Following the Brent Labour Education Conference in January, more detailed questions from members and school governors are being asked especially in relation to individual schools. Here are some answers to FAQs.

What will be the impact on Brent children, schools and the local authority if more schools convert to academy status?

Schools are setting budgets at this time of unprecedented cuts to public services. To address the shortfall, some are considering the possibility of academy conversion to gain direct additional funding for services normally provided by the Local Authority.

It is vital to understand the repercussions, impacting on the whole education community:

· Risks of fragmentation and greater insularity as more schools become academies, providing a more difficult context for partnership working and collective solutions which have been a strong feature in Brent and a factor in achieving good outcomes for young people

· Brent Local authority still have statutory functions to fulfil which are of key importance such as

strategic planning of school places

tackling underperformance in schools and some pupils underachieving

meeting needs of vulnerable children ( SEN, LAC, excluded pupils)

co-ordination of admissions and operation of fair access protocols.

If more schools become academies, it will become increasingly difficult for the LA to meet these functions effectively for all schools whatever their status

· If more schools convert, the operation of the top slice will increasingly affect the LA capacity to provide viable services. This will have most impact on those schools who do not wish to pursue academy status with the risk of creating a two tier system

The LA believe that there will be overall adverse effects on children and young people if strong collaboration and collective responsibility is not maintained and if the LA education function reduces to the extent that statutory responsibilities cannot effectively be fulfilled

Brent’s policy is to deliver its duties and services in close partnership with the Family of Schools, currently made up of a mix of maintained, foundation, voluntary-aided and academy schools.

Schools are setting their budgets for 2012/13 and expecting to have to make reductions including teacher losses. How much will they be losing?

In terms of Schools delegated budgets Brent schools are, in overall terms, not due to lose anything as the settlement has been cash-flat. However with inflation currently at just over 4% that would represent a real terms reduction.

On the other hand all schools should see a significant increase in their Pupil Premium funding which may go some way to offset the inflationary pressures.

How will individual schools be affected?

With regards to delegated budget shares it's not possible to say how individual schools will be affected until we have all the pupil number data and other data such as deprivation measures and run the formula to provide schools with their final budgets which are sent to schools in mid-March. As the settlement is cash flat, funding should be broadly similar to this year and as the Minimum Funding Guarantee will be applied again then no school will receive any greater reduction than 1.5% per pupil.

For the Pupil Premium, schools are set to receive significantly more as the rate has increased from £488 to £600 per FSM (free school meal) eligible pupil. Exact figures for this are not available but indicative figures are available on the DfE website.

How much is Brent obliged to pay to the Academies?

Academies receive from central government exactly the same budget share as they would have done through the LA  (local authority) as a maintained school. That is the bulk of a schools funding. On top of that Academies receive funding which, according to the government, represents funding to meet costs that would previously have been met by the local authority when they were a maintained school. This funding is for functions which the local authority provides for maintained schools. The government funds this additional payment to schools by clawing it back from local authorities in the form of something called LACSEG (Local Authority Central Support Education Grant).

The present view from most LAs (local authorities) is that the current method of calculating this LACSEG amount results in far too high a figure and more is being clawed back from local authorities than is appropriate.

The Government has therefore been engaged in a protracted consultation exercise to try and arrive at an agreed methodology. The current consultation process is aimed at having this new methodology in place for 2013/14.

One option being considered is that LAs calculate budget shares for all schools including Academies and then the LA funds the maintained schools and tells the EFA (Education Funding Agency) how much the academies should get and then the EFA funds the Academies.

How do schools converting to Academies gain extra funding?

Although converter academies will receive this additional payment, they will have to pay for a firm to carry out these new functions, which are many and complex but an easy- to -understand example is internal audit. As a maintained school the school does not have to pay for being audited or for producing end of year accounts as the local authority performs these functions. Academies will have to pay for legal, financial and HR functions as well as school improvement and training services.

The additional payment amount is indicated on the DFE ready reckoner. Some schools are seeing this as a solution in the current climate of budget cuts and rising costs. However once converted, the academy will be responsible year-on-year, carrying a lot more risk – and many stories of botched IT leasing arrangements and legal liabilities are coming to light.

What can go wrong?

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/60ecf0c4-3864-11e1-9d07-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1ixpYzB2E

Fears for academies after eight need rescuing

By Chris Cook, Education Correspondent, Financial Times 8^th January 2012

Eight academy schools in financial difficulty were rescued by a Department for Education quango over the past 18 months at a cost of £10.7m, intensifying concerns in Whitehall that state schools moving outside the local authority system were not being adequately supervised by officials.

The coalition’s school reforms, which encourage existing schools to become academies, have prompted 1,529 institutions to adopt the status. After leaving the local authority funding system, they become standalone institutions funded directly by central government.

But civil servants are increasingly worried about the lack of close supervision and sustained support for the schools – the so-called “middle tier” problem. Academies enjoy greater autonomy than conventional schools, but must also take on more responsibility for their own management.

All schools are already responsible for their own budgets, but conventional schools can call on the local authority when things go wrong or if they run into unexpected costs. Academies in trouble do not have access to council money, and may be denied their local knowledge and expertise.

Philip White, chief executive of Syscap, a finance company which calculated the figures, said: “Schools take the role of the local authorities for granted. Cutting the apron strings is not a simple process and will require schools to adopt behaviours which are not natural to them.”

Concerns about schools’ ability to run themselves will be highlighted by a BBC Radio 5 investigation which identified schools that were missold financial products. One accountancy firm, which declined to be named, found a school had been overcharged tenfold for laptop computers by a now-collapsed leasing company.

Glemsford Primary School was given 214 laptops for free, only to find that it had signed up to an expensive lease. James Loker-Steele, who is in charge of the school’s IT systems, said: “It means the school is in a lot of trouble, if the banks come chasing after us for the money – which they are.”

Mr White said: “We need to root out dishonest organisations purporting to act in schools’ interests. Appropriate leasing is a way for schools to pay for equipment. Good financial providers should have a clear understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of schools.”

The DfE has issued guidelines, in parallel with an industry body, to help schools avoid rogue equipment suppliers.

Sir Michael Barber, the chief education adviser at Pearson, the company that also owns the Financial Times, raised the issue of the middle tier in a recent publication, saying: “In a country the size of England the roles of catalyst and shock absorber will still need to be played.”

Sir Michael, who was asked last year by Michael Gove, education secretary, to become DfE permanent secretary, said it was “unthinkable that the system can operate at all as a system with over 23,000 schools and a remote central government in Westminster”.

One suggestion that would help deal with this problem was proposed by Sir Michael Wilshaw, the new chief inspector of schools, who suggested a national network of school “commissioners”. The DfE is currently considering these options.

What is Brent doing to guarantee the best use of resources?

The government has top-sliced Brent’s General Fund to pay for its exhorbitant academy converter programme. This means there is less money to provide for school improvement services. However Brent has redesigned the services in consultation with the schools responding to their stated requirements. Core services are provided free and others are ‘traded’ for a range of prices. These services are proving very popular with schools and there was a very large turnout for the launch of its second year programme in January.

It goes without saying that sustaining a good range of core services depends on schools remaining in the maintained sector to ensure ‘economy of scale’. Traded services are popular with schools and can be bought by academies as well. Brent is increasing its range and continuously improving its services to ensure they are best value for the schools.

Brent consults with the Schools Forum over the Delegated Schools Grant and budget setting. The forum is made up of representatives of chairs of governors and headteachers from the secondary, primary, nursery and early years sectors who contribute the views of the sectors they represent. In future there will be academy representation also. Budget-setting has taken on comments concerning the impact of previous government grants being withdrawn to make sure no school is adversely affected this year. There will be a rolling programme of evaluating the local authority central services to guarantee value for money over this coming year.

Brent joined other London boroughs in an LGA-led referral to judicial review in protest about the unfair top-slicing of its budget and this has led to the government re-thinking its funding strategy.

What will happen to Brent’s children if the LA duties are eroded?

Brent LA has invested in a pre-exclusion team and halved the number of exclusions over last four years as well closing the gap for underperforming children, ensuring better outcomes. Academies have responsibility for children they exclude. This means this must pay for alternative education and outcomes will only be monitored by central government, not locally.

Academies and free schools will be their own admissions authorities. This means the local authority has less control over selection of pupils by schools and some children may be unfairly excluded from admission. It also affects strategic planning for school places, putting schools in competition at risk, especially with ongoing changes in the local demographics, rather than planning collaboratively for change.

Brent has an increasing number of children with special educational needs and the LA is planning proactively to increase the capacity in the Brent education community. SEN children will be under-provided for, if schools fragment. This would mean sending children out-borough which is much more costly and less convenient for families.

Brent has almost 400 Looked After children and the social care teams work in close partnership with schools in localities achieving good and improving outcomes for these children. If schools fragment, the links between children’s services and education will be less protected, undermining these outcomes.