Education Development Service Best Value Review
Costs
The service had direct costs of £367,000 in 1998/99. This figure was about 20% higher per full time equivalent teacher than in broadly comparable councils. A major reason for this was the high time commitment of a head of service. The cost has been reduced to £19,000 by ensuring that costs associated with hypothecated funding are recovered from these sources.
The service also delegates £85,000 of staff development budgets to schools.
The per day of staff time is around £200, which compares with around £225-250 for staff from other authorities, £400-500 for higher education institute staff and £400-£1000 for private consultant staff.
Key Case Studies
The review focuses attention on some key case studies - which are a useful way of demonstrating both how the service adds value - and the success of projects with which the service has had some involvement. These include:
- early intervention (literacy and numeracy), where pupil attainment in reading and numeracy have improved significantly;
- introduction of integrated learning systems, where impact has been limited by available staffing resources;
- introduction of 30 period weeks, where pupil performance at Standard grade has significantly improved;
- overall, the creation and maintenance of a context in which pupil attainment is seen as a primary goal of the work of schools, as is the promotion of specific interventions that can contribute to this goal;
- interventions which support a high level of successful response to HMI school improvement recommendations.
Improvements
The Action Plan contains key recommendations for improving the service. These include:
- systematic collection of schools and other user perceptions;
- focusing on a limited range of initiatives.
Background
This review used case studies to draw some conclusions about the value added by a small service attempting to have a large impact on the effectiveness of one of the Council's most important services. On the basis of the evidence in the review the service provides good value at a reasonable cost.
This review was completed between September 1998 and March 2001 and was reported in May 2001.
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