25 April 2003
Head teachers this week accused ministers of playing a deliberate 'smoke and mirrors' game with education budgets, using 'double or triple counting' tricks to play up bottom-line increases in funding while forcing vast new costs on to schools.
David Hart, leader of the usually moderate National Association of Head Teachers, accused Education Secretary Charles Clarke and schools minister David Miliband of exaggerating rises in central government expenditure to play down accusations that UK schools face a £500m shortfall in funding this year.
'People have to be aware that not all the cash the government says is somewhere in the system actually emerges into schools' budgets,' he told Public Finance.
'Much of this row is down to the "smoke and mirrors" tactics used by ministers, for example, the blatant underestimation of new cost pressures, such as national insurance contributions. There is also a degree of double or triple counting of some cash to play up the government's investment.'
Hart's outburst followed an escalation of the row over schools funding during the education unions' conference season last week.
The Local Government Association this week said it would write to the Audit Commission requesting that the watchdog undertake an inquiry into the alleged shortfall. The LGA took the action after Miliband told an unconvinced audience at the Association of Teachers and Lecturers' conference that councils, and not the government, were to blame for any cash crisis, because they are not passing on all the money allocated for schools.
Graham Lane, chair of the LGA's education committee, told PF the 'time had come' to sort out this confusion. 'I don't doubt that there is still some cash caught up in the system, but it is not being held by councils. Perhaps some money is left in the Standards Fund [the government-held pool for specific education projects].'
The Audit Commission said it had yet to receive any correspondence from the LGA, but 'would consider' an inquiry should a request arrive.
Elsewhere at education conferences, the National Union of Teachers further soured its relationship with the government. Members voted to ballot for a boycott of classes with more than 27 pupils. The union claimed large classes could not be part-managed by classroom assistants in the way the government intends.
The NUT also backed plans to ballot for a boycott of the 'pointless' national Key Stage tests for seven, 11 and 14-year-olds and said it would strike over possible teacher redundancies.
PFapr2003
