HARD on the heels of the confirmation that Treasury and Resources is looking for the early delivery of £6.5m.-worth of projected financial transformation programme savings by simply withholding that sum from departments, there was an immediate reaction from one of the teaching unions.

With the Education Department set to lose £1.63m., the NASUWT said that the island could not afford to cut teaching provision and support for children in order to make those cuts.

Few would disagree with that, especially at a time when the performance of the secondary schools is under intense scrutiny.

However, what has to be questioned is what the Education minister is doing with the near £75m. budget she has this year.

A glance at the department’s own accounts for last year shows that while it piled on the bureaucracy, it actually reduced the number of teachers and teaching assistants it employs.

In that year it dropped 4.5 full-time equivalents in the classrooms while increasing the number of civil servants at La Couperderie by three and took on nearly 10 extra manual staff.

In total, there were 860 teachers and teaching assistants educating nearly 6,900 pupils in the maintained sector yet there were nearly 190 civil servants at a very conservative estimated cost of £6.4m, massively outnumbering 98 PSEs, who largely work in the schools environment.

Given that children cannot be educated without teachers and those who maintain the fabric of the schools, hard-pressed taxpayers will be wondering what value the army of La Couperderie bureaucrats adds to the education mix.

The closest the department seems to have to a mission statement is a declaration that it ‘has established a curriculum that aims to help young people become confident individuals; successful learners; effective contributors; responsible citizens’.

It does not include ‘well educated’ but nevertheless it is hard to see what 190 civil servants contribute to the board’s stated objectives and that is possibly something that the Policy Council review of education services might inquire into.

In the meantime, the Education minister ought to be able to reassure the teaching unions that classrooms will be unaffected by any cuts – because she has a rigorous back-office programme to pursue first.