Concerns over headteachers’ funding guidance

A COMMISSION set up to examine education reforms has raised concerns over the “highly-prescriptive” guidance which accompanies direct funding for headteachers.

The Pupil Equity Fund hands cash directly to schools to spend on measures to reduce the attainment gap between the poorest and wealthiest pupils.

It is aimed at giving headteachers more control, reflecting Education Secretary John Swinney’s view there should be a presumption that decisions are taken at school level.

The Commission on School Reform has described it as a “major step in the direction of greater autonomy for schools” but it also noted accompanying guidance for headteachers appears “inconsistent” with Mr Swinney’s view.

National operational guidance was issued to every headteacher as a guide to how they might invest their allocation of the funding from April 1.

In its paper on the fund, the commission states the guidance “is full of specific directions to schools about what they may and may not do”, and “repeatedly insists” schools “comply with established local authority processes and accounting procedures in disposing of their additional funds”.

The guidance also “places local authorities rather than schools at the heart of the whole operational process”, according to the commission, and advises that councils will also “issue complementary guidance about how the funding will operate locally”.

The commission, set up in 2011 by the Reform Scotland and Centre for Scottish Public Policy think tanks, considered the PEF and its operation as the Government undertakes a wider review of governance in education.