Ulster Unionist MLA Rosemary Barton has revealed the Education Authority exceeded its allocated budget by approximately £20m in the last financial year.

Rosemary Barton, the UUP’s Education Spokesperson, said:

“There is a major funding crisis developing across Northern Ireland’s education system and this is resulting in record numbers of schools not being able to stay within their allocated budgets.

“I have now been reliably informed that over the last year 22 additional primary schools moved into a deficit position compared to the year before and that, combined with dozens of other schools already in a similar position, has resulted in the Education Authority overspending by approximately £20m in 2017/18.

“The fact that the Department of Education’s annual budget from 1st April 2018 is £5m smaller than the one it ended last month with means that soon even more schools already struggling to balance the books will simply move into a debt position.

“Indeed this was confirmed at a recent meeting which I hosted between local school leaders and the Permanent Secretary of the Education Department Derek Baker, during which he said it was ‘inevitable’ that the number of schools reporting deficits would grow.

“This is a very serious situation as schools are being forced into spending money which they haven’t got. This has resulted in the Education Authority reporting a major overspend for the second year in a row.

“Our local education system faces annual increases in pay costs of approximately £60m and this has largely been passed on to school budgets in the previous three financial years so most schools have already exhausted all reasonable cost reducing measures. I fear sooner rather than later this untenable situation of shrinking budgets and growing deficits will just come to a crashing halt resulting in swingeing cuts to school budgets.”