On Tuesday this week David Fitzsimmons and myself represented Hands Up at F40's special conference in Westminster. It was widely recognised as being a successful and timely event which attracted considerable media coverage, particularly from the BBC who will be reporting on the fair funding issue in The Politics Show tomorrow (Sunday). Jim Knight will be interviewed for the South West version and that will include recorded interviews with John Hart and Richard Newton-Chance.

F40 did a good job in persuading the Schools Minister Vernon Coaker and his opposite numbers, Nick Gibb for the Conservatives, and David Laws for the Lib Dems to address the conference. The fact that they need some arm-twisting indicates that there is a lot more hard lobbying to be done. We and F40 are posing some very difficult political questions to MPs from all three main parties and without continued pressure they will cheerfully reach for "the blessed wet sponge of amnesia" as Boris called it memorably at the Conservative conference!

Devon was congratulated many times during the conference for the lead the County's schools, with County Council support, have taken. The Downing Street petition has been endorsed by F40 and I was able to plug it heavily at the conference. It was encouraging to hear delegates from across England who have already signed it and are publicising it in their patches. At F40's request we are also providing other authorities with the template for the Hands Up website so that other's can adopt and adapt it to their needs.

Ivan Ould, Chairman of F40, reported that he'd been interviewed by the Financial Times. It's worth pointing out that Devon via John Barnard provided the FT with the technical briefing to support that interview.

I was invited to attend the F40 Executive which followed the conference and recommended the following lobbying actions to them for consideration:

1. Brief the CFS Select Committee and urge it to investigate the Review proposals when they are published and/or contribute its own response to the consultation if it has not done so.
2. Brief the relevant All Party Groups and encourage them to take an interest in the issue. Whether they are for F40 or against they need to get involved because either way the outcomes will affect schools in their consituencies.
3. Commission a survey via local authorities to establish how many schools in F40 are forecasting deficit budgets in 2010/11. The campaign needs a sharper point of attack to concentrate MPs minds in the run up to the GE.
4. Commission Total Politics magazine to conduct a survey of MPs on the issue and host a breakfast debate in Westminster. The campaign needs to increase the turbulence -- let MPs know this one is not going to politely go away.
5. Use the findings from these surveys as ammunition for MPs' questions in the House.

Disappointingly, what sounded like a commitment from the Schools Minister in the conference room to more funding for F40 authorities now appears merely as a question in the DCFS published version of the speech http://bit.ly/4fLjjs. Ditto his apparent suggestion that sparsity should be treated on equal terms as deprivation.

He said the aim of the Govt's review is to achieve a simple, single, stable and transparent formula "in line with relative need". He gave no indication as to when the findings would be published.

He said the Govt was committed to small schools and recognised their important role in keeping rural communities alive. However, he said Govt wanted schools to work together to reduce costs by sharing resources and leadership, buying goods and services, and saw this approach as being particularly relevant to rural schools. He said local authorities should use the money they invest in small school "subsidies" to support schools to work more in partnership.

He said the review was looking at whether it is possible to introduce a basic entitlement using an activity led funding model and also at ways of targeting Additional Educational Needs funding at under-achieving pupils. He said the Govt was also looking at increasing recognition that high cost pupils can be a burden for some authorities and considering how the Area Cost Adjustment can better reflect the actual cost of recruitment, retaintion and employment in areas where there are higher costs.

Nick Gibb for the Conservatives was not forthcoming on the detail of Conservative policy, but pledged more funding for children from deprived backgrounds via the Conservative version of "pupil premiums". He said free schools meals was "too broad brush" to be an accurate measure of deprivation. Significantly for Devon he did say that more funding for sparsely populated areas was central to Conservative education policy.

David Laws for the Lib Dems said the MOSAIC system used by some authorities, including our own, and Working Tax Credits were examples of measures which could give a more accurate picture of deprivation and would underpin a Lib Dem version of the pupil premium. He said the Lib Dems were convinced of the case for a fairer and transparent funding formula for schools, but warned that funding would still need to be targeted to meet particular needs in areas.

Mick Brookes for the NAHT said there were many areas of "education deprivation" which were currently not recognised in a formula geared towards a narrow assessment of social deprivation. He urged the Govt not to cut spending on education and warned it would be counter-productive in a recession.

Lindsey Wharmby for F40 said it's research had proven that sparsity was just as great an additional cost for rural schools as those additional costs faced by urban schools and recognised in the current formula with extra funding.

In other activity, our Downing Street petition currently has 973 signatures and there has been a steady increase in numbers since the schools from half term break. It is one of the fastest growing petitions on the website, currently ranked eighth in education related petitions and overhauling those above it. The petition's value increases as more names sign up and that inevitably raises the level of interest in Whitehall and Westminster.

The social media aspect of the campaign is an important strand which Devon is leading. I am receiving an increasing number of enquiries about linking up via Facebook and Twitter. Geoffrey Cox is promoting the campaign website from his. The Devon Youth Parliament is going to adopt the campaign and I'll be meeting with MYPs asap to discuss how they could get actively involved. Multilingua, the community translation service, is backing the campaign and promoting it within Devon's BME communities and has written to Gordon Brown, copied to Ed Balls and Vernon Coaker.

I met with Jeremy Halley from Total Politics on Tuesday to brief him on the F40 campaign and the particular issue in Devon. The magazine is keen to cover the issue and I am encouraging F40 to take up this opportunity which would be beneficial to them and ourselves.

Peter Doyle

7 November 2009