More than 80 Members of Parliament from lower funded areas including Oxfordshire have written a letter from MPs to the Chancellor. Only one Oxfordshire MP did not sign the letter and we understand that is because he was away at the time, he is supportive of local schools and has presented two petitions to parliament from local residents about school funding.
F40 issued a press release with more information about the issues.
Funding for SEND and those who need AP: Call for evidence This important consultation from the DfE is open until July 31st. We would encourage all those in Special and Mainstream schools who are facing the challenge of trying to keep our schools fully inclusive on totally inadequate funding to respond.
Other consultations may be found on the Current Consultations page of this website this site.
Oxfordshire County Council have launched the School Lunch Survey for Primary School Pupil and Parents/Guardians 2019. Closing date is July 24th.
Governors may also be interested in The costs of education in an age of austerity: a local study from the point of view of parents.
The F40 group have been working constructively and cross-party to achieve a National Fair Funding Formula for schools since 1995. There is a single page summary of their work now available. They are the only group presenting a methodology for the calculation of the Schools Block of the DSG based on the actual cost of running a school, more detail can be found in the Updated Proposal for a National Funding Formula for Schools – April 2019 and the other associated documents. They also address the other funding blocks including Early Years Funding Formula and the High Needs Block, the source of funding for Special and Hospital Schools, Alternative Provision and top-up funding for SEND in our mainstream schools. They do not cover Post 16 Funding which is not part of the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG).
On 14th May 2019 all F40 MPs were invited to a meeting in Parliament at which the presentation for MP’s and the latest F40 Funding Briefing paper (April 2019) were presented. There was also an opportunity for questions. A copy of the briefing was sent to all MP’s of the lowest funded authorities, including those unable to attend the briefing session.
A report about the NGA Summer Conference June 2019 has been written by the OGA secretary. There is interesting information about the speech by Amanda Spielman Ofsted’s Chief Inspector and Professor Dame Alison Peacock the Chief Executive of the Chartered College of Teaching. Did you know Governors can join the Chartered College as Professional Affiliates for £3.75 per month, and among other things gain access to an education and research database; the world’s largest and most complete collection of full-text education journals?
Dame Alison also suggested that paying for College membership as a school would be one way to show that we value our staff.
Regrettably we will not now be holding a meeting this term.
If you are concerned about balancing the three year budget plan and the inadequate responses from Government to date then you may wish to sign the parliamentary petition to get the issue debated in parliament…
The NGA are holding a week of action in support of their campaign ‘Funding the Future: investing in our children’ they would like to hear from schools with specific examples of how the current financial pressures are impacting out schools.
Ofsted launched its consultation on the proposed new framework on 16th January 2019. The consultation is open until 4th April 2019. The proposed framework is substantially different in emphasis and will hopefully enable more inclusive schools to show their strengths and quality of education.
The DfE opened a new consultation about funding schools for the 2019-2020 increase in Teachers’ Pensions contributions, though they do not appear to have mentioned the mechanism for this. We know from the recent pay rise allocations that the mechanism chosen is important as it can result in winners and losers. Please see our Current Consultations Page for the link to this consultation. The closing date was 12th February 2019.
All ‘governors’ of state funded schools are automatically members of OGA and are welcome to attend our FREE Open meetings. However we do rely on Schools subscriptions to pay our running expenses (which are not excessive as we are all volunteers and have no paid employees). Our subscription charges are very modest at £10.00 for schools with less than 300 pupils and £15.00 for those with 300 or more, for the avoidance of doubt these are charges per school, not per multi-academy trust. This subscription has been unchanged since 2003, largely thanks to the generosity of many of our speakers.
Many schools subscribe via Oxfordshire County Council who collect the fees on our behalf, but others prefer to pay direct either via Bacs or by cheque. To facilitate this we have a proforma OGA Invoice for schools’ which they can use to pay us and keep their accounting records correct.
Please check the list that we have of schools that have subscribed 2018-2019 OGA Subscribers. If your school is not included and you believe having a representative body for governors in Oxfordshire is worthwhile please ask at your next Governors meeting if your school would be able to subscribe. It is very time consuming for us to chase up schools individually.
In October F40 the campaign group for a National FAIR Funding Formula presented a briefing to Members of Parliament in the House of Commons MPs Briefing 15 October 2018 delivered.
As I have joined the F40 Executive to support their campaign I attended this briefing. One Oxfordshire MP Victoria Prentis (Conservative Party MP for North Oxfordshire) attended the briefing which she subsequently described as a helpful update. Layla Moran MP (Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament for Oxford West and Abingdon) and Anneliese Dodds MP (Labour Member of Parliament for Oxford East) also contacted me to say they were sorry they had not been able to attend but were supportive of the campaign.
Those of us with Post 16 students, may be interested in the Raise the Rate campaign. Since 2010 the funding mechanism for Post 16 has changed radically, but between 2010 and 2013 the average per student funding fell by 7%. Post 16 funding has been frozen since 2013 which amounts to a real terms reduction of 17%. These figures are from the House of Commons Briefing Paper published in November 2018.
I have put some additional information about funding in the letter sent to Clerks for onward circulation to all Governors today. Please contact us if you do not receive this letter by 21st January 2019.
Carole Thomson, Chair of OGA
11th January 2019