Tag Archives: school funding

Depriving the deprived

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Levelling up is not just an issue for the north of England. Ahead of their Spring Conference, the Liberal Democrats obtained data about reading levels at Key Stage 2 and the percentage of pupils not achieving the expected standard at Key Stage 2 in 2019, the last set of data because of the pandemic. The most revealing data are that for the parliamentary constituencies in England – education is a devolved activity, so the data only covers constituencies in England – of which there are some 533.

My especial interest is, of course Oxford. The west of the city is in the Oxford West and Abingdon constituency that ranks 91st worst in the list at the same place in the table with Henley constituency. However, the Oxford East constituency is ranked 502nd worst out of the 533 constituencies in England. This is a really significant difference between the two parts of Oxford.

One issue that this brings into sharp focus is the problems associated with a national funding formula model for schools; a formula that is based upon the needs of a random collection of local authorities responsible for special education and although budgets go to schools not divorced from the way the overall formula is calculated. If you level up by authority, then you miss pockets of need, such as those parts of Oxford East contributing to the outcome for the Oxford East constituency as a whole.

To be fair to teachers in Oxford, way back in 2011, the City as a whole ranked as the worst local authority for Key Stage 1 outcomes, so this looks like an improvement, albeit on different data.

Nevertheless, children in East Oxford need to be able to access the required degree of resources to allow them to reach parity with their peers across the city and elsewhere in England.

London boroughs are disproportionally represented in the list of constituencies with the lowest percentages of pupils failing to reach the expected standard, whereas both rural and urban areas outside of London are to be found among those constituencies with the worst outcomes.

Oxford as a university city – with two universities – has a proportion of children with English as their second languages, but it is not clear that these pupils are disproportionally located in the east of the city, since university accommodation can be found across the city as a whole.

The Conservatives adapted from Labour ideas by inventing Opportunity Areas to offer extra support to areas needing it, but I have not seen any analysis of the outcomes for such areas. Oxford East seemingly didn’t qualify.

It is worth comparing Oxford with Blackpool for reading outcomes, as both are areas with two different parliamentary constituencies. Blackpool’s constituencies are ranked 73rd and 340th while Oxford’s rank 91st and 502nd. Blackpool is, of course, an Opportunity Area: Oxford isn’t. One might well ask why Oxford is not an opportunity Area on the basis of these figures?

Perhaps it is a matter of perception rather than hard evidence. Blackpool isn’t a wealthy university town and has high levels of unemployment. Oxford is viewed as affluent and successful, and a great place to live. To live, but not, at least as far as the East of the City is concerned, to learn.

To hypothecate or not?

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Civil Servants don’t seem to be very good at procurement if you read the latest report from the Education Select Committee at Westminster into the National Tutoring Programme.  Disadvantaged pupils facing ‘epidemic’ of educational inequality – Committees – UK Parliament this has not been a success. The Secretary of State recognised this in his speech to the ASCL Conference.

The issue of procurement and value for money is something that I have written about before on this blog.  Bulk buying back in vogue | John Howson (wordpress.com) With the present pressure on prices due to the world situation, schools and the whole education sector are going to need to review their spending. If we were to take 100,000 extra children from Ukraine, as announced by the Secretary of State  Education Secretary addresses Association of School and College Leaders conference – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

‘And we have a team that’s already making plans for a capacity of 100,000 Ukrainian children that will come in and take their places in our schools.’

This will impact on funding unless the government is prepared to fully fund the extra places. Wil the funding by hypothecated, as will be the £350 per month householder grant for refugees or just added to the normal school funding round?

At least teachers from Ukraine will be able to work in England as the Secretary of State also said in his speech:

“And because teaching is an increasingly global profession, I want to attract the very best teachers from across the world.

That is why we will also introduce a new relocation premium to help with visas and other expenses for teachers and trainees moving here from abroad.

But even this is not enough: I want our country to be known around the world as the place to train and practise teaching, rivalling the likes of Shanghai, Canada and of course Finland.”

I assume that these changes will be introduced in time to help Ukrainian teachers fleeing the war with their families, as well as any Russian citizens unhappy with their government and fleeing a prison sentence for protesting against the war that might be teachers.

As my recent post on the dilemmas of teaching discussed, hypothecating finance isn’t just a national matter. Schools have to decide how to use their budgets between the needs of different pupils. In this respect, the announcements about SEND will be eagerly awaited, as funding for that sector is in woefully short supply.

Finally, local authorities especially in the shires, will be facing rising transport bills for school transport and social services visits along with other cost increases. For the past eight years, I have demonstrated how recruitment advertising can be much cheaper than it has been. Perhaps, it is now time for the DfE to get together with professional associations and other interested parties to work out how real saving can be made without reducing services. The past few years have seen an explosion of talent in education entrepreneurship. BETT would be a good place for the Secretary of State to announce new initiatives to help avoid wasting cash as has happened in the past.

Funding schools: how far to hypothecate?

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No sooner do we have a National Funding Formula for schools than it starts to dawn on some people that’ equal’ shares may not be the best way to achieve the policy goal of levelling up outcomes. How funds are distributed to schools are key to education outcomes, and have been ever since the State mandated schooling as the default position for the education of children whose parents did not, could not, or would not make other arrangements.

At the heart of the debate about the distribution of funds are two key principles: equity and the identification of the point of decision on how to spend funds. For much of the past 100 years the issues around the degree of hypothecation of funds was centre stage. With the devolution of budgets to schools in the 1990s, this issue was replaced for a long period by the debate over how much cash should be allocated to schooling.

Of course, the problem of creating an education system where all may enjoy success meant that the issue of how funds were allocated didn’t entirely disappear from the political agenda. However, the simple view of a hard National Funding Formula approach that put the view that ‘equal means the same for all’ centre stage – except of course that pay differentials and London weighting meant that it was never as simple as some would have liked – gained supremacy in thinking, although there were always other exceptions such as Education Opportunity Areas.

Funding policy is now under scrutiny once again, with the national levelling up agenda taking centre stage in the political agenda around policymaking. This policy hasn’t been fully worked through in terms of what it means for education and the hypothecation agenda. I wrote in an earlier blog post about how you enforce retention payments to teachers if that is a mechanism to be used in the prosecution of levelling up. Mandate schools and provide a hypothecated grant?

This week there have been two helpful additions to help the discussions on the funding debate. The House of Commons library has published a research briefing, excellent, as always, on School Funding https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-8419/CBP-8419.pdf

Teach First, the charity whose aims now extend well beyond just training teachers to work in schools with high levels of disadvantage pupils, has published a  report around rethinking the Pupil Premium Rethinking pupil premium: a costed proposal for levelling up | Teach First The Pupil Premium is, of course,  a great example of a semi-hypothecated grant to schools, in that its criteria for distribution are made clear, but its actual use by schools is not determined closely as part of the funding.

At present, different rules also apply as between maintained schools and academies and Academy Trusts in how funds distributed through the National Funding formula may be aggregated to cover central costs. This is an interesting area of the hypothecation debate that merits further discussion.

But in the end, decisions about the allocation of funds will always be in the hands of those that provide the funding. Local council taxpayers can be grateful that funding schools is no longer a part of their costs in urban areas. In the countryside, and where there are large bills for special needs transport, it is a different matter, as school transport costs are left to local council taxpayers to cover.

DfE publishes data on funding for schools

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Hard on the heels of the Treasury Select Committee report, covered by this blog yesterday, the DfE has now issued its own data on funding of schools and their pupils. The data confirms the reflections of the Treasury Select Committee. School funding statistics: 2021 to 2022 financial year – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

locationtime periodPer pupil funding 2021-22 terms in £Per pupil funding cash terms in £
England2010-1163705180
England2011-1263905270
England2012-1363705360
England2013-1463505460
England2014-1563905560
England2015-1664005600
England2016-1762505590
England2017-1861405590
England2018-1961805730
England2019-2062305920
England2020-2162406280
England2021-2265106510
England2022-2367806970
State funding for schools in England

Source: DfE

To quote the DfE’s own words about Per-pupil funding between 2010-11 to 2022-23:

On a per-pupil basis the total funding to be allocated to schools for 5–16-year-olds, in cash terms, in 2022-23 is £6,970, a 35% increase compared to £5,180 allocated per pupil in 2010-11.

After adjusting for inflation, funding per pupil was broadly flat between 2010-11 and 2015-16 at just under £6,400 in 2021-22 prices.

It then fell by 4.0% over 2016-17 and 2017-18, but subsequently increased by 1.4% over 2018-19 and 2020-21. Since then, funding increased by 4.5% over the course of 2020-21 and 2021-22 and then by a further 4.2% in 2022-23, reaching £6,780 (in 2021-22 prices).

These numbers only cover the funding of 5-16-year-olds, so don’t account for the reduction in funding for sixth form pupils during the same period. Assuming that the numbers for the most recent periods were subject to inflation deflators not based upon the current high rate of inflation, then, should inflation remain at high levels, it seems likely that the real increase projected for the year 2022-23 of £410 in 2021-22 terms may turn out not to be as great an increase in real terms. Much of the increase may also be taken up in achieving the £30,000 minimum starting salary for teachers promised by the government.

Many secondary schools are enjoying economies of scale at present as their pupil numbers increase, whereas many primary schools outside areas with new housebuilding face the opposite, with diseconomies of scale, as pupil numbers fall. A class of 25 pupils needs the same teaching support as a class of 30 pupils, but will generate somewhat less than £30,000 in income for the school.   Tough times ahead for the primary sector if the government doesn’t want to support them, especially for small rural schools that many need the protection nearly two decades ago should insufficient funding lead to potential closures.

The data used by the DfE on funding covers the following grants:

Dedicated Schools Grant (excluding early years and post-16 high-needs funding);

Grants outside the DSG to the City of London, Isles of Scilly and City Technology Colleges;

Pre-16 high-needs funding in non-maintained special schools,

Special and alternative provision free schools;

Pupil premium (all pupil ages);

Schools supplementary grant (reception to year 11);

Supplementary free school meals grant;

Teachers’ pay grant (reception to year 11);

Teachers’ pension employer contribution grant (TPECG) (reception to year 11).

The DfE points out that the funding in 2022-23 is based on a combination of published funding allocations, and the budget settlement agreed at the 2021 Spending Review, and some estimates of small-grant and high needs spending.

Schools have had a tough time over recent years and many have made great strides at achieving financial stability. The risk now is of high inflation and falling rolls continuing that period of challenge into the foreseeable future.

Academies increase cash balances

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Hard on the heels of the Treasury Select Committee’s Report, with its comments on government funding of education – see previous post on this bog – comes the 10th Annual Academy Benchmark Report from Kreston Global Kreston-Academies-Benchmark-Report-2022-Web.pdf (krestonreeves.com) This detailed report raises a set of interesting questions, and also offers pointers as to why the labour market for teachers in the secondary sector may have been so buoyant during January 2022.

The Kreston Report comments that

“Once again, we are seeing record breaking in-year surpluses for MATs, whilst secondaries are showing a small increase and Primaries have fallen to 2019 levels. But this top level statistic hides the complex mix of variables giving rise to the surpluses. This result is likely to be a by-product of Covid-19 factors rather than an intentional result. The good news is that fewer Trusts are now in a cumulative deficit position and only 19% had an in-year deficit (2020: 25%).”

And

“The size of the in-year surpluses has gone up to record levels; there are less Trusts making in-year deficits, there are less Trusts with cumulative deficits, free reserves are up, and cash balances are up.” (page 12).

The Kreston Report adds that: “From conversations we have had with our Academy clients many were budgeting for in-year deficits or to break even, and were on track for this to happen. “(page 11).

Now, does this mean that a lot of the cash for catch-up programmes is already sitting in secondary school bank accounts? Why wasn’t the saving on supply teachers and other budget heading immediately transferred into support for pupils?

To allow reserves to increase during the pandemic raises questions abut either a lack of congruence between values and budgets or a less than perfect understanding of financial affairs by school leaders? Surely, neither is the case. However, the increase in balances, even if unexpected, does raise some interesting questions about the relationship between decision-making and educational values.

Way back in the 1990s, when I first worked on Assessment Centres for would-be headteachers, this was an issue of concern. Those in education are good at talking, but do they always possess the skills to put their values into actions? What is the relationship between the values of school business managers and education leaders, especially when faced with challenges for which there is no rulebook?

One reason for high cash balances cited by Kreston in the report is my old bugbear, saving for future capital spending. The Kreston Report says this “Some MATs do have a strategy of accumulating funds within the central fund to meet the costs of future capital projects, so this could explain why there are sizeable balances carried forward in some cases.” (page 20) My view has always been that revenue spending should be for today’s pupils, not those of tomorrow, especially when the non-physical environment is so challenged as it has been during the pandemic.

The Kreston report concludes with some interesting benchmark data, but not, as far as I can see, anything on staff recruitment costs. In view of the amount schools can spend in this area, that seems like a curious admission not to extrapolate it from the measure where it is no doubt currently buried.

Taken together, both the Select Committee Report on future spending and the Kreston Report on past trends make for interesting reading for anyone concerned with the education of the nation’s young people.

Education spending: government less than generous

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The House of Commons Treasury Select Committee has today published its Report on the Autumn Budget and Spending Review 2021. Normally, this blog doesn’t read Treasury Select Committee reports, but this Report did have something to say about government spending on education.

In paragraph 48 the Committee noted the evidence it received from Dr Tetlow and in paragraph 54 it made its own comment, noting that the DfE …’ , did not receive such a generous settlement’ and that ‘School funding per head has only now returned to 2010 levels following the latest Budget.’

The two paragraphs are reproduced below.

48. While the Department for Education (DfE) will have received a real-terms increase in its budget of 2.3 per cent compared to 2009–10, Dr Tetlow told us that the DfE had not done as well in the Spending Review as the sector may have hoped for, given how it had been impacted by the loss of learning during the pandemic, and the need there would be for educational catch-up: Education was clearly one of the relative losers from the Spending Review. Certainly, the £5 billion that has gone into education isn’t large enough to meet our estimate of what might be needed to catch up on lost learning. […] Poorer skills in the cohorts going into the labour market over the next few years does run the risk of having longer-term impacts on productivity.58 […] Even though the Chancellor hailed in his speech that per pupil spending would go back to its 2010 level, it is pretty remarkable to have a decade with no real-terms growth in spending in schools. That is quite unusual and not a strong signal of prioritising improved skills in the UK.

54. While some departments which had been significantly disrupted by the pandemic, such as the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Transport, received large increases, the Department for Education, which was also affected by the pandemic, did not receive such a generous settlement. School funding per head has only now returned to 2010 levels following the latest Budget.

Budget report (parliament.uk) 27th January 2022

No doubt in their defence The Treasury would point out that more children are being educated because of the increase in the birth rate and the move to all staying in education or training until age 18 than in 2010. They might also point out there are more students in higher education, but most of their costs are probably being taken on the student loan account.

Without a more generous settlement over the next few years, spending per pupil on education is once again going to be tight, and probably will fall in real terms. The DfE needs to look at the costs of running a mixed system of academies and maintained schools. Why are there several hundred Chief Executives of Academy Trusts when previously there were only around 150 Chief Education Officers in local authorities. What is the extra salary bill costing and how many more civil servants are needed to manage the Department to School budget process compared with discussing with just a limited number of local authorities? It really is time to sort out the middle tier of schooling and the extent to which there should be democratic accountability.

Finally, if I can suggest a simple cost saving measure to the DfE. Compare the cost and effectiveness of your job board for teacher vacancies with other products offering similar services and check that you are now spending more than necessary on this service.

Keep rural primary schools open

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Two years ago, I wrote a blog about rural schools. Update on rural schools | John Howson (wordpress.com) Recently, the DfE published a new update of their list of maintained primary schools in rural areas. Rural primary schools designation – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) The designation of ‘rural’ means more stringent rules have to be followed before a case for closing such a ‘maintained’ school can be made out. However, as the Order dealing with closures was made before academies were created, I assume that such procedures don’t apply to such schools.

In the recently published DfE list, there appeared t be only one school ‘proposed for closure. The school was located in North Yorkshire, a county with a large number of small rural primary schools.

As in previous lists there were four ‘greenbelt’ schools in the London boroughs, including two in Enfield. Both of those schools are Church of England schools, as indeed are many in the whole list. This reveals something of the history of the development of education in England and the reluctance of the State to become involved in what was seen as a responsibility of families. As the philosopher J. S. Mill put it “the role of the State is to see that its citizens are educated, not to educate them itself.”

There are echoes in Mill’s statement of the dilemma facing the government today over its approach to covid. The term ‘medical socialism’ a modern take on the phrase ‘nanny state’ has begun to appear in the media to explain the demands for no more restrictions on liberties that many Conservatives at Westminster are championing in the face of rules sought to reduce the speed of the spread of covid through the population.

It is interesting that the rules on rural school closures, and the need for a list of such schools, were made by a Labour government. Whether by inertia or a recognition that many such schools are located in constituencies with Conservative MPs, no government has challenged the rules even though they interfere in the workings of the market for school places.

Of course, other policies have impact on the future of rural schools. On the one hand there are the additional cost to the taxpayer locally of providing ‘free’ transport to another more distant school if more than three miles away or reached by an ‘unsafe’ route. On the other hand, the formula for funding schools may make some rural schools financially unviable unless they are part of a larger grouping where excess costs may be subsidized.

However, the funding formula does have some ‘fudge’ factors. In the previous blog the case of Holy Island First School was cited. The latest DfE data shows the cost per pupil as £91,000 compared with £4,292 for St Philip and St James Primary School in North Oxford. Find a school (skillsfunding.service.gov.uk)

Keeping school in their communities comes at a cost, especially in rural areas, but surely that is a cost worth bearing for the sake of these communities.

Sorry to read this

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https://www.tes.com/news/statement-future-fe-coverage-tes So the tes – once The Times Educational Supplement – is now focusing on schools and ending its coverage of the Further Education sector. I imagine that there will be staff in the sector that will still follow the tes because their work is similar to that of their colleagues in schools. But, they will no longer have a dedicated focus on their varied and interesting sector.

I wonder where this leaves the main publication. Looking at the accounts submitted for the year to last August by the American owners – available for all to see on the companies’ house website – recruitment advertising still plays a very large part in the tes’s revenue stream.

At this time of year, schools are reviewing their subscriptions to the tes. Most of the tes income on recruitment comes from subscriptions these days, rather than placed advertisements for specific posts. As TeachVac steadily increases its teacher base, and thus both ‘hits’ and matches. More than 6.7 million of the former in the past twelve months and more than a million matches made so far in 2021, schools might want to evaluate TeachVac more closely. After all, cash is tight for many, if not most, schools and funding won’t become any more generous with a funding formula linked so closely to pupil numbers.

In the past falling pupil numbers had less effect of school incomes. Now there is a direct relationship between funding and pupil numbers it can make sense to take our unnecessary costs. Comparing TeachVac with the hopeless DfE vacancy site is a no-brainer, especially when TeachVac has more than four times the number of teaching posts this week than are listed on the DfE site. To allow users to compare the site, TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk now has a live jobs counter on its front page.

As tes owners finalise their accounts for the 2020-21 financial year that ends at the end of August their first priority must be to ensure sufficient income to pay their bondholders. That’s why recruitment subscriptions for schools in England are so important. We won’t see these accounts until perhaps May of 2022, but those running the company already know what is happening to their income stream.

The ending of a FE offering by tes must tell watchers something. A concentration of effort on the core school sector or a need to further prune peripheral activities that don’t pay their way.

With fewer pupils in schools in England, demand for teachers is likely to fall unless more teachers can either be enticed to work abroad in the international schools or quit teaching for other professions. Either way, jobs in key subjects are down so far in 2021 in the lucrative secondary school market, but up in the primary sector where tes traditionally had more competition, not least from local authority job boards.

The next twelve months are going to be an interesting time in the teacher recruitment market. As its Chair, I look forward to the par that TeachVac will play in shaping future trends.

What’s the purpose behind school funding?

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The National Audit Office (NAO) has issued a report into school funding. https://www.nao.org.uk/report/school-funding-in-england/?slide=1

The present, and relatively new, National Funding Formula has exercised this blog on a number of different occasions. As recently as early May, I wrote that

The current National Funding Formula is fine as far as it goes. However, as I have written before on this blog, it is based upon a notion of equality that resembles the ‘equal slices of the cake’ model of funding distribution. That’s fine if that’s what you want out of the Formula, and the f40 Group of Local authorities have tirelessly campaigned for fair – more- funding for their areas. Again, they are right to do so.

However, if the new agenda has leveling up at its heart, then it is necessary to ask whether the present method of distributing cash to schools and other education establishments will achieve that aim? Leveling Up will need a new Funding Formula (posted 9th May 2021)

The NAO’s view as summarised in their conclusions is that:

‘With the introduction of the national funding formula, the Department has met its objective of making its allocations more predictable and transparent. However, it is difficult to conclude definitively on whether the Department has met its objective of allocating funding fairly with resources matched to need. There has been a shift in the balance of funding from more deprived to less deprived local areas. This shift has resulted mainly from changes in relative need and the introduction of minimum per-pupil funding levels. Although more deprived local authorities and schools continue on average to receive more per pupil than those that are less deprived, the difference in funding has narrowed. The Department must evaluate the impact of the national funding formula and minimum funding levels over time and use that information to inform whether further action is needed to meet its objectives.’

They also say of school funding in general that:

‘After real-terms reductions in school funding in the two years to 2018-19, the Department has since increased funding and plans further rises. Because of growing pupil numbers, average per-pupil funding was virtually unchanged in real terms between 2014-15 and 2020-21. The increases in cash funding did not cover estimated cost pressures between 2015-16 and 2019-20 but were projected to exceed them in 2020-21, although the Department has not factored in the potential impact of COVID-19 in this assessment.’

The message on deprivation is not good news, especially for the urban areas where large areas of deprivation are more closely linked to local government boundaries. The NAO make it clear that the DfE has allocated the largest funding increases to previously less well funded areas, which tend to be less deprived. (para 14)

Realistically, in my view, there needs to be a funding formula that is aligned with policy objectives. For instance, there should now be enough data about Opportunity Areas to see whether they have been any more successful that previous attempts at area based schemes to improve outcomes or whether national schemes such as the Pupil Premium offer better value for money?

This is an important report for anyone that needs to understand the niceties of school funding and there, as expected, some useful diagrams and charts to help explain how school funding works.

Pupil Teacher Ratios (PTRs): An update

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The publication last week by the DfE of the school census discussed in the previous post on this blog means that a time series analysis of changes in PTRs can be undertaken using the DfE’s new ‘construct your own table’ tool.

PTRs are useful as a guide because they can provide evidence of changes in the trends of school funding, especially when most of that funding comes from pupil numbers. The measure is not perfect. Older teachers cost more than younger one, so schools where staff stay put after being employed at NQTs cost schools more each year until they reach the top of their scale. This extra cost isn’t recognised in the funding formula.

When schools are gaining pupils, you might expect PTRs to improve, and when rolls start falling then PTRs might worsen, although there is likely to be a time lag to that effect as schools come to terms with lower numbers of pupils going forward. After all, no school likes to make staff redundant.

Incidentally, the fall in the birth rate and the exodus of overseas citizens will mean some tough decisions on ITT numbers may need to be made, possibly as early as this autumn for 2022 entry.

An analysis of changes in PTRs between 2016/17 and 2020/21 for the secondary sector shows only seven authorities, including the Isles of Scilly, where PTRs improved. In 13 local authorities the secondary PTR for schools across the Authority worsened by at least two pupils per teacher, with Slough unitary authority and the City of Nottingham having the largest changes in PTRS for the worse in the secondary sector. Most local authorities witnessed overall secondary PTRS deteriorate by between one and two teachers per pupil during this five year period. Historically that is quite a significant level of change for so many authorities. Now, some of that deterioration might have been due to keeping option groups going in the sixth form as pupil numbers in that age-group continued to fall but some could well be down to funding pressures across the sector.

In the primary sector, the position is more complex. Schools tend to be smaller and areas with new housing may be gaining pupils, even as other areas are being affected by the fall in the birth rate. Changes in PTRS have generally been in the range of plus one to minus one across most authorities, although during the five year period there are some outliers, notably, the City of Derby, where it is possible that the 2016/17 data point in the DfE database is a mistake. Such mistakes do happen from time to time.

It may also be a coincidence that both North Yorkshire and York unitary authority have recorded significant improvements during the five year period. A number of London boroughs south of the Thames also appear to have done relatively well during this five year period.

The longer that the National Funding Formula is in existence, it will be interesting to see what, if any effect it has on PTRs across the different authorities. Of course, if boundaries continue to be redrawn it will be impossible to tell. Happily, Outer London boroughs have had the same boundaries for more than half a century now.