Asked by: Lord Redwood (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what grants were provided by her Department to (a) Wokingham Borough Council and (b) state-aided schools in Wokingham in the (i) 2022-23 and (ii) 2023-24 financial year; and how much was awarded in each grant.
Answered by Damian Hinds
Revenue funding covers ongoing or operational expenses associated with schools. The majority of this is provided on a per pupil basis to support learning and attainment, but it also includes other aspects such as school running costs and salaries.
The following revenue grants were allocated to Wokingham Borough Council and/or schools within the council in both the 2022/23 and 2023/24 financial years: the Dedicated Schools Grant, Pupil Premium, PE and Sports Premium, Coronavirus (COVID-19) Recovery Premium, National Tutoring Programme, Teachers’ Pension Employer Contribution Grant and Universal Infant Free School Meals.
Other grants were allocated in specific financial years, to support schools with growing costs and the 2023 teachers’ pay award. These include: the Schools Supplementary Grant (2022/23), Mainstream Schools Additional Grant (2023/24), Teachers’ Pay Additional Grant (2023/24).
Wokingham Borough Council’s revenue grant allocations can be found in the separate table provided. The total school revenue funding grants, broken down by individual schools within the local authority, are published annually, in full. For 2022/23, these can be found at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-funding-statistics. The 2023/24 financial year school revenue funding statistics are scheduled to be published in the same format in January 2024.
Additional revenue funding is provided for post-16 provisions, such as sixth forms and colleges.
The department also allocates capital funding each year to support local authorities to provide sufficient childcare, mainstream and high needs school places, as well as keeping the school buildings that they are responsible for safe and operational. The following capital grants were allocated to Wokingham Borough Council in both the 2022/23 and 2023/24 financial years: the Basic Need Capital Allocations Grant, High Needs Provision Capital Allocations Grant, Childcare Expansion Capital Grant and School Condition Allocations (SCA).
Larger multi-academy trusts and voluntary-aided bodies in Wokingham will also have been allocated SCA funding for the schools for which they are responsible, although allocations typically cut across local authority boundaries. Smaller academy-trusts and voluntary aided bodies will have been invited to bid into the Condition Improvement Fund (CIF), to apply for funding for specific projects. Outcomes for CIF for 2022/23 and 2023/24 can be found on GOV.UK.
State-funded schools in Wokingham will also have been allocated funding to spend on their capital priorities or contribute to larger projects through an annual Devolved Formula Capital allocation.
In 2022/23, eligible schools and sixth-form colleges also received an allocation from an additional £447 million of capital funding to improve energy efficiency.
More information on school condition funding, including allocations for 2022/23 and 2023/24, can be found on GOV.UK.
Wokingham Borough Council’s grant allocations for Basic Need, High Needs, Childcare and (for its maintained schools) total SCA for the 2022/23 and 2023/24 financial years can be found in the separate table provided.
Asked by: Lord Redwood (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the (a) maximum and (b) average reduction in per pupil funding for a state secondary school was in each of the last five years.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Between 2015-16 and 2019-20 the government has made a significant investment in schools, with core schools funding growing by nearly £4 billion.
The table below shows the average funding per secondary pupil we have allocated to local authorities in England through the schools block of the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) for 2018-19 and 2019-20.
Financial year | Average Schools block secondary unit of funding (SUF) |
2018-19 | £5,228.74 |
2019-20 | £5,294.78 |
Before 2018-19, the Department did not distinguish between phases when allocating funding to local authorities through the DSG. Each local authority will have set their own funding rates for secondary pupils for each year in this period. The average funding per pupil (schools block unit of funding) for the period between 2014-15 and 2017-18 is available in the table below.
Financial year | Average Schools block unit of funding (SBUF) |
2014-15 | £4,555.02 |
2015-16 | £4,612.11 |
2016-17 | £4,636.43 |
2017-18 | £4,618.63 |
The drop in schools block per pupil funding between 2016-17 and 2017-18 is due to local authorities re-baselining funding between the DSG blocks, resulting in funding moving from the schools block into the high needs block.
In addition to schools block funding, schools also receive funding from separate funding streams and additional grants, such as the central schools services, and the high needs blocks of the DSG, as well as the Pupil Premium.
Local authorities continue to be responsible for distributing funding to schools in their local area, which they will have determined through their own local formulae. As a result, the Department does not hold any analysis of this data in order to provide the maximum and average change per secondary pupil at school level as requested. The Department publishes schools block allocations for individual maintained schools and academies online, which can be accessed at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/schools-block-funding-allocations.