Tag Archives: politics

Economic matters

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An American President once said ‘the economy, stupid.’ Often that seems to be the case. Indeed, the austerity facing public services in Britain at present can partly be put down to the management of the economy in the first decade of this century. If governments cannot or will not raise revenue from either wealth or income and discount land taxes, then, unless the economy is growing strongly, they will be unable to expand public services, should they even wish to do so. There is also the argument that the State should not provide services for the many, but just a basic lifeline for the few, but we won’t go there in this post.

All this matters to education, as we have seen with the relatively parsimonious new funding formula announced by the government in the run up to Christmas. With adult social care, the NHS and other services probably ahead of education in the minds of many voters, it was always going to be a challenge to secure more funds for schools: especially, when rising pupil numbers mean more is needed in any case just to stand still. Finding even more cash for enhanced services did seem a bit like ‘pie in the sky’ at the present time.

Nevertheless, it remains to be seen how parents react to news that their children’s school might be having its budget cut, even by no more than a couple of per cent.  With no elections in London in 2017, save for by-elections, the government can probably weather the storm of protest in the capital.

Of more interest is the situation in the countryside where many small rural schools look like being losers. Indeed, a quick survey of primary schools in the Henley constituency, Boris’s old stamping ground, revealed that 35 primary schools might be losers under the new formula, while just ten would gain funds. Now, I am sure that the good burghers of the Chilterns and adjacent clay lowlands can afford to support their local primary school through some backhanded giving. But, I am not sure that was what they expected as the outcome from the new formula.

The alternative is to see a redrawing of the map of primary education in rural areas, with fewer larger and more efficient units based around market towns. To achieve this outcome, more pupils would be required to travel longer distances to school. The cost of this happily falls, not on the government, but on local council tax payers. Conservative County Councillors defending their seats in May 2017 will no doubt hope that school funding and the survival of village primary schools doesn’t become an election issue, along with grammar schools. For a revolt by parents in the Shires would be bad news for a government with a small majority at Westminster.

Watch for signs that the consultation on the funding formula isn’t going to plan and that the timescale for introduction is amended. If not, following on from cuts to rural buses, mobile library service, road mending, grass cutting and a host of other services, might 2017 be another year where the political map is redrawn?

Are small schools doomed?

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The Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) clearly worries that they will be. They have raised their concerns and the story was picked up by the BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-37860682 although I couldn’t find any press release on the ASCL web site that prompted the BBC story. Perhaps it is part of a campaign by teacher associations about the funding of schools?

As regular readers of this blog know, I have expressed concerns before about the future of small schools, especially if the block grant that underpins their finances is removed, possibly as part of a funding formula based on an amount per pupil. Such a funding system, perhaps topped up by sum for deprivation in a similar manner to the present Pupil Premium, has a beguiling simplicity about it; easy to understand and easy to administer: job well done.

However, such a top-down approach does have other ramifications. The most obvious is that for as long as anyone living has been in teaching higher salaries have been paid to teachers in London and the surrounding area. This is a policy decision that could be ratified in a new formula through an area cost adjustment as Mr Gibb said during his recent visit to the Select Committee when he appeared to talk about teacher supply. So, if a policy to support London, but not other high cost areas is acceptable, what about rural schools? As I mentioned in a recent post, on the 3rd October, some shire counties have a large number of small schools in their villages. Northumberland has some of the most expensive. Oxfordshire has a third of its primary schools with fewer than 150 pupils and the removal of any block grant would undoubtedly mean their closure, as ASCL pointed out.

Does a Tory government that has already upset some of its supporters in the shires over re-introducing selection to secondary education now want to risk their wrath over shutting the bulk of the 5,000 or so rural primary schools, not to mention small schools in urban areas? As many of the latter are faith schools this might also upset both the Church of England and the Roman Catholic churches, especially if pupils were transferred to non-faith based schools.

Councils might also be upset if the cost of transporting pupils to the new larger and financially viable primary schools fell on their council tax payers. After all, as I have pointed out in the past, children in London receive free transport to schools anywhere in the capital within the TfL area; this despite London being classified as a high cost area in which to live.

There is a possible solution, return to local funding models where communities can decide whether to keep small school open. Of course, it won’t be decided democratically through the ballot box, since local authorities still are regarded as not being capable of this sort of decision, even when run by Tory councillors. But, a grouping of academies in a Multi-Academy Trust could take such a decision or they could assume government policy on school size was reflected in the funding formula and close schools that cannot pay their way.

If you believe in the need for small schools linked to their community, now is the time to say so. To await any consultation on a funding formula may be to wait too long.

 

 

A National Teaching Service?

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How much of the White Paper issued in March is now history? Does a change in government mean a change in policy across the board? Two of the proposals contained in the White Paper were for a National Teaching Service and for the creation of free national vacancy website. Where are we  now with both of these suggestions?

I will confess an interest in that I helped establish TeachVac (www.teachvac.co.uk) as a free national job matching service partly because such a service was missing and because schools were spending ever larger sums on recruitment, in some cases to the detriment of spending on teaching and learning. We are already doing what the White Paper suggested alongside the plethora of different regional and local websites maintained by both local authorities and their commercial brethren. In some cases these sites handle teaching and non-teaching posts together, in others they separate them out and they may or may not include local academies and the various range of free schools.

Teachvac has the added advantage over local authority sites of bringing together both state-funded and private school teaching vacancies in one place. This fact allows a view of the overall demand for teachers. Our analysis suggests that the DfE are better at modelling, through the use of the Teacher Supply Model, the demand in subjects such as mathematics and English than they are in some of the less common subjects such as business studies and in subjects with complex demands for different specialisms, such as in design and technology. However although sometimes the modelling may be accurate, but the lack of recruitment into training then affects the supply that doesn’t meet the modelled need.

A national site like TeachVac allows this kind of discussion in a manner not possible before, when the DfE largely had to rely upon the results from the annual School Workforce Census. While useful in some respects, the census lacks the dynamic up to the minute real-time information of a site such as TeachVac. However, it also allows governments to quite truthfully state an opinion at variance with current outcomes in the labour market. I don’t think that is a good enough reason not to consider the advantages of a national site, especially when one already exists and costs nothing to use.

The other initiative mentioned in the White Paper was the National Teaching Service. This is an attempt to help recruit teachers and middle leaders into underperforming schools that may otherwise struggle to recruit able teachers. The recruits from the first round of the pilot programme should have started work in schools this September. However, the expected tender for the further roll-out of a national programme has not, to my knowledge, yet appeared. The development of this type of service is a complex matter and not one to be rushed, especially as schools are now in many cases free to determine individual terms and conditions of service.

With the postponement of the consultation on the National Funding Formula, it is difficult to see the service making great headway until policy is clearer. The same is true for any similar service to place head teachers in challenging schools. Matching supply and demand by intervening in an open market is possible, but not easy. Some readers will remember the Labour government’s attempt with the Fast Track Scheme that briefly flourished around the time of the millennium.

It will be interesting to see how the DfE, having had the summer to think about these issues, takes them forward this autumn. At TeachVac, www.teachvac.co.uk the staff are happy to talk to officials about our experience.

Back to school

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There was a paragraph buried in the Statistical Bulletin published last week about the new key Stage 2 assessments that set me thinking. Although school level data won’t be available until the end of the year, and the current outcomes cannot be easily related to previous years, the DfE statisticians were able to say:

We have conducted provisional analysis of school level data (which is not ready to be published and remains subject to change) to examine the correlation between the ranked position of all schools on the percentage achieving level 4b or above in 2014 and 2015 and the percentage reaching the expected standard in 2016 (as for the LA comparisons comparing 2014 final data with 2015 provisional data and 2015 final data with 2016 provisional data). This gave correlation coefficients of 0.56 for 2015 and 2016 data and 0.58 for 2014 and 2015 data. This suggests that we are not seeing greater variability in the data at school level. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/549432/SFR39_2016_text.pdf

So, do not expect that schools with poor outcomes have suddenly improved, or that those with previously good results have achieved less well in all cases, even though some schools may have improved or deteriorated on an individual basis.

This raises a number of issues for the new government. After all, during the past quarter of a century much of the focus in education has been about improving standards through changing the organisational structure of schools; sweating the assets – mostly teachers – harder and measuring everything in sight, sometimes it seems as often as possible.

Within the structural muddle we currently have within our school system, especially in the primary sector, with a pedagogic revolution from class teaching to the concerns for the outcomes of every child, and too often a blame game by politicians of staff in schools lacking the tools to do the job properly, some good has emerged. We must not now throw that away.

The acceptance of the importance of the early years of a child’s development; the recognition of the importance of early literacy, numeracy and socialisation and at the other end of the system the opening up of higher education to the many and not just treating higher education as a state-funded privilege for the few. This last point is important because, as I argued in a previous post, the knowledge economy needs more educated individuals that an economy based upon brute force and simple tools. However, it rests upon the foundations of a successful start to the education process.

So, here are some areas of concern that I think need resolving though research and development in order to help schools more forward. My shopping list includes:

Identifying common factors associated with children that fall behind at the early stages of literacy and numeracy and creating solutions that work to overcome common issues whether they are above average absence rates; moving schools mid-year when learning patterns for the many are set; the digital divide between home and school; staff development and training for a teaching force a large number of whom are in the early stages of their career; leadership preparation and enthusiasm across all sectors and for all types of school or the often turbulent life of a child in care or on the edge of family breakdown.

So, let’s stop playing the blame game and focus on starting the new school year in a sense of hope for a future geared to improving education for all.

 

Now there’s a surprise

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The new Secretary of State for Education has invented an updated variation of the Jo Moore outcome. This approach, readers will recall, was about issuing bad news on a busy news day so it didn’t receive much coverage. The current variation is to issue an important announcement at the end of a parliamentary term, either because you really need to say something or because it might receive less notice than at another time.

Anyway today’s announcement is the long awaited postponement of the second stage consultation on a National Funding formula for schools. http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-statements/commons/?page=2

The gist of the statement in a written answer reads as follows;

I will therefore publish the government’s full response to the first stage of the schools and high needs consultations and set out my proposals for the second stage once Parliament returns in the autumn. We will run a full consultation, and make final decisions early in the new year. Given the importance of consulting widely and fully with the sector and getting implementation right, the new system will apply from 2018-19.

All this is, of course, subject to whether there is a general election in the autumn. So, for 2017-18 and I assume for September 2017 for academies, it is business as usual based on the present funding regimes up to age 16. Presumably Schools Forums around the country will have to agree the formula to be used locally at a meeting early in the autumn term.

The delay in taking the concept of a national funding formula forward is frustrating to those authorities that might see an increase, but a reprieve for areas such as London that could be losers under the new arrangements. How schools will react is difficult to tell, but I suspect that where budgets are under pressure already, despite the guarantees for pre-16 funding, schools will take a cautious line, especially while post-16 numbers are still in decline.

So, is this a new Secretary of State acting responsibly or admitting defeat because it is just too difficult a challenge in the present economic climate where there won’t be enough money to buy off potential losers? Who knows, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens in the autumn.

By 2018-19 the growth in the school population will mean that for there to be any winners the Treasury is going to have to find more money for education. The Treasury is also going to have to accept that universities are already factoring in increases in student fees to £9,250 for 2017 and one step the DfE might take is to review why universities are charging the same amount for classroom-based subjects as for science and technology subjects. Anything they learn from that investigation might helpfully be considered in the light of the needs of UTCs that are funded at the same rate as other schools despite higher revenue expenditure, as I have pointed out before in this blog.

So should we thank the Secretary of State for putting everyone out of their misery for another year or attack her lack of willingness to move a challenging issue forward? Tough call, but not for under-funded schools in areas such as Oxfordshire.

End of an era

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This week  marks the retirement of Baroness Sharp of Guildford from the House of Lords and witnesses the departure from front-line politics of the last of a trio of important female Liberal Democrats politicians, all of whom have been very have been influential in different areas of education.  Baroness Sharp’s departure follows the retirement of Baroness Shirley Williams earlier this year and the decision of Dame Annette Brooke not to contest the 2015 General election.

Baroness Sharp was elevated to the peerage in 1998 and has resolutely fought the higher education corner in the upper house on behalf of the Liberal Democrats ever since. Baroness Sharp’s political career began in the early 1980s when she joined the newly formed SDP  and was selected to stand in Guildford  in the 1983 general election. She fought three further elections in Guildford for the SDP and then the Liberal Democrats, gradually squeezing a 20,000 majority down to 4,500 and preparing the way for Liberal Democrat victory in the election of 2001.

On the national scene she has played an active part in policy making, chairing a number of policy working groups and for several years being vice-chair to Paddy Ashdown on the Party’s main policy committee.

As leader of higher and further education policy group, who produced the paper ‘Quality, Diversity and Choice’ for the Party.

Baroness Williams was one of the founders of the SDP and had previously been an education secretary during the Labour government of the late 1970s. Created a Life peer in 1993, Baroness Williams played an important background role in education for the Party in her role as a senior politician of wide experience. Her great speaking ability motivated many audiences in both the conference hall and at fringe meetings during many Liberal Democrat conferences over the years.

Dame Annette Brooke was a former teacher who, at the time she stood down from parliament, had attained the distinction of the longest serving female Lib Dem MP. Her contribution to education was mainly, but not exclusively, in the field of early years’ education which she championed with great vigour and expertise and help the Party to develop a significant policy base in this important but previously under-represented area.

All three of these politicians helped further the Liberal Democrat cause in developing a Party that has a deep and abiding interest in education. Over the years, I have been privileged to have been able to work closely with both Baroness Sharp and Annette Brooke. As the Lib Dem’s fortunes revive over the next few years, it will be important for a new generation of politicians to fill the shoes of these three women that have each done so much to help the Party achieve an understanding of the importance of education to society and to promote it through its policy agenda.

 

 

A new future

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Waking up to the news that the United Kingdom has voted to leave the EU is a disappointment. Oxford, along with cities such as Cambridge and Bristol, was one of the few places outside London to vote strongly in favour of remaining. However, I am not surprised by the overall result. My previous post, on the speech by The Chief Inspector about the failure of our education system to provide an education for all, recognised the deep gulf that has opened up in England and parts of Wales between those that have gained the most across the board from the past half century and those that feel impoverished by the direction of travel the country has taken. This feeling of impoverishment and associated alienation has nothing to do with any economic benefits the region where they live may have received.

The irony is that those voting to leave the EU could in some measure be dependent upon those that voted to remain if the economic miracle those advocating leave believe can happen is now to come about. The entrepreneurial success of parts of the country must be broadened and deepened. To that extent the aim of a northern powerhouse is a good move, but 20 years too late.

On the more narrow focus that is of direct interest to me, I wonder what the outcome of the referendum will mean for the staffing of our schools. One scenario has lots of young graduates, the group that voted mostly strongly to remain in the EU, looking for teaching posts overseas. At the same time, the unknown number of EU trained teachers working in schools across England may re-consider their position here and also look either to return home or seek another post overseas. On the other hand, those from EU countries where unemployment is still high and where teaching pays less than it does here may wish to remain, if allowed to do so. In any teacher shortage that might develop it must not be the least advantaged that suffer the most, for access to a high quality education remains a universal right regardless of the political grouping to which we belong as a country.

A fall in sterling will be good news for independent boarding schools offering an education to those from across the globe, as it will become cheaper to study in Britain. For the same reason, universities may find attracting students from overseas slightly easier, although presumably once Britain leaves the EU all students from overseas will pay the same in fees.

Personally, I will continue to fight to ensure that Britain continues as an outward looking, tolerant and liberal society where Human Rights remain important. Education plays a large part in achieving this goal and it must be protected in any of the possible hard times ahead. I do not want to become a member of a vassal state of either the USA or China, instead of a full-member of the EU, should these superpowers use any period of economic uncertainty to harvest UK assets at a bargain price.

 

 

Education failure brings consequences

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Sir Michael Wilshaw’s savage attack on the failure of the school system, and especially secondary schools failure to provide an effective education for children from disadvantaged backgrounds is not surprising in the light of some of his previous statements. Whether the government will take any notice is another matter: they should do so.

The Chief Inspector concluded his talk to the Festival of Education, held in the leafy glades of Wellington College, with the following comment;

“I came into teaching, above all, to make a difference to the lives of our poorest children. As Chief Inspector, I have attempted to show how the educational underperformance that blights the lives of disadvantaged pupils in reality beggars us all. Of course, the poor suffer the worst consequences. But we are all the poorer for their missed opportunities and wasted potential.”

https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/sir-michael-wilshaws-speech-to-the-festival-of-education

I have every sympathy with that view, as indeed do the many hard working teachers that struggle on a daily basis to achieve miracles in many schools. It is interesting that in picking out his five reasons for failure he didn’t mention the changes made by the coalition government, such as the Pupil Premium and the introduction of free school meals for infant pupils that have tried to start reducing the gap.

His reasons for failure were distilled under five separate headings;

The political ideologies of both left and right

What he called the structural vandals

The constraining curriculum

And both poor teaching and poor leadership

 

I think the first, second and third reasons have similar elements to them as the final two are also related. But, the 1980s and 1990s were a long-time ago, indeed before most of the children in schools were even born. However, I think he is correct in saying that politicians too often concentrate on how to do things rather than a simple goal to achieve.

 

In Oxfordshire, after the dreadful Key state 1 results of 2011, the ‘every child a reader’ campaign had a simple aim; ensure every child could read. It didn’t matter what sort of school they went to or how it was organised, what mattered was that children were taught to read.  The campaign started by the Evening Standard in London had a similar aim.

 

Whatever the turmoil of the next few years may bring we must not lose sight of the need to reduce the education gap between different groups in society. Uneducated, unemployed and feeling unloved by their country is a recipe for disaster if it affects a large group of those living in England. Sir Michael is right, “educational underperformance that blights the lives of disadvantaged pupils in reality beggars us all”. We now have to live with the consequences.

 

 

What a tragedy

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It is difficult to know what to say to the family and friends of murdered MP, Jo Cox. Such events come out of nowhere and can affect us all. As a politician, being available to the community and holding regular surgeries is second nature. Even in this time of emails and social media there is something important about being there for members of the public that may want to talk to you.

My condolences go out to all touched in any way by the tragedy, but especially to the family of Jo Cox where the sorrow must be devastating. As regular readers will know, I survived an unprovoked attack as a teacher many years ago, so I can have some little idea of what the the  family of Jo Cox are having to bear. I was lucky, they weren’t. I could continue my career: she cannot now do so. All the tributes suggest Jo had a glittering career ahead of her. This was a life cut short before it could fully be enjoyed, as a politician, mother and all-round great person.

There is little more one can say except to pause, remember, and above all give thanks for a life well-lived, but so brutally cut short. Even though I never met you Jo, thank you for your service to Society.

Fast-track to headship

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Recently there has been some publicity in the Daily Telegraph and the TES about a scheme whereby new entrants into education will be prepared for headship after just two years of experience. Now, I am not clear whether this is a scheme to be aimed at either new graduates or career changers with significant amounts of management experience or a mixture of both.

However, after more than 30 years of studying leadership appointments in all types of schools, I wonder if this is an interesting new attempt to solve a problem governments often don’t fully understand. The Blair government attempted to tackle a shortage of leadership candidates by introducing a civil service style fast-track scheme for entry into the teaching profession: it lasted a few years and was then quietly dropped. One of the intentions behind Teach First was to attract potentially high flyers in the hope that some would stay in teaching and progress to headships. In recent years there has also been the ‘future leaders’ scheme. So, why another new initiative?

It may be that in looking ahead to an all academy world the government or at least its friends at the University of Buckingham have realised that if there are to be between 500-1,000 multi-academy trusts in the future then there won’t be enough leaders available within the present system capable of running these trusts effectively without seriously affecting the numbers of school leaders available to run individual schools, whether as heads or deputies. Filling such positions might argue for a scheme aimed at career changers rather than new young graduates. However, such a scheme might face recruitment issues, since only the highest paid positions in schools and MATs are in any way comparable with the sort of salary and benefits a successful graduate can earn in many other sectors. This will, possibly, be less of an issue outside London and the Home Counties where graduate salaries are often less different to those in the public sector, but there are often fewer graduates working in some of these areas to attract into teaching.

There are other issues that will face a scheme of this sort if it is to attempt to become a national scheme. How will vacancies be offered to candidates on the scheme? Will it be an extension of the National Teaching Service with, perhaps, certain types of school being required to place a request for a leader with the scheme based upon a school’s location, achievements and perhaps other factors? Will the two main faith groups the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church, buy into such a scheme or will it only be for schools and MATs with no religious character and background? How will existing teachers view any narrowing of their possible promotion opportunities; will more decide to go and seek promotion abroad?

Of course, it could be a scheme that comes to the aid of MATs and schools that have tried to recruit a leader and failed to do so. Over more than half a century of detailed analysis of leadership recruitment, I have seen trends showing such schools facing recruitment challenges to have been overwhelmingly in the primary and special school sectors and frequently to have been schools that have had a religious background. There are schools in coastal and the more remote inland areas where small primary schools can face recruitment challenges, but in the secondary sector there is usually a further factor such as poor performance of a school behind recruitment difficulties. So, will the scheme be aimed at filling these types of vacancies where I would have thought more experience of teaching than a mere two years in a school might have been required?  Even the late Sir Rhodes Boyson was thirty before he achieved his first headship, and he is often held out to conservatives as an earlier achiever of leadership. Like many early achievers, he didn’t stay in headship but eventually entered parliament: here lies another challenge for such a scheme, not only selecting those that will be successful candidates, but also finding those that will stay in education leadership.

I am sure that the government has consulted its friends and advisers about how any such fast-track systems work in other people-focused sectors and how much support those on fast-track schemes need after appointment to a leadership post.

Perhaps talking to the churches and other faith groups about such a scheme might not be a bad idea for the DfE since many clergy acquire significant management responsibilities for churches and congregations very early in their careers. Might we learn from their experience? Of course, the whole scheme could be a mere speculative venture by a private university and a small number of individuals. Time will tell and no doubt the DfE will make it clear whether such a scheme has their backing.