DEPARTMENT FOR
CHILDREN, SCHOOLS AND FAMILIES News Release (2007/0204) issued by
The Government News Network on 12 November 2007
- EDUCATION
SPENDING PER PUPIL UP TO RECORD LEVELS -
- INVESTMENT BOOST IN
LITERACY AND NUMERACY -
- FUNDING TARGETED AT THE MOST
DISADVANTAGED PUPILS -
Minister for Schools and Learners Jim Knight today announced the
first ever three-year school funding settlement for every local
authority in England for 2008-11.
Mr Knight said the stable funding deal would build on the record
investment of the last 10 years and would support the drive to
further raise the attainment of all children.
The revenue funding settlement targets key priority areas,
including closing the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils
and their peers. The funding settlement includes:
* £330/£535/£912 million earmarked for each year over the next
three years to further personalise learning, including early
intervention to prevent children from falling behind; targeted
support for specific groups, including ethnic minorities, white
working class children, children in care and support for children
with special educational needs.
* £138 million in 2009-10 and £315 million in 2010-11 to help
improve the rate at which children progress, ensuring all children
can meet their potential, and those who are behind expectations,
or are falling behind, get back on track. A current pilot of this
approach in 484 schools will run until July 2009.
* £18/£47/£79 million earmarked for each year over the next three
years to get those falling behind in basic literacy and numeracy
back on track and up to standard, through the national roll out of
Every Child A Reader and Every Child Counts.
* Targeting funding at disadvantaged pupils and areas, with
additional £40 million funding a year for schools in pockets of
deprivation in more affluent areas.
Total revenue schools funding will be £38 billion in 2008-09;
£39.8 billion in 2009-10; and £41.9 billion in 2010-11, an average
year-on-year increase of 2 per cent in real terms.
It means overall average per pupil funding, including capital and
ICT spending, will reach £6,600 - doubling in real terms since
1997. That means education funding is projected to rise as a
proportion of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from 4.7% in 1996-7 to
5.6% by 2010-11.
Local authorities will see average per pupil revenue funding
increases of 4.6% in 2008-09; 3.7% in 2009-10; and 4.3% in
2010-11. The overall level of schools' funding will increase
by 4.3% in 2008-09, 4.7% in 2009-10 and 5.3% in 2010-11.
Schools Minister Jim Knight said:
"Today's settlement is a good one for pupils, teachers
and parents. It builds on the foundations of the last ten years of
record growth in school funding and ensures that every school and
local authority receives further increases in funding per pupil
each year.
"We want maximum resources targeted at teaching and
learning. That's why we are giving schools the financial
stability to plan ahead with confidence, with the first-ever three
year funding settlement. We are also supporting schools to run
their finances even more effectively, so every pupil gets the
opportunities they deserve and money can be freed up and
reinvested in the education system.
"The settlement means we can continue to raise the
educational achievement of all young people and narrow the gap in
educational achievement between disadvantaged children and their
peers. On top of the basic increases there is significant
additional funding to support our priorities: personalisation and
special educational needs, progression, additional cash for
schools in pockets of deprivation, extended schools and the
extended offer to three and four year olds. Our young people and
schools deserve no less."
NOTES TO EDITORS
* Summary and background information about the funding settlement
is at : http://www.teachernet.gov.uk/schoolfundingsettlement200811/
* In a written ministerial statement to Parliament today, Jim
Knight said:
1. "I am announcing today the first three year school
funding settlement, for 2008-09 to 2010-11. This settlement and
the capital settlement announced on 10 October will mean that, by
2011, total funding per pupil will have increased nationally to
£6,600. Education spending is projected to rise as a proportion of
GDP from 4.7% in 1996-7 to 5.6% by 2010-11. And for the first
time, schools will have three year budgets, enabling them to plan
further ahead, to take better long term decisions, to use their
budgets more efficiently and strategically over a three year period.
2. "On 25 June this year I announced to the House a package
of measures for school funding for 2008-09 to 2010-11. The key
features were: a continuation of the spend plus methodology for
DSG distribution, coupled with a fundamental formula review, to
start in the New Year; a Minimum Funding Guarantee (MFG) dependent
on average cost pressures, but with efficiency taken into account;
further measures to broaden the membership of schools forums,
particularly from early years and 14-19 stakeholders; a staged
approach to the reform of early years funding; and additional
funding for diplomas to be provided through a specific formula
grant, with local discretion on how this funding is used to pay
for provision.
3. "This statement sets out the government's decisions
for the next three years on: the overall increase in schools
funding, the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) and other grants;
details of funding for our key priorities; and the level of the
MFG for schools. Details of allocations of both the DSG and
specific grants to authorities and schools are being sent to local
authorities today and I am placing copies in the Library of the House.
4. "The overall level of schools funding will increase by
4.3% in 2008-09, 4.7% in 2009-10 and 5.3% in 2010-11. This
includes funding for our key priorities: the personalisation of
teaching and learning, support for all pupils to make good
progress, the extension of the early years offer to parents, and
extended children's services provided from schools. It also
takes account of the additional costs of the expansion of the
academies programme - our plans allow for a further 50 academies
to be opened in each of the next three years, bringing the total
to 230 academies open by September 2010.
5. "The strong focus on personalising teaching and learning
to the needs of every child will continue over the next three
years, with additional sums of £330/535/912 million earmarked
within DSG. This additional funding is to support universal roll
out of a personalised offer to all pupils - including those with
special educational needs - and will be distributed on the basis
of numbers of 5 to 15 year olds. In taking decisions on
allocations, local authorities and their schools forums should
consider our priorities: ensuring all children are making good
progress; early intervention to prevent children from falling
behind, especially those with special educational needs; targeted
support for specific groups including those ethnic minorities at
particular risk of poor outcomes, white working class children,
children in care; and ensuring that the school workforce has the
skills and confidence to address the needs of children from these groups.
6. "To complement this increased funding through DSG, we
will roll out funding to help improve the rate at which children
progress, ensuring all children can meet their potential, and
those who are behind expectations, or are falling behind, get back
on track. A current pilot of this approach will run until July
2009. We will then make available £138 million in 2009-10, and
£315 million in 2010-11 to improve progression in schools. By
2010-11, this funding will enable an additional 300,000
under-attaining pupils a year to benefit from 1:1 tuition in
English, and a further 300,000 pupils in Maths. Taken together, we
will be spending an additional £1.2 billion on personalisation and
progression by 2010-11. There will be support for children who
have fallen behind in basic literacy and numeracy through the
national roll out of Every Child a Reader and Every Child Counts,
with £79m being made available in 2010-11 via the Standards Fund.
Further funding will be announced shortly for the Every Child a
Writer programme.
7. "The increased funding for progression will be delivered
through the Standards Fund for the next three years, as will
increases in funding to extend the entitlement to free nursery
education from 12 and a half to 15 hours, announced by the
Minister for Children, Young People and Families (Beverley Hughes)
on 7 November, and for extended schools. Our aim is that from
2011-12 these funding allocations will be mainstreamed into the
DSG. We will consider how this can best be achieved as we take
forward work on implementing the funding system for 2011-12 and
onwards, following the fundamental formula review which starts in
January 2008.
8. "Narrowing the attainment gap for pupils from
disadvantaged backgrounds is one of the strategic objectives of my
Department and is a key priority for the Government. The most
significant attainment gap is between deprived and more affluent
pupils - including those in generally affluent authorities. We are
therefore allocating £40 million in each of the next three years
to support children from deprived backgrounds who attend schools
in less deprived local authorities whose overall level of
deprivation is in the bottom third, as defined by our new
indicator of income deprivation, based on Tax Credit data. Our
strong expectation is that this additional funding will be
directed to those schools with the most disadvantaged pupil
intakes. Alongside this additional money for deprived children in
less deprived authorities, we will continue to press all
authorities to properly reflect in their local funding formulae
the existing funding for deprivation delivered through DSG.
9. "For authorities whose spending was below the formula in
2005-06, we have closed half of that gap over the past two years:
we will complete this process over the next three years, with
additional sums of £20/40/60 million.
10. "Two further developments of the funding system take
account of changing patterns of demography. Firstly, all
authorities will receive a minimum cash increase of at least 2%,
irrespective of their pupil numbers: that will particularly help
those authorities where pupil numbers are rapidly declining.
Secondly, for authorities experiencing rapid growth in pupil
numbers, or a significant influx of children with English as an
Additional Language, there will be an exceptional circumstances
grant, paid out every autumn.
11. "As well as the additional funding for Ministerial
priorities, we are continuing to provide all local authorities
with increases for schools' core funding. I announced in June
that the MFG would continue to deliver a minimum per pupil
increase for all schools in each of the next three years, which
would reflect average cost pressures. Our assessment of cost
pressures includes an assumed efficiency gain of 1% for each of
the next three years, reflecting the substantial improvement in
efficiency which we expect to be achieved across the schools
sector and the public sector as a whole. It is based on a cautious
but realistic assessment of the wide range of pay and non-pay
pressures that schools will face across the next three years.
12. "The result is an MFG for all schools set at 2.1% for
each of the next three years, which is affordable within the
comprehensive spending review settlement, while allowing us to
allocate significant additional funding increases to our key
priorities. The settlement provides for the first time three years
of funding allocations, and will help schools to plan how they
will meet the range of cost pressures they face from pay and
non-pay over this period as a whole.
13. "The Department is working with our external partners,
including representatives of headteachers and governors to develop
support mechanisms for schools to help them make the best use of
their resources to improve outcomes for pupils. The aim will be to
provide schools with access to a range of support that is tailored
to their individual circumstances, exemplifies good practice and
provides opportunities for peer review and support. We will
announce further details later in the year.
14. "We have received the detailed recommendations of the
STRB on teachers' pay from September 2008 and I am grateful
to them for their work. We will be announcing our response to the
STRB's report when we have carefully considered their
detailed recommendations within the wider context of the
Government's approach to public sector pay. We will ensure
that the Government response to the STRB's recommendations is
consistent with the MFG we are announcing today.
15. "As we announced in June, all authorities will receive a
basic increase in their DSG per pupil made up of: the MFG at 2.1 /
2.1 / 2.1% plus an additional 1.0 / 0.8 / 0.8% of headroom; each
authority will therefore receive a basic increase of 3.1 / 2.9 /
2.9%. Funding for Ministerial priorities is equivalent to an
additional 1.5 / 0.8 / 1.4% per pupil on average, giving an
average increase in DSG per pupil for each year of 4.6 / 3.7 / 4.3%.
16. "Alongside the increases in DSG for all authorities we
will increase direct funding to schools through the School
Standards Grant (SSG) and School Standards Grant Personalisation
(SSG (P)), in line with the level of the MFG. Each
authority's allocation of School Development Grant will be
increased in line with the MFG, and all schools are guaranteed the
same cash allocation per pupil year on year: this will allow some
updating of the distribution of this grant, while continuing to
protect schools.
17. "The Learning and Skills Council plans to announce
increases in the funding rates for school sixth forms as well as
the details of its new funding methodology, to be used for school
sixth forms and other 16-18 provision, including transitional
measures to smooth the introduction of the new formula. Sixth form
funding will therefore no longer be taken into account when local
authorities apply the MFG to schools with sixth forms. We will
announce in December allocations of the specific formula grant to
support the introduction of diplomas from September 2008. That
will augment the £110 million we allocated through DSG in 2007-08
to support practical learning options. That funding is now part of
the DSG baseline going forward and we expect local authorities to
utilise it to support the roll out of Diplomas.
18. "This settlement builds on the foundations of the last
ten years of rapid growth in school funding: every school and
local authority will receive increases in funding per pupil each
year; but every school will also face the challenge of making
their funding work harder in support of our shared aims. On top
of the basic increases there is significant additional funding to
support our priorities: the personalisation of teaching and
learning, support for all pupils to make good progress, the
extension of the early years offer to parents, and extended
children's services provided from schools. And a three year
settlement supports schools as they take better informed, long
term, strategic decisions."
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