Counting the cost: the financial implications for English primary schools of implementing and sustaining the initiatives associated with the Primary National Strategy

Bob Curtis

School of Education

The University of Nottingham

Correspondence: or

Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association New Researchers/Student Conference, University of Warwick, 6 September 2006

Abstract

In Excellence and Enjoyment, the introduction to the Primary National Strategy (DfES, 2003), a number of initiatives were introduced to encourage all schools to ‘build on their own strengths to serve the needs of their own children’with the intention of combining ‘excellence in teaching with enjoyment in learning.’ To do this, schools were expected to:

  • implement work force reform
  • develop extended schools
  • think creatively about curriculum development
  • manage on-line school self evaluation for OFSTED
  • continue to keep a strong focus on standards
  • focus learning on the needs and abilities of individual pupils

In this paper I explore documentary and headteacher interview evidence that there are difficulties, particularly funding issues, which are limiting the overall effect of the strategy. I examine evidence that initiative overload and bureaucracy continue to absorb an inordinate amount of time and money. Finally I consider how schools are being held to account without sustainable resources to support them.

Introduction

Excellence and Enjoyment, the introduction to the Primary National Strategy (DfES, 2003), was promoted as the way forward for primary schools to achieve the best of both worlds, excellence in teaching with enjoyment in learning. The government claimed that it would provide the resources to underpin the strategy, quite rightly stating that it could not succeed if not properly resourced (DfES, 2003 p72).

Pilot PhD research (Curtis, 2005) in six schools in areas of social deprivation in the English midlands revealed major concerns amongst headteachers about the viability and sustainability of the strategy. Evidence suggested that primary schools were under funded and struggling to provide more than a basic education. Specific areas of concern were:-

  • The statutory requirements of PPA (Preparation, Planning and Assessment) time, introduced to benefit teachers, were impacting both financially and in the time available for other areas of school and curriculum development.
  • Further elements of the strategy – extended schools, personalised learning, foreign languages, music, gifted and talented provision, were struggling to become established consistently because of difficulty in obtaining resources.
  • The continued emphasis on targets and testing within the strategy was absorbing resources and the energy of both teachers and heads.
  • On-line school self evaluation, the SEF (Self Evaluation Form), linked directly to OFSTED, was, despite claims to the contrary, time consuming for teachers, headteachers and governors because of the monitoring and accountability associated with it.
  • Primary/secondary differentials remained an ongoing concern, particularly because of the extras costs involved in the above initiatives.

In this paper I explore these issues further using data from the pilot study and new documentary evidence that there are difficulties, particularly funding issues, which are limiting the overall effect of the strategy. I examine how initiative overload and bureaucracy continue to make unreasonable demands on headteachers, thus frustrating creative curriculum development. Finally I consider how schools are being held to account without enough sustainable resources to support them.

To begin with I examine evidence that the attitudes and beliefs of those responsible for the funding system are perpetuating financial inequalities and frustrating headteachers in achieving long term sustainability for the individual initiatives associated with the Primary National Strategy.

The Role of the Treasury

In his 2006 Budget speech Gordon Brown made some appealing statements.

  • ‘In private schools there is one teacher for every nine pupils compared with one teacher for every sixteen in state secondary schools.
  • To secure better school results we have improved the pupil teacher ratio and doubled the money spent per year for the typical pupil from £2,500 to £5,000.
  • But this figure of £5,000 per pupil still stands in marked contrast to average spending per pupil in the private sector of £8,000 a year.
  • Our long-term aim should be to ensure for 100 per cent of our children the educational support now available to just 10 per cent.
  • So to improve pupil teacher ratios and the quality of our education, we should agree an objective for our country that stage by stage, adjusting for inflation, we raise average investment per pupil to today's private school level’ (Brown, 2006).

It is interesting to note the concern of the Chancellor about the teacher pupil ratio is set in secondary schools. He does not mention primary school teacher pupil ratios at all. Again when talking about money spent on the typicalpupil increases no mention is made of the differentiation between primary and secondary funding. Quite how these figures are achieved when the actual funding going to schools per pupil in 2004/5 was £2413 per primary pupil and £3160 per secondary pupil (NAHT, 2005) is not clear. Do the larger amounts claimed by the Chancellor include the £177.5 million contract over five years for the implementation of the Primary and Key Stage 3 Strategies awarded to the private company Capita, all the national testing and assessment costs, the costs of OFSTED and DfES administrative costs? If the expenditure also includes the capital cost involved in the school building programme and ICT investment it would seem misleading to claim that it is being spent on the typical pupil.

Gordon Brown stated he wanted to raise state school expenditure to the level of current private school expenditure as described above. No timetable was given for this target. A few months after the Budget speech some of the claims made by the Chancellor are being questioned. In an article in the TES (16.06.06) Don’t count on Brown’s promises it is reported that David Bell, the Department for Education and Skills permanent secretary, in response to questions by MPs, stated that schools face some difficult years financially. “It is going to get tighter. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that.” (Stewart, 2006). The DfES was already expecting“more or better output for the same input”from schools(DfES, 2005b). Significantly increased funding has gone into education since the arrival of New Labour but much of this has been to redress the lack of investment by the previous Conservative administration. With new initiatives still coming on stream headteachers have expressed real concerns about sustainability because of funding issues(Easton, Knight, & Kendall, 2005).

In the next section I will explore how these new initiatives are being accommodated and I will examine the financial implications of these added responsibilities and their impact on school budgets. I focus specifically on workforce reform and its budgetary implications.

More or better output for the same input?

One of the most welcomed achievements of New Labour has been the increase in the number of teaching assistants (TAs) in primary schools, funded to support literacy and numeracy (Hancock, Swann, Marr, & Turner, 2001). Many of these TAs were initially brought in to support children with learning and behavioural difficulties as their inclusion into main stream schools has expanded. However, through working in the classroom, the influence of TAs has been much greater. Their support has spread to give encouragement to other pupils across the curriculum. The presence of a second adult has positively enhanced classroom dynamics and increased opportunities for cooperative learning. As one headteacher explained;

‘As far as TAs in main school go they all support teachers , they all do special needs work, they all do intervention work with individuals so they all do everything basically. So we’ve got a good team.’

Workforce Reform on the ground

TAs and teachers have established good working relationships (Webb & Vulliamy, 2006). However the government is now expecting many TAs to be upgraded to Higher Level Teaching Assistants (HLTAs) capable of teaching a class during PPA (Preparation, Planning and Assessment) time for the teacher (DfES, 2003). There are cost implications of this ambition. Other suggestions for PPA cover include bringing in specialists for PE, sport, music, foreign language, art, and drama, each of which will require staff with specific skills to be employed. It is claimed that these staff are cheaper to employ than a fully qualified teacher, meaning that for 10% of their time children could be taught by someone with a lower standard of qualification, a move not appreciated by teachers in recent research findings(Webb & Vulliamy, 2006).

There are real concerns for headteachers here. Not one of the heads in my pilot study challenged the idea of PPA time, inline with their national association, NAHT. PPA has a proven track record in other countries - Australia, USA and Canada. In this country it is a utopian ideal and for the leader of a team of teachers to be questioning the value of it would be divisive. Rather, it is the implementation that worries heads. Of all the areas identified during the interviews this one seems to be causing the most concern. Only one head, with a large number of teaching assistants (TAs), in a school of open plan design, was not too worried about what they would have to do to cover PPA time from September 2005;

‘…in our school where you’re totally on show all the time and so you’re supported by a colleague next to you, or either side in some cases, there is far less concern that somebody could be making a pigs ear of it.’[1]

But even for the headteacher in the open plan school there is an element of venturing into the unknown;

‘So, at the moment, remodelling and PPA time, at the moment, crossing fingers and touching a wooden table, seems like its going to work OK.’

Despite these concerns, evidence from headteachers suggests that the PPA time element of workforce reform will continue because ‘It is the law so we have to do it’. But contingency plans to get through the first academic year (September 2005 –July 2006) have been expensive, including in some schools, increased class sizes to reduce the number of teachers employed which releases funds for PPA cover. As one headteacher explained;

‘…because of PPA time I have not been able to have three Y3/4 classes. I can only sustain it for a year but also we provide management time as well so I shall probably end up using capital devolved money from Easter to September to finish it off. I don’t know what it will be like next year.’

Other hidden costs around PPA time are also starting to impact on school budgets. If a HLTA or specialist employed for PPA time becomes ill there is no similar cheap replacement cover readily available in many schools. Supply teachers are being employed at a much higher than budgeted cost. Only when expenditure is reviewed at the end of the first full financial year of PPA time (April 2006 – March 2007) will this be fully documented and thus affect future plans. Salaries of HLTAs, now on a higher pay scale than TAs, are also rising annually, further compounding the problem.

It is not surprising to find that this low cost, budget teaching approach is an essential part of DfES policy for saving money. The DfESEfficiency Technical Note to the Treasury (DfES, 2005b), clearly outlined plans for the Department to achieve over £4.3 billion in annual efficiency gains in 2007-08, contributing towards the Government’s overall efficiency target of over £20 billion. Below is the table used by the DfES to justify this approach for cover supervisors to the Treasury:

Element / A1 b) Using cover supervisors.
Description of efficiency / The benefit from using cover supervisors – appropriately trained support staff covering for short term teacher absences – to reduce the amount spent on supply teachers.
Recyclable? / Yes.
Type / More or better output for same input
Assumption: what would otherwise happen? / The amount spent on supply teachers would either stay at the same level or increase.
Benefit calculation, and measures. / The benefit is the reduction in the amount spent on employing supply teachers, freeing more resources for the schools to use elsewhere. The financial gain will be calculated as the reduction in real terms of the amount spent on employing supply teachers.
Monitoring / An annual assessment by DfES based on each year’s data, the first one in Spring 2006.
Data sources / Consistent Financial Reporting (CFR) returns which identify thirty expenditure headings including staff and teaching time.
Data validation and control / School CFR returns are validated by the local authority before being sent to the Department where further checks are made, including year on year comparisons. School level CFR data is not public information but income and expenditure data at authority level and above is published through Section 52 outturn statements.
Data issues and risks / CFR is a new data collection and as such schools are still coming to grips with coding their own accounts to the CFR framework. However, staffing costs are generally free of error and taking national data should sufficiently deal with any minor discrepancies that may exist.
Baselines / 2002 - 2003 data.
Quality measures / Progress towards the full range of PSA* school attainment targets

* PSA - Public Service Agreement

Table 1 Using cover supervisors. Extract from DfES Efficiency Technical Note

Dec 2005

Further to this the same document also states that the DfES plans to:

  • enable frontline professionals in schools, colleges and higher education institutions to use their time more productively, which we expect to generate around 30 per cent of the total efficiency gains, enabling institutions to achieve more with their resources. Benefits will be generated through workforce reform, investment in ICT and reducing administrative burdens.(DfES, 2005b)

So it seems that any increase in funding to support PPA time is an illusion. The new CFR framework does not have a section to identify the costs of PPA time even though there are new sections for extended school funding(DfES, 2006a). By not identifying the actual costs the real funding problem is avoided. ‘Creative accounting’, shifting costs from one areas of the budget to another, will enable schools to survive. The DfES will look for a reduction in supply teacher costs. There appears to be no intention on the part of the DfES of allocating sufficient funds, over time, for primary teachers to be effectively covered. The chilling phrase “more or better output for the same input” does not sit well with headteachers already worried about budgets ((Daniels & French, 2006; Easton, Knight, & Kendall, 2005). Will the same principle apply to all the other initiatives being promoted by the Primary Strategy? The DfES Efficiency Technical Note highlights the tenuous nature of efficiency claims when it states that: A reduction in expenditure which leads to a proportionate reduction in the quality or quantity of service is not an efficiency (p3).A responsible government should look for efficiencies and improvements in services but the current situationin primary schools makes such aspirations problematic.

It may be that using front line professionals to save money is, in fact, a new interpretation of the idea of the ‘Mums Army’ promoted by the Conservative government of John Major in 1993 for teachers of younger children to qualify at sub-degree level (Hill, 2005). This earlier incarnation of teaching on the cheap was much vilified and abandoned, but the carrot of PPA time now seems to be distracting teachers from protesting, despite not liking the idea(Webb & Vulliamy, 2006). There is a real danger that this will lead to an acceptance of much lower academic standards for those working with young children.

Extended Schools

Another example of the efficiency approach to funding is that of extended schools. Although included in the new CFR framework(DfES, 2006a) elements of the finance for such facilities will be promoted through Children’s Centres, with headteachers having to bid for funding for resources to be placed in their schools. Time and energy will have to be spent in attracting provision. The long term sustainability of the funding and support is not clear despite the best of intentions. As one headteacher who works very hard to attract funding and grants explained with regard to a breakfast club;

‘…we more or less take on board the cost because it would be totally unreasonable for me to think this was something for working parents because we’ve hardly got any parents that work.’

This headteacher was not confident that she could continue to fund the breakfast club and also to employ staff of high quality, already known to the children, to cover for PPA time;