Tag Archives: economics

Windfall profits and SEND

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There is no doubt that the rise in demand for special school places over the past few years was neither anticipated nor effectively dealt with by the State. One consequence is that large amount of off-balance sheet debt being carried by many local authorities responsible for schooling in England. Another consequence, highlighted by the Liberal Democrats in a press release issued today, is what might be described as the ‘windfall’ profits being made by a few in the SEND sector. Lib Dems demand cap on SEND providers profits as top firms rake in £100m – Liberal Democrats

When the highest paid director of a company operating both care homes for children and special schools is paid over £300,000, or more than twice the salary of a Director of Children’s Services commissioning the use of places in the schools and homes, it seems sensible to question whether such use of public money should continue.

At this point, I must make clear that I am a capitalist. The 40 years I have traded on my own account and through a company, as well as held a portfolio of investments in other companies. However, there are two issues that concern me. Where should the boundary line between services offered by the State and those run by the private sector be drawn? And how should price be determined?

It is interesting, as I have noted before, that in the USA and many other countries, public transportation is just that: a service run by the State. In England it has become a battleground between the State and private enterprise and the differing political opinions. Most would expect SEND to be a public service.

What often seems to be lacking is a mechanism to regulate the costs of suppliers to the State. When the private sector funds its enterprise by borrowing to provide the services and then expects the State to service that debt with a profit element added, it seems to me like time to take the service out of the private sector, and back into public provision.

In the case of SEND school places, national and local government should work together to prove places in state-run schools that would obviate the need for private sector intervention. This means the State, in this case the DfE, being much more interventionalist than has been the case.

The Liberal Democrats, of which I am a member and activist, noted in their press release that

‘Research commissioned by the party and carried out by the House of Commons Library showed that the top handful of profiting companies each took home tens of millions a year. One Group, operators of 28 special schools, turned over just over £200 million a year, making £44 million in profit – a margin of over 20%. That profit is 150% what the company made in 2022.’

How many more teachers might the £44 million have funded? While we wait for the government to produce a White Paper on SEND, perhaps the Local Government Association should set up a taskforce to remove the need to use the private sector.

I am sure that when John Stuart Mill, the nineteenth century philosopher, said that’ it was the duty of the State to see it citizens were educated, not to educate them itself’ he did not expect the cost to the State to be more than a reasonable amount.

Compelling case for paying teachers more

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The DfE has produced some interesting statistics about the labour market looking forward to 2035, and how the need for workers might change during that period. Labour market and skills projections: 2020 to 2035 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) Two key impressions are that the demands of the labour market will be for ever more skilled and educated workers, and that teaching faces a massive replacement issue during the period between now and 2035, mainly of women if based upon the present structure of the labour force in education.

The growth period in employment in the education sector between 2015 and 2020 that resulted from both the raising of the learning leaving age to 18 and an increase in the school population that was a consequence of an upturn in the birth-rate will largely have been absorbed by the labour market by the mid-2020s, with only higher education still to see the effects of the demographic upturn. Higher education might well find those extra home based undergraduates balance any loss of earnings from a decline in overseas students if governments fail to realise the economic, social and political importance of overseas students to both the economy and society.

A period of growth in the public sector always makes it harder for The Treasury to accommodate wage demands from public sector workers such as teachers. This is especially the case where governments aim for a low taxation economy. However, going forward, the pressure for the education sector will come from competition from other sectors of the economy for highly qualified workers also need ed to become teachers.

As I see it, the government has two alternatives, either reward teachers at a level of pay and conditions that attract and retain sufficient staff to maintain an output from the school system that is sufficiently well-educated as to provide for the needs of the economy going forward or let our national competitiveness slip, with consequent effects on the standard of living for future generations.

Governments can try to extract a price for rewarding teachers with bigger class sizes, but that approach may make teaching less attractive as a career. More likely, and the Oak Academy may be a harbinger of change, the relationship between labour and capital in teaching – in the form of technology – may change significantly going forward. This may also be accompanied by structural change in how schooling is managed for change.

However, unless there is some forward thinking across education, not just in thinktanks and groups such as FED, the risk is one of drift and a pulling apart of our education system to create an under-educated group and inflationary pressures in the labour market due to a smaller than required pool of new entrants to the highly skilled workforce.

Today’s discussions about the significant increase in unauthorised absence and the pool of pupils missing up to half their schooling is a warning sign that should not be ignored. A national revival plan for education based on sufficient teachers and engagement with parents to encourage a return to schooling for the absentee pupils should be a major consideration.

Sadly, I fear the present government hasn’t the wherewithal to start such a task, let alone achieve it in the present parliament, despite the many government MPs that won seats in 2019 where this is a critical issue for the future wealth of their local economies.

Teacher Recruitment Crisis: is the end in sight?

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Yesterday, Silicon Valley Bank hit a bump in the road. Most readers won’t have heard of this American bank that has created a niche for itself by lending to technology start-ups, including in the famous Silicon Valley, south of San Francisco.

However, might yesterday’s event prove as significant as Northern Rock’s fall from grace was in the first decade of the century at marking a turning point in the business cycle. If it does, then whatever the outcome of the current teachers’ pay dispute, teaching will look like a safe haven in a disturbed economic order. And, as in past bouts of turmoil, more people will seek to become teachers in any uncertain times, and those that quit for pastures new will seek to return in greater number.

Three years ago there was a spike in interest in teaching as a career when lockdown and the covid pandemic looked as if it would create disruption in the labour market. The furlough scheme and other government initiatives meant that spike in interest in teaching as a career was short-lived. 

The banking crisis of 2008 led to record numbers of graduates seeking to train as a teacher, reaching 67,000 applicants in the course of the 2009/10 cycle. By contrast, in 2021/22 cycle the total number of applicants only reached 39,288 according to DfE data: less than two per place.

Of course, by tomorrow, Silicon Valley Bank will no doubt have calmed investors and the risks will have been reassessed. However, the fundamental point about the relationship between the health of the economy and teaching as a career, at least in England where there is a well-developed labour market for graduates, will still hold good. Booming economies are bad for teaching as a career: recessions encourage more to consider teaching as a career, and current teachers not to take the risk of leaving.

Government statisticians are still predicting the possibility of a mild recession in the United Kingdom at some point this year, so perhaps we can predict the end of the current recruitment crisis in teaching?

Sadly, I think it will take more than mild recession to bail out the teacher labour market, at least in the secondary school sector. Falling rolls helps, as the divergence between the labour markets in the primary and secondary school sectors is now starting to make clear. Ironically, a high pay settlement, not fully funded for schools, would also reduce demand, but push up class sizes and affect the quality of learning in other ways.

However, if a recession doesn’t bail out the teacher labour market, might the very type of companies that the Silicon Valley Bank supports help out? Teaching as an occupation has made remarkably little use of technology to support the teacher pupil interface. The government might well set up a research institute to identify how to improve the capital/labour relationship in teaching so as to widen the range of qualifications acceptable to become a teacher. They might focus less on subject knowledge and more on human interactions and motivation as a means of promoting learning. They might also reduce teacher’s workload by taking away as many administrative chores as possible.

But, as we have seen in the recruitment of teachers, driving down costs by new technology doesn’t always change spending habits. Pay teachers more: use technology more effectively and create a 21st century schooling system. Now there’s a thought for the ASCL Conference this weekend.

1p on Income Tax for Education?

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Are school underfunded? To politicians the question is probably more one of, ‘do parents perceive schools as being underfunded and will that affect how they vote?’ Despite a campaign ahead of the 2017 general election on this topic, my sense was that education wasn’t a major topic during that election. Would it be now? Has the growing campaign by some schools to ask parents for cash to fund their running costs pushed the issue up the political agenda for any post-Brexit era?

My genuine answer is that I am not sure. We have been here before. As this blog has pointed out in the past, the post-1979 period was one of financial hardship for public services that last through most of the 1980s. Indeed, I have looked back at my 1986 book on ‘Schools in London’s Commuterland’ to find that even then some schools in Surrey were asking parents for sum like £5 per term or £14 for new pupils.

Throughout the early 1990s the Liberal Democrats had a well-known policy of ‘1p on Income Tax for education’. The policy attracted voters, and was based upon a feeling that schools were under-funded. Could it be revived on the basis that the government has pledged more cash for the NHS, but not for education, and it seems likely that the present financial support from the public purse will not be sufficient to fund increases in all public services at present levels of taxation.

The alternative to public funding, schools going cap in hand to parents, lacks any real support for a social justice agenda. Parents in my Division in North Oxford, where I am the county councillor, can certainly afford to part with a small sum from their disposable income for the school their child attends. The same isn’t true for many other parts of the city, where parents live on much narrow margins between income and expenditure.

If you believe, as I do, in the philosophy that a state education system should provide a standard of education necessary to create a high level of outcomes for all pupils, encouraging parents to pay towards a school’s funds creates an unfair advantage for those with the cash to help.

The funding debate is often mentioned in relation to the issue of staffing. Ever since schools gained control of their budgets in the 1990s, head teachers and governing bodies have been free to decide how to reward teachers in a system where central direction and control has become increasingly weaker.

Few now understand that the Group Size of a school once controlled not only the head teacher’s salary, but also the number of promoted posts a school could deploy. As a result, since school control of budgets came into force, the government has only ever funded schools on the average cost of a teachers: schools with lots of young teachers often did well, but those with lots of teachers on the top of the pay spine and with TLRs had a salary bill in excess of what their funding would be each year. Should these schools be allowed to top up their funding from parents? Then there is the question of reserves. Any parent asked for cash should require the school to display their latest set of accounts so the actual financial position can be determined.  Finally, ought there to be benchmarks in terms of issues such as pupil-teacher ratios and class sizes that identify funding levels. But, there is still the issue of how to compensate for the fact that older more experienced teachers cost more than younger less experienced ones?

One solution is to even out the costs by increasing the CPD allocation to young teachers so the actual cost of a teacher to a school is the same wherever they are in their career.

Governors warn of teacher recruitment crisis

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Tell us something we didn’t know, might be the first reaction to this headline from today’s Times newspaper. Indeed, October is a slightly odd time to publish such a survey, as it is well after the start of the school year and at a point where teacher recruitment is heading towards its autumn low point before picking up again in January.

However, I guess it took the TES some time to put together the answers from the National Governance Association members that completed the survey. Anyway, a survey of this type does help to keep the pressure on government, lest they try and bury concerns about teacher recruitment.

The figure for the extra number of teachers needed by the mid-2020s is also not really news, since the DfE has been publishing the forward planning associated with the Teacher Supply Model for the past couple of years. We have David Laws to thank for opening up this key planning tool to general visibility when he was Minister of State.  The next iteration of the Model is due to be published in a couple of weeks, towards the end of the month and will confirm future needs as the school population increases. No doubt this blog will comment on the DfE’s views at that time.

I was surprised that the NGA/TES Survey didn’t highlight the issues many schools have had this year trying to recruit a teacher of English. Indeed, TeachVac http://www.teachvac.co.uk  where I am the chair of the board, surveys key subjects on a daily basis and across the whole of England and we would rate English as more of a problem subject in 2018 than mathematics. As I pointed out last week on this blog, that might not be the case in 2019.

The report in the Times article didn’t mention regional recruitment issues. At TeachVac, we believe that the recruitment situation is generally at its worst in and around London. That’s not to say school elsewhere don’t face problems for specific reasons, but that a higher proportion of school in London and the Home Counties may expect to find recruitment difficult.

The Times newspaper article also ignored the challenges in vocational subjects such as business studies and parts of the design and technology curriculum. That’s probably not surprising, as the DfE shows a complete lack of interest in these subjects, not even offering a bursary to business studies students despite the real challenges schools face in recruiting these teachers.

With the government’s school-based training scheme, School Direct, having stalled this year, the NGA ought to be asking what can be done to ensure teachers that train through higher education courses end up in the schools where they are needed. It is absolutely no use attracting more mature entrants on the back of the BBC Radio 4 series with Lucy Kellaway, if they are in the wrong place and wrong subjects. The Treasury ought to be asking why so many teachers of history are being trained at £9,250 a head. Wasting money training too many teachers is as much of an issue as not training enough, but receives fewer headlines.

 

Funding still not fair?

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Is opposition to the current National Funding Formula for schools growing? There are those that see it as neither national, because it has so many variations, nor a formula, because it carries so many restrictions carried over from what went before. Indeed, the F40 Group of local authorities that campaigns for fairer funding has issued a recent document outlining their concerns about the present state of play.

In one sense the idea of every child having a basic unit of funding tied to the provision of their education has been the Holy Grail of many educationalists ever since the autonomy of local authorities over education funding began to be curbed around the time that local management of schools or LMS began to be introduced in the early 1990s.

At that time there were wide disparities in the funding of schooling across the country. Local business rates meant that Inner London had access to vast resources of income generated from the City of London and the West End. At the other end of the scale were former manufacturing areas and many rural areas where income was insufficient and central government had to provide funds to support an education service. These areas were also joined by many of the shire counties where education competed with social services for a limited amount of resources.

The goal of those seeking a National Funding Formula was to level up less well funded areas, so that all received the same basic level of funding as close to that of the best as possible. Of course, if it wasn’t at the level of the best then there would be losers. The first attempt at a Formula created too many losers. It is now becoming apparent that the current version also has problems associated with it.

As the F40 briefing note says;

One of the key principles set out in the early NFF consultations, supported by f40, was that pupils of similar characteristics should attract similar levels of funding wherever they are in the country (allowing for the area cost adjustment).  Therefore, NFF should be applied to all schools on a consistent basis.  However, the protections applied, such as the 0.5% funding floor, ‘lock in’ some of the historical differences for those schools which have been comparatively well funded for several decades.

Their solution:

The government must continue to develop the national formula so that it is fit for the future i.e. is fairer, more easily understood, transparent and adjustable. Transition to the new formula is sensible but locking in past inequalities is not.

The F40 Group is also seeking continued funding flexibility to support specific local issues or organisational requirements. They assert that no two schools in the country are exactly the same, but the current formula assumes all schools are almost identical.  The F40 say that are good local reasons why some schools have costs that others do not have, and an inflexible national system cannot support these schools equitably.  As a result, some local flexibility is essential in achieving a fair formula that works and stands the test of time.

Here is the nub of the argument, how to manage a national formula with a degree of local flexibility. The government’s solution for academy chains is to allow funds to be moved between schools as necessary, but that approach doesn’t help either stand-alone academies or maintained schools.

With increasing pupil numbers and an under-funded 16-19 sector, the government has limited room for movement in the short-term, even if austerity really does come to an end as a policy objective. Perhaps we might see a return to the separation of funding into two separate funding streams with pay as one funding stream and other costs funded through a different funding stream more open to local flexibility to reflect local circumstances. This might imply a return to rigid national pay scales and limits of promoted posts to control the pay stream.

What is clear is that without more thinking, the present arrangements for school funding are likely to be unfair for many pupils across the country.

 

 

System autonomy or a system for the future?

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Hard on the publication of the report from the social Mobility Commission, headlined in the previous post, comes a report from the Centre for Education Economics, the re-named CMRE or Centre for Market Reform in Education. This is a body that avowedly believes in market solutions to improving education. Their report is entitled ‘Optimising Autonomy; a blueprint [sic] for reform. http://www.cfee.org.uk/sites/default/files/Optimising%20autonomy%20-%20Web%20.pdf?utm_source=CMRE+News+and+Events&utm_campaign=15cd691116-The+Centre+for+Education+Economics&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_9bd023bfaa-15cd691116-92109333

Now, generally I find the former CMRE view often too market orientated for my taste, but this new report by James Croft bears reading as it makes some interesting observations. I remain un-reformed in my view that if the democratic process has a place in education at a national level then it also has at a more local level. This report does at least recognise some role for local authorities, but it might be better if they were to have worked through case studies of what can actually happen. How much might bussing in rural areas cost to achieve greater parental choice and is it worth the expenditure. A key question surely for a centre concerned with economics one would have imagined.

I also conclude that if competition was such a good idea then large retail chains would not impose the discipline that they do on their stores. I think, more important, as I have said at two different conferences this week, is the issue of technological change and our approach to education. The ‘free marketers’ have become too obsessed with the ‘wrong’ question of parental choice and have missed the issue of how education should respond to a changing environment and what the consequences are for the system as a whole.

Before 1870, England assumed that parents that wanted education would seek it out and pay for it. With the advent of greater suffrage and votes for all came the thinking about educating the electorate and a necessity for State intervention; something many other countries had already embarked upon. Parents often now choose to rectify the deficiencies of the State system through paying for private tutoring and home schooling is on the increase.

I think a centre dedicated to education economics might well look beyond the issue of for profit or not in schools and widen the debate into ‘for profit’ activities in education and how we achieve the aims of social mobility discussed in the previous post. Especially, what part will changes in technology play in the future shape of learning for our citizens and their families?

The general election was a good example of backward thinking, with the debate largely about selective education. Why should the State pay for this form of education over any other. Again, an interesting question for economists to discuss. I suspect the return on State investment is much greater with non-selective education across all government services. But such a calculation is notoriously difficult to undertake effectively.

I am interested to know where Labour stand in the debate on the politics and economics of schooling. As a left-winger for most of his career, does Mr Corbyn want to see a return to full State control and is that local or national. After all, Labour nationalised the NHS in the 1940s, so presumably is comfortable in keeping schools out of local democratic control?

 

More on the financing of education

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One of the joys of moving house is unearthing long lost papers. One such that came to light during my recent house move was a paper on the finance of education I wrote way back in 1981. I think it was in preparation for a talk to students at the then Chelmer Institute of Higher Education where many teachers for schools in Essex and the surrounding area were still being trained at that time.

Anyway, the significance of the paper today is not its purpose, but rather in its contents. At that time, the Thatcher government was wrestling with an economic crisis that everyone thought was dire. It is true that one of its consequences was the collapse of large parts of the manufacturing sector, especially in areas such as the West Midlands, where, for instance, glass making in Stourbridge was replaced by new activities such as shopping centres and the car industry went into a long period of decline that seriously affected the western side of the West Midlands.

Education wasn’t protected during the economic turmoil of that period and there was the added complication that school rolls were generally in a period of decline. As a result, school budgets came under severe pressure. Just as now, local government spending bore the brunt of public expenditure cuts and at that time schools was a locally provided service. A survey of 31 local education authorities, as they were then, conducted by ‘Education’ magazine during May 1981 revealed where the cuts in expenditure were being made.

Expenditure item London Met Districts Shire Counties  
7 LEAs 8 LEAs 16 LEAs Total
Meals & Milk 3 1 12 16
Central Admin 1 2 8 11
Non-teaching staff 2 0 5 7
transport 2 2 1 5
Buildings & Playing fields 1 2 2 5
Capitation 2 1 1 4
Pupil Teacher Ratios 0 1 2 3

The first point to notice is how much the funding of schools has changed over the past 35 years. The second point is that teaching staff, as measured by worsening the Pupil Teacher Ratio (PTR) was only recorded by three LEAs out of the 31 surveyed as an option for cuts. Of course, some LEAs might have made cuts in previous years, and those authorities with elections in 1981 might have tried to protect the more obvious front-line aspects of education that parents would notice, such as increases in class sizes. But, despite falling rolls teaching staff as measured through the PTR was largely being protected in these LEAs.

However, I think the table may provide some pointers about what is likely to happen over the next few years to those schools whose budgets come under pressure. Of course, in the present world of devolved budgets, it won’t be councillors in the 152 local authorities worried about re-election taking the decisions on budgets these days, but heads and governors and the CEOs of MATs.

Nevertheless, I would be surprised if protecting teaching posts wasn’t still in a similar position in any table constructed in 2017. However, it might not be seen as quite as well protected as in the 1980s, since schools may be more prepared to cut optional subjects, especially at 16-19 than LEAs were in the 1980s.

It will be instructive to see how far MATs are prepared to trim back on central administration costs; surely an area for efficiency saving as LEAs identified in 1981. Do we need an index of central costs to school-based spending as was commonplace in the period when local authorities were being pilloried for retaining too much of the funding for schools.

Might we also see a return to hypothecated funding in areas such a professional development and IT spending as we have with the provision of free lunches to infant age pupils and funding for aspects of deprivation through the Pupil Premium and extra funding for children in care. This may be the only way to ensure any degree of uniformity of provision across a devolved funding system. Whether we should is another issue for another day.

 

 

Teacher Supply: my current thoughts

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This week the All Party Parliamentary Group on the Teaching Profession and SATTAG (The Supply & Training of Teachers Advisory Group) both hold their autumn meetings. The 2016 ITT census appears next week, so teacher supply is likely to be on the agenda one way or another for much of the rest of the month. At some point in the future the Migration Advisory Committee will presumably publish its findings on visas and shortage subjects.

This time last year I told the Select Committee there were three possible sources for a crisis in teacher supply; geographical, numerical and quality. Now, while the numbers crisis may have eased in some subjects, and could be seen to ease further when the 2016 census appears, the other two reasons for a crisis may not have altered very much. To these can be added a fourth, whether more teachers are leaving state-funded schools after a couple of years in the profession? The evidence, although a lagging indicator, certainly seems to point in that direction.

So, will the situation in teacher supply worsen or continue to improve over the next few years? The jury is out at this point in time as the different factors are finely balanced. On the one hand, the global economy could slow down reducing job opportunities for graduates. There is also the issue of tightening school budgets, coupled with actual losers in any new funding formula that together might reduce demand for teachers. Should teachers finally be offered a pay rise of more than one per cent in 2017, then that might further reduce demand.

On the other side of the equation, pupil numbers are rising and the increase will start to be felt by secondary schools, especially in and around London for the next few years. The Capital and the surrounding Home Counties are already the areas most affected by teacher turnover and possible supply issues.

The effects of School Direct and the expansion of Teach First have been patchy to date. Schools in those programmes may benefit from their involvement and can also use the ‘free pool’ of higher education trained teachers where they cannot recruit trainees through these routes, whereas schools that don’t benefit from these programmes must, perforce, use the ‘free pool’ to recruit. I am not sure the effects of this approach have been fully researched yet, but the government must ensure all can have teachers if it is to do its job properly.

On balance, it seems the teacher supply situation could go in either direction: worsen for the seventh year in some subjects in 2017 and affect recruitment until 2018, or ease further in some subjects, but worsen in others. The world economic situation is likely to be the key determinant of what happens and the world may be overdue for a slowdown.

A final point to consider is that the number of eighteen year olds going to university isn’t going to increase over the next few years as the cohort size is affected by the demographic decline now coming to an end in our secondary schools among the younger age groups. Add in a loss of teachers from the EU, post the UK’s departure, and, whatever the world situation, we may create our own national teacher supply problems. To that extent it will be interesting to read the Select Committee Report when it appears as well as the deliberation of the Migration Advisory Committee.

 

Hard Facts

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Some things won’t change following last Thursday’s vote. The school population across most of England will continue to increase for the foreseeable future. Schools will come under more financial pressure, especially so if there is an economic downturn. Whether a new funding formula for schools will still be on the agenda in the short-term is a matter of ‘wait and see’. In a period of uncertainty, will Ministers want to provoke possible losers into action, especially if among the winners most will probably have voted overwhelmingly for a Tory government in 2015.

There is far more uncertainty over the direction of teacher supply. One the one hand, should there be a downturn in the economy and a resultant reduction in demand for graduates, teaching as a career should benefit, as it has done in the past during any downturn in the economy. On the other hand, teaching has depended in recent years on an increasing number of women choosing it as a career. Since many of them have partners that aren’t in education, how these significant others react to the economic and political scenes will be as important as how the teachers themselves react.

With a significant portion of the profession under the age of 40, we will know the exact proportion in a couple of weeks’ time when the 2015 School Workforce Census results are made public, it is the actions of the younger age groups of teachers that will be of most significance. Will they go or will they stay? To some extent this may depend upon whether the economic fallout from the referendum vote only has local implications for the economy of the United Kingdom or whether it helps trigger a wider slowdown across the world. My betting is on the former, with a crisis similar to that seen in South East Asia in 1997, but I might be wrong.

As part of the School Workforce Census data it would be helpful if the DfE could release the number of EU teachers granted QTS over the past five years. What countries they came from, what phase and the subject they are teaching and also where would also be useful information for those of us thinking about the future. ITT providers are making requests for 2017 allocations at this time, a process TeachVac www.teachvac.com is helping with for those that have requested data, but it would also help to know what other factors might affect the labour market in 2018 and through to January 2019 when the 2017 trainees are required to fill their share of vacancies.

There is also the question of how to handle the shortfall in expertise generated by up to four years of under-recruitment into training in some subjects. Does the DfE just leave it to schools to sort out, a favoured policy in the past by governments of all complexions, or does it look to a policy of CPD to improve the skills of those teaching subjects where they lack appropriate knowledge and expertise? Not to do so might be to abandon the challenge laid down by the retiring Chief Inspector of helping to close the attainment gap between the different sections of our nation. I support that aim and would not want it lost if education comes off badly in any turmoil during the next few years.