Dear Sir David

We are concerned the Government is still making inaccurate statements about education funding. On 30th August, the Department for Education made a major policy announcement about school funding, https://www.gov.uk/government/news/prime-minister-boosts-schools-with-14-billion-package.

The press release claims that:

“As part of this, every secondary school will receive a minimum of £5,000 per pupil next year, with every primary school getting a minimum of £4,000 from 2021/22.”

The Government cannot give this assurance because the allocations are at the discretion of Schools Forums, and last year thousands of schools received less than their allocation. You have previously had to write to Damian Hinds when he made this claim last year.

In addition, the press release quotes Boris Johnson saying, “Today I can announce the first step in delivering on that pledge – funding per pupil in primary and secondary schools will increase, and be levelled up across the entire country”.

The Government announcement says that the minimum increase in the per pupil allocation will be 1.84%. This may be the rate of the GDP Deflator for April 2020, but it is not sufficient to cover school cost increases and so we anticipate that over 6,000 schools will see their funding decline in real terms next year. We believe this makes the claim that school funding is being “levelled up” is misleading.

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Yours sincerely

Mary Bousted
Joint General Secretary

Kevin Courtney
Joint General Secretary

 

Related Links:

Sir David Norgrove to National Education Union (October 2019)

OSR statement on school funding announcements (October 2019)