Questions
Questions to be asked by Members of the County Council of the Leader of the Council, a Cabinet Member, or a Chairman of a non-Scrutiny Committee. The question will be answered by the relevant Member and the Member asking the question may then ask a follow up question which will also be answered.
Additional documents:
Minutes:
Mr. David Nixon asked the following question of the Deputy Leader of the Council and the Cabinet Member for Children and Young People
Question
I see in last week’s daily paper the headline ‘Academy plan for all Surrey schools.’ Quote - “The (Surrey) council said that a wholesale conversion to academy status was preferable to a small number of schools opting out of local authority control”. Seeing that Surrey County Council will be able to reduce drastically its L.E.A. bill with regard to pension provision, maintenance and heating of buildings etc. etc. are Staffordshire County Council thinking of going down this route as it is Conservative flag ship policy?
Reply
Staffordshire County Council has no plans to adopt a model of wholesale ‘conversion’ to Academy status for our schools. We believe that the current diversity of educational provision, including various governance arrangements serve the Staffordshire population well. We work with all our ‘family’ of Staffordshire schools, regardless of their status or governance arrangements and will support those schools which choose to become academies or Free schools in the future.
In terms of school funding, Staffordshire’s position for 2010-11 is as follows:-
· Almost 91% of funding for schools goes, via the local council, directly to schools
· The remainder is used to:-
support pupils educated out of school and in alternative provision (1%);
purchase services on behalf of schools, for example, building insurances, software and other licences and annual maintenance contracts (2%);
support costs met centrally on behalf of schools, including maternity pay (1%);
payments to third parties for educational provision, including payments to private, voluntary and independent providers of nursery education (3%); and
pay for a number of central support services, mainly related to meeting the needs of pupils with more complex needs (2%).
It is possible that some savings would be made, however, the level of savings would depend on what statutory duties or powers were retained by the authority, which we are expecting to be included in the next education bill and whether the authority continued to provide services to academies. It is therefore unlikely that the council would see any significant financial benefit.
Supplementary Question
A lot of this year’s Education Budget is spent on bureaucracy. As schools opt out of local authority control will the Cabinet Member look to see if savings can be made?
Reply
Many of the grants we get from Central Government are ring fenced and we therefore have little control over how this funding is utilised. I believe that this is a quite bureaucratic and wasteful way of doing business and I am hoping that the Government, in its comprehensive spending review, will do away with these ring fences so that we can utilise the resources to much greater effect. The County Council is a very lean organisation with most of the education funding going directly to schools. What we need to do is to tackle Whitehall red tape.
Mr. Ray Easton asked the following question of the Cabinet Member for ... view the full minutes text for item 35