One of the more irritating aspects of home education is that while pupils in schools take all their examinations free, courtesy of the taxpayer, home educating parents who save the state around £3000 a year for a school place, also have to pay for any GCSEs that their children take. Still, it might be argued that this is something that we should take into account when we decide not to send our children to school. We assume full responsibility for our children's education and there is an end of the matter. Every IGCSE that my daughter took cost a little over £120 and so the final bill was around £1000. There we are though; I made that decision and that is my affair, there's no point moaning about it!
Part of the impact assessment for Schedule 1 of the Children, Schools and Families Bill, the part which dealt with home education, talked of the advantages to home educated children if more of them were to gain five GCSEs between grades A* and C. I could not agree more. No central records are kept, but every so often an individual local authority will release information about this and it always suggests that home educated children are way behind when it comes to gaining good GCSEs. Last year, for example, Dudley, a town in the Midlands, revealed the figures for home educated children in their area and the GCSEs which they had taken and passed. These were pretty shocking. Of the hundred or so home educated children know to Dudley, only half had taken any GCSEs at all. Nationally, over 98% of children sit at least one GCSE. Fewer than one in ten of the home educated children managed to gain at least five GCSEs, including mathematics and English, at grades between A* and C. This is about a fifth of the national figure for children at school.
There are a number of reasons for these poor academic results. Ineffective teaching surely pays at least some part, but there is also the question of access to examination centres and the actual financial cost of the enterprise. Some families just can't afford to chuck around money on such things and in any case do not know how to go about arranging the GCSEs in the first place. The government proposed to help with this and furnish local authorities with 10% of the Age Weighted Pupil Unit, the amount which central government provides councils with for every school pupil, for some home educated pupils. It was not absolutely clear which home educated pupils would be eligible for this funding; it was at least an encouraging start and might have developed into a promising scheme. Unfortunately, the whole idea has now been scrapped.
Here is the latest news on what the government in Westminster will be providing local councils with for their pupils. The part relating to home educated children is on pages fourteen and fifteen;
http://media.education.gov.uk/assets/files/pdf/t/the%20school%20funding%20settlement%20for%202011%2012%20the%20pupil%20premium%20and%20dedicated%20schools%20grant.pdf
As readers will see, the statement is brief and to the point; not a penny for home educators. I cannot help but wonder if there is an element of gleeful malice in those few sentences! As though the Department for Education is saying; 'Well, you bastards, you made enough trouble for us about the Badman Review. See if you will get any of that money now after the way you moaned about the other recommendations! Losers!'
This might of course be my imagination, which some of those commenting here yesterday suggested was particularly vivid. I think that most parents were a little cautious about accepting money from the local authority anyway. They suspected, probably with good cause, that any such benefits would come with strings attached. It would have been nice to have the option though, for those who were not overly concerned about closer involvement with their local authority. I am guessing that the GCSE figures for home educated children will not after all be improving dramatically in the near future as a result of this initiative and that they will remain frankly dreadful. This is a pity for those children whose parents are unable or unwilling to enter them for examinations. I think personally, that this is a short sighted policy of the government and that the £300 or so a year which was being suggested for each child would have been money well spent.
Showing posts with label funding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label funding. Show all posts
Tuesday, 21 December 2010
Wednesday, 17 February 2010
Funding for home educators
The recent letter which the DCSF sent to local authorities regarding home educated children with special needs, contained a tantalising hint as to what home educating parents might be able to expect in the way of funding, at least once the new legislation comes into force. Before we look at this, it might be as well to run over the financial situation for local authorities and their schools.
Some home educators get quite irritable with their local authority when told there is no money available for home educated children. They have the idea that their council is sitting on a big bag of money which they are wilfully refusing to share with home educating parents! It's not like that at all really. Running schools is very expensive and the money collected in Council Tax wouldn't cover it. Instead, the government in Westminster sends local authorities a big sum of money each year to pay for their schools. This is called the Direct Schools Grant or DSG for short. It is calculated by counting all the children who are registered at the maintained schools in the local authority area and then multiplying this number by the Age Weighted Pupil Units, known by the hideous acronym of AWPUs. This figure ranges from £2152 a year for children in Year 1 to £3530 for those in Year 11. So a secondary school containing six hundred children might receive about £2,000,000. This money, the DSG, is only provided for children who are registered pupils.
Those of us who have decided to teach our own children, opt out of this system completely. We have to pay for everything, from pencils to sitting GCSEs. Personally, this strikes me as perfectly reasonable, although I know that some would disagree. In the letter to local authorities, the DCSF says, apropos of home educated children;
"We would count each such pupil as 0.1 for DSG funding purposes, and review towards the end of the next spending review period whether this is an appropriate level. We plan to make this change for the 2011-12 DSG period."
Now the interpretation which I put upon this is that the DSG will be increased in 2011/2012 by a tenth of the relevant AWPU for each home educated pupil registered with the local authority. The bulk of the DSG goes of course towards salaries and running costs of schools, so we can't really expect the government to give the full AWPU for each home educated pupil. The big question is, what will happen to this money when the local authorities get it? How much of it will filter down to families for the things they need? The short answer is probably not a lot. To see why, I shall look at Essex, my own local authority.
There are roughly six hundred home educated children known to the local authority in Essex. It is possible that there are as many as this again who are unknown. To monitor those children of whom it is aware, Essex employs three workers and one part-time office administrator. The three members of staff who visit homes are all experienced teachers. Their aim is to visit each family once a year for an hour or so, but they don't manage it all the time. Let's give them, say, £35,000 per annum each. Let's give the administrator £12,000 per annum. Lets us also allow each inspector around £5,000 a year for travel costs. We have a budget here of a little under £135,000 each year. This is very modest for a whole department; no wonder elective home education is often seen as the Cinderella of education departments!
Now let's introduce a law which makes visible the other six hundred or so children who are being educated at home and let's tell the inspectors that they have to see those children as well. In fact they must visit every child at least once a year. It won't work of course; they will have to engage some new staff. Hang on a minute though! If we are being given 0.1 of the AWPU for all those kids, that comes to twelve hundred times £300. An extra £360,000 a year. Hell, money's no object now! We can engage new staff, move to bigger premises. For the first time ever, the Elective Home Education Unit is now properly resourced.
I am guessing, and I might be quite wrong, that most of the money will end up being swallowed by new salaries and so on in this way. It's human nature really. The GCSEs that have been promised will not cost much. Although when arranged privately they cost around £150 a throw, schools only pay £30 or so. Access to laboratories and sports fields will not cost the local authority much either. What else would they do with the extra money, but spend it on hiring new staff?
All that I have written above is very speculative and based only upon the evidence available to everybody. If anybody has any firmer information, I should be interested and it is entirely possible that I have got hold of the wrong end of the stick. The new funding might, for instance, be ring-fenced and to be spent solely on home educating families. This is to forestall any comments to the effect that I don't know what I'm talking about! In this case, it may be true.
Some home educators get quite irritable with their local authority when told there is no money available for home educated children. They have the idea that their council is sitting on a big bag of money which they are wilfully refusing to share with home educating parents! It's not like that at all really. Running schools is very expensive and the money collected in Council Tax wouldn't cover it. Instead, the government in Westminster sends local authorities a big sum of money each year to pay for their schools. This is called the Direct Schools Grant or DSG for short. It is calculated by counting all the children who are registered at the maintained schools in the local authority area and then multiplying this number by the Age Weighted Pupil Units, known by the hideous acronym of AWPUs. This figure ranges from £2152 a year for children in Year 1 to £3530 for those in Year 11. So a secondary school containing six hundred children might receive about £2,000,000. This money, the DSG, is only provided for children who are registered pupils.
Those of us who have decided to teach our own children, opt out of this system completely. We have to pay for everything, from pencils to sitting GCSEs. Personally, this strikes me as perfectly reasonable, although I know that some would disagree. In the letter to local authorities, the DCSF says, apropos of home educated children;
"We would count each such pupil as 0.1 for DSG funding purposes, and review towards the end of the next spending review period whether this is an appropriate level. We plan to make this change for the 2011-12 DSG period."
Now the interpretation which I put upon this is that the DSG will be increased in 2011/2012 by a tenth of the relevant AWPU for each home educated pupil registered with the local authority. The bulk of the DSG goes of course towards salaries and running costs of schools, so we can't really expect the government to give the full AWPU for each home educated pupil. The big question is, what will happen to this money when the local authorities get it? How much of it will filter down to families for the things they need? The short answer is probably not a lot. To see why, I shall look at Essex, my own local authority.
There are roughly six hundred home educated children known to the local authority in Essex. It is possible that there are as many as this again who are unknown. To monitor those children of whom it is aware, Essex employs three workers and one part-time office administrator. The three members of staff who visit homes are all experienced teachers. Their aim is to visit each family once a year for an hour or so, but they don't manage it all the time. Let's give them, say, £35,000 per annum each. Let's give the administrator £12,000 per annum. Lets us also allow each inspector around £5,000 a year for travel costs. We have a budget here of a little under £135,000 each year. This is very modest for a whole department; no wonder elective home education is often seen as the Cinderella of education departments!
Now let's introduce a law which makes visible the other six hundred or so children who are being educated at home and let's tell the inspectors that they have to see those children as well. In fact they must visit every child at least once a year. It won't work of course; they will have to engage some new staff. Hang on a minute though! If we are being given 0.1 of the AWPU for all those kids, that comes to twelve hundred times £300. An extra £360,000 a year. Hell, money's no object now! We can engage new staff, move to bigger premises. For the first time ever, the Elective Home Education Unit is now properly resourced.
I am guessing, and I might be quite wrong, that most of the money will end up being swallowed by new salaries and so on in this way. It's human nature really. The GCSEs that have been promised will not cost much. Although when arranged privately they cost around £150 a throw, schools only pay £30 or so. Access to laboratories and sports fields will not cost the local authority much either. What else would they do with the extra money, but spend it on hiring new staff?
All that I have written above is very speculative and based only upon the evidence available to everybody. If anybody has any firmer information, I should be interested and it is entirely possible that I have got hold of the wrong end of the stick. The new funding might, for instance, be ring-fenced and to be spent solely on home educating families. This is to forestall any comments to the effect that I don't know what I'm talking about! In this case, it may be true.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
