Select Committee on Public Accounts Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-99)

Mr David Normington, Mr Peter Wanless, Mr David Bell, examined.

  Q80 Mr Bacon: The Standards Fund.

  Mr Normington: Then two other sums that add up to 1.5 billion which goes to schools, one is about pay and one is about the money that goes direct to schools, to the School Standards Fund, that is their money.

  Q81 Mr Bacon: You said there were 25 billion to LEAs, 1.5 billion to six forms through the Learning and Skills Council—

  Mr Normington: 1.5 in the Standards Fund, 800 million in the School Standards Grant and 750 million which is teachers pay, which is mainly for the teachers threshold when they go through the threshold.

  Q82 Mr Bacon: How much of the money that is spent in schools in England is under the direct control of headteachers or part of some initiative or some funding stream that they have to apply for or part of bureaucracy? How much is under the direct control of headteachers?

  Mr Normington: In the end most of the money I described goes to schools and schools have a great deal of discretion on how to spend it. Some of that money comes with conditions attached to it, the 25 billion, which is the main bulk, comes without conditions attached.

  Q83 Mr Bacon: That goes to the LEAs, I am asking you a different question, how much of the money that is spent on schools is under direct control of headteachers? If you do not know just say that you cannot answer and perhaps you can send me a note afterwards.

  Mr Normington: It depends, I think it is about 90%.

  Q84 Mr Bacon: Right. What is the average proportion held back by LEAs?

  Mr Normington: I do not know offhand.

  Q85 Mr Bacon: Why not? Do you not run the school system, are you not the Permanent Secretary?

  Mr Normington: Not on this.

  Mr Bacon: I know that in Norfolk it is 87%. I would have thought you should know that, it should be at your fingertips for across the whole country?

  Q86 Chairman: I think we should ask questions, not noise off all of the time and make comments about his ability or lack of ability, the fact is we have distinguished public servants before us and we have a duty to be courteous to them.

  Mr Normington: It is normally between 10% and 15%, it varies.

  Q87 Mr Bacon: You do not know the average.

  Mr Normington: I do not.

  Q88 Mr Bacon: If you can find out and let us know I would be grateful.[1] In the Report, and Mr Williams quoted this, it says on the page 14 that the measures that you currently have, this is in paragraph 1.15, are of limited value compared the performance in different schools and they are also only of limited use in assessing schools from one year to another. Therefore I think that is a pretty good explanation of rational for having these background variable of one kind or another. If you can turn to page 40 and 41, on page 40 you have pupil background variables and school background variables, a total of twelve factors, everything from distinguishing between boys and girls to English not as a first language, to those entitled to school meals, and so on. Can you explain in this multi-level modelling that is describe on page 41 how the twelve background variables get into the scatter chart or the residual score in Figure 13 interpreting school-level residuals? Do you ascribe a number to each of these background variables?

  Mr Normington: I need to be clear to you this analysis is done by the NAO, it is not our analysis. The only variable that we include in our material is prior attainment, this is a much more sophisticated analysis, this sort of analysis has not been done before so I do not know in detail what methodology was used by the NFER, it was used to a template provided by the NAO.

  Q89 Mr Bacon: Perhaps I can ask the NAO, how does the list of variables there become part of this picture?

  Ms Hands: It is a very complex analysis. If I can point to page 44, these are the results of the analysis for the various variables that the NFER looked at for us. They basically applied those results for us to achieve the tables on the previous pages.

  Q90 Mr Bacon: What are these figures here, India, 1.3; Bangladeshi 1.4; Pakistan minus 0.2?

  Ms Hands: "Indian 1.3" that means for a pupil of that ethnic background there would be a positive efficiency, that pupil would be likely to achieve a greater added-value at Key Stage 3. The same occurs at GCSE, 2.4. When you apply that to the actual school in terms of the type of students that it has coming into the school you get the results of a complex analysis.

  Q91 Mr Bacon: Indian at 1.3 is likely to achieve greater value-added by being in the school or are you saying the school is likely to—?

  Ms Hands: This is the result of the analysis for those kind of pupils.

  Q92 Mr Bacon: Are you saying the pupil is going to get greater added value or that the school is going to give—?

  Ms Hands: That is the likelihood.

  Q93 Mr Bacon: I am asking the question, are you saying that the pupil is going to get greater added value or the school is going to give greater added value?

  Ms Hands: That is the likelihood of that pupil at that school. By applying these analyses you can work out the residual that the school has produced in terms of added value.

  Q94   Mr Bacon: If I was a Pakistani at minus 0.2 I am less likely.

  Ms Hands: That means that the school has a disproportionate number of ethnic minority pupils and then it is expected the achievement will be lower.

  Q95 Mr Bacon: Right. That is as clear as mustard!

  Ms Hands: I can provide you note on that.[2]

  Q96 Mr Bacon: Has this methodology been used much elsewhere?

  Ms Hands: This is the first time this has been done this way.

  Q97 Mr Bacon: I find it extraordinary myself but there you go. I would like to ask some other questions of Mr Normington. You did say earlier you want to see the monies distributed fairly according to need. Do you not think there is a danger that the current funding arrangements can punish success and reward failure?

  Mr Normington: Well, the money is not allocated mainly in relation to whether a school is succeeding or not, it is allocated on other factors, so it is perfectly possible for a failing school for other reasons to get a large chunk of money, yes.

  Q98 Mr Bacon: I have two examples in my mind of schools in Norfolk, one of which gets about £2,300 and the other of which gets about £4,200. They are not that far apart. There is a difference of £1,800 per pupil which on a thousand roll is £1.8 million, on a larger roll it is about £32 million, a huge amount of money difference, plenty of high schools have only £2 million in total. Yet this other school, this £4,200 per pupil, gets so much more money and what I am asking is, is it not possible that by directing the money towards the school that is achieving less well you are punishing the successful school rather than rewarding it for its high delivery?

  Mr Normington: We do not allocate the money on the basis of success or failure. We allocate it, and we allocate it to local authorities so the bulk of money can then be passed on, on four factors. There is a basic assumption about the share each school should get per secondary pupil, which by the way is £2,600 so I am surprised that any school would be getting £2,300. Then there is the calculation for the additional need which is based on a whole range of factors about socio-economic groups, which is £1,300 more. Then there are two other factors. One is about the costs of employing teachers, which are obviously much greater in some places than others, and the other is a factor called scarcity, broadly, which takes account of rural areas and the extra costs of things like transport in rural areas. Put all those figures together and that is the allocation the local authority gets. The local authority then has a decision to take about how it allocates the money on. It does not have to follow the formula which I have described though it does have to relate the money to pupil numbers. It can result in slight variations. I am very surprised, actually, to hear such a wide variation with schools so close. I know it can happen but not normally within the same county.

  Q99 Mr Bacon: There was a scheme a couple of years ago where head teachers were getting £30,000, £40,000 directly.

  Mr Normington: Yes.


1   Ev 18-19 Back

2   Ev 20 Back


 
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