Schools and universities have been promised a "significant" increase in spending, by the chancellor in his budget speech.

However, Gordon Brown also stated that the full details will not be known until the comprehensive spending review which is due to be announced in July.

Forum Response: Association of Teachers and Lecturers

Julie Grant, president of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, told ePolitix.com: "The money promised directly to schools is most welcome and most schools could spend it several times over. Although teachers have expressed a willingness to pay higher taxes to fund public services, there is no denying that an increase in national insurance will not help teacher recruitment - particularly in high cost areas such as London."The increase on both employers' and employees' national insurance effectively hits education funding twice, because all of this money has to come out of hard-pressed schools' budgets."

Forum Response: National Union of Teachers

Doug McAvoy, general secretary of the NUT, told ePolitix.com: "The chancellor's commitment to increased expenditure on education throughout the present Parliament will be welcomed in schools across the land, as will the increased levels of direct grant to be spent as schools see as appropriate."What the chancellor has not told us is how much the increase in overall spending on education is to be."The question remains as to whether the additional expenditure will be sufficient to provide the support to ease teachers' workload. The answer will not be known until the Comprehensive Spending Review in July. Without adequate funding, recruitment into the profession will continue to decline."It must be assumed that the rise in direct grants to schools is additional to any increase from the Comprehensive Spending Review."

Forum Response: Professional Association of Teachers

A spokesman for the PAT told ePolitix.com: "We welcome the increased investment in education but the average increase per school will not even cover an extra teacher's salary."

Forum Response: Association of University Teachers

Sally Hunt, general secretary of the Association of University Teachers, told ePolitix.com: "I welcome the clear commitment made in the budget to further investment in universities and colleges as part of this summer's spending review. The chancellor, however, missed a golden opportunity to put immediate funds into university research.

"We also welcome the commitment to develop the regional economy and aid the growth of small and medium sized companies. But redundancies and financial cutbacks currently affecting higher education will undermine the vital role universities have in developing regional economies."

Forum Response: Universities UK

Diana Warwick, chief executive of Universities UK, told ePolitix.com: "We welcome the chancellor's commitment to increase significantly the share of national income invested in education. We also welcome his specific inclusion of universities and colleges alongside schools in this commitment.

"We urge him to back up his words with extra investment in the Spending Review, and we look forward to working with the government to meet the key investment areas we identified in our submission to the review.

"We note the Budget's strong emphasis on health. Universities of course form an essential part of the NHS - notably in our provision of health professional education. It is important that universities receive their share of this extra health investment if the service improvements the government is committed to delivering in the NHS are to be achieved.

"Finally, we welcome the announcement of research tax credits for small business. Universities play a key role in this area and we hope that the credits will be structured to enable small businesses to tap into the expertise within universities."

Forum Response: Association of Colleges

A spokeswoman for the AoC told ePolitix.com: "AoC is pleased to read of Treasury's continuing commitment to education, but the budget's customary announcement of support to schools gives us no encouragement.

"It is now the case that 86 of 420 colleges - serving 4 million students - are officially categorised by their own Funding Council, the LSC, as in a financially weak situation, and we know that many more are trading at a loss. This is essentially because colleges are operating on budgets where their core funding is at 90% of 1995-96 levels, even with recent increases - a fact well known to government, which continues nevertheless to apply an annual 1 per cent funding cut on colleges.

"For any other sector this would be recognised as a funding crisis and action would be taken - especially given the government's constant rehearsal of the importance of the sector. It is a measure of the commitment and skills of college managers and staff that students continue to achieve so well and that 90 per cent of our teaching is graded satisfactory or better.

"We can only hope that at last action will be taken to put things right in the Comprehensive Spending Review."