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So Becta are officially gone in the autumn: by closing the quango the government hopes to save £80m.

And beyond that the education department’s budget will be cut by another £590m. The Chancellor has said that schools’ funding, the Sure Start programme and spending on education for 16-19-year-olds will be protected. But that leaves a lot of the Education budget protected:

1. Sure Start: £1.8bn
2. General Schools Spending: £31.7bn
3. Teachers’ pension scheme: £10.7bn
4. Young People’s Learning Agency (the 16-19 part of Learning and Skills Council): £6.5bn
5. Academies and Specialist Schools: £1.1bn

That means only £9bn out of a total £61bn Education budget that can be cut. So that £590m will be a 7% cut of everything else.

If you assume that the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme will continue in some form (or at least that many contracts have already been signed and won’t be reneged on), then there is only £5bn left unprotected – and 13% of that will be cut.

If you work in a quango or agency (or a supplier company) that gets publicly funded outside of these protected areas, I would be pretty worried right now!

The unknown part is how much of what these quangos do is seen as really essential, and will just be reabsorbed in a re-organised Department of Education (i.e. Becta employees become DfE employees) and how much will just be cut loose.

And let’s be honest; the government will need to reduce spending again by double the amount next year, so by the end of 2011 over 40% of those ‘non-core’ activities of the Education department could have ended.

Common sense has prevailed as England, along with the rest of the world, can now call its education ministry the Department for Education, rather than the previous DCSF.

So far the website is looking very clean, and it may sign the way to a slimming down of the plethora of websites and portals that the DCSF ran.

In an e-mail to civil servants today Michael Gove said: “In the weeks ahead, I want us to offer all schools the chance to enjoy academy-style freedoms so that heads and teachers across the country can be liberated. This will be the focus of the legislation we hope to bring forward later this month.”

So it seems we were right that Gove’s liberalism hasn’t been watered down in the new coalition education policy.

As the full text of the Tory-Lib coalition policy framework was announced this afternoon we noticed some subtle shifts from the Tory manifesto on education. Yet the headline is that, out of a 3,000 word document only 60 words (2%) are devoted to schools policy; it seems that there are many other areas the parties can agree on more easily than education, and that it may take a back seat for the first year.

Schools
We will fund a significant premium for disadvantaged pupils from outside the schools budget by reductions in spending elsewhere.

We agree to promote the reform of schools in order to ensure:

• that new providers can enter the state school system in response to parental demand;
• that all schools have greater freedom over curriculum;
• and, that all schools are held properly accountable.

With a Tory education secretary in Michael Gove, his pet policy of independently run state schools is likely to go ahead, but there is no detail on what terms these would be run. The move to more school budgetary and curriculum independence is likely to increase, but without major overhauls.

Although money ‘from outside the schools budget’ is promised, this doesn’t necessarily mean there won’t be cuts within it. There is certainly no commitment to spending increases.

Ben Barton, who advised the Tory party on aspects of their schools policy, has found in the finer analysis that there are many areas for broad agreement. The clearest of these are to promote Separate Sciences and MFL at GCSE, expand Teach First and give Head Teachers more control over pay.