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Federate or axe staff, Balls warns
Schools Secretary says heads and governing bodies face efficiency ‘choices’
Heads will be forced to federate their schools over the next five years if they are to avoid firing teachers and teaching assistants, Schools Secretary Ed Balls told The TES this week.
Mr Balls warned that individual heads and governing bodies will have their own “choices to make” if they are to protect the frontline from “tougher budgets” as he attempts to find significant savings across the schools sector.
Federating schools locally or cutting staff numbers is the stark choice facing heads and governors, he said.
The Schools Secretary said he will not instruct heads on how to manage their budgets but said the choice will be clear once school budgets have been set.
Mr Balls said: “In the end, the way this (widespread use of school federations) will happen is that we’ll have the budget set from 2011 to 2014, and there will be, I believe, rising budgets but tougher budgets than in the past.
“This will mean individual headteachers and governing bodies will have choices to make.
“If they want to keep the one-to-one tuition, which we’re guaranteeing in the new legislation, and if they want to keep the extra teaching assistants and teachers - over 120,000 more teaching assistants, 40,000 more teachers - and if they want to keep the smaller class sizes, then they will have to look elsewhere for savings to make their budgets add up.
“If we don’t do this (share ideas on how to save) now for next year at the end of this process under pressure in the final weeks before the budget round, headteachers on their own will be thinking ‘Well, what am I supposed to do?’ And that’s when they start thinking ‘Well, what’s the easy cut?’ The more far-sighted thing to do is to find ways to be more efficient.”
The Department for Children, Schools and Families published a consultation document yesterday, Securing Our Future - Using Our Resources Well, which Mr Balls said would “start the debate” on how schools should consider making savings.
The DCSF has identified federations as a key area in which savings can be achieved - for example, using collective buying power to secure better procurement deals.
According to the Department, if schools could replicate the 10 per cent procurement savings currently being made in the private sector, approximately £780 million could be reinvested in the “frontline” in schools.
“That is where it will happen,” Mr Balls said. “It won’t happen by me making an announcement, it will happen by thousands and thousands of heads and governing bodies making their own decisions.”
The Normanton MP denied saying in an interview two months ago that he was aiming to save £2 billion from the schools budget, but said he believes “substantial” amounts of money could be saved.
“We’ve talked about schools working together to drive up learning and standards and also to save money but I’m not going to put a number on it and I never have,” he said.
“But if you take some of the individual examples we’ve seen in schools and replicate them across the schools system you could save substantial sums.”
The Association for School and College Leaders (ASCL) has been in close dialogue with the Department since Mr Balls announced his plans for schools to make savings, but the union is concerned with the focus on federations.
ASCL general secretary John Dunford said: “It’s inconceivable that the Government would be saying that schools cannot continue to work effectively without federating. A federation is a choice to be made for some schools in particular circumstances driven by the need to make improvements or to right a particular local situation.
“It is not a policy that should be driven by the need to save money and it’s certainly not a reason to reduce the number of leaders in isolation, although this may sometimes happen.”
Comment (9)
If only schools were as important as high-street banks in the minds of these professional politicians. There would be no cuts then. But hey - these weasels are making a mint. Balls and his wife are on over £250,000 salary (then there are the expenses that they cream in)...
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23:11
27 November, 2009
cantona
Start with all the so called consultants and directors of learning that never see a classroom or teach a child.
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20:09
28 November, 2009
A Teacher
The really good news is that he can safely be ignored because he will not be in this job in six months time - New Labour will be voted out and replaced by another lot.Hopefully the new lot will see the inefficiency is due to bureacracy, political correctness, endless guidelines, continual change and consultants who are well paid but have no front line responsibility.
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11:20
29 November, 2009
MrJob
I don't think this will work.
Our secondary is a merger of previous schools. So we now have one head. So there must have been some savings in head's salaries- except that the current head's salary is larger because the new school is bigger and they have more responsibility. Plus we have assistant & deputy posts duplicated on different sites so those posts are not generating savings. Although they did loose the duplicated SENco posts, replacing the trained Spld teachers with teams of TAs. Then there's expenses for travelling between sites......
Overall the school has been loosing money for a while & is in debt already, so what will happen with the impending cuts? Doesn't look good.
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14:20
29 November, 2009
choices
The jobs for the boys (and girls) will remain when the axe falls on the people who turn up at schools every day. When you think 30% of the total education spend goes into inspection, quangos, consultants, advisors and any freeloader who wants a peice of the action but does not want to be working in schools at the chalkface under constant scrutiny. Why have SIPs, HMIs, school improvement teams all doing the same things. Who are the TDA, the NCSL, GTC (who are still subsidised by DCSF), how many millions are we paying universities for researching ways to constantly change things. I would suggest DCSF start with these first, but I fear it will be classroom assistants, caretakers, one head running 4 or 5 schools.
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21:14
29 November, 2009
wattie54
Already there are too many chiefs and not enough indians.
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20:05
30 November, 2009
sezliz
I guess this means the end of MFL in schools then?
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21:15
30 November, 2009
alliec
If Ed Balls understood anything about the nature of cost efficiency in the private sector he would know that it has far more to do with strategic partnerships with suppliers than the rather outdated notion of simple economies of scale. I wonder when he is going to start regarding education as something he should be building a strategic partnership with?
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7:48
1 December, 2009
mcorkery
This isn't the end of MFL it's only the beginning with the massive investment across KS2 and the inevitable drive into KS3 with the renewed secondary framework. We have the capacity by 2020 to have the most innovative foreign language learning system in Europe.
Oh and by the way . . . after 11 years teaching service (9 of those in secondary and 6 of them as an AST) I am now a consultant in a unitary authority where the school improvement team has supported schools significantly, so much so, that we have no schools in any category at all.
I bleed for my schools and my job because of the children just like you do in class. So stop moaning about us costing too much because we're all still teaching as part of our roles and believe in life chances for all. Are we not on the same side?
Dave
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19:48
3 December, 2009
hardycd