National Funding Formula: Schools/High Needs

Lucy Frazer Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I was talking about two flexibilities in the consultation. They include, in relation to the high-needs fund that we are now consulting on, the ability for local authorities that will still receive high-needs funding to share some of that with mainstream schools, if they feel that is a better way of operating to provide for special needs locally. Of course, some special needs children are in mainstream schools and some are in special schools. We wanted to include an additional flexibility for 2018-19, so that where there is agreement locally that the funding should flow the opposite way—from the schools budget into high needs, perhaps because of the way that special needs are delivered locally—that should be possible if there is overall agreement from the majority of schools. That is what we are consulting on. We want to look at whether there is a longer-term approach, but the whole point of the second-stage consultation is to get feedback on those proposals.

[Lucy Frazer (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I warmly welcome the statement on fairer funding for schools. It is not right that constituencies such as mine have a £2,000 difference per pupil compared with other constituencies. I noted with interest that the Secretary of State identified as one of the reasons the fact that the data are a decade out of date, so going forward it is fundamental that we have the correct data, particularly in areas of high growth. Will she assure me that the data will be collected sufficiently late in the year, so that we know the accurate figures per pupil for the following school year?

[Justine Greening]

As part of the figures for deprivation we will be using IDACI—the income deprivation affecting children index—which essentially looks at how deprivation affects children in particular. It was last updated very recently, so it gives us a fresh database to use. In relation to broader pupil cohort characteristics, the census is updated in October every year and that feeds into the following academic year’s funding formula details. Those two things should mean that we have up-to-date data to feed in.