Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent discussions he has had with school leaders on the adequacy of levels of school budgets in autumn 2022.

The Department continues to speak to a range of organisations representing Head Teachers and directly to Head Teachers themselves. Discussions have included school funding and build on the regular engagement the Department has already had.

Overall, core schools funding, including funding for both mainstream and high needs schools, is increasing by £4 billion in 2022/23 financial year compared to 2021/22. This brings the total core schools budget to £53.8 billion. This means the total funding allocated to schools and high needs seeing a 7% cash terms per pupil increase in the 2022/23 financial year compared to the previous financial year.

On 21 September 2022, the Government set out how businesses and public sector organisations, including schools, will be supported by the Energy Bill Relief Scheme. This will reduce how much schools need to spend on their energy, and give schools greater certainty over their budgets over the winter months.

Any school which has signed a fixed energy contract since April 2022 will be eligible for support if, at the time they signed their contact, wholesale prices for the next six months were expected to be higher than the Government-supported price of £211/MWh for electricity, and £75/MWh for gas.

For example, a school which uses 10 MWh of electricity and 22 MWh of gas a month and signed a fixed contract giving them a current monthly energy bill of about £10,000, would receive support based on the difference between expected wholesale prices when they signed their contract and the Government-supported price. For a contract signed in July 2022, this could be worth £240/MWh for electricity and £70/MWh for gas, meaning the school receives a discount of £4,000 per month, reducing their original bill by 40%.

Support will also be available to schools on variable, deemed and other contracts.

The details of the scheme can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/energy-bill-relief-scheme-help-for-businesses-and-other-non-domestic-customers.