What does last Wednesdays announcement mean for schools?
DM: Well, the most important thing that schools have said to us is that they wanted stability and predictability for 2004/5 and 2005/6 and they wanted us to learn the lessons of previous years, especially this year. Lesson one is that we need to get information to schools much, much earlier and that is why we are working with local authorities to make sure that come January, schools all round the country know what their budgets are going to be. Secondly, they said that as well as a floor level of funding for every LEA across the country, we need to give a guarantee per pupil for every school in the country. Thirdly, they said that LEAs need to have the financial head room to help those schools in financial difficulty. Finally, they said that because of the problems this year we need a proper transitional fund so that those schools with the worst problems hanging over from this year and to future years can have them tackled. We have tried to respond to all four of those points in the an
