Tories told: Scrap education quangos and save £600m

Posted on | August 13, 2009 |

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/aug/13/tory-thinktank-proposes-scrapping-quangos

More than £600m a year could be shaved off England’s schools budget by scrapping some of the biggest education quangos, key advisers will tell the Tories today.

The Centre for Policy Studies, a right-of-centre thinktank that influences Tory policy, has calculated that a Conservative government could save £633m if it abolished at least eight quangos, including the exams watchdog and regulator.

The cost of quangos to taxpayers has risen to £1.18bn a year, the thinktank says in its report. The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority receives £157m in public funds a year – almost triple the amount it got 10 years ago – and it now has 581 employees, a rise of 122.

The watchdog, which also develops the national curriculum, is being replaced by two other quangos, which include the exams regulator, Ofqual. But Ofqual should be replaced by an advisory board of university professors and headteachers rather than civil servants, to help maintain standards in vocational and academic qualifications, the thinktank says.

The report also suggests schools should be free to develop their own curriculum.

The quango in charge of ensuring there are enough teachers, the Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA), should be abolished, the report says. Instead, it says, trainee teachers should be trained in schools or on short courses and be given a voucher worth £10,000 to cover the period.

The TDA wasted £160m on trainee teachers who did not become teachers in 2007-08, the thinktank claims, while the quango’s workforce rose from 54 to 329 between 2003 and 2008.

Ofsted could stay, but should inspect only schools seriously below the standard expected of them, the advisers add.

The thinktank believes its proposals would “liberate schools from much of the stifling central control that is currently undermining initiative”. It would also “reduce the bureaucratic burden on teachers and make the teaching profession more attractive to talented graduates”.

The report says: “Quangos are not ideologically neutral. Irrespective of their original remit they tend to assume the intentions and prejudices of the political classes of the time. The recommendations are founded on the principle that schools should be about education – that is, rigorous subject-based teaching – not agencies of government social policy.”

The Tories have pledged to cut quangos if they gain power. But the shadow education secretary, Michael Gove, said every effort had to be “directed to identifying waste and unnecessary bureaucracy” to “concentrate resources where they are needed: in the classroom”.

The schools minister, Vernon Coaker, said: “This report ignores the fact that these bodies are doing a valuable job, are publicly accountable to ministers and to the taxpayer, and are transparently and independently audited.”

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