Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate his Department has made of maintained school revenue balances in 2020-21 by share of FSM-eligible children in schools.

The department pays close attention to the financial health of the sector, analysing maintained schools’ consistent financial reporting returns and academies’ accounting returns. The latest published figures show both maintained schools and academy trusts have on average been able to add to their reserves in the latest reporting year.

The schools financial benchmarking website allows schools and trusts to compare their financial data with other schools that share similar characteristics, including similar levels of free school meal (FSM) eligibility. The website is available here: https://schools-financial-benchmarking.service.gov.uk/.

A full dataset used to produce this analysis for schools can be found here: https://schools-financial-benchmarking.service.gov.uk/Help/DataSources.

In financial year 2022-23, the National Funding Formula (NFF) will allocate £6.7 billion (17% of all funding allocated by the NFF) through additional needs factors, including pupils eligible for FSM. That includes an increase of £225 million, or 6.7%, in the amount distributed through deprivation factors. In addition, in financial year 2022-23, schools will receive a supplementary grant, which will provide significant further funding for deprivation: £85 for each primary pupil and £124 for each secondary pupil who have been eligible for free school meals at any point in the last six years (FSM6). Schools’ individual allocations from the supplementary grant will be finalised in the coming months.

On top of this core funding, pupil premium funding rates are increasing by 2.7% in financial year 2022-23, to £1,385 for each FSM6 primary pupil and £985 for each FSM6 secondary pupil. This means that the per pupil funding rate will be the highest, in cash terms, since the introduction of the pupil premium in 2011. Total pupil premium funding will increase to over £2.6 billion in 2022-23, from £2.5 billion this year.

All schools continue to be able to access a wide range of school resource management tools so they can more effectively invest their resources into areas that improve educational outcomes for all pupils. Schools in serious financial difficulty should contact their local authority or the Education and Skills Funding Agency.