Education quangos 'should be scrapped'
Updated on 13 August 2009
Two-thirds of Britain's educational bodies should be scrapped, "liberating" schools from bureaucracy and saving the taxpayer more than £600m, research suggests today.
The radical report by the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) argues that while politicians of all parties have called for cuts in the number and influence of quangos, they continue to flourish.
Furthermore millions of pounds have been pumped into the organisations but it is not obvious how they have helped to raise school standards, the report suggests.
The Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency (QCDA), the Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA) and the government's technology agency, Becta, are among those that should be abolished, the CPS says.
The research analysed 11 education quangos, receiving public funding totalling £1.2bn in 2007/08. In the last year alone, the cost to the taxpayer of these organisations increased by 12 per cent.
The report recommends a programme of reform which would see seven of the bodies scrapped and the others overhauled as "there is no evidence that the performance of the quangos has matched the growth in their budgets."
"Liberating" schools from central control
The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) 2008 annual report reveals productivity in UK education fell by 0.7 per cent a year between 2000 and 2006, it adds.
The CPS argue that the new QCDA (formerly the QCA) should be scrapped and replaced by a small Curriculum Advisory Board, with an aim of freeing schools from the centralised control they face from the National Curriculum. If the bureaucratic burden on teachers is reduced it would also make the profession more attractive to graduates, the group also suggests.
The QCA's public funding grew from £54.8m in 1998/99 to £157.4m in 2007/08, and the "intrusive nature" of what it does has been recognised by politicians, the report argues.
Ministers' plans to scrap National Strategies, and "repeated" Sats fiascos, show the failure of the QCA, it says.
This programme of reform would cut government spending by £633m.
Sam Talbot Rice, CPS research director said: "The basic argument is that there's a big concern of school standards, literacy and numeracy, particularly in primary schools.
"For all the increased money going into these quangos, it is not obvious what's been achieved for the money that's been spent.
"There is a need to save money now, and also a need to free schools up from centralised directives."
The TDA's budget has grow from £230m in 1999/2000 to £777m in 2007/08. Its remit, to train teachers, could be provided by schools, allowing the body to be abolished.
As well as Becta, which the report says is not required by schools, The National College for School Leadership (NCSL), 11 Million (the office of the Children's Commissioner), Teachers' TV and the School Teachers' Review Body, should all be abolished.
Ofsted should be revamped and returned to its original function as schools' inspector. Its remit to inspect children's services should be given to another organisation, the report says.
Partnerships for Schools, which oversees the secondary schools rebuilding programme, the School Food Trust and the General Teaching Council for England (GTC) should all be revamped, it says.
Swamped by government guidance
The call to reduce the number of quangos came as the Conservative party criticised the amount of official guidance sent to schools every year,
The Tories claim that the government inundates schools with almost 4,000 pages of emailed paper work rather then giving them powers to carry out their job.
According to analysis of fortnightly guidance notes issued by the Department for Children Schools and Families (DCSF), schools were emailed 3,982 pages of documents between April 2008 and April 2009.
These documents contained almost 1.3 million words and the Tories say that if all of the pages were printed, the stack of papers would be 16 inches thick.
Shadow schools secretary Michael Gove said: "Instead of giving teachers the powers they need over discipline or fixing the devaluation of the exam system, Ed Balls is swamping schools with such a tide of paper that it is obvious heads cannot read more than a fraction."
