Plans to bring Brighton and Hove schools into a federation – or federations – are still in their early stages, a leading councillor said today (Wednesday 10 July).
The Labour deputy leader of Brighton and Hove City Council, Jacob Taylor, said that the number of schools with budget deficits meant that action was needed.
Head teachers walked out of a recent meeting with senior council officials to discuss the proposal.
But Councillor Taylor told the council’s People Overview and Scrutiny Committee that the growing number of schools in the red could adversely affect the council’s budget.
Falling pupil numbers have exacerbated budget deficits. At the end of the past financial year, school balances were £281,000, down £4.259 million from £4.54 million at the end of 2022-23.
The risk is that the schools budget, funded directly by the government through the dedicated schools grant, will go into the red by about £8 million this year and need to be bailed out by the council.
Councillor Taylor told the committee, which met at Hove Town Hall, that the Labour manifesto said that the party would explore creating federations because the party was not in favour of academies.
He said: “Federation is potentially a route to helping schools with their budgets and with the pupil numbers issues that we’ve talked about.
“Formal federation of schools can start to drive some cost efficiencies but also efficiencies in terms of quality and what’s delivered.
“For example, if you have eight schools that came together in a federation, perhaps they wouldn’t need eight school business managers, eight premises manager or as much senior leadership across those eight schools.
“That might be a way to maintain all those as individual schools but achieve savings across those eight schools.
“It’s very much an alternative to academisation. It might drive some of the benefits the multi-academy trusts have in terms of efficiencies without moving to an academisation model outright.”
Councillor Taylor said that the council was communicating with head teachers, governors and trade unions but had not yet proposed any formal federations.
Any move towards federating would go through the scrutiny process.
Conservative councillor Anne Meadows said that schools that were managing their budgets would be asked to manage schools in the red.
She said: “I was a school governor for 27 years and I know that business managers, teachers and head teachers and everyone who deals with the budgets works full time.
“They’re not part-time where they can suddenly devote another 40 hours in a week to go and help another school. I’m just wondering how you’re expecting that to work.”
Councillor Taylor said that no federations had been proposed yet but a “hypothetical” idea was put before heads and governors.
Any future federations could include secondary and primary schools and need not necessarily be geographic.
Schools have been asked to get in touch with the council by Tuesday 23 July if they are interested in federating.
A survey has been sent to schools inviting feedback on the federation proposal.
A synergetic approach like this is actually quite clever. We’ve got quite a few examples in various industries where this works extremely well in making efficiencies.
I’m disappointed the head teachers walked out of a discussion, the opportunity to learn and test the idea academically could have ensured it was a passing grade. Instead, forfeiting their right to complain, and ultimately they have let down their students.
I have to say I’m more sceptical. Councillor Taylor’s comments sound very much like council pushing solutions onto schools, whereas in some other parts of the country where schools have faced the same problem, they’ve had head-led solutions, with them reviewing options and properly collaborating with school communities and other parties about options and the best (and fairest) way forward.
Heads tend to be fairly reasonable people with their pupils’ best interest at heart, so I think if they did walk out of a meeting it was likely because they were being asked something unreasonable by the council, or had issue with the way they are handling it. The Cabinet system doesn’t allow for proper debate and discussion, so I imagine Heads are genuinely worried about the council forcing ‘solutions’ on them, without proper consideration of their views.
Forcing schools with well run budgets to join with schools that are hundreds of thousands in deficit ?
“Federations might not be geographic” oh well that’ll make sharing resources and staff easy then .
The majority of schools are going to refuse to enter into discussions with regard federating until there has been a decent amount of time allowed to consult with stakeholders , until there is evidence of a working model that they are using for example ( there aren’t any ) and until the legal obligations and potential limitations of entering discussions are clear with regard to making future alternative plans .
All schools in Brighton should and may well look into Academisation.
Well, in respectful retort to the geographical aspect. The internet exists, and cloud office suites are very effective these days. Remote working is a tried and proven method for a lot of jobs and tasks.
A relevant academic reference discussing the success of school federation models can be found in the work of Chris Chapman and Daniel Muijs. Their study, “The Impact of Federations on Student Outcomes,” published in the School Leadership & Management journal, explores the positive effects of federated school structures on student performance, leadership, and resource sharing. The study concludes that federations, when well-implemented, can enhance educational outcomes by fostering collaboration and distributing expertise across schools.
Chapman, C., & Muijs, D. (2013). The Impact of Federations on Student Outcomes. *School Leadership & Management, 33*(1), 22-39.
Benjamin , in equally respectful retort it would appear you work within the education department , LA finance dept or local labour party thus making your very standard party line answers somewhat less palatable .
I predict a lot of Brighton schools will academise except they wont want the ones with huge deficits or those badly run and the LA will be left with the “problematic” schools which they can grind even further down with their less than efficient management and lack of consideration for the children of this city .
For clarity i have a connection with a school in the city .
Don’t work for any of those, I’m afraid. My professional field is medical. I’m relating this to Hub & Spoke models of working within the community pharmacy sector and applying the same centralisation benefits to managing the administrative workloads to my thinking around this. However, I’d certainly love to hear your thoughts regarding the nuances of such a model being applied to the education sector as proposed with your insights.
Quite simply the fall in pupil numbers means the current system does not work, (and will not in the future with the fall in birth rates). Federation is the LA’s way to retain some control and try and prevent schools from going the academy route, (which many Brighton Primary schools are currently doing/ exploring). I have never been totally onboard with the academy idea but we have such an abject failure of an LA with a senior management team that is largely overpayed and incompetent I can understand why heads and governing bodies would be looking at that.