Hampshire County Council | |||
Education Policy Review Committee |
Item 7 | ||
20 December 2001 |
|||
Outcome Report of Hampshire's Inspection and Advisory Service (HIAS) Best Value Review | |||
Report of the County Education Officer | |||
Contact: Chris Wilson, telephone 01962 846517
Best Value Review: The Sold Services of HIAS
Executive Summary
Main Findings
The broad conclusions of the review were that the sold services of HIAS show very high levels of client satisfaction, high levels of comparative cost effectiveness and substantial progress towards achieving the service's objectives. HIAS was seen as a successful and effective service for the continuous improvement of the performance of children in Hampshire schools. Because of the relatively under-developed supply side to the market for out-sourcing the service, the only immediate alternative, and greatest threat, would be from current members of the service leaving to set up in competition. Whilst the service is highly effective, its remaining so is at risk because of recruitment and retention difficulties.
Objectives of the Best Value Review of HIAS sold services
· To improve the quality of inspection and advisory services available to Hampshire schools
· To improve the efficiency of the service by making better use of electronic communications and of purchased time
· To improve the cost-effectiveness of the service by reducing overheads
· To ensure all HIAS businesses break even year on year
· To evaluate the effectiveness of subject inspector/advisers' work purchased by schools
Recommendation
Maintain the quality, range and integrated nature of HIAS sold services, operating within business planning disciplines.
Outcomes
· Improve the regular evaluation of the service's quality and impact on schools;
· Improve the planning for succession, retention and recruitment;
· Improve conditions of service and the rewarding of staff; and
· Sustain the cost effectiveness of the service through business planning disciplines.
Financial Implications
The financial impact of these outcomes is neutral as the entire finding for the service is already in school budget shares.
Action Plan
The action plan is concerned mainly with details of the way the outcomes will be implemented.
Review costs
The actual cost of undertaking this review was £14,307, made up as follows:
· Challenge group meetings cost (staff time, consultancy fees and venue costs): £3855
· Consultation surveys, distribution and collation: £640
· Review leader's time: £9812
Hampshire County Council | |||
Education Policy Review Committee |
Item 7 | ||
20 December 2001 |
|||
Outcome Report of Hampshire's Inspection and Advisory Service (HIAS) Best Value Review | |||
Report of the County Education Officer | |||
Contact: Chris Wilson, telephone 01962 846517
1. The Service Under Review
1.1 Statutory Basis
The funding of the work of HIAS is affected by the framework introduced by the 1998 Act, new arrangements, known as Fair Funding. These arrangements were intended to produce a clear division of responsibility between LEAs and schools and to ensure further delegation of funds to governing bodies.
The LEA has a duty to exercise its functions with a view to promoting high standards, so far as such functions are capable of being exercised, under provisions of Section 13A of the Education Act 1996.
The LEA must produce an Education Development Plan (EDP). This should set out the LEA's proposals for the action it will take to raise the standards of education provided for the children for whom it is responsible and to improve the performance of the schools it maintains. The EDP only contains plans for the use of non-delegated money for school improvement. In preparing this EDP, the LEA must have regard to the guidance issued by the Secretary of State on relations between the LEA and its schools. This Code of Practice, revised in February 2001, means the LEA can only intervene in schools in inverse proportion to their success.
There would appear to be an inherent tension between the interests of schools as stakeholders, largely responsible for the standards in schools and for the purchase of services they choose through delegated funds, and the interests of the LEA as stakeholder responsible for promoting and challenging school improvement. The responsibility for raising standards in schools through the use of delegated funds rests with governing bodies and headteachers. However, by maintaining a high quality inspection and advisory service with a wide range of expertise, the LEA makes available to schools the means by which they can raise and maintain high standards in schools. By integrating the service, irrespective of the sources of the funding, the LEA seeks to meet in part its obligations to promote high standards in schools.
1.2 The objectives of the Inspection and Advisory Service are:
· to provide a school improvement service for purchase by Hampshire headteachers and governors through their delegated budgets and grant funds, so that they can raise standards and improve the performance of schools;
· to work in partnership with schools in securing and maintaining high standards;
· to lead and shape developments and improvements in schools;
· to support schools in their own developmental activities to raise standards;
· to be responsive and sensitive to the needs of schools and other customers for the services of HIAS;
· to be accountable to purchasers for the services provided;
· to achieve break-even financially at full cost recovery.
2. The Review Process
2.1 The review process is initiated annually as part of the planning discipline of a business unit. To ensure that the services offered for purchase are cost effective, HIAS has to ask questions each year about the match of staff to the services required, the need for, and effective operation of, the sub-businesses and to interrogate the management data on earnings generated from different markets to ensure the business is on a sound footing for succeeding years.
A small team drawn from stakeholders within HIAS, County Council members and joined by two independent consultants, one from another LEA advisory service and one from an independent consultancy met on three occasions, each for 3 hours in the evening, on 14 June, 4 October and 8 November 2001. From outset, demands on the time of all the review group meant that much of the work would be undertaken by correspondence, using face-to-face meetings to challenge and question the emerging picture. Not all members of the review group have been able to attend all meetings but have contributed by correspondence. Agendas and notes from the meetings are given in Appendix 1.
A survey of the effectiveness of the attached inspector system has been undertaken as an annual event since 1999, to which was added for this review a survey of headteachers' opinions of the sold services they purchase with delegated funds.
The main constraints on the work of the review team have been in compiling and collating data from external sources where information is scarce. Furthermore, administering and collating surveys and questionnaires internally, often drew on the time of people who had little to spare.
2.2 Challenge
There is no obligation for an LEA to maintain an advisory service to offer to schools for purchase. There is an expectation in the Code of Practice for LEA-School Relations that an LEA will secure external support and guidance in response to requests from schools. There is the expectation that LEAs will act to provide schools with information about the services available to them in the market place. This, however, introduces a tension between the LEA as service broker and service provider, a tension recognised by the Head of the LEA Policy and Improvement Unit at the DfES in a recent speech to the annual conference of the National Association of Educational Inspectors, Advisers and Consultants (NAEIAC).
All the funding for the sold services of HIAS is already in schools' budgets. As long as the business unit breaks even, there is no demand on County Council centrally managed funds. There would be no savings to the County Council if the sold services of HIAS were disbanded. As employer, the County Council would have to meet redundancy payments estimated at £4.9 million. No developed market exists to which schools can turn for advice and support of a reliable quality. The only way to create such a market is to disband LEA advisory services. The greatest threat to the sustained access of schools to high quality advisory service provision is the establishment of private consultancies by groups of ex-HIAS staff. The excess of demand over supply for such services would be likely to lead to higher charges for services with less rigorous quality assurance. This demand would include the services the LEA would have to purchase to discharge its school improvement functions. This would not be good value for money in the short term. Over time, supply would exceed demand and prices would probably fall, as has happened in the provision of staff to meet OfSTED contracts nationally.
That the sold services of HIAS exist in a true market, subject to annual business planning, produces annual challenge. The challenge to HIAS is to plan to sustain high quality services at break-even costs. As the current work-force ages and as market forces reduce the attraction to teachers and headteachers of advisory work as full-time career progression, this will become more difficult.
Since September 2000, HIAS has developed schemes of seconding teachers and headteachers for one or two days a week from their full-time posts in schools to act as associate inspector/advisers. The secondary phase scheme is being run as a pilot of new models for school improvement services with DfES and commercial partners, Vosper Thorneycroft Education Services (VTES) and Symons Consulting, with DfES funding.
As a staffing strategy, since April 2000 HIAS has sought to recruit teachers by part-time secondment to act as associates where the staffing demands in any curriculum area are less than a full-time post. HIAS has invested time in training these part-time associates to undertake particular tasks for which practising teachers' skills are particularly appropriate, like leading training courses to disseminate good practice. Currently art, PE, RE, ICT, history and drama are implementing this strategy, and an independent consultant headteacher is used to supply advice as part of the services offered in the primary able child programme.
2.3 Comparison
Attempts to compare the costs of the services of HIAS with other LEA and private advisory services are frustrated by the lack of true comparisons. Data from the LEA Benchmarking Club, run by educational consultants Windsor and Co., to which HIAS subscribes, shows a range of daily rates for advisory services running from £250 to £450, with an average of £350. Private educational consultancies like Cambridge Educational Associates charge above £620 a day for work in failing schools but not for making any improvement. Informal discussions with colleagues in other LEAs and with Nick Jarman, the Educational Consultant running Windsor and Co., suggest the basis for calculating comparative costs is flawed. Informal discussions with Jane Wreford, a senior member of the Audit Commission, support the notion that cross-LEA comparisons are unreliable. The County Treasurer requires HIAS to spread all overheads equally between sold services and retained budgets. Details of the factors in the HIAS day-rate are given in Appendix 2 (not included as this appendix contains commercially sensitive information).
Calculation of the day-rate operated by HIAS and the number of earned days to be recovered to ensure break-even in the business unit was set in 1993 following advice then from Coopers and Lybrand, Educational Consultants. The target of 75% of contract time recovered as earned days (165 days), is commensurate with the ratio operated by other LEAs in the benchmarking club, although their methods of calculating costs vary considerably. Evidence in Appendix 3 illustrates the difficulties of comparing costs (not included as this appendix contains commercially sensitive information).
Internal comparisons are also difficult to make, but the rate charged by Hampshire's IT Services for advice and consultancy to HIAS is at a rate of £480 to £530 a day. HIAS current charges are given in Appendix 4.
The range of services offered by HIAS was described in the recent OfSTED/Audit Commission report on the LEA as
"...an enviable range and quantity of expertise,"
where
"...to an unusual extent, advisers are able to work within their phase and curricular specialisms...a factor underpinning the high regard in which they are held in schools."
Few other LEAs maintain this curricular range as a sold service. As part of the strategy for school improvement in Hampshire schools, HIAS has, in its business planning, managed resources so as to retain sufficient staff in every national curriculum subject, phase and specialist area to meet the perceived demand for sold services from Hampshire schools. These staff are recruited at a level to retain credibility and usefulness to schools and subject to a performance management system to assure quality and enable continuous professional development. The match of staffing to perceived needs is reviewed annually and adjustments made accordingly.
Because schools are responsible for the standards achieved by children, directly relating the work of HIAS staff purchased by schools to pupil outcomes is difficult. There is currently no performance data for subjects other than English, mathematics and science at the ends of Key Stages 1, 2 and 3, earlier than last year. Controlling for the effect in any one school of only the purchased services of HIAS staff in English and mathematics, as opposed to centrally and national strategy grant funded consultants, was beyond the scope of this review. Controlling for the effect on pupil outcomes at Key Stage 4 alone was equally beyond this review's scope. However, data provided annually as part of the LEA profile drawn from Section 10 OfSTED inspection reports on schools gives comparisons generally, at two points in time. As virtually all work in foundation subjects is purchased by schools, as opposed to centrally or grant funded, these data are useful in judging whether HIAS has had any perceived impact on improved school performance. Details are given in Appendices 5 and 6.
HIAS is perceived to be expensive by some schools and by some of the very few external customers for whom the service works. Salary and associated staffing costs make up 86.9% of the day-rate. HIAS recruits high quality staff with contemporary experience from schools and therefore has to offer salaries better than those earned by senior teachers, deputy heads and headteachers. Appendix 7 gives a comparison with teachers' and leadership spine salaries.
2.4 Stakeholder Consultation
HIAS regularly operates within a consultation structure which involves schools. All headteachers in Hampshire were surveyed for their opinions of the sold services of HIAS at the same time as being asked, as part of the quality assurance system of HIAS as a whole, about the operation of the attached inspector system. The summarised results of these surveys are given in Appendices 8 and 9 (not included because of confidential nature of response).
The standing committees of secondary and primary headteacher conferences and the conference of special school headteachers were formally consulted on the questions arising from these surveys, as was the Teachers' Liaison Panel on Conditions of Service. Again, the enquiry was focussed on issues thrown up by the survey of sold services, in particular to explore further the variation in quality of work by inspector/advisers which a number of headteachers had alluded to in their written comments.
All members of HIAS were asked about the standards and the work of the publications and information unit, a sub-business of HIAS, as part of the normal business planning process. The outcomes of this review will be reported separately to HIAS management team and the recommendations acted on separately. This is consistent with the way the review of the education technology workshop has been managed from September 2000 to December 2001. All HIAS professional staff were asked about the leadership and management of the sold services of HIAS, using a questionnaire based on the EFQM model (Appendix 10). Because it is a major purchaser of HIAS services, the Education Training Agency was asked to comment on the provision and quality of HIAS work, as were Governor Services as a purchaser of HIAS time to present training events.
Parents, children and employers are indirectly stakeholders as users of schools and the quality of education they provide, rather than HIAS itself, and were therefore not consulted.
2.5 Competition
The review group, in its challenge meetings, debated the out-sourcing of the sold services of HIAS and the existence of competitors of similar scope and quality to HIAS. There is little evidence of a developed supply side outside HIAS, offering services to schools. As HIAS does not receive advertising from competitors, it has been hard to quantify the nature of the competition. As the LEA is expected to inform schools about alternative provision and how governors and headteachers might judge the value for money provided by these other services, the absence of market intelligence here is a matter to be improved upon in the future. What evidence there is suggests that the provision by private firms of advisory and inspection services to schools relies on these firms being able to sub-contract from LEA teams or utilise ex-LEA employees. DfES intervention in failing LEAs relies on the availability of other LEAs' staff to provide grass-roots school improvement services.
There is no evidence of private concerns being asked to provide an integrated service where sold and centrally financed services have to operate to the same business constraints and the same measures of impact and outcome as is asked of LEAs, however they provide the services. There is a better-developed market for freelance trainers and there is evidence that schools do buy in training from a variety of suppliers. However, independent trainers do not have to integrate their philosophy, approach and message with the vision of the LEA, or to be consistent with its strategic plan for school improvement as expressed in the Education Development Plan. The sold services of HIAS do attempt to do this.
The greatest threat to the continued provision of high quality sold services to Hampshire schools would be the development of competition from members of HIAS leaving the service to become independent. There is currently no evidence of this, but the difficulties recently experienced in recruiting to vacancies in the service caused by promotion to other posts suggests retention, and succession planning, should be a major concern of the service.
3. Member Input
The process has involved members through:
· Best Value Panel (Education) Workshop to consider the scoping report on 5 July
· Best Value Panel (Education) meeting to approve the scoping report on 25 July
· Cllr Roger Kimber attended a meeting of the review group on 16 June and Cllr Ray Ellis attended a meeting on 4 October 2001. Cllrs Brian Dash and Ray Ellis attended the review meeting on 8 November 2001, with Cllr Mrs Pat West making a written contribution.
Councillors' views on these issues, both at the meetings and by correspondence have been very valuable, especially when considering the out-sourcing options and the perceived quality of the advisory service to governors in Hampshire schools.
4. Lessons Learned
The following lessons were learned from carrying out the review:
· Measuring impact when schools are responsible for the quality of outcome is very difficult.
· The continued purchase of sold services of HIAS year on year is an indication of schools' satisfaction with the impact of the work of HIAS.
· The scale of the work of the sold service, involving approximately 27,000 individual contacts with schools in a year, means annual evaluations of effect and satisfaction may be too broad.
· Systematic collection of data from other LEAs who may be competitors in the market place is difficult and comparisons are unreliable until a better nationally-led system of comparisons is established by the Audit Commission.
· The inclusion of an external private consultant on the review group was a valuable element to challenge the business notions underlying the provision of the sold services of HIAS.
· Undertaking a review of this size within the time scales during the summer and early autumn terms imposed severe constraints on what could be achieved, because of the interruption of the summer holiday to the process of sending out surveys to schools and others, and their return. Additionally, the demands of the review produced considerable pressure on the very limited management time available to run the business of HIAS.
5. Conclusions
5.1 Conclusions based on the Stakeholder Surveys
Headteachers expressed a very high level of satisfaction with the sold services of HIAS. The return rate was 71%. In comparison with the levels of satisfaction from, for example, accreditation for Investors in People surveys where 70% satisfaction is seen as high, these survey returns indicate substantial approval. Details are given in Appendix 8 (not included because of confidential nature of response). All schools agreed that HIAS staff were professional. Over 96% agreed that the work undertaken had had a positive impact on the school and that inspector/advisers had challenged the school to strive for higher levels of performance. The strength of these responses is an endorsement of the quality of the work of HIAS. Schools are free to purchase advice from any supplier. That they continue to buy from HIAS, and to evaluate the quality of the work highly, suggests headteachers continue to think HIAS staff provide good value. Annual complaints about the work of sold services have been in single figures for the past three years.
The survey's written comments on the sold services enter some caveats. In particular, a number of headteachers commented on the variation in quality of the work of different inspectors across all the service. So, although the overall level of satisfaction was high, this masks detailed variation.
Although not a part of the review of the sold services of HIAS, the survey of attached inspectors' work (Appendix 9) (not included because of confidential nature of response) showed similar levels of satisfaction with the quality of the work and its impact. The return rate was 75%. A number of schools purchase the time of their attached inspector in addition to the time spent in schools supported by the retained budget through the EDP, and commented favourably on the quality of this associated work. That schools are able to do this points to a strength of an integrated service that does not distinguish between the staff available to undertake LEA commissioned work and those requested by the school.
Follow-up surveys to investigate further the nature of the variation within the service and ways of improving it, through the representative groups of primary, secondary and special school heads' conferences and the teachers' liaison panel, produced no response within the timetable of the review. Governor services reported a high level of delegate satisfaction with the courses presented by HIAS members, with individuals' composite scores always falling between 4 and 5 on a scale where 5 indicated very high satisfaction. No response was received from the Education Training Agency about the level of satisfaction with HIAS staff as course presenters.
The survey of HIAS staff as stakeholders in the service asked their opinions of the management and leadership of the service and produced the response detailed in Appendix 11 (not included because of confidential nature of response). The general dissatisfaction with the leadership of some parts of the service and with the quality of some of the regular internal communication, contrasts with the reported outcomes of the assessment undertaken recently for Investors in People accreditation of the Education Department, and with the reported evidence gathered by the OfSTED/Audit Commission inspection team, detailed in the OfSTED report on the LEA in 2001. A number of staff responded in their written comments that management, leadership and the pastoral care of staff was satisfactory at a local level but less consistent when applied to parts of the service as a whole. Valuing, rewarding and involving people more were issues identified as unsatisfactory.
5.2 Conclusions based on performance data
As a business unit, HIAS has taken management action to reduce the accumulated and trading deficits of past years. The 2001/02 business plan indicated an estimated cumulative surplus at year end compared with a cumulative deficit two years earlier, at the end of 1999/2000.
The performance of Hampshire schools, as judged by OfSTED Section 10 inspections, shows that for almost all measures this county does better than like counties who form the group of statistical neighbours used in the national comparisons provided by DfES/OfSTED data. A detailed sample is given in Appendices 5 and 6.
Whilst it has not been possible in the time and with the data available to match the purchased work done in schools with their improvement over time between one OfSTED inspection and another, a recommendation that this sort of detailed evaluation of impact should be undertaken is one of the review outcomes. It will not, of course, be possible to control for other advice a school might have purchased from other sources outside HIAS and for the impact this advice might have had on pupils' outcomes. The examples given in the appendices have been selected because the sort of work undertaken by HIAS in schools to bring about the improvements shown is for the most part not supported by retained budgets and therefore fully at the market. This is especially true for the work of HIAS members in science, as, unlike English and mathematics, this is a core subject, with end of Key Stage tests but not supported by a national, grant aided strategy. The work in schools is therefore wholly purchased. Standards in science at the end of KS1 show that Hampshire schools achieved results above those of schools in like counties in the number of children achieving Level 2 and above since 1998 and, since 1996, well above in comparison with like counties in the number achieving Level 3. At the end of KS2, Hampshire schools have achieved better standards than like counties in science since 1996 in the numbers of children achieving above both Level 4 and Level 5. At the end of Key Stage 3, science results at Level 5 and above have always been at least as good as those in like counties.
That schools continue to purchase HIAS time, and that the performance of children has improved, suggests the service is effective. More work needs to be done to secure such an evaluation across all subjects and in relation to the time purchased in individual schools.
5.3 Conclusions based on external comparators
Although HIAS appears expensive, the cost comparators are unreliable. When placed alongside an independent consultancy firm like Cambridge Educational Associates or an internal consultancy like Hampshire's IT Services, HIAS is not overpriced. The major part of the cost of HIAS is staff salaries and associated costs. HIAS has always recruited the highest quality staff available from schools. The rise in school based salaries has exerted pressure on the salaries of inspector/advisers. Appendix 7 gives a comparison.
No independent consultancy firm appears to have available the same range of curriculum and phase advisory staff, recruited at the same level from schools as those in HIAS. The inspection report on the LEA undertaken by OfSTED and the Audit Commission commented on the unusual nature of HIAS continuing to offer specialist curriculum advice across all subjects. By inference, this is clearly not the case in other LEAs or independent consultancy firms.
The range and quality of the curriculum and specialist phase advice offered by HIAS and its continued purchase by schools is a contributory factor in the assessment that HIAS gives good value for money.
5.4 Equalities
Employees in HIAS are always appointed without respect to gender, ethnicity, religion or disabilities. The service abides by the Hampshire County Council corporate strategy and guidance on equalities.
5.5 Sustainability
Sustaining the range and quality of the staff in HIAS is a major challenge for the service in the future. Recent evidence of attempts to make appointments to posts vacated by promotion has shown that there is no ready, well-qualified pool of teachers and headteachers willing to make the advisory service their next career move. As part of its strategy to extend the range of staff available to schools, either for purchase or to undertake work on the County Council's behalf, HIAS has put in place an associates scheme using primary headteachers seconded for one or two days a week to work as school improvers and attached inspectors. HIAS has also developed, as part of the New Models of School Improvers Project, funded by DfES, a scheme whereby secondary headteachers are carefully selected to act as school improvers to work particularly with new headteachers, as part of the purchased service. These part-time seconded staff supply secondary headteacher expertise unavailable to HIAS because the costs of full-time employment of ex-secondary headteachers exceed by some way the comparable salary levels available.
With the majority of HIAS staff now over 50 years of age, recruitment, retention and succession planning is a challenge to the sustainability of the service. The review group were strongly of the opinion that more needs to be done to improve the conditions of service, rewards and incentives offered to HIAS staff, particularly in relation to the salary scales now available to headteachers.
HIAS has tried to play its part in achieving the County Council's corporate strategy aim of stewardship of the environment though reducing council plant and car usage. However, in attempting to reduce overall floor-space usage by basing staff at home, by agreement and by equipping staff to work remotely from their office bases, HIAS has encountered Inland Revenue regulations relating to business travel use and the definition of home-based workers that run counter to attempts to improve environmental impact. The review group were of the opinion that this was a corporate issue and recommended that it should be pursued as such through the outcome of this Best Value Review.
5.6 Crime and Disorder
HIAS contributes to the improvement in crime and disorder indirectly through improving the work of schools in educating children and through offering advice to schools on how best to teach moral, social and civil values.
5.7 e-Government
The service already makes substantial use of electronic media in accessing DfES websites, OfSTED information and emailing. Communications with schools are by email whenever possible, but hampered by lack of individual inspector/advisers having versatile and reliable equipment and by schools' access, at classroom level, to secure email facilities for teachers to use.
HIAS is keen to improve its use of information and communication technology (ICT). To function as an effective business unit HIAS continually reviews how its staff can undertake their work more efficiently and effectively by using ICT. In this the unit has been hampered by the limited consideration given to the needs of an out-of-office service when the corporate strategy is mainly focused on fixed site provision of ICT equipment. In achieving good value for money in the expenses it incurs, HIAS has been handicapped through being unable to operate in a free market for ICT provision, support and maintenance. Managing overhead charges has been made difficult through the unclear pricing structure offered by Hampshire's IT services. The nature of business unit finances mean HIAS has been able to make only limited budgetary provision for equipping staff and for maintaining and upgrading hardware and software. Whilst making the best of efforts to engage in the e-government agenda, HIAS has been unable to invest for implementation because the corporate strategy does not take sufficient account of the service's needs.
5.8 Areas for Improvement
The review group identified a number of areas for improvement of the service, summarised below.
· Better evaluation methods to assess the impact of the service on children's learning and schools' improvements.
· Better planning for succession of staffing and the maintenance of quality in the service.
· Reduce the variability in the quality of inspector/advisers' work by targeting the continuing professional development of HIAS staff on meeting the competencies in the new national standards for school improvers.
· Improve the provision of and reliability of ICT.
· Develop more coherent flexible working arrangements to reduce costs and improve working conditions.
· Improve communications within the service, in particular those between centrally based leaders and managers and the staff in local offices.
6. Options for the service
a) Disband the sold services of HIAS so that the LEA only retains staff to enable the activities in the EDP to be achieved.
b) Maintain the quality, range and integrated nature of HIAS, operating within local government Regulation 20 business planning disciplines.
c) Expand services as an operator in the free market outside the county and outside the maintained sector in Hampshire.
7. Evaluations of options
The review group debated these options at length over two meetings. The summary of these option appraisals is given in Appendix 12.
Option (a): Disbanding the sold services
Advantages
None, provided the business unit achieves break-even. As the money supporting the sold services of HIAS is already in schools' budget shares, there would be no savings to be made. Schools would still need the funds to purchase advice from whomever they wished.
Disadvantages
Quality control remains a challenge, even with a very tightly-drawn service specification, when engaging an external supplier of services. The integrated nature of HIAS, providing services for school improvement from different budgets, to the LEA and directly to schools, is a significant factor in the quality of the service and what it achieves with schools. Hampshire schools expect that staff in the service communicate and know about a school's particular circumstances. This would be difficult with an external provider. By setting high standards and engaging HIAS as a service within the vision for Hampshire schools, the LEA, through the Education Department, is able to set an expectation for improvement in all the curriculum advice it offers. The demise of HIAS, either by deliberate policy or by slow reduction of its range and numbers of staff would significantly reduce the authority of the LEA, because the powerful effect achieved by the critical mass of its curriculum advice through HIAS would be reduced. The redundancy costs associated with disbanding HIAS approximate to £4.9 million with no commensurate savings.
Option (b): Maintain the quality, range and integrated nature of HIAS, operating within local government Regulation 20 business planning disciplines.
Advantages
By continuing to provide a full range of curriculum and phase advice for purchase by Hampshire schools, the LEA is able to meet its obligations to promote high standards. By integrating the work of HIAS supported by retained budgets with the work schools purchase themselves, if they choose to, the LEA can achieve a critical mass of coherent advice, support and training to set high expectations and to enable schools to improve. If the LEA did not retain HIAS as a sold service, the LEA would be obliged to undertake the same quality control and service specification with outside providers without the same expectation of coherence and LEA ethos. The disciplines of business unit planning and the effect of the Fair Funding rules for local government finances mean there can be no cross-subsidy from retained central budgets to the sold services which stand or fall on the quality of their work in a true market. The service is self-supporting. By restricting the work undertaken only to Hampshire maintained schools, the estimation of resources needed to meet demand can be reasonably well anticipated and Hampshire schools, through the provisions of the service level agreement with HIAS, can be assured of service within the terms of the agreement at a predictable and stable price.
Disadvantages
Local government business unit regulations restrict the operation in a true market. The service level agreement prices all HIAS time equally, making no allowance for premium work from very experienced or very popular individuals. HIAS is expected to achieve break-even at outturn each year, which makes no allowance for generating investment income for new equipment or the off-setting of losses one year by profit the next, as the funding is all largely public money distributed as school budget shares or grant distribution to schools.
Option (c): Expand services as an operator in the free market outside the county and outside the maintained sector in Hampshire.
Advantages
HIAS would have the freedom to charge premium rates and to generate income from funding outside the total Hampshire schools' budget. This profit could be off-set against charges to HCC schools, provided the resources utilised for this work were marginal to providing time and services within Hampshire. Until April 2000, this is the way HIAS operated.
Disadvantages
The pool of skilled staff available for Hampshire schools would become diluted. The needs of HCC schools would not be able to predominate over the needs of outside clients, as both would be equal claimants. The pricing structure to achieve reasonable and useful premium income pitches charges beyond the means of most outside clients. Job-costing has to be very carefully undertaken to avoid accidental cross-subsidising of outside clients by HCC funds. Expansion could only be undertaken at the margins of existing staffing so that HCC schools continue to derive benefit from the availability of such staff or, alternatively, as a long-term contract over 5 years to enable security of staffing supply and of employment for the individuals concerned. Generally, the money to be made does not off-set the business and individual risks of such expansion.
8. Recommendations
8.1. That option (b) is adopted as an outcome of this Best Value Review, subject to the detailed recommendations for improvements to the quality of the service and the way it is managed.
8.2 That a regular, systematic programme of evaluating the work and impact of the sold services of HIAS is implemented, using a variety of methods, including outside consultancy.
8.3 That further work is undertaken through the representative standing phase committees of headteachers to identify the nature and extent of the variation in quality between inspector/advisers alluded to in the survey of headteacher opinions.
8.4 That core continuous professional development provision is targeted on training all staff to achieve the competencies specified in the national school improvers accreditation scheme, whether for external accreditation or not.
8.5 That urgent work is undertaken to ensure succession planning is in place by September 2004 to ameliorate the effect of increasing numbers of existing HIAS staff reaching retirement age or leaving for promotion or to return to school based work.
8.6 That further work is undertaken to improve the rewards, incentives and conditions of service for existing and prospective HIAS professional staff.
8.7 Improve the ability of HIAS staff to access reliable, flexible and appropriate ICT equipment, training, support and maintenance at best value for money.
8.8 Improve the ability of HIAS staff to work flexibly, efficiently and effectively by pursuing offers of home-based working.
8.9 Seek support from other parts of the county council to remove barriers to the realisation of its environmental aims in relation to staff working conditions and travel, including influencing the local interpretation of Inland Revenue rules.
8.10 Improve the communication between centrally based leaders and managers in the service, and staff based away from the centre.
8.11 Improve the perceptions of staff that they are valued, supported and rewarded for the work they do.
8.12 Improve the confidence of sections of HIAS staff in the professional leadership of their specialisms.
8.13 Ensure the action plan in the 2001/02 business plan for HIAS is achieved.
Glossary
ASIM Area School Improvement Manager
DASIM Deputy Area School Improvement Manager
EDP Education Development Plan
HIAS Hampshire's Inspection and Advisory Service
ICT Information and Communication Technology
Sold services Those services where the time of members of HIAS is purchased by schools or other clients from their delegated budgets in the market.
9. Action Plan
Performance Indicator |
Performance Target |
Current Performance |
Barriers to achieving Target |
ACTION |
Officer |
Target Date |
Cost Implications |
Ref |
Outcome 2: Improve the regular evaluation of the service's quality and impact on schools | ||||||||
Schools' expressed satisfaction with service |
100% |
96% |
Variation in perceived quality of staff by schools |
Investigate further nature of variation |
CDW |
Sept 2002 |
Officer time and survey costs |
2a |
Evaluation of service undertaken throughout year |
100% of purchasing schools contacted at least once each year |
71% return on annual survey |
Cost of expanded evaluations; Time of respondents; |
Build into 2002/3 budget; Consult with representative HT groups. |
CDW CDW AR JC |
April 2002 Sept 2002 |
Consultant's time: £5000 |
2b |
Impact of HIAS work more closely tied to pupil performance outcomes, through actions taken by schools. |
Pupil performance improves year on year and in value added through impact of HIAS advice; Schools in special measures, serious weakness or underperforming reduces to 0% by January 2004 |
1% of schools currently in in special measures, serious weaknesses or underperfor-ming. |
Ability of schools to effect improvements. |
Evaluate impact of HIAS work on schools through improved evaluation system. Use LEA profile data, when available to relate HIAS work to pupil performance |
CDW AR/JW |
In place Sept 2002 |
Consultants' time; management time; survey costs |
2c |
Reduce overheads and increase % of daily rate attributed to salary related expenditure |
Reduce overheads to 11% of daily rate |
Overheads are 15% of daily rate in 2001/02 year. |
Cost of overheads corporately decided; Ability to reduce deficit quickly. |
Continue dialogue with CT about nature and amount of overheads charges; Seek to reduce use of plant; Accelerate achievement of action plan in 2001/02 business plan. |
CDW CDW CT rep CDW |
Ongoing Ongoing Ongoing |
Termination costs if necessary |
4b |
Section 100D - Local Government Act 1972 - background papers
The following documents disclose facts or matters on which this report, or an important part of it, is based and has been relied upon to a material extent in the preparation of this report.
Records of the Best Value HIAS review team meetings and working papers of the Best Value Review, held by the Review Team Leader.