Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she has made an assessment of the adequacy of the allocation of gross dedicated schools grant funding for (a) each local authority and (b) York.

The Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) is intended to meet the educational costs of early years pupils, pupils in primary and secondary education, as well as the educational costs of special educational provision for children and young people with Special Educational Needs in post-16 provision, including those aged 19 to 25 who have an Education, Health and Care plan. The DSG is made up of four blocks; the schools block, the high needs block, the early years block and the Central Schools Services Block (CSSB).

Funding for the schools, high needs block and the CSSB all comes from the core school budget. The overall core school budget will total over £59.6 billion in 2024/25, the highest ever level in real terms per pupil, as measured by the Institute of Fiscal Studies. This means that, including the additional funding for teachers’ pay, funding for both mainstream schools and high needs is over £1.8 billion higher in 2024/25, compared to 2023/24.

The early years block consists of funding for the 15 and 30 hours per week early years entitlements for 2, 3 and 4-year-olds, as well as supplementary funding for maintained nursery schools, the early years pupil premium, and the disability access fund. The Department is providing £204 million of additional funding in 2023/24 and £288 million in 2024/25 for the existing entitlements. This funding is on top of the £4.1 billion that we expect to provide by 2027/28 to facilitate the expansion of the new entitlements announced in the Spring Budget. In 2023/24, we expect to spend a total of £3.9 billion through the DSG, with an additional £204 million through the early years supplementary grant, nationally, on the early years entitlements and other early years funding streams.

Each of the blocks of the DSG is distributed according to objective national funding formulae. In 2023/24, York’s December DSG allocation included £119.6 million in schools block funding, £27.7 million in high needs block funding, £11.4 million in early years block funding and £2.1 million in CSSB block funding. York’s total DSG allocation in 2023/24 was over £160.7 million.