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 General Meeting
The meeting on May 4 th was attended by 60 people, who came to listen and talk to Glenn Rodger. The agenda covered a number of topics:
- A look at future budget issues
This will of course depend very much on the priorities of the new government, and any new directions of travel they have, but there will still be a demand to modernise and make more efficient the support services: there is unlikely to be any cut in the sums given to schools through DSM, or in staffing in schools. SBC are also unlikely to cut frontline education spending over the next few years. However savings can be made by cutting the number of pupils educated outwith the region, and by moving the costs of, for instance, canteens and transport outside of SBC's budget.
- New initiatives, including ACE
The feeling from the floor was that there were too many uncoordinated initiatives, leading to overload, with the effect of one train arriving after the other. This had an effect on staff morale, and a reduction in time actually available for teaching and preparation, due to target setting, PLPlanning, and time spent working on initiatives. It was agreed that it was useful to have the authority produce task sheets for action plans, but requests were made for an audit of new initiatives to be carried out before they were introduced, to look at their time implications. It was requested that SBC feedback to SEED the difficulties suddenly launching initiatives such as Parental Councils cause for forward planning. It was also questioned whether the many initiatives were ever actually evaluated. New SIPs could drive out old SIP targets before they were completed, never mind evaluated! The latest Drugs/Health/Sex education pack was an example of this.
In defence of SBC, Glenn observed that very many of the initiatives were either made mandatory by SEED, or funding support required that the initiatives start immediately. He agreed that in future the Better plan would have a business plan with evaluation, that strategic planning is necessary, and at times in the past has been missing, but that structures were now in place to help deal with this. We are now better at planning, but need to get smarter, so that changes do not need a huge time commitment. SBC fed back regularly to SEED, either directly, or through ADES and HMIe their concerns about initiatives and ring-fencing of budgets.
There was a danger of both SEED and SBC being over prescriptive, and learning communities needed some space to develop their own priorities and initiatives, but should ultimately help schools cope with change more effectively. Integrated community schools will cause further change, and so there is a need for flexibility. Glenn felt that the school review system and QIO visits were also now helpful to schools.
He acknowledged that the LITs (Locality Integration Teams) had had a mixed success, and some needed more direction to become effective.
He also agreed that there was a need for some Scotland wide strategic planning, and cutting some inspection regimes to move everything into HMIe would be useful. There were too many separate bodies for a population which as actually the size of Greater Manchester, and probably too many local authorities to help things run smoothly.
- Classroom support
We pointed out that the number of classroom assistants and support staff was very low in the Borders compared to other authorities, and that the gap was growing, as we had made little progress over the past five years. Glenn admitted this, and said that the basis for this was the funding crisis of 2001: many things had had to be reinstated, and this had not always been a priority. However, we now always had a second adult in small primary schools, and additional needs assistants were more numerous than in many other authorities (although the audience pointed out that we have a larger proportion of AEN pupils mainstreamed). He was asked whether we should have more units locally. Glenn thought that our presumption to mainstream was correct, but that this needed support, that the further development of part-time attendance units was necessary to help this, as was a large increase in training to deal with the issues which arose from inclusion. This was now starting to happen. A Best Value Audit of the Borders had taken place recently, and there plans to deliver more support.
Glenn was asked directly, would more classroom assistants be a priority, and his answer was an unequivocal yes, but he pointed out that the further expansion of DSM would lead to many of these decisions being taken in individual schools.
We had little time for this discussion, but included in this document is a paper presented at the meeting, and Glenn agreed to support further work on the issue. It might be appropriate to put the issue onto a future Better plan. We agreed to approach HR to look at any patterns in stress related illness across the authority, and over the last few years.
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