Cuts in the education budget will hit neither students nor their teachers, the Government said last night after Labour revealed details of a cost-cutting drive.
Labour education spokesman Evarist Bartolo had said the education department and its agencies were ordered to stop spending money on literacy programmes as part of cost-cutting undertaken last month.
The exercise, he said, would see no more money spent for the rest of the year on the repair and upkeep of schools, information technology, training and the specific learning difficulty unit.
Mr Bartolo published an e-mail from the Directorate for Quality and Standards in Education to the relevant agencies that gave details of the votes affected by the exercise.
“As from today, no more purchases are to be made on any one of the following line items,” the e-mail said, portraying urgency.
Mr Bartolo said the exercise was a result of a shortfall in the Budget vote for education. He noted a €7 million reduction in the education budget earlier this year caused problems.
It was expected that the money voted for the education sector was not enough to pay for wages and allowances, he added, putting the shortfall at around €5 million.
Mr Bartolo said the education authorities had asked the Finance Ministry to provide additional funds so that wages could be paid until the end of the year.
Shortfalls of €1 million and €500,000 were also expected in the fund for school transport services and the provision of learning support assistants for private and Church schools respectively, he said.
The Ministry of Education and the Finance Ministry said in a joint statement they could guarantee that the service provided to students would be untouched and that teachers would continue to receive their salaries.
The same applied to Learning Support Assistants in government and independent schools, while schools would continue to be cleaned regularly. There would be no effect on school transport, with the Government honouring its obligations towards transport providers, the ministries said.