Week in Public Services: 6th September 2022
This week: exam results; industrial action in the law profession; and developments in the police uplift.
Welcome back to the promised Week in Public Services Part 2: The Reign of Truss. You’ve had part one. You’re itching to get the goss on the new PM’s public services in-tray. Let’s not fuss about:
Children and Young People
Exams:
As expected, students taking their A-levels and GCSEs were met with lower average grades than last year, thanks to Ofqual’s decision to ditch the automatic adjustments that saw grade distributions inflated over the covid-period. See this Education Policy Institute explainer for a useful analysis of GCSE results.
Prior to the results days, tes magazine reported that half of the covid-era grade inflation would have to be wiped out this year in order to achieve this. Thanks to John Dickens for this useful graph, showing the proportion of top GCSE grades sitting far above that halfway target. Does this mean a bigger hit of exam pain for kids next year? An alternative would be do announce a plan to get back to 2019 standards over the next two years instead.
Either way, this set of results is unfortunate for the students for whom educational catch-up efforts have been less than ideal (see our comment piece on the National Tutoring Programme here). Thousands for students’ BTEC results have also been delayed. The extent to which this is a result of the grading targets remains to be seen, but we’ll keep you updated on the progress of a potential Ofqual investigation into the delays.
Workforce:
While I should mention this NFER report on the government’s current teacher recruitment proposals, don’t miss the analysis in this year’s IfG/CIPFA Performance Tracker which will cover workforce concerns across a wider range of services. The NFER’s concerns revolve around financial incentives, proposing that they be targeted at certain (particularly STEM) subjects, and that primary and secondary pay scales be split.
The educational charity Teach First will extend its teacher training programme following a year of poor recruitment. It also remains to be seen whether any of the slack can be taken up by the recent expansion of the number of countries from which teachers can be recruited without needing to retrain.
Reform and innovation:
Sam Freedman has published this insight paper on post-Covid exam reform and the dangers of ‘assessment revolutions’. On the opposite end of the spectrum (including a proposal to ‘Replace the current system of assessment, including GCSEs and A-levels’), see this recent report from the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.
Raj Johal and Nick Davies have published this paper exploring the reasons for the successful development and launch of the Oak National Academy, and the prospects for Oak’s future as a non-departmental public body.
Industrial action:
Following the slow progress of negotiations over the School Teachers’ Review Body’s below-inflation pay award (nothing gets past us at the IfG, not even pay announcements published on the hottest day in UK history), NASWUT has revived the threat of industrial action come autumn. It’ll be interesting to see what effect the government’s planned use of strike-breaking agency staff will have on negotiations.
See this IfG explainer on the public sector pay increases.
Children’s social care:
The government’s review into the tragic deaths of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson has been published, and identified several communicative and skills deficits in the children’s social care system.
The recent Independent Review of Children’s Social Care calls for more action across several aspects of the sector, including with respect to regional coordination (see the recommendation annex for more information on the proposed Regional Care Cooperatives).
See this recent Ofsted report for a comprehensive summary of the strains covid placed on the childcare system, and in particular the relationship between staff shortages and care outcomes.
This BBC story on the quantity of children’s care homes in Blackpool, a town with a higher proportion of such homes than any other English town, raises some very important questions about regulation in the sector, including over the practice of moving children away from families. This CMA report explores the failings of a childcare market that has allowed, for example, 37% of children in England to be placed at least 20 miles from their home bases.
In other news, concerning reports suggest under-16s are still being placed in unregulated homes (including in boats and caravans). Though this practice has been banned since September 2021, 50 out of 141 authorities confirmed to the BBC that they’d placed children in unregulated homes.
More broadly, other critical reports have also been exploring children’s housing placements. See, for example, this BBC report and this (aforementioned) CMA study. Unfortunately, given the many initiatives and changes proposed at the same time, resource-strapped local authorities may struggle to deliver the necessary changes without costly delays.
A concerning new report from the Education Committee outlines the unfortunate educational attainment rates of children in care, and the shortcomings of the authorities charged with putting cared-for children in good or outstanding schools. Of particular note are the proposals to improve the current ‘black holes’ in the DfE’s data practices. Existing data, for example, is not broken down by placement type. See this written evidence from What Works for Children’s Social Care for comprehensive summary of the data gaps.
Law and Order
Police uplift:
HMICFRS’ new report has some fairly excoriating things to say about police responses to ‘serious acquisitive crime’ (or in English, nickin’ stuff). With few cases resulting in an identifiable offender, charge, or summons, the report calls into question the ‘capability of police personnel’, specifically ‘a lack of practical skills or a lack of access to joint tasking or problem-solving processes’. Ouch.
Could experience be the key driver here? True, 31% of officers have less than 5 years’ experience, but charging rates have been low for longer than the force has been young. The report also points the finger at capacity issues and officer workload. Naturally, this year’s IfG/CIPFA Performance Tracker will cover this issue in detail.
Either way, this doesn’t scream confidence in the police uplift programme’s ability to adequately train recruits. New training programmes (already offered by most forces, and set to become mandatory next year) will, so the thinking goes, improve police recruits’ capability while safeguarding their wellbeing. There are, however, other problems that need addressing.
Before we get into the nitty gritty, let’s have some nitty gritty. A recent Public Accounts Committee report draws attention to the fact that the Police Allocation Formula (see this explainer) is 7 years out of date, meaning officers are being assigned to areas where they aren’t needed. Helpfully, the Home Office has not developed a ‘credible alternative’ to this formula (see paragraph 27 of the report).
According to the NAO — as of March 2022 — the government was on course to hit its 20,000 recruitment target. But, as ever, a couple of caveats. First, to add this many officers, the government needs to recruit 50,000 (to account for resigning and retiring officers). Second, several recent articles from the police federation (here, here, and here) highlight the stress, workload, leadership, and expectational factors that are driving recruits away, often within one year of joining.
I’m not sure if this is a new admission, but the government recently told the Public Accounts Committee that it does not expect the recruits to have a significant impact on crime any time soon. Indeed, there isn’t even a strategy to evaluate the programme’s impact on crime.
Performance:
In any case, it’s not good news for our policing system, with six forces now under special measures. This, of course, includes the Met, who are now subject to enhanced monitoring due to, for example, inadequate counter-corruption efforts. (Life imitating art? See our forthcoming IfG report on the true identity of ‘H’)
These tables from HMICFRS are useful for understanding the reasons behind the special measures across various forces, as is this RAG(ish) chart.
We shouldn’t forget about the big shake-ups at the top of the Met and National Crime Agency. See this great comment piece from the IfG’s Grant Dalton on the NCA’s appointments process, and the wider implications for the public appointments system. It’ll also be useful to keep in mind Sir Mark Rowley’s statement upon being appointed as the new Met commissioner.
Here are some interesting pieces here on public trust in the police from the FT and YouGov.
Industrial action:
I’m no professor of jurisprudence, but I’d wager barristers — who voted in support of walkouts on 17 June, and who have voted to escalate action to an indefinite strike from 5 September — are probably safe from agency staff.
When thinking about the strike, don’t miss (seriously, don’t) this candid, harrowing, and wonderfully-written piece from Joanna Hardy-Susskind on the pressures facing criminal barristers. Adding to the factors pushing barristers out of public life, private law firms are also trying to poach criminal barristers.
For a good breakdown of the two sides in this dispute, see this Law Gazette piece, and this from The Secret Barrister.
Thanks to Tristan Kirk for alerting me to the fact that while legal pay increases are not expected to start kicking in by late September 2022, most of the increase in this year’s Main Estimate (a 16% increase by my calculation, not 13% as reported) is not due to pay uplifts. Instead, the uplifts can be expected to come into full effect after 2022/23. It could even be later, depending on how the ‘start date’ of a case is defined. (For anyone not an expert on the eccentricities of departmental finance, these links (here, here, and here) are very helpful. A big thanks to the ever geeky Matthew Fright for pointing me in their direction.)
For barristers, this technicality matters (yeah. technicalities… mattering… to barristers. Brave new world indeed). Note the ‘could’ in justice minister Sarah Dines’ statement to the CBA. Even if the start date is defined as the day a case reaches the court, let’s not forget those mammoth backlogs.
Convictions and prosecutions:
The government has released their response to the Home Affairs Committee’s Investigation and prosecution of rape report, which recommended (in the context of rising police-reported rape cases and falling convictions) establishing a commissioner for sexual violence to implement support services. The government’s response: another commissioner could ‘fragment the oversight of the criminal justice system’s response to violence against women and girls’, followed by a promise to update the committee with the progress of future consultations. Watch this space for updates.
Effective scrutiny is crucial if conviction rates are to rise. The Home Affairs Committee highlighted this point (paragraph 58) in a report urging the government to set out how operational partners will be held accountable if their target is not likely to be met. The target, as per the End-to-End review, is to ‘return volumes of rape cases being referred by police, charged and going to court back to 2016 levels’ by the end of this parliament.
On prosecutions, the Justice Committee’s court capacity report investigates why courts are experiencing high backlogs (58,818 in the Crown Court between October and December 2021), and explores how target setting, an independent Courts’ Inspectorate, and improved magistrate recruitment could reduce it (and what better than contributions from our very own Tom Pope!).
Finally, see Dr Laura Janes’ brilliant blog on the Justice Secretary’s attempt to prevent parole boards obtaining expert recommendations.
Probation, prisons and prisoners:
In slightly more important news, let me draw your attention to the publication of Raj Johal and Nick Davies’ paper (they’re really hogging the airwaves here) on the MoJ’s successful reunification of probation services.
See the Prison Reform Trust’s recent 2022 briefing on the state of prisons in England, Scotland and Wales.
The report cites the government’s decision to allow magistrates to apply longer sentences to ease the Crown Court backlog. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of pressure this puts on prison capacity. In light of the latest prison staff figures, for example, the Chief Inspector of Prisons has sounded the alarm over the difficulties in HMPPS recruitment and retention.
This is one of several concerns regarding the government’s plan to create 20,000 new prison places. Others revolve around standards in prisons themselves. Correspondence between the MoJ and the Prison Reform Trust, for example, highlights the fact that the MoJ doesn’t collect data on the amount of time prisoners spend outside their cells. The Prison Inspectorate’s annual report draws attention to the fact that, during the pandemic, prisoners ‘routinely spent up to 23 hours a day in small, overcrowded cells’ (p.51). This has not been helped by staffing shortages among prison officers.
The report also highlights varying (and occasionally non-existent) opportunities for purposeful activity — time out of cells for educational or rehabilitative programmes — provided to prisoners, including in relation to emotional support services.
Similarly, Ofsted and HMIP (in March 2022) reported that staffing issues, forms of assessment, and financial incentives often left prisoners wanting in key skills while facing significant delays in educational enrolment during the pandemic.
This recent select committee report outlines the difficulties faced by prison-education providers during the pandemic in the context of the longer-term trends in penal education.
In other prison news, the contract for the new prison at Full Sutton has just been signed (prompt as ever — the government promised in December 2020 that ‘construction is due to start soon’). This delay may be reflected in the Infrastructure and Projects Authority’s recent report, which acknowledged significant (though manageable) problems in the Prison Programme’s delivery. See the programme’s details here.
To round off this Week in Public Services, the government has announced proposals to bring forward the release days of certain offenders — usually released on Fridays — by up to two days. As it stands, Friday release leaves many newly-free offenders unable to access key services that close on weekends, leaving prisoners open to rough sleeping and further criminality.
