Creative collaboration in fundraising

As school leaders we are often placed in a dilemma as to whether an additional source of funding allows us to carry out a genuinely worthwhile project. For example, many school managers have received grants for reasonably large amounts, often through Pathfinder projects, announced this to staff and then realised that the funds are so tightly directed that there is no additional revenue to pursue any other objectives. Furthermore, the application procedure can be so lengthy, demanding so much senior leadership time that a cost-benefit analysis may in fact cast doubt on the value of the whole process.

In this article I look at a process, in which I have been involved, where a group of schools has applied for a fund which does not seem restrictive in nature. The schools are developing a project to increase their collaboration and enable them to achieve many high-agenda initiatives that might otherwise be beyond their reach.

Financial restraints
The Vale of Belvoir is a rural area of North Leicestershire consisting of a number of small villages. Education in the Vale is provided in a 10-14 high school and eight primary schools. Many of the primary schools are small in size, possessing less than 100 students, but what they lack for in numbers they make up for in enthusiasm and energy. There is good collaboration between the schools, formalised through the Vale Heads Group, where the headteachers of the nine schools meet on a termly basis.

Small schools, such as those in the Vale of Belvoir, have considerable financial restraints. This is also an issue in the high school, which has not been able to bid for specialist schools status due to the lack of GCSE provision. The sizes of the schools also makes implementing some of the latest initiatives challenging, such as extended services or modern foreign language study for primary students. Furthermore, as headteachers of small schools, with limited senior leadership capacity, the primary heads have a wide range of tasks to complete and there is a wish to share good practice to ensure development work is not continually replicated across the schools. In addition, there is a desire to develop a wide range of collaborative and transitional activities for students and young people in the Vale, but the distances between schools can make this difficult.

Finally, a reorganisation of education is planned to begin in September 2008 for the area. The current 10-14 high school will become an 11-16 comprehensive and the eight primaries will retain their Year 6 students. The Vale heads recognise the importance of sharing good practice so skills are not lost as a result of the changes, and as the schools increase in size there is a desire to ensure transition arrangements remain strong.

A member of the Vale Heads Group identified the Targeted Capital Fund as an avenue that could be explored. A small group of colleagues at the high school began to consider what opportunities there were to use IT as a vehicle for collaboration and transition. The high school IT staff conducted an audit of the IT facilities in the nine schools. This work highlighted two main areas of development:

• learning platform across the Vale
• video-conferencing facilities in each school.

These two concepts would be united as a virtual learning environment (VLE), which would be given the title of the ‘Vale Virtual School’. (The DfES wishes all schools to to use these technologies and have VLEs in place by 2008.)

Video-conferencing facilities in each school would allow a wide variety of enrichment and transition activities to occur, such as:

• developing activities for G&T children across the primary schools
• modern foreign language specialists working simultaneously with students in a number of primary schools
• regular opportunities for Year 7 students to communicate their experiences of secondary school life with Year 6 classes and individual students.

The learning platform will develop consistent online assessment and tracking of pupils across the schools with the aim of each school linking their management information system to the learning platform and hence forming what is known as a managed learning environments or MLE. There is also an excellent opportunity for teachers to share good practice using video conferencing, and to access joint training sessions without leaving their schools.

The learning platform would allow a whole range of information to be accessed by students and their families from across the Vale, including:

• information about extended services
• availability of high-quality, low cost childcare
• enrichment opportunities in the locality
• access to school resources for the local community
• a link to swift and easy referral to specialist support services.

One of the basic elements of a learning platform is online access for pupils so that learning can take place anytime, anywhere. To achieve this, a wide range of study support materials could also be made available so students would be able to access learning and revision opportunities from schools other than their own.

The governing bodies are very supportive about these proposals and the group of schools is very excited about the opportunities that could arise if their bid is successful. As you read this, the bid will have just been submitted and the schools will have an anxious month’s wait to see if all their hard work is to be rewarded by a grant.

The Targeted Capital Fund
The Targeted Capital Fund contains £50m in funding for 2006-08. It is not known at present whether there will be more application windows after 31 May. The fund aims to provide sums of money for schools working together to develop joint facilities (buildings and IT) and to enhance collaborative activity. The collaborations can be federations of schools with shared governance who are working on a joint project, and both hard governance federations and soft governance federations can be considered (see box opposite). They can be groups of schools that are working together under a common trust, which nominates governors to the governing body. Fresh Start schools are also eligible, but it is preferred that they are in either a federation or involved in a trust to access this funding.

Funding available
If the group of schools consists of less than five small institutions, they can bid for up to £100,000. Groups involving more than five schools, or including schools with over 500 students, can bid for up to £500,000. There is also the provision for exceptional proposals that could access even larger sums of money. However, crucially any bids will normally require a matched contribution of 20% of the monies, from either the schools themselves or the local authority. This could be from LA formulaic capital allocations or schools’ own devolved formula capital.

Fund priorities
Certain groups of schools will have priority access to the fund. As expected, one of these groups is schools in deprived areas, but additionally schools that are in rural areas, or those wishing to share expertise to broaden their curriculum, will also be favoured. Groups of schools that include primary schools or include schools in special measures will also receive priority. Generally, bids looking to develop ICT or to develop vocational education will have a greater chance of success.

As this is a capital fund, the monies should be used to develop buildings or ICT across a group of schools. The money cannot be used to pay for staffing, for example to manage or maintain the ICT equipment. It is also a single source of monies and cannot be used to recurrently fund a project. The proposals in the bid must have an overarching theme of raising standards. Interestingly, this could be to raise attainment at Key Stage 1 right through to Key Stage 5, depending on the nature of the group of schools.

Conclusion
After personal experience of compiling specialist school bids, I found the application procedure for the Targeted Capital Fund much simpler, in that the DfES asked for no more than three pages of summary for the project and annexes. The proposals had to set out the aims, arrangements and outcomes for the project. The details of the projects had to include the involvement of each individual school in the partnership and how the outcomes were related to the additional investment from the Targeted Capital Fund.

At time of writing it is not known whether it will be possible to bid to the Targeted Capital Fund in the new academic year, but I would recommend to colleagues to explore this avenue if it continues to be available. In addition I would suggest keeping an open mind when investigating funding streams. While some are very restrictive in nature, there are also many that allow schools to be truly creative and present an opportunity for making a real difference to learning while retaining the school’s vision and individuality.

School federations: is it worth getting together?
There is a federations continuum, with a hard governance federation at one end (with a single governing body shared by a group of schools) and at the other end an informal, loose collaboration (where a group of schools meet informally on an ad-hoc basis). Many schools already have such informal meetings, for example a family of schools where a secondary school meets with its primary feeders, or a group of local secondary schools which meet to develop teaching and learning. In between there are soft governance federations and soft federations, which are slightly different entities from each other.

A soft governance federation is where a group of schools set up a committee which is known as joint governance or strategic committee, with delegated powers. Soft governance federations are statutory and established using the collaboration regulations made under the Section 26 Education Act 2002.
A soft federation committee does not have delegated powers, nor does it have statutory regulations. A joint governance committee can have budgetary powers delegated to it. Where a project is being financed, the committee could oversee the financial leadership make prompt budgetary decisions for the groups of schools and then report this to each governing body.

It is not a complicated step to move from a loose collaborative committee to one which is a joint governance committee – it just requires the support of the governing bodies involved. The opportunity of bidding for large sums of money might give schools the impetus to formalise their collaborative arrangements already in operation.

Further information
DfES guidance
School Governance Federation regulations
Governornet guidance