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Don’t blame the bookkeepers, they were hired to teachIT is not surprising that senior schools in Camden are in financial trouble.
In the past when councils effectively ran schools financially, head teachers and senior colleagues could sit back and let them get on with it while they did what they were trained to do best – teach.
That was yesterday.
Today, as Labour, in part, follows Thatcherite policies, head teachers are expected to have a split personality – one as an educator, the other as a business person worrying about revenue, grants and ever-pressing budgets.
Is it any wonder that at least three schools, as we near the end of the financial year, face budget shortfalls?
Looking at the problem simplistically, it is easy to criticise head teachers and governing bodies for failing closely to follow the money trail to the point where budget deficits suddenly appear.
True, loose financial controls will end in tears.
Equally true, they will lead to backbiting and a hunt for scapegoats.
But the real culprits are those in government – and it started in the 1980s – who decided to turn the management of schools upside down and turn head teachers into managing directors and governors into management boards.
Both Mrs Thatcher and New Labour had one goal in mind – to centralise power and reduce the authority of local councils.
In education, this meant devolving power from the Town Hall to schools.
All very well, on paper. Young government policy advisers, straight out of university and ignorant of the real world, may have thought this both laudable and viable.
But time and again they are proven wrong.
Our revelations this week only flesh out the miseries facing teachers and governors – as well as parents and pupils – once policies, driven by dogma and ill-thought through discussions, start to bite back.
In the past Labour Camden sensibly threw political caution to the wind and made up shortfalls. Today’s coalition-run council sit back and tell schools to get on with it.
The coalition should follow Labour’s precedence. But in the long term, the blame should be put where it belongs – at the door of the government.
Too much money and time
MONEY by the bucketful has been poured into hospitals by the government. But this has resulted in too many highly paid managers.
And, judging by the asinine decision of the Royal Free managers to change the historic names of wards to code numbers, one can only conclude they also have too much time on their hands.
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