Education awaits £9m cash boost

Wednesday 08 June 2022

The Committee for Education, Sport & Culture is in line for an additional cash injection of around £9.4million.

It wants to spend most of the extra money between now and 2025 on recovery actions after the covid-19 pandemic and enhancing the Bailiwick's approach to special educational needs following an external review concluded last year.

Around £4.4m of the additional revenue spending was agreed by the States in last year's Government Work Plan debate, including £600,000 which is in the Committee's cash limit budget for 2022. The Committee has now identified another £5million of expenditure which it considers essential over the next three years. 

The Policy & Resources Committee is backing the revised total request of £9.4m as part of its latest draft Government Work Plan. States' members will debate and vote on the revised figure at their next meeting at the end of this month.

Pictured: A significant portion of the additional money requested for education relates to supporting schools and students to recover from the effects of the covid-19 pandemic.

The Committee for Education, Sport & Culture told Express yesterday that it was currently operating within its 2022 cash limit budget, which is just over £84m. That is £150,000 less than its actual expenditure in 2021 and around £2.8m more than in 2020.

With the exception of £600,000, the expenditure being proposed at the States' meeting later this month is in addition to the current cash limit budget, and is identified as investment in important new or enhanced service developments.

"As part of the refresh of the Government Work Plan, a number of new initiatives have been identified which have resulted in a net change to the proposed funding...of £5m over the period 2022-2025," said the Committee, whose President, Deputy Andrea Dudley-Owen, and Vice President, Deputy Bob Murray, are pictured top. 

"This is for specific initiatives identified as priorities under the Government Work Plan, which include the covid-19 recovery plan which, in common with many other jurisdictions, seeks to support education settings with additional resources following a period of significant disruption, and the implementation of recommendations following the Nasen [special education needs] review."

Pictured: The UK body Nasen reviewed the island's approach to special educational needs - for example, at special schools Le Rondin (left) and Le Murier - and made a series of recommendations which carry a cost to put into effect.

The Policy & Resources Committee has advised the States' Assembly to support the proposed additional expenditure on education over the next three years. But it has also raised concerns about the timeline for spending the money.

"Based on 5,000 learners, this request for Bailiwick students represents an injection of £262 per pupil over two years," said the Policy & Resources Committee in relation to proposed additional covid recovery funds. 

"Given the established impact on the education and wellbeing of the Bailiwick’s children, and the dependence of the future prosperity in the hands of future generations, this targeted one-off investment over three years to accelerate their educational recovery is supported by the Policy & Resources Committee.

"However, the Policy & Resources Committee is concerned that the long-term programme to build resilience and flexibility that requires 35 new posts – which is dependent on recruitment in a difficult market compounded by the well-established housing difficulties and cost of living pressures – may prove challenging to resource in this ambitious timeframe.

"This may result in a need to prioritise within the programme the operational developments which address the most immediate, and challenging, concerns.

"The Committee for Education, Sport & Culture has confirmed that it is unable to resource this sustained programme within its existing budget given the work already undertaken to redistribute its resources to areas of greatest need. Therefore, an uplift in baseline costs should be considered as a permanent increase in operating cost."

Pictured: The Policy & Resources Committee is asking the States to approve a multi-million pound cash boost for education between now and 2025, the details of which it has set out in the table above, which is reproduced from the policy letter on its latest draft Government Work Plan.

The Committee for Education, Sport & Culture said that the Bailiwick was emerging from covid-19 "in a favourable position" but that nevertheless "educational delivery has unavoidably been affected" by the pandemic, including two lengthy periods of lockdown which forced most children and families into home learning.

"Through both periods of lockdown, and the subsequent resumption of services, the Committee, supported by educational leaders, has sought to understand the pandemic’s effects on progress and attainment as well as mental health and wellbeing across the workforce and student population," said the Committee for Education, Sport & Culture. 

"While many learners have been able to adjust successfully to the unprecedented circumstances, the Committee has considered how to provide more focused support to those most affected. The Committee has identified several areas where the available data indicates the need for specific action and has already started to address issues.

"While benefits are being seen, the Committee believes that further, targeted activity is necessary through one-off measures of £1.314m over 2022-2024."

Pictured: If the States' Assembly approves the proposed additional expenditure on education, some of the money requested will be used to respond to recommendations made in school inspection reports.

The Committee has also reported that "the longer-term development of continuous educational improvement has been affected indirectly by the pandemic with resources necessarily focusing on the immediate provision of services, leaving insufficient capacity to progress wider work".

Therefore, the Committee's plan for additional expenditure of around £9.4m between now and 2025 includes "an ongoing funding requirement of £1.04m per annum from 2023...to permanently increase the capacity and resilience in education services...to bring about a more sustainable delivery model able to respond flexibly in the future, resilient to disruption, and ultimately to bring about improved outcomes".

The funding request also features additional money to recruit staff to support schools which have received Ofsted inspections, to develop policy proposals which may lead to a new Education Law and to work on the Committee's response to a report on special educational needs presented last year by the National Association for Special Educational Needs.

Pictured: This table in the draft Government Work Plan policy letter lists the items of additional or new expenditure which States' members will be asked to support at their next meeting.  

The additional spending proposed on education is part of a package of new items of expenditure which totals just over £34m over the period 2022-25 set out in the draft Government Work Plan.

The States' debate on the Work Plan was recently moved back by two weeks to start on Tuesday 28 June.

READ MORE... 

FOCUS: The States' agenda this year

ESC says inspections must resume to provide "independent oversight"

Masks and bubbles back in schools