National Funding Formula Consultation - Stage 2

Just before the Christmas break, the Department for Education published its long awaited second stage of the consultation on a new National Funding Formula for schools.

The first phase of the consultation set out the principles that would underpin the new funding system.  This second stage has a lot more detail about the effect of cash weightings that each funding formula factor is due to receive, and what that will mean in terms of cash values per pupil or per school. Therefore, this consultation is incredibly important in assisting schools to understand the future funding that they are likely to receive direct from Government.  

At a national level, there are roughly equal numbers of ‘winners’ and ‘losers’. At a local level, it is quite difficult to ascertain a pattern of winners and losers throughout the Warwickshire area, but it looks as if schools that serve pupils who live in areas with above average levels of deprivation have tended to gain.

Overall though, the results for Warwickshire as a whole are disappointing.  In the first year of transition to the new National Funding Formula, the whole of the Warwickshire area gains by only £1.2m, or 0.4%. When the Formula is eventually implemented in full (that is, without transitional protections) there is an overall gain of about £2.2m, or 0.7%.  Clearly we were hoping that Warwickshire, as a relatively underfunded area, would have received far more than this.  In particular, the majority of secondary schools seem to have lost funding.  There are some large gainers (7 primary schools gain over 10%) but equally 28 schools will lose over 2% of their current funding levels.

The consultation itself is called the Schools National Funding Formula Government Consultation - Stage 2.  The closing date for responses is 22 March 2017.  The Department for Education’s website does include indicative future budgets for every school in the country (see ‘Impact of the proposed schools NFF_20161220.xlsm’).  The link is as follows:

https://consult.education.gov.uk/funding-policy-unit/schools-national-funding-formula2/

Warwickshire County Council and the Warwickshire Schools Forum will be responding to the consultation, but I would encourage individual schools to respond as well.

John Betts

Head of Finance

Resources Group