Tynwald has approved the Department of Education, Sport and Culture's response to an independent review of funding for schools.
The report set out a series of recommendations which looked to improve schools' funding formula, conduct a full of additional educational needs and introduce efficiency metrics to reduce the number of full time teachers in secondary settings.
It received strong scrutiny by some backbenchers, with Rushen MHK Michelle Haywood questioning the validity of much of the entire report contents.
She's been speaking to Sian Cowper:
Tim Walte has approved the Department of Education, Sport and Culture's response to an independent review of funding for schools. The report set out a series of recommendations which looked to improve school's funding formula, conduct a full, additional educational needs review and introduce efficiency metrics to reduce the number of full-time teachers in secondary settings. It received strong scrutiny from some backbenchers, with Russian M.H.K. Michelle Hayward questioning the validity of much of the report's contents. Dr. Hayward, is it fair to say this report didn't live up to your expectations? Yeah, I think that's absolutely true to say that it, I don't think it delivered on what it is. It was set out to do. I think any report that claims that it's going to focus on efficiency, by very definition, you have to look at what the inputs are and what the outcomes are. And this report really summarised, I think, the information that the Department already had and didn't shed any new light on anything. Well, you said there appear to be several key elements of the report that it promises to look at, but fails to do so. Do you think there are any parts of this report that were worthwhile? I think it's useful to throw a light on the funding formula and things, but I think the Department knew what this funding formula was before the report and perhaps didn't need that nudge. It could have done it itself. I think my particular concerns with the report were that they've used a model of looking at how many teachers should be in school and how many pupils and what the expenditure is. But it's based on the UK setup. And I think if you're in a small geographically restricted location like we are and our schools are all integral parts of our community, that model doesn't quite fit. And so I think they've kind of modeled along the wrong lines. We know that these reports with external consultants, they tend to be quite expensive. Is it a bit of a waste of time then to be bringing in someone with that UK centric mindset when the Isle of Man is so different? I think it comes down to the brief and the terms of reference that you set. If we look at the report itself, there's data there that the Department could have pulled together without having to hand it over to an external consultant to put it into a nice table. Once you start trying to look at things that are not just numbers on a page and try and understand a little bit more about the culture on the island, that's really difficult for sometimes for UK companies to get their head round and to actually value the same things as we do. So I think there is a limited value in some of these external reports. We know that the Department of Education, Sport and Culture said it wouldn't be accepting a number of the recommendations in this report, not least the recommendation around closing some schools. Do you welcome then that the Department has taken this kind of stance to not just accept that report? I really welcome that the Minister's Resurance yesterday to the staff and to the schools that there wasn't going to be the changes that this report has assessed. I think my real criticism of the report is it assessed the cost, but it actually in trying to do comparisons didn't compare like from like, so there's no point comparing us to Jersey, they have a very different model. Their children's social services is all within the same department as education, whereas obviously here social services sit separately in manks care and so the funding is different for that. So you're not even comparing the similar setups. So I really welcome the fact that the Department has decided that they're not going to follow some of the recommendations in this report and then that again throws into question how much value was it if you're going to throw out so many of the recommendations and say yeah, that doesn't fit with how we work. So what would you like to see happen next? I'm really looking forward to obviously the AEN review and it came up in this report, but it's come up several times into more before now that that needed to happen. In fact, it came up in the last administration with the failed education bill then that AEN review is well overdue and the minister is committed to that. So I think that would be a really positive step forward. There is a new funding formula that the Department are now using which would seem to be fairer, makes less assumptions and would seem to be more related to activity within schools and pupil numbers, but with an element of stability there because it rolls across a three year period. So I think that's good news for schools as well. Obviously head teachers hold the budgets for their schools and then being able to plan ahead is really worthwhile and allows them some ability to manoeuvre into subsequent years rather than being just hanging on what the department was going to say at the end of the year about what next year's funding is. So I think there have been some positive changes already. I don't think this report didn't look at what your educational outcomes are. It suggests cutting down the curriculum but didn't look at what curriculum do our students need. So I think there are lots of pieces of work I think still going on in that and I know the minister is fairly new in post but she obviously grasped this one and dealt with this and I think it's on to the next challenge for her. Thank you for making it to the end of the Manx Radian newscast. You are obviously someone with exquisite taste. May I politely suggest you might want to subscribe to this and a wide range of Manx Radian podcasts at your favourite podcast provider so our best bits will magically appear on your smartphone. Thank you. [Music] You
