Council stumps up to avoid funding shortfall

12.01.51pm BST (GMT +0100) Fri 13th Jul 2007

Following on from last week's funding error which might have left borough schools with a potential £1.7 million budget shortfall, the council has acted swiftly to resolve the problem.

At a meeting of the cabinet last night it was decided to use £1 million from the fund set aside to improve the performance of schools, and to underwrite a further £0.746 million to cover all expected additional costs. Last week it was revealed that a calculation error had overestimated how much government grant the borough's schools would receive by almost £1 ¾ million. Schools had made plans based on the expectation of additional funds. Now it can be confirmed that the funds will be available to carry out the planned improvements.

Commenting on the cabinet's decision, lead member for Children Services and Education, Cllr Malcolm Eady, said: "I am very happy my colleagues have voted to support our schools by making this additional money available. Last week it became obvious that council officers had made a serious mistake and we held our hands up and said sorry. We also said that we would set matters straight and now we have. Last night's cabinet decision came after some very intensive work carried out in the last seven days by myself, the deputy leader, leader and a number of senior officers and the chief executive. We have been fortunate that the extra money will be spent on personalised learning programmes that will have a direct result on school performance. The improvement of school performance, especially at secondary school level, is one of the council's top priorities. It puts me in the very happy position to reiterate that there will be no adverse impact as a result of the initial error such as redundancies as some had feared despite our initial reassurances. In fact there will now only be more resources for learning of pupils in our schools.