Schools Minister acknowledges budget cuts
The school funding crisis was the topic of enquiry at the Education Select Committee this week with ministers Nick Gibb and Anne Milton giving evidence.
Chairman Robert Halfon asked Gibb to comment on the current state of schools funding in England. The Schools Minister stated that the government had put record levels of funding into schools, but that the number of pupils is increasing.
While Gibb urged the committee to take into account the wider economic context of the 2008 financial crash in its forthcoming report on school funding, he did admit that the IFS figures showing a real-terms cut to school funding were correct.
Halfon asked the DfE ministers why education does not have a 5 year funding plan or a 10 year strategic plan, like the Department of Health and Social Care has for the NHS.
Both ministers agreed that a long-term strategic plan for education would be welcomed, but Halfon said that they needed to make a public case for it, as Jeremy Hunt and Matt Hancock have done at Health.
Milton, a former Health minister, said that the Department of Health did not just publicly call for a 10 year plan out of the blue, but that they discussed the matter privately before seeking public support.
Gibb added that he is about to begin negotiations with the Treasury ahead of the next spending review, but that he is competing with similar demands from the Health Secretary and the Home Secretary, who wants more police funding. Gibb also said that Jeremy Hunt – as Health Secretary – had support from NHS England when he lobbied the government for more support.
Asked why he has not been successful in getting more money for schools in the past, Gibb argued that he has – citing the fact that the schools budget (alongside health and international development spending) was ring-fenced in 2010. The cuts to schools’ budgets was largely down to cuts to the Local Authority budgets, which are beyond his Department’s control.
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