Education Authority faces potential budget deficit of £200m

The Education Authority (EA) is facing a potential budget deficit of £200m in the current financial year.

That is according to the organisation's director of finance, Seamus Wade.

Mr Wade said the EA was currently facing a particular deficit of £116m in the services it provides for children with Special Educational Needs (SEN).

Speaking to BBC News NI, Mr Wade said he was asking political parties to give the "required priority to the education budget".

Previous research has suggested that Northern Ireland spends less on each school pupil's education than any other part of the UK.

The money that the EA spends on special educational needs (SEN) is expected to be about £450m in 2022-23, according to Mr Wade.

That includes around £208m on children with SEN educated in mainstream schools, £157m on special schools, £42m on transport and £35m on support like classroom assistants.

"We are at risk of not having sufficient budget to cover the costs that we believe that are necessary to meet the needs of our children and young people, particularly those with special educational needs," Mr Wade said.

"Like other government bodies, our budget for 2022-23 is cash flat and what that effectively means is that our budget is based on the opening budget that we had on the 1 April 2021.

"For the last number of years, we have benefitted significantly from in-year monitoring round money in order to help meet the overall cost of delivering our services.

"Last year, for example, we secured £80m of additional money for special educational needs in-year.

"The problem that brings is that when we arrive on the 1 April that £80m falls out of our budget.

"We have continuing costs, we also have pay and price inflation that is rising, we have increasing demand and the budget simply doesn't keep up."

A monitoring round is an exercise where money unspent by Stormont can be reallocated between departments.

But it is unclear whether that can take place without an executive to make decisions around budgets.

There have been recent warnings from some politicians of a "crisis" facing public spending.

Mr Wade also said that he also expects more schools to go into budget deficits in the coming year.

There were 478 schools in Northern Ireland that were in the red on 31 March 2021.

That accounted for 48% of schools, and their accumulated deficits totalled £87.3m.

However, Mr Wade said that school deficits could rise by another £40m.

The draft budget promised a significant increase in spending on health, but that draft budget had not been agreed by the time the executive collapsed in February.

"I am concerned that we've heard the very public discussions about the health budget," Mr Wade said.

"We've heard of the cost of living crisis, I understand that.

"In that whole discussion I want to ensure that the importance of a sustainable education budget is not forgotten."