Making a difference to the people of Medway

Deputy Leader Alan Jarrett: School budget cuts should fill us with dread

Article posted on Friday, 25 September 2009

The central theme of recent debates, with accusation and counter-accusation flying, has been education.

Medway Council is being forced by government to reorganise education in a variety of areas, even though those opposed to the Conservative administration have said otherwise.

But now the cat is out of the bag, with the government Minister for Education talking openly about £2 billion of cuts to the national education budget.

No matter how we try to divorce education from finances, there can be no denying the delivery of education policy is bound inseparably with money. Maintaining high standards in education - so vital if our children are to leave school adequately equipped for their life of work - cannot be achieved without enough money to pay for those standards.

Fortunately, some of the money for Medway schools has already been committed.

The Primary Strategy for Change is under way and money is already being spent. The Academy programme, which will see three new schools in Strood, Chatham and Gillingham, is the policy of both the government and the opposition. Because of that, there are grounds for optimism the programme will go ahead.

School amalgamations, and even closures, understandably cause concern among those affected, but with a central core of providing the best possible standard of education there are seldom more than marginal choices to be made.

That, of course, only takes account of the school sites, and it takes more than buildings to make a school.

Staff, children and families make a school, but even so the money has to be there for the school to succeed.

The thought of the government slashing £2 billion from the schools budgets should fill us all with dread. Government cuts of 9.3 per cent are planned to bring the economy back on track.

Cuts to education spending from a government that boasted "education, education, education" come as a real shock. Let's hope that future generations will not live to regret it.