A while back we published an article by Wendy Varley where she questioned if the government money required to carry out the IW council’s proposed changes to the Island schools system would still be available, given the changes in the economy since the IWC announced the school reforms.
It referenced two newspaper articles, The Guardian and the South Yorkshire paper, The Star, where Sheffield’s Building Schools for the Future programme (BSF) is being hampered by a £23 million ‘black hole’ in government funding grants.
Alan Wells responds
As promised at the end of the article we contacted the council – Alan Wells, the day the article was published – to get a reaction to the piece and he wrote back to us earlier last week …
We have been trying to get the background to the articles that appeared in both the Guardian and the Telegraph. It appears that this is speculation with no official substance.
All the feedback we have had from the department would indicate that there is more likelihood of funding being brought forward rather than delayed.
As you will be aware the Prime Minister is talking about the increase in public spending as a way out of recession and money for schools has particularly been mentioned as being ‘safe’.
Certainly we have heard nothing to the contrary from civil servants and all our investigation into these reports would indicate that this is media speculation.
We, like you, have probably heard that Gordon Brown has been talking about the government increasing spending money on civil projects, so quite possibly the rebuilding of Island schools could benefit from that. Let’s hope so.
Depends on how to define speculation
Where we were a little uncertain, was the reference to “speculation with no official substance.”
Digging back to the sources of the Guardian and Telegraph articles, shows that the source of the questioning was a statement put out by the cross-party Children, Schools and Families Committee, whose remit is to examine the
administration, expenditure and policy of the Department for Children, Schools and Families
That contained …
“In its annual examination of the Department for Children, Schools and Families’ (DCSF) spending, the Committee predicts that future funding will be much tighter than at present and the rate of spending growth will be minimal come the next Spending Review.
The Committee is pleased that the Government has reaffirmed its commitment to capital investment in education, but there is concern that the review of Building Schools for the Future will lead to the programme being curtailed. To avoid doubt, the Department should make a clear statement about the programme’s future.”
Our underlining – Ed
It’s all down to how you define “speculation with no official substance.” It might appear to some that a Parliamentary committee was as close to official as you could get – but of course, it isn’t the official word of the DCSF, it’s a collection of MPs who are tasked with keeping an eye on the DCSF.
Not wanting to cause difficulties for Cllr Wells, we wrote to ask if he was happy for his reply to us to go out as he’d sent it, in light of what we’d found.
He was fine as it was, responding
The Spending Review of course is different from BSF funding which is the Capital Spend.
The wording you have quoted mentions ‘concern’ so I think that can truthfully be described as speculation.
As we said, it’s all down to how you define “speculation with no official substance.”
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It’s taken us a little while to get this piece out, but as you know, we run VB voluntarily, so we fit things in where we can.
Image: Nufkin
