Linking Resources to Learning

Abstract

This article investigates contemporary resourcing issues for schools, and in particular explores the concept of linking resources to learning. The article is based on a study of school funding in a local education authority, which captured headteachers’ perceptions of the funding issues for their schools, and analysed published financial data. This material is used to identify a number of practical and conceptual difficulties to linking resources to learning. Delegation of financial decision-making has resulted in a general shift of funding towards staffing and away from other categories of spending, but delegation has made it harder to obtain impartial analyses of the effectiveness of resource deployment decisions. The interest of headteachers and others in ‘needs led’ models of school funding raises a number of conceptual difficulties. The article concludes that linking resources to learning requires a shift in emphasis away from the language of apportionment and towards the language of outcomes.