The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)
I am announcing today the launch of a public consultation on savings to the education services grant (ESG) for 2015-16.
Local authorities are responsible for providing the schools they maintain with services to support education, such as school improvement and education welfare services. Academies are responsible for the provision of these services for their pupils. The ESG was introduced in 2013-14 and has made the funding of education services simpler and more transparent.
The 2013 spending round announced that the Government will reduce the education services grant by around £200 million in 2015-16 and committed the Department to consulting on the detail of how the reductions will be implemented through realising efficiencies and enabling local authorities to focus on their core role in relation to schools. The Department for Education is committed to helping local authorities and academies to achieve the required savings for 2015-16. Field work has been carried out to collect information about how the ESG is currently being used, and to identify examples of local authorities and academies that have already made savings on these services.
The consultation will be available on the Government website, www.gov.uk