Education Minister confirms 2016-17 school budgets | Latest Newry News, Newry Sport and Newry Business for Newry City

Education Minister confirms 2016-17 school budgets

All grant-aided schools have been informed of their budgets for the 2016-17 financial year.

Minister O'Dowd

Minister O’Dowd

The amount of money directly delegated to schools is £1,167.5m.

Speaking as schools received their allocations, Education Minister John O’Dowd said, “As we are all aware, the budget position for all departments remains very challenging. As a result of reductions imposed by the Westminster Government, the overall Executive Resource Budget for 2016-17 has been reduced in real terms.

“However, although the Budget 2016-17 Resource outcome for Education is challenging, the position is significantly better than previously anticipated.”

“My priority has been to ensure that there is minimum impact on the classroom and I have done everything possible to maximise the allocation to the Department in 2016-17 and protect the Aggregated Schools Budget as far as possible,” he said.

“However it has been impossible to fully protect the schools budget. As a result there will be 0.8% reduction in the next financial year.”

The Minister continued, “In order to mitigate against reductions in school budgets, my Department has funded the 2015-16 Strategic Cost Reduction programme in schools. This will result in up to £12.5m of full year salary savings in 2016-17 for schools.

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LearnSpark1“I have also allocated three quarters of the additional £20m, announced by the Finance Minister on 10th February 2016 and which will be made available to my Department as part of the June 2016-17 Monitoring round, to the Aggregated Schools Budget which is being announced today.”

The remaining £5m, he said, will be directed towards the Education Authority for Special Educational Needs services.

“As we all face continued financial pressures, I am grateful to my Executive colleagues for their continuing support for children and young people. As we move forward in the new mandate it will be important to continue working together to target resources at those most in need.”

The Minister confirmed that the 2016-17 Common Funding Scheme is on the same basis as 2015-16. There are no changes to the formula factors or methodologies used to distribute funding, though the outcomes at individual school level will reflect demographic changes both at individual school level and in aggregate.

The £30m additional funding allocated in 2015-16 for additional Employers Pension costs has now been included within the 2016-17 Aggregated Schools Budget allocation.

The Minister has decided to move £7.1m of funding to the Nursery/Primary funding stream, in order to reflect 2016-17 demographic changes, whilst retaining the earmarked funds to support post-primary collaboration. The Minister also confirmed that Transition funding will be available in 2016-17, on the same basis as the previous two years.

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Posted by on Mar 4 2016. Filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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