The Education Secretary, Justine Greening MP, announced the much-awaited national schools funding formula today in the House of Commons. Worcestershire schools will on average benefit by a 1.7 % increase in funding in 2018-19 and some schools in the county will benefit by as much as 2.6% in that year alone. Nigel Huddleston and all Worcestershire MPs have been campaigning for this new formula and it was also a commitment in the 2015 Conservative Party Manifesto.
Justine Greening said: “Our school funding system as it exists today is unfair, opaque and outdated. Patchy and inconsistent decisions on funding have built up over many years which allows similar schools with similar students to receive levels of funding so different that they put some young people at an educational disadvantage. Our current funding system is broken and unfair and we cannot allow that to continue.”
The announcement is accompanied by a 14 week consultation which will run until March 22nd to allow schools time to reflect on the proposals. A final decision will be made before the Summer.
The new formula will include a base rate for every pupil at primary and secondary school which will increase in value as they progress through the system; as well as a factor to provide additional resources for pupils who come from disadvantaged families (and tis is on top of the pupil premium); and also a sparsity factor which will help protect small, local schools. There will also be funding targeted towards pupils with a low prior educational attainment at both primary and secondary schools which is intended to enable them to catch up with their peers. There will be floors and ceilings built into the system to ensure that no school loses more than 3% per pupil as a result of the new formula.
The new funding formula will be controversial as while more than 10,000 schools will gain funding under the new formula, some of the currently better funded schools will lose.
During the debate that followed the government’s announcement, Nigel Huddleston said:
“The people of Worcestershire will welcome this announcement because current funding per pupil in Worcestershire is nearly £1,000 lower than nearby areas such as Birmingham.” In response to criticisms by some MPs that the new formula will disadvantage cities and benefit rural areas only, Nigel Huddleston added: “Not everyone who lives in the countryside is living in some kind of rural idyll. There are pockets of poverty and deprivation right across our countryside and in my constituency. Investing in our children’s future based on need and fairness is absolutely the right thing.”