Tag Archives: rural areas

Rural re-visited

Posted on by
4

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

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

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

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

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

National Funding Formula

Posted on by
1

I have been reminded that my last post didn’t explicitly mention the need for a new funding formula for schools. This has been such a long-running saga, started under the Labour government and not brought to a conclusion during the coalition that I confess it slipped my mind.  My apologies to the F40 Group of local authorities that have long campaigned for better funding for their parts of England.

I suppose one good thing to emerge from the coalition was that both the Pupil Premium and Universal Infant Free School Meals were funded at the same rate across the whole country and not pro-rata to authorities on their other funding levels for education. There are those that might argue that the funding wasn’t enough, but it was the same for all. However, that doesn’t obviate the need for a coherent plan for education funding that can be justified on a rational basis. Any reforms must accept the consequences of the raising of the learning leaving age to eighteen. In rural areas the continuation of the old transport rules that assumed staying in education post sixteen was an option need urgent reform.

During the election campaign I met sixth formers of all abilities in both further education and schools that had faced considerable challenges to be able to continue their education. With subsidies to rural bus services under renewed threat this is an unfair burden on young people living in the countryside. If we tried to take away the free travel enjoyed in London there would no doubt be a great outcry.

There is no doubt that what funding there is will increasingly be taken up by increased pay. In those parts of the country, notably London and the Home Counties, where recruitment is at its most challenging it won’t take long for teachers to recognise that the new pay freedoms mean they can ask for more in their pay packets and leave it up to school leaders and governing bodies to decide how to manage the consequences of saying ‘no’.

One outcome is likely to be larger classes, especially in the secondary sector. However, judging by the downward trend in pupil-teacher ratios seen in recent years the system should be able to handle some worsening in ratios and larger class sizes. But, that makes planning teacher supply just that bit more difficult, as trainee PE teachers are no doubt finding out to their cost this year.

Schools will have to look for ways to cut costs, and recruitment advertising is one obvious source of savings as we have shown with TeachVac. By providing a free service to secondary schools that now covers promoted posts as well as main scale vacancies we have created a platform that could save school many millions of pounds as well as providing them with more information about the state of the labour market. If you haven’t visited www.teachvac.co.uk they pay a visit and register. The site will shortly be extending to cover leadership vacancies directly input by schools and I will announce that development on this blog as I will our future plans for extending into the primary sector.

How many rural primary schools are there in England?

Posted on by
1

This is the sort of pub quiz question that can only be answered by those that follow the DfE website and the many detailed updates to our knowledge about the education system that appear from time to time. According to the DfE’s latest announcement, there are 4,673 primary schools that qualify for the designation ‘rural’ under the annual order published as a Statutory Instrument this year on the 29th September and that came into force on the 1st October. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/rural-primary-schools-designation Unlike most SIs this one is signed not by a Minister but by a DfE official.

For those of you that thought London was an entirely urban area, there are six primary schools in London boroughs designated as ‘rural’ schools. One of these is the Forty Hill Church of England Primary School in the north of the Borough of Enfield. Located within the M25 it sits in an area of green belt adjacent to its parish church on a very restricted site just nine miles from the centre of London.  Originally built as an all-age elementary school in 1851, some 20 years before the advent of formal state education, it now has 238 primary age pupils wanting a church school education.

According to the DfE Forty Hill School is classified as  being located in a category defined as ‘Hamlet and Isolated Dwelling – less sparse’ as opposed to one of the other categories such as ‘Town and Village – less sparse’ and ‘Village – sparse’ as well as the really rural ‘Hamlet and Isolated Dwelling – sparse’.

Of course, compared with Kielder First School in Northumberland, Forty Hill might be considered quite an urban school. According to the DfE, Kielder has but 13 pupils aged between 5-9 with three teachers and two classes and a unit cost of over £14,000 per pupil. Earlier this year Ofsted reported that it was ‘outstanding’ having improved since its previous inspection. Schools like this one exist because, especially in winter, it would be challenging or even impossible to transport the pupils from the adjacent area to the next nearest school.

For many rural schools this isn’t the case, and from time to time local authorities have had various degrees of success in amalgamating rural schools into larger units. However, such is the love of all schools threatened with closure that apart from amalgamating separate infant and junior schools into a single  primary school there have been relatively few  large-scale schemes of amalgamation except where authorities have removed a three tier system and reverted to the ‘normal’ two-tier system with a transfer age at eleven.

Now that the smallest school can convert to an academy the geography of primary schools in rural England is likely to remain much as it currently is until a policy change forces a re-think. However, with ever younger children in schools, and a growing school population, this isn’t likely to be an issue high up anyone’s agenda for the next decade. As a result, perhaps the DfE can stop this annual exercise and save some more cash.

 

 

 

Back to the future: the return of the Advisory Teacher

Posted on by
1

Ofsted is clearly becoming the linchpin in what looks like the increasing nationalisation of our school system. The idea of national teachers parachuted into the shires by officials in London in order to demonstrate good practice to under-performing teachers would have been unthinkable some years ago. But, as I have said before, those who are able to  access resources can be in the driving seat when it comes to facilitating change.

For the past quarter of a century successive governments have denied local authorities the right to intervene in their local schools by ensuring that funds that could be used for such purposes were transferred into school budgets, only to see the cash all too often end up unused in school bank accounts. However, when faced with a school system across London in meltdown a decade ago the notional of a regional challenge was born, even if it didn’t extend to central government listening to what was being said about future pupil numbers and the need for extra places. Despite the success of London Challenge in raising achievement in the capital’s schools, the local evening paper, the Evening Standard, has still seen the need to become involved in a large-scale reading campaign across the city region, demonstrating the importance of community involvement in raising standards of learning.

For some time I have been pointing out the message about rural under-performance that Ofsted has finally acknowledged. Indeed, the poor performance in Oxfordshire and Oxford City in particular, has been a theme I initiated nearly three years ago now, and was coincidentally discussed at a public meeting in the city last night arranged by the city church of St Michael at the North Gate. We were reminded at that meeting that the Oxford City Council, although it has no education brief, was able to find £1.4 million to invest in projects to raise attainment in local schools, whereas the county would have been questioned as to such cash hadn’t been passed to schools?

I firmly believe that a world-class education system starts in the primary schools, where the foundations of learning are developed. Primary schools are essentially local in nature, and many in rural areas are the hub of their communities. For that reason I believe they need to be part of the local democratic structure and, as in London, the challenge should be for the locally elected members to lead the drive for improvement. If they fail, then perhaps an interim board should be imposed, but most local communities won’t fail given access to the appropriate resources.

Indeed, the idea of national superstars descending on schools to show how teaching is done properly must already be causing a film-maker somewhere to be salivating at the mouth. You can just see the plot; a talented but hapless outsider descends on remote village school to show teachers how to improve the literacy of their children …. I leave you to finish the plot. Much more important is to provide a local focus using the best in the way previous generations of local authority leaders developed advisory services, and in the 1980s the concept of advisory teachers, where best practice was spread using local professionals with a stake in their communities. All that was destroyed when, what is usually now referred to as the ‘middle tier’ of the education system, was dismantled by successive Conservative and Labour governments.

By all means parachute in outsiders if there is no local talent, but I doubt any local government area is totally devoid of successful teachers able to pass on their success to others. Such locally based schemes might also be cheaper than a visit from ‘the team from the Ministry’ but it wouldn’t fit into a model of a national school system where every school reports directly to Westminster and local authorities are too often cast as the villain of the piece.

For anyone who believes in local democracy, Ofsted may have joined me in identifying a serious problem, but their proposed solution is not one I can endorse.