Primary Educational Provision in Suffolk - Meeting New Challenges

Response to the proposals, from the Suffolk Division of the NUT

This response is in two parts. Part one concerns the specific proposal to examine "Federations" of schools. The Second Part responds to the proposal for "Extended Schools".

Part A: Suffolk LEA Proposals for "Federated" Schools

Points FOR:
1
 Could keep a small school open if threatened with closure because of falling rolls and the view that it was otherwise financially non-viable.
2
 Could provide a career avenue for those headteachers of small schools who do not wish to work in larger (mostly urban or suburban) schools (although they would have to be willing to become largely non-teaching peripatetic administrators).
3
 Could reduce some workload for individual teachers (i.e. only one policy required on everything!). The perceived professional isolation of some teachers in small school settings would be reduced as they become part of a larger team.
4
 Some economy-of-scale savings might be possible, if not offset by extra transport and communications costs.
5
 It would be possible to pool SEN audit finance to appoint a specialist teacher of SEN, for example, to offer practical teaching support for SEN pupils throughout a federated schools, rather like the peripatetic SEN teachers available in the past in Suffolk. An ASC could be created to serve the children with SEN from each of the schools. (We note however, that the LEA has announced its intention to abolish ASCs and its SEN policy does not encourage either specialisation or collaboration: if the ASC closure policy is implemented unamended, it will militate against such cooperation.)
6
 We believe that the only situation where "federation" could be practical is where two schools are on the same site, or immediately adjacent, where federation could be an alternative to amalgamation or a "take over" of one school by another. The NUT proposed consideration of federated status for the merger of Sprites Infants and Sprites Junior in Ipswich, as these two schools are connected on one continuous site and clearly serve the same community area. Interestingly, the LEA rejected the NUT's proposal that federation should be considered in this case!

Points AGAINST:
1
 Small community/village schools will lose "their own" headteacher, breaking links with the immediate community and depriving that "unit" of on-site professional leadership for a large proportion of the week.
2
 The "Head" may well be "absent" from each "unit" for 60-70% of the working week, creating difficulties of effective communications on day-to-day issues.
3
 Realistically, management of each "unit" of the school will need a person in charge for that 60-70% of the week - day to day management of each site / urgent decisions and guidance / dealing with incidents and complaints
4
 This will need the appointment of "deputies" or "assistant heads" for each "unit", whereas deputies have currently virtually disappeared in smaller schools. These posts are unlikely to be any easier to fill than those of headteachers. The "mini heads" will have most of the day-to-responsibility, but less status, pay or empowerment. They would also need non-teaching time or some flexible working arrangements, in order to be able to be available to deal with crises, when the "real head" is not present.
5
 Travel and communications: for a regular staff meeting, teaching staff would have to lock up classrooms and school buildings to go en masse to the place of the meeting at, say 15:30 (would the federated school have a federated caretaker?). Many would need to return to their unit of the school after the meeting to do the normal end-of-day tasks. If there are to be common policies and supportive collaboration between the "units" of a federated school, this would have to be repeated for relevant staff for all coordinators' meetings. Most primary schools have at least one such formally arranged meeting for each member of the teaching staff per week. (NUT Policy is that there should be no more than one management-convened meeting per week, lasting for no longer than an hour. If travel time is included, this could make for very short meetings for federated units some distance apart! If NUT guidelines are ignored, this will lead to unacceptable workload issues.)
6
 If the link between the (village) community and the headteacher of the school serving that community is compromised, we would fear a loss of "ownership" for the parents and other volunteers from that community, including those willing to be governors of a federated school, with meetings based elsewhere. Such things as PTAs and associated fund-raising activities would surely be adversely affected by fragmentation.
7
 We see a danger of simply introducing an unnecessary top tier of administrative management where the "real job" is being done at individual unit level, both in terms of delivery of the curriculum and contact with parents, plus LEA advisory staff, etc. We can foresee professional resentment and alienation creeping into a closely-knit working unit.
8
 It would break the tradition of "teaching heads" - the peripatetic administrator will lose contact with the actuality of teaching and the knowledge of the children or parents which are the hallmark of the current, traditional situation.
9
 We can foresee rivalry between neighbouring village schools and the fear of "take-overs" by either another village or, perhaps worse still, becoming the satellite of a suburban school. Wherever an existing headteacher of one of the schools becomes the overall head of a federation of schools, there is a very real danger of short-term resentment and long-term feelings of rejection within remaining staff and parts of the larger community.
10
 Even closer cooperation between schools and joint initiatives will come up against the ludicrous "shared powers" of LEAs and Governing Bodies. This could be more difficult in Aided Schools. At some point, a single authority is required to make those decisions for which they are legally responsible. This would rapidly become important for personnel decisions, such as disciplinary procedures or the award of discretionary pay, including Upper Pay Spine decisions. Conditions of service issues are also of concern, if an Aided School in federation with a Community School has different personnel procedures.
11
 The Union welcomes the principle of Collaboration between schools but this has become virtually non-existent in the last decade because of the culture of league tables, "failing" and "good" schools, and the need for individual staff to be able to show that their pupils do better than their neighbours', in order to qualify for the threshold or Upper Pay Spine progression. Cooperation of the kind proposed, cannot operate in the current climate of "high-stakes" testing and performance management.

Preferred ALTERNATIVES
1
 The LMS budget arrangements in Suffolk should be reviewed in order to reduce the amount of per capita formula funding by withholding (top-slicing) a greater part of school-related education funding to distribute on a basis of actual need for particular identified expenditure items (including Headteacher relief time, NQT release time, at least 10% non-teaching release time for all teaching staff, as well as meeting actual costs for the effective delivery of SEN via the SEN audit formula).
2
 The LEA should restore and increase special "lump sum" grants for small schools which will allow more headteacher "relief" time, so that Heads can teach but have adequate time for their headteacher duties (which will shortly be a statutory requirement).
3
 The recommended "standard" pay ranges on the Leadership Spine for headteachers of small schools should be increased, as an incentive. Governors need to be encouraged to use higher ranges by suitable additions to the lump-sum allocation to small schools' budgets, ear-marked for discretionary salaries. (We appreciate that this breaks one of the fundamental principles of LMS formula funding and will be resisted by larger schools, but we believe that the current trend of per capita funding only will make small schools inviable, whether or not they are federated).
4
 Increase non-teaching support time, especially clerical / administrative help (for budgeting, ordering, financial control. etc.) and enhance the PTR to allow qualified teachers to relieve the headteacher from teaching duties and to provide the 10% release from teaching duties for all teaching staff.
5
 The LEA should develop ways of encouraging neighbouring schools to collaborate over matters such as curriculum innovation, CPD, policy writing and implementation (much of which can be supported by the Advisory Service and dissemination of existing good practice). The LEA should seek ways of facilitating appointments to more than one school, such as SENCO for two neighbouring schools. Proper safeguarding of employment rights and conditions of service would be required. There is much that can be gained from collaboration and effective strategic coordination under the auspices of the LEA without depriving local communities and small village schools of their independence and direct link with the communities they serve.
6
 The NUT calls upon Suffolk LEA to seek to influence the DfES to repeal those areas of Education Management Policy which are hampering collaboration between schools, including the publication of league tables and the "payment-by-results" approach to performance management and pay decisions.

Part B: Suffolk LEA Proposals for "Extended" Schools

1
 The Union supports in principle the use of school sites for community purposes, including the provision of local libraries, doctors' surgeries, social services offices and even police offices, on the same site. We accept the financial and political requirement to reduce surplus places, and believe that multi-use of sites is a sensible approach. Local Community "ownership" of school sites is also one which we could support.
2
 There are, however, many concerns, and we make the point that these sensible proposals do not sit well with developments in education governance and local government matters over the last twenty years. In short, multi-use of sites would have been easier to manage and promote in pre-LMS times and when the County Council was the employer of all the likely employees / agents / businesses which would now be brought into an extended school. There has been a general dismantling of any "umbrella" of responsibility by local government/education department, and separation of colleges, evening classes, libraries, sports centres, youth facilities, etc. from the governance and management of schools.
3
 Although there is a reported willingness from Aided or Foundation Schools to be part of such experimentation, the lack of a single over-arching authority is a serious problem, for which we have seen no solution put forward.
4
 Of the major "partners" proposed for extended schools, the Health Service in particular has its own management structures totally independent of the County Council, with geographical areas which are often totally different from education's area and county boundaries. They also have their own budgets and development priorities, which do not, as yet, include any plans to expand into school sites. Indeed, the "school nurse" was removed some years ago: at the time, the NUT asked for medical services to children at school to be preserved "on site" and especially at Special Schools. This was, of course, rejected. Having destroyed that link between the Health Service's delivery of services to children with the Education Committee, as was, it is not going to be feasible to graft such links back into schools buildings which were designed since that time. Indeed, no school building regulations have addressed the need to consider future multi-use (e.g. separate entrances).
5
 Other major perceived partners, such as Social Services and Child Care/Play Schools are also not entirely in the County Council's remit. The voluntary sector is taking an increasing role in both areas, albeit less so in Children's Social Services. However, there are many private organisations and independent charities offering services to families and children. In Child Care, the provision is almost entirely outside the public sector.
6
 The Union welcomes the principle of making the local school the focus of its lcommunity. But this, too, sits ill with "parental choice" where, in a village school, say, as many as a third of the pupils are not "local" to that village. Their communnal medical and social care needs will be required elsewhere, perhaps in those villages where the village school has closed.
7
 The danger of bolting on extended use of school facilities for financial and political reasons, rather than as part of a sensibly developed and agreed plan worked out with all the partners concerned over time, is that the partners will want to be working from those schools which are already thriving, but will wish to avoid setting up offices in a village community which has falling rolls, available space, but little need for the "extended" services. Many of these "thriving" schools will be in restricted sites or using all available space anyway. We therefore see a mismatch between the willingness of partners to occupy surplus space and the availability of such space. We see the current "panic measure" approach to extended schools rather like attempting to add cycle lanes to roads built to take horse-drawn carriages: the lanes are too narrow, disappear in places, and present greater dangers than before. Cycle lanes can work when the road is designed with them in mind in the first place. As no schools have yet been built with extended use in mind, any suitability for purpose will be entirely fortuitous.
8
 We are very concerned at the workload, child protection and Health & Safety implications of more than one organisation, and more than one authority, working together in the same building. Although it is possible to work out a share of the costs of running a building, how does a caretaker employed by the LEA deal with the security of a doctors' surgery on site in the evening? Who is responsible for the building in an emergency? Who will be on call if a social worker requires assistance while on the school site? We can see the Headteacher being expected to "manage" an extended site. No one else is likely to be required to do so. Yet the people engaged in provided the "extended services" will not be employees of the County Council, or of the school, and will not be "under the direction" of the headteacher.
9
 There is a need for the LEA itself to seek suitable accommodation for an increased number of PRUs (for all ages) and for Home Tutoring (when the child's home is not practicable). Some of the surplus places could be used for such purposes, with the added advantage of providing suitable facilities, and management structures, with appropriate recognition for additional management and support staffing for such "units" being established or attached to a school.

Up-dated 12/10/03