07 January 2005
The government should take great care in linking expenditure with outcomes as there is little evidence that its extra cash has led to educational improvements, MPs warned this week.
The education and skills select committee said claims by Chancellor Gordon Brown that additional investment in education had led to improved GCSE results could not be proved.
Its own analysis found that, despite a 31.6% increase in real- terms funding between 1998/99 and 2002/03, GCSE performance improved by only five points. In contrast, performance increased by 6.7 points between 1990/91 and 1994/5 with just an 11.4% funding increase.
The committee warned that the government's justification for extra spending to improve services had obvious implications for those who had not received such largesse.
It also stressed that 'links between expenditure and outcome remain difficult to establish' and should be a concern in the light of the current public sector productivity review by Sir Tony Atkinson, which aims to find ways of doing just that.
The committee's report, Public expenditure on education and skills, is also highly critical of the 'swift' change in schools funding from a formula via local authorities in 2003 to a flat-rate increase in 2004 and by 2006 to a centralised form of direct funding.
It states that the move was largely forced by the 2003 'schools funding crisis' yet the Department for Education and Skills still does not have a full and accurate picture of what happened then.
It raises concerns that with the DfES pruning 31% of its staff through Gershon cuts while taking control of schools funding and overseeing savings, it could be forced to establish a new agency to deal with funding. This, said the committee, would negate any savings made through Gershon.
'There is a risk that ill-thought through changes to the DfES administration could simply lead to the creation of a new arms-length regulator,' the report warns.
PFjan2005
