Before I start this Post, and for the benefit of those visiting this Blog for the first time, I should explain my continuing reference to “Termites”. No, I am not paranoid. Yes, I am obsessional. If you visit my first post I explain how I came to use this word in the way that I do.
Essentially “Termites” constitute an unholy alliance of all those who are programmed to build and defend their nests, but are unable to move on. All too often they build empires of paper on foundations of sand. They are aided and abetted by those whose livelihoods depend on them.
In “Death of a Nightingale” I explore in a real life drama how they exercise power. In these Posts I explain it.
This week I am going to talk about money. You can’t get very far without it. The way that it is handled, from the Treasury downwards, has to be a very powerful management tool. It has been a powerful force implementing the policy of Inclusion.
As the good book says “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.” Don’t underestimate the role of the Treasury. I quote Elizabeth Appleby QC here. She said this to me a number of years ago when the school I was a governor of was taking her advice.
I have already written that “Death of a Nightingale” explores the area where control should stop and participation should begin. (Revisit Post 32) As you read what follows you may wonder whether the one does stop and whether the other actually does begin.
Act One, Scene 2: Regional office, DfES
James Harrington, the Mandarin from the Department for Education and Skills, is discussing with David Harding, the Director of Education in Wexborough, how the policy of Inclusion can be driven forward through the closure of Brighouse School.
JAMES HARRINGTON People like Gerry will win them over. You just have to. You see the Treasury has made up its mind that there are savings to be made here if they invest in it. You know the figures. Three per cent of children have special needs but they gobble up eight per cent of the total spend on education. That really isn’t equitable.
DAVID HARDING Between these four walls I don’t think Inclusion is going to be a cheap option.
JAMES HARRINGTON Well leading accountants advised us that we could make some real savings simply by reducing the number of Statements LEA’s have to write for children with special needs. Get that down by a third, reduce special school places by the same, and then hey presto you don’t need all those special schools. And writing Statements is a real headache. We’ll have to keep some schools for kids with profound difficulties or very complex behavioural problems, but most can go.
DAVID HARDING Hm. Accountants. Some are just calculating machines on legs. They play with figures and talk about outcomes. They leave us to deal with people and try to meet their needs. They’re just not street wise. They manage us when we should be managing them. The savings won’t be there if we do our job. Mark my words.
JAMES HARRINGTON You may well be right, especially to begin with. The Treasury has agreed to cough up millions to adapt mainstream schools, and we will obviously have to commit ourselves to training. We are currently trying to work out the actual cost now. It’s not easy though. There’s a major study just started.
DAVID HARDING Good luck to it. I look forward to seeing the results. I just hope you haven’t provided them.
JAMES HARRINGTON You’re a cynic. Anyway, just you keep your doubts to yourself. Money is where money needs to be is my motto. We can’t go back now.
“Money is where money needs to be.” Little did I think when I wrote this how true this would be. Billions of £s of it!
“Death of a Nightingale” and its Notes & Quotes provides a case study that validates the findings of Professor Jonathan Shepherd, reported in the Times on Monday 20 July 2009: “Education and criminal justice systems fail to deliver the best results because policies are not researched properly.” See in particular Note 8 “Extracts from Costs and Outcomes for Pupils with Moderate Learning Difficulties in Special and Mainstream Schools 1999.”
No wonder the “Termites” don’t like what I have written. And they won’t like what follows in the same scene.
JAMES HARRINGTON I am not sure that that is the best answer. You have got to win over the parents. I think you need something a bit more subtle. Look at it this way. They have a bird in their hands, and they like it. We are offering them, as they see it, two in the bush. Where’s their next dinner coming from? Not from the bush unless we make their bird look a bit less appetising.
DAVID HARDING I hope you are not going to get me into trouble with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.
JAMES HARRINGTON And I hope you are not a covert animal rights activist.
DAVID HARDING Well what are you actually proposing?
JAMES HARRINGTON I am not proposing anything.
DAVID HARDING Suggesting, then.
JAMES HARRINGTON I’m not suggesting anything either. This is a journey of exploration.
DAVID HARDING Or a safari where the wild beasts roam.
JAMES HARRINGTON And vultures fly overhead ready to scavenge their next meal. Come on, it’s up to you how you manage this. Basically if a lot of the kids in this school go to mainstream schools this school is just not going to be viable. You know that. It can’t be making best use of your financial resources. You are just going to have to push things along a bit faster in that direction. It’ll be unpleasant, but really run the School down. When you finally deliver the message that the School has to close there’ll be no great argument.
DAVID HARDING It’ll actually run itself down, as we admit fewer kids to it. Some redundancies will be unavoidable and they won’t be able to deliver the national curriculum.
GERRY THOMPSON The bird’s already beginning to look a bit sick. Their roll came down last year by nine pupils.
And this isn’t good news for Termites either:
Act One, Scene 7: Meeting of the Finance Committee
Frank Jones, chair of finance at Brighouse School, Eileen Winterton, chair of governors, Margaret Williamson, head teacher and John Laver, retired NHS Hospital manager just co-opted to board of governors at a meeting of the Finance Committee.
FRANK JONES … Your experience is going to be invaluable and your network. For a start you can help us understand LEA bookkeeping.
JOHN LAVER Thank you for the welcome. There’s only one thing you need to understand about their bookkeeping and that is that you are not supposed to understand it.
EILEEN WINTERTON If we knew what they knew, they wouldn’t want to know. The more we know what they know, the more we’ll interfere.
JOHN LAVER They do like to keep control of their territory.
EILEEN WINTERTON Are you saying that they think we’re invaders?
FRANK JONES No, they think we’d be intruders, not invaders, on their territory, and on yours too Margaret.
MARGARET WILLIAMSON That’s not very nice.
“A Guide to the Law for School Governors” is clear enough. “Some key decisions cannot be delegated and must be taken by the governing body …. Approving the first formal school budget plan submitted to the LEA for each financial year….”
Or are the decisions made for them?
These are just some of the proposals I made as a governor in 2004.
* The Budget approved by the Governing Body should be included in or attached to the minutes of the meeting where it is agreed. The Budget should anticipate all anticipated income and expenditure, capital and revenue, affecting the School for the year in question.
* No changes should be made to the budget without the agreement of Governing Body recorded in the minutes.
* Indicative Budgets should always be presented to the Finance Sub-Committee and then the Governing Body, as well as to head teachers, in time for its contents to be questioned and, if necessary, amended. It should be presented alongside the budget and the performance up-to-date for the current year.
* The Finance Committee should review at least termly the capital and revenue income and expenditure accounts compared against budget and previous year’s spend with a note of variance at the time. The variance should not be variance against total budget spend for the year as a whole. Any variance of more than say 5% shall be reported to the termly meeting of the Governing Body.
* A system of accruals that is the norm in business accounting should be adopted as soon as possible.
Should I have had to recommend these things? The setting and monitoring of budgets is the key to any enterprise. It should be the easiest thing in the world to organise. It is, after all, simply money IN and money OUT. In my working life I have been involved with many budgets, but when I was governor of a special school I actually had to ask a chartered accountant to explain to me how the LEA had put its figures together.
All of this explains why I wrote this:
The Prologue
There are school governors, and people like them, who are doing valuable voluntary work within the community, but who are deliberately denied the tools to do it properly by those who prefer to do it themselves, but want to make it look otherwise. It is the System that needs looking at, the con in consultation, the charade of partnership, the make-believe, and as a result, the mess of much of it.
I end as I began. Does the Treasury really want to encourage participation? Do they? Does anyone?
I will supply a new test. Over the years I have come across many very worthy charities from bereavement counselling to work with deprived families. Every year each one of them goes out with a begging bowl just to survive. Professional carers have to spend their valuable time trying to raise money. They all had one thing in common. They had no core funding. Larger charities have no such problem, and they don’t worry about it.
This situation is going to get worse not better as public expenditure is cut, and the nation feels itself poorer and the needs become greater.
Around the country Community Foundations help donors identify well run charities to which their charitable donations can be given and they make a genuine difference to people’s lives. They have grown rapidly in recent years. There are now 55 of them, and they can reach 95% of the UK’s population. They already make grants of about £70m every year. The State should provide these Foundations with matched funding to enable them to allocate core funding to selected charities.
It is going to become increasingly evident that the State does not have the resources to make necessary social provision on its own. Some on the Left will be reluctant to acknowledge this. Others on the Right may not even want to think about it.
Social provision should be seen as a working partnership between the State and charities, and the State needs to put its money where its mouth is. It says that it cares.
“Make money work better” would be a good mission statement, especially in times of financial stringency. This would be one sure way.
Likewise running schools needs to be seen as a working partnership between the State and Governors who give their time and their knowhow without payment.
Will they stop the pretence that they are creating partnerships and will they actively encourage participation? I wonder.
Today that is the very last thing in their minds they appear to want to do?
They should read “The highest common factor – Humanity?” in the Prologue to “Death of a Nightingale.” Even better read all of it.
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