Memorandum submitted by CASE (Campaign
for State Education)
CASE (Campaign for State Education) is a national
campaigning organisation committed to high quality and well resourced
education for all children and young people. It is a voluntary
organisation funded by members' subscriptions and donations and
it has no political affiliations.
CASE believes that whatever funding system is
used for schools it must be equitable and meet the needs of all
children. There are "winners and losers" in all funding
systems and currently some schools have surpluses, whilst others
have deficits. However it is important to ascertain the reasons
for these eg surpluses might be pre-allocated for a specific purpose.
CASE would seek reassurance as to how equitable the new three
year funding will be and the implications for "losers".
In particular CASE requests the Select Committee
to consider the following:
1. The three year funding cycle (initially
two years) and whether the planned "stability" may lead
to an inflexibility, which hinders schools' ability to plan. CASE
is particularly concerned that the DfES has not fully costed the
Workforce Remodelling reforms. With Planning, Preparation and
Assessment (PPA) time the DfES guaranteed a 1% funding increase
to cover the additional time, although the actual costs appear
to be much higher. CASE has requested information on the DfES
calculation to justify this 1% increase and a survey of all primary
schools (It is this sector where there are known to be budgetary
problems). In a reply to CASE, the DfES responded to an example
we gave on Salford schools by saying "Some of the Salford
heads do have tight budget situations and a lot are using their
surpluses or underspends to fund PPA" CASE believed this
situation is reflected across the country and using surpluses
and underspends is clearly not sustainable in the long term, particularly
if funding is calculated for two years without assessing the real
position in primary schools. It is also not clear whether the
1% increase will be carried forward to future years. A CASE Briefing
is attached.
Schools are now entering the third phase of
workforce remodelling with the restructuring to Teaching, Learning
Responsibilities (TLR) and future budgets may be fixed before
the financial implications of this are known.
2. CASE would also like to draw the Committee's
attention to a 2005 Association of London Government report "Breaking
Point". This examines the impact of pupil mobility on schools.
One of the conclusions is that schools with high mobility face
additional demands which translate into additional costs for extra
administration, teaching and other support eg the induction and
settling in process has clearly identifiable costs, but the DfES
does not provide any additional resources for schools with high
pupil movement.
The report also concludes that schools with
high mobility are often schools with high levels of educational
disadvantage. Such schools are often already underfunded to meet
this educational disadvantage. This is even more acute in schools
with significant numbers of children with English as a second
language, and some schools have a significant number of pupils
in all three categories. This is also supported by DfES research
which acknowledges that current funding does not provide sufficient
resources to meet the needs of educationally deprived children
or those with English as an additional language. (Study of Additional
Educational Needs, Phase II, PwC, April 2002). The schools often
do well by these pupils but lack sufficient funding, and indeed
may suffer financial penalty because they do not have full pupil
rolls. This report supports CASE's view that the current funding
formula does not address the multiple additional needs in some
schools.
CASE requests the Committee to particularly
consider these inequalities in the funding system, since the children
who are affected are often those who most need access to educational
opportunity. In this context, CASE believes it is not equitable
that up to £6 billion is being spent on capital costs for
200 academies.
September 2005
| 
