Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Written Statement of 24 October 2018 on Teachers' Pay Grant, Official Report HCWS1028, for what reason his Department decided to use pupil numbers as the basis for distributing the grant; and what consultation his Department undertook on that issue.

Nationally, the Teachers’ Pay Grant of £508 million covers the difference between the 1% pay award schools would have been planning for under the previous public sector pay cap and the average of the 2018 pay award.

At a school level, the Government is using a per-pupil formula to allocate the funding, to ensure simplicity and timeliness in getting money to schools. Not every school has the same staffing structure, and so the grant will not exactly match their costs in every case.

Officials met with a number of stakeholder groups to discuss the methodology of the grant, and took account of the views expressed in determining its final structure.