Following the publication of the School Funding in Wales Report by the Children, Young People and Education Committee, and the acceptance of all recommendations by the Welsh Government and National Assembly for Wales during yesterday’s debate, Janet Finch-Saunders, Shadow Minister for Children and Young People, and member of the Education Committee has welcomed the ‘positive progress towards sufficient school funding’.
Following her contribution to the debate, Janet said:
“I welcome the fact that there is now cross-party consensus on the fact that there is simply not enough money going into the Welsh education system, and certainly not enough finding its way into our schools.
“Our Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Boris Johnson MP, has already provide a boost with the announcement that the Welsh Government will receive £1.24billion extra spending directly for schools.
“However, our Education Committee has been clear in the report that more needs to be done by the Welsh Government.
“We have heard warnings that the school budget gap will rise further to £319million in 2022-23, that there is serious inequality in the amount spent by authorities on schools, and know that 225 were in deficit as of March 2018.
“The crisis is crippling North Wales too as data shows that 55 schools here were in deficit.
“This is a priority problem and I am pleased that the Welsh Government has agreed to every single one of our proposals.
“Going forward, the Minister for Education will now, based on our work, be undertaking an urgent review to establish how much funding is required to fund schools sufficiently; be working with local authorities to address cases where schools have deficit budgets; and urgently investigating why local authorities spend £11million on school improvements whilst they spend the same amount purchasing school improvement services from regional consortia.
“If acted on properly by the Welsh Government, I believe that the Minister’s acceptance of our committee’s recommendations does represent positive progress towards sufficient school funding”.
