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Exploring alternatives: Educational Provision

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Don Ledingham

Wednesday 23 August 2006

I've separated the statutory obligations for education authorities into four categories -

Educational Provision; Administrative; Resource provision; Educational Improvement.

 

In the next series of posts I'll consider some alternatives for the delivery of each of the categories and then discuss the merits of the existing arrangements and the possible alternatives.

 

Educational Provision: So how could an education authority fulfil its obligation to provide education in a different way, i.e. how could it ensure that there are sufficient school places for all children in East Lothian? (at this stage I won't offer any value judgements about any of the alternatives) However, I'd welcome your comments.

 

Could the local authority sell off the school buildings to a private company which would operate the schools? By operate I mean the buildings and staff are transferred to the company who would deliver the statutory obligations of the authority under contract.

 

Could the local authority retain ownership of the schools but lease out to a private comany to operate schools, in much the same way that PPP is managed?

 

In such arrangements it would be the responsibility of the authority to negotiate the contract with the private company and to put in place monitoring systems to ensure that service level agreements are achieved.

 

 

Comments

Contracting Out

Alan

Thursday 24 August 2006

Staff reading both the above options might be struck by the following observation: in one case the the authority would retain the buildings; in neither case would the authority retain the staff.

This, I imagine would flag up several questions and concerns:

Most employees enjoy a permanent contract with the authority. Would this be affected by such a change? For whom would we be working? The public sector? The private sector?

What sort of company/people would take on such a task? What are they doing at the moment? Where did they amass their expertise? Why would they prefer to run a company than work for a local authority? What would those in the authority currently involved in running schools do instead? Would there be any danger of such a company going bust – losing ballast, so to speak?

From the point of view of communication, I sense the risk of leakage. If I can construct a clumsy comparison with plumbing – about which I know nothing. Teachers and “authority staff” currently operate in the same pipe. Passing the operation of schools into the hands of a company would entail cutting this pipe in half and inserting a length of “company pipe” into the middle – creating two joints where communication might be diffused.

Contracting out operation would be a barrier to change

David

Thursday 24 August 2006

As we've learned with PPP, contracting out necessarily involves being able to specify in the contract exactly what is to be delivered. That's why people outsource "commodity" services like cleaning, catering and manufacture of products that can be precisely described, such as electronic items or pieces of software.

Where it can't work is in an area undergoing rapid change. In education just now, it would be impossible to specify exactly what we want from an operating company over, say, the next 3 years - a typical contract duration. But it would have to be done somehow. And that would bound possible changes for 3 years. Inevitably the costs of change would be high, and we'd need a small army to manage the contract. Commercial pressure would probably lead to current arrangements being set in stone.

Just think, 3 years ago the curriculum review hadn't even started, let alone produced A Curriculum for Excellence:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030306022321/www.scotland.gov.uk/library5/education/ndser-02.asp

Educational Provision

Brian

Thursday 24 August 2006

Very interesting ideas. I think that both the scenarios that you mentioned are in some way being experimented with in other parts of the country. It will be interesting to see how people react to such thinking.

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