Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the Northern Powerhouse Schools Strategy, published on 23 November 2016, what estimate she has made of the level of underfunding of schools in the north of England.

The Government is determined to build a country that works for everyone. We welcome Sir Nick Weller’s independent report which identifies the need to increase the supply of high-quality teachers and senior leaders in the North, the limited capacity of multi-academy trusts (MATs), and the need for more schools to offer a stretching curriculum, as key challenges in the north.

The report highlights the need for all schools to be funded fairly and according to their circumstances. That is why we are introducing a national funding formula, which will allocate funding to schools according to actual measures of schools’ and pupils’ needs.

Earlier this year we held the first stage of consultation on our proposals to introduce national funding formulae for schools and high needs. The first stage of consultation invited responses on the principles, architecture and the building blocks we proposed to include in the national funding formulae.

We will issue our response to the first stage consultation on the national funding formula, confirming which factors will be included, and launch the second stage of the consultation, later this year. The second stage will invite responses on the weightings we propose to give each of the factors in the formulae, and provide illustrative allocations for schools and local areas.