Every so often the government tries to justify its public service funding policies by arguing that “efficiencies” can be possible and reaches for the time-honoured cliché: “Savings in the back office can be found.”
Last time was in 2015 when the then chancellor George Osborne’s Comprehensive Spending Review noted that secondary school spending on back-office costs varied significantly between schools and that between 2003 and 2013 back-office spending per-pupil increased by around 60 per cent in real-terms. The implication was clear – some schools should cut back.
Unfortunately, George forgot to mention the caveats in the document from which the figures were drawn (Review of Efficiency in the Schools System, DfE, 2013). This noted that “individual school circumstances vary and condition and size of school buildings will determine certain running costs”. We also questioned the consistency of the data, which the DfE admitted was not the most robust.
Responding to the DfE report, many school business managers highlighted reasons for increased costs: extra governance support in academies; increased Education Funding Agency data returns; sports funding breakdowns; redoing the Single Central Record because inclusion requirements changed overnight; DBS and Ofsted early years disqualification checks; new systems for measuring progress; increased SEND, Education, Health and Care Plan and Pupil Premium admin; increased website requirements; brokering with additional suppliers and local authorities; post-16 support forms; administering performance-related pay and appraisal; additional health and safety and insurance duties; and not forgetting the academy budget forecast...
In the past, after a back office cuts announcement there would have been a bit of excitement and then things would settle down. However, we now have more academies facing cuts to the Education Support Grant and the Minimum Funding Guarantee on top of frozen basic funding. Add increasing pay, pensions and National Insurance costs and you can see that schools face a struggle.
Luckily the cavalry has appeared in the shape of well-suited (they earn a lot of money), shifty management consultants and HR specialists, bearing the panacea of “shared services” – “Let us run your administrative teams and we will cut out duplication, streamline services and save money on staff costs”, they cry. That of course depends on their being duplication in the first place – many school business managers have already squeezed most easy savings out through better procurement.
Shared services basically means fewer staff doing more work (and at a time when the government is urging reduced workload for teachers). Some multi-academy trusts are proposing to create their own regional “back office” teams, but this will also bring a range of problems.
Let’s be clear, the pejorative term “back office staff” underrates not just the work outlined above, but the invaluable hidden pastoral roles too. These are crucial in the life of a school, such as providing support to parents by helping them fill in vital forms that give them access to vital funds and support services; chasing absence (and as they know the pupils, knowing the best way to get them back into school); or understanding the different needs of disadvantaged parents and pupils and adjusting how the way the school works with them.
Lose this local understanding to a regional shared service and heads will lose invaluable flexibility, autonomy, knowledge and support. And time: I have a vision of 1,000 heads hanging on the phone to their regional resource centre, desperate for a DBS form to be filled in so they can employ a teacher, listening to: “Your call is valuable to us and will be dealt with shortly...”
There is a reason why many major organisations are now returning their services in-house. But how many schools will be taken for a ride?
- Jon Richards is UNISON’s national secretary for education. Visit www.unison.org.uk/education