No new money for A-level reforms

Longsands plans a range of changes (college photo)

By BBC News Online's Gary Eason

Schools in England are wondering what happened to the extra money they were told they were getting to handle the changes to the A-level syllabus this autumn.

The question to schools is 'What bit of growth would you like to forego?' if we do allocate extra to sixth forms.

Education director Andrew Baxter

Contrary to what they were led to believe by the Department for Education a month ago there might well be no extra money.

It had appeared that ministers had acknowledged that there would be a cost involved in implementing the changes, and that as a result £35m was being made available to schools.

The department has now confirmed that this is not "extra" money. It is part of the funding that had already been allocated to local education authorities for 2000-2001.

It is suggested to authorities that they use £35m in total to manage the change - but they can do so only by cutting some other area of planned growth.

'Sufficient resources'

"We received a letter saying they realised that the reforms to the A-level syllabus and the new [AS] examinations would have resource implications," said Cambridgeshire's director of education, Andrew Baxter.

"But it made it clear that in their view there was sufficient in the resources that had already been allocated for us to target that particular need."

In Cambridgeshire's case the whole allocation intended for education had been put into schools, but nothing as yet had been targeted on the post-16 sector.

Consultation on the distribution of funds, which had ended just before Christmas, will have to start again.

Robert Gwynne: "Iniquitous funding system"

The question headteachers will have to address is whether there should be extra allocated to schools with sixth forms.

One of those most affected is Robert Gwynne, principal of Longsands College, St Neots, which has 1,600 pupils aged 11 to 18, with about 220 in the sixth form. Its A-level results are well above the national average.

The college is in the process of revising its sixth form curriculum to meet the new requirements for greater diversity.

Another factor influencing it is the increasingly perilous future of smaller sixth forms and a need therefore to attract more students to stay on after 16.

Investment

Mr Gwynne estimates that the changes will cost up to £40,000 next year, out of his budget of £3.5m.

We are into an iniquitous position in education. We have a nationalised system which is funded on a localised basis.

School principal Robert Gwynne

"We have committed ourselves to what you might call putting up some risk money, and we were prepared to do that to see if we could make it pay off in the long term.

"But then we hear [Education Minister] Tessa Blackstone and others saying 'Yes, but we are going to give you some money anyway' - so we then want to know where that money is coming from."

The director of education, Andrew Baxter, said it would be churlish not to acknowledge that the funding which the government had made available for education next year was significantly higher than in the current and previous years.

"The question to schools is 'What bit of growth would you like to forego?' if we do allocate extra to sixth forms," he said. "We will have to try to get a consensus.

"What we can't do is pass on the money outside the distribution formula - because then we won't hit our targets for delegation. We get caught the other way."

'Unfair formula'

Last year for the first time the government controversially 'named and shamed' education authorities it said were not passing on to schools all the extra money it intended they should have.

LEAs objected strongly that the figures were inaccurate and some said privately that they would not be caught again - they would make sure their accounts this year did not lay them open to that accusation.

The revelation that there is no 'extra' money for the A-level changes follows on the row over the funding of increased, performance-related pay scales for teachers.

In that case too, it emerged that the government intended LEAs to pay for the rises out of their existing allocation - again cutting into the planned growth in education budgets.

'Pounds per kid' idea

The cost of the A-level reforms prompts Longsands College principal Robert Gwynne to join many other headteachers in railing against the formula by which schools get their money via local education authorities.

"We have that £40,000 as a real cost, the school down the road has that as a real cost. The school down the road is funded by Bedfordshire. We are funded by Cambridgeshire and there is a huge difference in the funding per student across those two schools.

"We are into an iniquitous position in education. We have a national curriculum, we have a national inspection process, we have national targets.

"We have a nationalised system which is funded on a localised basis."

He has no complaint with Cambridgeshire's efforts, but regards the system as outdated and unfair. Instead he would like to see a standard nationwide "pounds per kid" for education, weighted by pupils' age and a factor for social deprivation.

"What is the social equity in children in this school being funded at £300 and £400 less than their counterparts in Bedfordshire, which is three miles from here? It's ridiculous," he said.