Supplementary memorandum submitted by
the Department for Education and Skills
Question 59 (Jeff Ennis) The impact of different
funding levels on the success rates in school sixth forms and
FE colleges
It is not possible to draw a direct line between
funding levels and differences in success rates. Many other factors
intervene including differences in qualifications being undertaken
and the prior attainment of students. Nevertheless, we know that
"value added" for A-level students in general FE colleges
is slightly less than that for students in sixth forms. It is
our policy to help every school and every college to improve the
quality of the teaching and learning they offer. We are also committed
to reducing the funding gap between colleges and schools, for
comparable learning programmes, as resources allow. The measures
we have already taken will narrow the gap by 5 percentage points
by 2006-07 and we expect the gap to reduce by a further 3 percentage
points by 2008. Beyond that we will work to establish a common
funding approach covering sixth forms, and FE colleges through
the LSC's agenda for change.
Question 81 (Paul Holmes) Composition and measurement
of the £4.3 billion efficiency target
This note sets out details of the programmes that
make the greatest contribution and describes the robust approach
we are taking to measuring our efficiency gains.
MAIN PROGRAMMES
The four programmes that contribute the most
to our overall target are: Schools Funding; Transforming the School
Workforce; Lifelong Learning and Skills; Every Child Matters:
Change for Children.
The Schools Funding programme is essentially
about using resources in schools efficiently to deliver optimum
outcomes. This is being achieved by improving procurement practices
in schools and encouraging schools frontline practitioners particularly
bursars and headteachers to make more effective use of their resources
by for instance peer pressure via benchmarking website comparisons.
The Transforming the School Workforce Programme
is encouraging a more efficient set of working arrangements in
schools, building a whole school team approach that frees teacher
time to be spent on activities that require a teacher's specialist
input, ie the delivery, design and assessment of teaching and
learning.
The Lifelong Learning and Skills element
of the efficiency programme is delivering efficiency of the further
education sector by achieving better outcomes with the same resources;
this is evidenced by improving success rates despite moving to
a longer more difficult course. Rationalisation of further education
inspection agencies is also yielding significant efficiency gains
as well as improved procurement practices.
The Every Child Matters programme aims
to produce a much more efficient use of resources across the whole
of children's services in order to achieve better outcomes for
children, young people and families. Arrangements coming into
place locally, within the overarching children's trust delivery
model, will help local authorities and other service providers
identify ways of using available resources more effectively whilst
also improving outcomes, eg improvements in joint planning and
commissioning. Further gains will be achieved through extending
Sure Start services, using a more efficient Children's Centre
delivery model, across the 30% most disadvantaged areas.
MEASUREMENT
In measuring the efficiency gains we have a
system which provides balance between a robust assessment of the
gains whilst minimising the additional burdens we place on the
frontline. We have developed a range of measures based upon data
that would already be gathered or data requirements that can be
incorporated into existing data demands upon schools and other
institutions. Full details of our measures are set out in our
published Efficiency Technical Note, which can be found at http://www.dfes.gov.uk/publications/otherdocs.shtml.
Our Efficiency Technical Note is updated on a regular basis as
our measures are refined.
For the HE sector the Efficiency Measurement
Model (EMM) is a new innovative solution that was developed by
HEFCE. It is a methodology and model that supports the reporting
of achieved efficiencies in an IT database. In response to the
Government's Efficiency Review the EMM uses their five measures
to help identify and capture efficiency savings:
— price reduction—where
there is a monetary saving in the purchase price for the goods
or services;
— added value—where additional
benefit is obtained for no extra cost;
— risk reduction—where identified
risks have been reduced or eliminated;
— process re-engineering—where
improved processes have reduced time or effort in achieving tasks;
and
— sustainability—where environmental,
economic and social improvements are achieved through the supply
chain.
The EMM has used the above measures to create
a solution that allows an organisation to track its non-pay spend
and capture any efficiency savings that it makes. Additionally
it categorises each efficiency in terms of being cashable (ie
funds are available to spend on other requirements) or uncashable
(ie the efficiency has a worth to the organisation but no hard
cash is released).
The primary aim the EMM is to provide a structure
and set of protocols that allows efficiency savings to be captured
and valued in a consistent way. Guidance has also been prepared
to help users calculate the value of the efficiency saving that
the EMM will track. For example the guidance provides recognised
values for time/process savings, thus helping to ensure that there
is consistency.
Being a new solution, protocols etc are still
evolving, but it is expected the EMM will facilitate the identification
of good practice that will then be shared with others. It is a
solution that will enable procurement professionals to demonstrate
their value to their organisation, as well as make it easier for
the organisation to complete its reporting requirements.
In addition to HEFCE promoting it to the HE
sector, the Department's Centre for Procurement Performance has
licensed the EMM so that FE colleges can use it, and colleges
will be encouraged to use it as part of doing their college returns.
REAL LIFE
EXAMPLES
Our efficiency programme brings together a set
of policy initiatives which are making a real difference to the
way in which frontline institutions operate. Many of the policies
are about helping frontline professionals to get the very best
from their resources and thereby obtain better outcomes for learners.
For example, the use of ICT in lesson preparation is enabling
teachers to carry out preparation tasks more quickly and efficiently,
freeing up teachers' productive time to enable them to bring greater
quality to their lessons. Many teachers have told us about the
positive effects of ICT in helping them to work more efficiently:
— one language teacher in a secondary
school said that a software package she had bought allowed pupils
to match words to pictures. Before acquiring the software package,
she would have developed her own materials and would have had
to seek out the pictures herself, which would have taken a lot
of time.
— a teacher in an inner city primary
school realised that many digital resources available at the time
would not address the needs of her learners with English as an
additional language. She spent some time creating a set of easily
amendable resources and evaluated their impact. Since then, her
resources have been adopted by other teachers and learning support
staff in the school, and they recently became available to others
in her location via a Learning Gateway. In this way, practitioners
facing similar challenges have access to resources that are applicable
to their particular needs without needing to spend time creating
their own from nothing.
Question 114 (Jeff Ennis) The effect on field
trips of the introduction of the Dedicated Schools Grant
The introduction of the Dedicated Schools Grant
(DSG) makes no difference to the ability of schools to pay for
field and other trips from their delegated budgets. The DSG changes
the way the Government provides funding for schools and other
provision for pupils to local authorities; but the local distribution
of funds by local authorities to schools through the local formula
should not be affected, except that all schools are now receiving
multi-year budgets.
Since the school funding settlement for 2006-08
is a good one for schools and authorities across the country,
with national average per pupil increases of 6.8% and 6.7% in
the two years, there should be no reason why schools generally
should need to reduce their expenditure on this kind of valuable
activity. But we believe that schools should be free to decide
their own expenditure priorities.
The DSG funds each local authority's Schools
Budget, the scope of which has not changed. However, local authorities
have always been able to support the costs of outdoor education
centres and field trips, by maintaining centres and perhaps offering
discounted rates to schools in their area, from what used to be
the local education authority (LA) Budget. Under the new arrangements,
the LA budget is no longer separately identified, but the expenditure
it supported remains within the local government finance system.
The total resource for local government has
been increased by 4.5% in 2006-07 and 5% in 2007-08 and includes
extra provision in formula grant, over and above previous plans,
of £305 million and £508 million in each year respectively.
Increases of this size are over double the current rate of inflation.
Councils decide on how to achieve best value from these extra
resources.
July 2006
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