The Chancellor giveth what the Chancellor hath taketh away

Surely the most brazen aspect of today's rather disjointed display by the Chancellor was his announcement on school capital funding (trailed like much else in the weekend press). To recap, shortly after coming to office, Michael Gove earned his spurs with the Treasury by abruptly cancelling over 700 school building projects, loudly proclaiming his ability to achieve 'better value for money', and denouncing Labour's Building Schools for the Future programme as a 'costly failure'. He later lost a court case over a failure to consult properly.

Since then, some capital allocations were made to ensure the sponsored academies programme (the difficult bit that involves rather more than a £15-25k legal bill) was able to continue and to provide some funds to the free schools programme. There has also been some cash to help local authorities to deal with an unexpected surge in demand for school places, in part caused by a decline in private school take-up among the middle classes. Today, George Osborne gave back another £1.2 bn to be split evenly between free schools and school places.

But, the government hasn't just cancelled most new building in schools, at significant cost not just to the fabric of schools, but also to the construction sector. It has also decimated schools' ability to keep their buildings in good repair, by virtually eliminating their annual school capital grant that David Blunkett introduced, known as formula capital. There is, of course, a strong economic argument for pegging teachers' pay and reining in current spending in schools, as much as everywhere else: and with the IFS forecasting that 55% of primaries and 70% of secondaries will be losers, despite the pupil premium, that is happening.

However, there is far less justification, as Osborne now seems to allow, for the huge curb on schools capital investment. Moreover, the focus on free schools capital is particularly odd, since a much-touted attraction of free schools was, apparently, their ability to provide a presumably superior education at the same cost as the school down the road. Now, it seems that they will cost an average - and many of these will be primaries - of £6m each.

I've no problem with free schools having such capital funding, where they are meeting demonstrable need, or are genuinely helping tackle poverty. And I welcome the new specialist maths colleges (even if this is from a Government that axed support for specialist school networks). But, let's be clear: a lot of this money is at the expense of rebuilding other schools in deprived areas. And the list of free schools to date suggests that the genuine parent-promoted or teacher-led schools are being supplemented to boost the numbers by a combination of minor independent and faith schools joining the state system, Middle School/two-tier refuseniks and local authority schools under another guise. The idea that those latter groups deserve preferential capital treatment over other schools and academies is less than convincing.

It is eight months since the DFE published the not hugely inspiring James review of schools capital. When I tried to open it from the DFE website, I was informed that the 'file is damaged and could not be repaired'. Fittingly, since there is still no coherent programme for infrastructural investment (and that includes technology) yet. Instead of another Gordon Brown-style rabbit-out-of-hat exercise, the Chancellor should have given schools a clear idea of the coalition's investment plans for the duration of the parliament. Had he done so, he might have raised at least half a cheer from those upon whom he has just imposed 15-20% real terms pay cuts (including extra pension contributions) - and from the construction sector as well.

Coalition suffers again for BSF axe in Black Country

Luke Akehurst's indispensable weekly round-up of council by-election results draws attention to a stunning Labour gain, on a 16.5% swing from the Conservatives, in the Wednesbury North ward of Sandwell MBC. As the BBC regional news reports, the Tories have held this ward for 36 years.

But Sandwell was one of the worst affected by the crass handling of the Building Schools for the Future programme at the Department for Education. Not only did the council lose its vital regeneration projects, but it was told it had retained them before ministers had to contradict themselves. Nine major projects were lost - and as locals had seen the benefits of BSF already in other new local schools, they didn't swallow Michael Gove's line about it being a useless scheme. The Deputy Leader of the Conservative group, Elaine Costigan, another Wednesbury councillor, was so 'ashamed' of the decision that she joined Labour.

It would seem that the people of Sandwell have not yet forgiven the coalition for such shabby treatment, as both the Tories and Lib Dems both lost votes to Labour in almost equal numbers.

Ministers can't ignore the boring details

The many twists and turns in the school buildings fiasco (many of which have been ably exposed by Ed Balls) seem to point to a major flaw at the heart of the coalition's approach to government: a failure to bother themselves sufficiently with the details and a wish covertly to continue in opposition rather than accepting the trials and tribulations of government.

The wholly unfair Sunday briefings against Tim Byles, an able leader of Partnership for Schools who pushed the capital programme back into shape, suggests an ugly tendency among some in government towards smears and childish oppositionism. But the fact is that whatever capital programme emerges to replace Building Schools for the Future will need someone to run it and keep the costs in check, and that expertise does not exist within the Department for Education, nor is it easy to find outside it. Michael Gove has deservedly been praised for his willingness publicly to accept responsibility for last week's fiasco; one must hope that he can equally publicly disown the trashing of Byles and PFS, and put a stop to similar such briefings.

The lesson that he - and his fellow ministers - should draw from last week's affair is that they need to look in much greater detail at the implications of decisions, and recognise that the simple slogans of opposition do not always easily translate into the effective policy of government. That is not to say that the ministers should accept everything they are told by the civil servants, especially where their advice could scupper the coalition's radical reforms; rather it is to recognise that without proper checks, without a recognition of the delivery mechanisms and agencies needed to effect policy, and without a clear message, the government will come seriously unstuck.

Civitas has rightly drawn attention to the likely three year setback that will result from a rapid rush to GP commissioning, a view largely echoed by the excellent Chris Ham from the Kings Fund on Today this morning. And the idea that the independent Food Standards Agency should simply be absorbed into the DoH beggars belief. Here are two accidents waiting to happen. And they won't be the only ones unless ministers recognise that they need to take charge and get behind the important details, rather than operating like a permanent opposition.

It may be boring, it is certainly time-consuming, but without greater focus on details the coalition will not last nearly as long as many people think.

Getting the lists wrong was not Gove's biggest error

There is plenty of justifiable outrage at the cack-handed way in which the lists of spared and scrapped school building projects were issued this week. For those schools that thought their plans would be realised, the agony of being told that this was merely an administrative error must have been unbearable, and Michael Gove is right to don sackcloth and apologise in person.

But it would be wrong to view listgate as the most important mistake in this sorry business. That lay in cancelling 719 existing Building Schools for the Future projects in the first place, many of them well advanced - meaning that whatever admin costs were regarded as profligate will already have been accrued. BSF may have become too bureaucratic, but behind it lay a desire to achieve rather more than new buildings for a £55 billion investment. A transformation was being sought across whole towns, cities and shires, not just in individual schools. There were expectations that new schools would have the latest technology, that classrooms would be adaptable to modern needs, that the schools would approach carbon neutrality and that by improving the learning environment, they could contribute to higher standards. Many BSF plans were explicitly linked to the establishment of academies.

Of course, a new government might be expected to seek better value for money from the whole process. It may even have new priorities for what they should contain (though it should eschew building new schools on a Victorian model) and it may see potential value for money improvements in more standardised plans. All this could be achieved through a halt to future building plans, without throwing existing plans out, particularly those that were well advanced.

Maybe, Gove is seeking to win Brownie points from the Treasury. Maybe he thinks he can't fund free schools without cancelling existing plans. Either way he must surely have realised how much political damage this would do to the coalition. Tory MPs are as angry as Labour ones, with one planning a march on No 10. And given that many plans are funded through the Private Finance Initiative, was it really necessary? Unlike his cabinet colleague at health (latest wheeze: having trashed Jamie's school dinners, let's get McDonald's to run our health campaigns) Gove has had a clear rationale to his reforms, whether one accepted it or not. By creating so many enemies so early, he has made it that much harder to achieve his radical ambitions.

Meanwhile, is it worth asking where the Lib Dems were in all this process? Probably not, as their DFE minister, Sarah Teather's apparent ignorance of what has happened in education over the last ten years is matched only by her obvious inability to influence a single decision of any real importance in her department.

Coalition plans to abandon playing field protection

Amidst the understandable outrage among schools losing their BSF expectations, there has been little attention paid to the terms of reference of the review of capital funding that has been introduced alongside the cancellation of 700 planned new schools. Buried in the terms of reference is the following:

Reducing the burden on schools

· To review and reform the requirements on schools including the building/School Premises Regulations, design requirements and playing field regulations.

In other words, the coalition is considering removing the requirement introduced by Labour that playing fields can only be sold where they provide new sports facilities, like a new sports hall. Currently, a school wishing to dispose of a playing field is considered against three main criteria:

• that playing field provision and curriculum requirements at the school making the disposal, and at other local schools, are met
• that community use of a school's playing fields is taken into account
• that any sale proceeds are re-invested:
  firstly, to provide new or improved outdoor sports facilities;
  secondly, to provide new or improved indoor sports facilities; or
  thirdly, to be used to help raise standards by providing educational facilities.

While not eliminating sales, the requirement had greatly reduced their number by creating a presumption against such sales, and each sale has required explicit DFE approval. Now it would appear that despite plenty of bluster in opposition, the Coalition wants to relax these requirements.

That ought to boost England's sporting chances in the future.

Hopi Sen, like my anonymous commentator below (please don't be so shy), has been reading too many conspiracy theories. Hasn't he?

Short-sighted building cuts

Modern school buildings - over 1100 new schools were built since 1997 - remain one of Labour's great educational legacies. And while there may well be savings to be made in the Building for the Future (BSF) programme through more standardised plans, it is deeply worrying to see the coalition treating the abandonment of school building plans almost as a badge of pride.

While there may be a good case for some cuts in revenue spending, the cuts in buildings investment cannot but hinder the recovery, damaging the construction sector. This is an investment in the future which should not be treated as an optional extra. George Osborne effectively acknowledged in his Budget speech that previous Tory governments mistakenly cut capital investment during previous recessions. It remains to be seen how the capital programme emerges after this review of BSF: but a return to the days of crumbling schools in the 90s would not only be bad for education, it would be bad for the economy and future growth.

No wonder business confidence is ebbing from the economy.

This post also appears on the Public Finance blog.

Gordon brings some coherence to the Government's schools policy

Today's education speech by the Prime Minister was talked up as part of the fightback against his Bank Holiday critics. The Liberal Democrats predictably sneered at it in advance (bizarrely imagining that their own feeble education policy offers a credible alternative). But whatever its genesis, that was a good speech on education by Gordon Brown that offered a sense of where the government is going on the issue that has been sadly lacking in too much of what has emerged from the 'children's, schools and families' department in recent months.

It was particularly good because it was about education and schools in particular. And once it moved from the obligatory global justifications, it got down to brass tacks in a credible way. By dividing itself into themes related to leadership, teaching and the role of parents, it provide a valuable vehicle for a good number of worthwhile announcements (and justifiable reannouncements). It was, as a result, far chunkier than the advance billing.

There is to be much stronger action on failing primary schools (though the Prime Minister needlessly stops at federations for their governance). Chains of schools - already developing through academies - are to be given greater encouragement. Online reporting by schools to parents of children's progress will become the norm from 2010 in secondaries and 2012 in primaries. The importance of external primary tests was reaffirmed, along with plans for a new Report Card. Local authorities will be expected to become more the commissioners envisaged by Tony Blair in his 2005 White Paper than the managers of schools and to be responsive to parents both where they want to set up new schools and where they want new provision.

There is a much greater coherence in this menu than has been evident not only in government speeches on education of late but than there is in the Opposition's still very sketchy proposals for free schools. But there are still areas where the Government could and should go further when it finally publishes its White Paper on schools next month.

First, the academies programme and academy freedoms should be available to federations of primary schools including weaker ones (this is not actually what the Tories are proposing, and would provide a constructive contrast to their plans).

Second, although most parents may not want to set up their own schools, the Government should make sure the powers in the 2006 legislation can be used by those who do and significant parent promoters not only get local authority support to develop their plans, but they are linked to others who might be willing to take up their ideas. The extra costs need only arise with the capital proposals that are the Achilles heel of the Tory plans.

Third, if local authorities are to be expected to act in parents' interests, there must be someone with the statutory authority to force them to do so. This should be an explicit responsibility of the School Adjudicator, who already has a number of similar roles.

In the current climate, it may be that Brown's measures are treated as trivial or repetitive. And the Prime Minister could have done a little more to remind people how much has already been achieved, not least with academies. But by giving coherence to an approach to education that has recently felt haphazard, the PM has made a valiant attempt to recover the Labour initiative in this subject.

I've also written on the speech for the Progress website.

Bypassing the Bard

The demise of Shakespeare in schools, evidenced by a fall off in demand at the RSC, is an entirely predictable outcome of the Government's decision to scrap Key Stage 3 tests. In many schools, the only reason the Bard was taught to less able pupils under 14 was because of its place on the curriculum and in the tests. Teachers believe they are exercising their professional judgment that a significant proportion of pupils find Shakespeare too difficult. For years, the curriculum authority had been trying to ditch this test but were resisted by successive secretaries of state.

But it was to ensure that everyone was exposed to England's greatest playwright that the National Curriculum gave his works such prominence. Those who demanded the demise of the tests - including the Schools Select Committee - should have understood this. The question we need to decide is whether every pupil should have an entitlement to certain subjects and experiences. By scrapping the Shakespeare test along with other KS3 tests, the decision was also effectively made to downgrade Shakespeare in schools. The only surprise is that the architects of this decision should be so surprised.

The flaw at the heart of Cameron's schools plan

The Sunday papers have been persuaded that a Cameron-led government would open either 3000 or 5000 new schools, thanks to their 'free schools' proposals modelled on the Swedish system. The figures are pure guesswork: they are simply made up, and in some ways, the proposal is an extension of existing Government policy. Academies and school competitions have made it easier for diverse new providers to set up new state schools. There will be 400 academies - secondary schools with similar governance to that proposed by the Tories - within the next few years. (Which will be news to the Mail on Sunday, which thinks there is a local authority monopoly on new schools that the Tories would abolish).

But the difference between Labour and the Tories lies in a word that is apparently a dirty word: planning. Labour has been deliberately replacing failing schools with academies, as part of a drive to remove poor schools from the system. With floor targets to raise the minimum standard, they have successfully driven up standards already. The government has been encouraging and cajoling new providers to get involved. And with new schools costing around £20 million, this makes sense.

Let's be clear. The Tories are not guaranteeing 3000 or 5000 new schools. They are saying that if people get together and decide to set up these schools, then there might be 3000 new schools. In fact, Labour has already built around 1200 new schools, and it has funded the capital costs both of doing so and of renewing many more. But there has been an attempt both to prioritise and target funding, and to insist on linkage to school reform.

Those likely to take advantage of the Tory plans will be fourfold. The first are the education charities involved in the academies programme at present. It is not clear, however, that they have the capacity to move into hundreds of schools. The second may be some groups of parents, some of whom are already putting ideas into school competitions. Several parent power schools have opened under Labour, and there may be demand for more. The third will be people unhappy that unviable schools are being closed as primary school pupil numbers fall. The extent to which they succeed under these plans will depend on whether the Tories set a minimum school size. At present, such schools are typically amalgamated into new extended schools, with improved facilities. And the fourth will be Muslim groups who currently run fee-paying schools. It is likely that several hundred such schools would be the first to be set up. Which is not necessarily a bad thing: such schools are better regulated in the state sector, but I'm not sure that Dominic Grieve had this is mind when he sounded off yesterday.

What the Tories are proposing is not the same as the Swedish model, in one crucial and costly respect. In Sweden, where a group of parents or a private company wants to set up a school, and fulfils regulatory requirements on the curriculum and inspection, it receives some cash for each pupil it educates. It does not receive capital funding. That way, if it fails, the taxpayer is not greatly out of pocket. But the Tories plan to raid £4 billion from Building Schools for the Future to gamble on their success. The result is likely to be a large deadweight cost, which will eventually limit the programme. It is also likely to mean a lot of disappointment in areas that were counting on a well-equipped new school through the BSF programme.

Building blocks

I have a feature article in this week's Public Finance magazine about changes that are taking place in the government's school building programme, Building Schools for the Future. You can read it here.