Tag Archives: cuts

A cost to rural living

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As a Lib Dem county councillor in Oxfordshire I was interested to read the comments of the County Councils Network spokesman for education and children’s services, about the under-funding of rural counties in relation to home to school transport. Incidentally he is also Conservative Group leader on the Oxfordshire County Council that implemented changes to transport arrangements some years ago for most pupils and has recently consulted on changes to home to school transport for pupils with special educational needs where the transport is not included in their Education and Health Care plan.

Over the past few years, I have continually pointed out in the Council Chamber that parents living in London don’t have to worry about the cost of home to school transport because TfL offers largely free travel to young people living in the capital. We now know something of the cost to local authorities of home to school transport, even after they have transferred as much of the possible costs to parents by retaining only their statutory legal services in regard to the nearest school and in most cases no longer paying for travel to the school of choice. I commented in an earlier post about the effect such a change could have in local authorities in July 2013 with a post entitled ‘Not a transport of delight’ and in October 2016 about transport to selective schools and secondary modern schools located next to each other in a post entitled ‘Tories and Grammar Schools’.

The County Council Network noted today that 29 out of 36 county councils had reduced their expenditure on home to school transport between 2014 and 2017. I expect the other seven will probably be forced to do so in the future. Between 2014 and 2017, services were scaled back, meaning that 22,352 pupils less in 2017 were receiving home to school transport services compared to three years previously.

The data shows some large regional variations in the costs of subsidised school transport, with home to school transport in highly rural North Yorkshire costing £207 per head, significantly more than in such Yorshire urban areas as Leeds (£15), Bradford (£30), and Wakefield (£23); Hampshire’s per head average of £62 is much more than in Portsmouth (£6), Southampton (£12), and Reading (£23). In every region in England, county councils are the ones that are paying significantly more per-head than metropolitan and city councils.

Even more iniquitous, yet not mentioned by the County Council Network press notice, was the fact that when the learning leaving age was raised to eighteen from sixteen the right to free travel wasn’t also altered. I don’t know whether it was an oversight or a piece of mean penny pinching on the part of government, but it is not fair on those living in rural areas, especially where the local school only goes up to the age of sixteen. If the local bus service has been axed as well, then the cost may be significant to families. I know that there is provision for a hardship grant that replaced the Education Maintenance Allowance abolished by the Coalition, but its existence is neither well known nor understood.

With rural primary schools under threat due to budget pressures, home to school transport is an issue that may force its way up the agenda over the coming months.

School budget under pressure: use TeachVac

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The BBC are running a story today about school budgets being under pressure http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-37860682 although I cannot find under link to new evidence to suggest why the story should suddenly have emerged again today. After all, it isn’t news, but maybe the joint NUT/ATL launch of the website on school funding cuts at http://www.schoolcuts.org.uk/#/ is what has prompted the renewed interest in the issue.

As readers will know, I have long worried about the fate of small schools in the tightening funding climate. These schools saw off the Gove decision to remove any block grant that is needed to help with overheads. A straight per pupil formula would wipe out many remaining village schools and also small infant schools in urban areas. Church schools would be especially badly affected.

However, if the teacher associations are serious about the need for more funding they should also be serious about ensuring schools use the cash they already have as cost effectively as possible. What follows is as near as a rant as you will read on this blog so, if that worries you, don’t read on.

More than two years ago I did the round of teacher associations with my concept of the free vacancy matching service for schools based upon the advances in technology. I was listened to politely by all of them, but that was as far as any interest went, despite the fact that I explicitly made it clear that the aim was to save schools money.

Fast forward to November 2016 and TeachVac has been operating on a daily basis for more than two years, matching teachers and vacancies, all for no cost to either the schools or the teachers. Have the developers of TeachVac seen the teacher associations beating a path to their door to see how their members can save on the millions of pounds they spend on recruitment advertising? Well no, not really, although I did have the first meeting instigated by a teacher association on this issue less than two weeks ago. I understand the caution, after all nobody wants to be associated with a shooting star or a one-day wonder, and they have followed Teachvac’s progress through its regular reports to groups such as SATTAG and its evidence to the Select Committee. But, this is such a major drain on some schools budgets that it might have been something where options could have been explored.

The same can be said for the DfE, although they had more justification to say it wasn’t their concern about how schools spent their money, at least until the White Paper in March expressed an opinion that more should be achieved in the recruitment field by government. The NCTL, Education Funding Agency and Regional School Commissioners, as a group, have also seemingly shown no interest in how schools can save money on recruitment. MATs, on the other hand, have recognised the value of a service such as TeachVac and many of the largest ones have signed up.

If budgets really are coming under pressure, then by all means campaign for more money, but also look to use the existing funds as wisely as possible.