, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26 - evidence session 2
Thank you.
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26 - evidence session 2
Okay. Well, thanks, Joel. I mean, that's quite a big question, really, and we know that it is a really challenging time for the school workforce. They're grappling with not just lots of reform, trying to raise standards, but they're also still dealing with…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26 - evidence session 2
Imagine what it’s like for me. [Laughter.]
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26 - evidence session 2
They do have different purposes. The education reform LAEG BEL is the direct allocation to local authorities and education settings. The curriculum and assessment BEL aligns with the local authority support and provides funding for a range of other…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26 - evidence session 2
Can I—? Sorry, I forgot to say that there's also £1.73 million that's going for local authority curriculum support from the education reform BEL. That's going to the curriculum assessment BEL and that's to take forward some of the national programmes that…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26 - evidence session 2
Okay, thanks. Well, as Georgina said, it's a question of money moving around the system, and it's important to say that there is more money available. We're making more money available, it's just in different places and is influenced by the fact that we've…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26 - evidence session 2
Yes, the system will be based on school-to-school working, because school leaders were very, very positive in the review about the potential for that. We want to have a self-improving system that's based on really strong self-evaluation in schools, but they…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26 - evidence session 2
Well, the budget—. It's in several different budgets, but all of them we're increasing funding for. But we've had to move some of the budgets around, because, obviously, the consortia aren't going to exist any more [correction: the consortia may not exist any…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26 - evidence session 2
No, that is exactly what I'm saying, and that's why we've been so clear about the priorities—I think the school sector have welcomed that—but it's also why we've tried to develop a simpler and more coherent school improvement structure around schools…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26 - evidence session 2
No, that’s okay. So, he did an extensive piece of work talking to the sector, talking to school leaders, and we had really good engagement from school leaders in the process, obviously talking to local authorities, and the result of that review was that the…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26 - evidence session 2
Yes, yes. So, and—
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26 - evidence session 2
Well, Professor Dylan Jones, he undertook a major piece of work for us, and, at that time, it was called the middle tier review, wasn’t it?
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26 - evidence session 2
Okay. Thanks, Carolyn. So, the purpose of what we’ve done with the LAEG reforms was to make sure that the funding did go via local authorities. Obviously, they’ve got the statutory responsibility for school improvement, and the consortia came under the local…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26 - evidence session 2
Thanks, Carolyn. It's a key Government priority, boosting attendance. I announced a little while ago additional money in-year for supporting attendance. For the forthcoming financial year there’s an additional £7 million in the budget to support attendance…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26 - evidence session 2
Thank you. It's still a relatively new process, obviously, the LAEG. The decision was taken by my predecessor. I think, during really difficult financial times, visibility and transparency is really important around funding. One of the things that came out of…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26 - evidence session 2
Yes. It started on 1 January.
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26 - evidence session 2
Yes. The UK Government made available the additional in-year money and the money for next year, which education has benefited from.
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26 - evidence session 2
I don't know if we have a figure for that, because it's only just started. The money was announced in the budget. They'll have made planning assumptions and made their spending announcements accordingly, and we've had a consequential. But one of the things…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26 - evidence session 2
Oh, yes. Obviously, we've had a very significant budget uplift from the UK Labour Government. The actual changes to VAT have only just started now, this month. That's not devolved. The money goes to the Treasury. But I would expect that we would receive more…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26 - evidence session 2
Thanks. Obviously, I know that the committee always has a strong interest in the reserves position. In terms of the first part of your question, I don't think it's possible to say that there's a right or wrong level of reserves. I think it's understandable in…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26 - evidence session 2
I am saying that we provided additional funding. There was already some funding for pay in the local government settlement, and local government will have expected to plan for that, but because of the unexpectedly high increase in teachers' pay, we provided…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26 - evidence session 2
Thanks, Cefin. As you know, meeting the cost of teachers' pay is part of the core funding that's provided to local authorities by the local government settlement. Where the timing doesn't allow for inclusion of unforeseen amounts, the Welsh Government has in…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26 - evidence session 2
Thank you, Cefin. So, for the next financial year, local authorities are going to receive £6.1 billion from the Welsh Government RSG and non-domestic rates to spend on delivering key services. And the revenue funding for local government for the next…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26 - evidence session 2
Thanks, Carolyn. Obviously, this is something that I discuss regularly with local government as well, with executive members and also leaders, so I’m well aware of the pressures that they’re worried about in terms of capital spending. I think it is important…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26 - evidence session 2
Well, obviously, inflation has been a challenge for a number of years now. One of the things that I know my predecessor talked to the committee about last year was the fact that primary schools were more exposed to those inflationary pressures because they…
