You can’t say Gove isn’t radical…

By Richard Watts / @richardwatts01

Whatever his other failings, no one can fault Michael Gove’s desire to be radical.

The Financial Times reports that the government is planning to introduce a Single Funding Formula for school, potentially the biggest single change in the way that schools will be funded since 1902.

Although yet to be set out in detail, the Government’s plans has three main planks:

1) Instead of the money for most schools being passed through local authorities, all schools will be funded direct through a quango,
2) an admittedly complex school funding system will be simplified so that every child receives the same amount of funding for their education, and
3) schools will have far more financial responsibility and become financially impendent with Heads and governors taking responsibility for repairs, maternity arrangements and so on.

Each of these changes have significant implications and are worth looking at.

For a government committed to a “bonfire of quangos” it seems odd, to say the least, to move the arrangement of school funding from elected authorities to a massive new unelected organisation. Quite a shift given David Cameron said before the election “I have said that our goal is democratic accountability, not bureaucratic accountability – and I mean it.” The Spectator provides a useful chart to demonstrate this. No doubt the establishment of the Education Funding Agency will involve some quite large consultancy fees, branding exercises, new offices and so on, all of which will be money lost from the education budget. Islington Council receives thousands of enquiries from our schools every year about funding, and so the new quango will have a massive task to manage these questions from over 20,000 schools.

The financial implications for many schools will be severe. Government ‘sources’ have been briefing on the inconsistency of the current school funding system and, on the face of it, it does seem unfair that deprived Lambeth receives a lot more per child than even more deprived Hackney. However, for all its flaws, the current system largely puts money where it is needed the most.

Even this government has recognised that it is more expensive to educate pupils who come from deprived homes, do not have English as a first language or move homes regularly.

Overwhelmingly these pupils live in inner-cities and the current funding system largely reflects this.

The Tory-Liberals will no doubt respond that the much vaunted pupil premium will right this wrong. It will not. The FT reports that the Institute for Fiscal Studies predicts the proposed system would mean that 60% of secondary schools and 40% of primary schools will lose money even without a cut to education funding, which there will be.

I’ve written before that the Tory-Liberal’s plans for schools will mean a large cash transfer from poor areas to richer ones. The move to a Single Funding Formula will only exacerbate this.

Lets debunk the myth that it is ‘fair’ that all areas receive the same education funding per pupil. There is universal support for more money being invested in those pupils who need to improve more rapidly to be on the same level as their peers. The real expense comes where you have concentrations of deprivation, pupils with English as a second language and highly mobile populations (and in some cases all three). Providing some extra support for a very small number of deprived pupils in a school is not expensive and needs very little extra subsidy.

The final element of the plans is to give further responsibilities to Head teachers and governors to manage their own schools. Effectively every school in the country will be forced to become an academy. Only a cynic would think this is because Michael Gove hasn’t exactly been knocked over in the rush of schools accepting his invitation to apply for academy status.

Head teachers I have spoken to, including those from outstanding schools, do not want to take on the responsibilities the government now propose to force on them. Most value the support of a local authority and don’t want to become the Chief Executive of a independent company. The government mantra is about ‘choice’ and ‘listening to professionals’ yet seem to be actually doing nether.

Despite Michael Gove promising local authorities a “strong strategic role” our role in schools will be reduced to very little.

Reading the FT article it is clear that someone in government has briefed that council’s are guilty of “controlling [school] spending” and “keeping money back” from schools. Both of these accusations are untrue.

Local authorities only have access to schools’ money (called the DSG) if the schools themselves agree to this through local Schools Forums. It has been twenty years since councils had the power to dictate how schools are run, except in crises.

The role of the local authority is vital in areas such as ensuring that schools fulfil their safeguarding responsibilities, support children with Special Education Needs, regulate exclusion and admissions as well as offer services like behaviour support and Pupil Referral Units (PRUs) that schools aren’t big enough to commission on their own. The government is sending a clear signal to schools that they do not have to work with their council or with neighbouring schools and some vulnerable children will fall through the gaps created in the system.

It could be that the reports on the FT are just spin and the final proposals will be watered down. But like so much of what this government does, these plans will help the already well-off at the expense of the most vulnerable.