I don't mean that the stress of being named and shamed for allegedly wasting money on bureaucracy has inspired England's chief education officers to arrange a soothing session at their local fitness centre.

I do mean that councils have realised that the best way to avoid accusations of being uneconomical with the education budget is to be a bit more economical with the truth.

A number of councils have indicated to me that, for next year's spending league tables, the most sensible option for them is to massage the figures.

Massive variation

Several have admitted that it doesn't pay to try to be honest in these matters, especially when you strongly suspect that other councils haven't been. So, they believe there is no sensible alternative but to manipulate their own figures.

The government claimed that its league tables of how each of England's 150 councils spends its education budget revealed a massive variation in what different councils spend on bureaucracy.

While one council spent only £17 per pupil on central administration, ministers alleged, another spent almost ten times that - £167 per pupil. The average for England was £49 per pupil.

Money wasted on bureaucracy, argued the education secretary, deprived schools of extra funds.

Open to interpretation

Questions ought to be asked, and now David Blunkett had published these figures, the "funding fog" would be lifted and town halls called to account.

However many councils believe the differences in spending on so-called red-tape did not reflect different levels of economic efficiency, but different interpretations of what counts as spending on "central administration".

For example, for the purposes of the tables, councils would have divided up and costed the chief education officer's time.

Councils would have decided that the CEO spent x hours on "central adminstration".

In future, they'll try to redefine as many as those hours as possible, so they'll be asking "Were each of those x hours really spent on "central administration" or could we get away with describing it as time spent on "school improvement? ".

Few impressed

Few parents and taxpayers will be impressed with this approach to accountability.

No one in local government should be complacent about efforts to demonstrate which councils are doing a good job.

On the government's part, perhaps if it had taken more care completing this extremely complicated statistical exercise, it might have won the confidence and dispelled the cynicism of more of England's councils.