Draft education budget
The draft education budget will result in job losses across the system and no more new school buildings. Peter Cheney considers the potential impact of the cuts.
Widespread job losses among teachers will be one of the sharpest cuts in education over the next four years. The Department of Education’s draft spending plan claims that job losses are inevitable but has been criticised for not putting an exact figure on expected redundancies.
The Irish National Teachers Organisation warns that one in four teachers will lose their jobs, totalling 4,000-5,000 redundancies; the current workforce stands at around 20,000. The union’s estimate is based on 250 job losses in 2010-2011, which would reach 1,000 over four years at the present rate. This figure was then quadrupled when the expected level of school budget cuts was factored in.
“It is wanton, widespread educational vandalism,” said northern secretary Frank Bunting. Ulster Teachers’ Union general secretary Avril Hall-Callaghan has condemned the “continuing decimation” of the education system. The Assembly’s Education Committee criticised the lack of information on school closures or job losses coming from the department.
“I have never tried to disguise the fact that it is not a good budget for education,” Caitríona Ruane said during education questions on 1 February. “I intend to bear down on management and administration, protect front-line services and do everything I can to protect jobs.”
Cuts in the aggregated schools budget will reach £179.8 million by 2014-2015, but officials claim it is hard to assess how cuts will work out on the ground, due to the local management of schools funding framework. The department plans to draw down £10 million per year from the Invest to Save Fund to pay for future redundancies.
Education has the second largest budget in the Executive, with £1,914.8 million current expenditure allocated for 2010- 2011. A further £169.3 million is set aside for capital investment. Almost all funds go to schools, described officially as Objective A.
In an unusual shift, £41 million will be moved away from next year’s capital budget. This would cover salaries and other school running costs, in 2011-2012 alone, but would mean less money for maintenance. Investment in new builds “if at all possible, is likely to be intermittent and limited” until 2014-2015.
Officials say they need £2,151.1 million to meet inescapable cost pressures including pay increases, price inflation and demographic change by 2014-2015.
Savings totalling £308.7 million are planned over the next four years. The net figure falls to £303.4 million as extra money will be allocated to free school meals entitlement and services for ‘early years’ children, aged 0-6.
In addition, the following areas will be protected, as far as possible, from cuts:
• special educational needs;
• extended schools;
• post-primary school counselling.
More effective procurement will help to reduce the ICT budget, starting with a £12 million cut next year and rising to £16 million annually; some services will also end.
The applicant, rather than the employer, will pay for the cost of AccessNI vetting checks, saving £1 million per annum. A flat rate for short-term teacher substitution will also be explored. Teachers may also have to pay their own General Teaching Council fees. Ending transfer interviews for P7 parents would save up to £500,000.
End-of-year
Caitríona Ruane has repeatedly blamed the Tories for cuts which she is now obliged to carry out. The announcement that the Treasury would abolish end-ofyear flexibility (worth £87.2 million) took schools by surprise and sparked controversy. The money included £56 million saved by schools.
The Executive has now guaranteed the schools’ money from within the block grant. “The sums mentioned are an accumulation of schools’ savings over a number of years and they will not all be required to be drawn down in one go,” a DFP spokesman said. “The requirements of schools on a year-to-year basis will be managed with the finance department [DFP] to ensure their needs are met.”
He also confirmed that the Treasury’s plans were known in October i.e. three months before ministers protested about the move.
Three priorities for savings stand out:
• a “greater sharing of resources and facilities” between North and South, especially in the border counties;
• establishing the Education and Skills Authority (ESA), which would represent a “strategic, stepped change”;
• rationalising the schools estate through closures and amalgamations.
On the first point, the Republic’s education budget has been cut by 4.9 per cent in 2011. Sinn Féin says that pupils in border areas should attend the closest school. The ESA was due to be established by April 2009 but has been delayed by disagreements between the political parties and education sectors (see issue 44, page 9). Chief Executive designate Gavin Boyd returned to the Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment in August 2010.
The plan warns of the cost of sustaining too many small schools with falling roll numbers, too many old schools that are expensive and difficult to maintain, and a “duplication of provision that can no longer be afforded.” An area-based approach to school closures must respect the different sectors, but sharing across all those sectors is also encouraged.
This ties in with ‘Developing the case for shared education’, published by Oxford Economics last September, which said that sharing could help the sector to absorb cuts. Deloitte analysts in 2007 suggested that more collaboration across sectors and consolidation within the estate could save between £15.9 million and £79.6 million.
Segregation and school buses
As agendaNi reported in November (issue 42, page 25), the cost of a divided education system is hard to calculate. However, one of its most visible features can be seen on the roads every week day.
The April 2007 Deloitte study into the overall cost of division found that Northern Ireland had 75 extra school bus runs in the morning and 90 in the afternoon.
During the Troubles, it was dangerous for children to take public buses across interfaces on the way to school, especially in Belfast and Derry. Extra school buses were therefore laid on, often using longer routes.
Children from the Short Strand, for example, have been bussed over the Albert Bridge and up the Ormeau Road to their school on the upper Ravenhill Road.
Deloitte put the cost at £2.45 million over the lifetime of Northern Ireland’s extra buses. School transport faces £5 million cuts each year over the next four years. “The Assembly and wider society will have to consider whether they can continue to afford to bus thousands of pupils past good local schools,” the draft spending plan states.
Northern Ireland Budget 2008-2011 (£ million)
| Category | 2008-09 | 2009-10 | 2010-11 Original | 2010-11 Revised |
| Current | 1,776.3 | 1,879.1 | 1,961.0 | 1,914.8 |
| Capital | 214.6 | 253.3 | 201.1 | 169.3 |
Draft Department of Education spending plan 2011-2015 (£million)
| Category | 2011-12 | 2012-13 | 2013-14 | 2014-15 |
| Current (allocated) | 1,852.2 | 1,857.3 | 1,861.6 | 1,847.7 |
| Current (anticipated) | 1,999.4 | 2,040.6 | 2,087.2 | 2,151.1 |
| Funding gap | -76.6 | -125.8 | -172.4 | -236.3 |
| Net savings | 139.2 | 183.3 | 225.6 | 303.4 |
| Capital | 127.4 | 100.4 | 101.5 | 139.4 |
