North Wales Assembly Member Mark Isherwood has challenged the Education Secretary over the proportion of Welsh local authority school budgets which is passed on to schools.
Mr Isherwood raised the issue in the Assembly this week.
He said:
“In September 2010, the WLGA (Welsh Local Government Association) made a commitment to increase school funding delegation rates to 80 per cent in two years, working towards 85 per cent within a further two years - i.e. 2014. When I questioned your predecessor in March last year, he expressed his understanding that every local authority in Wales had surpassed the 85 per cent delegation rate and said that the Welsh Government had set an expectation for that to reach 90 per cent during this Assembly term.
“However, the 2016-17 figures published by the Welsh Government showed that 14 out of 22 Welsh local authorities were still below the 85 per cent figure, and that all of them were below the 90 per cent figure. Can you confirm what this Welsh Government’s goal is in this area, and how it proposes to close that gap?”
In her reply the Secretary said: “ I would urge local authorities again to look at ensuring that as much delegated budget is available as possible. One of the other continuing concerns that I have is that in some cases, we have high levels of reserves being held at a school level. That is usually within the primary sector, and quite often, that is held for very good reasons - if a school is looking to build up a particular reserve of money for a specific project. But, let us be clear: reserves that are held for the sake of it are not doing what that money was intended for, and that is providing opportunities for our children.”
Mr Isherwood added: “there was a £1,300 gap in school funding per pupil between the best and worst funded Counties within Wales during 2016-17, with Vale of Glamorgan, Swansea, Bridgend and Flintshire at the bottom, but, despite this, these all managed to delegate a higher percentage of their schools budget to schools than the all Wales average.”