The Secretary of State at the Department for Education (DfE), Michael Gove, has written to Ed Balls, Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary, to outline the Department’s contribution to the Government’s plan to save £6.2 billion, announced by Chancellor George Osborne on 24 May. As part of the new Coalition Government’s drive to reduce the budget deficit, the DfE is to make £670 million of savings.
The Department will cut £311 million from its area based grant to local authorities (LAs) and a further £359 million of savings is to be achieved by “efficiencies, cutting waste, and stopping or scaling back lower priority spending.”
In the letter, Mr Gove affirmed his commitment to review all spending in the Department to ensure that the Government was not making “unaffordable promises for the future”. He also said that spending would be focused on “priorities that best support the Coalition Government’s two primary educational objectives – raising standards for all and narrowing the gap between rich and poor”.
As part of the proposed savings, the Secretary of State has axed Labour’s planned new primary curriculum and announced his intention to scrap a number of Government education quangos. Allocated funds of £47m for one-to-one literacy and numeracy programmes, which have not been spent, will also be taken back by the Department.
Mr Gove also revealed that the Department will not be extending pilot schemes for free school meals and that Labour’s plans to extend free school meals to some primary school children have been shelved.
Campaigners against child poverty have responded angrily to the Government’s announcements on school meals, claiming that they would provide an unjustifiable burden on the “working poor”. Imran Hussain, Head of Policy at the Child Poverty Action Group, said that: “The support of free school meals would have lifted 50,000 children out of poverty, according to the Treasury. Suspending this support is the same as an income tax hike of £600 a year for a working poor family with two children.”
A copy of Mr Gove’s letter to Ed Balls can be downloaded at:
www.education.gov.uk/news/news/dfecutsletter
