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Item 2 is oral evidence to support the committee's scoping exercise on local authority funding of education and children's services. For the first panel, I welcome from the Scottish Government Colin MacLean, director of schools; Sarah Smith, director for children, young people and social care; David Henderson, head of the local government division; and John Ireland, senior economic adviser and head of education analytical services. I ask Colin MacLean to make a brief opening statement.
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to provide evidence for the committee's scoping exercise. For the record, my job title has changed from director of schools to director of learning, but the other job titles were exactly right.
Thank you very much for your detailed opening statement and written submission. I apologise for arriving late this morning.
I will ask David Henderson to comment on the general point. As far as education is concerned, a number of specific grants and allocations to councils have now been incorporated into the block; however, the total amount that was given to local authorities for education was always a very small fraction of their total spending and, in any case, they always decided the total amount that they were going to spend.
I agree. The GAEs, as they were before the concordat was signed, were never expenditure targets. The block of money that was not ring fenced amounted to about three quarters of the total that councils got from the Government. The GAEs were simply a means by which to allocate between different councils. They were never spending targets. With the removal of ring fencing under the concordat, the block increased from about three quarters to about 85 per cent, but the principle is the same. I endorse everything that Colin MacLean said.
In responding to my question, Colin MacLean said that the Government sits down, discusses and negotiates with local government to agree shared priorities. Again, that is mentioned in the paper. How do Scottish Government officials monitor progress on delivery of those commitments? Is there a problem with no costings being attached to the delivery of those priorities once they have been agreed with local government?
There are two different processes at work. I will say a little about the curriculum for excellence and Sarah Smith will say something about the early years.
The early years framework is another example of the approach that Colin MacLean described. It is very much a partnership approach. We are trying to build a common understanding of the key things that we believe matter in trying to give every child the best start in life. A concentrated period of joint policy development drew in colleagues from local government and the third sector, research and evidence to produce a jointly agreed framework that was signed off, as I am sure you know, by both COSLA and Scottish ministers.
Does John Ireland want to say something about evaluation?
Yes, very briefly. This is a piece of the work that will follow the implementation of the curriculum for excellence, and it has two components. The first is the monitoring of the detailed project plan, which is being worked up at the moment. The second part is work with the other delivery partners, such as the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland and Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education, to get a sense at first of how practice in learning environments is changing as a result of the curriculum for excellence. As time goes on, we will follow that up with a closer look at how outcomes are changing for learners.
Those are examples of pretty complex policy areas. It is not just about the Government's determination to do something. I genuinely do not want to get into whether any policy is right or not, but policies such as those on class sizes or the provision of free school meals are straightforward: either we are going to provide those services or we are not. Teacher numbers is another example. How do the discussions with local government work in that regard? I would have thought that costings are key to that. If there is not enough money to pay for additional teachers or free school meals, those services cannot be delivered.
I know that the committee is going to have discussions with COSLA and individual councils, and you will want to discuss such issues with them. David Henderson can talk about the negotiations around the concordat. Essentially, the concordat was an agreement between the Government and councils collectively about what councils would deliver and what Government would deliver for an agreed financial settlement. Beyond that, there was no discussion of the details of the costs of individual policies between Government and councils. The councils said that they would be able to deliver a certain number of things in return for a certain amount of money.
The concordat was an agreement between Government ministers and COSLA, representing all 32 councils. There were negotiations about what funding would be available and what that would deliver. COSLA negotiates with ministers on behalf of the councils, and in that forum, they agree what will be done for a certain sum of money. That is what was signed up to in the concordat, and we have routine and regular discussions about that with COSLA—formally every two to three months, and informally in between times. However, as Colin MacLean said, we do not negotiate with individual councils because COSLA represents the councils in discussions with the Government.
I want to get the matter clear in my head. I have to say that I had four years as a local government councillor and I still did not get local government finance clear in my head, so I declare an interest in that capacity at the outset. It is clearly difficult for anyone who is not an accountant or a maths graduate to get to grips with the issue. I will try to put it in layperson's terms.
The Parliament's Finance Committee carried out an inquiry into the distribution of local government finance in, if I remember correctly, 2005 or 2006. Everyone who has examined the matter has concluded that the system is probably the best system that we could have, although nothing is perfect. As you say, it is largely based on population, but it is not wholly based on that as it also takes into account a range of other factors. For example, in relation to the maintenance of roads, it takes into account road length and the volume of traffic, it also takes into account deprivation. It includes such needs-based factors as well as population. If it only took into account population, the distribution would be rather different. For example, the island authorities get more per head than the mainland authorities because there are extra costs associated with delivering services on the islands.
The convener touched on some particular policy initiatives that we have spent some time considering, such as free school meals and class sizes. To what extent are new policy initiatives taken into account in calculating the block grant?
As I said, we regularly negotiate with and consult COSLA. Under the concordat, any new policy has to be costed and both sides have to be satisfied that it can be accommodated within the total funding that is available.
So both have to agree before it would be introduced. Are you saying that, in every case over the past two to three years, COSLA has always signed off such policy initiatives and said, "We are absolutely happy that there is enough money for all of this"?
The process involves our discussing with COSLA where there are financial pressures. Pressures exist—such issues arise constantly. Many of the pressures that local government faces are demand led, so councils have little control over some of what they face. There are always discussions about pressures and what can be afforded within the total sum of money that is available. That is the nature of the beast.
May I add to that? The discussions are not just about financial resources. We also discuss what is deliverable and the capacity of the system to change in the ways that are being discussed.
If we say to our colleagues in local government that, in the decade since the Parliament was established, local government has had more money to spend year on year, we always get the same answer. Once you take into account new initiatives, the fact that a substantial part of councils' money is spent on staff, which is unlikely to change, and the significant amount of their allocation that covers statutory obligations, you reach the point at which councils say, "You are not giving us enough money—we do not have enough money to do what we need to do."
You would have to ask individual councils, because that will vary between them. They have fixed costs—for example, there will be a fixed cost for school buildings every year as part of the public-private partnership projects, and there is, as you mentioned, the cost of staffing. Children have to be educated, social care needs to be provided and roads must be maintained. There are all those certain fixed costs, and there are variable costs.
I am trying to ascertain what is not open to negotiation at any point. At the margins, there are new policy initiatives, and you discuss with councils what they require. Somewhere in the middle are things such as the maintenance of school buildings and staff salaries. On paper, those may appear to be things that councils can do something about, but to a large extent, any changes would take place at the margins. We have never seen massive redundancies among council staff—long may that continue—but the bottom line is that councils have to deliver those statutory obligations.
I cannot tell you that, and we do not go there—that is not how we do it.
There are a number of different ways of looking at that question, which you might want to put to councils. One way is to consider where councils are at the beginning of the year and what they will end up spending. If they have decided that there will be a particular number of teachers or social workers in their system, that more or less determines what the cost will be.
I recognise the issue that has been raised. Some costs, including staffing costs, are fixed. However, the question is, what are staff used for, where do they focus their efforts and how do they prioritise their efforts? It will be interesting to hear what local government says to members when they go out on visits and have discussions with councils. It is interesting to look not just at which costs are fixed, or not fixed, but at what the fixed costs are used for and how they are focused.
There seems to be a spectrum. Directors will tell us that there are some things that they cannot get out of doing, the costs of which are fixed. There are other things in the middle, including staff costs, that are not fixed, because decisions are taken all the time not to fill places and so on. At the other end of the spectrum, there are nice schemes that councils would love to run if they had enough money, but they will never feel that they have enough money to do all of them. I anticipate that, when we speak to people at the local level, we will hear exactly what all of us have heard from our local authority colleagues over the years: there is not enough money. Within that, we will be told that there are things that they are told they have to do and cannot get out of. I was trying to get a ballpark figure for those things. I am a bit surprised that there is not at least an indication of that.
I will follow up on Margaret Smith's line of questioning. COSLA believes that, after it has taken into account the council tax freeze and inflation, only £175 million of new money is available to it to cover new commitments. In the concordat, COSLA agreed and signed up to four specific commitments: on class sizes, on free school meals for primaries 1 to 3, on the extension of eligibility for free school meals to children whose parents are in receipt of working families tax credit, and on access to nursery education. The indicative cost of those commitments is roughly £583 million. There is a massive difference between £583 million and the £175 million that COSLA believes is available to it. Do you recognise the figure of £175 million? Do you agree with the £583 million figure? How will we marry up the two figures, to allow local government to meet its commitments and agreements?
I am not sure that I have heard the £583 million figure before. I have certainly heard the £175 million figure, but I cannot say how it is made up, as we have not costed matters explicitly in that way.
Convener, you will know that COSLA and ministers had discussions before Christmas about the specific issues that you identified. A line in the concordat states:
Okay—although I think that, although some of those discussions have undoubtedly taken place, the reality is that where we are with the budget was agreed in 2007. To me, the fundamental problem appears to be that local authorities do not have sufficient new money to pay for the new commitments that they are being asked to deliver. Those are the commitments of the Scottish Government.
I want to expand on that and also to move on to a slightly different area.
Are you talking about the money in the local government settlement?
Yes.
One small component is directly negotiated. The distribution of £36 million or £37 million—we can check the exact figure—in the local government settlement depends on the number of probationers in each local authority. We have an annual discussion with councils and COSLA about how that money will be allocated to provide support to probationers, because we do not know until August of each year how many probationers there will be in each authority. Money is then allocated to provide probationer support locally.
What happens when you announce new money for an initiative? Let us take the example of additional support for learning. Is what happens that the money comes into the cabinet secretary's budget and then she—sorry, it is now he—decides to give it to additional support for learning and effectively passes it back to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth and the local government settlement, or does that money never actually come through the education department?
There are two possible mechanisms, and David Henderson can talk about his end of that process. The first mechanism is that we can allocate money directly from the education and lifelong learning portfolio to individual councils in return for their employing teachers to do certain things as part of that discussion. The alternative is that the money passes through the local government settlement route. Either way, there is a discussion with COSLA about how much money goes to each council.
The presumption now is that money will not be ring fenced. As part of the discussions, however, there will be an agreement about how it is to be used. For specific grants, conditions are attached. Within the settlement, the money goes out as part of the block and is then for councils to spend.
This year, for example, there was funding for 100 teachers to support the curriculum for excellence. That was the result of an explicit discussion with COSLA about additional resources to pay for an agreed number of teachers in each council to support the national and local development work. It is increasingly rare that we use that mechanism, however.
Will that money be mainstreamed from now on in the local government settlement?
The vast bulk of the money is now in the settlement.
Does that include funding for the extra 100 teachers?
No. We gave that money on a one-off basis directly to councils. That process is increasingly rare.
The discussions between ministers and COSLA encapsulate everything that is going to local government—the settlement and any specific grants over and above that. We take everything into account, so the figure that we put out at the time—the £12 billion—includes everything.
You have been clear from the start that the GAE and nominal headings are simply a mechanism to divide up money fairly between councils. However, do you use the budget process to reward or incentivise councils, or even possibly to punish them for inefficiency or for not meeting policy commitments? Take, for example, additional support for learning, which some councils will be better at than others. Do you reflect that in your budget discussions or settlement? If a council decides to spend no money on additional support for learning, are you aware that they have not done so? Do you get that information and take action on the issue?
The scrutiny of how the budget is spent is a local matter for the auditors of a council and not a matter for us. If the delivery of a service to a particular group was inadequate, that would come to our attention through the inspection process. There are mechanisms to make the Government and the wider population aware of poor-quality service delivery. The mechanism then would be recommendations from the relevant inspectorate for improvement in that particular service.
Would you use the budget process at all?
To the extent that councils retain their efficiency savings, the better they do, the more they retain. That is an encouragement or incentive. If you are asking whether we would ever cut money to a council that did not do something, the answer is that that is not how the process works.
The definition of the process is that it is need led, not performance led. The money that goes to the council is based on the number of people, the level of deprivation, the miles of particular types of roads and so on. It is not based on the performance of children in schools.
I am trying to work out the link between the budget and policy. Is there a link? I have not heard one so far.
Sarah Smith can talk about the money that her directorate controls, but the bulk of the money in my directorate is used to support national activity—it is for the inspectorate, the Scottish Qualifications Authority, Learning and Teaching Scotland, grant-aided schools and so on.
I am not talking about the education directorate's budget; I mean the education spend in local authorities that comes through the Scottish Government, which I imagine is influenced by the cabinet secretary and the education directorate.
The discussions that we have at official and ministerial level are on, first, whether particular policies are agreed to be national ones. Increasingly, that process is a collective one and involves not only councils, but other public sector bodies. After a broad policy is agreed, the second step is to agree how it will be delivered. The process of deciding the budget allocations that relate to the policy is purely for the individual councils.
It might help if I gave as an example child protection, in which driving up performance is important to the Government and which we take seriously. We seek to drive up performance through a range of measures at national level, but a key one is the HMIE-led multidisciplinary child protection inspections and the work that has gone into a whole cycle of those and the follow-up round of inspections. The way in which we as officials engage and try to ensure that we are delivering better outcomes for children who are in need of protection is partly about what we hear from the inspections, but it is also about how we engage individually with local authorities and child protection committees—not just local authorities—to drive up performance.
For your purposes, do you link up to make a calculation about the policies that you wish to see implemented, which are of importance to the Government, and budget figures? Do the policies have figures attached to them at all, for your purposes?
Do you mean do we have an estimate of what it will cost local government to deliver particular policies?
Yes.
No. Local authorities do that. The discussion that we will have with them is whether the policy is desirable, whether it is realistic for them to implement it and what we can do to help. On curriculum for excellence, what we can do to help is largely around providing advice, support and teacher education, which is done at national level. The discussion is more about what the national Government and national bodies need to do to make it easier for local government to deliver at the front line and what has been agreed as that national policy.
What about big policies like class sizes, teacher numbers or school buildings? Do you have influence over those in terms of budgets? Do you make calculations, or is that entirely a matter for—
David Henderson can say a bit more about school buildings. There are specific contributions, which the Government had made in the past, to support PPP schemes, which are now formally part of the settlement. A number of new projects are being taken forward nationally.
Do you mean through the education department? Do you discuss and calculate the cost of these programmes?
On the national school building programme—this depends on what will happen later today, obviously—there is a proposal for money in the national budget next year, which will begin the process of supporting those schools as they are built. That is the Government contribution to the cost of those schools, but that is a relatively small proportion of the total amount that will be spent on school buildings. The rest of it is in the local government settlement. There is no discussion about specifically which bits of the budget will be used for schools or anything else—
So, you have no figures attached to the policies on class sizes and teacher numbers for example. You do not work with figures.
No. We hear from councils, as you will, what they are doing, but it is for them to decide. They will tell us what they are proposing to do in those areas. If they choose to put a figure on that—obviously in the course of the next two weeks they will be considering the cost to them as part of their budget process—they will do so. That is nothing to do with us.
I have one final question. I believe that you get a number of statistical returns, such as provision out-turn budget estimates and the local finance return. How do you use them? What do you use them for?
Both sets of figures are published. We use them to inform ourselves about what councils are doing. The local finance return figures come in after the event and are therefore a little out of date. The latest published figures are for 2007-08, which is some years ago. They are for information; we use them as such. They tell us what councils are doing at that level.
You get the figures in and they give you some information. Perhaps one of the figures is anomalous or not what you expect. Would you take any action?
If the figure was anomalous, we would certainly first check that it was right. Beyond that, it might come up in discussion
Would another department, such as the finance or local government directorates, take action? Do they use the figures in a more proactive way in their relationship with local authorities?
The policy divisions would look at them—they would inform policy divisions. My team gives out money to local authorities through the settlement. We do not go in and vet them in that way.
Sorry. I said that that was my last question, but I have another.
Whether we have control over what happens is different from whether we have an interest in what happens. Clearly, we have an interest, as you do, in what the Accounts Commission says about the performance of individual councils. We have an interest in what inspection reports say about child protection—Sarah Smith might want to talk about that—and in how councils respond to the inspectorate's findings. If the inspectors raise an issue about lack of resource, quality of delivery, organisation or management, then ministers would, like you, have an interest in how the local authority responds to that. Ministers have an interest but not a controlling interest.
On the question of what we do with the figures when we get them each year, we have a strong interest in looking in aggregate and then individually at trends in spend. For example, how much has children and families spend increased over the past 10 years? How much variation is there locally? What sorts of reasons might there be for that variation? How can we best promote best practice? We use the figures to inform policy discussions thereafter.
I want to tease out a little further the question of who actually makes decisions. Mr Henderson—you were very clear earlier that the Scottish Government's role is to decide the national policy objectives and to set the amount of money as a block grant—
In negotiations.
You also made it clear that the absence of ring fencing allows for much greater flexibility in how local authorities spend that money. Does that arrangement cause difficulty in respect of your ability to measure performance?
My colleagues may want to add to this, but I believe that performance is measured in a number of ways, including the best-value reports of the Accounts Commission, the reports on inspections, the statistics that we get and the discussions that we have. Performance permeates all that we see, so of course it is a factor in what we do.
You talked earlier about the initial agreement that you negotiate with COSLA, which represents all 32 local authorities. However, the individual 32 local authorities make the decisions on how to spend that money. How do you measure performance against that? At the grass roots, the important thing for education in this country is how well each of the 32 local authorities serves the interests of the children. As I understand it, your ability to measure that is slightly constrained because your negotiating factor is COSLA and you do not have a direct relationship with the local authorities. How can we improve the process of measuring educational performance in this country?
When we talk about measuring performance, we are not talking about measuring the budgetary performance. We look at the performance of the schools system, such as the level of Scottish Qualifications Authority qualifications that individuals achieve as well as a range of other quality indicators on school provision and child protection. We have lots of information about the performance of individual establishments and authorities. That is the basis on which ministers engage in conversation.
Mr MacLean said clearly that the approach is not performance led but needs based. I find that slightly extraordinary, and I think that many parents would find it extraordinary.
What I was saying is that the amount of money that is allocated to councils is based on identification of need in councils. The money that councils get is not based on their past performance in relation to meeting those needs. That is all I was saying.
Surely part of what councils have done in the past—as in how well they have performed and how well they have spent that money—must come into some kind of policy making for the future.
Of course it comes into policy making in considering how the system is performing and in local decisions on what needs to be done next. The single outcome agreements get into discussions about the priorities and challenges that an area is facing: of course, what an authority has done in the past is one influence on what it needs to do in the future. However, the allocation of funding to local authorities through the settlement is based on the assessment of the needs in that area today rather than on what authorities have done in the past. That is all that I was saying.
Are you satisfied that a system that is based on a concordat that sets national targets and allows much greater flexibility with the absence of ring fencing is the best possible way to organise education—
That is a question that you would want to put to ministers.
I am sorry, but I did not quite finish my question. Are you satisfied that such a system is the best possible way to deliver quality performance, on which you obviously advise the Government?
You would want to put to ministers the question whether that system is the best possible. It is not for us a take a view on that.
Is that the case even in respect of economic aspiration? Do you not advise the Government on that?
The question that you ask does not apply only since the concordat was signed. The needs-based approach that has been adopted has been in place for decades. It did not start with the concordat in 2007; it has been used historically. Your question is whether that approach is right and whether councils should be rewarded for performance.
A fundamental difference exists in that there is now an absence of ring fencing. We can argue politically whether that is right or wrong.
There is an absence at the margins.
Yes, but surely that has changed the relationship with local government.
It has changed it at the margins. Earlier, I said in answer to the convener that, previously, about 75 per cent of funding was not ring fenced. That percentage has gone up with the concordat. A lot of education spending was not previously ring fenced.
Who makes decisions about workforce planning and the numbers of teachers in Scotland? Does the national Government or do local authorities decide how many teachers we need?
Two different decisions have to be made. Individual councils decide the number of teachers they will employ. The number of retirals and women coming back from maternity leave determines the number of new teachers councils will need to recruit in any given year. They also take a share of the probationers who are coming through the system. Therefore, local decisions that are entirely for councils are taken about the number of teachers who will be employed.
Do you use the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities for that?
COSLA is part of the discussion process. John Ireland may want to say more about that.
I can provide more details about the technical model that underlies the discussion, if that would be helpful. Colin MacLean has made the substantive point: the process is collaborative. The technical working group, which does a lot of the modelling, consists of analysts from the Government and people from local authorities and COSLA.
I think that we will return to that issue when we speak to other people. There is a fundamental problem with setting national targets in any policy and then leaving local authorities to set their own priorities. Those two things do not go together at all. There is a bit of confusion about exactly who is making the decisions, but that is a matter for the Government.
Is it correct to say that the Government is now using an outcome budget system and that we have a national performance framework that is agreed with COSLA?
Yes.
There are only two education performance outcomes. My understanding is that one is to increase the number of school leavers who enter further education, higher education or training and the other is to increase the number of schools that receive positive inspections. How is the Scottish Government monitoring those outcomes?
I will put a gloss on what you said about the national performance framework. It is set by the Government, and COSLA has agreed to use it as the basis for the concordat and the 32 single outcome agreements. Even though it is discussed and agreed with others, it is the Government's performance framework rather than being a shared set of statements.
That was helpful in explaining the landscape, but I do not think that you quite answered my question about how you are monitoring progress on the only two performance targets in the national framework that deal explicitly with education. What progress is being made on those?
The data for those are published on the Scotland performs part of the Scottish Government website, which shows each of the indicators that Colin MacLean referred to and the whole national performance framework. When data are available, it is possible to see the direction in which the indicators are moving, and there is also a commentary, so in addition to the hard statistical monitoring, there is a narrative about what is going on and how things are changing.
In relation to school inspections, for example, individual inspection reports are published, so anyone can look at them to find out what progress is being made. Once enough schools and colleges have been inspected to provide a representative national sample, the relevant indicator on the Scotland performs website will have a number that is based on that representative sample. As yet, not enough schools have been inspected through the new inspection mechanism to provide a representative sample, but all the individual bits of information are available, and the inspectorate publishes commentary on quality issues as it goes along.
How were the national outcomes integrated into the budget process?
Part of the process that we go through with ministers is to consider what they will present to Parliament—as they are doing just now—in the draft budget. That is designed to ensure that their objectives and ambitions are addressed. As part of that process, we consider how to ensure that the national outcomes and the national purpose are delivered, but much of the money that is spent will be directed towards a number of different outcomes and purpose targets.
Is it the case that tackling educational inequality, which is a considerable problem in Scotland, was not seen as being sufficiently important to make it into the national framework as an important outcome? Perhaps that is a question more for ministers than for officials.
It is a question for ministers as to why they have particular outcomes or indicators, but, technically, if the proportion of school leavers in sustained and positive destinations has increased, that can only have been achieved by addressing some of the inequalities in the system. Some of these are indicators that the kind of big issue that you are talking about has been addressed, but it is difficult to measure whether inequalities have been addressed. Saying that some of the specific indicators have moved in the right direction links back to the outcomes, one of which is that we have tackled significant inequalities in Scottish society, and that includes educational inequalities.
I do not claim to be an expert on the matter, but I think that we might be mixing up outputs and outcomes, which are two entirely different things. We will move on.
It is crucial to accept that there has been a deep philosophical change in the relationship between local and national Government and how they engage. The relationship is based on parity of esteem and partnership. Colin MacLean alluded to that in his opening statement when he mentioned an end to micromanagement, which local government has appreciated and welcomed.
There are two different versions of the question. One is: can we work out what we are spending in delivering particular outcomes? Some of the spend will deliver multiple outcomes, so we can say that the spend on school education is delivering almost all the outcomes on the list. We can go through an exercise to try to estimate the contribution that schools make. That is a fundamentally different question from: how do you establish a school education budget that provides the quality and quantity of school education that we need in the system?
I will expand on that point in respect of children and families social work services. In considering budgets, I am sure that people think about how much is being invested in the more costly out-of-area residential placements, how much is being invested in finding community-based alternatives, how quickly community-based alternatives can be brought on stream and what impact that will have. There might be the same total budget in both circumstances, but it might be delivered in very different ways.
In respect of being fleet of foot, can outcome information be gathered quickly enough and established early enough to allow it, if necessary, to influence policy direction and inputs? Do you feel confident that you can do that?
John Ireland alluded to the process that we have been going through with curriculum for excellence, which is perhaps a more general model. The first thing that we can look at—and very quickly—is whether we are achieving the agreed set of policy development objectives in respect of agreeing on the detail of the policy, getting advice into the system, giving teachers the continuing professional development that they need and perhaps adjusting how resources are deployed at the front line. We can do that quickly and we do. The second level comes, in a sense, from the inspection reports, which tell us whether front-line practice is changing. We may provide the training and advice, but is the quality of teaching and learning or the support that is given to children who are at risk developing as we agreed it needed to?
What is your relationship with the various bodies that measure local government spend and efficiency?
The simple answer is very good—although that does not really answer the question that you asked. Like you, we have an interest in what those bodies find when they have their conversations. We have discussions with the bodies that are directed by ministers—the inspectorates—about what they are finding and what would be helpful to us in giving advice to ministers. Child protection inspections provide a good example. There have been discussions between the inspectorates—they are all involved—policy officials and ministers to agree what would be helpful the second time, following the first round. I guess that COSLA would be involved in that discussion, too.
I really meant Audit Scotland, the Accounts Commission and others, rather than the inspectorates. I meant the organisations that measure spend. They are independent bodies, but I imagine that you use their information, or at least look at it.
Yes, absolutely.
Is that information simply there to inform you? Do you suggest areas of work to those bodies?
There are some limited areas where they work with inspectorates, and conversations take place about how they can work together to tackle some broad issues. However, the work that those bodies do by themselves is for Parliament, not for ministers. Obviously, like everyone else, we have an interest in the outcome of that work.
I have a question on efficiency savings. The concordat requires local authorities to make 2 per cent efficiency savings, which they may reinvest in front-line services. Have you been monitoring the effect of those efficiency savings on education?
That is different from the question that I thought you were going to ask. We certainly monitor the efficiency savings that local authorities deliver. Each year so far, they have delivered more than the target. Colleagues might be able to help with regard to the impact on education.
That brings us back to the response to Aileen Campbell's question about what we monitor. There are some things that we can monitor quickly. If funding has been changed to achieve certain things, we can see whether those things are happening. As for the outcomes that derive from that—which I think is what lies behind your question, convener—they take longer to feed through the system. Inspection and statistical monitoring are the mechanisms that we use, although we do not necessarily see an instant response in terms of outcomes for young people.
If efficiency savings mean not replacing teachers as they retire, would you not think it pretty obvious that that will impact on whether or not national education priorities can be met? The Scottish Government should perhaps be monitoring that.
We return to the beginning of the discussion. The concordat gives authorities control over how they spend a higher proportion of their budgets than before. Authorities will report how they are making efficiencies, but what they do with them is entirely up to them.
So the Scottish Government's only interest in that is whether or not authorities meet the target that has been agreed in the concordat, rather than the consequences of that.
No. The Scottish Government has an interest over the piece. The efficiency target is one element, but it is not an end in itself—it is part of the bigger picture.
If you do have an interest, are you monitoring what is happening with the efficiency savings?
To the extent that they feed through to individual areas, yes, we see the consequences, and those can be discussed, as has been described.
We can give you some more information about the process. Councils and other bodies are telling us how they are generating savings and what they are doing that costs less money. My understanding is that they do not tell us what they do with that money, as it becomes part of their wider budgets. We can see what the total budgets are, but I do not think that we have any information on where, within those budgets, a particular £300,000 is used, for instance. It goes into the general pot of funds, which are then allocated.
That is not the point that I was asking about. I was asking about how authorities make those efficiency savings and whether those savings are having an impact on the education services that are delivered by local authorities.
There would be a more general discussion about whether or not what was agreed in the concordat was being delivered. That would include educational services that it had been agreed would be delivered. However, that is different from considering the efficiency savings specifically, and how they were taken from the system. If such consideration led to a more general concern between ministers and local government about the delivery of agreed commitments, they would have a conversation about that, rather than a narrow conversation about the efficiencies process.
I am sure that any further information that you could supply to the committee would be most welcome. Thank you very much for your attendance at the committee this morning.
Meeting suspended.
On resuming—
I reconvene this meeting of the Education, Lifelong Learning and Culture Committee and welcome our second panel of witnesses, who are from Audit Scotland. We are joined by Caroline Gardner, the Deputy Auditor General for Scotland and controller of audit; Graeme Greenhill, the portfolio manager with responsibility for children, education and lifelong learning; and Gordon Smail, the portfolio manager for local government. I am grateful to Ms Gardner for providing a written submission in advance of the meeting. I understand that she would also like to make an opening statement before we begin to ask questions.
Thank you, convener. I will be brief. Audit Scotland works on behalf of the Accounts Commission and the Auditor General for Scotland and audits around 200 public bodies in Scotland including the Scottish Government and the 32 councils that make up local government in Scotland. We do that through three broad areas of work. The first of those is the annual audits of the finances of each of those organisations, which are reported every year in public. The second is the best-value audits of all 32 councils, which we have just completed, that look in the wider sense at what councils are achieving for their communities. The third is our programme of performance audit studies that aim to look in detail at policy areas such as the teachers agreement and development of the schools estate. Those studies can look right across the public sector and pull together how councils and the Scottish Government are working together with other partners. Today, we hope that we will be able to draw on our knowledge from those three broad areas of work to inform the committee's consideration of the budget. The information that we can offer will tend to be quite high level, looking across local government. Nevertheless, we hope that it will be helpful to you.
Thank you for that succinct opening statement. I will start with a general question. In your view, does the new funding framework for local government provide clear lines of accountability for ministers and councils?
In the context of your earlier discussion with representatives of the Scottish Government, our starting point is that the funding framework is not that different, in practice, from what went before. We are now seeing the Scottish Government and local government, in the form of COSLA, sitting down together and agreeing, on the one hand, the overall amount of spending that is available and how it will be allocated among the 32 councils and, on the other hand, the national priorities and the policy areas that will be delivered within them. The money is then allocated to councils on the basis of the funding distribution formula, and they are accountable to central Government through the single outcome agreements. There has been a reduction in the number of ring-fenced grants that are involved—previously, about 75 per cent of grants were not ring fenced but now 85 per cent are not ring fenced, which is an increase of about 10 per cent. That means that there is less accountability for those funding streams; however, overall, the system is probably not very different regarding the remainder of the funding, which has always formed the bulk of it.
You are probably right to suggest that issues of accountability over education spend are not new to the Parliament. The issue has been discussed since day 1, when the Parliament was established. Do you have a view on how we could improve parliamentary scrutiny of education spend? How can we ensure that the Parliament is able to access the information that it needs in order to make a decision on whether sufficient money is being spent on education?
Not long before Christmas, we prepared for the Auditor General a report on Scotland's public finances, which looked at the broad question—across the whole £30 billion or so that is spent—of how Parliament is able to make choices about where the money goes, particularly in the context of declining finances, as opposed to the increases that we have seen since 2000. In that report, we recommended that much better information be provided on the links between spend, inputs and outputs and outcomes than is currently provided. The discussion that you have had this morning with Scottish Government colleagues has been helpful in pulling out the sort of areas in which that might be most useful.
I will pick up on that point. You say that the concordat implies the need for more information about input and outcomes and about whether outcomes are being delivered. If that is not available yet, what more needs to be done and how long is that likely to take?
The different bits of the system are not coming together. The system under which the Government agrees single outcome agreements with each of the 32 community planning partnerships is, however, now developing well. Year on year, reports are being issued on what has been achieved, with supporting indicators to show progress that has been made in the activities that people undertake in order to achieve outcomes.
We talked earlier about the impact of new policy initiatives on the block grant and how much that is taken into account—the examples that were mentioned were the curriculum for excellence, early years provision and class-size measures. How is the process working in practice? Is it as effective as it could be? Could it be tightened and made better for both partners—the Government and the local authority?
The only way in which we can be sure about the evidence is to do a performance audit study. Back in 2006, we undertook a big piece of work on the teachers agreement and on whether the £2.1 billion that was spent on implementing that throughout Scotland had achieved the aims of the McCrone report and the agreement that followed it. We found that progress was broadly in the right direction, but also that there were some questions for the future.
I missed part of the first evidence session, when the comment was made that year-on-year funding is based on need and not on performance. Given councils' duties to achieve best value and so on, they must consider their performance in all sorts of ways.
We did some work on ring-fenced funding a couple of years ago. I will ask Graeme Greenhill to tell you more about the findings, but it is probably worth while to preface that by saying that I am not sure that ring-fenced funding is the only way in which to ensure that we make progress on priorities. That can also be done by estimating how much money is needed by each council, allocating that money, and then checking that they spend it in the relevant area. Alternatively, it can be done by saying, "We agree between us that this amount of money is sufficient throughout Scotland. Now you report on the progress that you are making. How you do it is up to you." The present Administration is taking the second route, and with proper performance reporting, it can be as effective. As I said, however, there is a way to go until the performance reporting does the job.
Before Mr Greenhill comes in, let us say for the sake of argument that the Government has had the discussions, made the agreement and said, "We're giving you this amount of money. We have agreed that this is something that can be delivered." What happens if the reporting mechanism finds that performance is not good enough or that the money has not been spent? We heard earlier that there are no sanctions. There is an element of carrot, although local government will tell us that the carrot is not big enough, but there does not seem to be any sense in which there are sanctions. If the Government makes an agreement and puts the money in place but the work does not happen, what sanctions exist? What are the formal mechanisms to ensure that that does not continue to happen year on year?
It is clear that there are no sanctions in the funding regime. As Colin MacLean said, it is based on needs that come from populations and not on rewarding good performance or punishing poor performance. The sanctions ought to come in through clear reporting of how well the council is doing on its range of commitments, which will then play in to the decisions that each of us makes as an elector at elections. I guess that there is a debate about whether that set of relationships is direct enough in a context in which 80 per cent of local government funding comes through in the block grant, and a debate about the concordat's requirement for local government collectively to deliver on the commitments to which it signs up. However, in the system that we have, that is not the way in which the funding system is being used.
Before I took up my current role a couple of months ago, I was the audit manager who was responsible for the audit of the Scottish Government's accounts. As part of the audit of the 2007-08 accounts, we undertook an exercise to look at how ring-fenced funding was being used. As Caroline Gardner said, the impression is that ring-fenced funding was a mechanism by which the Scottish Government controlled what local government was doing, but it was actually a fairly light-touch form of control. We looked at a sample of ring-fenced grants and found that a number of them were not specifically linked to clear statements of expected outputs and outcomes.
Do you have any further thoughts on the question on statutory obligations that I asked earlier? It might be helpful if I repeat the question. People in councils have told us that there is flexibility over some elements of funding; however, they have no flexibility when it comes to, for example, statutory obligations, which they feel have to be delivered. If I was, say, a director of education, how much of my budget could not be touched because of statutory obligations?
As you might expect, we listened to that exchange with great interest. Our understanding is that what is fixed by statute is actually quite limited. We think that the broad extent of the statutory limitations is the high-level statutory duty to provide adequate and efficient education to young people of the appropriate age, and some quite limited restrictions on class sizes. Indeed, we think that the only statutory restriction is contained in regulations from 1999, which limit class sizes in P1 to P3 to 30 pupils. Obviously many duties related, for example, to health and safety. Other requirements also play in, but they tend not to be quite as clear in their application as the two that I mentioned.
That was very helpful.
Just for clarification, does Audit Scotland examine whether individual local authorities—or indeed local government collectively—spend public funding for education on the national Government's education priorities?
They do not do so in such a narrow sense. We have completed our first phase of best-value audits for all 32 councils and are now testing an approach that is based on that baseline and which will look broadly at what councils are achieving for their communities and how effectively they are meeting the best-value duties of economy, efficiency and effectiveness and continuous improvement.
That information would shed some light, but you do not collect data on specific policies such as the class-size policy or teacher numbers.
No.
Do you compare councils' efficiency in specific policy areas such as, for example, additional support for learning? Do you assess and monitor what a council is achieving for the money that it is spending on additional support for learning?
We do that most thoroughly through the performance audit programme, which I touched on at the beginning of this session. We undertook a study back in 2005 that looked at the policy of mainstreaming children with additional support needs in mainstream schools. That study produced quite a lot of comparative information about both how well councils were doing and how much they were spending on the policy. Such information can inform the kind of value-for-money and efficiency judgments that you describe. However, because of the gaps that currently exist in public performance reporting, we usually have to undertake a study before we can make such judgments on a comparative basis—we cannot look across the publicly available information and do that more regularly.
One of the committee's frustrations—indeed, one of the reasons for our inquiry—is the fact that we find it difficult to access information on how much each local authority is spending on, for example, additional support for learning or continuing professional development for teachers. You are suggesting that that information is also not available to you or to the public and that you would have to initiate a specific piece of work on an ad hoc basis, once every five or 10 years, to extract that information.
That is exactly right. At the moment, our studies programme is aimed at answering that sort of question, and our studies are carried out on a planned cyclical basis. We think, however, that there is a strong case for more information routinely being placed in the public domain because councils and the Government need to be able to demonstrate the progress that is being made on their big policies. That would obviously make it easier for us to make regular value-for-money and efficiency judgments about that work.
Again taking additional support for learning as an example, do you get the impression that, not using published information, but through such exercises as teacher swaps, education official exchanges or whatever, councils routinely try to measure their comparative success and efficiency in that area? Do they routinely compare what they are doing with national expectations that are set by the Government and approved by the Parliament?
We think that that is patchy. Some councils are good at it, either at a council-wide level or through the leadership of individual professional groups, such as teachers, who have a particular interest. However, one of the high-level findings of our best-value work is that there should be more of that sort of benchmarking and learning. Gordon Smail may want to add to that as he is the person who pulls together our annual overview report across the piece.
That is a recurring theme in much of the work that we do. In fact, one of the fundamental principles of best value is the ability to demonstrate how a council compares with others. As auditors, we would ask councils to demonstrate how they knew that they were performing to the highest levels and whether they were comparing themselves with other councils in comparable situations. We would certainly promote that.
My next question concerns areas in which we might push for further development. Clearly, there is a danger of making harsh and unfair comparisons of councils. Some councils have a lot of mainstreamed ASL work but others have special schools—we are not comparing like with like. However, at the moment no information is published regularly: the Education, Lifelong Learning and Culture Committee, let alone members of the public, cannot find out immediately how much is being spent or how many additional support for learning workers there are in a school, an authority or across the country. Is it fair to say that that information is not available at the moment?
Yes. You made a point about the context, which will play through any comparisons that can be made. In our view, it is worth doing the comparisons, but we must understand the context. Where there is valid comparability between one set of circumstances and another, we should explore that further. Councils are concerned that there will be an immediate shift to league-table-type thinking and that the context will be lost. However, we expect councils to do such work as part of best-value audits, to explore why there may be differences and to try to learn from them, as an entry point for exploring issues such as the relative costs of service provision. There are good reasons why costs may be different; information about that should be seen as entry point for exploring why such differences exist. Councils should speak to one another so that they can understand what is being done differently and is making a difference elsewhere. It may be more efficient or be producing better outcomes.
We take on board your warning about league tables—that is why I included a caveat in my question. However, we cannot tell even whether one authority is increasing or decreasing its budget in a certain area. Anecdotally, all of us are aware that teacher CPD is being cut across the board, but there is no information that could confirm that one way or another, or tell us what impact it is having on our children's education or teachers' development. Is that correct?
You are right in respect of the budget information that is published, which tends to be high level—for good reason. It would be difficult to break down the information to cover the whole range of things that councils do without swamping everyone with information and putting a huge amount of effort into preparing it. At the same time, when a council or any public body is setting a budget, it is important that it start off with a statement of its priorities. It should then go through a process of identifying the best way of achieving those priorities and identifying what is achievable and affordable. Doing that in a way that is reasonably transparent is absolutely in line with the duties of councils, as democratic organisations, under best value. It becomes all the more important in the context of a concordat that puts in place a high-level agreement about priorities between the Scottish Government and individual councils and their partners.
Absolutely. You said that the only sanction is through reporting. If information is not reported, there is no sanction.
As you would expect, we keep an eye on the trends in local government expenditure. The figures that I have with me are probably not detailed enough to answer your specific question, but over the five years between 2003-04 and 2008-09 total local government spend on education increased by 25 per cent in real terms—an average annual increase of 5 per cent. I think that our figures show that there was still an increasing trend between 2007-08 and 2008-09. I do not have figures for 2009-10, but we can certainly find out what information is available based on outturn up to the end of 2008-09 and budgets for the current year up to the end of 2009-10.
It was increasing at the time it was removed, but I thought you just suggested that you do not have any figures for what has happened since it was removed.
The concordat was signed in September 2007 and the figures that I have with me run up only to the end of 2008-09, which is clearly a narrow overlap. We are now into 2009-10, and budgets are being set for 2010-11.
There are two questions that I would like to ask. One is on education spend in absolute terms and in local government, the other is on it as a proportion of local government spend—the proportion spent on education within local authorities. Given that we have lost 2,500 teachers and 1,000 classroom assistants over two years, I would be absolutely amazed if the figures did not show a decline.
We can write to you with more detail, but the figures that we have here show that, across the five-year period from 2003-04 to 2008-09, education spend increased by 25 per cent in real terms as an amount and that it increased slightly from 28 to 31 per cent of local government expenditure. As I said, we can give you more detail on that, but those are the figures that we have with us today.
I am not surprised by that in the context of a ring-fenced budget, because at the time the overall budget was growing and, as education spend was ring fenced within that, I would expect it to grow. However, I would be surprised if that was still the case.
May I just clarify that the education budget was never really ring fenced in the overall budget before the concordat? The amount of ring-fenced funding was always pretty small. A large element of GAE was linked to different elements of education spend, but GAE is not the same as ring fencing.
That is interesting. I suppose that this is a historical question: what was ring fenced? We talked about ring fencing education budgets—I know that in my local authority education spend was ring fenced and protected.
It may have been protected in your authority. In the overall allocation of the revenue support grant to councils, GAE is used to agree how much should be allocated to each council, based on a formula that approximates need for education and other services. Up to the introduction of the concordat, the way in which 75 per cent of that money was spent was never ring fenced, and the amount ring fenced for education was always at the margins. Since the introduction of the concordat, the amount that is not ring fenced has increased to 85 per cent. Any ring fencing has been at the margins.
I am probably being too inaccurate in my use of the term. Education budgets were protected from efficiency savings—every other department had to make efficiency savings, but education departments were not obliged to. That is not quite the same thing as ring fencing, in the sense of a hypothecated grant. Could you supply us with more information on that? The issue is interesting and it would be interesting to have it illuminated. It would help us in our quest to improve accountability, which is what we are trying to do, as well as to address policy issues.
I would like to follow up on some of Mr Macintosh's earlier questions, particularly around educational outcomes as they are established by local authorities' community planning partnerships. How well is that system working? Are those outcomes allowing you to make an assessment of whether councils are achieving their educational goals? Are they currently fit for purpose? If not, what could be done to make them better?
The honest answer is that it is too soon to say.
Having got to the position that we are in, we are calling for systematic ways of measuring performance. At the outset, councils must be clear about what they are trying to achieve through outcomes. Following that, they must put in place robust measures for performance against those outcomes, establish systematic processes for gathering the information and make that information available publicly so that Parliament and the public can see how much progress has been made.
Is there a need, as part of that process, for output baselines so that you know what local authorities are doing and can judge whether the overall policy objectives are being met, even incrementally, over a period of time?
Absolutely. Baselines are essential in what I have just described. Whether you are talking about service performance or the cost of services, to make that comparison and show improvement you need to establish baselines against which you can measure progress and subsequently report in public. That gives you a sense that you are achieving best value through continuous improvement. If that sort of verifiable information is available, it makes our life as auditors a lot easier and means that we can form judgments. In the absence of that information, we are left having to deal with the underlying systems.
Do any of Scotland's local authorities publish education outputs that enable you to make those comparisons and see the progress that is being made?
I will use a phrase that Caroline Gardner used earlier: it is patchy. The issue is about the quality of public performance reporting and having honest and balanced reporting on how councils are doing in delivering vital public services. We use the words "honest" and "balanced" because, when we examine public performance reporting as part of our best value audits, we find that the approach of being open about what has been achieved and what still needs to be done is not adopted consistently in all cases. However, the situation is patchy. Some councils are making good progress, but many more must do more to make that information available to people.
What can be done to ensure that the situation is no longer patchy across the country? What is required to ensure that all local authorities measure their outputs and outcomes?
That is a good question. We have the power of publicity. We have reported on how well all 32 councils are doing. As Gordon Smail said, one recommendation that is often made is that there should be better public performance reporting. We pull those reports into an annual overview report that summarises the key themes across the 32 councils. It is also important that committees such as this one ask for more information about what is being achieved in particular service areas. Councils are not accountable to the committee directly, but it is entirely proper for the committee to take an interest in what is being achieved with the public money that is spent. Further discussion is probably required between the Scottish Government and councils on what is needed to underpin the concordat and single outcome agreements to ensure that everybody can see the progress that is made and the areas where more needs to be done.
Liz Smith has some questions.
My questions have all been answered, convener.
Right. Aileen Campbell is next.
Mine have been answered, too.
They have all been answered—that is great.
At this stage, there is no reason to accept that we should abandon that aspiration. We spend about £5.5 billion each year on education and other children's services. There is a lot of variation between councils on the absolute level of attainment and the rate at which they are improving. For example, Glasgow City Council, which historically has had low levels of attainment, is increasing the levels relatively quickly. That takes us back to the earlier question about how councils and interested outsiders can achieve a much better understanding of what underpins such differences and of how councils that are not doing so well can learn from those that are doing much better. Money might become so tight that we have to become less ambitious but, so far, I think that we are a long way from that point.
I see that Mr Macintosh wants back in—I have opened up a whole new line of questioning.
No, convener, I wanted to ask this question earlier, but I forgot. The figures that are reported to the Government include the provisional outturn budget estimates and the local government financial return. The Government does not collect that information, but it has it and the earlier witnesses said that the information informs them. Is that information useful in relation to the accountability of local authorities in delivering education and is that process the best way in which to gather information?
The information is useful and could be used more than it is at present, but its usefulness for budget setting is limited by the timing considerations that the earlier witnesses mentioned. I will duck the question and hand over to Graeme Greenhill, as he knows much more about the issue than I do.
As Caroline Gardner said, timing is a key issue. As I think David Henderson said, the local government financial return is an after-year report, so it is of limited value as a means of informing budgets for the next year, particularly in the parliamentary setting, because the Scottish Government has already set its budget. However, the information could be of use, as the timing more or less corresponds to when the Parliament considers the autumn budget revisions. It would also be useful for the year after—the next but one year's budget.
That concludes our questions. I thank the witnesses for attending and for responding to our questions. You have given us interesting information and evidence on which to reflect.
Meeting continued in private until 12:42.