New round of cuts will impact on children amidst funding tussle

Brent Schools Forum and Brent Council are in a tussle over funding ahead of the Executive's discussion of the budget on February 13th.

The Schools Forum had made a recommendation of a 15% cut in central services. This is in the context of  many schools considering Cooperative Trust or Academy Status and an ongoing debate about the value of the services the Council provides. At the same time the Council eyes school surpluses.

LINK TO EXECUTIVE BUDGET REPORT

The Schools Forum adopted the following recommendation:

The Schools Forum recommends that the 2012/13 Schools Budget should be set with a reduction in central items within the Schools Budget of 15% with the resulting saving being passed onto schools.

The Budget Document states:

The Forum has no decision making powers in regard to this recommendation and can only make recommendations which the Executive can consider and then decide to accept or not accept. Officers would not recommend that the Forum’s recommendation is approved for the following reasons:

• The Schools Budget is already £7.2m in deficit and subject to special recovery measures.

• A rolling programme of budget reviews over 2012/13 has been agreed with the Forum that will allow the Forum to gain greater insight into the complexities of the main central item areas and make more informed recommendations rather than a blunt flat rate reduction.

• By far the largest central item spending areas consist of support for pupils with Statements of Special Educational Needs (SEN), for which the Council has a statutory responsibility. It would not be viable to make blanket reductions without impacting on the Councils ability to meet its statutory responsibilities.

• A long-term strategic plan to reduce expenditure on SEN is already in place as a One Council Project. This will deliver significant ongoing savings in central items beginning in 2012/13, so effectively savings in line with The Forum’s wishes are already being made.

• The latest DfE analysis regarding the level of Schools Surpluses shows Brent Schools as holding the sixth highest level of surpluses out of all London Boroughs. Care has to be exercised in reaching conclusions regarding this as in many cases surpluses are held by schools for long term capital schemes. Nevertheless this does not support views that more funding should be passed directly to schools at the expense of being able to adequately fund statutory responsibilities.

Appendix Dii of the document lists a series of 'Savings' (cuts and increased charges) in the Children and Families Budget for 2012-13. These include:

Children with disabilities and SEN: Reduction of £21k in SEN and early years support and increased charging of non statutory services of £57k
Increased charges for Brent Music Service £40k
Closure of Crawford Avenue Respite Centre £137k
Management restructuring £134k
Ending of Inner London Weighting for officers and manual grades £68k
Charge Target Mental Health in Schools to schools (previously LA contribution) £150k
Increased buy back/charging of Traded Services £150k
Cessation of information, advice and guidance (Connexions) to schools(responsibility passed to schools) £550k
Reduction in SEN Transport expenditure through revised criteria and application process and expansion of in-borough provision £200k (plus another £100k annually in 2013-14, 14-15)
Savings in Social Care Placements (West London Alliance project)  £150k (£200k, £234k)
Savings on administration  of Social Care management and Business Support across Children  and Families £50k
Reduced staffing for Duke of Edinburgh Award and charging for Summer University £100k
Amalgamate Youth Offending Service and Youth Service - cutting one head of service £100k
Reduce Children with Disabilities Teams from 3 to 2 and 'tighter monitoring of direct payments' ££60k
Reduction in Core Services to Schools which will be offered on buy-back terms with increased charges £700k (£150, £150)
Early Years and Localities - explanation is fairly impenetrable but involves 'end-to-end service review' and 'managing demand for children's social care', and 'reviewing scope and coverage of existing children's centres to move towards delivering of targeted offer'. £500k (£500k, £500k)
One Council initiative to review employee benefits £70k

Total: 2012-13 £3,216,000 2013-4 £1,000,000 2014-15 £834,000

While we are told time and time again that the Schools Budget is 'protected' it is clear that these changes, through shifting responsibilities and increased charges will eat into school budgets.  The Council has said it is confident that more schools will buy into services this year and is meanwhile considering a social enterprise model for non-statutory services next year.

The proposals for  SEN, Mental Health, Children with Disabilities, Children's Social Care and Children's Centres will concern many parents and schools.

 

A 'new look' education authority for Brent?

Following moves by various Brent schools towards Cooperative Trust status or Cooperative Academies, the Children and Families department of the Council  has put forward some proposals to headteachers for a possible  'new look' education authority. This would reduce the services provided  by the authority to a small statutory core with many more being provided through collaborative arrangements between schools. The collaboration could be formalised into a social enterprise.

I understand that this is based on:
1. An expectation of a sharply reduced central education budget.
2. A recognition of the enormous amount of expertise that exists within the schools.
3. A recognition that schools want more autonomy.

Although this addresses the attraction of the Cooperative model's ethos and criticism of the deteriorating quality of some LA services, it does not deal with the short-term financial gain some secondary schools hope to get through academy conversion.

In this week's Brent and Kilburn Times (see below) I called for an open debate on the future of the Brent education system. The initiative from the Council makes this even more necessary.

Click on image to enlarge

Hard Times Ahead for Education in Brent

Brent Council, faced with having to make 'savings' of £90m by 2015 is undertaking a 'fundamental review of purpose' headteachers and chairs of governors were told at a briefing last night. Krutika Pau, Director of Children and Families, said this would involve deciding what services the council will continue to offer, reduce, stop or provide in partnership with others.  The council's 'One Council Programme' was designed to both reduce costs and protect front line services. What counts as 'front line' will need to be reviewed.

The Children and Families Department will lose £1.8m in-year grant reductions. Grant information is not yet available and school budget figures for 2011-12 will not be available until February or March 2011, only days before the start of the new financial year. This will make forward planning by governing bodies extremely difficult.

Capital spending for buildings will be reduced by 60% over the next 5 years and will be limited to spend on demographic pressures (additional children) and maintenance - not new build or rebuild.At the same time Brent  is facing an unprecedented increase in pupil numbers and a 55% increase in referrals to Children's Social Care. 1,000 additional children have needed school places in Brent since August.

Clive Heaphy, nine weeks into his job at Director of Finance and Corporate Services, presented the picture on funding. The DfE will receive cuts of 10.8%. Funding for the schools budget will increase by £3.6bn in cash terms by the end of the Spending Review period, a 0.1% increase in real terms each year. However pupil numbers will increase by an average of 0.7% per year equalling a cut  in spending  per pupil of 0.6% per year, a total of 2.25% over the five year period. The  'increase' will also have to cover the  £2.5bn pupil premium.  Schools wil be expected to find procurement and 'back office' savings of around £1bn. The public sector pay freeze is expected to 'free up' another £1bn.

The ring fences around previously centrally allocated budgets will be removed and hard-pressed schools may have to use the funds for basic purposes. These headings include:

• One to one tuition
• 'Every child' catch up programmes including Every Child a Reader
• Extended schools
• School lunch grant
• School Standards Grant
• School Development Grant
• Special schools grant
• Ethnic Minority Achievement grant
• National Strategies budgets
• Dedicated schools grant
• Academies running costs

The council will be reviewing Children's Centres. some of which have only just been opened, as SureStart funding is likely to be reduced. Krutika Pau said that funding will now target the most vulnerable Under 5s and that there will be a need to 'redefine Children Centres' core offer'. A new provision that will need to be funded is the allocation of 15 hours free nursery education per week to the 'most deprived' 2 year olds.

Questioned on academies, Kruika Pau said officers would remain neutral in terms of the debate but she promised to model what would happen to funding of Brent schools if some became academies. As academies attract funding that would otherwise go to fund central services there will obviously come a tipping point where there will insufficient funds to run effective central services. The services would become too expensive for schools remaining in the local authority 'family' when other school pulled out, and the services and those functions of the local authority would no longer be viable. Cllr Mary Arnold said she had already made her position on academies clear at a previous meeting but didn't seize the opportunity to 'rally the troops'. However, members of the Teachers' Panel who attended the meeting as observers were able to give out a leaflet about the issue.

Rik Boxer, Deputy Director of Children and Families, gave a briefing on the achievements of Brent LA. At the end of the reception year Brent children were below national and London  averages, but by the end of Key Stage 2 (11 year olds in Year 6) they were above the national average. At GCSE  Brent children are 6 percentage points above the national average. He said that much needed to be done and that there would be a strong focus on schools moving from an Ofsted rating of 'satisfactory' to 'good'.  He said current proposals on academies and free schools presented a real danger of fragmentation and emphasised the need fop overall coherence, strategic planning, collective responsibility and collaboration.

Added to the financial and organisational uncertainties, and a basic lack of concrete information, are the 'reviews' that the Coalition government have announced. These cover child protection, early years, capital spending, child poverty and early intervention. Alongside this schools and governing bodies have to cope with 'policy on the hoof' which I feel are really stabilising. Over the last few months there have been several policy changes on Academies which  the Anti Academies Alliance summarised:

• On the 4^th November Michael Gove announced that the government would use its powers to turn schools in Special Measures into Academies.
• On Friday 12^th November the FT reported that the White Paper, expected during November, would pave the way for every school to be directly funded from the government,meaning every school would effectively become an Academy.
• But then on Wednesday 17^th November the press reported that Gove was inviting every school to become an Academy, as long as they were partnered with an ‘Outstanding’ school.

In addition the announcement that in future the government would fund schools directly, by-passing the local authority, was quietly reversed last weekend.


Schools face a difficult task as it is and all these uncertainties need to be sorted out quickly so that they can get on with their central task of educating the next generation.