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Chancellor Alistair Darling included the following points in his speech to the House of Commons:
- A recognition that Britain’s future ability to compete and succeed globally will depend on investment not just in physical capital but also in skills, innovation and intellectual property. Up to a quarter of today’s income (ie almost £250 billion a year) will therefore be invested in these areas.
- The reassertion that helping people into work is the best way of reducing child poverty and providing opportunity – meaning continued support for the New Deal.
- The announcement of an increase in the budget to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to £2.2 billion in three years’ time, guaranteeing free access to museums and galleries and the delivery of the Cultural Olympiad in the run-up to London 2012.
- The announcement that the final figures for education spending will be higher than originally proposed:
- The Budget proposed that investment in education and skills would rise to £74 billion in 2010
- This Spending Review announces a further £250 million to ensure that all children at school are ready to learn and can receive personalised support
- It also announces a further £200 million of capital investment which, together with the existing DCSF settlement, allows for a new primary school to be built in every local area by 2010
There are now 30 Public Service Agreements (PSAs) that set the Government’s priority outcomes and work across departments (this is a new measure), including:
- A new PSA to raise the educational achievement of all children and young people, focusing efforts on raising standards at all levels of learning and development, with national targets from early years to age 19.
- A new PSA to narrow the gap in educational achievement between children from low-income and disadvantaged backgrounds and their peers.
- A new PSA to improve the skills of the population, on the way to ensuring a world-class skills base by 2020. The PSA sets national targets to support working age individuals to acquire the skills they need to succeed at all levels, from functional literacy and numeracy to qualifications at further and higher levels and apprenticeships. These will be underpinned by a new commitment to measure the employment outcomes of training, to ensure that the system is delivering qualifications valuable to individuals and employers.
Total spending on education in the UK will grow over the 2007 CSR period from £77.7 billion in 2007-08 to £92.0 billion in 2010-11. DCSF’s total budget will increase by £2.8 billion in 2008-09, £5.4 billion in 2009-10 and £9.4 billion in 2010-11.
Key measures that the Government is putting in place to deliver the above PSAs include:
- The introduction of the Early Years Foundation Stage to raise the quality and standards of early education and care.
- Extending one-to-one tuition in English and maths, as set out below.
- Pilots to personalise all children’s learning and help all to progress.
- Enabling every young person to achieve more by the age of 19 by providing new qualifications, including introducing new lines of diplomas from 2008.
Other measures:
- The additional £250 million over the 2007 CSR period mentioned above, to help ensure that all children at school are ready to learn and able to benefit from personalised services and support. Specific allocations and the detail of individual programmes to be announced in the Children’s Plan.
- £400 million a year by 2010-11 to enable more teacher-led one-to-one support for pupils who are falling behind in English and Maths. This includes rolling out the Every Child a Reader programme to benefit over 30,000 children a year by 2010-11. It also provides for an average of ten hours of one-to-one teacher-led tuition for over 300,000 under-attaining pupils a year in English by 2010-11. These measures were announced in the 2006 Pre-Budget Report and Budget 2007.
- Funding which, together with existing resources, will be sufficient to support extended service coordinators in secondary schools and clusters of primary schools. To ensure that all pupils are able to benefit from extended activities, the DCSF settlement includes £217 million a year by 2010-11 to support access to two hours a week of free extended activities for pupils eligible for free school meals, with two weeks of free part-time provision during the holidays.
- Provision for 3500 Sure Start Children’s Centres, one in every community, by 2010, and extending the weekly entitlement for three and four year-olds to free early years education from 12.5 to 15 hours by 2010 (already announced). The funding will also support two outreach workers in every centre serving the most disadvantaged areas, further support for fathers, delivery of evidence based parenting programmes to 30,000 parents from 2010-11, and more graduate-level professionals in early years settings, especially in the most disadvantaged areas.
- £60 million of Government investment over the 2007 CSR period, together with money from dormant bank accounts, to improve youth facilities, providing new or improved places for young people to go in every constituency by 2018. Further investment will allow expanded programmes of activities with personal support for disadvantaged young people.
The 2007 CSR provides DIUS with a total budget of £18.7 billion in 2008-09, £19.7 billion in 2009-10 and £20.8 billion in 2010-11. This includes:
- Value-for-money reforms generating savings that will provide for £5.3 billion a year by 2010-11 to increase adult skills and apprenticeships and make progress against the Leitch ambitions for world-class skills.
- Spending on Higher Education and Skills rising by 2 per cent in real terms over the 2007 CSR period.
- Increasing investment in the UK’s public science base.
Overall, spending to implement the recommendations of the Leitch review will increase from £14.2 billion in 2007-08 to £16.4 billion by 2010-11. Expenditure on the employer demand-led Train to Gain service is expected to rise from £460 million in 2007-08 to over £900 million in 2010-11.
In addition, improving access to employment for excluded groups, and improving the quality of education and training for these groups, will be priority actions for the Government in delivering its new PSA to increase the proportion of socially excluded adults in settled accommodation and employment, education or training (Cabinet Office is the lead department for this PSA).
- Education spending in England rising on average by 2.8 per cent a year in real terms.
- UK education spending as a proportion of GDP projected to increase from 4.7 per cent in 1996-97 to 5.6 per cent by 2010-11.
- Per-pupil funding in maintained schools rising by almost 20 per cent in cash terms (10 per cent in real terms) from £5,550 in 2007-08 to over £6,600 by 2010-11.
Over the three years to 2011:
Progress two levels
- Key Stage 2: English 90% of children, maths 84%
- Key Stage 3: English 46%, maths 74%
- Key Stage 4: English 71%, maths 40%
Thresholds
- Raise the proportion of young children achieving a total points score of at least 78 in the early years foundation stage profiles by four percentage points above the 2008 level
- 78% achieving Level 4 in both English and maths at Key Stage 2
- 74% achieving level 5 in both English and maths at Key Stage 3
- 53% achieving five A*-C GCSEs (and equivalent), including English and maths GCSEs
- 82% achieving Level 2 qualifications by age 19
- 54% achieving Level 3 qualifications by age 19
Narrow the gap
- Raise lowest 20% of foundation stage results to close gap with the median score by three percentage points from the 2008 results
- 60% children in care achieving Level 4 in English at Key Stage 2 and 55% in maths
- 20% children in care achieving five A*-C GCSEs (and equivalent)
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