The Department for Education, It Doesn't Add Up

[turbobloke]

Department for Education Miscalculation on School Budgets

[Ian Geary]

Before school funding formulas were "nationalised", my team used to calculate the funding given to each school using a "local" (is council based) funding formula.

This was dividing up the slice of the cake the DfE had already given us.

You had to use a hard cut off point for numbers on role, and just accept there would be variability in who was in what school.

However, a 0.4% swing nationally seems more like data wasn't aggregated or validated properly.

My take away from this:

Politicians often get accused of having a bunker mentality: secretive, denying problems exist, trying to fix things behind closed doors.

Here we have a government department putting it's hands up to (what seems to be a genuine) mistake in time for it to be resolved, and what will we see people do?

I'm sure labour are already making it the biggest crisis since the last one. The guardian columnists will already be sharpening their pens to blame Tory austerity.

Whilst a public (and private) sector that didn't make mistakes would indeed be nice, allowing an environment where someone is not able to acknowledge mistakes is the bigger mistake imo.