Governors' Partnership Meeting

The first of three schools meetings in three days ended as I expected, because that's how these meetings always end, with me feeling frustrated at the Local Authority's lack of understanding of the situation in our school. At least this time I had the satisfaction of talking after the meeting to two other chairs of governors who agreed with me.

But let's begin at the beginning. The meeting was the Governors' Partnership meeting which is where the Local Authority meets with all the chairs of governors at the start of the term to update them on current issues. These meetings used to be called "briefings" and that is a better description of what they are as we governors sit lecture style while a succession of Local Authority officers present to us. Last night's topics were finance (yet again), School Improvement Partners and Clusters.

These are the main points that I noted down during the meeting:

• Even in Kingston, some 100 children leave school each year with no GCSEs
• Schools funding is not working and we are unlikely to fix it as it is not understood at all well
• The performance gap between groups of pupils is widening
• Does intervention by schools really make a difference?
• "Targeting resources" to help one group of pupils means taking resources away from another group.

The inherent contradiction is that we are being asked to both raise standards overall and to close the achievement gaps but the two outcomes require resources to be allocated differently so you always address one at the expense of the other.

Discovery at the Wych Elm

I have started to refresh my summer wardrobe by drinking Fuller's Discovery. As part of a new promotion for the beer they are giving away branded polo shirts for the mere achievement of drinking eight pints of the lovely beer.

The card you are given to collect stamps each time a pint is drunk contains a warning, "this promotion does not require you to drink all 8 pints in one session". Wise words; I took two sessions on consecutive nights at the Wych Elm!

The bonus on the second night was missing the Eurovision Song Contest, even if this was at the expense of lively discussions with first a group of Liberal Democrats (personal adversaries over many years) and then a group of local Conservatives (including a ward councillor). I think that we all agreed that Council Tax should be lower (Kingston's is the highest in London) but we disagreed on how this could be achieved and on the Council's capacity to face up to the change required.

You can't see my office from here ...

... but you could if not for the Euston Tower which is rather in the way!

A couple of years back I was at an IPPR workshop in the BT Telecom Tower and afterwards we were allowed to go up to the observation deck where I took a number of pictures, including this one. Today I was taking pictures of the tower while on my lunchtime walk and so was reminded of my visit there.

This photograph is looking almost due north over Camden with Regent's Park on the left. At the bottom of Euston Tower, but not very obvious in this photo is the branch of Pret a Manager that I go to most lunchtimes. Sad.

Why and how should we fund schools?

One of my moments of political revelation came back to me this week, some 30 years later, as we discussed the funding of schools in Kingston upon Thames at a meeting of the Kingston Schools Forum Deprivation Funding Working Group.

It started back in 1976 at Southampton University when, during a debate at a Union Meeting, Sunshine (his nickname which he preferred to be known by), a member of the Anarchist Workers Association, commented that we spend a substantial fraction of our GDP each year on Education yet we never debate what we want to get from this spending.

This week we hit the same problem. Put simply, if you are trying to work out how much money to give each school then, by implication, you need to decide what it is that you are funding so that you can assess each school's need.

Currently, the funding of schools is not that complicated but is still not very well understood by the people who are asked to comment on it each year, i.e. Headteachers and governors. Basically we address some specific costs that vary between schools, e.g. rates and insurance, and then allocate almost all of the rest of the money on a per pupil basis with some allowance made for children who have additional educational needs.

The funding formula has developed over the years in response to both national and local initiatives and it is now rather complex with 15 or more sub-formulae each of which is calculated according to a number of different factors so there are now something like 100 data points that drive the funding calculation.

And, more worryingly, the formula does not seem to be working as there are marked differences in pupils' outcomes that correlate a lot more to their social standing than to the effectiveness of schools. Our mission is to try and close this performance gap.

The problem comes as soon as you try to define what this gap is. If we look simply at the exam results, as published in the infamous League Tables, then we get the triage familiar to A&E doctors; there are those pupils that will succeed whatever you do, those that will fail whatever you do and those where your intervention can make a difference. Similarly, when an intervention is possible we start to get debates about cost effectiveness which in health tends to occur around very expensive drugs and in education concerns children with extreme learning difficulties who need 1:1 support from specialists.

The political issues impact all three groups in the triage. Leaving people for dead, or uneducatable, may be logical but society generally does not like abandoning people. Where people will recover or learn without much assistance there is still pressure to be seen to provide a service, even if it is unnecessary. Wanting more policemen on the beat is a symptom of the same problem. In education we are pressured to meet the needs of gifted and talented children, even though this means taking resources away from other children. In the middle group, where intervention makes a real difference, there is the issue of how best to allocate finite resources across the various need groups (e.g. cancer v cataracts or autism v absenteeism).

Our next step is a workshop with Heads on 12 June when we will ask them what the objectives of the schools' funding formulae should be, how we should change the formula to deliver this and how we could measure the success of this. I don't anticipate that we will get many of the answers but at least asking the questions will be a step in the right direction.

The Naked Ladies of Twickenham

Putting the words "Naked Ladies" in the title will probably up the hit rate but that's not my fault, it really is the name of the beer that I was drinking last night.

I was in the Canbury Arms for the Irish music (first Tuesday of the month) and, as usual, went for a beer that I had not had before. The aforementioned Naked Ladies comes from the local Twickenham Fine Ales, which was another reason for trying it.

The brewery says this of the beer, "Outstanding hoppy beer using First Gold and Styrian Goldings for full-flavoured satisfaction. Good body and luscious aroma. Inspired by the statues of water nymphs in York House gardens in Twickenham, known locally as the Naked Ladies."

Or you could just say that it's rather like Fuller's Discovery, which is no bad thing.