News

Few things can define what is wrong with our country and this government better than their naming and shaming of more than 7,000 schools who have done what Gordon Brown is incapable of doing:  saving money for a rainy day.

The Times is reporting today that thousands of schools face having hundreds of millions of pounds cut from their budgets as a punishment for being prudent - including 17 schools in Luton and 72 in the rest of Bedfordshire.

We all know that saving money and using money carefully and wisely offends Gordon Brown's every instinct.  But to put headteacher's on a name and shame list for trying to be careful, and put money aside for books, salaries and IT is outrageous.  I don't know about you, but I don't know any schools in Luton where I see 'too many' books or 'too many' computers or 'too many' teachers!

It is absolutely right to get the balance right and having massive surpluses would suggest that something is wrong with the budget allocation system and internal school management; but what we are seeing generally is small surpluses of well under 10% of budget.  Of the total Luton Schools budget of around £133million, the headteachers have run a surplus in excess of the governments cut off of just £585,000. 

The overall picture I get from looking at the detailed local school budget figures is one of impressively tight financial management with a slight tendency towards prudence.  Such behaviour should be rewarded rather than be grounds for being put on a 'naughty' list.  But such behaviour contrasts so starkly with that of Brown and the government as a whole that it clearly offends them!

As long as the school has a plan for how to spend the money, and as long as the surplus amounts are relatively small then I see no reason why they should not be able to keep the money and spend it later.  Teachers and Heads know best how to manage local schools, not some numpty civil servant in Whitehall pulling spreadsheets together!

The concern now is that the local Labour run council - struggling with its own financial mismanagement - will be tempted to use rarely used powers to raid the budgets of those schools who have achieved a surplus in order to compensate for their own over-spending.

17 Luton schools that have been named and shamed and schools in the Caddington area of the Luton South constituency have also been 'fingered' in this report.