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Schools warned of tough future and tight budgets
SHEFFIELD'S headteachers have been warned to start preparing for an "austere future" of tight budgets.
MPs on an influential Commons committee told heads and council chiefs that "at best" the worsening recession means that funding from Whitehall will be "much tighter" than at present.
The report by the influential Children, Schools and Families select committee signals the end of soaring spending increases enjoyed under New Labour since 1997.
In a stark warning, the MPs' report states that the "serious economic problems" could "undermine investment in education and related services and could prevent the Government from achieving its objectives".
"Those in charge of schools and children's services more widely need to be planning now for ways of coping with a much more austere future," the MPs said.
The report also highlights concerns that the Government's flagship Building Schools for the Future Programme will be curtailed after it was placed within a cost cutting programme.
It also warns that the recession could mean that private companies are less likely to stump up cash for BSF projects.
Many school revamps are financed through the Private Finance Initiative, which see schools designed, built and financed by a private sector consortium, under a contract that typically lasts for 30 years.
The private consortium is then regularly paid from public money depending on its performance throughout that period.
Committee chairman Barry Sheerman said: "There is a chill wind blowing for everyone, and with PFI in particular, because they are very long term financial commitments to make."
Sheffield's Liberal Democrat council last year revealed plans to complete the city's BSF programme were being hampered by a 23 million 'black hole' in government funding grants.
The Lib Dems complained about the size of the city's contribution to the project, claiming Labour had concealed the size of the deficit.
The city council eventually approved plans to find the money from its coffers over the next five years and allow every secondary school to be rebuilt or refurbished by 2014.
Schools still to be tackled are City, Handsworth Grange, Birley, Notre Dame, King Edward VII upper, Abbeydale Grange, Bradfield, Stocks-bridge, the newly-merged Stannington School and Bents Green Special.
The completed programme will have cost 320 million in all.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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