Examination of Witnesses (Questions 64-103)
LESLEY ADAMS,
LUCY CONNOLLY
AND JAMIE
LANG
9 DECEMBER 2009
Q64 Chairman: I welcome Lesley
Adams, Jamie Lang and Lucy Connolly to our proceedings. It is
nice to have such a good geographic spread on this particular
subject because we want to learn how the single funding formula
affects a whole range of activities up and down the country. You
have not been chosen just because of geographic spread, but because
you know a lot about this stuff, and we need to be educated. Lesley
Adams, here we are looking at the single funding formula. The
Government have been spending more money on early years than ever
before in our country's history; they want a more transparent
system that funds by take-up not place. Everything seems to be
going in the direction of a sensible policy, but we have taken
evidence that people are not happy out there in the real world
of early years. What is the problem, Lesley? Can you tell us?
Lesley Adams: I can have a go.
As you say, a lot of funding has been put into the early years
not just in Birmingham, but nationally in the last dozen years,
and I do not want to play that down. Birmingham has a history
of nursery education that goes back 60 or 70 years to the second
world war. There is a basis there that possibly some of this stuff
ignores. I have no difficulty with transparency. It is a really
good idea but, as your Committee probably knows, our particular
issue in Birmingham is not transparency, but the fact that we
have 25 maintained nursery schools that we are very proud of,
many of which provide full-time places. On the basis of funding
participation rather than places, we need to do a whole lot more
work to find a way to preserve those schools and, as things stand
at the moment, that will be very difficult for us to do.
Q65 Chairman: How long is
a full-time place? How long does a child get?
Lesley Adams: Five hours a day.
Q66 Chairman: Why is that
under threat?
Lesley Adams: Because we are going
to have to fund on participation rather than on place, which in
itself is not a bad thing. I am not suggesting it is. It is a
good principle. We will have to have a set of criteria for funding
participation beyond part-time, based on deprivation factors.
Again, that is also fine, but some of our nursery schools are
not necessarily in the areas of the greatest deprivation in the
city. Part of the effect of the funding formula will be that some
of the funding will go to the private, voluntary and independent
sector—the settings that are in the most deprived parts
of the city. Again, I am not saying that is not right, but the
impact of moving the money around means that the maintained nursery
sector is threatened. As an officer working within our existing
funding envelope, I have not been given extra money to fund the
PVI sector—those in the deprived areas—and safety
net the maintained nursery schools. I am in a bit of a cleft stick,
so we in Birmingham are having what we consider to be a very generous
safety net for two years. That will mean that the maintained nursery
schools take a bit of a hit for a couple of years, but a lot smaller
hit than they would have done if we had introduced this from day
one. We have not had the time to do it, but we intend to work
on a set of criteria whereby the most disadvantaged in the city
get extra hours but, again, that will not necessarily mean that
all of our nursery schools will not then take a hit if they are
not admitting those most deprived children. Does that make sense?
Q67 Chairman: It does make
sense. Jamie, does that make sense to you or do you have a very
different situation in your neck of the woods?
Jamie Lang: We have a rather different
situation in Sheffield. We only have three stand-alone maintained
nursery schools. One of our problems is that we had understood,
until July this year, that because we only had such a small number
of maintained nursery schools, we would be allowed to continue
to fund them on a places rather than actual numbers basis, at
least for a transitional period. We were led to believe that by
the document "Implementation of a single funding formula
for early years: Interim guidance for local authorities",
published by the DCSF in July 2008. If I can just read out one
sentence, section 3.1 says, "Any exceptional use of place-led
funding should be based on clearly defined local imperatives such
as sufficiency and sustainability." Having received this
document we attended a DCSF information session in Leeds—a
half-day session—and we asked whether our interpretation
was correct. DCSF officers present told us that while they could
not guarantee that that would be the case, they thought it very
likely that we would be able to continue to fund our three stand-alone
maintained nursery schools on places rather than actual numbers,
although they could not absolutely confirm it 100% at that point
in time. When further guidance came out this year, it became clear
that we would not be allowed to do that and we would be required
to fund all forms of nursery provision on a pound per pupil hour
basis—so actual attendance rates. When we modelled the financial
implications of that for our three stand-alone nursery schools,
we found that unless we did something about it and took countervailing
action of some kind, they would lose significant amounts of money,
up to a six-figure sum—just over £100,000 in one case.
Q68 Chairman: Thank you. Lucy,
what do you think?
Lucy Connolly: My position is
slightly different because Hertfordshire is a pilot local authority,
so we are already working with the formula that has been devised.
Hertfordshire is a very big authority with a lot of towns but
a lot of rural issues. The consultation process that we would
have been going through this time last year involved all the major
stakeholders to make sure that we were as fair as we possibly
could be, and get the funding level at an appropriate level so
that we were not disadvantaging particular groups. Obviously my
particular role is around quality. We have 800 providers of three
and four-year-old funding and they are roughly split between half
in the private and voluntary sector and half in nursery classes.
Q69 Chairman: In the maintained
sector?
Lucy Connolly: Yes. And we also
have 15 maintained nursery schools, so we have a lot of people
providing it. Hertfordshire's model, after a huge amount of work,
was to try to improve the funding for the PVIs and not disadvantage
our nursery classes. Our nursery schools have been protected as
best the authority can, very generously, to try and ensure that
the quality continues by making good use of the supplements to
support some of the costs that they have inherently got, because
they have a head teacher, qualified teachers, etc. So the PVIs
have been underfunded compared with the nursery schools and the
nursery classes. We have raised the funding level for them, which
will have an impact on the quality to come. On the whole, we feel
that it has gone well for the majority of providers and that we
have achieved the aim of a single funding system. But obviously
Hertfordshire has committed to early years by supporting the early
years settings through other funding streams to make sure that
we did not disadvantage our schools and our nursery schools.
Q70 Chairman: So your pilot
is on course, you haven't got the problems that Lesley and Jamie
have, and you are not closing down any of the maintained sector?
Lucy Connolly: We're not closing
down any of the maintained sector, but the maintained nursery
schools feel under threat. At the moment, out of 15, we had 11
under the formula that didn't lose any money and we had four that
did—not vast amounts of money, but they did lose money,
and they are protected for a period of time.
Q71 Chairman: What period
of time?
Lucy Connolly: The statutory qualifications
they must have in a nursery class and a nursery school have been
protected. Where we have nursery nurses in nursery schools, but
in our PVIs they have people perhaps being slightly less well
paid, we have protected those posts because they have been there
for an awfully long time, and that is over a period of years.
Q72 Mr Pelling: Can I start
with Lucy, as we have just talked about the experience of a pilot
programme. I appreciate that there is often a great benefit in
being a pilot—you are under way—but in terms of change
and quality of provision, has it been worth the effort?
Lucy Connolly: We were working
on it before the single formula came in, because we had a driver
in Hertfordshire to improve the quality for children wherever
they are. Obviously, that is my major job—not necessarily
the dynamics of the formula. If a child goes to a PVI, we want
them to have the best quality—equally, if they are in a
nursery school or in a nursery class. We have been trying to narrow
the gap between achievement in our PVI sector and our nursery
classes in the maintained. We hope that the increase in funding
for the PVI will mean that that will enable them to plan, for
their own professional development, and us to reflect on what
they need to do in a way that they have not been able to do in
the past. Schools have naturally had a pot of money, and have
been able to have in-service training and close the school for
a day, and everybody gets trained. It has been much more difficult
for the PVI sector, because there hasn't necessarily been the
money to pay them. We are beginning to see that beginning to happen
in the last two terms. We are being asked to come and do an INSET
day for private and voluntary settings because they can afford
to say to people, "We will pay you to come to it". That
is going to have much more impact if you have all heard the same
message around a particular thing. It is too soon to measure,
but we hope that we will begin to get improved outcomes from our
PVI sector. We are measured, at the end of foundation stage, on
our narrowing the gap and on our threshold. That happens well
before reception. You need to have the quality running through
0 to 5 and that is what we have tried to do in Hertfordshire:
to look very early on—early intervention—and then
make sure when they go into the PVI, it is a good quality nursery
class or school, and into reception.
Q73 Mr Pelling: My local authority
has been a pilot. They report good news, but that a little like
the initial introduction of local management of schools there
is inflexibility in the formula. Would the Department's guidelines
themselves show sufficient flexibility to deal with issues of
diversity of need? I am sure Hertfordshire has its own share of
social disadvantage. Is it flexible enough in that particular
respect? A final, important additional question to this part of
my questioning—what were the key problems? Could you say
quickly what the problems were?
Lucy Connolly: Working together
has developed a professional respect for everybody who is working
in 0 to 5, particularly with our PVI and our maintained. The key
problem for Hertfordshire was supporting our nursery schools in
a way that they did not feel that they were going to be marginalised.
With lots of the supplements we have tried to make sure that,
overall, there is much more funding being directed to early years
in Hertfordshire, and we have tried to make a differentiation
between sectors where appropriate. If you need a qualified teacher,
which you do in a nursery class and in a nursery school, the funding
is put in there to enable you to do that. Does that help?
Q74 Mr Pelling: It does help,
thank you very much. As was said in the introductory remarks,
this has been a debate that has been going on for a very long
time. I can remember that when I was chairman of education 20
years ago, there was a debate on top share between early years
and other parts of the education service. Do the two other witnesses
welcome the Government initiative on reforming early years funding?
Was single formula funding the right way of addressing it?
Jamie Lang: Yes, we welcome it
in that sense. There is always a choice to be made between simplicity
and transparency on the one hand, and fairness through more complex
formulae on the other. In this case, the private providers, who
we currently fund on a very simple pound per pupil hour basis,
will find that they have a bit more flexibility in their funding
and there will, for the first time from next year, be specifically
identified formula elements—in our case for quality and
deprivation. For the schools it is the other way round. They are
used to a very complicated funding formula, which takes into account
the fuel type that is used in the school, the length of the grass,
almost—that sort of thing. Because they are moving to what
for them is a more simple formula, it creates winners and losers.
The benefit will be that they will be able to understand more
easily why they have the amount of money they've got, but we have
a responsibility as an authority, which I believe we can implement
successfully, to protect the losers, to ensure that the losses
are not of a scale that cannot be managed reasonably.
Mr Pelling: Lesley?
Lesley Adams: I welcome it, too.
I remember the beginning of local management of schools and some
of the anxiety of that time, and it is very similar. My only regret
is probably that this sees the three and four-year-olds in isolation
from the younger children and the older reception age children.
I do not think you can just look at this age group. You've got
to look at the linkages through the children's centres, through
a pilot for two-year-olds—which we are lucky enough to have—and
into the later foundation stage. Being a bit parochial, where
you have small primary schools, you have to consider the impact
on them of later year groups of this funding formula, and governors'
willingness to manage things such as children's centres through
their extended schools powers.
Mr Pelling: I have always felt that the
formula can be terribly restrictive. Indeed, I was disciplined
by Angela Rumbold for refusing to introduce it in Croydon.
Chairman: The imagination boggles at
your being disciplined by Angela Rumbold.
Q75 Mr Pelling: I know you're
in a hurry so I won't do any more reminiscing. The Government's
aims with the formula were greater flexibility for parents, improved
choice and quality—that is an issue which we have already
commented on. Do you think the formula can deliver on that?
Jamie Lang: It can deliver. It
just requires us to be flexible and creative in using the space
that we are given within the formula regulations. For example,
in the case of the problems around the stand-alone maintained
nursery schools, in Sheffield, as soon as we had it confirmed
that we would not, as we had originally thought, be allowed to
continue to use funding on a place rather than an actual attendance
basis, we consulted the DCSF. We have now instituted an additional
formula factor for those schools, based around senior management
costs being specific to that type of provider, which we believe
largely sorts out their financial problems. I am an accountant,
but I would like to make it clear that, despite whatever promise
may have been made, I have been advised by our quality people
on the learning and achievement service that these schools are
seen as beacons of excellence and that they are to be maintained.
I am confident that we will find ways to make the formula viable
and they will be maintained.
Chairman: We'll move on. Karen.
Q76 Ms Buck: Can you help
me understand a bit better the itemisation of the cost burden
on nurseries, as between participation and places? What is that
composed of?
Jamie Lang: Yes. This financial
year, 2009-10, our three nursery schools are allocated an approved
number of places. It could be 36 or 52 places and they are allocated
a rate per place. If it's £3,000 per place, the funding consists
of one times the other. If those places are not filled, that funding
is still guaranteed them.
Q77 Ms Buck: I think you mentioned
that in Sheffield there is up to a 30% reduction in the designated
budget as a consequence of this shift. Is it fair to say that
the majority or all of that shortfall is made up of unfilled places?
Jamie Lang: No. In our case, out
of the three schools, we believe with one of them that a significant
part of the problem—about half the problem in financial
terms—is accounted for by the fact that it is not full.
It is only just over half full. But the other issue concerns small
institutions with diseconomies of scale, such as high overheads
for premises and senior management costs. Compared with the size
of larger primary and secondary schools, they are in unit-cost
terms more expensive to run. We propose to get round that by inserting
a specific formula funding element for those schools to recognise
that.
Q78 Ms Buck: I understand
that issue about overheads very well. Both my boroughs have a
number of maintained nursery schools. I am still not sure how
that relates back to the participation/places discrepancy. You
have given us an example of a nursery in difficulties because
of unfilled places but is that something that is replicated across
other local authorities? You're shaking your head, Lesley.
Lesley Adams: Our difficulty is
not with unfilled places. As I said earlier, it is with the shift
from full-time to participation-based funding, in which the national
entitlement is to a part-time place. We haven't been a pilot,
so I'm aware that in Birmingham we still have to do some work
on how we might allocate full-time places to the most deprived
children, and we will do that during the period of the safety
net. I think the question was, "Is it going to work?"
Yes, I think in some cases it will work, because some of those
schools attract those children, and their money will be affected.
Also, we have to do some work about incentivising quality because
as yet we have not reached a consensus. So those two things give
me heart that we will get to a point, but I would still repeat
that the problem is going to be with those schools that don't
take in children who attract extra money because they are not
deprived enough, if you will. They will have to stop taking full-time
children and take part-time children, which in itself might not
be a difficulty, but it might be, and I think that for us there
will be an impact on the PVI sector, which the sector hasn't yet
understood.
Q79 Ms Buck: To play devil's
advocate, what you appear to be saying is that in order to increase
the quality and possibly the hours of provision to children in
deprived communities, some of which is being met through the voluntary
sector, you would be reducing the provision in maintained nurseries
serving less-deprived areas.
Lesley Adams: We will be requiring
schools to take in part-timers rather than full-timers, which
effectively equates to a financial cut, unless they can fill up
with more part-time children. They might be able to do that because
our sufficiency assessment suggests that parents prefer the maintained
sector, which could mean that they leave the PVI sector.
Chairman: They'd leave the PVI sector?
Lesley Adams: We are in the early
stages of this. I am crystal ball gazing a little bit here, Chair,
but our parents tell us that they prefer maintained provision.
If, effectively, some of our maintained provision is going to
take in part-time children, they will be taking in double the
number they take in at the moment. Those children will come from
somewhere, and they will come from the PVI sector. But I am speculating—we
are so early into this and don't really know.
Q80 Ms Buck: One of the two
boroughs that my constituency covers is the royal borough of Kensington
and Chelsea, and five of the maintained nurseries there are considered
to be under threat as a result of the formula. This is, however,
at least the second and possibly the third time that the local
authority has attempted to close those nurseries. You may not
be able to comment, but I wonder whether there is a little bit
of a sense that some local authorities are using this as convenient
cover for levelling down on expensive maintained nurseries, the
money from which they would rather have put into the pot to ease
their own financial burdens. That may not be true in your local
authorities, but I just wonder if you could speculate on whether
this may be the case elsewhere.
Lesley Adams: I'm not sure I want
to speculate, but I'd like to be very clear that that is not the
case in Birmingham. We would like to hang on to our 25 nursery
schools because they are like engines developing quality provision
that others can learn from. We'd really like to hang on to them.
The presumption against closure is sort of helpful, but I think
it is in conflict with the rest of the advice in some ways.
Chairman: Lucy, do you want to speculate?
Lucy Connolly: Yes. I don't think
that would be the case in Hertfordshire. Equally, 12 of our 15
nursery schools are lead agencies for the children's centre agenda
and the other three are not, but they all do extended provision
and so they are offering a lot more than just a two-and-half-hour—going
to be three-hour—session. They have exemplary practice and
are highly thought of, but what we have tried to do is ensure
that we protect them and at the same time recognise that they
are going to be more expensive to run. So how are we going to
equate that across the board? That is where the debate goes, if
you have 800 other providers. We want to make sure that we keep
our nursery schools as exemplary practice, but we also need to
fund our PVI sector to be exemplary practice as well, and enable
it to have the opportunity to develop in the same way. They are
never going to cost as much to run as a nursery school, because
a lot of nursery schools have got big floor areas and need to
have a head teacher—a statutory requirement—so it
is about the differentiation of funding, I think, according to
the sector.
Jamie Lang: I have already said
that there is no intention to close any of our three nursery schools.
We welcome the opportunity that arises through the introduction
of this new way of funding to perhaps use a little pressure for
efficiencies that was not there previously.
Q81 Chairman: In a city such
as Sheffield, you have all your eggs in a PVI basket. Around 43%
of PVIs say that they don't really want to take the paid-for children
and that they can't make any money out of them. What if 43% of
your PVIs said, "Tough, we don't want to provide for these
kids any more"? What would you do?
Jamie Lang: I don't think that
situation is going to arise. The modelling that we have done shows
that, on most of the options that we have looked at, all the PVIs
would be small winners. I certainly have not heard in any of our
briefings with PVI representatives that they would want to turn
the funding down. Obviously, people would always like more money—they
always ask for more money—but I think that the PVIs generally
in Sheffield see this as a step in the right direction. We have
been able to assure them that, while it is not a gold mine—we
won't have huge additional amounts of money—it will be moving
up rather than down.
Chairman: We move on to Graham and unintended
consequences.
Q82 Mr Stuart: "Unintended
consequences" is a great title. Is it possible to adhere
to all the guidance issued by DCSF without increasing the share
of funding that comes from the dedicated schools grant given to
early years?
Jamie Lang: Possibly not. As I
understand it, it is not a statutory requirement at the moment
to have a quality element in the formula, but we are strongly
encouraged to do so. That money has to come from somewhere. We
intend to put money into quality. That comes from within the dedicated
schools grant.
Q83 Mr Stuart: Is "quality"
about the quality of the staff, their qualifications and so on?
Jamie Lang: Yes, and there are
options for what factors you would link the funding for quality
to. In Sheffield, we propose to link it mainly to staffing qualifications.
That money obviously has to come from somewhere. I have been involved
in meetings this week with other council officers looking at the
pressures on next year's budget and seeing how we match those
to the amount of money available. Our intention to slightly increase
the funding of early years is a tension that will not be fully
worked out until we finally set the school and PVI budgets at
the end of February to the beginning of March 2010. Perhaps this
will be the last year of significant real-terms growth in the
money for schools that comes to the council, and we believe that
we should be able to manage it in 2010-11. We all know that from
2012 onwards, there may be increased pressures that will make
further progress more difficult to achieve, but the one year,
2010-11, where we have actual figures shows that we will be further
above inflation in real-terms growth in schools funding, so we
hope to use some of that for marginal increases in early years
funding right across the board.
Q84 Mr Stuart: I wonder whether
Lucy or Lesley want to comment on that. Do your authorities agree
with the Government that increased funding and, if necessary,
a greater sum of the reallocation of funding elsewhere in the
education budget should go to early years, and that that offers
the best return on investment in child welfare and education?
Lesley Adams: I think you started
off by wondering whether the current allocation of the DSG covered
what the Government are asking us to do.
Mr Stuart: It was more whether you would
effectively be raiding. Will you need to reallocate and increase
funds from the dedicated schools grant in order to deliver the
DCSF guidelines? In other words, the additional funding that is
going to LEAs is not in itself sufficient if you don't dip into
the dedicated schools grant.
Lesley Adams: I believe so. I
am not a technical person like Jamie, so I can't put figures on
it, but I believe we will. We have already been to the Schools
Forum to say that that is our belief, so it is aware of the pressures
that are on us.
Q85 Mr Stuart: Sorry, but just to
be absolutely clear, you believe it will be necessary to reallocate
the funds, not that there are sufficient funds without that?
Lesley Adams: They are not sufficient.
There will be a need for more in order to do everything we are
being asked to do and keep nursery schools open.
Q86 Mr Stuart: Is that your
view as well, Lucy?
Lucy Connolly: Well as part of
the pilot, the Schools Forum agreed to some additional funds so
that we could pilot it and see what the needs were going to be
in future years. We have not got a quality supplement in our formula
at the moment. We are obviously going to need to re-examine that
in 2011-12. It is quite a tricky one to decide whether you give
more money to your good and outstanding settings or to those that
are inadequate or satisfactory. We are still debating exactly
how we would make judgements on quality. The Schools Forum agreed
some money from the dedicated schools grant. Obviously there are
representatives of all sectors in Hertfordshire on that. I lead
early years. My passion is that if we get it right for the youngest
children, it will be good for them when they get older. That is
a personal take on it.
Q87 Mr Stuart: That is why
I was interested to know whether, without the single funding formula,
local authorities would have any way of looking at allocating
more funds to early years. Everyone accepts early intervention
and certainly hopes that it is a good investment. Is that the
attitude of the authorities overall?
Lucy Connolly: I guess, being
part of the pilot, we must have been up for looking at what the
implications were. I was not privy to the decision to be part
of the pilot. There is a commitment to early years in Hertfordshire.
Q88 Mr Stuart: Along with
quality, rurality is something that you are encouraged to invest
in but not necessarily given any money to invest in. Are there
any implications from the changes that will affect rural provision?
As part of that I should be interested to hear whether you feel
that you are able to offer similar access and quality of provision
in rural areas as you are in urban areas.
Lucy Connolly: Shall I start,
as we have quite a few rural providers. We've left the decision
on how we are going to fund our rural schools during the pilot
because we wanted to work on what it was going to look like. They
have been protected over the years through other schemes so that
where villages have not got a nursery or have not got the private
and voluntary we have funded them in school as a part-time place.
We have continued with that this year. Over the next year we are
going to look at a menu of solutions because it differs in every
village. You could have a village that has a pre-school and then
it has a maintained school. If the pre-school is being funded
appropriately, that is no problem. If it's got no pre-school,
it is just making sure that the families get the access to the
places in the same way as you would do in the town. We have a
lot of village schools, so we are unpicking that but with a view
to protecting them to make sure that they will get just as good
an opportunity if they live in one of our villages as if they
lived in Hertford.
Q89 Mr Stuart: So will they
get the same, yes or no? Will you be able to unpick it and provide
it? You are talking about the challenges. I cannot get from your
answer whether you are going to deliver something that you would
consider comparable.
Lucy Connolly: Yes, we are. It's
just going to be getting a menu of options for different villages.
It might not be the same for each place. We have to look at how
we do it and what the formula would be.
Q90 Mr Stuart: With the DSG
being raided for early years, what will the impact be, if you
are capable of looking forward—I did not mean that to sound
as rude as it did. It is difficult looking forward knowing that
it is going to be a tougher financial regime. What are the impacts
likely to be on primary and secondary schools as a result of taking
the funding away?
Jamie Lang: As I said earlier
for one year—next year—we do not anticipate serious
problems. We are trying to prioritise early years a bit more than
the other sectors, but we believe that we will still be able to
achieve growth for the primary and secondary sector, which will
at least keep pace with inflation and also put in the additional
funding for personalisation that has been allocated by the Government.
After that, we are speculating and things look like they will
be much more difficult. At the end of the day the size of the
cake is limited. My guess at the moment would be that while the
PVI and the early years sectors in general will benefit in 2010-11,
further plans to push that for a longer bit further from year
two onwards might be frozen by the general economic situation
and funding level.
Q91 Mr Stuart: Moving back
to the early years sector itself, if one assumes, going ahead,
that there will be a much tougher financial situation, and if
you look at the single funding formula, isn't there a likelihood
over time that full-time places will diminish more and more, and
that we will have a universal part-time provision, and find it
very difficult to fund full-time places? Is that a risk?
Jamie Lang: In Sheffield, we don't
fund full-time places anyway. When local management of schools
was introduced, we stopped funding full-time places and moved
purely to funding nursery units in our schools on the basis of
part-time provision. It has not been an issue.
Q92 Mr Stuart: Does that show
a tension between universality and higher quality targeted at
children's greatest need? Is there a risk that full-time quality
provision where that is provided will be undermined, Lesley?
Lesley Adams: Yes, I think that
there is a very strong risk of that, maybe not in the short term
as you say, but in the long term. There will be a loss of those
engines of nursery schools.
Chairman: That's very concerning, then.
Lesley Adams: I think it's concerning
for the country, not just for Birmingham.
Chairman: I was thinking about the whole
country.
Lesley Adams: I am agreeing with
you.
Lucy Connolly: Historically, we
fund a very small number of full-time places—only about
30—which remain protected under the pilot. So it would not
have the same impact as it would on Birmingham, where there is
a lot of funding.
Q93 Chairman: Lucy, when you
are talking about all your villages, where you want to make sure
of those provisions for children, do you mean all children, or
do you mean children who are from a deprived background?
Lucy Connolly: I mean all children.
We have 90 schools considered to be small schools, out of 400
in our villages, or 25%—although I might not be absolutely
correct on the figures. They are in all sorts of different parts,
and are run in different ways. We've got first schools and very
small primary schools, which already have the challenges of mixed-age
classes. At the moment, children in a village, who are in receipt
of particular grants, will get funded just the same as those in
an urban area.
Q94 Chairman: I was at a seminar
with Kathy Sylva, a professor from Oxford University, who has
in the past advised the Committee. She was very concerned that
one of the unintended consequences will be that more and more
children will pitch up for a day—maybe 10 hours—or
one bit on one day and one bit on another, with no systemic approach
to early years education. She said that it is very bad for children.
Is that one of the unintended consequences? Parents might have
the flexibility, but what is convenient for a parent going to
work for the day may not be right for a child. Kathy Sylva said
that if you put a child in for a morning here and an afternoon
there, that child would think that it was a new place each time,
and would not get a systemic approach to early years stimulation.
Is that one of the dangers of what is happening?
Lesley Adams: I believe so. I
am not sure it's an unintended consequence. From the guidance
we have, it is quite clear that it is a possible consequence,
intended so that parents can move their children about—two
days with one provider and three days with another, in a variety
of ways—to suit parental employment. That is laudable in
some ways, but there are consequences for the child, which are
what you have described. It is not good.
Chairman: Lucy, what do you think?
Lucy Connolly: We haven't come
across it particularly widely at the moment, but if we are encouraging
flexibility—if a parent wants to be flexible with where
they put their child—the responsibility is going to be with
the parent. I hope that our early years providers will support
continuity and help them to understand that key attachments are
critical to young children's development. That's what we are working
on. Ultimately, I guess a parent could choose to send their child
to a different place if they wanted to, but I would hope that
we would have good relationships and would encourage them to think
about what is best for their child.
Chairman: Let's move to implementing
the single formula.
Q95 Mr Chaytor: Lesley, earlier
you expressed concerns about the time scale for the implementation.
Could I ask Jamie and Lucy about the situation in Sheffield and
Hertfordshire. Do you think that the time scale was adequate?
Could you have done with another year to do all the work?
Jamie Lang: I think that the time
scale is adequate. We fully expect to implement on 1 April 2010.
I think that you can have too much time; another year might be
a good idea to keep us bureaucrats in jobs and going to lots of
meetings and things, I suppose, but there must come a point when
you look at your models, take a decision and say, "We'll
do it that way." I think that we have had time—getting
on for two years—to do that, so it is adequate.
Lucy Connolly: I would agree.
We did not feel that it was rushed. We certainly did not get the
impression from our stakeholders—the providers—that
they were feeling rushed into it. We consulted widely, we had
enough time to look at what our responses were and to ensure that
we did the best that we could from them. We felt that we had enough
time to implement it.
Q96 Mr Chaytor: Was the whole
process complicated by the simultaneous extension of the 12 and
a half hour entitlement to 15 hours and would it have been easier
and simpler for you had that been done a year earlier or later?
Jamie Lang: We did the two and
a half additional hours a year in advance because we were a pilot
for that, so we got that under our belts first. As a general principle,
when you get different factors coming together in a time line
like that, it can be a problem. I can imagine that other authorities
have problems. For example, we have a problem this year because
we have to implement the new single funding formula at the same
time as we have significant population growth in those age groups
and that is causing us problems.
Lesley Adams: I think that it's
a great shame that the 15 hours' extension and the single formula
have come at the same time, because they have for us. It's taken
our eye off the 15 hours—it hasn't completely because we
are running a pilot and are getting some good stuff out of it,
but where we should have the time to talk to people about the
different models of delivering 15 hours, which is quite exciting
and challenging, we are spending all our energy being cross with
each other about the single funding formula. Okay, maybe there
are lots of things that we have done wrong in Birmingham, but
I think that it is a great shame; they should have been separate.
Q97 Mr Chaytor: I am interested
in the different perceptions of the whole process, between Birmingham
and Sheffield for example. Obviously, it is not simply an urban/rural
dichotomy, because we have two major cities with completely different
experiences. Could I ask about Birmingham. Did you have difficulties
in getting the cost data from providers? Is the variability of
cost or the reluctance of providers to submit costs part of your
problem?
Chairman: An interesting smile, Lesley.
Lesley Adams: It's part of our
history, yes. We have had some difficulties and I'm not sure to
what extent they have been any different to anyone else's difficulties.
We did a cost analysis twice—the first time using the DCSF
template and the second time using one that we developed ourselves.
The first time we got a 33% response, but the quality of the information
was not terribly good, and the second time we got a 17% response,
but the quality was better. We spent a lot of time doing that,
which is, perhaps, why I am saying that we have not had enough
time because we really would have liked the quality of that to
be better.
Q98 Mr Chaytor: But there
is no consensus among providers now about the costing model?
Lesley Adams: We haven't had any
major feedback from the PVI sector about the ultimate outcome
of that, but that is another issue that, perhaps, is peculiar
to Birmingham. I do not know. We do not have very strong umbrella
groups that we can work with. For example, the National Day Nurseries
Association is not very strong in Birmingham, so we are always
working with single providers or very willing volunteers who are
trying to represent the whole PVI sector when really they can't.
That has been a difficulty for us. If I might just go on a bit,
I think that the outcomes from the pilots have been rather slow
in coming. We think that we have been waiting for information
from the pilots that has not come and it would have helped us.
Some of the things that Lucy said today have been helpful but
I did not know them till today.
Q99 Mr Chaytor: Do I take
it from the Birmingham and Hertfordshire perspective, given that
you are ready to implement as of 1 April 2010, that there is a
now a consensus among all providers about the costing model that
you established? I am directing that to Jamie.
Jamie Lang: Our experience in
Sheffield on this part of the exercise has been very similar to
yours in Birmingham. We too sent out the DCSF template initially
and got a very poor response rate, despite having someone on the
phones phoning up and trying to help them through it. We then
sent out a second cost analysis form, greatly simplified, in the
hope that that would work. Putting the two together, we only had
about a 31% response rate and a lot of the forms were returned
only partially completed or they did not add up, etc. Our conclusion
was that the cost analysis had turned out to be a bit of a waste
of time, unfortunately. The sample size was so small that it was
not very meaningful and, within that small sample size, the range
of costs being demonstrated were absolutely huge, so it did not
enable us to say, "Looks like we should be funding at approximately
x amount per pupil hour." But, on the other hand, our general
communication to the PVI sector and the schools where we are aiming
to improve the level of early years funding overall generally
has ameliorated their concerns about the cost analysis exercise.
I think that the concerns that the PVI sector had about the cost
analysis exercise are more to do with the fact that they did not
want to share what they saw as confidential information in many
cases—commercial information—with us. We have eight
independent schools with nurseries. None of those made a return.
Then there are the child minders who work at home; none of those
made a return—19 of them—which I think is probably
to do with that.
Q100 Chairman: Why don't they
return?
Jamie Lang: In the case of the
schools, because they saw the data as being confidential and nothing
to do with the council. In the case of the child minders, because
they are just not used to dealing with financial data and forms
in that way.
Q101 Mr Chaytor: In Hertfordshire,
is there a consensus on costing?
Lucy Connolly: There is now, because
we are part of the pilot, but actually it was very difficult to
get information to make sense of when we were trying to establish
the funding. It was easier to lock into existing practice, with
perhaps unreasonably low costs that some were charging, while
some seemed awfully high. So, we decided that we were not going
to get a clear picture, and what we had to decide was the theoretical
model of what we wanted to do and how we wanted to fund it.
Q102 Annette Brooke: Just
a very quick question, because I think it is an interesting example
of local decision making that is throwing up variations across
the country. I wondered whether, very quickly and very precisely,
from each authority, you could tell me exactly how much money
you are allocating for the deprivation factor—presumably
that is per child per hour, but if you could just clarify that.
I want to see the variation from the three authorities.
Chairman: You're the finance manager,
Jamie, we'll start with you.
Jamie Lang: In our case it is
15p on top of the basic rate. This year, for example, PVIs are
funded £3.51 per hour. We intend to inflate that to £3.62
next year, with the new system, which will then apply to schools
as well. On top of that they will be able to get up to 15p additional
money for deprivation factors and up to 20p for quality factors.
Lucy Connolly: I have absolutely
no idea, I'm afraid. I have no idea how much is in our formula
for deprivation, but I shall find out and let you know.[1]
Lesley Adams: We are currently
still in our formal consultation—it finishes on Friday.
It will be something between 44p and 61p an hour, but I shall
not know for a while.[2]
Annette Brooke: Thank you. I am just
interested in the hue of the variations. Could I just place on
the record—I have to do this at some point—a declaration
of interest. I am president of the Campaign for Real Nursery Education,
to which a number of head teachers of these stand-alone nursery
schools belong.
Q103 Chairman: I never thought
of that. I think I am something to do with the National Day Nurseries
Association, which is based in my constituency. Thank you for
that, Annette. Come on, here's a big change—a really big
change. You are from very different areas of the country. From
your answers to our questions, I am getting the feeling that this
is inconvenient and tough, but that you can manage it. I certainly
get that from you, Lucy.
Lucy Connolly: We think it's gone
well. A huge amount of work was done by lots of people working
in partnership, but we feel that it has enabled us to raise the
funding levels for our PVI, which will mean that they will be
able to strive to develop the quality further. We have done our
best for the nursery schools and would love to be able to continue
funding them at the level at which they were being funded. Some
of them did lose, on pupil count more than anything else. We feel
that we have an early years single funding formula. It has to
be tweaked in 2010-11 because of the way we have funded our PVI
sector. We want to change not the level, but how they have got
the money, in line with the information that has come out from
the DCSF. We have some tweaking to do, but on the whole the changes
are minor.
Chairman: Lesley, you don't seem to be
so happy.
Lesley Adams: Don't forget, we
are not a pilot authority. Maybe the extra year that Hertfordshire
has had was helpful. We can manage anything. As local authority
officers, things get chucked at us every day, and we manage them.
We will manage it, but I am not as confident as Lucy that the
outcome will be universally okay. Maybe in a year's time I will
be.
Chairman: So if you had been given another
year as a pilot—
Lesley Adams: I would have liked
to have had longer to have better, longer conversations with all
of the sectors. I feel very rushed, but I know that I stand alone
on that one.
Jamie Lang: We feel as confident
as we can be that it will be implemented successfully next year.
There are still some tough negotiations to be had to ensure that
no sector loses out unduly. Generally speaking, we believe it
will go ahead and that it will be broadly welcomed.
Chairman: You have given excellent information
to the Committee. If you think of things that you should tell
the Committee or you think we missed, please be in communication.
You are invited to stay. You might find it very interesting to
hear what the Minister will say any moment now, especially considering
Lesley's most recent comments. If you wait for a while, you might
find out something to your advantage. We will see what that might
be.
1 See Ev 39. Back
2
See Ev 39. Back
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