Spending Review: Government to reduce councils' school role

In his Autumn Statement and Spending Review Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne said £600m will be cut from the government’s education services grant (ESG), which is used by councils to hold schools to account for their performance and help those struggling to improve.

This is the latest large-scale cut to the ESG, which saw a reduction of £200m in funding for the current financial year (2015/16). This saw the per-pupil value of the grant plummet from £116 to £87.

The cut has been made as “the government will reduce the local authority role in running schools and remove a number of statutory duties”, says the Chancellor’s statement.

Currently, councils have a duty to support struggling schools with their school improvement services inspected by Ofsted.

An announcement on whether this duty will be among those to be removed from councils is to be made next year when a consultation on education policy and funding is launched. It also looks likely that all schools will be given the chance to become academies.

Teaching unions have reacted angrily to the £600m cut to ESG.

The National Union of Teachers deputy general secretary Kevin Courtney said: “This is another cut to education funding and the government’s plan to reduce the local authority role in education still further will mean less support for schools.”

Russell Hobby, general secretary of school leaders’ union NAHT, added: “We are concerned about further cuts to local authority services – a fixation with ever greater autonomy will not help build capacity and sustain improvement.

“The claim that removing the role of local authorities will save £600m on the ESG looks uncertain: these support services must come from somewhere and forced academisation is a costly, disruptive business.”

Roy Perry, chairman of the Local Government Association's children and young people’s board, said the announcement that all schools will be helped towards academy status "dismisses the fact that over 80 per cent of council maintained schools are currently rated as 'good' or 'outstanding' by Ofsted.
 
He said: “Hundreds of schools, often in disadvantaged areas, are being turned around thanks to the intervention of local councils and it clear that strong leadership, outstanding classroom teaching and effective support staff and governors are the crucial factors in transforming standards in struggling schools, rather than the administrative status.
 
“Schools spend billions of pounds of public money yet, at present, there is no rigorous accountability for academies that are ‘coasting’; no clear understanding of what happens when one falls into this category; and no risk assessment in place for those rated as good or above. Local democratically elected councils should have a role in this.”

Elsewhere across education funding, the Chancellor’s statement revealed that the government plans to bring in the first national funding formula for schools and early years, “so that the funding is transparent and fairly linked to children’s needs”.

The statement adds: “This will end the unfair system where a child from a disadvantaged background in one schools attracts half as much funding as a child in identical circumstances in another school, simply because of where they live.”

The new formula is set to launch in 2017/18 and has been welcomed by Neil Carmichael, chair of the Commons education select committee. He said: “It has long been recognised that the school funding model needs to change and as a committee we have continued to press for change in this area.”

The Chancellor has also pledged that core schools budgets will be protected in real terms, as will pupil premium rates, free school meal funding and the per-student rate paid to further education (FE) colleges and school sixth forms.

However, Stewart Segal, chief executive of the Association of Education and Learning Providers, said that rising costs faced by FE colleges meant “real-terms cuts for the next five years”.

Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT is also concerned that schools will be worse off financially.

She said: “We have heard it all before about guaranteeing to protect the schools budget. As ever, the devil will be in the detail. This usually reveals a huge gap between the Chancellor’s rhetoric and the reality on the ground.”