Past Events

Nine participants from six countries attended: Albania, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Russia and Turkey. Visits were facilitated with representatives from HM Treasury (responsible for both treasury and finance functions, including budget preparation), the Department for Education (responsible for schools and vocational training), the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (responsible for higher education) and the Office for Budget Responsibility (an independent body responsible for government economic and fiscal forecasts).

The UK experience was useful to participants, who identified numerous lessons learned which will be presented to the wider PEMPAL BCOP membership during its next plenary meeting.  Education financing reforms are a current priority for many of the participating countries as their governments are moving or considering moving to a per pupil financing approach. Participants were also interested in HM Treasury's management of the budget process and the preparation and planning involved in producing the national budget, given they hold similar responsibilities in their governments.

The UK government was chosen as a host of this visit as it is currently going through a significant reform process in education financing. It has also managed to effectively implement significant consolidation of government expenditure while still ensuring strategies are introduced to improve the consistency, access, and quality of education along with reforms to reduce the complexity and disparity caused by the previous education funding system. The participants found it useful to learn about different types of grants that the government uses to fund maintained general schools and academies, with the latter being a new school model introduced only a couple of years ago to increase schools autonomy over development and delivery of curricula. The approach to research through centralized research bodies also interested participants as well as the approach to restructuring of higher education financing through increasing a share of funding coming from student loans. Finally, the participants appreciated lessons from implementing the Spending Review 2010, which were shared by HM Treasury and learning about the model of provision of independent economic and fiscal forecasts, shared by the Office for Budget Responsibility.