BROKEN LINKS: Some of the links in this site use the domain savecombsschool.org.uk.
Because the site is no longer maintained, those links no longer work.
But if you substitute that part of the page's address with savecombsschool.blogspot.com, they will work for you.
Sorry, but there's no time to go back and edit the whole site!

Wednesday 27 June 2007

How Sophisticated Was DCC's Analysis?

Remember the 'more sophisticated analysis' done by DCC, that Alan Charles referred to in his letter to Tom Levitt?

Well, we think DCC needs to get more sophisticated still.

They claim that spending on Combs School is £136,181 per annum, but the actual spend in the last financial year was £105,528.06. That's a huge difference in the average cost per pupil - a key figure in DCC's proposal.

That's not all. Because Combs School has been under-spending, an accumulated surplus - money that was available to the school but which wasn't spent - of close to £70,000 is sitting in a DCC bank account, gathering interest. DCC wrote to tell us about it.

So, DCC appears to have been fattening up Combs School like a Christmas turkey, ready for the chop.

Chairman of the Governors, Nye Rowlands, commented, "Despite under-spending, OfSTED still called the school 'outstanding value for money', and had no reservations about either the accommodation or the resources. So where does the fault lie? Should the school be closed when the proposal from DCC is based on budget formulae that are out of line with the real situation? And shouldn't there have been an opportunity to discuss this before the axe was raised?"

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

At the consultation meeting, the council said they'd been looking at this for three years. You would think that they would have got all the right numbers by now, and could provide them all for public scrutiny, but there are still new numbers popping up with the consultation period almost over. Good luck to the school governors in getting to the truth!