£240 million allocated to new grammar schools in the Autumn Statement

[noblegiraffe]

I just want this thread here to reference whenever any poster says 'there's no money, schools will just have to reduce photocopying costs/sell the playing field/charge parents £500 per year/not give teachers a pay rise and schools/teachers/parents will just have to accept it'

Money can be found when it suits the whim of the PM.

If new schools are to be built then they shouldn't exclude at least 75% of the local population. It's pretty basic.

This is indeed well off topic.

Not sure why you say "no longer allowable". This hasn't changed since the 2013 version of 733. Under the flat rate scheme the business can only reclaim VAT on capital expenditure. Motor expenses, travel and subsistence are not capital expenditure. They are therefore factored in to the rate used. The flat rate set for any type of business is supposed to approximate to the VAT a typical business of that type would pay if it was not using the flat rate scheme. If a particular business is paying substantially more in motor expenses, travel, subsistence or other VATable supplies than a typical business in its sector it may be well advised to avoid the flat rate scheme.

they shouldn't exclude at least 75% of the local population

Why not? most oversubscribed comprehensives exclude a large number of locals on various different criteria.

Yeah any new schools being opened shouldn't be faith schools either.

any new schools being opened shouldn't be faith schools either

So just say to the parents who pay for schools "I dont care what you want, go to the bog standard local school". I would like to see the government who dictated that to families. Never going to happen.

That's what should happen. When money is tight and school places are in short supply there is no way the government should be saying 'here, special subset of the population, here's a shiny new school for you on your doorstep. The rest of you can get the bus to the next town.'

Rather than wasting money on underfunding new grammar schools, the DfE could always get its finger out of its arse and work out a fair national funding formula and increase the education budget before too many good people haemorrhage from the education sector.

I agree with a fair national funding formula, but how will that ever happen? The schools getting more money will be happy but the schools losing money will scream blue murder, we will have union strikes and the idea will be decimated.

There weren't any strikes when sixth form funding was slashed to make it 'fairer' compared to colleges.

It has to be our priority to educate our brightest children to their maximum potential

Really?
My priority would be to ensure all dc are given access to the best education for that child.
I wouldn't have an issue with a Government announcing additional money for grammar schools if they were funding specialist provision properly. There are simply nowhere near enough specialist places for the children in our authority that require them. I think any half decent society ought to prioritise the most vulnerable in their society.

The schools getting more money will be happy but the schools losing money will scream blue murder

There will be transitional arrangements. The details are not yet clear but no school will see its funding cut. It may be frozen or, more likely, rise at a slower rate but it won't be cut.

It won't be cut so much as the costs will just go up massively (with each new announcement about National Insurance, pension contributions, minimum wage, etc), as will inflation... which funnily enough, results in massive cuts having to be made in education in general, as the same money as last year pays for one hell of a lot less this year. Meanwhile, of course, if you retain good staff, they get more experienced each year and more effective and therefore cost more to employ, not the same. Clearly the government wants low paid, unqualified, inexperienced people working in and running our schools, and massive class sizes, in order to keep the costs down. Not that it has been averse to the idea of spending huge amounts of money on structural changes to the way good schools are run at a time of huge money shortages and now throwing away a little bit more still on the idea of creating new grammar schools. I would far rather an extra £7.50 per child than throw away £240 million on another underfunded project destined to be disruptive and distract energy and attention away from the mess the government is making of education in general.

"It has to be our priority to educate our brightest children to their maximum potential."

Indeed. So how about improving the existing comprehensive schools instead then?

DD is bright. She did exceptionally well in her GCSEs in a good comprehensive. It isn't rocket science.

So how about improving the existing comprehensive schools instead then?

It successive governments and educational experts knew how to they'd have done it. Trouble is, all schools are different, different areas have different problems. One size doesn't fit all.

There have been some quite spectacular failures where brand spanking new comps have been built, with state of the art facilities, but have become failing schools almost immediately.

A school near us has been crap for over 40 years. They've gone through all kinds of initiatives to improve it over the years, but all have failed. Finally, a couple of years ago, they closed it down.

So, other than just throwing money at a school, which has been proved not to work, what would you do to "improve all comps"???

So, other than just throwing money at a school, which has been proved not to work, what would you do to "improve all comps"???

Grammar schools lead to marginally higher grades for those who get in and worse grades for those who are just below the pass threshold. Thus they have been proved not to work. So why would you throw money at new grammars?

BTW it is not true to say that increasing financing has been proven not work: the increase in funding in London has worked. Why don't we try and learn lessons from this, instead of opening grammars to fool middle class parents into thinking that the education system is improving?

You can't pretend throwing money and expertise at schools doesn't work when the government loves to crow so much about the success of London schools which have had colossal sums of money thrown at them compared to anywhere else in the country.

Trying to replicate what was done in London but seriously on the cheap doesn't work. So either London schools are actually rubbish and cheat to get good exam results, or lots of investment makes a difference.

Not everyone agrees that it's the extra investment in London that has made the difference. Some argue that it's demographic changes, with a much larger proportion of immigrant children from higher-achieving backgrounds, that is primarily responsible for the improvement there, due to those children and their families having higher aspirations and a better work ethic. Correlation does not prove causation, unfortunately.

In addition, London has other advantages that it would be difficult to transfer to many more remote areas. Good teachers and headteachers want to live there; most of them don't want to live in seaside towns miles from a city, for example.

While I agree that improving comprehensives should be the priority, I don't think that just providing more money would necessarily be the answer.

Not everyone agrees that it's the extra investment in London that has made the difference.
link please

Good teachers and headteachers want to live there;
They want to but they cannot afford it.

London schools get nearly double the funding per pupil of Hampshire schools
that is twice as much money per class per year

the money that London state schools get is nearly as much as the private fees in the South West and the borders (north and west)
its a no brainer that if you can only afford NQTs rather than experienced teachers, learning outcomes will be hit

and the utterly dumb Academy system has stopped sharing of resources and training where schools are more than a mile apart so made it even worse

May needs to get out a bit.
I am disappointed by Greening. She rented a house in Derby Road. She knew.
But now she is rich so does not care.

educationdatalab.org.uk/2015/12/the-quest-to-find-london-effect-why-are-some-groups-of-pupils-making-more-progress-than-they-used-to/

Also, there seems to be a contradiction between saying that good teachers can't afford to live in London, but that London benefits from being able to pay for experienced teachers rather than NQTs.

Aww. That's alright, then - we can halve the funding of London schools and give it to lower funded authorities and it will make no difference to standards in London, then. That way, we avoid a four day school week elsewhere and everyone's happy. It is amazing how apparently London's demographic has changed so rapidly from being one where its state school pupils were amongst the worst performing in the country to being the best performing, all because of their drive and work ethic, and so unfortunate this coincided with a huge injection of money and focus on the groups of children who are now performing so well... As for good teachers being attracted to London despite not being able to afford to live there - that would be because many teachers commute into London for the better pay, rather than teaching in their local schools for less pay. Have you never noticed how many people commute into London for work???...

Another interesting thing is that "disadvantaged" schools, as they are referred to in the article, get more pupil premium money. Still, it's nothing to do with the money, apparently.

And I reckon our increased success in the Olympics has nothing to do with money, either - our athlete demographic just has more drive these days. So lots of that funding can go elsewhere, too.

Although more seriously, of course just providing more money is not enough - schools need to use the money wisely. £240 million towards new grammar schools is not my idea of a wise use of money.

it's nothing to do with the money, apparently.
we can halve the funding of London schools and give it to lower funded authorities and it will make no difference to standards in London,

I think you are misreading the report I linked to, if you think that's what it says. What is being argued there is that investment above the pupil premium in London schools does not appear to be correlated with better London performance, and that demographics do.

I believe this is a valid and thought-provoking point of view, which is why I put it forward. I also believe that if we are serious about improving comprehensives everywhere, we need to look at actual research with an open mind, rather than dismissing it in a flood of absurd strawmen and sarcasm. If the various London initiatives and higher funding may not themselves have been responsible for improved results in London, then it's important to be aware of that, in order to consider other approaches to school improvement.