EDUCATION
Cutting the future? The impact of the comprehensive spending review on children’s services
Education, welfare, health, local government. culture, media and sport, policing: all these services are fundamental in supporting the well-being of the UK’s children, especially the most vulnerable. The comprehensive spending review claims to be based on the principles of fairness and social mobility and makes specific reference to ‘giving the poorest children the very best start in life.’ And yet with its euphemistically labelled ‘resource savings’ affecting so many of the services which impact on children, it is not clear how the spending review can be fair, supportive of social mobility or able to ensure a good start in life for young people, in particular those living in disadvantaged circumstances, says Dr. Sorcha Mahony
T
Dr. Sorcha Mahony is a researcher at the Centre for Well-being, nef
his cursory glance at a selected number of budget decisions which
will impact on children points to some of the ways in which the comprehensive spending review looks set to fail the UK’s most disadvantaged children through its withdrawal from state provision, despite compelling evidence that points to the need to invest in children now in order to secure a decent future for us all.
Let’s start with education. Education services represent one of the most crucial arenas for reducing inequality, creating social mobility and helping children move out of poverty.
Here the increase in the Dedicated School Grant, though marginal, looks promising: a 0.4% increase over the next four years is not to be sneered at, supporting as is claimed, a ‘narrowing [of] the attainment gap’2
.
But wait. Might not the benefits that could have accrued from this marginal increase be offset by the 12% cuts to the non-schools budget, by the removal of the post 16 education maintenance allowance and by the 60% cuts to school’s capital spending and related scrapping of the Building Schools for the Future project?
The money now available to school’s capital spending looks
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paltry in both form and content alongside the previous BSF project, which understood that in order to achieve social mobility, building replacement needs to be accompanied by a vision of education that puts children’s well-being at the centre of the agenda and shows them that they matter3
.
Okay, let’s turn to the £2.5bn pupil premium, designed as an incentive for better schools to take on children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Surely this represents a welcome form of support for children’s services and through this, children’s well-being and social mobility? Actually this fairs little better under the spotlight: it has been criticised as redistributed funding made available by cutting money for some schools in order to fund others4
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Right, let’s try the £2bn early intervention grant then. Maybe this really does represent a commitment to giving the poorest children the best start? Here we run into a number of problems.
First, this grant includes funds that have already been allocated for dealing with social problems in youth such as substance abuse, anti-social behaviour and teenage pregnancy5
. Second,
the grant is not ring-fenced and so runs the risk of being used for purposes other than early intervention.
The president of the Association of Children’s Services, Marion Davis, is quoted as saying ‘Directors of children’s services … will have to argue strongly for investment in early intervention and prevention services … given the removal of the ring-fencing around funding for services for children’. Assuming that children’s services departments have enough staff left to do this arguing effectively, that is. And with their 30% cuts looming, this looks questionable.
Third, for early interventions to succeed there is a need for social scientific research into and dissemination of what works and why. But what has happened to higher education in the spending review? 40% cuts falling disproportionately to the arts, humanities and social sciences6 This does not bode well.
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The spending review’s cuts, reforms and even apparent increases in other arenas within children’s services are no less problematic with regard to fairness and social mobility.
The caps on benefits, the halving of the social housing budget, the slashing of support to third sector groups through cuts to local councils7
- crucial delivery
mechanisms of support for disadvantaged children, the cuts to policing… all of these mean that the patchwork rug of provision for young people is effectively being pulled out
Nov/Dec 10
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