Forum Brief: School funding

The government has announced an emergency bail-out of £28 million for the 36 local education authorities which this year received the lowest increase in education spending.

Schools minister David Miliband said: "There has been an overall cash increase in general funding for LEAs of £2.6 billion this year. There have also been radical changes to the formula for distributing general funding to LEAs for 2003/04."

Forum Response: Association of Teachers and Lecturers

Gerald Imison, joint acting general secretary, said: "It is heartening to see that the government has recognised that the new financial systems have caused serious problems for school budgets.

"The government deals with impressive sounding amounts of money but for individual schools, small change can mean redundancies and this has been happening.

"We hope that the government will continue to monitor the situation very carefully. These changes do not solve the crisis; there are many other authorities with problems. This has provided sticking plaster for only a few."

Forum Response: Local Government Association

Councillor Graham Lane, education spokesman for the LGA, told ePolitix.com: "While we were pleased that the minister has clearly been listening to our arguments, we were disappointed that his announcement didn't address the problem of the Inner London teacher settlement.

"These sorts of problems are bound to occur when changes in the system are made."