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Nicky Morgan welcomes climb down by the Government

Posted on 04/11/2007
P. Klein

nicky morganLoughboroughs prospective Conservative Member of Parliament, Nicky Morgan, has given a welcome to the partial retraction of the Government of proposals to take back a percentage of any excess in a schools budget at the end of the schools fiscal year.

inLoughborough has previously reported that Nicky, had given a warning that school funding were set to be plundered. Local authorities and schools had been already expressing their unease at Government tactics to raid school budgets, and deduct 5% of any surplus each and every year for the next three years.

That would have meant an estimated £228 million in cash will be grabbed back, an average of £10,000 per school. However the effects of these measures could:

  • punish careful schools across Loughborough that save money,
  • penalise those schools that are saving up to fund a major project, such as a new library,
  • be retrospective, which may be based on the balances in March 2007 onwards, thus hammering schools even if they have expended the surplus since then, and
  • generating a perverse motivation for schools to expend their surpluses by the end of each financial year, damaging long-term planning and potentially encouraging waste.

 Nicky said, "I am very pleased that the Government has apparently heeded warnings from head teachers and governors that this would penalise schools who were putting money aside perhaps for specific projects or for recruitment.  Schools which manage a surplus budget should be rewarded, not penalised.  I know, from conversations I have had with parents and those involved in education over the past few weeks, that they were very concerned about this.  Leicestershires schools already suffer from poor Government funding.  It was not right that they should have to worry further if they decide to save for specific projects.  I would now like the Government to go a stage further and rule out these plans altogether."

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