Consultation Response:
Fair Funding to Achieve Excellence and Equity in Education
September 2017
Introduction
1. Local Authorities play a fundamental role in the lives of children and young people in Scotland: their role as education authority is legislatively bound with wider responsibilities for children’s and family services, and underpinned by Getting It Right For Every Child (GIRFEC). In fulfilling these responsibilities, local authorities – as public bodies – are simultaneously responsible for achieving the highest standards of financial transparency.
2. The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) is the national voice for local government in Scotland. While COSLA fully supports the aims of improving raising attainment and ensuring every child is nurtured to achieve their potential, we have serious concerns about proposals within this consultation and the potentially detrimental impact on children’s services. There is a real risk that by taking a school-based and not whole system approach to funding, the most vulnerable children will be disadvantaged and the attainment gap will widen.
3. This final response has been endorsed by the following professional organisations: Society of Local Authority Chief Executives (SOLACE); Association of Directors of Education in Scotland (ADES); Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA), Directors of Finance; Society of Local Authority Lawyers (SOLAR). We have chosen not to follow the structure of the prompt questions to allow for the fullest and most coherent presentation of the Local Government position. We look forward to further dialogue on the points raised.
Key Points
· COSLA and the wider local government family agree that any system for funding in this context should be underpinned by key principles. However, we fundamentally do not support the analysis which has been made of principles on the face of the consultation document and presented as the case for change.
· A multi-agency, ‘whole system’ approach which puts the child at the centre is needed to bring services together to address all of the contributors to attainment: bringing together social work, health, the third sector and others to assess a child and family’s needs together as agencies. A whole system approach to funding is required to achieve this.
· There must be flexibility built into the education system which allows for local decision makers to take careful strategic decisions over how best to overcome local challenges, whether caused by geography, deprivation or circumstance.
· Local democratic accountability for both policy and financial decisions are crucial and at the heart of the current system. This should not change.
· A proposal to extend the Pupil Equity Fund by allocating funding on a changeable, formulaic basis would create complexity, allow more variation and bypass democratic accountability. The emerging disconnect would make it increasingly difficult to take an outcomes based approach to supporting the wellbeing of children and young people.
· We recognise that Devolved School Management (DSM) would benefit from improvement and we commit to working in partnership with the Scottish Government and other stakeholders to achieve this in a way which engenders transparency while allowing teachers to be leaders in their learning communities without placing the additional burden on them of managing significant budgets.
Context
- COSLA and the wider local government family believes that any system for funding in education should be underpinned by a number of key principles. We agree with the principles outlined in the consultation document at a high level. Funding should:
· Support Excellence and Equity
· Be Fair
· Be Simple, Transparent and Predictable
· Deliver Value for Money
- However, as set out below, we fundamentally do not support the analysis which has been made behind those principles on the face of the consultation document and presented as the case for change.
Support Excellence and Equity
6. The overarching aims of the Education Governance Review – and this consultation within that – is to ensure excellence and equity in Scottish education while closing the poverty related attainment gap. COSLA fully supports these aims but we are clear that these cannot be achieved in the classroom alone. To silo classroom-based education from integrated children’s services and the whole system approach risks negatively impacting the most disadvantaged children and driving a wider attainment gap.
7. Children do not come to the classroom equal in opportunity. As much of 80% of a child’s performance is attributable to factors out of school[1] – the influence of parents (including parental expectation), the family and neighbourhood environments cannot be understated. This differential can begin pre-birth through maternal health and lifestyle choices, with further impacts during early childhood when cognitive development is rapid. By age 5, the gap between children from low-income and high-income families can be 10-13 months.[2]
8. The school environment – however good - cannot "fix" the environment in which some children live. The poverty-related attainment gap is fuelled by inequalities of support, security and safety, as well as practicalities like a table to sit at to do homework. Families suffering from economic deprivation and poverty require an economic solution. The impact of economic deprivation on children and young people cannot be underestimated with access to food and a warmth not guaranteed for every child in Scotland in their home environment.
9. A multi-agency, holistic approach which puts the child at the centre is needed to bring services together to address all of the contributors to attainment: bringing together social work, health, the third sector and others to assess a child and family’s needs together as agencies. For example:
· One large local authority ensures that every child has a single plan with the resources required to meet the needs in the plan spread across a range of professional groups. This means that a range of staff are involved in meeting those needs which include learning needs. In this local authority, social work support staff are deployed by headteachers to help schools with early intervention work. This includes activity within and outwith the classroom, including with the family to address the child’s learning and associated needs. Every child’s plan involves shared multi-disciplinary activity to support the child to be safe, healthy, active, nurtured and included. In addition, youth workers are deployed to bring community learning and development into schools, supporting children with plans as well as leading universal service activity with the school population.
· One Local Authority highlighted various partnership arrangements which are in place to allow joint decisions to be made to help meet the needs of children which follow the principles of GIRFEC. Amongst these, examples include:
o A Senior Officer Review Group which is a high level decision making body including Social Policy, Education and Health to agree support provision for children such as external places and other support mechanisms.
o A group supporting children and their families to return to school after prolonged periods of absence.
o A collaborative approach to two year old early learning and childcare provision which includes colleagues in Education, Social Policy, Health and also Childminders.
10. Achieving a whole system approach in policy terms is not possible without a whole system approach to funding.
Be Fair
11. COSLA agrees with the importance of funding to achieve the overall aims of excellence and equity. However, we fundamentally disagree with the premise of this consultation as presented – that a universalised approach to funding can deliver better outcomes for children and young people than decisions made locally by elected members who are democratically accountable to the communities they serve. Or, worse, the implication that local authorities do not take active and conscious steps to ensure every child and young person has the same opportunity to succeed.
An example from a deprivation perspective:
One local authority with high levels of deprivation takes an approach to funding that allows for distribution of extra resources linked to deprivation and provides funding for schools to best meet the needs of their social and geographical areas. Part of this targeting of resources involves working jointly with a large third sector organisation to provide training and capacity building to teachers in attachment and nurture approaches in nurseries, primary and secondary schools. This targeted strategic approach has benefits that include resources being used effectively to tackle the poverty related attainment gap and consistency in approach to the type of support a child receives throughout their education.
It also means that the high quality specialist support provided by the third sector organisation can be negotiated at an authority wide level in partnership with headteachers. The third sector organisation have told the authority that it would be very difficult and less effective if they were required to negotiate with every school in the area to provide such a service.
An example from an island perspective:
One local authority with very remote island schools supports the equitable provision of education by, amongst other things, providing budget to support the travel in and out of those islands for both the teaching head teachers, and the children to participate in a variety of events – we understand the contribution that makes to the development for staff, and also the socialisation, health and wellbeing for the children who live in these very remote communities with no peer group.
12. In presenting this as a consultation to achieve “fair” funding, there is a suggestion that funding is currently unfair. The consultation is undertaken as a discussion about the level of funding which passes from local authority to school but whilst there is a recognition that staffing accounts for 70 per cent of spending, there is no assessment of the totality of funding required to deliver education policy.
13. Many of the challenges facing our education system including attainment, workforce and the mental health of children and young people are related to the current quantum of resources in the whole system. The consultation looks at how existing resources should be allocated rather than what level of resource is fair and adequate.
14. The measure used in the consultation as a basis for assessment of ‘fairness’ is cost per pupil variation. This is a crude measure which is not a proxy for quality of education, or the whole system which is in place to support a child.
15. Councils with more rural areas, including the island councils, generally do spend more per pupil for a number of reasons:
· In general, there is a lower average number of pupils in each school. As a result, teacher costs per pupil are higher. In 2013, there was an average of 113 pupils per primary school in rural councils compared to an average of 265 primary pupils per school in urban councils. In Shetland, the roll of some schools is as low as 3.
· Because distances are greater and pupils are more widely spread, school transport costs are higher and can include children travelling by ferry and plane. For example, three rural authorities 6% of their total school expenditure on school transport in 2012/13. In comparison, school transport accounted for 0.2% of one urban authority total school expenditure in 2012/13.
· The school estate tends to be larger due to high numbers of small primary schools. This brings increased maintenance and running costs. For example:
One rural authority has a widely dispersed school estate, and schools which are largely under capacity. Given budget reductions over previous years, the local authority are only able to undertake statutory testing and emergency type repairs. The local authority is working hard to achieve savings in energy costs etc, and thus reduce their carbon footprint, but the buildings are not financially sustainable. Again, the local authority bears this cost.
· Recruiting both permanent and supply teaching staff can be more challenging for rural councils. There are strategic challenges associated with this which fall to the central local government team including higher employment costs and employment can be across multiple settings, as well as supporting temporary cover. For Example:
§ A large rural authority found it difficult recently to fill teacher vacancies. To address this, it was reported that the council ran an international recruitment campaign offering benefits such as help with housing to successful applicants[3].
§ Another rural authority has faced challenges in recruiting teachers with particular difficulties in filling primary headteacher vacancies. As a result, the small central team within the Council provides significant pastoral support to an increasing team of acting headteachers to ensure they have mentoring to help them take on their new responsibilities. The authority recognise that without this support less experienced staff would find it less easy to adjust to the challenge and pressures of a new role.
§ An island authority finds recruitment of staff and provision of supply cover to be a real challenge. Small secondary schools in particular do not require a full time staff resource for many subjects, therefore the local authority manages the sharing of those staff over more than one setting – to both provide for an opportunity that may attract staff, to avoid a myriad of part time posts, and to ensure the delivery of the curriculum. The local authority also manages to provide for the cover of sickness and maternity costs, as opposed to that being the responsibility of head teachers as budgets would not permit those costs to be met by individual schools.
16. Urban areas will also have challenges unique to their geography, particularly those with high levels of deprivation but it is important to recognise with positivity that variation across the country also reflects careful strategic management of solutions to overcome those challenges.
17. The system needs to be flexible enough to allow localities to respond to their own challenges. The Pupil Equity Fund and the Attainment Challenge are themselves examples of targeted variation in funding which reinforce the fact that local needs and local circumstances are different. Local areas have different challenges and variation in how money is allocated and spent is to be expected.
18. The consultation paper argues that there is no single transparent approach to allocating money from the local authority to education and then to schools. However, this is true for most local authority services as the majority of the grant system is unhypothecated based on the principle that local authorities are best placed to make decisions on local issues. It is important for there to be local flexibility and local control over spending so that local need can best be met.