Explanatory note

Section 33 of the Education Reform Act 1988 requires local education authorities to prepare schemes providing for the delegation by the authority to the governing bodies of county and voluntary schools maintained by it of the management of each school’s share of that part of the authority’s general schools budget which is available for allocation to individual schools.

Section 50 of the Act requires local education authorities to prepare financial statements in respect of any financial year before the authority’s financial provision for county and voluntary schools is subject to regulation by such a scheme and for special schools until such time as they are covered by schemes. Section 50(5) requires a statement to be prepared giving details of proposed expenditure in the current financial year, and section 50(6) requires such a statement to be prepared after the end of each financial year giving details of expenditure actually incurred. These Regulations prescribe further particulars, in addition to those set out in section 50(5) and (6), which are to be included in such statements.

Regulation 3 prescribes a list of services expenditure on which is to be deducted under section 50(5)(b)(iii) of the Act from the initial amount appropriated for meeting expenditure in respect of relevant schools, so as to arrive at the general expenditure amount.

Regulation 4(1) requires the budget statement to give particulars of the proportion of the initial amount appropriated by the authority for meeting expenditure in the financial year in respect of all relevant schools which is respectively attributable to primary, secondary and special schools.

Regulation 4(2) requires it to give particulars of amounts deducted under section 50(5)(b), setting out (both as totals and so as to show the proportion respectively attributable to primary, secondary and special schools) the amount attributable to expenditure of a capital nature and the amounts respectively attributable to expenditure on each of the matters prescribed by regulation 3(a) and (b).

Regulation 4(3) requires the budget statement to give particulars of the basis on which the authority determines the share of the general expenditure for each relevant school and of the amount for each such school obtained by dividing that school’s share of the general expenditure amount by the number of full-time equivalent pupils recorded in the Annual School Census for the January immediately preceding the financial year to which the statement relates (or by an estimate of that, if the census is not available).

Regulation 5 requires the budget statement, where it would not already do so, to give the totals of the general expenditure amount and the initial amount appropriated for meeting expenditure in the year in respect of all relevant schools at estimated outturn prices, that is to say, on an estimated actual cost basis.

Regulation 6 requires the outturn statement to give particulars of the amount of expenditure actually incurred by the authority in the immediately preceding financial year on all those matters on which particulars are required to be given in the budget statement (whether by virtue of section 50 of the Act or of the earlier provisions of these Regulations).

Regulation 7(1) requires each authority to make a copy of the budget statement available from 1st April in the year to which the statement relates for inspection at its offices by the governing body and head teacher of any county, voluntary or special school which it maintains and further requires a copy to be sent to the governing bodies of all such schools and to the Local Management of Schools Unit of the Department of Education and Science or the Welsh Office, as the case may be, by 30th April in that year.

Regulation 7(2) requires copies of the outturn statement to be sent to the governing bodies of all such schools and to the Local Management of Schools Unit by 31st October in the year immediately following the financial year to which it relates.