Building system resilience

Leora Cruddas CBE, Chief Executive, CST

Hennessy says: "The great question of UK politics … is whether we can find the pessimism-breaking policies, the people, the purpose, the language, and the optimism to shift [our current] system and replace it with something much closer to who we are and, above all, who we can be.”

So, the role of the state is to exercise a duty of care – to both children and adults because, citing Lynn Swaner and Andy Wolfe: "Where there are few flourishing adults, there will be few flourishing children.” And as Jacinda Ardern has taught us, compassion and strength are not only compatible, they go hand in hand. We need both compassion and strength in the state, its public bodies, and regulators.

CST believes that education is a public good. We think that our philosophy of education needs to go beyond a utilitarian focus. Education is a good in itself. It is the building of who we can be.

But our school system is fragile.

The state must act to build the resilience of the school system. It must do so in a way that sees these challenges in the round. Building the capacity of system in relation to Maths education is not daft. The proposals to extend the Maths hubs and develop a professional qualification for primary school Maths teachers are likely to be good policies. But these need to be located in this wider approach to system resilience.

Multiple factors are putting pressure on our children, families and schools:

• The negative legacies of Covid-19;
• The impact of inflation – many more children and families in absolute poverty;
• Large increases in the number of children and young people experiencing mental ill health;
• The school workforce recruitment and retention crisis; and
• Decimation of the services around schools – to name but a few.

So, we need to build the resilience of our school system, alongside the resilience of our wider public services, our communities, and the resilience of children and families.

We believe the state has four strategic roles in relation to the school system which should be the priorities of this government, now, and should also be the priorities of whichever political party or parties form the next government:

• Workforce: An evidence-led strategy for the whole of the schools’ workforce, including sufficiency.
• Funding: Fair per pupil funding that is sufficient, sustainable and equitable and includes weighting for disadvantage, and a capital framework ensuring we have enough school places and schools that are safe and good places of learning.
• Accountability: Proportionate and intelligent frameworks public accountability, inspection, and regulation.
• Wider public services supporting children, young people, and families, including SEND reforms and the critical reform of mental health services.

Where we are now?

Workforce

Right now, we have a workforce strategy that is woefully inadequate. It focuses mainly on shortage subjects in secondary schools. While this is absolutely critical, it is not sufficient. Last year 13 out of 17 secondary subjects failed to reach their respective targets. This year’s recruitment numbers are so far only a little bit better. We need a more strategic focus on the whole of the schools’ workforce including support staff.

Pay is a crucial part of workforce strategy. The research evidence is important for understanding what impact different pay awards might have on teacher recruitment and retention, and for understanding the effectiveness of other policy tools at the government’s disposal to address teacher supply issues. Jack Worth, School Workforce Lead at the NFER, is an authority on this policy issue. He says that "the DfE‘s evidence review on the impact of pay increases on teacher retention concludes that there is good evidence higher teacher pay is associated with higher retention. However, the economic research that this finding is based on is clear that it is not the absolute pay increase that matters but how that pay increase compares to what economists call the ‘outside option’. In other words, if pay for a job a teacher might take up if they left is rising at the same rate as their pay as a teacher, then it is likely to have little bearing over their decision about whether to leave or stay.” So, we need pay and conditions to feature in a workforce strategy.

Funding

In relation to funding, the additional £2billion announced in the most recent budget is welcome, but we need a sustainable, multi-year funding settlement which recognises the cost pressures on schools. And we need to fully implement the national funding formula.

The DfE has set out its analysis of the sufficiency of school funding in a technical note as part of its evidence to the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB – the independent body responsible for teacher pay recommendations). The DfE assesses the additional spending power or pressure on schools’ budgets (ignoring the reserves position) by taking the difference between the percentage increase in funding and the percentage increase in costs. They convert this to cash terms by multiplying the percentage difference by the previous year’s funding.

In contrast to the findings of the DfE, CST Members anticipate a prolonged period of financial challenge and instability. The DfE’s technical note and resultant conclusions about headroom in school budgets does not resonate with the experience and planning in school trusts. Trust leaders have reported very real concerns about future financial sustainability. Some of this relates to the fundamental construct of the technical note, but there is more to it. Susan Fielden, CST’s specialist funding consultant, has done a comprehensive analysis:

• Inflation – trust budgets for 2022-23 were prepared in the summer of 2022, at the very start of concerns about energy prices, before inflationary increases and before that year’s pay offers for teachers and support staff. Rapid revisions to plans for the year were formulated, and then revised again after the Autumn Statement additional funding. It is quite likely that the focus was on 2022-23 and that budget plans for future years were not revised. When trusts begin to work on 2023-24, they needed to take account of price rises and pay awards since 2021-22. Whilst inflation may be falling, it is not negative, and the cumulative impact across two years may only just be hitting budget plans.

• SEND – the technical note calculates that as local authority budgets are planning for an increase in top-up funding to primary and secondary schools, it is reasonable to assume an increase in funding for mainstream provision, and that this will match the increase in spend. The distribution of top-up funding very variable across schools, but this is not likely to be the only issue. Over many years, school leaders have raised concerns over the adequacy of, and access to, top-up funding for pupils with SEND, and the expectation that provision can be funded using £6,000 from the school’s main budget. In addition, evidence from the Delivering Better Value programme tells us that whilst the number of education, health and care plans has continued to rise, the unit cost (i.e., top-up funding) has not. It is extremely likely that increased costs of SEND provision in mainstream schools have exceeded increases in top-up funding.

• Funding uncertainty – the additional funding announced in the Autumn Statement 2022 was for two financial years. Whilst messaging from the DfE clearly indicates the intention to build this additional funding into the NFF (and make similar arrangements for special schools and alternative provision settings) for 2024-25 onwards, it is not possible for officials to confirm this with complete certainty as the current spending review period ends at that point. In primary schools there is annual uncertainty over the Sports and PE Premium. Announcements earlier this year seem to give two-year certainty but without being explicit. There are many more examples. Despite every indication pointing towards continuity, a cautious CFO or Board may be budgeting without some of the specific grant funding.

• Minimum funding protections – over a quarter of mainstream schools are funded through one of the funding protections introduced as part of the National Funding Formula. For those receiving protection through the minimum per pupil funding Levels or the minimum funding guarantee/funding floor, funding will only have increase in 2023-24 by 0.5% per pupil before the additional MSAG funding. Schools funded through national founding formula protections will not recognise the funding increases quoted in the technical note and have no indication of the level of "protection” they can expect in future years.

• Special schools and alternative provision settings – the level of funding protection afforded to the high needs sector is very significantly lower than that experienced by mainstream schools. The technical note does not cover these settings and analysis strongly indicates real terms cuts in funding for vulnerable pupils and those with SEND. Any trust with a special school or alternative provision setting will not recognise the assessment of headroom informed by the technical note.

The state of capital investment in our school estate is now urgent and chronic. The DfE has increased the risk level in relation to some schools in its consolidated annual report and accounts (page 106). A question was raised in the House to which the response to the risk status of school buildings collapsing being raised to 'critical – very likely.'

Accountability

Our accountability system is deeply contested with many in the sector believing that the current culture of Ofsted is unsustainable. While some good things are being progressed through the regulatory and commissioning review, we have stopped short of creating a single regulator and properly defining the role of inspection as a regulatory activity.

In January 2023 CST published a discussion paper, ‘Navigating uncertainty: a future direction for Ofsted’. We set out some key concepts that inspection must navigate, including autonomy and control, validity and reliability, and inference and consistency. In this paper we build on this initial conceptual framing to offer some policy ideas which might be considered in relation to inspection:

1. Government should work with the range of stakeholders and the inspectorate to consider how the complexity of school quality and performance can be captured more effectively and with more sophistication. This could include a new online portal for school quality and performance to be explored, treating parents, schools and the state as partners in the process.
2. Ofsted should urgently commission research into the validity and reliability of its inspection framework.
3. There should be a comprehensive review of the current grading system, in conjunction with proposals 1 and 2 above.
4. Ofsted should provide reassurance to stakeholders who are concerned that pupil achievement is underplayed in some inspections by making clearer how the inspection methodology includes the use of achievement data.
5. Ofsted should periodically review and publish an analysis of the relationship between achievement data and inspection outcomes.
6. Ofsted should calibrate the pace and scope of its curriculum publications with the capacity issues schools are facing in a post-pandemic world.
7. Care should be taken to sufficiently insulate Ofsted’s observations about the quality of curriculum at scale from its inspection practice on the ground, so that very specific aspects of curriculum design in schools don’t inappropriately determine inspection outcomes.
8. Ofsted should publish its curriculum aide-memoirs.
9. Ofsted’s complaints process should be improved, including an independent oversight with the capacity to re-open inspection judgements in appropriate circumstances.
10. Ofsted should provide clearer and more consistent engagement with trust staff, positioning them as part of the school rather than something external. This should be more clearly described in the handbook.

Services around schools

The children and young people’s mental health crisis facing our society is now endemic. In 2010, funding to local authorities to fund early intervention services for mental health support was un- ringfenced and then cut. The mental health pathway has never been restored. Then, the pandemic created unprecedented demand for mental health services, placing even more stress on clinic-based and acute services. Schools are left to hold and support children and young people far longer than should be the case. The decimation of the services around schools has put even more pressure on the schooling system.

We are seeing more families now living in absolute poverty as a result of the cost-of-living pressures. This is devastating and crippling to our society and schools are left to exercise a duty of care.

These multiple pressures on our schools are creating system fragility.

We need the government to work with us to build the resilience of the school system. We need government to recognise its duty of care to our children, young people and families. As Nelson Mandela taught us,"there can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.”