'Improving our schools is a central part of our agenda that sees education as the key to greater prosperity and social inclusion.' These words, which she had spoken only a few hours ago in the House of Commons, were still giving Toni Cherry a warm feeling. What a great sound bite, she thought, as she sat in the back of her chauffeur-driven ministerial car as it sped through her constituency in Metroshire. She was due to meet with some local public officials and counsellors but, as she was early for that appointment, she asked her driver to pull in at a local secondary school where she knew the head teacher, Mary Brown, from their own school days. Mary was excited to be meeting her high flying friend who had phoned her just a few minutes ago. She showed Toni into her office and they began to chat over a cup of coffee. 'So, Mary how are you spending all the extra resources that our government has put into the school system?' asked Toni. 'Extra resources!' exclaimed Mary. 'What extra resources? We have just introduced a freeze on new appointments, laid off our temporary staff and pulled out of the local project that offered extra tuition to pupils receiving free school meals. We have also asked parents to pay for their children's textbooks.'
'But we have increased spending on education by over 20% in the last two years. Isn't the money getting through to you? Don't you have the freedom to manage your own budgets these days?' exclaimed Toni. 'Yes, of course we can set our own budgets - we have already set a deficit budget for next year that forecasts that we will have to dip into our reserves just to keep going. The increases in our costs such as the extra national insurance payments and the need to raise staff salaries have more than eaten up the extra money. Remember, this is a very expensive area to live in and we have to pay our teachers extra increments to stop them from moving to schools where housing is cheaper.' After this exchange, Toni made her excuses and left in a bad temper. When she arrived at her appointment she accused the local authority officials of not passing on the extra funding that they had received for educational spending in the schools. A major row broke out when the head of the council, Alderman Alf Roberts, protested: 'Of course we passed on the extra money but schools manage their own budgets now and we don't have the detailed knowledge of the cost drivers that we had when the local authority managed school budgets.' Toni responded: 'But couldn't you see that they were in trouble when they sent in an indicative deficit budget?' 'But they do that every year! Partly they are "crying wolf" and partly we are all erring on the side of caution when we don't know what the government is going to give us from one year to the next.' At the end of the day, a rather less complacent Toni Cherry was glad to be back in London and preparing for her forthcoming trip to the Far East. Postscript: Parliament gave schools some extra funds and, additionally, the projected budgetary deficits were lower than predicted by the schools.

Required
Explain the origins of the budgeting problems in the local schools in Metroshire and suggest some possible improvements to overall budgeting practices.