Education priority in the Council Council budget

Today, the County Council's Cabinet agreed to recommend to the County Council a £24m budget increase to continue to support school improvement, raising standards and equal access to educational opportunities. 

County Councillor Joan Stocker, Cabinet Spokesperson for Education says, 

"I am delighted to announce that the budget we are recommending today allows schools to receive an increase in delegated funding of 7.5%. We value Education and believe that well funded schools are essential to our Cumbrian community if we are to see educational standards continue to rise and young people encouraged to move into training, further education and higher education. 

Schools can also look forward to receiving additional funding from standards funds and Standards Grants as well as early years and infant class size money. We recognise that schools will be under pressure from increases in national insurance and pensions so to maintain a stand still budget they need an estimated 6.9% increase but we are giving them more than that. 

Our budget has addressed some of the problems created by the change to LSC post 16 funding. We have put money into the budget to cover the gap left by losing grant from government this year and an inability to redistribute money from the post 16 sector. This is over a million pounds into the under 16 school budget. Our budget has also had to find money to bridge the gap in the standards fund left by reductions in government grant. During the current year the majority of grants were funded at 52% but for 2003/04 this will be reduced to 50%. The cost of filling this gap is £549K. In total filling these holes has cost us almost £1.6m.but we want schools to know that the increases they are getting are real increases. 

Our budget includes funding for additional welfare work, early years SENCO advisors and funding for special needs packages. We believe these are important aspects of our work in supporting the most vulnerable in our community. We have included funding to help children leaving care to access higher education without leaving unbearable debts. We hope to have this increased by voluntary agencies. 

Our budget has put in the funding for three year olds to receive nursery class sessions in the term after their third birthday. We know that nursery education makes a real difference and officers assure me that we can make progress towards our target of increasing provision for the young three year olds during the spring term of 2004."