NEWPORT City Council will cut more than £360,000 from its education budget this year by making changes to how children get to school and cutting funding to maintenance and literacy programmes.

Cabinet member for young people’s services Cllr David Hando yesterday agreed to cuts recommended in five areas of the education budget, saving a total of £367,000 in 2010/2011.

The biggest saving came from changes to the way the council provides home to school transport. Contracts with transport companies have been renegotiated, saving the authority £150,000.

The council’s £120,000 contribution to the Better Schools Fund (BSF) grant will also be cut.

The BSF grant is made up of money from local councils and the Assembly to improve the school curriculum and training in line with Assembly targets.

Other cuts will come from money which, over the last three years, was put towards reading recovery in school, supporting additional teacher training to improve literacy skills.

£35,000 will be removed from this year’s programme, with any shortfall made up by a separate Literacy Project budget.

The budget for “non-school maintenance” - which includes the upkeep of school kitchens and caretakers' houses - had already been reduced by £50,000, but Cllr Hando's most recent decision will cut it by a further £30,000, bringing the total saving for 2010/2011 to £80,000.

Finally, the amount of money the council's education department spends on internal training will be cut by £32,000. The report said this cut would be achieved by prioritising and monitoring all training requests.

Cllr Hando said in his decision report that the education service “could not continue as it does now”, and that the council had had to look for new approaches to delivering effective services at a reduced cost.