Schools: Management Training (Hansard, 15 March 1990)

§ Baroness Blatch
My Lords, the Government are making available substantial support for training for this important reform. It is for each local education authority to decide on the nature and extent of training for LMS, having regard to its particular circumstances. However, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State is encouraged by the way in which local education authorities are responding to the issue of management training.

§ Lord Dormand of Easington
My Lords, is the Minister aware that the formula funding, which will come into operation with the local management of schools on 1st April, is causing great concern? Has the training dealt with the problem whereby the budget, calculated, as the noble Baroness will know, on the historic base, will be seriously affected when there is an increase in the number of pupils and, perhaps even more important, when there is an increase in teachers' salaries through normal increments, let alone any increase in overall salaries? What have the Government done about that?

§ Baroness Blatch
My Lords, the training is addressing all the issues that will be involved in managing education authorities' budgets and in particular schools' budgets. The noble Lord is venturing into whether the sum of money allocated to schools is actually enough for the transition when under the formula schools will either gain or lose. Most education authorities are finding a way of stepping those schools which lose to the point of the budget that they will receive. Those schools which gain will gain by not more than a percentage of their budget in any one year.

§ Lord Parry
My Lords, what further arrangements have been made for the provision of in-service education to meet the needs of the management studies that must be made available if those now being appointed to management positions in schools are to perform their task adequately?

§ Baroness Blatch
My Lords, the training will address that point. There is a programme of training for governors themselves, for support staff for 1638 governors and also for head teachers and senior teachers. To that end the sums of money in 1989–90 were: £4.9 million for training governors; £3 million for training support staff; and £10 million for training head teachers and senior teachers. In 1990–91 those sums are £5.1 million, £2 million and £8 million. There are plans that this funding should continue into next year.

§ Lord Parry
My Lords, is that additional money to the money that would previously have been given to education?

§ Baroness Blatch
My Lords, it is additional money to the normal allocation for training.

§ The Earl of Onslow
My Lords, when more and more schools become self-governing under the Government's Education Reform Act it will presumably mean that fewer and fewer people will need to be employed in local education authorities. Will not some of those people be retrained and reallocated as bursars and adminstrators who will run schools more efficiently and cost-effectively than overgrown bureaucracies in local education authorities?

§ Baroness Blatch
My Lords, my noble friend makes a very good point. It will be necessary for local education authorities to respond under the new system to the need for less bureaucracy at the centre than before. I cannot comment on whether that money will be transferred to schools. It is for each local education authority to determine allocations for each school. But it will be necessary in regard to the ancillary allowances given to each school to think very much in terms of a bursarial post.

§ Baroness Fisher of Rednal
My Lords, what advice do the Government give to school managers who refuse to take over responsibility for the buildings because they are either unsafe or in a state of dereliction?

§ Baroness Blatch
My Lords, the capital moneys for the kind of problem addressed by the noble Baroness will be retained centrally. Minor maintenance money will be allocated to individual schools.

§ Baroness Fisher of Rednal
My Lords, what advice will the noble Baroness give to local authorities when local managers say that they will not take responsibility as managers?

§ Baroness Blatch
My Lords, my answer implied that individual schools will not have to take on full responsibility for capital moneys for major maintenance. Local education authorities themselves will have to manage that issue, and many are doing it very well.

§ Lord Peston
My Lords, the noble Baroness will have seen the excellent report published by her own department this week on developing school management. Is she aware—I am sure she is—that it says that the function of the local authority will 1639 change but will not necessarily be diminished? Therefore, are not the remarks of her noble friend Lord Onslow quite mistaken in terms of any economies for the local education authority?
Is she further aware that the excellent report from her department says that many primary and secondary school head teachers who will be responsible for these budgets felt deprived of adequate support from the LEA in a consultative capacity and in the form of additional school-based administrative support? Is her right honourable friend the Secretary of State ready to respond to those statements and will he be taking an interest in appropriate action in the very near future as local management of schools starts in the very near future?

§ Baroness Blatch
My Lords, my right honourable friend is aware of all the issues and challenges for teachers, and for head teachers in particular, especially in the primary school sector. A school management task force has been set up specifically to advise the Secretary of State on all the management issues that are to be involved. There is a challenge for schools and there is the issue of whether the support staff is adequate at school level, but that will continue to be monitored.
The noble Lord referred to central administration. Many of us will be looking for a diminution of central bureaucracy in this area. The role for local education authorities will of course change. They will become monitors of quality and monitors of delivery of service. That will be the new role that they will have to develop.

§ Lord Dormand of Easington
My Lords, in relation to the Answer which the Minister gave me, perhaps I may give her a firm assurance that I was talking about the amount of money available to schools; that is largely what LMS is about. Can she be a little more specific on the matter because, with the greatest respect, she did not really answer the Question? If the historic base is to be 1988–89 or even 1989–90, more money is bound to be needed if only, as I said in a supplementary question, in relation to normal increments for teachers. Will she kindly answer the Question?

§ Baroness Blatch
My Lords, with respect, that is not the Question on the Order Paper. The Question asks what progress is being made on the training front. I can say that considerable progress has been made on training, and all the aspects of what teachers, governors and support staff are being trained for will be addressed. The allocation of resources is another matter.

§ Lord Peston
My Lords, I must press the noble Baroness on this point. It is connected with the question of training. Is not the problem that head teachers are being asked to manage budgets, which is something that they have not been asked to do before? They do not have the appropriate training. If my noble friend is right—and I believe that he is—in terms of scarcity of funds, head teachers will be asked to manage budgets which are too small to begin with. We are asking what the department will 1640 do if it turns out next spring—as this will take a little time to happen—that the schools run out of money.

§ Baroness Blatch
My Lords, the amount of money available to local education authorities has always been a finite sum. When it was controlled from the centre there was great frustration at school level about the management. It has been proved, certainly in my authority over the past nine years, that the way in which it is managed at school level brings about greater value for money and better management of resources than is the case when it is managed centrally by the local education authority.