In the Autumn Statement the chancellor advised that there would be a consultation programme looking at a National Funding Formula for schools and academies.
The Department for Education announced on the 7th March stage one of the consultation process, with the Education Secretary pushing ahead with a "national funding formula" for schools, to tackle uneven levels of funding across England.
Mrs Morgan says schools need funding that "genuinely matches their need". The proposals will see funding going straight to heads and will be a further reduction in the link between local authorities and schools.
The Education Select Committee chairman Graham Stuart presented a petition at the end of 2015 calling for change, saying the best-funded areas received up to £6,300 per pupil per year, while the worst-funded received £4,200.
Subscribers to the EFA bulletin will have received an email about the consultation.
This stated:
The Department for Education (DfE) has today (Monday 7 March 2016) launched the first stage of its consultation on the national funding formulae for schools and high needs.
DfE are running the consultation in two stages. This first stage outlines the principles by which the formulae will be set and the building blocks of the national funding formulae for schools and high needs. The high needs funding consultation also responds to other proposals in the report of the special educational needs (SEN) funding research carried out last year by Isos Partnership. The first stage consultation will close on Sunday 17 April 2016.
DfE will publish the response to the first stage consultation alongside the launch of the second stage consultation. The second stage will focus on the detailed design of the formulae and will show how the new formulae will impact on the funding of schools and local authorities.
During March and April 2016 we will also be gathering information from local authorities on their 2016 to 2017 baselines. This will enable us to ‘re-baseline’ the blocks of the dedicated schools grant for each local authority. This is so that each block aligns with the pattern of authority spending in 2016 to 2017, rather than how the funding was allocated to them. We will provide more detail to local authorities about this exercise shortly.
DfE will also be consulting on a national funding formula and associated reforms for early years later this year.
You can access the consultation by clicking on here.
