“Deep cuts” may be required to fund free schools

The Institute for Fiscal Studies issued a stern warning this week about the “deep” cuts required to fund the Coalition Government's roll out of free schools.

The Coalition Government’s plans for Swedish-style free schools has come under fresh scrutiny this week. Doubts have been expressed about how the government will find the money for its schools revolution, with the Institute for Fiscal Studies issuing a stern warning about the “deep” cuts required to fund free schools.

In an observation paper titled ‘New schools nice, but at what price?’ authors Haroon Chowdry and Luke Sibieta say that:

“Unless the new schools programme is to be very modest, these plans for overall capital spending will have to be revised upwards or the cuts to investment spending elsewhere will be extremely deep.”

This Coalition Government is banking on the idea that market solutions promoting choice and competition will lead to dynamic changes in the classroom – it proposes to allow any organisation to open their own school at taxpayers’ expense – but creating these new schools will clearly involve a capital cost: acquiring land, building the facilities, and funding the surplus places needed to create competition between schools. In this climate of frugality, how will we fund free schools?

Left Foot Forward has been raising concerns over the cost of these schools for a number of months, and this is not the first time the IFS has asked serious questions about where the money will come from. But this week, it said that allowing organisations to set up free schools at the taxpayer’s expense will:

“Add further pressure onto what is likely to be a tight schools capital budget. These plans were put forward by the Conservatives in the run up to May’s general election, but neither the coalition programme for government nor the Conservative manifesto explained how many new schools would be created or how the capital costs would be met.”

A Conservative Party policy paper from 2008 suggested that new school places would be funded by taking money from Building Schools for the Future fund, Labour’s school renewal programme. However, under spending plans from the previous government, this budget is due to dry up in 2011. So how do the government intend to pay for the schools?

The IFS suggests that one cost-saving measure would be to use refurbished office spaces and commercial premises, but warn:

“While such a move would reduce capital costs, converted premises may struggle to offer the same breadth and quality of facilities as a newly built school.

The IFS report concludes that:

“The coalition government will probably need to be very modest in its plans for new schools, or use an even greater proportion of the shrinking schools capital budget to fund them, or increase schools capital spending at the expense of other departments already facing a tight squeeze.”

The delegated schools budget will be protected for the next year but in the future, it looks as if free schools will be paid for from a re-allocation of existing school budgets, which translates as frontline cuts coming to a school near you.

Before that, we can expect cuts to local authorities. They might not sound particularly bad, nor immediately affect the teacher in the classroom, but unions are warning that such cuts could have a dramatic impact in the provision of services for special needs, social workers, and educational psychologists. As it is, free schools will also impact on special needs provision in a more subtle way.

The think tank Demos this week warned that free schools, which will operate outside of local authority budgets, will need to coordinate their own special needs provision:

Local authorities currently provide services for some of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children in society: many of those who sit at the bottom of the attainment spectrum and play a big role in our story about intractable educational inequality.

The free schools reform could thus take away a significant safety net. If it is not to harm them, significant safeguards will need to be built in.”

Despite several warnings from the IFS and widespread criticism, particularly from teachers, Mr Gove has ploughed on with his free school plans regardless, citing their success in Sweden.

But as Left Foot Forward has reported on many occasions, there are plenty of voices of dissent from Sweden, and this week, the Swedish education minister Bertil Ostberg said:

“The free schools are generally attended by children of better educated and wealthy families, making things even more difficult for children attending ordinary schools in poor areas.”

He added:

“Most of our free schools have ended up being run by companies for profit.”

And said the priority for policy-makers should be improving teaching quality across the board. Evidence from Sweden suggests a “significant increase” in costs in order to set up free schools. Areas with a high proportion of free schools had a higher than average cost-per-pupil.

So where do the coalition partners stand on this issue? Why won’t Liberal Democrats make the Tories see sense? Despite their criticism of plans for free schools in the run up to the election, and their own insistence that schools would be better off under local authority control, the Liberal Democrats appear to have backed down entirely and are following the Tories political direction of travel – but at what cost?

10 Responses to ““Deep cuts” may be required to fund free schools”

  1. Peter Ptashko

    RT @leftfootfwd: "Deep cuts" may be required to fund free schools: http://bit.ly/aLcgsD

  2. Duncan Wiles

    RT @leftfootfwd: "Deep cuts" may be required to fund free schools: http://bit.ly/aLcgsD

  3. Hitchin England

    "Deep cuts" may be required to fund free schools: http://bit.ly/aLcgsD via @leftfootfwd

  4. Andrew Tindall

    RT @leftfootfwd: "Deep cuts" may be required to fund free schools: http://bit.ly/aLcgsD

  5. Johanna Thomas-Corr

    A piece I have written for Left Foot Fwd on concerns over how govt will pay for free schools
    http://bit.ly/aLcgsD

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