THE Government will for the first time link money for schools with the standards they aim to achieve for their pupils in its blueprint for education, to be published today.
Standards will be the focus of the White Paper which outlines how the Government intends to improve literacy and numeracy and ensure that failing schools and teachers are no longer tolerated.
David Blunkett, the Education Secretary, said that schools applying for grants from the £1.3 billion provided in the Budget from the windfall tax for repairs and improvements would be expected to demonstrate clear plans to raise their pupils' performance. He denied speculation that the new money over five years would be linked to past exam or test results, but said that a school's development plan, showing how standards would be improved in the future, would be one of the factors taken into account.
The Government will also propose a system of grants of several thousand pounds to reward schools with the most improved standards, and grants to fund literacy and numeracy projects.
Leaders of teacher unions questioned how a link could be made between leaking roofs and arithmetic scores, but a senior Government source said it was important that schools be asked to demonstrate that the money would be well spent as part of their overall plans to lift standards.
"No one is going to go to a school in three years and say give us the money back," he said.
But he added: "It is reasonable to ask schools what they are going to do to improve results, and for them to show that it is something they have thought clearly about."
David Hart, general secretary of the National Association of Headteachers, said: "Schools expect to have to submit development plans and to set exam targets and to be held accountable for them. But this must be separated from a school's physical needs. Otherwise, you would penalise the very children the Government is desperately keen to help most."
Mr Blunkett, in a BBC interview with David Frost yesterday, said the Government was determined to raise the morale of teachers and there was no room for "perpetual sneerers" in the education system. The teacher unions would be consulted on membership of the new General Teaching Council, to regulate and promote the profession, but not given automatic places on it, he said.
The White Paper would include provisions for the Government to take away the powers of failing local authorities until they were in a position to deliver, he said.
It also emerged that the White Paper would not include plans for the future of grammar schools or on changes to grant-maintained schools which would be issued in separate consultation documents this month.
There will also be a consultation paper on grant-maintained schools which the Government intends to change to "foundation schools". This is likely to mean that they will lose control over admissions policies.
Other measures to be included in the White Paper are methods of identifying and removing failing teachers and the setting of a time limit on how long the process should take.
It currently takes up to two years, although the Local Government Association has proposed a fast-track route of a month for those who are grossly incompetent, and six months for the rest.
