As a former long-standing school Governor, I’m aware of how a school’s finances can fluctuate and how a school needs to have the ability to hold on to its reserves.
A large school may have a budget of several millions but, because of LMS (part of the move towards privatising schools), a school is responsible for any unexpected bills that may arise, such as structural and/or fabric problems, suich as bad foundations, aging pipework or similar causes.
Bear in mind that schools are always built according to the lowest possible tender (more so, since PFI)and one has to expect sudden unexpected problems, which are usually expensive.
Pre-LMS the Local Authority could distribute a central fund to help out individual schools but this is no longer true. In fact I’d be very surprised if funds clawed back by the Local Authority were allowed to be re-distributed to other schools. I suspect it would go back to a generalised slush fund, at local or national level.
I would hope that any claw-back is kept to the absolute minimum, for various reasons.
First, a School may try to make savings to fund some capital project, but finds itself unable to make sufficient savings in one year to fund the possibly essential project.
Schools may decide to forgo something that may be of benefit, because of fears of clawback, and instead may decide to fritter it away on many. lesser beneficial projects, to avoid having their next year’s budget cut.
Schools may find themselves with a stable and experienced staff, which means that salary costs will be rising in the next few years. Clawback could mean having to try to lose important members of staff, disrupting departmental initiatives. They would have to buy in cheaper, younger staff.
In business, a company that lets funds sit idle is wasting a resource but a Company that shaves its resources too close to the bone can suddenly find the liquidators at its door.
Schools shouldn’t be viewed as businesses: They should be viewed as non-fiscally-profitable public assets, whose real profitability lies in enriching the nation, by educating its workforce. An over-eager clawback can cripple a school’s ability to perform this function.
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Tags: education, LMS, PFI
This entry was posted on January 31, 2010 at 2:57 pm and is filed under comments, politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Schools in Wigan sitting on £9 million
As a former long-standing school Governor, I’m aware of how a school’s finances can fluctuate and how a school needs to have the ability to hold on to its reserves.
A large school may have a budget of several millions but, because of LMS (part of the move towards privatising schools), a school is responsible for any unexpected bills that may arise, such as structural and/or fabric problems, suich as bad foundations, aging pipework or similar causes.
Bear in mind that schools are always built according to the lowest possible tender (more so, since PFI)and one has to expect sudden unexpected problems, which are usually expensive.
Pre-LMS the Local Authority could distribute a central fund to help out individual schools but this is no longer true. In fact I’d be very surprised if funds clawed back by the Local Authority were allowed to be re-distributed to other schools. I suspect it would go back to a generalised slush fund, at local or national level.
I would hope that any claw-back is kept to the absolute minimum, for various reasons.
First, a School may try to make savings to fund some capital project, but finds itself unable to make sufficient savings in one year to fund the possibly essential project.
Schools may decide to forgo something that may be of benefit, because of fears of clawback, and instead may decide to fritter it away on many. lesser beneficial projects, to avoid having their next year’s budget cut.
Schools may find themselves with a stable and experienced staff, which means that salary costs will be rising in the next few years. Clawback could mean having to try to lose important members of staff, disrupting departmental initiatives. They would have to buy in cheaper, younger staff.
In business, a company that lets funds sit idle is wasting a resource but a Company that shaves its resources too close to the bone can suddenly find the liquidators at its door.
Schools shouldn’t be viewed as businesses: They should be viewed as non-fiscally-profitable public assets, whose real profitability lies in enriching the nation, by educating its workforce. An over-eager clawback can cripple a school’s ability to perform this function.
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Like this:
Tags: education, LMS, PFI
This entry was posted on January 31, 2010 at 2:57 pm and is filed under comments, politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.