Education services face £300m of cuts

Children's Secretary Ed Balls has revealed details of the expected cuts, which will see education quangos' budgets slashed by £135m, extended services support by £100m and funding for so-called "golden hellos" to attract applicants to teaching by £50m.

A further £21m of savings will be found within the DCSF's backroom staff, with communications seeing the most severe cuts in a package of measures that involves moving Teachers TV online.

The government's IT in education body Becta will see a 40 per cent cut in its budget, amounting to £45m in cuts between 2011 and 2013. Teacher training body the Training and Development Agency is to see its non-teacher training budget cut by 30 per cent over the same period, amounting to around £55m.

Further cuts are expected within school budgets.

Balls has also announced that the National College for Leadership of Schools and Children's Services will be provided with £5m to train 250 business managers a year for the next four years.

Each business manager will work across four to five primary schools and the government estimates that access to the role can save each school up to £30,000 a year helping them make the best use of school facilities and advising on cutting costs.

Balls described the cuts as a "tough but fair settlement".

He said: "We also know that if in tough times we are to protect the frontline and ensure it can continue to deliver high-quality services to children and young people, we need to drive efficiencies and make tough choices about reducing direct spending by the DCSF and its partners."

The government has added that the buoyant recruitment market has meant that teacher training bursaries are no longer necessary for many subjects.

However, this has been dismissed by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers general secretary Dr Mary Bousted.

She said: "Using the recession-generated increase in teacher training applicants as an excuse to cut bursaries for those wanting to teach some shortage subjects is like dismantling the roof when the weather is fine. When the weather gets bad, the roof will have to be built again from scratch."