t recognise the high cost of housing in some areas outside London, it won’t help schools in those areas attract and retain staff. This is important because, as the consultation recognises, staffing costs are the major part of any school’s budget. Ever since the introduction of Local Management of Schools in the early 1990s, the decision to fund on ‘average salaries’ rather than actual salary bills has benefitted schools with a relatively young staff profile and eaten up more of the budget of those schools with a high proportion of staff at the top of the Upper Pay Band. The new formula won’t change that. Indeed, it might see the end of scales and move towards a single point or a first year starting salary and then the same basic salary for all with additions for responsibilities and other reasons depending on what the school could afford.

The notion of support for exceptional circumstance such as split sites, sparsity and business rates, not to mention the PfI payments from the Building Schools for the Future programme, is welcome news, assuming the funding is enough to cover all current needs.

And here lies the issue. With more pupils to educate, how much more cash will there be in real terms? Personally, I would also want to see modelling of outcomes when the current pupil numbers currently going through primary schools move into the secondary sector. What will be the effects on primary schools, especially small primary schools, when secondary numbers are rising and primary numbers are static or again falling? The nature of the formula will especially affect small rural primary schools. Does a Conservative government want to design a formula that might lead to their wholesale closure or will the sparsity factor balance off against the area cost adjustment? This will, I am sure, worry some of the more rural areas of England, not least Northumberland where, according to the DfE website, Holy Island Church of England First School currently has a per pupil expenditure or more than £27,000. I am not sure whether the statutory walking distance to the nearest schools works in cases like that but it might be another factor to add to the list of exceptions that can be covered through additional funding.

This just goes to show how much work DfE officials have done on trying to create a fair formula, but how complex the issue remains until there is agreement on what a fair formula is. What it isn’t is just allocating the same amount to every pupil.