News and Information

It contains the following which is relevant to schools and the FE sector:

• Action to reduce the national curriculum, to set up new schools, to reform national pay and conditions and to give more power to headteachers on matters like discipline
• Plans for more flexibility in the 14 to 19 curriculum and for more Technical Academies but there is no clear information on the future role of the Young People's Learning Agency (YPLA) in 16-19 education
• Plans to seek ways to support the creation of apprenticeships, internships, work pairings and college and workplace training places
• A repeated commitment to ensure that public funding for colleges 'should be fair and follow the choices of students'
• Confirmation that colleges will be ?set free from direct state control? and that 'many' FE quangos will be abolished
• Review of the financial support available to part-time higher education students
• Reiteration of the commitment to devolve more power to local councils but few details. A freeze in council tax for one year is promised alongside various changes to existing local government policy including directly elected mayors in the 12 largest English cities and an end to local government reorganisation in Norfolk, Suffolk and Devon
• Replacement of Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) by Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs). Where RDAs are popular they will form the basis for the new business-council led bodies
• Measures to reform and open up government including publication of financial information online and to control high pay in the public sector (via a fair pay review)

The areas that have been identified for protection from in-year cuts are schools, Sure Start and spending on education for 16-19 year-olds. £500 million out of the £6.2 billion savings will be used to 'improve Britain's growth potential and create a fairer society, by reinvesting in further education, apprenticeships and social housing'.

Cuts of particular relevance to the FE sector include:

• Cuts of £836 million from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills; and £670 million from the Department for Education
• £320m from elements of employment programmes, including ending further rollout of temporary jobs through the Young Person?s Guarantee (the 'Future Jobs Fund') and removing recruitment subsidies from the 'Six-Month Offer'
• £200m from the university budget which will mean 10,000 extra places rather than the 20,000 that had been announced. These will generate 8,000 extra full-time undergraduate places and 2,000 part-time places this autumn
• £270m from 'lower value' RDA spending of which £74m to come from BIS
• £80m from closing the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA), saving £10m in this financial year
In more detail:
• £200m will be saved by refocusing the Train to Gain budget on apprenticeships and college buildings. This will provide £150m to fund 50,000 new apprenticeship places, focused on small and medium enterprises; and £50m for investment in Further Education colleges, which they will be able to leverage to create a £150m fund to provide capital investment for up to 50 individual schemes
• £1.165bn of savings will be made in Local Government by reducing grants to Local Authorities. Ring-fences around over £1.7bn of grants to local authorities in 2010-11 will be removed, 'to give them greater flexibility to re-shape their budgets and find savings in the areas set out above, while maintaining the quality of services to their customers'
• £320m will be saved from reducing and then stopping government contributions to the Child Trust Fund. The Government intends to introduce legislation to scale back payments from August this year and then stop payments from 1 Jan 2011.

An emergency budget will be announced on Tuesday 22 June. It will contain measures to 'boost enterprise, create a fairer tax system, and demonstrate to the world that Britain is open for business'.