Rules to be relaxed on schools spending

The government has proposed relaxing the rules around the spending of schools’ budgets to enable the money to fund more services supporting the Every Child Matters agenda.

The plans, contained in a consultation published last week, come after councils alerted education secretary Alan Johnson to problems with using the dedicated schools grant for services such as school nurses at last year’s National Children and Adult Services Conference.

Councils are meant to use the grant for services that provide an “educational benefit”, but the government said that few were doing so due to the strict rules around the grant.

Further information
Consultation on School, Early Years and 14-16 Funding 2008-2011