ASCL has campaigned for fair education funding for over 30 years. Here, former President Peter Downes highlights key moments from our quest and says, although the proposed new formula isn’t perfect, ASCL and its members can be proud that the principle for which it has campaigned has been accepted.

A step in the right direction

In 2017, the government announced a major decision on funding for schools. The published National Funding Formula (NFF) for allocating money to schools across England was welcomed by many but has also caused controversy. Newer members of ASCL may not be aware of how involved the Association has been in this topic over the last 30 years.

The reform of school funding started with a scheme called Local Financial Management (LFM) piloted in 1982 in Cambridgeshire by seven schools, many of which had SHA members as heads (the Secondary Heads Association became ASCL in 2006). The five-year LFM pilot attracted much interest and an external evaluation judged it as a success. The Education Reform Act (1988) extended what was now called Local Management of Schools (LMS) to the whole country. This provoked fierce debate at SHA Council meetings at that time as not everybody was convinced it would be a positive development.

By 1991, as LMS was getting established, SHA organised seminars for heads from different parts of the country to come together to compare budgets. The initial idea was to compare the percentage allocations to various headings but detailed examination of one another’s budgets made us aware of the huge differences in the cash amounts available to schools of a similar size in different parts of the country. We knew that schools in London would get more cash per pupil because of the Area Cost Adjustment, however, we could not understand why schools of identical size in neighbouring local authorities (LAs) with similar socio-economic circumstances got very different budget allocations.

Fair funding

The more we investigated, the more glaringly unfair were the disparities of funding. Then, in 1992, the government introduced a national inspection regime and this is where it began to get serious. Secondary heads realised that their school’s performance was being judged against national criteria, but they were being funded by LAs according to local political decision-making. Moreover, very few people seemed to understand how the local decisions were made.

So, in October 1994, the campaign for a National Fair Funding Formula was launched. As President of SHA at that time, I commissioned a study by the London School of Economics and they produced a report called A Better Cake. This made two key points:

1. We ought to know the ingredients in the national schools funding cake, that is, what amounts the government was putting in and for what purpose.

2. We ought to know how the cake is being sliced up and distributed.

A small group of SHA members obtained an audience with senior Department for Education and Skills (DfES) officials to discuss our case. We were well received and congratulated on the logic and clarity of our argument. “But that”, they said, “is the problem. It is too clear – you need to know that a little obfuscation assists the political process.”

Clearly the battle-ground was political and not technical or administrative. Our challenge was to persuade central government to make a fundamental change to the ways schools were funded, that is, ceasing the locally based decision-making and recognising that education is a national public service and so central government should take the responsibility for deciding how much should be spent on schools, and how it should be distributed. A delegation of SHA heads from Huntingdonshire took advantage of having their MP, John Major, as Prime Minister. We met the Prime Minister in his private rooms in Westminster, together with Kenneth Clarke, but we made no progress. It was simply too difficult. A new formula would create winners and losers and the political risk of that was too great.

A parallel activity undertaken by SHA members with LA officers and primary colleagues in Cambridgeshire was the creation of an ‘activity-led formula’. We painstakingly analysed the cost of all the activities that go to make up life in schools and converted that into a formula for use within our own county, but it attracted wider interest too. What that means in practice is that, instead of starting your budget distribution from a set sum allocated by the LA, you work out from the bottom what it is that you want to provide as an educational experience for your pupils, that is, their activities in the classroom and outside it. It also has to be ‘needs-led’ because it must take account of the different needs of pupils at different ages and with varying disabilities. That was ground-breaking work at the time.

Party politics

SHA decided to make a renewed effort when there was a change of government in 1997 and one in which ‘education, education, education’ had been prominent as a feature of the election campaign. In 2000, the government set up an Education Funding Strategy Group’ on which I represented SHA and, along with over 30 others from all the major education associations, we had monthly meetings in London and working-parties between, drawing on a great deal of specialised research. This culminated in July 2002 in a set of proposals based closely on what SHA had initiated in Cambridgeshire, that is, an activity-led and needs-led approach to creating a national amount for schools, with a clear, logical and equitable way of distributing money across all schools in the country.

That, too, was rejected! Why? Because it would have required more money than the government thought it could afford and, more worryingly, would have moved money away from London to the rest of the country, to the disadvantage of the political party in power at the time.

Many other changes have taken place since then: the removal of the schools grant from the general allocation to LAs; the removal of some schools from LA control. ASCL officers have met regularly with ministers and officials, helping to tweak the structure, but fundamental change only came in 2017.

The National Funding Formula, effective from April 2018, is a step in the right direction but its implementation has been blighted by an inadequate quantum of funding. Understandably, there is widespread dissatisfaction but at least ASCL can take some satisfaction that the principle for which it has campaigned has been accepted.

The more we investigated, the more glaringly unfair were the disparities of funding. Then in 1992, the government introduced a national inspection regime and this is where it began to get serious.

Peter Downes
Former President of SHA (which later became ASCL) from 1994-95 and SHA Funding Consultant from 1996 to 2002

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