Free School puzzles and why a £13k fees school wants to set them up
Three things puzzle me about free schools:
• Why are they any more free than other state funded schools?
• Why has the government embarked on a scheme which inevitably creates an eduction system with more places than pupils in a time of austerity? Surely, the money could be better spent on creating jobs for young people when they leave school.
• Why does a government apparently committed to “localism” centralise the approval and funding of these schools in Whitehall? If you want to know who is boss, just follow the money.
And another puzzle. Suffolk blogger James Hargrave has been scraping away to discover why the Seckford Foundation, whose main business is Woodbridge School (Fees: £13,524 or £24,150 for boarders), is behind plans for four free schools in the county.
Today he has a post headed Free Schools project to “rescue” private education. He repeats part of an earlier post where he revealed Woodbridge School had made a loss of £2 million over the last six years. He quotes this from the 2010 annual report:
The net loss for the year after tax and realised losses on investment assets is £543,610 (2009: £244,835) this reflects the fall in income as a result of the reduced numbers in the school; down from 983 in 2009 to 929 in 2010.
He has also looked at the role of Melanie Tucker — who runs MTM Consulting which works in education at Southwold, just up the coast from Woodbridge — one of the proposers of a Beccles Free School.
Mrs Tucker has given her services to the Beccles project for free but it is not unreasonable to assume that the Seckford people are aware of her wider work. And this may explain why they are so keen on establishing a chain of free schools.
An article on the MTM website which looks at the impact of free schools on independent schools. It points to its research showing that selective state schools attract pupils away from independents. And says:
We asked our survey respondents to judge whether the Conservatives’ plans for free schools would be implemented and attract pupils away from independent schools. 39% felt it unlikely while 36% thought it likely. We would side with those who think it likely, and in particular the smaller minority who believe there is significant potential for independent schools to lose out to free schools.
In quantifying this, our estimate is that “if the grammar schools are a guide, then there could be a reduction of about a third of pupil numbers over a period of 20-30 years”.
So the already loss-making Woodbridge School (the foundation has enough money to cope with this for years) is faced with the loss of up to a third of its pupils if they believe MTM consulting.
Establishing free schools, funded by the Government, looks like a very sensible strategy for coping with a main business in decline. Whether it is so sensible for the taxpayers and people of Suffolk is another matter.
The other three Seckford-backed free schools are at Stoke by Nayland,Saxmundham and Ixworth.
Further links:
Seckford Foundation
Woodbridge School
Stoke by Nayland Free School
Samundham Free School
Ixworth Free School
Government and Tesco conspire in ‘forced labour’ scheme
Which is worse, Tesco seeing unpaid employees to the Government for advertising the jobs?
This is the advert which disappeared from the Direct Gov site early this morning after a wave of Twitter protests:
It offers a “permanent” position for someone who will be paid travelling expenses in addition to their Job Seekers Allowance.
To find out how to apply you would have to ring Jobseekers Direct.
No wonder some jobseekers are going to court claiming a contravention of the Human Rights Act clause which says, “no one shall be required to perform forced or compulsory labour”. (Guardian)
James Hargrave has more details on his blog.
Suffolk libraries new bosses need to deal with low staff morale
When the full board of the Industrial and Provident Society which is being set up to run Suffolk Libraries meets for the first time on Wednesday (Feb 15) it will need to start demonstrating its independence.
The three founding directors were appointed by the county council and a further eight have been chosen, if that it the right word, by the founding directors and the council.
There were meant to be five additional directors but it seems that the chairman, Clive Fox pressed for all eight nominees to be appointed. This neatly avoided the potential allegation that the entire board was made up of placemen and women.
One of the first tasks will be to start restoring morale among library staff who are understandably worried about their futures. Radical change in employment, transferring from one employer to another, is always unsettling.
But in this case there seems to have been no planning for internal communication by the county. Staff are complaining that whenever they ask a question they are told it is a “matter for the IPS”.
The whole schedule looks rushed with the objective of the IPS taking over at the beginning of the new financial year in April. The list of those providing evidence for the transfer plan included no one from communications or HR teams.
There is one thing they could do to demonstrate both the independence of the IPS and start lifting morale at the same time — abandon the nasty plan to employ new staff at lower salaries.
The evaluation report approved by the council includes in the justification of the IPS an assumption that the IPS will pay new staff 10 per cent less than existing staff. The historic rate of staff turnover is 4.8 percent, so the saving in the first year would be tiny. perhaps 0.25 per cent of the wage bill.
Refusing to implement that part of the plan would be an easy win for the IPS board and low cost way of starting to rebuild morale.
It would begin to allay fears among library staff (who are not highly paid) that they are going to be eased out to make way for cheaper people.
One of the threats to the IPS plan was recognised as: “Potential low morale, higher sickness absence and higher staff turnover as a result of significant organisational change.”
Alison Wheeler, the IPS general manager (appointed by the council) has made a strong attempt to reassure staff, in an email, offering to answer questions and listen to concerns. She even gave out her mobile number.
In part she said:
We will have to be ingenious, practical, pragmatic and creative to ensure that Suffolk’s library services survive. I am relying on all of you to play your part in this endeavour, working with communities, with an open mind to new ways of working, supporting each other to generate the ideas and apply solutions to new situations.
It is true that the success of the venture will depend on the staff being enthusiastic, creative and flexible. But it was not really the right time to raise the possibility of failure, although it is a fear she probably shares with some senior people in Endeavour House.
Reassurance and big hugs for the staff are what are needed at the moment. I do hope the board will see morale as one of the urgent bits of business for its first meeting.
Suffolk county council: £300k tax avoidance
Suffolk County Council has embarked of a tax avoidance scheme which will cost central government revenues more than £300,000 a year.
The avoidance of business rates is at the heart of the plan to save money by handing libraries over to an Industrial Provident Society in April.
Last month the Prime Minister, David Cameron, promised a tougher approach to businesses and individuals avoiding tax by using fancy lawyers (BBC).
The report on which Suffolk County council based its decision to pass the running of libraries on to an independent IPS says it will cost less than a directly run service for two reasons: the 80% rebate on business rates for charities, and lower corporate overheads.
According to the report business rates in the current financial year are £381,750, which means that a little over £300,000 will be saved.
This is tax which is collected by district and borough councils on behalf of the government and goes into the pool from which local authorities get grants from Whitehall.
So while there is an advantage for Suffolk county council, the overall national effect is neutral.
But the system of distributing business rates is changing and the libraries report identified a risk in the Government’s plans to reform its distribution. It said:
A significant proportion of the identified savings would come from business rate relief due to the charitable status of the IPS. There is a risk that after 2013/14 these business rate savings will become cost neutral to local councils depending on the outcome of the Government review on local retention of business rates. The proposals on this review are currently not clear whether charitable rate relief would be reimbursed by Government to local authorities or not.
Just before Christmas the Communities Department announced more detailed plans for reforming business rates which have become one of the most centralised local tax systems in the world.
A press release said:
The reforms will establish a direct link between the effort that councils put into growing local economies, supporting jobs and infrastructure and the amount of money that they have to spend on local services and local people.
Council tax payers and business rate payers stand to benefit from additional income that rate retention could bring authorities, through better services and more investment.
Charity relief will remain.
At best the libraries scheme is taking money out of a national pocket and putting into a local one. But it remains a way of avoiding paying tax and the long-term effect on the county remains unclear.
The complex impact on shire counties of the current business rate reforms has been examined by Simon Parker, director of the New Local Government Network, for the Municipal Journal.
At last Network Rail bosses put lives before bonuses
It sounds like an admission that boardroom bonuses cost lives. Network Rail announced today that directors would forego this year’s bonus pool of £20 million and allocated the money to safety improvements at level crossings (Telegraph).
Everyone living in East Anglia, where there is a seemingly constant stream of accidents at crossings, knows that the campaign for safety improvements has been going on for years.
I trust none of the bonus money will be used to pay the fines of up to £1m expected after network rail admitted breaches of the Health and Safety Act for an incident in which two teenage girls died.
Basildon magistrates heard last week (Daily Mirror) that deficiencies in the way Network Rail had gone about risk assessment resulted in the deaths of Olivia Bazlinton (14) and Charlotte Thompson (13) at Elsingham in 2005. A risk assessment from four years before the deaths had been lost, the court heard.
A few days before the case was heard another teenage girl, Katie Littlewood (15) died at a level crossing at Bishop’s Stortford (BBC), less than six miles from Elsingham.
If the directors of Network Rail had put safety before bonuses earlier, Katie might still be alive.
Maybe, company directors are coming to realise the public revulsion at bonuses for simply doing their jobs.
The strange choice of chairman for Suffolk libraries co-operative
When Clive Fox appeared before Suffolk County Councils Scrutiny committee last year talking about Aldeburgh’s proposals for its library he sounded like a cheer leader for the Big Society policy which even David Cameron no longer mentions.
Library campaign and blogger James Hrgrave remembers that Mr Fox told the committee library campaigners were “rent-a-mob”.
The news today that the county council has appointed Mr Fox as chairman of the co-operative to run the county’s libraries was, to me, a shock. He is going to have to work very hard to prove that he is not the devisive figure that he appears to be.
The process by which he and two other board members have been appointed is obscure. The press release provides no clue to the basis on which they were chosen.
James Hargrave writes: “I think Clive Fox will have an uphill struggle to get credibility amongst local library groups”
The other two appointees to the interim board of the Industrial Provident Society to run the libraries are Mike Hosking, former director of libraries, learning an culture at Cambridgeshire County Council, and Shona Bendix, chief executive of Suffolk Association of Local Councils.
A further four board members will will be selected from nominations by community library groups. There will be a “selection process” (unexplained) before are appointed by the council. A member of the library staff will also be appointed.
I suppose Clive Fox has been chosen to chair the new board by Judy Terry, council cabinet member responsible for libraries, as almost the lone voice who offered unstinting support to her original plans for the libraries.
Those original plans were overthrown with the promise that no libraries would close. The virtual council plans, The New Strategic Direction, were also ditched after the resignation of the council leader, Jeremy Pembroke (he remains a member of the council) and chief executive Andrea Hill.
Support for the discredited policies was shown in the tone of the Aldeburgh response to the libraries consultation, put together by a steering group of which Clive Fox is chairman:
Suffolk County Council (hereafter SCC) has invited public response, by 30 April 2011, to its proposals for changing the basis of the County Library Service. These are driven by two policies, which also reflect national Government priorities; although the immediate public reactions to the initiative have understandably tended to assume they are a single issue.
The first is the need to reduce public expenditure, to tackle the unsustainable national structural deficit. All Local Authorities have to find ways to make significant reductions in public service expenditure. SCC has chosen to include library services in their solution.
The second is the County Council’s policy of divesting itself of responsibilities for managing public services directly, including all library services, by transferring those responsibilities to other front-line providers.
This initiative also reflects the Government’s policy to change the balance between central and local control of public services, and the conviction that local people are better able to assess local issues and priorities, finding a diversity of solutions that can be better matched to people’s needs. This is now often called ‘the Big Society’, or ‘new localism’.
The key concepts of this are empowering individuals and communities, encouraging social responsibility, and creating a State that is enabling and accountable. It requires devolution of responsibilities and resources to local levels, and confidence in the capacity of local communities to manage things for themselves.
Clive Fox promises an “open, listening and learning organisation”. I hope it is.
On a patrist, a library and views of women.
It is natural that a *patrist should have his head in the past. That he should be so lacking in connection to the present as to write what follows about Suffolk libraries, is surprising
Doubtless there is some woman somewhere who receives a salary to run the organisation. (You can tell that it is a woman in charge because the conversion of Ipswich library into a playgroup is something that only a woman would do).
Perhaps Roger Pearce has been reading too much of St John Chrysostom who, according to the translation in Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, wrote: “Of all the wild animals, none can be found as harmful as women.”
Pearse complains in his blog about the time it takes to a copy of Vermaseren’s Mithras: The Secret God (published 1963) from the reserve stock to Ipswich LIbrary. I am pleasantly surprised that they have a copy.
I started off with some sympathy, remembering that in my home town there was a separate children’s library. I like the quiet of libraries but have come to believe that the most important thing is to get children into a room full of books where they can be encouraged to read.
It has been throughout the determination of campaigners, probably the majority of them women, that he can still talk about 46 libraries in Suffolk (many other places are closing them). Our libraries are not as well funded as I would like them to be and there are more cuts to come. But by keeping the libraries open we have the option of improving them in the future.
*A patrist studies the lives , writings, and doctrines of the early Christian theologians.
Mystery over Suffolk CC ‘major’ announcement on emergency services savings
Five weeks ago Suffolk County Council made a “Major announcement to bring Suffolk emergency services together”. It included moving the police station in Debenham to the next door fire station.
Today the East Anglian Daily Times reports on a briefing from the Chief Constable Simon Ash on cuts, including 100 police officers. The paper says:
Woodbridge police station is the latest closure to be announced and bases in Ixworth, Debenham, and Elmswell are currently being looked at.
Yet a month ago Mr Ash was quoted, in a county council press release, saying:
I am delighted that we will be working closely with our Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service colleagues to ensure that our Safer Neighbourhood Teams remain in the heart of the communities in Debenham, Elswell and Ixworth. At a time when our budgets are being cut, we are looking to reduce the costs of our premises in order to preserve police officer numbers where possible and maintain frontline service delivery.
People who live and work in these villages will be reassured by our commitment to keep officers locally based whilst meeting the challenging cuts in funding.
An explanation is required. It may be that someone has looked at the figures given in the press release which showed the Fire Service spending £215,000 on construction and the police £599,000 — a total of £824,000.
The savings annual were said to be £25,000 a year over the the 25 years of the project. That is a total of £625,000.
In other words, even over 25 years the investment would not be recovered. There would still be £199,000 outstanding.
That does not seem to be a good deal in this time of cuts and deficit reduction. It does suggest that efficiency savings are difficult to achieve.
Suffolk County Council: doubts about ability to control back office spending
While the early announcement of proposals to cut £50m from Suffolk County Council spending in the coming two years is welcome it also provides hints about where some problems lie, among them getting the costs of back office services under control.
The purpose is to allow for consultation. The bullet points are:
- Council-wide efficiency savings (1.5% per year across all departments) – £15m
- Early intervention, coordination and streamlining adult social care – £15m
- Reducing the cost of our back office – £6.5m
- Early intervention and more integrated teams in children and young people’s services – £3.5m
- Re-letting the council’s highways management contract – £2m
- Reducing the amount of senior management – £2m
- Reducing/rationalising office accommodation – £2m
- Savings from better purchasing of services – £1.5m
- Saving money on waste management – £1m.
Over the next few weeks a series of consultation meetings are being held. The press release is here.
But it is hard to see how some of these savings can be made without an effect on front line services. Cutting £15m from adult social care, for example, looks difficult.
The Ipswich Spy blog, an an excellent post, suggests spending on the CSD joint venture with BT which provides many of the back office services has still not been tackled. The Spy says:
Unless Suffolk County Council improves its corporate response to overseeing contracts, not only will it fail to make the savings it has indicated, it will have to make savings to the front line to pay for the failure to properly control spending in the back office.
The best value evaluation of three models for future library services (in-house, county owned company, or a co-operative (Industrial and Provident Society) hints at these problems.
Last week, the cabinet whose the IPS model and the report says:
Models one and two [in-house and council owned company] assume that CSD services will continue to be provided at the same level and cost as currently. For the IPS model, it is prudently assumed that the current costs for HR and Finance (currently charged by CSD) will remain at the same level, with the IPS having the freedom to decide how to use this budget, including the possibility to employ an HR advisor within the IPS. ICT costs within the IPS have been estimated at approximately 4% of the organisation’s turnover. This is in line with industry benchmarks, and represents a lower cost than the current CSD ICT
provision.
A few pages further on the report says:
One of the major areas of savings identified in the financial modelling is the reduction in the level corporate overheads which are attributable the IPS library model. It is important to recognise that these overhead costs are the responsibility of Suffolk County Council, and will need to be managed downwards if genuine cash savings are to be realised. The 2012/13 and 2013/14 County Council budget will address this.
Put those two paragraphs together and they appear to suggests no reduction in the cost of the CSD contract relating to libraries is being envisaged. But the IPS would not need to buy them so so the apparent by the independent library service could be illusory.
It is all very confusing. But it is the first time I have seen an admission that CSD is not delivering value for money.
Branding Suffolk’s new library service
Many of the details of Suffolk County Council’s proposals for an Industrial and Provident Society to be an umbrella organisation for 44 libraries, are unclear. (The libraries will be members of the IPS and appoint the board.)
But on Tuesday at the Cabinet meeting we did hear about two of the jobs at the IPS. There will be a general manager and a marketing person. Of how many qualified librarians there was no mention.
On hearing this, I found myself wondering whether the first task of the IPS will be to design a new logo.
Maybe they will need this, because, according to the Best Value Evaluation:
Membership is also open to organisations who wish to start a library with the Suffolk Libraries branding (without County Council funding attached to it), by becoming a member of the Suffolk libraries network and buying the services offered by the IPS.
My emphasis.
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