Conclusions and recommendations
Departmental Report
1. We
expect the DfES to take our concerns about the Departmental report
on board for the future and to ensure that information is presented
in the Departmental Annual Report in ways which are consistent
with previous years and which provide clarity about what is happening
with expenditure, for example by having all tables reflecting
the full period of a Government (in this case, running from 1997).
Consistency and rigour will benefit us in our scrutiny work, but
will also benefit the DfES. Debate should be about what information
on expenditure tells us about what is happening in the education
sector, not whether the information itself is reliable. Moreover,
we expect to be informed, prior to preparation of the report,
about significant changes to the DAR or within any other key annual
sources of information on education expenditure and outcomes.
(Paragraph 11)
Schools' funding
2. One
of the main aims for the new schools' funding system ought to
be that it is as comprehensible as possible, so that head teachers,
governors and parents are able to understand how funding decisions
for their schools are arrived at. (Paragraph 28)
Expenditure and efficiency
3. We
welcome the recyclable gains expected from the efficiency programme,
but we do have doubts about whether quantifying them in cash terms
is in any way helpful. Money is not being redeployed elsewhere,
and it is a moot point the extent to which the gain which accrues
from a teaching assistant or other non-teaching staff member taking
on tasks previously undertaken by teachers, and thereby freeing
teachers' time for preparation or teaching, can be given a monetary
value. This does not seem to be money as it is normally understood,
and once again draws the DfES, and Government more widely, into
arguments about what the numbers mean, rather than putting the
focus on the matter in hand, namely the quality of educational
provision. (Paragraph 32)
4. Given the increased
level of investment that this Government has made in education,
it is unfortunate that it has not yet proved possible to measure
the effectiveness of that spending in providing better education
and more highly qualified students. This is not to say that the
investment was ineffective; but in productivity terms, we simply
do not have the data to tell us one way or the other. There is
a risk, in the longer term, that the inability to demonstrate
a measurable link between inputs and outputs will mean that taxpayers
have no way of judging whether or not public resources are being
well used. Such an outcome would be bad for taxpayers and, potentially,
could undermine the electorate's willingness to fund public services.
(Paragraph 35)
Research funding
5. We
are planning a wide-ranging inquiry into a number of issues concerning
higher education in the next parliamentary session, and research
funding is one of the subjects that we shall be investigating.
We expect the Government not to take any irrevocable decisions
on the next steps until we have reported our findings. (Paragraph
49)
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