Schools: Finance

(asked on 25th April 2018) - View Source
Questioner
Neil O'Brien Portrait
Neil O'Brien
(Conservative - Harborough, Oadby and Wigston)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much funding his Department allocated to schools in (a) Harborough constituency (b) Leicestershire (c) Leicester and (d) England in each financial year since 2010-11; and what estimate he has made of the funding that will be allocated to those areas under the National Funding Formula for (i) 2018-19 and (ii) 2019-20.

Answered by
Nick Gibb Portrait
Nick Gibb
This question was answered on 10th May 2018

The Department primarily allocates revenue funding for schools at local authority level. Individual schools’ allocations are determined according to the local formula set by the local authority, in consultation with schools. It remains our intention that every school’s budget should be set on the basis of a single, national formula, but we believe a period of transition will provide greater stability for schools.

Revenue funding for schools allocated by the Department to Leicester, Leicestershire, and England in each year since 2013-14 is shown in the table below:

£m

2013-14

2014-15

2015-16

2016-17

2017-18

2018-19

Leicester

Schools block

200.54

205.61

211.37

226.70

230.84

240.64

High Needs block

38.41

40.21

40.48

41.10

48.01

48.57

CSSB1

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

1.87

Leicestershire

Schools block

338.09

339.66

362.79

368.92

368.28

380.14

High Needs block

49.56

52.34

52.84

53.87

63.16

65.98

CSSB1

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

3.28

England

Schools block

30,411.73

30,655.12

31,365.51

32,650.31

33,093.60

33,683.97

High Needs block

4,966.89

5,183.87

5,246.54

5,299.87

5,826.84

5,986.95

CSSB1

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

468.61

Note that, in 2017-18, the balance between the Schools Block and High Needs block for every local authority was re-balanced, to reflect previous years’ decisions on the local distribution of spending between schools, high needs and early years. In the case of Leicestershire, total funding increased in that year from £422.79m in 2016-17 to £431.44m in 2017-18.

Prior to 2013-14, the Department did not break the dedicated schools grant (DSG) into specific blocks. Total DSG allocations for the years 2010-11, 2011-12 and 2012-13 are shown below, but these figures are not comparable to those above because they cover schools, high needs and early years funding.

DSG £m

2010/11

2011/12

2012/13

Leicester

204.16

244.96

247.64

Leicestershire

349.43

400.93

402.13

England

31,195.45

36,543.96

36,855.00

Funding for 2019-20 will be determined later this year, on the basis of the October 2018 census. The Department published notional allocations, based on 2017-18 pupil numbers and characteristics, alongside the outcome to the national funding formula consultation in September 2017. However, these figures were published to help to explain the impact of the introduction of the national funding formula; they are not comparable with the figures in the tables above as they do not take account of the actual pupil numbers used to calculate schools block allocations for 2018-19.

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