3. Statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Finance: The Draft Budget 2019-20

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:49 pm on 2 October 2018.

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Photo of Suzy Davies Suzy Davies Conservative 3:49, 2 October 2018

Thank you very much for your statement, Cabinet Secretary. I wonder if you could help me out, please, when I'm asking some questions about education and the relationship between the education main expenditure group and some of the other department expenditure lines? Obviously, it's very pleasing to see the £60 million extra for education. It still falls a little short of the £100 million that we were expecting for school standards over the period, but I also see there's £30 million additional funding for schools. The majority, of course, of schools' core funding comes from local authorities, though. I have to say, within my own region, when I'm visiting schools and actually other services, the two main complaints I get about funding are schools specifically—so it's not education generally but schools specifically—and social care, which actually Mike Hedges has picked up on as well.

I can see that there's been an increase in the local government and public spending MEG, but, of course, that's not just the RSG and it doesn't explain either where schools' core funding is within that £123 million and how that can be protected, whilst at the same time avoiding ring fencing. It's particularly important, I think, because, of course, when the Welsh Government in the last Assembly proclaimed that it had obviously added extra money for school protection, the majority of that money actually came from local government, which was already being squeezed, rather than from the central education budget.

So, if you can explain to me a little bit about how schools' core funding is being looked after in that growth, I'd be very pleased, particularly because the primary legislation that deals with the funding formulas, if you like, for school funding are 20 years old now, and even the regulations beneath that are eight years old. So, there's a wider question for me, perhaps for another day, about whether that whole structure needs looking at anyway. 

The relationship with the Welsh language budget and the Welsh language education budget—obviously, we've had an announcement fairly recently of a capital increase, but bearing in mind that the Welsh Government's emphasis is going to be now on Welsh language education, not just Welsh-medium education—although we all note the difficulties there with getting young people involved in teachers' training for that—where are the Welsh language aspirations, shall we say, met? Because there was no reference to Welsh language in any of the speech that you gave today. 

Finally, the relationship with the health budget—it's obviously very pleasing to see some growth there, but as teachers and staff in schools are being asked to take on more responsibility regarding looking after children's pastoral requirements, their mental health in particular, does that increase in the health budget have a tiny little piece carved out, even if it's not formally, for improving school budgets, and would that count towards a school's core budget or would it be considered as an exterior income stream, if I can put it like that? Because obviously I'd be worried that, if there's any money going from health that then finds its way into the RSG where it gets no protection, it could get lost, despite the benevolent decision to use health spending to help schools improve the well-being of young people. Thank you.