Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, when her Department plans to publish the findings of the first phase of its consultation on a national schools funding formula; and when the second phase of that consultation is planned to commence.

We received a high number of responses to the first stage of our consultation on the principles and building blocks of the schools national funding formula. Those will inform our detailed proposals for the design of the formula, which we will put forward later this year. We must allow appropriate time to consider what would be significant reforms, and we remain committed to introducing the formula from 2017-18 so that schools can start to benefit from fairer funding as soon as possible.