Stephen Timms – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Stephen Timms on 2016-03-17.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to her financial statement of 16 March 2016, Official Report, column 963, how the £500 million funding will be used to speed up the introduction of a fair national school funding formula.

Mr Sam Gyimah

The Chancellor announced at the Budget that £540 million would be provided to the Department for Education to support the school reform agenda. This will supplement the department’s Spending Review settlement.

We will spend around £500 million over the Spending Review period, over and above the per pupil protection of the core school budget, to accelerate the introduction of a fair national funding formula. All of this funding will be provided to support children’s education.

The funding means that the government will be able to accelerate gains for schools that are due to see funding increases under the formula, while continuing to offer a minimum funding guarantee for all schools. We are currently consulting on the principles and funding factors that should define the national funding formula for schools. A second consultation, later this year, will address the weighting attached to those factors and transitional arrangements, including the use of this funding.

A link to the consultation can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/schools-national-funding-formula.

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