National Policy Forum - Your Southeast CLP representatives

Chancellor Gordon Brown announced the budget last week and gave us a budget for education and skills in particular.

Here is a summary of the main announcements made in the Budget:

Education and skills

- a 5 year plan to raise state school spending per pupil to match the levels in private schools

- £34 billion to employ extra teachers, improve equipment and reduce class sizes still further

- £440 million in direct payments to secondary schools this week, which amounts to an extra £150,000 per school

- an extra £13,000 for each primary school

- science teaching will be given the same importance as numeracy and literacy, to give Britain a world-class science economy. There will be cash being given to recruit, retrain or reward 3,000 extra science teachers, as well as money for extra after-school classes for struggling pupils
- a 25% increase in the funding for school buildings repairs or replacement

- a new commitment to lifelong learning, with 19 to 25 year olds being given free entry into A Level exams

- an increased emphasis on FE colleges, with more money for further education colleges

- to help tackle child poverty and inequality in work, £40 million extra will be given to retain low-skilled women

Families

To tackle child poverty in particular, the Budget had an emphasis on measures to improve the financial situation of hard-working families with children.

- Child Tax Credit will increase at above inflation rates for the next three years, going up 14% to £88 per week
- Child benefit will also go up at above inflation rates
- To help working parents, the tax-free childcare voucher will be increased to £55 per week
- There will be an extra payment of £250 or £500 at teh age of 7 for the “baby bonds”

Sure Start Centres will be increasing from 700 to 3,500 by 2010, bringing all-day childcare to all parts of the country.

And of course the minimum wage is increasing by 30p per week, to £5.35 per week.

The environment

There were many measures in the Budget to help tackle climate change. The “gas guzzler tax” grabbed the headlines, but there were also a number of important issues designed to encourage green technologies to become available much more widely.

- £50 million will be given to develop microgeneration technologies for homes, businesses and local communities. This will be used to develop solar and wind power schemes, as well as local Combined Heat and Power schemes.

- £20m will also be given to open a new Energy and Environment Research Institution. This will help turn new green technologies into commercially-available and practical schemes - making them available to all to make a real change

- There will also be money given to help insulate 250,000 or more homes

- The climate change levy, a tax imposed on large-scale energy users, will be index-linked from 2007, to help ddrive down energy usage

Homes

The Chancellor gave help to those who need new housing, including:

- £970 million over the next 2 years to help 35,000 new first-time buyers, with interest-free loans

- More emphasis on shared equity schemes, with a new task force being set up to increase its use

- More publicly-owned land will be given over to build the new £60,000 homes

- And the threshold for stamp duty will be increased to £125,000

Lastly, the Chancellor has given UK sport the extra money it asked for, to help the UK team at the London Olympics become one of the best at the games.