§ Mr. WillisTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills if he will make a statement on the role of comprehensive spending reviews in enabling local education authorities and others to plan expenditure over the longer term. [81082]
§ Mr. MilibandThe spending review 2002 set out the resources that the Government would be making available for education over the three years 2003–04 to 2005–06. The allocation of general funding to each local 31W education authority, taking account of the increases from SR2002, and the new local authority funding system, will be announced by early December. Those allocations will set a trend for local education authorities for the next three years, and we will work with local education authorities to encourage them to deliver three-year budgets for their schools. These will be firm budgets for 2003–04, but will be indicative for 2004–05 and 2005–06 because of the impact of changes in pupil numbers and other data.