§ Mr. Hunterasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he will list the means and methods whereby he has sought, and is seeking, to achieve value for money within the education budget.
§ Sir Keith JosephThe government's aims for all sectors of education include securing the best possible return for the resources available. The Government are taking every opportunity to work with those directly responsible for education spending in order to achieve this aim.
Examples of this work are: developing recognised output measures and performance indicators for individual sectors to provide measures of the returns achieved by spending; setting targets for improvements in areas covered by these measures; promoting efficiency studies in specific fields of education, such as the Jarratt report on the universities, the complementary study of good management in public sector higher education by the National Advisory Body, and the joint study with the local authority associations of efficiency in non-advanced further education; making specific grants available to support worthwhile developments in education, and monitoring the results; providing a new system of specific grants for the in-service training of teachers to focus training on priority areas; scrutinising the quality of initial teacher training courses; and scrutiny of various aspects of the Department of Education and Science's internal organisation.
The 1986 public expenditure White Paper (Cmnd. 9702) gives details of existing output and performance measures.
Net Institutional Expenditure Total in Cash Terms Total in Real Terms* Real Terms Index England† £ million Hampshire £ million England† £ million Hampshire £ million England† Hampshire 1975–76 1,241.2 36.2 3,150.2 91.9 100 100 1976–77 1,388.6 40.6 3,114.4 91.1 99 99 1977–78 1,484.5 44.0 2,923.6 86.7 93 94 1978–79 1,645.1 49.2 2,928.8 87.6 93 95 1979–80 1,862.8 55.2 2,837.4 84.0 90 91 1980–81 2,274.8 67.9 2,917.4 87.1 93 95 1981–82 2,463.6 72.6 2,872.8 84.6 91 92 1982–83 2,592.1 76.7 2,824.6 83.6 90 91 1983–84 2,697.0 79.1 2,812.7 82.5 89 90 1984–85 2,791.1 82.3 2,791.1 82.3 89 90 * Real Terms The cash figures for each year have been repriced to 1984–85 prices using the gross domestic products (market prices) deflator. † England Information about Wales is the responsibility of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales.