SCHOOL FUNDING IN ENGLAND
SPRING TERM UPDATE 2012
DFE ANNOUNCEMENTS ON SCHOOL AND LOCAL AUTHORITY FUNDING IN ENGLAND FOR 2011-12
In December the Secretary of State made a series of announcements about funding allocations for local authorities and schools in England.
He confirmed that school funding, other than the Pupil Premium, will again be frozen in 2012-13, cutting school funding at a time of continuing high inflation. Further announcements on reform will be made by the DfE in 2012.
The key points so far are as follows.
· The Minimum Funding Guarantee (MFG) will again be at minus 1.5 per cent, protecting individual schools from reductions of more than 1.5 per cent per pupil before the Pupil Premium is applied.
· Pupil Premium funding will increase from £625 million in 2011-12 to £1.25 billion in 2012-13.
· Eligibility for Pupil Premium funding will be extended in 2012-13 to pupils who have been eligible for Free School Meals at any point in the last six years. Children in care for more than six months will continue to be eligible. This will extend coverage of the Premium to a further 500,000 pupils and to increase the value of the premium from £488 to £600 per pupil.
· Children with parents in the armed services will continue to receive a Service Child Premium, the value of which will increase from £200 to £250 per pupil in 2012-13.
· Up to £50 million of Pupil Premium funding will be used to support a Summer School programme for disadvantaged pupils, details of which will be published in 2012.
· Overall capital funding for 2012-13 will remain at the same level as in 2011-12, including funding for devolved formula capital.
· Changes to the methodology for distributing capital funding will however result in changes in funding levels for some local authorities. Protection has been put in place to ensure that no local authority received less than 80 per cent of the funding it would have received under the previous methodology, but this could still mean significant losses for some local authorities.
· The Government consulted on the report of the James Review of Education Capital and an announcement is expected early in 2012.
· Decisions on the allocation of the £600 million for additional pupil numbers announced in the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement have not yet been taken.
· The Secretary of State is ‘minded’ to continue with the amount to be top-sliced from local authority budgets in respect of academy funding – a loss to local authorities collectively of some £148 million in 2011-12 and £265 million in 2012-13.
· Central Government grants to local authorities will as expected be cut by 7.7 per cent in 2012-13, following the 9.9 per cent cut in 2011-12.
The announcements made by the Secretary of State will not protect schools against the serious funding problems created by the Government. Recent independent research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies has shown that even taking into account Pupil Premium funding almost three-quarters of primary schools and 90 per cent of secondary schools will see real terms funding cuts in the period to 2014-15.
Schools now face the second full year of Coalition Government cuts, at a time when they are struggling to cope with the impact of the cuts in 2011-12. The cumulative impact of the cuts presents a serious and severe danger to school funding.
Pupil Premium funding is set at a low amount per pupil and is unevenly distributed, significantly limiting its impact on the negative overall funding outlook. The MFG will provide only limited protection, with cuts in individual school budgets of up to 1.5 per cent even before the impact of continuing high levels of inflation.
Local authority budgets also continue to be hit by the Government’s ongoing cuts programme, threatening key services essential to schools. The decision to proceed with the top-slice of local authority budgets in respect of academy conversions will intensify those problems, highlighting again the negative impact of the academy programme on education.
Divisions and NUT representatives on school forums are asked to make representations to their local authorities on the importance of protecting school and service funding. Local authorities should be pressed to apply a higher MFG than the 1.5 per cent set nationally - representations should emphasise the real terms cuts that many schools face even taking into account this guarantee, and should urge local authorities to focus on the need to avoid job losses in particular. Details of the DfE announcement can be found on the DfE website at:
www.education.gov.uk/a00200868/announcement-education-funding.
AUDIT COMMISSION REPORT ON COUNCIL RESPONSES TO THE CUTS
The Audit Commission report ‘Tough Times: Councils’ responses to a challenging financial climate’ was published in November 2011. The report provides a picture of the impact of changes in funding for councils following cuts in funding from central government and local authorities’ responses to the changes. Unsurprisingly given its origin, the report emphasises financial management issues – but it also contains important information on the impact of the cuts.
The report found that the impact of cuts varied across the country but councils in deprived areas were most affected. The report notes that most local authorities had improved ‘efficiency’, cut services, increased fees and charges, and used reserves. Improved ‘efficiency’ did not however mean an improved service. Reliance on public services has a tendency to increase during an economic downturn, so there are clearly problems in reducing provision at a time of increased pressure on public services. However, the report’s emphasis is on how well councils are balancing their budgets and if they have ‘strong financial management’ to enable them to cope.
The full report can be found on the Audit Commission website at: http://www.audit-commission.gov.uk/nationalstudies/localgov/Pages/toughtimes.aspx.
SCHOOL AND LOCAL AUTHORITY FUNDING SURVEY 2011-12
The Union’s recent survey of division secretaries on the impact of the cuts showed that, in addition to cuts in grant funding, teacher workload had increased. Although the full impact of redundancies had not been felt, most respondents said that redundancies had taken place or were planned. The survey also confirmed that a range of local authority services had been hit.
The information provided in the responses is very helpful in assisting the NUT to formulate school funding policy and to build up a picture of how the cuts are impacting locally. We will continue to monitor the impact of the cuts.
ACADEMY FUNDING
At the time of writing the Secretary of State was consulting on funding to be top-sliced from local authority budgets in respect of academy conversions, and also on future arrangements for academy funding in respect of services provided by the local authority to maintained schools. The NUT will be responding to this consultation. The response will argue that the top-slice does not take account of significant problems such as the impact on local authority funding of the academy programme, the unfairness of those cuts, the lack of evidence behind the proposed top-slice and the impact on valuable local authority services. The top-slice will have a serious impact on local authority services which are essential to education and are already being reduced or removed due to the Government’s public sector cuts.
The Secretary of State is proposing to change local authority funding arrangements for contingencies in order to allocate some of this funding to academies. The NUT response will strongly oppose this proposal, which would unfairly restrict the ability of local authorities to give some limited protection to individual schools against the Government’s cuts programme.
POST-16 FUNDING
In December the YPLA published its annual statement on 16-19 funding for 2012-13, which confirms the Government’s cuts programme for the sector. Student numbers in 2012-13 will increase faster than the increase in cash funding, which means fewer resources per student even before the impact of inflation is taken into account.
There is no restoration of the cuts to entitlement funding, which will remain at 30 guided learning hours following the cut from 114 hours last year. As in 2011-12, £150 million will be distributed on the basis of disadvantage. Transitional protection arrangements for individual providers suffering cuts will be extended to 2015-16, but will be gradually removed over the four years 2012-13 to 2015-16. Information on individual colleges won’t be distributed by the YPLA until the end of March, but there is no doubt that colleges will struggle to cope with the ongoing cuts.
The NUT is taking the lead in organising a campaign to defend 16-19 education against the cuts. We’ve already discussed the campaign with other unions – check the dedicated section of the NUT website at: www.teachers.org.uk/6fcs/campaign for future information on the campaign.
The NUT made a comprehensive response to the recent DfE and YPLA consultation paper on the future of 16-19 funding. This too can be found at: www.teachers.org.uk/6fcs/campaign.
THE IMPORTANCE OF MUSIC: A NATIONAL PLAN FOR MUSIC EDUCATION
The new national music education plan was published on 25 November 2011 following a review of music education and can be found on the DfE website at: https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/standard/AllPublications/Page1/DFE-00086-2011. The sharp cut in funding accompanying the plan is a major concern. Funding for music tuition will fall from the current £77.5 million to £75million from April 2012, £63million from April 2013 and £58million in 2014-15.
CUTS TO SCHOOL TRANSPORT
The Government’s cuts agenda has also affected council spending on school transport. The Campaign for Better Transport has reported that 72 per cent of local authorities have made cuts to school transport. Thirty eight per cent of councils are reviewing or cutting transport to faith schools, 46 per cent are reviewing or cutting transport to non-faith schools and 51 per cent are reviewing or cutting post-16 transport.
There is an obligation for local authorities to provide free school transport to pupils between 5 and 16 years old if their nearest school is more than 3 miles away, or 2 miles away if they are under age 8. Some pupils from low income families or who have special educational needs are entitled to free transport but local authorities are not required to provide transport over and above the statutory minimum. Cuts to school transport may mean pupils walking to and from school on a very lengthy or unsafe route.
IFS AND NAO RESEARCH ON CUTS TO SCHOOL AND LOCAL AUTHORITY BUDGETS
Key research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) and National Audit Office (NAO) has drawn attention to the impact of budget cuts on schools and local authorities.
IFS briefing note (BN121) highlighted trends in education and schools spending in the UK and provided a comparison of spending by the previous and the current Government. The IFS estimates that public spending on education will fall by 3.5 per cent per year in real terms between 2010-11 and 2014-15, representing the largest cut in education spending in any four year period since the 1950s. The full briefing note can be found on the IFS website at: http://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/5732.
The NAO report ‘Oversight of financial management in local authority maintained schools’ stated that in the decade to 2009-10 schools had seen an average annual increase in funding of nearly 5 per cent but are now facing real terms reductions in their budgets. The report made recommendations to the DfE on financial management capacity and capability in maintained schools and confirmed NUT fears that to achieve savings schools will be forced to cut spending on staff. The report also confirmed that local authorities were reducing their capacity to monitor and support schools due to insufficient resources. The full report can be found on the National Audit Office website at: http://www.nao.org.uk/publications/1012/schools_financial_management.aspx.
An NUT briefing on the two reports and that of the Public Accounts Select Committee on the work of the Efficiency and Reform Group on value for money in the public sector is available on Hearth at: http://www.teachers.org.uk/files/briefing-recent-funding-research-november-2011-2.doc.
NUT WEBSITES: SCHOOL FUNDING SECTION
Please note that this section, which continues to include a range of briefings on school funding, can be found on the Advice and Guidance School Funding page on both Hearth and www.teachers.org.uk.
An updated version on the NUT ‘There is an alternative: No to cuts’ power point presentation and a range of other anti cuts material is available on the Priority Campaigns page at: http://www.teachers.org.uk/node/12928.
NUT SCHOOLS FORUM REPRESENTATIVES
Please help us keep the NUT contact list for Schools Forum representatives up to date so that we can continue to circulate information to NUT representatives on Schools Forums and they can advise of any useful or important issues. You can use the link on Hearth to update their details http://www.teachers.org.uk/node/13139.
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