RDC(3) RRSWC6
Rural Development Sub-Committee
Inquiry into Reorganisation of Schools in Rural Wales
Response from Rosalind Garratt
To: Claire Morris
Community
Clerk
Committee Service
Sustainable Development Committee & Rural Development Sub Committee
National
Assembly for Wales
Cardiff Bay CF99 1NA
26th June 2008
Dear Ms Morris,
I would be grateful if you could submit this letter as supporting information to the enquiry into rural education currently taking place.
I am a parent of a primary aged child who until two months ago attended a small rural school in Radnorshire. My husband and I took our daughter to several schools in the region to attend ’pre-school’ play schemes or groups. The behaviour, attitude and achievement of the children we observed in the smaller schools we attended was markedly better than that in larger, more pressurised environments found in schools with more than 50 children. As a result we decided to place our daughter in a smaller school (35 pupils). Without hesitation I will say that the small school is the better environment for primary aged children. All the evidence shows that overall achievement of secondary school pupils is also better in smaller school environments. Also those pupils of all ages are less likely to be bullied, or become disaffected in smaller school environments. I am now living in Scotland in a remote rural area (a small island off the west coast) where our daughter continues to be very happy and achieving well in (very) a small school.
Our decision to leave Wales, where I grew up and my family have lived for 250 years, has come about due to the rapid dissolution of the social and cultural fabric of rural areas of Wales. We are certainly not against change or the evolution of cultural norms. However as an advanced and civilised society we have the option to engineer change in ways that carry forward what we know works well. Small community schools in Wales work well; or they always have done until the recently negative approach of local authorities to maintaining services in remote or rural areas. Local Authorities are no longer focussed upon delivering services as a priority. The focus has moved to managing budgets as a priority instead. This approach coupled with current fashions or trends in providing or obtaining funding (tenders to sub-contractors to deliver, or put another way, the system of local authorities purchasing services from providers) is 'squeezing’ most of what works well out of education. It is a 'lowest common denominator’ situation.
Local Authorities will submit evidence that claims that surplus places and smaller schools cost more money. This claim can be refuted. I would draw your attention to the work of Ian Gilder (also provided as an attachment with this letter) and very recently the work done in Scotland which actually proved that the figures produced by a local authority in the Highlands region was flawed to the extent that maintaining a school previously marked for closure at Roy Bridge would save the local authority 157k in the first year alone. Luckily for that community their school has been spared and local councillors now view their smaller schools very favourably as the indicators actually are that they save money for the local authority.
I would support the work of the National Association for Small Schools that has gathered much evidence over many years which endorses the view that the smaller school unit is the better place for children and young people to find themselves in on a daily basis.
The most recent research into child development and behaviour in society indicates that the institutions that we place our children in are far more influential upon the child than previously understood. It is claimed that the institutions that they attend will influence our children more that their own homes! This must be a truth when we consider the amount of time that each child now spends in an institution or in the care of an organisation on a daily basis. At the same time we are all increasingly aware that the demise of family life is having a profound effect upon society. Surely it is obvious that those things which are good or desirable about 'family life’ are more easily duplicated or found in ways that are useful to those working with children at school when the school environment is smaller.
In direct response to the points of interest noted by the enquiry team please see below:
the educational context of rural schools;
Rural schools are very valuable in terms of providing a natural, evolution of culture in rural areas. Rural schools not only reflect their local community but respond to cultural shifts and disseminate information within communities.
Rural schools deliver mainstream or national curricular education within the cultural context of the various and varied regions of Wales. The individual identity of pupils is developed most successfully within the 'local’ context.
whether there are any wider social and educational issues associated with rural school reorganisation, such as the impact on rural communities, families and children and how this is taken into consideration as part of the decision-making process;
Rural areas without schools cease to support families. The economy of rural areas without schools will be affected severely. If there are no schools in rural areas families will be forced to live in urban areas where they are found or close to the site of amalgamated schools. Rural areas without families have lost members of communities that earn and contribute to the local economy.
Removing children or young people from their local environments to send them to larger amalgamated schools literally 'disaffects’ children from their own communities and creates another 'institutionalized’ community that by sheer weight of numbers has to operate autonomously or outside the community.
The smaller schools are markedly better at participating in events with other organisations in communities than larger schools (who simply do not have to relate to outside organisations or influences in the community).
Local authorities are glib with regard to their 'consultation processes’. Consultation by local authorities on the issue of individual school closure is never long term enough to yield any useful information. Consultation or research into the effects of school closure should take place over a 10 year period, within schools/communities that have already lost their schools, to establish an illustration of the likely effects of closure upon communities.
Powys County Council published a report that recommended that "There is no discernible effect upon communities that have a school closure”. This is patently rubbish. Any change, particularly one so dramatic and fundamental as a school closure, has a profound effect. The actual effect is the thing that matters and to establish that, and as a result provide usefully within communities in Wales, long term study has to take place. During that time it is prudent not to destroy the infrastructure for education by allowing school closures to go ahead without the specific instruction of the Minister for Education. Each case is individual to each community and must be regarded as so.
examples of reorganisation in rural Wales and elsewhere to understand the experiences and learn from any innovative approaches;
Please liaise with NASSW and Cymdeithias Yr Iaeth who have evidence to usefully inform this part of the debate. I would also ask that the Welsh Assembly Government looks outside of Wales to see what has been established in other regions of Europe as effective or not.
existing and proposed Welsh Assembly Government policy and guidance and whether they adequately deal with the wider issues that may be associated with the reorganisation of rural schools; and
the role of Estyn in reporting on schools and LEAs.
Welsh Assembly Government policy needs to robustly protect the infrastructure for education in Wales. At present the number of schools that can offer low pupil to teacher ratios is still quite high and provides a positive feature of education in Wales to be treasured (and envied). This is a desirable situation. Such a dramatic change in the 'educational map’ as is proposed by so many local authorities must present an alarming prospect, if only because the outcomes for communities and children and their families are so un-considered. To that effect I would argue that the careful creation of a policy that will support local authorities that undertake careful and responsible consultation and planning reviews before school closure should take place before any more schools in Wales face the undermining spectre of closure hovering over their every day operation.
Thank you for reading this letter. I feel so strongly about the positive contribution to the education and well being of young people that small schools make in Wales that I would travel from my current residence on a remote Scottish Island to contribute to the process that your committee is involved in at present. The rural schools are something that is very important and precious to Wales as a country. Please do not hesitate to contact me at the address below should you wish to clarify any of the above or require my personal input to the debate.
Yours
sincerely,
Rosalind Garratt,
Annex A: Gilder’s Work
Gilder's work was done for his District Council, St. Edmondsbury in West Suffolk. He was the senior Planning Officer charged with deciding where to house the impending London overspill migrations then planned. He looked at the cost of providing services, four major public services including education in small villages, in the larger villages of Key Structure Plans and in the smaller towns. He measured the costs against the tax and rate-paying population in each location and found it cost less in the smaller communities, more on the Structure Plan villages and most in the smaller towns. He published his findings in "Progress in Planning" Vol. 11 No. 3 November 1979.
Because its impact overturned conventional thinking two Planning Departments replicated the study for education, R A Mordey et al at Leeds Polytechnic 'Rural Service Provision and Rural Settlement Policy" Planning Paper No. 37 1983; the second was Gloucestershire Papers in Local and Rural Planning No. 12 1981 a series edited by N. Curry under the title "Rural Settlement Policy and Economics."
Don't forget the arguments about long-term savings, indeed profit, because children educated in small schools close to home and integrated into their local communities involve less of that expensive later spending when families, communities and neighbourhoods break down, and with higher taxes from the better jobs that come from longer in the system and higher achievement. At a time when many commentators fear we have lost contact with our children and more and more are virtually feral; this has to be a powerful financial argument for the early investment rural schools represent and NASS argues now for new schools anywhere to be small.
Annex B: Finance
The question must be asked:
Just how much money will the county save and how much of that will actually be re-circulated to school pupils?
Figures contained in the recent report compiled by the Childen Families and Lifelong Learning Directorate or CFLL (no longer operational under this name), entitled Policy for the Reorganisation of Schools have been used to ascertain the following:
1. There are 30 schools in Powys with under 50 pupils (Delegated Budget Summary Information 2005-06)
2. 6 of the 30 are very small i.e. 24 pupils and under
3. The smallest schools appear to have amongst the highest transport costs per pupil
4. If a calculation is done to re-distribute the funds awarded per pupil from all the schools in Powys of 50 pupils or less (including transport costs as awarded at the date of this report) there would be a total additional £107 per annum available to each of the 11,285 primary aged school children in Powys.
5. If a similar calculation is done disregarding the 6 smallest primary schools the additional funds available per pupil are £88.
6. No additional transport costs, costs associated with re-locating teachers or pupils, providing additional classroom space or staff at receiving schools or provision of financial compensation in the long term should hardship be suffered as a result of the closure of individual schools has been accounted for in the above calculations.
A breakdown of the calculation is as follows:
Closure of 30 schools under 50 pupils = Total save £4417183
Total cash saved per pupil = £1122 (Average spend per pupil in group £4075; made up of average for county of £2953 + £1122 extra spend)
Total spend over average = £1216248
£1216248 divided by 11285 pupils of primary age in county = £107 available for recirculation to each pupil.
Do the same sum for 24 schools under 50 pupils (that is excluding the 6 very smallest) and the figure for recirculation is reduced to £88.
N.B. Analysis shows that the bearing of "cost” in society simply shifts to other areas such as compensating for school exclusions and breakdown of internal community support systems. See Dollars and Sense research paper from the United States.
Annex C: Transport
The additional transport costs of £1000 per pupil per 5 miles is a rule of thumb we have been using since late 2005. Highland Council in November 2005 showed £26K for 27 children over 4 miles. A couple of months earlier Scottish Borders Council had used just under £30K for 53 kids over 5 miles. It later turned out that they had used comparative figures for a village which had a bus company situated in it and therefore there were no journey lead times costed.. The real figure was very nearly £60K.
Since then we have scrutinized every consultation document and have found a level of consistency. Some have been £2K per pupil over 9 miles etc. North Ayrshire have a current consultation document out which costs a 5 mile journey at well over £1K per pupil
East Ayrshire quoted £20K for a four mile journey for around 26 qualifying children at Crossroads School. A FOI request has shown that the officials were advised that this was likely to be £50K. We are investigating the difference.
Much depends on the area the children are being collected from. Single track farm roads often mean that two minibuses are required instead of one large bus between two villages. This can push the cost well over the £1K figure.
In each of the examples above the additional transport costs exceed the total overhead costs as per the DSM budgets for each school. (North Ayrshire is the only one that is even close). In most cases of schools with rolls over 30 the additional transport costs exceed the proposed savings in teaching staff. Hence our line about replacing teachers with bus drivers and expecting educational standards to improve.
We have very interesting figures on the education costs per pupil in rural areas as opposed to urban areas just released by the Scottish government last week. Very much exposes the lie that rural areas are draining educational resources away from urban children. See below,
Sandy
The latest per pupil costs have just been published ( 08/02/08 ). Click here: Expenditure on School Education in Scotland, 2006-07
There are 8 councils in Scotland which have zero percent of their children educated in rural schools with fewer than 70 kids. Aberdeen City , Dundee , East Renfrewshire , Edinburgh , Glasgow , Inverclyde, Renfrewshire and West Dunbartonshire . The average of their per pupil costs as per the above link is £4594.
There are 8 mainland councils with over 8% of their pupils educated in rural schools with fewer than 70 pupils. These range from Angus and Moray with just over 8% to Argyl and Bute with 22%. They list as Aberdeenshire, Angus, Argyll and Bute , Dumfries and Galloway , Highland , Moray, Perth and Kinross and Scottish Borders.
Given everything that has been said about how small rural schools are draining rescouces away from the more highly populated areas you would expect to find a large jump in per pupil costs in these areas. You will also note that, with the exception of Perth and Kinross, members of SRSN have been involved in campaigns in each of these areas.
The average of their per pupil totals is £4421 or £173/pupil less than those areas with no rural pupils
In fact the only councils spending less than £4k per pupil are Angus, Moray and Stirling - all rural areas. Aberdeen City is spending £5k per pupil. Highland council has 17.2% of its children in small rural schools but costs over £200 per pupil less than Glasgow City on average. Not only that but the educational attainment figures in remote rural areas is currently outstripping that of the large urban areas.
Just exactly who is subsidising who?
