AM: Well let’s turn to something you are close to which
your own
department. Do you think it was tin-eared of the Chancellor
to
say he was going to give little extras to education in
English
schools? Little extras?
DH: Well look, it’s a good thing because of the strength of
the
economy. There has been some extra money it’s been possible
to
find for the education system. Actually the £400 million
which will
go to small additional capital projects, that’s on top of
£1.4 billion
in allocated capital, and actually there’s other money for
other
things in the wider education system as well and things
like
children’s social care and apprenticeships.
AM: Sure, very important, but when it comes to teachers
and
teaching assistants, the most important thing without
schools are
completely pointless –
DH: Absolutely, absolutely.
AM: - you cut the budgets by 8% and they’ve been frozen
only
this year. That is why head teachers and teachers and
marching
up and down Whitehall, that’s what they’re furious about.
And a
few little extra on whiteboards or the odd extra computer,
as the
Chancellor was talking about, feels to a lot of them like
an insult.
DH: Well you’re quite right, that it is all about teachers.
You can’t
have great education system without great teachers and we
have
10,000 more teachers than there were in 2010 and I think
the
most talented generation of teachers that we’ve ever had.
Look, it
is true that if you compare us to other countries we are
relatively
high spenders on state education and it is also true that
we spend
more than we used to, but I do also recognise that budgets
are
very tight. There have been particular cost pressures on
schools
and so I’m very conscious of that and we have to do what we
can.
AM: You cut it last year. Why?
DH: Cut what, sorry?
AM: Cut spending on English schools last year.
DH: Well no. We found an additional £1.3 billion over two
years to
put into the schools budget to make sure we hold constant –
AM: Per capita per pupil –
DH: No.
AM: You did, I’m sorry.
DH: - to make sure we could hold constant the overall per
pupil
amounts.
AM: You cut pupil funding last year. You did cut per pupil
funding
last year.
DH: So we’re holding, we’re holding – over the two years
we’re
holding per pupil real terms funding constant.
AM: That’s this year. Last year you cut it.
DH: And – well – and it’s at a higher level, considerably
higher
level than it used to be. So you know, now the funding for
the
average class of 27 children in primary school is £132
thousand.
That’s eight or ten thousand pounds more than it was a
decade
ago in real terms. There are pressures on school budgets,
I’m not
denying that for a moment and I take it very very
seriously.
AM: A conversation to continue, but for now thank
you for very much for talking to us.
