It's all about the money: Capital funding, grants...

Sometimes you have to wonder what the priority for schools is. The money or the pupils. I suppose before you are quick to jump to a judgement it is important to realise that money (funding) is important in order to facilitate learning in the first place. So...is it all about the money after all?

There are a million different words for money -or so I'm told -when it comes to the Diploma. There is the £3o,000 grant, that will only come into play if the Consortium bid is successful. (if it doesn't come through after all this we may as well shoot ourselves for being more incompetent than it is even possible to be!) Then there is capital funding available for innovative projects or needs for institutions in the Consortium. Our school has decided to make a bid for a meeting room, and it most definitely would be needed. The idea is to have an additional mobile unit built. This place would become a dedicated meeting room. Dedicated, that is, when there are scheduled meetings. With being the lead centre and all -assuming it all goes through -this would be a necessary facility.

In the spirit of the Diploma and all the tax payers money that seems to be being poured into it, I thought the following article may be of some interest.

http://www.whitehallpages.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=113280

This is all the wonderful Ed Ball's doing of course. The article talks about £23 million cash injection to help rural areas put in place comprehensive plans to ensure all young people can benefit from the exciting new opportunities offered by the Diploma.

£23 million?!

One part of the article reads: "Today's announcement means £1 million in capital funding will be provided to each of the 20 most rural local authorities so they can provide innovative solutions to overcoming barriers to delivering the Diploma in their areas. The areas which will benefit are: Northumberland; North Yorkshire; Cumbria; Herefordshire; Shropshire: Devon; Lincolnshire; Rutland; Wiltshire; East Riding of Yorkshire; Cornwall; Norfolk; Dorset; Somerset; Cambridgeshire; Suffolk; North Lincolnshire; Gloucestershire; Oxfordshire; and Durham "

No mention of Croydon! Mention or no mention, I hope our school manages to get some of that capital funding for a new meeting room!

Who got the ball rolling?

Who knows how these things start! One minute, I was seriously considering taking up a job in another school, and the next this opportunity (within my own school) arose, and it seemed like a plausible enough reason to stay. Someone from the 14-19 partnership group was under the impression that our centre (an outstanding school) as well as a Maths & Computing specialist status school, would be a good candidate for the lead institution. I went along to a meeting, knowing next to nothing about Diploma's and came away knowing a little more, but pessimistic about whether we'd get the lead. If we didn't get the lead, I am told, we would have not bothered with being part of the consortium. Interestingly enough we did get the lead, along with another college in the consortium. Apparently that's the ideal model. Joint-lead between two centres, one of them a college, and another a school. The next part of the process is getting through the Gateway. The consortium has to put their heads together under the guidance of 14-19 Diploma Development Officers in Croydon and come up with something sensible to put under PART B of the Gateway application. There's a meeting on Tuesday.