Schools face axe in spending cuts (From The Northern Echo)

Schools face axe in spending cuts

7:22am Thursday 27th November 2008 in Search By Rob Merrick

FLAGSHIP plans to rebuild every secondary school in the region may be ripped up in a savage spending squeeze triggered by the recession, The Northern Echo can reveal.

Ageing schools in Darlington, North Yorkshire and parts of County Durham are in danger of falling victim to the cull, as could those in York and parts of Sunderland.

The revelation – unearthed in the small print of Monday’s emergency Budget – is the starkest evidence yet of how spending will be cut after the next election.

It will anger parents and teachers who have long been promised that schools will be either replaced or refurbished.

Many date back to before the Second World War.

To add to the Government’s embarrassment, ministers launched a fierce attack on the Tories for planning to axe the programme – only to now draw up proposals that threaten the same result.

The local education authorities at risk are those in the later waves of the 15-year Building Schools for the Future (BSF) scheme, where work was not due to start until after 2010.

A £300m programme is already under way – and protected – in Middlesbrough, including the replacement of Hall Garth and King’s Manor schools with what will become known as Acklam Base school.

Similarly, the transformations of secondary education in most of County Durham, Stockton, Redcar and Cleveland and Hartlepool are safe.

But a little-noticed section of the Budget book says the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) is “assessing the value for money” of later waves of BSF.

It throws doubt on the rebuilding programme in Darlington, North Yorkshire and parts of County Durham (all waves 10-12), York (waves 13- 15) and parts of Sunderland (waves 7-9).

In a statement, Schools Minister Jim Knight said: “This is not a scaling back of BSF. It is absolutely right to make sure that the taxpayer gets value for money from every penny of capital investment.”

But a Treasury spokeswoman, asked if she could give a 100 per cent guarantee that every school would be replaced as planned, said: “I am not going to say 100 per cent.”

David Laws, the Lib Dem schools spokesman, urged Children’s Secretary Ed Balls to “make an urgent statement coming clean on this issue”.

He said: “There must be a real worry that the Government is planning to slash the later waves of the BSF programme – particularly given the cuts to capital investment after 2011.

“Although the Government has highlighted the potential to bring forward some school building projects, the fear must be that those local authorities in the later stages of the programme will lose out altogether.”

The assessment will be carried out as part of a public value programme that signals an era of austerity for public services after 2010.

Most of the Budget headlines focused on dramatic short-term tax cuts, but many economists believe that postelection spending cuts – estimated at £37bn – are even more significant to the country’s long-term future.

Labour MPs who cheered a 45 per cent tax rate on the very wealthy, announced on Monday, are only slowly waking up to the cost to public services of the ballooning national debt.

Other programmes under threat include putting a teaching assistant in every school, a free nursery place for every two-year-old, new hospital buildings and new roads.

When, at the 2005 election, Labour said the Tories were planning £35bn of cuts, it said that could only be achieved “by cutting deep into frontline public services, such as schools, hospitals and police”.