Eductation budget cut by £670m

[anotherglass]

Education is bearing the brunt of the government's cost cutting axe.

The Treasury has just announced that it expects the Dept for Education to make £670m in savings for 2010/11 - the third highest savings to be made from 16 departments.

Yes, that is £670m ! And how is the Ed Dept to do this?

Simply by "reducing waste" and quango costs elsewhere in its budget.

Schools, Sure Start and spending on education for 16-19 year-olds will be protected from these in-year cuts.

My local school already struggles in many areas with funding.

This news is depressing.

Maybe it means they will stop meddling in education. If they let it be for a while they would save pounds on useless courses, resources, training, cover for said courses and the cost of making the changes within the schools.
Not having KS2 sats would mean no costs for writing, printing, posting and marking the tests. Plus all the photocopying of practice papers through Yr6.
Coming down hard on Headteachers who waste money and possibly re jigging the budgets. At one point there was a pot of money not being used for buildings but we were told we couldn't order any more glue or pencils.

Your local school will not be losing any funding. It won't be getting any extra but it won't be losing anything.

And by the way, this reduction is just over 1% of the total spending on the Department of Education.

It would be great if these cuts weren't necessary but the government is currently spending £4 for every £3 it receives in revenue. That is not sustainable. I can't find the exact figures but I'm pretty sure the previous government suggested that more than this could be cut from the education budget without having any effect on schools.

prh47bridge - will teachers and other staff still be entitled to increments (separate to the cost of living pay rise)? If so, surely that will reduce school budgets in real terms?

Martha - I haven't seen details so I can't comment but the government's press release doesn't say anything about pay freezes or similar so I presume they will go ahead. However, school budgets for the next 10 months have already been set - the financial year starts in April and funding is based on the number on the roll in January. Any increments between now and next March are therefore already allowed for in the budgets for individual schools. If they are stopping increments schools will actually be better off than expected. If, as I believe, they aren't stopping increments schools will be in exactly the same position as they were already expecting.

prh47bridge do you work for a LA? Just curious.

Why not get rid of the GTC?

How much is the new Dept of Education website costing?

Agree that a stop on external SATs marking would save an absolute fortune.

I think some people believe that unspent devolved capital and standards fund money may be clawed back by the powers that be.

Narmada - No, I don't work for an LA but I do know a fair bit about our education system for various reasons. My specialist subject is school admissions. For what it is worth, I learnt about the way schools are funded because it was relevant to an admissions appeal in which I was involved.

RollaCoasta - 99% of the GTC's income comes from teacher registrations. I expect it would continue to operate even if the government stopped providing any funding.

prh47bridge, that would make for an interesting episode of mastermind for us edugeeks.

Yes, but teachers are refunded their payments to the GTC!

Education spending has almost doubled since 1997--and that's allowing for inflation. Effectively, what has happened is that the DCSF and quangos grew like topsy, and huge numbers of new teachers and classroom assistants were hired. The former churned out new programmes by the bucketful, with the result that class sizes haven't changed much, and teachers generally work longer hours.

The Tories are serious about having a bonfire of the controls, but you can count of the pen-pushers to fight tooth and nail to preserve their favourite initiatives. The teachers we talk to (we are educational publishers) are fed up with being told what to do by people who have little or no teaching experience.

prh47bridge didn't the tories say they would not be honouring the 3 year pay deal signed by the previous government?

And some of the money will come from stopping all school building.

narmada -

RollaCoasta - I wasn't aware of that. I presume that the government believe the benefits in having a professional body for teachers outweigh the costs. I don't have a view on that personally.

Tanga - Back in April they said that they need to look at the three year pay deals. They said that current deals, including that for teachers, will be in their final year and they may decide not to unravel them but that they would want a flexibility clause in any future such deals so that they could be revisited if the state of the economy changed. I haven't seen any announcements since the election. That may mean they are going to leave the current pay deals alone or it may mean that they haven't decided yet.

They haven't stopped all school building. Doing that would save over £1 billion, rather more than they are looking for, and we know that a sizeable chunk of the required savings will come from abolishing or reducing the funding of quangos. So it seems unlikely that they will stop all school building. What they have done is said that all spending decisions made since January will be reviewed. That may mean that some schemes that were approved in the run up to the election will get postponed or cancelled but it will probably be a while before we know. It does, of course, mean that schemes approved since January will make limited progress until the review is finished.

I wonder how much the new website for the Department of Education is costing to replace the DCSF website? Why change it? What about all the stationery? That must cost a fortune!

I'm sure a straw poll here would confirm my view that no-one takes any notice of what the GTC says or does. It apparently has some kind of training section. Goodness knows how many people sign up to that! It is subsidised by the government because so many teachers refused to pay for it - many teachers withheld initial payments; the government capitulated and all teachers get the subscription refunded once a year. I can't remember exactly how much it is (£33?), but it runs into millions of ££££ per year in total!

I thought they said they were going to axe the Building Schools for the Future programme, freeze public sector pay for a year and abandon the national framework of teacher's pay and conditions?

Tanga - They did say last October they were going to freeze public sector pay for a year for anyone earning over £18,000. They have not actually introduced such a freeze as yet and it is not clear when any freeze will start.

Whilst they have been critical of the implementation of the BSF programme (as have others), they have not said they are going to axe it, only that they are going to review it.

It is certainly the case that some teacher's unions have said the Conservatives will abandon the national framework but I haven't been able to find anything from the Conservatives saying that. However, that would be a side effect of a move towards having more academies as they can set their own salary levels for teachers. If it works the same as it did in Sweden, this will drive teacher's pay up as schools compete to attract the best staff.

But it hasn't worked that way in the existing academies, has it?

Sorry - I mean existing academies in the UK.

I think headteachers ,sorry " principals " in Academy's enjoy high salaries .

RollaCoasta - I see your wish has been granted. The GTC for England is being abolished. My speculation as to why the government might want to keep it was obviously wrong.