Clause 13 - Power of Secretary of State and National Assembly for Wales to give financial assistance for purposes related to education or childcare
Education Bill
5:00 pm
Mr Stephen Timms (Minister of State (School Standards), Department for Education and Skills; East Ham, Labour)
No, it does not. I can reassure the hon. Gentleman. The intention is to reduce bureaucracy and unnecessary administration, particularly for schools. Let me give examples of the difficulties that arise under the current arrangement, where we have to use many different powers to provide financial assistance, all hedged about and qualified in rather different ways, each with its own restrictions and obligations. We have had to set up a new funding stream through which to pay teachers' threshold pay grant rather than use the existing standards fund mechanisms. That process has added to schools' work load; it is a different administrative procedure. We have had to limit the scope of virement in the standards department rather than give schools freedom to vire the money for any use within the school that best raises standards. That means that despite the improvements we have made the use of the money is still somewhat restricted; schools still need to operate some otherwise unnecessary accounting procedures for the standards fund.
A good example of problems with the current system is that we were unable to use education funding powers to support the threshold pay cost of teachers employed by local authorities working in care homes. The reason is that they were employed by social services departments rather than education departments and, therefore, the powers available to us did not extend to paying their extra salary costs.
Obviously we have no desire to treat such teachers differently from those working in schools. It is hard to think of any reason why they should be treated differently for salary purposes, but we were forced to set up an entirely separate payment mechanism for them because of the limitations in the existing legislation. I think that, on reflection, the Committee will accept that it should not be like that. There is no reason for those teachers, in comparison with any others, to be disadvantaged because of historical accidents and arbitrary distinctions made in a series of regulations over the years.
By amalgamating all the existing powers into a single new power with no unnecessary obligations written into the legislation we will be able to remove difficulties of the kind described, saving schools and LEAs considerable time, both in accounting for funds and also in understanding the funding system. Members will have repeatedly heard concerns about the complexity of all the different regulations through which funding is provided. I accept that this is a significant change, but it will allow us to remove a great deal of that complexity.