Tell it as is it – Part 2

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The Public Accounts Committee has just issued its latest report entitled the ‘The Funding for Disadvantaged Pupils’.  http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmselect/cmpubacc/327/32703.htm

In the summary it concludes that ‘… the Department for Education needs to be better at supporting schools to share and use best practice more consistently so that more schools use the Pupil Premium effectively. In addition, there remain inequalities in the core funding received by schools with very similar levels of disadvantage. As the impact of the Pupil Premium will take a long time to be fully realised, the Department needs to do more to demonstrate its emerging benefits in the meantime. We also urge the Department to carry out an early review of the effectiveness of the Early Years Pupil Premium.’

This seems to me to reinforce the point make in the study of the DfE by Dr Cappon, mentioned earlier this week by this blog in another post. Perhaps politicians have confused the concept of a market with the role of players within it. When I did Economics 101, or ‘O’ level as it was in the UK in those days, the first two lessons were on markets and effective demand. We were all told that we might like a sports car, but most of us would not be able to afford one. Our latent demand wasn’t the same as our effective demand for a second hand old banger as our first car. On markets, it was seen as the mechanism for determining the price of a good. Indeed, in areas such as the Stock Market, it still is. However, markets usually have winners and losers and losers react in different ways, such as by reducing supply or quitting the market.

Now the best thing to come out of the past twenty years in education is a recognition that there is more than one type of meaning to the term ‘equality’. It was a sharper focus on the recognition that spending on some pupils needs to be greater if they are to achieve a minimum standard of education that led to the Pupil Premium. I would argue that the Lib Dems were the first to articulate this concept under Phil Willis and Richard Grayson when he was at CentreForum as it then was. Indeed, Nick Clegg also brought an understanding of this notion of equality from his experience as an MEP to this debate.

The challenge, as the Public Accounts Committee and Dr Cappon make clear is, in a department of state where an idealistic notion of the market as a means of solving problems holds sway, how do you get consumers – the schools in this case – to use their resources to the end you seek: reducing the learning gap between the disadvantaged and others in society. Do you use a carrot – the equivalent of lowering prices – or a stick, send in Ofsted to create effective use of funds such as the Pupil Premium? The problem with the market model is that consumers -schools – have to want the same thing as the DfE, and that might not be their focus.

Is a ‘special offer this week – funds for disadvantaged pupils – buy here’ really the best way to eradicate the learning gap and increase social mobility? Clearly, the Public Accounts Committee don’t seem to think so. That they also think there are issues with the core funding of schools is another worry for another blog post.

Rural re-visited

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The DfE has published its annual list of primary schools designated as rural. This year, the total is 4,906, up by just over 200 on last year. The list includes four middle schools and 11 all-through schools. The majority of the schools are either community (1,779) or Voluntary Aided or Controlled (2,320) with many of the latter being church schools. There were 593 academies of various sorts and 206 Foundation Schools. Interestingly, there are only eight rural free schools serving the primary sector across the whole of England and two of these are all-age schools, both in Oxfordshire.

If, after his conference speech, the Prime Minister really wants every school to be an academy by 2020, rural primary schools are one of the groups he will have to work upon. Many of these schools are in Tory controlled county councils across the rural heartland of England. Although Oxfordshire is keen to convert all community and voluntary schools to academy status, there may not yet be the same enthusiasm elsewhere in some parts of the country.

There is a question over whether the government should still be funding people to go around persuading schools and authorities to convert schools to academy status after the cuts to be announced in the comprehensive spending review. Could that money not be better spent elsewhere? After all, the government could, almost at a stroke, add a clause to the current Bill about to enter the House of Lords, mandating a change of status for all schools making them converter academies and sort out the issues of trusts and other arrangements later. This would leave local authorities with the duty to champion education and monitor performance. But, this may be too radical a proposal for a Conservative government.

As I remarked last year there are a small number of schools designated as rural within the London boroughs. Interestingly, the total has increased by one this year. By contrast, there are only 107 rural designated sponsored primary academies across the country, with only Cornwall and Norfolk having total numbers of such schools in double figures. The South West, Devon and Cornwall have large numbers of converter rural primary academies, whereas there are virtually none in some of the northern rural areas. Academies as a concept does seem in the primary sector to be something of a north south split.

Some years ago in the Gove regime there was a proposal that would have severely limited the funding for rural primary schools by removing the grant each school receive independent of pupil numbers. Now, it seems as if there is a recognition that such schools serve a valuable purpose. The issue is how will they be organised in the future and what role will democratically elected local government play in their future?

National Poetry Day

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Today is National Poetry Day. Two years ago I celebrated the day with a poem on this blog about World War One and The Somme and a link to teaching history. This year, I thought I would use a poem on a different subject entirely, although it has the same underlying theme of parting.

Written some years ago, it may have little literary merit, but surely the message of National Poetry Day is to encourage us all to write more poetry as well as to read more. for in doing so, we learn from others and about ourselves.

So, for what it is worth here is:

HEATHROW VIEWS

Departure

The revolving door sweeps us smartly

Into the chaos of that hideous, happy, hall.

‘Don’t leave unattended baggage’

Mother with babies, businessmen with phones,

Families’ katundu laden trolleys,

Merge together into a snake-like queue

A line of order, inching towards,

The ministering welcome of the check-in desk.

‘Unattended vehicles will be towed away’.

Stoically, the shuffling mass moves forward.

At the desk, the first interrogation waits.

Your passport, luggage, ticket,

Disappear for processing. Did you, didn’t

You, have you’. Do you really want to fly’

 

Terror and fear stalk the airport,

Shadowing the police clutching

Guns to padded chests.

We fear flying, they fear us.

I fear losing you into the

Slow snake that leads you to Security.

Shall we seek currency, eat

Unnecessary meals, or just go home?

I can, you can’t. Would that we together could.

 

A brief respite.

We sit across the table,

Wishing you won’t go, knowing

You will go, saying you must go.

Eyes meet, hands touch, minds remember

Other meetings, partings.

Between us cup and plate,

Detritus of a Last Supper.

Brown batter of a Ramsden’s cod,

Mushy peas and thick cut chips.

Yorkshire suspended like us,

In unreality.

While down below the endless procession

dribbles through Security to

Aberdeen, Paris cdg and Tel Aviv.

 

Together we contemplate

Departures, one home

Where no heart is,

The other to the

Mysterious misery of flight.

Too soon, stay one minute more.

We clasp together putting off

Not departure, but separation.

 

Too soon the TV monitors flash

Their urgent message, boarding

Gate twelve.

No lingering goodbye now, but haste

To disappear into that finality

Of departure.

Tell it as it is

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Earlier this year the DfE employed an eminent Canadian educator, Dr Paul Cappon as a Research Fellow. He looked at the manner in which the education system in England operates and wrote a very interesting report called ‘Preparing English Young People for Work and Life: An International Perspective’. You can use the following link to access it.

http://www.skope.ox.ac.uk/a-new-skope-policy-paper-by-dr-paul-cappon-on-preparing-english-young-people-for-work-is-now-available/

Although the origin of the research was probably associated with the skills agenda and the role of schools in academic and vocational education the really interesting part of the paper deals with Dr Cappon’s views of what works in education systems. He are a selection of four extracts from the Executive Summary;

English educational successes appear to occur despite, rather than because of current systems and structures. The rigid pathways that confine students from a young age and throughout their education and training is a notable example. Since fragmentation characterises delivery of education in England, stronger networks must become an intrinsic part of a more coherent and successful delivery.

With regard to primary and secondary education, we find that recent adjustments to national curriculum have generally been sound, and that good GSCEs for all students in any educational/training track must be the goal. We find that careers advice, an acknowledged weakness of English education, requires considerable amendment and accountability.

Chief impediments to evidence-informed policy deliberation have been: few moderating influences on [sic] the political nature of educational policy; insufficient development of partnerships between civil society and policy makers; little structured external advice to government; insufficient deployment of academic researchers in support of research and analysis; and a propensity to set goals for individual schools but not for the system as a whole.

In a successful education system, the desirable attributes of the central authority would be the converse of those that we would hope to find at local level.

It is locally that we would expect and wish to find innovation, experimentation, risk-taking, entrepreneurialism, empiricist methods of trial and error. The principle of subsidiarity applies. Each district or region would be attempting to find creative means of attaining measurable common goals or targets – but do so in keeping with their own specific and particular contexts and challenges. When these attributes are present, experimentation and trial of diverse approaches in pursuit of similar goals may lead to fruitful collaboration and to regional sharing of promising practices and approaches. System-wide improvement occurs.

Conversely, the central authority would impart stability, consistency and a long term perspective. When it engages in changes of policy direction, it would do so carefully and in consultation with a broad array of partners from both the education sector and from other segments of civil society. Its intention would be to work as closely as possible from a convergence of viewpoints of its partners, so that its initiatives would have optimal chances of success. To that purpose, it would construct a sustainable framework of partners that would assist it in considering priorities, goals and means. (In doing so, however, it would refrain from delegating or abandoning its authority to independent bodies or commissions).

In such a system, decisions regarding practice and complementary funding allocations would frequently be made regionally or locally, but in accord with nationally prescribed goals.

What if, in England, just the opposite of this pattern obtained? What if is central government that is empiricist, entrepreneurial, with sudden mutability and frequent changes of direction, trying one approach and then another – often with only short periods allowed for practitioners to adjust and adapt?

In schools, districts and regions, on the other hand emulation, conservatism, rigidity, compliance, harmonisation and risk aversion appear to be the pattern.

In such a dynamic, would it not become difficult to foresee the kinds of creativity and innovation that, when scaled up, may lift a system to enhanced outcomes and to continuous improvement?

The last of these extracts is the one that for me clearly sums up what has been so wrong with the school system in England ever since central government lost faith in local government and started taking power to the centre. The legacy of this decision, taken originally in the 1970s, but never fully worked through, remains with us today with haphazard academisation and un-elected commissioners. Although there is innovation at the level of some schools and inspiring leadership teams, even there the hand of Ofsted looms large.

The message for me from Dr Cappon’s study is that it is time for everyone concerned with education in England to agree a new framework. There is still a willingness to create a workable system for the country as a whole, but time is running out, especially if the political landscape becomes one of polarised views and a breakdown of understanding.

There is not the space for a full essay on policy-making here but, one might look at the functions of policy formation as;

Problem solving;

Planning;

Priority Fixing and

Consultation

Perhaps one might add dissemination and implementation as further functions since the agreed system-wide agreement on the latter is a notably lacking feature of the present system. How do we create system-wide improvement in a coherent and constructive manner?

Tergiversate

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The Lord Adonis is one of the few politicians in recent British history to have tergiversated twice in his career. He started life as an SDP councillor on Oxford City Council and then joined the newly formed Liberal Democrats, I believe even going so far as to win the Party’s nomination as prospective parliamentary candidate for Westbury in the mid-1990s. However, before the 1997 election, he had left the Party and eventually became a Labour supporter and took the Labour Whip when appointed a peer. Now he has it has been reported resigned from that Party to take up an appointment under the Conservative government.

I first met Lord Adonis in the 1980s when I was chairman of the Costwold Line Promotion Group that was campaigning initially to save and then to improve the line between Oxford and Worcester – he was already interested in railways at that time. Incidentally, that was ten years after I met Jeremy Corbyn in Hornsey during the two 1974 general elections where I was the agent for the Liberal candidate and he was part of Labour’s election team in Hornsey.

After Oxford, Lord Adonis went on to be the Education correspondent at the Financial Times for several years and I recall feeding him stories about data on education issues such as pupil teacher ratios and the cuts to music services under the Thatcher government.

Lord Adonis is a very able man with concerns about issues such as transport and education that he is able to articulate effectively. He has a concern for those the system doesn’t protect; hence his early support for academies after he spent a period while in Oxford as a governor of a secondary school in Blackbird Leys, the estate in south Oxford located in a part of the city where there is significant deprivation.

As someone who has remained a Liberal for more than 50 years, despite two periods of political neutrality during my career, once as a civil servant and the other as vice-chairman of a national charity, I would never have surrendered my basic beliefs and, despite differences with my Party at times, would never have wanted to leave it.

No doubt some journalist or other will ask Lord Adonis how he has been able to reconcile a political life with adherence to three different political ideologies, assuming he now accepts the basic direction of travel of the Conservative government in taking on his new job. If he doesn’t, then he should make clear the grounds on which he has accepted the post.

I cannot also help but wonder if there are some Conservative Party members that will feel just a tiny bit put out at the appointment of Lord Adonis. The message to them being, even if you work hard for the Party, we will take the best person even if traditionally they have been part of the opposition to our values.

One wonders if this act of tergiversation will be the first of many in a re-alignment of political opinion in England or just a rare footnote in British political history and the career of one individual?

Incentives and ageism

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This week the DfE announced the new bursary rates for trainees starting teacher preparation courses in the autumn of 2016. The headline grabbing rate is the £30,000 tax free bursary or scholarship available to a small number of Physics graduates with either a first class degree or a doctorate in the subject.

A bursary at this level amounts to a starting salary before tax and other deductions of around £40,000 after training, unless the teacher is expected to take a pay cut after training: a bizarre suggestion. Whether schools will be willing to pay such a salary in 2017 to these trainees is an interesting question. Fortunately, there probably won’t be very many of them and the extra £5,000 each it will cost the government compared with the rates this year. In the unlikely event that even 100 of the 800 or so Physics trainees would qualify, that number only means an extra half a million pounds of government expenditure. Such an amount can easily be found from the under-spend on the total amount due to under-recruitment against the Teacher Supply Model number of trainees required and the cash set aside if it was met.

The headline figure looks very much like a marketing ploy. The adverts can now say in large letters ‘£30,000 to train as a teacher tax free’ followed by an ‘*’ and in small letters ‘terms and conditions apply – read the small print’. This seems a legitimate marketing strategy, whatever you think of its dubious moral value by offering something not obtainable to the majority of those attracted by the advertising. No doubt the Advertising Standards Authority has a code of practice for this sort of activity.

One group that should be especially wary of such adverts to become a teacher are the career switchers. An analysis of the percentage of applicants offered places shows that older applicants are far less likely to be offered a place on a teacher preparation course than younger +-graduates.

Age Group Placed
21 under 58%
22 59%
23 57%
24 55%
25-29 50%
30-39 42%
40+ 39%
all ages 51%

On average half of all applicants were placed by mid-September, but this reduces from 59% of those aged 22 on application to just 39% of those in their forties or older. The older applicants are more likely to be holding conditional offers in September than younger applicants, perhaps because of issues with the skills tests?

I haven’t been able to look at the data by the different routes into teaching as it isn’t published by UCAS. As there are no details of ethnicity published by UCAS in the monthly statistics, it isn’t possible to see whether there are still differential rates of places being offered to different ethnic groups as has been the case at some points in the past.

In the new slimmed down civil service, I do still hope that someone somewhere is paying attention to these figures and asking questions that probe what may lie behind the numbers: are older graduates just not up to being teachers or is their knowledge, despite boosted by time in the real world, not up to modern degree standards. Surely that cannot be the case since degrees are supposed to be easier than they were a generation ago. Certainly there are more First Class degrees awarded that in the past. A fact that will cost the government more in bursary payments.

Is the lack of a London allowance affecting teacher training numbers in London?

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What is happening in London? The data released by UCAS yesterday on applications and applicants for graduate teacher training courses as at the middle of September – after most courses will have started – shows that the data for applicants with a domicile in London seem way out of line when compared with the data for applicants domiciled in other parts of England.

According to the UCAS data, only 39% of applicants domiciled in London have been placed on a course. This compares with a national average of 51%. By contrast, 16% of applicants with a London domicile were shown in the data as holding a conditional offer, compared with a national percentage of 11%. In the North East, the conditional offers were 8% of those applicants domiciled there; half the percentage in London.

Now it is perfectly possible that providers that recruited applicants domiciled in London were less good at informing UCAS that applicants had been converted from a conditional offer to a confirmed place. Indeed, I hope that is the case. The alternative and more worrying scenario is that the conditionally placed total represents candidates that weren’t going to take up the place offered to them earlier in the year and failed to meet all the conditions such as the pre-entry skills tests without informing the provider that they weren’t going to take up their place.  Were that to be the case, then there might only be around 3,500 trainees in London, outwith Teach First, on courses that started this autumn.

As that’s both primary and secondary trainees, the figure must be of concern. As schools in London have advertised a similar 3,500 vacancies for secondary school classroom teachers so far in the 2015 recruitment round  according to TeachVac (www.teachvac.co.uk), the number of secondary trainees would need to be more than half the trainee total to ensure sufficient entrants to the London labour market in 2016, if vacancies are at a similar level next year. With pupil numbers on the increase, it seems unlikely that vacancies will fall very much unless London schools’ budgets are restricted next year.

As we don’t know the spread of offers between subjects among London providers, it is impossible to tell whether certain subjects might be even more adversely affected by these figures. They certainly need further investigation. Now it may well be that the large-scale operation of Teach First across London is having an effect on the market for training places in the capital. As we know, from TV programmes, such as ‘Tough Young Teachers’, Teach First has its own approach to preparing teachers. However, unless it has the same retention rate as other programmes that presumably aim to train career teachers, any programme seen as a short-service approach to teaching as a career could affect training numbers when pupil numbers are on the increase.

Let’s assume a normal training programme places 75% of its teachers in post: say 75 out of 100. By the end of year 1, 20% leave, taking the number down to 60. If a further 15% leave at the end of year 2, that means 51 are still teaching. However, if the figures were 80% for the entry rate and 10% leaving at the end of each year, there would be 57 still remaining at the start of year 3. How does that compare with Teach First over a similar period from entry to summer school to start of year 3 of teaching?

Fortunately, as a result of a PQ in the House of Lords, we know that the 2014 cohort for Teach First was 1,387 at the start of the Summer Institute. By the end of year 1, some 1,272 gained QTS. However, the government dodged the part of the question from Lord Storey that asked how many entered teaching the following September. As not all of the 1,272 are in London, we cannot really complete the comparison except to say that if all Teach First were in London they would have needed to lose just under 600 trainees between year 1 and entering year 3 of teaching to match the hypothetical figures for other training provision.

The point of this discussion is that any route that retains fewer teachers over the first three to five years of teaching than the norm just adds to the recruitment problems. This is something that should be monitored to allow for the most cost-effective training provision that best meets the recruitment needs of schools in London, especially if there are fewer trainees entering in the first instance than there are places on offer.

Teacher Supply news from the seaside

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The news from Brighton that the policy area of teachers and teacher supply is one of the key issues for Labour’s new Shadow Secretary of State for Education is clearly to be welcomed by this blog. Hopefully, Ms Powell and her advisers will be more adept at keeping the subject in the headlines than her predecessor, one of whose best briefing on teacher shortages appeared on the Monday of a Christmas week when all the press had just gone on holiday. As a result, it was entirely wasted.

Clearly, Ms Powell has also been listening to the teacher associations about retention problems. However, she will need to come up with some data on the matter if she is going to convince the government to take the issue seriously, especially as some schools would probably be shedding teachers next year if costs continue to increase faster than income.

I am not sure what labour’s position is about academies and why they singled out free schools for specific mention? Do they include UTCs and studio schools in the group of schools to be curtailed or are they happy with them?

More importantly, who do they really want to manage the oversight of all state-funded schools? Will they retain the un-elected Regional Commissioners, having now as a Party accepted a role for the Police & Crime Commissioners?

The key issue in education is that of governance and whether schools and education policy is decided locally, regionally or nationally. Place planning and the effective use of resources is at the heart of the matter. If individual schools can dictate how many pupils they can take, then local authorities in rural areas face an open expenditure line on home to school transport that they cannot control. The same is true where schools can exclude pupils without having to take a corresponding number of such pupils from other schools. Allowing all nationally funded schools to set their admission criteria also doesn’t help local planning and the efficient use of taxpayer funds. However, that doesn’t matter if parental choice is more important than providing a good school for every pupil. Do the Labour Party want to channel funds to achieve the best outcomes for the largest number of pupils or do they just want to satisfy just the parents concerned that their offspring can attend an excellent school?

I haven’t heard anything about the curriculum and examinations from Labour, so presumably this is a policy work in progress area. I had hoped to hear that Ms Powell would call for fees to be paid for trainee teachers, but perhaps the new shadow Chancellor isn’t up to allowing spending promises from other colleagues around the shadow cabinet table.

I hope that Labour will support the continuation of universal infant free school meals and the Pupil Premium both of which can help with the vital early years of education where closing the gap can make a real difference as I am sure that Ms Powell knows from her former role in the Party during the last government.

University numbers still increasing

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The first look at 2015-16 recruitment to undergraduate higher education courses four weeks after the start of clearing has been published by UCAS. https://www.ucas.com/sites/default/files/ucas-entry-year-acceptances-day28-2015.pdf According to the data in the report, acceptances to the 2015-16 entry year at this point are 511,730. Across the UK This is an increase of 12,610 (3 per cent) compared to the 2014-15 entry year (at the equivalent point in the 2014 cycle).  Acceptances to the 2015-16 entry year were 7 per cent more than to 2013-14 and 16 per cent more than to 2012-13. The total increase of 12,610 to the 2015-16 entry year (compared to the 2014-15 entry year) was split between an increase of 10,800 in acceptances to enter HE immediately and an increase of 1,810 in deferred entry (from the previous cycle).

Even more interesting was the breakdown of qualifications of those accepted. For acceptances recorded as holding entry qualifications in the ABB+ set: 90,160 were holding GCE A levels, -150 (no change to the nearest per cent); 46,330 were holding BTECs, +3,430 (+8 per cent);13,960 were holding SQA Highers or Advanced Highers, +270 (+2 per cent) and 3,930 holding an International Baccalaureate, +310 (+8 per cent)

For acceptances not recorded as holding entry qualifications in the ABB+ set: 156,420 were holding GCE A levels, -440 (no change to the nearest per cent; 53,610 were holding BTECs, +1,040 (+2 per cent); 10,580 were holding SQA Highers or Advanced Highers, -200 (-2 per cent) and 1,710 were holding an International Baccalaureate, +60 (+3 per cent).

So, in both the upper and lower qualification band sets ABB+/not ABB+ the number with GCE A levels effectively remained static and the increase in student numbers came from other qualifications including both the BTEC vocational qualification set and the IB. In percentage increase the BTEC set showed the largest percentage increase. This is despite the presumed attractiveness of the growing apprenticeship opportunities for this group.

The growth of 16% between 2012-13 and 2015-16 entry periods, despite the increase in the fees to around £9,000, shows the continued resilience in the attractiveness of a university degree to potential students. Once more detailed tables are published it will be possible to see how the increase has bene distributed across the different universities. Have the Russell Group taken more students overall, leaving other newer universities to fill places with these extra applicants or has the increase been seen across all institutions. It will also be interesting to see how the numbers of students attracted to different subjects has changed over the past few years as acceptances have increased. Presumably, a large percentage of the increase in home student is among those from families with no previous family member having attended a higher education institution. This would mean a continued widening of the social base of those going attending higher education, despite the increase in fees.

What, I wonder would Labour do about the repayments from these and other students paying back fees if they were to offer to re-introduce free university education to all, including the wealthy? After all, a university education is still much cheaper than many sixth form courses in the private sector.

Belt tightening in evidence

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Life is beginning to return to normal after the summer break. The final figures on teacher training offers will appear later this week. However, last week the government published the last data of education spending under the coalition with the figures from the Section 251 budgets for planned expenditure by schools and local authorities’ services for this financial year.

With the split between academies and maintained schools comparing between authorities on schoolings remains a bit of a challenge. In other children’s services it is still relatively clear what is spent by local authorities on say, youth justice or fostering. However, now that the majority of academies are what is known as ‘recoupment academies’ this means some comparison between per capita spending across the country is once again possible.

Overall spend per capita on the individual school budget at local authority levels has seen an increase in expected expenditure from £4,361 to £4,408 per capita, up by £47 or a little over one per cent. This may well help to explain why schools feel that their budgets have effectively been cut, since increased government take back through pension contributions and increased National Insurance contributions have been greater than the increase in income. To some extent this has also reduced the recruitment crisis in some places by diverting funds away from employing staff.

The local authority per capita expected spend doesn’t distinguish between spending in the primary and secondary sectors in the government’s aggregate figures, so it is impossible to tell whether the authorities where spending per capita is expected to be lower in 2015-16 than in 2014-15 is across the board or in only one of the sectors. What is interesting, however, is that five of the bottom ten ranked authorities, or five of nine if Middlesbrough is excluded on the basis that the figures don’t look credible, have selective secondary schools across the authority. Additionally, three of these authorities appear to have a lower per capita spend in 2015—16 than in the previous year. Now, as academies have a different financial year to maintained schools, that may account for some of the difference, but it isn’t clear whether or not that is the case form the data as presented.

Another interesting feature is that per capita spend in Inner London has also declined from £5,842 to £5,759 per capita in 2015-16. The drop isn’t across the board, but is greatest in Camden and Kensington and Chelsea. Tower Hamlets still tops the list with a spend of £6,842 per capita, down by some nine pounds per capita, but still some £350 ahead of Hackney, the next highest. (These figures exclude the single school in the City of London and on the Isles of Scilly where figures are much higher. However, it isn’t clear why the primary school in the City of London should receive £600 per pupil more than the average for schools in Tower Hamlets.)

Indications are that with increasing pupil numbers and the government’s commitment to austerity the 2016-17 budgets now being assembled at the macro level aren’t likely to be any more generous than this year, and might put schools under even more pressure at the per capita level. That will make free services like our TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk more valuable to schools than spending money on services that often increase in price every year regardless of inflation levels and technological changes.