News story

1st July 2003

MP Speaks Out Against School Budget Squeeze

Northavon MP Steve Webb has today spoken out at Westminster in protest at the budget squeeze on South Gloucestershire schools. The MP was speaking in a debate that he had secured entitled "Education funding and teacher redundancies in South Gloucestershire".

The Lib Dem MP began by setting out the background to the funding crisis in the local area. He highlighted the fact that South Gloucestershire had been amongst the most poorly funded local authorities ever since it was created in the mid 1990s. The new funding formula for councils introduced in 2003/04 offered the prospect of improvement, but the MP said that the Government's decision to slice 4.7 million pounds from South Gloucestershire's grant meant that the squeeze on local schools remained intense.

Steve Webb then quoted from letters from more than a dozen local head teachers who had been in touch to explain how the financial squeeze was affecting them. Most schools had slashed teacher training and were cutting back on the hours worked by support staff. Heads were having to do consultancy work to earn money for their school, whilst some schools were having to rely on money from parents associations for core activities like paying teaching salaries. Many schools were very anxious that without improved funding they would have to make redundancies next year. This was in addition to the 10 teachers who had been made redundant or taken early retirement and not been replaced in South Gloucestershire this year.

In response, the education minister Ivan Lewis MP said that with any new funding arrangement there would be gainers and losers and that the changes had to be phased in. South Gloucestershire's grant had to be capped to help pay for the floor that the Government had placed under the grants of some other local authorities. He said that he did not blame South Gloucestershire Council for the funding shortfall in schools and said that because of the new funding formula there was "light at the end of the tunnel".

Commenting after the debate, Steve Webb said:

"The Minister's words will have come as little comfort to local teachers, parents and school governors. The promise was essentially one of "jam tomorrow". The Minister could not even confirm that the ceiling on South Gloucestershire's grant would be lifted next year. We must keep up the pressure for the abolition of this "South Gloucestershire Tax" on our children. I would urge every local parent to write to the Deputy Prime Minister, who makes the rules on council funding, to make him realise that we expect to get our money in full next year".

To read the full text of the debate, click here.