Tag Archives: schools

Not a transport of delight

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As a teenager 50 years ago I used to listen to the BBC’s Round Britain Quiz and puzzle over the cryptic questions set for the teams. So I thought that I would set one of my own for this blog. What links together the representation of Downton Abbey, the RAF, and a school established over 600 years ago? And how might the Prime Minster have needed to keep an eye on the outcome?

Anyone who sat through the Oxfordshire County Council’s cabinet meeting yesterday afternoon will have had no difficulty answering the question set above. But, for everyone else, I have added an explanation at the end of this piece.

Home to school transport has always proved a contentious issue in time of government spending cuts, as the rules, although seemingly simple, are often challenging to enforce fairly. Basically, the principle established many years ago is that children under eight don’t have any access to free transport if the distance to school is less than two miles unless the route is unsafe. For those between the ages of 8 and 16 the distance increases to three miles by a safe route. Changes to existing policy can have significant implications for those who live in rural counties such as Oxfordshire. Since the passing of the 1980 Education Act the issue of parental choice, and the ‘duty’ of authorities to do their best to meet parental preferences, has caused significant issues as it has made the status of ‘catchment areas’ or ‘designated schools’ much less rigid in meaning. Additionally, local authorities are still charged to do nothing that is ‘prejudicial to the efficient use of resources’.

After the county elections this May, Oxfordshire County Council embarked on a consultation to change their present travel arrangements. The consequence of that process came to a head at the cabinet meeting yesterday where the decision was taken to start the whole process again in the autumn after the level of opposition from schools, parents, and the community proved overwhelming. The actual reason given was that the DfE, who had placed new ‘guidance’ on their web site in March – and thus triggered the local review and consultation, had announced a –U- turn and dumped the March guidance and returned to the status quo ante by restoring the 2007 guidance. Interestingly, nobody challenged whether the 2007 guidance affected the consultation in any way, but I suspect that there was great relief among the ruling Conservative and Independent Alliance Group or CIA that currently governs Oxfordshire.

Much of the challenge to the consultation is centred on a small number of schools, many within the Prime Minister’s own constituency, where one secondary school was in favour and another against the changes. There are certainly anomalies that have grown up over the years across the county, and it will be interesting to see whether the new consultation goes back to first principles or tries to bury the problem.

Looming in the background is the issue of how the County deals with free schools, academies, studio schools and UTCs. I am reminded that the 2007 Guidance said:

The Secretary of State expects that local authorities may wish to exercise this discretionary power to ensure that pupils whose parents had expressed a preference for a vocational education at a 14-19 vocational academy were not denied the opportunity to do so by the lack of, or the cost of transport arrangements to such a school. Local authorities should use this power to facilitate attendance at a vocational academy where the school’s catchment area included all, or part of the local authority’s area. Where such pupils were from low income backgrounds, then such arrangements should be free of charge.

This part of the guidance has implications for the cost of transport to the new UTC in Didcot and the Studio School in Banbury, and may cause other schools to ponder whether it might affect their post 14 numbers if free transport was offered.

Perhaps, with the raising of the statutory learning age to 18, it is time for central government to review the whole set of principles behind home to school transport in an age of parental and even student choice. What worked in the uncomplicated state school system of the Nineteenth Century may not be appropriate for the Twenty First. Perhaps, travelling costs could be free for all, as in London, or be added to tax credits of Child Benefit? There is certainly, time for a wider debate than just what happens in Oxfordshire.

The answer to the question set above. Bampton features as the village in the TV series Downton Abbey. Many families from the RAF at Brize Norton send their children to secondary school in either Carterton or Burford. The secondary school in Burford traces its history back many centuries. All these towns are in the Prime minister’s Witney constituency. And the school bus from Bampton effectively goes past Carterton Secondary School on its way to Burford School. The former is an 11-16 school; the latter an 11-18 school. One or other might be affected depending on whether Oxfordshire changes the rules or not.

Quality comes at a price

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Teach First have recently filed their accounts with the Charity Commission for the year ended 31st August 2012. Anyone interested can read them at http://apps.charitycommission.gov.uk/Accounts/Ends94/0001098294_AC_20120831_E_C.pdf

There is no doubt a lot to be said for the school-based approach to converting graduates into teachers for two years in the hope that some will remain in the profession. 89% of those who started the programme in 2010 completed their two years in teaching. Curiously, although 80% became ambassadors for the programme after two years, the review accompanying the accounts seemingly doesn’t say how many remained in teaching for a third year. As numbers on the programme grow that performance indicator assumes more importance because if it is below the figure for other types of teacher preparation programme, such as School Direct or the higher education routes, it will be a hidden cost because it will require extra numbers to be trained as teachers. Of course, if it is lower than wastage through other routes Teach First can claim to be more cost effective.

Located in an expensive part of London, even though it is now a national programme, the accounts reveal a cost base that many teacher trainers can only view with awe. The average salary with on-costs for the 216 employees in 2011-12 was £48,000, with the Chief Executive earning a salary similar to one of the best paid secondary heads in a London Academy. Although the trustees weren’t paid, one did claim the equivalent of £400 per week in travel, subsistence and office costs for the second year in a row. That’s over £40,000 across the two years. No doubt their experience is unique and cannot be replicated for less.

Still you would have thought a programme that has trainees placed in schools wouldn’t need to spend much money on rent for offices. Teach First appears to have spent around £750 per trainee on premises costs and rent, although since they also run other programmes it might be better to halve that figure to £375 per trainee. Similarly, the £1,450 staff costs might be better reduced to £700 to allow for the other programmes. Whether it is possible to reduce the £4,600,000 spent on graduate recruitment by spreading it across other programmes may be more of a moot point. Using the 7,000 applications received in 2012 that works out at around £650 per applicant. If you just look at how much it cost per successfully recruited participant the figure is nearer £4,500. This is the equivalent of the DfE spending £46 million on recruitment for School Direct or universities more than £80 million on attracting students to PGCE programmes. It would be nice to see these figures benchmarked both against other graduate recruitment programmes and against the less well-funded teacher preparation programmes. In their 2008 accounts the Charity spend £1.1 million to recruit 373 new trainees, so there doesn’t yet seem to be any economies of scale in the recruitment process. Undoubtedly the assessment centre process used by Teach First is expensive, but I well remember being told it couldn’t be afforded for trainee head teachers, so should it be part of selecting new teachers?

The next few years may be testing times for the Teacher First programme as it has to compete with both a recovery in the wider graduate recruitment market and the growing School Direct programme that seemingly offers many of the same benefits to would-be career teachers without the need to work in a challenging school. Hopefully, they those managing the programme will be able to rise to the task without having to spend even more money to achieve their goals.

Has Teach First had to rely on the ‘redbricks’ for growth?

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Teach First is the premier teacher preparation programme when it comes to publicity. This week it managed to convince the world it recruits more graduates than any other employer. The DfE as the ultimate paymaster for School Direct, let alone the higher education route into teaching, must has managed a wry smile at the hyperbole created by Teach First’s marketing department.

However, there is something of a more complex picture when you look more closely at the data on applications for Teach First across the first decade of the programme that were revealed in a parliamentary answer recently. In order to compare the original applicants to Teach First back in 2003 with those applying in 2012 you have to strip out the four universities that only joined the Russell Group in 2012, after transferring from the 1994 Group. Between 2003 and 2012 the number of applicants from the original Russell Group of universities for the Teach First programme increased from 873 to 3,563, or an increase of just over four times. The bulk of the increase came after 2009, and the 2012 cohort of applicants will largely have applied for Teach First in the autumn of 2011 when the graduate labour market was still feeling the full effect of the economic recession.

Nevertheless, not all Russell Group universities have seen the same level of increased interest in the programme. Although Oxford and Cambridge attracted applications from 11% and 10% of their average finalist classes in 2012, and could have filled a sizeable percentage of Teach First positions, their shares of total Teach First applications fell by 8% in the case of Oxford and 7% for Cambridge between 2003 and 2012 to just 7% each of the total of original Russell Group applications in 2012 as the programme expanded and sought more applicants. Manchester University took top spot in 2012, accounting for 10% of all applicants from the original Russell Group universities.

However, it is the behaviour of students at the London institutions of Imperial, LSE, University College and Kings College that is possibly the most interesting. Of these four institutions, only Kings College has a School of Education, so undergraduates at the other three institutions are not affected by any loyalty to their alma mater when it comes to deciding where to train as a teacher.

% share of applications to Teach First

2003                       2012

Imperial College                               8%                          2%

University College                            8%                          5%

LSE                                                  4%                          2%

Kings College                                   5%                         3%

In the case of Imperial College, although there were 106 applicants as recently as 2010, the number had declined to 68 in 2012, just one more than the 2003 total. At the other three institutions in London the actual growth in the number of applicants has been healthy between 2003 and 2012, but it was still only around six per cent of the average finalist class size at each institution. The importance of Imperial College as a source of future science teachers probably cannot be overstated, so the relatively poor figures from that institution that mean only one in 20 graduates at Imperial choose to apply for teaching as a career in 2012 through the Teach First route may be worth further consideration. If it reflects the fact that overseas students have not been excluded from the figures for finalists then, on the one hand, the picture may not be as bad as presented here; on the other hand it might raise other issues about the future supply of science teachers.

Outside of Oxbridge the largest percentages of Teach First applicants now come from two of the Russell Group’s newest members: York and Durham Universities. As might be expected, three of the four Russell Group universities outside of England have the lowest percentages of finalists heading to Teach First, although Edinburgh University had six per cent applying to Teach First in 2012 compared with only two per cent from Glasgow University.

Seemingly, if Teach First is to grow much further it will need to either refine its marketing to some Russell Group students or start to cast its net even wider. Perhaps we will soon see Russell Group applicants accounting for around half of all applicants to Teach First rather than 60% of the total as in 2012.

The figures for Teach First applications for 2013 will also be especially interesting to see whether these trends have continued in the face of the wider introduction of School Direct that also offers school-based training, and in some cases is closely modelled on the Teach First approach, but reduced to one year of training.

Education icon goes to overseas buyer

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The news that the TSL Group, publishers of the TES and The Higher, is to be sold to TPG a leading global private investment firm currently with $US56.7 billion of assets under management, will come as no shock to those who have been aware that the existing owner of the Group, Charterhouse, has been looking to sell the titles and associated on-line presence. This sale will see these iconic British titles taken into foreign ownership. It will also no doubt see the profits from the TES recruitment business flow overseas to support the development of a global brand. TPG are big in technology, and have held positions in some other British companies in the past, including Virgin Rail and Debenhams. However, this seems like a new foray for them directly into the UK education market.

I worked for the TSL Group between 2008 and my retirement in 2011. This sale does raise the issue in my mind about whether there should be a new attempt to create a low-cost vehicle to serve the UK teacher recruitment market, perhaps owned and operated by a consortium of interested parties such as the professional associations, governor organisations and teacher trainers, along the lines of say the NfER.

I have pointed out before that the system I use to track vacancy levels could be applied to school web sites as a low cost recruitment tool and, providing schools and teacher training providers cooperated, could reach the vast majority of teachers seeking either their first appointment or to change jobs much more cheaply than the present profit-making concerns. The fact that the last time the government tried such an initiative with the School Recruitment Service it failed doesn’t mean the idea was wrong, just perhaps that it was badly executed at the time.

Unlike the sale of companies such as Cadbury, of some utility companies, and many of the rail franchises to overseas buyers, the school recruitment market can stay in UK hands, and the cost to schools can be reduced if there is a will to do so. A recruitment business can also offer the platform for other services to teachers and schools, but with a UK on-line focus.

How efficient are our schools?

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Now I always enjoy reading DfE documents that tell schools how to do things, and their recently published Review of efficiency in the schools system https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/209114/Review_of_efficiency_in_the_schools_system.pdf has some delightful gems within it. My favour is the quote taken from a 2009 McKinsey report that said ‘Second only to the quality of teaching is school leadership. Replacing an ‘average’ principal with an ‘outstanding’ principal in an ‘average’ school could increase student achievement by over 20 percentile points’. I am sure that this shouldn’t be used solely as a reason for governing bodies of all schools not regarded as above average this week by a passing Ofsted team to give their head notice at the end of term celebrations. But it does raise the issue of how we can improve school leadership now that an increasing number of schools don’t have local managers with senior education experience they can easily contact to discuss problems.

There is a lot about staffing and the effectiveness of spending on teachers over support staff in the DfE’s report. For instance, in the high spending school category, school in the top 20% spend 58% of their budgets on staffing whereas schools in the bottom 20% of attainment among the high spenders only spend 51% of their budgets on staffing. I guess the latter may have more NQTs and a high staff turnover. It would also be interesting to see how Teach First fits into this scenario as it is a relatively low spending programme for staffing even though it is an expensive way to train some types of teachers.

On Saturday I talked to an NUT conference for supply teachers, many of whom are a very under-valued and underpaid resource. The DfE report did note that those schools that employed their own supply staff (presumably mostly large secondary schools) saved money, although the debate about the need for subject expertise can also be an important factor. However, schools do need to recognise that the cheapest option isn’t always the best solution to improving standards, and you may well get what you pay for. The best supply teachers do the job because they want that type of life whereas others do it because it is the only work that they can get in teaching. There is room for the professional associations to take more interest in the fate of this group of workers, especially as the government is seemingly trying to de-professionalise teaching as a career. Implicit in the DfE report is the view that ‘cover supervisors’ and ‘teaching assistants’ aren’t the same as teachers and, despite the rhetoric from Ministers, teachers who are qualified do make a difference.

The challenge for the next decade may well be how to entice the most able at teaching to enter the profession when the wider economy is once again offering a range of job opportunities. Ensuring those that do enter teaching are fairly distributed between schools will also be a challenge that won’t just be about money.

How to make a profit out of education

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Yesterday Nick Clegg quite rightly slapped down the idea that state-funded schools could be run for profit. It is doubtful whether any Liberal Democrat would go along with the idea of mainstream schooling as a business venture based on government funding. That’s not to say that you cannot make money out of schools. Of course you can, as textbook suppliers, purveyors of examinations, facilities companies, bus and coach operators, and a myriad of other service providers including in these days of academy conversions lawyers, accountants and insurance brokers, not to mention those architects who designed the ‘Schools for the Future’ under the Blair government, have all demonstrated. But, as a society we bulk at anyone operating the essential learning experience as a profit-making enterprise.

But that isn’t the experience everywhere. Especially in locations such as The Gulf, where schooling isn’t provided by the State for the children of expatriate workers, there is a flourishing and profit-making private sector in education. No doubt in many cases you pay for what you get. And, this is where the defining line is drawn. In Britain the State has determined both the price and the expected standard of schooling it wants. The fact that thinking is muddled about both these points doesn’t obscure the view that as the investor in education the State doesn’t expect anyone who hasn’t taken a risk to benefit from the spending on education.

Now there is nothing to stop anyone setting up a private school that makes a profit, and there have been examples through history of such schools, especially in the vocational and training fields. Since State Education is not compulsory in England, and is only the default position, any parent can elect to pay a private company to teach their children. Indeed, it can be argued that many do by paying for both tutoring services and for revision classes ahead of GCSE and ‘A’ level examinations. In practice nobody knows how much of any schools exam performance is down to parental spend on such activities. Indeed, it might be worth Osfted asking parents about the steps they take to supplement the school’s own efforts at educating their offspring. In some areas something of a mixed economy might emerge.

There have long been questions about the different cost per pupil of services provided under different arrangements between schools and their suppliers and, as academies in their many different guises proliferate, this is an area that will need tightening up if governments are to achieve value for money with taxpayers’ funds. I don’t expect schools to be the next ‘expenses scandal’ because there are too many potential whistle-blowers around, but a canny Minister might establish a Value for Money Unit at Sanctuary Buildings that can review funding agreements ahead of the creation of a national schools funding formula before the Public Accounts Committee tells him to after uncovering some excesses.

More interesting in its outcome than the debate about ‘for profit’ schools will probably be the effects of the de-regulation of teachers’ pay. Anyone who has read the conclusions in the 22nd Report from the School Teachers’ Review Body may well decide that making this change at a point where the wider economy seems to be reviving, and demand for graduates is increasing, especially in London and South East, might have the opposite effect to what Minsters may have intended, by increasing pay not cutting it.

Has Michael Gove failed to learn the lessons of history?

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There is a view currently fashionable among political analysts that cabinet ministers should stay in the same post for several years, preferably after having shadowed the portfolio in opposition or presumably worked as a junior Minister during any longer term period of government. This view is based upon the fact that Ministers who stay in post longer are thought to be more competent, and thus better at their job. It’s a point of view, but not one I necessarily subscribe to. Firstly, it presupposes ministers are competent at their jobs, and not appointed for other more political reasons, and secondly, not all minister enjoy the routine tasks associated with running a department of state at Westminster.

All this is by way of introduction to a discussion about how well the provision of teacher training is working now that the DfE has taken its oversight in-house after nearly 20 years operating through an external agency.

Regular readers of this blog will recognise that I have expressed some concerns about the new School Direct system that has replaced the former employment-based Graduate Teacher Programme and at the same time has been significantly expanded as part of a wish by the Secretary of State to transfer training from the university sector back to schools. To save new readers the chore of trawling through my previous posts I have summarised the relevant bits below:

This is what I wrote in March about the state of recruitment this year;

For the purposes of this blog I reviewed the data provided on the DfE web site regarding the total number of places on School Direct, and how many remained available at the middle of March in two subjects. Physics was chosen because it has traditionally been a ‘shortage’ subject, and even those not offered a salary can claim relatively generous bursaries. By contrast, history has not been regarded as a shortage subject, and those not on the salaried scheme may find little by way of financial support to help them through their training.

The results when I looked on the 15th March were that only 4% of the ‘salaried’ School Direct places for Physics were shown as ‘unavailable’, as were just 6% of the ‘non-salaried’ Physics ‘Training’ places. That’s a total of 29 places out of 572 on offer for Physics shown as ‘unavailable’, and presumably, therefore, filled. In history, the position was better, with a quarter of the 336 places shown as ‘unavailable’, and presumably filled.

Now it is too early to be sounding alarm bells but, with the Easter holiday fast approaching, schools probably won’t be holding many more interviews until sometime in April. By the end of that month there will be just four months before the new school year when the School Direct candidates will be expected to start their training. By now Teach First has usually closed its book to new applicants, but this year even that programme is still accepting applications in the sciences, mathematics, computer science/ICT and English.

Taken together, the fact that the three leading routes used for preparing teachers are finding this a challenging recruitment round means that the government must take notice and, if necessary, action.

Now it may be that School Direct partners are just slow in notifying the DfE that they have accepted candidates. It may also be that they are used to recruiting teachers for September largely between March and May, and don’t appreciate the fact that training places have generally been organised earlier in the year than that. Schools may also be expecting a higher standard from potential applicants than higher education has sometimes been able to demand. Whatever the reasons, we will not produce a world-class education system unless we have enough teachers. johnohowson.wordpress.com 19th March 2013

Early in May after the government posted data about applications to School Direct. I commented that;

The government released data today that showed around 20,000 applicants had made more than 64,000 applications to become a teacher through the new School Direct route. That’s around seven applications per place, and well above the ratio for the university teacher preparation courses, where applications through GTTR for postgraduate courses rarely hit the level of four applications per place except in very popular subjects such as History, Physical Education, the Social Sciences and Drama. However, since GTTR measure applicants rather than gross applications so on that basis School Direct is probably doing little better than GTTR in terms of applicants per places available. But, without a breakdown of applicants as well as applications by subject and phase to School Direct it is impossible to be sure.

With so many applications to choose from you might expect School Direct to have filled all its places by now, just as Teach First has already closed its door to applicants for this year. But, you would be wrong, if data from the DfE web site is correct. Over the Easter weekend only between 7% and 45% of the salaried places were filled, depending upon the subject, and there was a similar percentage range of places filled on the non-salaried training route. With so many applicants, this means that only between two and nine per cent of applicants appear to have been offered places on School Direct so far. This is a much lower proportion than for the courses offered by universities through GTTR.

The obvious questions that arise are whether there are better applicants for the GTTR courses than School Direct or are perhaps admissions tutors in universities being more generous in making offers than their colleagues in schools? Take Chemistry as an example: on the School Direct Salaried route, 11% of the places were filled by Easter, and that represented just four per cent of applicants being offered places. On the School Direct Training Route nine per cent of places were filled, and just three per cent of applicants had been offered a place. By comparison on the GTTR courses 46% of the applicants had been offered a place although this was down on the 51% accepted at the same time last year. Given that it is unlikely anyone without the basic academic degree class bothers to apply, it seems odd that so many applicants have yet to be offered a place through the School Direct programme, especially as applications have been arriving since the autumn.

However, there is still about three months to go, so all is not yet lost, but the government will need to keep a close eye on whether schools are being slow at interviewing applicants that applied sometime ago or whether schools have decided the quality of the applicants are not good enough. There is certainly no guarantee that a flood of high quality applicants will turn up at the last minute, and too many empty places could cause staffing problems for some schools next summer. A teacher supply crisis in the year before a general election would be embarrassing for the government that made much of the large number of applicants to the School Direct programme in its announcement today. No doubt the lack of a similar announcement about the numbers accepted was an oversight that will be quickly rectified. johnohowson.wordpress.com 8th May 2013

On the 1st June, I commented further that;

… earlier this week I worked out that less than a quarter of training places in Chemistry on the School Direct route were being shown as filled on the DfE web site compared with about double that figure for the higher education routes in the subject.

Now, as I have maintained before that difference in acceptances could well be because of schools requiring higher standards than universities from their would-be trainees. If so, then there is little more than three months left to find the trainees to fill the remaining places at a time when the market for graduates appears to be reviving. If the schools and universities haven’t selected from those who have already applied, why should those who apply now be any better in calibre? An analysis of application patterns over recent years has shown that once the rush of applications from finalists who haven’t yet thought about life after university is over there are relatively few other applicants as the summer months pass by. Now, this year may be different, but it is difficult to see why it should be if the overall market for graduates is better than in recent years, as those yet to make a decision about their future have more choice than in recent years, unlike their colleagues in many other European countries.             johnohowson.wordpress.com 1st June  2013

These comments come from a single researcher working alone and unfunded and reveal the possibility of a crisis unfolding that will potentially cause a shortfall in teachers seeking to enter the profession in the summer of 2014. With the resources available to the government, anything less than a complete understanding of the situation seems like a dereliction of duty.

At the end of June I conducted a full review of the availability of places as shown on the School Direct web site. This has led me to consider the likely outcome for different subjects.

Those subjects where all places are likely to be taken up in 2013

Primary

Art

Business Studies

Those subjects where there is some risk in one route of not all places being filled

English – both routes

Music – training route

Physical Education – training route

History – training route

Those subjects where there is a substantial risk of a serious shortfall against places available (33%+) in one or both routes

Modern Languages

Biology

Design & Technology

Chemistry

Religious Education

Mathematics

Computer Science

Physics

Geography

Coming, as this outcome does, after several years when recruitment to teacher training has largely not been an issue, the present situation is a wake-up call for all concerned, and ministers must take urgent action if we are not to see a re-run of the crisis in teacher recruitment that occurred in the early days of the Blair government.  There are two months left before the training courses start, so all is not yet lost. However, if my predictions prove accurate, some schools are going to struggle to recruit teachers next summer: good news for recruitment agencies, but probably not for some pupils. And, as I have said before, this is no way to create a world-class education system.

Nationalisation of our schools: the latest state of play

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A couple of weeks ago the DfE submitted to parliament the Annual Report on Academies for 2011-12, as required under the 2011 Education Act. The document can be accessed at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/206382/Academies_Annual_Report_2011-12.pdf

During the year from August 2011 to July 2012 there were 1,151 funding agreements signed, meaning at the latter date there were 1,952 open academies, of which 365 were of the sponsored type created originally by the Labour Government, and 1,587 were of the converter variety invented by the present Secretary of State. By May 2013, the total number of open academies had increased to 2,924. And as at 31 July 2012, 42% of state funded mainstream secondary schools and 3% of state-funded mainstream primary schools were academies, a figure that is no higher although nearly a third of local authorities still had no primary academies within their boundaries.

According to the Annual Report, academies are sponsored by many diverse bodies, so that at the end of the 2011/12 academic year there were 471 different approved academy sponsors. Of these, 161 were academy converters sponsoring other academies; 40 sponsors came from the business sector; 82 from the charitable sector; 40 from dioceses; 65 from the further education sector; 34 from the university sector; 13 were grammar schools, of which 10 are now themselves academies; 13 were independent schools; two were special schools, and 21 were sponsors from other public bodies, including local authorities.

These figures show that the Conservative led coalition is as keen, if not more so than the previous Labour government, at encouraging the creeping ‘nationalisation’ of the school system in England under the guise of providing freedom to individual schools and their sponsors. Local democratic oversight, it was rarely control, is gradually being eradicated from the day to day management of the nation’s schools to be replaced by unelected officials whose political masters are sometimes happy to play fast and loose with planning rules to see their schemes succeed.

In a technical document on attainment between academies and other types of school published in association with the annual report* the DfE identifies the improvement academies have brought to the education scene, although there is no evidence at all as to whether this has been achieved with more or less resources that at other schools.

I hope that local authorities will put together mechanisms for comparing the progress of the academies in their locality against those schools that have not yet been converted or been created as an academy. Not only can such comparison raise questions about what is working, and what is not creating results locally, but it can help develop a local oversight of the whole education system and its Value for Public Money that a fractured system might obfuscate in an unhelpful manner. Even though the national budget for schools is ring-fenced that doesn’t mean it should be squandered in a wasteful manner setting up new schools where they aren’t needed. And just as we have seen responsibility for public health returned to local authorities, there is always the possibility that a future government will return control of schools to local authorities, especially if there are hard budget decisions to make once the ring-fence is finally removed.

*https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/206529/DFE-RR288.pdf

Baby boom now affecting schools, especially in London

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Between January 2012 and January 2013 primary schools across England added nearly 2,000 extra classes in order to teach some 64,000 additional pupils. By contrast, their secondary colleagues educated some 23,000 fewer pupils in January 2013 than in the previous year, and saw the number of classes on census day drop by 85 compared with the previous year to a number around 1,500 less than in the peak year of 2011.

None of these statistics contained in a new Statistical Release released by the DfE (SFFR 21/2013) are very surprising to followers of trends in pupil numbers. Secondary schools are approaching the lowest point in the current demographic cycle, and primary schools in some parts of the country are already experiencing significant growth among the younger age children entering primary schools. This pressure can be seen by the fact that the average class size in primary schools has increased from 26.2 pupils per teacher in 2009 to 26.8 in 2013. At Key Stage 1 the increase has been even more dramatic, from 26.2 in 2009 to 27.3 in 2103. The number of KS1 pupils has increased by nearly 150,000 in the period between 2009 and 2013; an increase of more than 10%, with more yet to come over the next few years.

As has been predicted, the largest KS1 average class sizes are to be found in the outer London boroughs.  Twenty of the top 26 authorities with the largest average KS1 class sizes are London boroughs, and only two – The City of London and Lewisham are what might be considered Inner London boroughs in historical terms. Interestingly, two traditional inner London boroughs, Hammersmith & Fulham and Kensington & Chelsea have the lowest average KS1 class sizes in the capital, on a par with class sizes in Sunderland and Buckinghamshire. In Harrow, the average KS1 class was 29.5 in January 2013, only 0.5 of a pupil below the legal maximum of 30 for KS1 classes, although this was exceed by the one school in the city of London where the average was shown as 30 pupils per teacher. In Sutton, where the Chief Executive last year spoke of a need to increase the legal limit, the average is a relatively unproblematic 28.7; slightly better than the average for schools across Birmingham.

Authorities in the North East took five of the lowest ten positions in 2013, although the authority with the overall lowest KS1 average class size was Cumbria, with its many small rural village schools. Here the average KS1 class was 23.9, some 5.6 pupils fewer than in Harrow.

If the success of London secondary schools achieved over the past few years is to be maintained, it will be essential to monitor the performance of the pupils in these increasingly large classes in order to avert any decline in standards at an early stage. If there is no decline in achievements, it will no doubt further add to the debate about class sizes and pupil performance.

Oxfordshire, where I am a county councillor, is in the third of authorities with the lowest KS1 class sizes, so it will be interesting to see how our KS1 results fare this summer after the scrutiny they have come under during recent years.

Back to the future: the return of the Advisory Teacher

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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.