Update on the National Funding Formula
Schools will be aware of the Government's decision to implement a national funding formula for schools. When the provisional formula was announced (in December 2016) the results for Warwickshire schools were decidedly mixed. The proposal certainly did not address the structural, historic under-funding to the County area and the overall gain to the whole area was decidedly modest. The Local Authority, the Schools Forum and groups of schools all lobbied for further change that would result in additional funding for Warwickshire pupils.
In September the Department for Education announced some considerable revisions to their original proposals, including:
- an additional £1.3 bn investment
- a minimum per pupil funding level, in 2019-20, of £4,800 for every secondary school and £3,500 per pupil for every primary school
- a minimum, 0.5% per pupil cash increase in 2018-19, and a 1% increase by 2019-20 compared to their baselines, in respect of every school.
Understandably, locally those schools who stand to gain the most from the move to a national funding formula will want to accelerate implementation. Equally, those schools in Warwickshire that lose out the most will want some form of transitional protection. So there is a basic issue of balancing competing desires within an overall cost envelope. Provisionally, the Local Authority will want to address this, alongside the Schools Forum, by adopting the following principles:
- to implement the new national funding formula locally as soon as possible, given that all schools will need to work with the new formula by 2020.
- accept that there may need to be an element of capping of gains, in terms of affordability, as part of the initial implementation in 2018/19. We will not know how affordable it is to implement the new formula, in full, until we get the Dedicated Schools Grant provisional settlement from the Department for Education (probably in December).
- to minimise volatility, as far as that is practicable, for those schools who lose out the most
- to take into account the impact of any regulations (or local dispensations) on the minimum funding guarantee (which will directly affect the resources available to implement the new national funding formula).
The Schools Forum will consider this further at the meeting on 18th October and we will keep schools updated.
For information, the papers for Schools Forum are available at the link below: