Education must look for real cuts

Thursday 23rd June 2011, 3:00PM BST.

From John Henwood.
IT should come as no surprise to learn the Treasury Minister is preparing his colleagues in the States, and the rest of us, for the news that he may not be able to deliver on his promise to cut £65 million from States spending.

However, it is surprising that he should select the States decision to delay changes in schools’ funding as the reason. The proposal to transfer the burden of some of the subsidy to fee-paying schools from the general exchequer to users does not represent a saving at all, merely a shift of the cost.

This was easily perceived as a cop out by the Education Minister, a painless way of reducing his department’s expenditure without actually cutting cost.

Only around half the people employed by Education, Sport and Culture are teachers and I have heard no call for a reduction in their number, even though there are not enough children to fill all the schools. On the other hand, many are questioning whether all the non-teaching posts are necessary.

On several occasions when asked the department has failed to reveal the extent of the apparent growth in the number of administrative and so called support posts in recent years, leaving the clear impression that there is sufficient opportunity to make some real savings without in any way affecting the quality of education at the point of delivery – in the classroom.

Instead of preparing us for broken promises the Treasury Minister should be telling the Education Minister to sharpen his pencil.

1
Teach

June 23, 2011 at 3:54 pm

Some good points but one needs to bear in mind that for any successful school to run at acceptable levels there will always be the need for

- administrative staff
- counsellors
- canteen staff
- caretakers
- special needs assistants
- language assistants
- truancy officers

Without these you end up with (in respective order)

- no-one manning reception, bursary, general essential organisation
- troubled and sometimes desperate students lacking proper care
- anyone to serve and prepare food
- upkeep of building and grounds
- behavioural problems, children unable to access curriculum
- children unable to access curriculum due to language problems
- children playing truant without follow-up, abuse case slipping the net

To turn around and say that the answer is simply trimming away at these vital roles is overly simplistic. Which ones would you start with?

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2
Pupe

June 23, 2011 at 5:59 pm

1. Teach “Which ones would you start with?”

I’d start with canteen staff, which are unnecessary. Then I would merge any councellors into the mental health service. Caretaking could be merged into the states property service. The cost of language assistants should principally be bourne be the parents of children that use their services.
No doubt there are also a number of well paid senior functionaries in the education department who could be removed without any noticeable reduction in the ‘service’ provided.

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3
joker

June 24, 2011 at 10:21 am

The letter highlights the true nature of most, if not all, of savings the Sates could achieve, i.e. the shift of costs.

The only true saving for a government is increased productivity for the same buck. Everything else; cutting services, cutting expenditure to local suppliers, outsourcing, redundancies, all just hit the economy further down the line often having a zero sum effect.

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4
Pip Clement

June 24, 2011 at 5:27 pm

The worst time to cut States’ expenditure is in a recession.
This will take jobs and spending out of the economy when the private sector will not be able to compensate.
Also we have to bear in mind thet the States have always spent what they wanted so making real cuts is a new and very difficult experience.
I predict that there will be less cuts and more taxes which may make the recession longer and deeper than it needs to be.

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5
Jersey Medic

June 25, 2011 at 1:10 am

Pupe (2).

What you are suggesting is exactly the definition of a shift of cost! Sure Education may be able to save a bit of money by shipping out these non-teaching roles, but other departments (Health etc) will have to pay for the services themselves… Where is the money saved?

I don’t agree that language assistants should be paid for by the parents of the kids who use them; some pupils spend longer with teachers due to various issues, should the parents be sent an invoice for their time too?

Outsourcing presents its own problems. There is lack of ownership and therefore productivity suffers. If you outsource caretakers, and remove them from the school community, you can pretty well guarantee that the quality of ‘caretaking’ would drop. Caretakers, as do the majority of school staff, take absolute pride in their school and work exceptionally hard to provide the best environment for the pupils. We’ve seen a similar situation with the outsourcing of cleaning in the NHS for example (an not dissimilar situation), where outsourcing cleaning has led to dirtier wards and higher infection rates.

I do however agree that I’m sure a few bigwigs could be shown the door without much difference being made. However, their golden payoffs will reduce the benefit somewhat…

The best way to reduce cost would be to merge or close smaller, underfilled schools, however this is a move that would be political suicide to whoever made the decision.

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6
More from Less ?

June 28, 2011 at 12:16 pm

Many (small %?) of the states school classes are already issued with Internet enabled laptops (~£150 netbooks)

Hope on the horizon – VERY INTERESTING first item on:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b012btrk/Click_25_06_2011/
This should be available for nearly a fortnight, unless someone wants to make it permanently available on youtube.

or: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/9522379.stm

Low cost and driven for free in the cloud.
(perhaps we should all have our “heads in the cloud” Chesney)

I think it would be silly to pretend that there is no dead wood – in the private sector it tends to get cut out.
-it hurts there too, but remember that education is “all about the kids”, so the rest of us need to “man up”.

“More from Less” or a LOT more from the same perhaps?

Hedinda x.

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