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School Budgets

Volume 195: debated on Tuesday 23 July 1991

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7.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science how many secondary schools currently manage their own budgets under the system of local management of schools; and if he will make a statement.

Of the 3,853 secondary schools in England, 3,015—or 78 per cent.—have fully delegated budgets now. The remainder must have them by April 1993 or, in the case of schools in inner London, April 1994.

Were not many people wary of local management of schools when it was first announced, but now see the benefits of it? Does my hon. Friend agree that we should encourage more schools to look after their own affairs locally instead of their being dominated by left-wing, Labour-controlled authorities?

Yes, I have yet to hear of a school that wants to hand its budget back. However, I must tell my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale (Sir F. Montgomery) that his local education authority of Trafford has chosen to delegate less to schools this year than last year and to spend a higher proportion of its school budget on central administration. That means that every school in Trafford this year will lose out because classroom money is being spent on the bureaucracy at Trafford town hall.

Did the Minister read in the press about the extraordinary events a couple of weeks ago in the royal festival hall when Simon Rattle conducted 2,000 youth musicians and 300 youth choristers to draw attention to the damage being caused to instrumental music teaching in schools by LMS because local authorities can no longer sustain central support for youth orchestras and the instrumental peripatetic music budgets of schools are being cut to the point at which they are not worth having? In the case of school instrumental music LMS means divide and destroy.

There is no evidence for that kind of assertion with regard to school meals.

The plain fact is that local education authorities have plenty of scope to reduce their administration and bureaucracy. For example, Waltham Forest is spending 7 per cent. of the schools budget on central administration while other LEAs are spending between 1 and 2 per cent. If Waltham Forest did not do that, it would have a lot more to spend on music.