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.

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.

Candour on spending is vital

The Sunday Times reports that there is a split within the cabinet on the best way to approach the spending debate and the battle lines with the Tories at the next election. On capital investment, this Government has an excellent story, which can be illustrated in every constituency with new schools, health centres and other public buildings. That capital may fall in future years as a result of the recession would still mean that far more is being invested that under the Tories, who provided less than a billion pounds in 1996 for school building.

But the Government is in danger of obscuring the real progress that it has made for two reasons. The first is that it has largely given up reminding people of the difference that has been made. An audit of school buildings in 2007 showed that by that stage over 1100 completely new schools had been built since 1997, yet there has been little effort made to update the data, partly because of a bizarre Year Zero approach that characterised the early Brown period.

But the second more pertinent danger is that a lack of candour on public spending will deny legitimacy both to the real achievements on the genuine differences in approach between the Tories and Labour. It is vital that ministers have the chance to set out in detail ahead of the election exactly what will be spent or invested - and what will need to be saved - in the years ahead. Only then can the party genuinely erect dividing lines with a Tory party that failed to invest when in power and is unlikely to provide the further necessary investment if it wins power again.

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.

A good week for school reform

There has been a welcome sign of purposeful activity from the awkwardly-named Department for Children, Schools and Families this week, and an unusually high degree of reasonably well reported good news stories.

* The opening of 180 new schools, including 47 new academies, has given positive prominence to the school building programme not just nationally but locally too.
* Details of plans to bring back the compulsory cooking lessons agreed by Tony Blair with Jamie Oliver have been strong and without equivocation. The difference between 'food technology' and cooking is being well understood.
* Plans for 100 new trust schools run with the co-operative movement echo an idea floated at a time when trust schools were hugely controversial. It is good to see the key proposal from the 2006 education act being taken forward with enthusiasm.
* Plans announced today for £10 million investment in boarding places for vulnerable children are particularly welcome, although select committee chairman Barry Sheerman's odd reaction to the idea suggests that this is a policy battle not yet fully won.

And what characterises these four excellent proposals? They represent a welcome continuity of the education policies developed by Tony Blair as Prime Minister. They have a level of detail and plausibility that remains lacking in the Conservative proposals. And they confirm that early signs of a retreat on reform in education after Gordon Brown became PM have been firmly abandoned.

Why the government has picked the right target

Sir Simon Jenkins tells us that the plan to improve 638 secondary schools where fewer than 30% of pupils get five decent GCSEs is 'another failed-schools initiative' which confirms that "state education has grown worse in the last decade." Deborah Orr believes that the "threatened closure of hundreds of failing secondary schools [is] confirming that standards are not, in fact, rising like angels."

In fact, the reason why this programme will work - at least for the majority of the schools on the list - is because standards have risen in so many schools over the last ten years using a similar approach. And they have done so by combining the rigour of individual targets for pupils with the pressure of floor targets for schools not unlike that confirmed yesterday. Why else were half of schools - 1610 - at the below 30% level ten years ago, but only a fifth in that position today?

Moreover, the programme relies heavily on academies - which are already working in our inner cities; they always welcome informed commentators for a visit - and the leadership elements that have improved inner London standards through the London Challenge. Within schools, there is a lot of evidence that both leadership and teaching standards are significantly than they were ten or fifteen years ago (and that owes much to inspection, testing and tables introduced by the Conservatives as well as Labour's more targeted approaches). The idea that it is unreasonable to expect an inner city school to reach a target such as this is negated by the many that already do so, including a majority of secondary modern schools.

But because the newspapers largely ignore what has worked well - and pundits too rarely visit inner city schools - this is rarely reported. Of course, there are aspects of the system where there is still more to do - and many schools that have benefited from significant revenue improvements do need the government's school building programme to progress beyond the inner cities rather more quickly.

So I have some sympathy with Alice Miles on this point. But I have rather less with her example of a local secondary school looking a bit tatty being an indictment of the Labour government. Perhaps the head forgot to mention to her that like every secondary school he now has a £113,000 a year devolved capital budget to spend largely as he and his governors choose, as well as a significantly higher devolution of revenue funds; the devolved capital budget was precisely £0 when the Tories were in power.

Building blocks

Today's report from the Education and Skills Committee on the government's massive school building programme is a rather more sensible and sober affair than the silly account of it on this morning's Today programme, which claimed that MPs thought the £45bn for Building Schools for the Future should be spent on teachers. Of course, it is right to keep the issue of value for money under control. But the BSF programme is now fully integrated with programmes to lift standards, including Academies, and ensuring good teaching facilities and environmental sustainability. On Today, we were treated to a report from Clacton, where the local Tory MP Douglas Carswell whined that a relatively new school 'might have to close', therefore the investment in schools was wasted. Of course, rather than rambling on the radio, Mr Carswell could have a chat with Tory-controlled Essex County Council, whose brainchild this possible closure is, and ensure that the facilities are used for education within the schools' consortium. Perhaps he has not caught up with the development of federations and trusts, of which the Essex schools' model is actually quite good. Equally, we should not forget (even if a young Mr Carswell missed it at Charterhouse) that before PFI allowed a gear-change in investment under Gordon Brown, our state school buildings were a disgrace. Crumbling buildings, rotting labs and dismal sports facilities were commonplace in the 1990s, when the Conservative government let investment to fall to a piffling £700m a year nationwide, not even allowing necessary repairs. Since 1997, over a thousand new schools have been built. There have also been tens of thousands of new computers (which often support lessons) and thousands of labs, sports pitches and teaching rooms. Investment in schools is investment in teaching and learning, and is helping to improve standards and encourage record numbers of graduates to enter teaching.