So the year 7 catch-up funding has been confirmed again for 2016/17. It’s not something that concerned me greatly until the year 7 resits reared their ugly head and confirmation of how the funding works for this year is just another reason why the resit idea stinks. The fact is, and there is no way to put a positive spin on it, if these tests go ahead we are being asked to do more for less money per pupil. Actually …. even if the tests don’t go ahead, schools are going to be receiving less money per pupil and this is with all the rhetoric about wanting students to make up the gap that has already happened with them so as to be able to “pull it back” for GCSEs.

Up until September secondary schools have received £500 for every pupil that hasn’t achieved a level 4 and above in their key stage 2 reading or maths – now, as you’ll know this summer levels were replaced with scaled scores with a scaled score of 100 being the expected standard. Without going into the whole KS2 debacle and what expected standard means – if we take the premise that a “4” and above was acceptable and now it is “100” and above the preliminary results show that there are more students that will fail into the catch up category. For maths, in 2017, 70% achieved 100 + compared to 87% level 4+ in 2016 and for reading, in 2017 66% achieved 100+ compared to 89% level 4+ in 2016.

For the forthcoming year the DFE have said in their publication about the catch-up funding:

catch up fundingLet’s use a real-life example whereby a school received £14,000 last year which equated to 28 students … now this coming September the very same school has an increased ((I can’t imagine what has happened to make the school so popular!) intake in year 7 of approximately 26.531% This figure is only an estimate because the final percentage growth will be based on the October 2016 census but let’s go with it. .. bear with me …

catch up 2

It doesn’t make for great reading does it? So “we” (I mean nationally) have more students below the so-called expected standard and this whole “but there are more students” thing doesn’t cut it for me. This example shows an almost 20% cut in real-terms on a per-pupil basis.

A couple of people on Twitter seem to think that making a “hoo-haa” over the year 7 resits is all about us whinging about the impact on teachers. There is some truth in that statement if taken at face value – it does affect teachers which means that there is a knock-on effect to the students. However, for the sake of fairness, I am sure that there must be AT LEAST one school for which, the cohort is the same size as last year and they also happen to have same number of students reaching expected standards as level 4+ … Oh hang on … wait a minute … nope I was mistaken … I thought I’d seen a flying pig! The fact is, almost all schools will see an increase in the number of students who haven’t got to the so-called expected standard (remember nationally the figures have dropped). There will also be some of you, more commercially minded people who will be screaming at this “but there will be economies of scale” … yeah right! For some schools this increased number just means that they will be asked to achieve more (because of the raising of the bar at KS2) with less money. It comes down to the fact that the amount of money PER PUPIL will be less than it was. I don’t know about you but I’m not sure how that can be “spun”.

Bloody unfair. I know that the money isn’t there nationally (I’m not an idiot you know – contrary to some opinions) so how about dropping the resit idea? It would be an acknowledgement that we (in secondary) are already working bloody hard to narrow this gap and would also show that the government are aware they can’t keep expecting more “bang for their buck”. It also rankles a little to see some government bodies spending money on things like the National Reference Test, that they haven’t even “pinned their hats” on being of any use (budgeted at £3.6M – BTW I’ve put a FOI into Ofqual to find out the scope of the project and also how much has been spent so far!). It just frustrates me so much. If I had nuts, I’m sure that they would have been frustrated off by now!

I’d love to know how your school has been affected – a  JustMaths mug to the school with the highest forecast amount per pupil. Oh bugger it! TWO mugs for the school with the lowest amount and you never know we can get a good spread of data and make use of it in a maths lesson.