Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what role local authorities and school governors have in agreeing annual school budgets.

Maintained schools receive a delegated budget from their local authority. Local authorities are required to maintain a scheme for financing schools that sets out the framework for the financial relationship between them and the schools they maintain. This requires that the school’s formal annual budget plan must be approved by the governors. This approval is undertaken on the basis that the budget is being used for the purposes of the school.

Under the scheme for financing schools, a local authority’s responsibilities are to review schools’ budget plans; to carry out high level monitoring of school budgets; to agree a deficit reduction programme with schools in deficit; to challenge excess surplus balances held by schools without good reason; to intervene in schools for which there are financial concerns.