Tag Archives: schools

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.

Troops into teachers or children into soldiers

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Last week the government announced it was going to create a route to allow ex-military personnel to become teachers. Essentially, for graduates in the military, the route will be the same as for other graduates, but with more cash, and possibly some ring-fenced places on either one or all of the routes into the classroom.

The main interest in the media was in the training to be offered to non-graduates. As the non-graduate scheme envisages the bulk of the trainee’s time during training will be spent in school, presumably it is assumed that sufficient subject knowledge will have been acquired during a military career to make the time spending acquiring a degree unnecessary. Now I might be persuaded that a physical education instructor; a chaplain – if any enter the forces these days without degrees; or even a musician, might have acquired enough specialist subject knowledge to teach their subject in a secondary school. But, outside of areas where the work in the forces is at least congruent in some ways with what is taught in schools I cannot see how military life would prepare someone for subject teaching in schools. Many former military staff members have for a long while made worthwhile contributions to the further education sector where their specialist vocational skills can be in high demand. Perhaps the government is thinking that many on the ‘troops to teachers’ programme will work in the burgeoning 14-18 sector of UTCs and studio schools.

Much has been made of the attitude to discipline those with a military background might bring into schools, but discipline in a uniformed service, where a refusal to obey a lawful order might result in a charge, is not the same as either helping a frustrated teenager act out their angst against society during a bad day at school or even just any class or youngsters that feels like playing up a new teacher to test the boundaries of their authority. This is not to deny the great strides the forces have taken in recent years in moving away from a ‘do as I say’ mentality. However, war does require obedience to orders, in a way that society more generally has moved away from. And in the end, the armed forces training is designed to prepare personnel for armed conflict.

Nevertheless, the BBC quoted David Laws as saying that military values such as leadership, discipline, motivation, and teamwork would benefit children.

“We want to capture the ethos and talents of those leaving the armed forces and bring this experience into teaching. We know that our highly-skilled servicemen and women can inspire young people and help raise educational attainment.”

But, perhaps more worrying was the section of the DfE press notice that said:

“We are already working to bring military ethos into our education system to help raise standards and tackle issues such as behaviour. In June the Prime Minister announced a £10.85m expansion of the school-based cadets to create around 100 more units by 2015. Extending the scheme in state schools will allow even more young people to benefit from the life-changing opportunities that cadet forces offer.”

At a time when the armed forces are being severely pruned, perhaps it would have been better for any uniformed units created in schools to have been based upon a civilian service model, and not on a military model dreamed up after the South African war over a century ago. As a means of instilling values such as, discipline, motivation, and teamwork it would bring the same benefits to children without the militaristic overtones. Next year we will be remembering the foundation of army formations such as the Glasgow Boys’ Brigade (16th Battalion, Highland Light Infantry) Battalion as one of the many ‘Pals’ battalions formed at the start of World War One. How far the cadet forces aided recruitment in 1914 is an interesting discussion point.

By all means let’s ensure discipline in schools is as good as it can be, but not at the price of creating a militaristic culture in our schools. So, I welcome ex-service personnel who want to become teachers, just as I welcome those from other walks of life, but schools must no longer be expected to become the training grounds for our next generation of the armed forces. Let it be an adult decision to take the Queen’s shilling.

Funding per pupil, spending by schools: does it give value for money

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‘Many of the important operational financial decisions of schools are largely idiosyncratic.’ This was the finding of a DfE sponsored research project that reported in 2012. Earlier today David Laws as Minister of State issued a written ministerial statement on future funding for schools in 2014-15. In the end, whatever decisions are made about how to fund schools, the spending decisions are now taken at the school level. How idiosyncratic schools’ individual decisions are can be determined, at least in historical terms, by an analysis of the raw data the DfE now publishes on its web site

Recent data for academies allows comparisons between such schools expenditure patterns. The latest data is for the school-year 2010-11 since it seemingly takes longer for the private sector to produce accounts than for state owned schools, where data up to March 2012 has been in the public domain for some time now. It would be invidious to look at academies starting in 2010, since they would not have a full complement of pupils, and there are always extra start-up costs. However, taking four academies outside London with starting dates between 2003 and 2008 provides an interesting picture of expenditure over four different categories.

Teaching

All academies with Key Stage 4: National median expenditure £3,544

The 4 academies  £2,047  £3,512  £3,700  £4594

Cleaning

All academies with Key Stage 4: National median expenditure £29

The 4 academies  £65  £72  £99  £123

Staff Development

All academies with Key Stage 4: National median expenditure £71

The 4 academies  £24  £53  £81  £92

Educational Supplies

All academies with Key Stage 4: National median expenditure £603

The 4 academies £602  £779  £880  £885

On every element there is a wide range of expenditure between the four academies. It is important that boards of directors of academies do these sorts of comparisons just as much as governing bodies of community schools so that they can justify the use of what is still in the final analysis public money.

The new funding arrangements for 2014-15 may be the last before a major reform that will grapple with the vexed question of regional funding levels, as well as those at the individual school level. The greater flexibility for the funding of small schools in rural areas highlighted in the ministerial statement will no doubt be welcomed by many in the shire counties and unitary authorities in rural areas, but the approach could mean the end of some small urban primary schools unless they have relatively low overheads and staffing costs towards the lower end of the range. There won’t be many TLRs in those schools, and the new pay arrangements might mean these were the first schools to face the staff with the choice of an increment or the closure of the school.

School funding arrangements will never please everyone, but it is clear that value for money benchmarks that governors and directors of schools can benchmark their own schools against might be a useful aid to constructing budgets and helping ministers decide the funding mechanisms for the future.

Good schools for all or just for some?

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Should society concentrate on making entry to good schools fairer rather than trying to expand the number of good schools? The Sutton Trust Report published earlier today about eligibility for free school meals at the top state schools seemingly opts for supporting the former approach. That’s not surprising since it paints a dismal picture where in the top 500 comprehensive schools the overall rate of pupils eligible for free school meals is half the national average, and only 40 of the 500 top comprehensive schools have higher free school meals than the national average. Indeed, since the Sutton Trust first looked at the issue of the number of pupils on free school meals in top performing schools little has changed, except that more pupils are entitled to free school meals as a result of the recession.

Top State Schools            Local Area of school       National Average

2005 Study          3%                                          12.3%                                    14.3%  Mostly selective schools

2006 Study          5.6%                                      13.7%                                    14.3%  200 comprehensive schools

2013 Study          7.6%                                      15.2%                                    16.5%  500 comprehensive schools

Schools in the top 500 are, according to the Sutton Trust study, more likely to be faith schools; single sex schools; converter academies; voluntary aided schools. Some schools may fall into more than one of these categories. All of these types of schools control their own admissions policies.

The alternative approach, making all schools good schools, is the driver that underpins the coalition’s Pupil Premium policy of adding extra revenue support to pupils on free school meals. The top 500 comprehensive schools won’t see much of this money. The Pupil Premium policy tackles the issue of where children are now, not where the authors of the Sutton Trust study might like them to be. Interestingly, the study is silent about what would happen to pupils displaced from the top 500 schools by those on free school meals? Is it assumed that their parents would lead the drive to improve the schools their offspring ended up at?

Ever since the attempts in the 1960s and 1970s to create a rational secondary school system to replace a system designed for an age when the majority of pupils left school at 14 to join the workforce, secondary schooling has all too often been about social segregation in the urban areas, rather than a force for greater social cohesion. The philosophy inherent in the Sutton Trust report seems to be that of offering an escape route to better education for the deserving poor rather than accepting the view that being poor should not mean having to accept a lower standard of schooling from the State for your children.

A good school for all has always been the standard I want our education system to strive for. Looking at what has happened in London over the past decade shows what can be done. I believe it starts with good quality primary schools for all. As a nation we aren’t there yet, and indeed we are often too fixated about the secondary sector. I firmly believe that good primary education will mean more good secondary schools, and ease the debate about admissions policy. After all, those children who live in really rural areas generally have no choice in the matter about where they go to school: they deserve to go to a top school as much as any other child.

Some Studio Schools encounter student attendance challenge

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Are the government’s new studio schools getting off to a difficult start? Recent DfE figures for pupil absence during the autumn term of 2012-13 do at the very least raise questions about what is happening. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/200820/Main_text_-_SFR17_2013.pdf

Five of the ten schools with the highest absence rates, across both primary and secondary sectors, were either studio schools or in one case a University Technical College. As all five of these schools had relatively small enrolments, the behaviour of just one or two reluctant transferees may have unduly affected the outcomes. Nevertheless, against a national rate of 5.2%, or 5.7% for the secondary sector as a whole, absence rates of more than 14% do seem a little on the high side.

Although the majority of the studio schools in the list were in manufacturing centres, with school systems that have faced considerable challenges over the years, it does seem odd that despite the variety of different specialism in these new studio schools so many have these high levels of pupil absence. It might have been though that a fresh start in a new school with a definite vocational slant to the curriculum, and often backed by well known employers, might have inspired pupils to attend regularly. On that basis, it is important to identify what, if anything is going wrong? Indeed, although two studio schools are ranked better than 4,000 in the list of all schools for overall absence rates, the other three schools with studio in their title are in the 600 worst performing school for absence rates.

By focussing on vocational trades, it may be that the early studio schools that a skewed distribution of ability and it will take time to enthuse the pupils about the value of their education after nearly a decade when school has not been the most welcoming of places for many of them. What really must not happen is that these schools become dumping grounds for the failures of the mainstream school system. The new schools coming on stream in 2013 and 2014, including the space studio school in Banbury, need to learn the lessons, not least about transfer to a new school at age 14, that these schools have had to encounter in their early stages of development. It would certainly not be acceptable to either turn a blind eye to high levels of absence in these new types of school or to accept it as a part of the deal for the future of education in England.

As the responsibility for these schools lies with Ministers in Westminster, so officials in the DfE, as would any competent local authority, must ask these schools for the preliminary figures for term two. If these so no improvement over term one of the academic year, action must be taken now. Not to do so will reveal to the education community that while it is acceptable  for central government to castigate local authorities for poor outcomes, government schools are able to produce even worse outcomes with impunity.

Tear down the ring fence?

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The Think Tank Reform today published a report about spending on schools. http://www.reform.co.uk/resources/0000/0765/Must_do_better_Spending_on_schools.pdf

As a right of centre think tank it might be accused of having arranged some of the data to make the most of its thesis that spending on schooling has increased without an associated rise in outcomes. Taking the period from 1999-2000 as a base for some of the analysis means the analysis started from the end of a period when government spending had been depressed during the Major government and the first two years of the Blair government, so some recovery in spending on schooling as a proportion of GDP might have been expected.

The overall thesis is that the ring fence on school spending should be removed, and the same degree of efficiency imposed on schools as on other public services. Now the issue of funding of schools has featured in several earlier posts on this blog. Interestingly, I cannot find any reference in the Reform pamphlet to the growth in school reserves. This issue, the subject of the first column in this blog, is one that has disturbed me for some time. In an age of austerity why are schools taking cash from taxpayers and putting it in their bank accounts rather than spending it? Why, indeed are some schools sitting on balances of over £1 million pounds: the number of schools with deficit budgets was at an historic low in 2012.

Reform also seem to neglect to note that during the period 1999-2003, before spending on schooling increased significantly, there was a teacher supply crisis. They don’t model anything about labour costs in detail. A failure to staff schools does lead to poor performance, and one reason I expect the next PISA results to be better is because schools have been better staffed during the past decade than at any time during my adult life. My anxiety is that an end is now in sight to that period of full staffing unless the government is very careful.

One issue the Reform report does note in passing is the difference between spending on primary and secondary schooling. According to the figures used by Reform, secondary schools accounted for 46% of spending in 2011-12, whereas primary accounted for only 27%; or 33% if under-fives spending was included. In my own view targeted spending on primary pupils who fail to achieve where they could do so might produce the best return on investment within the school system. The Pupil Premium has the capability to achieve this end, providing schools fully understand its purpose.

Indeed, adopting the suggestions in the Reform Report, and abandoning the ring fence on school spending while still aiming to improve educational outcomes and pupil attainment, might affect more affluent areas more than the less well off parts of England. Reform’s supporters might well reflect that it was David Blunkett as Secretary of State who imposed a maximum class size of 30 at Key Stage One. The major beneficiaries of his policy were mostly schools in Tory authorities where large class of over 30 were more frequently to be found at that time. Removing the funding cap might cause a return to that situation. It might also sound the death knell for small and expensive post-16 provision in some schools that is already under threat from other government actions such as the introduction of studio schools and UTCs. Reform’s authors should be careful about what they wish for.