 Barry Gardiner has said school budgets may be cut |
Education boards across Northern Ireland have rejected a suggestion by the government that they have not been working hard enough to keep schools within their budgets. Education Minister Barry Gardiner has made a veiled threat to take the budgets away due to a small proportion of schools overspending and underspending their budgets.
The boards say the main problem is shrinking pupil numbers and they claim drastic action could mean school closures and redundancies.
Boards of governors decide their own financial issues and the matter has caused consternation on both sides.
The minister seems to be using the example of schools in England which are not permitted to go into the red.
In Northern Ireland there has traditionally been a more flexible attitude.
The majority of schools overspend because they are small primary schools which have to employ at least two teachers but which have shrinking rolls and therefore shrinking budgets.
BBC Northern Ireland's education correspondent Maggie Taggart said: "The stance taken by the minister could be seen as an extra weapon in the hands of the Education and Library Boards, so that they can tell schools that orders to cutback have come from a higher and stronger authority."
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