UK: Schools 'get off lightly' in pre-budget report, but universities prepare for cuts
Schools will get modest real-terms increases in their budgets for the next three years, the chancellor announced today as he promised to protect frontline education, health and police services from the "tough and challenging" public spending climate of the future.
Setting out his pre-budget report, Alistair Darling pledged that spending on core services would rise, funded by an additional levy on national insurance payments from all taxpayers on incomes above £20,000. Schools will get 0.7% real-terms increase between 2011 and 2013, while funding for 16- to 19-year-olds in sixth forms and colleges will get a 0.9% increase in the same period.
But his warnings of the tough spending climate will raise immediate concerns that other services, such as universities and colleges, could see a major downturn in their budgets.
All public sector workers – including those who work in schools – face a 1% cap on their pay rises for two years from 2011. It means the 2.4% pay rise promised for 2011 will go ahead, but teachers, heads, classroom assistants as well as everyone working across the public sector will have their pay restrained beyond that.
Headteacher leaders welcomed the "better than expected" spending commitment, but said that the 1% pay rise would account for nearly all of the 0.7% rise in spending, warning that they would not be able to take on new projects for the government without extra cash.
Universities will separately have to make £600m in savings, and the Department for Children, Schools and Families will have to make savings of £350m from their central budgets and quangos before 2013. Headteachers described these as de facto cuts.
The chancellor also announced plans to:
- Raise the threshold for children to qualify for free school meals, after complaints from child poverty campaigners that it is currently set substantially below the household income that defines a child as living in poverty. An extra 500,000 children will be eligible for free school meals.
- Fund 10,000 students from low income backgrounds to allow them to take up internships in industry and the professions that are traditionally the preserve of those wealthy enough to undertake unpaid work.
- £300m in spending is being "redirected" to guarantee every 16- to 24-year-old who has been out of work for more than six months a job or training place, reducing that threshold from the current 12 months.
- Redirect £200m to a Strategic Investment Fund that universities have to bid for to undertake research work.
Universities are already planning for the funding cuts with many making savings now to prepare for the lean times ahead. Some are modelling for up to 20% cuts over the three years of the next comprehensive spending review, from 2011–14. Thousands of jobs are already being shed to make savings.
Ed Balls, the schools secretary, has also put in place guidance to help schools make efficiencies so their budgets can stretch further in the lean years. They are being supplied with smart meters to help them cut energy bills and encouraged to review their staffing to make sure wage bills are as low as possible.
Polly Curtis
The Guardian