Rate Support Grant (Hansard, 24 November 1978)

§ Mrs. Shirley Williams

If local authorities decide to spend in total according to the broadly agreed policies and priorities that underlie this settlement, expenditure on education and its related services in 1979–80 can be expected to increase by rather more than 3½ per cent. compared with the level achieved in 1977–78. By comparison, over the past three years local authority expenditure on the education service has remained virtually static. There has been no growth in real terms during that period. What we are hoping for in this settlement, so far as education is concerned, is a rate of progress over the two years 1978–79 and 1979–80 taken together which will go some considerable way towards easing the restrictions placed on various parts of the service during recent years.

All that follows will be directed at the national picture, not to the circumstances of individual local authorities. Each local authority will need to consider its budget for next year in the light of its own local needs and circumstances. In doing so it must clearly take account 754W of its actual share of grant as part of this settlement; the level of its own balances; and the rating policy to be adopted for 1979–80. At the same time, before they reach their decisions, it is right to let local authorities know as clearly as possible how the Government see the national picture and the main assumptions about policies and priorities which underlie that picture.

Our general expectation is that 1979–80 will see a consolidation of the process of recovery which, on the evidence so far available to us, has already begun this year. The years 1976–77 and 1977–78 were years of tough restraint and, in the difficult process of reducing their overall budgets, local authorities actually ended up spending less than had been estimated at the time of the settlements for those years. This was a general phenomenon, not confined to the education and library services, and there is no evidence that cuts took place to finance developments elsewhere. The year 1978–79 so far gives some cause for optimism. I said last year that I believed that the settlement for 1978–79 would put us back on course and I am optimistic that this is happening, particularly on teachers' employment and on non-teaching costs. We cannot necessarily expect to see local authority expenditure on education and libraries reach the levels that we were forecasting for 1978–79 this time last year, but there are good grounds for believing that local authorities will achieve the expected growth of about 3½ per cent. between 1977–78 and 1979–80. In other words, to the extent that there may be some failure to reach the forecast level of expenditure in 1978–79, I would expect that to be compensated for in 1979–80.

Looking at the expenditure forecasts for 1979–80 in more detail, the main assumptions that we have made are for:

i. some expansion of provision for the under-fives as more purpose-built accommodation becomes available, and in existing primary schools with spare capacity, and therefore some additional teachers;
ii. an allowance of 8,500 extra teachers in primary and secondary schools beyond what would be required 755 to keep pupil-teacher ratios constant, in order to meet management and deployment problems and to protect curriculum standards as school rolls fall, and a further 1,000 extra teachers towards the needs of disadvantaged children;
iii. the expansion of induction and in-service training programmes so that nationally the full-time equivalent of 9,000 teachers might be released for training in 1979–80—compared with 4,000 in 1977–78 and an estimated 5,000 in 1978–79.
iv. a growth—compared with 1978–79—of 3½ per cent. in non-teaching costs per pupil in primary and secondary schools, partly to meet the unavoidable increases in costs associated with falling school rolls—about 1½ per cent.—and partly to enable local authorities to take steps towards meet-a growing backlog of repairs and maintenance work and towards improving the provision of books and equipment—about 2 per cent.;
v. a growth of 1 per cent. in further education non-teaching costs per student, together with extra teachers as numbers of students continue to rise;
vi. an increase, as I announced on 6th November—[Vol. 957, c. 55.]—from 25p to 30p in the school dinner charge from September 1979, with the usual remission arrangements for poorer families.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Wales and I have also decided to increase the building starts programmes for 1979–80 for England and Wales. Details will be given shortly.