Overspend forecast all too familiar

Amid some positive overall signs for States finances, the explanation coming out of Education would do little to reassure taxpayers that the committee is in control of its spending.

Think back to the dark days of Health and Social Services – where poor financial monitoring and reporting kept leading to shocks, while politicians argued they were saving all they could – and there is a clear echo.

A large chunk of the £2m. overspend being forecast comes from the committee’s pre-school scheme, some £400,000, implying there was something fundamentally wrong in the calculations with which this was sold to the last States.

This is not the backdrop that you want from a committee that is in charge of college funding and secondary education changes. Trust is vital for major reforms to be accepted and then be successful – what is happening leaves that in short supply.

ESC is looking at the secondary changes to help it deliver the savings that the States requires of it in the long term, but that has been the trend with Education – the savings are always somewhere on the horizon.

So it was during the financial transformation programme, where it was effectively given a savings holiday because of ‘timing issues’. When that programme closed there was more than £900,000 left over in potential education savings.

The new benchmarking review by PWC only reinforces the message that there are inefficiencies to be eliminated if there was the political will – it was, after all, the committee’s staff who identified them.

The board’s decision to try again with the selection debate and the staff time and resources that took up has reverberated into other areas of its work. Words from the president that they are exploring ‘each and every opportunity for realising savings and for doing things differently and more efficiently’ require evidence.

Education’s failings in delivering big-picture savings has led to it making short-term cuts.

How politically and publicly sustainable its position is, that the savings will come eventually, will now be tested.