Education, education, education…?

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

UPDATE: The full transcript of Ed Balls’ interview about this on the politics show is now available to read here.

The big news this morning is Ed Balls’ announcement that his education department will curb spending by £2bn from 2011. Balls believes he can reduce the number of bureaucrats and senior school staff including headteachers, deputies, assistant heads and heads of departments without damaging the quality of education. Teachers’ pay will also be “restrained”.

But the Guardian says that the plans will also see cuts to spending on books, computers and “restrained” teachers’ pay – and that education’s £42.8bn budget will be cropped by nearly 5%.

This announcement comes at the end of a week in which Lord Mandelson said Labour would protect essential frontline services. But if hedteachers and school books are not essential and frontline provisions, then nothing is. We’ve already seen the effect a good heateacher can have on schools.

It’s interesting, too, that the first real announcement on specific spending reducations is on education. In LabourList’s recent survey with IPPR, education was frequently identified by Labour supporters as one of the services that should be “protected from cuts above all else.”

Is it that cuts to the most vital departments are being brushed out the way early in order to keep them as far away from the general election campaign as possible? Or is it that Ed Balls is trying to show the sort of decisive leadership that his current boss so lacks?