Extra money for children and schools - but spread very thin

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An extra £200 million was promised for the refurbishment of primary school buildings and £250 million for child services – but experts say that the settlement still represents a significant cut.
In addition to the £1.15 billion committed in the Budget and the £550 million left over from the last spending review, the new money for primary schools will create a pot of nearly £2 billion for the refurbishment of 675 schools in England by 2011.
Though welcome, this will not come close to covering the money needed to meet the Government’s aim of refurbishing half of all the 20,000 primary schools in England. And it is still only a fraction of the £45 billion budget earmarked for rebuilding secondary schools over the next 20 years.
It is likely that the extra £250 million for children’s services will be spread pretty thinly between education and social care services. Details of where the money is to be spent will be announced in in December, but it is expected that the schools element may be used to fund schemes such as catchup classes for stragglers and extension lessons for the most able.
The money will also be required to help schools to meet the new public service agreements targets, which include increasing the number of pupils with five good GCSEs, including maths and English, from 46 per cent to 53 per cent by 2011.
There are also new targets for improving the communication skills and emotional development of the underfives and for reducing the attainment gap between poorer and middle-class children of all ages.