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Children and Young People's Unit
Dr. Kumar: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills if he will make a statement on his joint working with the Home Office's Children and Young People's Unit and the development and delivery of shared initiatives with particular reference to the Participation Fund; and how such funds have affected Middlesbrough, South and Cleveland, East. [144768]
Margaret Hodge: The Children and Young People's Unit (CYPU)—previously a Unit located within the DfES but reporting to a Home Office Minister—is now part of the new DfES Children, Young People and Families Directorate, reporting to me. The valuable work pioneered by the CYPU in developing cross-Government initiatives, in supplying local partnerships and in involving children and young people in policy development will be incorporated in the work of my new Directorate.
The Participation Fund is a small fund designed to support the development of mechanisms for the consultation and involvement of children and young people in England. Part of this budget is devoted to a Consultation Fund, which I launched in July this year. Its purpose is to provide opportunities for children and young people, in particular those in hard-to-reach groups, to be consulted on policies and services that affect them. No projects have yet been funded in Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, but applications would be welcome (application details at www.cypu.gov.uk/participation/consultationfund.cfm).
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Children's Registers
Tim Loughton: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what arrangements are in place for children in the UK to be included on (a) national and (b) local registers. [145026]
Margaret Hodge: The Queen's Speech said that a Bill will be introduced to improve services designed to protect children. Subject to the outcome of consultation on the "Every Child Matters" Green Paper, this will include proposals for establishing local information sharing systems to enable practitioners to share early relevant information about children and young people where this will enable better services to be provided to them and their families.
There are no plans for children to be included on a national register.
City Acadamies
Mr. Hoban: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills pursuant to the answer of 15 December 2003, Official Report, columns 659–60W, on city academies, how the funding is broken down between the three categories set out in his answer. [145243]
Mr. Miliband [holding answer 5 January 2004]: The figure of £215.3 million set out in Section A of the
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Winter Supplementary Estimate 2003–04 breaks down as follows:
- Academy building refurbishment and construction costs—£167.9 million;
Academies annual recurrent costs paid in general annual grant by the Secretary of State (including, where appropriate, start-up costs)—£38.3 million; and
General administrative expenditure incurred by the Department in the running of the programme (including project feasibility and implementation costs)—£9.1 million.
- Standards Fund grant paid to Academies by local education authorities—£11.3 million.
Delegated Expenditure
Mr. Hoban: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what proportion of the (a) total expenditure on education and (b) total expenditure on schools in each local education authority was delegated to schools in each of the last five years. [144061]
Mr. Miliband [holding answer 15 December 2003]: The following table shows the percentage of each LEA's Local Schools Budget delegated to schools in the years 1999–2000 to 2002–03. Data for the percentage of total education expenditure delegated to schools by LEAs will require further work and I will write to the hon. Member.
Notes:
1. The figures shown in the table have previously been published as part of the Department's Comparative Tables and reflect the methods of calculation underlying the comparative tables for each year. This means that they incorporate various adjustments which were made in some or all of these years. For the years 1999–2000, 2000–01, 2001–02 and 2002–03, the published comparative tables included information on the level of financial delegation direct to schools by LEAs. The measurement of these levels of delegation were associated with the achievement of delegation targets by LEAs. For each of those years, the average level of delegation stood at 82.4 per cent., 84 per cent., 86.3 per cent. and 87.2 per cent. respectively. The corresponding percentage for 1997–98 was about 79 per cent.
2. The Department does not hold any comparable data for 2003–04. With the Education Act 2002 came the introduction of separate LEA and schools budgets, the establishment of schools forums and the introduction of a reserve power which enables the Secretary of State, in exceptional cases, to set a minimum level for an LEA's local schools budget. As a result, Ministers decided not to set delegation targets of the kind which had operated since 1999.
3. Only about one-tenth of the funding retained centrally by LEAs relates to "central administration". Most of it relates to such items as school transport (about one-fifth of the total retained centrally); special educational needs (SEN); out-of-school education and behaviour support; and school improvement.
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