Schools: Finance

(asked on 21st February 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

to ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he plans to take to ensure adequate funding for schools.


Answered by
Nick Gibb Portrait
Nick Gibb
This question was answered on 28th February 2020

The Department is giving schools the largest cash boost in a decade, investing a total of £14 billion additional funding for schools over the next three years. This will allow school funding to increase by £2.6 billion in 2020-21, followed by increases of £4.8 billion and £7.1 billion in 2021-22 and 2022-23 respectively, compared to 2019-20.

We will continue to distribute funding through the National Funding Formula (NFF), which ensures that funding is based on schools’ and pupils’ needs and characteristics. This will ensure that per-pupil funding for every school can rise at least in line with inflation next year; and faster than inflation for most. On average schools are attracting 4.2% more per pupil.

We have also recently laid regulations in Parliament which give legal force to the new minimum per pupil funding levels. This will allow us to aid the lowest funded schools to ensure that every secondary school attracts at least £5,000 per pupil next year, and every primary school at least £3,750 – on the path to receiving at least £4,000 per pupil the following year.

Finally, we have removed the gains cap in the NFF for 2020-21, so that all schools will attract their full allocations under the formula. This means that we can deliver the greatest gains to areas historically underfunded to ensure that they have the right investment to deliver an outstanding education.

The Department will continue to move towards a ‘hard’ national formula as soon as possible, meaning a single national formula will determine every school’s final budget, rather than it being set independently by each local authority. We will work closely with local authorities and the sector in making this transition carefully.

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