The conference opened with a session looking at the pressures and uncertainties that now face schools following the change in Government.  Link2ICT (Bridget McGinley – Head of Operations) explained a range of new services they’re introducing and improvements to a number of existing services.

Stephen Pincher (Birmingham City Council) then talked about the financial impact of the cuts in the Harnessing Technology Grant – he described the in-year cuts as totally unprecedented and unexpected.  Birmingham, like many LAs, was actively planning for life after HT – not expecting funding to continue beyond the end of this financial year – but the in-year cuts could, potentially, have a dramatic effect on services and hence a significant negative impact on education across the city.

The problems facing LAs and schools as a result of the cuts are varied and listening to views from around the country they seem to cover a wide spectrum.  At one end of this spectrum are LAs where the schools have agreed that the LA retained 100% of the funding – to act strategically and provide and manage service delivery on behalf of schools – either on as the LA or as part of one of the Regional Broadband Consortia (RBC).  At the other end are the LAs where 100% of funding was devolved to schools. 

At the 100% retained end of the spectrum many LAs are now facing real difficulties – they’d entered three year contracts (the length of the guaranteed funding) and now don’t have the cash to meet their contractual arrangements for the remainder of the financial year.  There are some difficult conversations being held by LAs – both with suppliers and with schools – to determine where savings can be made, what alternative sources of funding (if any) are available and what services can be cut.  There will be an impact on service delivery and in some cases there may be questions raised over the continued viability of the delivery organisation.  This will be a nervous time for some of the RBCs and in the worst case scenario the LAs could possibly end up covering redundancy payments rather than service delivery.

At the 100% delegated end of the spectrum there are a different set of problems.  The LAs receive the funding in quarterly tranches but, in the majority of cases they used their overall financial position to effectively enable them to give the schools the funding in a lump sum.  This seemed sensible; it allowed the schools to purchase expensive items at the start of the year rather than having to wait.  However the impact of this is that many schools have made their purchases using money that the LA will not now receive.  There are rumours of schools rushing out to complete their purchases once they’d heard about the cuts and before the LA had chance to tell them to stop spending.  I know of at least one LA where the service provider within the Council has billed the schools annually in April and where the service provider now has the funding.  Again some difficult conversations will be had all round

The majority of LAs and schools sit somewhere between the two ends of the spectrum; they’re faced with a composite of both sets of problems.  One thing’s for sure there are no winners; the impact will be felt throughout the sector as schools and LAs come to terms with the cuts.

So back to Birmingham – Stephen Pincher and LA colleagues are working hard with their school colleagues to determine a strategy to minimise the impact of losing 50% of a grant after the plans had been agreed.  I wish them success.  Cheryl Broad (Head of Sales and Marketing for Link2ICT) had opened the event with the concept of looking forward, planning for the future, and not dwelling on ‘what might have been’.

Mark Platt of Edward and Platt LLP, presented us with his current view of the changing education landscape.  He talked at length of the opportunities that academy status may bring a school; of the need for informed decision making and the need for a school to gain a thorough understanding of the risks and opportunities before making a decision.  Both Mark and the next speaker commented on how historically academy status was something ‘conferred’ on a school in challenging or challenged circumstances whereas now schools have to be exceptional in order to apply to become academies.  We’ve flipped from a bottom-up approach to one of top-down.

The next speaker was Peter Kingham from the OASIS academy group.  Peter was upbeat – we always have challenges in education and we always rise to meet them.  He reinforced the need to be holistic – for a school (or academy) to be successful you have to work with the whole community – doing so has a positive impact on the whole activity of the school – it’s more than just teaching and learning.

Talking about the Oasis academies peter stressed the importance of every child – children don’t deserve to feel worthless.  The academies are the hub of the communities they serve and often provide a range of collocated services (Council, PCT, Police etc).  He talked about there being Mark 1 academies (those opened to date) and Mark 2 (those to be opened in the future) he felt that Mk 1 academies are about changing attitudes.

Following the break there was a presentation about the services offered to schools from Tim Riley and Sharon Cufflin from Link2ICT.  I then had the opportunity to talk about our OPENHIVE environment and how it would integrate with and complement the existing service offering.  Tim had reinforced the opportunities for choice for Birmingham’s schools and we’ve certainly extended that choice.

After lunch Andy Pyper (Link2ICT) talked about e-Safety and Information Security.  He reminded schools that just because the source of guidance (Becta) is about to disappear that doesn’t mean the end of their responsibilities.  These won’t go away – see an earlier blog post – and the next session from Andrew Lawrence (Sophos) provided schools with a range of technical solutions to help them meet their obligations.

I missed the final session – Birmingham Grid for Learning ISP – now and the future – perhaps a reader who attended the event can bring us up-to-date?

Patrick Kirk