Gove dilutes schools funding pledge

Last week, the FT revealed that Michael Gove was planning to introduce direct funding of schools, a move that weaken local authorities’ grip on education funding. Theoretically, it is a central component of Gove’s plan to free schools from local authorities’ bureaucratic control in a bid to improve standards by creating a quasi-market. It was, as Gove’s aides have been at pains to express, ‘exciting’.

But Gove denied the story on Andrew Marr this morning: the legislation will contain no such clause. The FT responded this afternoon, proving that Gove has diluted the legislation. The original White Paper contained this emphatic sentence: ‘Local authorities will pass the national funding formula allocation directly to maintained schools until the Education Funding Agency comes into existence.’

Tim Montgomerie asks several pertinent questions about this latest u-turn:
 

‘Something has clearly happened to dilute the White Paper. Liberal Democrat opposition? Unhappiness from councillors? We may never know but it certainly has been diluted.’