It won’t cost any more – eh? - The Great Educational Balls up - Part 5

This blog is an archive only version, the content has been moved to http://wightweirdos.co.uk/ww/2009/07/the-great-educational-balls-up-series-overview/

Please visit the new site for the latest content and comments or to post a comment.

Apparently the new measures proposed aren’t going to cost anything significant, and the recommendations that would cost money (essential the only ones that might have given something back to HEers) don’t appear to be on the radar any time soon. Here are two statements relating to funding:

“I accept all the recommendations in your report that call for urgent action to improve safeguards for home educated children and we will introduce these as soon as possible…We will consider how best to respond to your other recommendations as we will need to work through their implementation and resource implications.” (Source: Letter from Ed Balls to Graham Badman accepting the review)

“We do not expect (the proposals) to place any significant additional burdens on local authorities as most already monitor home education, and our proposals will provide additional powers that will assist local authorities in dealing more efficiently with the small number of cases where home education does not come up to scratch.” Baroness Morgan of Drefelin, Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Children, Young People and Families) (Source: They Work For You)

So, basically no resources for local authorities as overall it won’t cost them more. Hmmm… lets have a look at that.

OK, Badman in his review claims that there are around 20,000 home educated children known to their local authorities. He goes on to estimate numbers could be in excess of 80,000. Each child is to be visited, the parents spoken to, the child spoken to, possibly on their own, the child given the opportunity to express their views and exhibit their work. As access to the home is apparently necessary, some form of inspection of the premises will be carried out. Enough time will need to be spent to ensure the child does not show any signs of abuse. Substantial notes will need to be taken, and parents may well provide written evidence. This information will need to be written up and collated and a report produced. This will need to be sent to the parents, and may well need to have inaccuracies remedied. Time will need to be spent setting up appointments with parents, travelling to visits etc. Some visits will be missed if parents accidentally forget the LEA are coming round or an emergency crops up. I think it reasonable to suggest that the whole process will take around 2 person days as a conservative minimum. That means 40,000 to 160,000 days per year, an average of 268 to 1,074 days per top-tier local authority (1). So, just for this task an average local authority will require 1.36 and 5.5 FTE members of staff (2). I don’t know how many people are involved in work that would be replaced by this, but based purely on anecdotal evidence I would say it is around a 0.5 FTE member of staff. So we are looking at between £31,175 and £181,250 per local authority on average. A total of up to £27million pounds. I believe I’m being conservative with my figures. And that’s just the extra costs of the new monitoring proposals. No extra burden on local authorities?

Notes:

(1) Based on 149 Top-tier local authorities (those responsible for education)

(2) 260 working days per year (5X52), less average 13.5 sick days (source) less 28 holidays/bank holidays, less 10% time allocation for personal admin, training etc. (22 days) gives 196.5 productive days.

(3) Assumes SO1 grade officer on spinal point 30 at £25,220, 20% NI/pension deductions, £1,000 training budget, £5,000 office costs relating purely to post = £36,260 per FTE staff member.