Are schools doomed to be scammed?

Before the National Fraud Authority ended up on the Coalition’s bonfire of quangos it did a lot of work on raising awareness of fraud. One of its major projects was estimating the total value of fraud in the economy – everything from “blue badge” parking abuse to multi-million VAT fraud. Before the NFA disappeared, it published Annual Fraud Indicators which estimated the loss to the economy of fraud to be £52billion (pdf available).

What has that number got to do with schools? In one month the press reported:

·         Arrests following concerns over the use of£162,000 at an academy following an Education Funding Agency report.

·         Finance staff giving away bank details in response to a phishing email with a subsequent loss of £1m

·         A school bursar being convicted of signing-off fake overtime claims with a loss of £18,000

·         A former head being found to have fallen below the standards expected of school leaders for his involvement in the recruitment of a family member which "breached the expected standards of transparency".

Much detected (and obviously undetected) fraud does not get into the papers. The 2012/13 Department for Education accounts mention a £2m “irregularity” at one academy chain – a Google suggests that the case never got into the press.

The NFA cautioned against its estimates being used for identifying trends. But is fraud getting worse? Quite possibly: while staff will generally be honest and public-spirited, after years of pay freezes and 1% rises, a minority may be demoralised and feel squeezed;  many organisations are struggling to cope with financial pressures so some managers may be tempted to bend rules; greater autonomy for schools creates opportunities but not all are positive.

Are schools doomed to be scammed? In fact, schools can protect themselves through simple steps. But the first step is to recognise that fraud is an issue.

 

 

Later this month I am talking at EdExec Live about how schools can protect themselves. Tickets are still available.

Inbetweeners, EMA and sixth form providers: what comes after the long rise in participation?

When I went to the cinema last week I wondered if all four of the Inbetweeners would have stayed on in the sixth form if they had been 16 a decade ago. Over the summer the release of NEET numbers got media attention but not the data showing the huge expansion of 16-18 education since 2000.

How much of the rise in participation was due to Educational Maintenance Allowances? It definitely played a role. The Institute for Fiscal Studies found that EMA was an “efficient maintenance allowance” increasing the proportion of eligible 16 year olds staying in education from 65% to 69% and boosting the participation of eligible 17 year olds even more.

One of the first acts of the Coalition was to wind down EMA as part of its £6 billion of ”efficiency savings”. This year 16 year olds will no longer be eligible for EMA if they stay in education. How will this affect participation rates?

There is anecdotal evidence that there may be an impact this autumn – for example, chatter on the TESConnect website. There has certainly been some pretty crude hard-sell in the run-up to enrolment trying to attract 16 year olds – colleges offering free laptops, even a school sixth form promising free driving lessons.

What this means for the enrolment of 16 year olds, the raising of the participation age to 18 and the funding of providers of 16-18 education will, no doubt, become clearer over the next few months.

Judging them by their results: MPs, sixth forms and value for money

Today the House of Common's Public Accounts Committee (PAC) published its report on Getting value for money from the education of 16– to 18– year–olds.

While few people are excited by a select committee report, I was a little dissappointed by the PAC report. There was plenty of common sense in the report including the observation that larger sixth forms benefit from scale economies and a promise to scrutinise the impact of the abolition of Educational Maintenance Allowances on staying-on rates. That is all reasonable and useful. Nevertheless the PAC report was a let down.

Back in March, the National Audit Office (NAO) published its own research on sixth forms and value for money - indeed, it sailed under the very same title. Many of the findings and recommendations of the NAO fed into the PAC report. However, a key finding of the NAO was that sixth form colleges deliver impressive value for money:

Sixth-form colleges, which perform best on most measures of learner achievement, are paid at a lower funding rate than school sixth forms. While the Department has taken some steps to reduce differences in the funding of different types of provider, colleges receive £280 per learner less than schools.

Sadly this message was somewhat diluted in the PAC report which noted:

School sixth forms currently receive £280 per student more than colleges.

Why was this lost in translation? I have no idea. Maybe it is because colleges lack political friends and public profile. (How many party manifestos have spouted off about schools and universities but forgotten that colleges even existed?)

To add insult to injury, the normally excellent Education Guardian had an article headlined: "Money being wasted on badly-managed colleges, say MPs". No! The PAC may have failed to applaud sixth form colleges but it did not question college management. In fact, it observed: "further education colleges have become more adept at making tough choices to improve value for money".

The Guardian article was better than its headline. It noted that PAC was concerned about the comparability of data for assessing value for money. (The NAO report pointed to the weaknesses in the quality of data coming out of school sixth forms although this was not evident in the PAC report.)

As results are published for the nation's sixth forms, there is no way that the PAC (or the sub-editors at the Education Guardian) deserve an A*.

Education for-profits or not? It depends

We live in interesting times. The talk of Maoist revolution in public services seems to have tailed off. However, in education there is a huge wave of change coming the way of education even if the NHS is centre stage at the moment.

A critical issue in education at the moment is whether for-profits will become significant players. In the medium term, the answer may depend on which sector you are talking about.

In universities, the minister responsible is keen on “alternative providers”. They have already arrived. As I have noted on this blog before, the professional training company BPP is getting University College status. Recently it was announced that BPP had teamed up with Swindon’s New College to offer a no-frills law degree for £3000 per year.

This week an article in the Times Higher Education by a consultant from The Parthenon Group global strategy consultancy suggested:

By charging £27,000 for three years, England and Wales have just become Treasure Island to for-profit companies that know from experience that they can teach degrees for much less.

The article goes on to suggest that the new entrants will shake up the incumbents:

Universities must begin to provide the platform for more sophisticated strategies, including: greater pricing differentiation; international growth; regionalisation; improved employer partnerships; greater student employability; and targeting particular student segments - for example, adult learners.

For-profits may be welcomed by the government in higher education but the red carpet is not yet rolled out in primary and secondary education.

The government’s free school policy is turning out to be less revolutionary than hoped or feared. Last Friday’s New Statesman points to “the Coalition’s free school dilemma”. The introduction of new suppliers in the schools market need buildings when there are constraints on capital spending. Jonn Elledge of EducationInvestor magazine concludes:

The government wants three things: to create enough new schools to shake up state education; to keep the profiteers out; and to keep the cost to the taxpayer down. But it can't win on all three fronts. One of them is going to have to give. And right now, it looks like the revolution will be the one to get tossed aside.

Not so long ago it seemed like the ban on for-profit free schools might be lifted. There were voices from policy wonks calling for a change – people like Julian Astle of the Lib Dem think tank CentreForum. Now it seems that the government – or at least the Lib Dem wing of the Coalition - may be more cautious in reforming public services – let alone allowing for-profit schools.

Maybe things will change for schools as well as universities. The Coalition has – potentially – another four years when a week is a long time in politics.

Mind the [narrowing college funding] gap: the impact on school sixth forms

In the media coverage of the cuts there has been surprisingly little coverage of sixth forms. While overall 16-18 funding is set within the constraints of the deficit reduction program, there is the policy expectation that increased participation levels from raising the school leaving age should be funded by efficiency gains. In addition, schools are to be funded at the same (lower) rate as colleges. While there is “transitional protection” limiting losses in any one year, austerity will bite.

What does this mean? The local press around the country is starting to pick up on the implications. Staffordshire County Council is warning schools to prepare for significant challenges and to look at whether their courses will remain viable. This means collaboration and – for small uneconomic school sixth forms – closure. While in Croydon the Council wants schools and colleges to share sixth forms.

It is ironic that in the early noughties the Learning and Skills Council was expected to reshape 16-18 education with unviable school sixth forms being reorganised out of existence. Now the LSC is gone, this might well happen.

In the news: demographic pressures and failing secondary schools

A "youth bulge" may have been at work in the Tunisian and Egyptian revolts but demography has political implications closer to home. Since the turn of the millennium many education providers have been conscious of demographic decline. Now there is a recognition that rising birth rates are starting to feed into demand for primary school places as an extra 100,000 babies every year are fed into the equation.

This week the quality media has turned its attention to the longer term and post-11 places.

The Financial Times reports that secondary schools will be affected by both rising birth rates and slower rates of migration of middle-class families out of cities. The FT analysis of official projections indicates that an extra 80,000 secondary school places will be needed in England by 2016/17 in areas of population growth. However, in those areas, there is space for only 50,000 students at schools that meet government targets. In addition there are currently 6,000 places available in schools that do not meet the government’s minimum “floor standards”. This might become a major political issue unless new places are created through the free schools and other policies.

The ever excellent Guardian DataBlog maps the location of the current surplus capacity. It’s a shocking statistic that 225 schools - 7% of England's school estate - are more than a third empty and most of these have poor GCSE results. (Off course some may have poor results due to challenging circumstances but the persistence of such concentration of educational disadvantage remains a serious social issue.)

A spring of disgruntlement? Strikes, pay and pensions in the public sector

Today the teaching union ATL announced that it would be balloting its members on industrial action over the proposed increase in teachers’ pension contributions. Meanwhile in colleges and universities UCU is doing likewise on the issues of jobs, pay and pensions.

Beyond schools, colleges and universities are we facing a spring of disgruntlement?

How will public sector unions respond to the austerity that is affecting their members’ jobs, pay and conditions?

Headlines may inflame matter when they highlight the remuneration packages of se senior management. The Daily Telegraph this weekend reported on pay rises enjoyed by university vice chancellors. (The paper’s survey found that three-quarters of vice chancellors saw pay packages, including salary, pensions and other benefits, increase during the year to August 2010. Eleven of the 87 surveyed benefited from rises of more than 10 per cent.)

The issue of pensions is likely to be a highly sensitive one. The Hutton Commission final report on public sector pensions is due in March 2011. The exact date has not been published but the 2011 Budget is on Wednesday March 23 – this would be an obvious candidate. The final report is likely to recommend pension entitlements based on a career average salary rather than “final salary”.

Public sector pensions are not “gold-plated” but public sector pension schemes do give workers a certainty about the timing of retirement and a level of entitlements that most private sector workers lack. I suspect that not all public sector workers recognise the full value of their pension schemes. Unions have not mobilised against the change in inflation indexation introduced last year. However, the increased pension contributions likely to kick in across the public sector from 2012 will be harder to swallow - as seen in the case of ATL members in schools - when pay is frozen for most of the public sector. Whether unions will enjoy public sympathy is another issue.

Academies: the significance of numbers and the future of regulation

So one in ten English schools are now academies – marking a doubling of academy numbers. I do have some sympathy with commentator Conor Ryan’s tweet that:

It is not the number of academies, but their contribution to school improvement that matters most.

As a former advisor to the last government Conor Ryan blogs:

it is simply ridiculous to claim that the marginal governance and financial changes involved in converting an outstanding school to an academy are in any way comparable to the huge task involved in gaining secure sponsorship and leadership for a new academy in a tough area or an academy replacing a failing school.

The setting-up of academies planned by the previous government and the conversion process allowed by the current government mean that there is a significant challenge and workload associated with regulating them. (On top of that free schools are in the pipeline.) It is therefore ironic that a fog of uncertainty has descended on the future regulation of the academy sector since the regulatory changes planned for 1 January appear to have been postponed. The Young People’s Learning Agency is funding and overseeing the sector, but Third Sector reported yesterday that it has not formally been made the new Principal Regulator to replace the Charity Commission.

Pluralism in education - enter the humanist free school?

In the current issue of New Humanist Francis Beckett - author of The Great City Academy Fraud - suggests "co-operating with an objectionable and reactionary educational policy" and setting up a humanist free school. He suggests that this is "a one-off chance to show that real secular state education works".

It would be broadly tolerant, liberal but firm. The boundaries would be drawn widely, but they would be fixed. Cross that boundary and the sky falls in on you. Our staff would have better things to worry about than the length of their pupils’ hair, and there would be no uniform. But any form of bullying or abuse would not be tolerated. And neither would boring lessons. We can’t divorce ourselves from the target culture, but we can make sure it doesn’t ruin the lives and the learning experience of our pupils.

(It all sounds a bit like the liberal Kunskapskolan schools opening as part of the academies programme.)

The magazine’s website has an online poll on the issue. When I last looked almost three-quarters of those voting said that they would support the establishment of an avowedly atheist and humanist state school.

As someone who works with faith schools and colleges, I hope the humanist free school project gets off the ground. The project will contribute to the diversity and innovation created by academies and free schools.

The how and when of the YPLA's replacement

Tucked away in yesterday's Schools White Paper was the announcement that the Young People’s Learning Agency will be “replaced” by the Education Funding Agency. Perhaps re-badged would have been a more accurate description – the staff of the YPLA will be brought in-house into the Department for Education from being a standalone Non Departmental Public Body.I expect some other DFE staff will be included as the EFA will have a role in relation to schools which are not (yet) academies.

There was some uncertainty about the date of the change but according to the YPLA website the transition is assuming April 2012.

It is worth noting that Michael Gove has backed off from the idea of a direct EFA-schools relationship seen in an earlier draft of the White Paper. I suspect that this is a tactical retreat. You can only eat an elephant one bite at a time.

It is ironic that the survival of the Skill Funding Agency and the (de-quangoed) YPLA/EFA were not advocated in either manifesto of the Coalition parties for the post-16 funding landscape.

Government U-turn on a national funding system for schools and 16-18

Today the FT Westminster Blog reports that that the government is backing down on a national school funding system. It quotes Michael Gove on the Andrew Marr Show as saying:

The Financial Times ran a report of what they thought was going to be in the white paper, fair play to them, journalists often anticipate events, but the truth is that we will be funding schools through local authorities as we do at the moment.

The Westminster Blog says that it had a copy of a draft copy of the white paper and the details of their story were confirmed by civil servants at the Department for Education.

Where all this leaves the Young People’s Learning Agency is unclear. The draft seen by the Financial Times included this paragraph:

The Young People’s Learning Agency (YPLA) will extend their current responsibility for funding Academies and Free Schools to funding all schools becoming the Education Funding Agency from April 2013. It would administer the national funding formula to all schools directly as well as post 16 funding ensuring that the maximum amount of money goes directly to schools in a fair, transparent and equitable way. Local authorities will pass the national funding formula allocation directly to maintained schools until the Education Funding Agency comes into existence.

I suspect the YPLA will carry on even though the government has U-turned on the broader reform. Sadly this may mean that the inequalities in 16-18 funding between schools and colleges persist.

Bribery, corruption and trips

On the Third Sector website I was reading that the Oxfam Finance Director was concerned that charities might be tripped up by the new Bribery Act unless sector guidance was issued. The Act creates new offences including one which relates to businesses that fail to take sufficient steps to prevent bribery involving their employees or agents.

The Bribery Act might well affect the education sector too. Colleges and schools take learners to fascinating and exotic places. Some destinations have endemic corruption. For example, students sometimes visit Russia – 154th out of 178 in the Transparency International league table.

I have travelled widely in the former Soviet Union so have had bribes extracted from me directly or via taxi drivers. On one holiday I had to cross the border of the breakaway Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic on four occasions – on three of them, I had to pay a “fine” or make a “present” to the border guards for fear of ending up in a prison of an unrecognised statelet with which Britain has no consular relations!

The YPLA and plans for nationalising schools funding

Tucked away in yesterday's Financial Times article about plans for a national schools funding formula was a clue to the fate of the Young People's Learning Agency:

Officials are preparing for the transition to a new funding system to begin in 2012, with a new independent Education Funding Agency taking over finance for “all schools and sixth form provision” from 2013.

Of course, this may not happen. Councils and councillors - not least Conservative ones - may be most unhappy about the policy which may appear to run contrary to "localism" rhetoric. The Conservative backbencher Douglas Carswell has already voiced doubts on his blog. The plans would create a super quango dispensingover £30billion each year. Moreover, there are many practical obstacles to a more rational and transparent allocation of resources to schools.

School heads may welcome the move now but not necessarily when they realise that many of their schools may be losers - 60% of secondary schools according to research by the Institute of Fiscal Studies in the Spring (a pdf of the research paper is available).

Michael Gove may be in for another bruising battle.

Interesting times: school federations, new markets and blurred boundaries in education

Working over the years in colleges I have noticed that there has been a slightly casual use of the term “federation” – sometimes to mean merger of colleges. In schools there is a precise meaning to the term. On the Teaching Expertise website there is an excellent survey of the legal meaning and implications of the term from two education lawyers at Veale Wasbrough Vizards.

A clear and useful exposition of the legal and other issues around federations is particularly timely at a time when the education landscape is in a degree of flux. In this week's New Statesman, Dr John Dunford (former general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders) surveys what he sees as the “two different, but related, markets are being created by the Academies Act 2010”:

The first is the government's push for so-called "free" schools to be created by parent and teacher groups. The second, and potentially much larger, market being created is the provision of a range of services, from human resource management to school improvement capability, to both the new academies and to the free schools.

He concludes:

Schools are being offered by the coalition government a more autonomous way of working, with the additional funding that accompanies academy status looking very attractive at a time of economic retrenchment. Some of these academies will continue to buy services, where they are efficiently run, from the local authority, but many more will look outside the authority to the new market of entrepreneurial schools and commercial providers for their human resources and school improvement support, or even for federation under a single governing body. It is hardly surprising that so many organisations are looking at providing these services in what could become a lucrative new market

The revolution is not limited to the schools sector. The financial constraints on colleges and universities – as well as the pressures likely to flow from the market model proposed by the Browne review for higher education – may lead to an interesting reconfiguration of providers plus the growth of new entrants like the new private sector BPP University College. This may see some blurring of boundaries – a recent Financial Times article speculated on whether colleges might soon own their own university.

Free schools – numbers, expectations and reality

Today there is bad news for the free schools movement and its highest profile exponent, Michael Gove.

The Financial Times warns that the first wave of free schools might consist of only eight schools or fewer. An assessment by Department for Education officials says that the “majority” of the 16 proposals for free schools that have been approved to open in September 2011 are “likely” to miss five of the 14 deadlines that officials believe must be met.

There appear to be issues with the appointment of Principals by the December deadline and having in place fit-for-purpose buildings in time. There are also uncertainties over transport-related planning requirements.

This revolution – like so many in history – may have raised expectations that it will struggle to deliver.

Academies, crisis management and risk management

Last week the website Children & Young People Now carried an article about changes to the academies funding agreement. Various duties have been erased – how these deletions are interpreted depends on your perspective.

One of the requirements struck out was the duty to have a crisis management plan in place before an academy opens. While I am all for reduced bureaucracy for academies (and other schools too), I do hope that academies do still have appropriate arrangements in place before opening.

Crisis management plans are is basic risk management – and it’s not too difficult either. There are plenty of templates on the internet. For example, here, here and here. Have a look; take your pick; tailor to your organisation; and be prepared for the unexpected.

There is no need for lots of consultancy from people like myself – although my rates are very reasonable!

For guidance on risk management more generally, the Academies Financial Handbook is a wealth of information. The Handbook includes templates for risk registers, although I do believe that a simpler methodology may be more user-friendly and manageable for academies. (There is a revised Handbook in the pipeline so there may be amended guidance and templates when that arrives.)

With academies - and organisations generally - it is vital that risk management becomes a continuous thread through governance, management and operations rather than a ritual that is "done" periodically.

Today’s free school revolution?

There has been a lot of discussion about the academies bill (and a few postings on this blog!) which will potentially cut loose high-performing schools. There has been less attention (until today) given to the Conservative proposals for free schools - allowing parents, teachers, charities etc to set up independent state-funded schools.

While the free schools idea builds on provisions introduced by the Labour government for parent-sponsored academies, the new Coalition is planning to clear obstacles to such schools. In particular, they promise to make it easier to secure sites for new schools by allowing a wider range of sites, including residential and commercial property, to be used as schools without the need for ‘change of use’ consent and by creating a presumption in planning guidance in favour of setting up of new schools.

There is still a lot of scepticism about free schools and whether "parents really want to run schools".(Of course, in headteachers will play the leading role in running free schools albeit with accountability to parents.) Often the most sceptical are people who would normally be keen on co-operatives.

The examples of Swedish free schools and American Charter Schools show how free schools here offer an opportunity to transform education in this country - particularly if a pupil premium for disadvantaged children is given sufficient financial weight.

The government has published information on the Department for Education website and encouraged anyone interested to link up with the New Schools Network who already have hundreds of local groups interested in setting up their own schools.

Michael Gove and academies: an update on numbers

The Times Education Supplement reports that only 200 extra new academies are expected in September as a result of the proposed Academies Bill. The timescales did look rather challenging.

I cannot find online the impact assessment for the Academies Bill that the TES quotes but I will add a link when I do.

Academies and free schools: practical problems?

As over 1,000 schools have responded positively to Michael Gove’s suggestion that they might like to become academies, it is inevitable some thought and media attention is given to some of the problems and practicalities.

Yesterday’s Times carried an article about the “complex problems” involved including staffing, land use and administrative capacity. As there are over 200 existing academies I am sure that many of these problems are neither new or insurmountable although I am sure that some of the smaller academies will struggle to cope with independence.

The Times article was strangely silent on the biggest issue of practicality: time. Is it realistic that secondaries and primaries making a decision now will be up and running by the start of the autumn term? Michael Gove is clever man so I assume that he has thought that through.

The media focus on the morphing of existing schools into academies has overshadowed the policy agenda around new providers – “free schools”. Last week the Guardian carried an interesting article about the application of European Union procurement rules to contracts to manage free schools. (Michael Gove has spoken of for-profit businesses managing the day-to-day affairs of free schools for not-for-profit governing bodies. In Sweden many of the free schools are run by for-profits such as Kunskapsskolan who operate over 30 secondary schools.)

Academies: what the papers (and commentators) say

Following this week’s Queen Speech The Guardian usefully carried an article on “What is an academy?” For a more partisan introduction (as well as recent news about open and proposed academies) there is always the Anti Academies Alliance.

I am not aware of any media commentators saying much about the uncertainty around how many school heads will opt for academy status. It was interesting to read in the FT that Michael Gove had cautioned against what the “dartboard politics” of announcing targets. On the other hand he clearly wants academies to be the “norm” at some point.

The unions obviously think Michael Gove is serious. In yesterday's Times the leaders of NASUWT, NUT, ATL and Unison had a letter published voicing their unions’ opposition to the Coalition’s policy and academies more generally:

We believe that an essential principle for all education reform must be that it raises educational standards. All of the independent evidence confirms that academy schools do not deliver better educational outcomes for pupils, cost more money, and create widespread inequality and social segregation.

On his blog former No10 adviser Mathew Taylor described how experience overcame his doubts about academies but he also expressed some skepticism about the Coalition’s new moves:

What had reconciled me to the Academy policy was, first, the way it channelled new capital expenditure into deprived areas and second, that the extra element of diversity and innovation would be good for the system as a whole. The new policy is different in both aspects. The redistribution element has gone, indeed it must be most likely that it will be more privileged schools and sets of parents who take up the new freedoms and funding streams. Second, rather than putting grit in the oyster of the local schools system the policy is now to smash the oyster entirely.

An key issue is whether the academies push will affect the time, attention and resources given to the free schools policy. The latter policy promises (or threatens) a supply-side revolution with an influx of new providers.

We live in interesting times.