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WRITTEN EVIDENCE |
Y Pwyllgor Cyfrifon Cyhoeddus / Public Accounts Committee PAC(5)-10-17 Paper 4
The Public Accounts Committee
Inquiry into Regional Education Consortia
Tuesday 21 March 2017
1. The NASUWT welcomes the opportunity to submit written evidence to the National Assembly for Wales Public Accounts Committee (PAC) inquiry into Regional Education Consortia.
2. The NASUWT is the largest teachers’ union in Wales representing teachers and school leaders.
GENERAL COMMENTS
3. The NASUWT offers the comments and observations which follow on the inquiry into Regional Education Consortia (the Consortia) under scrutiny by the PAC. In particular, the Union will focus on the issues of governance and financial management as well as the openness and transparency of the operation of the four Regional Education Consortia in the context of the Welsh Government’s National model for regional working.[1]
4. The NASUWT has been involved in discussions and engagement negotiations with the Consortia since their inception. The Union has had a very mixed experience with the four Consortia and believes that there is still a lack of understanding of the role of the Consortia both within the Consortia themselves and amongst teachers and schools.
5. The NASUWT, as a key stakeholder, has attempted to work closely with the Consortia to ensure that the outcomes of their work are to the benefit of schools and teachers. The Union has sought to initiate true partnership working with the Consortia but has been faced with a lack of understanding of the meaning of partnership. Meetings initially took the form of briefing sessions, with the Consortia simply updating the workforce unions as to their activities.
6. More recently, the NASUWT experience with the Consortia has become more positive, with their role and the role of the workforce unions being better understood.
7. Progress has been made with the Education through Regional Working (ERW) Consortium in west and central Wales and the Central South Consortium (CSC) when discussing model policies on pay, performance management and capability procedures for use across the consortium region.
8. Although the Consortia have responsibility for ensuring the provision of specialist Human Resources (HR) support to schools in accordance with the appendix to the National model for regional working: revitalising people management in schools (Welsh Government Guidance document no: 170/2015),[2] difficulties remain over the Consortia’s understanding of the role of local authorities as the employers, and that any model policies, regardless of whether or not agreement has been reached at consortium level must then be subject to the normal local authority protocols and procedures.
9. These processes are less well established and understood in the School Effectiveness and Improvement Service for North Wales (GwE) and the Education Achievement Service (EAS) in south-east Wales. In GwE, these functions remain with the individual local authorities, whilst in EAS there is a south-east Wales grouping of HR officers that sit alongside the Consortium, with some officers taking a dual role. This has, in some cases, led to confusion and delays over responsibility.
10. Whilst the NASUWT acknowledges that some progress has been made in the engagement with the Consortia over regional working, there remain significant issues regarding the openness, transparency and funding of the Consortia.
SPECIFIC COMMENTS
11. The NASUWT has experienced considerable difficulty in finding the minutes and reports of meetings, statements of accounts and dates of board meetings of the Consortia and, although each consortium has its own website, there is no consistency in the reporting of meetings and minutes.
12. The National Model for Regional Working states that:
‘Normally notice of meetings of the joint committee will be given on the consortium’s website and the meetings will be open to the public…’[3]
13. Dates of meetings and agenda items are available for the CSC Joint Education Service but these are found on the Rhondda Cynon Taff County Borough Council (RCT) website and not on the CSC website. These web pages and documents can only be found easily by using external search engines and not from within the RCT website itself. This information is hosted by RCT as the lead authority in the region; similar information regarding CSC cannot be found on any other websites of the other constituent local authorities.
14. Likewise, the information about ERW meetings is hosted on the Pembrokeshire County Council’s website. This is, to some extent, replicated on the City and County of Swansea and the Powys County Council websites, but not on those of Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council, Carmarthenshire County Council and Ceredigion County Council.
15. The EAS website contains minutes of board meetings, statements of accounts and the previous year’s business plan but does not include the dates and locations of forthcoming meetings. The company board meetings are not open to the public. Only very limited information regarding EAS can be found on the websites of the constituent local authorities.
16. Information provided by the Welsh Government to the NASUWT in 2014 showed that the budget for the regional consortia should have been as set out in Table 1.
17. The NASUWT has found marked discrepancies between these figures and those reported by the individual consortium. The budget for ERW had been set by the Welsh Government at £5.322 million for 2014-15. However, the statement of accounts for ERW put the contributions from member authorities at £267,000.[4]
18. ERW’s business plan for 2017-19 states that the total income from the constituent local authorities amounts to £250,000 and their total funding including Welsh Government grant funding is £500,000. This is at odds with the Wales Audit Office Memorandum for the Public Accounts Committee – Achieving improvement in support to schools through regional education consortia – a review of progress, November 2016, which states:
‘…the core budgets for the four consortia in 2014-15 were approximately £18.5 million…’ [5]
Table 1
Required local authority minimum contributions for 2014-15, based on the 2014-15 mainstream schools SSA
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SSA Formula |
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Region |
Local Authority |
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2014-15 Mainstream Schools Sector distribution |
Percentage distribution |
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North Wales |
Isle of Anglesey |
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422,621 |
2.3% |
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Gwynedd |
|
740,733 |
4.0% |
|
|
Conwy |
|
652,994 |
3.5% |
|
|
Denbighshire |
|
623,793 |
3.4% |
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|
Flintshire |
|
933,484 |
5.0% |
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Wrexham |
|
782,631 |
4.2% |
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Sub total |
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4,156,256 |
22.4% |
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|
|
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|
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ERW |
Powys |
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786,048 |
4.2% |
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Ceredigion |
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414,511 |
2.2% |
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Pembrokeshire |
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759,950 |
4.1% |
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Carmarthenshire |
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1,141,069 |
6.2% |
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Swansea |
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1,370,773 |
7.4% |
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Neath Port Talbot |
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850,288 |
4.6% |
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Sub total |
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5,322,639 |
28.7% |
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Central South |
Bridgend |
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862,092 |
4.6% |
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The Vale of Glamorgan |
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799,973 |
4.3% |
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Rhondda Cynon Taf |
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1,531,657 |
8.3% |
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Merthyr Tydfil |
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359,863 |
1.9% |
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Cardiff |
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1,917,619 |
10.3% |
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Sub total |
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5,471,204 |
29.5% |
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South East |
Caerphilly |
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1,169,666 |
6.3% |
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Blaenau Gwent |
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417,511 |
2.3% |
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Torfaen |
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600,536 |
3.2% |
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Monmouthshire |
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481,642 |
2.6% |
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Newport |
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934,254 |
5.0% |
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Sub total |
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3,603,609 |
19.4% |
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Wales |
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18,553,708 |
100.0% |
19. By contrast, the CSC Budget for 2016-17 sets the local authority contributions at £4.195 million.[6]
20. The Regional Education Consortia also receive grant funding from the Welsh Government. Part of this money can be kept by the Consortia for administrative purposes and to finance their own activities. The remaining amount of money, which represents the large majority, is delegated to schools. However, in none of the reports that the NASUWT has found on any of the Consortia are these amounts broken down with sufficient clarity to provide the whole picture of the funding of the Consortia.
21. As stated previously, the NASUWT has experienced considerable difficulty in accessing the reports and budgets of the Consortia. These are not published by StatsWales in the same way that school budgets and local authority finance is reported. The information is difficult to find, inconsistent and opaque.
22. Over the period of 2013 to 2016 StatsWales has reported the Education revenue expenditure, by authority and service.[7]
23. This shows that the total amount spent by local authorities on school improvement has fallen from £54.137 million in 2013-14 to £44.174 million in 2015-16 (Table 2 below).
24. The changes to individual local authority spends are also marked, with Conwy County Borough Council increasing their spend by 115% whereas the Isle of Anglesey County Council has reduced theirs by 85%.
25. The NASUWT maintains that the changes and variations in spending are very difficult to understand in the context of the work of the Consortia. In particular, the figures for the ERW region do not shed any further light on the funding arrangements in that area. It may be that the comments from the Auditor General for Wales in the June 2015 report, Achieving improvement in support to schools through regional education consortia, provides some explanation:
‘We found that many local authorities have ceased to have ‘head of school improvement’ posts during 2011-13 but have since re-instated similar roles to provide the local authority with a lead officer to interact with the relevant senior or principal challenge adviser for the consortium.’[8]
Table 2
Education revenue expenditure, by authority and service 2013-2016
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2013-14 |
2014-15 |
2015-16 |
2013 to 2016 |
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Local Authorities |
Total School improvement |
Total School improvement |
Total School improvement |
Change |
% Change |
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£ ,000s |
£ ,000s |
£ ,000s |
£ ,000s |
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Isle of Anglesey |
1318 |
1066 |
202 |
-1116 |
-85 |
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Gwynedd |
1596 |
2444 |
1296 |
-300 |
-19 |
|
Conwy |
626 |
1409 |
1348 |
722 |
115 |
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Denbighshire |
2713 |
2558 |
2763 |
50 |
2 |
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Flintshire |
3360 |
2243 |
2625 |
-735 |
-22 |
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Wrexham |
967 |
1553 |
1762 |
795 |
82 |
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GwE Total |
10580 |
11274 |
9996 |
-584 |
-6 |
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Powys |
5217 |
5442 |
2225 |
-2992 |
-57 |
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Ceredigion |
3184 |
2892 |
2033 |
-1151 |
-36 |
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Pembrokeshire |
1086 |
1255 |
1344 |
258 |
24 |
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Carmarthenshire |
3372 |
3247 |
1988 |
-1384 |
-41 |
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Swansea |
2970 |
2026 |
2242 |
-728 |
-25 |
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Neath Port Talbot |
7251 |
7921 |
8353 |
1103 |
15 |
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ERW Total |
23079 |
22783 |
18186 |
-4893 |
-21 |
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Bridgend |
1307 |
1128 |
1092 |
-215 |
-16 |
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Vale of Glamorgan |
913 |
1458 |
942 |
29 |
3 |
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Rhondda Cynon Taf |
3012 |
3145 |
3031 |
19 |
1 |
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Merthyr Tydfil |
973 |
97 |
458 |
-515 |
-53 |
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Cardiff |
2723 |
2286 |
2002 |
-721 |
-26 |
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CSC Total |
8929 |
8114 |
7525 |
-1404 |
-16 |
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Caerphilly |
6615 |
6381 |
5179 |
-1436 |
-22 |
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Blaenau Gwent |
1382 |
960 |
685 |
-697 |
-50 |
|
Torfaen |
1135 |
995 |
680 |
-455 |
-40 |
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Monmouthshire |
1350 |
1095 |
1086 |
-264 |
-20 |
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Newport |
1067 |
936 |
837 |
-230 |
-22 |
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EAS Total |
11550 |
10367 |
8467 |
-3082 |
-27 |
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Total Unitary Authorities |
54137 |
52537 |
44174 |
-9963 |
-18 |
26. The NASUWT firmly believes that much more needs to be done to improve the openness and transparency of the workings of Regional Education Consortia and that lessons must be learnt before this model is extended to other local authority services.
27. The NASUWT does not accept the assertion of the Welsh Ministers that the Regional Education Consortia model presents a good example of collaborative working between local authorities.
Rex Phillips
National Official for Wales
For further information on this written evidence, contact Rex Phillips, National Official for Wales.
NASUWT Cymru
Greenwood Close
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Cardiff
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029 2054 6080
www.nasuwt.org.uk