In brief...Northern Ireland schools

Northern Ireland schools will benefit from a £67m increase for education in next year's budget, bringing the total spending on education to £1,407m. Education minister Martin McGuinness said, 'The budget will enable continued progress towards achieving our targets of improving attainment levels, and literacy and numeracy standards, as well as providing by March 2003 a pre-school place for every child whose parents want this.' The funding includes an extra £2.5m to extend the Making a Good Start initiative from Primary 1 classes to the most needy pupils in Primary 2, and cash help with ICT for special needs pupils.