Waltham Forest schools face a funding meltdown – parents need to organise in response

'Parents will start to see staff being let go this year. They will see bigger class sizes, fewer subjects on offer. They will see the person looking after special education needs go, and all those other additional services disappear'.  Russell Hobby, General Secretary, National Association of Headteachers

Parents need to have their voice heard

Welcome to state education in 2017 - a system on the brink as schools face a growing financial crisis which threatens the education of children across England. It seems barely a day goes by lately without new stories of schools taking increasingly drastic action to balance books in the face of the worst funding cuts in a generation.

The Fair Funding for All Schools campaign is bringing together a coalition of parents across all parts of the country to stop the cuts and make the case for investment in our schools, our children and our future.

Parents in Waltham Forest, with their proud legacy of fighting for progressive and inclusive state education, are urged to join the fight.

Why is there a growing funding crisis in our schools?

Despite the Department for Education’s claim that the government has “protected the national schools budget in real terms for the duration of the Parliament”, evidence shows that per pupil funding is set to decrease over this period. The National Audit Office say that the government’s spending plans do not provide for funding per pupil to increase in line with inflation. With over 450k growth in pupil numbers, funding per pupil is only rising by 1.3 per cent between 2015/16 and 2019/20.

At the same time, schools are facing increasing cost pressures. Pay rises, the introduction of the National Living Wage, higher contributions to National Insurance and the teacher pension scheme, non-pay inflation and the Apprenticeship Levy mean significant additional costs for schools. The NAO says that these cost pressures will force schools to find £3bn in savings  – equating to an 8 per cent real terms reduction per year in pupil funding by 2020. Schools have not experienced this level of reduction in spending power since the mid-1990s.

These figures don’t take into account other cost pressures created by the government, for example by reducing the Education Services Grant which provides funding to local authorities and academies for education services, e.g. school improvement and Special Educational Needs, schools will now need to pay more for those services.

Emma Knights, Chief Executive of the National Governors Association puts it starkly “the organisations who speak for school leaders, including business leaders, are saying the same thing as we are: there simply is no longer enough money in the total pot to sustain adequately all schools in England”

What will be the impact on our schools?

This is going to have a massive impact on your schools. It is clear that every state school in the country is already facing a worsening financial situation. The number of Secondary schools spending more than their income doubled to over 60 per cent in the last five years.

The government expects schools to find two thirds of the £3bn savings through cutting staff costs. The NAO reports that spending on teaching staff fell from 56 per cent to 51 per cent from 2010 to 2015 in maintained schools and from 55 per cent to 52 per cent in academies over the same period. 

The latest schools census shows that last year there were 17,780 state secondary pupils taught in classes with 36 or more pupils – the highest number for a decade. The days of large classes are returning.

Schools facing increasingly difficult financial positions have turned to asking parents for termly cash payments to supplement core school budgets, three schools in my part of London have written to parents asking for termly donations of £30 - £50 per family to supplement school budgets.

Things in Waltham Forest are set to get even worse

For schools in Waltham Forest things are set to get even worse. In April 2018 the government will be introducing a new National Funding Formula (NFF) – the aim of which is to ensure more transparent and equal funding for pupils across all schools in England, addressing historical imbalances.

However, the government will achieve this by redistributing money between schools from a total pot that is shrinking in real terms. And therefore, according to the government’s own figures, 49 per cent of schools in England will lose even more funding with over 2 million children in the worst affected schools.

The impact of the NFF will be felt most obviously in large cities such as London and Manchester – London Councils report that 70 per cent of schools across Greater London will face budget cuts in a climate when school finances are already struggling.

According to analysis by the NUT, the total estimated reduction across all schools in Waltham Forest in real terms by 2020 will be over £20m. That works out at around a £538 reduction for every pupil in the Borough, the equivalent of the salaries of 541 teachers.

But this is not just an issue for London. The Times Education Supplement notes that the majority of those who are set to gain out of the NFF changes will still stand to lose out as increases will insufficient to meet funding shortfalls highlighted by the NAO.

Analysis by teaching unions indicates that around 98 per cent of schools in England will be net losers as a result of the combination of real-terms reductions, additional costs, growing pupil numbers and the impact of the NFF.

And, of course, the NFF will be directing money directly from Whitehall to individual schools – making it much more difficult for allocations to be informed by the kind of local knowledge available to schools forums – and cutting Local Authorities further out of the loop, thereby furnishing the way for further academisation.

Fair Funding for All Schools

Fair Funding for All Schools is a network of parents from all parts of England, that want the government to listen to our concerns about the funding situation facing state schools across the country.

We have two key asks of the government:

• Increase investment in all schools by protecting per-pupil funding in real terms for the life of this Parliament
• Provide the additional funding needed to implement the National Funding Formula that increases funding for maintained schools and academies in comparatively poorly funded areas of England without cutting funding per pupil for schools in any other part of the country, so that no school loses out.

Taking our inspiration from the brilliant work of campaign groups like Our Community – Our Schools we have been bringing together parent campaigners new and old, including many existing groups that have been active in the fight against free schools and academies in their area, in a national coalition to make the case for proper investment in state education.

We are staging public meetings at schools, meeting with MPs, representing parent voice in Westminster, holding days of action and generally getting our voice heard. We need the voice of Waltham Forest parents to be heard too.

Our website www.fairfundingforallschools.org has a range of materials that parents can use, you can sign and share our petition, use our guide and model answers to respond to the DFE consultation on the NFF and download model letters to MPs, councillors and the press.

Please join the fight.

 

 

 

What you need to know about Academy Schools

Under immense public pressure, the government has rowed back from its threat to force all schools to become academies, but it has made it clear that it will still force many other to do so and it still wants all schools to be academies by 2020.  

It can seem like a dry and difficult issue, but it really matters if your school becomes an academy. In this blog we try to explain why.  

There is no evidence that Academy Schools are better schools 

 As various studies have shown and a committee of MPs reviewing the evidence concluded, there is no proof that becoming an academy does anything to improve a school. In fact there is evidence that academies that are part of chains may well deteriorate and perform worse than state schools. ecent studies have indicated that state schools overall are outperforming academies. One things you can definitely say about the drive to force schools to become academies is that it’s not based on evidence. 

Academy schools are more likely to undermine teachers working conditions and try to employ less qualifies staff. 

Teachers matter. You want the best teachers, respected and supported to teach our children. Academies run themselves like businesses, because they have to make a surplus every year and they often have to pay big senior staff salaries. The only way they can do this is by cutting staff costs. This can mean trying to squeeze more teaching out of hard-working staff or cutting access to other conditions of service. In an NUT survey, 43% of teachers at academies reported coming under pressure to move onto worse contracts with rising workloads.  

Academy Schools tend to exclude children they think may damage their results 

All schools are under pressure to deliver results in tests. But community schools have strict rules that say they have to provide education to everyone, equally. Academies have more freedom to change their admissions policies and when combined with the obsession with results, this can have terrible consequences. Studies have found that academies are manipulating their admissions criteria to skew their intake away from children they think will damage their Ofsted results. Academies are also resorting to permanently excluding children they see as a ‘poor quality’. How can you be sure that your child will not fall victim to academies attempting to ‘game’ their admissions or disciplinary policies in pursuit of results? And what would you do if you thought that was happening? Which leads us to… 

Academy schools are less accountable to parents 

If you have a problem with your school, as things stand, you have several ways of getting something done about it. You can raise it with the Local Authority or its elected representatives, who have a responsibility to ensure that the schools are delivering on their core mission for the borough. There are also parent governors who are currently elected to school governing bodies. Academies on the other hand are essentially private companies who have a legal contract with the government in Whitehall to provide education in your area. They have no other responsibility except to remain solvent. Who will you complain to if you have a problem? The government?

  

Academy schools become more like businesses   

Once a school becomes an academy, the people running it may remain the same for a while but the evidence shows that governors and staff can quickly turn over in academy schools. Academies typically look to make their governing bodies smaller and increase the power of ‘super-heads’ so that they become more like the directors of multi-company enterprises. And power is concentrated in fewer hands, the evidence suggests that academies are more vulnerable to financial mismanagement, cronyism and nepotism. Academies have been plagued by a succession of stories based on investigations by the Education Funding Agency, such as the Perry Beeches scandal. A school’s ethos simply won’t survive the changes that academy status brings.  

This is not about education – but turning our schools into sources of profit 

In summary, there’s little evidence that academisation is about standards and while the government has shied away from forcing all schools to become academies, it’s now clear that it was never really about giving parents more choice. In reality, this is part of a longer term project to break up state schools and turn them into private companies. This will make it easier to ultimately turn them into schools that can be run for profit, as in parts of the USA, Sweden and Latin America. It also provides huge opportunities for companies to sell education technology to companies to reduce their ‘costs’ (teachers) and for private equity funds to exploit schools’ land assets. A small number of people stand to make a lot of money out of our schools and our children’s education. That’s what is driving the government’s push to force schools to become academies. It brings their dream a little closer. Unfortunately the record of for-profit schools in the US and Sweden shows that while shareholders turn nice profits, it is children and communities that suffer.   

What can we do? 

The government’s recent actions show that it knows that the tide is turning against academies and free schools and they may be running out of time to force their vision on us. We need to build support for a more positive vision and more positive policies for our schools. That's one reason why  OCOS developed our Charter. But in the meantime, it is possible to stop some schools becoming academies and it’s possible to mitigate some of the worst effects of academisation. But this requires parents and teachers to unite to campaign and show that they are not prepared to sit back and watch their schools being taken away from them.  

• Talk to other parents – set yourself a target to talk to three other parents and direct them to this blogsite where they can get more information. 
• Let us know if you’re happy to be a local contact for your school – we need people to tell us what’s happening in our local schools and to give information out to other parents.  
• Write to your local MP – Use the points in this post to write to your MP setting out your concerns about academisation and asking them to support our local schools. 
• Write to your local Councillor – we need the Local Authority to hear the same message… 

• Share this blog widely on social media. 

Help us turn this build an active community that unites parents and teachers alike in campaigning for better schools for all our children. 

 

OCOS statement on the 3 May day of protest against SAT tests

We are aware that many parents are discussing the forthcoming protest on Tuesday 3 May against the Key Stage 1 and 2 SAT tests and seeking more information or guidance over what they should do.

Who is coordinating the protest?

The protest on 3 May has been coordinated by parents groups, most notably the campaign group Let Kids Be Kids.

What is the protest about?

The action on 3 May is in response to the government’ growing obsession with early and harder testing. OCOS supporters have written on this blog about their anger at the Year 2 SATs, and the new, harder Year 6 SAT tests. Many of these tests will take place during the week beginning 3 May.

What is actually happening on 3 May?

Let Kids Be Kids are encouraging parents to withdraw their children from school on Tuesday 3 May for a day of ‘fun learning’ as a national protest against the SATs. They are quite clear that this is not a boycott as the tests do not all take place on the same day. It is instead a practical protest action that can be taken by parents to register their dissent from the test-driven education being forced on schools and teachers by the government.

Is it just parents of Y2 or Y6 kids who are participating?

The day of action is not confined to just those with children sitting year 2 or Year 6 SATs, it is a day on which parents can use withdrawal from school to show solidarity and register their anger, not at schools or teachers but at the government.

Won’t this hurt the schools?

These protests are intended to support schools and teachers and are supported by teaching unions. The aim is to put pressure on government to stop piling more demands on our children, teachers and schools.

What is the OCOS position on the protest?

OCOS supports this day of action.

We are also aware that this is a campaign at an early stage. As a consequence, many parents are only just becoming aware of it now and many more may not know about the day of action. Working parents may not be able to take the time off work. Some may not yet feel confident to take this action and may have unanswered questions about how their school will respond and whether they will be fined for an unauthorised absence.

In this case, we would ask that those of you who support the aims of the campaign send in a letter of support for the day of action. We have set out suggested text below:

TEMPLATE LETTER

Dear [Headteacher]

I am/We are writing to express support for the national day of protest against the Key Stage 1 and 2 SAT tests. This day of action is not aimed at schools or teachers. We know how hard you work for our children every day. Instead this action is intended to send a message to the government that parents do not support their policy of early and harder testing for children in primary schools.

I am/we are unable to withdraw my child for this day of action so they will be attending today / My child will be attending school today.

However, I/we support the aims of the day of action and reserve the right to withdraw my/our child from school in support of future days of action.

I would request that a copy of this letter is forwarded to the Board of Governors of the school and reported it its next meeting.

Yours sincerely,

I want to support the action by taking my child out of school for the day. How should I notify the school?

Any parents who wish to withdraw their children on that day can find a series of template letters they can use here.

https://letthekidsbekids.wordpress.com/what-you-can-do/

 

 

We need a broad coalition to defend our community schools from this latest attack

This was all supposed to be about parent power and choice, wasn’t it? The government has clearly decided that this particular story has run its course. Perhaps there was too much debate about academies’ records, too much resistance from schools, parents, local authorities, a slowing rate of change. So, the government has decided to change the game and take matters into its own hands.

Last week, the government announced that it will be bringing forward legislation to ensure that all maintained schools will now become academies, either as part of multi-academy trusts or, exceptionally, as stand-alone schools, regardless of what anyone else thinks. The requirement for schools to even have parent governors will be removed, meaning that parents will have no formal voice in their schools any more. Schools will be run by trusts on a business model that removes them further from their communities. We as parents, resident in our communities, will have less say than ever in the lives of our schools.

If the government has abandoned its rhetoric of choice, it also seems to have ditched the tiresome burden of evidence-based policy-making. There is simply no evidence that academies in themselves improve performance.[1] In fact sponsored chain academies in particular tend to perform less well than maintained schools. The number of voices saying this has only been growing in the last few years. Regardless of this, Nicky Morgan has decided that our schools will be academies, one way or another.

It seems likely instead that some sections of the government have grown tired of waiting and want to speed up the process of creating a market of competing trusts and chains with a dose of what used to be called ‘shock therapy’. The endgame for some in the government, as we have known for some years, is the creation of schools owned by shareholder-owned companies and run for profit, as has happened in Florida, Michigan and other areas of the US. Stories about empowering parents and improving schools got the Conservatives this far but not far enough and not fast enough. So, it’s decided to resort to simply dictating to parents, teachers, schools and communities.

What you can do now:

Our Community, Our Schools was set up to defend and promote our community schools and the progressive vision of education that sits behind them. The government’s latest move is a devastating attack on our schools and the idea that they should be embedded in and answerable to communities and the public. The government’s move has prompted widespread outrage and has the potential to mobilise a very wide coalition in protest. But if we are to frighten the government and give full expression to this potential, parents must be actively involved and at the centre of campaigning. We must ensure that we are reaching deep into our communities, raising awareness and involving more people than ever.

OCOS is planning how we can play our part in building a broad campaign now, but in the immediate term, here are some things we can do:

Petitions:
There are two petitions circulating which you can sign. Both have more than 100,000 signatures but we need to make them as big as possible to get attention to the depth and breadth of feeling on this issue. Please sign and share both:https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/124702

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/124747

Protest:

If you can make it, attend the emergency protest called by the NUT in central London, assembling at 6.30pm at Westminster Cathedral:

http://www.teachers.org.uk/sites/default/files2014/london.png

 

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[1][1] Henry Stewart surveys the evidence base for the Local Schools Network here: http://www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk/2016/03/the-white-paper-justification-for-academy-conversion-is-pathetic

http://www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk/2016/03/nicky-morgan-is-that-really-all-the-evidence-youve-got

The Education Bill: You can have any school you like as long as it's an Academy

So, the new Conservative government has unveiled its vision for education reform and it seems to be to settle accounts with comprehensive community education once and for all.

Nicky Morgan may not have Michael Gove’s gift for generating universal animosity but her actions since the Tories won their majority remind us that politics is not just personalities. Morgan’s Education Bill, published last week represents a nakedly partisan attack, not just on comprehensive community schools but on democracy and, ironically, parental choice.

What the Education Bill will do:

The Education Bill creates a new category of ‘coasting schools’, which the Secretary of State will define later in regulations and that will bring a whole new raft of community schools within her existing power to make an academy order by making them Eligible for Intervention. Intervention will include replacing headteachers (operating with a questionable assumption that there is an endless supply of ‘superheads’ ready to take their places), replacing governing bodies or making an academy order.

In the case of community schools rated by Ofsted as ‘inadequate’, the Secretary of State will have a new statutory duty to order them to become academies. This will make it effectively impossible to argue that the use of an academy order is a disproportionate response to inadequacy. Instead, academy status will become a necessary legal consequence of Ofsted’s rating. (*The legal implications of the Bill are usefully summarised here.). It also rests on the assumption that making them an academy is in itself a solution to this problem. Inadequate academies (surely a logical impossibility in this world view?) will simply be transferred to another academy sponsor.

The Bill seeks to close other so-called loopholes in existing legislation. By ‘loopholes’, Morgan means the statutory duty to consult on any academy order. This was already a weak bit of legislation that gave communities little real say, but nonetheless the Conservatives seem to have found it embarrassing that communities have used the rhetoric of parental choice and the mechanism of consultation to launch some remarkably effective challenges to the academy-producing machinery set up in Whitehall. So that has to go too.

Finally, the bill places a legal duty on governors to promote and facilitate the transition to academy status. So once the machinery swings into action, a school’s governors will have a statutory duty to help the process along the way. Again, it seems that situations like that at Thomas Gamuel in our own borough, where a governing body had to be replaced to remove democratic, community opposition, were proving embarrassing and irksome.

Running throughout the Education Bill is a barely concealed contempt for democracy and community voice. The law that allows the government to create academies was already undemocratic as it removed schools from democratic oversight with minimal process. Now the last democratic spaces are to be shut down and parental choice is revealed as a useful fiction. Nothing is to be allowed to get in the way of the academisation steamroller.

Faith-based policy:

The government will argue that choice and democracy are ultimately trumped by the interests of your child. All this is being done for the children, right? But of course we know that’s not true. As Henry Stewart from the Local Schools Network and others have argued, there is no evidence to support the idea that academy status is automatically beneficial for schools and there is some evidence that academy chains are doing worse than their community school equivalents.

This is remarkable because it shows that what’s happening here is faith-based politics. The government knows that academy status is not a magic bullet but it doesn’t care. It believes, on a fundamental level that community comprehensive school status is inherently wrong and appeals to evidence merely cloud the clarity of that insight. Its faith is based on the idea that the comprehensive experiment, like the welfare state and the NHS, are historic errors that need to be reversed and represent impurities in its emerging education market. And it is reinforced in this faith by the CEO’s of the academy chains who are queuing up to praise this bill the rafters. Just have a read of the quotes on the government’s press release, including from Waltham Forest’s own home-grown Reach2.

What can we do?

In the immediate term, the bill will face opposition, although with the government commanding a working majority and a woefully weak education opposition from Tristram Hunt, it’s difficult to see it being substantially amended. Nonetheless OCOS will be looking to support any attempts to weaken the bill, so watch this space.

However, with such a profound attack on democracy and our community schools, we have to do more. One answer to attempts to close down democracy and exclude people from the school system is to create more democratic pressure. That means that locally, we need to use every opportunity to demonstrate that even where formal mechanisms don’t exist, the voices of parents, teachers and communities can find expression through mass meetings, polls, surveys, protests.

Similarly, if the government and academy chains don’t want us to be involved in our local schools, then we should be getting even more stuck in, using every opportunity to make it clear that we don’t accept their vision and we don’t accept a passive role in our school system.

Finally, we need to continue to build organisations, policies and a vision for an alternative school system. Locally, we have tried to contribute toward this a borough-wide campaign oriented around a positive vision for our local schools, in the form of our Charter for Education and we’ll continue to develop this initiative. But there’s much more to do. Watch this space for more soon.