Spot the difference

They differ on funding, but all the parties say they want to set schools free. Can they resist the temptation to interfere?

By Mike Baker

All political parties want the voters to think that they offer different recipes for raising school standards. Yet on policy there are probably more similarities than differences. However, on the less tangible issue of future funding, there is more divergence.

Since it is the hardest to pin down, let us start with funding. Labour has made much play of the fact that “frontline school spending”, 16-19 education, and Sure Start will be protected from cuts until 2012-13. Indeed, the party has promised a 0.7 per cent real terms increase in school spending, and 0.9 per cent in 16-19 education, in 2011-12 and 2012-13.

However, these protected areas cover only about 75 per cent of the total DCSF spend. Other areas will have to produce those much touted “efficiency savings”. The Budget Red Book has already identified £350 million from the DCSF budget, including £25 million from Becta, the government agency promoting the use of information and communications technology, £40 million from the Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA), and £71 million from extended schools funding. And Teachers TV will have to move entirely online to save £5 million.

And while Labour is giving to schools with one hand, it also intends to claw back “efficiency savings” from frontline services with the other. In March, Schools Secretary Ed Balls said schools could “potentially” save £950 million through “the greater use of collaborative procurement, sharing back office staff between schools and federations, and other forms of collaboration”. A further £150 million of savings were earmarked for 16-19 education and Sure Start Children’s Centres.

David Cameron has tied his party’s hands by refusing to protect school spending. So the Tory plans are somewhat vague. However, Mr Cameron has said there will have to be cuts in the DCSF budget. He has argued this can be done without harming schools since he claims that less than two-thirds of the DCSF budget goes directly to schools. This looks like a selective use of statistics since it based on the narrow interpretation of direct school funding based solely on the Dedicated Schools Grant. In fact, spending on schools is rather more like 80 per cent of the DCSF budget.

Although the Conservatives say there will be cuts in education spending, their manifesto makes a number of additional spending pledges, but without any price tags. These include a new pupil premium for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, creating 20,000 additional young apprenticeships, and paying off student loans for top maths and science graduates who become teachers.

The Liberal Democrats are rather more specific. Their version of the pupil premium will cost £2.5 billion a year and will be additional money going into school budgets. The average school would receive an extra £2,500 for every pupil eligible for free school meals. This could be used to cut class sizes or to offer one-to-one tuition but schools will be free to decide exactly how they wish to spend it.

The premium will be partly funded from £1.5 billion savings from tax credit reforms. However, the remaining £1 billion will have to come from “administrative savings” in the DCSF and education quangos. The Tories also plan to make savings by cutting education quangos such as the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency (QCDA). Since the Labour government has already identified £350 million of future administrative savings, including cutting quango budgets, it looks like hard times indeed for these non-departmental bodies.

A “bonfire of quangos” is easy to promise on the electoral stump, but more difficult to deliver in government, particularly with a slimmed-down civil service. If the work of bodies such as the QCDA, the TDA, Becta, Partnerships for Schools and the National College for the Leadership of Schools and Children’s Services is either stopped or drastically reduced, there will be implications for schools or for the workload of the DCSF.

Away from spending, the three parties offer a remarkably similar refrain in their rhetoric about setting schools free. Labour’s manifesto promises to “devolve more power and responsibility to strong school leaders”. The Liberal Democrats want to legislate to stop politicians meddling in the day-to-day running of schools, with their proposed Education Freedom Act and the proposed independent Education Standards Authority. They would also put the national curriculum on a strict diet and reduce it to a “minimum curriculum entitlement”.

The Conservatives also want to remove schools from the influence of Whitehall. They would turn more schools into academies and, through their much-publicised Swedish schools model, would make it easier for parents and other groups to set up independent state-funded schools outside the local authority umbrella. This would involve legislation to over-ride objections to new schools based on surplus places and local planning issues.

However, for all the rhetoric about freedom and autonomy for schools, all the parties find it hard to resist the temptation to interfere. The Liberal Democrats’ proposal to replace academies with local authority “sponsor-managed schools” would give town halls more sway over local schools. They also want all schools to teach a foreign language.

However Labour and the Conservatives are even less able to resist the notion that Whitehall knows best. Labour’s manifesto is packed with things that schools would have to do, from teaching foreign languages (and where possible Mandarin) in primary schools to creating school cadet forces. Labour would continue to require schools to stage the national curriculum tests at age 11. Moreover, with their proposed Report Card they would have a powerful accountability tool to ensure that schools focus on the key performance indicators.

Like the parents of adolescents, the Conservatives cannot quite bring themselves to trust teachers. So a future Conservative government would require teachers to be trained in, and to use, “systematic synthetic phonics”. Primary schools would have to conduct a reading test at age six and follow a national curriculum built around traditional subjects such as history and science. Secondary schools would be strongly encouraged to set pupils by ability.

Moreover, according to education spokesman Michael Gove, a Conservative government would want a traditional approach “with children sitting in rows, learning the kings and queens of England and proper mental arithmetic”. And, in another example of their overlap with Labour, the Conservatives would keep those powerful Whitehall control levers, the key stage 2 tests and league tables.

So voters should “mind the gap” between rhetoric and policy.

www.mikebakereducation.co.uk

26 April 2010

Mike Baker. Former BBC education correspondent and a member of the editorial panel of Policy Review,