Tag Archives: local authorities

Register your child’s education

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As we approach the 150th anniversary of the State requiring parents to educate their children new proposals are emerging for consultation that would potentially alter the nature of the contract between individuals and the State over the education of children between the ages of five and sixteen (and possibly eighteen).

As I noted in a post in June 2016

Parents are not required to send children to school to be educated, but if they do so it must be ‘regularly’. There seems to be no similar legal penalty that appears to be enforced for those that decide to home school or educate their children in some other way than sending them to school.

So, the requirement on parents has been to ‘educate’ their children, and the state school was always the default option if no other action has been taken by parents. I suspect that parliament either thought schooling generally a ‘good thing’, so most would take up the option or that it didn’t want to interfere in family life any more than necessary. As stated, the law also allowed private schools to continue with minimal state interference.

Fast forward 150 years and we live in a different set of circumstances, where family rights can be challenged by the rights of individual members of the family. In these circumstances, the right of the child to a ‘good’, ‘satisfactory’ and even’ appropriate’ education may top the right of a family to educate their children as they see fit. At some point the courts will have to rule on this issue.

In order to reach a decision on the education a child is receiving the state needs to know about that education and that the child is indeed being educated. This latter point is, I think, the reasoning behind the current move by the DfE to consult on a register of all children’s education.

Is this a sledgehammer to crack a nut? Realistically, the State wants to know children at risk either because parents are deliberately hiding them from the State or because state providers have made attendance at a school so challenging parents have withdrawn their offspring with no other adequate education in place.

A compromise might be that if a child is entered into a school, and receives a unique pupil number, it becomes eligible for tracking until the end of compulsory schooling. This would allow parents of genuine home schooling that never interact with the State to continue unhindered in their way of life. But, pupils excluded, off-rolled or otherwise removed, perhaps because of bullying or poor SEND provision, would remain open to checking on their education.

Apart from anything else, this might help local authorities recognise where provision has broken down for some children and argue for better resources. The risk is that, at least in the short-term, some schools might exclude more pupils since they would no longer disappear from the system. However, that risk is part of the debate society must have about schools and their place in communities: exam factories or education for whole communities?

This proposal doesn’t deal with those that want a different form of education. But, rules about what is a ‘school’ and the inspection of all schools with severe penalties for unregistered schools might deal with that issue.

 

 

16 to 19 discretionary bursary fund: allocation methodology consultation

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Those readers that live in rural areas might be especially interested in replying to this consultation currently open for responses. https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/16-to-19-discretionary-bursary-fund-allocation-methodology

The closing date is on the 23rd May 2019, unless presumably a general election is called before then, in which case purdah rules might apply.

There is a whole section of the consultation about transport costs for this age group that will allow comments about how unfair the present arrangements are. Indeed, the consultation acknowledges the special position of London, and the TfL provisions for travel in the capital for this age group.

There is also a mention of the Grayling Rail Card that will help student using the remaining rural railways to travel to school or college, but does nothing for those travelling by bus or without any transport links at all.

The first section of the consultation is about replacing the present grant based upon student numbers times a fixed amount with a more nuanced grant based upon deprivation factors. The present arrangements were introduced when the coalition scrapped the Education Maintenance Allowance introduced by the Labour government.

Given the battering that the 16-19 sector has taken over funding, the new arrangements should not be used to further withdraw cash from the sector. If ‘need’ is taken into account, It must be related to courses studies as well as income Why should students using very expensive equipment, as say on engineering courses, be provided with a free education, whereas those on catering courses may be required to buy both specialist clothing and even sets of knives.

With the learning leaving age now at eighteen, the rules should be the same for this age group as for other children in education. Local authorities, if funded, would be much better placed to provide the transport arrangements than individual schools and colleges. But, that would require an acceptance that local authorities are a ‘good thing’, something not universally accepted in government.

 

So, if you have an interest in this area, please do download and reply to the consultation. The more responses about the transport issue the better. Perhaps, we can make a difference for families living in rural areas for a change.

 

Interesting data from ofsted

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The Regional Director of ofsted spent just over an hour answering questions at a meeting earlier this week of Oxfordshire’s Education Scrutiny Committee. Sadly, neither the press nor any members of the public turned up to hear this interesting and informative exchange of views.

One of the questions posed by the Committee was about schools ranked ‘outstanding’ on previous criteria and whether the judgement will remain when the new Framework, currently out to consultation, comes into force. There doesn’t seem to be a mechanism to reset the dial when there is a major change in the inspection framework.

This question was thrown into sharp focus later this week by ofsted’s publication of inspection outcomes for the autumn term of 2018. This is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/state-funded-schools-inspections-and-outcomes-as-at-31-december-2018

Of the 102 schools classified as ‘exempt’ under the 2011 legislation, that were subject to a full inspection, 12 schools (12%) remained outstanding, 50 (49%) declined to good, 35 (34%) declined to requires improvement and five (5%) declined to inadequate. The fact that four out ten of these schools declined to either ‘requires improvement’ or the category of ‘inadequate’, in five cases, must be of concern. A further 15 ‘outstanding’ schools had a short inspection and, thus, remained with the same outcome.

Ofsted also commented that the number of schools that had improved from ‘requires improvement’ had declined, compared with previous years. However, ofsted noted that ‘This may be a sign that the remaining schools have more entrenched problems and will be harder to turn around.’

Ofsted has also looked at schools in the government’s opportunity areas that have received extra cash outside of the normal funding arrangements. As might be expected, there was a 10% different between the percentage of schools rated as ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ in these areas and the national percentage of such schools. As ofsted observed, ‘The lower percentage of good and outstanding schools in opportunity areas is to be expected, as the areas were chosen on the basis of the problems they were experiencing.’

No doubt, at some point in the future, ofsted will comment on both the use of funding in these areas and the difference it makes to schools outside those areas, but facing similar or even more extreme challenges.

In the present complex structure of governance, the lack of local robust school improvement teams offering help to all schools, whether maintained, standalone academies, small or even large MATs means that ofsted can often only inspect after a school has begun to decline. Good local school improvement teams, funded across all schools, might well be able to prevent some declines from happening. MATs can make this happen as they can top slice their schools, but other schools cannot as easily do so.

When the country finally emerges from its Brexit travails, this is but one of many issues that will need to be addressed. One can but hope that such an outcome will be decided sooner rather than later.

Knife Crime must be tackled

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Those readers that have followed this blog since its inception in 2014 will know that I have written sparingly about the issue of knife crime. They will also know that I write from personal experience. In 1977 a pupil excluded from both a mainstream secondary school and then a special school entered my classroom and stabbed me in front of a class of pupils: luckily I survived.

I think my comments on the issue of exclusions and knife crime, today’s current topic for debate in the media, were best summed up in my post of 14th April last year under the heading ‘The responsibility of us all’. https://johnohowson.wordpress.com/2018/04/14/the-responsibility-of-us-all/

The most telling paragraph is not about the deaths but that:

NHS data shows a 63% increase over five years in the number of children aged 16 and under who have been treated for stab wounds in England. The largest increase (85%) between 2011/12 and 2016/17 was among 15-year-olds. The overall rise in the number of stabbings across England during the same period was 14%.

Like my experience, most of these could have been near misses. As I pointed out last year, exclusions have always been greatest among 14 and 15 year old boys.

What was also interesting today was to hear the Mayor of London on the BBC’s Today programme apparently recognising the role local authorities used to play in education; not least in coordinating what happens to excluded pupils. The role of local authorities is one, although unfashionable, I have consistently championed through this blog.

I am also interested to know how many local authority scrutiny committees have focused the spotlight on exclusions in recent years: Oxfordshire Education Scrutiny Committee has done so, and you can find link to their report by using the search facility on WordPress.

The reduction in the use of youth custody has been a positive outcome of the change in the approach to penal policy and sentencing in recent years, and I do not think locking up fewer young people has contributed to the rise in knife crime and the associated deaths and serious injuries.

However, I do think the almost complete destruction of youth services and the speed with which ideas can be transmitted through social media may be important factors. Much has been made of gangs, and what happened in Lancashire recently was horrific, but the stabbing of individuals on suburban streets and in other public spaces merits the question as to what was behind these seemingly senseless acts of violence. Were they gratuitous or was there a motive?

Much has also been made of the spread of drugs and the ‘county lines’ that have recreated modern ‘Fagins’, with control over the lives not only of those that run drugs but their families and friends.

Tacking these complex problems while also staying alert for the threat of terrorism almost certainly demands more resources for our police. Schools may also need more targeted resources to cope with challenging pupils. Will this mean a move back towards are more hypothecated distribution of funds, thus curbing some of the freedom schools currently enjoy?

 

  

First Swallow?

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The Diocese of Bristol must be one of the first multi-academy trusts (MATs) to have posted accounts for the financial year 2017-18 on the Company House web site. At least, it is the first one I have come across. These account cover the year from September 2017 to August 2018, and thus follow the academic year. This is unlike accounts for maintained schools that follow the financial year from April to March.

In the past, this dual system has caused trouble with the government’s auditors for civil servants at the DfE. But, hopefully, that is all in the past.

One interesting feature to note is the five per cent overhead charge levied on schools in this MAT. There are eleven schools in the MAT and the cost to them seemingly increased from £403,000 the previous year to £486,000 in 2017-18. This charge covered physical, human, financial and legal support as well as education support and the classic category of ‘other’. From this, the Diocesan Board of Finance received £150,000 in 2017-18.

Now five per cent seems like a reasonable amount and it will be interesting to compare it with amounts levied by other MATs and paid by standalone academies for these professional services. There is also the question of how maintained schools should access these services? If schools in MATs must contribute to a central services charge, should maintained schools be required to do the same or be allowed to shop around for the best deal?

The Bristol Diocese MAT is coy in its accounts about the senior staff structure, although it has to declare the salary of its highest paid staff. There doesn’t seem anything about the gender pap gap, but I may have missed that bit somewhere during a quick read.

During 2018 the Minister wrote to MATs about excessive pay for some Chief Officers and it will be interesting to read any comments about this from auditors as more accounts are published. Will we see any significant reductions in pay or just an acknowledgement of the government trying to interfere in the running of MATs.

When more accounts emerge it will also be possible to review the amounts schools spend on those areas not covered in the DfE comparisons on the school data and performance indicators published by the DfE.

One area of concern that the accounts do highlight is the Local Government Pension Scheme, since all non-teaching staff in schools are normally entered into these schemes that are run by individual local authorities. Like most pension schemes, these have been in deficit and MATs and standalone academies have had to increase payments into the scheme to help overcome these deficits. Should the DfE now create a national scheme for these workers as they are clearly no longer local government employees? There may be an interesting debate to be had about the pension arrangements for these staff.

Until all schools are once again on a common annual accounting period there will remain two distinct groups that are difficult to compare in terms of income and expenditure. Such duality of approach is not helpful.

 

 

Commuting pupils: are most to be found in London?

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How much does the provision of free transport affect the choice of secondary school in London? What is clear from data published recently by the DfE is that pupils in London, and especially those living in Inner London, are among the most mobile in the country, especially at secondary school level when it comes to attending a state school outside the boundaries of the local authority where they live.  https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/schools-pupils-and-their-characteristics-january-2018

The percentage of pupils living and attending schools in a local authority, as a percentage of resident population, ranged from almost 100% in Cumbria to just 54.6% in Knowsley in Merseyside. However, along with Reading, at just less than 64% attending schools in the borough, these latter two authorities were very much outliers. Some 26 of the 30 mainland local authorities with the lowest percentage of their resident population attending schools in the authority at secondary school level were London boroughs. I don’t know how much of the explanation in Reading is a combination of the presence of two highly selective schools and a distribution of schools dictated during the twenty years when Reading was part of the County of Berkshire before it was broken up into different unitary authorities.

History, as well as free transport, may also play a part in the reasons why London figures so largely in the authorities with the most movement. For around a century, school building in Inner London was governed by a single agency; first the LCC and then the ILEA (Inner London Education Authority) that was abolished by Mrs Thatcher’s government. In outer London, although the creation of the boroughs dates back more than 50 years, many of the secondary schools in north and west London were built on sites created by the former Middlesex County Council.

The creation of academies, free schools, UTCs and studio Schools will also have help encourage movement of pupils, but, I suspect, to a lesser degree than the historical location of schools.

Although there is cross authority movement at the primary school level, it tends to be at a lower level as most pupils will attend their nearest school except when different demographic pressures put pressure on specific schools in urban areas creating a movement across boundaries. By contrast, the movement across local boundaries for pupils in the special school sector is higher than in either the primary or secondary sectors in many local authority areas. This is not really a surprise, since creating specialist schools is often more cost effective if they can reach a certain size and not every authority wants to provide specialist provision for every type of need.

Outside of London, many of the pupils moving across boundaries will have to pay for their own travel costs, as authorities have modified their travel policies, in an effort to reduce expenditure. However, county council’s expenditure on travel is still a large burden to many authorities, especially for children living in rural areas where the local bus service has now disappeared and either a special bus must be run or a taxi provided at significant cost to the authority.

 

PTR Rankings remain surprisingly constant

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In my previous post I used Pupil Teacher Ratios (PTRs) as a measure that is largely consistent over time in the manner in which it has been calculated to discuss overall changes in the staffing levels of schools. One slight change in how PTRs have been calculated has been the classification of unqualified teachers and instructors within PTRs and the increase in school-based preparation courses. This may have caused some PTRs to look better than they actually are in reality.

For around 70 local authorities, a time series of overall PTRs can be constructed stretching from 1974 to 2017. These include the Outer London boroughs; the metropolitan district (forming the main conurbations outside London) and a number of shire counties where a unitary council has not yet been abstracted from within the 1974 boundaries created when the former county boroughs were changed to two tier County and District councils.  There aren’t any PTRS for the inner London boroughs, because in 1974 these boroughs were part of the ILEA and reported as a single unit until the ILEA was broken up into its constituent boroughs.

Although the time series could be traced back until 1974, I have only been able to find Statistical Bulletins on PTRs back until 1979; the last year of funding decided by the Labour government that was defeated later that year by Mrs Thatcher’s Conservatives.

Looking at the PTRS for the 71 mainland authorities, one is struck by the fact more than a third of local authorities retain a similar ranking position at the start and end of the 38 year period (with change of +/- 10 places in each list). This is especially trueof six local authorities with the most favourable overall PTRS in 1979. Two of them still occupy places in the six local authorities with the most favourable PTRS in 2017. All six are in the top 11 authorities with the best PTRS in 2017.

At the other end of the table, the two worst shire counties in 1979 have improved their positions slightly, but Oxfordshire remains in 17th worst place in the list – exactly where it was in this list of local authorities in 1979. In 1979, some local authorities still had three tier systems and those with Sixth Form Colleges had their staff included in the PTR tables as part of the secondary sector. Changes to one or other of these systems may account for some of the large movements within the ranking.

Overall the worst PTR in 1979 was 21.1, whereas in 2017 it is 19.8; an improvement of 1.3 pupils per teacher. This may have been partly paid for by a deterioration of the best placed authority in the list. The best PTR in 1979 was 15.1 – leaving aside the Isles of Scilly as a special case. In 2017, the best placed PTR was 16.1: one pupil per teacher worse than in 1979.

If PTRS continue to deteriorate over the next few years, as seems likely at present with increasing pupil numbers not fully providing for additional costs, then may be by the end of 2019 PTRs will be the same as they were in 1979 across a larger number of local authorities whether they have academies; free schools or retain maintained schools.

 

 

Class sizes and PTRs

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How do you measure the utilisation rate of the teaching workforce? The two traditional measures have been class sizes and pupil teacher ratios or PTRs. More recently, a new measure of Pupil Adult Ratios or PARs has been introduced in order to incorporate the growing important of support staff in the life and work of schools.

For the lifetime of the Statistics of Education volumes based upon the census of the workforce taken each January, the PTRs were published by local authority for nursery, primary, secondary, special school sectors and an overall figure. This allow meaningful comparison between primary sectors in LAs with 11-16 secondary schools and those with Sixth Form Colleges. Small rural primary schools also didn’t affect the comparisons between schools.

With the coming of the School Workforce Census, in 2010, in what was a sensible move overall in terms of data collection, more data became available at the level of the individual school, but less by local authority. Since 2010, only overall PTRs for each local authority have been easy to abstract from the datasets. This has not been as useful as the former more nuanced datasets.

In passing, it is worth recalling that dealing with PTRs for more than 150 local authority areas can lead to mistakes, even if the data provided at the local authority level is 100% accurate, which it isn’t always. My first interaction with Hansard in the early 1980s was when a national list of PTRs appeared in answer to a written PQ with a mistake in the first local authority in the list, thus making all other figures wrong. These days it would be an easy talk to rectify the error. Then it wasn’t and I am sure that bound copies of Hansard still remain with the wrong data to trip up some future researchers, especially if the errata slip has become detached.

I think there was a mistake in Telford and Wrekin PTR in the 2010 first run of the School Workforce Census where a PTR of 25.0 was apparently recorded. Logic suggests it ought to have been somewhere in the range of 17.6-17.9.

In a later post I will discuss the differences in PTRs between different types of local authority; London; urban areas outside of London; the unitary authorities and the remaining shire counties. However, it is generally clear that across England the pressure of rising pupil numbers and the cash they bring through the funding model has not been able to offset the falls in pupil numbers in the secondary sector and the other pressures on school funding over the past few years.

Only 15 of the 154 local authorities don’t have a worse PTRS in the 2017 School Workforce Census than they recorded in the last of the former series collected in January 2010. Seven of those local authorities are in London and most of the remainder are authorities with significant areas of deprivation where the Pupil Premium may have helped funding in their schools.

Overall PTRS are still much better than a generation ago across much of England, but will that trend be reversed as secondary pupil numbers grow if demands on funding, and especially gross salary costs, outstrip funding increases?

More or less local democracy in our school system: who cares?

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The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) at Westminster has published a short and interesting Report into ‘Converting Schools to Academies’. https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmpubacc/697/69702.htm

There is little to disagree with in the Report. The process has been expensive and has caused problems with the remaining statutory duties of local authorities. The Committee cited pupil place planning as an issue, but could have included SEND issues and the education of children taken into care. They could have also realised that Free Schools and the dalliance with the 14-18 sector that brought us UTCs and Studio Schools also contributed to the problems with pupil place planning.

Oxfordshire is one of the few, (perhaps the only?) local authority to require a regional school commissioner to appear before its Education Scrutiny Committee each year to give an account of progress of academies within his remit. The answers to the Scrutiny Committee’s questions have revealed a weak and probably largely ineffectual system for improving school performance among academies. The PAC were right to comment on the need for better links with the Education and Skills Funding Council and the RSCs.

Of interest to Oxfordshire was the PACs comments about small rural schools and academies. Oxfordshire has a large number of small rural primary schools that are much loved by the county. The PAC said

Small rural schools, particularly primary schools, can face particular difficulties in finding suitable sponsors. Low pupil numbers may make rural schools financially unviable and their geographical isolation can make it more difficult for multi-academy trusts to provide support. The Department told us that, since 2010, 1,379 rural primary schools had registered an interest in becoming an academy. Of those, 984 had gone on to apply to become an academy, including 262 that were small rural primary schools.

 The PAC asked what, particularly for small rural schools, the barriers were to becoming academies and how the barriers could be addressed. The Department told us that, in principle, the opportunity presented by a joining multi-academy trust should be greater for a smaller school than a larger one, because there was the potential to achieve more economies of scale.

One wonders why, if the point on economies of scale is true, it is secondary schools that have rushed to become academies while these small primary schools have held back, even in many diocese where they already had links outside of the local authority. It may be that under the 2010 Act many original converters became stand-alone academies and only now are they joining together into multi academy trusts.

This means that there are now three separate governance systems for our schools, often running alongside each other; maintained schools, mostly primary schools; standalone academies, mostly secondary schools and Trusts that can be either primary, secondary or a mixture of both with a smattering of all-through schools as well.

These separate systems are expensive to operate and can cause problems as the PAC Report demonstrated. The DfE will, at some point, have to think how to re-join the parts into a whole. For me, one key question with be the place of local democratic accountability in the system. Do we want an NHS style school system with little local accountability or one more akin to what there was between 1944 and the early 2000s, with a significant role for a democratically elected local body aligned to the rest of local government? Regular readers of this blog will know where I stand.

Leadership matters

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Is the fact that there are both good and less good local authorities and multi-academy chains (MATs) the main message from today’s new report of the Education Policy Institute? It is certainly likely to be one of the headlines when the report is being discussed. The Report is a follow-on from the one they published in 2015 and has the advantage of being by the same author. https://epi.org.uk/publications-and-research/performance-academy-local-authorities-2017/

However, for me, there are two other key issues raised by the report. The first, given it was generally known that there are good and less good local authorities and MATs, is, how important is democratic accountability in the governance of education?

Where poor performing local authorities are in areas where political control hasn’t altered for many years and there is often one dominant political party running the authority, how can challenge be created and maintained. Did we do better when there were Education Committees as opposed to Cabinet Government, with power sometimes residing in a single cabinet member, subject only to post-hoc scrutiny. Education Committees did have non-politicians in full membership in most authorities and this helped where they created an effective challenge, but it didn’t always work well. As I have mentioned in other posts, local authorities also have geography on their side and I do think that is important.

The EPI report might like next time to look at the outcomes for non-geographical MATs compared with those that have a stronger sense of place. EPI might also like to look at the effective size of governance units and whether there is any relationship between central costs and outcomes? But, commentators must be wary of dancing on the head of a pin. Where teacher supply is an issue, as it is in large parts of England at the present time, then schools that cannot recruit teachers will surely often suffer in terms of their outcomes.

The other concern raised by the EPI Report is that of the span of control faced by the DfE. EPI identified 237 bodies it rates for KS2 outcomes and 218 for KS4. Outwith these tables are the stand-alone academies and free schools that also need central oversight. Indeed, the fact that local authorities still make up two thirds of the listed bodies at KS4 make come as a surprise to many and shows how the ‘stand-alone’ schools are an issue EPI needs to address in the future.

The government also needs to work at deciding upon the model for governance of education that will allow the good to flourish, but also respond to decades of under-performance in some parts of the country. Recent decades have seen the repeated use of the stick to beat local communities for failure and spasmodic attempts, from Blair’s education Action Zones to the current Opportunity Areas programme, to recognise that carrots also have a part to play in improving performance.

Leadership matters and developing the next generation of system leaders ought to be high on the agenda of the government. Leadership is inextricably linked to values and the ability to put them into practice and EPI might also want to explore that most intangible of elements when they do their next study in a couple of years’ time.