Paces

So what's a Chief Executive worth in the voluntary sector?

As a member of the NCVO, we recently received our 'Member Edition' of "The UK Civil Society Almanac 2012". What a treasure trove of civil society data it is.

I'm tempted to quote some statistics ... "Did you know, for instance ..." but will resist the temptation. Except for one statistic. Pay and Chief Executives. So how much do you think the average Chief Executive gets paid? While you ponder that, bear in mind an often quoted statistic that a salary of £51,000 per annum would put you in the top 15% of UK salary/wage earners. (Average pay for drivers of petrol tankers, I read over the weekend, is £45,000 pa)

The NCVO produce the Annual Voluntary Sector Salary Survey in association with XpertHR. The survey covers over 150 charitable organisations and analysises salaries for a range of responsibilities within the voluntary sector.

And Chief Executives? What did you guess? Well, according to NCVO/XpertHR, the median total earnings of a Chief Executive in the voluntary sector in 2010/11 was .... £71,907.

"Median" means there are as many whose earnings are above this as below it, which is pause for thought itself. "Total earnings" though, I'm not sure of. Bonuses? Perish the thought! Share allotments? Unlikely. Pension payments? Quite possibly.

And just in case you are wondering, no, I don't get anything like the median. Nothing at all like it in fact!

Two very welcome visitors

Belatedly .... Thursday saw two very welcome and special visitors to Paces.

In the morning, one of Paces' oldest friends, Graham Moore, Chairman of Westfield Health. Graham it was who in 1994 attended our very first public meeting, where we announced our intent to bring Conductive Education to Sheffield and set up our own centre. As Graham tells it, he just couldn't believe what we were planning to do, couldn't see how we could possibly succeed - and decided he'd better help!  On Thursday he offered his help again, and that of Westfield Health, with our plan for refurbishing the old craft workshops as three new classrooms.

By contrast, the afternoon was spent with a new friend, Mike Chitty.  It proved to be one of those all-to-rare afternoons when, after lunch together in the Campus Cafe, we settled down just to talking about what interested us: three of us from the Campus and Mike. We are looking to build on this in the New Year with some work that could benefit our adult group.

Thanks to both Graham and Mike. The world seems a better a place.

 

Transition/Hardship Fund announced

Andrew Sutton's latest blog post points to potential opportunities for CE in England from the announcement of a £100m Transition/Hardship Fund.

I have just posted the following as a Comment to Andrew's post. I hope to return to this brief post later, to revise and amplify it. For the moment ....

"Andrew, as I assume others will, I have requested further information about the Transition Fund. However, in following the link to the Third Sector website, I read:
"Money likely to be targeted at medium and large organisations that can play a bigger role in delivering public services".

Medium and large organisations. Ho-hum!

You recently posted a piece about CE and strategic thinking. Today, I heard the news that three local councils in London are to collaborate so as to achieve costs' savings and efficiencies. (It led me to fantasise about the four South Yorkshire boroughs doing the same, for the benefit of people locally.) Is this a model for the future?

If local councils can do it, how about CE organisations coming together (a strategic move?) to position ourselves as a "medium to large" nation-wide organisation able to bid into the Transition Fund in 2011-12?"

Free School update from Paces

While we wait for a response from DfE to our Proposal to establish a Free School, I can report an excellent Governors' meeting yesterday that reviewed all the pros and cons, from various points of view.

For everyone, the pros, for a special school like Paces School, outweighed the cons. Indeed, the cons were largely confined to issues of uncertainty to do with the future of Government SEN policy.

One issue that we agreed we had not seen debated elsewhere, especially should a Free School serve more than one local authority, is that of financing transport: dealing with which, on the ground, Paces has considerable experience that could be of benefit to DfE civil servants.

Coincidentally, in today's "Independent" is the story "The Price of Freedom" of Tim Moat's experience seeking to set up a secondary Free School in the Holgate area of York. I couldn't help reflecting on how much they still had to do - and how our experience as parents having set up Paces School from 1996 might be useful to them:

"In less than five months, the campaign boasts a 10-strong steering committee, four of them teachers, and 25 parents have signed a commitment in principle to send their children there. Last week the school took another major step towards becoming a reality when it received a positive assessment on its initial application, and began to settle on a possible site for the school."

And then again, their strategic and funding expectations:

"To begin with there will be 40 children, in two classes of 20, so that after five years the school will have reached a capacity of 200 – a size that will allow the staff to know all their pupils by name. The school will be staffed by two full-time teachers and a teaching head, spread across all the subjects. It will be "academically ambitious" though "not an exam factory", and there will be an emphasis on vocational studies able to meet the demands of a changing workplace. The money to renovate the premises will come from a £50m diverted fund of central Government money."

Not a special school though. We would very much like to see a special school - particularly Paces School, of course - included in the list of those invited to work towards a September 2011 opening.

Can CE keep a cool business head?

To the hairdresser's with Sarah this morning. Chance to catch up with local news in the Sheffield Telegraph, our weekly paper.

On the front page, news of the cancellation of the move of St Luke's Hospice to new premises and the fear of redundancies; beds will be cut from 24 to 20, in an attempt to reduce the charity's deficit this year from £1.3 million to £700,000. 

On the back page, news of Sheffield Wednesday's struggle to avoid administration or worse, with some suggesting that a take-over is the only hope. Reports suggest the club's debt totals £30m and a winding up petition brought by HM Revenue and Customs was avoided this week only by the Co-Operative Bank putting up £780,000, to buy the Club time to find an investor or other solution. Apparently one possibility is a fans-backed revolution headed up by Sheffield MP David Blunkett.

Reading this dismal news, I was reminded that earlier in the week I had read of the difficulties facing Prince Charles' Charities Foundation as a result of a downturn in the profitability of the charity's trading subsidiaries. Originally gift-aiding profits to the charity, the companies now find themselves dependent upon the charity for survival. (I cannot provide you a link to the story in The Times as Rupert Murdoch will not allow me since he put up a paywall.)

These are not insubstantial enterprises and although Sheffield Wednesday's woes might be longer standing than the economic downturn, we might well feel that better economic times would encourage more positive solutions.

Straws in the wind? Lessons for us who manage conductive education charities and enterprises? Can CE keep a cool business head?

Free Schools - a chance for conductive education?

Andrew Sutton has reported the DfE announcement of the opening of the process for making Free School applications, so I will not repeat it here.

The first step is little more than a relatively straightforward 'expression of interest': the completion of a "Proposal".

I have begun drafting a Proposal from Paces. 

If your conductive education centre is thinking of making an application - and now is the time - I'd be more than happy to help you do so.

Alternatively, I understand that applications proposing "groupings of schools" (definition not yet clear) would especially be welcomed. So if your conductive education centre might be interested in some sort of partnership application, I'd be happy to talk with you about that too.

Paces has successfully gone through Registration, Approved status and Non-Maintained Special School status with DfE and we have quite a lot of experience we are willing to share.

I can be contacted on PacesCEO@googlemail.com or 0114 284 4488.

Catching up on some good news

Life as Paces CEO has been a bit hectic over the past couple of months or so. Which explains why I've not posted as often as I would have liked. Funny thing that - the more stuff happens, sometimes, the less easy it is to write about - never quite reaching the moment when there's something to say. I'll maybe have some time to give it a go when we are in Pembrokeshire this week. That's not a promise - we've no reliable internet connection!

Some good news has slipped by though. Towards the end of March, I posted here that being at Paces then seemed a bit like one of those 'change' moments when we hold our breath waiting for something to happen. Well, one thing did happen: we secured a grant toward the repair and refurbishment of the former craft workshops at the back of Paces Campus. The plan is to open these as three new large classroom spaces for Paces School. The grant came from The Social Investment Business, to whom we are immensely grateful. And if that is not enough good fortune, it's great to be able to say that KeepMoat plc, who have supported Paces with 3-year sponsorship of our Families Support work, have already pitched in with a commitment to help us wring as much value from the grant as possible.  More later.

Now for a short holiday.

Debt, cuts and special needs

"The Treasury has drawn up plans to accelerate deep spending cuts over the next two or three years to reduce the £164 billion deficit."  ("Coalition is urged to move fast with deep spending cuts": The Times today)

You will make your own mind up whether this is the right course of action depending on your personal political loyalties. Apparently Canada is the model for the pro-acceleration view.

Canada, though, may have a warning for us in the UK:  "....education cuts imposed by the Ontario government led to a sharp increase in class sizes — from 25 to 35 children in some instances — and the loss of many services for children with special needs, who were integrated into mainstream classes. The provincial administrations, which provide the bulk of education and health services, focused their initial cuts in these two areas.

Can we do more than "wait and see?".

23rd annual Bridge School benefit Concert

Something I just wanted to share with you ....

Surprising as it seems to me - but maybe no more surprising than that time passes and my youngest daughter Sarah is now 27 years old - 2009 was the 23rd annual Bridge School benefit concert. You can check out video clips from past concerts on The Bridge School YouTube Channel or read about the concert on the L.A. Times Music Blog, Pop & Hiss

The Bridge School is not a conductive education school. It does say of itself that it is:

 "An innovative organization educating children with severe speech and physical impairments through the use of:

• creative approaches to education and communication
• augmentative and alternative communication systems and assistive technology
• extensive involvement of families and community

And having dipped in and out of the School's website over many years, I'm prepared to believe that. The Bridge School manages four programmes: Education, Transition, Outreach and Research, which makes me feel it is a bit like Paces.  I admire the evident energy. 

The Bridge School Benefit concerts have been organized by Neil Young and his wife, Pegi, every year since 1986 (excpet 1987) as non-profit charitable events for The Bridge School. Mostly the guest musicians use acoustic instruments and Neil Young himself performs every year.

Now that would be something to emulate for Paces School. Anyone know a musician who would be our champion?

Funding collapse driving 1 in 3 towards merger

A report in today's Independent says that a collapse in funding revenues is driving 1 in 3 charities to consider mergers.  

Staff salary cuts, redundancies, deferred projects and assets sales as a result of public service cuts and drops in fundraised income are reported from a survey of "top 175" charities.

"These cuts could have a 'devastating knock-on effect for society' as services which are relied on by many vulnerable people are put in jeopardy."

There are good reasons for conductive education centres in the UK to strengthen our position nationally and locally through collaboration. Merger driven by financial necessity may be inevitable for some, but it is not one of them.