Debate contribution: Education Authority: Savings Plans

Debate contribution by Mr Paul Givan on 10 November 2025.

MLA

Mr Paul Givan

Party at the time

Democratic Unionist Party

Date

10 November 2025

Type

Debate contribution (made as a minister)

Business

Questions for Urgent Oral Answer

Heading

Education Authority: Savings Plans

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5224751

Read the official Assembly record

Text

First, I apologise to the House: I walked between the Minister of Justice and Mr Stewart while she was speaking to him. I did not realise until afterwards, but I know that that is not normal protocol. My apologies for that. Mr Speaker, I ask for an extra minute to answer the question for urgent oral answer, after which I will set out the financial context that my Department faces. Education has been and remains significantly underfunded. That has been independently evidenced not only by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) in its last two comparisons of spend per pupil across the United Kingdom but, more recently, by the independent review of education's report 'Investing in a Better Future'. While the EA has been able to operate within budget in the past two financial years, it has been able to do so only because of significant additional in-year funding totalling £480 million in 2023-24 and £614 million in 2024-25. The Minister of Finance has strongly indicated that additional funding of that quantum will not be available in this financial year. It is in that context that the Education Authority recently announced its savings plan in response to the unprecedented financial pressures facing the education sector this year. Currently, the EA faces an overcommitment of £280 million. As a result, the EA board has had to make difficult decisions to protect core statutory services, while implementing a number of measures aimed at reducing the EA's projected overspend. The decisions made by the EA board make will, inevitably, have operational implications for schools. Adjustments to home-to-school transport and the suspension of new education other than at school (EOTAS) referrals may place additional pressures on school leaders and staff, particularly in supporting pupils with complex needs. However, I can provide an assurance that the Education Authority is committed to working closely with schools to manage any changes and ensure that pupil welfare remains a priority. For parents, I recognise that the increase in school meal prices and changes to discretionary charges, such as music tuition, are regrettable and may cause concern. However, I reassure Members that pupils who receive free school meals will not be impacted. Those decisions of the Education Authority board have not been taken lightly and reflect the economic reality of operating within a strictly constrained budget whilst continuing to meet rising service demands associated with delivering statutory and policy obligations. Since taking up this post in February last year, I have been and remain fully committed to advocating for additional resources for the education sector in Northern Ireland, which is chronically underfunded. I will continue to engage with parents, schools and Members to ensure that the most vulnerable children are supported and that, collectively, we all continue to press for a sustainable funding solution for the education sector.

The Education Authority indicated that it planned to put out a press release. Obviously, there is an operational responsibility for the EA when it comes to managing its budget. I assure the Committee Chairman that my Department has been engaging extensively with the EA and repeatedly making the case that it needs to deliver on the opening budget that it received. I know that the EA board, on which all the political parties sit, has deliberated on a range of measures that the senior management team brought to it at board level. The outworkings of that were proposals that the EA board then approved and wanted to put into the public domain. However, where there are lessons to be learned about how that is communicated, we should, of course, learn those lessons.

The Member is wrong in his final point. In the original response, I highlighted the fact that in-year funding in 2023-24 was £480 million, which was beyond the opening baseline that the Department of Education received. In the last financial year, in-year funding was £614 million. That was additional to the opening budget settlement. In this financial year, I have found that there has been nowhere near that level of in-year funding being made available to the Department of Education. The evidence of the underfunding is there, and I encourage the Member to listen to his school principals and the teaching trade unions. They make it clear that there is nowhere left from which they can cut. We need additional resources to be put into the Department of Education so that we can then assist the Education Authority. His members have looked at and supported those proposals. The board approved the proposals

The board approved them. It is an operational responsibility of the Education Authority board. If the Members want to produce a minute showing where the Sinn Féin representatives on the Education Authority board opposed the proposals that were brought by the senior management team, they can do that, and I will stand corrected if Sinn Féin opposed them at an Education Authority board level.

The Member is right. Reductions in public services, which cause harm, are controversial and significant, so, yes, I brought a paper to the Executive. The Education Authority board having made the proposals, I asked the Executive, if they had objections, to raise those objections. Indeed, one of my proposals in the paper to the Executive was that additional funding would be granted to the Department of Education so that the cuts would not need to take place. I note that Sinn Féin did not support that. These matters are controversial and significant, and, indeed, if the expectation is that the current projected overcommitment of hundreds of millions of pounds needs to be implemented, that is a quarter of all teaching staff. Is that what Sinn Féin is now seeking when it talks about fiscal responsibility? It wants to see that level of cuts in the Department of Education and in our schools. It needs to be honest with the public, or it could join me in making the case for our schools to get the funding that they need. I will happily join Sinn Féin on that, but the points that it is making are not lost on many in the education sector. Sinn Féin demands cuts, but, as soon as a board takes forward those proposals, it is critical of those cuts.

The point is well made. Again, decisions on how food is sourced and so on are a matter for the EA in its operational responsibilities. There will be appropriate standards on the quality of food that needs to be presented. I absolutely readily admit that, for some families, some of whom have multiple children in a school, the increase in the cost of meals by 50p will create a level of financial hardship, particularly for those who do not qualify for free school meals. It is often those who nearly but not quite qualify — the working poor — who struggle most. I absolutely understand the challenges that that creates, but, again, I appreciate that the Education Authority and its board are grappling with significant financial pressures, and these are proposals that it has made.

The Member makes the point for me. The financial pressure on the EA is an overcommitment of £280 million. In the Assembly, a Member gets up and says that we need to provide greater levels of subsidy: where from? Where, financially, do you want to take money off other Departments and help to address the financial pressures in the EA board? That is a question to countless Members around the Assembly. Mr Baker wants to bring in a private Member's Bill on holiday hunger. That will cost £20 million. Where is he funding it from? I have every sympathy for him, but where is he funding it from? Has he spoken to John O'Dowd, the Finance Minister, to get the money? If Sinn Féin believes what it says, rather than tricking the people out there whom it claims to represent, it should be there fighting for their financial needs and pressures. You control the Minister of Finance: tell him to open up the wallet and provide the financial support to the people whom you claim to speak for. Is it just, again, a continued pantomime that Sinn Féin operates in? It tells one thing to the public, but, privately, my Department is being starved of the funding that it needs, and it is Sinn Féin that controls the Minister of Finance.

When it was brought forward to the board, did Sinn Féin representatives on the board vote against it?

Did they vote against it?

Again, this is the hypocrisy when it comes to Sinn Féin. It has members on a board, as do the Alliance Party, the DUP and the Ulster Unionist Party, and it is saying that a paper was brought forward for simply "noting". Pontius Pilate-like, it washes its hands of responsibility and says, "It's not us. It's the senior management who brought this forward to the board". What is the point in your board members being on the board, if they are just there to rubber-stamp? I do not rubber-stamp any decisions in my Department. I go through it, line by line, to see where the expenditure is, how it can be justified and where we need to find savings. That is why we find them. I would appreciate it if Sinn Féin could get its board members to apply a little bit more scrutiny when it comes to these proposals and to make sure that the measures are not falling on those who can least afford them.

I thank the Member for the question. The pressures that education has been under for a significant number of years are clear. That is something that I have raised repeatedly in my role as Minister of Education. I will continue to champion the needs of our schools and to fight the corner of our children in the face of difficult circumstances. That is why I tabled the draft Executive paper, on 14 October, that set out the critical position of my Department's finances and the actions that my Department would need to take in the absence of additional funding in order to significantly reduce the projected overcommitment in 2025-26. In that draft paper, I set out the savings that the EA was proposing and stressed that many would have an adverse impact on our most disadvantaged children and young people and on school communities more widely. Therefore, I struggle to express my disappointment at the failure of my Executive colleagues to recognise the crisis that is facing education. The Minister of Finance even questioned why I had brought the paper to the Executive, asserting that the Executive do not run my Department. I can reassure you, Mr Speaker, that I fully acknowledge my responsibility in running my Department, but I also recognise the collective responsibility that Ministers share to operate within the agreed Budget envelope. Given the prospect of an overspend at the Northern Ireland block grant level, it is vital that we work collectively to seek to minimise our collective overcommitment to the fullest extent possible. Therefore, I trust that all Ministers in the Executive will take that collective responsibility seriously and help to support me and, more importantly, our schools and children who need to have the support of the Executive and not just me as Education Minister.

There was a series of reductions before devolution was restored. There were a number of savings, of which holiday hunger was one. Those reductions were made, before I was here, in order to help reduce the expenditure in the Department. I would love to be able to put more money into education to meet the needs of those people who deserve it, but the Executive are facing serious financial pressures collectively. One pressure is from the Department of Health and one will likely crystallise in the Department of Justice, next year, due to the data breach. That pressure will be to the tune of well over £100 million. If that is not met by the Treasury, it has to be met by the Executive collectively. As a result of some of those actions, pressure is placed on other Departments. I want to see effective management within the EA when it comes to trying to address the financial pressures. That is why I brought a paper to the Executive, and that is why I seek the support of my Executive colleagues. I wish that they would all get behind doing what we can achieve collectively rather than engaging in some of the positioning that is happening in Sinn Féin's ranks. Its voters deserve better than that. The children whom it represents deserve better than that kind of political posturing, and its Ministers need to roll up their sleeves with me so that we can do all that we can to mitigate the pressures that we face as an Executive. Longer-term strategic decisions will need to be taken on workforce planning and transport policy, and there will not be a lot of appetite for that in the wider public domain, but legislative change is required. My Department continues to scope out measures for the medium- to long-term plans, but the short-term pressures are chronic and will have severe implications for our education system.

I will not justify any wastage. My correspondence with the EA challenges it on the measures that it is taking and on its responsibility to ensure that it lives within its budget. That is documented. I regularly meet the EA, and I take my role very seriously. The overcommitment does not sit within my Department's core functions, nor does not sit within any arm's-length body other than the Education Authority, on the board of which we all have political representatives. It is a shared responsibility, and if Members listen to principals, as I do, they will hear them say that they need our support in order to be able to do more, and that is what we need to provide. Join me in making every effort possible to stave off the hundreds of millions of pounds of cuts that will be made to our education system. What will the education system look like if those cuts take place? Cuts would have severe implications for the number of teachers in our workforce. Sinn Féin would rightly be the first to say, "We do not accept that", and I would agree with them. Cuts would have implications for expenditure on things such as school transport, and Sinn Féin's MLAs would be the first to demand that constituents need to get to school and may need a taxi to do so. I am asking whether there is a more efficient way in which to provide transport. I could give you hundreds of examples of correspondence from Members of the Assembly in which they have asked for more money to be spent on the education system, not less. The challenge for the Finance Minister is to determine how he will support me as I seek to support the school principals and our education system. I hope that he will rise to the challenge and support me.

I have outlined some of what we need to do, but, because of the EA overcommitment, the Department will not be able to balance its books without additional investment. To deliver a balanced budget, any shortfall in the reduction secured through the cuts identified by the EA would have to come from other areas. The implications and practicalities of that are far-reaching. Balancing the budget could be delivered only through an extensive programme of voluntary and, inevitably, compulsory redundancies, which would ultimately need to be implemented with close to immediate effect. That would likely require a quarter of the teaching workforce to be made redundant, and such decisions would clearly have devastating consequences for our education system. That is why those matters are controversial and ought to be referred to the Executive. There are other Ministers in the Executive who should have referred matters because they were significant and controversial. I will comply with the ministerial code and ensure that the Executive deal with education matters that are controversial.

The changes mean that less support is available. That is deeply regrettable and, indeed, unacceptable. Schools will have to do more to try to provide the young people with support. The Member's question crystallises the serious pressures in the Education budget. That is why, when the Assembly collectively discusses expenditure levels, I say that education should be one of the top priorities. We need to put our education system first; we need to put our children first. The consequences of not doing that are now being felt by the very children whom we are here to support. That is deeply regrettable. Greater collective responsibility is required in the Executive and then in the Assembly when it comes to the prioritisation and allocation of funding.

The EA went through various proposals, some of which the board did not want to implement because of their implications for the education system, and, from the category of proposals approved by the board, provided a series of them to the Department to be taken forward. There were other, much more severe proposals. With the projected overcommitment of £280 million, the current proposals are estimated to achieve savings in the region of £20 million to £30 million, which is barely 10% of the overcommitment that sits with the Education Authority. Members rightly find the proposals unpalatable. How much more serious will the situation be if the EA ends up having to go through with other, much more severe proposals? That is why the proposals are controversial and why a collective response is required in the Executive to help meet the issues. Operationally, the EA is responsible for determining the proposals, and its board has approved them. I agree with the Member's sentiment that they are not satisfactory, but that is a reflection of the financial position in which the Department and the EA find themselves.

The overall pressures are equivalent to 8·7% of the opening budget that was granted to the Department of Education in this financial year, which is in the region of £280 million. Given the extent of the current forecast overspend in the overall education sector, there is a real risk of breaching that budget allocation. That in turn has a consequence for the Northern Ireland block grant. I referred earlier to the Department of Health's position. Without question, had the data breach issue crystallised in this financial year, the Department of Justice would also have breached its budget settlement, given that the Treasury indicated that it would not be able to access the reserves. That pressure will face the Executive in the next financial year. Initial planning for next year indicates that, according to the Education forecast, inescapable pressures — they are not nice-to-do things or luxuries; they are inescapable — come to £890 million. In that context, we simply cannot afford to have a 2025-26 overspend increase into the 2026-27 budget shortfall.

I know what effect it will have: it will have a negative effect. The consequences of what is happening are negative. I have repeated in response to other Members that it is not an acceptable position. That is why I am seeking the help and support of Executive colleagues. We all have collective responsibility. I take my ministerial responsibility seriously and can evidence and document where we have been able to make savings. However, the Education Authority is sitting with a very significant overcommitment, and the reductions in services will have a negative impact on those who depend on them.

There is an ongoing process on what we want to achieve. We are waiting on the position at Westminster. They are facing incredibly difficult financial challenges, and the Finance Minister has indicated that he does not anticipate funding being made available through that process. The monitoring round will come in late November or, more likely, early December. There is opportunity there for Departments that need support to receive it, but, with the Executive looking at hundreds of millions of pounds of pressures on the block grant, I do not believe for one moment that we will receive that level of funding from the Treasury. Last year, an exceptional amount of funding became available. That funding masked the underlying situation faced in Education and other Departments. The pressures are now crystallising. That requires me to take action, which I will, in the medium to long term. I will outline some of the issues that need to be addressed, and it will be challenging. I suspect that very few Members in the Assembly will be supportive of those actions, but, given the financial reality that faces the Executive, difficult decisions need to be taken. My experience has been that many Ministers do not want to take those difficult decisions and immediately rule out revenue-raising in certain areas. They do not want to do those kinds of things, but we have public services that need to be funded. Those are the pressures that we, as an Executive, face.

3,514 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 13:42 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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