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Item 2 is on the budget process. We had a paper, on which I was reporter, in which we pulled together several questions and asked for a response from the Executive. That response is now in front of us. Members might need a few minutes to read that response.
I understand what you are saying. The targets are very clear and the department is working hard to achieve them. We are all learning. I went through a similar process last year with the enterprise and lifelong learning budget. The way in which information is presented—moving towards showing real-terms figures and improving the layout so that financial information matches the department's objectives and the non-financial targets more closely—is an area in which we can improve. We hope to learn from year to year, and to make those improvements as soon as possible.
Is the deputy minister able to answer questions on the cultural and sport aspects of the paper?
No, he is answering questions only on education.
That is what I have been asked to do.
Indeed, but issues also arise about culture and sport.
If there are such issues, I would be happy to take a note of them, or the committee could write separately to Allan Wilson, the Deputy Minister for Sport, the Arts and Culture—whatever would be most helpful.
In my capacity as reporter on budgets, I suggest that we need at some stage to flag up issues around culture and the cultural strategy.
I invite Frank McAveety to ask the next question.
On the written response that you have given in relation to the allocation of £141.8 million for child care and pre-school education, does that take account of—
Sorry, which question are you talking about?
Question 5. Essentially, the committee has taken on board the comments made by the Minister for Education, Europe and External Affairs about the prioritisation on adoption and fostering, and we have highlighted the figures that relate to that, but the response to that question states:
As members know, there applies right across our educational priorities a balance between the approach of ring-fencing money through the excellence funds, which is a way to ensure that funding is allocated to our priorities by local authorities, and the alternative approach, which is to allocate the funding through the normal GAE process and to encourage the addressing of our priorities in partnership with local authorities. The question of what is the best way forward involves balance and judgment. We know that ring fencing can be unpopular with local authorities, although it can be welcomed by those sectors of education that gain from it.
Can you make a reasonable guesstimate of how much has been spent on fostering, care and adoption? I am conscious that the review will be a process of examining how appropriate that spending is, as well as examining the procedures, and that recommendations will be made based on the concomitant impact. Are we clear about the situation at the moment?
We are not sufficiently clear. We do not have readily available figures on adoption expenditure in local authority areas. We will have to consider that spending, however. We know that, in the current financial year, £5.2 million will be delivered by the local authorities through the changing children's services development fund, which is included in the GAE for the transitional scheme for community-based placements—for fostering services, in other words. We know part of the picture.
We asked a question about how much of the changing children's services fund was allocated under the young people and looked-after children budget and were told that the 2000 spending review identified £15 million in the first year and £17.5 million in the following year. Is that the total allocation for the changing children's services fund? Does it all come under the heading of the young people and looked-after children budget or does it appear elsewhere?
I hope that I will be corrected by my officials if I get the figures wrong. The information about the sources of the changing children's services fund is as follows. For 2001-02, no funding is allocated. I think that there is also a small element of drugs initiative funding, but I am not sure whether that is part of the changing children's services fund budget. I will ask Riona Bell to clarify that later. The education department funding is £15 million in 2002-03 and £17.5 million in 2003-04. Drugs initiative funding is allocated to the education department but is separately identified. It comes to £7 million in the first year, and £9 million in the second. Health department funding comes to £10 million in 2002-03 and, again, £10 million in 2003-04. Development department funding comes to zero in 2002-03 and £5 million in 2003-04. That comes to £32 million in the first year and £41.5 million in the second, which makes a grand total of £73.5 million.
There is a small amount of drugs funding for this year, but the fund is deemed to start in 2002-03.
From next year, the £1 million for drugs initiative funding will be taken as part of the changing children's services fund. This year that £1 million is identified as drugs initiative funding under the education budget heading.
In the future, will the changing children's services fund have its own budget heading? At the moment, it looks as if it is allocated under the young people and looked-after children's budget heading.
At the moment, it is spread across different budget headings.
Will it continue to be allocated in that way, so that we have to pick it out here and there?
Irene McGugan is suggesting that it would be helpful if the £73.5 million that has been announced for the changing children's services fund was identified separately, with an explanation to show from which headings the fund has come. I presume that her request to do that would apply to other cross-cutting initiatives or to initiatives that affect more than one department. That would mean that, although the money continues to be sourced back to the department, members can see clearly how the fund is made up.
We would find that helpful.
I guess that that must apply to allocations such as the money that is available for action on drugs. We will do that, as we all agree with that suggestion.
At the start of the meeting, I made the point that it would be useful for the Education, Culture and Sport Committee to see the amount of money that has been spent on initiatives and the amount that is heading for initiatives. Further down the line, if we know where the money is coming from and how it is being used, we can measure how well it has worked or whether it is enough.
I would like to ask Riona Bell if she is aware of plans to have a separate section for cross-cutting initiatives in the budget or to identify the source of those funds in the lead department's budget?
Because of the way that the statutory powers are divided up, the money has to stay in the department through which it will be delivered. We can identify separately how much there is for each of the cross-cutting initiatives, as that is a separate issue.
For the Education, Culture and Sport Committee's interest, we will look at doing that for all the areas where we make a contribution to cross-cutting funds. In future years, we will try to ensure that that is presented more understandably.
That would be helpful.
Does Cathy Peattie want me to start by answering some specific questions from the committee or to make a general comment on McCrone?
A general comment.
The committee is asking whether there are changes as a consequence of McCrone. The straightforward answer is yes.
The full implications of McCrone will not be realised this year and next. Do you see that happening to planned projects in future?
That is right. There are implications beyond 2003-04, which is not only beyond the period of the plans but beyond the next election, in 2003. We will be making plans for those years before 2003. That is something that we will have to consider. The only thing that I draw to your attention is that we are still due to make an announcement on year 3—2003-04—about the funding of the teachers' pay and conditions deal for that year. The figures in front of you have all the funding that is required for the first two years.
Money has been allocated for new community schools and there are plans for such schools in future. What has been done to ensure that that money has been used to develop new community schools and has not simply become part of the schools budget or been used to do what the school would be doing anyway? How do we ensure that that additionality happens?
At present, we are funding only new community schools pilot projects, so we can be certain at the moment that the funding is additional and is being provided for specific proposals that local authorities are submitting to the Executive. There is a direct link between the money that the Executive is providing and the outcomes that we would like to see at the local level.
There was a discussion at an early stage about the pilots developing governance for the new community schools, which would be separate from the education system. Has that moved on?
It has moved on in some of the new community school pilots. They vary a great deal and not all of them have explored governance, but we are content that enough pilots have begun to explore governance to give us useful evidence to pass on to schools when we get the results of the major evaluation research, which is due later this year.
Are the new community schools that are running out of their first three years of funding currently funded from the centre?
Yes.
How do you arrive at a figure for the special educational needs budget? Is it based on what you can afford, which you say must be used for special educational needs, or is there an assessment of how much training is needed and how many extra teachers there must be for special educational needs? I know that money is earmarked for that, but how are the calculations done?
On the detail of that, I will bring in John Elvidge again, but it is important to emphasise that the most significant part of special educational needs funding comes through GAE. We tend to focus on the central Government element, and to talk about the money for mainstreaming through the excellence fund, the money for training initiatives and some of the specific grants that are made available. However, the lion's share of funding for special educational needs is devolved to local authorities, which therefore must make many of the judgments and assessments.
There is a combination of the two approaches to which Ian Jenkins referred. When something is happening throughout the special educational needs sector, we can often cost it reasonably accurately through discussion with local authorities. If one can identify developments that will have similar effects on, for example, staff numbers throughout the sector, it is possible to calculate the costs reasonably mechanistically.
It is also difficult for members to know the answer when a minister talks about £20 million of funding and then asks us whether we consider that that is a great amount or not enough. Is there a formula that would assist us in knowing whether the sums were adequate? I knew before I asked that question that matters are not that simple.
I said in the SEN debate in Parliament that I am sympathetic to the idea of a strategy for special educational needs and that I will raise such matters with the SEN forum. In some ways, the matter is more complex because we hoped that as mainstreaming progressed, there would be a fall in the expenditure on existing special schools. About £200 million is allocated to local authorities in respect of special educational needs. Over time, we hope to see a shift in how that money is spent. We want some money to be released for mainstreaming, on top of the additional funding that the Executive is making available for initiatives such as adaptations to schools, and changes to materials to make the curriculum more accessible to children who have special needs. All such matters need to be considered.
Consequentials from the United Kingdom budget will come on stream. How will they be fed into the figures? What process will be followed?
Such details have not been announced. Funding has been made available this year and for previous years, but we cannot assume that it will always be made available in future years. At present, such details are not contained in the budget documents.
No. I was asking only about the principle.
It would be helpful in future years if details of consequential money were made available to us. Our constituents often ask us about it. Schools, parents and authorities want to know where that money is and sometimes we cannot pick it out of the budget as easily as we would like. Obviously, the consequential money for the years to come will depend on that small event on 7 June.
I will be happy to provide the committee with a letter that identifies the historic spend. It would be wrong for me to make any announcements on future consequentials before 7 June.
That would be helpful. It would be useful for the committee to know the breakdown. If there is future money, perhaps it would be useful to have it detailed in the budgets.
The budget consequential figures are included for the past years and they therefore increase the budget for those historic years. The fact that we will still achieve real-terms increases in funding in future years underscores the point that any money from the UK Government would lead to even greater real-terms increases in the budget. It could be argued that we are not comparing apples with apples because we are considering historic spending plus UK budget consequentials that have been allocated to education. To make an accurate comparison with future spending, consequentials from the UK budget would have to be included. There might well be consequentials, although I am not able to announce any today. They might be announced fairly soon—that would increase the education budget figures, but we will have to wait until after the general election to find out. However, this year and in future years, additional sums could increase the percentage real-terms rise in the education budget still further.
As there are no further questions, I thank the minister.
Not at all.
Next year, we will factor in ministerial time much earlier than we did this year. We will enter such time in the diary now for next year's budget process.
I look forward to that.
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