Propagandinar

 It’s a new word. A portmanteau, like Brexit, and it’s a new thing government departments are doing.

The propigandinar is a Teams meeting where a couple of Civil Servants (Graham and Tom) are hosted by an overly smiling Minister to ‘explain’ the unexplainable. While they are talking people can write their questions on the chat device and they will ignore them or answer them at the end.

Tonight, I logged into the one called ‘The school funding cycle and teacher’s pay.’

(I have, in the past, written made up conversations, however this is recorded verbatim, or as near as I could manage)

I know I’m sad but I thought it would be interesting. 

It started with the Education Secretary pretending not to know how to use a computer and then being uncharacteristically nice. It was almost like she was a different woman to the one who had been on the TV last week saying that she couldn’t speak to teachers directly. This time, speaking directly to teachers and head teachers she thanked them for everything they do seven times. Then handed over to Graham. 

I’m not sure why Graham was there, except that he was a master at talking without actually saying anything. He did thank us all for everything we are doing (again) and said that the whole department agrees and wants to thank us. He said that questions would be answered by relevance and popularity, as there was limited time. He explained that schools should have had a letter today to explain exactly how much money was going to be in their budget and handed over to Tom, who had the details. 

It was quite interesting. Complicated but enlightening. If you are wondering why teachers are going to be on strike tomorrow then some of this information might help.

Tom explained that annual funding cycle starts early. The NFF 2023/4 was announced July 2022. Presumably, it was calculated long before that. Before fuel rises, before Ukraine, before Liz Whateverhernameis crashed the economy. The NFF is the national funding formula that the government uses to calculate the basic allocation for every school. This doesn't include money for SEN (Special educational needs), PPG (Pupil Premium Grant - poor kids to you and I) or an uplift for London schools. He explained that every school gets minimum amount per pupil. For Maintained schools the Local Authority can redistribute using a local formula although many use National Formula and are going to be forced to use the National Formula in future. He refused to talk about SEN funding because 'it's complicated.' 

Yes, I did snort my tea through my nose at that point.  Any school will tell you that for every child who needs extra help the government only funds part of that extra help, so a school with a good reputation for working with special needs children will be poorer than those who actively make their lives miserable.

Tom went on to explain that Maintained schools are funded April – March while Academies are Sept – August and that individual schools receive their budgets for the following year in March.

This year there is also  the MSAG – distribution of the additional money announced in the Autumn statement, which isn't enough to cover the fuel rises and the pay award granted last year to support staff but hey ho, it is extra money so stop moaning.  He said that  Pupil Premium going to go up by 5%, which is great when inflation is currently at about 9%.

He did acknowledge that because MSAG came late they weren’t able to send it out in time for funding the support staff pay rise and he knew that was a problem. 'Thank you again, for everything you do.'

 He explained that the MSAG will continue to be paid to schools but it will be rolled into NFF for 24/25.  I think this means that schools won't recognise it as extra help.

Then Tom said, 'Teacher’s pay,' and paused for an extraordinary length of time.

He explained that these annual budgets are all the funding that is given to cover everything and that includes the costs from the pay awards that will be applied. 

'This year', he said, 'There is increase of £2.8bn to schools.  We have not held back some of the money we will hand out until later in the year. So keep a close eye on teacher pay awards.'

'We calculate that stating from £2.8 bn there is enough in that total budget to pay for a teacher’s pay award for an average school. It is not a calculation that says every school will cope easily with a 4% award.  Schools have to approach budget setting with care because we don’t know what award might be made.'

He then decided to pre-empt that question of what will happen when the pay award comes in above 4% and then said that he couldn't pre-empt, whether there will be any extra to cover.  He said that there was a bit in the last offer but it wasn't accepted.  All he could say was that as it stand they believe there is enough to cover a 4% pay increase for an average school. 

Graham came back on to say, 'Let us turn to questions.'

The questions they chose to answer were interesting.

1. What happens if schools run out of money?  Can they go bankrupt. 

Smaller schools this might be the position. Make use of school management resources look for good deals. Every year there are schools that face real financial difficulties – maintained schools should approach local authority for additional support in extreme cases.

2. Why aren’t you talking about SEN funding?

In not referring to it we are only giving a partial view of the situation. It would be worthy of a seminar in its own right. Please let us know if you would like that. In last four years a 50% increase in funding for special needs. We know  it’s not enough and fully  take the point about the additional pressures that we are cognisant of.

 3. The other pay awards (I’m not sure what the question was but that is what he said)

I skirted over that quite quickly. When we make our calculations in terms of support staff that is based on pay awards for support staff. The pay award for support staff is 8% on average and more generous for those at the bottom and we have worked those into all our calculations.  We’ve also sought to take account the energy costs that schools will be facing.

It is important to look at the grand total increase. We do recognise that the situation of each individual school will be facing is different. To make it fair we would have to reduce autonomy.  We don’t want to do that and you wouldn’t want us to.

Question 4 was genius.

4. If 92% of heads say pay offer is unaffordable then it is unaffordable. Are you saying headteachers are wrong? 

We are saying that on average using the methodology that we use year on year then the funding is correct.  We are clearly not saying that we know better than every individual headteacher as to what they are facing in their school.

I can’t help feeling that the word ‘average’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Most schools have been working very hard to be above average. In fact Ofsted will fail any school that isn’t above average. 

The questions that weren’t answered were also interesting, especially the one asking why the rise per pupil is capped at 1.56%? If the premise of the question is true then that tells you everything you need to know about why teachers are on strike. 

Many people didn’t ask questions but just explained their situation and it was heartbreaking to read. 

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Anonymous 4:40 PM

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Our allocation of 2.4 billion is £30k. Energy bills next year are estimated to be £28k of this. As a shire school we are already poorly funded. How will the extra £2000 pay for teacher pay rises and support staff pay rises and costs such as paper that have gone up 66%?

As propigandinars go it wasn’t exactly convincing anyone. Schools are underfunded  so teachers are fed up. Teachers are on strike today because they are not able to give children the educational experience they deserve and they won’t accept any pay rise that isn’t funded for all schools, rather than just those who aren’t above average.