Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of trends in the level of per-pupil funding on educational outcomes for pupils in areas with deprived neighbourhoods outside London.

The National Funding Formula (NFF) continues to distribute funding fairly based on schools’ and pupils’ needs and characteristics. In 2023/24, the Department has targeted a greater proportion of schools NFF funding towards deprived pupils than ever before. Over £4 billion (9.8%) of the formula has been allocated according to deprivation, while over £7 billion (17.4%), has been allocated to additional needs overall. As a result, schools with the highest levels of deprivation, on average, attract the largest per pupil funding increases. This additional funding is provided on the same basis for disadvantaged pupils wherever they are in the country, both inside and outside of London.

On top of this core funding, Pupil Premium funding rates have increased by 5% in the 2023/24 financial year to a total of almost £2.9 billion. This increase in funding is on top of £1 billion of recovery premium funding in the 2022/23 and 2023/24 academic years, which was allocated to deliver evidence based approaches to support educational recovery for disadvantaged pupils, and over £300 million delivered in 2021/22. Both Pupil Premium and recovery premium funding is distributed at the same rates to pupils in and outside London.

Alongside the NFF, the National Tutoring Programme (NTP) funds schools based on rates of disadvantage. Since the launch of the NTP in November 2020, more than £1 billion has been made available to support tutoring. From November 2020 to July 2023 nearly 4 million tutoring courses have been started. Over 1.3 million courses were started during the 2022/23 academic year up to May. Around 208,000 (16%) of those courses took place in London, while a third of those courses took place in the North of England (the North West, North East, and Yorkshire and The Humber).

In addition, at a regional level, the Department has identified 55 Education Investment Areas (EIAs) with the lowest attainment outcomes. There are 55 Education Investment areas and 24 Priority Education Investment Areas, all of which are located outside of London. The Department is targeting its intensive investment at areas where there is the highest need and most entrenched barriers to school improvement. In these areas, the Department is providing £86 million for Trust Capacity funding, up to £150 million for Connect the Classroom, and extra funding for Levelling Up Premium retention payments.