The 10 key education headlines from the spending review

Overall 

• The Autumn Statement was published today. Overall DfE spending will fall just 1.1% over the next four years. Even in the "unprotected" areas that were expected to be cut by around 25% reductions are much lower - somewhere between 5 and 10%. While this is much better than feared it still means providers across the sector will be seeing significant reductions in spending power over the next few years.

Schools

• The 5-16 school budget is protected in real terms. This means that the amount of money currently given to schools will increase in line with expected inflation. However it does not take into account the additional 500k pupils coming into the system over the next five years so will still mean a 7-8% cut for schools (also taking into account changes to employer pensions and national insurance). This is a slightly better deal than was promised before the election.

• The extra cash in the schools settlement will help the transition to the National Funding Formula which will start in 2017. There will be a consultation in Jan/Feb next year but we know it will be a phased introduction so schools that lose out won't get the full hit all at once.

• The Education Services Grant, which is currently £820m, and gives a per pupil amount to local authorities and academies to pay for a variety of services is being cut by £600m. This is the only new big cut in the DfE settlement. It will take about £90k out of the budget of a large academy. The remaining money left over will presumably be used to cover LAs statutory duties and the DfE will also look to reduce the number of statutory duties to help.

• £1.3bn over four years will be provided for teacher recruitment and training. It's pretty hard to tell what this is being compared to. But I reckon it means funding will continue more or less in line with current spending.

• Capital budgets are essentially flat in cash terms. So existing maintenance and basic needs grants will stay at similar levels and the Priority Schools Rebuilding programme will continue at the same rate. The 500 free school commitment will be met.

Post-16

• The base rate paid for all post-16 pupils is protected in cash terms (i.e. won't go up in line with inflation). We don't yet know if the other aspects of the post-16  formula (e.g. disadvantage) will take a greater cut. Either way it's a better outcome than many feared as this protection wasn't offered before the election.

• Sixth form colleges will now be able to convert to academy status which means they won't have to pay VAT. This is a very significant saving for these colleges and helps simplify the system a bit.

Early Years

• There will be an additional 15 funded hours of childcare for three and four year olds as promised in the Conservative manifesto. These hours will only be available to those families where no parent earns more than £100k and where both parents work (equivalent to 16 hours of work at the minimum wage).

• There will be an increase in the hourly rate paid to childcare providers from 2017. The new rate swill be £4.88 for 3/4 year olds and £5.39 for 2 year olds.

ResearchED 2015 Presentation: The 5 Big Policy Challenges for the New Government

I don't usually share presentations as I'm not sure mine ever make much sense out of context. But a few people asked for this one on policy challenges for the new Government.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/d7d64enr5e6aib7/ResearchED%20presentation.pptx?dl=0

(For the record I did offer a few solutions to some of the problems set out in the paper during the talk...)

The birth of a zombie statistic

Last week the "i" newspaper splashed on a startling statistic: "40% of teachers leave within one year". It has since been repeated in the Guardian, Times, Mail, Observer and probably hundreds of other places.* It was cited in this weeks' Any Questions. It's been tweeted by thousands of people.

The only problem is that it's entirely untrue. 9% of teachers leave in their first year (Table C2). It's been 9 or 10% a year every year for the last 20 years. This isn't particularly interesting; it isn't news; but it is true.

The 40% figure comes from ATL - who press released the numbers to generate publicity for their annual conference. To be fair to ATL they never claimed that 40% of teachers leave within the first year. Their claim was that 40% of those who achieve qualified teacher status (QTS) aren't teaching after a year - this includes people who qualified but then never went into a teaching job in the first place. They generated this number by adding the 9% who leave in the first year to another table showing 10,800 people (roughly a third) who achieved QTS in 2011 never started teaching (Table I2).

Even if this number was correct all the newspaper reports would still be wrong because they're making a claim about the numbers who start teaching and then leave within a year. However, the 10,800 number is also wrong because it is generated from pensions data which omits certain groups of people. The correct data to use if you want to see how many people gain QTS and then don't start teaching is here in Table 5. This shows just 15% of those who gained QTS in 2012 were either not in a teaching job or had an "unknown" status six months after completion. It was 16% in 2011 (Table 1).

This matters because the 40% figure creates a false narrative about a profession in crisis. I agree with ATL that teacher workload is too high - often driven by nonsense compliance rules around marking and planning. I agree that it's a very stressful and tiring job and that many first year teachers don't get the support they need. But the vast majority of those who start teaching do stay and succeed. Exaggerating the problem through dodgy statistics risks putting off new entrants to the profession - which we really can't afford to do at the moment given an improving economy and changes to teacher training are creating serious recruitment issues.


*Massive credit to Schools Week for being the only publication to realise there was something dodgy about the statistic.

What we should have put in the White Paper

One of the problems with the education debate in England is the tendency to focus on the merits of individual policies - “should we decouple A-levels?”; “are free schools working?” – rather than thinking strategically about what we’d like the system to look like and then using that template for making policy decisions.

My big regret about the 2010 White Paper is that it reads too much like a laundry list of policies rather than a set of design principles for system reform. The vision of a school-led system is explicit but there’s too little about what that means. Having a clearer set of design principles would have made it much easier to explain how various policies fitted into the overall picture and would have provided a firebreak against Ministers/No. 10 inserting their own random or contradictory policies into the mix.

So what would the core building blocks for a genuinely school-led system look be? I think there are three keys elements: school autonomy; accountability and capacity-building.

Autonomy is important because it leads to: faster decision-making as you don’t have to wait for a request to go up the chain; innovation because not everyone is following the same model; accuracy because decisions are based on local information rather than aggregated information at the national or regional level.

Accountability is important because transparent information leads to: the ability to uphold minimum standards; schools being able to benchmark their performance against others and identify areas for improvement; parents being able to more accurately assess their options.

But autonomy and accountability aren’t enough. The latter creates incentives to perform well (along, of course, with teachers’ typically high intrinsic motivation) and the former gives the agency to perform well but neither give them the capacity to perform well if they don’t know how. This is why my third building block is capacity-building. A school-led system needs the institutional infrastructure to broker support between strong and weaker schools without impeding their autonomy.

At the moment we have all the elements of this system but the balance is not yet right. Autonomy is impeded by an accountability system that is too punitive and the infrastructure for capacity-building is under-resourced and patchy. The links between the accountability system and capacity-building are too weak leaving struggling schools unclear what they need to do to improve (though the introduction of Regional Schools Commissioners has mitigated this to some extent).

So what might a set of principles based on these elements, which would allow us to realign the system, look like?

Autonomy:

1)      Schools should have authority over all their functions apart from those that require co-ordination between schools (e.g. exclusions; admissions; place planning).

 

2)      Where functions need to be carried out above the school level they should – where possible – be done through collective agreement at the local level.

 

3)      Schools should be funded consistently regardless of where they are in the country so they have the necessary resources to fulfil their functions.

 

Accountability:

1)      Accountability should be based on outputs (e.g. test results; destination data) and not inputs (e.g. whether a particular form of pedagogy is being practised).

 

2)      The consequences of accountability should be proportionate and in particular should not disadvantage schools with lower-attaining intakes.

3)      Accountability systems should reward collaborative behaviour where it leads to improvements.

4)      All data/information should be published (unless doing so would break data protection law).

Capacity-building:

1)      Where schools are considered to be below a minimum standard there should be immediate intervention.

 

2)      For all schools the accountability system should be linked to means of getting support for areas requiring improvement.

 

3)      Support should be available to all schools regardless of where they are in the country.

I’ve come up with these suggestions by myself and in a hurry so they’re unlikely to be right and certainly aren’t exhaustive. My aim is to illustrate the sort of discussion we should be having. Are these the right principles? If not why and what should we have instead? If they are right what would have to change in the system to ensure they were kept?

What do Labour's spending plans mean for schools?

Last week I wrote this on the Conservatives plans for school spending. My conclusion was that over the next Parliament their plans would mean a 10.5% cut to the amount schools get per pupil (depending on inflation).

Today it was Labour's turn to announce their plans. They pledged to increase the schools' budget in line with inflation and, unlike the Conservatives, they have extended this to include early years and 16-19 provision.

On the face of it this looks like a much better pledge for schools. And for early years / 16-19 institutions it is. However, Labour haven't pledged to increase budgets per pupil. So while the current budget for schools (5-16) will increase in line with inflation it won't be increased to take account of the very substantial increase in pupil numbers over the next Parliament. I estimate this will mean a cut to the amount schools get per pupil of 9.5% compared to the Conservatives 10.5%.

Here's my working:

• The DfE predicts there will be 566k more pupils in 2020 than in 2015. As these children have mostly been born already this is a fairly safe prediction. Average per pupil costs are £4.5k a year but there will be larger proportionate increases in secondary and special school places which are more expensive than primary. When this distribution is taken into account (see detailed working at the end of the post*) the total cost is = £2.85 billion. The current schools budget is £41.6 billion so those additional pupils represent an effective 7% cut.
• On top of this there are upcoming increases to schools contributions to teacher pensions and National Insurance that represent an effective 2.5% cut. These are explained in more detail in by blog on the Conservatives' plans.

This is actually much easier to calculate than the effect of the Conservative plans because it doesn't rely on assumptions about inflation. There will definitely be a cut in this range if pupil numbers rise as per projections. It also means that if inflation is lower than my assumptions the Conservative plans would actually better for schools than Labour's (unless they have a sixth form). Equally if inflation rises above my assumptions the Conservative cut grows whereas the Labour one stays the same.

Either way it now looks certain that schools will have a significant cut in their budgets over the next Parliament - though probably smaller than other public sector institutions outside of the NHS. All headteachers and business managers will need to work through the implications for their schools. Austerity is here to stay.



* According to the DfE figures there will be 307k more secondary pupils; 245k more primary pupils and 15k more pupils in special or alternative provision settings. The DfE doesn't publish per pupil rates for different stages but the average primary rate (before things like pupil premium and deprivation funding are added) was just under £3k. The KS3 rate was just over £4k and the KS4 rate was £4.6k. I have assumed the additional funding on top of this is roughly approximate between schools (primaries get more pupil premium but secondaries get more of other types of additional funding). Given the per pupil average is £4.5k I've calculated an additional primary place at £3.5.k and an additional secondary place at £5.75k (to balance KS3+ KS4). I've assigned a figure of £15k per place to special schools - this is definitely an underestimate but I can't find a source for the per pupil amount and I want to be conservative in my assumptions. So:

307k secondary pupils x £5750
245k primary pupils x £3500
15k special/AP pupils x £15000

= £2.85 billion.

Because of the lack of data this is an estimate and may be out by half a percentage point or so either way.

What do Conservative spending plans mean for schools?

Just after the Prime Minister's speech on education earlier today I tweeted:

"PM confirms Tory school spending plans for next Parliament - flat cash per pupil. Combined with NI/pension changes = at least 10% cut".

This got picked up by a few news outlets this afternoon as a source for how big the cut would be. So I thought I better explain my working and add a few other points too detailed for a tweet.

I derived the "10%" from two things.

First, over the next couple of years schools will need to pay around £350-400 million more into teacher pensions as employer contributions increase. In addition there will be an additional £550-600 million more national insurance for schools to pay as a result of changes to state pensions in 2016. These figures come from a very helpful paper produced by the Association of Colleges. The schools budget is £41.6 billion so these changes represent a cut of around 2.5%.

Secondly, the "flat cash per pupil" settlement announced by the PM today means that from 2016 schools will not see their income rise in line with inflation. Based on the latest Bank of England estimates I've assumed inflation will run at: 0.5%; 1.5%; 2%; 2%; 2% over the next Parliament - 8% in total.

Add 8% to 2.5% and you get a 10.5% reduction in the amount schools receive per pupil. Obviously if inflation is lower the cut will be lower and if higher the cut will be higher.

Some additional points:

• The vast majority of school spending is on staff and we can probably expect pay rises of 1% to continue (though schools have freedom over this so could choose to pay more or less). This means that, in practice, they won't feel the full 10.5% cut as their main area of expenditure will increase at levels below inflation.
• On the other hand the protection announced today doesn't cover either the pupil premium or 16-19 budgets. These could be cut by more. 16-19 has been cut over this Parliament so schools with sixth forms are already hurting.
• Moreover other budget cuts to welfare and social care have knock on effects on schools that aren't accounted for. This is, naturally, especially true of schools in poorer areas.
• It is not yet clear whether these cuts will hit all schools equally. The current Government plans to shift to a National Funding Formula after this election. This could mean some schools in currently overfunded areas lose more while others receive some protection. As schools have surpluses of £4.5bn at the moment - that are not evenly distributed across the country - this would be sensible.

It's also worth noting that, given overall Conservative spending plans, this settlement will still leave schools much better off than other non-health departments like the Home Office. Moreover schools have had a relatively generous settlement this Parliament - seeing their revenue funding increase on average by 1% per pupil in real terms (not including 16-19 spending).

Labour and the Lib Dems plan to cut less over the next Parliament so have more leeway. Labour have not yet revealed their plans, and I'll update this blog when they do. The Lib Dems have promised to protect all education funding from 3-19 in real terms but have not yet said if this will be a "red line" in coalition negotiations. As all parties have accepted the NI/pensions changes even "real terms protection" will feel like a small cut.

The Standards Puzzle

"Have standards improved over time?" is one of the most persistent questions in education policy. And understandably so - under the last Government spending on education doubled, so it's reasonable to want to know if that's made any difference to the "output" of the education system.

Unfortunately our main measuring tools in education - national exams - are useless for answering the question. First because they've changed so often and secondly because they are used for school accountability and so schools have got better at teaching to the test (this isn't a criticism - it's an entirely rational response to a clear incentive).

Professor Rob Coe at the University of Durham has made the best attempt at using alternative "low stakes" test data to look at standards over time. In his inaugural lecture he set out his analysis of international tests like PISA as well as Durham's own tests, used by many schools. His conclusion: "The best I think we can say is that overall there probably has not been much change."

In the absence of any better evidence I'd have to agree with Professor Coe that this is what the data shows. And yet it feels counter-intuitive. I've worked in education for ten years and it certainly feels to me that schools have improved over that time. Likewise most of the more experienced teachers and headteachers I've discussed this issue with think things have got significantly better too.

Of course this could simply be cognitive biases at work. We all desperately want things to improve so we convince ourselves they have. But a recently published DfE report suggests another possible explanation.

The snappily titled "Longitudinal study of young people in England: cohort 2" (LSYPE2) will track 13,000 young people from year 9 to the age of 20. The first cohort were tracked from 2004-2010. Comparing the two cohorts will show how things have changed over the past ten years. This report looks at the first year's data from the new cohort and compares it with the first year's data from 2004.

And the trends are very clear. Ironically, given the recent obsession with "character building" amongst policymakers, there have been big improvements in a range of "non-cognitive" measures. Reported bullying has fallen; the percentage who claim to have tried alcohol has plummeted; aspiration has increased - higher percentages say they are likely to go to university; and relationships with parents seem to be a lot stronger too.

This is entirely consistent with other data showing massive falls in risky behaviours by young people over the last decade - including a huge fall in criminal behaviour. As well as big increases in participation in education post-16 and in higher education.

All of this would suggest I, and others, are not imagining it when we claim that schools are - on average - nicer places to be than ten years ago. And that pupils are making more progress, at least in the sense that more are going on to further and higher education.

But here's the puzzle: given the improvements in behaviour; the reduction in criminality; the falls in truancy; the increase in aspiration; the improvements in home lives - all of which are known to link to academic attainment - why haven't we seen a commensurate, observable, rise in academic standards? Either academic standards have actually improved, but we just don't have the measurements available to identify it properly, or something is happening in schools that's preventing us capitalising on these "non-cognitive" improvements to genuinely improve standards. So what's going on?

All thoughts welcome!