labourpress:

·         Analysis of the Budget shows that the schools system is facing a black hole of £560 million, as Osborne fails to fully fund his pledge to turn every school into an academy.

·         There are currently 15,632 schools in England which are not yet academies. The costs for conversion to academy status is £44,837. 

·         The Budget allocated £140 million to academisation. This leaves a shortfall of £560 million.

·         To make the money up, the Chancellor will be left with no option but to raid the Budget for much needed new school places.

·         The Government has conveniently left out the policy costings for full academisation in its Budget document.

Lucy Powell MP, Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Education, said:

“The Chancellor’s plans for education are unravelling. Schools are already facing an eight per cent cut to their budgets, the first time education spending has fallen since the mid-1990s. This half a billion pound black hole in the education budget means that schools will be further out of pocket as a result. The Chancellor needs to come clean about where this money is going to come from. Parents will recognise that this announcement today doesn’t do anything to tackle the real issues facing our education system – the chronic shortages of teachers up and down the country, the lack of good school places, a widening attainment gap between disadvantaged children and their peers, and exams and assessments in schools in chaos.

“Labour wants to see robust accountability and oversight of all schools regardless of type. We would prioritise excellence in every school and every classroom – that means a focus way beyond arguments of structures in schools.”

(via labourpress)